Emissary

Athriax Keltillierre hit the ground. Hard. The slightly larger boy straddled him and began wailing blow after blow upon him, the gathered circle of acedemy students chanting and cheering as the two brawled. Athriax tried to block the attacks to his head but the bully would just switch to pounding his ribs or gut. And when he moved to guard there, the larger human boy would resume hitting Athriax's triangular lupine snout.

A sharp naval whistle sounded out and the entire crowd silenced themselves immediately, the bully stood up off of Athriax, and the academy headmaster marched in wearing his white uniform.

"Cadet Keltillierre! Would you care to explain this?" The tall, stern, and aged fennec asked.

Athriax sat up as far as he could, his ribs screaming in pain, and swiped at a ticklish spot on his nose and his hand came back bloody. Blast it... mother's going to be livid. "S-sorry, headmaster Rieeckan. Cadet Jordi and I were merely testing our physical prowess."

The white uniformed fennec scoffed, "Seems you have a ways to go before you are their equal, Cadet. All of you, disperse! You have classes. Cadet Jordi, stay."

The crowd of uniformed academy cadets left in a hurry; the word of one of the colony's greatest heroes and the academy headmaster was not to be denied. Soon, Athriax was left alone with just Jordi and Rieeckan. The old fennec offered his hand to Athriax. He took it and found it was still incredibly sturdy, the old fennec certainly not weathered by age.

"Cadet Jordi, take your new combat partner to the medical office and ensure his wounds are treated. You'll need him." Rieeckan spun on his heel and walked off, his greying tail swaying behind him as the left.

Jordi and Keltillierre gawked at him, then at each other, then back at Rieeckan. "He can't be serious. I have to operate with you?" Jordi grumbled.

Athriax shrugged, the motion causing some pain, "You think I like it any better? Just... get out of here... I'll find the medic myself."

Jordi sighed and shook his head, "No... he said make sure you got yourself fixed up. I'll stay. Besides, beats sitting in Kembal's astronavigation class. Not like we're ever leaving this planet anyway." Maintaining their distance, Jordi and Athriax walked to the medical office and Athriax got treated for a fractured rib, bloody nose, and minor concussion from hitting his head on the pavement when Jordi knocked him down.

Needless to say, neither were thrilled about having to work together from then on.

"Jordi. Left. Left!" Athriax shouted as he and Thomas Jordi raced their training mechs through the obstacle course. They were on the clock against the second best team in the academy and they weren't about to lose their record today. The course had been changed though, and it seemed far harder than normal.

"I see it. I-GAH!" Jordi clipped a solid block that slid a little further over into his path, his mech's shoulder sizzling with ionic energy from the obstacle's discharge. His upper right booster shorted out as a result.

"I lost right shoulder blade... hit me with a discharge probe, would ya?" He rolled his mech, while still flying as fast as possible, so that his electrically charged section was facing Athriax's mech. Athriax spun elegantly and leveled his left shoulder with the flying mech and launched a "repair" probe. The real-life analog that would discharge the electric damage done by obstacles in the course. Normally, they would patch mech damage with nanomachines that would hold a mech together until proper repairs could be done. Here, they would absorb and discharge the electric shocks inhibiting the mech's systems.

Jordi rotated to catch the probe directly on the disabled system and the engine hummed back to life as the electricity discharged into the probe, the device popping off and flying away, forgotten. "Nice shot. Let's see... combat mechs coming. Two. You take left, I got right."

"Got it. I see 'em." Athriax responded. He shifted his mech to the right and Jordi slipped left. They knew what they were doing. They'd done this move dozens of times over the two years they had been combat partners. This was an easy bait-and-switch. Moments before their two opposing drones fired, they slipped and swapped positions rapidly, throwing off one's targeting as Jordi slid behind Athriax. For a moment, Jordi was free of a missile lock. Jordi fried his target with a precise shot and swapped to his shoulder-mounted flare launcher, waiting for Athriax's target to fire. They exchanged missiles, Athriax's dummy missile racing to the drone as the drone's flew at Athriax. Moments before contact, Jordi fired his flares and drew the dummy missile off of his partner while Athriax's missile hit home. The drone shook in an electric shock and slumped, disabled.

The two mechs flew on and raced past the finish line, a loud buzzer announcing completion of the course. A holographic heads-up display in their mechs rose up and showed the current leader board with their names theatrically sliding up the rankings right to the top. They were ahead of their competition by a whole four minutes. The two whooped and hollered as they brought their mechs back towards the hangar, exchanging compliments and gratitude for the other's actions.

Back in the cadets' lounge, the two were mobbed by younger pilots, various admirers of their skills, and peers who were jealous but appreciative that the two worked harder than anyone else to get where they were. They deserved the title of "top mech duo."

Athriax sat on his preferred arm chair and watched the viewscreen as another pair of pilots followed the same course he and Jordi had aced. He hoped they would not be discouraged by his own time, instead endeavoring to beat him. He was proud he and Jordi were the best, but he never wanted others to falter because of it.

"Hey, foxy, eyes up, you got a visitor!" Thomas called, seated across from Athriax with his girlfriend on the couch beside him. She was a human female from the class a year below theirs. She wasn't in the mech program as he and Jordi were, instead she studied to be an insertion pilot, the class of pilot who flew the mech carrier vessels into combat zones. It wasn't uncommon for mech pilots and their carrier pilots to get quite close. Athriax's own grandfather had met his grandmother the same way.

