Anyway, for your enjoyment:The year is 1274 After Tranquillity.
Mankind has transcended its limited existence on the surface of the Earth and conquered the Solar System. Over the course of a millennium, former national affiliations have been discarded and reforged around Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and beyond. Forgetting the blue world that was once its cradle, humanity has extended its reach; abandoning old conflicts, it creates them anew. The scale of human territory is too vast to perpetuate warfare on a personal level. Even with the system of relativistic Beam Lines crisscrossing known space, distances seem insurmountable. Vast and powerful fleets of mobile weapons exist to perpetuate the idea of might, but in the 33rd century, true power is derived from resources: matter, energy and how much you control.
Despite this, warfare continues across a thousand different battlefields in a thousand disparate locations. Reeling from the destruction caused by self-replicating mobile weapons in the one great solar war, the polities of the present make no effort to exert themselves in tests of arms. In this climate, private military contractors are ubiquitous. Bereft of political ideology and nationalism, mercenaries provide a safe outlet for violence between political enemies.
And in this climate, there are nearly an infinite number of opportunities to prosper.
KIDOU SENSHI SOL GUNDAM
Chapter One – Red Letter Monday
The world struck a gash of light into Freeman Ayato’s brain, and it took him a full five seconds to realise it was because he was opening his eyes. Groaning, he reached up and rubbed the rheum from his aching eyes. Something had clearly died in his mouth. His face was on his desk, and after a moment he pushed himself upright, creaking as he did so, until he fell back into the leathery embrace of his chair. Rubbing at his nose, he waited for his eyes to start focussing, and trying to fathom out why his head felt like there was a monkey banging away on his skull with a mallet. When he could actually see again, he counted two bottles which had at one point contained a lot more vodka, and another bottle which had definitely contained tequila before it had been opened. Leaning down to open his desk drawers, and cursing when they seemed totally devoid of painkillers, he noticed a package sitting in a prominent position next to his antique telephone. It had been torn open and was spilling a considerable quantity of white powder.
Ayato rubbed at his nose again. Oh, that would be about right. It had been a present from Dimitri. The bearded gangster had been practically jumping for joy when the shipment had come in, and seeing as they had been in the null-gravity of the dock, that hadn’t been advisable. Dimitri was a lieutenant, an important one, who had come to Ayato for the express purpose of importing two thousand tons of Venusian cocaine. The contraband would have an estimated street value of roughly to two trillion marks, and would allow Dimitri’s bosses to corner the market in the Captured Stars Federation; essentially, the most important job of Dimitri’s life, and he had never worked with Ayato before. Suffice to say when they started unloading and customs had seemingly missed it entirely, he was so pleased that he snatched up a brick and pushed it into Ayato’s hands.
‘A little bonus for a job well done.’ He had said, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Have a good time tonight, and when you wake up you will be considerably wealthier, okay?’
And Ayato had taken him on face value and gone home, sat down at his desk and placed the tightly bound package in front of him. Both its purity and value were immense; coke went at something like a hundred marks a gram, and if he cut it properly, he could probably stretch it to about three hundred grand. Even as he mused on whether to get into the distribution business, his assistant – Piety Carnelli – entered the office. She planted her backside on the desk and stared at the package.
‘What’s that?’ she had asked.
‘It’s a key of Venusian coke. Dimitri gave it to me as a thank you gift.’ he had replied. ‘I was thinking of selling it.’
Piety nodded sagely, then used a thumbnail to split the wrapping. ‘Oooor …’
It seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea at the time. The vodka kiss had helped. Sighing, and still feeling like his brain was far too large for his skull, Ayato picked up his bank card and used it to scoop as much of what was left of the drug back into its package – there was, frighteningly, not nearly as much as there should have been. Folding it closed, he considered binning it, but there was still basically a hundred and fifty marks in the bag, maybe a little more. As he further weighed up the satisfaction of discarding it versus the satisfaction of more cash, the phone rang. It felt like the monkey with the mallet was trying out the o-daiko solo from a Reconstructionist Matsuri Metal performance.
“Sweet mothering fuck.” Ayato groaned between clenched teeth. He picked up the handset, held it above the cradle for a few measured breaths, before putting it to his ear. “Good morning, this is Ayato Free Market Import and Ex-”
“Freeman you young bastard!” Dimitri shouted, and Ayato recoiled from the phone. “How are you this morning?”
“Fabulous.”
“You did good work for me, Ayato. Real good work. You should check your bank account; I think you’ll like what you’ll see.” Ayato did not bother, but made an appreciative noise to please Dimitri. “I took a gamble on you, but it paid off. You’re smooth, and I like that. I like you. I think my boss will like you too.”
“Are you … are you trying to imply something here?”
There was a burst of laughter like a series of punches to the ear. “Come to the Elysian by eleven.”
The clock said it was just after ten. “Elysian Fields, eleven o’clock. Ciao Dimitri.”
Hanging up, Ayato squeezed at the corners of his eyes, grabbed his jacket, then stood up; when he turned, the floor seemed to tilt, and he stumbled slightly. Normally the ‘tilt’, caused by Coriolis force acting on the fluid of the inner ear, was more or less unnoticeable. He found another empty bottle on the floor; this one had contained a very old and expensive whiskey. The floor tilted again as Ayato rounded his desk. He noticed his shirt and vest were unbuttoned. He tried to remember why this was so. Piety had done it, hadn’t she? And where was the little alcoholic?
