A cold breeze blowing over the battlefield had begun to dissipate the stench of burnt flesh and Gear blood by the time the last of the wounded men and the bodies were being carried back into the airship. A thin trickle of blood was running down Ky's arm inside his sleeve, sticky and irritating, but it would be hours before anyone from the medical division would have time to waste applying more than the roughest field dressing to such a minor wound. There was still nearly an hour left before sunset, but the sinking sun added something final to the scene. It was high time their attention was turned away from this place.
"How much longer until the enemy reinforcements will reach us?" Ky asked aloud.
The tactical division officer standing by his side answered without so much as a glance at the clipboard in his hands. "Ten minutes at most. We've confirmed at least a hundred Gear units, the majority in the large classes."
"And the casualty report for our own troops?"
"The physical and magical divisions both reported heavy casualties. All survivors are under the care of the medical division now. Final head counts are still underway, however, we don't believe more than fifteen men will remain unaccounted for…" the man trailed off uncertainly.
"Is there something else?" Ky prompted him.
"Sir…" the officer's voice shook slightly. "Sir Sol is also unaccounted for…"
Ky managed not to flinch outwardly, although preventing himself from grinding his jaw at the news was beyond him. "Were any of the assaulting force unaccounted for?"
"No sir," the officer replied quickly, fumbling with his clipboard, glad to have been given a question he could answer rather than be pressed with the much more difficult matter of just how his division could have lost the single most unmistakable soldier in their battalion. "A small contingent attempted to escape along the ridge, but were overtaken by our own men before they could retreat. It is possible some of the smaller classed Gears may have retreated into the forest, however, it was not considered…"
"And the final sweep of all corners of the battlefield has been completed?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then we will complete our withdrawal immediately. Inform the airship's crew we have five minutes to make it back into the air."
"But… sir!" the officer protested helplessly, then suddenly found himself to be the subject of a piercingly cold blue gaze.
"Sol is one man. To expect the entire battalion to be put at risk on his account is inexcusable. Have we any other reason for further delay?"
"N… no sir!" the officer stammered. "Right away, sir!" With that he turned tail and fled back into the airship.
Ky looked towards the battlefield one last time. The only movement remaining was where the wind was disturbing the grass; even the few fires which had been scattered among the debris had burnt themselves out. The twisted shapes of the remaining Gear bodies in nearby view were uniformly cold and lifeless. There was nothing else in sight worth remaining here for.
Ky turned and made himself walk the whole way up the ramp to the airship without another backward glance.
Halfway through the return flight, the official reports from the battlefield began to materialise on his desk. They'd all require individual attention, if he was to collate enough information about what had taken place to produce a report of his own – hours of work, but Ky was in a position to welcome the diversion. The tactical division's report contained nothing he hadn't seen before – no evidence the Gears had employed any new tactics or introduced any new breeds or offensive capabilities in their numbers. Casualties in the combat divisions had been regrettable, but not unusually high for a battle of this scale. The report from the medical division (by far the shortest and most perfunctory, as surely its members had better things to be doing at the time) recorded no cases of poison or gas, that treatment of their wounded was proceeding well and a high survival rate was anticipated. The airship's contingent could be made ready for battle again within hours if the need struck, although they could probably expect to be taken off duty for at least the next twenty-four once they returned to base. In all respects, it had been an unremarkable battle, just another small victory for their side.
The reports included a map of the battlefield and surrounding terrain. This region was long disputed territory, far from any official Order base. Any human settlement nearby would be long deserted. It would be days travel on foot from here to anywhere remotely civilised.
Also included among the assorted papers were names for all the men still officially left unaccounted for. The battle had taken place in a narrow clear strip running between dense woodlands and a steep edged ravine. Most of the missing men were believed to have been lost when two giant Gears, enraged by misdirected spellfire and smoke, had been sent charging blindly over the precipice, sweeping at least one unit of unfortunate soldiers down with them in their wake. Others might still be lying back there, buried underneath the piles of cooling Gear bodies, or have had their own bodies torn or burned beyond all recognition, or been swallowed alive. It was all no more than the usual hazards Ky's men faced in this war.
