MSG: In Vain Doth Valour Bleed

Chapter 18

Hameln, Niedersachsen, Central Europe
November 19, 0087

The eyes behind the high-powered field binoculars scanned to the left for what seemed like the millionth time, alighting on the sight of a pair of Titans Hizacks as they cruised over using their powerful thrusters to settle down near another group of Titans suits, a mixed bag of the ubiquitous Hizacks and GM IIs. The binoculars tracked to the right, only to fix upon a similar sight; black-and-red Titans mobile suits, in fixed-fire positions about two thousand meters outside the town limits. The binoculars swiveled around to face the far side of the Fulda river; more Titans. They were everywhere, as they had been for the last three days. On both sides of the river, Hameln was surrounded by the 54th Titans Tactical Armored Brigade, and they were making their presence a constant consideration.

Stifling the urge to spit off of the end of the clock tower, where his lookout perch was, Zeon Marine Captain John Roberts kept his eyes trained on a location just beyond the second line of lethal GM IIs and Hizacks; a field command-and-control tent about five kilometers out, probably a battalion command post. A delicious target, had Roberts been in his Gelgoog Marine Commander, but just a painful sight for sore eyes where he was now. The Titans had ringed Hameln with more firepower than had been seen in Europe since the One-Year War, and the Zeon of the 10th Panzerkaempfer found themselves in the same shit they had been in at Metz. Only at Metz, the Hizack Custom and the suit his computer was unable to identify would not have been there. The Titans were nice in that regard, at least: it was easy to distinguish between a commander's suit and the grunts. A very Zeon sort of trait, and a strange custom for an anti-Zeon group to have adopted.

Roberts was astute enough in the art of fieldcraft to know that von Mellenthin's ploy in Hameln was mostly psychological in nature; he had fooled that Titans Major into risking another Metz and had managed to win that bluff. But Roberts had to wonder why it was taking the Titans so long to figure out that it was a bluff. Barring some unforeseen development on the part of their opposition, he surmised that even if they had figured it out, their lack of motivation to strike with their overwhelming firepower had to be some plot in the making. Hameln was no Metz, with its ring of fortresses and natural obstacles to overcome; this township was on the banks of a river, surrounded by Lower Saxony's flat plains and marshes, and had few large buildings that offered cover of any sort for the beleaguered Zeon mobile suits.

A creak behind him warned his ears that someone was coming up the steps of the clock tower. He turned his head slightly to catch view of Commnader Karl Weissdrake's burned visage as his comrade pushed open the trapdoor to climb into the room. The Marine nodded casually, then returned his eyes to the Titan line that encircled them.

Weissdrake closed the trapdoor behind him, knees popping as he crouched low. "Anything new, John?" he asked, a hint of hopefulness in his otherwise scratchy voice.

Roberts shook his head, answering in his peculiarly quiet voice. "They haven't grown bored with us yet, Karl. They just keep cycling their guard patrols between their companies; six-hour shifts, like they've been doing the entire time."

"Damn," murmured Weissdrake, settling in beside his old battle buddy, his own binoculars skimming the countryside. "We're not going to catch a break this time, are we?"

Roberts grunted in reply. "That's up to them."

Weissdrake remained silent, but knew that the them Roberts was referring to was not the Titans. "No change on that front, either, John."

"They'd better grow up fast, then," replied the Marine offhandedly, with just a fragment of noticeable anger in his voice. "Their stubbornness will get us all killed."

In a similar fashion to what the Titans were doing with their patrol rotation, the Zeon were also using shifts to allow their people time to rest; Weissdrake was here to relieve Roberts, but understood the Marine's reluctance to go down and report to von Mellenthin. As Margul's Kaempfer, brutalized by battle damage but still fully operational, its evil profile moving through the city like the biblical Angel of Death over Egypt, stomping over to relieve van Allen's equally-battered Gelgoog Cannon, Weissdrake lamented at the tension that had settled in over them, clutching at their tenuous thread of hope, threatening to sever it completely.

The running battle to get to Hameln had been bad enough; von Mellenthin's use of the treeline and the surrounding hills had kept the majority of the three Titans companies that had hounded them away, but they were down a lot of ammunition (thankfully, mostly Federal ammo they'd snagged from the remains of Cramer's 103rd), and no one's suit looked pristine anymore. Even the nigh-untouchable de la Somme's Gouf Custom had taken a solid 120mm burst on the left arm, near the elbow joint, causing the little ace no end of grief to jury-rig back together again. But the battle damage and the loss of five suits during the fighting were nuisances compared to the rather nasty schism that had blossomed like a poison between General von Mellenthin and Colonel von Seydlitz.

No one, not even de la Somme, knew the details of what happened, but sometime between the 10th's entry into Hameln and the running battle, the duality of the relationship between von Mellenthin and von Seydlitz had become strained by something. Weissdrake could not only sense something was wrong, but neither of the two ranking Zeon officers had bothered to hide their sudden discomfiting. The morale of the 10th was dangerously low now, and all it would take to break them all, even the usually-indomitable Roberts, was one good push in the wrong direction.

That, to Weissdrake, spelled trouble, because if he could tell, anyone could tell.

"They'll come around," said Weissdrake. "They have to. We're running out of time."

Titans Line (east), Niedersachsen, Central Europe
November 19, 0087

"I really couldn't care less," said 1-54 Battalion Commander Captain Scott Armistead. "Time is a surplus right now. I'm content."

"You would be," spat Captain Garrett Sajer as he glared at the map of Hameln for the trillionth time in three days. It had not changed much.

The 1st Battalion CO sighed, wondering again why it was he was being punished with Sajer's presence when it was Nico Palaccio's 2nd Battalion's Delta Company that had fucked up Tizard's trap. Oh, the heads were still rolling for that clusterfuck: not only had Delta been reduced to a single platoon's worth of mobile suits, but the fact that a single Zeek suit had crippled or killed most of the others meant that Tizard had just sustained the single greatest defeat of a Titans unit ever on Earth's soil, surpassing even the humiliating debacle at New Guinea. Armistead was willing to bet most of the space unit commanders had eaten that bit of gossip up, Tizard supplanting Wilkins' failure. Whatever the repercussions of that fight, Tizard had been having a case of the ass ever since, enough that he had begun banishing from his presence those that displeased him.

Sajer was not content to merely make snide commentary. "This whole shitstorm is just a goddamn game, like chess or something. The Major's playing chess with Mellenthin, instead of just letting us go in and wipe these goddamn hacks out! But the game means everything now, not killing the Zeeks! If I were in charge, the first thing I'd do is zap that one---" He plunked a fingertip down on the spot on the map where the head and shoulders of a Zaku IIF were visible, "---there, and then I'd snipe that one---" The fingertip moved to where a Dom Tropen stood sentinel, "---air assault from both sides of the river and swarm them. Simple as hell."

