by the fans for the fans

Part One: Anubis Takes A Fall

To call this place a wasteland would be an insult to decent, hard-working wastelands all over the place. They, at least, had some feature, coloring, or other mechanism to instill a feeling of dread in those unfortunate few who’d visit.

But not this place. Five hundred square miles in a rough circle held nothing but grey dirt, grey rocks of all sizes, and a solitary grey building. The building was supposed to be a strategic guard station for the Robotech Defense Force, but it was hardly strategic, and it only had one occupant that could really be called a guard. The stations’ other occupant, a slacker who served as a barely adequate station controller, was more of a torturer, someone who enjoyed his post too well, milking his small position of power for all that he could. He was a minor participant in the grand scheme of the RDF, but he lorded it over the only subordinate he had.

The station was ten years old, built shortly before the return of the SDF-1, and showed more age than it actually had accumulated. A severe lack of maintenance and morale had left the place with an aged, decrepit look, and for those two persons occupying it, it took its toll. Originally designed to be occupied by a full squadron of Veritech fighters, the first residents of the station, a reservist squadron, gave the place an all too appropriate nickname. And it stuck.

It was called ‘Purgatory’, and for the one active pilot assigned to the station, it fit.


Anubis had a limp, a condition that had been getting progressively worse over the last eight months, and the aggravation that it caused Anubis’ pilot was growing along with the injury.

Anubis was, in fact, nothing like the God from the Ancient Egyptian pantheon. In point of fact, it only looked humanoid from a far distance. Upon closer inspection, it bore more of a resemblance to a troll from mythology. Standing roughly forty feet tall, it’s purely mechanical appearance was dominated by the angular armor that was the machine’s skin, and the two large-bore particle cannons that made up the machine’s forearms.

It’s hunchbacked body had no head, per se, but it did have a face. Situated in the top center of the mechanical monster’s torso, its cyclopean eye, a red crescent of transparent, impact resistant material, gave the machine a menacing visage. On either side of the torso, huge armored casings covered racks of missiles, and below these missile racks, clusters of secondary weapons sprouted their barrels. To put the finish on the body, two machine guns poked their way out of the armored cowl above the faceplate.

The final touches to the machine were the two shoulders. On the right, a six-pack launcher carried anti-air missiles, and the left carried a huge spotlight.

This machine was, in fact, a Destroid, a Tomahawk MBR-04 Mk.4. It was supposed to be the most heavily armed and armored ground attack mecha in service with the RDF. Its offensive capability was matched only by its technical advances, most of which were made possible by technology recovered from the wreck of the SDF-1.

But not this one. Its markings faded, its khaki tan paint chipped and flaking, this Tomahawk had seen better days.

Anubis was the name attached to the only active RDF unit at Purgatory station. The key to its identity was the cryptic markings that covered the machine. From deciphering these, one could find out its identity, and from that identity, its history.

For this destroid, as with all others, its identity is centered on the unit its assigned to. For Anubis, that unit was the prestigious Third Heavy Armor Corps, more commonly known, simply, as Third Armor. Delving deeper into the markings, one would find that Anubis belonged to a gritty, no-surrender platoon, the 43rd Heavy Assault, that had a very heavy reputation of ‘getting’ the job done.’ While very few knew of the 43rd Heavy Assault, many more knew of them by their platoons’ name, “The DeathDealers”

For anyone who’d care to dive further into its history, they’d see that Anubis was one of the few remaining destroids that had seen service since the opening days of the war with the Zentraedi. It served with quiet distinction through the return trip from Pluto, when the SDF-1 made its catastrophic fold jump as it hovered over Macross Island. It stood with its brothers in the famed Daedelus attack, when the bow of the amphibious assault ship that comprised the SDF-1s right forearm was rammed into a Zentraedi cruiser, where its bow was opened to reveal a large number of destroids ready to unleash their missiles into the interior of the enemy ship, ultimately destroying it. And, it stood on the exterior of the SDF-1, fighting wave after wave of enemy battle pods, as the great fortress fought its way back to Earth over the span of two years. Anubis and its pilot were, literally, legends. Quiet legends, but legends, nonetheless.

For reasons known only to a select few high-ranking officers, and the pilot of the destroid, Anubis was now sentenced to serve in the forsaken hell known as Purgatory, to be quietly forgotten, to die.

The pilot of the Tomahawk, Sergeant Dyson McCrae, knew all too well the reasons why he was here, and why his machine was slowly deteriorating. Through no real fault of his own, he was stripped of his former rank, his accolades, and his decorations. For bruising the pride of a general, he was sent to this place, to watch as his career slowly atrophied.

