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Chapter 56

Chapter 56

February 1st, 2158 (station time)

Logan quickly turned away from the monitor that showed Eamon's point of view.  It took several long slow breaths to insure that he was still in control of his own body.  The last thing he wanted to do right now was to throw up in the common room.

After a short time Logan turned his attention to the holo in the center of the room.  On the holo Eamon and Gantulga were clearly marked in purple.  Looking at the two on the holo, Logan began to question weather he saw what he thought he saw.  It happened so quickly, and now Gantulga was moving again.  Not only moving, but moving only slightly slower than he had been before being hit by the rock.  Surly the injury was not as bad as he thought it had been.

Venturing a look back to Eamon's point of view, Logan wanted to verify that the injuries were minor compared to previous beliefs.  In the center of Eamon's view was Gantulga, but he was moving in an odd way.  It took a moment, but Logan then noticed that Gantulga was running on all fours.  No... Actually he was... His right leg dangled limply with a broken and bent mechanical limb.  Now he was running on his hands and his good leg.

The leg was in bad shape, and Logan could tell that without extensive medical treatments it would never work the same again, if at all.

The terrain the two were climbing was rocky and steep.  So steep that Eamon was struggling to keep up with the injured Gantulga.  After only a few minutes of the retreat, Gantulga had climbed out of Eamon's camera view.

As Eamon tried to catch up, his foot slipped on the rough ground and he fell hard on one knee.  The impact of the mech made the camera jump violently.  Then something strange began to happen.  The camera looked up, and for a moment Gantulga came into view.  Then there was just sky, and Logan realized that Eamon was falling backwards.

With another violent shutter, the mech connected with ground.  This angle of the valley below would have been a nice view, if it were right side up.  Continual vibrations and shaking of the camera lead Logan to believe that Eamon was now sliding down the steep slope on his back headfirst.

"Eamon," Taavi half yelled, "drag one of your hands so you can begin to turn!  Get your feet underneath you so you can self-arrest.  Eamon, Do you copy?"

There was no response, and for a brief moment nothing changed.  But then the camera angle began to right itself.  Eamon was dragging his hand and turning.  Eventually, the view corrected itself, and once again leveled out.  Half a second after leveling out, the view turned skyward and began to shake a little more.  Eamon must have planted his feet, and arched the mech's back to give the most acute friction points possible.

It took an agonizing ten seconds for the mech to come to a complete stop.  But when it did, there was still enough frantic movement inside the mech to make the camera move slightly.  Logan briefly wondered why he was moving so much, but then the electric transition began.  He was activating the transmitter.

"Eamon," Taavi said, this time a full yell, "turn of that transmitter!  The goliaths are too far away to harm, you are only going to upset them more.  Eamon!"

"Taavi," Gantulga cut into the one sided conversation with a cough and a growl.  "I have eyes on four targets.  They are moving in on Eamon.  Requesting permission to show these primitives what a little advanced firepower can do."

"Negative Gantulga," Taavi quickly responded.  "Use suppressive fire, keep them back and off of Eamon.  Permission is not given to directly engage the goliaths, do you copy?"

It could have been Logan's imagination, but he could have sworn that he heard teeth grinding through the comm system.  A few seconds passed by without a response from Gantulga.

"Gantulga, do you copy?" Taavi demanded with a sharp tone.

"Copy that," Gantulga responded.

Looking at the holo in the center of the room, Logan could see four pink highlighted shapes moving slowly towards Eamon's non-moving purple mech.  Why wasn't he moving?

Logan turned to hoping to gain any additional knowledge from Eamon's point of view camera on the monitor.  Logan couldn't see Eamon on this viewpoint, however he saw something that made his muscles tense.  Rocks were flying into view and peppering the downed mech.

A large rock flew into view, and inexplicably blew up several meters before reaching Eamon's mech.  Logan was about to turn and ask someone what had just happened when another large rock came into view.  Like the one before, it too exploded with great force.

This time as the rock broke apart; Logan thought he might know what was happening to it.  He waited for another rock, which didn't take long.  The third rock blew apart like the previous two, but Logan saw something that he failed to see before.  This time it was clear that there was a high speed projectile impacting with the rocks.  When knowing what to look for, there was clearly and impact and blow out the opposite side.

Gantulga was shooting the incoming rocks, the large ones anyway.  With computer assisted aiming he was taking out the larger rocks being thrown at Eamon.  However, the more time went by, the closer the goliaths got to Eamon, which meant the rocks were increasing in both speed and frequency.

"Good job, Gantulga," Taavi said.  "Mike is just on the other side of the next ridge and you should see him any minute now."

"Come on Mike," Gantulga said gasping and a little breathy, "any day now."

Logan's attention once again returned to the holo in the center of the room.  As he did so, he could see Mike's mech crest the top of the ridge.  Suddenly there were quick and sporadic movements from the pink highlighted goliath's.  Mike had opened fire around them.

Mike's shots were not intended to impact with the goliaths, rather to disorient and scare them.  It worked; three of the four goliaths turned and ran down the valley away from the incoming fire.  The fourth goliath took cover behind a boulder the size of a small building.

Mike's mech quickly closed the distance to Eamon.  "Gantulga," Mike said, "we are going to need a little bit more cover fire."

"I'm on it," came Gantulga's reply followed by a sharp cough.

On the holo, it looked as if Mike and Eamon's mechs merged together.  Then as one the two began to move up the steep hillside towards Gantulga.  Logan turned back to Eamon's first person view and saw that Mike had picked up Eamon and was carrying him still inside his mech on the back of his mech.

From Eamon's point of view camera, the only thing that Logan could see was the ground slowly moving.  The two mech's were moving very slowly up the treacherous slope.

"Thanks Gantulga," Mike said, "keep up the good work."  At the end of Mike's sentence there was a sound that almost sounded like static or rain.  Rock fragments were raining down onto Eamon and Mike as the continued their climb.

Several agonizing minutes passed as the two slowly made their way up to Gantulga's vantage point.  After a while Gantulga broke the silence, "So Mike, why are you carrying the idiot?"

"The idiot," Mike replied with a little emphasis on the second word, "is unconscious.  He must have knocked his head on a rock, or his mech."

"Ha," laughed Gantulga followed by another cough, "we may need to get the idiot a helmet and some training wheels."  Gantulga finished the sentence with another cough.

"Yeah," laughed Mike, "well lets just get the idiot home.  Then you can fix him up with all the bells and whistles."

After a few more long minutes Mike and Eamon finally reached Gantulga.  Together the three began to climb even higher up the mountain.  Mike in his fully functioning mech carried the mech with the unconscious Eamon.  And Gantulga moving on three limbs with the fourth dangling broken and limp.

"Gantulga," Mike began, "this is going to be a long trip.  As soon as we get a moment to stop, I need to take a look at your leg."

"The leg is fine," Gantulga responded quickly.  "My mech dosed me with an anesthetic and the localized clotting agent seams to be working.  It doesn't look like I'm bleeding all that much anymore."

"All the same," Mike retorted, "I'm going to look at the leg."

"Ugh fine," Gantulga said in exasperation followed with a sharp coughing fit.