Mission 11 - Chas Goes on an Adventure - Part 2

  TA419 - 14/04, early hours of the day,

  TSU Asullt-Carrier Curadh, Junior Officers Quarters.

  Three tall and overly well-built men were crowded somewhat comically into the relatively small room of Ensign Chas Collins. Their shoulders bumped one another whenever they moved to check a drawer or wardrobe.

  A guard stood just outside the door. Moncha, the head of the ship’s security corps and pilots, was absolutely not a conflict of interest in the matter of the runaway pilot… Definitely not.

  "What does it say?" the Commander asked Gemon, who carefully flipped a piece of paper he’d found on the floor around. The note hadn’t actually been hidden, instead left on a bedside table, but the three pilots elephantine busting into the small room had blown it under the bed and slowed their investigation. It was, to their credit, very early in the morning.

  "Lemme see here, 'Testing the Casnel’s atmospheric re-entry ability. Be back soon.'”

  “That crazy son of a--!" Moncha growled.

  TA419 - 15/04,

  TSU Forward Operating Base (FOB) 5B.

  "Hiyeaaaaaaaaa," a static-riddled open-line voice shouted into Kiyo Kigen's cockpit. Standing before him was a lone Vijiak-Special, its sword held in a high grip, both hands on the hilt, blade at eye level, pointed up. It was a good stance, but its wielder was far from competent.

  ‘Vijiak-Material-Arts; were hard. A single school had emerged for it, prioritising simple moves. The discontent between the plethora of switches, levers, gear changes and everything else between a pilot and his blade was simply too great for the majority of pilots.

  That wasn't to say there was no depth to the craft. Before Kigen, the pilot was going to thrust forward and slash down overhead. It would leave them open, but in turn, Kigen's neck and shoulders would be exposed should he go for that opening, at least if they were on the ground.

  He'd faced a great number of combatants during these many small raids, and most were like this. Pilots didn't expect to fight at close quarters; it made no sense. The range of a rifle and the power should surely make this concept pointless.

  Remembrance had banked on that mentality; after all, the most significant factor in mastering Vijiak-Martial-Arts was experience, and their pilots had more of that than anyone.

  Of the five great aces, he and Sesha used human techniques, while Aphathe and Scarlet were masters of ‘VMA’. Only Seth lagged in this area and only the smallest amount, which he made up for with tenacity and cunning, at least when his ego wasn't at play - there was a good reason they'd given Sesha, the fifth-ranked, one of the three stolen Chevaliers instead of Seth, the third-ranked.

  That was hardly all: Scarlet's second-in-command, Lt.Jasta, Kigen's batman Benson, Sehsa's star pupil Khufu; the organisation was a unique gathering of people with an extremely high aptitude for close-quarter combat.

  Kigen liked to use those acquaintances to keep himself sharp. If he imagined them as his foes, he would never grow conceited, never underestimate a foe, however weak.

  He pictured what Scarlet would do here. For one thing, she wouldn't have drawn that feeble arc-staff. The staff were fantastic; they could turn the worst pilot into a threat, but they were still just tools. Their telescopic construction gave them some flex perhaps, but overall, they were far more liable to shatter in combat. When that blade of plasma cutter heat hit Casnel's shoulder, it would no doubt melt inwards, but then what? The Special didn't have the brute force to drive it anywhere near far enough to sever the arm; it was more likely the blade would just get stuck partway in.

  No Scarlet would be wielding a great axe or longsword; either would be a Calabar blade. The more rigid body would cut deeper, and the thousands of spinning chainsaw teeth would then bite and heat the metal. With a good enough swing, that might pierce something, even on a Casnel.

  The TSU pilot's swing was the other mistake. They were standing as though on the ground, approaching Kigen head-on. The arc-staff came down hard over head, but Kigen didn't just duck under it; he propelled his mech downwards.

  The staff finished its swing a little below waist height, hitting nothing. The Scourge in his mind, would have never done something so ineffective. Her approach would have started at an angle. Her swing would have kept going 180 degrees at least, a full cartwheel if needed to avoid a counter.