Part of the pilots’ sentence, his penance, was to suffer the indignity of having no assigned technical crew at the station. What little work the destroid received was performed by an incompetent hack that traveled from guard station to guard station, doing little more that spit-and-baling-wire repairs and service on machines that normally were serviced by ground crews of four to six people. His last visit was over a year ago, and Anubis was feeling the effects.

Anubis was limping, as it completed a three day patrol around the periphery of Purgatory. Once a week, the destroid was sent out to walk the edge of the circular wasteland, a patrol that took three days, and a duty that was meant to fulfill the basic requirements of the station. McCrae had been doing this since he’d first been assigned, and he could pilot the machine blindfolded through the entire route. Utterly useless, the patrol represented ‘busy work’ for the pilot, something to justify the miserable pittance he received as pay, and more, to justify the existence of Purgatory itself. In essence, he was being sent out on these patrols to maintain the necessity of sending him out on these patrols.

As the Tomahawk crested a small hill on its final approach to the station, the drab, depressing building came into view. Five more kilometers, and it’d be over, for another week. Nothing but short walks around the station, and the continuous battles to try and find some way of getting the machine fixed.

For McCrae, it was a mixed blessing. Three days camping in the pilots seat of the Tomahawk meant time away from the miserable twerp that ran the place. But, it also meant that he’d be on the receiving end of aches and pains from sleeping in a seat that had long since worn out. Returning to Purgatory meant the slim chance of a hot shower, but it also meant more of the same pre-processed food-packs that were the only sustenance available here. And, he’d have to face the jerk he worked for, who’d go over every second of his destroids internal recorders, questioning him on any inconsistencies. No, there was no joy in returning to the massive docking hangar, where he’d back the big monster into bay 01, and hope like hell it wouldn’t fall over.

As Purgatory came into sight, though, things were different. Anubis’ air-search radar immediately alerted McCrae that there were objects swarming around the station. After a few seconds, the pilot was able to get a fair count of the flying, circling objects. Thirty-one of them, as he counted, but his IFF (Identification Friend-or-Foe) transponder was non-functional, so he couldn’t identify the objects. They seemed to be flying in a controlled pattern, one dropping to the exterior landing pad as another took off, but until he could get confirmation, the mystery remained.

“Control, Anubis.” McCrae called on the radio. The only way he could get any proper ID on these things was to call in.

After a few moments, and no answer, McCrae became annoyed, his usual emotional state when having to deal with the supposed ruler of the station.

“Destroid Anubis calling Purgatory Control!” he snarled into the radio. This time, he got a response.

“Yeah?” came the tired, bored response. The guy was a master at passive-aggressive control tactics, and he seemed to love to shred Dyson McCrae’s nerves with them. His name was Brian Cassidy.

“Give me a visual, control. You’ve got multiple uncorrelated targets descending on your landing pad.” Dyson still held to proper etiquette, even if his supposed master didn’t. He was rewarded with a small image of the greasy haired punk on one of his viewing screens.

“So? If you’d use your IFF, you’d see they’re friendlies.” Cassidy replied. He was twenty-six, eleven years younger than the pilot he commanded, but he acted like a spoiled teen-ager, and threw his attitude at McCrae any chance he could.

“My IFF’s been broken for six months, control. Haven’t you gotten the requisition for repairs?” McCrae growled. His patience had been worn down to nothing, and now he was working on borrowed nerves.

“Your problems aren’t really my concern, Sergeant. You know the procedure for repair requests, just like I do. If RFD command doesn’t see a real need, they make the call.” Cassidy replied, contempt thick in his voice. He made it well known that he hated being asked to do his job.

“Listen, Control. I’ve been putting in requisitions for repairs for over a year, and not one of them gets answered. How am I supposed to do my job if I can’t tell what a target is?” McCrae asked. His frustration was getting to the point where he was almost yelling into his helmets’ radio microphone.

“McCrae, we’ve had this discussion before. You know what I can do if you get out of line. Don’t make me do it.” Cassidy’s threats held real danger for McCrae. Even though his existence at Purgatory was just this side of Hell, there were things that could still be done to him. Stricter food rationing, confiscation of personal property, and many other small but effective punishments had been levied against him in the past, by other controllers who had been assigned here.

“Control, you got the power here, I know that. All I’m asking for is the ability to carry out my assigned duties! Can you get that into your head?” McCrae’s self -control was getting thinner and thinner, worn down by months of abuse at the hands of Cassidy. The delicate balance McCrae tried to maintain was getting harder and harder to hold onto.

