Descent into Mayhem

By Bruno Goncalves

After two hundred years of isolation, the colonists of Capicua, a fertile super-earth orbiting Gliese 667C, are suddenly faced with an unknown and hostile military force.

Oblivious to the impending invasion, Toni Miura joins Capicua's decrepit armed forces in a bid to escape domestic troubles, aiming for the privilege of driving the Hammerhead, a bipedal mobile suit which is the epitome of his planet's ailing warrior spirit.

With the arrival of the earthborn invaders, Toni's unqualified platoon, brimming with misfits and plagued by internal differences, is suddenly thrown into the midst of battle. Abandoned by their seniors in the course of their mission, Toni and the remnants of his unit become lost in a world which, owing to the nature of its orbit, suffers periodically from planet-wide hurricane conditions.

So begins a race against time, where a handful of cadets will be forced to outmaneuver a pursuing enemy in the boondocks of a turbulent planet, all the while seeking to deliver an odd but important Bavarian prisoner-of-war to their headquarters.

"Comparisons to Heinlein's Starship Troopers are justified. Fans of hard Military Science Fiction, salute your new commander!" - D. B. Rose

"Much better than expected! I can barely wait for the next installment. Very interesting world building, good extrapolation of current technological warfare!" - RAZVAN ANDREI

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruno Goncalves
• Release date: Dec 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311358639

Bruno Goncalves

Born in Portugal but raised in South Africa, Bruno Goncalves is one of those odd people whose sentences sometimes begin in one language and end in another. After a few years dedicating his life to combat engineering, Bruno somehow managed to fool the Portuguese government into offering him a pistol and a badge. This achievement is still a source of some amusement to him. He has since been working as a Police officer by day, but at night he reads and writes science fiction novels. His greatest enemy? Television. Oh, and Youtube. Especially the funny cat videos. That'll distract him from his writing in an instant. On the other hand, he also relies heavily upon Youtube's epic music clips for writing inspiration.

Book preview

DESCENT INTO MAYHEM

Capicua Chronicles

Book I

Bruno Goncalves

Copyright © 2014 Bruno Goncalves

[e-mail]

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ISBN: 150275794X

ISBN-13: 978-1502757944

Foreword

Hi there and thanks for buying my book!

A special thanks to the following fellow indie authors:

David Rose (@David_Rose1958), a South African author who took the time to give me immense critical feedback, helping me to revise this book into something better than crap;

Felix R. Savage (@FelixRSavage), a Tokyo-based author without whom certain passages in my book simply wouldn’t make any sense.

I´d also like to dedicate Descent into Mayhem to my daughter, Laura, who has taught me a few things about mayhem herself.

Bruno Goncalves

February 01st 2016

PROLOGUE

Ten kilometers south of the Northern Wetlands Conservation Hub, 14H05, 5th of January 2750

First-sergeant Devonport suppressed a renewed urge to vomit. He struggled to get his labored breathing under control, dismally aware that it was only a matter of time before his stomach betrayed him. If there was one thing he knew about motion sickness, it was that the nausea would only settle down once the movement that was causing it had subsided.

He pushed the uncomfortable thought out of his mind and focused on his situation instead.

Devonport knelt before the crest of a steep elevation, his surroundings cloaked by rain that had been pouring down since the end of the previous month. Near to him a few stunted trees stood, their trunks turned up in a way that suggested the wind blew uphill on its southern face. There was still some strength left in the day’s wind, although it was only a shadow of the katabatic storm that had preceded it. The gusts instilled slight rocking motions upon the MEHEI as he waited, his helmet playing the falling rain’s static sound endlessly into his ears.

Well beyond the elevation’s summit, someone keyed a radio three times. To Devonport’s ears, the sound was barely audible above the background static, but still he tensed as he caught the unmistakable squawks, steeling himself for what was to come.

Maybe if I croak there’ll be a footnote about me in some history book, he mused, a humorless smile spreading across his face. His severely cropped moustache, almost Hitlerian in design, brushed against the edges of the undersized mouth-piece.

