It was certainly the most beautiful of days. There were almost no clouds in the sky, the few present nonetheless whizzing darkly overhead with unnaturally high speed. His immediate surroundings, however, were a hazy brown from the violence of the landing, and he could see at least one of the jettisoned braking chutes clinging to the trees at the edge of the clearing, threatening to blow away due to the strong wind that was ruffling the forest treetops. The sound, however, was quite unlike anything Kaiser had ever heard on Earth.
The chirping cacophony of birds was terribly intense, as avian species of all kinds swooped through the air in alarm at the intrusion upon their domain. To his great surprise, Kaiser found that the clouds he’d seen before were nothing less than massive pulsating flocks of birds seemingly disturbed by his arrival, and indeed as one such flock strayed closer towards him, his magnified hearing clearly caught the intensifying swoosh of thousands of flapping wings until, veering away, the sound abated to a rumble. He was astonished by the awesome, almost exorbitant, display of life, a vision quite unlike anything he had encountered in person before.
Never again, he thought in wonder. Never again shall I set foot on another spacecraft or planet, this is where I will live and where I will die, Kaiser privately promised himself.
His sense of balance told him that he was still lying on his back. He stood slowly, one careful movement at a time so as to leave the entry capsule undamaged, and his eyes assessed the state of his appendages, focusing especially on the pulsed laser platform gripped between his mechanical hands. A massive titanium carbon nitride-coated thumb flicked its selector to semiauto. Holding the rifle in his right appendage, Kaiser flexed his arms outwards and around in a practiced movement, the feedback to his interior exoskeleton telling him that his freedom of movement was currently unimpeded. Surging forwards, the Suit’s heavy pads stomped loudly over the ramp provided by one of the petals, until moments later much more muffled footfalls could be heard as he padded over the clearing’s grass-carpeted grounds.
The other TECs must already have landed, he decided. Activating the short range radio comm, Kaiser broadcasted into the unknown.
“RecOp Chain, Kaiser here, Over.”
A brief moment later he was answered.
“Kaiser, Lippie here.” He felt his spine tingle at the sound of her husky voice.
“Received, Lippard. RecOp Chain, sound-off, over.”
“Lippard here.”
“Moose here, over.”
“Deadhand here.”
So operators two, three and four were currently up and running. A perfect drop, he thought with some relief.
“Chain received. Execute recce as previously established. Stay off the air, over.”
Kaiser waited for their acknowledgements, receiving them mutely as he itched to set off on his own.
He had exactly one hour to beat his part of the bush before rendezvous four kilometers to the north-east. Conjuring a semi-transparent overlay of the area, Kaiser dragged it with his eyes to the bottom left of his visual display. Taking a few steps forwards, he watched as the semi-spherical virtual compass beside the map danced about due to interference from the myriad local magnetic fields. The planet’s magnetic field was just as weak as he’d been warned. He’d have to keep moving while the CPU computed the mean magnetic average, all just to keep his map’s top edge pointed north.
After making the necessary adjustments Kaiser finally set off, making a slow circuit of the clearing as he peered at his surroundings. Magnifying a spot of earth on a foreground overlay, he found it littered with what appeared to be bone-white seeds between the clumps of grass, their number increasing sharply as he neared the center. Kaiser scraped his left gauntlet along the soil, bringing up more dirt than anything else, pocketing the yield securely inside an empty pouch on the Suit’s tactical vest.
He then moved into the forest with rifle snug against his breastplate pylon, roaming in a spiral trajectory so as to get a feel for the surrounding area. Despite the Suit’s sizable dimensions, the trees were tall and well spaced, offering him a meter of ceiling as long as he carefully chose his route.
The woods had definitely seen the hand of man. They had the feel of a kempt plantation, although the trees themselves didn’t have the look of a rapid-growth type.
And what on Earth do you know about trees? He asked himself.
Enough to know that sooner or later they fall, and there simply do not seem to be any of those lying here, he mused as he searched around. Yes, he concluded confidently, despite the overwhelming abundance of animal life the place reeked of mankind.
