Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

Kaiser was forced to use his flashlight to search for the heavy uniform, and he found it neatly folded and sealed in a bottom pocket of the Suit’s tactical vest. The mobile Suit hulked over him as he removed the garments, watching silently as its driver turned away and jogged at a brisk pace towards its kneeling twin.

Lippard was already waiting for him with a coy smile on her face, her aristocratic beauty not in the least bit lessened by the bulky armor of her exoskeleton. As usual, her silver hair was rolled into a tight bun, giving her a somewhat severe look that contrasted greatly with what he already knew about her. Kaiser pecked her lightly on the lips, their maraging steel sternums clashing noisily in the act, and the two drivers set off quickly towards the waterline below.

*****

Over the following ten minutes, Lippard was forced to gently defeat two amorous advances from her superior, who seemed unable to simply watch as she washed herself in the cold, clear stream. Kaiser’s demeanor when they were alone was something others who only knew him professionally would perhaps never guess, she thought with amusement. The Bavarian’s worry lines disappeared almost entirely, to be replaced by gentle crinkles around his eyes. His playfulness was almost puppy-like sometimes, although she was quite sure his order for their teammates to return to the meeting point had not been so innocent.

“If I didn’t know better, mein fuhrer, I would think you intend to achieve another first for the Earth Federation Forces.” She laughed playfully as he began to snuggle against her for a third time.

“Uhumm ... meine liebe, you are entirely wrong, such a thought has never passed through my mind. Wha – what are you doing?!”

“Why, putting on my uniform, of course. Since you are so intent on being noble.” She sighed sadly, secretly delighting in his disappointed expression.

“Kaiser, Deadhand here. Moose is recovered and the beacon signal is strong. Umm, coming any time soon?” An inquisitive voice squawked from his discarded earpiece on the ground.

Kaiser snatched up the earpiece and answered as Lippard continued to re-suit.

“Kaiser here. We will arrive in five mikes. You may both begin clearing operations, Over.”

“Only five mikes? Why the hurry?” There was a hint of humor in Deadhand’s voice.

“That is all. Over and out.” The commander replied levelly enough, an embarrassed smile momentarily present on his face.

Deadhand had spoken the truth, she thought. Re-encasing herself in the exoskeleton with Kaiser’s assistance, she noticed how much more snug the fit was, and found herself feeling more at ease as she moved around. Donned his own skeleton, the commander kept up his indignant expression as they returned to their larger halves, petulantly warning her not to be surprised if he didn’t power up immediately, as he’d possibly be satisfying himself in the PS over the following few minutes. Lippard laughed at that, mostly because the chances of her commander doing such a thing were about as high as the planet spontaneously combusting. Kaiser was not the sort. Even his advances towards her moments before had been nothing more than light flirtation. He certainly knew Lippard would never have yielded.

As they were approaching the Suits, he turned to her, curious.

“Come with me, Lippie, I want to show you something.” He said, and he set off briskly towards his kneeling Suit.

The commander leaped athletically onto its massive right thigh and proceeded to search the enormous tactical vest, removing what looked like a cluster of green grapes from one of its pockets. From another such pocket he removed a handful of dirt, and began to studiously sift through it, pecking at objects in the pile with his thumb and forefinger.

Apparently satisfied, Kaiser discarded the remaining soil and, dropping back to the ground, his skeleton absorbing the impact with as much ease as it would on Mars, he sat casually on the titan’s left foot, working one of the bone-white objects with an articulated pair of pliers he carried with him.

“What is it?” She asked.

Curiosity caught hold of her, knowing well that few things merited so much attention from him. The officer did not answer immediately, but instead appeared to be trying to crush the seed-like object with the pliers, and apparently with great difficulty since, despite the strength augmentation provided by his exoskeleton, he hadn’t yet succeeded. With an audible crack and to Kaiser’s pleased exclamations, the seed finally succumbed, revealing a rich red core inside. Rubbing the interior vigorously with his gloved thumb, he touched it to his tongue.

“Nein!” Lippard exclaimed, suddenly alarmed at his behavior.

Disregarding her reaction, he held one of the halves towards her.

“It is quite safe,” he added as she hesitated.

Feeling foolish and slightly nervous, Lippard brought the rustred core to her lips and licked it lightly. The taste caught her by surprise.

