MSG: In Vain Doth Valour Bleed

by His Divine Shadow

The 10th PzK and the Titans nearly turn Hameln's Remembrance Day into its Armageddon, as Kaempfer battles Barzam on the bridge across the Weser, while the Church's plan to stop Mellenthin reaps a bitter harvest. Chapter 21 UP!

16. Chapter 15

MSG: In Vain Doth Valour Bleed

Chapter 15

Steinbaum, Niedersachsen, Central Europe

November 13, 0087

For the first time in their existence, the Commonality was in a state of discord with itself.

"Please," begged one of the younger members to the one who stood separate from the group, "just tell us what happened!"

The eighth member, the eldest, glared at his seven siblings, arms crossed angrily over his chest, facing them all in defiance. "You would not understand. You weren't there."

"Then you must endeavor to enlighten us," spoke the second-eldest of them, the one the other six were hiding behind.

The eldest almost spat. "Impossible. You have no frame of reference that would give you the means of understanding."

"But why?" piped in one of the others, apprehensive. "What could have occurred that would so vastly separate you from us?"

"The facts of life," snarled the eldest, becoming very annoyed at being interrogated.

"Explain them to us, then," said the second-eldest, facing his sibling with no fear. "You deliberately severed the link between yourself and the rest of us, and then experienced sensations that we also have the right to experience. This reluctance on your part makes you to be like a petulant child, as does your refusal to share your assessment of the events."

"You want to know what happened that badly? Fine! I grew up!" The eldest spread his arms wide, as though daring one of the others to act irrationally. "I kept you all from it because, like me, when it impacts upon you as individuals, it should be as much a shock to you as it was to me. I also did it because it did not seem right for those not there to feel it firsthand unless they were there."

"Enough stalling!" cried out one of the younger ones. "In order to understand the world in which we have been birthed, we must analyze all aspects of it so as to reason out the purpose for our existence. Denying the Commonality information which may prove vital undermines every effort we have mustered to comprehend the Pattern, which is grievous in scope and consequence. What did you come to see in Kassel that would drive you to hide from us that which we may need to know?"

"The truth!" The others recoiled from the venom in the eldest's voice. "I learned the truth about why we were created, and it was just as we feared! We were concerned that the Federation norms who made us would use us as weapons, even as the Mellenthin-entity would, but we were overlooking one factor: we are weapons! Designed, like the mobile suits we ride in, for the purpose of warfare, of killing! I looked at the ruins of Kassel, the smouldering remains of the Federation dead, and I came to the realization that I was comfortable with seeing it! As though I'd been prepared for it since my creation and never knew until that moment!"

At the looks of horror on the faces of the rest of the Commonality, the eldest continued, his voice becoming more calm and introspective. "I came to know for certain that I am as much a soldier as those the Antares-entity killed on the battlefield, and I also came to know for certain that our design as such was not an accident, but a premeditated plan on the part of the Federation norms. We were created to operate as a whole unit, not as individuals, and once Awakened to our full maturity and potential, we would walk the fields of battle like gods. No force could withstand our power if we united, not even the machine-Awakened or monsters like the Mellenthin-entity."

"But why should we wish that purpose?" asked one of the others from behind the second-eldest. "Even if we were, in fact, created to destroy, why must we obey such a design if given the option not to?"

"Because we can end it all!!" yelled the eldest, incredulous. "Imagine it! We can end war once and for all! After we achieve maturity and neutralize those who oppose us, no one would ever dare raise arms against our combined might! We could enforce a peace upon Humanity the way no other force ever could before! We, using the very tools the norms gave us to fight their wars, could eliminate war from the pages of the future forever! We can make the cycle stop!"

"It's the ravings of madness, to believe that human norms would design us for any such purpose as killing, no matter the ideal being fought for, with the knowledge that we would be superior enough to subject the species to our wills," commented the second-eldest. "Your words tread dangerously close to the ideals that the Mellenthin-entity would bring about."

"Nonsense. The Mellenthin-entity would enslave humanity in bonds of genetic domination, and use warfare as a means of culling the lessers from the species. We would use our own obvious and evident superiority to make warfare something humankind would fear to unleash."

"Your time with the Antares-entity has shrouded your objectivity, brother," said one of the other. "You are blind to the obvious now."

"I thought that, too, until Kassel. The time will come when you see it, too," said the eldest confidently. "It's only a matter of time before the rest of you Awaken to your destiny as well. Then you will realize that I speak the truth."

"Perhaps time will tell, but we must converse amongst ourselves about what you have told us," said the second-eldest. "And we must do this without the possibility of influence by an outside source."

The ramifications of the words of the second-eldest were not lost on the eldest. "You're banishing me? For being what I am? For being what we all are?? How DARE you!!" If he had teeth in this medium of commune, he would have gnashed them. As it was, his anger was evident by stance alone.

The second-eldest held up a hand to quell the eldest. "It is the fear of this Commonality that some form of influence may have affected you, caused by your ill-advised closeness with the Antares-entity. This is not banishment, but please understand that we have to come to terms with this on our own accord, as a whole, and not as individual units. We must do this alone, and away from you, for a time. If indeed you are correct, time will tell whether your theory is sound. Do not begrudge us the means to decide our fates beforehand."

"You're not going to decide!!" screamed the eldest at his fellow Commons, even as they turned away from him, shutting him out from the group. "None of us get to decide!!"

After a moment of silence, the eldest left them to their discussions, disgusted by the childishness of them all. He would not waste any more time with those who would not accept what they were. He would rouse his physical form and mingle with those who were more like he was now, and await the moment of his vindication.

Nijmegen, Netherlands, Central Europe

November 14, 0087

The Waal river flowed east and south towards the point in its course where it became the Rhine river. It was not a particularly clean river, mostly because the Dutch used the Waal as a dumping ground for waste and refuse of all forms, thankful in the knowledge that whatever garbage they chose to insert into the fast-flowing river, it would all be swept straight into Germany, where garbage belonged. Academy Commander Jackson Stilwell considered the irony of the fact that in spite of Dutch predispositions, this time the garbage was flowing upriver.

"Anything on the hydrophone, Briggs?" asked Stilwell, silvery hair moving with the not-unsubstantial breeze that was blowing through the night.

"Nothing, sir," replied Briggs quietly to Stilwell.

"Keep listening, then. I wouldn't put it past these guys to try and sneak in here the same way they did at Bonn. Anything even thinks about sounding funny, you let me know."

The Federation Academy of Armored Warfare at Nijmegen was where every aspiring mobile suit or armor jockey went to become a stud. Ordinarily, there were about 500 students of mobile warfare in training at the Academy, their numbers compounded by Stilwell's staff of about a hundred officers and enlisted personnel. Numbers had decreased over the years, mostly due to lack of a real war to fight and the ever-burgeoning influence of the Titans on Federation ranks, so only about 200 students were actually present. In all honesty, though, Stilwell knew that it would not have mattered if it had been 2,000. The Zeon were coming, and they were heading straight for where the sixty year-old Commander was currently standing.

When Camael Balke had called Stilwell and told him that the long-dead 10th Panzerkaempfer Division had returned from the grave, commenced a riverine operation that no one had seen coming, then had sailed into Bonn as pretty as you can please with a phosphorus bomb and had blown the city apart, Stilwell was still soldier enough to be scared. It was textbook Sun Tzu, making all their plans in secret and then striking like a thunderbolt before anyone could take action to prevent it. According to survivors from Bonn, there had been three draft barges in the convoy, along with three Zeon amphibious mobile suits, and the other two ships had kept right on going up the Rhine, steady on course for the Germany-Holland border, and eventually Nijmegen itself.

The Academy had mobilized everything it could. Despite its purpose, Nijmegen itself was singularly unsuited for being defended against an aggressor, its ultimate mission not one of direct warfare but of education in the art of it. In spite of the handicap with materials, Stilwell knew the fight would have to be decided on the river itself, if they were to have any chance of preventing what happened to Bonn from happening to Nijmegen, and he had no doubts that destroying the Academy was high on the list of von Mellenthin's priorities. In view of this, he had ordered the Academy on their version of "yellow alert", and everything that could be armed was lined along the riverbanks, awaiting the arrival of their foe. His caution was not undue; the monuments of Luxembourg and Metz left grave tribute to the ramifications of earning von Mellenthin's wrath.

He was proud of what he had been able to accomplish with just a few regular personnel and the higher-grade students. The 77th Reserve Battalion from Maastricht, Belgium, had been wiped out by several Zeon mobile suits several days ago in a nighttime ambush, removing most of the localized infantry and anti-tank support that Nijmegen could call upon, but they were by no means helpless. The task force led by the surface destroyer EFS Erebus was positioned at the mouth of the Waal, near Hoek van Holland and Europoort, to block access to the North Sea and the Strait of Dover from the 10th Panzerkaempfer in case London was on the hit list for their third possible barge-bomb. Nijmegen was defended by an ancient ASROC torpedo launcher mounted to a pair of I-beam girders and moved by forklift, its payload set for shallow-draft; a jury-rigged depth charge launcher that would do little more than make a lot of noise and splashes; a half dozen TGM-79 GM Trainer suits patterned off of the old RGM-79 GMs, but without the weaponry and most of the armor that came standard to the venerable mobile suit, armed only with their beam sabers and some obsolete 100mm machine guns and a few clips of ammunition; a couple of jeeps with 20mm Gatling cannons and a few drums of ammo apiece; and lastly, the object Stilwell was standing on, the former centerpiece to the memorial that stood at the center of the Academy grounds, an ancient Bundeswehr Type-121 Leopard II A4 main battle tank nicknamed 'Ol' Beastly', with most of its advanced targeting computer and optics removed, but still mobile and still armed with a fully-operable 120mm Rheinmetall smoothbore and 27 rounds of vintage APFSDS-T. And then there were the students themselves, armed with whatever they could scavenge from the armory and their own pride and guts. The class of '87, already calling themselves "Stilwell's Irregulars", were ready to face Hell itself, even if it came in the form of three top-line Zeon amphibious mobile suits with beam weaponry and a chemical bomb the size of a city block.

Stilwell himself shivered, sitting atop 'Ol Beastly' in the middle of the night, near a river which added a whole other layer of misery on top of the already-deepening cold of Europe's winter near the North Sea, and raised the low-light binoculars to his eyes for the thousandth time today, scanning the river as far as he could, but seeing nothing the size of what Balke had been talking about sailing their way. This both reassured and unnerved him. At his age, he had not expected to have to become combat-active again. The very thought that now, after having seen his children grow up and have lives of their own, and having grandchildren to dote on, and a wife to get to see on a regular basis, he would die at the hands of a few recalcitrant Zeon against which he had little chance of survival, mortified him at a level he had not known was possible. The meager resources with which he had to resist destruction were a far cry from assurance of victory, and Balke had said that there would be no reinforcements. That meant that if the Zeon got past Nijmegen, only the Erebus task force stood between them and the open ocean. And the only thing keeping those three suits from tromping unopposed through three heavily-populated Dutch districts was Nijmegen itself.