As he moved along at leisure, stopping every few moments to allow his ears to do some exploring of their own, he happened occasionally upon the local wildlife. Aside from the great abundance of birds, whose panicked calls chafed at his ears whenever he got too close to them, Kaiser crossed paths with a troop of small monkeys taking refuge in a particularly robust tree, and they let out all manner of shrieks as he curiously inspected them. He had never seen a live monkey before. Soon afterwards he also crossed paths with a fleeing deer and a shy red fox, although both made themselves scarce in a heartbeat. If it hadn’t been for his system’s motion alerts, he would probably never have known they were there in the first place.
For most of the hour allocated to him for solo reconnaissance, Kaiser searched his surroundings, finding not a sign of recent human activity. Despite coming upon some narrow roads, clearly intended for use by tracked vehicles, he had been unable to detect a single tread on them, although all led north-westwards to where the nearest known settlements could be found. Kaiser also noticed at least an earth-year’s worth of undisturbed vegetation growing over those roads.
Arbitrarily selecting a tree, he inspected it closely, finding large clusters of seeds bending its taller branches. Detaching one such cluster, he noticed that the seeds were akin to those he had found on the ground of the clearing, although smaller in size and bright green in color. Those seeds also found a place in one of his pockets.
Every few minutes his ears popped, and he would deliberately yawn to compensate for the slowly rising pressure inside his Suit. The air pressure would soon stabilize at over three Bars, and he’d be more susceptible to ear infections from that point onwards, or so he had been informed in his briefings. But the change was unavoidable. Without pressure equalization with the outside atmosphere, he would never set foot outside his Suit again.
Five minutes before the expected rendezvous time, Kaiser arrived at the meeting point, a large clearing of about forty by fifty meters across. The choice of the site had been a vital one, and had hinged on the two advantages it provided. The first was the substantial waterline situated only a short distance beyond its northern border, the second being that it would take the least work to prepare for the next phase of their mission. For the moment, Kaiser remained still at the clearing’s center, watching the mission time slowly progress as he pondered on what he had observed over the last hour.
The first sign that he was no longer alone came from the north, where an immense flock of birds suddenly took flight. He knew who it was without having to ask. Less than a minute later, and precisely on time for the rendezvous, a second mobile Suit clambered its way into the clearing. With rifle slung across its torso, the Suit’s upper appendages parting tree branches as it progressed, clearly not caring in the least for the pathway of destruction it was leaving in its wake. The V-38 Hellmouth Harrower was nearly as beautiful to his eyes as the driver currently inside it.
“Guten morgen, mein Lippie.” He playfully greeted her.
“Morgen, dag, oder nacht? You know as well as I that this rock has no morning, mein Kompaniechef. Are the others lost?” Lippard inquired.
“Lippie, it doesn’t pay to criticize our kinder so. They will find their way here in good time. Find anything of interest?” He kindly asked, laughing secretly at the tone of her voice. Lippard had a habit of firing her cannon indiscriminately when she felt rattled
by something, and she was certainly rattled at the moment.
“There is no fight here! I was expecting everything, anything, except for that and the verdammte birds. They have shat on my Suit. They have shat on my gewehr. And they’ve shat on your helm!”
Lippard was met by her commander’s raucous laughter, his mobile Suit shaking slightly as he chortled at the idea of being covered in guano.
“Silence, you swine! Do you want my report or not?!” She demanded.
“Begin.” He replied.
Lippard filled him in. Speaking mostly in English, but reverting occasionally back to Germanic, as she was prone to do whenever they were alone, his lieutenant informed him that there were no recent traces of human activity to the north of their position, and that she had found three streams flanked by deep ravines, the closest of which was the one previously detected in the orbital images. Other than that, she had found nothing of interest for her commander.