Ah, right there, two feet away, drooling onto the armrest of the red leather couch. Pink hair the same shade as her underwear cascaded over her face. She was clinging to a mostly empty sphere of Chambord. Seeing his discarded silk cravat at his feet, Ayato knelt down and wiped residual powder from her belly and cleavage, before drying her mouth. She stirred, mumbling something incomprehensible, and rolled over. Ayato covered her in his suit jacket, then headed for the door, grabbing his katana as he went.
The office door lead directly into the living room, and there was a different jacket casually tossed onto the curving couch sunk into the floor. He fished it out with the sheathed end of his sword, then walked into the kitchen. Everything was chrome and black glass, which did not suit Ayato (and it only suited Piety when it didn’t need to be cleaned). As he approached the fridge, the screen into its door blinked on, providing muted news. Ayato watched it for a moment. Separatist terrorism in the Tharsis Hegemony? That wasn’t new; so he ignored it and heaved open the door. No eggs. Why no eggs?
Leaving the apartment, Ayato stepped out into the sun and recoiled. His eyelids slammed shut against the onslaught of reflected sunlight. He quickly leaned on his katana and donned his one-piece sunglasses. Sepharial Cylinder Alpha was looking particularly lovely today. The sun was shining off thirty kilometre long mirrors through thirty kilometre long windows. Roughly six kilometres over his head he could see Enbyr City amongst the greenery of artificial mountains, and if he walked out into the middle of the street and turned around, he would be able to see Mousen City be the sea. He took a deep breath of fresh, habitat air. Heels clicked past. “Good morning Ayato.” Two women said in unison.
“Good morning ladies.” He replied, taking a moment to watch the swaying of their hips. He started to stroll down his street, greeting those people he knew, which was essentially everyone. Reaching the corner, he swung into The Raveli and sat at the bar. The owner, Simone Rasbadi, stared at him a moment, and he stared back. “Egg.” He croaked. She laughed, and disappeared into the back, before returning with an egg, a small bowl and a couple of bottles.
“Looks like you had a big night.” She said, cracking the egg. Ayato watched her move the yolk from shell to shell, letting the white fall into the bowl. He made a noncommittal noise, and she smirked. Simone slammed a lowball glass onto the bench, dropped the yolk in and topped it with dashes of tomato juice, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and pepper. With the jab of a finger it slid across into his waiting hand. After it giving a long, slow look, he knocked the whole thing back and blanched.
“How do I look?”
She blew a stray lock of auburn hair out of her face. “About as good as you did when you first walked in.”
“So pretty good then.”
She gave him a wry smile, taking his glass and started to play with the lip. “Don’t push your luck, sweetheart. One day you’re going to meet a girl you can’t just sweep off her feet.” Ayato gave her a quizzically bemused expression, kissed the tip of his finger and pressed it against her lips. He smiled when he felt the tip of Simone’s tongue.
“If I were to ask you to call me a taxi, just how long do you think I would have to pay you back for all your kindness?”
There was a pregnant pause, where Ayato found the tip of his finger between Simone’s teeth. She released him and shrugged. “Start paying me back now. We’ll how that goes.”
*
Sepharial Habitat hung seventeen thousand kilometres over the surface of the red planet. Its scale was immense, constructed as a pair of counter-rotating cylinders three kilometres in diameter and ten times that again in length. Since its completion centuries previously, it had become fully self-contained – a stable ecosystem, a powerful industry and a sustainable population of millions. However, Sepharial was simply one of thousands of such habitats in areostationary orbit; Mars was girded by a ribbon of stars constructed by human engineering. Both Deimos and Phobos had been dismantled by hungry terraformers in ages past, leaving only the Glitter Belt. No Martian nation was without at least a handful of these O’neill cylinders, and the Captured Stars Federation – of which both Ayato and Piety were citizens – was based entirely upon orbitals of this type. A triumph of industry, forever visible in the Martian sky.
Forty thousand kilometres along the length of the Glitter Belt from Sepharial and over ten thousand kilometres below, a humanoid figure drifted, a silhouette on the glowing face of Mars. There was no way to judge the scale, and if you were just close enough to make it out, you might have thought it was just a human in a space suit, very far from home. This would have been an inaccurate assessment: the figure was over twenty metres in height and massed over a hundred tons. Black and blue, the EGMS-19 Blue Giant – a custom model known as the Euryale – lay spread-eagle on the gravity well, surveying Mars with the impassive visors of its angular head. Buried within its armoured heart, Ysrael Samsa considered the book in his hand, his helmet floating by. The panoramic displays gave the impression that Samsa and his linear seat block were floating free in space.
“Hey, Kafka.” He said, seemingly to no-one. “What do you think of this? ‘In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of 'world history' — yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened.’”
To his left a display in blue and green popped into existence, with the name KAFKA, N. emblazoned across it. The bars of her vocal wave pattern began to undulate. “Since when did you read Nietzsche?”
“Don’t you think it’s surprisingly pertinent to the situation at hand?” he asked. Smiling, he stowed his book and pulled his helmet on. Silently, the cockpit began to fill with impact gel, and more and more displays began to blink on, until Samsa was surrounded by a web of light. He leaned back into his contour couch and felt the click of input/output cables; at once his awareness seemed to swell, as though his senses were now a thousand times sharper.
Kafka gave a sigh over the laser line. “Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength — life itself is will to power. Get your game on, Izzy.”
