MSG: In Vain Doth Valour Bleed
Chapter 1
Berchtesgaden, Bayern, Central Europe
April 30, 0087
Long after the last hiss of the crew train had echoed away in the massive
caverns underneath Obersalzberg, a sound of a different nature began its
lilting dirge, bouncing from stalactite to stalagmite. If one stood close
enough to one of those pillars of water-condensed minerals, the true form of
the sound could just be distinguished from the noise of countless
reverberations, as though the essence of the mournful measure was locked in the
crystalline memory of the salt formations that had been mined from the walls of
the caverns for hundreds of years. It would not have surprised the
creator of that sound if it were so. After all, for eight years, after
work hours in the mines were completed each day, he had shaped the sound from
his instrument of wooden frame and copper string.
The piece was Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake, Danse' for single violin, an old
acquaintance of the player. He played it for memory, from memory, even at
public occasions like the upcoming May Day Tag der Arbeit festival.
If only the owners of the Salzbergewerk, the famous salt mines of
Berchtesgaden, knew that humble Tomas von Seeckt from Pomerania used to sit a
different chair than as Evening Manager of the mines.
Second chair, in fact, on the New Koenigsberg Symphony Orchestra, Side 3, Duchy
of Zeon. His talents, however, did not lay solely in music, and his
accomplishments in that position paled in comparison to what he could do in the
command chair of a Gouf mobile suit.
Reinhardt von Seydlitz was one with the violin, and the memories. His
fingers moved of an accord all their own, the bow slicing across the strings
with the elegance of a lover, but the power of a man possessed. No note
was missed, no time interrupted. To do anything else would scar the
memory, and that was what drove him, and had driven him, for eight long years.
Patience was the key, but not forgetfulness. The time would come,
as he knew it would.
Von Seydlitz remembered the retreat from Metz with all the clarity now than
when it first happened. He remembered the weeks in the wintry Alps, as
the remains of the 10th Panzerkaempfer Division, eighteen mobile suits,
eluded detection by their Federation enemy. He remembered arriving in
this far corner of upper Bavaria, to rendezvous with the last three operational
mobile suits of the 555th 'Triple-Nickel' Airborne Battalion, as arranged.
Most of the Zakus, and his own Gouf, had not survived the
transit through the harsh Alps, but the pilots had been saved, and von
Seydlitz's team had arrived in the wilderness of Obersalzberg with four mobile
suits, crammed full of Zeon soldiers.
But Commander Karl Weissdrake had not failed him then, as von Seydlitz had
known he would not. Of all the mistakes made in Operation Lorelei,
sacking Zurich was not one of them.
All that gold had proven very useful. Its power was such that bribes were
issued, papers forged, residences leased, and the last survivors of the 10th Panzerkaempfer
were well-established German nationals instead of renegade Zeon soldiers.
With a quickly-garnered education, most of the men had even become very
skilled salt miners. For eight years, no one had come looking for them
here, in this secluded corner of Germania, and von Seydlitz knew after 0083
that they never would. Even the gold was untraceable now, since no one in
Zurich would ever admit it was missing, because for over two hundred years the
Suisse Bank had maintained that they did not have it.
Old gold tells all kinds of tales, especially when stamped with the symbol
and measure of the hated Third Reich. It was better this way, using the
spoils of swine to a nobler end than laundering it a credit's worth at a time
in bottles of Goldschlaeger cinnamon schnapps. That irony did not
fail to be noticed.
Obersalzberg had been General von Mellenthin's idea of a contingency plan, and
it was near perfect in scope. Not even the residents of Berchtesgaden,
where most of the 10th lived and worked, realized the serpent in their midst.
Why should they suspect anything? With the melting pot that Europe
had become under the Earth Federation, it did not even matter if you were not a
speaker of deutsch, though it definitely opened doors if you were
capable. Besides, no community in Central Europe would blink an eye at
fit and able men moving into their area. With the devastation of the Zeon
War of Independence and the horrendous cost of life, finding good help had been
problematic.
It was now 0087, and von Seydlitz was 29 years old. For eight years they
had been here, integrated in the local culture and society, biding their time.