“Blood. It tastes a little like blood.” She commented, staring distrustfully at the object in her hand.

“Not blood. ferrous oxide, meine liebe. This place is all an enormous mine. See?” Kaiser exclaimed, breaking one of the green clustered seeds open with much greater ease. Its core was a somewhat paler red color, just shy of pink.

“The seeds store the mineral in them as they develop, and when they are mature, they are cultivated. My landing site was full of the ripe white seeds on the ground. That is why they would have a plantation so far from their cities. This location must have enormous iron deposits, and by collecting these resources using specially engineered trees, there would be no need for the locals to remain here in any number. They must be using the clearings to collect the seeds before transportation, I think. I knew that Command was up to something. And I was right, wasn’t I, Lippie?” He finished with a sly grin.

“Have we just captured an iron mine?” She asked as she looked around her with a new interest.

He nodded enthusiastically.

“And perhaps not only iron, Lippie. There are other plantations near this one, and I expect they might have hybrid species of trees collecting other minerals from the soil.”

“But how can this be used?”

“Simple, I think. The seed’s oil and organic materials must all be quite flammable. The seeds need only be incinerated in a foundry, with the bonus of the organics supplying some of the carbon for steel production. We have seen this before on Mars, remember? Although the colonists there were unable to fully address the low light conditions found so far from the sun. These locals seem to have solved that problem. Don’t you see, Lippie? Most of what we need to get started presently surrounds us.” Kaiser explained admiringly, slapping his armored thigh in enthusiasm and producing a stiff clang in the act.

Lippard felt momentarily awkward as she wondered whether the local population would put up with that, or whether they would consider the capture cause for war. She quickly put the thought out of her mind; Command had certainly made its decision for very valid reasons. The EFF Leviathan had, after all, just completed its first interstellar voyage, despite having originally only been designed for interplanetary jaunts. No matter how many refits a vessel was subjected to, its end product would never be quite as successful as with a specifically designed ship. In the Leviathan’s case its current military payload for an IS mission barely exceeded four hundred tons. And how did one occupy an entire planet with so little hardware? Why, the answer was hanging on the trees around her, and she realized suddenly that the advantage the plantation afforded them could not be overlooked. She had unconsciously known that such extreme measures might be necessary, now that she thought about it.

Duly re-Suited, both officers returned to the meeting point to find that the sergeants were well into clearing operations. Having apparently given up on using the tactical knife as an improvised axe, the pilots were setting their Suits’ weight against the trees, uprooting them easily before dragging them out to the plantation and emplacing them amidst a rapidly growing abatis wall. As Lippard went to assist her comrades, Kaiser approached the beacon and repositioned it carefully at coordinates previously extrapolated from orbital images. Having done that, he joined his teammates in the freshly booming business of knocking down trees.

A full twenty minutes before crunch time, the reconnaissance team had effectively cleared a circular area with a radius of forty meters around the radar beacon. As the minutes ticked away, the mobile Suits took up guard positions at the four cardinal points of the circle, facing outwards from behind the abattis as they awaited Ground Command’s descent to the planet’s surface.

Peering silently over the tortured roots of an uprooted tree she had personally emplaced, Lippard found herself hating the delay. It left her too much time to think.

For the first time she wondered at the kind of people who lived there. Were they the sort to fight, or did they have the wisdom to know a lost cause when they saw one? If they fought, would they fight honorably, or would they fall into the vicious coward routine? Lippard knew herself very well; Mars had taught her a lot about what she could expect from herself in a fight. Her gauntlets tightened around her laser platform as she thought of that planet. Her conclusions over the conflict’s origins had been about the only subject she’d ever disagreed with Kaiser over, but then again he could be strange about such things. Lippard knew that if the last was to prove true for those people, she would kill them all if she was given the chance.

