Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #59 – Fire Below

“You’re being what, Zaido? Repeat! Zaido!”

Silence.

Nothing came through the communication device. The channel was forcefully closed. Slaugh hovered on the ground with his Seraph, glanced at his squadron from the safety of his cockpit, raised the hand of his mech to signal to the others that they had to stop for a minute. They didn’t need to know why – not yet. Their only role was to follow his orders, as General Yoshimane gently reminded them before departure. Do whatever Captain Hasegawa says. If the mission fails, the responsibility is all his own. That was both a boon and a curse. A boon because he was allowed to act however he wanted. A curse because, if something unexpected happened, his head was the one on the chopping block. Slaugh switched radio subgroup, tried to reach out for any of Savynisha Zaido’s comrades, any of the other fourteen pilots deployed as a support squadron to soften up the anti-air defenses of the Panopticon Control Center. Any of them would have sufficed. Any, really. Then, why? Why wasn’t anybody picking up his call? The advance team wasn’t even supposed to engage in skirmishes, just to probe a little the anti-air defenses from afar, while looming over them to avoid reinforcements from coming in. He tuned his HUD on the transponders of the Seraphs, marking their position and the status of the pilot. Of course, the Mad Hounds were displayed all in green. Peak physical condition, peak machine condition. That was no surprise at all. He turned a knob, pushed a button, selected the ‘dog’ battalion – an option only he had access to, as the unit leader. It wasn’t good for everyone to know where everyone else was – that could have caused acts of personal initiative. So, it wasn’t strange for the captain to be the single person allowed to browse those records, with a new member of the team getting access to it only when the leader was downed. The display lit up, showing the data of all the Seraphs of the advance team.

His jaw almost dropped.

Of the fifteen mechs deployed, ten were marked as ‘inactive’, two as ‘badly damaged’ and only three as still intact. And, as the pilots went…

He crunched his fist, gritted his teeth.

Seven of them were dead. Three had debilitating injuries. All of them were under his jurisdiction.

“Not this shit again…”

Another Eve Bantam. Times seven. He frantically went through the list of Seraphs that were still active, dialed the code of one of them, marked as Ensign Veren Gurash on his display. The channel opened up, background noise filtered through the speakers. A thundering, hammering sound, someone shooting.

“Gurash, it’s Captain Hasegawa! What the fuck is happening there?”

“Captain! Oh, Lagash be blessed! Are you coming to help? We’ve been ambushed by a small Peacekeeper commando! They severed our chain of command and only five of us are still… OH LAGASH N…”

A screech startled Slaugh, made him almost recoil, right as Gurash’s mech signals went dark. Another ‘dog’ down, right under his watch. He blinked, shook his head, cursed under his breath. Even at their maximum speed, it would have taken at least ten minutes longer to reach Panopticon. Too far to help his helpers, but not so close that they couldn’t ‘accidentally’ arrive ‘too late to save anyone’. Yes, that was the deal. Slow down. Arrive right when everything is over. Destroy evidence of the calls. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was a woefully long time, in twenty minutes whatever attacking force was making short work of his comrades had to be finished with destroying the last surviving mechs. And, even if they didn’t and his subordinates were so smart that they decided to retreat, they couldn’t blame it on him. Yes, that was how things had to go. Or how he would have liked them to go. Unfortunately, the Seraphs uploaded all theIr telemetry to the mainframe, so somewhere, someone was already aware of it. Ignoring the situation would have probably caused him even more trouble. Unless, of course he could twist it in his own favor, showing how a capable leader behaved.

“Captain, what was that? Any news from Panopticon?”

Ensign Kizman, with the unpleasant questions. Slaugh quickly switched back channel to the Mad Hounds, growled in the communicator. Hiding the truth would have done him no good.

“Zaido’s team has been annihilated by a bunch of Neodutch Peacekeepers.”

“What?”

“They were ambushed. Many casualties, size of the opposing forces unknown.”

He gestured to his soldiers, indicated a target on the horizon.

“We’ll be extra cautious, we can’t tip our enemy about our arrival. I’ll contact HQ to get a read on the situation and get further orders. Switch off all your comms on the advance team channel, radio silence from now to the target! We’ll fly a roundabout route, to reduce our chances of being detected. ETA T plus twelve hundred. Understood?”

A choir of six voices echoed in his ears.

“Yes, sir!”

“Glory to the Coalition!”

“For the Coalition!”