Von Seydlitz knew that Germania would always be the Fatherland, as it had
been for most of the 10th Panzerkaempfer's higher officers and NCOs.
New Koenigsberg, a Bunch colony within Side 3, was the Motherland,
populated by Germans almost 100 years ago. The Fatherland would never
change, be it under the Federation or the Romans, but the Motherland lay
oppressed by a false independence, brought to heel out of fear of the Titans
and Earth.
But their time would come. It had taken all of von Seydlitz's speaking
skills to stop his men from rallying behind Admiral Delaz and Operation
Stardust in 0083. Logic won in the end, and the 10th's masquerade
continued, for despite Delaz's success in ridiculing the Federation, it had
cost him everything and almost everyone who'd followed him was dead, including
Anavel 'Nightmare of Solomon' Gato, a very successful Zeon ace from long-dead
Vice Admiral Dozul Zavi's Space Assault Corps. Survivors had made
themselves a nuisance to Earth for years after Stardust, but their anger was
feeble compared to the staggering might of the Titans, and few had ever struck
anything more than a glancing blow at the hated oppressors.
Von Seydlitz knew the time was not yet right, even before Stardust began.
Not until Axis moved back into the Earth Sphere would Zeon ever rise
again. The Motherland had grown too comfortable being the 'Republic' of
Zeon, a puppet land ruled by the Titans and Earth. Von Seydlitz grimaced
at the thought of going back now. Trading in exile for slavery was hardly
a better breakfast than a dog's.
Besides, the seed of Operation Nemesis had not yet borne fruit. Once it ripened
. . .then the Federation would be made to pay for its corruption and crimes
against humanity. Whether it took ten years or ten thousand, von Seydlitz
and the 10th Panzerkaempfer would be revenged, and Earth would know what
it was to face the wrath of the superior race.
The violin bow ceased its movements, and the music stopped, as von Seydlitz
heard a soft knock at the door of his office, and smelled the salt tinge of one
of his men. He turned his head towards the door as Lieutenant Anton
Dalyev saluted. "Yes, Oberleutnant?"
"Apologies for disturbing you, Colonel. We're getting a long-range
message from Sternn," replied the younger soldier, still wearing
the leather overalls and lantern helmet of a salt miner, with white streaks of
pure salt scratched across the surface of the black leather. Dalyev was
one of von Seydlitz's original troops, under his direct command in the 358th
'Unsullied' Light Assault Battalion. He was accustomed to von Seydlitz's
habits (like the one about using German to designate ranks) and moods.
After a moment of thoughtful silence, von Seydlitz stood to his full 6'3"
height, placing the violin carefully inside its case on the desk, and then
closing it with a snap. Dalyev watched his face carefully, trying to read
the phlegmatic Colonel's expression, but only the barest hint of a smile formed
on his lips. Even an occasion such as this one was not enough to crack
the Prussian inscrutability that von Seydlitz radiated in all matters.
Dalyev let a smile form on his own lips as he turned to follow his
commander into the caverns.
The 10th, despite their safety from Federation eyes, had not been idling away
their time. Deep within the salt mines, a sublevel had been constructed,
originally for deeper digs, but had gone unused for decades. The Zeon,
under the watchful eye of their resident 'engineer', Lieutenant Lucien McKenna
of the 22nd 'Onslaught' Marine Battalion, had stripped a Zaku of its
Minovsky reactor and placed it deep within the bowels of the salt mines.
The reactor served as the power plant for the string of computers and
simulator equipment that von Seydlitz had purchased with a fraction of the gold
taken from Zurich. It was also the power source for another McKenna
innovation, a very sensitive short-wave frequency radio.