An enormous sonic boom suddenly shook the forest’s limbs free of its avian inhabitants, announcing the imminent arrival of a behemoth. Moments later her OS motion alert warned her of a significant airborne signature above and behind her. She did not bother to look; a countdown had appeared in a foreground overlay and read thirty seconds to touchdown. She did not require instructions for what was to happen next. The mounting roar of retrorockets firing tore at her ears and she put her Suit’s kneepad against the tree’s root, lowering her profile as she began to key up for a potential assault. This was the most critical part of the mission; if they failed several hundred deaths would be on their heads, and the four would then find themselves stranded in a hostile environment. The roar began to intensify until it was screaming into her skull. A yellow alert appeared before her display, warning her that, due to the outside sound presently being above the tolerance of human ears, it was unsafe to exit her Suit. Still the roar intensified, since despite her OS having capped any increase in volume to her earphones, the vibrations were still somehow penetrating the armor. A powerful wind began to blow vegetation and all manner of wildlife beyond her, and entire clouds of flying creatures took to the sky in even greater numbers than before. Despite the protection her armor conferred, Lippard instinctively began to squint as great clouds of dust rushed past her, obscuring her surroundings as it scattered an intensifying blue light.

The roar suddenly died away, leaving her surroundings hidden in a dark haze, and a fluttering relief passed through her as she realized that the descent had been completed. Hazarding a look over her pauldron, she could barely make out a massive silhouette rising above the dust cloud like a titan’s monolith. It was Kaiser who broke the silence.

“Well done, RecOp chain. Ebony Tower has landed. Rejoice, for we shall all be having lunch in a refectory today.”

MEWAC Headquarters, 11H35, 17th of January, 2771

Toni was unceremoniously ushered into the dimly lit interview room, confident that he had committed all possible contingencies to memory. Then he laid his eyes on the interview team.

Oh Gods, no.

Sitting nonchalantly behind an impeccable beige table, supporting his weight on his elbows as he closely inspected his fingernails, was the Screamer himself. Lifting his eyes heavily towards the newcomer, a ghost of a smile played across the sergeant’s face as he appraised the recruit’s expression. To his right sat a perky female Lieutenant. Blood drained slowly from Toni’s face. Mason gestured with a careless hand for Toni to take a seat. Suddenly very self-conscious, the recruit quickly took it, trying very hard to relax his facial muscles as he did so.

“So. Mister Tardy. How are we doing today?” Mason asked pleasantly.

Surprised by the lack of venom, Toni replied with honesty.

“I guess I’m a little nervous, Sergeant.”

“I think so too. Boy, do you realize that, as you were waiting in the corridor a few minutes ago, you were talking to yourself? Moments ago a member of the administration came in here and warned me. Apparently he was quite concerned about your emotional health. Tell me, boy, how long have we been holding conversations with ourselves?” He asked with mock concern.

The Lieutenant beside him pressed a palm against her mouth to hide the smile beneath. The smile was a dagger in his heart.

Toni found himself momentarily unable to articulate words. Hastily he opted to forget all rehearsed answers and hazarded a wild foray into honesty.

“Well, sir, I honestly wasn’t aware I was doing that. As I said, I’m a little nervous and, since I have never been interviewed before, I was trying to think up answers for some questions I thought might come up, that was all. I just didn’t realize I was mouthing the answers.” He answered carefully, watching closely as a comprehending and benign expression began to present itself on the sergeant’s face. He decided to ignore the woman; her reactions to the swordplay were beginning to fray his nerves, and his previously drained face had begun to suffer a rapid influx of blood.

“Yes, I see. I see. And why do you need to memorize your answers, boy? Is the truth not enough for me? What I’m trying to say is, why would you need to deceive the Army?” He inquired politely.

Bastard
, Toni thought. The man’s face did not betray his intentions, yet Toni could see uncompromising hostility hidden behind his half-smile.

“Sir, I understand my mistake. It’s simply that, since I joined against my family’s wishes, I thought there would be some questions regarding that. This is important to me, sir. Maybe I was trying too hard.” He replied.

Toni was saying much more that he had ever planned to, and he hated himself for it.

“Yes, I see. Trying too hard, yes. Well, shouldn’t you perhaps have followed your family’s wishes?”

It was not a question. He had stated it as a question, but it had been meant as a statement of fact.

The sergeant looked pointedly over Toni’s shoulder to the door behind him, and then back to him, and then held his hands outwards in an apologetic gesture. Toni realized what he was trying to say. The Lieutenant beside him was no longer smiling.