Fully immersed within the translucent gel, Samsa grasped the controls and immediately swung out a fifteen ton limb. Leveraging Newton’s third law of motion and short pulses of cold thrust, the Euryale flipped over. Concentric targeting reticules caught sight of two objects, one a weapons container marked BOWA-400 VAJRA, and the other a quickly approaching mobile suit designated CRX-88 HYPERION GUNDAM. At a short mental command, the sleek oblong unleashed bursts of cold thrust and pushed itself towards Samsa.
So much was happening at once. The Euryale’s fusion drives were cycling into operation. The container split apart, spilling its contents into space. One of his anchors snapped out and seized the beam projector, dragging it towards him. Kafka and her Hyperion streaked past, an ice white meteor flanked by a pair of smaller objects. The Vajra in his MS’ hands, Samsa flipped himself over and once more surveyed Mars before him. His magnification increased dramatically, as though he was falling through the stratosphere, zipping past the Hyperion wreathed in sun-hot fire, through the wisps of clouds in the upper atmosphere until their target, a city held by the separatist militant group Noctis Libertas, which seemed as though it was within the reach of his hand.
It looked like any Martian coastal city along any other portion of the Noctis Labyrinthus, or the Valles Marineris, or any other body of water on the red planet. Samsa had heard of the troubles which gripped the region for three decades, though even now he was here, the reasons why were irrelevant. The position of the Tharsis Hegemony only concerned him insofar as it provided him with reasonable accurate intel. The beliefs and struggle of the Noctis Libertas only mattered because it had provided them with mobile suits, anti-armour weaponry and the inclination to use them.
Who, what, where and how much. That was all that mattered to a mercenary in combat. The why could wait until later, after their targets were eliminated and Kafka was safely returned to space. Maybe then he would ask himself why. The thrum of the charged beam cannon travelled through the Euryale’s arms and torso and made his teeth quiver.
Thousands of kilometres below, the Hyperion Gundam screamed through the atmosphere like a solar flare, riding on a shock front of superheated air. From below, violet light stabbed up in legato rhythms, though the laser pulses were essentially useless against the wave of plasma enveloping the Hyperion. Within the opaqued cockpit, they barely registered on the complex, though limited, telemetry weaving across the curved walls. Kafka watched scrolling figures, the city laid out in red and yellow wire frame. Something tickled her on the edge of perception, a flash of intuition that had her immediately tweak a foot pedal, transferring through to one of the legs. The mobile suit spun, creaking at the violent shift in vector, as a burst of hypersonic penetrators whipped past at tens of kilometres a second. Working all her controls, Kafka changed her dive into a barely controlled tumble, an evasive pattern half based on pure instinct and half on electromagnetic pulses from surface based gauss cannons.
Slammed from side to side in her restraints, Kafka kept her eyes fixed on the altimeter. Laced into its systems as she was, this was essentially needless, but old habits died hard. The needle on the holographic gauge dropped steadily, even as she went into more swerves to avoid tungsten arrows. There were missile contacts now; glowing at over five thousand degrees Kelvin, the Hyperion was a target that no ECM – short of actually frying the missiles in flight – could effectively obscure. As they rose to meet her like a swarm of buzzing, nuclear hornets, she knew that an object making unpowered re-entry was child’s play to take down with guided munitions.
The red needle slid steadily over from digit to digit. Her grip on the sticks tightened, her cheek twitched. Caution signs were blaring around her, in light, in sound and all through her head. Kafka shoved them aside and watched as the needle clicked over and thermal sensors indicated that the shock front was dissipating.
The hard line of her mouth split into a toothy grin. Injectors plunged into her body, neural pulse flow accelerated and the CRX-88 came alive.
Protective coverings over delicate sensors snapped open, revealing Mars in all its mid-afternoon glory. Atop its head, a V-shaped crest snapped open, control surfaces rippled like scales and its limbs cracked open, activating full articulation. Spreading its arms and legs and ailerons like some sort of mechanical flower, Kafka felt like she had been kicked in the gut. The shoulder restraints cut into the reactive armour of her pilot suit, and her velocity was killed practically instantly. She gave the Hyperion’s systems a brief order, and her two free flying weapon pods split apart, disgorging the armaments within. As they hurtled past, the Hyperion’s hands grasped hold of them – one a Breitenbach 120mm automatic gauss cannon, the other a Standish 400mm grenade launcher. Kafka throttled up her drives and tore away on a tail of incandescent star-stuff; vapour condensed around its body as it exceeded the sound barrier. The cloud of missiles whipped around, trailing cords of hot vapour. The Hyperion had reached Mach 4, but the missiles were like hungry wolves – they would not give up the chase until they died. Or were killed.
Flipping end over end, the Hyperion lead the missiles on a crazy dance, twisting and turning. She was dangerously close, but at that distance the ridiculously high relative velocity kept their foam-phase hydrogen payloads from detonating. A dozen different fusion-powered verniers were firing in concert, sending the mobile suit through the swarm; when she emerged unscathed, Kafka reoriented herself and triggered her head-mounted lasers. Missiles in the process of spinning back around were melted, sliced apart. A fountain of vapour trails crested by uncontrolled and essentially useless detonations.
Kafka dropped to street level, her impact shattering glass and concrete and making cars jump like toys. Over her own slightly sore gasping, Samsa spoke. “Heaven and Earth, Neph. Drag them out by their guts for me.”
“Like you have to ask.” She replied, the Hyperion settling on its haunches.