Devonport’s stomach lurched as he rose to a standing position. He shifted his body forwards and began to advance in bounding strides, his pace picking up to a slow, ponderous jog. Pulling from its resting-pylon his sole weapon for the coming fight, he then launched his armored Suit over the crest and became airborne.

The new feeling that invaded him had very little to do with nausea.

He landed heavily with seven tons of hardware tipping perilously forwards. He instinctively buckled his appendages, slamming a right kneepad into the waterlogged ground while allowing his left footpad to slide forward to counter an eventual roll. The impact shook his body, the hydraulic interface’s shock-absorbing capability failing to entirely cancel out the vibrations. Gravity conspired with inertia to send him onwards with hardly-diminished speed.

He began to savor the ferrous taste of his own blood.

He pounded his way down the tall hill, unable to see the way ahead except for a twenty-meter extension before him, backsword held one-handed and high over his pauldron. The thick-bladed implement, originally a combat engineering tool, weighed over two hundred Kilo-mass and was single-edged, with the blade remaining rectangular right up to its abrupt end. The hilt allowed for a wide two-handed grip suitable for felling trees, and more than a fifth of the weapon’s weight rested in its sizable tungsten pommel. The only disruption to its smooth design was a robust crow-hook at the end of the back of the weapon’s blade.

Devonport was counting on the crow-hook to afford him victory in the fight to come.

He picked up several frantic squawks over the comm from his advanced observer. Moments later a disembodied male voice began to offer warning in Japanese.

Would be sweet if I knew what you were saying, kozo ... Devonport rasped at the automated voice.

His view suddenly became obscured by several virtual panels offering him urgent instruction in Kanji writing.

The sergeant smirked but forewent any witty remarks. If only he had figured out how to change the language settings, then he wouldn’t be about to die from an overdose of ignorance. A twisted grin came to his face as the unit’s operating system began to display icons of incoming targets.

He was presently under missile attack.

He increased his pace to a bone-rattling sprint as the incoming missiles’ icons arced towards him. The fact that they were detectable at all made it clear that his unit’s active threat detection system was somehow operating, basically made him trackable as well. Devonport had no clue as to how to deactivate it. He turned towards the approaching missiles, banking on the rain to disrupt the Bloodhounds’ infrared detection systems. Rockets began to slam into the surrounding area in quick succession, all except for the last, which suddenly caught his scent.

Oh hell ... he muttered in alarm, as the icon that represented the missile streaked towards him.

Before he could think of an appropriate reaction, the MEHEI’s CPU took over, feeding quick instructions to the unit and its hydraulic interface. The articulated suit that enveloped Devonport’s body took on a life of its own and lurched forwards into a roll, the encapsulating chassis emulating its actions in almost perfect synchronicity. Warseed, christened as such by Devonport only the day before, rolled over the rough terrain as the missile struck the ground behind him and detonated.

His body timed the gesture fluidly, raising the enormous frame onto its footpads after two stone-shattering rolls before concluding the descent into the jumbled valley below. As he reached a collection of stunted trees, it all became too much for him. He vomited into his mouth-piece and then clawed frantically at his face to tear it off, Warseed’s upper appendages copying his grasping motions flawlessly.

As soon as he had stopped heaving, Devonport reined his emotions in and tried to estimate his attackers’ location. He reckoned the nearest enemy unit to be a little more than a kilometer away.

The sergeant crouched into imminent contact posture and began a slow advance, sticking close to the cover provided by terrain and trees as he tried to pick up the rumble of approaching armor.

Suddenly, a much nearer engine began to turn.

Warseed’s principal power unit roared into life, forcing Devonport to put a kneepad to the ground as the turbine’s whine slowly chafed away at his depleted nerves. He prayed silently, hoping that the noise wasn’t as deafening as it sounded from inside the unit.

Three agonizing minutes later, the tank was fully pressurized and the engine quieted once more. He unfroze his mind and made a quick decision.

