Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1)

by Bruno Goncalves

  DESCENT INTO MAYHEM

  Book One of the Capicua Chronicles

  Written by Bruno Goncalves

  © 2014, Author Self-publishing

  alfgon@sapo.pt

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under international laws and treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author.

  Foreword

  Hi there and thanks for buying my book!

  After five years of wrestling with it, I’ve finally published the damn thing. I’m so proud of my little achievement, especially considering the number of unfinished projects that litter my life.

  If you enjoy the book then I hope that you’ll rate and review it on Amazon. I’m in desperate need of dispassionate criticism; perhaps you could help me turn a good story into a great one.

  A special thanks to the following fellow Indie authors:

  - David Rose (@David_Rose1958), a South African author who took the time to give me immense critical feedback, helping me to revise this book into something better than crap;

  - Felix R. Savage (@FelixRSavage), a Tokyo-based author without whom certain passages in my book simply wouldn’t make any sense.

  I´d also like to dedicate “Descent into Mayhem” to my daughter, Laura. She knows a few things about mayhem herself.

  Bruno Goncalves

  March 07th 2015

  PROLOGUE

  Ten kilometers south of the Northern Wetlands Conservation Hub, 14H05, 5th of January 2750

  First-sergeant Devonport suppressed a renewed urge to vomit. He struggled to get his labored breathing under control, dismally aware of the fact that it was only a matter of time before his stomach betrayed him. If there was one thing he knew about motion sickness, it was that the nausea would only settle down once the movement that was causing it had subsided.

  He pushed the unpleasant thought out of his mind and focused on his situation instead. He knelt before the crest of a steep elevation, his surroundings cloaked by the great rains that had been pouring down since the end of the previous month. Near to him a few stunted trees stood, their trunks turned up in a way that suggested the wind blew uphill on its southern face. There was still some strength left in the day’s wind, although it was only a shadow of the katabatic storm that had preceded it. The gusts instilled a slight rocking motion upon the MEHEI as he waited, his helmet playing the falling rain’s static sound endlessly into his ears.

  Well beyond the elevation’s summit someone keyed his radio three times. To Devonport’s ears the sound was barely audible above the background static, but nevertheless he tensed up as he caught the unmistakable squawks. Grimly he steeled himself for what was to come.

  Maybe if I croak they’ll write a footnote about me in some history book, he mused, a tremulous smile spreading across his face. His pretentiously cropped moustache, almost Hitlerian in its design, brushed against the edges of the undersized mouth-piece.

  Devonport’s stomach shifted down into his gut as he rose to a standing position. Shifting his body forward within its interface, his unit advanced in bounding strides and began to ascend the rise, his pace picking up to a slow, lurching jog.

  Pulling from its resting-pylon his sole weapon for the coming fight, he then launched his armored Suit over the crest and was suddenly airborne.

  The new feeling that invaded him had very little to do with nausea.

  He landed heavily with seven tons of hardware tipping perilously forwards, instinctively buckling his appendages and planting a right kneepad to the ground, all the while allowing his left footpad to slide forward to counter an eventual roll. The force of the impact shook his body, the hydraulic interface working overtime to cancel out the vibrations. Gravity conspired with inertia to send him onwards with hardly-diminished speed.

  He began to savor the ferrous taste of his own blood.

  He pounded his way down the tall hill, unable to see the way ahead except for the twenty meter extension before him, backsword held onehanded and high over his pauldron.

  The weapon was improvised, of course, its regular use being restricted to fortification, mobility and counter-mobility work. Which made sense, considering that the MEHEI-3 series were no more than glorified Combat Engineering equips. The thick-bladed implement weighed over two hundred Kilo-mass and was single-edged, with the blade-length remaining rectangular right up to its abrupt end. The hilt allowed for a wide two-handed grip, and more than a fifth of the weapon’s weight rested in its sizable tungsten pommel. The only disruption along the blade’s extension was a robust crow-hook on the weapon’s blunt back at its extremity.

  Devonport was counting on the crow-hook to afford him victory in the fight to come.

  He picked up several frantic squawks over the comm from his advanced observer, entrenched four kilometers to the east on an opposing hill with enough sensors to pick up most enemy activity. Moments later a disembodied male voice began to offer warning in Japanese.

  “Would be sweet if I knew what you were saying, kozo ...” Devonport rasped at the automated voice.

  His view suddenly became obscured by several virtual panels offering him urgent instruction in Kanji writing.

  The sergeant smirked but forewent any witty remarks. If only he’d figured out how to change the language settings, then he wouldn’t be about to die from an overdose of ignorance. The twisted grin returned to his face as the unit’s operating system began to display icons of incoming targets.

  It was all he needed to know he was under missile attack.

  He increased his pace to a bone-rattling sprint and studied the incoming missiles’ icons. The fact that they had been detected at all meant that his unit’s active threat detection system was somehow operating. Which basically made him trackable as well. Devonport had no idea how to deactivate it. He banked instead on the Bloodhounds’ infrared detection system having been disrupted by the rains and turned towards them. The missiles began to strike the surrounding area in quick succession, all except for the last, which homed in on him as if it had suddenly caught his scent.