During the war, with the level of Minovsky radiation that rendered radio waves
useless on the battlefield, it had become something of a hobby to study other
possible ways of long-distance communications. Not very many experiments
worked as well as the vibration-powered "skin-talk" method, but
McKenna had become rather enamored of the range a good short-wave radio could
generate with enough power, provided Minovsky particles were not present in the
path of the signal. Short-wave was not used much anymore, by anything,
though Deutsche Welle still broadcast on 11985 kHz. McKenna had
discovered that by "piggybacking" another short-wave signal a mere
fraction of a frequency from the original, it could be transmitted without
detection as a "ghost" signal within the actual transmission, similar
to what occurred when two cellular phones got carried on the same channel to
two different receivers. Add in a filter program run from a computer,
and you had a radio signal with a range of thousands of kilometers that in a
Minovsky radiation-free environment could allow you to chat with another person
without detection by any of the Federation's frequency snoopers. They
rarely checked short-wave bandwidths, anyway.
While the transmitter was, by necessity, a short-wave job, the receiver under
the mountain was pure legitimacy: a cell site situated on the outskirts
of the mountain carried the incoming lower-frequency signal straight to a
simple cellular speakerphone, attached to the wall near the short-wave
transmitter box. Using two separate wavelengths would make it even harder
for the 'Eardrum' Federation satellites to detect them. Even if the
signals were collected for analysis, it would take an absolutely genius analyst
to discover that the two totally different signals were related to one another.
Security was worth the awkwardness of communication.
Von Seydlitz noted that this signal was being carried on 9455 kHz, which meant
it was being broadcast simultaneously with Voice of America. The Foxe
twins, Privates Royce and Bryce Foxe of the 555th 'Triple-Nickel' Airborne
Battalion, were on operations duty this evening. He decided to allow them
to remain, knowing that curiosity gnawed at them as well. Dalyev stood
off to the side, ears alert.
A voice was being generated from a speaker on the wall, very fuzzy but audible.
"Habicht, hier ist Sternn! Geh doch mal ran, bitte sehr!"
Von Seydlitz toggled a switch, not phased for a moment by the almost-playful
tone of the speaker, yelling at him to pick up the phone. "Hier
ist Habicht. Was gibt's Neues?" he asked 'Sternn',
who spoke enough German to know that von Seydlitz wanted an update.
The laugh on the other end was so jovial it was almost psychotic. Von
Seydlitz could not help but grimace. Sternn, or 'meteor', had been
up there for a very long time, by himself. Von Seydlitz, being Habicht,
or 'hawk', began to wonder if the air supply had begun to cut out on him.
"Reinhardt, baby, my pal, my buddy, my all-time favorite Oberst!
Break out the champagne and get ready for a party!" spoke the voice
of the man that von Seydlitz had sent to collect the fruit of the seeds of
Operation Nemesis, an ace pilot and commander of the 15th 'Tyrant Tornadoes'
Fast Attack Battalion. He was also von Seydlitz's second-oldest friend, a
fellow New Koenigsberger, and the man everyone who knew of their past
relationship must have been the direct foil of the Colonel in their own
closeness to General von Mellenthin. They had all grown up together in
the same house, after all.
Von Seydlitz sighed audibly. "Is it at all possible for you to
maintain some semblance of decorum while on a military operation, Kommandant?"
He spoke as though it had not been four years, three months, and 13 days
since last hearing the all-too familiar boyish drawl on the other end of the
transmission. Friend he may have been, but von Seydlitz often wondered
what he had been thinking so many years ago when saving the life of the manic
soul on the other end of the radio.
Especially considering that soul would probably never grow up.
A hissing, spitting sound emanated from the speaker, and von Seydlitz knew that
the younger man had just blown a raspberry at the radio. "Still as
stuffy as ever, mein Freund? Margul must be there or something.
Okay, then, I guess you'll have to wait until I'm planetside again to
bust me down to a lowly Master Sergeant. Unless you want me to take these
pretty toys back and keep the gold from the refund for myself. Hazard pay
gets steep, you know."
Von Seydlitz had been about to comment that Hauptfeldwebel was about
three ranks too high an estimate for how far he would break his old associate
down, but squelched it at the mention of 'toys'. "Have you
accomplished your mission, Kommandant?"
"You bet I have, sir," was the almost-gleeful response. The
Foxe twins glanced at each other in eagerness, and then looked at Dalyev, who
grinned at them. "I've got enough gear in this tub to make even
'Black Eagle' von Seydlitz dance a jig. Or maybe just the Funky Chicken."