Of course, it would be utterly unlike Sol to meet his end in any of those ways. It would be much more like him to have gone charging away in pursuit of some escaping Gear and forgotten to come back.
It would not even be entirely unthinkable that he'd left the Order on little more than a whim and had no intention of returning…
Ky had been staring blankly at the map in front of him for several minutes before he realised he was doing it. What he'd told his officer before had been blatantly untrue. Sol was far more than just one man – he was the single most valuable asset under Ky's command. He was also perpetually teetering on the edge of becoming more trouble than he was worth.
He badly needed to get started on a report of his own before he let himself become any more distracted. Staring at maps or out through the rear windows of the airship for another half-hour wouldn't allow him to see anything new.
Reporting might be tedious, but had long ago become routine enough to Ky to give him little difficulty finding the words needed to encapsulate a Captain's perspective of the progression of the battle. Reports from the divisions under him would cover the rest of the detail. He had to hesitate briefly at the end though, faced with the task of listing the names of any officers lost in battle. It was hard to argue that Sol would qualify – the man had never had the slightest intention of ever rising beyond the rank of an ordinary soldier, and yet, inasmuch as the purpose of the exercise was to report the loss of indispensable personnel…
Ky had gotten as far as the first 'S' before he stopped himself and erased the character again. To reduce Sol's disappearance to a simple name on a form – what was the point of that? Commander Kliff would expect a far better explanation than that if someone of Sol's calibre – a man he'd personally recruited, no less – was lost, but Ky simply didn't have one. 'Missing in action' insert time and date was the only information he was in any position to convey.
It was so very typical of Sol, he thought to himself (not quite noticing the way the drafted report was being unconsciously crumpled into a ball in his hand), to cause these sorts of problems for him.
Once they arrived at Headquarters, there were finally medical staff free to apply more than a rough field dressing to the wound on Ky's arm. The process brought an end to the fairly pleasant numbness he'd been experiencing in that region for the past couple of hours and reminded him anew how badly it had stung when it was fresh, but not even the full attention of the medical staff could find anything wrong with it that would require more than an evening off duty to recuperate (which he'd have had in any case since that was the very least time he could expect his battalion to be taken off duty). Mentioning the pain when asked may have been a mistake, however, for it gave them exactly the excuse they needed to dose him up with painkillers and send him away in a state where he'd have little option but to obey their instructions that he was to engage in nothing more strenuous than a good night's sleep.
He awoke late the next morning, groggy from oversleeping, to discover the world had provided him with no reason to get up any earlier. The report he'd turned in the previous day had been mundane enough to get him little more than a receipt in reply from his superiors. The update he was sent on the men under his command in the care of the medical division was mostly good news. His battalion would not be returned to even limited duty until the following day. Even Commander Undersn was unavailable to receive any news, being personally engaged in a serious defensive effort after an army of Gears had stormed a key tactical position in northern Russia. That last piece of information only made Ky itch all the more to be back on the battlefield.
It was going to be a long day.
He stopped by the medical wing again mid-morning for a quick check up on his arm, and had the bandages removed to reveal that barely even a mark now remained – they'd done a splendid job of it. In an attempt to ensure he'd done something more useful than brood that morning, on returning to his quarters he sat down and forced himself to read right through the considerable stack of copied reports he'd been delivered regarding other recent engagements along the frontlines of the battle. He learned quickly that the Gear force which had forced his battalion's speedy retreat had advanced no further into Order-patrolled territory. The reports from Russia did little but elaborate on the details he'd already heard regarding the Commander's absence. Most of the remainder were discouragingly familiar – minor skirmishes for the possession of land along borders which had been pushed back and forth by the enemy sides in increments of a few miles at a time for more months than he cared to remember. He could perhaps have occupied himself for a while by plotting out his own strategies for the capture or defence of those areas – the intellectual exercise of spotting where mistakes had been made or opportunities missed – but the knowledge of how futile that was in the larger scheme would only frustrate him, and he had enough useless frustration to bother him already today.
