Rebirth through fire and ice

Prologue:

          CSGS-24 stood alone on the battlefield, his A.R.O.N M24 dancing across the battlefield as if it were a butterfly. His halberd cutting the enemies of man in twain. Only he was still standing. The rest of his allies having died only a couple of minutes into the battle.

          The enemy forces tried to take the planet of Collo; he had stopped them for the most part. Who is the current enemy? Well, they call themselves “The Flood of Crisis”. While the “Coalition of Terra” had formally declared war on them about 3 Terran years ago it was only something like 3 weeks ago for them.

          As one could guess they were ETs. Or aliens for the average soldier. The average viewer of them would be horrified if they looked at them for too long. Having four legs and a centaur like torso in the middle of their back made them seem lean and mean. Their arms that split at the elbow gave the look of a strong grasp.

          Although they weren’t all too strong. They evolved for a world much more stable than Terra. In fact, they called worlds like it Deathworlds. That is why they piloted massive mechs into battle. And that was what 24 piloted as well.

          The furnace halberd giving him extra reach over his allies and enemies. His square thruster wings flipped open to reveal massive cannons. His mech giving him the extra power he needed to turn this battle around. The FHC atop the front of his mech’s forehead gave it the look of a cyclops from old Terran mythology.

          The last couple of enemies backing off from him gave him the time to take in the field they were in. The rain poured down the visor, activating the wipers. His only two comrades lay destroyed on the ground.

          The two purple robotic mechs in front of him seemed to be taking a breather like he was. He couldn’t let them have much time though. After only a split second to them, he charged.

          *fawoosh*

          He darted forward cutting one in half as it tried to respond with its arm cannons. He was what one would call a super soldier. He was surgically, cybernetically, and genetically modified to fight in hostile areas to the masses.

          He in fact could tell when and where they would attack. They saw time about as fast as he did. But he experienced time as fast as any man. That meant he could react faster than them.

          The other one rushed to attack him, extending its arm blades. The blades cut into the armor of his suit. After a beat he shook off the foe. He would have to give his suit a good amount of matter for it to repair itself after this.

          “Right arm now inoperable,” chided the suits AI, Aron.

          24 thought for a split second and looked at the suits right screen. There he noticed the rough cut from the blade of his foe. It was very bad. He had to stop this right now. His wing cannons fired point blank at his foe. The enemy somehow dodged it and wrapped around the back of his suit.

          The alien lifted him and slammed him down onto the ground. His feet took the shock of the blow, and he raised his wings to catch his enemy by surprise. The enemy jumped into the air and landed in front of his suit. He fired both cannons now. It hit sending chunks of alloy and living matter all about the place.

          Just as the shells connected his view shifted. The land now different, a rolling plane broken only by mountains and plateaus. Said mountains and plateaus looked like they had formed from basalt.

          What just happened? Where was he? 24 didn’t know what just happened but he was sure that something was wrong. He turned the cameras on the outside off and on again. It did nothing to the environment he found himself in.

          “Aron, run a diagnostic on all systems,” he told his old partner.

          “Affirmative, running diagnostic scan on all systems,” he chirped back in his old robotic voice.

          The voice of Aron was chosen by the AI itself. The sound of his voice having been invented in the 20^th century, now it was the 26^th century. The top screen went black, then it turned blue and then after 5 minutes it went back to its normal status screen.

          24 ran his hand through his black hair and sighed. He had been alive for a little over the normal life span of a human. If one used the average life of a 21^st century human, he was a half century older, 160 years old.

          Though he was still in his prime thanks to the CSGS program. He was about 6 feet tall, an early CSGS soldier. The majority of the latest CSGS soldiers weren’t even required for advanced training.

          Though, he thought he understood why. But the more he thought about it, the more it made little sense. The war was going well, and the enemies had now just learned the import of ranged weapons.

          But that didn’t matter now. What mattered right now was where he was and how he could get back. The check had told him that he was in a different world than Collo. This world was of the same gravity as Venus. Although, its sun was a bit cooler than Sol. The distance this planet was about some place between earth and mars. The measured distance estimates from the size of it in the sky and the pull of the gravity it emitted was enough.

          He could not tell the difference from that of earth though. It seemed like a multitude of factors made the differences negligible.

          So, he began to walk. He walked in that mech for what felt like an eternity. But the clock said he had just walked for about 3 hours. The scenery hadn’t changed at all and soon a heard a great rapturous sound of some animals beating wings.

          He looked slightly up and saw what looked to be a dragon. said dragon had green sales and yellowish eyes. It looked at him as if he saw a rival in power. 24 had read several different books with dragons in them.

          Some had the dragons be intelligent while others simply depicted them as animals. This one he couldn’t tell which. Not that it mattered as the dragon swooped down and tried to grapple him.

          He fended it off by simply swiping at it with his furnace halberd. The dragon seemed taken aback at his counter and faltered. Why the thing attacked him was unknown. He didn’t really care though.

          “What are you?” it asked.

          He didn’t expect the dragon to talk back to him, so he answered simply.

          “I’m a soldier,” he said.

It dived at him, and he cut it down in defense. He couldn’t have let it hit him. If it did, he didn’t know how much damage it would have done. The two sides of the beast fell to the earth with a great faw ump. The corpse of the dragon stayed there and soon 24 forgot it completely as he continued to walk for the next 5 hours.

He soon started to get tired as he had stayed awake for about 12 hours. He let Aron piolet the mech for awhile till Aron notified him about something. A group of someone’s were in front of them in the radius of the mech eyes.

 He looked for a place to set down the mech and as he looked around, he noticed a group of what seemed…

          “Vikings?” he asked out loud.

          “They do not appear to be wearing authentic Norse armor. It also looks like they have someone with them that is being held against their will,” Aron noted.

          24 zoomed in with his cameras and saw that Aron was correct. They were indeed kidnaping a woman against her will. She was kicking, and screaming, and she had elf ears…

          What is this? A world of magic? But 24 didn’t let that stop him from speaking outload with his megaphone like speaker. They were only about 600 yards from him after all.

          “Halt! What are you doing with that woman citizens? It looks rather suspicious with that young lady kicking and screaming like that,” he said.

          If the people of this world couldn’t speak English, then it didn’t matter. All he had to do was use the Omni-translator. Though, it only worked with languages humanoids could speak.

          The men stopped and gawked at the massive 20-meter-tall frame in front of them. They then began to go faster, the horse-like animals running about 40 miles an hour. He could catch up to them and he did so, couldn’t let kidnappers run after all.

          He put a hand in front of the carriage and the horse-look-alikes stopped and bucked. They seemed scared of his mech. That made sense as not many people saw A.R.O.Ns in the wild.

          The men shook in fear and threw the woman at him. They then gained control over their steeds and ran away from him and the now frozen woman. She had snow white skin that reflected the light somewhat and white hair the color of snow. She also had a deep blue set of eyes that she used to look up at the massive A.R.O.N M24 mech.