He shut Warseed down and waited in its dark interface cavity for the system to reset to its default specifications. He then reactivated the Suit and was pleased to discover that the threat detection icon was no longer visible. Feeling almost painful relief as he regained stereoscopic vision, the sergeant began to creep forwards once more. Before long he came upon an oddly familiar landscape.

Devonport had once been plagued by nightmares about labyrinths. However fantastic the creatures that populated their corridors were, though, what had terrified his younger self was the feeling of being hopelessly lost, every step into the maze only managing to take him further away from safety and familiarity.

Devonport now found himself on the move inside such a labyrinth, its chaotic passages flanked by ferrous-red clay walls or by twisted masses of vegetation. It was a land carved by flash-floods from the monthly rains, the blood-red flow having created a convoluted topography that offered no clue as to what lay within. The passages were still flooded and Devonport found himself sticking close to the walls to keep his noise signature down, managing to paint his unit red in the effort.

That labyrinth also happened to be populated with its own exotic creatures. But what creatures they were, whether of the artillery kind or of the cavalry kind, and in what numbers, he couldn’t hope to guess. Both carried the Bloodhound anti-armor missile, the former defensively and the latter offensively; the missile attack thus offered no clear ID either way. He ignored the growing ball of fear in his stomach as he advanced for a kilometer, pausing before every turn to listen carefully. A nagging suspicion began to eat away at him, one that claimed that his adversary had shut down engines and was silently awaiting his approach.

The Rains slowly gave up their claim over the sky; for the first time in many days, visibility returned to his world.

A rapid succession of squawks cut through the silence. Devonport froze at once, holding his breath as his ears sharpened to take in every digitally-scrubbed sound. He stood within a particularly wide passage that curved gently to his right. The right-side wall was sloped and formed the beginning of a densely forested island, one that extended out for at least three hundred meters. He couldn’t guess its maximum width from where he was, but saw that it rose to a good twenty meters above the natural passage.

Four distinct squawks over the comm made his hackles rise. Devonport’s mind worked furiously; Imano had seen something important enough to make him risk compromise. He left the flooded passageway below and began to carefully ascend the island. As he slipped quietly into the trees, no more squawks made themselves heard.

The sergeant advanced on all fours through the foliage, dragging the heavy blade so its crow-hook wouldn’t snag against roots over what felt like two-thirds of the island’s length. His observable universe became restricted to a ten-meter radius of rain-soaked flora. He consoled himself with the belief that if he were visible to the enemy, he would probably already have been fired upon.

Two quick squawks pierced the silence and Devonport froze obediently. A few moments later he heard another three squawks, keyed slowly and deliberately. The speed of the squawks confused him, giving the impression of urging caution. When his spotter repeated the signal, Devonport slowly began to realize what he was trying to say.

His heart began to beat steadily faster.

He cautiously raised Warseed onto its footpads and approached the island’s left edge, trying to avoid damaging the vegetation to keep his noise signature down. The island ended in a sheer drop-off that afforded an ideal, if somewhat exposed, panorama of his surroundings. From there, he was able to discover that the passageway he’d abandoned eventually widened before joining the enormous floodplain that divided the valley. He searched for tracks, finding none. Belatedly he realized that he wouldn’t be finding any soon; the channel was still flooded with stagnant water.

If his adversary was equipped with main battle tanks, his job of finding them had just become more difficult. The MBTs could maneuver and conceal themselves while submerged for quite some time before eventually needing to show themselves. He wondered how deep the waters were and peered cautiously over the sheer drop-off before him.

His eyes widened in astonishment.

Below him, immobile and immense as they snuggled against the cliff’s face, almost entirely obscured by the flood waters, were two self-propelled artillery pieces. They looked like obese crocodiles as they lay in wait, their tracks and chassis entirely hidden in the crimson water, only their colossal heads, long slender snouts and the tops of their towed ammunition trailers visible. The only things about them that broke the reptilian look were the elaborate muzzle-brakes at the ends of their barrels. The unit nearest to him, at rest directly below, had its barrel trained on the passageway he had been using only minutes ago. Its sibling was guarding against rear attack.