*
Some minutes before eleven, Ayato rocked up to the Elysian Fields; one of Sepharial’s largest sports fields, and the only one devoted solely to a single sport, in this case baseball. Ayato couldn’t help but smirk at it and shake his head, a movement which caused intense pain. Dimitri’s boss owned the Elysian: it was a symbol of Anjou Nostrum’s power in the criminal underworld of Sepharial. Who else owns a property this big? Ayato could almost hear him say it; having never spoken to the mob boss, he concocted the most stereotypical wiseguy voice he could. One hand in his pocket and the other around his katana, he strolled up the stairs to the glass of the front doors. He was greeted by men in neatly pressed suits. One of them was a Dimitri, and one was a gorilla. Ayato had seen more than a few apes in his lifetime, but he had to admit that this one was the snappiest dresser of them all.
“Is that a Chaozhouxieye? It looks good on you; a very nice cut around the shoulders.” The gorilla acknowledged this with a movement of his massive brows. He reached out with think fingers and began to poke, pad and prod, lifting the lapels of Ayato’s jacket, checking down his sleeves. Finishing with a close inspection of Ayato’s shoes, the gorilla (who went by the name of Clemenzo) nodded his head in satisfaction. With the click of his fingers, Ayato turned his attention to Dimitri, spreading his arms. Dimitri immediately grasped him by the upper arm and started dragging him down the hall. “Whoa, what’s the rush? I’m actually on time and everything.”
The gangster pushed Ayato into an elevator, then joined him. He jabbed a button, crossed his arms and then lolled his head to the side, grinning. “You look like you had a good night.”
Sure, he felt terrible now, but it was actually possible. Piety ended up in her underwear and everything. Sure, that happened every other hour but it never seemed to get old. He probably drank the Chambord as well, and while he couldn’t seemingly taste anything other than decay now, at the time it would have been delicious. The sniffing, and the sensation of having his nostrils attacked with steel wool, was unpleasant, but he was still breathing, right? “Any night you can wake up from is a good one.” He decided. Dimitri chuckled as the elevator doors opened and the two stepped out into the bleachers.
Ayato had seen the stadium almost as empty in the past when he had stayed past the end of the game for no real reason. There had been more activity then, of course, with robots making light work of the daunting cleanup after a major league game. He had been the only human there, but even with at least a dozen soldatos in dark suits scattered around, it seem so much emptier now. He could feel eyes following him as he walked down the stairs, towards the man in the fur-collared greatcoat. About six rows up, he glanced to his right; there was a young woman, headphones in and tapping a high-heeled boot against the seat in front of her. He lifted his sunglasses with his little finger and squinted against the sudden light. She was wearing a corset. It was worth it.
“I see you’ve met my daughter, Minerva.” Said the man below in a baritone, tossing a baseball into the air. Ayato watched him shift his hand slightly and catch it. “Mister Ayato.”
“Ayato is fine.” He replied, taking another couple of steps down, and resting his weight on his katana. The rise and fall of the ball was almost hypnotic. “You’re interested in business.”
The baseball hit Nostrum’s palm with a slap, and he looked over his shoulder. He was a man with a thick, heavy face. His dark grey beard was geometrically neat, and his hair was slicked back in impressive waves. Cold blue eyes surveyed Ayato for a moment. “Immediately to the point. You didn’t strike me as that sort of person.”
Rubbing the back of his head, Ayato laughed sheepishly. “Sorry, I just have a bit of a headache.”
Nostrum grinned in response, and turned on the spot. “I am interested in business. Dimitri tells me that your conduct was impeccable, that the transfer through customs was smoother than it has been before, that your negotiations saved us money, and that you are remarkably affordable.”
“Keep in mind that as demand rises for me so too does my demand for hard currency.”
“Really?” Nostrum showed more teeth, then gestured for Ayato to come down further. He indicated the entirety of the Elysian with his ball. “You see this, Ayato? This is mine. I built it. As a symbol of wealth it is irrelevant, as it cost only two billion marks. As a symbol of status, it is unsurpassed in all of Sepharial.” He tapped his bearded chin with the baseball. “Status is as important as wealth. Some say that money opens doors, but I feel that this incorrect. Money greases wheels, weakens hearts, but it is who you are that opens doors. You are not-insignificantly wealthy, yes?”
“My bank balance is healthy.”
“So what?” Nostrum said suddenly. “No one who is actually important is going to care. I can offer you an opportunity to become significant. Within five years I will be the source of all organised crime on Sepharial.”
“You’re offering me exclusivity. After one job.” God, he needed some painkillers or something. Why hadn’t he taken any already?
Dismissively, Nostrum waved a hand. “I see potential in you. You are as young as my daughter, and yet you have inherited your father’s legacy and forged your own successful enterprise. I would be foolish not try and capitalise on this.” Ayato bobbed his head in vague agreement. Nostrum produced a silvery sliver of quantum memory. “Equally, I would be foolish to just hand over the reins of my imports and exports in one fell swoop. Let me just say that I am offering you a job, and if your service is satisfactory, I would be willing to offer you more jobs. And we would go from there.”
With the throbbing behind his eyes becoming more intense, Ayato held out his hand. Nostrum obliged him by putting the data husk in his hand. Ayato reached into his jacket – he could feel the tension rise across the bleachers – then pulled out his phone to examine the contents. Displays appeared before him, seemingly bereft of projection. His eyes narrowed. “Human trafficking? That’s a little … outside what I’m normally willing to do.”