Von Seydlitz's left hand clenched into a fist as he spoke into the transmitter
again. "Estimated time of arrival on Terra?"
"Tomorrow night if my scheme works, and it will. I'll be depositing
this crate in the vicinity of Kehlsteinberge, so leave out milk, cookies,
and preferably some IR spotlights as a guide beacon. I'll be moving really
fast, so please don't miss me."
"I do not presume you are going to inform me of exactly how you intend to
get a transport vessel of that mass into Terra's atmosphere without alerting
the Federation to your presence?"
"Negative, Colonel. I'd hate to not make a flashy entrance.
Don't sweat it, Reinhardt. I haven't been up here with nothing but
me for company for nothing. Opportunity has finally appeared, and the
timing is just right," Von Seydlitz could feel the smirk from the
far side of the conversation. "Besides, with all the trouble the
Titans have been having trying to keep everything straight with the AEUG after
that Side 1 gassing, they'll never notice little ol' me cruising in through the
holes they've left in their patrols. It's kosher as Christmas, Colonel.
I'll be back to teach you how to laugh again in no time at all."
"Make certain I have something to laugh about, Kommandant. Habicht
abstelle."
"Tschuess, Oberst." The transmission terminated
with the flick of Royce Foxe's hand.
Von Seydlitz whirled on Dalyev. "Oberleutnant Dalyev, summon
the commanders! I want them all in my office immediately! Starting
now, we are on the road to going home, and no one, not the Federation nor the
Titans themselves will stop us! Go now!!"
The startled Dalyev fled the tactical room at top speed. Von Seydlitz
marched back towards his office, and his violin. When 'Swan Lake'
sounded through the caverns again, it was played in such a fashion that it
seemed less a dirge and more like a march, the music betraying the emotions its
player would not.
Operation Nemesis was now in full swing, though its fate still rested on the
collection of twisted genetics and matrimonial oddities that had graced
Humanity and the 10th Panzerkaempfer with the Zeon ace pilot with the
bizarre name of Commander Antares de la Somme.
60,000 km Above Norway, Outer Van Allen Belt
April 30, 0087
A gloved finger mashed down on the OFF button of the cellular telephone, then
simply flung it away. Antares de la Somme was unconcerned for where it
went after he released it to float away in the vacuum. It was tethered to
his ship by a length of tensile copper wiring, so it was not going anywhere far.
Story of his life for these last few years, but a cell phone was not so
vitally important as patience was.
Cruising in roughly a southward course above Scandinavia, the commercial bulk
freighter S.S. Non Sequitor continued on at a leisurely inertial speed
for yet another long-range orbit. De la Somme knew he was pretty much not
alone out here, but no one, not even the Titans, would confuse this bucket as
anything but a freighter. Slow and ungainly, with a tiny crew cabin
attached to a massive flat cargo section and three mammoth Minovsky boosters, Non
Sequitor was a warship in the same sense that de la Somme was a tailor.
Antares de la Somme was definitely not a tailor.
He sighed, then yawned lazily, the sound echoing strangely inside his helmet,
as he settled back into the lawnchair he'd bolted to the roof above the crew
cabin. Having been up here, in this ship, for several weeks, he decided
that if he stayed in Non Sequitor the entire time, he'd go insane.
Besides, no Zeon feared space and lived for long, not after having been
born in the darkness without end. To make matters better, sitting outside
the ship offered opportunities no place else in the universe could afford to.
For one thing, it was hard to star-tan while encased in a bulkhead. De
la Somme began "star-tanning" during the time he'd been one of Vice
Admiral Dozul Zavi's Space Assault Corps troopers, lounging in the palm of his Zaku's
hand after blowing apart Federation starships and fighters. His tour in
space had not been long, as von Mellenthin had promised so long ago when he'd
bet against the odds and won. De la Somme had been the prize of victory,
more so than Berlin had been.
Another benefit to being out in space was that it was very quiet, very private,
and usually without interruption. This gave one an excellent venue with
which to talk to God, if so inclined. De la Somme had picked up the habit
to keep his sanity while alone up here. God did not seem to mind him
blathering at Him, so de la Somme did so at every possible opportunity.
