"¡Ay,
que lastima!."
Octavio Duarte sat in his Zaku, towering above Xicotencatl road. His suit's monoeye was trained on the pink and blue Zaku beside him instead of on the seaboard where he was supposed to be monitoring. Luna Ruiz was such a competent Jion officer, he reflected, so why did she insist on such childish colours? Even covered with dust as her machine was now, he still couldn't keep from picturing Luna as a teenager, and the woman was a commissioned officer in her twenties.
Ruiz's suit was gazing out over the city. Here and there, smoke was rising from what the Fedichos had bombed. The rail freight terminal. An automotive factory. The causeway leading to the island fortress of San Juan Ulúa in the harbour. Between the city firefighters and the Jions, they'd been able to put out most of the fires, although rescue had been slowed because the mobile suits needed to engage the bombers. Several bombing runs had been disrupted
Duarte sighed. He and Ruiz, who were now the only members of First team after they'd restructured to compensate for the loss of Lopez, had been in Veracruz to back up the Benito Juarez for two weeks. He missed Luisa. He missed going to sleep beside her, her cooking, and her sarcastic remarks. He missed Abuela's spiritlike presence and even Abuelo's wacky theories about the gods. Garma as Huitzilopochtli. Señor.
Chavez and Alcaraz were handling the base at Teotihuacan. They were doing well, from all he'd heard. The company was ready to fly down at a word from Duarte, but he hadn't seen fit to call them.
"Why do the Fedichos keep pissing on us this way, Capitan?" Ruiz asked as they drove their suits back to base. "It's as if the Fedichos just want to poke us with sticks, make us angry like a hive of bees."
"I think that's exactly it," Duarte told her. "We've forced them out of the last major city in the south of Mexico. These little attacks are to see how much they can get away with."
Prince Garma back in California Base had been sending abundant intelligence. Duarte knew that they couldn't see any sign of Federation bases within aerial striking distance of Mexico, which meant that the enemy was either well hidden underground or out to sea. Duarte and California Base suspected the latter.
"I almost wish that the Fedichos would just launch their attack and let us get it over with," Luna said.
Duarte shook his head in his suit. "As you say, they're just pissing on us. They want to make us angry, see how much firepower we're willing to throw at them."
"They're testing us," Captain Guillermo Greifenstein DÌaz agreed, once they were back in the TOC of the "Benito Juarez". Greifenstein, a tall, slender man with thinning blond hair and blue eyes, was quicker on the uptake than any of the 505th had wanted to admit after the taking of Oaxaca. Despite his last name, he was pura Raza, his family having moved there after World War II for a multiple-great grandfather to be a supervisor in the Volkswagen plant.
"Ever considered a visit to Nuevo Koenigsburg?" Duarte had once asked him conversationally.
Greifenstein had shaken his head. "I hate beer and don't speak a word of German," he said, ending that conversation. "I get so sick of everybody assuming I identify as a German. All I have is a last name, caramba."
"They want to check out our resistance, see how much we have to defend the city with," Duarte agreed. "That's why we're seeing attacks on factories in the suburbs and the main roads getting bombed."
"Any word from Colonel Zabi as to where they're coming from?"
Duarte shook his head. "Possibly an aircraft carrier, but it's also possible they're coming in from Jaburo, wherever that is."
"We know it's south of here. That's a lot of land mass to look around in, though."
"Could it be hidden in the Yucatan, maybe?" Luna asked.
1st Lieutenant Xochitl Madero Hernan shook her head. "We have the Zapatistas down there keeping an eye out. They and their Maya associates know the jungle better than we know the streets of Zum City." She grinned nastily; her family had been among the last bunch of deportees. The high cost of living of Zum City had not been an option for a family of dark skinned, black haired Nahuas.
Luna squirmed a bit. She had been born on Side 3, in Guadalupe colony. She had light skin, shoulder-length brown hair, and she did know Zum City from her time at the Academy. Xochitl's hip-length, obsidian-black hair was in a single braid down her back. She radiated attitude and OTS.
Greifenstein was talking. "They could be in Honduras for all we know. The Fedichos are testing our resistance, but they're also being very careful not to do more than nibble around our edges. Looks like they want to take the city whole, but it could all still be a probe. If anything, they know we have the suits."
