Fight Gravity: Quickstart

by Tergonaut

This story and everything contained within it is © Tergonaut.

The rocks shuddered.

With a final blow of metal against stone, the small crevice that had been filled with rocks over the years was smashed open. A beam of light came through the opening, and following it into the amassed darkness was the figure of a teenage girl in a motley arrangement of clothes, belts and tools. In one hand she carried the source of the light, a hooded lantern, and in the other was the pickaxe that she had just used to make her way through the wall. She was encrusted in dust and sweat, the result of several hours of hard work.

She dropped the pickaxe into a belt loop and slipped her goggles from around her eyes, letting them drop around her neck. The beam of her lantern made a couple of passes around the cavern, and she looked back at the hole she had just made. "Jerret, come on! I think we've found something!"

The gangling form of Jerret, her brother, came through the hole in the wall. A variety of bags and tools hung from his body, but the most prominent piece of equipment he had was the heavy rifle that was across his back. He was tall, almost seven feet. An unshaven stubble littered his face, and his head was nearly bald.

His eyes focused in the darkness. "Yeah, I think this is it, Val. Point your torch over there."

She turned again, and her torch directed the light in the direction that he had indicated. It landed on a pair of large, heavy doors, cast of a dark golden metal.

The two of them walked through the cavern to the doors. Up close, they were even more imposing. But they had been in enough of these ruins to know how to pass such an obstacle.

"Now, where is it?" Jerret wondered aloud. He walked along the doors until he found a hand-sized panel that was marked with a red lightning bolt. Pulling on a pair of heavy rubber gloves, he opened the panel to reveal several wires, through which ran the power to activate the doors. If the power was still up in this part of the ruins, then he could rewire the doors to open up, revealing the treasures that they could sell.

"What do you think, Jerret?" Val asked as he used his wire clippers. "You think that the rumors are true about there being a Mandroid in these ruins?"

"Dunno, Val. It'd sell mighty fine if we found it. But in a way, I hope not. Gravity is likely to find out about it as soon as we put it on the market. And they've got enough spies to steal it before we can even show it to the first customer." Jerret yanked at one of the newly-bare wires and tied it around another wire. There was a small spark of electricity, which means that there was still power. That would make things easier.

Val made sure that she wasn't too close to Jerret, as electric shock was a common problem among ruin-scrabblers like themselves. But the gamble was almost always worth the effort. Unless Gravity heard. Then they'd be captured by the corrupt conglomerate's Can Mans for some imaginary criminal offense, just so they could get their hands on any Mandroid that they managed to find. She had seen too many of her friends get arrested for less to underestimate Gravity's greed.

A flash of sparks flew from the panel, and Jerret jumped back, shielding his eyes. "There! I think I did it!"

They both looked up at the doors, and for a moment, there was silence.

And more silence.

"Shoot!" Val shouted, and she gave a good boot to one of the doors. "We dug all that way just for-"

But she was interrupted by a screeching sound, and she and her brother grabbed their ears to protect themselves from the calamitous noise. Looking at the doors, they could see that they were opening, scraping against the sediment that had collected between the joints over the course of time. They rolled away, one door to one side, the other door to the other side, and finally, with a cantankerous slam, they stopped, fully open.

After the echoes had finished making their rounds along the cavern walls, Val and Jerret walked into the huge cement-encased room that had been opened to them. Light poured from the bulbs hanging from the ceiling, allowing them to view everything clearly. From what they could see, it had been a vehicle bay from the Long Years, when humans were fighting a tremendous war against some great menace. Only thing was, Earth was almost completely devastated before the menace mysteriously disappeared, leaving humanity to try to rebuild. Unfortunately, a lot was lost back then, and Gravity took advantage of that. Only the rich got to live in the master cities, and the rest had to make a living in the wilds.

Val and Jerret were representatives of the poorer class. Making their living from the ruins and the treasures within, something like a Mandroid would be like a dream to them. The money could get them into the master cities easily. Finding a customer who wouldn't sell to Gravity would be hard, though, and they didn't want to give something that valuable to Gravity, even if it did get them into the big cities.