Silently he prayed his warmest thanks, praising Imano for his divine guidance. Devonport didn’t believe in God, but Imano was a Buddhist and a life-saver, and he deserved a prayer or two. A direct hit from an artillery round would have been enough to make him find out whether God was more than just a fine idea.

Devonport carefully studied the nearest crocodile’s head and realized that it was entirely caked with red mud; it was the upgraded OAP-3 that the boys from Fort Kiba weren’t supposed to have, which meant that if he didn’t destroy them in that moment, the vehicles would be able to make their escape into the water just like any MBT.

He finally located what he was looking for; a circular hatch on the far side of the oversized turret, almost entirely obscured by a layer of clay. A less knowledgeable soldier might have confused it with the rebated radar dish on the turret’s opposite side, but Devonport had been privileged to begin his career as an artilleryman.

Springing into action, the sergeant launched his unit over the drop-off and landed with all four appendages upon the OAP’s turret, graying out for a brief moment as the resounding shock from the impact nearly overcame him. Sucking it up, he quickly stood and lodged his backsword’s crow-hook into the crevasse between the hatch and its casing.

Using the tungsten-rhenium blade as an improvised crow-bar, he then popped the hatch off its turret with remarkably little effort. He had expected no less than that result; the OAP’s hatch simply hadn’t been designed to deal with so much leverage.

All at once things began to happen.

As Devonport peered into the gaping hole he had just made, the OAP beneath him jerked into motion. The supporting OAP began to traverse its barrel , the turning turret’s rear biting deeply into the soft cliff wall against which it was nestled.

The sergeant launched himself towards the supporting OAP, landing gratefully short of his target into the far more yielding water. Planting his footpads securely on the muddy channel bed, he waded towards his second adversary in frenzied desperation, already imagining the first artillery platform’s barrel aiming at his backplate. Dipping his helm beneath the second OAP’s traversing main gun, he hugged the tank and chanced a quick glance to his rear. The first artillery piece was nowhere to be seen.

Clambering onto his new prey, Devonport repeated his previous performance, prying the hatch off the artillery piece’s still-traversing turret as its barrel began to push into the cliff-face itself. Not wasting another second, the sergeant thrust his gauntlet into the turret and began to swat at whatever hid inside.

It was easy to distinguish man from metal.

In a brief pair of seconds, Devonport was sure he had killed or seriously maimed at least two of the five crewmembers who operated the platform. The first, probably the ammunition handler, he crushed against the ammo rack at the turret’s rear, the hollow thump of Warseed’s gauntlet against his flak jacket making it clear that the man would be doing nothing for what remained of his life. The second, probably the commander if seating arrangement was anything to go by, tried to shy away from his searching grip like a puppy from an obsessed toddler. As Devonport closed his gauntlet around the soldier’s torso, he heard the loud pop of a pistol going off, followed by a sound more horrifying than any he had heard before.

It was more of a high-pitched bark than it was a scream, but it still signaled the end of a life.

The OAP’s main gun fired into the clay wall and the entire cliff came crashing down. Devonport hastily released his victim, rolling into the water before most of the compacted clay could bury him. The sergeant pulled himself free of the collapsed cliff-face to find the artillery piece interred by its own landslide. A rumbling roar from behind caused him to snap about.

He was just in time to see part of the opposite cliff-face collapse into the water. Still unsure of the first OAP’s location, he decided to break radio silence.

Scryer, this is Champion. Inform location of first hostile!

You’re looking at it, Champion.

Say again, Scryer.

I said you’re looking at it, kozo. Your first hostile fled into deep water without knowing it didn’t have a hatch any more. It must’ve flooded and kept on going until it hit the wall. Right now your first hostile’s as buried as your second is. Not bad for a guy with a can-opener ...

The sergeant took a second look at the distant land-slide, finding that it was located right where the first OAP would have reached if it had kept moving in a straight line.

Roger that, Looker. Inform if your post has further threats on its scope, over.

