by Project Itoh
“She seems to have some trouble speaking,” Campbell said.
I nodded. “Sunny’s stutter bothers her. After she was born, she lived under unusual conditions. She carries many burdens, and the stutter is their manifestation.”
Snake added, “And I thought living with us was unusual enough.”
He’d been getting at me to let her out of Nomad, to show her more of the world. But as long as the Patriots were watching, he couldn’t convince me that letting her roam freely outside was the right thing to do.
“She’s a child prodigy,” I added. “She’s different from other children. It’s just how she is.”
“She’s a prodigy?” Campbell asked.
I pointed at the supercomputer rack against one of the cargo bay walls. “She’s amazing at anything technological. She can comprehend the most complicated source code in an instant. She even has a substantial understanding of mechanical engineering. Take this, for example.”
I stood and retrieved a robot from the rear of the cargo bay. The machine had an LCD screen, two legs, and a body just small enough to fit my arms around.
“Allow me to introduce Metal Gear Mk. II. It’s a Metal Gear, just like REX. But this Gear’s not a weapon. It’s a remote mobile terminal designed to provide Snake with operational support.”
“But what does that have to do with Sunny?” the colonel asked.
“She designed it with me. She had her hand in much of the code, from the auto-balance system to the image recognition routines.”
I lowered the Mk. II to the floor and turned it on from my terminal. The robot booted up and deftly coasted across the cargo bay, rolling on two wheels on the ends of its feet.
“But she can’t be older than seven or eight! That is impressive.”
“She’s a product of the next generation. I’m already obsolete.”
“Obsolete or not,” Snake said, “there’s still much you have to do. We can’t pass on our sins to Sunny’s generation.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s what we’ve been fighting for all this time.”
Campbell nodded in agreement, then leaned forward, ready to return to the matter at hand.
“Snake, you’ll be sneaking into the conflict zone via transport truck, disguised as one of the rebel army’s hired operators. Your first objective is to make contact with our informants, Rat Patrol 01, shorthand RAT PT 01. They’ll be expecting you.”
“Rat Patrol, huh. They sound sneaky.”
“They’re a special forces team assigned to the army’s PMC investigation unit, CID.”
The Criminal Investigation Command (formerly the Criminal Investigation Division, and still referred to as “CID” for continuity) was a law enforcement agency within the army—basically, the army’s police. They investigated all crimes within the army’s jurisdiction, from crimes on the battlefield and occupied territory—such as mass murder of civilians or cruelty to prisoners—all the way down to simple misdemeanors on base.
Snake chuckled. “So they’re the rats of the army.”
Whether you deemed them necessary or not, those who sniffed around among your comrades weren’t going to be popular.
Campbell shook his head. “No, I can vouch for them personally.”
“Friends of yours?”
“You could say that.”
Snake looked at Campbell with narrowed eyes, but the colonel ignored the look and went on.
“Transportation to the area will be provided under cover of a UN humanitarian aid mission with support from the US military. From there on, though, you’ll get no protection—and no guarantees—from anyone.” He paused for emphasis. “And you must not leave behind any evidence of your involvement in that area, let alone that of the UN. If word of this ever leaked out, it would spark a global firestorm.”
“The same as always,” Snake said. “Same as Zanzibar Land and Shadow Moses. It’s like in Mission: Impossible—if you’re caught or killed, we’ll disavow any knowledge of your actions.”
“Will you do this for me? Will you terminate Liquid?”
Now Campbell looked at me.
I nodded. We had to finish this.
Before Snake’s life went up in smoke.
“Thank you,” Campbell said, his words filling every corner of the cargo bay.
The words carried appreciation not only for the fight we now faced, but for all of Snake’s battles and the painful weight with which they burdened him.
That is the man whose story I tell.
His code name was Solid Snake, but as well known as the moniker is now, it’s hardly a code. Say the name Snake to anyone, and they’ll say something like, “Oh, the legend.” The hero of Shadow Moses. The mighty champion who crushed Outer Heaven and brought down Zanzibar Land. The man who made the impossible possible, the man who destroyed the devil’s weapon, Metal Gear, again and again.
