He did an about-face and launched himself into the brambles once more, screaming with rage and pain as he continued to forge a path through the thorny growth. Chancing a quick look over his shoulder he saw Ian backing up for a running start.
The height of the thorn-growth gradually rose above head-level, and Toni was relieved to find empty pockets beneath the bush that he promptly began to tunnel through. Moments later he tore through the sea of thorn’s opposite side and sped off, an enraged Ian howling and lost behind him.
Toni’s legs pumped furiously as he opened the distance between them, exhilarated by his escape, and yet also ashamed. There was something craven about running away from one’s enemy, a part of him whispered.
He coursed over a crest and through the valley beyond before turning southwards, and then circuited a humble koppie and began to veer west. Finding a dense growth of bushes, he hid inside it, checking first to make certain that that particular variety did not possess thorns.
Bloody hands removed the map from its pocket, pricking themselves on several thorny branches that had elected to hitch a ride on his uniform. He splayed the chart on the ground, not bothering to orient it since the bushes that shielded him from his senior also impeded his vision. He began to carefully study the map, comparing it with his memory of the terrain he had just crossed. What he saw perplexed him.
His escape had somehow taken him beyond the edge of his map. Simply turning west wouldn’t be enough to help him return there, since he then ran the risk of skimming below it.
He grimly decided on a north-westerly course. Which would send him back to the sea of thorns, and towards his senior.
He left his refuge after a careful search of his surroundings and set off at a brisk jog. The terrain was littered with small rocky hills, and with clumps of trees interspersed with myriad bushes. Feeling naked in the open ground, Toni took a page out of his training manual and chose a more winding path from grove to grove, taking care to avoid being seen. As he came upon the summit of a low hill, Toni finally saw something familiar.
Out towards the west, perhaps a kilometer away, was a koppie crowned with a whitewashed central pillar. He smiled as he remembered what it had reminded him of. What a sight for sore eyes you are, pas–
A sound from behind caught his attention but it was already too late. Ian collided violently against his body, and the two recruits rolled downhill with arms flailing to drop off a short precipice. Toni rose to his feet first but promptly collapsed on to his rump in disorientation, and he watched in a daze as a blood-streaked Ian, his uniform in tatters, calmly stood and approached him.
“I need to thank you for your love, Tonesy ...” Ian snarled, and then he kicked him in his exposed groin.
Sudden agonizing pain exploded from below and Toni instinctively curled into a defensive ball, prepared to be pummeled. Ian stooped over him and, roaring in fury, he rained a flurry of concussive blows upon his junior’s prone figure until, exhausted by the effort, he finally tore open Toni’s side pocket and pulled from its interior the fluorescent GPS marker. He leaned close to the recruit’s ear.
“I’ll be having an orgasm when I see you Walk. That’s why you’ll see me smiling when you pass me by –” he snarled.
“And what, exactly, do you think you’re doing, soldier?”
Toni heard the woman but couldn’t see her through the blood in his eyes. He recognized the voice, however. Cleaning the blood from his face with a dirty cuff, he blinked furiously and peered in the direction she had spoken from.
A small army camp was splayed out before him, composed of little more than a smattering of tents beside a shallow stream. It was nevertheless the encampment of Napoleon’s Grande Armeé to Toni’s weary eyes. Several corporals leaned by a water purification device, watching curiously, and others accompanied Lieutenant Rose as she approached the pair with a humorless half-smile.
CHAPTER SIX
Mining Quadrant, 14H15, 19th of April, 2771
The convoy lumbered steadily onwards, the trail’s degraded surface causing each vehicle to bounce and shudder in turn. The trucks bore no emblems, but their antique lines recalled the modular transport vehicles once popular in the 2030’s. Their gray panels were battered and scratched in a way that suggested they had seen extended service in harsh conditions.
