MARS GEAR: Solo Ascension Initiative

What in the world kidnaps a human and immediately throws him into a warzone???!!!

The darkness was peeling away; not all at once but, just enough for Ten to register he's awake. He didn't move, still and he held his breath. His body was still catching up but his senses were coming back in slow slow waves.

"Hold on a minute," he squinted his eyes. He could see. "Why?"

He raised his hand and knocked it on what seemed to be a solid glass. The world outside the glass was a wasteland. It was a barren expanse of rust-red and black rock, twisted ridges scraping at the thin, dust-choked sky.

Cracks veined the surface of the ground in all directions, splitting apart the brittle crust like the planet itself has been fractured for centuries. There seemed to be wind, a ghostly one that howled, stirring up fine dust that never settled and just at a distance of a mile was a widespread cliff.

And he could see them all.

He could see the every detail of the dust even. It's like his eyes had gone from worst to better than the best of eyes. "Maybe it's the glass?" He knocked on it again.

Suddenly, the dark panels below the glass lit up and the control interface came to life. Was he inside a metallic phantom? He wasn't sure, but everything around him was metal, and he was strapped in tight. A control panel stretched out before him and it was filled with buttons and switches.

The screen flickered on with a message in English futura fonts.

A circular radar interface popped up; like a clock, except instead of numbers, there was an arrow in the middle. And it wasn't alone. Four yellow marker stones had appeared, each moving toward the arrow at an alarming speed.

Ten narrowed his eyes. Threats. That's what they were. The arrow had to be him.

"Shit," he muttered. He glanced past the screen, into the real world beyond the glass.

At first, nothing. Just a red empty land. Just the broken, rust-red expanse. Then something flickered.

Ten blinked, his breath hitched. What wasn't there a second ago was suddenly there: machines. Small, fast, and metallic. They didn't move like drones but they looked like drones; they swarmed. Like wasps stirred into a frenzy. The yellow stones on the screen weren't just warnings. They were real.

The attack came before he had time to think.

The air around him rippled with movement as the drone-like machines; sleek-bodied, insectile machines with sharp, extended limbs. They opened fire.

Attack shots of thin, small, precise projectiles clustered together struck the outer shell of his cockpit with rapid, surgical accuracy. He barely felt the impact, but a thin red bar in the corner of the screen ticked down in response.

They were eating away at it.

Ten swallowed. His fingers flexed over the controls. What the hell was he supposed to do?

Then, the system reacted. A second panel lit up beneath his fingers.

Options flashed across the interface. They were listing names he didn't recognize, well, except one.

SHOTGUN.

Was it a real weapon? He didn't know but he knew football. In football, a shotgun formation's when the quarterback lines up behind the center but several yards back.

Maybe that's why his gut told him to pick it? The moment he did, he felt something shift in the metal around him. A dull vibration traveled through his seat and at the same time but, in the corner of the glass, a massive spinning gun barrel emerged from the side, likely getting ready to shoot.

A targeting reticle locked onto the closest drone.

"What next?" Ten asked himself. He looked down at the control panel. He wasn't much of a gamer, well, not at all but he hoped placing his hand on one of the things that looked like an advanced joystick would do something.

And it did.

Ten squeezed the trigger.

A violent burst of gunfire tore through the swarm. The drones moved fast, darting away from the stream of bullets, but not fast enough. One clipped, then another, then… BOOM! An explosion. The impact sent debris scattering through the thin air and plumes of dust rising as twisted metal rained to the ground.

But the fight wasn't over.

The screen flashed again. More drones, closing in. "Weren't they just four before?"

He barely had time to register the next attack before something bigger moved in the distance. A shadow over the horizon.

It was massive and larger than anything Ten had ever seen move through the air. Not a drone. Not a swarm. Something else.

The interface blared another alert.

Ten's stomach clenched. Whatever this was, it was already locking onto him.

His fingers hovered over the controls. His instinct screamed at him to move which he didn't even know how to, but he agreed with himself to wait. And watch. And that… was a bad idea.

It lunged onto him.

The first impact hit like a wrecking ball. The world shook, and that's how he got to know just how big whatever he was in was.

There were restraints and they dug into him as the protective metal shell he was trapped in shuddered from the force. The second strike came almost immediately after, followed by a third. It was attacking him.

Pain hit first.

It had hit him hard. The impact rattled through the metal around him, and his head throbbed from where it had slammed against the seat.

The screen in front of him was still alive, flashing symbols and warnings in a language he barely understood despite it being in English.

Another slam. It struck the side of his cockpit and the entire machine lurched.

Ten gasped. His lungs were seizing as the safety belts across his chest dug deep into his ribs. A high-pitched noise filled the air; whatever was attacking him was surely skinning him alive.

He barely had time to register the next strike. The cockpit jolted again; his head snapped sideways. The taste of copper flooded his mouth.

"Move, damnit."

He really wanted to get up and move, and not die. But, his arms felt wrong. They were too heavy. His nerves screamed at him to do something, anything, but the body of this cockpit wasn't responding at all. Or maybe, it was him who didn't know how to make it respond.

Another impact.

This one sent a sickening crack through the cockpit as metal warped under pressure. The screen flickered, dimming, then roaring back to life in jagged bursts of color. Ten barely had time to see the movement outside before the glass in front of him got darkened by a shadow.

No; a machine. Another machine.

It moved too fast to be anything else, dropping down from the sky like a specter. Its silhouette was framed against the rust-red horizon. Even through the shaking, through the suffocating tension in his chest, Ten's mind focused onto it.

"It was flying?"

It was sleek. Cutting through the air with a brutal kind of grace. It twisted mid-descent, it's boosters roaring, then leveled itself as it landed with a perfect, effortless motion.

Ten's breath caught.

The drones didn't hesitate. They turned on the newcomer with their segmented limbs clicking in unison. The big guy who had been attacking him suddenly broke into what seemed like a million drones. The swarm adjusted, rushing the newcomer in coordinated waves.

The newcomer machine barely moved. Then, without warning, it erupted into violence.

A bright blue light came from the center of the newcomer machine. It made a circle of dust around its feet. Then, it moved quickly and precisely. A sharp blade appeared, its arm swung, and three small flying drones were destroyed in mid-air. No hesitation. No wasted movements.

For a moment, Ten forgot himself. Forgot the pain, the blood in his mouth, and the way his fingers trembled against the now dead controls.

All he could do was watch.

Then something moved outside his cockpit a bit too fast. One of the drones broke from the fight with the newcomer. The drones body was twisted and the limbs nkw folded inward. In a blink, it was now on him.

The drone somehow produced a drill and launched it forward. The drill struck the glass.

Ten flinched as sparks exploded in a violent burst of white light. The machine screeched, pressing harder with the drill; spiderweb fractures crawled across the reinforced pane, cracking wider with every second.

Panic slammed into Ten. He tried to move and struggle against the safety harness, but the drone wasn't stopping. Another few seconds of drilling into the glass and it would punch straight through… almost close to getting in contact with the space before his face…

BEEP.

The screen flickered. An offline new message delivered by an unknown.

His brain barely processed it. His fingers moved before any thought could catch up. There was a button that had a label H-2, even if it was the only glowing and alive one amongst the dead control panel, so why not?

He hit the button.