Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) (37 page)

Snapping and ripping sounds suddenly made themselves heard, and he bounded blindly towards its source, managing only to plunge into the massive hole left by a landmine’s detonation. Collapsing to his kneepads, he twisted into a roll and smacked his backplate against the sopping ground at its center. The force of the impact caused him to pendulate in his HINT for the briefest of moments, making it clear that he had probably not been too far from double-slamming against the cavity’s rear wall.

More snaps and suddenly Toni was roaring as he rolled onto his four appendages, and he coursed his way out of the fosse in bounding strides, leaving a twisted and torn double-whammy behind to soak in the muddy water. Pulling another charge from its webbing, he bounded over the terrain, falling twice as his body slowly became accustomed to maneuvering and compromising with the new HINT. A louder snap, followed by a crimson fireball that illuminated the haze directly ahead, made it clear to him what was happening. Passing the double-whammy from left hand to right, he accelerated to maximum velocity until a silhouette became plain to his eyes.

It was too large to be a Hammerhead.

It turned suddenly towards him but it was too late; Toni had already pulled the red armbands out of his charge the moment after the switch from one hand to the other, and he slammed the device high upon the upper thorax of his enemy as frame collided against frame. The detonation was catastrophic, and Digger Three’s right appendage blew apart as the force of the explosion separated both Suits as quickly as they had united.

Toni screamed in pain, the HINT’s violent flurry as it emulated its synchronized appendage’s final moment causing old wounds to tear. He double-slammed against the cavity’s interior and then the Suit collided against the ground, the interface crane’s pendulation wreaking havoc in his inner ears as he tried to stop his roll and recover. Finally sliding to a stop, he peered at his right appendage, finding only a stump at his elbow, loose PAMs diverging from his spaulder like bananas and loosely surrounding their endoskeletal gas conveyors. It looked like Mr. Fandango’s Class of Fucking Robot Anatomy.

“STERBEN!” He suddenly heard screamed from a very loud loudspeaker, and he rolled instinctively as brilliant lines of white light flashed all around him.

Finding his feet, he fixed his eyes on the source of the light-show and pulled another double-whammy from his webbing. He attempted to pull the red-band, discovering that he had no hand to pull it with. His next instinct, pulling the band with his teeth, failed due to the Hammerhead not possessing such an innovation. All that remained as the laser pulses closed in on him was to place the band between his kneepads and give the packs a stiff pull. He then lobbed the grenade towards his adversary and threw himself into the dirt. The detonation caused Toni’s Suit to slide, and he dug his stump into the ground to anchor him firmly there.

Wobbling slightly, Toni stood once more and rushed forwards in desperate search of his adversary, finding the Unmil on its knees as it attempted to re-shoulder its rifle. Forgetting the grenades, he rushed his adversary and launched a vicious kick towards its helm, only to discover that it somehow no longer had one. It was with his trailing appendage that he finally struck the Suit, causing him to lose balance and plough into the ground on the other side and onto his right spaulder.

Abandoning long-range combat, he wrapped his remaining appendages around his adversary’s lower body and tried to kick the rifle from its gripping gauntlets. Several failed attempts later Toni realized that its musculature and structure were way beyond those of any Hammerhead, and it inexorably turned to face him as if wrestling with a child. The monster finally released its weapon and grabbed a firm hold of him by his webbing, and Toni began to feel himself being lifted off the ground.

Oh well, it’s sayonara time, isn’t it, Chum?
The stranger quipped delightedly, and Toni was forced to agree with him.

Thinking fleetingly of his family, he pulled both red and blue bands from his remaining charges with his remaining gauntlet, and then pushed his webbing as far away from his body as possible and towards his killer’s arms.

The detonation knocked him out cold.

Above Base Fido, Nature’s Day, 21
st
of June, 2771

Toni returned to consciousness inside the personnel cabin of an air force copter. It was probably noisy out there, since all those without earmuffs were presently pressing their hands against their ears. One of the earmuffed soldiers noticed that he was conscious and said something to the high-ranking officer beside him. The old officer, whose appearance suggested that he had just survived hell, leaned over him and spoke a few words.

Toni wasn’t too good at reading lips, but the man seemed to be trying to console him. Toni asked whether the Unmil was dead, and was surprised to discover that he couldn’t hear his own voice. The sad expression on the officer alarmed him. Was he sad because it was not? Or was it because he hadn’t understood the question?

He tried to move but found that he couldn’t, and he began to panic, wondering whether he was strapped down or whether he no longer had use of his body. He closed his eyes, preferring the darkness, and felt hot tears roll down his face.

He returned to the warm void where his savage self roamed, and remained there for a while.

When he awoke again, Toni lay in a cot in a medical bay quite different from the one he had known at Base Fido.

The compartment possessed a surface area larger than Fido’s medical bay, and hospital cots like his lined both sides of its considerable length. To his right was a wide entrance, its double-doors kept open as nurses and orderlies passed busily through to attend the injured. The patients numbered at least thirty.

He suddenly realized that he was able to hear again, and he lay there for a while, weeping quietly and thanking the gods for their mercy. He then closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of his surroundings. His ears felt like they had been stuffed with cotton, but still he could hear nearby patients in conversation, the howling wind outside and even the occasional groan of pain.