"I agree," said Duarte. "They lost Oaxaca, they have to compensate. What better way to do it than to seize the only remaining port in the Gulf of Mexico?"
"The water route to Canaveral and Cuba," Madero said. "Plus if they take Veracruz they can dock their ships, release their troops and tanks and head right into the heart of Mexico."
"Couldn't they do that via Cancun?" Ruiz asked.
Greifenstein tipped his head side-to-side in a thoughtful gesture. "They could, but it wouldn't be very worth their while. Cancun was more or less a cruise ship port, and we made sure to destroy all the amenities anyway. It left us with a lot of Conejos who had been employed at the hotels, but it had to be done. It's a long, long way from there into the Valley of Mexico, though." He turned to Duarte. "That's why they're dropping bombs so selectively, it seems. They need this port for themselves."
"With it in their hands, they've got a straight shot to Mexico City on one side and the Caribbean on the other," Madero observed. "They're not going to want to destroy it."
An aide brought over a stack of the most recent reconnaissance photos. The officers spread them out on the large oak table that dominated Greifenstein's office. "They're sending in airstrikes against what they perceive as possible military targets," he said. "They've been mostly wrong so far, although they've done damage to some of our runways. It's anyone's guess how long they're going to persist in doing this."
"I've got the Royal Cuauhtemocs lined up as a quick response force," Duarte assured him.
"All of them?" Greifenstein asked with some concern.
"Team rotations. Second team will respond first, Third will stay behind so we don't leave the base completely vulnerable. They can still be called in if needed."
"The goal should be to do enough damage to the attackers that they give up or change tactics," Greifenstein said. "They won't keep this up forever."
Duarte nodded in agreement. "They'll spend some time deciding what's more important to them: Veracruz or its population. After that, they'll come for us."
The Federation struck again that night with another air and artillery barrage. Luna came out of a sound sleep immediately on hearing a siren, followed by explosions nearby, which had not been something usual at JFB Veracruz. She grabbed her uniform and came out of her geodesic dome to find Xochitl already outside, her braid half-undone.
"Mobile suit hangar, quickly!" she yelled, and the two young women started running towards it.
"They're close!" Ruiz observed.
"And on land. That's new," Madero said grimly. "They must have heard El Rubio. They changed tactics like he said."
The explosions and sounds of artillery impacts continued as they ran into the hangar. Duarte and Greifenstein were already there as the other four Benito Juarez came in. "The Fedichos are striking the suburbs from the air again," Duarte said. "They're coming in on the ground from the south."
"We have to push them back," said Greifenstein. "We can't let them encircle the city from the ground or they'll be able to take it."
"Second team is coming in by Gau from Teotihuacan," Duarte added. "They need 45 minutes and they'll drop right in. So until then, we'll use the plan we came up with earlier this week. Luna and I will take the north side, you Benito Juarez take the south. We'll keep them off the approaches to the city."
"We can add some Dopps to the equation," Greifenstein agreed. "Let's go."
Duarte and Ruiz walked their Zakus into the Mexican night, followed by four Magella tanks and eight armoured troop carriers. The streets were quiet; few citizens had left Veracruz but all knew to lie low while these things were happening. Duarte was aware that there had been no small amount of protest to what Zakus and tanks did to the city streets and roads, but it couldn't be helped. Not when the Federation was just outside.
In her own Zaku, Luna was wishing she'd been able to have a coffee before they mounted. Well, maybe not. Coffee meant she might have to pee later, and that was very inconvenient in a mobile suit. Once again into the breach though, facing Federation firepower and death. Luna smiled grimly. Doña Sebastiana, the Mexican personification of Death, was on her side, she was sure. She'd always been scared of the image of that dread Lady until she was older and made friends with Her: a skeleton in a robe like the Virgin, a bow and arrow in her hands.
Santa Muerte hace de mÌ una saeta, she prayed. Holy Death, make me into an arrow.
Then the firing started. "Look sharp for Fly Manthas," Duarte ordered, and Luna registered that even though she was training her suit's searchlights on the area in front of her. Ten million candlepower lit up the night, showing off a line of Federation tanks, turrets scanning left-to-right as they wove their way through the narrow suburban pathways. Their discipline was good, with plenty of space between tanks, but they were still moving single-file. Luna knew they'd caught them in mid-move. Experience gave her faith in that Duarte knew exactly what to do.