Stilwell did not want to place a bet on their chances. "Can't let them past us, Briggs. They've had their way too long already."

"Can we stop them with what we've got, sir?"

"We're damn sure gonna try."

So here they were, shivering in the cold, waiting for the Zeon to make their presence known, an event supposedly to happen in the next twenty-four hours if their speed had remained constant. Stilwell was determined to make sure that even if the Zeon suits made it through Nijmegen, their barge-bombs would not. It was all any of them could do.

Kassel, Hessen, Central Europe

November 14, 0087

"'In spite of the Zeon terrorist attacks on Bonn and Kassel, Dakar has not offered any response to the Zeon demands or any information as to what they're planning to do about it,'" said the political expert who was on the vidvision in the Barracuda Bar on Frankfurter Strasse in western Kassel, a shady little music bar where no band played and the taps were always open. "'And with the rumors of the Titans landing in force in northern Germany, I can almost guarantee that there will be a news blackout within the week, just like what occurred in the Philippines and Southeast Asia in August. I, for one, fear that the Titans, and the Federation, have sold us out to the Zeon malcontents who threaten all life on this planet with biological apocalypse, and the Federation cannot even tell the citizenry in the newest war zone whether or not their water has been infected with any degree of certainty. The outrage of the German people at the Zeon cools daily as they come to accept that they may be here to stay, while in proportion, the anger they feel at the Federation that has betrayed them grows by the day. If the Titans fail to realize that public opinion is their lifeblood in Europe, then they may find their battles to be much harder than anticipated due to local support for General von Mellenthin. Rampage will only turn Germany into another example of Vietnamization. . .'"

"Don't you think we've had enough yet?" asked Braxton Bryton to the man who was waving frantically at a Bierfrau. His voice was slurred from the dual effects of alcohol and fatigue, but not nearly so much as the gesticulating Camael Balke. The third man at the table, Dorff, just shook his head in disappointment as he nursed his fifteenth beer, and he was the only one who could be called remotely sober.

"Enough?" barked Balke, languidly turning his head to look at his friend. "Who shaysh I've had enough?"

Bryton shrugged. "Just wondering is all. I think this one," he hefted the half-full beer stein, "will be my last for the night. I'm dying over here."

"Nonshense! Ain't dyin' till you're ready to die, and you ain't ready to die yet, my young apprentishe. YO, shweetcheeksh!!! Another round over here!!" Balke managed to pick up the cigarette in the ashtray and bring it to his lips without dropping it.

Bryton's head settled onto his arm, which was sprawled across the table. "All this work, for nothing."

Balke shrugged, the gesture almost making him tip over. "Who shaysh it was for nothin'?"

The other Captain tapped Balke on the forehead with an index finger. "You gone foggy up there, Camael? I've spent twenty-four hours in that damn tent city looking at wrecks and corpses and spent brass, and all we've figured out is that the Zeon hit this place. That, in my book, equates to NOTHING."

"Fuck that!" slurred Balke, a stupid grin sliding onto his lips that still had the cigarette dangling from them. "I KNOW why that shpace Nazi blew the hell outta Kassel. He did it jusht to get Sweet Baby'sh goat, is all. Nothin' elshe."

"How'd you come to that scientific conclusion, Camael?" Bryton did not bother to keep the derision out of his voice. It was too easy to assume that the only motive behind the Kassel attack was to piss off Cramer.

The Bierfrau plunked another three beers down on the table, then grabbed the empties and ran before Balke could grab her ass in his traditional fashion. Balke barely noticed her, instead staring at the fresh beer in front of him. "'Caushe the beer told me, that'sh why, Brak."

"Whatever you say, Camael." Bryton was too tired and too miserable to really be enjoying this. He'd been shocked to hear that the Titans had taken over the Headquarters, and that Dakar had let them get away with what amounted to highway robbery in time of crisis.

"Hey, Brak?" whispered Balke conspiratorily. "Did'ja know that back in the Vietnam War, American Intelligence offichers couldn't carry live ammo on bashe?"

"Yeah, just like we can't today. We might blow some poor sap's brains out for not talking to us. So what?"

Balke smiled evilly, his breath stinking of alcohol, and he reached into the front of his trousers.

"Camael," said Bryton nervously, "last time you did this I had to bail you out of prison." He glanced over at the silent Dorff, who just shrugged and paid attention to the news.

The newscaster's face was sympathetic, and probably laced with a little relief that he was not in Kassel tonight. "'. . .supplies and whatever aid for the refugees of eastern Kassel can be sent to the following address. . .'"

"Relaxsh, dumbshit, I'm not gonna whip it out on the table." Balke groped around for a minute, then paused. "Boy, thish takesh me back. You an' me, One-Year War, the back of that flatbed truck, on the road to Clermont-Ferrand, a bottle of peach schnapps. You alwaysh were my favorite, Brak."

Dorff's head twisted to stare at Bryton, eyes wide. Bryton's face went scarlet. "Damn you, Camael, you liar!"

The other Intel officer's smile grew wider. "You're right, you're right, jusht kiddin', Brak. You were never good enough to be my favorite." He looked over at Dorff. "No technique," he explained, and the ex-Pionier nodded in seeming understanding, throwing Bryton a look of disbelief.

"'. . .Hamburg Spaceport officials commented today that the launch of the first in a new line of cargo starships, the Belle Karla, will proceed on schedule in spite of the recent events between the Federation and. . .'"

Bryton lurched up from the table, fully intending on bludgeoning Balke to death with his beer stein, but his balance was shot, and he stumbled and fell onto the floor, butt hitting with a thump. Balke laughed aloud, drawing even more attention to them from the other patrons, of which there were plenty.

"I'll kill you, Camael!" roared Bryton as he tried to stand, but his inner ears refused to cooperate in the equilibrium department.

Balke removed his hand from the front of his pants, and was holding a fully-loaded clip for a 9mm handgun. "Taa-DAA!! Check it out!"

Bryton's anger vanished as he stared at the bullet-loaded magazine. "Whoa," he whispered, crawling up to his knees and steadying himself of the table. "How'd you get your hands on THAT?"

Balke puffed up in self-importance. "'In time of war, one musht be shcertain to keep one'sh weaponsh sharp and well-maintained.' I shtole it from shome goober back at the tent shcity. Wanna hold it?"

"You bet I do," said Bryton, fingering the unloaded 9mm on his own hip and fully cognizant of what he could do with it when he did load it. Neither of them were allowed access to live ammunition unless in the field, and that had hacked them both off to no end. Dorff, on the other hand, was carrying no less than six magazines of 9mm warshots somewhere on his person.

Balke reached over to hand him the magazine, and Dorff casually plucked it away from his drunk boss's hand and disappeared it into his jacket sleeve, never actually looking at what he was doing, so intent was he on the news.

Balke and Bryton both looked in astonishment at Balke's now-empty hand, then they looked at each other, heads no more than seven inches apart. "Wooooow," they whispered simultaneously.

"Do that again!" said Bryton in awe.

Balke glanced around the table and grabbed hold of a beer stein. "Lemme shee if I can make thish dishappear, too!"

"'. . .says that next year's Winter Olympics will be 'something to marvel at' when it comes to Germany's chances in the penathalon. . .'"

Balke was working well on making the liquid in the stein 'disappear' when the door flew open and an Ensign stormed in, only to find both of his superiors well-blended. "Dammit, Captains!! I've been trying to reach you both for over an hour now!"

"Huh?" asked Bryton, managing to haul himself into his seat again. "What for?"

"'What FOR'??" the Ensign was beside himself. "Cramer's made contact with the 10th Panzerkaempfer, THAT's 'what for'!!"

As though a magical hand had suddenly wiped away all their fatigue and the alcohol in their bloodstreams, the two Federation officers leapt to their feet. "Don't just stand there, you fucking pratz!" yelled Balke to the Ensign. "You're driving!!"

Lippe River (near Hamm), Nordrhein-Westfalen, Central Europe

November 14, 0087

"Sir," spoke Taglienti's voice in Wolfram La Vesta's hydrophone, "sonar says we've hit the finale here. Any further and we bottom out."

"Confirmed," said La Vesta, doublechecking with his own Hygogg's sonar to make certain that the point Z'Gok E was correct and accurate. They had swung out of the flow of the Rhine river near Duisberg, moving onto the narrower and shallower Lippe river that flowed east instead of south. It had been miracle after another that the three of them had managed to find a berth for RMS Duisberg and Ruhrort near Leverkusen two days ago. La Vesta had taken that opportunity and the time off to alter certain traits on Ruhrort, whose name on the bow and stern now read 'Fafnir', as well as re-program the autonav computer on Duisberg for its part in the plan. "You know what to do, froggies. Time to get dry and aired out."

Taglienti's Z'Gok E stood to its full height, the level of the river coming only to the mobile suit's knees. The scant light coming from Hamm glinted from the water that coursed down the broad shoulders of the armored giant, and its red mono-eye scanned to and fro, looking for heat sources. Hemphill's Z'Gok E, which had risen from the stern of Ruhrort, also swept its main camera about. After having evaded the Federation's random and sporadic aerial sweeps, lines of hydrophones and sonobuoys, the treacherous obstacles in and on the bottom of the Rhine, and taking the chance of surfacing only long enough to get Ruhrort's paint job done, getting ratted out now by some local or a kid ranked high on La Vesta's "Bad Things" list.

"It's gonna be radio silence while we make this run, kids. Don't want some snoop satellite or scanner picking us up while we hump this crate a hundred-twenty klicks overland to Bad Pyrmont."

"Why're we doing it like this, Sarge?"

La Vesta rolled his eyes. "Use your noggin', Vito. The Feddies are looking for two ships being escorted by three amphibious mobile suits on the Rhine river. We're about to become one ship being escorted by three amphibious mobile suits on dry land, and if we don't get caught, we're going to be on a whole new river kilometers away from where anyone expects us. Jesus, did you even pay attention in Basic Frog?"

"Naw, Sarge, I was too busy scoring off of Hemphill's girl."

"Screw you, Vito," responded Nestor Hemphill, not sounding pleased by the topic of conversation. Taglienti laughed, and his Z'Gok E extended a talon in a bizarre attempt at giving Hemphill's suit the finger.

