Disclaimer: still feeling lazy, see chapter 1
AN: my bad this Chap took a lot longer than expected. (I blame writer's block and good video games) and to anyone who's read my other chaps I'm sorry for the grammar issues. I did not proof read well I have no excuse. I think I got most of them in this one.
Chaos Theory
Rated M for violence, mild adult themes and language (my charters say fuck a lot)
CH.3
God Complex?
Wow you're an asshole. Welcome to the club! There's cookies and punch in back.
Blade42 in response to a comment on closed his eyes, allowing them to rehydrate after looking at a laptop screen for too long. The miniaturized computer was one he had to barrow from Ami because Bard wasn't willing to take the chance of some wiseass, or a counter intelligence group back hacking the C&C system. Bard refocused on the screen, at the moment he had several maps Ami had liberated from public companies and an open link to a library server.
"Look at this." Jo said point to a hard copy topographical map.
"What?" Bard said getting out of his seat and kneeled to get a better view. Fran leaned in staying in his chair; Sei glanced over her shoulder at them from the driver's seat. Last Meg leaned unnecessarily close to Jo, with 5 people in the command cabin it was a little tight, but Bard didn't want to push his luck by asking Meg to leave after Jo's show of affection at the briefing.
"Here." Jo pointed at the map
"So?' Bard said "there's nothing there. No major land masses, hills, nothing. Just that river. It gets shallow so they could ford there but why bother there is a bridge maybe 25- 30 miles south."
"RAPT controls that bridge." Fran said, "Rigged with sensors and a twice daily patrol. That's the only reason I see." Bard nodded his head in agreeance
"There's a mild hill range about 45 miles away. 2 maybe 3 days travel for something that big over unrefined ground, possible hiding spot but unlikely. There's no way to hide to from aerial surveillance. If you place it close to your base of operations it'll be spoted when someone has any reason to search the area and everything goes down the shitter. There's no where close to that area to safely hide something the size of the Chaos gun."
"There is a city here," Jo pointed at a level area by the sea, almost in the center of the mountain range. "Onika."
"The ghost city!" Meg exclaimed worriedly "that place is haunted." Bard and Fran snorted at the notion. Jo kept a passive expression.
"No it's not." Jo protested calmly.
"The place was hit hard by the quake of 2025." Sei said, not looking away from the road. "After that the city never recovered. People were afeard after they discovered a new fault line was forming underneath it. The city was left to die, decaying like some rotting corpse."
"Sounds like you had family there." Fran said
"My parents."
" I see. I'm sorry." Fran said out of social expectance.
"Ok you win we'll go." Bard partially complained, "As soon as we stop moving."
"We pass it on the way." Jo said.
"Umm... where are we going anyway?" Meg piped up.
"I'd be hard to mount a search from Tokyo, Leo has a place we can us as a base of operations. He did Jango's field trials there. It'll be big enough." Sei explained.
"Nice to know you people know everything. What number am I thinking of." Bard said
"23" Fran guessed
"Damn."
"Will you stop whining?" Meg whined at him.
"No." Bard snapped "as a solder for higher I have the god given fucking right to bitch and moan until my superior officer threats to shoot me and if I may point out I do have a good reason to bitch and moan, because we are chasing down one of the most destructive things to this date created by man. A weapon second only to the atomic bomb in human deaths per shot. A weapon our enemies will have no issue using against anybody that considers standing in their way of whatever they wish to do, which for the record most certainly includes us. So excuse me for being a little miffed about the whole situation."
"You have such a way with words." Fran said in a smug sort of voice.
"Fran shut the pie hole before I shove this map where the sun don't shine." Bard threatened.
"If this heart warming bubby-buddy moment is done with, we'll be there in about 20 minutes." Jo said. Fran and Bard rock paper, scissored. Bard lost. He got up and left to ready himself.
Bard placed the case holding his personal weapons on the table and unlocked it. He pulled out his .45 colt setting it on table top. He placed his hand on the cloth holding his disassembled AK-27 assault rifle, but decided against bringing it. Bard relocked the case and replaced it in his room.
"You look ready." Jo said.
"Just a minute." Bard told her. He rapped on his chest listening for the solid thud of his knuckles coming in contact with the ceramic plate of his bullet proof vest. The vest was a part of the whole out fit he wore. The was all Kevlar, the vest used steel and ceramics to keep high velocity rounds from punching into his vital organs, the pants and shirt wore a worn mix of cotton, Kevlar, polyester and about 3 more items only there creators could pronounce the names of. All 3 parts were coated in a sun reactive green dye to add in camouflage. Basically the amount of sun light the dye received dictated how bright or dark the shade of green was. So as long as there was color in the plants Bard would blend in as well as a human could.
