CE 74
Sarik pulled the sled along, all of his equipment carefully strapped down onto it. He wasn't too worried about scaring off the animals that he hunted, as the snow from the previous night was deep but well packed, allowing him to move just about any amount of weight without making much noise.
Before long, he found a number of deer tracks accompanied by droppings, meaning that the herd he was tracking moved after the snowfall. While they definitely had the head start, locating them would not prove to be as difficult as before.
Sarik continued on, pondering whether or not to turn back. He reasoned that if the news was reporting accurate findings, then the weapons used were of an extremely powerful magnitude, and stray fire could find him even this far out. On the other hand, the nearest shelter was at his home, which was at least a sixteen hour walk from here in this weather.
Sarik decided to trudge on, wanting to find his prey and not wanting to miss the opportunities that his visions usually provided him. He had spotted the deer several times during his previous week of hunting, and even managed to snap off a few shots, but he mostly missed in the strong winds, while those shots that did hit did not injure the deer enough to kill them.
Today, the winds were just as strong, whipping by Sarik's masked face, testament to the previous night's storm. He was partially glad for this, as they helped dull the distant sounds of battle.
For an hour, Sarik continued to track the deer. He eventually came to an opening in the woods where the deer appeared to have rested at some point recently. He could easily understand why. It was located at the edge of the wood, leading to an open, mile long stretch along the lake's shore. In fact, most of the area around the lake was pretty clear, with a tree here and there.
Until now, Sarik hadn't had much of a chance to estimate the herd's size. From the tracks and the various droppings left behind, he estimated that there were at least two fawns, several younger deer, and a few larger ones, probably older males. But, as always, he could be wrong. He wasn't exactly an expert.
After taking a large swig from his canteen, Sarik continued on, not in the least fatigued by the load that he pulled.
Two more hours went by, and still no deer. But the tracks were fresher. He had to be close.
On he pushed, and as he came over a small hill, he finally found them. Under a small group of trees, Sarik spotted a few deer. He knew that most of them were probably hiding in the thicket, but the tracks lead directly to them, implying that they were the prey he sought.
He pulled his binoculars from a pouch in his coat to estimate the range.
Rangefinder shows fifteen hundred meters, Sarik thought. Need to get closer.
Sarik pulled out a snow camouflage tarp and threw it over his sled, then set up a small encrypted GPS beacon so that he would be able to find it when he returned with his trophy.
Slowly and carefully, Sarik moved through the snow, keeping as low as possible and using cover whenever he could. After thirty minutes of this painful exercise, he checked up on the deer and noticed several walking out towards the lake, most likely to drink. This would be the perfect time to set up. He quickly pulled his gun from his back, an old-fashioned bolt-action rifle. It was ancient compared to modern weapons, but an elegant challenge nonetheless. With this weapon, Sarik could not rely on the automatic or semi-automatic capabilities that many marksman had become accustomed to. This weapon required skill, finesse, and most importantly, patience. Patience was something that he often found many lacking, including himself.
Checking the range with his binoculars again, Sarik found himself to be at a much more realistic distance.
Two hundred meters. Difficult in this wind, but possible.
Sarik set the barrel of his rifle onto a nearby rock to steady his aim, then examined his selection of targets. There were the fawns, but they were unsportsmanlike, and illegal to shoot at. There were a few good looking younger males, with well developed bodies and large antlers, but still young enough to have tender meat.
Sarik was looking over three older males in the group and nearly passed them up when he noticed one had a limp. Closer examination showed it had a gunshot wound in its abdomen, the damage done by a round of similar caliber to Sarik's gun. This was the old, stubborn beast who had escaped him before. Sarik decided upon this one as his prey.
He flicked off his safety and sighted in. Sarik had fragmenting rounds loaded, so he would have to wait for a clear shot to his target. Moments later, he got his chance. From his current position, he could make a perfect shot to the creature's heart, killing it quickly.
Sarik settled his finger onto the trigger. A gust of wind blew.
Wait for it.
The wind ended. Sarik steadied himself once more.
Wait for it.
Sarik was about to pull the trigger when he heard the loud blast of a sonic boom. The deer herd noticed it, too, looking up before turning to run.
"Dammit!"
Sarik snapped off a shot, but he missed his target by centimeters.