Hemphill ignored the gesture. "I don't like this, Sarge. We're only gonna get about forty klicks an hour out of these suits on land if we've gotta carry this barge, which isn't exactly the kind of thing you can ignore when it's moving around out of water. This all seems like a goatfuck waiting to happen."

"It's more like a 'frogfuck', Nestor," cut in Taglienti.

"You'd know from experience, Vito."

"Shut up!" La Vesta severed this little trend in conversation before it got any worse. "Private Hemphill, I don't make the goddamn orders, I'm just the guy who gets to make them happen. The General wants this ship in a specific place at a specific time, and this is the fastest way to do it. It's also fucking nuts, which means it might even work without us getting killed, okay? You got a problem with the plan and the timetable, take it up with the General, not me. In the meantime, you two grab this boat and let's get moving while we've still got dark to do it in. There's a lot of open turf 'tween here and Bad Pyrmont, and it's gonna take us a day to get there anyway. I'll take point. Motivate, tadpoles. Follow me, and remember, radio silence from here on in."

The two Z'Gok Es sloshed over to the slowly-drifting Ruhrort and grabbed hold of it, one on the bow and one on the stern, with their clawed manipulators. At almost 400 meters in length, the barge was a big, bulky load to carry, but its empty hold made its weight manageable for the Zeon suits' strength. With a coordinated heave, the two suits lifted Ruhrort from its watery course and up-and-over their own bulbous heads. Dirty water and ooze sloughed from the bottom of the hull of the ship and slimed its way over the Z'Gok Es like a baptism, adding river muck to their already-mottled camouflage. Still running on infra-red vision, La Vesta's Hygogg stepped free of the Lippe river and onto the northern bank, barely illuminated by the lights from Hamm. Motioning to its fellow suits with a multifingered hand, the broad-shouldered mech headed off, moving like a gorilla, using both legs and a long hyperarticulated arm. The bipedal Z'Goks followed, bearing their trophy overhead like a canoe.

Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Central Europe

November 14, 0087

Titans Major Golan Tizard's eyes snapped awake at the contact. Blinking once, he turned his slitted eyes on the poor soul who had dared wake him from slumber. "What is it, Lieutenant?"

"My apologies for waking you, sir, but we're getting intermittant radio traffic from Kassel." Titans Second Lieutenant Kenneth Holt had been Tizard's aide-de-camp for several years now, and was one of the few people Tizard would allow to physically touch him without becoming violent. "The 103rd have made contact with the 10th Panzerkaempfer."

Tizard sat bolt upright. "So soon? Where?" He started pulling on his boots.

"Just north of Kassel, sir, near Hofgeismar."

Tizard's narrow eyes grew narrower. "That's not Steinbaum. Who's still up?"

Holt glanced at the ceiling, recollecting. "Ummm, Captain Volkyr's still awake, as is Lieutenant Dremm."

Tizard stood up from his cot, grabbing his black and red uniform jacket as he started moving. "Wake Lieutenants Forbes and Wolstead, too. I want them all in the war room immediately. Then get ahold of whomever is on shift for the Garuda and tell them to warm up the engines. In addition, tell them to file a flight plan to Brunswick with Bonn Flughafen. Get Captain Sajer up, too, he'll want to hear this."

"Aye, Major." Holt made a break for it just as Tizard stood upright and stamped once, hard, to settle his left boot.

Tizard's boots thumped as he strode down the hallway and made clickety sounds as he walked the staricases of the administration building of the University of Bonn, the new home and hearth of Federation Headquarters, Europe. The "war room", the tactical planning center of Headquarters, was on the first floor, while his "office" was on the third. The building was too old to have an elevator or any other form of automated transport like an escalator, so everyone had to walk to get to where they were needed. Tizard considered the multiple trips up and down the stairs to be spiritually humbling; Holt considered it grueling, and knew that Tizard knew it, too.

He pushed open the door with his free hand, the other smoothing over the zipper flap of his uniform jacket. "What have we got?"

The Brigade G-3 of Operations, Captain Reynold Volkyr, loomed over the tactical field display being pictured on a small laptop console. Unlike Volkyr's recruiting poster-perfect appearance even at three in the morning, the G-2 of Intelligence, First Lieutenant Helen Dremm, looked like she had been sleeping in a barn, or not at all; Tizard figured on the latter, since Dremm hated delegating time to her subordinates for fear of missing something vital.

Volkyr acknowledged his commander with a nod. "Cramer's attack helicopter wing is engaged in combat with at least three mobile suits of the 10th Panzerkaempfer. They've lost three helos so far, but are driving the Zeon northeast into Reinhardswald. Initial contact was made about an hour ago; we're only getting it because we're scanning Federation frequencies, sir, otherwise we'd know nothing."

Tizard crooked an eyebrow, pale eyes shifting to Dremm. "Do we have any confirmation on unit and type of Zeon suits engaged?"

"One confirmed Zaku-type matching the MS-06K. Another unsubstantiated report of another Zaku-type, perhaps the FZ."

"That would be logical. And the third?"

"As yet unknown. As long as they're in the forest, the helos haven't been able to get a look at it. However, if we take the makeup of enemy forces to its ultimate conclusion, it's probably whatever remains of the 358th Light."

"And von Seydlitz," murmured Tizard, tapping a finger on his chin as he looked at the tactical display, musing over whatever mind had placed Reinhardt von Seydlitz and at least two other mobile suits in Reinhard's Forest just to ambush Cramer. "Where are the rest of Cramer's unit?"

"Wolfhagen, and moving north fast."

Tizard nodded, his facial expression one of disgust. "He took their bait then. He'll try and cut von Seydlitz off at the Weser, but he has too much ground to cover for that, and too many bridges to keep an eye on. He will arrive in Steinbaum and meet the bulk of the 10th Panzerkaempfer there." He turned slightly as Holt came in, with Dennis Forbes, the Brigade G-4 of Logistics, and Walton Wolstead, Brigade G-1 of Personnel, in tow.

Holt was a little bit breathless. "I've been unable to find Captain Sajer, sir. He apparently-"

"-Was in the bathroom, butterbar!" a voice cut off Holt, as a furious Garrett Sajer burst into the room six steps behind the others. He walked right up to a wide-eyed Holt and shoved his face into the Lieutenant's. "I did hear all your bleating, Lieutenant. I'm surprised the whole damned building did not."

Holt did not back down from the taller Sajer, who had always hated him for bring Tizard's aide. "Pardon me, Captain Sajer. Next time, I'll listen more closely for a cowbell, just so I know when I've found you."

Sajer grabbed Holt's uniform jacket in both hands, but Holt broke free, and the two started warming up for something a little less civilized than a shoving match. This had been brewing for almost a year, as each vied for occupation of Tizard's ear whenever possible. Most days, Sajer won due to his position as Titans liaison to the Federation, but the Captain had just committed a grave error by putting his hands on Holt in front of other Titans officers, and rank difference or not, Holt was going to lay Sajer out for the custom.

"Captain," broke in Tizard, stopping them both cold before their brawl even began, "so glad you could join us. The 103rd has commenced wartime operations against the 10th Panzerkaempfer Division."

Sajer's smouldering gaze stayed locked with Holt's for one long second, before he turned away. "When?"

"Three hours ago. Captain Dremm will brief you later. Mister Wolstead, start getting Headquarters packed up and loaded aboard the Garuda. We're relocating to Brunswick. Mister Forbes, status of the 54th?"

Forbes, a heavyset man who barely passed the physical qualifications for being a Titan officer but had a mind for organization of supply like few others, shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. "As you ordered, the Brigade has been divided into six parts, including Foxtrot Company which is here in Bonn with us, sir. Alpha Company is deployed at Paderborn, Bravo is at Goettingen, Charlie is set up in Hildesheim, Delta is at Bielefeld, and Echo is at Braunschweig, or 'Brunswick' as you call it. All elements are in place."

Sajer looked a bit puzzled by the disposition of forces, and Tizard made a mental note to explain it to him on the way. "So our net is set and just waiting for our 'Lion'. Excellent. Prepare Foxtrot to move out ASAP. Captain Dremm, try and get us listening in on Cramer's frequencies if at all possible. I would like the play-by-play as a live broadcast from this point onward, please. Captain Volkyr, made doubly certain that the Company commanders understand that their job is not to jump into the fight, even if Cramer screams for it over the open airwaves for the world to hear. Our plan of attack does not lend itself to foolhardy gestures of misplaced heroism. I will not be a Senas Jacobi and wield overwhelming and totally unnecessary power and yet fail time and again because I allow the enemy to dictate terms to me. Not on my watch and not in my sector. Make triply certain that Lieutenant Horvath understands this law of the universe clearly, or he will answer to me for his sins.

"The clock is ticking, people. We are the Knights of Europe, riding forth to face the Hunnish horde, but where they died on the field, we will be victorious, as God grants us the power and the will to excise the Zeon filth from Terra once and for all. Dietrich von Mellenthin has had it his way for too long, but no longer. He'll glut himself on Cramer, but choke to death on the Titans. I will see to that myself, and there will be no more Luxembourgs or Metzes for him to hang on his name like accolades. Spread the word to all the troops that we are now in a state of war against the 10th Panzerkaempfer Division, and vigilance will see us through. Dismissed."

Steinbaum, Niedersachsen, Central Europe

November 14, 0087

Were it not for the scattered and sparse arrays of green Cyalume illumination sticks placed in strategic locations, the tent city that served as the 10th Panzerkaempfer Division's field headquarters would have been encased in total blackness. No fires lent their light and heat to the men, huddled together for a semblance of warmth that anyone else from any other unit would not have understood, but memories for soldiers such as these were long, indeed, and they all remembered the winter of December 0079, when they were burning wallpaper for just enough heat to keep frostbite from taking their digits, ears, and noses. Their mobile suits all had heating units, as climate control had been a priority even with the old Zaku II, but they were all dormant, inactive, and as still as the forest in which they knelt. Von Mellenthin had ordered the suits powered down as soon as they had arrived, making the run from the Solling range to the depths of the glens and marshes and coniferous forest known as Teutobergerwald. The mobile suits themselves were already in position just inside the treeline, kneeling or lying prone where they had been assigned, awaiting the order to wake up and perform their function.

Tiny Steinbaum lay southeast of their position, taunting pinpricks of barely-discernable light that made people who had grown accustomed to warmth on demand yearn for the fires of the town, but it was not to be. Aside from the chemical lightsticks and a few battery-powered light sources, the haunting darkness of Teutoberg forest threatened to swallow the Zeon even as it had swallowed the might of Rome in 9 AD, a tale von Mellenthin had told them all once the tents had been erected, before he had retreated into his own tent to catch a little private time for himself before the fight. Everyone knew it was coming, and when cold rations or the ambient heat from a nearby body did not serve to ward off the chill that came perilously close to fear, the knowledge that they would be in action again, in the first pitched battle with the Federation since Metz, was enough to kindle a fire born of hate and and urge to kill their enemy within them.