Bard strapped the pistol holster on. The holster was slung low, resting on his mid-thigh were his hands naturally fell when walking. Bard looked up in time to see Meg waltz in, dress in her neon yellow dress and cowboy hat.
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
Yes." Bard and Meg argued back and forth.
"You have got to be kidding me." Bard asked Jo
"I trust her." Was her response. Bard just growled.
"I should be calling you 6 different types of stupid but, I know I'm not going to win this fight so let's just skip it and get to reality here. Meg change. I'm not sure if you know what we're doing so I'm going to say this as bluntly as I can. We are doing a recon of a possible trail of transport and supply. Now I'm sure you have a firm grasp of what is needed for urban tracking and scouting. But this as natural and forestry as Japan gets from what I'm told and for the record neon yellow does not blend with any sort of green never mind the natural forestry shades. Now doing what we're doing getting seen first tends to get you shot at. Now believe me having a bullet rip up your insides and most likely kill you tends to ruin your whole day. Now it is your choice to follow my advice or not because you can come, but let me warn you. If you want to press the point of going out on recon in that getup I will blow out both you knee caps and the issue will be settled that way, because I like my sense of self existence and would like to keep as is."
"You are a bastard." Meg said
"And I'm still alive. Now change." Bard ordered. Meg huffed, and went to change.
"This from the man who cried like a baby when Ray died." Fran commented
"Oh shut the hell up." Bard snapped. He slid a clip into the .45 and jacked a round into the chamber. "Some days it's not worth giving a damn."
"At least you don't pretend not to." Fran said. "People like that are hard to get along with."
"Speaking of which." Bard looked at Jo.
"What's your problem?" she asked him.
"Didn't say a word."
"Nothing" Bard and Fran said at the same time. Bard moved to the stairwell by the door. Positioning him self beside the door. Meg reappeared, in a much more appropriate green shirt and kaki shorts.
"It's all I got." She explained
"It'll do." Jo told her. Bard rolled his eyes.
"I still think this is a bad idea."
"And I think you're a coward." Jo shot back
"And I know for a fact you're suicidal so if you're done stating the obvious we're only a minute out."
"Should I pray for your safe return or just prepare for the insurance money?" Fran asked
"Thanks." Meg said sarcastically
Bard opened the door to the open air. The ground rushed by as the stairs extended.
"Aren't we stopping?" Meg exclaimed
"It's called tuck and roll sweetheart." Bard yelled over the wind and run down the stairs, reached the end and leaped to clear the trailer's rear wheels. Bard did exactly as he said; he tucked and rolled along the ground until his body ran out of momentum. Jo landed beside him in a cloud of road dust. Her limbs wrapped around Meg, after having more or less throw her out the door after Bard. Bard stood up and dusted himself off.
"That was fun." Jo said
"Are you crazy!" Meg bellowed back at her,
"Keep your voice down." Jo commanded. Bard leaned over.
"Yes she is legally insane, and keep your fucking voice down." He said "remember our conversation on how getting seen first will get you shot? Being loud doesn't help." Jo uncurled from Meg and stood up,
"Sitting on our asses won't get things done."
"I know I know." Bard said "it was west right?" Jo nodded a correct at him.
Pickers bite lightly into Bard's skin but he didn't notice, he had learned to tune out that sort of mild discomfort in much darker settings than this. The sun was out and the sky was blue, a light breeze tickled the grass in a uniform fashion it was a very pleasant day. Bard peer thought his binoculars at a smoky landscape beyond the base of the hill. On the far side of the slope out of sight Jo and Meg waited. They were in theory watching his backside; however he was only counting on Jo to do that. He was the one on the crest of the hill because he wasn't in a mood to baby sit. Bard whistled and Jo flew up the hill side not making a sound, Meg to his surprise followed quickly, the noise she made was very below the need and was drowned out by the slight breeze at a 4 or 5 paces. Maybe he wasn't giving her enough credit.
"What?"
"There's a shanty town in the bend of the river." Bard whispered to the pair of woman. There probably wasn't a soul around for kilometers, but there was no point in taking the chance. Bard handed Jo the binoculars "looks likes something happened the area is smoky and a couple of building aren't standing anymore, but then again it looks like I could knock those things over by leaning on them."
"Looks deserted." Jo said "that's unusual."
"Doesn't look to promising." Bard said
"For what?" Meg asked.
"Survivors." Jo explained.
"Best case scenario is massive fire and the people decided to cut their losses." Bard thought-spoke
"Genocide is far more likely." Jo said bluntly.
Meg carefully picked her way across the scattered remains of a poorly built wooden shack, its walls splintered by an explosive. The smoke hung thick enough in the air to leave a taste in one's mouth. The ground was littered with the wastes of battle, round casings, dropped magazines, blast marks, human and cybot tracks, dried blood spots. But no bodies or any reusable equipment for that matter. Whoever won, won decisively enough to clean up. Bard and Jo moved through the zone of destruction with an eerie sense of familiarity. Securing corners and windows with ease of practice. Meg followed watching were told to.