Toni reminded himself of every single mistake he had made dealing with the man. And he understood, finally, how it all had come to that moment. Mason wasn’t a man to be dealt with; he fancied himself the dealer, maker and breaker of men, and he would never have forgiven Toni’s flaws any more than Toni could forgive him for what he was doing now. He accepted that fact with the sad recognition of someone who had just discovered an important secret too late for it to make any difference.

And yet he found himself unable to stand and leave.

“Sir, was that a question?” He asked innocently.

“No, son, it was not. It was a statement. A statement you have no need to comment on. The door is over there.”

“I apologize, sir. I mean, I wasn’t aware you required a comment, sir. My father’s advice to me was to forget about the Capicuan Defense Force. His opinion is that an institution that hasn’t waged a single war in two hundred years is unable to justify its existence, and that it should be disbanded.

“I simply don’t agree with him, sir. I think that the defense force is here to prevent wars, first and foremost. And as I see it, the best argument in favor of the CDF is the fact that there have been no wars up until today. Very few people consider that, I think. I’m here because I believe in the CDF, and because I believe I can be useful here. I only need the chance to prove that, sir.” He finished.

For the life of him Toni couldn’t imagine from where he had conjured the words. He had never considered himself to be articulate, but damned he was if he hadn’t seen a sudden spark of interest in the lieutenant’s eyes.

“I see,” Mason exhaled, “So your family’s pro-abolition, and you’re a rebel. A sort of anti-hippie, perhaps? Boy, oh boy, if you want to serve, then by all means serve. But tell me why you can’t serve in the foot infantry. Or in the Command and Services Companies, for that matter. Do you have any compelling reason to justify being handed a hundred and twenty thousand Credit war machine?” Mason asked, his face expressionless, his tone reasonable.

Son-of-a-bitch
, Toni thought.

He decided to give insane honesty one last try.

“No sir, I don’t, except for the fact that I want this.” He said.

The answer sounded horribly wrong to his ears. Mason’s lips curled into a wicked grin and he began to laugh.

“HAH! Want this? Because you WANT this? Boy, that just doesn’t cut it here! Everyone wants to be the hero, nobody wants to make the sacrifices. That’s rich! HAH! Boy, listen to me and listen carefully, because this is the honest truth. The Army is not a fair institution. If you wanted fairness and justice you should have gone to Varsity and studied Law. The Army cares about only one thing. Putting the right man in the right place so it can get the mission done! And, sorry kid, but I just don’t see you there, I just don’t see you inside a Suit. Have a nice day!” He finished, snatching up a clipboard and brandishing his pen, a satisfied smile on his face as he searched for Toni’s name on the roster.

Toni didn’t move a muscle.

The Lieutenant had lightly touched her delicate fingers upon Mason’s muscled forearm, causing the sergeant to freeze as if stopped in time, digital pen hovering a centimeter above the clipboard’s data-slate.

Toni noticed the Lieutenant’s nametag, finding only her first name there. Her name was Rose.

“Good morning, Mister Miura, are you all right?” She asked politely.

“Yes, Lieutenant, quite fine.” He replied quietly.

“I see you have amber eyes. Almost golden, in fact. Not exactly an ordinary eye color, is it?”

“No, Ma’am, it isn’t. My mother’s family has had a lot of transgen modifications going back a few generations.”

“And your father?” she inquired.

“My father’s a natural. He spent his first years in an artificial atmosphere. Step-by-step adaptation. Six year regimen.”

The Lieutenant’s pretty eyebrows furrowed, as if the news was particularly upsetting to her.

“And what does he think of transgenetic procedures?”

“He’s against them. He – his whole family believes that human adaptation to Capicua’s conditions should be a natural event.”

“I see. It seems your father’s against a lot of things, isn’t he?”

“That’s my father in a nutshell, Ma’am.”

“I am a transgen myself,” she confided as she perused the briefs before her, “and so is our sergeant, here. Every driver out there is a transgen, although exactly what genes are at play is very important for this particular line of work. Your physical performance results are quite impressive. Unnaturally impressive. Especially regarding reflexes, coordination, rapid problem-solving, among a few others. I’ve taken a look at your mother’s file. She has inherited some impressive abilities, but it seems some of your results don’t entirely correspond to her, um, characteristics. So tell me, are you truly your father’s son?”

