Vestige Chapter 11 - New Battle

“Shouldn’t we learn how to drive these things first?” Someone in the crowd asked Han.

“Nonsense! We don’t have time for that!” Han jumped up onto the closest tank. “We call these babies nightmares. They’re an absolute beast against Dionis on the battlefield and extremely easy to operate.You control them in teams of two. One person sits on top and operates the mounted gun. It works just like the artillery you’ve used your whole lives. The other sits inside the cockpit and drives things. Inside you’ll see several levers. These control speed, direction, and rotation. You’ll get the hang of it in no time.” Han leaped off the nightmare and leaned against it.

“Well, that about all y’all will get. I want y’all to get into teams of two and get onto the field as soon as possible. You’ll be facing off against each other until only one team is left. Those who do well will get into the advanced class.” Han began to walk up the stairs to the top of a watchtower that had vantage over the whole field.

“Oh and whoever wins this thing gets cleaning duty off tonight!”

Han slid into his chair on the watchtower and took out his pair of binoculars. Everyone below had already begun to break into teams of two and started getting into the nightmares.

It was surprising to me how eager they were to get started. I mean did anyone know how these things worked? I operated machinery back in the orphanage but nothing like this. Furthermore who I am even going to ask to join my team?

“Hey, Aurelia-”

“Let’s go, Gray!” Aurelia rushed off with Gray and into a nightmare. “I’ll handle the driving you take care of the guns.”

“Got it!” Gray began to check out the artillery on top.

I should have expected this. After earlier Aurelia probably doesn’t want to partner up with me. That’s probably for the best though. Anyways who am I even going to team up with?

“Hey. You got a partner yet?” Jean snuck up behind me.

“Huh?” I turned around and sighed.

“I can control the guns if you can drive?”

“Sure.” He’ll have to do. It’s not like I know anyone else here.

I climbed up the nightmare and slid into the cockpit. The thing was small and only had room for one person, yet it had a decent view of the outside in front. A panel in front took up most of the space inside and was littered with buttons, switches, and levers. I began to inspect them to figure how to drive this thing..

“You know what you’re doing?” Jean asked me from above.

“I think.” I pulled down a switch and the nightmare’s engine roared.

“Good, let’s win this thing, then-”

“Y’all hear me?” Han’s voice blared on the speaker inside the cockpit. “I’m giving you a minute and a half to split up on the field before we get started.”

“Only a minute and a half!? That isn’t a lot of time.” Jean sighed. “You think you can at least get us away from the storehouse, Lulu?”

“Maybe.” I began to pull levers to get things working.

The field was huge and the storehouse was located in the south-east corner of it. Most people still crowded around that warehouse, so if we could get to the north-west corner we’d be away from most people. If we stayed there we could hold out and survive for a while.

“There!” I finally got the nightmare to get moving. That being said it moved at such a crawl we wouldn’t be able to get to the corner anytime soon.

“We’re running out of time! Think you can go any faster?”

“I’m trying.” I frantically scurried the controls to increase the speed.

“Thirty seconds left, maggots!” Han announced.

“Come on, Lulu, we’ve got to get going, someone to our left has already got their guns trained on us!” Jean yelled.

“I’m working on it!”

“15 seconds.”

“Crap, crap! I can’t get the guns loaded, how the hell did those guys over there do it?”

“5 seconds.”

“Lulu, we’ve got to go faster! Those guys to our left are gonna nail us off the bat!” Jean cried from above.

“I can’t figure this out! Nothing is working!” The nightmare jolted back and forth as I attempted to speed it up.

“3.”

“Shit, shit, it won’t load!” Jean complained.

“2”

“This doesn’t make any sense.” The lever I pulled forced nightmare into to a halt.

“1”

“Do something! We’re sitting ducks out here!”

“Go!” Han yelled.

The nightmare jetted forward at an extreme speed, so fast it sent me to the back of the seat. Somewhere behind us, an explosion boomed.

“Haha!” Relieved, Jean laughed. “They missed us! Nice work.”

We sped across the field. “Get us all the way to that corner over there, Lulu.” Jean pointed off to the distance.

I felt relieved to finally get the nightmare working, yet around us battle had already broken out everywhere.