The legend.
Snake grew tired of being called that.
Truth be told, back when I first met him, I hadn’t heard anything about him yet. I was just a science geek, and all I cared about was using the funds of a gigantic military corporation to build a robot like the ones I’d seen in Japanese anime.
Anime and technology—that was all that defined me. I devoted myself to my work, giving birth to a two-legged walking robot weapon, clueless in my childish naiveté to its actual purpose.
Yes, I created Metal Gear REX.
The American government requested—or should I say, ordered—Snake to a remote island off the coast of Alaska to destroy REX. The Next-Generation Special Forces unit FOXHOUND rebelled against the United States and took control of the Metal Gear, and with it, they could launch a nuclear strike anywhere in the world.
Shadow Moses Island was located in the Fox Archipelago, and there, in the deadly cold winds of the Bering Strait, training exercises with the Metal Gear were under way. FOXHOUND, which had been ordered on protective duty during the training exercises, seized the island and its stockpile of nuclear warheads. Using threat of nuclear attack, they made their demands of Washington. After the end of the Cold War, the island became home to an enormous stockpile of nuclear warheads no longer needed elsewhere.
The trouble with nuclear warheads, ICBMs and the like, is the expansive amount of money required to deploy them. And without a Cold War, there wasn’t a need for that expense. Both Russia, whose government collapsed due to her failed economy, and her counterpart America were eager to restrain their spiraling military expenditures.
But not everyone saw it that way.
Some bureaucrats thought that order had been kept in the world because of the nuclear threat that could wipe out hundreds of thousands in an instant. Others saw the profitable industry fueled by the ceaseless development of new tanks and weaponry by the Soviets and the Americans as each stared down the threat of total annihilation.
Among the latter group were DARPA chief Donald Anderson and ArmsTech president Kenneth Baker. In hopes of restoring the prosperity each had found during the Cold War, they utilized black project funds secret from public accountability to start up development of a new Metal Gear.
The Metal Gear that FOXHOUND stole on Shadow Moses.
But no matter how many nuclear warheads the terrorist group got their hands on, the weapons wouldn’t mean anything unless they could deliver the payloads across the sea and onto American soil. Why else had both sides of the Cold War pushed so hard to develop space rockets? But Metal Gear REX didn’t need to rely on rockets to make its deadly delivery to any point on the globe.
A railgun was mounted on REX’s right shoulder. Nuclear warheads placed on the rail could be shot at tremendous speed by a magnetic force created by an immense influx of electricity. Effectively, REX was a cannon with no need for gunpowder. The basic mechanics were identical—only this cannon could fire projectiles into space.
And its ordnance was quite different from missiles or rockets, which relied on burning fuel for propulsion. A warhead fired by REX would h
ave too high a velocity to be shot down and, with no smoke trail or heat signature, would be undetectable by satellite or radar.
The devil’s weapon, Metal Gear REX, would usher in the twenty-first century.
FOXHOUND was led by one of the Snakes who changed the world. He was Solid Snake’s clone brother and, in a sense, was Solid Snake himself. He tried to surpass Big Boss, and he failed. This was Liquid Snake.
Solid Snake had infiltrated Shadow Moses Island on orders to determine the extent of the threat posed by FOXHOUND and, once confirmed, put a stop to it. Solid Snake had once been a member of the next-generation US Army unit established by Big Boss on behalf of the Department of Defense to handle combat situations too politically sensitive to intervene in through public means. During this time, Big Boss also secretly founded the mercenary company Outer Heaven in South Africa, where he developed the first Metal Gear with the intent of global destruction.
The mission thrust upon the rookie soldier: You are to infiltrate the enemy fortress “Outer Heaven” and destroy their final weapon Metal Gear.
