The intelligence that lay behind those windows into the soul looked her over as if effortlessly unpeeling her layers of identity, mentally stripping who she was bare. It was not a sexual undressing. She knew that all at once he calculated her presence, motives, the way she was dressed, and the events that had all taken place in both recent times as well as previous encounters with one another; putting them in order and deriving facts and data from them all without any input from her. She found herself blushing and looking away, but the ice had melted.
“No. I cannot remember anything that happened after leaving the canyon with you in the pilot’s compartment with me actually. I’ve tried… a little to remember.” His voice trailed off for a moment before picking back up again, “I know Starkindler was destroyed. I also know that is why I’ve not been able to speak with Aurora aside from one of her shells. I have been avoiding thinking about her, the fight, and even Starkindler. It has been childish in a way, but I have avoided finding out.”
She stood up quickly, nearly falling over in her haste and embarrassment that she misread the situation and had only served to hurt him again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring something up that would upset you. Excuse me.” She turned to run away when his hand shot out, catching her wrist, the strength of his grip stopped her. The grip was solid, she could not have moved unless he let her, but he was not hurting her either. He pulled gently, guiding her back to where she was sitting.
“Now or later does not mean anything in the end. Would you tell me why we are alive?” He was still sitting in the same position he maintained for hours, forcing him to look up at her. She should have felt taller than him, bigger than him, but she did not get the impression of her looking down on him, instead it felt as if her standing while he remained sitting allowed them to be equal. It unnerved her.
Strength radiated from him, it was almost suffocating. She realized he had not been ignoring her. He had yet again put her comfort and needs first, knowing full well how disconcerting his piercing gaze was for others to deal with, and so he remained motionless for days in order that she might accompany him and become used to him. Understanding blossomed as all at once as she recognized that he was lonely and asking for her company the only way he knew how. His refusal to look her in the eyes until now had been the tacit and misunderstood agreement that offered her the freedom she had hitherto enjoyed. Now, she did not want to meet his eyes again, as he anticipated from the beginning, afraid that they would see right through her.
For his part, Mikkhael casually pulled his hand away from her wrist while she was distracted. He waited patiently as she calmed herself, letting her take a few small breaths before speaking again. His voice was still raspy, unused to being used much and still raw from the tube that until recently had been down his throat, but his voice grew stronger every day. “I believe you were about to tell me a story.”
She nodded gratefully, excitement taking over that she could finally do something useful for him. “Since you can remember leaving the canyon with me, I will start with what happened when we landed on the surface after you used Starkindler to fly us out. When you arrived, Starkindler was so damaged it was amazing it could even move. So the plan was to jump out of the canyon and land on the plain, and then attempt to break out of the encirclement with Ulric and the other pilots following behind you. As soon as we cleared ground level though, it was clear the Special-Forces had regrouped in preparation to finish the job they started. They were waiting for us; and they hit us hard.
“The two damaged Mech’s were both destroyed outright, there wasn’t even enough time for them to eject, they took the full brunt of the attack and that was the only reason we lived.” She stopped talking for a minute, collecting herself. A few tears ran down her face but she had already concluded most of her mourning. The guilt from her mistakes that day would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“You and Ulric returned fire, but there were just too many of them, we never stood a chance. Starkindler was next. God, we were hit so many times it was awful. After one big impact, I was thrown into the wall, knocking me unconscious. When I woke up, Starkindler was lying on the ground, unmoving. The cockpit had so many holes in it you could see anywhere you wanted to, it was a miracle we hadn’t been hit. The legs and arms were shot to pieces; the rest of the torso unit was pockmarked with hundreds of holes in it. There was no oxygen at all in the cabin; instead it was filled by smoke and dust. The restraints holding you remained intact, and you just lay there, unconscious from the steady concussions of the incoming fire.
“When I looked up, I saw a Slayer standing over us; both of its main weapons were pointed straight at the reactor, ready to finish us off. The weapons were in the middle of charging, it was getting ready to fire the last shots that would destroy the reactor, terminating itself and everyone in range. I am not sure why, but I laughed when I saw how scared they were of you, laying there in a destroyed Mech, unconscious, that they would still commit suicide just to make sure they took you with them.
“A bright flash occurred and I remember being confused as to why I was still able to see after I was dead. Then the light faded, replaced by the tinking sound of metal falling on metal. When my vision cleared, the Slayer was gone; the little pieces of it that were all that remained were raining down on us. The sound of it blowing up deafened me I guess, because I can only remember visual cues after that. I looked around to see what destroyed the Slayer and saw the second most beautiful thing in my life, a line of Panzer Eight’s from the German PPFF were firing volleys into the exposed rear of the assembled HellCats’s and other Mech armor surrounding us. Behind them were dozens of WinterSong Lancers holding off the PDF Marine reinforcements. Captured Chimeras filled with heavy infantry and equipment from the Free Russian movement landed around us, gathering us and as many pieces of Starkindler into their holds as quickly as they could. Ulric was also saved by the Lazarus faction, taken away in one of their Dragonwagons. And off in the distance, nearly every single one of the StormCrow Mech’s held the line with the help of the Lazarus Factions while the other groups made their retreat.
