Jet engines screamed at full throttle beside his ears, and it took a while to realize the sound wasn’t coming from outside his skull. Aside from the head-splitting headache, Toni felt little pain, although he was beginning to feel a warm wetness beginning to spread over his right arm and groin. Refusing to deactivate oculars, he attempted to access the integrated tourniquet under the HINT’s armpit. It was no use; every time he came close, his gauntlet collided against the open hatch or his spaulder, forcing his real hand to stop short of its objective. Working against time, Toni decided to deactivate his Suit.
The interior of his interface cavity was a mess. Although partially shrouded in a haze, he could still make out a few branches and an armful of leaves, fragments from Unit Fourteen and a lot of draining hydraulic fluid. He followed the fluid to its source, realizing sickeningly that it was mixed with blood. Desperately he pulled at the tourniquet near his armpit until the tightness satisfied him, his eyes carefully avoiding the wounds. Within fifteen minutes he would need to relieve the pressure. As if to underline the situation’s urgency, Toni felt the ground begin to vibrate. He reactivated Unit Seven and took a quick look around.
No more than twenty meters off, an armored Suit unlike any Toni had ever seen lumbered into view. It was heavier than the Hammerhead beyond a doubt, and its aerodynamic rifle was still smoking from what looked like radiators along its barrel-length. The unit managed to look squat and sleek at the same time. Its narrow skull turned to watch him closely.
The air around the unidentified Suit suddenly became alive with supersonic fireflies, each accompanied by a sonic boom, several of them impacting the walker’s superstructure with a festival of fireworks. Unaffected by the impacts, the Suit bounded back east with surprising agility and fired off a casual shot with his rifle, the sound it made no louder than a petard. The microsecond flash produced by the weapon elucidated Toni as to its nature.
Toni heard the characteristic chainsaw-like roar of the Hammers’ 30 millimeter cannon a full second after the fireflies’ appearance, putting them three or four hundred meters away. He searched for the enemy Suit once more, finding to his relief that it wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Locating his rifle beside him, Toni sat up to reach for the weapon, and something slid down onto his Suit’s lap with a metallic clang.
He looked at the object for a while. It was torn in two just as its Suit had been, though where the other half was he wasn’t inclined to speculate. Hirum’s corpse was still encased in its interface, hydraulic and electric wires in disarray, only his right arm remaining, his left having found someplace else to rest. His eyes were semi-closed as if about to fall asleep, an illusion not helped much by the fact that most of his cranium was missing. Toni lifted the corpse delicately from his lap, laying it to rest beside Unit Fourteen’s exposed APU, horrified by how light the body felt to him. What remained of its head bobbed sickeningly as he laid it down, giving him a brief peek at where its brain should have been. Unformed thoughts swimming in his mind, Toni picked up his rifle and began to move east.
It didn’t take more than a minute for Toni to find what he was looking for. Somewhere between eight to a dozen Hammerheads had opted to engage the Suit, and the hilly forest was alive with ricocheting fireflies and earth-shaking concussions. Every few moments a brilliant white flash could be seen from the converging point of the Hammers’ wrath and, some of those times, the flash struck its target, precipitating another eruption of the unnatural red fire. They were moving fast, faster than Toni could keep up with, but every time he slowed down the memory of the lolling empty skull returned to him. He pressed onwards, moving across plantation land where fires raged and Hammerhead scrap was everywhere to be seen. His APU sputtered into activity, the sound it made somewhat unhealthier than when last he’d heard it. Finally he put a knee to the earth inside a shallow depression and ordered his Suit to shutdown.
Toni lost track of time for a while as his darker half showed up to pay the world a visit. By the time he finally snapped back into consciousness, he found himself sitting on the cavity floor, his right arm disinfected and bandaged, the tourniquet loosened, and smelling like a latrine.