Big Boss chose the young and inexperienced Solid Snake for the role because he’d hoped the mission would fail. Publicly, Big Boss was the commander of FOXHOUND, but his second identity—the one that held his true allegiance—was as the commander of Outer Heaven.
Much to Big Boss’s surprise, Snake proved himself a capable warrior. At the time, Snake didn’t know he had inherited his innate prowess from Big Boss. But in the end, the young clone destroyed Metal Gear and bested his original in combat. In effect, Big Boss was defeated by his own shadow.
Ironically, due to these events, FOXHOUND became known to the world, and the existence of Big Boss was covered up. Afterward, Big Boss fled to Zanzibar Land, a remote former Soviet satellite in the Middle East, where he fought as a mercenary, helping local freedom fighters secure independence for their nation. There, he built a second Metal Gear and once again sought to bring chaos to the world.
Big Boss believed that from this chaos would emerge a soldier’s Utopia—a place where warriors would be able to discover their true selves. But Snake, called in by the US government, crushed Big Boss’s plans once more. Then, when Snake faced his former commander, he learned the identity of his father—from his elder’s dying words.
At Shadow Moses, Liquid made one demand of Washington—he wanted Big Boss’s body.
Genes inform many traits—intelligence, personality, physique. One study suggested that some traits usually dismissed as entirely cultural or acquired post-birth—including political leanings—are decided to a certain extent by hereditary factors. Big Boss’s genetic code contained the “right stuff ” for soldiers, and his body was kept preserved in the Pentagon, a virtual library of soldier genes.
Through a method of gene therapy, Big Boss’s genetic traits were given to select special forces soldiers. These soldiers would form the Next-Generation Special Forces, also known as the Genome Soldiers.
The Genome Soldiers were among Liquid’s FOXHOUND forces at the insurrection on Shadow Moses Island. Once again, Snake, the man who made the impossible possible, was forced into duty.
But the Pentagon’s true goal was only to send in Snake as a vector for a deadly virus—FOXDIE.
The virus, a biological weapon designed by Dr. Naomi Hunter with ATGC Corp on behalf of the Pentagon, responded to individuals with specific strings of genetic code, inducing apoptosis in the heart and subsequent cardiac arrest.
Snake’s orders—to rescue DARPA chief Donald Anderson and the president of ArmsTech, Kenneth Baker, and to prevent the launch of the nuclear warheads—were an outright lie. FOXDIE killed Baker and, finally, took Liquid’s life as well.
I met Snake during the course of those events. As a scientist—or I guess I could say the chief engineer—I assisted Snake and threw myself into the battle to make the world a slightly less awful place.
After the events on Shadow Moses, Snake and I worked to combat the worldwide spread of Metal Gear derivatives. At the marine decontamination facility Big Shell, off the coast of Manhattan, we learned of the existence of the shadow network called “the Patriots” that controlled not only America, but the entire world. After that, we shifted focus from being “anti-Metal Gear” to being “anti-Patriots.”
Snake and I have been together for a long time now. This is the story of the last battle of Solid Snake—my lifelong friend, the man who met that geeky robot-obsessed scientist Hal Emmerich on Shadow Moses and changed his life forever.
Snake grew tired of being called a hero, but I’m going to call him one anyway. Solid Snake was a real legend—to me, and to many others.
I want you to know his story.
2
A CHEERFUL VOICE rang through the sky above the ruins like a message from God.
“Acting under the contract of local authorities, the Praying Mantis PMC recently restored governmental control to this sector. Utilizing ArmsTech Irving unmanned vehicles, Praying Mantis conclusively delivered a swift and decisive outcome. We hope you’ll consider the Praying Mantis solution for all your future combat needs.”
A commercial. Not that Praying Mantis would find any new customers among the rebel assault force, seeing as they were all dead, their corpses awash in the blowing sandstorm.
Indeed, order had seemingly been restored to most of the city ruins. Snake took a drag of his cigarette. The rattle of gunfire had gone silent, and the low, unnerving roars of the Irvings were absent. Between the buildings, Snake could see a column of advancing PMC armored vehicles—made in the USA—and no signs of rebel resistance.
