'Maverick' novel preview.

Chapter 33

      Ethan, as he had done so many times before, walked silently and alone to the service elevator leading back outside into the tundra that had become the lake outside. He was, in no way, happy about what Professor Cruz had to say about Felix Wilhelm and Omega. The sky was clear and the stars shone bright in the sky above the abandoned town, even the wind had ceased.
      Ethan stepped down from the platform of the elevator, and walked towards the lone tree of the island on which he stood. The snow on the ground had blown over the tracks he and the others had made earlier, and now nothing but a white plane of ice and snow lay before him.
      “It can’t be true…” Ethan muttered to himself. “Wilhelm, you aren’t the one who did all that, are you?” He was agitated, to say the least, and his mechanical hand clenched into a fist, a fist which he pounded against the tree next to him. The snow, what little of it there was, fell down around him. Some of it remained in the air as a white mist, but soon dissipated to the ground.
      As Ethan looked up, he noticed something small in the distance, flashing like a light. “There weren’t any lights on in the town before…” he said to himself, and focused his vision on the spot. There was something out there for certain, but it was so far off he couldn’t make out what it was. He moved a little bit down towards the city to try and get a better view, keeping a low profile while he moved, and stopped suddenly when he realized what the flashing light was.
      Parked at the shore where he and Matthew had left the bike and car were three carrier ships, each of which had unloaded their cargo of androids. Even a base camp was set up, and a lot of attention seemed to be focused on the ship in the middle of the three. “Shit, how did they find us so fast?” Ethan muttered to himself. “This is bad…I need to get insi-” Ethan was cut off by the red bolt of an ML-20 whizzing past his head, impacting in the snow just beside him.
      When Ethan brought his head back up, he noticed that several of the hunters were running towards his location, even a spotlight had been turned on and aimed at him. “Great, that’s just great…” he said as he stood up. “No point in hiding now, and I can’t go back to the base with that light on me…”
      Ethan reached around for the nanostaff attached to his bandoleer and activated it. He could see at least ten of the androids coming towards him, weapons up and aimed in at him, but they stopped short a good twenty feet away from him.
      “Maverick unit zero, zero, zero, zero, one…” the drab mechanical voice of one of the Hunters started to say.
      “Not this shit again…”
      “…you are to be terminated immediately, on crimes against CREST, and threatening the stability of the world, established by CREST protocol,” the android finished saying, and brought it’s rifle up, aiming it at Ethan’s head.
      Ethan was dumbfounded by the new accusation. “Well, that was unexpected…” Ethan said, and brought up his nanostaff. “This should be fun.”
      The hunters started firing almost immediately, and at once, making it difficult for Ethan to defend against them. He moved in to attempt to disable them like he had done countless times before against them, but now they were aiming for his life, not his capture. His getting closer only helped their accuracy, and Ethan had no choice but to back away, and rely on dodging the shots, rather than deflecting them.
      He jumped back and rolled to the side to avoid a barrage of red energy bolt flying towards him. These units were faster than the ones he had fought before, like they had been enhanced, or upgraded. “Damn it, I can’t get close to them!” Ethan shouted out. He ran to the right, dodging more shots, but he wasn’t making any progress. Eventually, his foot landed on a part of the ground not covered by the snow and his slipped, landing on the ground, making a thud noise. “Ice?” Ethan said, wait a minute, I don’t need to get close to them!”
      Ethan got to his feet and jumped back, avoiding shot after shot being fired towards him. When he got far enough back, Ethan leapt into the air, and did a somersault with his staff in hand, smashing it into the Ice in front of him. He could hear the ground crack in front of him, and deflected the shots being taken towards him until the hunters walked onto the weakened ice.
      “Time to go!” Ethan shouted, and after deflecting a shot back towards a hunter, he thrust the staff into the ice in front of him with so much strength that the cracked sheet in front of him shattered almost instantly, crumbling beneath the hunters that approached him and sending them to the bottom of the icy lake.  “Well, that wound up being easier than I though it…would…oh shit…” Ethan said, dropping his jaw when he saw what was in front of him.
      Two large figures were walking towards him, along with enough Hunters to invade the entire base. Some of them were fitted differently though, with heavier looking armor plating on their skeletal structures.