The arm looked ugly in its blood-soaked bandages, and he realized he wouldn’t be able to reinsert it into the interface. Inspecting the device as it floated before him, he began to cut into wires and hoses with his pocketknife, adding even more hydraulic fluid to the mixed puddle of blood and oil on the floor. Before much time had passed and with the assistance of a few conveniently removable pegs, Toni managed to detach the HINT’s right appendage and toss it out the hatch. Renewed sounds of battle became apparent to his recovering ears, and he peered hard at his surroundings through the broken hatch.
The terrain kept its secrets, whatever they were.
He popped three painkillers at once, hoping they would be enough. Strapping his right arm carefully to his chest, he slipped once more into the HINT, ignoring the scent of his recent urinary contribution to the device. Activating his Suit, he tried to spy the source of the sounds. Gradually he became aware of Hammerheads communicating via loudspeakers to the east. Whatever they were saying, they sounded desperate. The sound of several turbines at full throttle became clear and began to intensify.
From the east, Toni finally spotted several Hammerheads sprinting in single file at speeds he had never imagined possible. The larger trees were spared by the group, the smaller ones simply being shouldered aside as they tore desperately towards the west. He counted four Suits, the rearmost lagging behind by a fair margin. It seemed to be that driver who spoke as they passed obliviously by at a hundred paces.
“GOING FOR IT. BEST OF LUCK!”
The Hammerhead released an object from its gauntlet and then put its footpad into the ground in a braking action, the extremity excavating enough earth to impress a dump truck driver. Before coming to a full stop the Suit snapped about and fired off a short burst with its cannon. Several missiles rocketed from its spaulder-pods while smoke grenades popped off around him, effectively obscuring the titan from view. Then the Suit detonated in crimson flames, the fireball expanding quickly to envelope the surrounding trees. The enemy Suit appeared unscathed from the forest to calmly survey the carnage.
Toni made ready to engage, but the Suit immediately noticed the Moca and turned its rifle to towards him.
A powerful blast suddenly lifted the hostile Suit off its footpads, engulfing the Unmil in a miniature mushroom cloud before gravity pulled it back to earth. It struck the ground on its back, the impact causing the leaf-less trees surrounding it to shake as if they had suddenly come to life. The detonation appeared to have originated from the Hammerhead’s discarded object.
Toni took advantage.
Activating all armament, he opened fire on the Unmil simultaneously with rocket-pods and rifle. The sound of all systems firing at once rang him like a bell, the sight of the impacts against the hostile Suit’s chassis making the agony worthwhile. Quickly he changed clips and prepared to reengage.
A brilliant flash from the Unmil’s upraised rifle coincided with the complete disintegration of Unit Seven’s right appendage. PAMs popped as the Suit rolled to its left, and Toni hastily decided it was time to become scarce.
He rolled out of the depression and began winding among the trees as fast as his one-armed Suit could carry him, glancing back occasionally to see whether he was being followed. Seeing nothing, he decided not to risk it, and he took advantage of the long descent to pick up speed. A tree behind him suddenly exploded into splinters, followed by another a moment later. Giving his dancing compass a cursory look, he took a westish course and prepared to go aerobic.
A full minute afterwards, Toni’s APU was running to an ever louder clattering sound and a burning smell began to intrude upon the interface cavity. His dismayed oculars stared at the open hatch, watching as diffuse smoke billowed from its interior, when a tree close behind suddenly exploded into splinters. The laser beam burned its way through the wood and
struck the fugitive unit below its pressure vessel, where its APU was situated. The impact sent Unit Seven rolling down the hill, colliding hard enough against trees to uproot one and spilling four hundred liters of Resinin oil over the landscape. Toni impacted twice against the cavity’s interior wall, and he mentally thanked Ruka for the padding she’d thought to fit there. Taking advantage of his momentum, he rolled himself back onto his feet and took off at a sprint, his lungs beginning to burn on par with his legs.
Strangely enough, Toni suddenly found it much easier to run, and before long he accelerated to a pace beyond anything he had thought possible for a Moca. He managed the following hill so fast that only the occasional tree strike was enough to reduce speeds to their original level. Two minutes later he took the moment to read the accumulating warning messages on his display. The information was like a blade through his heart:
» WARNING: APU PURGED
» WARNING: FUEL TANK RUPTURED
» WARNING: ACAT AT 50 PERCENT CAPACITY
Somehow he had managed to lose his APU and empty his biofuel deposit in his rolling descent. And he had five minutes’ worth of locomotion, at best, before he ran out of air entirely.