"That's the Major's call to make, not ours, Garrett," said Armistead as he glanced over into Hameln. "He says 'wait', we wait. End of discussion."
That Kaempfer was on the move again, going through the same guard rotation the Zeeks had been using for three days like clockwork. It was getting a bit tedious, he admitted to himself, but unlike Palaccio's people, his would stand fast rather than risk falling into the kind of massacre the 103rd and Delta Company had jumped into with their overconfidence. Armistead realized later that they had made the same mistake time and again with the 10th Panzerkaempfer Division back during the War, and that history did repeat itself.

"Chickenshit."

"Look," snapped Armistead, his eyes still in his binoculars and not caring whether or not Sajer was referring to Tizard or himself, "you wanna test out your Barzam on someone, test it on your own damn temper, Garrett. Hameln's tolerating the Zeon for now, but when they lift that restriction on us, it's gonna be over fast and quick and then that's all for us. It'll be back to garrison while the space geeks kill the AEUG up in the Void, and then it'll be those Axis pricks, and then what? You may as well enjoy the field work, Garrett, since life behind a desk is looming pretty fucking close for all of us groundpounders." The head and torso of that dug-in Zaku was still in its position within the city (it never moved), and the Gelgoog Cannon was moving off to what everyone presumed was the Zeon laager point somewhere near the old church square. Hameln was a big enough town that at the angle most of 1st Battalion's spotters were getting, the Zeeks could still hide their suits.

Sajer stomped out of the tent, ostensibly to go bug someone else with his opinion of the situation. Armistead continued scanning Hameln, which seemed pretty lively considering there were a lot of bad people with big guns running all through their business. If only they knew how close a thing this is. . . he thought grimly, and he meant it on both sides. Sajer wasn't the only one chomping at the bit to go and kick some Zeek ass; Palaccio was hot to redeem 2nd Battalion's reputation after Horvath's screw-up, and so were most of his people. Some of the other platoons had lost people, too, on the running battle that had led them here in the first place.

But more of them were scared, and it had taken two days for Armistead to get someone to talk about it. It wasn't Delta's near-destruction that had them spooked, but rather, the rumors of the fate of the 103rd that had them all acting like frightened children, hiding in their suits behind their guns and wondering if every trick they'd ever learned had just been thrown out the window. If the Zeon had found a means to circumvent the Minovsky effect to obliterate the 103rd, what was to stop them from doing the same to them? How do you fight an enemy who isn't blind and deaf but you are? The "how" of the Zeon's newfound technological supremacy was not as important as the "what", and that was something no one had been able to glean.

Tizard blew off what happened to the 103rd as a fluke. Armistead was not so certain.

The Kaempfer finished its move into position, placing itself right where it needed to be so that anything trying to cross from the western half would have to face its firepower to do so. Armistead wasn't concerned by that: his people had Gelgoogs covering them, and those were far more dangerous than the hit-and-run fast strike suit. There was also von Seydlitz's Gouf Custom, standing tall as ever in spite of its mostly-superficial wounds, the black eagle visible as if to mock the world. If the Zeeks were planning for the same to happen to the 54th as what happened to the 103rd MI, Tizard was definitely giving them the time to set it all up.

He let out a breath as he lowered his binoculars. "We're running out of time. . ."

Hameln, Niedersachsen, Central Europe
November 19, 0087

The basement of the youth hostel was not an uncomfortable place at all. A long-time fixture of Hameln for the purposes of hosting the young from all corners of Europe for tours, schooling, or just for "homestays", the basement was more like a communal floor. It had its own latrine, its own kitchen (unstocked at the moment), and sleeping mats arranged in the main room almost like something out of Japan, though these mats were stuffed with feathers and not bamboo reeds. It also had doors that locked from the outside, and windows too narrow to crawl through; von Mellenthin had declared it perfect for his seven hostage's housing arrangements.

The Commonality was unified again, but only by grief. Their eldest remained silent, but the other remaining six had allowed him to return to share in their mourning. The loss of one of their number had hit them all hard; it was one thing to feel the deaths of those not of their kind, but another altogether when it was one of themselves. Where once there were eight, only seven remained in the Sharing. In the three days they had been here, they were little closer to understanding fully what had occurred. In that aspect, they were children still.

"It's not right," snarled one of them bitterly.

"It was inevitable. When humans war, often those not directly involved are the victims," tried to explain another, but it sounded hollow even to her. They had all changed, and realized it. Their eldest had been right after all; battle had awoken something primal within them, a need for conflict instilled by the Federation that made them.

"It still doesn't make it right," said the eldest of them, point-of-factly. He had long since stopped lavishing in their apologies for their doubting him. Their not being in the cockpits of those mobile suits was now a burden instead of a comfort; the warmth of the hostel basement did nothing to stem their common feelings of. . .separation from the great war machines. Like the drug addicted when removed from the presence of their narcotic, they were all, as de la Somme would have put it, 'Jonesing'.

One of the others glared at him. "From one who dallies with a dealer in death, you seem comfortable enough with it."

The eldest shook his head. "No, just closer to having an explanation for it. The Lalah-entity never mentioned what death would cost Us. The Antares-entity is accustomed to it, but yet he still feels it as potently now as he ever did. His emotions are open to introspective analysis."

"Are yours?"

The eldest forced a smile. "Not quite yet. Just because I have some insight into it does not require that I be comfortable with it. The loss of one of Us will have severe ramifications, I believe, but I do not expect that to be the last of Us we lose before this is over. But those of Us that survive will be that much stronger for having done so."

"The Mellenthin-entity will pay dearly for this," sobbed one of the inconsolable ones. Some were taking their Awakenings harder than others.

"Would it be any different if it were the Federation making us fight for them?"

"Negative," replied one of the more calm ones. "This price would still have to be paid. The question remains as to whether or not humans would commit war if they knew what this felt like."

"Doubtless," responded the eldest. "The Antares-entity is the closest human I have encountered to suffering this same grievous pain of loss, and yet his propensity for warfare and killing has not abated any. The Mellenthin-entity would consider this emotive response a flaw in our designs, I am sure."

One of them actually laughed, but it was a harsh and cruel sort of laugh, not one of true humor. "His own difficulties are the only thing keeping me from ending this torment now."

"Yes," agreed one of the others between their tears. "May his own pains burn his soul, and that of his spite-filled brother!"

"Their reactions to this predicament have been quite enlightening," concurred the eldest. "The Antares-entity is at a loss as to what could have happened between the Mellenthin-entity and the Seydlitz-entity, but their rift is widening by the day, and the effect it is having on these Spacenoids is intriguing."

