Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) (32 page)

“Unknown contact audible in the forest,” Lieutenant Stevenson whispered as they huddled around the equipment, “Heading is what we expected, it’s following the MEWAC trail.”

“Is it in the funnel yet?” The captain asked. He was staring thoughtfully towards the south-east.

“It’s in, but just barely,” the lieutenant answered.

“We wait ...” the captain decided.

A full minute passed before the captain asked again. His lieutenant answered.

“It’s in but not yet midway. The Unmil is either being careful, or it suspects something.”

“Tell Murata to begin to carefully close the end of his side of the funnel. Do the same with ours.”

Thirty seconds later the lieutenant began to tense up.

“Sir, the Unmil has halted. I’m stopping my bots.”

Another minute passed and only the hissing could be heard. It seemed so loud to Toni’s ears that he wondered if it was the noise that was giving them away.

“Unmil is on the move again. Moving slowly. Heading straight towards us. Sir, it’s half a click away and closing. Do we assault now?”

“Are you mad?” the captain retorted irritably, “We want the fucker to come here, where we’ve concentrated our RPGs. Let him come. Keep closing the other end of the funnel. Box him in.”

Another minute passed and the lieutenant gestured silently to the cadets to get ready to move at any moment. Turning to his captain, the lieutenant whispered.

“You’re going to get what you want. The Unmil is less than two hundred meters away and closing. The funnel is closed and the contact is boxed in. There are confirmed visuals by emplaced anti-armor teams. Now, sir?”

After a moment’s pause the captain looked rearwards. There was no longer a smile on his face, only that broad frown. Tensely he gave the signal for the cadets to retreat before returning his gaze to the south-east.

“Engage the fucker.” He ordered.

The cadets did not retreat but watched silently instead, spellbound by the tension of the moment. A silent order passed from the lieutenant to his bots in a hissing wave, and then the forest suddenly became alive with screeching missiles.

Deafening concussions rocked the woods, waking it violently from its slumber as belching fumes began to ascend the sky. The detonations were immediately followed by the roar of machineguns, which increased in number and intensity until all Toni could hear was a screaming, popping static. The static began to be punctuated by ever more frequent detonations as the sounds of battle began to reach their peak.

“What exactly are we still doing here?” Hannah shouted into his ears.

He thought about that for a moment, and it became clear to him that they urgently needed to be someplace else. There was no need to answer. Hannah grabbed Ian and Toni grabbed Sueli, and the remnants of LOGIS set of at a run to their north-east, following once more what remained of MEWAC’s signs of passage. Toni risked a glance behind and saw the vegetation before Venter’s position being struck by a laser pulse, its defenders hastily exiting their foxhole as smoke and fire nearly overwhelmed them.

More concussions rocked the forest, their shockwaves knocking flat anything not attached to the ground, and Toni suddenly found himself lying there, the deafening static sound of gunfire still screaming into his ears. The enemy Suit came within sight, and it sauntered over the forest floor with kneepads well-bent and frame in reduced silhouette, its armor sparking and glinting as myriad small-caliber projectiles struck their target.

The Suit’s oculars laser glimmered, it’s beam cutting up the landscape like a luminous scalpel. Its helm turned towards him and that laser flashed once more, the ground shooting up dirt wherever the beam touched, bark and limb and tree bursting into flames and subsiding to the earth. The kicked-up dust enshrouded him, cloaking his surroundings from the titan’s killing sight, and the screaming static in his ears was overruled by a keening, screeching sound that tore into his heart.

Twisting around where he lay, his eyes fell on Sueli, who rolled over the ground hugging what appeared to be a child by its leg. Clumsily he stood and approached and tried to pry the child from her arms before she smothered it, his mind at odds with what he was seeing, wondering how a civilian could have found its way into the midst of a battlefield. Sueli held on desperately, as if it was her own offspring she held, and once he had pulled one of her arms away, he realized how wrongly he had judged what he was seeing.

It was not a child. It was her own leg she was holding, the member’s boot having somehow been lost, her petite foot jutting out from her embracing arms for the world to see. He stared in horror at the vision, and then his eyes searched downwards until they found the cleanly cauterized stump well above her right knee. Looking behind, he found the sounds of battle receding as bots coursed the terrain in pursuit of their prey, oblivious to the fact that they would also soon be in pieces.