Three 120mm rounds struck the lead tank's turret coupling in mid-scan, blowing several tons of weapon system into the air and turning the armored vehicle into a pyre. Another burst caught the trail tank, immolating it and effectively trapping the convoy between two burning hulks.
The second tank was quick, its turret swishing back around from its rightward scan to engage the threat to its front. As the Jion suits began hammering murderous fire into the tank line, the twin 150mm's of the Federation tanks began to add their own thunder to the racket, forcing the mobile suits to find cover. The Magellas commenced firing as the Zakus repositioned to strike the Federation flanks, forcing the tanks to disperse their counterfire on multiple targets.
The second tank, now the first of the line, fired another shot at the Jion, then began to roll forward, using its power to push the bulk of its destroyed point tank off of the road, preparing to open the path the Feds could use to break out of their predicament. Open terrain would give the tanks the advantage of massed firepower. Luna saw it first.
"Jefe!"
"Heat hawks!" Duarte commanded, his Zaku charging into the tank line before they could escape into open ground. Luna drew hers and followed; even as she drew the blade it was deflecting bullets. She slashed downwards, both keeping shells from her cockpit and cutting at the tanks. Go away, bugs. Not today. Long ago she'd come to think of the Fedichos as roaches, not people, just dirty little vermin to be baited and killed or stomped under her foot. Take that. Eat my heat hawk. ¡Pinché cabrones!
It was all over before morning. As the sun began to rise over the Gulf of Mexico, sending soft pink rays across a landscape veiled in smoke and early-morning fog, the Federation retreated, leaving the remains of almost a company's worth of tanks and infantry carriers behind, smoldering as their fuel and ammo burned itself out. In his own cockpit, Duarte leaned forward, not believing what his radar and own eyes were telling him. He rubbed at his eyes angrily.
"What are they doing, Captain Duarte?" Ruiz asked over his radio.
"Turning tail like a bunch of cowards," Duarte said. "Morning. I guess they want breakfast!"
"That makes no sense, Luna said. "Should we go after them?"
There was a pause as Duarte consulted with Greifenstein, then: "Negative. Guillermo says the same thing happened in the south. Return to base; the infantry will handle the cleanup."
For all they were tired and bitchy, it was still good to see second team again. Mike Chavez, Pedro Hernandez, and Maria Franco met them in the hangar and exchanged hugs and kisses with their companions before accepting cups of coffee from a Benito Juarez wife.
"The way she's dressed," Chavez said. "I think I've seen that in a book somewhere."
The woman was wearing the normal Mexican outfit of embroidered blouse and jeans, but with a white handkerchief tied around her right upper arm, a plain white sombrero atop her braided hair.
"She's an Adelita," Maria Franco said, stirring some sugar into her cup. "Ancient custom from the early 20th century. Women revolutionary soldiers. Emiliano Zapata used them. ILa poder de la mujer/I, you know."
"They do more than serve coffee, I hope," Luna said.
"Yes," Greifenstein and Duarte said in unison, sipping from their cups at the same time.
"Why did the Feddies withdraw, though?" Chavez asked. "I mean, sure we were kicking their butts, but I know they must have more to throw at us."
"You complaining?" asked Hernandez.
"No, but it's suspicious."
"It is suspicious," Greifenstein agreed when the same Adelita came by with a tray of Ipan dulce/I. He picked out a pastry and went on, "All I can come up with is that bombing Veracruz just to do it isn't their goal. Maybe they just want to get us good and riled for something else."
"Maybe they're just testing us again," Xochitl Madero said.
That put an end to the conversation until they'd all eaten, and they returned to their quarters for a few hours of sleep.
Nothing happened the next day, nor the next. By the end of the week, it looked as if the First and Second teams of the 505th could go home.
"Stay packed," Duarte ordered.
There were sighs of resignation from the company, who did as they were told. Pablo's response was to install a jump seat in Duarte's Zaku.
"What's that?" Duarte asked, on finding him in the process.
Pablo tightened up the belts holding the seat in place. "If I gotta go with you, I can't go in the trucks with the mechanics. I checked. You'd have to buy me a kiddie car seat." He gave the belt an extra tug. "Jion military not set up for an enano like me."