"Indeed. Perhaps this is the chance we have been waiting for."

"But to do what? We cannot hide anymore, be it from the Space-people or these Titans. We are hunted now as assuredly as the Mellenthin-entity and his people are, and they no longer seem to hold a unity."

"The threat to Us is real enough, but the Pattern has not yet formulated a true picture of what our fate is to be. I believe this game is not yet played out for either side." The eldest squeezed his eyes tight, then opened them wide as the door to the basement living room unlatched.

The Commonality broke into its components, but as one they turned their heads as the door opened, each projecting their thoughts towards the identity of the intruder, anticipating it being de la Somme, or at worst one of the twin guards whose minds were practically a commonality of their own.

It was neither.

"Spare me," said Dietrich von Mellenthin as he took a step into the room. "Your minds may overpower lesser creatures', but you'll find my walls too steep to climb and my depths too deep to fall."

The level of hate in the room exceeded nova-hot proportions. "What do you want?" spat one of the children, her high-pitched voice making the tone more scathing than an adult's would have been.

Von Mellenthin smiled ingratiatingly. "What a charmer you'll be. I have a proposal for you, mein Kinder, and I do not mean you as in the individual you, but more the likes of the group you." He glanced at each of them, blue-green eyes cold despite the expression on his face. "Oh, come now, which of you is the spokesperson for you all?  Try not to insult my intellect. I've studied the files the Federation had in their computer in Heidelberg, and I know they've trained you all to operate as a unit. Units require leadership to finalize decisions and to be their mouthpieces. Which of you is tasked to do so?"

After a moment of looking at the other children, the eldest stood up. "I am," said Erik.

Von Mellenthin smiled, recognizing the one that had taken a liking to de la Somme. "Then I have a proposal for you, one leader to another. Would you care to step across the boundaries of a soldier to a maker of doctrines, and discuss with me matters that pertain to our futures?"

Aerzen, Niedersachsen, Central Europe
November 19, 0087

"There it goes again," groused one of the Titans communications people, a Corporal. She tapped the glass on her screen, watching as the hertz meter spiked once, then stopped. "What the hell is that?"

Her partner, a Tech Sergeant, rubbed his face and his exhausted eyes and groaned. "Dammit, Carol, it's a figment of your imagination, okay?"

She reached over and slapped him on the shoulder; it wasn't hard, but it startled him so badly that he fell out of his chair, his headphones flying off his head. He landed with a curse. She stared, stupefied, then broke out laughing and couldn't stop. Shortly, so did her partner, still sitting on the floor of the room the Titans had converted into the commo suite. The release of tension was almost narcotic, as they both just broke down in gales of laughter that were unstoppable as the tides, tears streaming down their faces.

It had not been an easy time for the Titans in spite of the lack of combat. Since the Zeon takeover of Hameln, all they had done is sit there, happy as clams underneath a Minovsky umbrella and an old Federation law. On the other hand, the Titans had worked their asses off to get Hameln locked down as tight as they could, they set up roadblocks and waystations and a revolving twenty-four hour guard roster, and then. . .nothing. The waiting was the hardest part of all this madness, but really only because Tizard was making it so. The Major had been so uptight these last two days that even the news of Lammersdorf's reactivation had not broken his mood. His last situation report to Dakar had not gone well, either, which of course meant it all rolled downhill onto those around him.

But then, the commtechs knew things even Battalion COs like Armistead did not know. With the communications blackout over Europe finally being lifted, it had taken some days for the news of the death of Titans Captain Elias Fury in combat with the AEUG to reach Tizard's ears; that he had been dead for nearly a month was little comfort. The Major was not a man inclined to emotional outbursts in public, so he had retreated for several hours to an old storage shed far away from the Titans Command Post. No one saw anything, but there had been reports of the sounds of a grief-tortured soul coming from within that shed for several hours, and the devastation that was the shed's interior gave some credence to the rumor that Tizard had gone berserk at the news of the death of one of his more promising students.

Whatever it was, it had not changed Tizard's plan to outlast the Zeon in Hameln. The wait continued, and with the exception of all incoming and outgoing traffic being subjected to a scrutinizing that most would have found uncomfortable, things went on as usual in Hameln.

Wiping tears from his face, the communications tech on the floor finally got his labored breathing under some kind of control. "Any—anyway, what's the problem again?"

"The problem---" stated a voice from behind—and above—him, "---is you sitting on the floor."

The tech craned his neck around and up, to see the neatly-creased black-and-red uniform of Golan Tizard standing on a space where there once was emptiness. The tech scrambled to his feet, trying to brush off his uniform surreptitiously.

Tizard waved a hand as a show of indifference. "I heard the laughter, Sergeant, that's why I am here. I've had very little to laugh about recently, so I thought I would like to hear the joke. It would seem it's more of a 'you had to have been there' thing, am I correct?"

"Y-yes sir!"

"Then now that the joke is over," Tizard continued, brushing the sergeant aside and sitting in the vacant seat, "you can explain to me the 'problem' you've just alluded to."

The sergeant blushed red. "You would have to ask the Corporal, sir," he said, mouth dry as a bone.

Tizard turned his reptilian eyes on the other tech. "Would you please, Corporal?"

She at least was wise enough to swallow once before answering: "It's really nothing, sir, except this hertz meter here. . ." she pointed at the screen, ". . .it keeps spiking for no apparent reason."

Tizard's eyes narrowed further. "This meter. . .what is it for, exactly?"

The other tech fielded that question. "It's the relay receiver console for the field surveillance crews, sir. We're using them to monitor radio traffic in Hameln."

"There is a Minovsky field over Hameln, Sergeant," said Tizard coldly. "Why are these relays functioning?"

"The Minovsky field prevents a direct intercept, sir, but we can still know if someone's talking on the radio by the fluctuation in the megahertz ranges. These receivers just say whether or not someone's transmitting or receiving, but the meat of the messages is blanked out by the radiation."

"And someone is transmitting? And it is getting through the Minovsky umbrella?"

The corporal nodded. "Well, we're not exactly sure, sir. These spikes are intermittent, drastically so, and way too high in frequency to be anything involving a mobile suit's comm suite."

Tizard sat up a little straighter. His eyes had not been on the techs, but rather the hertz meter. "Like that one just was?"

The Sergeant's mouth dropped open in astonishment. The Corporal gave the senior NCO the finger (out of the eyesight of Tizard, or so she believed) and grinned. "Affirmative, sir."

"So let me get this straight," Tizard tapped a pen tip on the screen, "someone or something is transmitting or receiving messages at extreme megahertz range, a range beyond anything our own communications frequencies use, transmissions that might be penetrating the Minovsky barrier, and the source is Hameln?"

