*****
All LOGIS members were free of their armored Suits for the first time since leaving Lograin, their units currently fulfilling the role of full metal gargoyles around the platoon’s improvised mustering ground. From all around Toni and his comrades, a multitude of hard, flat titanium faces and ice-cold oculars stared down, contemplating the tiny creatures that controlled their fates. The platoon didn’t form up, but huddled instead around Lieutenant Templeton, who for the first time in an age was simply the Ell-Tee instead of LOGIS Prime. His subordinates looked quite different from when last he’d laid eyes on them.
There were already some dedicated autostriders among the cadets, Templeton thought distastefully. Sueli Cassel was bright and dedicated, and yet she had been the first to fold, vomiting so much only a few hours into the land excursion that the inside of her Suit’s interface cavity sloshed with every stride, much of the muck having been absorbed by her travel pack before finally sludging up and settling over the entire cavity floor.
Motion sickness had always been an issue with the Suits.
About as soon as the first walkers had begun to pad over the Thaumantian continent, their drivers had had to contend with it, the end result being that no rookie driver was able to operate his Suit for extended periods without medication. His platoon members were therefore regularly allotted several adhesive patches apiece, meant to be attached to the skin behind their ear before each session.
The first Driving Patches had been exclusive scopolamine vectors, until it was realized that the high atmospheric pressure on Capicua caused the anti-motion sickness medication to induce extreme dilation of the pupils. Several sergeants lost their eyes to glaucoma before the patches were reinforced with mirtazapine and clonidine, counteracting the blindness-causing pupil-dilatation and ocular hypertension. The patches were presently quite sophisticated, although some drivers had proven to be unable to deal with the multitude of side-effects from the combined medication.
Sueli had been relegated to the autostrider “brigade” at Main Force’s rearguard, where she remained sick despite alternative treatments. It was not always so simple, however. Allerton had also been persistently sick, but an encrypted conversation with the driver had confirmed the commander’s suspicion; Motion sickness was sometimes a mask for cowardice, and the lieutenant had heard enough to think about eventually directing the Allerton boy away from front line duty. Sueli, on the other hand, had proven to be a much tougher nut to crack, and she had hidden behind the motion sickness explanation as if it were a Spartan shield. She hadn’t as yet spent more than a day away from the rear.
Hirum was the one most fraying on his nerves. Motion sickness wasn’t the problem there at all, the driver’s inner ear and stomach apparently being tough enough for the jerky accelerations inherent to Suit locomotion. But on the sixth day he had begun to suffer a persistent increase in his stress levels, accompanied by an abrupt decrease in performance. From that day onwards, Hirum had been experiencing what Templeton could only describe as a series of miniature nervous breakdowns, followed by suspiciously quick recoveries. Maybe the driver was trying to break the tempo of operations to suit his limitations. Maybe it was something else entirely.
Autostriders aside, it was clear from their expressions that exhaustion was taking a hold of most of the remainder, and it had begun to court the hardier drivers as well. He felt relieved at having requested the timeout.
“It appears you’ve lost more than five kilos apiece since I last saw you together ...” he stated.
It was no joke; they had probably lost that if not more. He began to chuckle.
“I won’t lie, you all look like you’ve gone through the gut of a Master Sergeant.”
A few grinned. There were even a few laughs, but Hirum’s expression remained as empty as before. The cadet’s lack of emotional response was known as blunted affect, and it never meant anything good about the subject’s emotional health.
“That’s why I wanted to record this moment of misery on photo. Tomorrow, whatever happens, you will survive. And when you do, I want you all to take a good look at your tragic mugs and laugh at what you see there. Sergeant, if you please ...”
Before long, what the lieutenant most desired began to happen. It was like magic, that strange phenomenon called morale. As they began to jockey for position with a pair of kneeling Mocas as backdrop, directed only sparingly by their section commanders (as he’d ordered them to), some cross-talk began to take place among them. Then someone made a joke (Rosa) and there was an outburst of laughter. From that moment onwards it didn’t matter that their lips cracked and bled with the effort; quick grins covered their faces almost entirely, expressions softened and the motley crew reverted to their natural selves in no time at all.
He observed them carefully.
Rosa stood beside Miura at the back, plugging his nose theatrically and complaining at the stench of urine that apparently emanated from his fellow driver. He was quite the entertainer. On Miura’s other side, Tani also seemed to be keeping her distance, although perhaps for some other reason, he supposed. Besides Tani, the troop’s left flank was almost entirely composed of Miura affiliates, as he’d begun to think of them as. Winters, Hirum, Rosa, and the remainder of section one, sans Kimble, seemed to have clumped together into a group, the Boy with Strange Golden Eyes at its center. Miura hadn’t as yet rotated into interim command of a mission, but Templeton had noticed over the comms how many had deferred to him when in doubt, even the Kimble character, although Miura often seemed as much at a loss as the rest. Perhaps there was more to him than appeared at first sight, he thought.