“I am getting really tired of you complaining, McCrae. You and I know why you’re here. I suggest you shut up and deal with…” Cassidy’s response was cut short by a crashing sound in the background of the control room. Dyson could see Cassidy jump up quickly, and walk out of view of the camera that showed him on the destroids’ screen. Quickly, he heard more conversation in the background. “You Cassidy? Got your stuff packed? Your shuttle leaves in fifteen minutes. Get out!” an unfamiliar voice said. Cassidy responding “But, I got a unit in the field!” The other voice, yelling “GET OUT!”

What the hell’s going on over there? Dyson asked himself, silently. With his left hand, he pulled the throttle to full-stop. With the foot pedals under his feet, he centered the destroids torso with its hips. Something strange was going on.

After a few long seconds, a new face showed up on the visual connection, a young mans’ face, clean shaven, and wearing a smile. The face was completely new to Dyson McCrae.

“Is this Anubis?” the face asked. The voice was the one McCrae heard kicking Cassidy out, but it was more gentle now, more professional. McCrae, though, was taking no chances.

“Sender on this net: Identify and Authenticate.” As per standard procedure, Dyson thumbed through a small paper book of authentication codes. Choosing one at random, he relayed it to the new face. “Delta One Niner”

“Oh, crap. Where’s the book…” the young guy on the other end muttered. Dyson could see the kid scrambling around on the desk, looking for his copy. Finally, after two minutes, he found it. Looking up the code, he grinned at the camera, and replied “Ok, this is your new control officer. Second Lieutenant Jimmy Hadden. I authenticate with Alpha Three.”

For McCrae, the code worked. It proved that this guy was really an RDF officer, and that he knew what he was doing. Ok… now what?

“Anubis is awaiting instructions, Control.” McCrae said. This was getting stranger and stranger for him.

“Ok, Anubis. we’re going to have you hold station at your present location for one-two-zero mikes. We got all these shuttles to land and unload. At the end of that interval, call in and get a clearance. Copy?” Hadden said, continuing to smile.

“Copy, Control. Hold for One Twenty, and call in.” Dyson replied. “Advise if there’s a change, huh?”

“Will do, Anubis.” Hadden said, closing the visual link with the destroid.

Two hours to wait… McCrae thought. He started reaching for switches and buttons that populated the interior of the destroids’ cockpit. Flipping a few switches, and punching a few buttons, he began applying safeties to the weapons of the machine, and then putting all its systems, including its fusion reactor, on a standby status. The last button he pushed was the one to open the cockpit.

A wedge-shaped piece of armor slid forward from the cockpit. From the outside, the cover comprised the cowl over the destroids’ monocular eyepiece, and when it slid forward, then slightly downward, it carried the tertiary machine guns with it. When the hatch was fully opened, air pressure was bled into a bellows-type chamber under the pilots’ chair, lifting it. As soon as the seat was level with the top of the cockpit, the pilot was able to dismount. Dyson did this, feeling every one of the last three days. Joints popped and cracked, bones ached, and muscles complained.

After standing for a few moments, he sat cross-legged on the armored cover on the left rocket launcher. His eyesight still good, he looked at the airborne objects flying into Purgatory. He was quickly able to identify them as shuttles, the majority of them ‘Atlas’-class heavy-lift shuttles. Another few were ‘Mercury’-class administration types, used to move people. Built on the same anti-gravity chassis and thruster configuration, the only real perceptible difference between the two classes was, essentially, the cargo area. The Atlas class had an oversized box behind its cockpit, where the Mercury shuttles had a few seats.

Dyson McCrae also thought about the strange turn of events that seemed to be taking place.


Dyson was usually informed about a change in staffing at Purgatory. He’d been through three controllers since his arrival here. But, he’d never received a message about this stuff. He wanted to know what was going on, but he had too little information to know.

First, his controller was kicked out, unceremoniously, and a new controller had taken his place. For whatever reason, Dyson had been kept out of the proverbial loop.
Add to this, there were a boatload of shuttles arriving and departing, dropping off whatever they were carrying, and still, no mention of anything to McCrae. It just didn’t add up.

You could drive yourself crazy, thinking about this… Dyson thought to himself, but try as he might, his mind wouldn’t let him stop pondering the imponderable, to guess at things unknown, to wonder what his own future would hold.

Is a new squadron moving in? A new platoon, maybe? Am I being reassigned? Fired? All these thoughts, and more, raced through McCrae’s mind as he waited, and they were only interrupted by a small chirping alarm from the cockpit that told him a radio call was being sent. He climbed back into the seat, lowered it, and replaced his helmet, from which he heard the new controller calling him.