Then, they switched on their thrusters again, floored the throttles.

And disappeared into the horizon.

**

Commander Alessandra Rysas didn’t know what to think or to believe. It sounded too good to be true. And, if it sounded too good to be true, it probably was. After three sieges that wasted most of their ammo, a handful of Peacekeepers show out of nowhere and distract the enemy squadron just long enough for their flak turrets to filter out the remaining Seraphs? Way too convenient. Still, that was exactly what unfolded before her eyes. An armored ATV comes out of nowhere, mows down the mechs and leaves the last stragglers ripe for the taking. All in all, the whole operation lasted less than two minutes. In that minuscule span of time, all of the black Seraphs had been torn to shreds, either by that high-velocity needle gatling gun or by the bunker’s heavy artillery.

“Here’s the IDs, Commander! They check out!”

One of the operators showed her a series of pictures and matching profiles. Rysas went through them, through the list of people that showed up at her door with such a bombastic visiting card. All of them Peacekeepers. All of them from the New Babylon central precinct. Commander Primula. Commander Felce. Spec Ops Agent Agave. Frijderik den Malstrom. And, finally…

“…who’s this beefcake with a uniform two sizes too small?”

“According to the archive, he’s called Dobriovchka, no other names given, and he’s a – huh – convicted criminal that was stashed up on Atropos.”

‘Atropos? Lagash take me’ was the first thought that crossed Rysas’s mind. The bare mention of that orbital junkyard made her feel like she had somehow landed in the wrong universe.

“Convicted on what counts?”

“…it’s redacted.”

“Well, whatever.”

Rysas glanced at the monitor, stared at the cameras framing the small group standing right outside of the main gate. Those people were exactly who they claimed to be – except the iron giant, who reeked of massive outlier. But why there? Why now? It didn’t make sense, not a shred of sense. Unless the resistance movements were starting to build up momentum. Unless they were envoys of some cells that survived the systematic Pangean and Eastcol purge of all the remaining partisan groups. That hope was hard to give up on. Rysas turned around to face a bunch of Peacekeepers, all wearing their helmets, all readying their weapons. All of them were taller than her. Alessandra Rysas had never been a fan of her diminutive size, one well below the Neodutch average, especially when compared with her underlings. Still, this time that thought didn’t even pass through her mind. The stakes were too high to get lost in such trivial worries.

“You six come with me. We’re going to open the gate to our unexpected guests… and ascertain their intentions.”

The Peacekeepers raised their weapons, nodded at their commander, then marched behind her, following her to the main gate. The corridors of the bunker were tight and solid-looking, with thick walls made of reinforced concrete. Doors opened on both sides of the aisle, leading deeper inside the compound, to a maze of restricted areas and stairs going down the mountain, down to the real Panopticon Control Center. The bunker at the top was mostly window dressing, while still being a vital point of entry for the facility. Before the Turn, a grand total of two hundred Peacekeepers, a fully-fledged medical unit and three hundred technicians worked there every day, always ready to act with a warning of minutes. Then, the Turn happened and everything went down the drain. Mass hysteria. Shootings. Suicides. The three rhizomes of the team were assaulted by an angry mob of soldiers. One of them, a Shield-type called Edera, had lost one eye and was left psychologically scarred. The other two died, burned with herbicide and killed by the rioters before Rysas could take control of the situation. Edera, though, was grateful to her, grateful for having been saved. Grateful for the punishment Rysas inflicted on those barbarians, who were decapitated on the spot, as an example for the other wannabe rioters. Still, after the chaos and two raids by Eastcol troops, the bunker was low on ammo and on personnel. The morale was low too, the lowest it had been in the six years she led that outpost. Invaders at the door. A nanoplague deleting their capital in less than one day. The government giving up its sovereignty to the enemy. Too much to bear, even for the strongest-willed champion – let alone for a bunch of people forced to live together while all around them the world was dying. Rysas reached for the front gate, tapped her percom.

“Radar readings?”

“No hostile troops detected in a twenty kilometer radius.”

“Good.”

All the fifteen Seraph pilots were dead or severely injured. If the small commando outside worked for a foreign power, it couldn’t be Eastcol – not even a deranged, amoral superpower like that would sacrifice fifteen pilots in such a gruesome way, at least not in Rysas’s view of the world. Still, in that view of the world, any enemy of the Eastern Coalition was a potential ally. So, talking with them, under the protection of a defense platoon and a heavy railgun, felt like the right move to do. Better than waiting for their reserves to run dry and their remaining food to rot. Rysas gestured at her soldiers, had them train their rifles to the entrance. Then, she tapped her percom again.