Sarik quickly cycled the bolt and lined himself up, then let the next round loose. But the deer had bolted over dozens of meters in that time, and the combined factors of the wind and Sarik's broken concentration caused the shot to miss by a much larger margin than the first round.
Frustrated beyond belief, Sarik flicked his safety back on and yanked out his binoculars. Scanning the skies, he was inistially unable to find the source of the sound. He could only tell it came from the direction of Berlin. He searched for a moment longwe, finally spotting something. It started out as a small speck in the distance, but it quickly grew closer, revealing a humanoid outline.
Zooming in, Sarik identified what it was. A mobile suit.
He scrambled through all his gear, making sure to turn off anything that could give him away. Sarik then dove into the snow behind his perch, ensuring that his rifle was well hidden. Sarik watched from his cold hiding place as the mobile suit flew closer, eventually coming to a relatively graceful landing on the shores of the lake. He pulled out his binoculars cautiously, hoping its energy signature wouldn't give him away. From what he could tell, this pilot was being careless, and wasn't searching for anything in particular.
From his observations, the mech's design was similar to that of the GAT-X105 Strike, a now destroyed Earth Alliance mobile suit that was the prototype for the Dagger series. A specific mobile suit type known to some as a Gundam, an acronym based off of its then-revolutionary operating system. However, as he looked over the mobile suit, he did note several differences, including what looked to be ZAFT-designed weaponry.
Sarik was about to pocket his binoculars when the Gundam stepped forward into the lake, its hands extended with their palms up directly beneath the cockpit. When the water was almost up to its hands, the mobile suit stopped. He continued to watch as the cockpit's panels separated, revealing a younger looking man holding another person. He zoomed in on the two, quickly realizing that the black haired man couldn't have been any older than sixteen. He was dressed in a red ZAFT flight suit. And the person he was holding, a girl with short, blond hair of similar age, was dressed in an Earth Alliance flight suit.
Sarik knew what this was. He switched the binoculars to infrared mode, confirming his suspicions. The girl was giving off less heat than what was normal for a living human being. However, she couldn't have been dead for more than a few minutes, because her abdominal area was still giving off a significant amount.
Sarik put his binoculars down and looked away from the scene, giving this young man respect and privacy for his memorial to this girl. Sarik grabbed up his gun and was preparing to slink away when pain overtook him, forcing him onto his knees. He began to despair, as this had never happened to him before. What was wrong with him? Was the damage to his body finally catching up with him?
Everything turned black for a moment, then a familiar landscape formed before Sarik's eyes. It was his dream from a month earlier, but far clearer.
A boy with black hair and teary eyes was walking towards the edge of a frozen lake, a blond-haired woman, unmoving, lifeless, cradled in his arms. He set her upon the surface of the lake, holding her as his last tears fell on her motionless body. He watched as he released her, allowing her body to sink into the water's shadowy depths.
Sarik blacked out, waking up to find himself sprawled face first on the snowy ground.
He immediately understood. Sarik looked off towards the Gundam, his senses enhanced by adrenaline. The young man was at the edge of the mech's hands, holding the girl just above the water.
Sarik knew this was wrong. She wasn't dead. Somehow, this wasn't her time. He man took a quick estimate of the distance between him and the lake as he threw off his coat and web belt.
About three hundred meters. I can make that.
After yanking the medical kit off his belt, Sarik bolted forward, nothing on his back but his dry suit and light clothing. He ran as fast as his enhanced body could, but he still could not run as quickly as he needed to. Sarik squinted, trying to discern what was going on aboard the Gundam, but running blurred his vision, making it extremely difficult to make anything out.
Sarik was no more than ten meters away from the lake when the ZAFT mobile suit blasted off, sending out a shockwave that sent Sarik sprawling onto his back and causing him to loose his grip on his medical kit. He almost instantly jumped back to his feet, sprinted his hardest the last few meters, and dove into the lake.
As soon as he hit the water, Sarik's exposed skin started to burn, and his senses began to numb. Regardless, he dove deeper, swimming as hard as he could, desperate to save this girl. Desperate to save Stella.
He hit the bottom, where the pressure threatened to send him into unconsciousness. By will alone, he swam deeper, searching for her, hoping to find her before she sank too deep. It was dark down there, as the heavy cloud coverage allowed almost no light to make it down this deep, forcing Sarik to rely on touch alone. He was about to pass out from following the lake's bottom when he ran into something soft. A body.
