Toni instinctively sheltered behind his travel pack, and the subsequent concussion riddled it with shrapnel. Both soldiers rose from their shelters simultaneously, Lacrau 8 millimeter projectiles crossing paths with sub-caliber 2 millimeter flechettes in a hailstorm of gunfire. Toni was struck twice in his vest and once under his right armpit, hardly feeling the impacts as he watched some of his own strike home. A second grenade detonated nearby, how it had arrived there quite beyond Toni’s understanding. His already wounded arm took a fragment and a second one thwacked against his helmet. Taking shelter once more, Toni began to get the distinct impression he was losing the fight, further laughter from the enemy driver adding weight to the thought.
Desperately he unpocketed a grenade and pulled out the arming pin with the hook on his vest, giving the hatch a split-second glimpse before he lobbed the device. As the grenade left his hand a moving shadow near the giant’s armpit caught his attention. The shadow catapulted over the unit’s arm, rolled over the depression’s lip and disappeared from sight just as the hatch swallowed the grenade. He bolted after the driver, his mind too numb to think about leaving the depression from a safer side. As he approached the lip, several impacts against his upper vest felled him, the gradient rolling him back until he was beside the Unmil Suit. He barely had time to notice that the hatch had somehow sealed itself when the enemy unit’s torso ruptured with a thunderous thump, much of the overpressure inside having been relieved by what appeared to be explosion vents between the giant’s neck and shoulders.
Rising unsteadily to his feet, Toni released his rifle to hang at his chest, produced a second grenade and pulled its pin. A part of his brain was having a hard time deciding whether it was currently in command of a human body or an armored Suit, but he shoved the thought aside and instead released the safety lever, lobbing the grenade outwards at a high angle. Three seconds later a blast shook the area, followed by the static-like sound of shrapnel impacting wood at ever greater distances.
Throwing himself forward as if breaching an invisible force field, Toni bounded up and over the lip, picking up as much speed as his ailing body would allow. Grunting with the pain and the effort, he searched for his quarry. A fleeing figure slalomed among the denuded trees.
He set off in pursuit, another grenade firmly held in his hand as the rifle lay tucked between the vest and his badly bleeding arm. He did not need to pursue for long.
A grenade, surreptitiously dropped by the escaping driver, detonated twenty paces ahead of Toni, shrapnel drumming into the trees before and beside him. Not daring to slacken his pace, Toni instead deviated left to follow a more parallel trajectory. Despite his bleeding wounds, his burning muscles and lungs and the weight of his equipment, he realized that he was quickly closing the distance. As soon as he was thirty paces away, he began to suspect that the slowdown was deliberate, but then the fugitive collapsed to the ground and lay there, his only sounds a deep, unhealthy wheezing.
Pocketing his grenade, Toni carefully approached, aiming the Lacrau at the back of the soldier’s head.
“Throw the weapon aside! NOW!” He demanded, his suspicion deep despite the soldier’s unhesitating obedience.
“On your back!” He ordered. Very slowly, the enemy driver obliged.
He was older than he looked from a distance, his handsome face finely lined by time. Despite his wheezing, the soldier wore a wide grin on his face, although perhaps it was more akin to a grimace. As Toni stared at his eyes, those intelligent grey eyes, they stared back at him measuringly. The soldier spoke.
“Yes yes, kinder. You are a very persistent boy. You have captured me. Well done! Now you must show me –”
“You killed my friend ...” Toni interrupted.
The man’s grin faded to a forced smile. He insisted.
“That is unfortunate, but this is war –”
Toni fired a burst into his gut, the soldier’s body wiggling spastically as the rounds connected. The object of his rage turned to the side and let off a long, choked groan, his perspiring face flushing red as the he momentarily ceased to breathe.
“On your back!” Toni demanded, kicking the man viciously when it became clear he wasn’t going to obey.