There was one report from an aerial engagement with Gear forces which had taken place only few hours after and several dozen miles away from the battlefield Ky had left the previous day. What caught his eye was a minor detail, an enormous magical pulse recorded mid-battle. The tactical division had attempted to attribute it to Gear weaponry, and failed, then tried to attribute it to colliding magical fire with the same result, and finally considered the possibility the reading had been an error to begin with, but found nothing to suggest it could have been anything but genuine. Eventually, they were only able to recommend that the reading be recorded for comparative purposes in the event any similar phenomena might ever be observed again. It was an uninspiring sort of mystery, with so little clue to its source, but Ky caught himself beginning to reread the whole report for the third time before he stopped himself and made himself go out for a walk instead.
His 'walk' quite innocently took him halfway to the tactical division's wing before he gave in to the inevitable. If he didn't ask, he'd only spend the remainder of the day wondering about what he might have learned.
The man at the main desk sat up to attention sharply when he spotted Ky coming in. The presence of anyone of that rank here would usually mean some kind of important official business.
"Just a minor point of curiousity," Ky assured the man quickly, reminded anew just how much he was grasping at straws by pursuing this at all. "Provided it won't interrupt any more pressing duties, I'd like to speak to someone from the fourth battalion regarding their report submitted after the engagement yesterday evening."
He was shortly introduced to a young woman from the division who held the appropriate credentials. The look he got from people outside his own battalion on discovering they were talking to the legendary Ky Kiske himself was becoming a familiar one. The look people took on when realising that someone voluntarily read official reports in full was only slightly less so, but he was relatively pleased to note those were the only slips in her professionalism the whole time he spoke with her.
"This would be about the unusual magical surge we picked up?" she guessed before Ky could even broach the subject. But for that point, the expedition had been too unremarkable to attract outside attention.
"That's correct. Can you tell me anything about it beyond what was in the report?"
"There are a few details," the tactical officer told him, checking through a report of her own. There was a faint flicker in her attention, likely her wondering whether to read the record verbatim or try to dumb the technical aspects down for the poorly qualified field officer, but from her tone then on she appeared to have gone with something closer to the former. "It was a pulse reading, it rose and dropped away again very quickly, meaning either a surge phenomenon or a fast moving source travelling in and out of our vicinity. To be exact, two pulses were noted in quick succession, but without knowing the cause, we can't be certain whether that was simply a feedback or timing problem with our instruments. The event took place after dark and during an ongoing volley of heavy spell and canon fire, so there was no reported visual confirmation from anyone at the scene. The closest comparison we could make was to some magical attacks used by Gears in the Megadeath class, but there were none present at the time. Unless it happens again, it's likely to stay unexplained."
Coming to the end of her report, she gave him a thoughtful look. "Unless you have an explanation in mind?"
"Ah, nothing more than a hunch," Ky had to admit. "Nothing I can substantiate usefully. That's everything in the report?"
"Unless you want specific numbers and graphs of the reading."
"Too technical for me to make much use of," admitted Ky, "but please let me know if anything similar occurs in the next few days. I'm grateful for your help."
It had been too much of a long shot to begin with for Ky to feel too disappointed to have learned nothing to his advantage. He ought to have felt foolish for indulging a whim so far fetched, and yet…
Ky rested a hand on his belt plate, distractedly tracing his fingers over the shape of the shape of the word he'd engraved on it those long months before.
And yet, what else did he have?
Officers did not customarily dine with their men; rank granted them grander quarters of their own. However, reaching them without making a long detour around required Ky to pass through the general mess hall, already full of men by the time he arrived for the evening meal.
The sound of Sol's name being spoken should not have stopped him in his tracks so completely. Sol had been missing then more than twenty-four hours, and it was inevitable that the disappearance of a man so well known, so widely respected and feared, should breed rumour and discussion. However, none of that prepared Ky for what he heard.
"…really gone? Sir Sol himself? And no-one even knows how?" spoke one voice.
"They say he just disappeared in the middle of a battle in a giant ball of flame," declared another man, voice low with awe.
"I heard he was fighting a giant Gear with teeth as long as you're tall, and he forced it over a cliff and jumped after it," offered a third.
"I heard the same," piped up a fourth, "and that he and the Gear were both enveloped in such a giant burst of flame that they both burnt to ash before they ever reached the ground!"