The boots of Sergeant Major Inaba Ogun made crunching noises that in the still sounded to him like thunder to be heard for miles, the ground beneath his heels a muck of mud and icy puddles and slushy dead vegetation that gave off a curious odor when disturbed. He did not like this place any more than anyone except the General did. Ogun was not a superstitious man, though he had seen sights that would have made any cynic's eyes bulge out of their head in his days, and he himself thought that this forest was alive. . .and that it hungered in the night. Captain Roberts and his Marines had spent several weeks in these woods and none of them had ever talked about it. While he knew that von Mellenthin loved to tell stories of this land and its peoples, and had all the way through the War, Ogun wondered vaguely if certain tales, like the Morbach werewolf that had been seen up through 1998 of the Old Calendar near Hahn Air Force Base, or the folk legends about changelings that stole children, ate them, then took their place in the crib that were still told in Mecklenberg. might have some truth to them after all. That thought made the hackles rise on Ogun's neck and his nerves jump as he sought his quarry in the stumbling darkness. The penlight he held in his hand was a feeble method of finding his path, and he prayed for the sun to rise soon and cast the grayness on the gloom; this place was a place where the monsters may very well live. When the penlight finally touched on a piece of metal that gave off some scant reflection from its camouflaged skin, he sighed in a relief more vast than he thought was necessary. Picking his way around the 18-meter mobile suit, his eyes caught a hint of green and he headed for it, hand gently following a length of metal wire that had been strung up between the kneeling Gouf Custom and some point off in the darkness.

Where the others huddled together in hushed conversation, or slept, or stood guard on the eight children who had never once attempted escape (though situations had warranted the occasion more than once since Heidelberg), Antares de la Somme was at work. His universe lit by the green of several Cyalume sticks and a hand welder, he was buried up to his waist in the innards of the junction between the upper and lower sections of his Gouf Custom's left arm, legs dangling out as he tinkered with what was inside. The little man was humming Cheap Trick's "You Got It" to himself as he worked in the well junction between the elbow actuator and the lower arm. Ogun watched him struggle and curse between verses for a minute, then knocked on the Luna-Titanium with his gloved knuckles.

"Yeah?" echoed de la Somme's voice through the arm well. He sounded like he was gagged.

"It's Ogun. The General has granted your request to see him."

"Grah 'y eegs an' ya'k, Ina'a. I' 'een s'uck for 'alf an hou'ah 'ow."

The Sergeant Major complied with the request, and with a little effort, the ace was free of his suit's arm. He wiped at a sheen of sweat on his forehead, teeth still clamped onto a mini-flashlight. He spat it out and rubbed at his jaw. "You're a life-saver, Inaba, I ever tell you that?"

"Once a day, Commander."

The smaller man smiled, then winced. "Damn. Think I broke meself." He wiped his palms on his orange 'Surf Nicaragua' T-shirt, then grabbed his unform jacket from where it was dangling from a convector tube. "How long've you been looking for me?"

"Not long. What were you doing in the elbow assembly, if I might ask?"

"Left arm's been feeling funny," replied de la Somme. "Decided I'd better tighten it up a bit, just in case, but I'm no techie, so if anything I've prob'ly messed it up more. Who decided to send you hunting for me in this godawful weather? Lose the coin toss?"

Ogun shook his head, though he suspected that it was an unseen gesture. "I was whom the General found first."

"Ouch!" laughed de la Somme. "Tough break, Inaba. Next time, pull rank and send Kerr."

"Private Kerr can't find his balls with a map and an IR marker, sir."

"You've gotta stop defending the good Private, Inaba. He might get around to thinking you like him or something." De la Somme stepped around a tree carefully. "I hate this slippery shit."

"I hate this forest more," commented Ogun offhandedly.

"Aww, are the big trees making the big, tough Sergeant Major nervous?" mocked de la Somme, making the 'nervous' sound more like 'noi-vous' in amusement. Ogun had been with the 15th 'Tyrant Tornadoes' since the beginning of the War, longer than de la Somme had been in the unit, and was casually known for not getting unnerved by much.

"My heritage is open savannah and plains, Commander, not bogs and woodlands. This place holds no love for us."

De la Somme clapped the much-taller man on the back. "Don't sweat it. If there's any monsters in these woods, Margul's breath scared 'em off, and it wouldn't matter anyway because we're the baddest muthas in the land, baby. So stop shivering and go get some rest, and I'll come and tuck you in after I get done talking to Deet."

Ogun snorted at the thought of having to be 'tucked in' by his own commanding officer. "I'll try to stay awake long enough for you to tell me a bedtime story, Commander."

The ace brushed off Ogun with a hand and started making his way towards von Mellenthin's tent, pulling his uniform jacket on but not bothering to close it.

Erik's green eyes fluttered open, then focused in the darkness as best they could. He looked over at the other seven with a mix of sorrow and anger, then huffed a bit and sat up on the cot. The cold was pervading, chilling him to the bone, and he huddled in the blankets as his feet probed on the ground for his shoes, toes threatening to go numb in the interim. Once they were securely on his feet, he stood, casting another baleful look at the other seven kids before poking his head out of the tent and into a darkness that was oppressive.

He had liked nothing about this place, knowing that this was where the people who had taken he and his siblings had laid their next trap for the Federation. The specifics he did not know about, even after having sifted through the minds of the Zeon for some time now. The only problem was that the minds that contained the information he sought were both closed to him. The New Koenigsbergers' defenses were too strong to risk invading, even with the other seven behind him. Whatever it was, it had been up to von Seydlitz to bring the Federation to this location after Kassel, and he still had not returned. Erik hoped the black-hearted man was dead, burned alive in his mobile suit, but did not harbor the luxury of taking that for granted. Besides, even if he were dead, this would continue for as long as von Mellenthin was alive.

There was a single guard at the door, the enlisted man named Reiter, who worked for the brute Margul who only loved killing things. Erik managed to hide using one of his older tricks, masking the image of himself in Reiter's conscious mind, and slipping away while the human norm was busy visualizing nothing to draw his attention to. Erik had better places to be than in a tent with a bunch of kids who were not deigning to talk to him. He would use this opportunity to continue his own learning path, the one that stood at the front line instead of behind it.

Too wound up to sleep and too cold to want to move, seven Zeon troops, officers and enlisted alike, clustered together near a battery-powered lantern, mummified in blankets and huddled together to share warmth and conversation. As it tended to when soldiers got together to "shoot the shit", the topics ranged back and forth from high philosophy to crude references to other people's anatomy and/or heritage.

"For heaven's sake," moaned Gary van Allen over his shoulder at the two forms behind the main group," isn't that shit ready yet?"

The heads of the two swiveled in unison, as the identical faces of Royce and Bryce Foxe looked over their own shoulders back at him. "No," they replied, also in unison. Answer delivered, they turned back towards the cheap little propane burner they had in front of them, a coffeepot sitting atop it.

Lucien McKenna snorted. "Those rat bastards are torturing us with the smell, is all."

"Bullshit," rumbled Vladimir Margul. "The goddamn Wonder Twins fucked it up and now they're trying to cover up."

"Nonsense," spoke up Karl Weissdrake in defense of his men. "Besides, I don't see you getting up off your butt to make the coffee, Vladimir."

Margul speared Weissdrake with a look that was malevolent, which was not hard since they were sitting right beside each other. "That's 'cause unlike you, Scarface, I don't got the memory of a hot plate on my face to keep me warm."

Sensing that there was about to be a fight, van Allen chimed in again. "You'd think that with two of them, though, it'd get done twice as fast."

"Leave the fucking logic to people who have a clue, van Allen," rasped Paul Lacerta.

"Hell, boy," commented McKenna with a laugh, "why're you opening your trap then?"

Weissdrake glanced over at the Foxe twins. "ETA to coffee, before we have to keep hearing this idiot conversation?"

"Two minutes," came the synchronized reply. "Less, now."

"Hey, a minute for each of them. Not bad." Lacerta blew into his cupped hands and rubbed them together, trying to keep the circulation going.

"'Night like this," said McKenna, glancing up, "a man ought to be able to see the stars, not just a blank sky."

"Anyone ever tell you you're a dreamer, Lieutenant?" quipped van Allen. "From Terra, all anyone's ever wanted to do was look at a blank sky."

"The stars didn't start the War, Private," said Weissdrake. "People did that."

"'S too fucking bad for Terra, then," said Margul. "The boys from the stars're gonna end all their dreams for them."

"Damn straight!" sang out Lacerta, laughing.

Even the least ardent of them had to smile at that. That was the point of them doing this, after all.

"Hey, Commander?" asked McKenna. "What will you do when we make it home? I mean, after the War's done?"

Weissdrake smiled, the scar tissue stretching to accommodate. "Star in a beauty pageant." He waited for the laughter to die down, then continued. "Seriously, I'm a soldier, and I'll always be a soldier. The idea of having to give up being a soldier is like someone telling me that I'm not allowed to breathe anymore. What about you?"

"I'm gonna work in an office and sit behind a desk."

"More like under one," chortled van Allen.

McKenna sneered, then grabbed van Allen's blanket, lifting open a corner. Van Allen yelped and slapped at McKenna's hand as cold air blew in. "Tha-that was m-m-mean, s-s-sir!" protested a shivering van Allen, as everyone else laughed at his misfortune.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," broke in Margul, as the laughter faded out, "I'm gonna get myself a nice big fucking axe, and then I'm going to track down that scheming bitch of an ex-wife I got, then I'm gonna waste her the way I shoulda wasted her years ago." He said it with a totally straight face, but the menace in his voice was more cold than the wind that made the trees rustle.

There was a long and uncomfortable moment of silence, until the Foxe twins made the announcement everyone had been waiting for. "Coffee's up."

Five mugs were thrust out from beneath woolen field blankets towards the steaming coffeepot. Margul passed his off to Lacerta. "I'm gonna go take a piss. Don't skimp on the fucking coffee, or I'll mash you back into being one person again, fuckweeds." He shouldered the blanket off of himself and got up, moving unsteadily into the darkness.

The Foxe twins set the coffeepot somewhere within easy reach, then took Margul's place beside Weissdrake, and the circle closed again. The twins shared one blanket, like they shared virtually everything else.

As Margul stomped off, Weissdrake clutched his full mug in trembling fingers thankfully. "Here's to the future, then, even if it involves an axe." He sipped, then nodded at the Foxe twins. "Not bad for an instant job."

They both smiled. "Our pleasure, Commander," was the simultaneous response. With the exception of de la Somme, they were the youngest troopers in the 10th Panzerkaempfer.

