Okay guys, so I’ve been sitting on this idea for a mecha short story/movie proposal to kind of introduce more westerners to the genre. For my Creative Writing class this semester, I got to write the first chapter of it. I’d love any input if you have it.

Spirits of Armor Episode 1: Prologue

            If you were one of the many people still living on Earth on May 21st, 2563, chances are you had a pretty bad day.

            We’d been at war with the Aldeerians for years at that point. They’re a race of twenty foot-tall reptilians with orange skin, midnight blue eyes and rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth. Fighting them hand-to-hand was physically impossible, so to compensate we developed the armor spirits; essentially a line of giant robots, for humans to pilot and fight the aliens on a more even ground. We managed to keep them away from Earth for a long time, fighting them primarily around the outlying colonies near Betelgeuse and Rigel. But when they made it to Earth, they came prepared.

            In the blink of an eye thousands of ships warped in around Earth’s orbit and within seconds began firing some kind of bio-weapon at the planet’s surface. It killed every last piece of organic life on the planet. Every person, every animal, every blade of grass was gone. All that remained of the human race were about a billion inhabitants spread across 20 colonized planets, 93 colony ships, and the active navy.

            But there was hope. One day, a freak accident with its engines caused an agricultural ship to crash land into an asteroid. Nobody on the ship survived, but there was a glimmer of hope to be found, as this asteroid was home to a settlement of gigantic spacedwelling insects named the Torin. These creatures secrete a sap-like substance that can somehow regenerate organic matter, similar to a bee’s honey. When the ship was found, all of the plants had become completely overgrown, as if it had been accelerated over a hundred years. Our scientists deducted that if we were able to harvest enough of this sap, we could use it to restore Earth. It may not bring back the dead, but at least the planet will be livable again.

            And that’s where we come in.

            Our attempts to farm-raise the Torin were completely futile, as the breeds of the creature that secrete the sap are far too wild to be tamed, so we have to do things the hard way: suiting up in our armor spirits and getting the sap the straight from their goddamn nests. This is totally what I signed up for the military for…

*      *       *

United Earth Navy Starcruiser Athens; December 17, 2579

            “Attention Apollo Team, all members report to the hangar bay. I repeat; all Apollo Team members report to the hangar bay.”

            0600 hours, time for the first operation of the day. We must have found a new settlement of Torin or something, because our operations lately haven’t been starting til much later. I get out of bed and head for the closet, throwing on my flight suit. As I zip it up I notice the “T” has fallen off of my nametag, so it just reads “N. Peers”. No time for me to look now, though. I just hope the commander doesn’t notice.

            Dashing out of my quarters I find myself trailing behind Rodriguez, one of my teammates. He doesn’t see me, thank god. The two of us don’t get along too well. In fact, I don’t really get along with anyone on the team. As he turns a corner he spots me. Crap.

            “Yo Bugbait, we found another settlement! This looks like a big one, so don’t screw this up!”

            Ugh. I hate that nickname. Ever since the time I got my armor spirit covered in sap and caused a group of Torin to swarm on me, Rodriguez and Delmar have been using that stupid nickname. I can’t exactly do anything about it… they are my superiors, after all.

            As we enter the docking room I see Commander Robinson and Delmar jumping into the hatches leading to the cockpits of their armor spirits’ cockpits. Rodriguez and I enter ours simultaneously.

            As I climb into my cockpit I immediately flick on the diagnostic system. But of course, since my machine is a poorly-maintained piece of crap, it doesn’t work on the first try, so I hit it and it starts up. I begin strapping myself into my seat as I see the left leg on the screen glow yellow instead of green. That’s the third time this week. I’m beginning to think the repair crew just overlooks my Garrun during the maintenance sessions. Ideally, the entire display would glow green, but I guess they care very little for maintaining an aged grunt unit like mine.

            Either way, it’s an acceptable condition to take off. I flip on my unit’s main power. The viewscreen shows me what its eyes see: technicians and mechanics scrambling to clear the deck while getting everything in place. I see the Commander’s armor spirit getting ready to launch, with the crane moving it over to the catapult deck. As his unit latches on, I hear him give his deployment announcement.

            “Commander Robinson, Garrest, launching!”