Ky did not keep his fists from clenching that time. He'd marched up to the table where all four men sat almost before he knew what he was doing. "Just what is the meaning of this?" he demanded.
All four could scarcely have looked more startled had Sol appeared in front of them himself. "K… Sir Ky!" the third spectator stuttered. "But… you must know about the disappearance of Sol-.."
"Sol Badguy is currently listed as missing in action," Ky informed the men icily, "with no official presumption as to his state or whereabouts, nor any information to support any theory half so wild as the ones I have just heard discussed."
"But… he can't have just vanished!" another man argued helplessly. "There must be some explanation why…"
"Do you propose you will be able to uncover it by such idle speculation?" Ky snapped. "Surely any man fit for the Holy Order must have better means to waste his effort than by repeating such ridiculous rumours!"
No-one dared argue further. A chorus of 'yes sir!'s and 'sorry sir!'s erupted from all side of the table at once.
As Ky stalked away from them once more, he found all his appetite had left him completely.
By the time he returned to the hallway, exercise was the only remaining activity he could stomach the thought of – preferably the sort prolonged and mind-numbing enough to free him of all useless thought. He would often supervise training sessions with his men around this time of the evening, having long made it his personal goal to improve the swordsmanship of everyone fit to bear arms under his command, but the thought of further company did little to improve his mood. Whether thanks to the time that had passed or the stress or for whatever other reason, the calm he'd had earlier in the day had utterly deserted him now.
Objectively, he knew it was ridiculous to let a few ordinary soldiers reaching the quite reasonable conclusion that Sol must have met his end in some dramatic manner bother him so much. However, what objectivity he'd ever had had deserted him too.
It was never a good idea to try and take out one's frustration in combat against an opponent. The occasions when he'd allowed himself to fight against Sol while angry had invariably lead to an even swifter and more humiliating defeat than usual. Ky had no need for a sparring partner simply for the purposes of training, however. He had an entire routine of exercises, refined and expanded each year since long before he'd been old enough to join the Order, which he used to keep his sword arm strong and skills sharp even when there might be weeks between encounters with the enemy. The training arena he had made for was deserted that night. He could have it to himself for hours if he needed it.
At the centre of the arena, Ky drew his sword and swung viciously through the opening motions of his routine. Lightning crackled down the length of the blade, harsh and bright. His shoulder still ached dully, but he paid it no mind, and before long he ceased to notice it altogether.
These were exercises so familiar he could execute them with almost no concentration at all. He had mastered this art to the degree that he could perform the most complicated of manoeuvres even in the midst of a life or death battle, when other men would panic and resort to any foolish flailing around with their own weapons. He could size up an opponent within a few moves, could spot a crucial opening a millisecond in duration. Even at his tender age, his skills were held in awe throughout the Order. Few of even the most experienced veterans could defeat him consistently – and Ky was confident that within a few more years of training, few would be able to beat him in even one match out of ten.
Few, but certainly not no-one.
Perhaps he'd never hated Sol quite so much as he did at that moment.
How dare the man even pretend to have met his end when Ky had never yet even come close to defeating him? How could Sol be gone before Ky had ever had the chance to earn his respect?
On his second iteration through his exercises, Ky's movements became wilder – stronger and less calculated. The electricity which ran down his sword arced out to earth itself further and further away, and yet, it wasn't until the light around him finally grew so bright that it drowned out even the haze of concentration that had been preventing him from seeing past his own eyes that Ky hesitated long enough to look around himself.
Shining streams of static traced through the air all around him, restored by his own power faster even that it could earth itself, lancing outwards from the tip of his sword. Even once he'd stopped moving altogether, it took several seconds to fade away. Even his own movements had reduced to little more than wild stabbing at the air.
It was quite the most ridiculous waste of power he'd ever seen. It wasn't like him to lose control like this.
The mental echo of his own voice telling that officer that Sol was only one man sounded more foolish in his own head every time it repeated.
Most of that rage had left him by the following morning, lurking only on the edge of his consciousness as an unpleasant reminder of his own behaviour. Today at least he would have the far more pressing distraction of getting a battalion of men back into the air. Whatever else might transpire, the war would still be waiting for them.