Eventually the soldier did obey and lay gingerly on his back, his renewed breathing shallow and difficult. There was no longer a smile on his face. Instead the soldier looked sullen, almost sulky, and held his hands high beside his head. The bodysuit appeared almost unchanged except for some stretch-marks in the fabric. That fascinated Toni enough for him to consider repeating the act, but the soldier easily read his thoughts.
“Nein, Nein, kinder! The textile is special, see? If you press slowly it bends easily, but the harder you strike it, the harder it gets. That is all, that is all it is –” the soldier began to wheeze once more, the act of speaking having apparently exhausted him.
Toni fired another burst into his midsection and then the electrical firing pin arced across empty air. Hastily he reloaded, a task not aided in the least by his onehandedness. He cursed at his own stupidity; if the soldier hadn’t been rolling in the leaves crying, he would have been fighting a two-handed adversary for his life.
He noticed the man watching him from the corner of his eye, tears of pain still coursing. There was pain to be seen there but, more importantly, there was a barely-concealed coldness that he hadn’t noticed before. For a moment Toni imagined having to imprison someone as smart and cold-blooded as lieutenant Templeton while having use of only one good arm. The thought helped him to make the decision. He pointed his rifle at the soldier’s head, committed to what he needed to do.
The soldier slowly rolled onto his back once more, the cold expression replaced by a very cautious one. He spoke again.
“I am sorry, kinder. I have been a soldier for too long and sometimes I forget how deeply young fighters feel a loss. I am your prisoner, as certainly as you would have been mine if I had caught you. I would have honored you as a prisoner, and you will honor me as one too, yes?” Carefully he turned over onto his stomach, placing his hands behind his back, wrists side-by-side. And then he waited quietly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mining quadrant, 09H32, 14th of June, 2771
The psychotic teenager pushed the rifle’s muzzle against the back of Kaiser’s head, making it very clear that he was unsatisfied with his prisoner’s marching speed. Unwillingly he hastened his pace, bloodshot eyes darting every few moments at his surroundings in expectation of a rescuing Harrower’s appearance.
The Bavarian was having difficulty keeping from laughing out loud at his predicament, still not fully believing he had just been defeated in combat with the aid of his own commanders. That would make it only the second time he had lost a Suit, although on Mars he had still managed to return safely to friendly lines. And last time he hadn’t sacrificed a quarter of their combat strength in the course of his defeat.
Laughing out loud was certainly not a thing to do with this boy, however. Once the youth had bound him with his bandoleer, Kaiser had made the mistake of smiling reassuringly up at him; the result had been a rifle-butt to the skull with enough force to knock him out cold. Once he had regained consciousness, he had found the boy squatting over him with a well-used pocketknife in his hand. Not the most promising of developments. It was the look in his eyes that had worried Kaiser; the boy appeared to be slipping into a dark, ugly place.
“Oh, so you are alive ...”
That was the last time the boy had spoken to him.
From that moment onwards, Kaiser had opted for complete cooperation as his surest survival strategy, not feeling confident enough to have to wrestle him, bad wing or no.
The root source of his lack of self-confidence stemmed from the fact that Kaiser was also a quite impressed with his captor. Already, the red sun’s merciless rays were murdering his own skin, and the gravity sucked the energy out of his body with every step he took. He also supposed that the carbon dioxide that had almost asphyxiated him during his atte
mpted escape would certainly do the same if he were to try again.
Yet despite the slim pilot having suffered enough damage to easily drop a special ops trooper, he had still managed to course the uneven terrain like a gazelle inthe course ofthe foot-pursuit. More impressively, the boy seemed completely oblivious to the sun’s effects as he loped along, his bandaged arm regularly dripping blood, carrying that enormous mutilated backpack with apparently little effort. Perhaps it was the reddish light, but his eyes were a strange golden color he had only ever seen in the more engineered canine breeds. His captor was probably far more adapted to that planet than he was, which meant there were only three ways he would be able to secure his freedom: outside assistance, wit or dumb luck.
“Kinder, it would be quite unwise for us to keep approaching those clouds. Surely you know what radioactivity is, no?” He spoke over his shoulder, slackening his pace.