The last time Pablo had been off Teotihuacan was during the drop to Earth. Although he'd had to wear his usual child's normal suit, he had been secure belted into place like the rest of them. Duarte hadn't stopped to consider that there might be a snag when they actually had their feet on the dirt.
Consequently, Duarte nodded. "Carry on."
"You know, I fix these things, but somebody else always has to test them out for me. This'll be my first time riding along in gravity."
"Definitely overrated," Duarte said. "Taking a body slam from another suit in full gravity is not a happy thing."
Pablo crossed his arms. "You really think the Fedichos are gonna have mobile suits one of these days, jefe?"
"You know they've got captured Zakus. Wouldn't you use it as the model for a mobile suit of your own?"
Pablo nodded. "True."
"The goal is to end this before they get that far—"
"And even having a colony dropped on them didn't get the Fedichos to surrender, so that's not gonna be easy," Pablo observed.
"But if we can't, this unit will at least be ready for them."
Pablo nodded as they descended on the lift. "I'll keep these little angels ready to rock and roll, all right. Still," he looked wistful, "I'd still like to see a new suit on our side. Could save all our asses when the Fedichos strike again."
They were distracted by a rancid odour that suddenly struck them like a moving wall of stink. They turned to see Luisa glowering at them, her hair tied in a bandanna and an apron over her clothes. The apron was splattered with organic slime of various sickly colours.
"Chingao, woman, you stink!" Pablo exclaimed, taking advantage of Luisa's being his cousin-by-marriage to swear. Duarte just covered his nose but looked unsurprised.
"You're right. I do stink," she told him, raising a hand. "You should have smelled me before I got rid of my rubber gloves. Those were what were actually in the dogs. This better lead to the deaths of lots of Fedichos, Tavi."
"Forgive me, corazon," he said. "I'm sure it will. It's worked many times before. Guerillas in southeast Asia had good luck using them against us when we first landed there. I'm counting on the Fedichos to have not spoken to these guerillas and learned from them."
"What has he got you doing?" Pablo asked, backing away.
"Ordnance gives us the explosive devices. We wives put them in the dead dogs."
Pablo gazed quizzically up at his commander.
"Then they'll put the dead dogs in the roads leading up to Veracruz," Duarte explained. "They'll rip the hell out of an enemy troop carrier. We're putting them in rubble piles and plastic baggies, too; roadside trash is as good a hiding place as any for a coffee can with a 120mm mortar shell in it. Rig it up to a proximity detonator or a remote trigger, then sit back and watch the chaos."
"Ah. You know Cousin Angel, right? And how he hated Jion Deykun, verdad? Always said a dead dog would be more useful than he was, for looking out for Side 3. What do you know? He was right."
"The dead dogs are on their way," Luisa said. "I told the other women to go home, shower, and burn their clothes. I made sure the ordnance team got all of them loaded into their refrigerator truck. It left about twenty minutes ago. It's disguised well; just another dairy delivery. Thank goodness we send out food into the countryside a lot. A truck like that not making stops shouldn't make anyone too suspicious."
Even as life in Tenochtitlan was almost back to normal, the small, annoying attacks on Veracruz kept up for the Benito Juarez. Few days passed when they didn't see some Federation planes or recon armour. The Benito Juarez had to stand watch constantly over the factories, water treatment plants, and other potential targets in the city. The Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in the roadside garbage and dog corpses were a nasty surprise to the Federals as they made deeper and deeper incursions into the suburbs. It was encouraging to hear that a Fedicho patrol, apparently checking the possibility of starting forays into the city, failed to avoid the corpse of a dog that was lying beside the road. Instead of sticky tires, they ended up with one patrol vehicle blown to kingdom come and the others damaged by the blast and the resulting shrapnel.
The Fedichos, on the other hand, began to react differently in response. Where once a dead dog or an oddly-placed cinderblock would not have gained any more than glancing notice, now each and every scrap of debris in the roads became a mission-crippling potential crisis.
"Driver, halt!" barked Federation 1st Lieutenant Tim Robeck in his headset, bringing his Type-71 command hovertruck, designated E-31, to a standstill, along with the other three vehicles, all tanks, in his column. He poked his helmeted head out of his commander's hatch, moving the reassuring weight of the 20mm chain gun out of the way as he peered out. Damn, he thought, another one. "Fucking hell. RAY!! GOT ANOTHER ONE!"
