Chapter 16

The next few days were uneventful. Toby brought us further and further south while edging towards the east.

While he piloted, I continued devoting the controls of the Calipso to memory. My memory had improved a lot but controlling the armor required more than just a good memory.

During the night I had toby run the simulations so that I could practice actually controlling the calipso.

The view screens would go black and then a virtual field would be laid out before me. In the field were multiple cutouts of other armor types, all of which I did not recognize.

There was a large obstacle course to traverse and I could even request simulated enemies to fight against.

For now, I stuck to learning to maneuver and operate the calipso under non-combat conditions. I would use the full link mode during combat.

Moving slowly was actually quite simple. I had memorized the controls and functions of the calipso completely. I got a handle on walking the machine, running, and manipulating its arms and hands.

Piloting the machine became ten times more complicated when quick alterations in movement, sudden agility, and flexibility were needed.

It was easy to control the armor to complete simple tasks like running in a straight line or turning but once I needed to dodge, duck, weave, or twist in odd ways I would need to input dozens of rapid and complicated commands into the system.

Logically I knew how to do it. That wasn't good enough, however. It needed to be muscle memory. It needed to be second nature and instinct. That can only be accomplished with practice and experience.

So no matter how much I caused the virtual armor to crash into the simulated ground while making myself look like a fool, I kept practicing.

The late night sessions of simulated practice cut into my sleep schedule. It was a good trade-off however, as by the third day I felt much more comfortable piloting the armor.

I felt assured that should toby be unable to control the armor for some unforeseen reason, I would be able to take his place at a moments notice.

During our day time travel, I asked Toby about the history of the continent and the nation that had built him.

His answers disappointed me. His creators did not seem to believe he required such information.

During my questioning, however, it was revealed that Toby himself actually had map data from before the fall of humanity.

None of it was top secret but there were a lot of cities as well as several military bases marked. Most of the military bases on the map were not top secret. Their proximity to cities marked on the map told me they were probably known to the citizens in those cities all those years ago.

I created a data file combining the two sets of data while keeping the nobles map data file as it was. I planned to use the map data from the calipso as a bargaining chip when I got to Anarchy City.

There was no reason to give more than needed and I wanted to keep the information to myself for later use. I didn't know if I would ever use it but felt it smart to hold it in reserve.

At the end of the third day, we came to the end of the sandworm territory and to the edge of a forest. I decided to spend one more night at the edge of the sandworm territory before I would dive into the darkness of the forest.

There would be a multitude of different types of core beasts inside of it and the choice between sleeping inside the forest or inside the territory I had already become used to, was an easy choice to make.

There was some good news. I had been randomly testing the full sync capabilities to see if they had been repaired and earlier in the day I had been able to successfully sync with the Calipso. The outer shell of the armor was also coming along nicely. A full restoration would soon be complete.

When I set out on the morning of the fourth day I decided to take control of the calipso myself. I would have to do it eventually and the more I held off on doing it the longer it would take me to master the controls.

With Toby no longer required to pilot, he was relegated to a support role. I had him watch the sensor feeds and warn me of anything suspicious.

The drawback to piloting the calipso myself was I was to not be able to do it as efficiently as Toby. My maneuvers wasted more of the fuel reserves than Toby's had.

The status of my fuel reserves was also beginning to weigh on my mind. At the current rate, I would run out of fuel in about five days. I would have to find a source of fuel and soon.

That meant combat. The only source of fuel available outside of the cities had to be obtained directly from core beast corpses. I would have to fight eventually and create some core beast corpses.

Piloting the Calipso inside of the forest was difficult. The tangle of tree branches required me to maneuver the Calipso much more delicately. It did, however, make for great practice and helped to improve my piloting skills immensely.

As I weaved the calipso through the trees while attempting to make as little sound as possible, I kept the submachine gun firmly gripped in the Calipso's gauntlets and ready to fire at a moment's notice.

Every once and a while I would bump into a tree branch or tear through some low bushes with a massive armored foot by accident. The loud sounds it created made me cringe and stop to listen for any reactions from the forest.

Moving inside the forest while attempting to keep from making too much noise was extremely slow. My skills at piloting the calipso manually did not help matters. Neither did the burden of carrying the extra armor over the Calipso's shoulder.

Due to the curving path, I would have to take to avoid coming too close to any cities, the distance I would have to travel to get to Anarchy City was a whopping 480km.

With the forest slowing me down it would take at least a week to get there. My fuel would run out long before then.

The question of fuel came to a head when on the second day I found a large outcropping of rocks sticking out of the forest with a small clearing around it.

I hadn't run into any core beasts along the way. At first, I was happy to travel in peace, but I knew conflict couldn't be avoided forever. I really needed cores to fuel the armor.

When I spotted the outcropping of rocks it struck me how perfect of an ambush location it would be and I made a decision.

I would use the outcropping of rocks as a defensive position and lure in some beasts.

The terrain afforded to me by the outcropping was perfect for it. There was a large slab of rock on the back side. It looked incredibly hard to climb. The slab was smooth and due to its vertical nature, I doubted many core beasts would ever be able to climb it.

The front section of the outcropping was while not impossible to climb, uneven and jagged. Only one section seemed somewhat easy to climb.

If I positioned myself near the top and took a defensive position there, any core beasts that came at me would only be able to do so easily from an area that was 6 or 7 meters wide.