She said, “I later learned that my father called in every favor he could to get all of their help, spending the time you were keeping the PDF occupied to organize our rescue. While you whittled down their numbers, he organized the largest combined Rebel operation in years. In the end, the PDF ended up being completely routed, forced to flee for their lives. The Free Russian movement kept the pieces of Starkindler they captured of course, but otherwise they handed us over without much fuss. They did not expect us to live long anyways due to all of the radiation poisoning we endured, so they didn’t feel that we were of any value to them. They finished rescuing us just in the nick of time, but if you hadn’t fought so hard, if you hadn’t taken out so many of the PDF by yourself, than they wouldn’t have gone to help and matters would have turned out differently.”
She forced herself to stop speaking, realizing too late that she had been speed talking. She had been holding that story in for a long time now, and the relief at getting to tell him was like a weight lifting off of her. “There’s more that’s happened while you were hurt and unconscious by the way.”
He was looking just over her shoulder, past her, staring blankly out through the viewing glass, eyes mostly closed. She knew that he was imagining events as she described them. His eyelids fluttered as he concentrated while working out the details.
“What happened next?” He asked.
Grateful for his invitation to continue, she went on to tell him how after everything settled down, informants in the PDF hierarchy found out that General Akari pulled two veteran Marine divisions and a special-forces division off the front lines of the Hellas Province to replenish his forces lost during previous battles. And that after that fateful battle when the Hellas garrisons lost all of those forces, their depleted garrisons guarding against the long restive rebel population underground and in the Valles Marineris had been overrun and
defeated in many places. The Islamic fronts were running rampant in a wide number of domed cities, creating an insurgency that the PDF Mech armor were incapable of fighting against. The outer settlements where resource collection still occurred were igniting one after the other, being overrun one at time. Insurgents in the outer settlements were destroying anything important in the way that only those born into a world without opportunity and living a life without hope can.
In response, the Hellas government was forced to deploy their militias to battle against the Islamists directly in the suburbs; their withdrawal from supporting the outer garrisons was the last blow the WinterSong had been waiting for, attacking when the Mars Industries puppet government was at its weakest. They were the strongest Rebellion movement outside of Arcadia, if not the strongest. The Reckoning began with them, comprised of poor immigrants from almost every Earth nationality but especially Chinese descendants; they were brought to Mars by the super-rich European and North American corporation’s hell bent on raping Mars of its ripe mineral wealth for maximum profit. Exploited, enslaved, and abused for years, their anger knew no bounds.
Forced to work together without any commonality throughout their vast numbers, they first cobbled together a form of Pidgin English and Chinese. Once they began working with one another, the facets of a never before seen hybrid society came into existence, deep underneath the surface out of sight of the Mars Industries government. They were the ones who built the first underground cities, they were the ones who birthed the first children away from the oppressive regime above them, and they were the ones who built the first Mech armor and fought the first battles in their attempt to halt the abuses against them.
Their resistance centered around the Valles Marineris, and was so close to the Capitol Hellas, that their numbers were continuously replenished by sympathizers and other abused peoples. The majority of the PDF facing off against them spent their careers manning garrisons in a concentric ring around the Valles Marineris and Hellas regions, never leaving their impregnable domed fortress cities. The status quo had been more or less maintained for nearly five years now. With the loss of two fully experienced divisions and two others that were chewed up in the giant battle, as well as their militia reinforcements being sent elsewhere, the garrisons were undermanned and vulnerable, unable to support each other or counterattack. The WintersSong faction seized the advantage for what it was, launching a fresh wave of assaults with their newest models of upgraded Mech armor to deadly effect.
Rumors had it that the PDF were being overwhelmed to the point they were hiring mercenary units from Earth. Forced conscriptions were taking place in the domes that were still loyal; anyone that was suspected of being a sympathizer was jailed or often killed outright. Beatings could occur in the cities at any time or place as the police were mostly going without uniforms now, ruling through the terror that anyone could be an informant, or working directly for the government.
Eve stopped, looking at Mikkhael’s face for the first time in she did not know how long. She realized she had been talking for quite some time without any input at all from him. He had not moved, only his closed eyelids continuing to flutter as he absorbed the details to memory were all that showed her words were even reaching him.
He opened his eyes after she did not continue, meeting her eyes just for an instant before turning to look outside into the valley. “Thank you.”
It was all she would get from him. It was enough this time.