Discovering also that he had the use of his left arm, he touched his hand to an ear and felt through its folds, finding nothing jammed in there. His ears were back, but they weren’t in good shape and possibly never would be. His sadness was greatly lessened when he found he could also move his legs. Slowly he flexed them, and felt more than heard his knees snap painfully. It was an acceptable pain, one that told him he might one day run again.

Something struck Toni’s head and he opened his eyes, peering about. Finding a crinkled piece of paper on his bandaged chest, he searched for its thrower, and found a patient of his age smiling in the cot beside him.

“Got your ears pretty hammered, huh?” The boy asked cheerily.

Toni had no difficulty in understanding the question, and indeed the other patients had winced at the loudness with which the boy had spoken.

The soldier turned out to be an aircraft maintenance assistant by the name of Harry Osaka. Four days previously, as they had been prepping a drone with missiles for an attack sortie, someone had made the mistake of maneuvering the forklift a little too aggressively and had collided against the craft, rupturing its fuel tank. The end result had been an escalating chain of fires, deflagrations and detonations that had left two base personnel dead and more than twenty injured, Harry among them.

When asked if he knew anything about what had happened at Base Fido, Harry appeared puzzled, and the base-rat was forced to grapevine with the remaining patients before presenting Toni with the sole tidbit of information regarding ROWAC’s and EWAC’s delaying activities; ROWAC’s commander was dead and a score more injured, both unit commands having been effectively put out of action by the employment of a single nuke. The information was known only due to the fact that the injured had been evacced to Lograin, all other details being classified. Swallowing his sadness for the old natural, Toni thanked the runway jockey for the intel.

They chatted for a while longer, Toni having to strain his ears and Harry his voice until an irritated nurse finally approached, putting an end to the loud conversation. They were duly informed that night had begun, and the curtains were closed and daylights extinguished as if to underline the point.

Toni was relieved. The effort of keeping his head turned to his left side had left him with a crick that took a while to subside, and his brow had beaded with sweat at the effort it had required to listen to the chatty mechanic’s assistant. He closed his eyes once more and found blissful darkness to match the silence. A nurse arrived shortly afterwards with a syringe and then it was his pain that was numbed, and he drifted off to sleep with titans colliding in his groggy mind.

An eternity later morning came, and he smeared the sleep off his face with his only working hand. A nurse arrived shortly afterwards to raise his cot and place a tray of breakfast on his lap. Thankfully finding Harry still deep in blissful sleep, he ate his eggs and toast peacefully, caring not in the least for the lack of salt or butter. Someone had finally deigned to update the wall-clock, and he found that it was a quarter past eight in the morning.

Shortly after nine o’clock a senior nurse arrived, gave him a nervous smile and began to search through a transparent plastic bag beside his bed that contained a tattered and bloody uniform. Finding a nametag there, she carefully cleaned and read it, before apologizing to him and hurriedly exiting the room.

Something struck the back of his head and a crumpled piece of paper ricocheted towards an intermediate nurses’ station, earning them a rebuking glare from the squat nurse who was nesting there. Toni turned to find a very alert Harry leaning towards him. Suppressing his despair at the prospect of another neck-ache, he smiled and leaned towards his neighbor, only to have the boy slip him a folded piece of paper. Toni read the message there and felt his heart begin to gather speed.

THAT IS THE SECOND TIME THEY’VE GONE THROUGH YOUR STUFF! THEY KEEP CHECKING OUT YOUR NAMETAG, AND THEY’VE BEEN WHISPERING LIKE THERE’S TROUBLE. WHAT’S GOING ON?

Not trusting himself to whisper low enough, he requested his mate’s marker and scribbled a quick answer.

PROBABLY
IN
TROUBLE! GOT A LITTLE POISON PILL IN MY UNIT WHO WANT’S TO DO ME IN. CAN YOU WALK?

Harry nodded and, following Toni’s gestures, he limped towards the foot of the cadet’s bed and discreetly removed the chart that had been hung there. As he handed it towards him, Toni mouthed a very genuine word of thanks and then carefully inspected the untidily scrawled document.

An EWAC soldier by the name of Frederic Granger was apparently into his fourth day of internment after having suffered traumatic injuries during combat. The soldier’s right arm had suffered significant tissue damage, and had already been subjected to corrective surgery. Aside from that, the patient had suffered penetrating wounds from more than two hundred incandescent spalls into his upper and lower body (presumably originating from the interior surface of a Suit’s armor), which had had to be removed before stem-cell netting could be applied over his burned skin. The patient had suffered a multitude of hematomas due to his Suit’s straps, a severe concussion that by itself would require at least three weeks of convalescence, and damage of unknown seriousness to his hearing.

The patient happened to possess a deep incisive wound to the right side of his face, although it appeared to have healed well enough to not require further treatment.

The injuries were very familiar, as was their origin, but the name was not. And then Toni remembered what he had done before going into combat against the Bakemono; he had garbed the previous occupant’s uniform over his own to protect his body from the interface’s punishing straps. Carefully he sat up and removed the plastic bag with his belongings from beneath the nightstand. Searching its interior, he found a torn and blood-spattered dolmen and inspected its nametag. It read Frederic Granger A+.

