Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) (27 page)

» 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 last 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.

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.