"You really don't have to yell, sir," trickled his driver's voice in his headset, "I can hear you just fine on the internal. Got another what?"
"Dog."
There was a sigh. "Please can we just shoot the thing? Save us some time and trouble?"
"I wish, but ROE's clear. Any of these and we gotta call it higher." Robeck wanted to scream. "We're two hours behind time-on-target and we keep finding these things. How many fucking dogs are there in this city?"
"The ones on four legs, or two?"
"Never mind. Just call the thing up and get those EOD pukes out here." Robeck scanned the surrounding buildings as Ray switched over to Battalion command net to request the Explosive Ordnance Demolitions team. "I'm sick of this bullshit, too. . ." he said to no one and nothing in particular, twisting his head around to look over at E-32 behind him. The line of Type 61s were waiting patiently, though it was pretty evident that Sergeant Kimmel looked pissed that they were stopping again. He keyed Platoon. "Three-Two, Three-One."
"This's Three-Two," came Kimmel's voice.
"Sorry about this, Three-Two. Got another possible mutt bomb."
Robeck could see Kimmel throw his hands in the air. "Yeah, roger, figured it was something stupid like that. Lemme guess, we're gonna sit here and wait for EOD to get off their lazy asses and do their job, right?"
"Same as before, yeah."
"Sir," continued Kimmel, "not to sound like a total Negative Nancy, but we ain't got enough EOD to be doing this shit for every piece of trash and rundown hound out here. Can't we ask Eliminator X-Ray for clearance to engage with coax or something?"
Robeck smiled grimly, turning back around to watch the forward arc of his own truck. "You know what they'll want first, and then you know what they'll say after they get it." Eliminator X-Ray was the Company CP, of which Robeck's platoon was part of. They would want location, description, and resources affected, and then call up to Battalion for fire clearance, and Battalion would play Twenty Questions until someone field-grade or higher finally said "No" to the request and told them to secure the site and wait for EOD.
Kimmel snorted. "Figures they'd play bureaucrat while we--"
A wash of heat passed over Robeck from behind, before the racketous thunder of a Jion 120mm struck his hearing. In shock, he whirled around to see a Zaku step out from behind the church, its weapon's fire sweeping across E-33 and E-34 as it had over E-32. The three tanks were burning quite nicely as the Zaku's mono-eye fixed on Robeck.
"SHIT!!" he cursed, terror overcoming his shock and surprise at being ambushed. "DRIVER, BACK--" was all he was able to get out before the 120mm spoke its roar again.
Massacre completed, Benito Juarez pilot Sergeant Orlando Reyes Berrigan reached down to pick up the corpse of Charlie, the dun-coloured mutt lately run over by a careless icolectivo/i driver. No sense leaving it to make a stink. The locals would put out the fires and scavenge the vehicles for whatever might be useful, but most everything would be destroyed anyway. It seemed that even a dog with bad luck could be an effective tool in slowing the Fedichos down.
Later that evening, as they were lingering over coffee in Luisa's kitchen, (she had taken several showers in-between) Duarte's cell phone went off. He answered and just the half of the conversation that Pablo and Luisa could hear let them know the Federation had made a move.
"I have to go to the Command Post right away," Duarte said. "Good thing you put in that jump seat. Time to go to work."
"The Fedichos get to Veracruz before we did, jefe?" Pablo asked.
"That's the funny thing, they didn't," Duarte said. "They're converging on Oaxaca again."
The mood in the 505th CP was one of carefully controlled fury. Mike Chavez was impressed as he watched the rest of the company from his desk at the back of the room. Luna was silent, turning a pen around and around in her fingers. Provi Alcaraz, Pedro Hernandez and George Villalobos were the most animated; they were sitting side-by-side and their conversation was peppered with the foulest insults that could be lobbed at the Federation's mother. Leobardo Magadan was studying the latest Royal Jion Cartography Service map of Oaxaca.
Maria Franco was tending the coffee machine. She had already made one pot, put it up on the burner, and was brewing another. In the meantime, she was refilling the sugar bowl, putting fresh packets from a box into the bowl with the older bags on top. She'd wiped down the entire counter before starting. Hers was the most complicated ritual in the company. Mike's was simple; he watched things and tried to understand.