Their footsteps echoed as they walked toward the back of the vehicle bay. The vehicle bay had several huge minibays filled with automated machinery. The minibays were used to repair Mandroids, fixing them at such an incredible rate of speed that it seemed hard to believe that humans were losing the war. But bare concrete dominated in the central area, save for a long recharging rack near the end where Mandroids were stored while their pilots weren't using them.

Val's eyes brightened with excitement as she pointed at the end of the rack. "Look, Jerret! It's a Mandroid! And it looks intact!"

They ran forward to the shadowy corner of the bay. The lights around this area had gone out, and the shadows almost concealed the metal titan that hung from the rack by two metal slings under each of the arms. The white paint seemed to have been preserved very well through the years after this bay had been buried underneath a relatively thin layer of rock and ruins. Its head had a single eye that wrapped around the front of its head, like a pair of shades. The sleek humanoid body, with a flight pack large enough to propel it into the air, was magnificently well-constructed. Even Gravity's Can Mans were inferior to this great machine.

There was a ladder that led up into the cockpit, within the stomach of the Mandroid. Val eyed it, then ran toward the humanoid vehicle. "I'm gonna get in!"

Jerret shouted, "Stop! You don't know how to work that thing, and it might be dangerous!"

She was halfway up the ladder, but she stopped and turned to look at her brother. "We have to find out if it works, Jerret. Can't sell what don't work, as Uncle Selgood used to say."

Jerret shrugged. "Okay, but be careful, would you? I don't want to get in trouble when I bring your charred carcass back home."

"Just watch me!"

She climbed through the open stomach and fell into a cavity that seemed to be in the shape of a tube. Getting up and looking around, she could see nothing, save for the metal walls around her, and that only because of the light coming from the hole in the stomach.

She felt around until she found some sort of button, and pressed it. The stomach closed instantly, and she heard something gurgle above her. Then, she tried to protect herself from the sudden splash of liquid that came down on her. It felt like ooze against her bare hands, and it was filling up the tube. Thinking that she was going to suffocate, she tried to move her arms, but once the liquid reached up to her shoulders, she realized that she couldn't even feel her arms!

Holding her breath, the liquid went up past her eyes, and then she was completely enveloped in it. Eyes closed, breath held, not able to move, she was at a loss about what to do. Then, when she could hold her breath no longer, she released it and accidentally inhaled some of the ooze.

She could not feel her lungs anymore, and she felt herself dozing off. Her eyes closed again, and she slept.

But how could it be? There was a light on the inside of her eyelids, a light which coalesced into a screen. She saw letters, letters from the ancient days, but she was beginning to understand them.

PREVIOUS PILOT: CAIN, ORLANDO

CONDITION: DECEASED

ENTER YOUR NAME, PILOT

Val began understanding more and more about what had happened to her, and a flood of memories rushed over her mind. She entered in her name, VAL, and waited for the prompt to change.

It did.

WELCOME TO MANDROID FS-506, "MANHANDLER"

PILOT VAL

UPLOADING ALL FILES NOW...

Val felt her brain being filled with data that she knew were blueprints of the Mandroid, manuals on how to operate it, and the rest of the knowledge that she would have needed to fight during the Long Years. There was a change to her that even puberty had not accomplished, and she felt like a completely new person.

BEGINNING NEURAL TRANSFER

YOU ARE MANDROID PILOT VAL, FS-506, "MANHANDLER"

SQUADRON TRI CAPPA EPSILON

NEURAL TRANSFER COMPLETE

Then, her vision came back to her, in the form of a single eye. Her vision was warped, and yet she could see far clearer with the various sensors that enhanced her combat awareness. She was standing taller than her brother by several feet, and then she realized that she was the Mandroid. She was Manhandler!

The voice box of the Mandroid said, "Hey, Jerret!"

Jerret stepped back, giving her plenty of room. "Took you long enough! Now let's get out of here with it and sell it before Gravity finds out!"