  “Oh hell ...” He muttered, as the icon that represented the missile streaked suddenly towards him.

  Before he could think of an appropriate reaction, the MEHEI’s CPU took over and fed quick instructions to the unit and its hydraulic interface. The articulated suit that enveloped Devonport’s body suddenly took on a life of its own and lurched forwards into a roll, the encapsulating chassis emulating its movement in almost perfect synchronicity. Warseed, christened as such by Devonport only the day before, rolled over the rough terrain as the missile struck the ground behind him and detonated.

  His body took over, rolling the unit back onto its footpads, and he concluded his descent to the jumbled valley below without suffering further assault. As he reached a collection of stunted trees, it all became too much for him. He vomited into his mouth-piece and then clawed frantically at his face to remove it, Warseed’s upper appendages copying his grasping motions flawlessly.

  As soon as he had stopped heaving, Devonport hastily reined his emotions in and estimated his attackers’ location. He reckoned the nearest enemy unit’s range at a little more than a kilometer away.

  The sergeant crouched into imminent contact posture and began a slow advance, taking advantage of the cover provided by terrain and trees as he tried to pick up the rumble of approaching armor.

  Suddenly, a much nearer engine
began to turn.

  Warseed’s principal power unit roared into life, and Devonport put a kneepad to the ground as the turbine’s whine slowly chafed away at his already depleted nerves. Silently he prayed, hoping that the noise wasn’t as deafening as it sounded from inside the unit.

  Three agonizing minutes later the battery was fully charged and the engine quieted once more. He unfroze his mind and made a quick decision.

  He shut Warseed down and counted down the mandatory minute in the dark interior of its interface cavity, hoping that the shutdown would reset the system to its default specifications and deactivate the trackable threat detection system. He then activated his Suit once more.

  Feeling almost painful relief as he regained stereoscopic vision, the sergeant began to creep forwards once more. Before long he came upon an oddly familiar landscape.

  In his youth, Devonport had been particularly affected by nightmares about labyrinths. The worst parts of those dreams hadn’t centered on the fantastic creatures that sometimes populated their corridors, but instead on the feeling of being hopelessly lost, with every step into the dark maze only taking him further away from safety and familiarity.

  Devonport found himself on the move inside such a labyrinth, its chaotic passages flanked by high clay walls of ferrous red or by masses of dense vegetation. It was a land carved by flash-floods at the beginning of the monthly rains, the blood-red flow leaving behind a land with a topography so convoluted that no clue remained as to what lay beyond each bend. The passages were still flooded and Devonport found himself sticking close to the walls to avoid splashing, managing to paint his unit ochre-red in the process.

  That labyrinth also happened to be populated with its own exotic creatures. But what creatures they were, whether of the artillery kind or of the cavalry kind, and in what numbers, he couldn’t hope to guess. Both carried the Bloodhound anti-armor missile, the first defensively and the last offensively, and so the missile attack offered no clear ID either way. He ignored the growing ball of fear in his stomach and advanced for another kilometer, pausing to listen carefully before every turn. He began to have a nagging suspicion that his adversary had shut down engines and was silently awaiting his approach.

  The Rains began to give up their claim over the sky and for the first time in a long while visibility returned to his world.

  A rapid succession of squawks suddenly interrupted the quiet. Devonport froze at once, holding his breath as his ears sharpened to take in every digitally-scrubbed sound. He found himself inside a particularly wide passage that curved gently to the right and out of sight. The right wall had a slope and formed the beginning of a densely forested island. That island stretched out at least some three hundred meters beyond, with a maximum width he couldn’t guess at from where he was, but it rose to a good twenty meters above the natural passageways at its highest point.

  Four distinct squawks over the comm helped him make up his mind. He began to carefully ascend the island, leaving the flooded passageway below. As he slipped quietly into the trees, no more squawks made themselves heard.

  Progressing on all fours among the foliage, dragging the blade so its crow-hook wouldn’t snag against roots, the sergeant advanced for what felt like two-thirds of the island’s length. His observable universe was restricted to a radius of ten meters of rain-soaked flora, and he consoled himself with the belief that if he were visible to the enemy, he would probably already have been fired upon.

  Two quick squawks pierced the silence and Devonport obediently froze. A few moments later he heard another three squawks, keyed slowly and deliberately. The speed of the squawks confused him, giving the impression of urging caution. As his spotter repeated the signal Devonport slowly began to suspect at what he was trying to say.

  His heart began to thump steadily faster.

  He cautiously raised Warseed onto its footpads and approached the island’s left edge, trying to avoid damaging the vegetation to keep his noise signature down. The island ended in a sheer drop-off that afforded him an ideal, if somewhat exposed, vantage point over his surroundings. From there he was able to see that the passageway he’d abandoned eventually widened and joined an enormous floodplain that divided the valley. He searched for tracks, finding none. Belatedly he realized that he wouldn’t soon be finding any, as the channel was still flooded with stagnant water.