Understanding, or at least partial, was on its way. They stood as Captain Duarte entered the room, followed by his assistant Conchita who sat down at the computer at the front of the room.
"Compañeros y compañeras, you have heard correctly. Oaxaca is once again under attack, and we'll shortly be on our way to its relief." He nodded to Conchita, who turned on the projector to which the computer was connected. An aerial photo showed a Federation tanks on the move from the south. "This was just sent to me from Brigade. This is coming up the 175 as fast as it can go and will hit Oaxaca in about two hours. Since we've been holding ourselves ready for a quick response, we'll be loading ourselves onto the Gaus momentarily and dropping down into position to guard the city here." He pointed to a line south of the city, across the indicated highway.
Villalobos raised his hand. "Why Oaxaca? They've been making all their moves on Veracruz. They need Veracruz, why they going after a city they can retake as soon as they have their port?"
"We resent this, don't we?" Duarte asked.
"Claro!" Hernandez exclaimed. "They made us lose Lopez, then we had to turn the city back over to the Benito Juarez."
"Exactly," Duarte said. "Veracruz is more important, but we cannot under any circumstances allow Oaxaca to fall back into Feddie hands. Our countrymen will never forgive us."
"Do they even know what we're doing in Zum City?" Villalobos asked.
"Those weren't the countrymen I was talking about," Duarte said, and Chavez noticed the dark expression that passed briefly over the colony-born Villalobos's face. "Not all Mexicans think that we Jions are all that different from the Fedichos. Maybe we have faces like theirs, but we're still invaders. The liberation of Oaxaca made a lot of people think twice about that. If we don't protect Oaxaca, people will think that it was all a publicity stunt to promote Garma as viceroy. He made promises to protect their land, and it's up to us to uphold those promises. If we don't, it won't really matter if we can keep the Fedichos out of Veracruz because we'll lose Mexico anyway and when we settle on Earth after Jion wins, we'll still be nothing more than an invading army. Questions?"
There were none, so he went on with the briefing.
Half an hour later, they were airborne. Their Zakus were lined up and locked in place in three Gaus that were heading south towards Oaxaca. The flight was only an hour, during which each member of the company sat in his or her mobile suit, waiting for the drop and able to talk only to the pilots in the hangar with them.
Chavez rode along in silence for about five minutes. He'd brought music with him, but found himself advancing to the next song after a few bars of anything he played. Finally he just turned the player off and said, "Franco, you there?"
There was silence on the line before she appeared on a viewscreen, having turned on that camera in her cockpit. Her angular face, framed by short black hair, peered back at him with the expression of someone called out of the bath for a call they knew was important. "I'm here."
"Wanted to hear a human voice."
She held a white rosary up to his view. "This is what I do when I'm heading for battle, but I can talk to you."
"They're pretty."
"Gift from my mother, Dios le acoja en su seno. I carried it on my wedding day."
"Where were you married?"
"Side 3, two years after I joined the militia."
"You told me your husband died in the One Week War. You were married 18 years."
"Yeah."
"You've lived more than 20 years on Side 3. What's more home to you, it or Mexico?"
"Difficult question." She considered a moment. "Jion's got my citizenship. It's been good to me and I'm proud of it, but Mexico," her voice caught a little. "Mexico's the place that makes my blood sing." After a moment she asked, "You?"
"Still Los Angeles," he said. "I mean, I grew up there. I only got sent to Jion after college, remember, thank you Federation, and then I couldn't stay employed, thank you Federation again. Now I'm here and I dunno." He thought for a second, then smiled whimsically. "There is definitely something to be said for getting in touch with your roots. I won't lie to you though. I still feel like an outsider.".
She nodded. "Not a good feeling. Not a good feeling at all. You already fought with us one time in Oaxaca. I'm thinking that whatever comes next, you're going to feel like one of us after it."