The trucks were preceded by a light tactical vehicle, its chassis, comprised of a framework of metal tubes, bounding along gracefully as the exposed suspension system mopped up the vibrations. Four men in civilian attire manned the buggy, the driver and his wingman strapped into their seats with three-point harnesses, the remaining pair squatting on the rear-mounted engine and firmly gripping the metal tubes.
They appeared to be having the time of their lives.
The men came upon the clearing carelessly, the tactical vehicle galloping over its treeless expanse as the engine noisily cleared its throat. Reaching the clearing’s opposite end, the buggy slowed down and then executed a tight about-face, abruptly ejecting the lesser prepared of the rear passengers. He rolled over the sandy soil to the laughter of his comrades, only to laugh himself as he slapped the sand out of his generous head of hair.
He clambered back on board and the buggy set off slowly and deliberately, the second rear passenger spraying a fluorescent orange line onto the ground as it rolled in the opposite direction. The trucks turned towards the line as they arrived and toed it in turn, and before long the eighteen heavy transport vehicles rested side-by-side in a neat line.
The clearing soon began to teem with people. All wore civvies, the younger workers wearing colorful clothing of all sorts, the older men preferring conservative earth-colored wares, making them appear as if they were wearing different versions of the same crappy uniform. Those men seemed the more diligent workers as well, and they set about removing equipment from the trucks, recruiting the nearest and most cooperative youths to assist them. The remainder took to the clearing like children to a playpen, and soon their laughing voices could be heard as they crossed the grounds at a run.
One of the running boys suddenly stopped as if something unusual had caught his attention. He peered down at the depression at his feet, and no doubt there must have been a curious expression on his face as he pondered the pattern stamped there. Suddenly he hollered to a group of passing boys, and soon they were doing some staring of their own. Then one of them took off towards the remaining workers and spoke briefly with them. All work was abandoned as the workers began to spread out over the field, and their shouts of excitement soon became clearly audible.
“That’s right, natives, worship the spoor of the gods.” Deadhand muttered, the briefest of smiles alighting on his features.
The convoy had been picked up by drones well before their arrival, and the clearing was presently covered by three mobile Suits. Mentally opening the appropriate comm. channel, Deadhand updated his commander for the day.
“Lippard, this is Deadhand, over.”
“Lippard here, inform.”
“I don’t know if you see it from your vantage point, but these natives are civilians. I repeat, they are civilians.”
“My vantage is good enough to see that, kinder. That is not the issue. Their chances of survival depend on whether they suspect our presence here. First appearances are not encouraging.”
Deadhand didn’t like the way she stated that last part.
He preferred Kaiser in such operations. If the Bavarian had been born with a personal totem, it would most definitely have been a fox. He was sly, calculating and wise beyond measure. Lippard’s totem, however, was just like her nickname. She was a leopard to the core. Her tail twitched nervously all the time, and she was always ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. To a leopard’s eyes, the most innocent of gazelles was fair game. As long as she was hungry and conditions were good, she was destined to ambush her prey, and she would never feel an ounce of shame in the aftermath of the carnage. Lippard was his number one choice of commander in a stand
-up fight, but as soon as he saw the boys playing in the field, he found himself missing the old fox.
“Looks like it’s going to be one of those missions, boss.” He remarked, as the stick-figures beside the trucks began to raise a communications antenna.
“Moose, Deadhand, standby. I will establish a link with Ebony Tower.” She declared.
Whatever his misgivings, Deadhand nevertheless opened his tactical eye and focused it on the clearing. Each vehicle had appeared to carry a driver and two workers and, factoring in the buggy, that put about fifty eight civvies on site. The vehicles were parked as neatly as beer bottles on a wooden fence.
“Any chance of taking prisoners, boss?” Deadhand inquired.
It took a while for her to answer, but when she did her voice had steel in it.