“You father was similar, but it is unreasonable to put human value upon the dead. Corpses from recent conflicts provide excellent opportunities for organ extraction. If you can keep transport cost low, we would be able to corner the organ trade.” Ayato nodded slowly; if he couldn’t keep transport costs low, any advantage over cloned or cybernetic organs would be lost. He considered Nostrum's face carefully, barely avoiding a squint. The edges of his smile seemed so blurry; it was seemingly impossible to interpret his posture and facial expression. The timbre of his voice did nothing about cause pain.
“That's not very compelling.”
Nostrum shrugged and held out the baseball. Ayato raised his hand, stretched his fingers towards the ball, then pulled away. He cocked an eyebrow and the criminal king tossed the ball straight up in the air; automatically, Ayato presented his palm and it dropped into his hand. “Baseball is different on Sepharial, compared to the surface of a planet. Our 'gravity' is an illusion caused by the rotation of our cylinder, with everything that centrifugal force brings with it. Bring those born and raised in a gravity well to Sepharial and he will not appreciate this. He will play baseball as he did on Mars, and it will be to his surprise that it does not work the way he expects it to. You know how to play baseball on Sepharial.” Ayato stared at Nostrum, mouth almost agape, then shook his head with a laugh. He pushed the red-stitched ball back into its owner's hand. “Good, good. I will leave it to you then. I am expecting great things.”
“Of course you are.” Ayato extended his hand and Nostrum took it. His grip was firm, and Ayato returned it as fully as he could, then turned to leave. He noticed that Nostrum’s daughter had disappeared, but Dimitri was still present. Together they returned to the elevator.
“That went well.” The blonde, bearded man said, and Ayato shrugged. Dimitri frowned. “Is there something the matter?”
Squeezing his brow, Ayato shook his head. “You know what, no. I’m just not in the state to judge Anjou Nostrum’s sincerity.” The doors parted and they emerged into the marble-tiled lobby. For a moment the two stood and faced each other and Ayato extended his hand, and Dimitri took it. Briefly, it seemed as though Ayato was going to speak, but he just smiled and turned away.
Exiting back into the cylindrical outside world, Ayato stretched until he felt vertebrae click. Heaving a sigh, he noticed that on the steps below, Minerva Nostrum was sitting, long, shapely legs stretched before her. Though he would not have admitted it, Ayato was actually surprised; he had seen many women wait for him before, but he had expected the daughter of Sepharial’s premier boss to be a harder nut to crack. “That’d be my good karma, I guess.” He said to himself, before joining her and flashing his second best smile. “Hi there.”
She turned her head; she had the same pale blue eyes as her father, but Ayato found himself half-frozen. He’d seen the heavy makeup dozens of times, but there was something feral there, just beneath the surface. He lifted his sunglasses to make proper eye contact and it was clear that Minerva was some sort of predatory animal. Or at least very good at faking it. She smiled, revealing teeth, each set with a precious stone. “Hey. You made a good impression.”
Rubbing his bottom lip, Ayato shrugged. “I hope I did.”
“Oh, that’s bullshit.” She laughed musically, and Ayato wondered if she laughed like that when slicing off ears. “Daddy was just trying to lube you up, but it should have been obvious that he was being sincere. As much as he could be.”
Ayato rested his chin on the tsuba of his sword, fingering the carven moth. “Sincere. Yeah. Well, it’s not really important, so long as I get paid. If he wants to give me more jobs after that, I’m not going to complain.” He gave Minerva a sidelong smile. That corset was magnificent. “I might enjoy being wrapped up in Nostrum business.”
He stood up suddenly, and made to leave, when Minerva grabbed him by the hem of his pants. “I think I can give you a ride home.”
*
The main forces of the Noctis Libertas were not particularly numerous in the city. At best, there were twelve mobile suits. Of course, that was more than enough to defeat Kafka in direct combat. However, the lingering threat of the Euryale and its Vajra beam projector prevented them capitalising on this; though Samsa would not be able to strike with impunity, and though he was not untouchable, he uncomfortably possessed the high ground. Kafka reckoned that she had perhaps twenty seconds of freedom before the NL came after her, and she intended to take the initiative. Sprinting down the length of street, every footfall splintering the road and shaking apart haphazardly parked cars, Kafka zoned in on where she had strong reason to believe there was some sort of opponent. At corners she triggered bursts of thrust to help counter the Hyperion’s massive inertia.
Her approach could not be subtle. Every footstep rumbled across whole city blocks. The artificial muscles driving the mobile suit forward screamed in exertion. The pulses of fusion thrust left lingering thermal blooms like stars. Kafka depressed a pedal and the Hyperion made a small leap, landing in a crouch atop a bus, reducing it to twisted metal. There was the briefest of pauses before the Hyperion leapt again, throwing itself through the air at breakneck speed, trailing debris. Kafka brought up the Standish and fired two rounds towards what looked to be a multistorey car park. Nearly invisible lasers stabbed out in attempt to cut down the vernier equipped grenades. One prematurely detonated over a hundred metres away, the other reduced forty storeys of concrete to shrapnel and collapsing rubble. Her suit highlighted a streak of atmospheric disturbance; her target.
