Titans of Apollo

Titans of Apollo
Chapter 1: Dawn of a new age

New Athens
Olympus Federation
Apollo
3296 (local calendar)

The annoying buzz of the intercom woke Stephan McNamara from his sleep. His head was throbbing, telling him that he was no longer young enough to drink as much as he had the night before without consequences. Opening one eye, he looked out through the half closed blinds to see that Minor had already risen, while Major was starting to creep execrably over the distant horizon.

Shaking his head, McNamara pulled himself upright, leaning back on his sofa as he rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his vision. His apartment was, as ever, a mess: empty beer cans from the night before lay strewn across the floor, mixed with the remains of his dinner. His dog lay in the far corner, looking at him through one half-interested eye.

The intercom buzzed again, reminding McNamara of why he had woken in the first place. Pulling himself shakily to his feet, he staggered across the room until he found the squawking box and hit the Receive button.

“What ever it is, it had better be damn important.” He yawned, “But if you’re selling something, I’d advice you to take a long walk off a high building.”

“Captain McNamara?” A slightly worried, but most defiantly female voice asked, “Captain Stephan McNamara?”

“You got the wrong apartment lady.” McNamara went to cut off the call, but was interrupted.

“Captain, it is most urgent that I speak with you.”

“Look, whoever you are, but you must have gotten me mixed up with someone else: I’ve not been on the reserve list for more than a decade…”

“Captain Stephan McNamara; 43rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, 3267-3279. Served during the battle of Sparta and the siege of New Athens. Awarded the Stellar Cross for your part in the second battle of Argo. Credited with five confirmed Titan kills. Transferred to the 81st Mechanized Infantry after the fall of Ithaca. Discharged from active service in 3281.” The woman sounded like she was reading from a briefing paper, “Are you sure I have the wrong person?”

“Just who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” McNamara asked, wishing his hangover would just go away.

“My name is Dr Ling: General McGraw sent me.”

“Eddie McGraw sent you?” McNamara could feel his resolve slipping, “You’d better come up.” He hit the button that opened the outer door.

Looking around at his apartment, suddenly realising that it was in not fit state to receive guests. He grabbed what he could and shoved it in the bin, before grabbing a somewhat clean shirt off the back of a chair and pulling it on. He still looked like a bum, but at least he’d made an effort. The mysterious Dr Ling knocked at the door, and McNamara crossed the room in a coupe of steps, his long legs making the small apartment feel even smaller.

Dr Ling stood a little over a head shorter than McNamara, and looked at least twenty standard years younger, maybe more. She was dressed in civilian clothing, and looked relatively comfortable. Her short, raven-black hair was pulled back tightly from a pale face that lacked any signs of makeup. Her features were classically Asian, although McNamara had no idea where Asia was.

The two men standing behind her couldn’t have looked more out of place if they’d tried: their close-cropped hair and always moving eyes screamed military, and unlike Ling, the looked incredibly uncomfortable in their civilian clothing.

“Captain McNamara, it is an honour to finally meet you.” Ling smiled, “General McGraw…”

“Let’s cut the crap, Doc.” McNamara crossed his arms across his chest, “If Eddie McGraw sent you then he wants me for something. What is it?”

“I’m afraid that I am not at liberty to say…”

“It must be something important; he hasn’t spoken to me in twelve years.”

“The General will explain everything, at the base.”

“Like I said before; I’m not military any more. There is no way no hell that you’re getting me within twenty clicks of any base.”

“Captain, please, this is of the up most importance.”

“I don’t care if it’s a commandment from God himself: I ain’t going!”

“You are needed for an important mission…”

“Needed? Me? Look, Doc, you’ve obviously read my file, so you know I was a Titan pilot, and the last one of those still operational caught a tactical nuke outside Argo back in ’79. I should know: I was there and saw it happen.” McNamara sighed, “No Titans means no need for pilots, means I have no need or desire to be in the same room as the esteemed General Edward Hadrian McGraw. I don’t know why he sent you, nor do I really care.”

“This is a matter of planetary security.” Ling sounded genuinely concerned, “We need your experience…”

“I’m a washed up old Titan pilot: what on earth could you need me for?”

“To train someone to pilot a Titan.” Ling’s words hang heavy in the air, stopping McNamara dead in his tracks.

He slowly turned to face Ling, looking for some sign of deception in her eyes, some sign that this was some sick joke on the part of General McGraw. But there was nothing but open face honesty.

“You’ve got to be mistaken.” McNamara shook his head; “I doubt you could even put together a shell if you scoured the entire planet! Hell, the one we piloted in the war were so jerry-rigged that they were more likely to fall apart than work. The biggest piece of a Titan I’ve heard of in the past ten years is a leg used as a grain silo somewhere over near Alexandria…”

“It has taken us almost ten years, but we have managed to piece together a working Titan.” Ling took a step forward, “The leg you spoke of gave us a knee actuator. We’ve scoured the entire continent for parts needed, but we finally think it is ready.”