De la Somme had a lot to say and a lot to talk about.
His take on conversing with the Almighty was not like a supplicant to a higher
Lord, but more akin to a child talking to a father or an older sibling.
De la Somme had had plenty of evidence in his 24 years to suggest that he was,
if not personally God, at the very least a very big piece of His plan.
This fact granted him special dispensation to talk to God whenever he
damn well pleased, and God was obliged to listen to him jabber.
"Hey, God, it's me again. You remember, the rising star You've been
taking care of since I was little. It's going to get rough on this side
of Heaven again, and I'm not going to ask You to get the whole thing right, but
at least let me get this scow I'm hitching on down to Terra, so that Zeon can
once again punish the transgressors of Your Earth and cleanse it so that the
Light You promised Humanity can shine and Your glory can be known to all who
doubt Your Word and Way. You've made us the instruments of Your will,
God, so let's get the calibration straight, okay? Chat with You later.
Go visit some misery on the Feds until I get down there tomorrow with all
this wicked steel and inflict misery on them for You."
That was about the gist of the conversation every evening. De la Somme
crossed his fingers behind his helmet and leaned back, staring at the star
field beyond Earth's zenith. Luna was off to starboard, ever-looking like
a battered softball. In the far distance, Side 4 and its colonies glimmered
like candles in a darkened window. Luna II and the Titans were on
the far side of Terra, where de la Somme wanted them. Everything else out
here was either planets or distant stars. De la Somme only really felt
kinship with the stars.
His beard, unshaved for months, began to itch again. He muttered under
his breath some rather vile implications of what he was going to do with his
hair once he got down to Terra. Not that cutting it was going to really
improve his looks. Von Seydlitz had always called him "the best
nonregulation-looking soldier in the division." He'd also called him
a lot of other things, and had since he was small. De la Somme had never
minded the older von Seydlitz picking on him. After all, God had brought
von Seydlitz, and von Mellenthin for that matter, to de la Somme to save him
from Fate itself so many years ago. Since that time, de la Somme had been
their devoted follower, in a way no one else could comprehend.
No one but those two had ever seen de la Somme truly terrified, ever shed a
tear, or voice a doubt or concern, and they never spoke of the times that he
had to anyone else. De la Somme would follow von Seydlitz and von
Mellenthin into Hell itself for that. That did not mean he'd make their
lives any easier, of course. He called the unusually-charismatic von
Mellenthin "Deet", his old shortened version of "Dietrich".
He called the utterly impassive von Seydlitz "baby". Von
Mellenthin would laugh it off, while von Seydlitz would often grind his teeth
together and plot revenge. De la Somme could not help but slip into a fit
of giggling at the face von Seydlitz would make whenever he did that.
He was still chuckling to himself when his hyperaccurate eyes and perception
caught sight of one of the stars in the darkness without end staring back at
him. His squinted, holding a hand up to his helmet to concentrate the
light where he needed it to go. The star was getting bigger, and de la
Somme had a pretty good idea of what it was.
As it got closer, he grinned. "Looky what we have here. What's
a bad girl like you doing in a place like this?"
Closing in on the position of the Non Sequitor was an AEUG Salamis
Kai-class frigate, braving the Titans patrols in and near Side 4. De
la Somme figured it was probably heading back to Luna after taking a look-see
at the Titans at Luna II.
De la Somme stood up from his lawnchair with the grace of a man so accustomed
to moving in space it was instinctual, then stretched until his spine popped.
His Velcro-bottomed boots caught the mass of fuzz he'd glued across the
bulkhead in a trail that led back to the ingress-egress airlock. The
weights laced throughout his spacesuit to prevent muscle atrophy did not hinder
his movements. After casually walking a few feet, he grabbed a tightly-rolled
tube of laminate plastic and began to unroll it, whistling as he worked and
watching the Salamis Kai like a shark.
The AEUG ship would pass from his port bow, and it would be close. De la
Somme unrolled the plastic sheet with a casual flick of his wrists, letting the
lack of gravity and the forward inertia of the Non Sequitor finish the
process. There was about eighty feet of laminate, five feet wide.