But the rebels hadn’t lost this battle yet—they’d only gone underground to fight with guerrilla tactics. Here and there, Snake caught glimpses of rebel fighters scurrying through the streets.
He followed after them and soon found himself at what seemed to be an underground headquarters. Tailing the soldiers wasn’t difficult—not for Snake at least. He hid in the shadows and sized up the gathering forces. The rebels had suffered heavy losses, but still had barely enough numbers to pull off one more attack.
Snake considered that the attack at the city gates might have been a diversionary ploy to sneak in this force. The labyrinthine corridors underneath the city were filled with the injured and the dead, but as Snake passed by the command room, he noticed commanders preparing to regroup their forces.
“Are you all right?”
Snake turned. Behind him was the Mk. II. Controlling the robot remotely, I’d been following Snake for some time. With its stealth camouflage engaged, the machine was practically invisible.
I spoke through the live video feed on the Mk. II’s flip-out screen. “I’ll be watching you with the Mk. II.”
“Sounds like you’re keeping cool,” Snake said, “while I’m out here in the middle of a hot zone.”
“Hey, I’ll be with you in spirit. Anyway, because you had to dress up as a militiaman, I had the Mk. II bring you some goodies.” I opened the Mk. II’s storage port and withdrew the Solid Eye. “Starting with this. Put it on your left eye.”
“Looks like an eye patch.”
Snake strapped the Solid Eye over his eye. The patch was black, angular, and loaded with sensors. With the Solid Eye on, I thought Snake looked just like Big Boss. Even Snake’s father, the original, the legendary Big Boss, didn’t complete all of his missions unscathed. He’d lost his right eye in a Cold War op and from then on wore an eye patch.
“It’s an all-purpose goggle,” I explained, “that displays radar images and other data in 3D. You can also switch it over to light-amplifying night vision or enhanced magnification.”
Snake pressed a switch on the side of the Solid Eye, and a data overlay appeared across his vision. The Eye’s software gathered pictures from hundreds of tracking points and extracted 3D locational data from the various viewpoints. Data could be transmitted from the Gaudi and displayed in 3D space. The image displayed in the Eye was not a virtual reality created from scratch, bu
t rather an augmented reality.
The rebel forces continued to pour into the stronghold. Some of them were injured, but the majority were still at full strength.
“It looks like they’ve got the government’s PMC troops beat,” I said. “At least in numbers.”
“And this is their home turf. Praying Mantis is playing psychological games, announcing their victory from the skies, but the real battle is yet to come.”
“You miss your AK, don’t you?”
“Jammed. I had to dump it. I tried appropriating some of the PMC’s SCARs, but even with their safeties off, their triggers were locked.”
“It’s practically raining bullets out there, and you made it all the way here unarmed?” He really did make the impossible possible. “Snake, the PMC soldiers are using ID guns.”
“ID guns?”
“The locks on ID guns are only disengaged when they recognize the nanomachine ID inside a soldier’s body. Anyone not possessing nanomachines keyed to the System, or anyone who is keyed but not authorized to use that weapon, won’t be able to pass the ID gun’s verification process. And as long as the lock is engaged, you can’t pull the trigger.”
“So I can’t use PMC guns.”
“I’m afraid not. You’re not registered with the System. And it’s not just weapons. Vehicles, buildings—everything used for military purposes is secured with this ID control system. Without the proper IDs, it’s impossible for PMCs or state armies to fight.”
“So it’s a way of identifying individual soldiers—like a dog tag, only at the nano level.”
Everything on the battlefield was under the authority of tiny machines swimming through the soldiers’ blood. Without the System’s authorization, guns wouldn’t shoot and armored vehicles wouldn’t drive.
“Snake, I know this is a stealth mission, but you’ll need to protect yourself.”
I sent the Mk. II’s manipulator arm back into its side storage port and withdrew an Operator M1911.
