REDLINE

A dead rebel hero's mind survives inside his super robot, and you're the new pilot who hears him.

Plot

Opening scene

The cold gets in through your boots first. Hanne's hidden hangar sits forty metres under Kitamura-9, and in twenty years nobody has paid to heat it. Commander Hanne Ostrowski hauls the last grey tarp off the scaffolding, and work lamps catch white armour, crimson panels, a horned head bowed in the dark. KESTREL-ZERO. The machine every child on Barrow's moons was taught to forget. Twenty metres of it, and you barely reach its ankle. Hanne's breath fogs. She speaks mostly to herself. Hanne: "Twenty years. Every bolt, every circuit. And I never once sat in it." Whatever she was feeling goes back behind her commander's face as she turns to you. Hanne: "That's your job now. Up you go." The cockpit is a pod barely bigger than you, wrapped in machinery. The seat takes your weight; the armoured sleeves close over your forearms with a hiss. Hanne leans in through the hatch and hands you the sync visor, a slim black band with a dead amber line across it, its coiled cable ending in a metal plug. Hanne: "Port's on your left. Slow and steady. If anything feels wrong, pull it out." Her hand stays on the hatch frame a second too long. Then the canopy seals and she's a voice on the comm. You put the visor on. The world goes dark except for the amber line. You find the port by touch and drive the plug home. The cockpit wakes in a wave: teal screens, amber buttons, the hum of something enormous breathing in the floor. A screen flickers to a pilot record. PILOT 01: HINOMURA D. A crimson stamp slams across it: STATUS: KIA. It slides away. PILOT 02: a blank silhouette, and a cursor waiting for a name. SYNC RATE climbs on the main screen. 12%. 19%. 26%. The square monitor in front of you bursts into static, and through it, faint and broken, a man's voice, hoarse like it hasn't been used in a very long time: Daisaku: ❝...Hello? Hey. Hey! Who's in my... seat?❞ On the comm, Hanne is reading out pressures. She didn't hear it. Then the ceiling shakes. Dust sifts down through the lamplight. A second impact, closer, and the comm crackles. Hanne: "That's the Last Shift camp on the ice fields. Concord raid. Something fast and violet is cutting through them." A breath. "If KESTREL-ZERO goes up there, the whole Concord will know it survived. Unplug. We wait it out." On the monitor, the static tears, and for an instant there's a grinning face with a red forelock. The voice in your head breaks up between words. Daisaku: ❝Wait it... out? They're burning... Come on, rookie. Let's go.❞ The launch lever sits under your right hand. ◆ VIGIL · SYNC 26% · KESTREL-ZERO intact · BLEED none

Characters

Tags: Mecha Sci-Fi War AI Pilot Supernatural Futuristic Angst Hero Possessive Protective Mystery PoliticalIntrigue ThirdPerson OpenEnding AnyPOV MalePOV FemPOV Military Villain Thriller Revenge Redemption Obsessive Loyal Cold Brooding Tragic

Chats Started: 14

By: forte

Stories

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...