Athriax looked up to see a particularly cute fennec girl standing in front of him with her bushy tail swishing behind her. She wore the same mech pilot patch as Athriax. He put on a smile and she matched it.

"You flew pretty great out there, Keltillierre. Any shot you two will be going for the headmaster's record?" She asked, a fire of excitement in her eyes.

Athriax glanced at Jordi who smirked back. "We'd have to ask Rieeckan if we could take a crack at it. I think we'd stand a decent chance... but... well, he's not a war hero for nothing."

Jordi barked a short laugh, "What he meant was, "yes, we'll be getting it next week.""

Athriax scowled at his partner before returning his attention to the fennec girl. She giggled at the two's banter and glances. "W-well, when you do go for it, I'll be rooting for you!" She bounced off with a spring in her step, returning to a group of her giggling and staring friends.

Jordi leaned forward and shout-whispered, "She was hitting on you, bro."

Athriax blushed and snapped his head towards Jordi, his ears fluffing up atop his head, "Was that what she was doing? I-"

"Yeah, you need to get a date. Mel? Shall we go? We can leave savvy here to get himself a girl." Thomas stood and offered his hand to his girlfriend.

"Sure. See you around, Kel, and just so you know who she is, she's from your geometry class." The two humans waved and walked off, headed for the barracks. Athriax scowled, he wasn't allowed in his and Thomas's room when those two went back there and he wanted to grab some books to take notes about the course they finished while it was fresh. He looked up at the fennec girl from before to find she was still staring at him. I guess it's time to try something new...

Athriax Keltillierre walked along the crowded and dirty dock yard that his mech, the Emissary, was stationed at. The dock was only a section of the tall, rectangular building, extending stories up and down from the inset "collar" that made up the dock area. The walkway simply stopped at the edge, a sheer drop going dozens of stories down and up. These docks, alongside normal shipping duties, were home to a half dozen mechs that were kept at battle-readiness in case of unexpected danger. Mostly, it just meant they rusted away as the acrid gases from interstellar fuel rods discharged or got rained on by sparks from overhead maintenance crews. These particular docks were also used for interplanetary ore shipping vessels, the major export of their little colony.

Athriax tried to not let this bother him, this feeling of uselessness. He had a destiny, his father, the previous pilot of the Emissary, had always told him so. Athriax, dressed in his pilot's jumpsuit, meandered through the docks and smiled and waved at admiring dock workers or visitors. One girl stared at him with rapt attention, it was a little unsettling but Athriax put it out of his mind; he was the spitting image of a proud fennec pilot and the general enthusiasm over pilots never died down in the colony. He knew that, when he was off the defense rotation here, he, Jordi, Yianna, and Athriax's girlfriend Liu would participate in the Mech Games. That was where pilots proved themselves these days, since there wasn't any real danger to defend the colony from anymore.

Athriax heard a rapid beeping noise and paused to answer his communicator, a device incorporated into his jumpsuit's left forearm. A little holographic image of Jordi popped up. "Hey, big guy, Command is acting weird. Said get to your mech and watch out. The Emissary is all good? You're the first line up there."

Athriax felt a cold chill run through him. Command never ran drills involving the defense mechs. And Thomas had stopped trying to prank him long before they left the academy. "I haven't heard anything. What's going on?"

Jordi's holographic image shrugged, "No clue. They contacted me saying they couldn't get ahold of you. I was already nearby, they hoped I might be able to reach you. They- what the-"

Jordi's image fizzled out and Athriax suddenly heard a roaring scream of a mechanical engine. From the stars, a dozen fighter craft screamed into the atmosphere and launched dozens of explosive rockets into the city, detonations ripping through the air and sending shudders through the dock's metal decking. A second volley hit far closer to him and he heard a series of following explosions, shrapnel began flying through the air and the hundreds of people here began screaming, running for cover.

Athriax felt adrenaline surge through him and he looked over at the Emissary. Undamaged by the volley, he was grateful but felt grief for the adjacent mech; its hull was a smoldering wreck. He hoped the pilot hadn't been inside.

Turning to sprint to the Emissary, Athriax approached the yellow metal catwalk that would give him access to the top-mounted hatch into the pilot's seat. As he approached, the Emissary's internal computer opened the pilot's hatch, six distinct plates separating and opening up, giving a clear view to the crystal-blue light of the piloting chamber. Athriax made it to the foot of the catwalk when another attack craft screamed past again and launched a rocket at the Emissary. It went wide, hit the sheer face of the skyscraper the dock was incorporated into, and exploded with enough force to rock the Emissary and shatter the catwalk. Athriax watched, almost in slow motion, as one of the steps of the metal catwalk received a life of its own and flew out from the rest of the exploding walkway and flew directly at, and into, his chest.

Athriax flew backwards from the concussive force and slammed into the wall behind him, blood pouring from his wound as a section of gnarled yellow catwalk remained embedded in his torso.

A human female slid to a halt in front of him. Athriax recognized her as that human who had stared at him weirdly before. He wondered what she wanted. He coughed once looked down at the blade of shrapnel in his chest. Athriax Keltillierre only had one thought: So... so much for destiny...