Chapter 34

      Cynthia and Matthew walked together through the artificial park that had been constructed within the underwater facility, hoping to try and soak in the information that had just been presented to them. Never in their wildest dreams had they thought that Felix Wilhelm could have been the one to cause all of this destruction. Although it had been nearly a decade, both of them had often thought back to his words of wisdom when they found themselves in a bind, but now they didn’t know what to think.
      “Do you think he’ll be alright, Matt?” Cynthia asked, leaning over one of the fences bordering the park inside. “I don’t think he was prepared for something like this…”
      “None of us were, but that doesn’t mean he’ll give up,” Matthew responded, leaning next to her. “You know my brother about as well as I do. You know he’ll be alright once he has time to cool off.”
      Both of them stood in silence as they watched the people of the Resistance facility go about their lives and preparing for the coming holiday tomorrow. It had been a very long time for either of them to really have a peaceful Christmas day. Matthew had been on the run, searching and watching his brother, while Cynthia had always been helping organize the Resistance activities. Ethan was a whole other case, what with his constant moving from around just to stay alive.
      “It’s Christmas Eve, Cyn. We should find Ethan and try to at least relax for one day before we begin the fight against Omega and the rest of the maverick hunters again, right?” Matthew asked, placing an arm on her shoulder in an attempt to calm his companion.
      Cynthia looked up at him and smiled softly, but a lone tear escaped her eye and crept down her cheek. “Thank you, Matt, for everything…let’s go find Ethan and-” she was cutoff by the sound of an alarm and many red siren-lights going off. “What’s going on?” she asked.
      “Enemy presence detected on lakefront border. Repeat, enemy presence detected…” a computerized voice said over the intercom system.
      “Enemy presence?” Matthew asked, and looked around him until he realized what it meant.
      Both Matthew and Cynthia looked at each other with wide eyes and exclaimed, “Ethan!” before running back to the control room. Ethan was outside, and alone, with hunters in the vicinity.
      By the time they made it back to the control room, everyone was already hard at work trying to figure out how large a threat was out there. “Professor Cruz, General!” Cynthia shouted out, and made her way to the main display monitors where the both of them were staring up at the camera feeds from outside. “What’s happening outside? Is Ethan ok?” she asked them, nudging at both of them.
      “We don’t know, Cynthia,” the general said as he turned to face her in his chair. “We’ve only detected the E.M. signatures from the androids. We don’t have a visual, but we did see Ethan walk out on to the lake in a bit of a hurry a few minutes ago.
      “A hurry?” Matthew asked, looking up at the screens displays. “Why would he do that?”
      “He must have seen something,” Professor Cruz replied. “You two do have an acute sense of sight with those eyes of yours, you know.”
      Matthew remained silent and watched the monitors display screens for any sign of his brother or the hunters that had been detected outside. Something seemed odd about one of the screens but he couldn’t place a finger on what it could be. It was like the lighting was changing very faintly on the snow, but only on that one. He watched the one camera’s display intently, and found just what it was he was looking for. “Look at camera four!”
      The many people watching the screens looked at Matthew with confused gazes on their faces. “Why? What’s so special about four, Matthew?” Cynthia asked.
      “Just do it…there!” he said, pointing up at the screen. “That’s blaster fire from an ML-20! Ethan is up there fighting!”
“You can’t go up there though, the elevator has been locked down due to the alert,” the old General said to him. “If Ethan really is engaged in combat with them, he’s alone up there. We can’t send anyone up to help him.”
“What!?” Cynthia exclaimed, staring at the old man. “We can’t just leave him up there alone, we have to help him!”
“We can’t, Cynthia. Until the androids pull out, the system is set up to automatically lock down to prevent any accidental access,” Cruz replied. “We can’t even send out radio transmissions.”
“Oh no…” Matthew said, apparently ignoring the conversation. “Guys, he’s in trouble.”
“What?” Cynthia replied, looking at Matthew. “What do you mean?”
“Look,” he answered, pointing at the monitor facing the area where they came in.
Professor Cruz typed in some commands on the control console and zoomed in the camera Matthew pointed at with the hopes of finding what it was he saw. His face, along with everyone else except for Matthew’s, went pale. In view on the monitor were the visages of two Dämmerung-Drachen, and they were walking straight towards Ethan.