Attacking me from the sides would be incredibly hard and attacking me from behind would be nigh impossible.

I hadn't spotted any other features of the land that offered so much defense. It was nearly perfectly suited for my plans.

Piloting the Calipso up the slope, I found it extremely hard to keep my balance. The rocks and boulders below the Calipso's feet kept shifting. At one point it required me to embarrassingly scrabble my way up on the Calipso's hands and knees while I dragged the other armor behind me.

Towards the top of the rock formation, about nine meters high, I found an area relatively flatter and chose it as my position for the defense.

I shifted some boulders out of my way and position them to help block anything trying to climb up and attack me. I could also kick the boulders down the slope and hopefully take out some core beasts.

When the work was done I looked out and over the forest. All I could see was the tops of trees in every direction for miles.

I thought long and hard about when I would start my plan. Most core beasts were active at night. Not all core beasts followed this rule. The literature I had read and the rumors I had heard told me a little more than two-thirds did though. I didn't feel it a good idea to attract too much attention, so I struck a night ambush from my mind.

Neither could I do the ambush directly before night time. If I did that I would have to travel at night to get away from the corpses and the reeking blood they would no doubt be leaking everywhere. The smell of blood might draw attention from core beasts eventually.

My plan was to wait until the morning of the next day. That would allow me to quickly collect the cores after the fight and move on.

Sunset was an hour away when I came up with another idea. I scrambled down the slope and to the edge of the forest.

Selecting trees just small enough for the calipso to carry, I pulled out the energy blade, activated it, and made quick work of cutting them down. In total, I cut down 12 trees.

It took a lot of effort and time to drag them up the slope and position them scattered about on each side of the path heading up, but eventually, I was very happy with the results. Anything that wanted to come up any other way but the path left open in the center would have to climb over loose boulders, jagged rocks, and the trunks and branches of the trees.

From my flattened position up the slope, I could still see over the obstructions and had a clear field of fire.

The only qualm I had with the situation was if I was attacked by a much larger group or a core beast more powerful than I was capable of stopping, I would be trapped on the hill. I didn't like plans the left me no path of retreat, but I couldn't think of anything better at the moment. I figured that if it got really bad I would use the thrusters and jump straight over all the obstacles and retreat into the forest.

The plan was simple but I like simple plans. Complicated ones tend to fall apart. Complicated plans required everything to go exactly as planned. In a simple plan, there were less moving parts. You tend to get more reliable results from a cunning yet simple plan.

My plan wasn't exactly genius level but it would do.

I sat the Calypso down with its back against the massive slab of rock that jutted out of the ground at an angle and leaned against the giant hill of boulders and rubble.

The sky grew dark as I ran simulations in a last-ditch effort to familiarize myself as much as possible with the calypso's capabilities. I triggered full link during the simulations as that would be what I would do during the fight to come.

I familiarized myself with all the Calipso's weaponry which consisted of the submachine gun, the blade of light called a force blade, and 3 grenades that the armor had attached to its left hip.

The submachine gun had a 40 round magazine that I practiced loading. It, like the rifle that was damaged, as well as the assault rifle I had in the cockpit, also used ammunition without a propellant.

The ammunition was nothing more than a segmented block of metal that was fed directly into the top of the weapon. The ammunition was magnetically stuck to the calipso's left thigh and parts of its chest.

I liked the design as there would be no need to pull a magazine out of the weapon before replacing it with a new one.

The force blade was simple enough. Its reach could be extended at will, but the longer it was extended the less concentrated the energy of the blade would be. The sweet spot for blade length seemed to be about two and a half meters.

Two of the grenades were of the explosive variety. The last one was a combination stun grenade that also blocked electronic signal transmissions for a time.

The thought of burying the grenades and triggering them remotely had come to mind but I decided against it as I wanted to be able to use them when and where I needed.

If somehow the core beasts avoided funneling through the area where the grenades were buried, the grenades would end up being useless.

I spent as much time as possible in the simulation using full link mode before the headache and heat in my chest got too painful. I managed a little over an hour and a half. During that time I'd practice firing the submachine gun, wielding the blade, and throwing the grenades.

Before heading to sleep, I ate a few of the ration bars and drank some of the water that I had dug out of the Calipso's storage compartment.

The ration bars didn't taste bad at all. The Noble obviously wouldn't stock his rations with bad food. It did surprise me that his water was flavored. It had the taste of lemons.

I scoffed at the prissy attitude of noble. Flavored water... What a pansy. The spoiled prick had flavored water as an emergency supply of water.

When I slept my dreams were much better than the dreams of the night before. The memory of the dream is fuzzy, but I seem to remember sitting in the kitchen of my house at the table while my mother cooked food and softly hummed the tune to a song she had loved since her childhood.

When Toby woke me at the time I had designated him to, I felt a pang of regret at having to part from the dream. Toby actually had to raise the volume of his voice before I begrudgingly parted from the dream.

Powering the armor and bringing it to a standing position I looked to the east. A faint glow had begun crawling up the sky in that direction ever so slowly. Now was the time.

I ran my simple plan through my head a few more times before deciding nothing needed altering and that there were no major problems with it.

Setting all systems to full power, I picked up a large rock perfectly suited to the hands of the calipso and smashed it against an even larger boulder.

A loud crack like the sound of a gunshot accompanied the action. The sound echoed out over the treetops and into the distance.