The Hyperion hit the ground and fired its drives, strafing away from burst of ion-trailed coilgun rounds. He was closing the distance, skidding on his own torch trails. An AKS-51 Safir in the normal visual camouflage for Martian ground units. Its presence here implied outside national interests wishing to mess with the Tharsis Hegemony; there was irony in this, but Kafka was too busy throwing the Hyperion into hard angled turns to care. The 120mm gauss cannon in her left hand exploded in three-round bursts, slivers of ceramic wrapped tungsten leaving trails of fire and ionised air. An enemy penetrator scrapped the Hyperion’s thigh; one of Kafka’s tore a chunk out of a skyscraper and sunk into the Safir’s elbow joint and almost sliced it clean off.
Right arm hanging by threads of black muscle, the Safir reached over to grasp its dangling autocannon. In mid-move it was speared through by an electric blue beam, turning it into a vortex of molten materials. In the instant before it exploded, Kafka was half-transfixed herself by its slow fall and the gaping, glowing hole cutting through it from shoulder to hip.
She spun in place, dropping the grenade launcher and firing off one of her grapples. The second Safir, standing amongst the rubble of the car park, leaned out of the way and opened fire. Little did its pilot realise that when it had passed him it had triggered a tiny vernier and sunk itself into an upstanding shaft of concrete physically as large as his mobile suit. Sliding out of the way of his fire, Kafka made a thruster assisted tug and collapsed hundreds of tons of structural masonry on the Safir’s head. When it broke its way out, shoving aside pillars and whole sections of flooring, it found Kafka’s Breitenbach in its face.
Kafka thumbed over the autoloader. A radial display to her left indicated the chosen load was foam phase hydrogen. She suppressed a laugh and pulled the trigger.
Having leapt away, the Hyperion flung out its left hand, fired off its grapple and secured the dropped Standish two hundred metres away. A pull sent it hurtling through the air and Kafka caught it, changed her facing and fired off another grenade. Like her explosive cannon rounds, they had a foam phase hydrogen payload, only on a larger scale. Approaching suits shied away and Samsa made another shot, slicing a mobile suit in two even as it opened fire on Kafka. The second unleashed a hail of missiles, then a single shot of his 300mm piece of artillery. Kafka barely moved out of the way, buffeted by the rampaging shockwaves.
“Shit.” She spat, turning her head-mounted lasers towards the incoming missiles and changing her vector, barely avoiding an actual hit from the heavy cannon. Skating on the thrust in the Hyperion’s feet, Kafka weaved through violent detonations only to crash directly into her opponent. Warnings squealed in the cockpit and Kafka’s eyes widened – there was three hundred millimetres of kill jammed into her torso. She could see the suit’s finger moving.
Jerking on the controls, Kafka let loose with burst of thrust, driving her into a transonic fall. One knee rose on a pillar of blue fire and crunched into cannon as it discharged. The heavy round tore chunks from the Hyperion’s shoulder and the side of its head, including one half of its V-shaped primary antenna. Her displays flickered as they compensated for sensor loss. Gritting her teeth, Kafka kicked into her pedal and the Hyperion dutifully drove its still hot foot into the Safir’s chest; it skidded back two hundred metres, leaving trenches through dirt and concrete, until it stabilised itself. The pulses of torch-thrust melted portions of a skyscraper, which tilted dangerously.
Kafka put a grenade into its chest. The resulting detonation sent the enemy suit ploughing through the building. It landed in an awkward crouch, chest, gun and some engines a ruin. The damage to its head mirrored that of the Hyperion, and it pushed itself to its feet. At first unsteady, the pilot and AI subsystems compensated, and the least damaged of its limbs retrieved a beam saber from a shoulder rack. It ignited and across a radio band that Kafka’s suit picked up, the pilot snarled.
“I still function.” He growled, and Samsa punctuated that remark by killing him from orbit.
Kafka did not pause and instead sprinted past the smouldering remains. Elsewhere in the city, Francis Albedo stared at his tactical reports. A third of his forces were gone, drawn into predictable patterns where the orbital sniper could eliminate them with medical precision. They were not Hegemony Defence Force units; the unit in orbit was a Blue Giant, an elite level suit used by the Ganymede Space Patrol. The unit in the city was not familiar to either him or the database at his command. Some sort of unique unit? They had those in one of the Earth’s lagrange nations. He couldn’t shake the notion that elements of it seemed familiar … whatever, dwelling on their origins was irrelevant. What mattered was surviving and winning; this was a considerable move on the part of the Libertas. The future of a free Noctis Labyrinthus was on a fulcrum.
Hijal died before his eyes. His IFF on Albedo’s map just blinked off. He wasn’t given the chance to scream, or say goodbye, or anything of the sort. Albedo could feel his throat tightening. Just a symbol on a screen disappearing. “All units, pull back to my position.” He paused, watching as their indicators pulled away from their protected positions. Albedo clicked his tongue; it was perhaps dangerous to concentrate his forces, numbers was his main advantage, and he felt he had the measure of his opponents now.
Six Safirs, the workhorse of the Cydonia Republic Spacy, all of them piloted by competent officers of the Noctis Libertas. Albedo could rely on them and their skills. They still had the advantage here and it was time to capitalise on it. At the end of the day, the Noctis Libertas would still have the city, and still have its populace holed up in its shelters.
Kafka zeroed in on the subway hub. It was pure Tharsis, all ceramic white frames and dark blue glass and blood red writing. Once upon a time, the Hyperion had been white, red and blue – she had had the blue repainted to black simply to avoid inevitable comparison to the Hegemony. As she approached, she felt a disturbance through her seismic sensors. The road beneath her began to collapse, sending her careening through hundreds of metres of tarmac at almost five hundred kilometres per hour. She slammed to a halt in a tunnel just big enough to contain a mobile suit in a crouch.