“Wait, hold on, Lulu slow down!”

“What?” I continued to let the nightmare dash through the field.

“Careful, just don’t hit that wall there!”

“Huh?” The nightmare slammed against the stone wall and it’s engine stopped.

“Why didn’t you go around it?!” Jean yelled at me through the hatch above.

“I don’t know how to turn this thing!”

“Fine, just get it started already, we made good headway, but the others are gonna catch up to us soon.”

“Don’t order me around! You haven’t even figured out to get it loaded.”

“What!” Jean exclaimed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

I leapt out of the nightmare began to work on getting the engine restarted and Jean started learning how to operate the guns. You could easily lift the front of the tank and have access to the engine, though that didn’t make it any easier to fix. They really should have given us a manual or something, nonetheless, we worked with vigor, as the battle around was rampaging on.

The smell of smoke and gunpowder filled the air. The sound of explosions and engines cried repeatedly. It was as if a real war was going on around us.

“Oh! I figured it out.” Jean finally loaded the gun. “You’ve just gotta pull out this and push this down! That makes sense.”

“Great.” I complimented him.

“How’s the engine coming along.”

“Need more time.”

“We don’t have more time.” Jean pointed to a nightmare 100 feet down from us. A good few walls separated us, yet they slowly navigated their way towards us.

“They’ll be here anytime.”

“I know.”

“Hmmm.” Jean turned the gun to their direction and over the wall. The stone walls that littered the field were to serve as cover, yet many of them were short of enough for you to shoot over them. “I got this!” He yelled.

A loud explosion pierced my ears as the double-barreled gun fired.

“Got him!” Jean jumped into the air rejoicing. The other nightmare sat their motionlessly covered in white smoke. Jean quickly stopped his celebrating, as the smoke cleared. “That didn’t really damage them at all. Why did they stop moving then?”

“Doesn’t matter, I got the engine working, let’s get out of here, we’re still too close to the majority of the fighting.” The engine roared into a start. Though it had been ten minutes the sounds around us failed to let up.

“Amazing work, Lulu!” Jean hopped back to the gun and began to load it again.

I got back into the cockpit and started moving the nightmare, this time I went slower and navigated it around the wall. I was starting to get the hang of the controls. There’s a pedal for gas, a lever for speed and two levers for the x and y-axis for both the top unit and the tracks. Granted it still took me a while to move this thing around, but we were starting to get somewhere.

“You’re doing really well driving this thing.”

“Thanks.”

Both of us sat there in silence as we navigated past a narrow passage of walls. I was so focused on driving on this thing, I’d lost track of time, yet it must have been a while since we started. Most of the fighting was starting to die down and we hadn’t seen anyone else for some time. Getting to the north-west corner was taking longer than I thought it would, but I made it my goal, so I’m getting there. We’ll have a good advantage if we make it there.

For a while, I’ve been doing most of the work, as we’ve navigated past most of the other nightmares we’ve encountered. With little to do Jean relaxed in the seat above me. The open hatch gave him a great view from his seat down into the cockpit.

“Can you stop staring at me?”

“Oh, sorry.” Jean looked away.

“Focus on lookout. I can only see directly in front of me.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right-” Jean began to look around. “Oh shit! Someone’s tailing us fast!”

Promptly loud sounds of tracks hitting dirt grew close behind me. Whoever it was tailing us, they were fast.

“They’re moving fast!” Jean cried.

“I’ll go even faster then.” I responded.

“Hold on, I got this..” Jean frantically loaded the gun. Before he could finish reading the weapon, the sound of artillery blared from behind the nightmare and an explosion landed near us.

“Shit! They nearly hit us!” Jean finished loading the gun and pointed it at the enemy nightmare. “Quit swerving around so much, I can’t get a good shot!”

“I’m trying to lose them.”

“Hold still, so I can shoot them.”

“No. We should try and outrun them.” I argued.

Jean fired the gun and the blast landed somewhere past the other nightmare. “Look! You made me miss!”

“That’s your own fault.”

“Whatever.” Jean loaded the second shot. “Just be a little steadier this time!”

“No, we won’t outrun them that way.”