The paper contained within the tube was bright silver, emblazoned with
red lettering, which de la Somme proudly displayed as a big streaming banner.
It read "HONK IF YOU THINK TITANS GIVE THE BEST HEAD IN THE EARTH
SPHERE!!"
A flashing spotlight signaled back from the Salamis Kai, blinking out a
Morse message, which de la Somme could translate in his sleep. The AEUG
reply was "Would-honk-if-not-for-the-crotchrot.
Take-care-and-penicillin."
De la Somme smiled at that, his right hand giving a thumbs-up at the AEUG ship
as it crossed his T, then sped past to its destination. His left hand,
the one holding the stick the banner was attached to, was giving the departing
vessel the finger.
Later, traitors, he thought angrily, knowing many Zeon were members of
the AEUG. Like the old song says, 'I-I-I don't need you.' Zeon's
true sons will show you how to fight a war, and with God on our side, how can
we lose?
Re-rolling the banner around the stick, de la Somme decided he'd star-tanned
enough today. There'd be another chance tomorrow. And after
tomorrow, there would be so much more to do. Von Seydlitz would be there
when he landed, and it would be nice to see his older foster brother again.
He hoped von Mellenthin would be there when he started to walk again.
Mannheim, Hessen, Central Europe
April 30, 0087
It had been a hideous structure since Old Calendar 1945, standing on the
outskirts of the city of Mannheim, defying Time and War that would destroy all
things around it. The paint was fading into a pale off-white instead of
the drab green-brown it used to be, but its stones lost none of their hardness.
Neither, for that matter, did the people who were forced to dwell within
its walls.
The Mannheim Military Penitentiary had housed the most awful war criminals from
nearly every European conflict after World War II. Originally, it was a
halfway point, used to keep prisoners until they were transported to whatever
new form of hell they were assigned to. It later became a permanent
residence for military convicts. After the establishment of the Earth
Federation, its use had been expanded to include death row inmates, molesters,
and mass-murderers. Fiends from all walks of unlawful behavior were
represented in the General Population of this dire fortress of despair,
incarceration, and eventual extermination. In the midst of all this
contained hatred were the military prisoners, noted from their less-disciplined
fellow inmates by their solid manner, commanding bearing, cleaner wardrobe, and
an absolute intolerance of violation of whatever of their "personal
space" they could maintain in a place where unless you were in solitary
confinement, you could never be alone.
Sodomy had been a commonplace trait of prisons since the first criminal was
thrown in the slam, but not in Mannheim. Rape in all its forms, save
those convicted of it while on active duty, was a relative newcomer to the
premises. With the new inmates, a new horror had reared its head, to
spread itself throughout the ever-swelling population of prisoners, and an
ambience of fear followed in its path. However, immortal Rapine had never
counted on the fight its followers would find once introduced into a place
where the professional killers lay their heads. The military prisoners
reacted violently in the presence of unwanted sexual attention, and it became a
necessity if you were looking for a little forced attention to bring a gang
with you to subdue the victim.
It could be said that sex criminals are a tenacious lot, so no one got off
completely unmolested, even if they did manage to fend off their would-be
rapists. This category included the convicted military prisoners of the
One-Year War, mostly captive Zeon, whose morale was already at a dangerous low,
and whose willpower was similarly beaten down. Over a period of four
months, over a hundred Zeon soldiers were cycled into the waiting arms of a
form of torment they were not prepared to face. Some fought their way
into a type of "sanctuary", when the cost of trying to subdue them
was more than the rape-gangs were willing to continue to pay to try.
Others were not so fortunate, but despite their dishonor, they vowed and
instituted revenge on their own terms. The guards, all Federation
soldiers, turned their heads, so long as the sexual deviants preyed only on the
prisoners and not on them, despite the drastic increase in aggravated assaults,
batteries, and prisoner deaths. This system had been in place for eight
years.