It contained a mobile suit in a crouch. The Safir was grasping a 300mm mass driver.
Fusion drives ignited, making the tunnel run like wax. A hip mounted anchor smashed into the barrel of the heavy cannon as it fired, knocking its aim off and sending a round through the tunnel roof. The Hyperion crashed into the Safir and sent it careening backwards. Its own drives fired in an attempt to counter Kafka’s mad rush. On the surface, it was as though some vast worm was tunnelling away; asphalt cracked and rose, before bursting. The Safir and its cannon tumbled away – the last two of Kafka’s grenades impacted and tore the machine apart.
There was silence but for multi-ton rain. Kafka stepped back into the shadow of a mostly stone building on reflex and snapped open the Standish to feed more grenades into it. She had stowed her mass driver and retrieved a second cylinder when electromagnetic sensors went wild and she spun to her left. Tungsten whipped by at kilometres a second, boring glowing holes through the building and splitting her grenade launcher in two. Skidding away and trailing chips of armour, she spotted her attacker. She fired off both left-side grapples, wrapping them around its primary gun arm as it rounded a corner. Kafka pulled, a movement of both drives and massive fibre-bundle muscles, overpowering the Safir and dragging it through the building.
The cylinder in her other hand impacted the Safir’s head with such force that it deformed. The grapples on the mobile suit’s arm released, only for a third to strike it. A crackle of blue ran down the cable’s length and all six grenades were triggered. It was not merely destroyed, but practically reduced, as with half the surrounding city block, to its constituent atoms. The wave of fire engulfed the Hyperion and the remaining Safirs, hidden away, watched as it emerged unscathed, a vaguely spherical shimmer surrounding it. Raised portions of machinery snapped back into the Hyperion’s body; Kafka snapped up her Breitenbach and opened fire.
“How do you feel about being irradiated?” Samsa asked with the infuriating calm of a person a thousand kilometres away from the transonic brawl. A precision burst of fire almost took off a Safir’s leg and the Hyperion caught it by the face. The under-wrist linear anchor jabbed its way into the suit’s head, unleashed a burst of electricity.
“Catch!” Kafka shouted, heaving the Safir into the air. Ysrael’s beam cannon discharged and traced an electric blue cord through the limply flying suit and turned it into molten shrapnel, before boring its way into the city’s sewers. The resulting steam detonation popped manhole covers tens of metres into the air.
Missiles traced intricate curves through the air as both sides took part in a deadly dance. The flattened city blocks were crisscrossed by vapour trails that were just as quickly erased by sonic booms and passing projectiles, only to be redrawn by mobile suits. Amidst the flashes of blue flame, the impossibly intricate curlicues could be called an unusually deadly form of art. Kafka’s coilgun put a three round burst through the head of one Safir, only to run empty. Ejecting the clip, she leapt and landed knees first on the damaged suit, smashing it to the ground. As they skidded together through a battered apartment building, Kafka moved to reload her Breitenbach, only for the limbs to move of their own volition. Something hot and violet impacted a glassy barrier just ahead of the Hyperion’s forearm; pure heat and a rainbow-like corona cascaded from it, half slagging the gauss cannon. Scattered particle trails sliced into surrounding buildings.
“A reaction shield? Is that all you have?” Albedo said to himself, a kilometre and half distant, surveying Kafka dart out of the heat haze through the tunnel he had carved out with the discharge of his Delamenter. He pushed himself from his crouch, a streaking orange missile, Samsa’s orbital strike bubbling paint along his back. As he dived into a wild evasive pattern, he occasionally snapped off shots towards the white mobile suit, but he was as restricted as Samsa with his own men so close. Instead he turned his attention upwards, engaging the sniper.
“Neph, you have a Metyor inbound.”
“Shoot-” she grunted through clenched teeth, swerving hard to avoid a stream of hypersonic tungsten. She ejected a smooth, angular object into the air, snagged it and cut a Safir in two with the thin, violet blade that erupted from the device. “It!”
“Yeah, well,” he began as the last of the Safirs climbed to its feet and opened fire. “Our contract stipulated that we don’t raise the level of background radiation of any area above one hundred grays, and we’re totally pushing that here. And you know us. The Invictus Military Company: We’re paid to care!”
Kafka ignored him, easily manoeuvring between the now grossly inaccurate cannon fire and tossed her beam sabre, severing its hand. She skidded into it shoulder first and hunkered down beneath it, like a hundred and twelve ton umbrella. Albedo swore, and did not take his shot. Kafka reasoned she had roughly eight seconds before the Safir pilot made his attempt at a heroic sacrifice and got her killed. Flicking her eyes up to some obscure part of her HUD, she ejected twelve metres of combat blade into the ground behind her. She tossed the Safir off, grabbed the hilt of the sword and swung it around. The ultrasonic blade plunged through the enemy suit’s chest and out its back, mechanically heating the cockpit into glowing slurry.
As the Safir began to slump, Kafka slid the blade free and kicked off its shoulders. Spiralling upwards, trailing rings of atmosphere as she went upwards, Kafka spent a half second examining her new opponent – the Plan 0083 Metyor was the latest MS to come into usage with the Elysian Red Fleet. It emphasised speed and agility and above all else, precision. Kafka had never faced one in combat before; conversely, its pilot could never have faced the Hyperion.
The difference here was that Kafka had fought many, many suits designed and built by the same corporation, while there was essentially nothing like her Gundam in the entire Solar System.