“Anubis, go control.” he responded.


“Anubis, Control.” Hadden started. “We’re a little bit ahead of schedule, and the only shuttles we have left are three Mercuries. So, we’re gonna get you in here and secure. Approach on course Three-Two-Three, distance 4.98 kilometers. Wind is fractional, from the southwest. You are cleared for approach and docking.”

“Anubis copies.” Dyson responded. He found the clearance transmission refreshing. Whoever these guys were, they were professional, and a heck of a lot better than who he’d been working with for all these years. As he refastened the safety restraints built into his seat, and closed the cockpit hatch, he found himself smiling as he reached for the throttle control, pushing it forward.

The reason Anubis was limping was that its joints were falling apart. Years of use and no replacement had worn bushings and bearings down to nothing, resulting in metal-to-metal contact in the ankles, knees, and hips of the giant machine. In the ankles, especially, microscopic cracks and fissures formed in the metal components of the joint. The worst of either ankle was the right, where the cracks were actually growing to a size that could be seen with the naked eye. As it stood, waiting for its clearance, the angle of the right foot had aligned these fractures perfectly, resulting in a situation that could be very well summarized by the old saying ‘The straw that broke the camels back.’

As the Tomahawk started out, its first step was made by the left foot, with the machine lifting the right foot for the next. As it took this step, the weight of thirty-one metric tons was placed on the right leg, with all of it resting on the right ankle for a split second. That’s all it took. With a sound that resembled a giant firecracker, the right ankle exploded, sending shrapnel smashing through the interior of the destroids armored lower leg. Some of this shrapnel actually found pneumatic and hydraulic lines, cutting them instantly. With pressure bleeding from these systems, the rest of the right leg began collapsing at a rapid pace. As the right foot twisted under the weight of the machine, the next joint to collapse was the knee. Without hydraulic pressure, shock-absorbing components failed, and gave no resistance to the force placed on the right leg joints.

The destroid’s Command and Control Computer (also called a C3), correctly interpreted the data being sent to it by sensors in the right leg, but due to a badly performed software patch, the computer didn’t respond correctly. As it read the failure of the leg joints, it tried to counter the failure by ramping up pressure in the hydraulic and pneumatic systems in that leg, but with the lines cut, this only made matters worse. What little hydraulic fluid there was remaining in the system was flushed out at a very high pressure, and immediately flashed into vapor.

Inside the cockpit, immediately after the loud crack that announced the death of the ankle joint, loud claxons began sounding. Dyson McCrae didn’t need them, though. He’d seen the horizon shift, and that’s all he’d needed to understand what was going on. He knew the destroid was tipping, and there was nothing he could do about it. He reached over to hit the eject button, situated on the right-side bulkhead, but there was no response. Cursing to himself, he hit it two more times. After the third attempt, he looked at the screen showing him the outside world, and saw the horizon coming close to a 45-degree angle. He had only one option left.

He reached up with both hands to the headrest at the top of his seat, grabbing the two yellow-and-black handles, and pulled, hard. These handles were the last ditch option for any destroid pilot. They were attached to mechanical devices throughout the destroids’ torso, where two things were supposed to happen. First, pulling on these handles was supposed to actuate clamps and cams that held the two main pieces of the torso together. The center torso section, containing the cockpit and C3, was supposed to separate from the rear part, containing the reactor and armaments of the machine. This part of the sequence actually happened, and Anubis’ ejection capsule was freed. The second part of the sequence called for small rocket motors, situated all around the capsule, to fire. This didn’t happen. Only one of the rockets fired, and it didn’t have enough force to push the capsule away from the rest of the destroid. It did have enough thermal energy, though, to burn its way through a thin bulkhead, where the rest of the rockets’ energy was bled off. Unfortunately, it had burned its way into a wiring harness that controlled the destroids’ weapons. The rocket motors’ flame blew through several bundles of wires, cutting some, and flash-welding others together. One of the wires to be joined was connected to a firing relay for one of the machines main guns, the particle projection cannon that was mounted on the left arm. The other wire, connected to a sensor monitoring the destroids fusion reactor, carried just enough of a charge to trigger the left main gun.

As it fell, Anubis sent one last deadly distress call to whoever would see. The gun that made up the machines’ left forearm erupted, discharging a blue-white comet of lightning, with a sound that was almost organic, and resembled the screech of tearing metal.

Dyson braced himself. He knew there was no more he could do. Both ejection systems failed. It was supposed to be impossible, but there it was. All he could do, now, was take the ride, and hope he’d survive. This is gonna hurt! He thought, right before his helmeted head hit the right-side bulkhead. He was immediately knocked unconscious.