There was one exception to the rule, the crown jewel of the One-Year War
prisoners, the one who was convicted on over a hundred counts of mass-murder
and gross misconduct against civilians during time of war. The Federation
military tribunal had sentenced him to seventy consecutive life sentences,
without hope of parole, for his crimes against the population of Earth, not
even giving him the death penalty to cut him any slack. No form of
punishment save trapping him on Terra was considered harsh enough to wipe away
the horror this man had visited on Minsk, Berlin, Prague, Zurich, Luxembourg,
Paris, and Metz. With the hammer of a gavel, a three hour-long van ride
while in chains, and the slam of a cell door, Major-General Dietrich von
Mellenthin arrived at the only home he would know for the rest of his living
days, and some thereafter.
Von Mellenthin was the only person in the prison who had a cell all to himself.
The Federation guards wanted him to have as little private contact with
anyone, especially former Zeon soldiers, as possible to arrange.
Nevertheless, when he'd first arrived the chance to get into the pants of
a Zeon General was too great a temptation for all but the most controlled and
perceptive sex offender, many of whom had lost much to the Zeon during the War.
Those who were not enamored of the idea of breaking von Mellenthin in
were the ones who'd seen him when he first came into Gen-Pop. Even after
trading in his smoke-gray and gold uniform for the bright green and barcoded
prison uniform, this was not a man who'd lost his ability to fight, or kill.
His eyes, while an object of desire for the rape-gangs, told volumes
about the amount of torment this man could inflict upon those who displeased
him. The wise went after easier prey.
The first attempt occurred in the shower room. There were six of them,
and only two who were not: von Mellenthin and another former Zeon
soldier, a special forces commando from the 14th Division. The two
soldiers backed themselves to the far wall and turned the facing showerheads to
a temperature more suited to boiling eggs than cleaning flesh. Their
assailants fled with second-degree burns, and von Mellenthin and his ally
walked out with pride intact.
The soldier spread the word with the other Zeon prisoners that von Mellenthin
was in Mannheim, and who he was. After that, while in Gen-Pop von
Mellenthin was never without military escort.
The Federation guards noticed the sudden change. Before von Mellenthin's
arrival, the military prisoners had been almost lackluster in dress, in
stance, and in discipline. Better than the other prisoners, always, but
not up to par with their former profession. When von Mellenthin arrived
in 0081, after his grueling year-long war crimes trial, his mere presence
changed all of that. The Zeon ate in their own sector of the mess hall,
exercised together in the yard, and generally stayed away from the rest of the
prisoners. At their center was von Mellenthin, whose pleasant voice, ease
of laughter, and willingness to discuss anything under or around the Sun was
infectious.
This scared the piss out of the warden, a former Federation infantry Captain
named Grissom, who considered putting von Mellenthin into solitary confinement
until he died. The only thing that stopped him was that von Mellenthin
was not breaking any of the rules. He was not even indulging in the
prison black market, much less inciting a riot. Like it or not, Grissom had
to admit he was the model prisoner, despite the cult of personality he was
forming around himself. Something had to be done, but Grissom was at a
loss to figure out what. While he warred with his indecision, his
tame military prisoners were learning what it were to be the bearers of the
pride of soldiers again.
After Delaz's uprising in late 0083, Grissom had anticipated a full-scale war
cooking off in his prison. He tripled the guards throughout the debacle
of Stardust, and even had a team of GMs stationed outside the complex.
But nothing happened except for a sudden monopoly of news stations on
every radio and television, with every Zeon soldier in Gen-Pop glued to each
set like raptors watching an injured animal die, silent in their concentration.
When it was all over, and the colony had fallen in North America, the
Zeon prisoners simply went back to their routines. Any tears they may
have shed for the Delaz Fleet were shed in solitude. None of them would
even talk about it.
When the Titans formed after Stardust, their jurisdiction applied to all former
Zeon, including prisoners of war. The Titans representative had appeared
at the prison once in the five years of the group's assembly, and he had been
shocked at the state the Zeon prisoners, and von Mellenthin, were in.
Instead of a cluster of broken criminals, he found military discipline
and a solid group community that was as stable as the foundation the building
stood upon. Enraged, he overruled Grissom's protests and began instituting
some changes to Mannheim. The GMs, newly painted black, became a
permanent fixture, along with a tanker truck or two fitted with pumps that bore
Biohazard warning labels and the letters "CoCl^2" on the tanks.