"That's. . .that's about the whole of it, yes, sir."

"Hmmm, curious." Tizard leaned back in his chair. "I wonder who they're talking to, or trying to talk to. Get with the guard posts and tell them to set up more relays on the lines. I want to know every time this screen spikes, and how frequently. Does anyone else know about this?"

"Just Captain Balke, sir," replied the tech.

Tizard seemed to freeze in place. "When did he know?"

"Yesterday, sir." The Sergeant winced. "Just before you banished him from Aerzen."

"Ahh, then no harm, no foul. He would keep his little secrets, just to hope we fail where he also did," Tizard stood. "Keep up the good work, soldiers. If this is what I think it is, then we are much closer to the end of all this than I thought. Tell the others that." The Major left the room, closing the door behind him, leaving two confused soldiers in his wake.

Tizard shut the door, and then smiled, warmly and honestly. I've just found your gambit, von Mellenthin, but my pieces are already moving. Balke is many things, but a loose cannon is only loose when it thinks it's being contained. I've already let him go to do his own work, and he will be the one who shows me the way.

It had taken a long time for Tizard to realize the usefulness of the debauched Federation captain and his little crew of malcontents and retirees. The Titans were constrained by a code of ethics on Earth Tizard had been unwilling to break; Balke was not so pinioned. In a show of wrath, Tizard had kicked Balke and his fellow Federal regulars out of the combat area, on pain of incarceration never to return until summoned. They had left without too much of a fuss, but Tizard knew something had passed between himself and Balke at that last meeting, and that Balke understood. Tizard knew that evil recognized evil; he had faith Balke knew, too.

Where the Federals were now, he had no idea, but the Titans Major had his guesses. If Balke's self-destructive tendencies were kept in check, they were most likely working behind the scenes in the countryside, trying to dig up what had happened to Cramer's people and their incredible tale of woe. The depositions of the Lieutenants Dyson had given Tizard some inkling that the Zeon had, indeed, stumbled on some way to circumvent the Minovsky effect in the field. Tizard knew that he was taking a chance that von Mellenthin was planning to do the same to them should Hameln be stormed by force, but his instincts told him that with the speed of Delta's attack and the subsequent lashing that Quillan Devereaux's Foxtrot Company and William Stark's Alpha Company had given them on their run from Steinbaum to Hameln, that the 10th could not pull off the same trick twice. Von Mellenthin's next ploy would be something else, and Tizard was content to let the Zeon General think he was being clever. This trap was one of Titan devising, and this time, no one would fuck it up for Golan Tizard. His only wish now was that these were AEUG scum instead of Zeon leftovers, but these would have to do.

He vaguely wondered, as he stepped out of the building and into the gray of the outside air, if with the deaths of von Mellenthin and company, if it would cause some kind of pain to Char Aznable, far away in space. He hoped they would, the same kind of emotional agony he had felt when he found out that Elias Fury had been killed by AEUG operatives. Fury had been one of his best up-and-coming stars, a man who should have survived to go on to greater things than this; he would have traded a company of Sajers for one Fury in the space of the three heartbeats it would have taken to make certain the offer was not a joke. That he could have probably pinned the blame for Fury's death on Senas Jacobi more than he could Char Aznable was irrelevant; someone had to pay, and he had just made the 10th Panzerkaempfer the whipping post for the sins of others.

Would Fury have approved of this kind of revenge? Probably not, Tizard knew, but considering Balke's absolute hatred for von Mellenthin, it still gave Tizard something he did not have before with the undisciplined Federation Captain: a common bond. Now they each had their reasons, and that made them allies of a sort. Tizard would rather have had an ally out of Balke than an enemy.

The snow, which thankfully had not been falling as of late, crunched under his boots as he walked back towards the clock tower. 'Your enemy is what he eats; you must be the cook'.

Solling Range, Niedersachsen, Central Europe
November 17, 0087

"This is NOT how this was supposed to go!" roared Dietrich von Mellenthin over the radio on the open channel.

Reinhardt von Seydlitz was not in a position to argue, as another 35mm burst from the left arm of his Gouf Custom snipped the lower leg off of a descending Titans GM II. The enemy suit fell to the ground heavily, just in time to be pounced on by Lucien McKenna's racing Dom and run through with a heat saber, even as an azure beam of light streaked upward from what was undoubtedly their Gelgoog Cannon; the line terminated in an explosion in the sky as the Cannon claimed another catastrophic kill. The Garudas that had arrived after the fight with that first group of Titans had ended had been combat-dropping suits at the rate of a platoon every few miles or so. Von Seydlitz knew what they were trying: it was a herding tactic. Every which way von Mellenthin was leading them, the Titans cut them off with another drop. Von Seydlitz estimated that for every black-and-red suit they killed, there were three more replacing it even before the slain suits stopped twitching. There were the better part of two companies on the ground now, chasing the fleeing 10th Panzerkaempfer through the foothills of the Harz mountains, the outskirts of the Teutobergerwald, and along the flood plains and marshes of the Weser river.

Von Mellenthin's Zaku Hi-Mo wheeled to the left, skipping out of the coverage of the trees, closing on a touching-down Titans Hizack before the other suit could bring its beam rifle to bear. The Zaku's hand closed on the rifle's upper assembly as the Hizack moved to aim it; the Zaku used its better leverage to push the rifle aside as a burst of energy lit up the sky, the rifle firing wide. Von Mellenthin's other hand dropped to its side, gripped the heat hawk positioned at the hip, and chopped upward with the heated blade. The Hizack staggered back instinctively, and the Zeon Zaku spun on a heel even as the heat hawk changed its aspect to a horizontal slash, cutting open the pilot's compartment on the Hizacks middle torso, gutting the more advanced suit. The Titans suit crumpled to the earth, its pilot most likely a smoking ruin. Lines of tracer fire stitched the earth around von Mellenthin's suit, and the nimbler-than-usual Zaku Hi-Mo sprinted back into the cover of the trees, as more Titans suits landed further away, beyond the Zeon range to kill.

They had been running for five hours now, pausing only to allow the slower suits to catch up with the quicker ones, like Margul's Kaempfer, which was racking up an impressive kill list as it led the Zeon column through the terrain northwards. Von Seydlitz was considering the possibility of using some natural feature of the Lower Saxon countryside for a defensive position, to give the Titans something more to think about, when Margul's voice came in through the Minovsky static: "Clearing."