Then again, perhaps not.
Ian didn’t think twice and pitched a tent in the center, and no one appeared to object to that at all. That didn’t even qualify as ambition by afterthought; Templeton knew Ian was only thinking about how the Old Man would react if he saw his grandson in any position other than front-and-center. No one clumped around him.
The blonde cadet kept his face tightly disciplined as his platoon-mates positioned themselves to his flanks and rear, as if he were being surrounded by the enemy but was too polite to frown about it.
Tactical monster, Templeton considered. He cursed his older brother yet again for what he had done to his own son. The boy was probably damaged beyond repair, although the lieutenant was slightly impressed by the fact that no one had yet perished at his hands.
Templeton took a few stills and recordings, participating good-naturedly in the banter before handing the cam to a friendly footman. The platoon posed and then posed again, and the level of noise soon began to attract unwanted attention from nearby ASC drivers. The lieutenant hushed the troop at once and sent the majority to the waiting line to top up their Suits. Discreetly he called Miura aside.
“We need to talk a moment, Miura. Got the time?”
“Nothing but time, sir. Have I done something wrong?”
The lieutenant chuckled.
“Why is it every time I call a cadet aside, he think he’s about to get squeezed? No, as far as I know you haven’t done anything wrong. Tell me how things have been going for you.”
That seemed to give the driver some pause for thought.
“Well,” he finally said, “we’ve been on the move non-stop for twenty days, never knowing the enemy’s location. I and my mates are in the same platoon, but today is the first time I’ve seen their faces since Lograin, they look as bad as I feel, and some of them look worse. I’m not even sure what day of the week it is, or where I currently find myself besides some position on some map, and no one else knows any better. I stink all over, I itch all over, I haven’t washed since MEWAC and I feel like I have sticky paste covering my body and gun oil in my hair. Other than that I’m OK.”
The lieutenant inclined his head in consideration and let the sarcasm slide.
“The Moca’s operating system is a bit simple,” he conceded. “That’s to be expected, seeing as it was meant to be supported
by an equally simple CPU. Has something to do with the price-tag, I guess. But the map is there and it is accurate. Trust me on that. As for where the enemy is, is it really that important to you?”
Miura nodded silently.
“Very well. We’re currently forty clicks closer to Unmil than any UAVs have come before and less than four hours march from the mine plantation. We have some reports there was a disturbance around these parts a few months ago, heavy enough to cause a brand new dawn-wave to propagate over the continent. The Research Hubs compiled all the data pertaining to the event and processed it. The point is they figured the dawn’s point of origin to be about three hundred clicks to our east, give or take a hundred.
“My guess is, if the enemy’s around these parts, he’s going to notice our presence here. Which is why from now on Main Force will be moving in battle line instead of column. That is also why LOGIS will be marching half a click behind the ASC. Today’s grove was a good catch, it was what we were needing. From now on there’ll be no grove-hunting, we’ll be operating on what we have. Feel any better?”
“Actually, yes sir. I was beginning to feel like this could go on forever.”
The lieutenant grinned.
“Rest assured that if our commander had decided to not jaunt to Lograin, it would have. But that’s not the reason why I wanted to talk to you. Who are you paired up with?”
“Grimm. Unit Four, sir.”
“Not anymore. You’ll pair up with Fourteen while Four assists Brother One. Understood?”
Miura’s disappointment was hard to miss.
“I ... Yes sir. Why?”
The lieutenant sighed heavily.
“Listen, Miura. I’m sure you’ve already noticed that Hirum’s having it hard out here. He’s going to need someone he knows and respects beside him to keep him in line. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes sir. It’s just that ... well, I –” Miura began.
“You just want to be a hero. Right, I get that, except that you’re not authorized to be a hero. That’s the true nature of military service. Shitty assignments. I hate them as much as you and I do everything I can to stay away from them. But they’re still assignments and they need to be done, otherwise I foresee Hirum will screw up so bad he’ll either get himself killed, get everyone else killed, get himself court-martialed, or a combination of the above. You’re his mate, right?”
“Yes ...”
“I’ll arrange to open a private channel so you can talk only between the two. That should make it easier for you. But you’ve got to keep him engaged. Are we clear?”
“Yes sir, I’ll get it done,” his subordinate finally said, apparently resigned to his fate.
“Excellent. Now get a meal in your belly. And wash. You smell like you’ve spent the last three weeks living in a latrine.”