  If his adversary was equipped with main battle tanks, his job of finding them would be even more difficult. The MBTs could move and hide while submerged for quite some time before eventually needing to show themselves. He wondered how deep the waters were and peered cautiously over the sheer drop-off before him.

  His eyes widened in surprise.

  Below him, immobile and immense as they snuggled against the cliff’s face, almost entirely obscured by the flood waters, were two self-propelled artillery pieces. They looked like obese crocodiles as they lay in wait, their tracks and chassis entirely hidden in the red water, only their colossal heads, long slender snouts and the tops of their towed ammunition trailers visible. The only things about them that broke the reptilian look were the elaborate muzzle-brakes at the ends of their barrels. The unit nearest to him, at rest directly below, had its barrel trained on the passageway he had been using minutes ago. Its sibling was guarding against rear attack.

  Silently he prayed his warmest thanks, praising Imano for his divine guidance. Devonport didn’t believe in God, but Imano was a Buddhist and a life-saver, and he deserved a prayer or two. A direct hit from an artillery round would have been enough to make him find out whether God was more than just a good idea.

  Devonport carefully studied the crocodile’s head and realized that it was entirely caked with red mud; it was the upgraded OAP-3 that the boys from Fort Kiba weren’t supposed to have, which meant that if he didn’t destroy them in that moment, the vehicles would be able to make their escape into the water just like any MBT.

  He finally located what he was looking for; a circular hatch on the far side of the oversized turret, almost entirely obscured by a layer of clay. A less knowledgeable soldier might have confused it with the rebated radar dish on the turret’s opposite side, but the sergeant had been privileged to begin his career as an artilleryman.

  Springing into action, Devonport launched his unit over the drop-off and landed with all four appendages upon the OAP’s turret, graying out for a brief moment as the resounding shock from the impact nearly overcame him. Sucking it up, he quickly stood and lodged his backsword’s crow-hook into the crevasse between the hatch and its casing.

  Using the tungsten-rhenium blade as an improvised crow-bar, he then popped the hatch off its turret with remarkably little effort. He had expected no less than that result; the OAP’s hatch simply hadn’t been designed to deal with that much leverage.

  All at once things began to happen.

  As Devonport peered into the gaping hole he had just made, the OAP beneath him jerked into motion. Its supporting OAP simultaneously began to traverse its barrel, the turning turret’s rear biting deeply into the soft cliff wall against which it was nestled.

  The sergeant launched himself towards the supporting OAP, landing gratefully short of his target into the far more yielding water. Planting his footpads on the muddy channel bed, he waded towards his second adversary in frenzied desperation, imagining the first OAP’s barrel already boring into his back. Dipping his helm beneath the traversing main gun of the second OAP, he hugged the weapon platform and chanced a quick glance to his rear. The first artillery piece was nowhere to be seen.

  Clambering onto his new prey, Devonport repeated his previous performance, prying the top hatch off the artillery piece’s still-traversing turret as its barrel began to push into the cliff-face itself. Not wasting another second, the sergeant thrust his entire upper appendage into the turret and began to swat at whatever hid inside.

  It was easy to distinguish man from metal.

  In a brief pair of seconds, Devonport was sure he had killed
or seriously maimed at least two of the five crewmembers who operated the platform. The first, probably the ammunition handler, he crushed against the ammo rack at the turret’s rear, the hollow thump of Warseed’s gauntlet against his flak jacket making it clear the man wouldn’t be doing anything for what remained of his life. The second, probably the commander if seating arrangement was anything to go by, tried to shy away from his searching grip like a puppy from an obsessed toddler. As Devonport closed his gauntlet around the soldier’s torso, he heard the loud pop of a pistol going off, followed by another sound more horrifying than anything he’d heard before.

  It was more a high-pitched bark than it was a scream, but it still signaled the end of a life.

  A moment later the OAP’s main gun fired into the clay wall and the entire cliff came crashing down. Devonport released his victim and rolled into the water before the compacted clay could find and claim him.

  The sergeant pulled himself free of the collapsed cliff-face, finding the artillery piece interred by its own landslide. A rumbling roar behind him caused him to snap about.

  He was just in time to see part of the opposite cliff-face collapse into the water. Still unsure of the first OAP’s location, he decided to break radio silence.

  “Looker, this is Basher. Inform location of first hostile.”

  “You’re looking at it, Basher.”

  “Say again, Looker.”

  “I said you’re looking at it, kozo. Your first hostile fled into deep water without knowing it didn’t have a hatch any more. It must have flooded and kept on going until it hit the opposite wall. Right now your first hostile is as buried as your second is. Not bad for a guy with a can-opener ...”

  The sergeant took a better look at the second landslide, finding that it was located right where the first OAP would have reached if it had kept moving in a straight line.

  “Roger that, Looker. Inform if your post has further threats on its scope, over.”