Sigma/Star

Chapter 138: The Call

Grimsley examined a collection of trinkets hanging from a stall.They swayed back and forth in the breeze, and most of the currents that pushed them around were generated by the constant passage of foot traffic nearby. The markets of Beijing were busy, and always seemed to be crammed with people at every time of day. Grimsley had already poked his head out of his hotel in the night and noticed that the streets were just as packed at any time of day. It just seemed to be how this world operated.

It was all vastly different from the sleepy town of Easley that he had grown up in. Everything he had come to experience since leaving there had been different, and it hadn't followed along the path he had predicted at all. He was separated from his sister, and had been since the day he signed up from the military. He never saw her, never heard from her, just knew she was attending school at the academy and helping everyone with repairs. She was following her own dream. Was Grimsley following his still?

The youth glanced back over his shoulder, towards the edge of the city. He could make out the blurry form of the Goliaths at the landing pads, and had to assume one of them was his, sitting there, waiting for him. It was a very strange feeling to know he had a Goliath, and it was one he wasn't familiar with. It had hit him very suddenly when Ronald had left them at the border to the Eastern United States. His ancient body was tired of the travelling, and he had called it quits, opting instead to just find a flight back home while the Enian Federation and Eastern United States were still at peace with each other. He seemed to have genuine fears of getting trapped in a foreign country.

As Ronald had left, he had handed over the battlesuit to Grimsley, claiming that it was as much the youth's as it was his own, and that he could never pilot it alone anyways. Grimsley wasn't entirely sure if he could properly pilot it alone either though. He had never operated the machine without Ronald around, had only moved it from one place to another while the old man was sleeping, but every battle he had ever fought in had involved a co-pilot. After all, he had never been officially trained on the warmachine.

Goulet placed his hand on Grimsley's shoulder in the market, snapping the young man back to reality. "Don't worry, they'll be safe out there. It's pretty hard to steal a Goliath."

"That's not my biggest concern," Grimsley sighed.

Goulet eyed the pilot for some time, sucking on his pipe. It seemed Goulet had entered heaven when they had reached Beijing, swiftly moving from one speciality store to the next, packing his pipe with all manner of fanciful herbs and leaves. They had visited more libraries and bookstores than Grimsley ever cared to be in again, and it had been a whirlwind tour of learning that had gone right over Grimsley's head.

"Perhaps," Goulet answered, "you'll know the answer to the questions inside your head when you put them to the test. For now, we cannot let this opportunity pass us."

"Let me guess, you found another library." Grimsley rolled his eyes at the old man, but he was eternally thankful to him. Goulet had been there with him almost since the beginning, and had immediately put aside their differences in nationality to help train Grimsley and keep him alive in the battlefields they had encountered. He had taken him under his wing and had shown him so many fascinating things about the world. It was as if Grimsley had lived on one side of a curtain and Goulet, rather than pulling the curtain back, had slowly pulled him around behind it.

There were certainly darker moments of doubt for Grimsley. He still struggled some days with the notion that the Jahari had been partially started by Goulet and Sigmeund. He knew it had been inevitable, that sooner or later a country would try to find truth in those rumours and would really wake them. After all, they were real, that much had been made clear. Then there were the times Grimsley thought about Easley, about the attack that had started everything for him. That had been the Artisans, Goulet's people. Goulet himself was a general, and the idea of Goulet ordering this attack on Grimsley's family kept him awake some nights.