This post bids yours farewell and good luck, kozo, Imano replied sadly, my scope is full of incoming –

The communication cut off as several flashes brightened the overcast day. Devonport turned and watched in astonishment as the hill where his observer was embedded was pummeled by dozens of artillery rounds. They were closely followed by streaking missiles that dispersed antipersonnel bomblets over its surface, subsequently tearing the hill apart.

The cacophony of detonations finally reached his ears, their massive reports making real what had only a moment ago seemed like another dream creature’s appearance.

Imano was dead. If he wasn’t dead, he was almost certainly dying. Devonport digested that fact with more difficulty than he would have thought possible.

In another part of his mind, the analyst was quietly at work, duly noting that the units he’d just dispatched had probably only been an improvised screening force. If the enemy had managed to triangulate his observer’s location finely enough to order an artillery strike, then that meant the presence of E-warfare units and dedicated artillery batteries, which implied that a combined-arms force was at play. That in turn meant that Fort Kiba had disgorged its entire complement, MBTs included.

Warseed’s principal power unit sputtered into life again. Devonport hardly took notice; he was too engrossed with the sight of the debris as it rained down upon the ravaged hill. The rains had ended, he realized as his head begin to throb, taking away the one edge he could ever really have counted on.

There was no longer any reason to remain there, but still he considered the hill as it resettled, realizing that it was possibly his decision to break radio silence that had cost Imano his life.

I killed the man who saved my life, he concluded, aghast at the scale of his sin.

Moving with the sluggishness of the shell-shocked, Devonport turned towards the supporting OAP´s burial site and began to search for his discarded backsword.

It wouldn´t be wise to return to battle unarmed.

CHAPTER ONE

20 kilometers east of Leiben, 03H00, 7th of January, 2771 (21 years later)

Toni peered into the fog and thanked the family gods for the concealment it afforded. He winced as he heard a cry in the distance and reminded himself again of how much of an idiot he was.

He could have left without warning, of course. In fact, every rational bone in his body had urged him to do just that. He had decided instead to leave a goodbye note upon his bed before leaving. The desperate voice in the distance belonged to his mother, his sweet mother who, possessed by her uncanny maternal sonar, must have gone into his bedroom to check on him. He had been hearing her voice for the better part of the last half-hour, calling for him.

Toni refused to run, however. Running was something a child would do, and he firmly believed himself to no longer be one. Even so, he hastened his pace.

The fog had Toni wondering whether he would soon be in need of shelter. Peering up was pointless, the unrelenting mist shielding the sky beyond, hiding any clues as to his immediate future. The fact that it was presently the seventh day of the month offered the only clue as to the weather he could expect.

At that time of the month, the sky could be counted upon to be overcast, with a persisting presence of fog, drizzle, or even light showers from the second to the eighth before the crimson sun finally made its appearance. It was only day three since the Great Rains had come to an end.

As he journeyed over the winding dirt road, he finally set his eyes on something that gave him a firm idea as to his location. Under his feet the road began to rise until, several paces ahead and at its highest point, a familiar ochre-red wall appeared to his left. He ran his hand along the rough wall, feeling the rock-like bark grating against his skin, feeling the looser fibers in the intermittent gaps giving way as his fingers scraped along. The road curved around the wall for quite a few more steps before finally breaking off at a downward slope. Toni followed the road, sparing only the briefest glance at the tree behind him, its massive trunk disappearing up into the fog. Today was no day to peer at the silent sentinel.

Toni’s heart sank as he spied a more humble redwood at the roadside.

Leaning nonchalantly against it with arms crossed and a furrowed brow, Kaya Miura awaited her brother’s silent approach. As he halted hesitantly before her, she uncrossed her arms and shoved her slim fingers into her coat pockets. She was wearing the brown leather jacket. He had worn it once, and knew that its pockets’ interiors were lined with genet fur. It was an extravagant coat, quite appropriate for the tall woman who stood before him, appraising him with that critical expression he hated so much. He couldn’t help but see his father there.