Reaching forward, he grabbed the girl, then swam upward as fast as he could, darkness growing at the edges of his vision. He needed air, but his failing sight could not show him how close he was to the surface. The pain and numbness setting in threatened to plunge him into permanent darkness. For a moment, Sarik thought of giving up.
NO! he told himself. I will not die!
Sarik's resolve brought forth a flurry of strength, which he used to force himself and his charge upward. As his strength started to wane, he burst upward out of the water, almost loosing his grip on Stella. He regained his grip on her, then set her body on the water so it would float.
As quickly as he could, Sarik paddled over to the nearest edge of the lake, pushing Stella's body onto land before pulling himself up. He lay on his stomach, shivering for a moment, then remembered his personal mission.
He eyed the shores of the lake, looking for his medical kit. He spotted it nearby, a few dozen meters away. Sarik leaped painfully to his feat and ran as fast as he could to retrieve it, stumbling like a drunk man from the exhaustion.
Sarik quickly made sure everything was intact. Before he had come on this trip, he had planned for every scenario he could think of, including death. He had come especially well prepared for most scenarios involving water, hoping he had interpreted the vision correctly.
During his early years of college, Sarik had done a report on the human body's amazing ability for self-preservation. Sometimes, when exposed to freezing temperatures for dangerous amounts of time, the human body would enter into a temporary state of suspended animation. Blood would pool around the heart and brain, saturating them in oxygen in as a natural preservation mechanism. The body would be clinically dead, but when exposed to enough of certain stimuli, such as a defibrillator, or sometimes even just CPR, it would come out of this state. It was because of this that people had survived for over twenty-four hours after having "died" in cold environments, then reanimated with little or no brain damage. In the modern medical field, it was not uncommon to induce this state and freeze a body to prolong a critical patient's life. It was even possible, occasionally, to induce this state after death, if the body's temperature was dropped to near freezing temperatures within a short amount of time after death.
Sarik hoped that this was one of those special occasions, or he would have wasted all of this for nothing.
As he approached Stella, pulled out of his kit a pair of small syringes, filled with a liquid saturated in pure oxygen, nutrients, and cell-regenerating compounds.
He searched her body, trying to find a vein leading to the heart, but her suit was in the way, his only access being the head and neck.
Frustrated with his impulsive actions, Sarik scooped up Stella and began running back to the site where he left his things. Realistically, he was in no rush. Either she could be revived or not. A few more minutes wouldn't make a significant difference at this point. But he didn't care.
Once he arrived at his former hiding place, Sarik dropped Stella into the deepest amount of snow he could find, trying to keep her body as cold as possible until he could find what he needed.
Sarik searched through his things, finding his combat knife. He ran over to Stella and pulled it from its sheath. Carefully, the boy began to cut through her suit, exposing the light underclothing that most pilots wore under their flight suits and uniforms.
From there, he cut to the arms, not once nicking her flesh. Once he was satisfied, he began again to search for an appropriate vein, but the quick freezing that the water had caused made them shrink to the point where Sarik couldn't locate any. Straight into the heart, then.
He prepared the syringe, making sure no air was left in it, and with one quick jab, he stabbed the needle into her heart, injected its healing substance, and pulled it out.
Sarik prepared the other syringe, this one far shorter than any other needle in the medical field. So short, in fact, one would generally have an impossible time trying to find a vein for it. But this one wasn't meant for a vein. This was meant for a human's brain.
Sarik lifted Stella's head, searching for the unprotected fleshy area right above the spine. After moving her short hair out of the way, Sarik centered the needle and carefully forced it through her skin, straight into the brain. This needle, pressure activated, immediately injected its substance into her, allowing Sarik to pull it out within a second of penetration.
Sarik moved away from her and replaced the used needles, then found a blanket and a small heating pack among his emergency supplies. He lay the blanket out and lifted Stella onto it, then placed the heating pack next to her, hoping it would help once she was conscious. Hypothermia was imminent.
From here, he knew what to do by heart. Sarik tilted Stella's chin back and opened her mouth, making sure her airway was clear. He put his mouth on hers and forced two breaths into her.
Then he began pushing on her chest, hard and desperately.