“Hello there, kinder. I am Kai– UMPH!”
Without warning, the local buried a boot into his gut, putting enough force into it to rupture something were it not for the shock-absorbing trait of his suit. Kaiser’s legs gave in and his knees hit the hard ground percussively as pain radiated from his abdomen.
Fucking sadist, he cursed silently. The pair apparently had that much in common. An explosive laugh left his lips before his lungs seized on him.
“Now this doesn’t make any sense! You gotta see the one we’ve caught, he’ll blow your mind ...”
They half-escorted, half-dragged him towards the remainder of the group. There he found three equally young locals standing near the Harrower’s helm, two of them women, and a fourth person sitting cross-legged on the ground amongst them.
It was Deadhand.
As Kaiser was made to sit down he evaluated the state of his subordinate, and was appalled by what he saw; Deadhand had taken a beating against which his own injuries paled by comparison. His ebony face had ballooned, especially around the eyes, and his lips were torn and uneven. His skull appeared to have been scraped over by a blade several times, leaving him almost scalped. The same blade had probably been used to gouge at the side of his muscular neck, having probably stopped short of his carotid by mere millimeters. His right ear was only half-attached, and it protruded from the side of his head as if it had been viciously yanked at.
Kaiser raised his eyebrows questioningly. The African simply shook his head, his battered face too deformed for the Bavarian to read the expression there.
The excited conversation among the locals died down as the Miura boy squatted to take a good look at the other prisoner. He kept the stare up for quite a while.
“What’s wrong with him?” He asked to no one in particular.
“That’s his natural color, he calls himself a ‘colored man’! Think he’s an African like in the books?”
“No, that’s not what I meant ... I mean, how did this happen to him?”
The friend became fidgety, and one of the women replied instead, her eyes an impossibly light shade of blue.
“Ray lost it when we got a hold of him. Our Suits collapsed close together as Davos here was about to kill us. The sarge died trying to defend us ...”
“Jorren’s dead?”
“Yes. The driver killed him when this was still a battle with Suits. Then the nuke detonated, and we managed to reach Davos as he was trying to get out of his hatch. He wasn’t armed but he attacked Ray anyway. And Ray lost it ...”
“Lost it, my ass ...” Ray interrupted hotly, blood vessels protruding from his neck, “It was self-defense!”
“Not a problem, Ray ...” Miura interjected calmly, “I was just curious as to how it happened ...”
“Where’s the rest of your section?” The third boy asked.
“Hirum’s dead. The rest evacuated while I was trying to pull him out. Hirum was done in by Kaiser here.”
The group turned towards him, as if seeing him anew. Alarm bells began to ring in Kaiser’s head. As usual, his instincts were right on the mark.
“You sonufa ... BITCH!” Ray screamed, launching himself towards the prisoner before anyone could stop him.
Ray kicked Kaiser hard and the Bavarian’s back smacked against the dirt. The local straddled his chest and pulled a knife from his vest, but before he could make any use of the weapon his arm was expertly gripped by the blonde boy, the remaining soldiers wrenching the knife from his grip. Ray began to howl in rage and nearly managed to shake them off, but before long both of his wrists found themselves in a firm lock.
“Ian, don’t hurt him, you’ll only make it worse!” The pale-eyed girl shouted as she struggled to hold on.
Gradually the soldier began to calm down, but suddenly a scuffle broke out between Miura and the blonde boy.
“You trying to bind your own mate?! Get your hands off him!” Miura roared.
“That’s enough, you two! No one’s going to bind anyone. Right, Ian?”
“Yeah ... that’s right. And when he loses it again, you can hold him down yourself, Tonesy. He’s freaking out and he’s not going to calm down until the patch wears off.”
Miura touched something behind his ear, a fleeting act that nevertheless alarmed the pale-eyed girl.
“Don’t take it off, you’ll stroke out!”
He removed his hand as if he’d just received an electric shock, nodding instead to her in thanks. Turning to Ray, he spoke reassuringly.