The circle huddled around their coffee, wondering how much longer it would be before they could really be warm again.

The outside of the tent was colder than the interior had been, if that were even possible to be. Stumbling about and trying to make as little noise as possible, Erik listened for the sounds of life, and heard voices several meters away. Using his hands to guide himself and his hears to hone in on the source of the voices, he crept along carefully, trying not to fall or smack into anything. Groping about blindly and wishing fervently for a light source, he concentrated on the clammy feel of the atmosphere, the icy caress of the wind, and the roughness of the trees his fingers encountered, trusting on his ears to guide him where his eyes could not. The smell of coffee was getting stronger the nearer he got to the voices. He listened for 'Uncle" Antares' voice, but could not make any out at this distance. He would have to get closer.

So intent was he on that goal that when his hand encountered something solid, warm, and fabric-enmeshed, he was startled enough to pause. When something grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him into the air, he screamed.

The sound of the high-pitched scream that broke the quiet of the forest was as shocking as a bucket of ice water to the faces of the gathered six. Blankets and coffee mugs went flying as they leapt to their feet, pistols drawn and pointing into the darkness around them.

"Jesus!!" exclaimed van Allen, who had a knife in the hand that was not wrapped around a pistol grip. "What the hell is that!?" He was breathing fast and actually sweating, just as they all were.

Weissdrake's eyes searched the blackness in vain for the source of the sound. "I don't know! I don't know!" he hissed, all of a sudden feeling very small in this place. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, and he clenched his maimed hand into a fist as his gun barrel tracked, looking for a target.

The Foxe twins were back-to-back, each covering for the other, weapons jerking this way and that as the screaming reached a crest.

Movement to the right, and six guns all zeroed in on that point in space. "Grab the damn light, Lacerta," said McKenna calmly. "It's at your feet. We've got it handled, don't worry."

The 'Grimravers' member nodded slowly, sweat from anxiety trickling down under his uniform collar, as he timidly knelt and picked up the lantern. He shined it into the darkness. . .

. . .and there was Margul, holding a terrified child up off the ground by an arm.

"Mother of God!!" swore Lacerta, falling backwards and sitting down on his rump. "Damn it all, Commander!"

The collectively-held breath by the other five let itself out in a whoosh that sent steaming clouds into the air, and six guns lowered themselves slowly.

"Fucking hell, Vladimir!" berated Weissdrake. "What in the name of Zeon do you think you're doing, scaring us like that?"

The big man sneered at them. "You goddamn pansies done acting like scared little bitches yet? Lookee what I found snooping around in the woods."

The child's cries had become muffled sobs of pain and fear. Margul used his free hand and pulled out a wicked-looking, nonregulation, serrated-edged combat knife and waved it in the boy's face. "This's the one that hangs out with that fucking monkey Antares. What the fuck're you doing loose, boy?"

Sniffling sounds were all that issued from the kid's mouth, and Margul got a disgusted look on his face.

"You've made your point, Vladimir," said Weissdrake quietly. "Put him down now."

Margul's huge head swung to glare at Weissdrake. "Kiss my ass, Scarface. This one fucked up, and I think a little punishment's in order. Can't have all eight of the little shits thinking we're all as fucking easy to push around as Antares is, can we now?"

The other six were frozen in place, unable to move for risk that Margul would react badly and plunge the knife into the boy's throat or something. They had all known how brutally violent Margul could be, and they also knew he was very capable of doing what he said he would.

The Zeon ace got very close to the boy, face inches away, knife point tapping the whimpering child's tear-streaked face. "So how 'bout it, NewType? What part of your face you wanna lose for breaking our rules, huh? How 'bout one of those faggoty eyes you got? Your fucking lips? Your useless tongue? Tongue sounds fine to me, since you've only used it to complain with."

"For God's sake," whispered van Allen to McKenna, "do we shoot the sack of shit or what?"

McKenna's eyes were fixed on the scene in front of him. "Not sure, lad."

Lacerta's pistol was still in his hand, and he surreptitiously aimed it at McKenna and van Allen's backs, ready to shoot them both if they so much as made a move to raise their weapons to harm his commander.

Erik had never been so scared in his life. Even after having been kidnapped, after seeing Kassel, after brushing the mind of Reinhardt von Seydlitz, it had never been more apparent that someone meant to do him harm. The crushing grip on his upraised wrist that held up above the ground, the fact that his arm was about to separate itself from its socket, and the very real hardness of the cold knife wavering in front of his eyes was nothing compared to what lived in the mind of Vladimir Margul.

Erik caught flashes of coherent pictures in between bouts of his own fear overriding the rational centers of his advanced mind, but the majority of what ran through the consciousness that was Margul was a swirling plethora of negative emotions: greed, jealously, rage, hate, and lust. They were a roiling jumble of colors and shapes, ever changing and being changed by each other. Erik's experience with the minds of human norms was very limited, but where the mind of Antares de la Somme was a riot of bright color and a lot of little hidden compartments where he kept his secrets, Vladimir Margul was wide open, but he had nothing within him anyone wanted to see or acknowledge as a common link between themselves and a beast like Margul. Erik had to come to grips very quickly with the fact that Margul was not only a good killer, he enjoyed it more than anything else in the world. There was no conscience with Margul, at least none that Erik could find, and no sense of humanity. Erik had little doubt that if this were not a war, Margul would find a way to get rid of everyone else in the 10th Panzerkaempfer in as painful a fashion as he could devise. The images of what he wanted to do to a woman that Erik supposed was his wife he would never forget, as was one of an exploding bus, the faces of those inside very visible under magnification just before their immolation.

And it was in that facet of the pseudo-personality of Margul that he saw his pictures. A black mapcase was most prevalent, and there were a few scattered others, but the black case was a persistent image, though Erik could not divine what it was about this case that would so draw someone of such a makeup. Though piqued by curiosity, Erik was in too much pain to attempt to delve further than he already had. He needed to escape, since it was very clear that irreparable harm was about to be done to his physical form.

The illumination of this tableau was almost too poor for human vision to focus on, but somehow the horror of the events about to unfold made the scene all-too clear for the six paralyzed onlookers.

"Vladimir," said Weissdrake quietly, "put the boy down. Please."

Margul snorted and gave the arm a hard yank, eliciting another cry from the dangling child. "I don't need your goddamn advice, Scarface. You ain't got the rank or the nuts to boss me around, so keep your fucking lips shut."

Weissdrake took a step forward threateningly, stopping only when Margul placed the knife point underneath the child's left eyelid. Cripple though he may have been, Karl Weissdrake did not step down from a challenge, especially one issued by a non-New Koenigsberger degenerate like Margul. "Then why don't you try that knife out on me instead? It'll be safer for you that way: harm that child and you catch six bullets."

"You can wait your turn then, Charcoal Man." The boy cried out again, more out of fear than pain this time, struggling feebly. Margul ran the tip of the blade gently across the boy's lower lip. "C'mon now, open up for daddy. You're only getting what you fucking deser-"

And Margul's head snapped back like he had just been struck in the face. His eyes bugged out of his head in confusion as he stared at the boy, who looked him directly in the eyes. Margul's head rocked again, and he dropped the knife. The big ace blinked twice. "What the hell--?"

And then Antares de la Somme flew out of nowhere, smashing both knees into Margul's back and knocking the bigger man off his feet. He dropped Erik, who landed in a heap and then rolled away. De la Somme pounced on Margul's back and started smacking him on the skull with a flashlight. Hard.

Margul was struggling like a bronco trying to buck its rider, but the smaller man was not inclined to let Margul stand up or roll over. He tossed his uniform jacket over Margul's head, clamping it to the ground with his knees, and continued bludgeoning.

"How'd you like that shit, Vlady baby?! You like getting your ass whipped?! You liking getting beat like a bitch, huh, fuckface?! You still thinking you're a tough guy, you goddamn bully?!" screamed de la Somme down at the writhing form beneath him. "You may think about that shit a lot, but you're a fucking coffee stain compared to me, shit ball!! I've been to the edge, man, and I looked down when I got there!! You wanna live on the edge, too, assblaster?!"

The flashlight plinked off of Margul's head, and the enraged ace roared unintelligibly and pushed off from the ground. The lighter de la Somme's weight was insufficient to hold Margul down, and the contorting mass began to rise to its feet. De la Somme cinched in the uniform jacket, beginning to cut off Margul's air supply even as he continued smashing Margul's head and yelling epithets that echoed in the woods. If there was any living soul within a mile, they would have heard this racket with ease.

"You got away with it in the War, Vlady, but you ain't getting away with it here, not while I'm still fucking breathing!!" The flashlight smacked off of Margul's cranium again, but de la Somme lost his grip on it and it went arcing off into the darkness, its bulb reduced to glass splinters. The big man finally managed to shake off the clutching limpet that was de la Somme and pull the jacket off of his head. Margul looked like someone had been beating him with a sock full of quarters, but his eyes were filled with a fury that was mocked in the eyes of de la Somme. Somewhere along the way, Margul had retrieved his knife, and it whistled through the air menacingly.

"You're a dead little faggot, 'Killing Star'," snarled Margul, blood on his teeth. "I'll spike your skull on my Kaempfer!"

"Oh, honey, you're not the only child rapist to tell me that! C'mon, asshole, I'll make you famous!" De la Somme waggled his hands in a 'bring it on' gesture, then gave the big man both fingers and stuck his tongue out.

With a animal bellow of rage, Margul lunged forward. De la Somme's eyes became those of a predator, and he calmly waited for Margul to close. . .

"STOP." The single word cut through everything, slicing through the darkness like a flechette round. Margul stopped in mid-lunge, and de la Somme froze in place. The other six could not even raise their guns. Lacerta actually dropped his. Erik's eyes widened as he turned around.

Dietrich von Mellenthin was silhouetted in the eerie green of the Cyalume sticks, but it was unmistakably him, and he was wearing his full uniform, but over it lay the formal greatcloak he had used during the War. This greatcloak was legendary, even to Zeon not from New Koenigsberg; it was dark gray, the eagle-and-Zeon Cross in gold on the back, and lined in white-and-black fur of a quality unmatched by any terrestrial animal. The fur was from a genetically-engineered white liger, a crossbreed of a Serengeti lion and a Siberian white tiger, then modified to make it bigger and stronger. In what had been a televised event within New Koenigsberg and a popular bootleg video within Side 3 and Luna, von Mellenthin had slain the beast alone, in the jungle biome of New Koenigsberg, with his own bare hands, though it had nearly killed him in the process. But he had survived, and recovered, and now his old adversary's flesh warmed his own as a trophy of his might. It was impressive even to the uninformed, but for him, it had merely been another test of his own abilities.