  Space has no floor: To swing your blade as though it did was the difference between someone with nothing more than the basics and an actual practitioner of VMA.

  Kigen's Chevalier merrily came out of its tiny dive and swung its long curving Calabar katana upwards, moving with the direction of his thrusters. The blade tore alongside the Speical's flank, chewing apart hydraulic lines and electrical cables alike. The left arm went limp.

  Still in one movement, Kigen spun around to face the enemy's back, bringing his sword up with him to tear a chunk out of the Speical's arm joint as well.

  "Tch," the ace scowled. That had been stupid.

  The attack on its flank had already disabled that arm; he'd stricken it again on instinct. The phantom Scarlet would have been in motion after all, and the first hit wouldn't have disabled her. Nor mightn't a human, a human might yet have mustered one final desperate move. But this was a mech, a machine. No amount of determination or willpower would ever have allowed it to force that arm to move again.

  His second hit was, therefore, a waste of his blade’s durability, an opportunity to scan his surroundings instead. He had to admit it was a flaw in picturing a stronger opponent over a weak one.

  The Vijiak-Special shakily turned around, sword held in just one hand now, a lamely defensive stance, one which left its back entirely open to the rifles of Kigen's comrades had he simply uttered the order.

  The left eye of its V-shaped head had gone dim. Kigen's single strike had clearly hit a weak point for the mech's whole left side. He'd have to make a note of that to circulate to the other pilots. By the amount of fluid leaking from its wound, the entire mech would stop functioning in a few moments, maybe just a few seconds - but the cockpit, which would be protected separately, the pilot would live if Kigen left now.

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  Defeated in a single blow, perhaps, but alive. That mercy could not be tolerated, no matter how noble it might have been.

  This pilot was beaten in their single exchange of blows, but to let it end was unacceptable. Kigen had learned that from the same man who'd taught Scarlet to be a master of VMA, from the first leader of the Knight Brigades, The Knight Templar. Mercy led to downfall.

  This pilot might run away were he to live, cower and hide. But he might also begin to stand back up once he finished blaming his bad luck, his machine, god and talent; to learn and train from this day on, and one day, he might just face Kigen again as a true warrior.

  Kigen had just given this young pilot a master class. Big, powerful, simple swings were the simple part of VMA; what made you a practitioner was doing all that in space, in a 360-degree environment. Using every direction, every angle and tilt to your advantage.

  Thus, the cost of that lesson had to be steep.

  The Chevalier, with the U-shaped helmet and slanted shoulder guards, surged forward. The Speical's blade didn't come close to rising in time; the katana dug deep across its chest, and the pilot inside fell with ease.

  Kigen had lost track of how many TSU pilots this made now, that he’d cut down even after their machines stopped being a threat - just one more mark of shame on his dwindling honour.

  As he dislodged his sword and began giving orders to return to their ships, this having been the last mech standing above an insignificant installation, he turned his mind to those he had not yet slain.

  Remembrance had destroyed Defence Platform 2 without a hitch, but not its Casnels. Only one of them, Kigen, was able to claim in time. Another had fallen to his audio disruption attack. No doubt it would have learned the lesson of never humouring your opponent’s voice in battle from that, in its case, a rare ‘free’ lesson.

  The third was the spear wielder Sesha had also spared with. That one was dangerous, especially having seen it was also skilled with the blade - but it had little left to learn. In some ways, the potential of the young pilot he'd failed to kill was the most threatening of all, even if that Casnel had been the weakest at the time.

  There was also the sniper, whose railgun range had prevented Scarlet from doing anything but defending.

  Once more, Kigen wondered if it would be Casnels who put his people’s dream to death again. What were those pilots doing right now? Fighting a different Remembrance raid elsewhere? Sleeping, travelling, training?

  He supposed he'd know soon enough.

  TA419 - 15/04,

  Surface of Planet Abhaile, ‘Near’ the Capital.