“We’re ready. Open the gate.”

The electric engines buzzed, causing the massive slab of metal to slowly ramp up, making the opening bigger and bigger by the second, letting the light from the outside filter in. The shapes of five individuals slowly emerged through the slit, larger and more defined as the gate left room to empty space. The figure at the front was the shortest of them all, but still taller than Rysas by almost ten centimeters. Ash blond hair. Ice blue eyes. Roots around her neck. A rhizome. Performing a military salute. A rhizome she was familiar with.

“Commander Rysas. It’s… a pleasure to meet you again.”

“At ease, Pri… Commander Primula. At ease.”

Rysas glanced at her, at the woman leading the pack. Then, her eyes moved to Felce, to the armless Agave, to Mal. Only to stop on a man almost forty centimeters taller than her, a man who answered to the rather unwieldy name of Dobriovchka. His pecs were pushing against the body armor, his biceps barely contained by the uniform. She couldn’t say to have meet a fitter human being in her life. Still, his gray complexion and metallic head, with that unsettling single red eye in the middle of his face, made her feel slightly uneasy. She stopped in front of him, squinted her eyes at his posture.

“That salute isn’t Neodutch, beefcake. Komezian?”

“Yup! Pops was from there.”

“I figured.”

Rysas turned towards Primula, ignored the big man as well as she could, whispered in her ear.

“Is the situation so dire that we’re recruiting Komezian war criminals, now?”

“He’s just a smuggler convicted for minor felonies, sir, and an important source of nourishment for Commander Felce and Spec Ops Agave.”

“An important source of what.”

“Water, protein and minerals, sir.”

Rysas didn’t reply, at first. She simply grumbled something under her breath, shaking her head. Right. Rhizomes. Drinking people. That was their shtick, yes. But the deadpan way with which Primula delivered the line, as if it was an unremarkable universal truth, caused her brain to skip a beat. Rysas gestured towards them, invited them to come in. The five crossed the threshold, one by one. Then, the door started closing down, with the same buzzing noise as before.

As soon as the group moved, Rysas patted her hand on Prim’s shoulder, heaved a deep sigh.

“What’s the status, Commander? Are we resisting? How much of our country is still under our control?”

“You don’t have access to the news, here?”

“No, sorry. After the surrender, we cut all comms from the outside world. Ironic for Panopticon, I know, but we needed some time to… accept the situation.”

“I see.”

They walked back, following Rysas, all under the unmoving gazes of the loaded barrels. The soldiers kept them in their sights, unwilling to let them go. Suspicion was running rampant, as it was to be expected. A bunch of survivors of an army that didn’t exist anymore, showing up and clearing an Eastcol troop out of the sky? Not a believable coincidence. Which meant that Rysas was still gauging them, keeping them under her thumb.

“So, Commander? The situation?”

Primula nodded, averted her gaze.

“We… lost, sir. There are some pockets of resistance close to the Western Fringe, but there’s no way we can fight the invaders.”

“Not with that attitude. We still have a couple trump cards to play.”

“About that, sir… are you referring to Nemo?”

Rysas stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes turned into slits, enveloped Primula in their coldness.

“…the cat’s outta the bag, huh.”

She snapped her fingers. All Peacekeepers cocked their guns, trained them on the heads of the five intruders. Primula raised her arms, the other four followed up almost immediately. Rysas’s finger grabbed Primula’s chin, danced around her cheek.

“You shouldn’t have access to that intel, Commander Primula. Nobody should. So, come on, spill the beans. Who sent you? And why?”

“An elite unit of Eastcol Seraph is going to attack this facility in around fifteen minutes. The squadron in waiting was most likely their advance and support team.”

Rysas squinted her eyes, tapped her percom, shouted at the microphone as if her life depended on it.

“Radar readings! Check the four hundred kilometers range! Send me a scan ASAP!”

Primula continued, making sure to talk in a slow and steady manner, just like Mal told her. No overexcitement. No shower of words. She needed to be clear. Impossible to misunderstand. A wrong word might have meant death.

“We were sent by General Kamilou Papanastasis of the Pangean Union.”