Running flat out, he made for a forest island, and then adjusted his trajectory to home in on the axis of retreat displayed on his map. The islands were much hardier terrain than the plantation land, probably the reason why they had managed to remain forests in the first place, and that suited him fine; with more landscape to hide behind, agility, not peak speed, became the primary factor for survival.
As Unit Seven came out onto an open area on the island’s opposite side, a laser beam struck its titanium skull, disintegrating it and sending his Suit rolling down what remained of the high ground. Entirely blind, Toni fell into a ravine at the end of the decline, landing on his right side to the sound of a loud snap just before his body double-slammed against the cavity’s wall. The OS automatically activated the Crab Eye system, the pair of wing-like accessories with compact oculars at their ends unfolding elegantly from the torso’s summit.
Picking himself up, Toni turned and bounded unsteadily down the ravine with an intense hissing sound coming from below his midsection. Water vapor began to condense around the Suit’s waist area as cool air bled out, both denouncing his presence to any potential pursuant and warning him that its hollow hipbone had probably been damaged.
The ravine was dangerously straight and bare, and he was fortunate in finding a collapsed bank only moments after his fall. He decided to move parallel to the axis of retreat, suspecting that the enemy armored Suit had placed itself between him and his escape route. Once again Toni found it easier to move, and he realized that the pressure build-up in the Suit’s hollow bones and external tank had probably been slowly decreasing the PAMs’ ability to expel air, a problem inadvertently resolved by the sudden pressure loss from the break. He continued onwards desperately, hoping that somehow the Unmil had give up on him.
His hope proved to be optimistic.
As Unit Seven intruded unexpectedly upon the edge of a wide clearing, the Suit’s lower appendages exploded underneath it, the legless torso plowing into the ground with a tremendous impact before rolling to a halt. Toni dug his remaining gauntlet into the ground and rolled away from the clearing, already certain that he was being toyed with. He kept on rolling, the open hatch scooping up so much earth with every turn that his cavity was becoming akin to a concrete mixer, soiling him and his injuries in the process. Keeping his mouth closed, holding his breath and then holding it again when his loose travel pack began to impact against his body, Toni finally came to rest inside a shallow dip in the terrain.
Raw terror, never too far away, made an opportunistic stab for dominion. For a while Toni was unable to move or even think, until finally his mind began to occupy itself with his surroundings.
He lay in a natural bowl three meters deep by about twenty wide. The trees surrounding it were widely spaced but very broad. The ground was soft and moist.
Toni’s mind slowly began to function again. He looked carefully at his options. He could stay and fight and die. He could stay and surrender. He could abandon his Suit and try and escape on foot. Option three appeared by far to be the most attractive, although he hadn’t much time if he wanted to get going.
He tried to look around, an effort that failed since he had no head to swivel. Then he froze and listened very carefully.
He picked up nothing but suspected every sound. The Unmil was hunting him, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that the enemy Suit was much closer than he’d at first supposed. An idea of the desperate kind came to him.
He fired all of his twenty four flares at once, and they shot off popping and hissing every which way. Supporting himself on his remaining arm, he lifted his torso up awkwardly, looking west where it seemed likely the enemy unit would have placed itself.
Only its movement gave the Suit away. The hostile was less than fifty meters off, quite difficult to see due to the quality of the Moca’s auxiliary oculars. Toni threw himself onto his back, shuddering with the impact, and tried to fire over the depression’s lip with his rifle. The first burst hit the ground nearby, the explosive rounds peppering his Suit with tungsten carbide spheres in the process. He fired higher and got a second burst over the lip. Then his only remaining appendage disintegrated up to its elbow and the spinning rifle hammered into the ground nearby.
“Deactivate suit!” Toni roared.
