Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) (6 page)

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 across. 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.

As he pressed the control, the exit panel emitted several clicking sounds and then popped audibly inwards, followed moments later by the exterior armor plate as it hinged outwards.

Deadhand had been right. It only became another world when seen with one’s own eyes.

Although he found himself mostly in the shadow of an overhanging tree, Kaiser could still feel the burn of the red sun above. Gliese 667C, he had been informed. Although only a sixth of its light was in the visible spectrum, the red dwarf nevertheless exerted an astonishing effect at infrared wavelengths, keeping the precious planet warm beyond what one might otherwise have expected. The star’s power was prodigious but there was another reason for its present strength. Kaiser’s landing had taken place on the eve of summer. Within fifteen days, the satellite’s continuing orbit would take it more than twenty five million kilometers away from the star, depriving it of almost half its precious warmth.

How Earthly life had managed to take root so deeply was a mystery to him.