By the time she was finishing, Kaiser’s motion alert informed him of movement to the east of the clearing. Unlike his or Lippie’s Suit, Moose was equipped with the V-35, an earlier Hellmouth design developed as a heavy weapons platform. Presently its weapon pods were empty, its only operational armament being the laser platform and heavy combat knife that had been distributed to all members of the team.
“Moose here. Apologies for the delay.” He said simply as he sauntered over.
It was quite unlike Moose to say much more than that. That trait had apparently been a source of irritation for many of the soldier’s previous superiors, but it was what Kaiser most liked about him. Moose never said more than he really needed to, and he always got the job done without muss or fuss.
“Your report?”
“No local inhabitants. And no one’s been around for the last several months. This place feels like a plantation of some kind, but I can’t tell what they’re growing.”
“Trees, perhaps?” Lippard mocked.
They waited for a full five minutes before Deadhand finally arrived. The latecomer closed in not from the south, but from Kaiser’s arrival point instead, his V-38 heavily smeared with mud and leaves.
“Deadhand here!” He stated obviously, out of breath by the sound of his voice.
“My dear sergeant, you are very well camouflaged.” Kaiser remarked.
”Hah! Well, there was one hell of a ravine to cross. I kept moving to the east for a better crossing, but I didn’t find it. So I crossed where the river was wider. Place had a couple of meters of mud there, for certain. I slipped down the opposite bank when the ground collapsed and camouflaged myself in the process. Also had some trouble figuring north. This land must have some heavy-duty iron deposits, ‘cause I kept losing my bearings over some points.”
“Yes, it seems we must resolve this problem in the future. Very well, Deadhand, any contacts?”
“Not a soul. This place has been empty a while.”
“Yes, we are in luck. Before we contact Command, we should take a short trip to the nearby stream. I believe it is time to take care of ourselves.” Kaiser suggested.
In Command’s infinite wisdom, and partly due to water restrictions on board the EFF Leviathan, his teams had been strictly prohibited from using their usual g-suit, the MS-3 uniform, which required more than 10 liters of fresh water to function properly. As a result they had been forced to use a model intended exclusively for gradual accelerations, utterly useless against the sudden knocks they were susceptible to while simply moving in a V-38, much less in actual combat. Adding to the discomfort, the current suits occupied less volume than the MS-3 and so provided a poor fit with the V-38’s interior exoskeleton, compounding eventual shocks and reducing the precision of motor movements. Yet there they found themselves, in a land where there were actual rivers of the precious liquid flowing all over, and their uniforms were neatly stowed in their Suits’ tactical vests, practically begging to be worn.
The team moved in a diamond formation towards the river Kay, as it had temporarily been christened, their leader giving his orders silently via the Swarm Operating System. The SOS processed the data acquired from all four Suits via short wave radio, using the highest ranking Suit’s CPU as a hub to relay the information to its driver and, under his direction, to the remaining Suits. Kaiser noticed as they moved that their collective data provided a much more precise reading of magnetic north, realizing that a pair operating about a hundred meters apart might avoid losing their north that way. He stored the newfound knowledge away for future consideration as the waterline came into view.
Lippard and Deadhand hadn’t been exaggerating about the waterlines; the shallow stream there was accessible only with great difficulty by a person on foot, located as it was at the bottom of a steep gorge about twelve meters deep, and with an average width of fifteen meters. He wondered how the winters must be like there for a simple stream to cut so steeply into the rocky ground.
Following Lippard’s directions, the group moved east a hundred meters until they came upon a section where both sides of the gorge had collapsed. Deep, massive padprints could be seen traversing the stream from north to south.
“This is where I crossed. We can get there on foot now.” She stated confidently.
“Goose, Deadhand, dismount and water your uniforms. Lippie and I will stand by. Keep your comm up, you hear?”
They acknowledged his transmission, and shortly afterwards he watched two tiny human figures as they scurried into the gorge with uniforms in hand.
“Damn, it’s dark out here. It’s all redder than it looks like in the Suit.” Deadhand remarked, apparently out of breath again.