Instinctively, Val fired the jets of the flight pack so that she could get off of the rack. Cutting the jets, she dropped a few feet to the ground, and she stood on the legs of the Mandroid. She raised her hands, looked at one, then looked at the other. With a thought, the guns hidden in the forearms popped out of their spots in the arms, and then they retracted just as quickly. She knew that they were directly powered from the Mandroid's power core, and thus had incredible destructiveness.

She took a step forward, going past her brother easily. A feeling of elation washed over her, and she laughed.

"Brother, we can't sell this! In fact, we're not going to. We're going to fight Gravity with it."

Jerret's voice seemed a lot smaller than she remembered. "What? Are you crazy? How can we fight against Gravity with only one Mandroid?"

"This Mandroid has more weapons aside from those arm guns, Jerret, and they are far more destructive. The Can Mans aren't good enough to stop a Mandroid!"

Val could hear Jerret starting an argument when suddenly, the stone wall outside the vehicle bay explode inward, and in the room beyond, there were three of Gravity's Can Mans. In comparison to the Mandroid, they were pot-bellied robots with only a single cannon that they wielded as rifles in their articulated hands.

One of them stepped forward. "CEASE AND DESIST, HUMANS! SURRENDER OR DIE!"

"Hardly," Val replied, and she popped open the sides of her metallic thighs. Out came rocket pods, which rolled into position until they locked into place. The arm guns and massive chest gun also became obvious in that same instant.

The Mandroid dodged a shot from one of the Can Mans easily, and then she fired back with all of her weapons. Raw reactor energy tore through one, rockets blew another one up, and the chest gun blasted the last Can Man into the wall, a big hole through both its head and midsection.

Val made a big show of retracting all of her weapons. "Hmph, that was easier than it looked." She reached down with the Mandroid's arms and picked up Jerret, who seemed stupefied at the combat he had just witnessed. "C'mon, Jerret, let's go home and tell everyone about this!"

Not bothering to use the flight pack, she bounded out of the ruins within minutes, when it had taken them hours to dig their way in. The power of the Mandroid surged through her like electric blood, and she had to admit that this had been the best dig of her life.

"D'londo, another Mandroid has been awakened."

D'londo looked up at the screen above his command chair in Grav City, the capital of Gravity's holdings. His piercing eyes saw the screen display a map of the world, showing the locations of all activated Mandroids. There had been only two other before, but now there was a third one, closer to Grav City than the other two.

D'londo flexed his arm as he remembered. This weak human body was only a cover for him, making him appear to be the young, platinum-haired leader of the most powerful organization on Earth. It had been long ago when he had taken on this form, which was also the reason he had not died along with the rest of his race.

He remembered. The fighting had been going on for far too long. The humans were absolutely tenacious, and their fighting machines, the Mandroids, linked human to robot, creating a powerful combination that was beating them, the true rulers of the Galaxy! And as if that were not enough, his race had developed the Disease, which ate away until there was nothing left. He had been fortunate enough to transfer himself into a human body, on the off chance that he could avoid it.

But the Disease had a strange effect on him. Instead of eating away at him, it reached him, then recalibrated for humans, and then began eating at the humans! The Disease ignored him, but it had become the bane of the humans, and they became so disorganized that they had taken several years just to get themselves civilized again.

D'londo tapped his arm. It had been a rough business, but he had formed Gravity, a government which let him control the humans while building up for his master plan, a plan that would eliminate all of them, faster than the Disease ever was, and more thoroughly.

"Send a Spyler squadron over there, with three triads of Can Mans. Maybe they can catch this pilot off guard."

As the computer processed his orders, he walked from his chair to the window overlooking Grav City. He could see the humans scurrying about in their vehicles, going about their insignificant business.

Fools! They still told themselves stories of how the menace had not been truly defeated, and yet they did not try to prepare themselves for another assault! He would get revenge for every friend he had lost against the humans, and then, maybe then, he could get off this wretched world and return to the Homeworld, where he could live his days in peace.

He would be the master of Earth! For gravity, the greatest force in the universe, was even more powerful than light! And Gravity was the greatest force on Earth! He would get his revenge!