Toni scooped her up, caring not in the least for his injured right arm, and stifled his emotions as he set eyes upon her face. Her face was perfect, except for the utter horror that was stamped there. She cried and shrieked, and there was something animal about the way her eyes blinked at her surroundings. He ran as he held her firmly, and came upon Hannah further down the trail where she had been wrestling with Ian on the ground.

He said nothing to her or to Ian, his expression putting an end to the fight more effectively than any word could have.

They stared at Sueli as she embraced her leg. Blinking back tears, Hannah took out a hypodermic painkiller and injected the drug into her comrade, and the group then set off at a jog down the trail, where the revving of engines had became audible.

Four rovers coursed over the terrain at speed, jumping and careening along almost as if out of control. They rolled to a stop before them and ROWAC’s Command and Services section assessed the state of the group.

“Oh lord ...” was all one of them could say.

Moments later Toni was shoved into the confined flatbed of the rover with a warning to “hold-on tight”, a semi-conscious Sueli still firmly held in his arms. He numbly realized that that was the first time he was holding a woman in his arms.

Pity
, the demon inside jested,
pity that she’s in pieces and would sell you downriver in a heartbeat for her leg back
.

Toni didn’t care if she did, nor would he blame her, for that matter. He rested his head on her chest, feeling the fever-quick beat of her heart against his cheek as he fell off into a deep sleep, heedless of the bouncing rover or the suffering woman, and heedless also of the fact that Ian was for the first time alone, separated from his teammates on a vehicle that was no longer in sight.

*****

“KAISER!” Lippard roared over the loudspeaker, armored footpads pounding over the forest floor as she momentarily ignored her scurrying foes. It was a useless exercise, the deafening noise produced by the surrounding suicidal infantry drowning out her calls.

The question of whether the locals had any fight in them had been answered in capital letters. Her oculars had already been damaged several times, and she suspected that snipers were deliberately aiming for them. The stock of oculars that were stored in her helm was down to two-thirds after less than a minute of battle, with no end in sight to the engagement.

Nothing enraged her more than the sort of tactics she was witnessing at the moment. Whether one called it a human wave attack or a banzai attack, what she saw before her was an almost alien, inhuman commitment to resistance. That fact alone was enough to make her blood boil, but the rage was compounded by the fact that Kaiser had been taken prisoner by the heathens.

And how could he?! How could he allow himself to be captured? Deadhand was dead, a gigantic loss for their team. Kaiser’s Suit was beyond repair, which was perhaps an even greater setback. But if Kaiser were somehow forced to speak, the consequences would be disastrous. They hadn’t yet established themselves at the mines in any way that could counteract their vulnerability in manpower. And yet the Ebony Tower, hermetically sealed and sanitized in its methods of thinking as it was, had decided to forbid any rescue operations.

Which meant absolutely nothing to her. The mobile Suit she currently possessed was thermonuclear powered, her lasers feeding on the very same power source, and only food supply limited her autonomy in any appreciable way.

Several rockets suddenly impacted against her frame, the detonations sending her into the dirt below. The performance sphere cocooned her securely, considerably reducing the force of impact. It was, however, entirely inadequate to shield her pride, and it was there that the fall most injured her.

“Das ist es! JEDER STIRBT!!” She roared, her hoarse voice breaking with the effort.

Planting her footpads securely on the ground, she lowered her center-of-mass and gave her system the appropriate orders. All movements in her field of vision suddenly sprouted bright red reticules, and another larger reticule appeared directly in the center of her field of vision. Turning her head, she centered the large cross over the many smaller crosses, the Suit’s OS making the appropriate calculations and then activating the co-axial laser. That laser, sharing the space inside her helm along with the oculars and ocular replacement equips, had only one purpose: antipersonnel. It cut through the landscape and bodies fell, and Lippard began for the first time to wonder whether her attackers were human at all. Where was the screaming that usually accompanied its use, where were the bodies cut in pieces, and why were so many exploding into flames? It wasn’t their ammunition that was doing that, although she could hear them popping off as the flames enveloped their burning bodies. Some continued to fight as they burned, and she watched, horrified, wondering whether they were under the influence of drugs.

One more flash and, somehow, through all the shots and explosions, Lippard began to hear a wailing, screeching sound, shortly followed by someone shouting. The sounds were music to her ears, and she grinned viciously as she turned her armor towards her enemies’ left flank. The screams slowly became less pronounced as she moved along the trenches and foxholes, cutting and firing her way through the vegetation and all who hid there until she could no longer hear anything at all.