"Verdammt," cursed von Seydlitz. Open ground was their undoing in this instance. Without the cover of the hills and forest, the Titans would pick them off like flies; especially since von Seydlitz had discovered that the damnable Hizacks had hover-capability like the GM IIs did. Only the Foxe twins' Gelgoog Jaegers had even close to that much thruster power, and even they could sustain no more than a long 'jump'. He keyed his radio. "Eagle One to Lion One, over."[i]

Von Mellenthin's voice sounded strained, as if he were holding back his temper by force of will alone. "Lion One, go!"

"Herr General, it might be wise to consider finding an easily defended position before we reach open ground."

The Zaku Hi-Mo cut loose with one of its captured Federation 100mm machine guns, sparing the ammo in its MMP-80s for later; von Seydlitz could hear the chattering thunder, a different tempo than those of Zeon make, of the large machine gun's bark even through the static. "Negative, Eagle One!" barked von Mellenthin. "We're driving onward!"

Von Seydlitz's eyebrows knitted in confusion. "Understood, Lion One, but I must remind---" a tree in front of von Seydlitz's Gouf Custom exploded into a thousand flaming cinders. He ducked and swerved out of the way, deeper into the forest area, bolts of light chasing him, "---the General that open ground only serves to---"

"I KNOW that, Reinhardt!" snapped von Mellenthin. "I just don't want to get pinned down in one location this far from our Phase Two objective! Find us a hideaway point and we'll meet up there to discuss this further. . .my God! Look at them!"

Von Seydlitz turned the great mono-eye of his battle-scorched suit towards the west, and his jaw went slack with amazement. "It---the Titans have stopped!"

"More fools, they! Here's your chance, Oberst," said von Mellenthin. "Get us out of here before they start moving again!"

Von Seydlitz keyed his map interface. "There! All units, proceed to grid point Delta-Sierra five-oh-five-nine-six-six-three-one! I do not care how you get there, just get there! Eagle One, out!" He wheeled the Gouf Custom to the right and plunged deeper into the darkness of the forest, high-caliber tracer fire lighting the paths he left behind.



"Heya, Reinhardt!!" sang out Antares de la Somme, his Gouf Custom waving its right arm at him as he broke through the last of the trees to the link-up point, a natural depression ringed by a cluster of high-top trees that would make it difficult to spot by air. "They got me, the sons of bitches! Check this out!"

Von Seydlitz noted the torn-up elbow of de la Somme's suit. "Very pretty, Kommandant. I presume it was dutifully avenged?"

"Yeah. Got me a score of twelve; that's one better than Starkweather and two better than Vlady. Listen, Deet's waiting for you over yonder, something about a powwow with you ASAP, ya know?"

"Yes, Antares, I know. I am on my way. What are the Titans up to?"

"Nothin'. They're just sitting there, waiting for a sign from God or something," the younger ace's Gouf Custom leaned closer to von Seydlitz's conspiratorially. "Guess what? I've got it on good authority that He ain't talking to them."

Von Seydlitz almost smiled. "Then I guess they will be waiting quite a while. Get that arm checked out; without it, you are down your seventy-five millimeter, your shield, and your thirty-fives. That is unacceptable, Kommandant."

"Right, gotcha, arm and an oil change." De la Somme's suit moved off with another wave of its right hand. "Lemme know how it's gonna go, okay?"

"I will." Von Seydlitz walked his Gouf Custom eastward, red mono-eye scanning for the familiar silhouette of von Mellenthin's Zaku Hi-Mo. It was not hard to find, since it was nicely set up in the center of the natural depression, with its hatch open and blue light streaming from the cockpit interior.

Von Seydlitz walked his suit to as close as he could get to von Mellenthin's, standing it face to face with the slightly shorter Zaku, popping open his own hatch as his suit came to a halt. He climbed out with a smooth sort of motion, hands gripping the upper rim of the cockpit while he kicked his legs out of the doorway; at the terminus, he simply let go, and when his boots touched the metal of the hatch, he was standing, a matter of simple acrobatics under gravity. "I am here, Dietrich."

The General smiled at his XO and extended a hand as von Seydlitz crossed the makeshift bridge their open hatchways made. "About time, too, Reinhardt. You've been a bit behind on the clock today, haven't you?"

"One could see it that way," shrugged von Seydlitz, taking von Mellenthin's hand in one of his own. "You know what happened."

"Yes. I'm sorry, Reinhardt, I truly am. It must have been hard for you, just as it has been for Vladimir and Antares. They lost men, too."

Von Seydlitz's eyes grew distant in his exhausted face; what once was called thin was practically gaunt now. "I made them pay, Dietrich. A whole Titans Company suffered for Dalyev and Haskell, and I do not think I am finished yet." He crouched down so that he could look into von Mellenthin's cockpit. Everything was upside-down, but that was not even an inconvenience worth noting. "If you would be so kind as to bring up the regional map for viewing? I have some scant few ideas that may get us out of this predicament alive."

Von Mellenthin complied, and the blue light-emitting screen changed into a riot of colors as the relief map popped on the display. "Here's the situation as it stands, since the last update that Antares piped through the unit FBCB2* about five minutes ago. We've got a Titans Company here, and another one here," von Mellenthin pointed with a finger, indicating two different positions to the southwest and southeast of their own location. "Oberstabsfeld Ogun confirmed further Titans units here, here, and here," his finger tapped three more locations, "to our north, northeast, and northwest, and closing rapidly."

Von Seydlitz nodded, face grim. "About three companies' worth, plus the leftovers from the one we savaged earlier. They are trying to cut us off and entrap us. We can use this to our advantage. If we maneuver to this valley here," he pointed at a spot in the eastern Harz range, "it would force them to come at us from one direction; we can mass fire at the entry point and set charges on the valley walls to negate their aerial---"

Von Mellenthin shook his head. "We haven't the supplies or the ammunition to fight that kind of action, Reinhardt. It won't work, and the risk to the children is too great."

Undeterred, von Seydlitz shifted gears. "Very well, then there is always the hit-and-fade, which I have discovered they are not accustomed to dealing with in terrain like this. We stay within the forest range and obliterate them platoon by platoon, taking their weapons and ammunition until they---"

Again, von Mellenthin cut him off. "Our ability to maneuver decisively in close quarters is reduced. Margul's Kaempfer is reaching critical fuel level, and the Twins aren't much better off. If we get pinned down with just foot speed, they'll catch us, and it still won't enable us to break free and escape with the NewTypes intact. We need something else, Reinhardt, something fixed, something vulnerable."

Perturbed, the younger officer straightened his back and looked at his brother, deadpan. "I will then presume that you have an idea already, one that involves the additional security of eight Federation war weapons?"

"Seven," corrected von Mellenthin, "and they are MY war weapons now. We've come a long way to get those children, Reinhardt; they MUST survive until Nemesis is complete."

