Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

Chapter 6: Welcome, Tourist

621 returned to awareness in its bunk and immediately reached out, hoping that the presence it had made Contact with yesterday was still there.

<<Ayre?>>

Before 621 had even finished the thought, it could feel her, like a warm touch on its shoulder, a finger brushing over its brow.

"Raven. I'm here." she answered calmly, "Shall we see if Walter left you anything?"

...

Ayre had been exploring this new place while Raven slept. Learning as much as she could about these "Armored Cores," about the machine that Raven piloted. LOADER 4 seemed like such an impersonal name and upon closer inspection she found that it was the default name the system registry had initialized with.

Raven either wasn't allowed or had no desire to make the machine truly his own. Going by the mechanical way Raven had obeyed the orders of this "'Handler' Walter," she wasn't sure which one it might be. Maybe both.

Upon Raven's return to consciousness, she'd immediately focused her attention back on him. Ayre was loath to be apart from him, even after such a short time. When they returned from the sortie the previous day Raven had remained in the machine, reluctant to exit, seemingly fearful of losing the connection. And Ayre, who knew it was not so fragile, had no qualms about that.

She stayed close as Raven checked through his notifications, pulling up one from the Handler.

"621. I've got some business to attend to." he informed.

She hated hearing him call Raven that: 621. Nothing else? Not even G13 at the least?

"I need to hawk some intel to the corps and secure a backer for our trip to the ice field." Walter continued, "One job for you while I'm out... Rest up. And that's an order"

Maybe he could quit ordering him around like a dog. He's human. He not a slave.

Next was the list of incoming mission requests. One from Balam, and nothing else. An advance survey request, meaning Arquebus was likely already on site.

"It's a request from Balam Industries." Ayre explain,"They want you to carry out an advance survey of the Central Ice Field... to confirm the information that Walter brought to them about the Coral convergence."

Ayre pulled up the C-band scans of the area around the watchpoint. The drifting patterns pointed toward the ice field, like Walter had claimed. Now, how to get Raven over there...

She rifled through maps of the local area and construction records from decades ago. No large airfields or transport systems that weren't in the hands of corps. The records for Grid 086 caught her eye. There was a cargo launcher system built into the upper levels. Granted, it wasn't made for transporting people, but in his AC, Raven would find it an easy journey. Walter could catch up later.

Or never would be fine too. For his sake.

"I think I found a solution." Ayre offered, "With the Alean Ocean between us and the ice field, the transport helicopter won't have enough range to get us there. It's unconventional, but we could use the intercontinental cargo launcher to launch your AC to the Central Ice Field. It's installed on the upper level of Grid 086. We'll need to be cautious; Grid 086 is occupied by the Dosers, outlaws who treat Coral like a drug. It's also the territory of a belligerent group of arms dealers who call themselves RaD."

<<Stay with me?>>

"I'll always be here to support you, Raven. And, let me handle getting us into the Grid." she offered, "I'm fairly adept at analyzing systems, and manipulating them too."