Before long, Lippard moved in silence, except for the impact of projectiles against her frame, the occasional explosion, and the tearing sounds produced by her laser beams against their targets. One particular target died hard, hit below by her pulse-rifle and then seared by her co-axial laser, but it kept on firing as it burned, making no sound. She halted her advance and pulled warrior’s rifle from its hands before picking it up for inspection.

Inside her performance sphere, Lippard’s eyes hardened as she turned it over in her hand, suddenly aware that no amount of crushing force from her gauntlets would be enough to kill it. The creature stared at her unblinkingly as it burned, and it then began to chirp beautifully, as if encased somewhere within its metallic body a talented songbird sang.

Lifting the obscene creature over her helm, she launched it out into the wilderness, a champion’s throw that would keep it airborne for a few moments at least, flying and singing as it left a charcoal smear across the windy sky.

“KAISER! GET ME OUT OF THIS NIGHTMARE!” She screamed, the loudspeaker of her Suit utterly failing to amplify her words to the volume she felt they deserved. The forest around her smoked and burned, the rising pillars slanting to the north-west as the strengthening wind pushed them. The scurrying figures continued to fire at her, their obsolete projectiles impacting against her armor to make obsolete sounds.

Then the figures began to retreat towards the mountains. Lippard hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do. Then she began to follow them, lost and uncertain, but aware that among those tin cans some humans could be found. The screaming from before made her certain of that. She would find one of them and squeeze his body as she asked some questions. Crushing pain was about the worst pain that one could feel, and she had learned by acquired experience that even the toughest combatant could sing like a canary if enough pressure was applied.

She relished the thought, shivering and smiling as her footpads began to pound the earth once more.

Base Fido, Nature’s Dawn, 20
th
of June, 2771

Colonel Toramaki Sen observed the display panel and grimaced. His expression was carefully studied and imitated by his subordinates, who surrounded the wide table into which the panel was embedded. Looking briefly south-west through the campaign tent’s mosquito-netted window, the colonel thought about the difficult decisions that lay before him. Grimacing once more, he leaned towards his comms officer.

“The companies currently under attack are to cease offensive action and retreat. This retreat must be slow and organized, and they must head northwards into the Dogspine. Waste this monster’s time! Get it lost in the range’s folds and crevices, because the time we’ve made it lose up until now doesn’t yet justify the losses we’ve suffered.

“As for the companies it passes by, once it’s in the Dogspine they are to harass the bakemono every step of the way.”

“Colonel, as for the casualties ...”

“The bot casualties are of no concern. They were out-of-date anyway ...”

“I think he meant our people, sir,” an old Major interjected, “They have perhaps two days of food left, the winds are arriving and the rains will soon follow. What about them?”

The colonel thought about that for a while.

ROWAC was an unusual unit in that the majority of its human components were not dedicated to frontline duties. Between logistics, resupply and the three Cs, ROWAC congregated more than two hundred personnel in its command base.

He had decided to locate Base Fido right in the middle of the pass that interrupted the northern and southern ranges of the Dogspine. The base was a highly improvised thing, of course, but its situation, well flanked by the mountain range’s tall peaks, and by the fast river that followed the northern slopes of the northern range, provided effective protection. The base was also situated on the axis MEWAC had forged in its passing, and his esteemed EWAC colleagues were at the moment improving the conditions of that axis from Fido to Lograin to favor a more fluid ROWAC retreat, and booby traps had already begun to be set there.

The base itself was concealed within the tall grove that grew in the pass, a smaller grove of nearby Diesel trees having blessed that spot as well. The Diesel grove had been spurned by MEWAC in their passing; their deposits were too meager to justify the effort of tapping for fuel to power those oil-guzzling armored Suits. ROWAC’s energy requirements were more humble, however, and the grove had proved generous enough to fuel all his bots.

The bots didn’t burn the fuel, of course. Their generators had instead been designed to saturate the oil with oxygen and infuse a small amount of initial heat, the resulting slow decomposition being enough to quietly and efficiently power their systems for a couple of days.

That grove had since dried up, not due to ROWAC, but to EWAC’s efforts instead. Contrary to common belief MEWAC wasn’t alone in operating Suits; the Engineering Warfare Corps possessed some of their own, although their adapted Hammerheads were far more lightly armed and armored, having been exclusively tasked to combat engineering, mobility and counter-mobility. It was EWAC who had dug the improvised command bunker in the midst of the more extensive pine grove. They had also dug the trenches for his elite praetorian bots, and opened up the ground surrounding the base to establish a killing field for the anti-armor teams, recycling the acquired timber into the central bunker and other key positions. Progress had become slower since then, the Suits having to depend on fuel resupply from Lograin, its arrival slow and difficult due to terrain constraints.

