I've scrubbed the tell-tale kabuto decals from the hulls of my mecha and drop ship that identify me as a member of Samurai Mecha. They no longer bear the grinning metallic faceplate with its coarse shocks of tufted beard and mustache. I feel after having been dressed down by my leader that I do not deserve them. Not yet.
To quit or not to quit... Perhaps though, in all this exploring I will have opportunity to redeem myself though. I have heard pirates tell of an asteroid field, wherein that rarity of rarities, a small hive of still free roaming wild Jadoon have downed smaller mecha whose pilots are foolish enough to wander over there in those few unfortunate convoys. No one is willing to take me to it no matter how much I offer to pay. They feel the sector is bad luck and that the sanest bet and guarantee toward having the longest life is to avoid the area altogether. I will have to ferry myself then.
Well, hey, I'm bad luck too. Maybe the two bad lucks will neutralize each other. That part of me that is the explorer and the treasure hunter, it tells me that the secrets of this part of space may be quite useful to me as a pilot. So, now to just find one of these wild Jadoon which they seem to be so afraid of. And to tame it. By myself. Without the assistance of TcTt's aid or Drake's technological artifices as crutches. Quanta warped me as close to the space island as she could stand, Zadok in tow. During a space walk things are hauntingly too quiet. That and the immense stretching void pinpricked with far off stars remind you how truly alone we really are, and that our conflicts, both personal and not, are truly small in comparison to the vastness of all the rest of this stuff in the cosmos.
Much more fundamentally so and in a simpler and more profound way than visiting another dimension or parallel universe. There are many things we still don't understand about our own universe. In all of our exploration, we still don't know all there is to know about the Forerunners, for example. Or the Triax. Let alone what the beast mecha society of Giguses and Skriags was like all that much from before the Forebearers modified them into gigantic war machines. We may never know too much about that one, which seems unfortunate.
It was then that suddenly a sort of buzzing hum went from being unheard to barely audible in my aural implant. This was the signal I had been waiting for. The Scrub Grub, Multifuel Turbine and Turbine Engines pushed the Zadok along as I scrabbled it to traverse the rocky outcropping of this asteroid.
LITTLE ONE, YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO AUDACIOUSLY IMITATE US.
Oh, they meant my choice of an insect looking mecha.
<i>So what?</i>
YOU ARE EITHER VERY BRAVE OR VERY RECKLESS. COME CLOSER...
Well, I thought, things are about to get interesting. That or I'm about to get very dead...
To Be Continued.
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Submitted by Mycobacter #712744