So ... she finally said, did you hear your mother? Did you hear her calling for you?

Silently he nodded.

And? she asked, the furrow on her brow deepening. Don’t you have anything to say?

There’s nothing to say, he replied, despairing at the softness of his voice.

Nothing to say? Nothing? You ungrateful little prick, she remarked quietly.

He grimaced at her tone, recognizing it for what it was: the light breeze before the storm. If he allowed her to get up to full steam, Kaya would soon be yelling loudly enough to trip mother’s sonar and draw her in like stellar gravity. He hurried to cut her off.

It’s not a matter of being grateful, I can’t be what you want me –

You hid your final marks from us, she continued. More skillfully than I would have expected, I must admit. But using my password was a bit much, don’t you think? Was there some hidden message there? Were you sticking your tongue out at me?

Three days ago, Toni’s final examination results had finally arrived at the Miura residence by conventional mail, removing from the household all doubts as to who had been tampering with the domestic server’s electronic mail.

Well? she insisted.

No, he lied. I needed to make time until I had an answer from the Forces. I thought that if I deleted the messages, I –

You coward ...

The word was kick to the gut, and it silenced him instantly.

I know, he conceded. You wanted to know why, so I’m telling you why.

And I guess you realized we’d just think it was the money pit’s fault, right?

The Miura household’s domestic server, affectionately known as the Money Pit, was more than thirty years old, having survived multiple ownership over the course of its existence. The forestation company his father had bought it from had neglected to entirely clear the computer’s memory banks and so, once reconnected to the grid at its new place of residence, it had showed some entrepreneurial spirit, acquiring countless seedlings of several tree species to the detriment of their bank account. His opportunistic mother had made the best of the mistake and quietly set to work, planting the seedlings around their farm’s perimeter and tasking Toni to care for them until they found their footing in the soil.

The computer was subsequently lobotomized, although its reliability suffered a nosedive as a result. It was, in fact, the family’s lack of confidence in their connection to the General Civilian Network that had allowed him to get away with his deception for so long.

Yeah, I guess so. I also knew that without mom’s or dad’s authentication codes, Southwood would just find another way to send the letters. I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.

"Dad threatened the school, Leiben varsity and the GCN employees with prosecution, he kept calling them incompetent. He had to call them back and apologize!" she said with rising anger.

I know, I was there when he made the call ...

You’re a worm, you know that? You’ve brought dishonor to our –

This is the problem, right here ... he muttered under his breath as dull anger began to fester.

What? What did you say, shrimp? You sure you want a piece of me? she challenged.

I won’t ever be anything like this.

What?

I said I won’t ever be anything like this! You step on me. Father steps on me –

You screw up, that’s –

Let me speak! he spat.

There was enough anger pressed into those words to give her pause. She watched him coolly, her expression momentarily subdued.

I don’t care if I screw up! he continued, speaking as loudly as he dared. From now on I’ll screw up on my terms. Where I’m going I won’t have this insane family to tear me up from the inside out!

No. You’ll just have some drill instructor to do that for us! You think we were hard on you? Wait until you get a load of them! They’ll break your fragile heart and send you home crying, she finished with a laugh.

No, they won’t, he countered with certainty. I can take them on because they’re not family, which means I’ll be free to hate them without having to feel ashamed about it. And even if I don’t make it somehow, you shouldn’t stand around waiting for me to return. If I fail, I’ll just walk into the wild until I find a research hub out there. I don’t care to return even if it means within a week I’ll be eating the bark off of trees. What I feel for all of you now is the worst kind of hate. I’ve been trying to repress this, but the feeling just won’t go away ...

His words seemed to have made an impression on his older sister. Kaya leaned against the redwood again and listened to the forest sounds, or maybe for some clue as to his mother’s whereabouts. Her anger appeared to have abated, and there was a hint of doubt on her features, although perhaps that was just a trick of shadows.