“They’re going too fast to outrun!” Jean yelled.

“They’re going too fast to shoot!” I yelled.

“Damn! They’ve already reloaded.”

“I’ll dodge it then.”

“No! I got this!” Jean focused in on the nightmare tailing us. “Gotcha!” He let the shot loose and it roared somewhere behind us.

Suddenly, a loud explosion sounded on top of us and our nightmare slowed to a crawl. I pushed on the controls, yet it wouldn’t move.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s the smoke. It must shut off the nightmares.” Jean responded.

“We got hit with smoke? What about the other nightmare?”

“So did they.” Jean looked down through the hatch at me. “We shot each other. We lost.”

“We should have focused on outrunning them.” I looked up at him.

“We should have focused on shooting them.” Jean argued back.

We stared at each other for a good few moments before bursting into laughter. In unison, we laughed hysterically.

“We shot each other!” I laughed loudly into the cool air.

“Outrunning them, shooting them! It didn’t matter at all!” Jean laughed and reached his hand down into the hatch. “You know what? We make a pretty decent team.”

“Yeah.” I grabbed his hand and he pulled me up out of the cockpit.

The outside was surprisingly calm and quiet. We hadn’t even made it all the way to the corner, like I wanted to, yet most of the fighting had ended.

“I wonder who was tailing us.” Jean hopped off the nightmare and began walking towards the other unit. I followed behind him.

“That was impressive, man!” A familiar voice sounded from the nightmare and Gray leaped down to meet us.

“Oh hey, it’s you, Gray.” Jean responded.

“Haha! We managed to shoot each other!” Gray laughed.

“Yeah!”

“That was really good, Lulu.” Aurelia climbed out of the nightmare and joined us. “Sorry, I just left you earlier. I just figured you’d do better if you were with someone else.”

“No, it’s fine.” I responded.

“I’m glad you found someone though.” Aurelia wiped the sweat off her forehead. “Whew, let’s get started walking back before it’s dark.” Aurelia pointed to the storehouse on the other side of the field.

“Huh? Walking? Why don’t we just get back in the nightmares.” Jean asked.

“You didn’t hear what Han said, man?” Gray started walking back. “He said that smoke stops the nightmare’s engines for a good few hours! It’s faster to walk back.”

“What!” Jean exclaimed and turned to me. “When the hell did he say that?”

“It was probably when we hit the wall and the engine shut off. The radio wouldn’t have been working then.” I responded.

“Damn!” Jean begrudgingly began walking back.

We walked back to the storehouse. The sunset radiated the sky as we traversed the silent battlefield. Nightmares and explosion blast marks filled the field, showing the aftermath of the battle.

That battle must have taken the whole day as the air around us grew cold and darkness began to seep in. We managed to finish the walk back in roughly an hour though.

“Damn! You lowlifes didn’t have to go all the way back to the edge of the field! Ya got me waiting out here forever!” Han greeted us as we arrived.

“Where is everyone else?” Aurelia asked.

“Y’all are the last ones.” Han responded.

“Really? Does that mean we won?” Gray wondered.

“Nope! That just means you maggots when out really far! The winner was actually a couple of guys named Rocky and Marlo. They had you beat by about half an hour and didn’t go out nearly as far.”

“Awww.” Aurelia looked disappointed.

“Eh. Even though I wanted to, I didn’t expect to win anyways.” Jean shrugged.

“Nonetheless y’all did well. Without a shadow of a doubt, you guys earned a spot in the advanced class.” Han began to walk back towards the cabins.

“Really! Isn’t this great Lulu!” Aurelia exclaimed.

“Yeah.”

“Come on! Y’all still gotta clean the mess hall before you can rest!”

“There’s, more?” Jean complained and started walking back.

“Let’s get this done quick, man.” Gray responded to Jean.

“Yeah, I need some rest after today.”

The battle took the whole day, yet now that it is over, it feels strangely short. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have fun. Driving the nightmare was a lot of work and was especially stressful, yet I enjoyed it. I think I’m actually starting to like this place.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean I can forget everything that happened before this. Jax and Kata are still out there somewhere. They’re family and I must find them, yet for now, staying here with Aurelia, Gray, and Jean might be for the best.