Grinning, Kafka dived through the swarm of unleashed missiles, as Albedo deflected an incoming beam off a shoulder mounted reaction shield. He fired his thrusters, flipping himself so that the white suit would be in the potential line of fire. His rearward shields pulsed in response to a lance of energy from orbit, sending him tumbling. He grunted as he corrected his fall into a darting evasion. The sniper would risk that? It occurred to Albedo that he was suddenly at a considerable disadvantage. The difference in mechanical specifications and output between his Metyor and the Safirs had not been especially significant. Both his enemies were piloting elite-level suits themselves.
“Shit, shit, shit.” he breathed through clenched teeth, altering the output of his beam projector. He didn’t need full power, he needed saturation. Pulses burned towards Kafka like hard-edged lightning strikes, either harmlessly passing her to detonate upper stories of buildings below, or deflecting from her arm mounted reaction shields. Projected statistics for the Delamenter showed a frightening heat-load – the fire rate was too high for a prolonged dogfight at close range. They whirled closer and closer, violet beams streaking off in all directions.
Another bolt from the blue struck Albedo, this time burning against one of his fuel tanks. He ejected it as the compressed helium destabilised and only barely escaped the full brunt of the explosion; his reaction barriers went into omnidirectional under the pressure and heat wave. As the sphere of hexagonal plates disappeared, he found the Hyperion on him. Some twist of the legs broke the Metyor’s right arm and sent the Delatmenter spinning off into the air. The Gundam’s thrumming blade came within inches and Albedo immediately swung out the Metyor’s axe. The ultrasonic blades crashed against each other in a spray of sparks.
The duel lasted for two and a half seconds, a melee of swift blades and flying grapples. Kafka caught Albedo’s outstretched wires and yanked him in, taking off his left arm at the shoulder. They spun in midair and Albedo found himself plummeting towards Mars. The Metyor fired its engines in response but the Hyperion crashed into it, driving it into the ground. Their impact was like a minor Marsquake.
Blood running from his nose, Albedo stared up at the white suit through the flickering panoramic displays. The vibrations caused by the blade impaling the Metyor’s shoulder were beginning the boil the impact gel filling his cockpit. Vents and projectors snapped open all across the Hyperion Gundam’s body, and its reaction shields went offensive, unleashing themselves like a bubble of destruction. The Metyor disappeared.
*
Ayato entered the apartment to the sound of sizzling and the smell of hearty food. Dropping his katana into the umbrella rack, he strolled into the kitchen and found Piety standing over a skillet full of beans in a shirt a few sizes too big. Seizing her around the belly, Ayato lowered his face to hers and stole a kiss. When they parted he held up a dozen eggs, which the pink-haired girl took slowly. “You taste nice.” She said as he handed her a second frying pan. She doused it in olive oil and deftly cracked four eggs with two hands. Ayato pushed his sunglasses onto his head, taking his hair with them. He was grinning broadly, and Piety rolled her eyes, handing him a plate and sitting down at the bench. She took a sip of what looked like a Bloody Mary.
“Do we even have any vodka left in the house?” he asked, sitting opposite her. There was a plate of corn tortillas between them, and he took one.
“I found a bottle of sake in the pantry.” She said dryly, before bringing her fork to her lips. She paused and tilted her head, curiously. “You’ve got a hickey.” In the process of smearing his tortilla in saucy beans and egg yolk, Ayato pulled at his shirt, revealing a livid red and purple mark. “Is that why you’re so happy? Because you got laid before twelve?”
He smirked, waving a finger. Holding his tortilla in his teeth, Ayato pulled out his phone and placed it in front of Piety, quickly tapping the screen with his fingers. Her eyes darted from side to side, before her eyebrows rose slightly. “That’s not the good part. The good part is that Anjou Nostrum wants us on an exclusive contract.” Piety put down her fork and squinted at the information before her once more.
“I love you.” She sighed, heart aflutter with currency.
Ayato took back the phone, nodding. “I want to get on this right away. The delivery date is a week away, but I think we can get it done faster than that. The question is, just who can we use in Tharsis?”
*
With the Hyperion crouched in a hundred metre wide glassy depression, portions of the armour around its back cracked open. A roughly cylindrical object emerged partway, and with the hiss of a hermetic seal parting, a figure in a white, red and grey flight suit climbed out onto the Gundam’s still warm shoulder. Slick black muscle coiling around her shoulders and elbows, Nephthys Kafka unclasped her helmet, tossing it back into the cockpit. She shook her lengthy white hair into the wind, combing her fingers through her pink fringe. Using rents in the Hyperion’s cheek armour, as well as familiar handholds, Kafka easily clambered on top and sat in cross-legged hunch between the broken ‘V’ of the Gundam’s primary antenna.
It was quiet except for the hot wind blowing up dust amongst shattered buildings and the far distant whine of engines. If Kafka looked up, she would be able to see aircraft from the Tharsis Hegemony approaching, preparing to drop canisters of anti-rad dust, as well as military peacekeepers who would unlock the shelters and search the city for any miscellaneous survivors. By then, of course, Kafka would be long gone, back in space and –
“Wing Commander Kafka, this is Invictus Control.” A cheerful voice chirped in her ear canal.
“It couldn’t be.” Kafka replied, stretching her sore arms above her head. “What’s happening, Sepia? I was just taken a moment before returning to the ship.”
“Ah, well, you’re going to have to postpone that. We’ve been hired again.”
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)
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- PeZook