"With all due respect, Herr General," said von Seydlitz, trying not to choke on his own rising anger at having two workable plans shot down for a maybe plan that's only goal was the survival of seven kids, "I do not think the continued existence of these things supercedes the continued combat survival and capabilities of the 10th Panzerkaempfer Division."

"Stop being a ninny, Reinhardt. These seven mean everything to the success of Nemesis and the 10th Panzerkaempfer Division. Besides, if you had not gone traipsing through Niedersachsen in the first place, this difference in opinion of the import of these children would not be happening, would it?"

Von Mellenthin's tone of voice was matter-of-fact, but to von Seydlitz it felt as though he had just been slapped with a handful of fishhooks. "Dietrich, I hope you are not insinuating that I deliberately goaded that Titans unit into following me to Steinbaum."

Von Mellenthin looked him dead in the eyes. "If that's how you choose to see it, then it must be so. Listen to me, Reinhardt: these seven children must be alive in order for Nemesis to have a chance of gaining what I need it to. You must see this as a fact."

Von Seydlitz shook his head emphatically. "I cannot believe I am hearing this from you. This was not what we planned out for Nemesis, any more than the change in destination!"

"Plans change!" snapped von Mellenthin angrily. "Especially plans that are eight years old! I'm down a NewType now thanks to your need to revenge Dalyev and Haskell, and on top of that I've lost Kerr, Lacerta, and Reiter, and their suits! Nemesis now treads on a very thin line thanks to your fuck-up!"

Had von Seydlitz not been who he was, he would have recoiled in shock. Instead, he simply stood up, grey eyes alight with anger. "How dare you, sir? I have performed every aspect of my duty as ordered, while under fire. My Battalion is DEAD, Dietrich! And you sit there and believe I lured the Titans to Steinbaum deliberately?? Pray tell, what have these Federation superbeings done for you except take up cockpit space, subvert your brother's mind, and DIE in the course of losing a fine pilot and a priceless mobile suit!?" For von Seydlitz, this was quite the rant.

Von Mellenthin slammed his fists down on top of his console, the screen winking out momentarily as two equally-sized dents appeared in the metal 'dashboard'. "Damn you, Reinhardt, this is bigger than one mobile suit, OR it's goddamn low-gene PILOT!!"

"Then if these children mean so much to you," pleaded von Seydlitz, "LISTENto me! The only way we are going to get out of this is to FIGHT---"

"DAS REICHT!! ENOUGH!" roared von Mellenthin, seething outwardly, his aura becoming volatile; von Seydlitz could see it ten feet away if he had to, and his internal warning sense activated.

The General took a deep breath and let it out in a futile attempt to calm himself. "We WILL fight them, Reinhardt, but first I need time, and I need these children alive to guarantee Nemesis, or it's all for nothing. I need time more than I need a body count."

Von Seydlitz knew he had lost this fight; his brother was more stubborn than a hundred bulls once he made up his mind. "Then I hope your judgment in this matter is correct."

"It is. Prepare the troops to move out in five minutes. We make for Hameln."

Von Seydlitz blinked. "Hameln? In the name of Zeon, Dietrich, why?" He began to seriously contemplate the possibility that his brother had gone mad.

Von Mellenthin stared at his map, not looking his stunned brother in the face. "A bargaining chip."

Von Seydlitz nodded. "I suppose it will do for a final resting place."

"Better there than here, Reinhardt." Von Mellenthin's tone was amply noted by von Seydlitz as being 'dead serious'.

Hameln, Niedersachsen, Central Europe
November 19, 0087

A snowball flew past Reinhardt von Seydlitz's face, missing his nose by centimeters and interrupting the same reverie he'd been mulling over for the last three days. He closed his ice-grey eyes for a brief instant, swiveled his head to the right, and then opened them again, glaring daggers at the child who had dared lob a snowball at him. The little brat, who might've been six at the oldest, shrieked and ran off with the scampering quickness commonplace to all children. . .and de la Somme, he mused. He stood up from the cold steel park bench that faced the frozen-over fountain, spun on a bootheel, and strode off, knowing the child would be back with friends sooner rather than later, and von Seydlitz was in no mood to play Uncle to the neighborhood spawnlings today. He was no de la Somme, with his incessant need to please children; of late, children were becoming the death of him.

A flock of pigeon, whose brethren had flown southwards but they had remained behind for the winter to get fat on the offerings of the locals, scattered in a cloud of cooing and dirty feathers as von Seydlitz walked through the space they had been occupying without a care as to their feelings.

Tapping his boots one at a time on the top stair of the landing to rid the treads of packed-in snow, he opened the door of the Zeon Command Post, noticing that the heat had been turned up again in the building. "Why does it feel like a ring of Hell in this place?"

"Maybe it's your cold nature, sir," commented a sleepy Gary van Allen, who had come off shift less than two hours ago. "Or the General's, sir."

"Not likely, Gefreiter. Where is Generalmajor von Mellenthin?"

Van Allen waved a hand in the direction of the stairs. "Down in the cellar. Again, sir."

Von Seydlitz turned his hawklike gaze on the spiraled stairs. "Any notion as to why he spends so much time in the communications room?"

"That's---" van Allen yawned, "---above my pay grade, sir. I figured if anyone knew, it'd be you, sir."

"I wish that were the case, Gefreiter. Sleep now; the town is secure." Von Seydlitz took a good, long look at the stairs, then made his decision. It was time to come to an understanding with his King, one way or another.

He was halfway down the hallway when he heard the sound of voices. There was one in particular he recognized, and though his outward demeanor did not change, every hyperacute nerve in his body suddenly went into an adrenaline overdrive. With a low snarl, he reached for the door handle.



Von Mellenthin cut off the shortwave radio with a flick of a fingertip. "There. It's settled. They will get my message in due course to whomever needs it."

Erik nodded from the seat next to the Zeon General. "Yes."

"I knew you would see things my way. It's better for all of us if it does work, I think." Von Mellenthin smiled at the boy, like a pleased lord whose servant has done him well.

"Your arrangement is sound. I will inform the others, and they will understand. Everyone's needs are met, with little risk of disappointment." Erik's eyes met von Mellenthin's without fear. He, at least, now knew what Nemesis was all about, and that knowledge had made him an equal with the General, and no longer a hostage to be used as a shield. With this deal, it put the Commonality where it needed to be: in the role of treasures. Erik was content with that.

"Then come," said von Mellenthin, pleased beyond measure, "I will take you back to---"

"---to where?" rasped a voice from the door as it flew open, admitting von Seydlitz, whose face was a mask of rage and horror.

Von Mellenthin stared coolly at his brother, while Erik shrank deeper into his chair reflexively.