“Listen, Ray. We’ve managed to capture these two alive, right? And my prisoner here, Major what’s-his-name, has already told me that our enemy is the Earth Federation Forces, and that they’re here to annex us to Earth’s authority, or something along those lines. They can tell us a lot more, too, but we gotta get them back to friendly forces, right? And that gets a little difficult if they can’t walk for themselves ... You need to lay off the kindness, OK?”
Their shocked expressions were not entirely unexpected. What was unexpected was the one that momentarily played across the blonde soldier’s face. Kaiser was an expert at microexpressions, and he quickly tucked that information away in a corner of his mind for future use.
He then noticed that Deadhand was staring at him with raised eyebrows.
“So we’re allowed to pass on intelligence to the locals now, Major?” He whispered.
“Do not worry yourself, my friend. In due time these children will be dealt with. There is dissension among them, as you may have noticed.” He whispered in return, marveling at how easily they were able to hold that conversation as the soldiers talked excitedly among themselves.
“Toni, who patched up your arm?” Pale-eyes asked.
“I did, I guess ...”
“Sueli, I’m taking your kit, if you don’t mind. I have feeling I’ll need more than mine to treat that.”
They settled in comfortably beside the felled Harrower, no one seeming to realize that Ebony Tower’s first objective would be to locate their fallen combat assets. Kaiser blessed them for their ignorance. Miura and the young woman removed the bandages from his arm and gasped at the level of tissue damage. Even Kaiser felt his stomach go queasy at the sight; the triceps muscle above his elbow was deeply torn, a ragged layer of yellow fat on display there. His brachial artery or some ramification thereof had probably been affected, and the wound began to bleed again as soon as the bottom-most bandage was removed. The entire remainder of his arm was heavily cratered. A jagged bone poked out from a wound on his forearm.
“The break looks clean enough ...” Pale-eyes remarked, a smile playing on her face. A moment later she became somber.
“We need to align the bone. If we can, I mean. I’m not sure if there are any fragments in the way. We’ll have to clean the wounds first, of course. Toni?”
“What is it, Hannah?”
“This is going to hurt like a mouse in a blender. I’m going to spike you with flupirtine first, of course, but you’re still gonna have to help me here. You too, Ray.”
They set to work on Miura and before long Kaiser was hearing howls of pain as they attempted to reset the bone. The Hannah girl was caring but relentless as she worked, and he found himself beginning to respect her.
The other girl was a little too pretty for such a place, as if someone in the human resources department had screwed up and yanked her from the public relations department. She kept her composure well enough, however, despite clearly preferring to keep her distance from Hannah’s gory first aid efforts. The blonde, however, had been behaving oddly since he discovered Kaiser’s provenance. He appeared quite determined to avoid eye-contact with him, but there was neither fear nor hostility in his demeanor, only a guarded expression. As with all odd things, his interest was piqued, and he filed the information away for future exploitation.
As the hours passed and the group prepared to move, there was still no sign of EFF activity. To Kaiser’s chagrin, no Suit, no infantry force, not even a
lousy drone dared make an appearance in the area. Leaning to a newly bandaged Deadhand, he whispered softly.
“Are you up to some delaying action, my friend?”
“Anytime, Commander. What kind of action we talking about?”
“The playing-mostly-dead kind. I need you to lie down and close your eyes as if you are unconscious. We must make time for the Tower to find us. I’ll take care of the explanations. Understood?”
Deadhand’s answer was to lean into the ground and slowly close his eyes. Kaiser smiled inwardly, thanking the pilot for his courage. His thoughts were interrupted by a shout from Miura.
“Ian, what in hell did you just do?”
The blonde-haired boy had just returned from the trees to their west, where several plumes of smoke were rising from the trees there.
“Don’t have a miscarriage, Tonesy. As the senior sergeant here, it is my duty to destroy our Suits so they don’t fall into enemy hands. We couldn’t leave without doing that first. Now we can leave.”