            The Garrest is a beautiful machine, standing about a good meter taller than most of the other units, with an elegant black and silver paintjob and striking gold eyes. It even has a pair of wings that allow it to fly without hindrance in a planet’s gravity well. I aspire to pilot one of those someday.

            Next up is Delmar, with her offensive-type Garram. She and Rodriguez are junior officers, so they get the good old matching units. Hers has a bright red color scheme and shoulder-mounted cannons. It’s largely identical to my Garrun, just more streamlined with a different weapon complement, depending on which unit you were assigned.

            “Lieutenant Delmar, Garram 1, headin’ out!”

The red Garram blasts off to the stars accompanied by Delmar’s rather grating voice. She’s about as caring as Rodriguez, but at least his voice isn’t as grating as the screams of a dying Torin.

            Then comes Rodriguez, with his blue defensive type Garram. Save for its cool blue color scheme, the only differences between it and Delmar’s unit aside from its color scheme are its two shield generators in place of shoulder-mounted cannons, and a large handheld riot shield and machine gun in place of a pulse rifle.

            “Lieutenant Rodriguez, Garram 2, taking off!”

            His Garram blasts off the catapult deck, and the second he clears the bow of the ship, he performs a barrel roll. If the Commander saw him doing that, he’d be furious.

            It’s my turn to launch. The crane arm grabs my unit by the waist and the backpack slides into place, pressurizing the cockpit. But even with a pressurized cockpit, you want to have your helmet visor down at all times when you’re out in space, because even the slightest crack in the cockpit has the potential to kill you.

            The crane moves my armor spirit right above the foot latches for the catapult. It releases me, and the magnetic force of the latches locks me into place. I’ve managed to adjust to the g-forces pulled by the catapult proper, but the magnetic latching always made me feel uneasy. I give all of my instruments one last check, and everything looks good. Well, as good as they can look for a poorly-maintained grunt, anyway.

            “Ensign Peters, Garrun, launching now!”

            The launch catapult propels my armor spirit forward as I get forced into the back of my seat. It’s uncomfortable, but better than the alternative of wasting all the fuel you’d need to accelerate past the ship otherwise. I take a look at the Athens from the rear-facing monitor, seeing its majestic, triangular shape against the field of stars. No time for that now, though, as I meet up with the rest of the team right outside the asteroid field. We take a tight formation, with the Commander in front, Rodriguez and Delmar on each flank, and myself bringing up the rear. Maintaining a tight formation is important in these parts, as you never know what could be hiding among the rocks.

            We approach the target asteroid, one bigger than all the rest. Even from here I can see the opening. I was right. It’s definitely a Torin settlement of some sort. We make it about 1000 kilometers from the landing point, and I hear a transmission come in from Rodriguez.

            “Hey Bugbait, you ready for this? We don’t want a repeat of the Khandreia Belt,” he says.

            “Yeah, remember; the bugs aren’t for riding on,” Delmar chimes in. The two of them share a hearty laugh as the Commander breaks it up.

            “Knock it off, you two; we’re on assignment. Save the chatter for the ship.”

            Honestly, the ridicule of the two lieutenants doesn’t bother me on a person level… it just gets frustrating to hear it every mission. We approach the asteroids orbit and soft-land on it. The entrance to the cave is enormous, measuring a good 50 meters across. The asteroid’s gravity is strong enough that our armor spirits can walk around on it with little difficulty.

            “Apollo Team, here’s the plan. Delmar and Rodriguez will stay on the surface guarding the entrance. Peters and I will take care of the sap inside the cave,” the Commander orders.
            “Me, sir?” I ask.

            “Your unit is best-suited for carrying out the canisters. The Garrams will do a much better job up here.”

            The red and blue armor spirits take formation on each side of the cavern while I follow the Commander’s Garrest to the caves below. As we descend through the caves, we see very little, just dark, uninteresting rock. The further we descend the more detail we begin to see, and the closer we get to the main chamber the more green veins we see in the sides of the wall. Typically, Torin settlements are overflowing with green veins, but these aren’t very prominent. This settlement must be fairly new.

            We enter the main chamber. It’s oddly empty. We see the large pool of sap in the center of the room, but the only life we see otherwise are worker bugs digging out the sides of the cave. My sonar doesn’t detect any other movement, so things look pretty ideal right now. We land along the coast of coast of the glowing green sap lake. The Commander and I begin pulling the four long, cylindrical canisters off the rear waists of our units. The canisters can be unwieldy, especially when full, so we tend to remove them before the delicate process of sap collecting.