What we have here is a failure to communicate, she finally said. I don’t really care whether you hate me or not. My conscience is clear on that point. But you might want to reconsider those feelings in relation to Sarah. She’s attached to you, and your leaving’s going to leave a mark there that might –

Go to hell. I knew you were gonna pull the Sarah Card out sooner or later. She’ll do fine. She’s got two older sisters to take care of her, besides mother. As for me, I’m eighteen years old, my studies are done and I’ve been accepted into MEWAC.

Mewhat?

MEWAC. Mechanized Warfare Corps. I’m on my way there now.

On foot?

It’s not that far away ...

A slow smile slowly began to spread across her face.

So you want to break out into the world and be independent. You want to be autonomous, a great warrior, whatever. And you’ll be within walking distance of the farm? Don’t overexert yourself there, soldier.

As he always tended to do in such moments, Toni wondered whether his sister loved him.

So tell me about this MEWAC, she demanded.

It’s ... It’s a sort of fusion of old infantry and cavalry units from the Henderson and Kumato research hubs. Its home-base is the Adamastor warehouse.

That a very big aquarium for such a small fish, she remarked more to herself than to him.

For the briefest of moments, he suddenly wasn’t too keen on getting there. Then he remembered what had drawn him to MEWAC in the first place; it was the outfit to join if one wanted to drive a Hammerhead Suit.

What about the Military Academy? It might be a bit much for you, but at least dad might respect you a little more.

Toni grimaced.

I applied for both the MA and the Army Sergeant School. The Academy didn’t even bother to reply, the Sergeant School just sent me the application form for MEWAC. I filled it in and got an answer yesterday.

"You mean I got an answer yesterday. You’ve been using my user account, I checked the activity log."

I knew mom was checking up on mine, so ... yes.

Wonderful. And their reply?

Toni grudgingly handed his sister the printed sheet. Her eyebrows slowly rose as she studied the document.

Two spelling mistakes ... she observed distastefully. "Anyway, it says incorporation dependent upon approval. Which means you haven’t even been approved yet. To an outfit whose soldiers apparently don’t know how to spell ..."

She handed the sheet back to Toni with disdain and he refolded it, trying not to let his feelings show. He had already been painfully aware of what she had said. He wondered whether soon he really would be eating the bark off trees.

I have to go, he finally said.

Sure. I wouldn’t want to keep you from abandoning your family. However, mother told me that if I chanced to come across you, it was my solemn responsibility to warn you to inform base medical services about your folic acid deficiency.

My – what?

Yes, your folic acid deficiency. She never bothered to tell us about it, but she´s been supplementing our meals with the stuff, it apparently runs in her side of the family. You can be sure the canteens won’t be supplementing your meals, so you’ll have to inform the medical department about that.

Toni was dubious.

Does that even exist? I’m sure as hell not going to hang myself by the tongue at medical, Kaya. Goodbye, he muttered as he skirted around his sister, giving her a wide berth.

That’s just fine, then, I’m sure you’ll be getting all the supplementation you need when you’re eating the bark off trees. I heard they’ve got a lot of folic acid, she taunted, rubbing the redwood beside her.

It took him only a dozen steps to lose her in the fog.

*****

The sounds of the forest were beginning to make themselves heard. Toni checked his digital watch; it read a quarter past four in the morning. But of course the critters didn’t know that, and so they kept to whatever timetable they had figured out for themselves. By the looks of it, at least some squirrels had decided it was daytime, and he could see a pair of them foraging among the roots of a Tanoak to his left. He wondered for the millionth time what true night might be like.

Close your eyes and you’ll know, his father had joked the first time Toni asked that question.

He had learned to never expect a straight answer from his father, and had long suspected that that was a treatment the old man reserved only for his son. He felt relieved all over again to be walking away from Mushima farm. His encounter with Kaya had only strengthened his resolve.

He increased the length of his stride, dreading to be late for his first encounter with military life. His backpack felt heavier, and he had begun to switch it from one shoulder to the other more often. His surroundings were becoming noisier. Birds chirped musically as some began to take flight, and at last it became clear to him that the forest had decided it was daytime. Nature’s dawn had finally arrived.