“What the hell do we need a Titan for? Last time I checked, the government wasn’t planning on starting a war…”

“Our government, maybe, but as someone who served in the last war, you know how the other nations of this world can be.”

McNamara looked out of the window: Major, the larger of Apollo’s twin suns, had started to rise above the cityscape. He knew that people would be getting ready to start their day. That was why he’d joined the military in the first place: to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves.

“And just who am I supposed to teach?” He asked Ling.

“Me.” The young woman pulled her hair away from the back of her neck and turned her head to the side, revealing the network of neural implants needed to control a Titan. They looked new, the skin still red and slightly inflamed.

McNamara found himself reaching round to scratch his own implants, but stopped himself: that was part of his life that he knew was not worth dwelling on. “Give me half an hour to get cleaned up, and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The electric car moved down the multilane highway without a sound, the countryside a blur as it navigated the light traffic with computer controlled ease.

McNamara could see the two guards in the front seats scanning the road for anything that could be conceived a threat. Every now and then, one or the other would glance at him in the rear-view mirror, making sure he didn’t do anything to Dr Ling.

“How much do you know about the history of the Titans?” He asked, trying to break the monotony of the journey.

“About as much as anyone else;” Ling looked out of the window, “that the first of them was built before the Expansion, when mankind was still colonizing the worlds of the Sol system. They were built for heavy construction and other hazardous areas of work. It wasn’t until the first rebellion, some 3,000 standard years ago, that The Alliance started to arm them.”

“The Alliance never allowed the knowledge of how to make them to leave Sol, so we have no idea how to do anything but repair them. Over the four thousand or so years after the start of the Expansion, they have gradually deteriorated. As you said, those you piloted in the war were held together by bailing twine and wishful thinking more than anything else.”

“I like you, Doc; you’ve got guts.” McNamara shook his head, “Have you ever actually piloted this Titan of yours?”

“I have completed the basic piloting program.” Ling nodded, “But without a qualified instructor, I have no way of continuing my training.”

“So you want me to teach you how to pilot it in combat?”

“I would rather it was melted down for scrap, but I swore an oath to defend Olympus. If I must pilot a Titan to do that, then so be it.”

“But why you? Of all the people in the military; why you?”

“I studied the history of the Titans at university. I know more about them than anyone else alive. I was also the only volunteer to survive the operations needed to embed the neural implants needed to pilot a Titan.”

“Yeah, that stings like crazy for the first year or so.”

“And after that?”

“To tell the truth, you never get used to it.”

“We have much to discus. Fortunately, it will take us many hours to get where we are going.”

“And where is that, exactly?”

“Mount Olympus.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The great fortress of Mount Olympus stood against the sky, its dark tree covered surface looking out of place amid the low hills that surrounded it. But the tranquil surface hid a dark secret.

Build by the long gone Terran Alliance as planetary defence headquarters during the dark days known as The Uprisings, hundreds of tunnels honeycombed the mountain, extending for tens of kilometres down into the bedrock below. No weapon forged by man could breach its defences, though many had tried over the years. The fortress itself was surrounded by a number of low hills once known as the Ring of Fire. An age ago, when ships from distant words still visited Apollo, each hill had been caped by heavy fusion cannons capable of blasting even the mightiest starship out of orbit.

But the weapons had long since been removed; no more starships sailed the void, and the difficult or impossible to replace components that had been used to build the cannons were needed elsewhere.

All this was known to McNamara: he had learnt the history of his homeworld as a child, and later as a cadet, had toured one of the abandoned fortresses. Even stripped of anything useable, the massive structures spoke of the unmatched power that the Terran Alliance had been able to command: the ability to literally move heaven and earth, and bend the universe to its bidding by shear force of will.

Much knowledge had been lost in the centuries since the last starship had visited; even history was more conjecture than anything else.

After a momentary pause at the main gate, the ground car moved off the road and onto the expanse of the Mount Olympus Military Reservation. The mighty parade ground, built of some unknown substance that resembled stone but was harder than steel, stretched out as far as the eye could see. They passed a long row of heavily armed crawlers, bristling with weapons and covered in thick layers of armour. Drill Sergeants put infantry soldiers through their passes as the new arrivals passed unnoticed.

The car continued until it reached the entrance to a tunnel built into the side of the mountain. Sensor scanned it, confirming the identity of its occupants, before allowing them to continue. Well maintained machinery moved the ten meter thick slab of solid armour that protected the first section of the tunnel out of the way, allowing the car to move forward. The guard in the driving seat switched on the cars powerful headlights as the armour slab closed, sealing them inside the mountain.

The road angled downwards, taking them deeper and deeper into the mountain. Other checkpoints and gateways interrupted their travel, but eventually they reached a large cavern that had been dug in the side of the mountain. The ceiling seemed to disappear in the darkness, deep shadows cast by the floodlights that hung suspended from a network of gantries and walkways. Powerful machinery hummed intently along three of the walls, but it was what stood against the four that caught McNamara’s attention.

Bathed in light, standing almost fifty meters tall and painted jet black, was the Titan.

To be continued...