            I make the Garrun kneel down as I start collecting sap into the canisters, one at a time. Each one I fill gets placed against a rock, just to make sure my machine stays level. I see the commander doing the same on the other side of the “lake”, against a rock with a far-more oblong shape. His rock seemed more like one you’d see in a cavern like this, so I take another look at the one I’m putting mine against.

            It isn’t a rock.

            It’s an egg.

            I immediately radioed the Commander.

            “Sir, I don’t think this is a Settlement. I think we found a new Hive.”

            He hesitates for a moment.

            “Then we need to act quickly.”
            Hives are dangerous places and are generally homes to thousands of solider bugs. If my suspicions of this being a new cave are correct, then we have little to worry about, but precautions should always be taken.

            I fill up my final canister before the Commander. I move to grab the others from the side of the egg, and I accidentally knock them all over. I could feel the vibration inside my cockpit, but the Commander doesn’t seem to notice.

            As I scramble to get them all together I notice a blip on my radar. A big one, right behind the Commander. The wall behind him begins to shift; only it isn’t a wall at all. It’s alive.

            “Commander, look out!”

            The Garrest drops what it’s doing and turns around to see a gigantic, sixty meter-long tubular insect with a jet-black carapace, bright orange eyes, three rows of yellowed teeth, and claws that could smash the bridge of a starcruiser. It’s a Torin Matriarch.

            “Oh, shit!” he exclaims, dropping the two unlatched canisters his machine was holding. “We need to get out of here, now!”

            “But what about the sap?”
            “Leave it, let’s go!”

            He fires the rockets on his Garrest’s backpack and heads up through the entrance to the cavern. I trail behind him, but the Matriarch is right behind me. It seems like we pissed it off, and it’s not going to stop until it gets back at us for violating its nest.

            As we approach the exit to the cave, the Commander radios the two on the surface.

            “Rodriguez, Delmar! We have a goddamn Matriarch on our tails! Get ready to take this thing down as soon as we’re clear!”

            The second we fly out of the cave, the enormous bug comes out right behind us. Immediately, the two Garrams start firing on it, but with no effect. For whatever reason, our weapons can make short work of the soldier bugs, but they don’t do jack to the Matriarchs.

            The Commander flies his unit onto the back of the creature, and he pulls out his machine’s combat knife and starts digging into its back with it. The monster flails about, knocking the two canisters of sap off the Garrest’s backside. One of them hits the asteroid and cracks open, leaving the sap inside to float around the weightless space. The other barely misses the ground, so I move to pick it up. The second I attach it to my Garram’s backside, the Matriarch’s tail swings at me and knocks my armor spirit’s backpack clear off. A gust of wind inside my cockpit blows out all of the oxygen. I would have gone out too if I wasn’t strapped into my seat. Without my backpack, the Garrun is damn near useless in outer space, but at least I still have that canister of sap I recovered.

            Rodriguez sees what happened and flies his unit over to me, activates his shield generators and extends them around my machine.

            “Damnit, kid, you’re a real trouble sometimes, you know that?”

            As he pulls me to safety I see the red and black machines still tangling with the Matriarch. The Garram tosses the Garrest an inactive grenade, and the Garrest activates it and jams it into the hole he made in the creature’s back. He propels himself off of the monster right before the grenade goes off. A huge explosion rips off a gigantic chunk of flesh off the Matriarch’s back, spewing blue-green blood everywhere.

            It didn’t work. It’s still moving, and even more pissed off than before. That means it’s time for emergency protocol.

            “Athens, this is Commander Robinson. The mission’s gone FUBAR, we need emergency protocol NOW! Target: 503 mark 4, on my command.”

            The Commander gives the orders and the bow of the Athens opens up to reveal its mega particle cannon. Everyone abandons the asteroid quickly, with Rodriguez pulling my machine in tow. The Matriarch lets out an inaudible roar of rage.

            “NOW!!”

            The massive yellow beam comes down upon the Matriarch and the asteroid like a divine cleansing. Almost instantly the massive beast is disintegrated and the asteroid splits in two.

            But our mission was a failure. We were assigned to take eight canisters back to the ship, and now, we only have one.