  Two days. That was Chas's best guess. Things were not going well. He'd left his handheld aboard the Curadh to avoid instantly being tracked, but time became rather illusory when his digital wristwatch filled with dust.

  Abhaile had days and nights, of course, but the days were only a few hours long. Still, he was reasonably sure there had only been two sunrises. Probably.

  The compass had held true, still pointing his way, but Chas had begun to wonder how wise following it like this was. Did Abhaile even have the same poles as Bhaile?

  Supposedly, he was near the capital but where was, well, anything?

  The land was primarily flat. He could look out and see a red horizon during the light hours, like the beech he'd once been to with a man he hadn't yet hated. That horizon line was enchanting but also concerning. Was the map wrong? This much flat land so close to the capital must surely have a purpose.

  He'd past one building and been grateful for it. The brutalist cube of a farmhouse, if it could be called that - with sand-encrusted brown walls and little square nook windows - had an old rusted tap in its yard. The water was foul but abundantly better than going without.

  Having gorged on the liquid life and refilled his canteen, a dog had come bounding after him. It was emaciated, probably abandoned like the house. Chas had considered shooting it with his pistol but chose to run for it instead. That had been the sole life he'd come across these last two days; it was unnerving.

  Periodically, there'd be the remnants of a fence or the traces of a road but no animals or crops. Chas was unnerved and unsure of what was even natural or not - no trees, no rivers, no birds - the most you could find was the odd cacti of sorts, even those seemed barren and withered looking. An endless, greyed-out, red land of dust and sand and nothingness.

  It got very cold at night; he'd chanced across what might charitably have been a rug once, wrapping it around his shoulders, but that was far from the worst of it. The dust storms would sweep across the land, sometimes so bad he simply had to stop, curl up on the ground with the rug over his body and wait them out. Shivering from the biting gales and the stinging dust in the air.

  Should he turn back? Could he? The compass wasn't exact; he might never pass that farmhouse again if he strayed a few feet to one side. Did he have enough water in that scenario? How much further could the city be?

  Why was he doing this again?

  …

  Why exactly?

  How the hell was any of this his fault? Chevalier Unit 001, so what? He was a test pilot; all he did was sit in and run tests!! He didn't make the stupid thing. He had no say in its design or construction, in its budget allocation or commissioning.

  He wasn't the TSU bigwig who'd thought it fun to push Bailey and Vanadis into an arms race to see who could provide the better superweapon. He was just Chas Collins. Just an ordinary test pilot. Why did he have to feel 'duty' towards stopping Kiyo Kigen using a machine he'd once upon a time tuned? ‘The fuck was up with that?

  The faces of his old colleagues flashed through Chas’s mind. The scar on his cheek stung not for the first time. The little ant-sized people of the civilians his rifle had melted passed by his mind, and his hands shook.

  The gallant form of Sgt.Mike’s back protecting him against the sword devil - only to be cut down with such ease - made Chas collapse to his knees in shame once more.

  What did Kiyo Kigen actually look like, Chas wondered, underneath the armour, behind the strange u-shape helmet and long curving sword. Who was the man that had taken everything from him and pushed him to try and follow?

  If not for duty, then fighting because Kigen had attacked Vandis base 2? Because Remembrance were monsters, baser than humans - because of Remembrance, no Abhialens, who had killed his friends and so many others since.

  Abhailens simply had to be lesser than other humans. What other explanation could there be for their crimes, for their wanton murder of civilians? Perhaps something in the planet's air or the water buried deep within fundamentally made them different from the rest of the human race.

  Chas fought to put down the monsters, to safeguard the superiority of the rest of humanity - was that it?

  He could feel a tug towards that answer, one nestled in his heart and maybe the hearts of many TSU soldiers. It was a nice and neat conclusion. It sorted the world into the good and the bad. It put aside the context of pesky things like ‘why’ the enemy did what they did.

  Was he ready to give into that sickly nectar, to let its convenient answers lull him into a mode of being that, if not right, would at least allow him to keep doing his ‘duty’?

  Chas wasn't sure. He curled up under the tattered rug. Another dust storm was about to pass over.