Von Seydlitz walked slowly towards them, eyes raking them both. "So that is what this is all about, is it? I heard part of your little conversation, Dietrich. Is this all Nemesis is to you? Is this what we have to endure Hell to achieve? Slavery? To Axis?"

"It's not a matter of slavery, Reinhardt," explained von Mellenthin. "It's a matter of military security and survival. Promises have been made that must be kept for the good of all to succeed where they will."

"And who told you that? Your own insight, or Haman Kahn?" accused von Seydlitz. "I cannot believe you have needlessly trapped us all here for this idiocy, Dietrich!"

Von Mellenthin steepled his fingers. "I'm not going to sit here and justify my actions to you, Oberst. The decision has been made. Negotiations between the AEUG and Axis broke down because that imbecile Char Aznable, the so-called heir to Zeon Daikun's misbegotten legacy, could not come down from his high horse and accept the reality of the situation, and all because the AEUG has won a few piecemeal battles against the Titans and Char believes he's now invincible. I am not so blind to the obvious, and I am in a better position to bargain with our Axis brethren."

"You cannot TRUST her!" howled von Seydlitz, his Command voice like a thunderclap that echoed through the hallway and the stairs.

Von Mellenthin was, of course, immune to the effects. Von Seydlitz fell to his knees and desperately grasped one of von Mellenthin's hands in both of his own, like a supplicant to a higher lord (which, essentially, was the case). "Please, listen, Dietrich! That scheming bitch killed her own father! No patricide can be trusted, any more than a regicide can be!" He squeezed von Mellenthin's hand as hard as he could, knowing that he could make his older foster brother feel it. "No one ever proved that Degin Zavi killed Old Man Daikun; I know she killed Maharaja Kahn! She will betray us!"

Von Mellenthin squeezed his brother's hands in return. "She has what I need to win, Reinhardt, and I have what she wants: something that the AEUG could not give her and the Titans have to create artificially and will only give up under duress. I have a bevy that I can simply give away in equitable trade."

Von Seydlitz's desperately wild grey eyes slid over to look at Erik, who had stopped cowering. "NewTypes."

"Yes. The ultimate currency." Von Mellenthin covered their clasped hands over with his free one. "Haman will give up control of legions to obtain these seven children for herself."

Von Seydlitz continued to look at Erik. "And what do you get out of this?"

Erik met his gaze with his expansive green eyes. "A chance."

Von Seydlitz was trembling, partly in shock, partly in rage, partly in an emotion that anyone else would call fear but one that he could not put a name to. "This cannot be happening. . ."

"Think of it, Reinhardt," said von Mellenthin, as the room got a bit colder and his voice equally chilling, "the chance to command again, in the field. Haman knows her alliance with the Titans will not last, though she would never admit as much; what we offer her is a swift and easy victory instead of a protracted battle, in addition to access to the seven most valuable souls in the Earth Sphere. She wants us on her side, brother mine, and she will give up the worth of Zeon for it!

"And besides," von Mellenthin's smile got a little more rapine, "she's a fascinating creature, from what I've deduced. I may just let her live."

Von Seydlitz, who had been staring intently at the young NewType in the other seat, swiveled his head towards his brother, eyes as wide as saucers, mouth agape. "This is. . .this is insane!"

The leonine smile slid off of von Mellenthin's face. "Perhaps, but that's the way it is going to be. Make it happen and it will succeed."

Von Seydlitz somehow found the strength to free one of his hands. "Dietrich, this is a gamble we cannot possibly win. That bitch will kill anyone who ever gets close to her, even those she considers to be her allies and her friends. We can do this without Axis, without the risk, and we don't need them," he pointed at Erik with a clawlike finger, "to do it! We have the breakout we need to leave this pesthole of a Lower Saxon low-class gene pool and finish Nemesis as we originally planned! I can give you this without needing to prostrate ourselves to a traitor!"

Realizing that von Seydlitz was not going to agree to this with all his heart and soul, von Mellenthin let go of his brother's other hand, placed both his hands on his knees, and leaned very, very close to von Seydlitz's face. In a monotone, very slowly, he spoke: "At this point in time, Oberst von Seydlitz, I need these seven children and that 'traitor' more than I need you."

The world, which was once von Seydlitz's plaything, suddenly went into a dizzying darkness for the Zeon Colonel. When he had been fifteen years of age, he had been smashed to the ground in defeat on the Field of May by von Mellenthin's warhammer, but the blows of that heavy weapon had not damaged him nearly so badly as when the older of the two had used his gauntleted fists to crumple von Seydlitz's helmet about his face until he had lost consciousness. The words von Mellenthin had just spoken to him hurt even worse than his fists that day had. "Ist das alles, sobald und zukuenftiger Koenig?" Is that all, once and future King?

"Tomorrow night, Oberst. Prepare the men." Von Mellenthin knew he had just wounded his brother's pride deeply, perhaps more deeply than he ever had before, and he was no stranger to causing his too-serious foster sibling pains of the soul. With one last long gaze into the pain, too rare and too precious to ignore, in von Seydlitz's ice-grey eyes, von Mellenthin spun around his chair, turning his back on the Colonel. "You have your orders. You are free to go, Graf von Seydlitz."

Von Seydlitz was not certain where he found the will to stand to his feet after this. His mind, a vast expanse of memories, experiences, and knowledge that would have made Mensa scholars reel, could not piece together the vocabulary to even remotely describe the loss of trust they had just displayed. This had never, in all their lives, occurred before; even his earliest memory of Dietrich von Mellenthin, their first meeting when the scion of the House of Hessen had set his dog on the scion of the House of Brandenburg-Preussen as a test of the worth of his blood, that incident had not left him with such a keen sense of betrayal, disappointment, and utter helplessness combined with a hopelessness. Nevertheless, despite the crushing weight that felt heavier than New Koenigsberg itself, he did stand to his feet. "Dietrich, do not make this---"

"I SAID GET OUT!!!" bellowed von Mellenthin even more loudly than von Seydlitz had minutes earlier. The windows two flights up the stairs rattled from the acoustical force of it. Erik actually recoiled from the shock of it, his already-giant eyes growing wider as he fought the urge to simply flee the room.

Von Seydlitz's lips compressed into a line so tight they virtually disappeared. He saluted, as was proper form that even on his worst day he would not have forgotten, and then turned on his bootheel and left, detesting losing as a not-too-distant cousin to failure, which was anathema to an Elector-Prince. As he walked up the stairs, each footstep weighing twice as heavy as it should, he began to wonder if this was the wound that would kill him, slowly and relentlessly. Thrown away. It has all been thrown away for a dream that will not become a reality. I can do nothing now except what I can to try, but how can I give this mission my best if I cannot convince myself of its tactical value? Damn you, Dietrich, for making me doubt myself.