Toni thanked the gods that the soldier’s blood-type was the same as his. Searching beneath its tortured fabric, he found his own dolmen and removed the Velcro nametag with his true identity as discreetly as possible. The gesture did not pass unnoticed by Harry. He hurriedly scribbled message onto another piece of paper.

IS YOUR NAME TONI MIURA?

Toni’s world began to tilt to the side. He had been too cautious about it for Harry to have been able to read his nametag, which was now carefully hidden away in his hospital-supplied underclothes. He took the paper from the soldier and wrote a quick answer.

YES. HOW DID YOU KNOW?

MP SHOWED UP HERE WHILE YOU WERE KO, LOOKING FOR TONI MIURA.

MP?

MILITARY POLICE. THEY WERE LOOKING FOR YOU!

And that was that for him. There was only one thing left to do, and that was to find Ian and kill him before he lost his chance for good. His mind began to work frantically through all the options at his disposal. A nurse’s arrival interrupted his thoughts.

“Corporal, could I have a quick word?”

“Y-yes, nurse.” He answered.

“We’re having problems registering your name into our database, apparently there’s another Frederic Granger in our patient list, he had a work-related stroke a few days ago. Could you please confirm your name?” She kindly asked him.

Thinking hard, Toni threw himself at the only door he could find.

“My name is Raymond Rosa, I’m a Sergeant-cadet from LOGIS, MEWAC. I was using Granger’s uniform for lack of my own, I’m sorry ...” he lied.

She brightened up immediately and thanked him for his cooperation before taking her leave.

Belatedly he turned towards Harry to find him shaking his head disapprovingly. The boy took up the piece of paper again and scribbled furiously.

HOW MANY NAMES DO YOU HAVE, ANYWAY?? BUT THAT PROBABLY WON’T WORK. THEIR DATABASE IS ON THE GMN. IF THE GUY WHO’S NAME YOU GAVE IS SOMEWHERE ELSE OR MISSING, THEY’LL KNOW!

Missing!

Ray was dead, but he was probably listed as missing. He had just bought himself minutes, not days! Hurriedly he thanked a bewildered Harry and carefully stood on his feet, finding that even his soles hurt. Grimacing with the pain, he checked to make sure that no one was looking, and then set off like any other patient with a need to pee would; with great care and greater urgency.

Exiting the compartment, he found himself in a wide corridor, and he turned towards what appeared to be the building’s exit, a well-illuminated atrium with a reception to one side and four men on the other, MP written into their armbands in capital letters. Toni about-faced and followed the corridor in the opposite direction, coming across a lavatory populated with a pair of peeing patients. He occupied a stall as they did their business, thinking hard as he did so. His mind, however, remained sluggish, and he realized that he didn’t even know whether he had the strength for what needed to be done.

The pair finally left the room, and he nervously exited the stall. Acting on a whim, he quickly locked the lavatory from the inside and proceeded to open the window. After several failed attempts it finally opened with a clang, and the compartment’s interior was suddenly invaded by a whirlwind.

Only a fool would venture outside with the wind so strong and a body so frail, but a fool was he, and he sat his rump on the sill and pivoted his legs over with great effort. His hospital skirt suddenly blew into his face, his hidden nametag magically slipping out of his breeches and over his head to strike against the lavatory door.

Moving feet were clearly visible beneath it.

Cursing loudly, barely managing to hear the words due to the wind, Toni jumped out and fell the half-meter that separated him from the medical bay’s grassy grounds. Unable to keep his footing, he purposely fell on his left shoulder to lessen the damage. The pain, however, was terribly severe, and he knew that somewhere he was bleeding again.

Can’t you do anything without bleeding?

He remembered Hannah and wondered if she had survived the engagement, the real possibility that she might be dead agonizing him more than the pain. Suppressing the thought, he carefully stood and stepped into the buffeting wind, peering at his surroundings and trying to situate himself from what he remembered when he had last been there.

LOGIS had spent most of its time in the perimeter of Lograin’s airfield, and so he searched for that first. To his left were a few buildings, some of them derelict, and then a fence and the shifting forest beyond. He turned to his right, shuffling towards a group of taller buildings that blocked his view from whatever lay beyond. Lowering his center-of-mass as if he were driving an armored Suit, he leaned into the wind and moved towards the buildings, desperately hoping that he wasn’t being watched.

Feeling the chilly wind suck all the heat from his body, Toni began to regret not having remained in the warmth of his hospital bed. He might even have gladly accepted being arrested just to stay warm and safe.

Then he imagined the firing squad and the little smile on Ian’s face as he watched, and knew the cold was preferable to that. Not because of his execution, of course. It was the smile that bothered him, that cruel, un-empathetic, superior smile of his that said everything about what really went on inside the traitor’s mind. He could not bear to see that smile again. Colonel Tora was dead and who in hell knew if the Bakemono was dead or not, but if he was going to face a firing squad, it would be while savoring the memory of sitting on the traitor’s chest, grinning like an idiot while he cut his senior’s pale throat.