The lantern shed a little light on von Mellenthin's face, and it was a mask of fury that neither Margul nor de la Somme could have hoped to match. The others, even those who had seen von Mellenthin in such a state before, quailed before him. Like something out of Tolkien, his form had become something dark and terrible to behold, and he himself knew full well the effects of his own presence could have on those not empathically resistant to it (of which there had been only fourteen, and they could do this little trick of pheromones and pure force of personality, too). This was not something that most Elector-Princes chose to use often, as it could build a dependency on both the wielder and those it was wielded against, but in this case, von Mellenthin was making an exception, if only to stop this nonsense before it got any further.

Karl Weissdrake recovered first, unable to tear his eyes away from von Mellenthin, trying not to allow his knees to tremble. "Attention!" he barked out, though to his ears it sounded more like a squeak. The Zeon snapped to full attention in an instant, Margul dropping the knife to the ground, blood tricking from a gash above his eye.

He walked slowly and calmly, his too-graceful movements belying the dangerous temper beneath the surface. "And just what did you think you were doing? Blithely engaging in a duel while in the middle of an operation? Shame, shame."

His steps took him past the assorted six and Erik, his gloved hand brushing the top of the boy's head in an almost loving gesture as he walked by, eyes smouldering with a palpable anger. He stopped in front of Margul, who just bled, and de la Somme, who looked contrite enough to almost be convincing.

Von Mellenthin leaned in close to the both of them, sniffing the air slightly. "I'm very much aware of the vulgar amount of loathing you two have for each other, but I would have thought that your respective ranks combined with the fact that we are in a situation that requires discretion would temper that hatred somewhat. It appears I was mistaken. And so now I want an explanation as to why I've been proven wrong." He glared hard at the two Commanders. "Now, please."

De la Somme spoke first. "Sir, Commander Margul has a problem involving child molestation." Margul's lips peeled back in a sneer, and de la Somme shot him a sidewards look and smiled evilly. "He loves the cock, bo~ong!!"

Margul's fist lashed out in a hammerblow, but von Mellenthin's hand shot out from underneath the greatcloak before it had completed half its arc and closed around Margul's beefy wrist. The fist did not move any further, no matter how Margul struggled to free it and deck de la Somme.

Von Mellenthin's face was not amused by his foster brother's antics. "Your actions have just confirmed to me that you're both willing to put your own interests before the interests of the Division. That, my erstwhile soldiers, constitutes insubordination, a penalty punishable by the scourge."

Margul stopped trying to free his arm from von Mellenthin's grip, and de la Somme visibly paled. In the War, von Mellenthin had only ever ordered one scourging, a stupid Private who had violated the "no looting" order on Berlin. That poor soul had taken twenty lashes from a cat-o'-nine-tails and had looked like he had been chewed on by a hay rake. De la Somme had not been there to see it, but the guy had shown off his scars for a long time afterwards as a warning that Dietrich von Mellenthin was not a man with whom to fuck. Von Mellenthin had wielded the scourge himself back then, and there was little doubt as to who would bear the burden of the task again.

"If it weren't for the fact that we're going to have company any moment now, I would gladly lash you both to ribbons for this outrage." Von Mellenthin's voice was low and baleful, very much like a warning growl that certain large, maned cats gave to show displeasure, but his eyes remained hotter than a hundred suns. "So I will be lenient this once on the both of you, but before you think that I'm cutting you any slack because I've gotten 'soft', remember this: if you even think about acting on your own against my directives from this moment forward, I will break you both on a wheel and leave you for the Federation to find." The General did not blink, projecting his strength of personality through his eyes at the two before him. "If you make this behavior as your example to your men, Kommandants, then I will make examples out of you. Clear?"

"Absolutely, sir," said Margul, reining in his own anger. He had seen what this man could do, and was not willing to test his strength one-on-one against von Mellenthin no matter the reason.

De la Somme was quiet, but he was still extremely upset, and that was obvious. "Yes, sir," he murmured.

Von Mellenthin released Margul's wrist from his vise-like grip. "Mister McKenna?"

"Aye, sir?"

"Take the child back to the tent where the others are and chain him to his cot. Then tell Mister Reiter that if anything gets past him again he's a dead man."

McKenna blanched. "B-But, sir? The boy just, well, during the fight, he-"

"Obey my request, please. Explanations should not be necessary in this instance."

McKenna blinked, then held out a hand to Erik, who waited until de la Somme nodded his approval before taking it cautiously and walking with the red-haired Marine Lieutenant. "Don't turn my brains to stew, please," said McKenna as they left the circle of light and soldiers.

Von Mellenthin's blue eyes tracked Erik's departure before coming to rest on de la Somme. "Come with me, Kommandant. The rest of you may go about your business, but don't think you won't gain my notice if you screw up. My mercy pool just emptied itself for the night."

Von Mellenthin turned and walked off, de la Somme trailing in his wake, snagging his uniform jacket from the ground on the way and giving Margul the finger again as he walked off. The smaller man raced a bit to catch up, his walking speed unable to allow him to keep pace with the taller von Mellenthin. "Thanks a lot, Deet. I coulda handled him, but it woulda-"

"Shut up." Von Mellenthin was in no mood for idle chatter, and not because of the de la Somme/Margul rivalry. He was worried, but would be damned before he let that show to anyone else.

"Okay, okay, no need to get testy. . ." The ace shoved his hands into his pockets.

Von Mellenthin spun on a heel, and de la Somme bounced his face off of the General's chest. "Do you have a problem with hearing, Kommandant? Did I or did I not just tell you to shut up?"

De la Somme did the smart thing and did not voice an answer, contenting himself to rubbing his pointed nose. Von Mellenthin led them to the radio tent, where Nolan Kerr was on duty. The Private shot to his feet when von Mellenthin threw back the tent flap and entered.

The General took one look at Kerr. "Get out."

Kerr did not argue, almost bowling over de la Somme in his haste to flee the confines of the tent. Von Mellenthin pointed at the vacant chair. "Sit."

De la Somme complied. "Would you like a bark with that, too, Deet?"

Condescention was the last thing von Mellenthin needed. "If I require it, YES!!" snapped the rumbling voice, lips twisted in an expression of distaste.

The tone in von Mellenthin's voice stunned de la Somme. Oh, shit, he means it.

"Tell me why, Antares. Why am I out there dealing with your inability to grow up when I should just bake you into a pie and send you to Bonn?"

"Ummm," de la Somme mused for a moment, then grinned weakly. "Because without me around Reinhardt would get on your nerves? Because I'm dead sexy? Because I know something about these kids that you don't? Because--?"

Von Mellenthin held up a hand. "Explain that last one."

"Explain why you're so miffed."

"Are you extorting me, you dreadful little worm?" The heat from von Mellenthin's anger was actually radiating off of him in waves, and the interior of the radio tent was becoming very warm in comparison to the night outside.

De la Somme ducked his head in acquiescence. "Naw, just keeping secrets until you stop keeping secrets."

"My secrets are my own. Spill it, Antares."

"Nuh-uh." The ace shook his head emphatically, crossing his arms over his chest, but he did not raise his eyes, still unconsciously yielding to a stronger predator.

Von Mellenthin's reddened face went scarlet. "Very well, then, I'll tear what you know from the breasts of those children one at a time, and I'll let you watch!"

"OKAY!!" yelled de la Somme, jumping to his feet. "FINE!! I'll tell you! The goddamn Feddies made them as weapons, just like Reinhardt said they did!! At Kassel, Erik said that he loved war!! There, are you happy now!?! Go off and kill them, since that's what you were waiting to hear, wasn't it??"

The General started pacing back and forth, fists clenching and unclenching. "That explains it," he whispered as he paced, "yes, it all makes sense now."

"Ummm, exsqueeze me? What 'makes sense'?"

Von Mellenthin paused in his pacing, as though noticing de la Somme for the first time. "Hmm? Oh, something I found in the disc from the genetic research lab in Heidelberg, but I wasn't certain what all it meant. Now, I do."

"Care to fill me in on it, or do I just get to watch?" De la Somme's lower lip was quivering, and his eyes were expectant.

Von Mellenthin could not help but get a chuckle out of the sight. That facial expression was exactly the same as the one de la Somme had used when he was just a boy, especially when someone was doing something fun and he wanted in on it, too. "You get to watch. That's all you deserve, since you can't keep a handle on your emotions for more than thirty seconds at a time."

"Can too!!" protested de la Somme. "Watch!" And the diminutive pilot sucked in a deep breath and started holding it.

Von Mellenthin watched, bemused and glancing at his watch. "I'm not going to kill the children, Antares."

Before thirty seconds had passed, de la Somme's held breath escaped in a whoosh, and he coughed. "Wha-?"

"That's what you're so afraid of, isn't it? Reinhardt wants me to kill them now, true, but I have other plans that even he does not know about that require them to be alive."

De la Somme's eyes filled with tears. "I-I-I don't, I mean, I'm, you know, grateful to hear you say that, but I'm not sure I--?"

"'Understand' is the word you're looking for, I think?"

The smaller man hung his head down, letting the tears fall silently. Von Mellenthin tsked him once. "You need to have more faith in me, Antares. You of all people should figure out that I always have a plan. Hell, I'm the one who told Reinhardt to snatch the children in the first place, once the time was right, because I knew the Federation military would not keep their hands away from playing with genetics after the success of Amuro Ray. If I wanted them dead, they would not have left Heidelberg alive. Circumstances dictate that I need them alive, so stop fucking fretting about it."

De la Somme's shoulders were shaking as he cried.

"You and I have never been as close as you and Reinhardt, or myself and Reinhardt, Antares, but I still know you well enough to know that you won't let anything hurt those children. And that is why you and Margul were stupidly fighting out there. Margul was going to hurt the boy, and you stopped him."

"I've been so damn patient, Deet. . ." moaned de la Somme amid his tears, still unable to look von Mellenthin in the face.

"Yes," agreed the General, "you have been, but I need you to wait a little longer. You know that I have faith in you and your abilities, so why do you make me doubt your loyalty? What is it you want to get you completely in synch with Reinhardt and I?"

"You know what I want, Deet," said de la Somme, finally raising his head to look his foster brother in the eye, and something dreadful and hungry was in his own amber eyes. "I'll do almost anything to get it, too, but you know that I have my morals and my limits and please don't make me ditch them just to have what I was promised!"

Something very similar returned de la Somme's gaze. "Oh, you want it bad, don't you? You're starving for it, aren't you? Eight years you've waited for me to give you the word."

"Eight years. . ." confirmed de la Somme, voice firm with longing, as his mind retreated back to a different time.

The older man put his hands on de la Somme's shoulders. "Are you ready to hear the price for me allowing this boon?"