That was too much for Toni. He tried to cover his mouth, but the smile kept spreading under his hand anyway. A chuckle escaped from his mouth before he could smother it.

“Can it, boy!” Mason growled menacingly.

“I’m sorry, sir. Ma’am.”

“It’s alright.” The lieutenant answered lightly, still smiling at his reaction.

“Ma’am, I’m his son for certain.” Toni answered confidently, “We look too much the same, by far. Even people who’ve only just met us usually make the connection. I might not like it, sometimes, but I am definitely his son. A photo should be in my father’s file, shouldn’t it?” He asked.

“No. Your father did not apply for military service and, since the CDF doesn’t have access to citizens’ personal information, all I know is what you’re telling me.

“Strictly speaking, your mother doesn’t have a file with us either.” She added, “What she does have is a service record.”

“Service record?” He echoed.

“Yes. Your mother fulfilled five years of military service before beginning her civil work with the government. Didn’t you know?”

“N-no, I didn’t.”

“Well, in any case either your father is a closet transgen, which he can keep a secret if he likes, or you have at some point in your life been the subject of a genetic procedure. Either way, we’ll know what you are once the genetic profiling results come in.” She studied a document intently as she spoke, ignoring the look of astonishment on the recruit’s face.

“So, you want to be a Suit driver, do you?” She asked him directly, finally looking up.

“Y-yes.”

“Good. You will shortly be informed of our decision. Thank you.” She added, giving him a smile before returning to her reading.

The only sign that Mason was in any way upset came from the twitching muscles on the forearm the lieutenant had touched. Otherwise, he simply glared from beneath his shaven brows as the recruit silently left the room.

The Interview was the ultimate challenge after two weeks of blood extractions, painful tissue extractions, urine and stool contributions, full body scans, neural mapping exams, vascular mapping exams, motor reflex and coordination tests, along with a barrage of logic, memory and rapid problem-solving tests that had occupied the first week. Spanning the three days before the interview, the recruits had fallen victim to a second barrage, comprised of personality tests whilst attached to a temperamental neural scanner that kept going into automatic shutdown.

Toni spent the evenings trying to get along with his fellow hopefuls, as well as reading from the meager partition of the base library reserved for those in limbo. Aside from outdated propaganda pamphlets, Toni had discovered a wealth of technical and mechanical literature, and slowly came to understand that he would eventually be expected to possess intimate knowledge of the Suits’ functions. The realization depressed him, especially when he considered his academic performance at Leiben High. On the other hand, it was with relief that Toni came to realize that the members of his provisional platoon harbored no hostility towards him, apparently preferring to reserve such feelings for the sergeant.

Screaming Mason drank only at night, seeing as there existed some leniency on-base regarding the pastime, just as long as it was after-hours and off-duty. At three AM sharp in their first night on-base, an impressively drunk First-Sergeant had elected to drag a casernful of sleepy recruits out of their beds and stand them at attention, giving them each an empty stare as the stench of alcohol slowly occupied the compartment.

The Sergeant had then launched into slurred discourse on the chief military virtues, counting them off one-by-one with his fingers until he miscounted, got confused and gave up entirely, and had then proceeded to explain how his niece currently exceeded all those present in combat preparedness, adding as an afterthought that she was currently twelve. Toni’s eyes had become irresistibly drawn to a crack on the opposite wall, and he had stared blankly at the imperfection for the remainder of the sermon, tuning out the sergeant’s chafing voice until it was no more than background noise (his father had trained him well). The monologue lasted for an impossibly long hour before an unsteady Mason finally abandoned the casern, braying one last insult over his shoulder as he did so.

The sergeant kept up his nighttime visits with regularity, varying only in hour, number of accompanying corporals, and level of intoxication.

The day after Toni’s fateful interview, however, the Genetic profiling results finally came in, and before the afternoon’s end he was informed that he would be expected in uniform at 08H00 sharp Monday morning at MEWAC’s Suit Instruction Company.

The report added that, in answer to Toni’s form declarations, the medical department had scanned his genome and not found any defective genes relating to the metabolization of Folic Acid, and so there would be no need for supplementation or therapy.

A sizable part of Toni wondered whether some administrative official had somehow botched things and listed him in the Inducted List instead of the Eliminated List. He made no effort, however, to correct their mistake.