All combat was a race against time. The more fuel they had, the faster they would be able to build up the road. The faster they built up the road, the more fuel they would have, not only to continue building up the road and base fortifications, but also to dedicate their time to the setting of some very macho booby traps along the axis of retreat. Simply put, the more time they could conquer, the faster the base could become something to do some serious delaying of its own, the faster they could evacuate if things went awry, and the better their chances of dealing damage to the enemy Suit if it made the foolish mistake of using the road.

The decision was all too clear for him.

“Our combat personnel are to persist in delaying action until the Unmil is dead, or until they are dead, or until it loses interest in them and abandons their theater. Should it leave, they are to remote-detonate their bots, group into survival teams and move into the mountain range. They are to survive there in comm. blackout until the sixth day of the following month. Whoever is still alive must then open comms so we can get a fix on their positions and evacuate them by air.”

“By air?!” The major blurted out angrily, “There’ll be no Lograin air base by that time, only drones could come in so deep, and they cannot evacuate a brown squirrel!”

“But they can make supply drops, Dennis. If that’s the only option, then it can’t be helped. The alternative is that the Unmil will get here while we are still weak, smash its way through and catch Lograin with its pants down.”

“And what makes the colonel think it won’t smash its way through even when we are better fortified.” A younger major asked.

The colonel sighed.

“If we begin to make such pessimistic suppositions, we might as well decide to surrender our families to something that might not even know what mercy is. This enemy is powerful and relentless, and as a result we are being forced to make some very difficult decisions, but there is no living thing immune to death, and this one is certainly no exception. We will face it, and it will tire. And then we will kill it or we will die trying.”

“If this command dies, it may prove impossible to resurrect ROWAC in the near future.” His lieutenant-colonel coldly warned.

“True, but if we fail to halt its progress and instead escape this theater, we won’t have the window of opportunity to manufacture a house-cleaning bot, never mind a force of combat drones. We’ll have to take the risk.”

“Be that as it may, if it becomes clear to me that it’s prowess is beyond all our measures, I’ll be pulling select men from battle whether you need them or not.” His right-arm man informed him.

The colonel sighed once more.

Lieutenant-colonel Dale Arakaki was too hard-headed to warrant an argument with him. The blue-eyed officer possessed the almond-shaped eyes of his Japanese ancestors, and they had narrowed to slits as he spoke. Like most transgens, Arakaki frowned on naturals like the colonel. Toramaki felt like explaining to his subordinate that he was still paying the debts for his three offspring’s transgenetic procedures, that he had opted to ensure that his children be spared the suffering that he had endured over his youth, and that he still had to deal with every day. Colonel Toramaki had progressed within ROWAC to a position that many envied, and he had done so despite being at an enormous disadvantage in regard to his peers. It was his sharp mind that had made up for that, but he still had to deal with men like Arakaki, who failed to understand why their senior would refuse to subject himself to the same treatments as his children.

“Feel free to do what you like, Dale, in full knowledge of the fact that if I were to survive such an event, you would later find yourself the subject of a court-martial.”

The lieutenant-colonel gave him a stiff nod, apparently unconcerned by such an eventuality.

“Pass the orders on.” He ordered the comms officer.

*****

As his subordinates reluctantly turned to their tasks, the colonel set off on his own, exiting the campaign tent towards its windy exterior. Moments later the old major quietly joined him. Of all his staff members, Dennis Haven was the one he liked the most. Which was no wonder, seeing as he was the only subordinate present by Toramaki’s personal request.

The old grunt had never thanked him for that, but Tora had never for a moment expected him to.

The men stood in the wind and observed their surroundings. The trenches were barely visible beyond the tall trees. Their canopies were being harassed by the rising winds, branches creaking and groaning noisily, striking each other occasionally to make dull wooden sounds.

“That thing is probably only going to stop when it wants to. You know that, right?” The major mused quietly.

“My greatest wonder is about its armor ...” the colonel remarked, dodging the question, “The missiles we’re firing at it carry Octogen two-stage shaped charges, with copper-bonded tungsten powder cones. This is our state-of-the-art, and yet even multiple hits are entirely ineffective. What are your thoughts on that?”