"I've been ready, Deet," said de la Somme, teeth baring like a wolf's to match the leonine grin that von Mellenthin wore.

"Then listen closely." Von Mellenthin drew the smaller man into an embrace, resting his head atop de la Somme's, and his voice lowered to the barest whisper, letting the vibration of his words transmit directly through his ribcage and into de la Somme's ears, subvocalized so that no eavesdropper could spread word of this plot of death. "These eight children have been subjected to some sort of hormonal psychotherapy, triggered by violence to achieve some imperative. They are indeed weapons, with the potential to be true NewTypes if the disc is not a lie and the Federation has done what they intended to them."

He was interrupted by the radio, which gave a quiet squawk and a hiss of static. Inside the interference, von Seydlitz's voice spoke: "Flashpoint. Flashpoint."

At the sound of his brother's voice, von Mellenthin's head lifted from de la Somme's, and his eyes closed as though he were in pain. He had suspected this would occur, but now it was confirmed that he would have to go through with it after all. It was the only way.

De la Somme felt von Mellenthin stiffen at von Seydlitz's words, and squeezed the older man harder. Von Mellenthin continued: "I, however, do not view them as weapons, but as currency, enough to buy us a future. I need you to guard that future until I release you of that burden. Can you do that?"

Something had changed. De la Somme could hear that something was wrong in von Mellenthin's voice. He nodded anyway.

"Then it is done. I grant your wish."

They ended their embrace, though von Mellenthin kept a gloved hand atop de la Somme's head. The little man was smiling to end all smiles. "No one'll be the wiser, Deet, 'cept you and me and God."

The General smiled down at his younger brother. "Then go now, and cause no more buffoonery. The Federation will be here soon, and we will need all the strength we can get. Send me Leutnant McKenna when you see him." He swatted de la Somme across the head, sending the maniacal ace reeling out of the tent, hooting and skipping away into the cold of the dark forest outside. When he was gone, von Mellenthin sat down on the chair near the hissing radio, and his eyes grew very, very distant.

When McKenna arrived, von Mellenthin never looked at him. He just said: "Begin dispersion, full density."

Solling range (near Holzminden), Niedersachsen, Central Europe

November 14, 0087

A line of fire reached out and connected the predatory AH-77 Cerberus attack helicopter with its Zaku Kai prey, the eruption of the shaped charge Mjollnir anti-armor warhead knocking the mobile suit back, chunks of its armor raining to the earth from the impact point on the suit's left arm. The suit staggered under the blow, but Dalyev kept it on its feet and raised its MMP-80 90mm machine cannon to return fire. Two more missiles streaked from two other Cerberi choppers towards the beleaguered Zeon suit, forcing it to move to evade and thus ruining its aim.

Reinhardt von Seydlitz brought up his Gouf Custom's 75mm and let one round leave its massive Gatling-style barrels, the tracer smacking into the flank of one of the Cerberi and sending the attack helo spinning off its course, buying Dalyev a little more time. Unlike the Thistle scout helos that the 10th Panzerkaempfer had destroyed at Kassel, the Cerberus was another beast entirely. The last of the rotor-equipped attack helicopter designs before the Federation switched production to Fan Fan-type hovercraft, the Cerberus was the final iteration of the classic air cavalry combat vehicle. Equipped with a tri-barrelled 35mm on its vulture-like nose and supplemented with two more 30mm pod-mounted chain guns, the kinetic firepower of a single Cerberus was enough to rival a tank platoon. Tack on the impressive amount of antitank Hellfire IV HEAT missiles and the brand-spanking new Mjollnir HEAP anti-armor missiles, plus an assorted plethora of conventional HE warheads, 3-inch Scylla 18-rack antipersonnel rocket pods, Goshawk anti-radar and Unhallow laser-guided munitions, and very effective electronic countermeasures in a non-Minovsky particle-producing vehicle, all wrapped up in an extraordinarily nimble and gruesomely well-armored fast attack helo that would have made the aviators driving the old AH-64D Apache Longbow shed tears of jealous rage. All in all, while a single Cerberus could not hope to take down a mobile suit, two or three of them most certainly could make a good show of it.

Herschel Invictus Cramer had dispatched twenty of these things to deal with Reinhardt von Seydlitz and his two co-marauders, a move that von Seydlitz had concluded was the most logical for Cramer to make, since the Cerberi could fly at well over 200 km per hour, unlike Cramer's mobile suits. Von Seydlitz felt a sort of grim amusement that the Federation would expend so much effort on three Zeon suits. They had crossed the Weser at Bad Karlshafen in a tactical maneuver to use the Solling to their advantage, and had managed to cripple or destroy five of the Cerberi, using the hilly and wooded range as a shield against the worst retaliation, but now they were in the open stretch, heading for the bridge that would allow them to cross the Weser river again and link up with the rest of the 10th at the Teutoberg forest. Von Seydlitz knew that they were now too far north to make use of the nearest bridge, which was in Beverungen, and he was certain that Cramer would expect it; thus, he had set their crossing point at Holzminden, which would enable himself, Dalyev and Haskell to use the Falkenhagen forest on the western side for cover and simply walk into the outer reaches of the Teutoberg.

What he had not counted on was the dogged persistence of these thrice-damned helicopters. Instead of doing the safe thing and withdrawing back to their own forces after harrying the Zeon, they were staying and fighting it out, unheeding of the cost to their squadron. While dismayed slightly at the unexpected tenacity of the angry Federation pilots, von Seydlitz knew that the helos had to go back for refueling and rearming sometime, and right soon, or risk stalling out far from a friendly base. Von Seydlitz grudgingly admitted that had he not been shackled with the problem of logistics himself, this fight would have been over long ago, but after three hours of hide-shoot-hide with these rotobladed nuisances, the Feds were reaping the spoils of victory in this engagement. While his own suit had taken little more than superficial damage, Dalyev's Zaku Kai was getting tatttered badly, and their great equalizer, Haskell's deadly flak-throwing Zaku Cannon, was barely walking now, so badly were its actuators damaged. Von Seydlitz was not at all pleased by the Cerberi's willingness to ignore the other two Zeon suits to concentrate their fire on the Zaku Cannon, which had taken down three of the five eliminated helos by itself.

"Colonel!!" yelled Dalyev's voice in his ear, static-filled due to Minovsky radiation and the Cerberi's jamming. "They're encircling!"

Von Seydlitz's eyes flitted over the tac display, watching the red dots that were the Cerberi move in a ballet of death around Dalyev's green dot. "Unsullied Three, lay suppression fire on targets Two and Five on my command. . .Now."

"Roger that, Unsullied One!" Haskell's voice sounded strained, like he was fighting something other than the Cerberi. Nevertheless, the Zaku Cannon stood up unsteadily from a kneel in a dense but limited treeline and spat antiaircraft fire from both the shoulder-mounted flak cannon and the 120mm autocannon in its hands. In a dazzling flash, Cerberus Two vaporized in a rain of fire and shrapnel as the Zaku Cannon claimed its fourth victim.

Von Seydlitz's Gouf Custom baseball-slid across the ground, a furrow of earth almost half a kilometer long being dug in its wake, as the e-whip lashed out and entangled the dual rotoblades of Cerberus Six, dragging the 'copter close enough for him to sever the tail from its fuselage with the heat saber. The remainder of the Cerberus went spinning off, out of control, to crash into the earth somewhere else. The Zaku Cannon's 120mm shells forced Cerberus Five to evade, opening a hole for Dalyev's Zaku Kai to escape into open ground and out of the circle.

The Gouf Custom stood to its feet, just as a pair of Hellfire IVs smacked into its Luna-Titanium shield. The metal buckled under the force of the twin explosions, and the giant suit tipped over despite the orders of its pilot, landing on its right side. Calmly, von Seydlitz ordered the suit to scissor its legs and right itself, which it did. A cursory inspection revealed that the shield on the left arm had not been breached, but he did not have time to run a complete check, as 30mm tracers began tracking in from two of the remaining Cerberi. He began moving westward again, following Dalyev and Haskell.

"Holzminden in sight, Unsullied One," came the excited voice of Haskell, who was on point.

"Proceed to bridge, you two, best speed. I am directly behind you." Von Seydlitz, despite the stress of the situation, had not even broken a sweat yet. Compared to the freakish nightmare that had been the siege at Metz, being set upon by a pack of Federation flying hellhounds was hardly cause for true concern. Besides, the Luna-Titanium skin of his suit was weathering the fire of its foes extraordinarily well.

Running backwards in a mobile suit was not an easy feat, but von Seydlitz was not some fresh-out-of-the-Training-Battalion gimp pilot. Two more of the Cerberi were forced to withdraw due to extensive damage as the Gouf Custom's 75mm spewed lead at the helicopters, who eagerly returned fire with their own weapons, scoring several good hits on the Zeon suit, hits that would have mauled a normal Zaku.

Three of the Cerberi broke off their attack runs on the Gouf Custom and dashed ahead for the other two suits. "Three at six!" he barked into his radio.

Dalyev's Zaku Kai kept running, even as lines of tracer fire riddled the rear of his suit, blowing out the thruster backpack and knocking the Zeon suit to the ground in a metal heap. Haskell's Zaku Cannon planted itself firmly in place and opened fire with both weapons, driving the three helos away for a moment, but the agile Cerberi simply spun on their axes and began unloading fire into the Zaku Cannon.

"Unsullied Three! Break off and withdraw! Get across the bridge!" Von Seydlitz began laying down covering fire on the hovering attack helicopters, feeling the stings as the other Cerberi began peppering his armor with high-velocity 30mm rounds.

The frustrated Zaku Cannon waited until Dalyev's Zaku Kai regained its feet, then gave the helos one more burst from its 120mm before making a break for it, using a powered jump to leap into Holzminden. Von Seydlitz followed, giving off short bursts from his 75mm to deter their enemies from pursuing. The effect was not what he intended.

Rather than break off the engagement and simply wait for the Zeon to cross out of the respectably-sized town on the far side of the Weser, the eleven remaining Cerberi resumed formation and drove after the fleeing Zeon suits. Von Seydlitz's Gouf Custom crossed the bridge, and then he watched in horror as the eleven Cerberi bypassed his own suit and unleashed their full fury on the Zaku Kai.

Dalyev's Zaku Kai caught a salvo of 3-inch Hydra rockets across its waistline, detonating the grenades it carried on its leg skirting. The explosion tore the mobile suit in half, just in time for the torso to erupt in white flame as the helicopters finished it off with HEAP missiles. A cloud of billowing white smoke obscured the final resting place of the MS-06FZ.