"No one's here." Meg said, scanning the deserted landscape.
"I have to agree with you on this one." Bard conceded. He holstered his .45. "They wanted these people gone, the area clean. Didn't want any survivors coming back."
"There aren't many survivors if any." Jo said. She pointed at a large patch of freshly turned earth just beyond the shatty's edge. "We better be quick, who did this will be back to burn the evidence." Bard knelt down examining the bullet casing on the ground, picking them up and carefully searching each one. He moved slowly doubled over, searching the liter. Jo peeked her head in to a shanty; Meg took a cue from this searching a "housing" as well. However she made the mistake of striding into the door, not peeking.
While this happened all too fast for anyone to understand why they survived, they indeed did. Meg tripped of a variation of a bouncing Betty land mine. Left behind to insure no one poking around would live to report what they found. The land mine did exactly what it was designed to do. The mine's primary charge launched a sonic propelled directional ordinance pod into the air. It punched through the tin roof of the shanty and detonated. The shaped directional ordinance pod is very similar to the US Claymore mine, a curved casing with a pound of C4 for propellant and several hundred ball bearings meant to kill in a 120 degree cone instead of a circle. A timed fuse in the pod ignited an explosive chemical call hydroplinate. When ignited the chemical doesn't explode right away, for a fraction of a second in implodes inward on itself and then releases its force outward. The energy this causes is massive, 50 pounds of this stuff and a 30 ft steel pipe will launch an 8oz steel ball into low orbit. The Japan Space Exploratory Commission has done it. The energy release is designed in this mine that the explosive doesn't really launch the ball bearings inside, the sound wave and air pressure change from the small detonation does. Along with all this nastyness the mine harnesses one more side affect to its advantage. Any explosive converts most of its potential energy into heat and light. It's a nature of explosives. The heat is held around the pod just long enough to melt a few of the ball bearings into molten globs of burning death and coat the outside of most of the rest in the super heated metal.
The mine launched itself through the roof, taking it with it for several feet. When the tin roof fell back to earth it caved in on its center, this is what saved the trio. Call it the grace of God, destiny, or just dumb luck, what ever suits your sense of logic best, that this shanty was capped with a piece of metal strong enough to withstand the impact of the mine's projectiles but flimsy enough to bend. The metallic roof deflected the majority of the death inflictors away from Jo, Meg and Bard preventing harm. Unfortunately as anyone versed in the English language will know, majority does not mean all.
Bard groaned and resisted the urge to pick at the bandage on his face. He was frustrated as hell, because for all his experience on the wrong end of a barrel and other means of killing somebody, along with the after affects he didn't know what was going on. He took an educated guess from the noise that either Meg or Jo was getting patched back together like some pathetic voodoo doll. Beyond that Bard didn't have a clue, because Bard couldn't see. The bouncing betty mine released light and heat normally compare to that of the sun in scientific circles/terms. Being less than 5 meters from the explosion gives people sunburns, in uncomfortable places occasionally. Bard like when the Chaos gun exploded back in San Francisco had been looking in a bad direction. The whites and retinas of his eyeballs had been more-or-less sunburned, blinding him for the next several days. In the long run it wasn't any more dangerous to him than a regular sunburn would be, that said this sort of injury increased the odds of becoming color blind as one aged about 3 fold. However to honest, after the Chaos gun injury he was kind of counting days till then anyway. Besides this whole bad day would be even more so if not for the drugs in his body. There are times when people just have to could the blessing they have. Thank god for anti-clogulant-b12, the nuke of all painkillers. Bard felt the chair beside his creak.
"Who's there?" he asked.
"What? a fella can't side down?" Fran said.
"Just don't sneak up on me." Bard said submissively. "Do I even want to know?"
"Meg will live. She was in trouble but it was mostly superficial flesh wounds. Bleeders. She'll be back to her bright and cheery self in a couple days." Fran looked sideways at Bard despite the fact he couldn't see the sneerful action "do I even have to say how lucky you three Bastards are?"
"No you don't you prideful like fucker." Bard bitched "I take it Jo is fine then?"
"I sprained my wrist and my head feels like someone took a hammer to it." Jo explained in a lecturative tone
"I really don't doubt you know what that feels like." Fran said
"Give me a hand will ya? The heat in here is getting to me." Bard said placing a hand blindly into the air. Jo took it, leading him out the door.
"Somehow, I told you so just doesn't cut it." Jo said nothing. The lower temperature of the night air created a defined line between in and outside. Bard felt the excessive heat drawn out of his body, it felt wonderful. Jo let him go within a hand span away from the outer wall. He placed a palm against it, seeking evidence that he wasn't suspended in some lightless, timeless void between existences.