“Now we can DIE! You don’t think they’re gonna see that smoke from ten clicks away? They’re the only fresh plumes to be seen around here!”
“Calm yourself down, comrade. We’re wasting our time here now. It’s time to go.”
The explanation didn’t seem to go down well with the remainder of the group. As Hannah approached Ian, she turned to Toni.
“Toni, could you get the prisoners on their feet?” She said before turning to the blonde, “I’d like to chat with you a moment, Ian. Is that alright?” She asked sweetly.
As the pair wandered out of earshot, Miura approached Kaiser.
“On your feet.”
“Sergeant Miura. We have a problem, I think. Deadhand was not feeling well minutes ago, and now he will not wake up. We might need to carry –”
“No one’s gonna be carrying anyone! Deadhand,” he called the wounded prisoner, giving him a tap with his boot, “Get up now. NOW!”
The prisoner didn’t budge. Carefully, Miura checked his pulse and breathing.
“He’s breathing. Come on, Deadhand, get up.”
Much to Kaiser’s delight, the soldiers fell on the contingency of wetting the prisoner’s face with water from their canteens, soon after escalating their efforts to lightly slapping his cheeks. The unconscious prisoner remained as he was, the turban of bandages around his head and swollen appearance lending realism to his fragility. Ray kept away from the prisoner, perhaps feeling guilty over the turn of events.
“What’s going on?” Hannah asked as the two returned, Ian’s complexion considerably paler than before.
“The dark-skinned one’s not waking up ... he’s breathing but not moving a finger, whatever we do ...” Miura replied.
“We’ll simply have to organize a stretcher.”
“No we’re won’t –” Ray countered, and fired a rapid burst from his Lacrau into Deadhand’s head, tearing it apart.
A deafening silence took hold of them all as they contemplated the twitching body on the ground, blood still pulsing from its multitude of wounds. Ian slowly raised his weapon to the shooter’s chest. Ray only smiled in return.
“Don’t sweat it, Ian. I’m giving Toni my rifle, see? We couldn’t just drag this bastard for a thousand clicks while his buddies hunt us down. And now Kaiser here knows what’ll happen to him if he slows us down.”
A wail caught them by surprise, and they turned to see Sueli fall to the ground and began to cry convulsively. As Hannah and Ian went to her, Toni approached Kaiser and put a knee to the ground.
“I’m so sorry about this ...” the youth whispered somberly.
“There is nothing to be sorry about, Sergeant. It was not you who committed a war-crime.” Kaiser replied with a sad smile.
Inwardly, he was roiling with thought and emotion. He took a good look at the teenager who had murdered his fellow veteran. Ray kept away from his comrades and looked at the trees to his east, his face relaxed as it hadn’t been before, no trace of guilt present there. He doubted whether the medication they were under could come close to explaining that.
He had not truly been Deadhand’s friend; they had never held that much in common with each other. But his subordinate had been an exceptional professional, and not the sort to leave a man behind. He had been a soldier right to the end. Which was why Kaiser was not going to forget Ray’s kindness.
He could be very kind himself, if he wanted to be.
“I really need you to get up now, Major.”
He smiled at Miura once more, seeing the haunted expression on the boy’s face.
“Very well, Sergeant. I wouldn’t want to slow you down any further.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mining quadrant, Nature’s Dawn, 15th of June, 2771
The multitude of birdsongs woke Toni from an uncomfortable sleep. Stiffly he unhugged his arms from around his rifle and took a good look at his surroundings. Not much had changed since he’d fallen asleep, except that it was presently a semi-comatose Sueli who guarded their prisoner. Kaiser was already fully awake and smiled widely at Toni in unspoken greeting. Toni nodded in return.
He was beginning to find it difficult to dislike his prisoner.
“You awake, Toni?” Hannah asked with a smile, already on her feet as she checked her travel pack.
She and Kaiser must have common relations, he mused. He smiled in return.
“Looks like I’m the only one who wasn’t. Are we eating before we’re leaving? ”
“We’re eating like we’re moving. Fast and light. Need a hand up?”