Despite everything he had been taught about Nature’s adaptation to his home planet, Toni still found its biological clock fascinating. In the complete absence of day-night cycles, the forests had adopted their own circadian rhythm of about twenty two hours, although the cycle-length happened to vary depending on the time of month. On more than one class excursion out to the groves, Toni and his primary-school mates had been instructed to sit silently and listen to the forest as it woke. It was a rare day when Nature’s Dawn coincided with the chronological one.

But Nature’s Dawn was not a simultaneous continent-wide event. It progressed in waves, the gradual increase in wildlife activity propagating across the countryside like a planet-wide Mexican wave. That wave moved along at over a hundred kilometers per hour and was eleven hundred kilometers deep, sometimes taking more than two weeks to make a full circuit around the Thaumantian supercontinent’s arid center. There were never less than twelve such dawn waves in motion at any time, although very rarely dawns fused, or spontaneously emerged from between sister waves that were unusually far apart, or even swirled and eddied over vast mountain ranges and other geographical features. Once faced with a time-lapse simulation of the event on a continent-wide scale, it had appeared to Toni as if a giant hypnotic eye was hard at work, trying to bewitch him.

The tree-roots under his feet had become so densely intermingled that he was having difficulty keeping his footing. The road had since been demoted to a long disused path, but it was already too late to think about turning back. Besides, there was supposed to be nothing else out there except for the base. He maintained his heading, swallowing his anxiety as the minutes passed by.

Half an hour later, the road promisingly began to look well-traveled again, and every once in a while he would find a dirt path leading off it, wide enough for a single column of men to travel through. Visibility had also begun to improve and Toni could see farther out around him. He groaned inwardly, knowing that it was now only a matter of time before it began to rain. He kept following the dirt road until finally he spied something that made his heart leap. He took a quick look at his watch: it was a quarter to six.

Two hundred meters down an arrow-straight paved road, there was an ornate wrought-iron military gate with a solitary black sentry box standing beside it. To the left was a white-washed wall of about a man’s height, and it led off into the forest without any end in sight. A wall on the other side led off diagonally into the forest.

After an exhilarating sprint, Toni came to a skidding halt in front of the gate. A quick look at the sentry box provided him with yet another setback; it was quite empty.

The gate must open at six o’clock sharp, he finally realized.

The avian chirping slowly grew to become a nuisance, and Toni saw a number and variety of birds beyond count in flight, or pecking along the ground in ever closer proximity to him as he rested on a rock with his pack beside him.

As Toni tried unsuccessfully to attract the attention of several marauding crows, the long expected drizzle finally began to fall, reducing visibility again as well as chilling Toni to the bone. He removed an oversized jersey from his pack and used it to cover his shoulders like a cloak before perching a wide-brimmed farmer’s hat on his head, an accessory as useful to keep his head dry as to prevent the birds overhead from painting a target on his crown.

The minutes ticked slowly away and, to Toni’s growing bewilderment, not a single recruit showed up at the gate.

He checked his watch again. It was a quarter past the hour, and that undoubtedly meant he was late. Anxiety lurched forwards and took center-stage in his heart, reminding him in exquisite detail of the shame that awaited him were he to fail.

He walked over to the gate and gave it a long, hard stare. He then shifted his weight back and launched himself forward, sending a boot against the gate in frustration. The sudden impact of work-boot against iron produced a resounding metallic clang.

To Toni’s utter surprise, the sentinel box to his left shuddered violently, and a tall figure enshrouded in a black cloth suddenly jumped out, only to collapse to the ground with a thud.

Uff! HALT! WHO GOES THERE? the figure bellowed loudly, trying to stand as it did so. It finally managed to free itself from its covering and a compact-looking rifle fell clattering to the ground at his feet.

A crack trooper he certainly wasn’t. Toni suppressed the urge to face-palm as the soldier quickly gathered the rifle up with spider-like arms. He wore a vomit-green uniform a little short at his arms and legs, which