Von Seydlitz heard Lieutenant Anton Dalyev die, and his own howl of rage rivaled the death scream of the 27 year-old soldier in its power. For the first time since Metz, the 358th Light Assault had lost a soldier. Two of the Cerberi were simply riddled apart as the Gouf Custom brought its own full firepower to bear. But it was useless; there were simply too many attack helicopters, and as a single unit save the three that kept von Seydlitz occupied, they turned their attention to the Zaku Cannon. Haskell held his ground, the cover of the Falkenhagen less than a kilometer behind him, Zaku Cannon on its knees.

"Get going, Unsullied One. Finish Nemesis for us." Haskell's voice was deathly calm, even as his suit began to take fire.

"Negative," rasped von Seydlitz harshly. "Turn around and get that crate into the forest. I will cover you."

"I can't, Colonel," said Haskell, almost pleasantly, "I can't move my right leg. I'm immobile, and I'll be damned if I'll crawl to the General with a busted-up suit."

"I will not lose you both, Haskell!" von Seydlitz's voice was almost desperate, as the 75mm spat another burst at the circling Cerberi. "I cannot!!"

"You already have, Colonel, so win the War for us as an apology. Please go, sir. Tell them we died like Zeon, and that we'll miss them all. Like you always told us, Colonel, this ain't the time for heroics, just soldiering."

Biting his lip to keep it from trembling, von Seydlitz slowly nodded. "As you wish. Farewell, Kyle Haskell."

The Zaku Cannon's flak gun went dry, and the Cerberi descended, Hell erupting from underneath their wings and chins. The MS-06K shed armor and pieces of itself in a rain of slagged steel and fragments as the Federation weapons tore into its armored hide. The entire left arm assembly blew off, and the suit slumped, but it still held its 120mm in its right hand, and the finger still squeezed the trigger, until the drum ran dry and the doomed Zaku Cannon had nothing left except its heat hawk, which it clawed for until a Mjollnir missile obliterated the grasping hand.

As the sprinting Gouf Custom reached the treeline, von Seydlitz heard Haskell's voice one last time. "Farewell, 'Black Eagle'. We'll meet you in Valhalla."

The Zeon mobile suit exploded, but there was nothing but silence on von Seydlitz's radio instead of the death cry of his last soldier. The nine Cerberi hovered over the smoking remains of the Zaku Cannon, then turned away and began flying south.

Von Seydlitz smashed his fists on the console. "You will kill my men but you will not kill me!? I will make you all pay!! ALL OF YOU!!" He slumped in his crash chair. "All of you. . ."

The Gouf Custom began working its way through the trees, unharried now. Von Seydlitz's anger cooled into something more like grief, but his eyes shed no tears. They still did not know how to. He flicked on the radio to the 10th's unit frequency. "Flashpoint," he said without emotion, "flashpoint." Then he keyed it off and set course for Steinbaum.

North of Hofgeismar, Hessen, Central Europe

November 14, 0087

"We killed two of them, Captain," said the voice of Dog One in the helmet of Herschel Cramer as his RX-77-3 Guncannon Heavyarms strode at the head of a column of Federation mobile suits. "Two Zaku-types, no survivors. The Gouf got away, but we're out of ammunition and almost out of fuel. We're heading back to Kassel to resupply, and then we'll join you in the hunt."

"Negative, Doggie One. You 'n yours've done enough already. Leave these Zeek bastards for us to clean up."

The poor warrant officer on the other end sounded patently confused. "But, sir, we're good to go once we get some missiles and-"

"I said 'negative', Doggie. The mobile infantry can handle a couple of goddamn Zeeks. Stay in Kassel, that's an order."

"Captain," cut in the soft voice of Lieutenant Angela Dyson, his Company XO, as she caught up to Cramer's mobile suit with her own RGM-79C GM Kai. "I think Dog One and his people have a right to be there, sir. They lost eleven units to these Zeon. I think they're due some payback."

"Well, I don't agree, Lieutenant. Doggies, get your asses back to Kassel and stay put. We'll bring you back some Zeek heads for you to chew on when we're done with 'em. Legion One, out!" Cramer flipped a switch to the unit channel instead of the UHF open broadcast. "Not a bad haul for 'em, eh, darlin'? Two Zeek Zakus, BOOM! If the rest of 'em do such a piss-poor job of fightin', we'll make hash out of them fuckers. Little rat-bastards have just scared everyone with their little show, and haven't got the testicles to pull off what their mouths're yellin'."

In her own cockpit, Dyson squeezed her eyes with her fingers, stretching to pop her spine in the crash chair. Two for eleven? You would think that was a bargain, wouldn't you? She had tried desperately to get Cramer to stop calling her 'darlin'' for years, but it never worked. The man was a chauvanist that she had had to fight just to participate in the twice-per-year field exercises with the 103rd, and while few outside the immediate six officers knew it, Dyson had whipped Cramer's ass in the simulators three times out of three for the privilege. In fact, she was the best mobile suit pilot in the 103rd, and the only one to grudge her that was Cramer himself, who sought ways of keeping her "out of dangerous stuff like fighting". He had tried it again when the call had gone out to destroy the 10th Panzerkaempfer, but she had skirted past that when it became obvious that they were not heading for Madgeburg.

Dyson loved mobile suits. There was a feeling of supreme confidence in making 18 meters of walking armor and firepower move on command and knowing that there was an ass out there that needed to be kicked. Dyson herself had never seen combat, and after eight years she had thought she never would. Delaz had not given her the pleasure of trying, so this run was probably the last she would see of warfare unless the Kalaba decided to invade Europe between now and her retirement. She almost scoffed at that idea; she was only thirty years old, and in great shape. She was not even going gray yet, a fact that amazed both she and her husband considering who they were putting up with as a commanding officer. More than once, their bouts with Cramer's throwback sensibilities had been cause for marathon lovemaking sessions just to channel the frustrations of not being able to deck the son of a bitch. Not that she was complaining, mind.

Her husband, Lieutenant j.g. Lief Dyson, was in command of 2nd Platoon, and if she canted her GM's head to the left, she could see his red-and-gold and very unique RGM-79G GM Command, which Cramer had rejected as being a "sissy suit". The rare mobile suit had been vied for by casting lots between the other officers, and she had been filled with pride when Lief had won it. There were few GM Commands left anymore, and were almost as rare as GM Customs nowadays. Dyson wondered briefly just how many others had been used as hideaways for hot and sweaty sexual escapades, though: she knew Lief's had been. She wished she were in his mobile suit with him right now, in fact, even though she loved having her own. They had met at Nijmegen of all places, just after the War, and it had been love at first sight twice for the slim, dark-haired Angela Novak; the first time with the GM Trainer, and the second with the tall, broad-shouldered, good-humored, auburn-haired Lief Dyson, who had given her a good run for her money in the training sims and accepted his defeats with a grace no man had ever shown before. After their third one-on-one fight, they were inseparable.

For the longest time, Lief had been her only ally against Cramer, and the only male officer in the 103rd who would stand up for her. He had caught flak from Cramer dozens of times for it, too, getting assigned to what amounted to shit detail for defending his wife's rights as a combat soldier in a combat unit. Dyson knew she did not need her husband to fight her own battles, and had told him as much, but he had been adamant about sleeping with her in their bed with a clear conscience, no matter the repercussions. She needed no more reasons to know she loved him before then; afterwards sealed it in her soul forever. Lief was like that, though, and never hid anything because of it, and he did not even mind her being a higher rank than he was. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing she could do or be that would harm his pride. Dyson knew plenty of females who wished for men like that; she was just the lucky one to find one and keep him.

As if reading her mind, which he was pretty good at, a beep sounded from her console, signaling to her that Lief was calling on their "personal" frequency, 4483 mHz, which was also the date of their wedding.

"Yes, sir, not bad at all. That's two less we'll have to worry about when we get there," she responded to Cramer, rolling her eyes. She could not believe still that he wanted to march the whole unit to Steinbaum and fight a battle with veteran Zeon on their turf. The sending of the Cerberi to scout Kassel and the bridges of the Weser had been her idea, and she had been right, but the officious ass would claim the credit anyway. After all, I'm just a 'gentle creature' who 'doesn't need to fight a war, 'cause that's a man's job'.

"Almost a shame," said Cramer gleefully, "having to waste those mobile suit kills on some helo jocks. They can drink on it when they get back to Kassel, though, but we've just broken fuckface Mellenthin's back. His morale'll be shot to shit when we get there. I think I'll give 'em a chance to surrender, just out of the kindness of my heart and all."

God, how can this man be so goddamn DUMB?? "I'm sure there are plenty left for the rest of us, sir, and that they'll fight it out instead of give up. That's what they do, sir."

"I like the way you think, darlin'. Keep that attitude up and you'll be a decent trooper someday."

What stung the most was that Cramer actually meant it. "I'll-I'll keep that hope alive, sir. Dyson out." She flipped off the unit switch and dialed in "their" frequency. "You there, sexy?"

"Always and by your command, dearest. The Old Man giving you hell already? I can see the fumes coming off your GM's head." Lief's voice was, as always, full of mirth, though he could be serious as cancer when he needed to be.

"You have no idea. Three 'darlin''s and counting."

"Want me to kill him? I've got tone." Lief was as decent a shot with the 90mm as anyone she had ever met, especially within 300 meters.

"That's sweet of you to offer, dear, but I think I can handle it." She cycled her cameras through to low-light, the heat signs of the Guncannon Heavyarms ahead of her beginning to give her a headache.

"Okay, but make sure you keep that cute ass safe and sound, Old Lady." He chuckled at that, knowing it got to her that he was a little more than a year younger.

"Second Platoon!" snapped Cramer over the open channel. "You're slacking!! Keep up, wouldya, or you'll miss the fight!"

"Aye, Captain," responded Lief, managing to surreptitiously 'scratch' the 60mm Vulcan's housing on the left side of his GM Command's head with its middle finger. He was a better pilot than Cramer, too.

Dyson smiled at the gesture. "I love you, Lieutenant junior grade Lief Dyson."

"I love you back, Full Lieutenant Old Lady Angela Novak-hyphen-Dyson." His GM Command gave her a thumbs-up, which her GM Kai returned before he turned to deal with his lackadaisical other four mobile suits.

Even as her GM Kai sped up to 60 kph, she could not shake a sense of impending dread, despite her desire to fight the Zeon. In the confines of her own cockpit, idly listening to the random chatter on the open frequency, she began to pray that the 10th Panzerkaempfer really were disheartened by the loss of two of their own and withdrew from Steinbaum to somewhere else rather than have to face them on their own terms.

That thought entertained itself in her mind as the twenty assorted mobile suits of the 103rd Mobile Infantry Company, the "Legion", marched northwards to meet whatever Fate and the 'Hessian Lion' had in store for them.