The airship had barely made it off the ground a few scant hours later that morning when an alert came in about a new Gear attack. Two large class Gears had appeared on the outskirts of a small rural town only a brief flight away from them. It was an obvious assignment for an undermanned battalion newly cleared for limited duty.
The airship soared away, engines roaring at their maximum power. Even at their fastest speed, there would be no chance of reaching the town before the Gears did. Their best hope would be that evacuations would go smoothly, and that they would arrive before too much damage could be done.
Ky watched from a viewing balcony as his own tactical division monitored both their and the Gears' progress. Before ten minutes of the flight had elapsed, the Gears were reported to have reached their target. It was little more than frustrating to see an attack unfold in this manner, when so many crucial minutes remained before there would be anything they could do, but the least Ky could do in the meantime was to keep himself informed of developments as they occurred. At least on landing he would be prepared for the worst.
"Magical readings indicate the Gears have commenced their attack," a man reported from below. "Gears confirmed as type…" he hesitated, staring at the readout in front of him. "Wait… is this correct? They can't be attacking each other!"
"There are no existing military armaments of any kind at that location," a woman beside him reported. "No large magical generators. Nothing that should produce that kind of signature."
Men and women all over the room were looking at each other for any kind of explanation now.
"What else could have intercepted them?" a man wondered aloud, bewildered. "What on earth is going on down there?"
Ky gripped the railing in front of him until it almost cracked under his fingers.
When the airship touched down, the smouldering bodies of two large class Gears lay waiting for them on the outskirts of the town. Sitting in front of them, looking faintly pleased with himself even from the airship windows, was Sol. His outer clothes were a shredded mess, even by the usual standards in which he was known to come back from battle. His coat was so badly torn it was literally held together by little more than a few threads; patches so soiled by soot they were almost black. Even the straps on his headband looked like they'd been recently fixed using string, and his hair had come loose to hang around it in even less order than usual. And yet, Sol himself looked as casual and bored as ever.
Of course Ky wanted to know where he'd been – how he'd managed to disappear from battle so completely to reappear again so far away, what on earth he could have been through to leave him in that sort of state. It should have been the least Sol could do to make up for all the grief he'd caused to outline every remotely relevant detail his commanding officer might want to know. But before Ky had even stepped from the gangplank, it was as though every thought he'd had in the last thirty six hours coalesced into the sudden realisation of just how useless it would be to press the man for any more details than he chose to reveal of his own accord. If Ky wanted the luxury of being at all glad they had Sol back, it would be better not to ask at all.
"I suppose you find it amusing to make us come all this way just to pick you up," he said sharply, as he came to a stop in front of Sol.
"Just doing my job," Sol replied, uninvested as ever. "Woulda been yours if you'd got here sooner."
"I assure you, we came as quickly as that inconvenient rule requiring we report to base now and then allowed," said Ky, meeting Sol's eye for as long as he could bear. "Will it be any more than a waste of my time to ask what exactly is the meaning of all this?"
"Who knows?" said Sol, getting to his feet and raising his eyes towards the airship. "Fuck, I'm hungry. Any food on that thing?"
The futility of war had nothing on the futility of attempting to extract information from Sol.
Ky followed his subordinate back up the gang plank, amongst muffled gasps from the gathered men at Sol's appearance. Not one of them dared come close to getting in the way of either of them. Men would surely find the way to spread the tale that Sol had battered his way through an army of a thousand Gears before they'd found him. For all Ky knew, it might be true. As soon as the gangplank had been raised, Ky gave the immediate order to depart.
Precisely how he was supposed to report this incident he had no idea at all.
Captain Ky Kiske of the fifth battalion reports the successful destruction of two large class Gears outside the township of Simera. Evacuation of citizens prior to the attack was completed successfully with no associated loss of life or injury. No significant injuries were sustained by any Holy Order personnel. Damage to infrastructure of the township resulting from the attack is reported as minimal. No follow up action is anticipated to be necessary.
In addition, the battalion reports the recovery of one Sol Badguy as a result of the same expedition, and consequently requests that the name of the same individual be removed from the official MIA list immediately.
Message ends.
11:45 AM, 19 March 2173