“Has some kind of non-explosive reactive armor ...” the major mused, “Something that sets the charges off prematurely or deflects the forged carrots so they won’t penetrate. You should be asking someone from MEWAC or the cavalry units, though, not me.”

“But I’m asking you ...”

“Then my answer will be the simple one. If a small bomb doesn’t do the trick, hit it with a bigger bomb!” He rasped.

“Bigger bombs are less mobile, slower and more cumbersome. There are no warheads in existence that –”

“Yes there are! The air force has no lack of big bombs in their inventory!”

“But no missile that can pack that punch. The bombs are slow to fall and quick to be intercepted. The missiles are faster and have been getting through, but they’re cherry-bombs compared to the free-fallers.”

The major turned on him with a scowl.

“Why are you talking to me about this? You know there’s a force right here with whole truckloads of explosives, a force that makes a point of improvising the charges in size and type for the mission at hand. Talk to EWAC! They’re mine-layers as well, and no mine needs to fly about to get its job done. Hell, they even have the equipment to dig as many massive holes as they need to – why are you smiling?”

The colonel beamed at him, amused at the major’s angry and puzzled expression. This was why he had requested Haven for his staff officer. The grunt was just the man to bounce problems and potential solutions off of, and on occasion he even managed to come up with one of his own. The reason for that was very simple. The major was old, tired and nearing retirement, and knew he would never be promoted beyond his current post, nor did he have any fear of speaking his mind. Of course, as long as Tora had known him, the old major had never possessed such a fear in the first place.

Which was why he was still a major at the ripe old age of sixty three.

“A mega-mine, heh? That’s your solution?” The colonel asked, smirking.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?! If that thing comes close enough to a giant remote-detonated mine, it won’t matter what magic it’s got up its skirt! The acceleration alone will kill the driver inside, even if the Suit doesn’t have a scratch on it after.”

“That is, assuming there’s a biological entity inside.” The colonel observed thoughtfully.

“If you don’t risk it, you’ll never get the brandy!” The major retorted.

“We need to find ourselves some combat engineers ...” Tora decided, and the pair set off to the north-east, where some could certainly be found.

*****

“Sergeant-cadet Templeton reporting, sir.” The youth declared.

The filthy cadet had an injured wing. No, more like a badly injured shoulder, his arm therefore having been confined to a sling. Nevertheless the soldier stood rigidly at attention, silently awaiting recognition by ROWAC’s commander after having arrived on base as one of the occupants of a single rover. Tora raised his weary head from the map he had been studying.

“No need to stand at attention, cadet, just take a stroll to medical bay and see to your injuries. You’ll have time to do that; there won’t be an evac to Lograin for the following two hours –”

“Sir, I have an urgent matter I must first discuss with you. May I?”

The colonel squeezed his lips together in irritation. The tent’s window flaps had been lowered to prevent the sunlight from reflecting off the display panel’s surface, and he and a couple of captains from EWAC had been studying a map of the outlying area, discussing what to do about their uninvited guest’s eventual arrival. The captains were young but sharp as daggers, and they had shown to be possessed of a practical intelligence he greatly appreciated.

And now this.

“You’ll want to take quick run to medical bay, because the only way we’re going to talk is if those bandages are fresh and clean. Understood?”

The youth stood there for a long moment, and the colonel began to suspect that he was about to object. Then the cadet gave his senior a stiff nod and made an abrupt about-face, exiting the tent briskly. The colonel paused for a moment, wondering if there was something wrong with the boy. Pressed for time, however, he soon returned to his duties.

The meeting lasted the better part of an hour, and the wind had in the meantime picked up and begun to ruffle the campaign tent as well as those inside. He was relieved when an EWAC sergeant finally informed them that the fortified bunker was complete and ready to receive ROWAC Command. The colonel had to wonder how long it would be in use, but he knew at least that those quarters would not be falling prey to the coming tempest.

As the command section reached the site, Tora found the ground surrounding the bunker to still be marred by innumerous footpad-prints from the Suits that had built it. The shelter was a low-set construction cut into ground that was bracketed by tall pines, and capped with a central mound meant to provide protection against direct artillery hits. An array of camouflage nets lay on that squat artificial hill, although a moment’s look at its soiled surroundings made clear that they formed what was essentially a bull’s-eye. One of the EWAC captains quickly put his concern to rest.