CHAPTER FOUR – BECOME
“Better yourself every day. Hone and develop your craft. Make it a part of you, become its master. Beat yourself against the anvil-driving out all impurities. Struggle. Fight for what you believe in, fight to secure your tomorrow. Do not wait to act.” – Commander Ultor
The days passed quickly and quietly now that a new pattern established itself. Mikkhael spent a few hours performing his physical therapy routines during the mornings, although time was completely irrelevant to him, and then would shuffle out to the observation point. He avoided any public areas; the mess hall was the worst. As soon as he entered conversation stopped, all eyes were on him. It was as if he had attained a kind of spiritual status among the common ranks of the rebel’s. Even with Starkindler destroyed, what he had done while piloting it had been unimaginable to them. A few Rebels were more awkward then others, treating him almost like a deity. He denied them harshly, but it did not matter, they had made up their minds. He could not persuade them to reason, so he removed himself from their foolishness, retreating to the sanctuary of the observation point, having his meals delivered to him instead.
After giving him some time alone, Eve would join him. Her father, the base leader removed her from duty the second she was returned to him and would not let her get near a Mech armor since. She would sit with Mikkhael for a bit before telling him about what was going on in the outside world and around the base. Sometimes they would go hours at a time in silence, others, he would start a topic and just listen to her talk. He spoke little; she was perfectly content to fill the void.
As they silently looked out through the observation point, marveling at the alien view where the terrain mimicked formations found on Earth but on such a completely different scale as to make any kind of comparison difficult, one of Mar’s infamous dust storms began kicking up. Mikkhael had spent nearly nine months on the planet now, but had never gotten to see one.
They watched in complete rapture as clouds of dust danced for them, collecting slowly, fighting for cohesion and solid form. The clouds of dust faded and returned, ethereal forms skirting across the barren landscape, growing stronger with each new breath of the wind until they rode the eddy of currents, forming into waves that began to sweep across the craggy plain that extended for hundreds of miles away from the Tharsis Bulge, too afraid to waste their energy smashing into the continent sized mesa. Each cycle of the waves grew wider and taller as the wind speed continued to pick up, whipping the waves of dust into crazed giants that marched around, crashing with violent roars as they collided into one another, kicking up city sized mountains of even more dust that choked the sky so thick that it began to block out the sun. The waves of dust clashed again and again; forming into titan sized vertical columns like red geysers shooting into the air until the dust spread out, falling slowly to the ground like blood red snowflakes, adding yet more energy and matter to the growing mayhem.
They continued to watch day-after-day, enraptured at the fury and power of nature that laughed at humankinds measly attempts to thwart it. For days, the force of the storm continued to increase, wrapping the whole of the world in Mother Nature’s embrace. Under the planet-wide onslaught of wind that could pick up Mech armor and offhandedly toss them against a mountain on whim or impulse or whatever alien forces controlled the storms, rebels and government forces alike were imprisoned in their various shelters until the winds died down. For anyone to venture outside the safety of their shelters until then was suicidal folly.
On their fourth day of watching, the pair had been at the observation point for an untold amount of time when the storm blocked the sun entirely. With the dust choking out the suns light, a murky darkness settled heavily over the planet. The wind continued to increase in speed, channeling between far away mountains with such force that the planet itself seemed to be emitting a haunting cry as if a mythical siren was calling to anyone naive enough to answer. Olympus vibrated underneath, and all around them, as the wind crashed into the immutable hulk that comprised the Tharsis Bulge.
With nothing to see and only the haunting cries of the planet, an awkward silence settled over the duo as there was no longer any reason for them to be out at the observation point.
Eve took the impasse to surprise him. “Thorsten’s been trying to rebuild Starkindler.”
Mikkhael for his part was caught entirely off guard, unprepared for the surge of feelings and memories that accompanied the mentioning of Thorsten and Starkindler. The look of surprise on his face said i
t all as he waved a hand at her to wait and let him adjust before continuing. He was glad that he was already sitting down; the weight that settled over him at that moment may have knocked him over. Catching his breath and steeling himself mentally, he gestured for her to continue.
“Actually, most of the base puts in time when they can. They’ve been laying out all of the pieces we have been able to gather, figuring out where they go, and then rebuilding them, while other teams work on replicating and replacing what pieces they can. Every time I go down to the hangar they are in he has this crazy expression on his face, as if it’s permanent. It’s hard to describe, something that is half-grin and half-bewilderment because he cannot figure something out, but when he finally does crack the puzzle, it’ll be the greatest treasure ever found. He wanted me to tell you he’s working with one of Aurora’s shells and she’s not giving him access to any of the top-secret materials. For now he’s just trying to build out the basic internals and what other pieces he can. You should hear him mutter to himself while he works, he sounds like he’s finally made the plunge headfirst. The way you and your friends built that machine, it’s a lot different than anything anyone’s ever seen and he is trying all kinds of new manufacturing ideas based upon the last few months of servicing it.”
A passerby would have missed the subtle signs that Mikkhael was forcefully containing himself. It was clear to him that in this particular instance she was goading him for a reaction; probably searching for something that would emotionally involve him again in the world around him, or at the least the process of working on his Mech armor or with the other Rebels. Before leaving for Mars, he had instructed Aurora that any weapon or technology transfers to the rebels was to be severely restricted to things they would probably work out on their own in the short term.
Nemesis (The MechaVerse Trilogy Book 2) Page 5