Several silent minutes passed as the operators proceeded to fill their uniforms, the humming sound of the water pumps clearly perceptible to Kaiser’s ears.
The men then traded the g-suits for their duly filled uniforms, taking advantage of the opportunity to quickly wash themselves in the stream. Their frequent coughing was beginning to worry Kaiser.
“Moose, is something wrong with the air?” He asked.
“They cannot hear you, Kaiser. They’ve taken off their mikes to wash.” Lippard answered, her voice telling him she was concerned as well.
Their worrying was all for naught. Before long, both drivers had made their ways back to their Suits, stowing the surplus garments away in a storage pouch before clambering back in.
“Aaah! Major, this is divine. It’s like getting your skin back!” Deadhand declared as his Suit stood tall once more, ventilating audibly as he did so.
“I heard you and Moose coughing. Is something wrong with the air?”
“It ain’t good, that’s for sure. As soon as I was out there, I started getting a sour taste in my mouth. Moose got it too. And I feel like I just came back from a long run. He’s feeling drowsy, by the way.”
“Are you unwell, Moose?” Lippard inquired.
“Not feeling too good. My nose and throat are burning. And my face. Trying to keep my eyes open ...” he answered softly, his Suit swaying slightly as he spoke.
“Moose, safety your weapon.” Kaiser ordered, “Deadhand, escort him to the meeting point and deploy the beacon. I’m going to contact the Leviathan.”
“Kaiser, is that wise?” Lippard cautiously asked.
“It is the carbon dioxide. Its level is over four percent, and we were told to expect the symptoms. Nothing can be done about that except to stay in our Suits. But we have already confirmed that the area is abandoned for now, and all the necessary conditions are met. It is time.” Kaiser answered, leaving no room for discussion.
As the two sergeants returned to the meeting point, Kaiser checked his timetable, noting that he was currently well within the window of opportunity to contact his command. Deploying the Laser Communications Array, the commander signaled his mothership. The Leviathan’s Operations Center answered without delay and they communicated for the following few minutes, trading authentication codes before he transmitted a brief report of what they’d come acr
oss. The Leviathan’s answer was quick and to the point; The Ebony Tower would be making its landing within the next two orbits.
“You have given us only three hours to prepare the site.” Lippard remarked petulantly once he had broken off contact.
“Then we must not delay, Lippie. Exit your Suit but keep your skeleton strapped on.”
Kaiser set one massive kneepad on the ground and placed his gauntlets in a supporting position atop the other. Giving his OS the appropriate order, he suddenly lost his visual of the exterior, finding himself in complete darkness as his Suit began to power down. As he removed the display helmet, it was brusquely pulled out of his hands and upwards by the cranial appendage, coming to a rest just below the ceiling of the performance sphere. The interior lighting blinked on, illuminating him with a red glow as he observed the biomechanical exoskeleton encasing his body. His two subordinates had opted to extricate themselves from that structure before abandoning their Suits, thus subjecting themselves to the planet’s gravitational pull and increasing their weight by thirty nine per cent. Adding to that the exotic atmosphere’s oppressive influence, it was no surprise that they had run into difficulties, since any physical exertion in a high carbon dioxide environment would result in the slow poisoning of their organisms. There was, however, a more elegant solution.
Reaching behind the skeleton’s back plate, Kaiser felt for the extension switch and then turned it, activating the dorsal appendage. The dorsal connected the CPU’s cables to the skeleton itself, allowing the Negative Feedback Interface to exert its effect, while at the same time keeping the driver suspended in the center of the sphere. Once activated, it lowered the exoskeleton until his feet touched the flooring. Kaiser then pulled the two release pins located just above and below the extension switch, freeing himself from his umbilical support. He quickly opened an access panel near the forward exit, removed his Caudal Mk-2 self-defense weapon and connected its side-strap to the skeleton. Last of all, Kaiser removed his mobile Suit’s remote control and clipped it to his wrist.
Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) Page 6