I'm busy gathering berries in Greendale Forest when I
suddenly hear an almighty crash coming from nearby. The ground shakes
violently, knocking me off my feet and spilling most of the berries I'd managed
to gather. Scrambling back to my feet, I decide to put my berry-picking on hold
for now, and instead investigate what on Earth could have caused such a violent
tremor this close to Arwing City. As a member of the Planetary Defence Force,
it's my duty to investigate such disturbances.
I draw my Protector 9mm handgun and start to make my way
north, in the direction of the noise. Ever since the Devastators' arrival, about
seven months ago now, wild animals throughout the planet have started to go
berserk, so even in this dense forest, I'm not safe from attack. Researchers at
ATRAC believe that the Devastators emit some kind of low-level signal that
interfere with the animals' brain patterns, causing them to turn violent. Why the
signal doesn't seem to affect humans is unknown.
As it happens, I make my way through the forest without
being attacked. At one point a crow swoops down from a nearby tree, but it
ignores me and flies away. Soon I find myself at a clearing, and what I see
there chills my blood. It's a Devastator, one of the larger, bipedal R-Class
machines. It's lying in a crater, having apparently just crash-landed, and
seems to be badly damaged.
Standing at the rim of the crater, aiming at assault
rifle at the fallen machine, is a PDF soldier that I recognize as Lieutenant
Martina Vasquez, one of my superior officers. She noticed me entering the
vicinity and holds up a hand, signalling for me to halt. "Don't come any
closer, rookie!" she calls out. "It looks like the fall might have
knocked it out, but it could wake up again at any time."
"This Devastator just fell out of the sky?" I
ask.
"Yeah," said Lt. Vasquez. "Usually they
warp directly onto the surface, but this one seems to have gotten its co-ordinates
wrong somehow. Fell five miles and came down right here. We were lucky; if this
thing had fallen just a few clicks further south, we could kiss goodbye to Arwing."
The mere thought of having our entire base of operations
wiped out by a single errant Devastator is enough to make me wince. "So,
what now?" I ask her. "If it's inactive, shouldn't we take advantage
of the situation and make sure it doesn't get up again?"
"I'm afraid it's not that simple, rookie," says
Lt. Vasquez. "The two of us probably wouldn't last a minute against this
thing. That said, if this thing does wake up, we gotta make sure it never gets
anywhere near Arwing, no matter wh-"
The lieutenant suddenly falls silent as the machine
begins to whirr into life, its eyes lighting up. It turns its head to look at
me, and I feel the bottom fall out of my stomach. "Oh God, it's waking
up!" exclaims Lt. Vasquez. "We should get outta here! With any luck,
it'll follow us, and we can lead it away from Arwing!"
After taking a few steps back, however, Lt. Vasquez stops
and begins to cautiously approach the crater once more. "Wait a minute…"
At this point, I begin to notice the same thing as her: though the machine is
trying to get up, it does not seem to be able to. The lieutenant's posture
relaxes a little, and then her eyes suddenly light up. "This thing's too
badly damaged to get up," she points out. "That means it can't attack
us… no, more than that. This means it's essentially captive. A captured
Devastator that's still active… we could learn so much from this thing! Where
they came from, why they want to destroy us, and most importantly, how we can
fight them more effectively."
She turns around and gives me an uncharacteristic grin.
"What we have here, my rookie friend, is an intelligence goldmine. But we
can't really leave this thing alone, just in case something happens. So here's
what I'm thinking. I'll stay here and make sure this thing doesn't go anywhere,
and nobody tries to destroy it, and you head over to St. Leonard to let the
ATRAC boys know what we've found. I'm sure they'd love the chance to study a
real-life Devastator."
I nod affirmatively. "I'll head over there as fast
as I can," I say.
"Thanks," says Lt. Vasquez, "I'll let you
know via radio if anything happens here." She then gives me a farewell
salute. "God-speed, rookie."
I return the salute, then head off back the way I came,
through Greendale Forest and towards Arwing City. St. Leonard lies to the east,
and it's a bit of a journey to get there, but if Lt. Vasquez is right, then the
information we could extract from this Devastator would be invaluable to the
war effort. This could well be my chance to really make a difference.
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