Without a care for consequences, he ordered von Mellenthin isolated from
Gen-Pop, and his "army" stripped from him. That was when the
second attempt occurred.
When the weather did not permit prisoners to exercise outdoors, there was an
enclosed weight room within the prison structure itself. The Titans
representative had the indoor room cordoned off by a platoon of guards, then
let eight sex offenders into the weight room, with von Mellenthin alone inside
it. The truncheons and guns of the guards, to allow what would happen to
happen without outside interference, locked out his own people. The
Federals had expected a riot. What they got was a massacre.
Von Mellenthin had been hitting the weights religiously, several hours a day,
since his arrival, and had managed to build his strength and size accordingly
in preparation for just this eventuality. To make matters even more
dangerous, he had been a champion bare-knuckle boxer for his weight division
while attending Gross-Lichterfelde Academy on New Koenigsberg. These
traits, coupled with the amount of raw steel lying about the room, enabled the
'Hessian Lion' to savage the hyenas quite well. When he emerged from the
interior of the room to face the crowd several minutes later, he had blood on
his hands, blood on his clothes, blood on his shoes, blood in his eyes, and a
blood- and hair-covered lifting bar in his hands. That landed a dozen
people in the infirmary (two died of internal injuries), and von Mellenthin in
solitary for a month. The other Zeon prisoners were ready to name him the
reincarnation of Giren Zavi, if not Zeon Daikun himself, after that feat of
prowess. He had overcome the obstacles and emerged victorious, and even
the month in solitary failed to break his resolve. No other incidents had
occurred since that last time, and the Zeon had kept their own counsel, and
their noses clean, since.
In 0085, when the Titans gassed Side 1's 30 Bunch colony, they held a silent
vigil for an hour. The Federation guards, and the other prisoners, looked
on in utter confusion.
It was not the carnage of the weight room that stopped the jackals from making
another attempt, nor was it the threat of retaliation by a large group of
former soldiers. It was what became a custom at dinner sometime in late
0085, when a badly-maintained baby grand piano turned up in a long-unexplored
storage room in an abandoned wing of the third floor. It had been there
since 1988, Old Calendar reckoning, apparently a gift for a former warden by a
superior officer from one of the other foreign military hegemonies that had
been responsible for the prison. Von Mellenthin petitioned Grissom for
the privilege of restoring it and placing it in the mess hall, the first time
the Zeon General had ever asked for anything from the Federation overseers.
Not seeing any harm in a hobby, Grissom acquiesced to the request.
It took the combined efforts of a dozen men, the woodshop, a guard
willing to accept bribes to garner wire (a controlled substance if there ever
was one in prison), ivory (false, of course), and screws, and von Mellenthin's
knowledge an entire year to get the thing restored and re-tuned to perfect
sound quality. It also took that dozen men, and von Mellenthin, to lift
the thing bodily down three flights of narrow steel steps and to its new home,
under supervision by their Federation guards.
That evening, in late 0086, amidst the jeers and catcalls by the non-military
prisoners, Dietrich von Mellenthin sat down at the piano and began to play.
Slowly, as the music began to build and flow through the mess hall, the hurled
insults went silent, one voice at a time, until the only sounds to be heard
were the clatters of trays and utensils in time to Mozart's 'Eine Kleine
Nachtmusik, Allegro', performed live by a Zeon General for the benefit of
prisoners and guards alike.
After that, it became a custom for dinner music to be played, and von
Mellenthin was a master of the piano. He even took requests, from
anybody. He tapped out the miniscule prison library for every piece of
music and score he could acquire. The rest he played from memory,
apologizing if a piece was requested that he did not know.
His chair had been First for piano in the New Koenigsberg Symphony Orchestra.
It was now April 0087, and the last evening before Tag der Arbeit, the
traditional Labor Day for Germans. As usual, Dietrich von Mellenthin was
on the piano, banging out the selection of this session with his usual
precision fervor while the prisoners fed and the guards watched and listened.
The piece was 'Swan Lake, Danse', by Tchaikovsky, for single piano.