An ancient quote from Friedrich von Schiller summed up his thoughts exactly: 'With stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.'

**********************************************

To be continued in Chapter 19. . .


Author's Notes (I need to do more of these kind of things; everyone else does, and it makes life easier. I think I'll do these from this point onward):

*FBCB2 – Force XXI Battle Command Brigade-and-Below; an integrated battle system that transforms an armored unit of individual components into a unified force whereby each individual unit functions under the same information as the others. Combines GPS, real-time situational awareness of the battlefield, universal IFF encoding/iconography, communications, and integrated logistics support. No, I did not make this up.

Mentions of stuff from Redcomet's (What Cost For Freedom?) and Zinegata's (Warriors in the Shadows) works again. Should be easy enough to spot. I figure when BK catches his works up with the Zeta era, I'll be plugging him in, too. Here's forewarning for future chapters: expect to see mentions of Neo-Aztlan colony and the 505th Falling Eagles unit from 0079 that belong to kishiria and debuted in her fic Quinto Sol, which is a badass read. So the Pattern will ensnare yet more UC goodness for its use; I've always been something of a user, anyway.

His Shadow's Corner of FAQ Answers: This chapter, not only being VERY late in the making, was not an easy one to write for me. The dynamics of taking two characters who, in my skull, complement each other perfectly in virtually all aspects because they are, essentially, my superego and my ego (and Antares, my weirdo id personified), and forcing a rift between them and thereby staining their once-harmonious relationship was, in essence, me sort of betraying myself to accomplish. Unfortunately, conveying such a sense of the loss of trust between the two where once it was that same sense of trust that made them a force to be reckoned with, both in their functionally Nietzschean society of origin and on the battlefield, which is the ultimate test of trust, that sense of a breaking of faith is so damn HARD to emote in just words. The language is simply lacking in words that can convey what it has to feel like to have someone so close to you that they seem AS close as your own skin suddenly not be able to be trusted. How would that be? How much would that HURT? And then, to place beings like these in that position, when all their lives ruthlessness and a. . .retreat from the "sensitive" emotions commonplace in people (even in ultra-macho males like soldiers) to the point where their lack of presence makes them seem more inhuman even than they are, are suddenly forced to cope with what happens when they have to suffer through it, especially since the dynamics of their relationship went against that same social programming (except on the Field of May, where anything went). . .whoa. How far do I go with it, and still have it seem believable? Did I succeed? I've no idea, you tell me.

I like to think that in such a situation, each would put up something of a barrier against an outward show of just how DEEPLY this is affecting them; with Seydlitz, it was easy, he's a very stoic sort of guy, though his omnipresent shield does have cracks (as seen with the deaths of Haskell and Dalyev), but this was even worse than THAT for him. I figured for him, if it reached his EYES, it was reaching his soul, the one he denies the "sensitive" emotions from, and now he has this great burden to have to cope with. His face won't change much (though when it does it seems drastic enough), but his EYES can be quite expressive, so I used those for him and just hoped that it worked as an emotive tool (I can't step outside "the Box" with my own work). With Mellenthin, he's all about a contained sort of anger, the kind of anger someone who's been promised something and then scorned feels, a kind of neverending "I will make you PAY!" kind of rage/hate vindictivity colors everything he does and everything he says. In spite of the fact that he can charm snakes when he wants to, he's a temper-tantrum waiting to happen ALL THE TIME, smouldering in an ancient despising of the way things ARE. Now, with this, it became apparent that his volcanic anger is both weapon and shield for him, a lash and a rod; he uses it to punish, but also to HIDE BEHIND; harm him, and he goes ballistic, usually vocally. Seydlitz not trusting his plan is, to him, a lot like taking a thornbush and beating him across the face and shoulders with it, and he responds in a cruel fashion, the cruelest he knows of, because he's about the only person in the universe who can get under Seydlitz's shield because he knows Seydlitz's weaknesses better than even Seydlitz does. But it always has to be bent around this ever-present temper, it can never be subtle with Mellenthin. . .but then, it CAN, but only for HIMSELF. His fight earlier with Seydlitz was really more a matter of business for them, a "clearing the air" after the eight-year absence from each other over a single order in the middle of a battle. . .whoopdee-doo, they beat on each other a bit, make up, and it's all good again. This time, it's something more blatant between them, but for Mellenthin, he can hide how much it hurts HIM behind the anger, and project it through the anger at the same time. This gives him the air of "I don't give a fuck what YOU think, just serve your purpose and get out of my fucking space", even when what he's saying or doing is really picking at his bizarre sense of conscience. Mellenthin's face, often described as leonine in feature, is very expressive, so whenever he raises his voice it's easy to picture his face sort of twisting into a pissed-off cat-like snarling mask, complete with the blazing bluish-green eyes, bared teeth, throbbing veins on the forehead and temples, and face going all flushed, all INSTANTANEOUSLY and AS OFTEN AS HE WANTS, and it will happen no matter HOW he's actually feeling as long as it's NEGATIVE. Frustrated, hurt, confused, mad, displeased, it doesn't really matter with him as long as the source is a negative; when he's in a good mood, he's very calm, very soothing, and very confident in himself and his abilities (case in point, the news interview in Mannheim). Unlike de la Somme, whose every emotion is practically an open book in his eyes, face, body movements and language, speech, etc., Mellenthin's only real outlet of expression is with anger, but boy, is it a useful outlet, indeed. Besides, de la Somme is another story all his own. He gets his own piece of the FAQ Corner later. ^_^

But any way you slice it, it's all Mellenthin's fault and he knows it, so he lashes out because he feels guilty over first accusing Seydlitz of bringing the Titans down on them prematurely, and then again claiming that as an asset, Seydlitz is unnecessary to him.

And then I take all of this angst and DOWNPLAY it for the characters outwardly (notice, however, how many times eyes come into play, though), because that's how THEY would act outwardly, even the anger-driven Mellenthin, because they have forms to maintain, even in the midst of overwhelming emotion that would reduce anyone I know (myself included cause I'm a sissy like that) into heart-wrenching sobs, they don't have that luxury. As almost any expert in emotional psychology will tell you, the inability to express emotion, to "let go" in a way that is both refreshing and rehabilitating, will turn a person into a sociopath in pretty short order, unable to cope with society as a whole. It just so happens that that exact reaction is an invaluable trait in a person whose purpose is to rule over others, because one of the abilities of the quasitypical ruler is the APPEARANCE of an immunity to a great many human emotions that may cloud judgment (the reverse is also true, and that's where the fine line lays).

Now I gotta figure out a way to FIX it. We'll just have to see, won't we?