The boy’s answer was simply another jab at his skull. Kaiser picked up his pace again, thinking hard. The quickly dissipating mushroom clouds were of no concern to him, of course, the aneutronic fusion devices that had birthed them having been designed to minimize fallout. Indeed he was probably at greater risk from his mobile Suit’s continuous low-level radioactivity than from what he saw up ahead. But Kaiser would be hard put to work his magic if the boy were to somehow hook up with his comrades-in-arms. He stared ahead, cursing those clouds and the cowards who had opted to create them.
If his Suit had been in good working order a nearby thermonuclear event would have been of no consequence to him; like all frontline equipment and armament, the Harrowers had been hardened against electromagnetic pulses of nuke origin or otherwise. The problem was that the electronics itself was far too sensitive to be impervious to such interference, which was why EMP hardening depended almost exclusively on the set of faraday cages that encased the sensitive parts of his Suit.
He refused to believe the impacts against his unit had breached the CPU’s robust encasement itself. But the CPU was connected by cable to other sensitive components, and any failure to those cages, or to any of the armored cables themselves, would probably have been enough to compromise the entire system. Considering the intense magnetic fields inherent to charge separation-type EMPs, the collection of circuit breakers protecting the CPU would simply not have been able to open fast enough once cage integrity was spoiled.
But the nukes hadn’t destroyed the Suit. Kaiser had.
Or to be more exact, Kaiser had neglected to close the hatch after exiting his Suit, hoping the boy would simply presume he was still sheltering inside. And then he had made it worse by sealing the uncompromised hatch by remote in the hope of retrieving the platform later. How was he to know that the boy had tossed a grenade inside? A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, and he wondered whether his captor knew just how much disruption he had caused to their plans.
They eventually intruded on the outskirts of the nearest site.
The tactical nuke had detonated over a broad valley, setting fire to an area three hundred meters wide and uprooting all but the strongest trees for more than half a kilometer. As they moved into the clearing of upturned trees, the wind blowing strongly against their backs and towards the inferno, his captor motioned for him to stop. Grateful for the pause, Kaiser sat with his back against a fallen tree, breathing fast and shallow as perspiration dripped from his nose and chin.
Sitting on an unearthed root, the boy stared expressionlessly at the forest fire as if mesmerized by its flames. Despite his agony a couple of quips jumped into Kaiser’s mind, but he decided to remain silent instead. The events had taken a heavy toll on the pilot, and he had seen it countless times before. It was never wise to poke at a wounded creature, and this one was certainly wounded in more ways than one. Slowly but surely the fire began to close the distance towards them.
“Who are you?”
Kaiser turned towards the boy.
“Hello, how do you do? I am Kaiser.”
“I don’t give a shit for your name, asshole. Who are you?”
“Ah. I am Major Tommi Von Beulwitz, Mobile Suit commander of the Earth Federation Forces.”
The boy simply stared at him for a long while, until the increasing warmth to the side of Kaiser’s face warned him of the encroaching danger.
“If I may, kinder, I would advise we not remain here much longer.”
“My name is not kinder! And you’ll be calling me Sergeant Muira from now on. I’ll make this very clear: If you try to escape, disobey or generally piss me off, I’ll snuff you, whatever your rank. On your feet.”
They skirted the forest fire by moving south, weaving their way with difficulty among the collapsed plantation trees due to the angle at which they had fallen. Gradually the terrain’s inclination began to steepen and before long Kaiser began to have difficulties.
After several pushes and one violent shove, Kaiser realized he needed to be more obvious about his breathing difficulties. He collapsed to the ground and began to hyperventilate.
“Get up!” Miura ordered.
Kaiser tucked his chin in defensively as the boy made ready with his rifle-butt.
“Please, Sergeant, I need only a moment – this air is poison to me, verdammte!” He shouted as the butt collided against his skull.
He had already been suffering from tunnel vision. Double vision arrived and then he finally blacked out. By the time he returned to a world swimming in starbursts, the boy was staring at him speculatively.