Chapter 35

“This isn’t good…Flamme and Schild…I must have really pissed off Omega,” Ethan said, chuckling to himself. “Well they know where I am, might as well stop hiding in the snow,” he said to himself, and stood up.
Alpha Flamme and Theta Schild stopped in their tracks, along with their battalion of hunters. Schild took a step forward and pointed at Ethan as he began to talk in a booming voice, “Ethan Thomas, you are foolish to fight us alone…”
“What can I say, I’m a confident pain in your ass,” Ethan shouted back. He knew this was going to be a fight for his life, so he decided to have some fun taunting the Drachen. “Besides, I’ve taken out four of you Drachen, I can handle two more.”
“Yes, you are a good fighter, but you haven’t had to fight two of us at once, nor this many of our hunters either!” Alpha Flamme shouted back as he stepped forward. “You’ve destroyed a good portion of my troops, but I don’t think you’ve ever had to fight off this many heavy armor troops ever. Am I wrong, Maverick?”
Ethan looked around at the numbers of the Hunters standing behind the two Drachen. “That is a lot…” he said to himself. Spinning his nanostaff around and holding it in front of him in a combat stance, he shouted back to the two Drachen, “If you think those soulless machines can take me out then make my day!”
Theta Schild laughed loudly at the defiant Ethan Thomas. “This is going to be good…Destroy him!” he shouted, and the entire group of Hunters behind him and Alpha Flamme charged past them and towards Ethan, ML-20’s firing constantly with their red bolts steaming into the snow.
Ethan deflected the shots closest to him and started to maneuver his way through the barrage of fire. He knew that with this many Hunters gunning for him at once, their safety protocols to keep them from shooting each other had to be active. Deflecting and dodging, Ethan made his way right up next to one of the assault units, but dove to the side and rolled back to his feet almost immediately after reaching it when he saw the sparks and fizzle of an ML-20 bolt impacting its head.
“What the hell!? Their friendly fire protocols are deactivated?” he shouted to himself.
“Of course they are, Maverick,” Flamme shouted over the sound of the shots being fired. “We aren’t taking any chances this time. Like you said, they’re only ‘soulless machines.’”
“Aw crap…” Ethan said, and jumped away from several more shots being taken at him. A couple of them he barely avoided, and they went through the cloak on his back. He landed on his feet, and ran to the side, avoiding the fire of the many Hunters that were after him, and hid behind a large snow mound. “Guess I don’t have a choice…wait a minute,” Ethan thought about the first group that attacked him, and about the ice beneath him. “A large enough blast should be able to send them all down there, and then I would only need to worry about the Drachen!”
Ethan retracted his arm into the cannon and stood back up from behind the mound, but was caught off guard by several heavily armored hunters bearing down right on top of him, and he had to roll out of the way. He fired three quick shots at them, blowing off their heads and sending them toppling over. “Jeez their fast!” he shouted, and got to his feet.
He deactivated the nanostaff and placed it back on his bandoleer to allow for better agility. “Ok, let’s rock and roll…” he said quietly. He stood as best as he could on the snow and aimed at the ground beneath the hunters pursuing him. “Let’s get rid of this snow first!” he shouted, and fired his own barrage of low shots that skimmed the top of the snow layer, melting it and revealing the ice beneath.
A flurry of red energy bolts came flying towards Ethan just as he finished shooting and he dove to the side in the nick of time. “Try to catch me now!” he shouted as he ran towards the hunters. He jumped forward and slid his way down, using his cannon to propel himself forward along the ice, outmaneuvering every Hunter out there. “Just like I thought, they can’t handle the ice!”
Each shot Ethan took was weakening the ice beneath him more and more, which was just what he wanted. The defensive hunters were slower, and heavier, so when they fell they made enough large cracks in the ice sheet to make Ethan’s plan that much easier. Eventually, after circling around the group, Ethan used his speed to use the snow like a vault, and leap into the air. “Merry Christmas you filthy machines!” he shouted, and unleashed his blasts down on the weakened Ice, shattering it as they energy passed through.
By the time he landed back on the snow, a large hole was in the place of the majority of the android battalion, and now only a few remained. Ethan extended his had again and gripped onto the nanostaff once more. “Ok, let’s go!” he shouted, and rushed towards the small group of hunters remaining.
There were four assault hunters and seven defensive hunters that were on solid ice when the hole collapsed, and each one of them was focusing their fire on the incoming human. Their programming had been upgraded though, for better small unit combat, and they formed up to repel the incoming aggressor.
The defensive androids moved up front with their weapons firing, and created a blockade of sorts to hold off Ethan while the assault troops fired their controlled bursts while covering each other.
Ethan deflected the close shots, as usual, and moved in close to one of the defensive hunters. He swung his staff with a spin to try to knock the behemoth of a machine over, but the staff bounced back and sent Ethan into an opposite moving spin, knocking him off balance. “What the hell?” he said as he dodged another incoming volley.
He looked at the armor plating on the Hunter, and knew exactly what it was. “Oh yeah, heavy armor…their only weak spot is the visor, everything else can even deflect energy bolts. Guess I got lucky before!” he shouted, and maneuvered his way back towards the hunters. “Take this!” he said has he lunged his staff directly at a defensive android. It went straight through the red visor on its head, deactivating it.
His hand retracted into the Cannon again and he shot off two more quick shots at their feet, vaporizing the snow and creating a white mist around them. “Want to see how strong I am!? Here, this was a gift from Eta Frost!” Ethan yelled loud enough for the Drachen to hear.
Both of their eyes went wide when they heard Ethan mention Frost’s name. “What!?” they shouted as they watched.
The ‘X’ on Ethan’s arm illuminated into a very bright light blue, and it appeared to have opened several small coils from the sides, each one releasing a cold looking gas. Ethan fired, and a blue beam of energy shot out towards the small group of hunters in front of him. Alpha Flamme and Theta Schild stared in awe as they watched the beam freeze the units almost instantaneously. The whole area became covered in a white mist, and they watched carefully until the mist subsided, and were amazed by what they beheld.
The whole group of advanced androids was completely frozen, covered in ice, which seemed to have been a result of the snow mist on them. Next to them, with his nanostaff in hand, stood Ethan Thomas, breathing hard and glaring down at the Dämmerung-Drachen. “You still think I can’t take two of you bastards on?” Ethan yelled back at the two lone figures standing on the opposite side of the water hole Ethan had made.