At that name, the soldiers muttered, started talking, chatting, whispering. Rysas gritted her teeth, crunched her fist. Mal could see a word forming in her eyes. Traitors. That was what she was thinking. He swallowed a lump of saliva. Dying like that would have been anticlimactic, after everything they went through. Still, preferable to being disassembled by a bunch of hungry nanoprobes. Primula continued, without ever stopping, her voice growing louder.

“As an acting representative of the New Netherlands Peacekeeping Corps and highest ranked available officer, I bargained with him and received and offer that I deemed acceptable.”

“What did you sell us for, wench?!”

“Open the right pocket of my belt, sir. There’s a document there.”

Rysas gestured to one of her soldiers, let them handle Prim’s belt, unlock the pocket, pull a piece of paper. The soldier unfolded it, gave it to Commander Rysas, which almost ripped it off his hands. Her eyes widened, burst open with disbelief.

“…what.”

She gazed at Primula, gazed at the sheet of paper again.

“He can’t possibly have agreed to this!”

“Pangea needs Nemo, Commander.”

“Still…”

She cleared her throat, stared at the ring of Peacekeepers surrounding the five uninvited guests. Then, she started to read aloud, for all of them to hear.

“…the remaining territories of New Netherlands which are currently under the jurisdiction of the Pangean Union will be released and recognized as an autonomous state, henceforth ‘the new state’. The Pangean Union commits to defend the new state from foreign aggression as long as the new state is not equipped with a sufficiently advanced army and that the new state is not the initiator of the conflict. The new state commits never to attack or attempt to annex territories belonging to the Pangean Union. In exchange to what described above, the remains of the army of New Netherlands grant the Pangean Union unrestricted use of the Nemo Satellite System, only in circumstances that menace both the integrity of the Pangean Union and of the new state.”

Her hands trembled, her voice shaken.

“…Lagash take me, it’s signed by Tricia Comnist… the acting president of the Union… and by Papanastasis too? These holographic stamps… my goodness, they are authentic…”

“There’s my signature too, and one by Max van Barens. All what’s missing is yours, Commander Rysas.”

“How?”

“The seedship swarm. They need Nemo to stop it. There is no alternative. If Panopticon is destroyed, they’ve lost everything. Taking it by force might damage the system. So, they decided to go for this solution, one that… they felt was the only one you would be willing to accept. Unfortunately, the Eastern Coalition had another idea. They’re coming for us, right as we speak.”

Alessandra Rysas locked eyes with Primula, her breath ragged.

“…this is not enough. Half of our country will remain under… under Eastcol control…”

Tears. Tears were flowing down her cheeks, for reasons she couldn’t fathom. Reasons that made her gasp for air.

“…but… but it’s a start. We can… we can grow strong again if we... if we…”

She gestured to another soldier, shouted from the bottom of her lungs.

“Samizane! Gather everyone in the mess hall! We need to vote! This is the best bargain we can get now, but I can’t accept it alone! We’re all in this together, we’ll decide together!”

The Peacekeepers looked around puzzled, not understanding if they were allowed to cheer or not, not understanding if they had to. It was a strange feeling, one that made them feel empty inside, if only for a second. In that second, Rysas patted Primula’s shoulder one more time, wore the first smile in a long while, while tears flowed down like a river.

“You’ve really grown some balls, Prim. I can’t believe you’re that same bunny-obsessed naive plant gal that asked me if I was so short because my roots were cut and if my water tasted different because my skin was yellower.”

Mal smirked, felt a little warmth building up in his heart. That was true. Prim was the glue that kept everything from falling, the glue that gelled them together in times of need. That Prim, that shy rhizome that always felt out of place, was now blossoming in a capable, confident individual. One that was still a disaster when it came to intimate relationships, granted, but greatly matured in every other regard. He basked in that vision for a second longer, finally feeling some stress melting away.

Until the alarm rang.

And a voice blared through the speakers.

“Warning! Hostile Seraphs! Seven confirmed units, fifty kilometers away from here, closing in! Contact in approximately five minutes!”

Rysas gritted her teeth, growled in her percom.

“To every Peacekeeper on duty! We’re going to blast them down to the fire below! This is the last test, the last trial we need to endure! For New Netherlands!”

She put the agreement in her pocket, stopped the communications.

Then, she raised her arm, closed her hand into a fist.

All of the Peacekeepers dropped their weapons, raised their arms too, mimicking that gesture.

All chanting the name of a country that existed only in their hearts.

A country all of them had already decided to die for.