“Poison?” He repeated.
“Yes, boy ... Sergeant, I mean. Poison.”
“You’re a natural?”
Kaiser disliked the way in which the boy had said the word, and he made an effort to find an acceptable answer, his numbed mind struggling to think.
“Oh, no I am not. But I am not adapted to the air of this planet as you certainly are.”
“Then you’re a natural.”
“Nein, nein. I am not, I tell you! I am genetically engineered like you are, except to be a better mobile Suit pilot!” He insisted, disliking where the conversation was headed.
“Then you’re a natural!” The boy countered, “You weren’t made for this world, but only to be a Suit driver. Your Suit is your world, then, not Capicua. What are you doing here?” He demanded.
The boy’s words shocked Kaiser more than he would ever dare admit. The very thought had passed through his mind in his darker moments, although he had never dared put it into words, not even to Lippard, with whom he could be so candid about so many things. Carefully he put it all out of his mind, along with the fleeting thought of Lippard.
He prepared to gamble.
“I am your enemy. Your enemy in this world. The whole universe is filled with mankind, and there are many planets out there where men forget they are a part of something larger, greater. And I am only one among many who have come to remind you planetary retrogrades of precisely that. You are not some indigenous species of this world. You are only one outreaching hand of mankind.”
“Sorry Major, but Earth is just Earth. I’m not gonna get into a debate about who belongs where. The plain fact is you pissed off the wrong people when you attacked Leiben.”
“Lieben?”
“Leiben! The city you dropped a few of those on, remember?” The boy gestured angrily towards the black clouds persisting over the valley.
“Ah, my apologies, then. I did not agree with that decision. There are better ways to greet the locals, I said. You must understand there are many on my side who get nervous when they see so much armament skirting a city like that. But please do not forget we are here to pacify you –”
Kaiser was expecting what came next, having spent the previous minutes working to loosen the bandoleer that bound his arms. The Sergeant kicked out viciously, his boot connecting with his captive’s head. Taking advantage, Kaiser caught the boot with his newly untied hands as it retracted, having correctly guessed that the boy’s legs were strong enough to help him up in the
process. Twisting around so his back collided against his adversary’s slung arm, he hugged the rifle with both arms and sprung upwards, rolling in mid-air over his shoulder as he did so. The weapon twisted into his hands more easily than he would have dared hope, but then his back collided hard against the uneven ground. It was somewhat more difficult to perform such acrobatics under the intense gravity of that planet.
Before a split-second had passed, the young sergeant’s elbow came crashing down on his face, breaking his nose. Eyes watering badly, Kaiser felt his adversary shake the weapon out of his grasp. One deafening gunshot later Kaiser was cradling the side of his face where a projectile had torn a ragged path. Cursing his idiocy, he waited for the finishing shot.
Instead the seconds kept ticking by, and as Kaiser began to wipe the tears from his eyes there was a second shot from a distance away. It was not an echo. The young sergeant’s odd eyes became wide and hopeful as he searched the summit, rifle still trained on his prisoner.
“Up! Now!” He ordered, having apparently forgotten that they had been fighting only moments before.
Kaiser obeyed, cradling his face as blood dripped through his fingers. As he renewed his ascent, his captor placing a supporting forearm against his back to ease the way, they crossed what remained of the jumbled landscape and reached the summit of the hill.
On the opposing side, they came upon a second Harrower, lying on its side amidst a carpet of fallen leaves.
“Tonesy! Over here, mate!” Kaiser heard to his dismay.
Standing beside the giant like victorious Lilliputians, several locals were gathered. One of them crossed the distance at a run, a tall and lean fellow with wild hair a little too long to be allowed. By the way they greeted one another it was clear they were friends.
“This guy’s an Unmil. He’s from Earth.” Miura said after a shoulder-slapping moment, gesturing to Kaiser with a wave of his hand.
The local approached and stared at him with an unfriendly expression. Kaiser decided to make a good impression.
Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) Page 26