"Well this is a great end to a generally suckie day." Jo continued to say nothing.
"She can normally handle herself, with me around." Jo said, more introspective than anything.
"Warfare has steep learning curve, sooner or later you wind up on the bad end of it." Bard said in a feeble attempt to logicalize the whole situation."
"I should have protected her."
"You're only human, you can't protect everyone all the time."
"I should have,"
"Oh Jez, your not God Jo, you've got limits like the rest of us. You might be an angel of death but that's it." Jo snorted
"What?"
"You and Meg are the only two people that have never been angry at me." She stated
"What the hell? That came out of left field. And for the record angry is a pretty good description of how I felt when you got my brother shot!" Bard nearly yelled at Jo
"You where furious, pissed, not angry." Bard thought long and hard on that one.
"The difference being…."
"Furious passes. Anger don't" Jo explained.
"So I don't hold grudges well, big deal."
"It's bigger then you think." Jo paused "the only person Meg could be angry at is herself. She shouldn't."
" Whoa whoa whoa…" Bard said picking her words apart to find the real meaning. "Back up here, you're feeling guilty about not feeling guilty? At the end of the day, you're still feeling guilty." Jo stared straight ahead, Bard only heard silence.
"Oh don't give me that I'm not like other people bullshit again. Tell me you don't feel fear, or feel guilt directly. But don't tell me you have no soul, or look at the stars at night and not wonder what the hell is out there. I've seen you cry and I've seen you wonder. You may not be normal but you're not that different."
"It's cloudy tonight. No stars." Jo said
"So I'm not god either."
Bard curled up under the blanket in his hammock, to protect against the chill. It really wasn't that cold a night but his back and face were sun burnt from the mine and those burns could make the air feel a bit chilly with nothing around to distract you. Meg was in his team's trailer, it had a med area set up to ICU 1 person, saying she'll live doesn't mean she's out of the woods yet. Bard mentally cursed at the world in frustration. He had managed to reach that mildly fuzzy drowsy area where sleep is possible if you don't think too much, and he had just had a very full day to think about. Bard thought about the recon, drifting into the shanty town. He said/thought a pray in thanks. He wasn't religious in the fact he went to church every Sunday. But he did make it a point to say thanks whenever all logic dictated he shouldn't have what he has, shouldn't still have all his limbs, or shouldn't still be breathing. At the moment all 3 applied.
The door slid open slowly and quietly. Bard closed his eyes despite the bandage a, habit from childhood. Jo snuck over to the side of the hammock. Bard was left in the dark, literally. He had no idea what was going on till Jo pulled up the blanket and got in the hammock. She thought Bard was asleep, but he draped an arm over her middle and thought the ach her neck created against the hammock fabric, for comfort mostly. Funny how people fall into old habits when stressed.
" I'm really hoping it's you Jo cause I told that hooker to go home an hour ago. I'm not paying overtime." Bard whispered
"funny." Was the response.
" You never where much of a conversationalist, Meg still under?" he asked
"Yes, your people are keeping her sedated till morning, something about letting her wounds settle." Jo said.
" You really should talk to her."
"Why."
"Because she loves you." Bard paused, letting that sink in.
"I guess I do too." Jo answered.
"But not in that way." Bard summarized.
"What?"
" Do you love her like you love me?" Bard asked
"Yes."
"Then not in that way." Bard summarized again. " I may not know you perfectly Jo, but I know you well enough to know that. We've been through hell together, and I'm not sure what you went through with Meg but it proved for both of us to you that we're useful, reliable, and loyal, all to varying degrees. You're talking about comradeship, and just generally giving a damn. And yes that is a very strong form of love, what that isn't what she feels. She's……." Bard stopped lost for words. He realized in trying to say so he had no words to try and explain to Jo how he thought Meg felt. Jo wasn't speaking "just… talk to her for my sake. Please."
"Fine, should I take that as a sign to leave?" Jo questioned.
"No, I like having you here. It's comforting and familiar. To be honest I was feeling exposed before you showed up." Bard placed his head down, but Jo moved hers back forcing Bard to drape his chin over her neck and lay his head against hers. His skull cushioned but Jo's platinum hair. In war there was a reason to get close like this, 1 to share body heat. Should there be need, 2 to make as small a target as possible should they be shelled in the night. However that need for either of those things tonight was so small it would almost be fair to call it impossible.
AN: thank you for reading, and please leave a review. Please if you enjoy this story in any way it's in your best interest to leave one. The more reviews there are the more motivation I have to sit and write. Without them it's an I'll finish when I finish sort of deal.
Thanks for leaving a review.
CH2 Akasha the goddess
CH1 xsojix