“Moose, suppression operation initiates at the end of this minute. You will launch an EDI streaker at the vehicles and activate frequency jamming measures. You will then set pulsed laser platform for antipersonnel and neutralize all indigenous persons. Deadhand, you will set your platform to anti-material and kill the vehicles’ engine blocks. Avoid the fuel tanks, we don’t want to send out any smoke signals. You will then proceed with antipersonnel activities. All fleeing civilians are valid targets. Those who refrain from flight and are cooperative are to be taken prisoner. Inform if you copy, over.”
There was a long pause as they digested the communication, and fifteen seconds before minute’s end both grudgingly copied it.
Deadhand cursed as he set his weapon to intermediate strength and shouldered it. He cursed again as his scope roved over the excited civilians, and then rested his reticule on a vehicle’s principal heat source. It was the stationary buggy; any fool would wish to neutralize it first.
The moment the mission clock added another minute to its elapsed time, a missile streaked up over the treetops and then swerved aggressively towards the parked trucks. It detonated a respectable height above its targets, the report insignificant compared to the electromagnetic pulse it produced. As soon as Deadhand’s sensors detected the pulse, he fired upon the buggy, and the engine incandesced and disintegrated, the vehicle doing a jumpy half-turn before abruptly bursting into flames. Fat smoke billowed from the wreckage, obscuring the trucks behind it and rising into the sky.
Oh, hell no, He thought.
He immediately directed his platform to the left and began to fire upon the vehicles’ engines one at a time, striving to destroy as many as possible before any more could become cloaked in smoke. Fifteen trucks were soon neutralized, but the remainder were obscured and the civilians began to run towards them.
“Deadhand, you dummkopf, change your location and kill those vehicles!” Lippard roared over the comm.
The Suit pilot leaned forwards and took off at speed, footpads colliding against the earth as the shouts in the clearing began to turn into screams. The cracks of low-powered pulse weapons suddenly increased in frequency, and Deadhand knew Lippard had changed her platform’s settings to automatic fire. He maneuvered his way out of the trees and pounded into the clearing, and the civilians wailed at his appearance as if the day of reckoning had arrived. Ignoring their scurrying figures, he moved to his left, trying to gain line-of-sight to the intact vehicles. The smoke enveloped them however, and so he straddled the trail from the east and began to close the distance. The remaining mobile Suits became visible, Lippard’s unit striding and firing at the fleeing natives while Moose kept his distance, picking targets off from the plantation’s other side.
A shuddering truck leapt through the smoke towards him, and without further thought Deadhand opened fire. The vehicle suddenly gained entertainment value, swerving brusquely before it collided against the opposite side of the trail’s drainage ditch, and it then caught fire as pulse after pulse of lasered light disintegrated its front compartment and the people inside. He fired one shot too many, and the beam struck a panel above the fuel deposit, sending a shower of sparks through it. Flames enveloped the vehicle and set the nearest trees alight.
Deadhand began to groan.
“Deadhand! Avoid the fuel tanks is what I said, not aim at them. I –”
A loud chirp cut through her communication, making it clear someone had activated their comm channel’s alarm.
“Two vehicles escaping east, they’re beneath my line of fire ...” Moose interrupted.
Lippard’s Suit took quick aim and the mouth of her platform briefly strobed, the light show quickly followed by the rapid snapping sounds of autofire. Deadhand vaulted forwards through the blaze and accelerated to a mad run, penetrating the smoky haze beyond to find a ravaged truck slowing to a stop as the other beyond it disappeared through the treeline. Not daring to slow down, he tore through the foliage, finding the trees too low for him to follow the vehicle at its pace.
“Lippie, I need overhead eyeball on the vehicle, over.”
There was a deathly silence over the comm.
“The next time you call me Lippie, I’ll detonate your Suit. Is that clear, schwarze?” She finally answered.
He swallowed the insult with some difficulty and reformulated his request.
“Apologies, boss. I need drone recon over the area, I can’t keep up with them in these trees.”
“Return to the clearing and help us clean up this mess, the drones will finish the fugitive vehicle.” She immediately answered.