Finding it very hard to extricate himself from the interface with only one functioning arm, he finally shrugged his way out through the exposed right side, pulled the pen-key from its slot and bolted for the cavity’s access panel. He reached for his sidearm and put it away in a pouch on his vest, shouldering the Lacrau firmly once he’d hooked the strap to a pad eye on his shoulder. Carefully, he approached the hatch and peered outside.
From its full height of ten meters, the enemy armored Suit peered down at him, its chassis showing more damage than he had noticed from a distance. Toni moved out of sight, thinking hard. A sudden impact projected him against the cavity wall and he struck the HINT’s maintenance panel hard with his unprotected head. Blacking out momentarily, he awakened to find what remained of his Suit still rocking from the kick it had just received.
Toni strode beyond fear and into the land of hate.
Finding his helmet beneath a pile of rubble, he strapped it on firmly and kept out of the enemy Suit’s sight, hoping the driver would somehow be foolish enough to exit his unit. Another violent shudder shook the Moca, and Toni began to feel his gut sinking as the entire chassis was lifted off the ground. He prepared himself for the end of his life.
Instead the entire cavity shook and shuddered and turned, and the accumulated cargo in the interface cavity began to pour out of the hatch. Feeling once again as if he were inside a concrete mixer, Toni held on as best he could to the wiring surrounding him, finding himself being shaken almost beyond the resilience of his flesh as rock, dirt, vegetation, what remained of his first-aid kit and his travel pack were ejected into the world beyond. After several frustrated shakes that Toni barely managed to resist, the enemy driver released the chassis disgustedly, the remains of Unit Seven colliding hard against the soil. Toni took the impact against his right side and began to scream and cry with the pain, far beyond caring about his fate anymore.
A pair of intense strobes suddenly filled his field of vision, and he suspected he was on the verge of passing out. A moment later Toni felt more than heard a massive impact as something shook the very ground beneath the wreck. Silently he waited, trying to grasp what was happening.
An immense shockwave suddenly struck the area with enough force to lay the chassis out on its side and strip the leaves from their trees, leaving the foliage to fall to the ground like confetti. A second shockwave then washed over the tormented land, threatening to turn the Moca’s remains over entirely. Enough was enough; a bloody and butchered Toni abandoned his unit for the las
t time.
He came out into the open with the Lacrau hanging impotently from its strap, a multitude of leaves still falling on his skewed helmet as he stared agawk at his surroundings. To his south-west and no more than a couple of kilometers from where he stood, two great mushroom clouds rose majestically from the ground, presiding over their immediate territory like twin gods fallen from the skies. Toni could see them clearly because every tree around him was stripped of its foliage, allowing him also to observe the vast forest fires from south to south-east. And the goliath that only moments ago had been trying to shake him out of his Suit like a mouse from an empty can of beans was lying motionless on its back, almost perfectly camouflaged by the fallen leaves.
Hugging his middle, Toni plodded miserably towards his badly beaten travel pack, still reeling from the trauma and sick with the thought of returning to an interface cavity any time soon. He reached his pack only to vomit beside it, the effort of the act causing him to black out once more. He slowly regained consciousness to a persistent hammering noise. Suddenly there was another sound, much like something giving way.
“Sheisse!”
Toni turned towards the sound of the voice. Unable to move, he watched as a man’s torso protruded from an opening in the flank of the enemy unit’s breastplate. The man was dirty-blonde and rugged in appearance, and clothed in what looked like a black bodysuit. And he was armed with a sleek rifle, which he promptly raised towards the injured driver.
Toni acted due more to a sudden spark of rage than to fear. Gripping the Lacrau with a slap of his hand, he fired a short burst at the driver, striking him several times. The remaining shots veered away as the rifle danced in his hand and the enemy driver disappeared quickly into his unit. The driver began to laugh from inside the colossus, a genuine laugh that seemed alien to the circumstances. The laughter was followed by several words that Toni failed to understand, and then by a hand -grenade that flew out the hatch towards him.
Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) Page 25