He didn’t really need any assistance but accepted it anyway. He enjoyed the fleeting moment as his hand held hers.
He also suspected he was setting himself up for a bitter disappointment in the future.
They breakfasted on what was left of their first day’s combat rations; Toni had managed to hoard an energy bar and most of his milk from the day before, although he offered some of both to Kaiser just as Hannah had yesterday. Kaiser gratefully accepted, his bindings having temporarily been removed to allow him to feed himself. The remainder of his comrades contented themselves with their own leftovers, although Ray raided his second day’s rations for its chocolate cake.
As soon as they were finished, the group set off in the north-westerly course they had been following over the last two days. Toni no longer knew what time it was; Ian’s watch had stopped working, killed by the twin EMPs from that awful day. And so they presently had no choice but to bow to the rhythms of nature itself. Somehow that simple act of submission to the forest’s biological pulse had afforded Toni a more fitful sleep than he’d enjoyed in his lifetime, in spite of the hard ground. The only hitch was the knowledge that the winds from Thaumantias’ eye were not too long away.
In only five days, Capicua would find itself at the perigee of its orbit with Gliese 667, by which time the heating desert air at the supercontinent’s center would begin to rise and radiate towards the terminators. As that happened, the cooler, more humid air from the Crescent Ocean would be pulled towards the subsolar pole, the ensuing violent winds being well-known for making life difficult for any unsheltered creature. The tempest would abate as the planet swung out to its apogee and the humid air would finally condense into a dense, continent-wide cloud, and by the 1st of July the diluvian rains would begin.
It was not by coincidence that MEWAC Command had timed the Wild Rose campaign when it had. No one wanted to fight in hurricane winds, much less test their Suits flotation specs in battlefield conditions. But now Toni’s small troop was on the move in a deeply-furrowed forest, unprotected and with wounded among them, the plantation land having been left behind by the end of the first day’s march.
“Hey, Ian. Wasn’t there a road from the plantations to Lograin on the maps?” Toni asked as they marched in single file.
“Why do you want to know?” He retorted.
“It would be nice if we could be surer about our heading, not to mention that the road w
ill be easier to travel on.”
“And risk being seen from the air? I prefer the forest, thank you. We’ll just have to find another way to home in on the base.”
“I –” Toni suddenly stopped in his tracks. Slowly he began to walk again, thinking with every step.
“I think I know how we might do that.” He finally said before explaining.
“Those comm devices we were allotted, they have a range of a couple hundred clicks. We could use them to relay our position –”
“Except they were fried by the nukes, Tones.” Ray interrupted.
“Did you even read the manual, mate? They’re hardened against that. Our model might not have the GPS option, but each unit has a pendant cable about two meters long, and they’re interconnectable. If we link all our cables, spread them out high enough and connect them to a comm unit, I’m sure we could extend the range by a few hundred clicks!”
“Optimist.” Hannah cut in with a grin.
“It might actually work, why don’t we try it now.” Ian said to Toni’s surprise.
“Wait a second,” he countered, “we’re way too close to the EarthFeds for that. Right now we’ll have far greater chances of betraying our position than of contacting Lograin. Besides, what would the base do even if they knew we were here? Send a rescue mission? We’re only about sixty clicks from where we got our asses kicked, remember?”
Ian looked somewhat annoyed but didn’t insist on the matter.
“Got our asses kicked, for sure. You know what I keep thinking about?” Ray asked.
“Getting your rifle back?” Ian ventured.
“Nah, it’s in good hands so I’ve no worries. Listen, I was thinking about what the Screamer told us in the casern before we deployed ...”
“And what was that?” Sueli asked, apparently clueless as to what he meant.
“What, he didn’t talk to the femmes?! Guess that goes to show what he thinks of you, ha! He told us that first contact would probably only end in one of two ways: easy victory or crushing defeat. And he told us to run like hell if it was the second.”
Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) Page 27