Anubis crashed down on its right side, with a force sufficient to snap the six-pack missile launcher off the shoulder. With the remaining kinetic force from the fall, it rolled over on its back, its legs and arms askew, looking to all the world like a giant, passed out drunk.

Captain Jenna Stevenson, pilot of the last Mercury shuttle, waited patiently for her turn to land. Her one passenger was the new commander of the place, a full-bird Colonel. As she slowly circled in the holding pattern above Purgatory, she scanned the horizon, a practiced habit from years of piloting Veritech fighters. When she saw the blue-white shot from a particle cannon racing towards her craft, she instinctively threw her collective controls forward, dodging the shot easily. Angry, she growled “Where the hell did that come from?” and immediately started looking for the source of the shot. Using the zoom feature in the optics of her helmet, she found a cloud of dust, settling, and the prone figure of a Tomahawk destroid. Uh oh! She thought, and then, triggering her radio, she called out “Destroid Down! Destroid Down! Purgatory, start salvage and rescue ops, now! Any free Atlas shuttles, we might needs some help! Coordinate with Purgatory control!” As she started to receive acknowledgements from Purgatory and other shuttles, she glanced over at her passenger and said “Looks like your golden boy took a header.”

Her passenger only looked out the windscreen, staring at the prone figure in the distance. His expression was one of worry. Did we get here too late? He thought.

Let me know what you think, folks... More stuff to come, as I write it.

ǝʇısqǝʍ sıɥʇ uo ɹoɥʇnɐ pǝʇuǝ1ɐʇ ɹǝɥʇouɐ ʇob ǝʌ,ǝʍ ǝʞı1 sʞoo1
¡ʇı pǝʎoظuǝ ı 'poob ʎ11ɐǝɹ sı sıɥʇ ʍoʍ

Only one comment?

This is sad!


BTW: Thanks HP.

No problem, can't wait for more

Dude i love it! Can't wait for more to come

Gotta say my Corrosion Control and inspection training has me hurting from the description of the cracks on the Destroid LOL Great job!

JUST TO ADD..

This machine was, in fact, a Destroid, a Tomahawk MBR-04 Mk.4. It was supposed to be the most heavily armed and armored ground attack mecha in service with the RDF. Its offensive capability was matched only by its technical advances, most of which were made possible by technology recovered from the wreck of the SDF-1.

LVS, I truly appreciate it. To be honest, I didn't know if people would think it's too long-winded, or some other issue... I'm glad you liked it... I should be starting Part 2 shortly. Trying to ballance this with other stuff, like job hunting...

Memo, thanks for the reference pic...

There's another pic I like, as well, from the same series.



Thanks, all... I'll keep working on it...

WHY IS IT SAD?

MAN THATS GREAT WRITTING. FUNNY AT THE SAME TIME. ALMOST CLOSE TO THE X WING ROUGHE SQUADRON.

I ENJOYED IT. WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR REFRENCES TO YOUR STORY FROM?

ATLAS AND MERCURY?

References? I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but I'll try to explain...

AS far as the mechanical principles involved, I use real-world examples. For instance, the operational discriptions of the destroid's legs come from observations made about current-day heavy machinery, and robotics. Meld those two together, you got a functioning principle.

As far as the general military aspects of it, military history has been a hobby of mine for quite some time, and I simply took a bit from here and a bit from there.

As far as the overall storyline, this is something I've been mulling over for a few years. See, I am a true minority inside a minority. AS we RT fans are few and far between (the select few, one may say), there are even fewer of us that are fans of Destroids. I've love the design of the Tomahawk since I first saw it some 25 years ago. Now, since the Tomahawk is a fictional object, there's only one way I could ever realise the idea of actually driving one, and that is to write about it. All those ideas that kept percolating in my little pea-brain finally congealed into a cohesive storyline. For the last couple years, I've been refining it, to the point that I could actually start writing it. And, so, you see the beginning.

AS far as influences are concerned, I have many. For the most direct, I would cite Tom Clancy, for his writing style, and the way he presents stuff... Just enough technical info to ake it entertaining, without being overbearing. For me, I have to improvise on some stuff, so the lack of microanalysing a system or feature actually helps me, to the point of not really needing all that technobabble to get the point accross.
A couple others that I glean influence from are Terry Pratchett, writer of the wonderfully funny and satyrical 'DiscWorld' series, and Joseph Wambaugh's stuff is good too. Another narrative style that works really well.

Anyway... as I said, more to come as I get to it.