About-facing angrily as he smothered his rage, Deadhand returned to the clearing. Once there, he stopped and took in the scenery.
Most of the vehicles had been flawlessly killed. So had the civilians, for that matter. Not a moan or cry for help could be heard, only the crackling fires as they consumed the remains of the badly killed vehicles, only the heavy footfalls of Lippard’s and Moose’s Suits as they padded over the terrain, nudging body after body for signs of life. A detonation to the east caused him to turn.
The luminous ball over the plantation beyond slowly morphed into a puffy mushroom cloud, as dark as sin and steadily ascending.
*****
Kaiser awoke suddenly in the darkness and slammed his head into an unseen panel with a loud bang.
“The Kaiser has woken,” he heard his neighbor say from the other side of the bulkhead. “It seems even royalty has nightmares, no?” the voice declared before cackling with delight.
Kaiser paused for a second, and then he laughed, apologized, and greeted his neighbor. The voice belonged to Wei Guozhi, the Tower’s chief logistics organizer, and thus someone with whom it was important to be cozy with. He heard movement all around him, barely perceptible above the ship’s own noises, and realized they were not the only ones who were awake.
“Greetings, comrades.” He called out cheerily.
There were answering greetings, some enthusiastic, others grumpy. He estimated he could easily speak with five of his neighbors that way, the remaining cubicles connecting with his accommodations only at its corners. Five neighbors who could hear him break wind were five too many, but the personal space more than made up for that. The sergeants were four per cubicle, while the lower-ranking personnel were eleven for a space roughly twice his own. They accomplished the feat by sleeping in shifts, so at least there was never a need to warm their beds.
Already Kaiser had grown accustomed to the potent gravity, and he rose gracefully from his bed, trying to not put an elbow into his immediate surroundings to keep the noise down. He turned on the emergency light only; it was all he needed. Stronger illumination would only cost him points from his card. He stopped in front of the compartment’s other perk; an aluminum lavatory before which a battered metal mirror hung. The face he saw there had more lines than he remembered from before their long journey. He suspected he had somehow aged in cryostasis, although the doctor had scoffed at the statement, declaring instead that the higher gravity was pulling at the skin of his face in a way that only gave that impression. His hair appeared almost black in the red light. It was light brown, in actual fact, just shy of
dirty-blonde. His grey eyes appeared darker in the light as well, with a burgundy tinge that made him look like a vampire.
He washed and brushed, and then uniformed himself in his more formal number two attire. He thought about his nightmare, trying to remember it but failing. It was a now-familiar failure. Since his arrival on the planet, Kaiser’s dreams had not been tranquil, and one in particular had been recurring with increasing frequency. He remembered the dream only because of the emotions it elicited on waking. Misery, guilt, helplessness, a tight ball of emotions that seemed to accumulate with every episode. He discarded the thought and pocketed his wallet, bidding his neighbors farewell before leaving his room.
Compared to the dim light of his quarters, the corridor was positively glowing, and he paused momentarily for his eyes to adjust. As an exclusively military structure, the Tower was small for the multitude of resources it accommodated. The consequence was an array of service passages so narrow, the only way for two people to cross in opposite directions was at nodes where they could pass abreast.
Evacuation is most certainly not a concern here, he mused.
“Passing through ...” he declared as he neared a sharp corner.
“Waiting ...” he heard, and as he made the corner he found a sergeant waiting for him at the node that followed.
“Good morning, commander. Or is it afternoon?” The sergeant asked.
Kaiser smiled and shook his hand.
“For all I know it’s the middle of the night, Mateus. How are you?”
“I’m well, sir. In fact, I’m better than well ...”
They chatted idly for a while, and Kaiser found himself wondering what the sergeant might want of him. The reason he knew Mateus wanted something of him was because he was aware of that fundamental trait among all human beings. People who knew each other quite well tended to ask for a favor and be done with it. People who did not usually pitter-pattered ceremoniously around the subject before committing themselves to the request.
Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) Page 12