As the Gaus came closer in to Oaxaca, Luna Ruiz made sure her dolls were secure. They had been a fad in Nuevo Aztlan that unfortunately became a trend among high school girls in the rest of the colony. They were little fabric things, about eight inches high, with very rudimentary faces painted onto cloth heads that had yarn hair. It was the costumes that made them popular, because each was unique. They wore square-yoked blouses and multilayered skirts, with the embroidered design on the blouse and the skirts individual to each doll. In Nuevo Aztlan, they were just toys for little girls. In the rest of Side 3 they had a reputation for being good luck dolls, or friendship dolls, meanings that girls with a bit more money who were used to more sophisticated playthings had impressed upon them.
Child of Nuevo Aztlan and the military academy that she was, Luna had adopted the anglos' meaning. She had three dolls, one for her and the others for her two sisters, in the cockpit. She had long ago glued Velcro strips to the panel in front of her so that she could seatbelt them into place. That way she and her sisters could be together, in spirit at least.
The voice of the pilot came into her cockpit. "We're descending to the drop point. On signal, launch."
Luna doublechecked her seat harness and sat forward to drop her braid down the back of her tunic. She popped in a rubber mouthpiece to protect her teeth, leaned back against the seat and exhaled. No matter how often they did these drops in gravity, it never got any easier.
The hatch of the Gau opened like a mouth. Luna's Zaku was first in line, so she disengaged its feet from the locks in the deck and took three steps forward to the edge. She tipped her suit's head down to see the ground below, a wide field darkness beneath a dark-blue night sky. It was a clear night. She could make out every star.
She was acutely aware, as always, that she was about to drop into open air while surrounded by 61 metric tons of metal. Still, the fact that she was looking at the ground through a viewscreen provided a psychological barrier against panic. She didn't hesitate to depress the pedal and make the Zaku take that step forward.
The Zaku provided no cushion against the feeling of free-fall, though. Luna lifted an inch above her seat and her stomach lurched upward. A sense of animal panic always hit the second she was in the air, but Luna also always squashed it within seconds and hit the thrusters. The sense of falling was replaced by one of, if not exactly flight, of descending to earth with enough control to calm her terrified mammal brain. Behind her, Duarte had launched and was making his own landing. She checked his position briefly; he'd be hitting the ground behind and to her right, just as planned. Luna increased the thrusters as she neared the ground, but when the Zaku's feet hit, she was still slammed into her seat with a force that rattled every bone in her body. She felt a second, not nearly as painful jolt as Duarte hit the ground as well.
She pulled out her mouthpiece and slid it into its box. "I'm down all right, jefe."
"The Feddie tanks are on their way, compañeros," Duarte's voice said in her cockpit. "I'm hearing 30 tanks with Fly Manthas and Tin Cod in the air behind, almost a battalion of armor with air support." There was a pause as he listened to Tenochtitlan again. "Okay, our Dopps are close behind. Let's keep what's ours, people."
They could see each others' monoeyes and the small blinking red lights that dotted the skins of the Zakus. Despite the clear night, it was still moonless and dark. They moved around slowly, turning their Zakus' heads as they walked, imitating the movements of average-sized people looking out for something.
Above, they could see the tracers from the guns of the Dopps as they engaged the incoming aircraft. On the right flank, George Villalobos suddenly saw the flashing light in front of his suit that told him he'd been the first one fired upon from above. With a cry of surprise, he jerked his suit out of the way and lifted his machine gun, just as an explosion happened overhead. Whether the exploding plane had been friend or foe he didn't know, but at least no one was shooting at him anymore.
The Type 61s came into the view of their infrared and began firing. Duarte gave the command to return fire, and they started pulling the triggers on the machine guns they'd been holding since they landed.
In his suit, Duarte groaned inwardly. The Federation had sent a force half the size of the one they initially engaged at Oaxaca, but the darkness made it just as challenging. They had to trust the Dopps to take care of the enemy aircraft, as shooting randomly into the sky could destroy their own planes. The Zakus were only able to concentrate on the enemy facing them from the ground, and the knowledge that they were unable to keep an eye on the enemy in the sky made the skin on Duarte's back prickle.
Three of the Type 61s were hit and destroyed in the first minute of combat, the lurid explosions lighting up the terrain. Magadan pitched a cracker at the middle of the formation and two more tanks went flying. Ruiz, having had good luck with her heat hawk before, took it again from her Zaku's waist rack and started swinging it like a golf club. She'd cleared her path of one tank and sliced the front three feet off another when the blade of the axe, coming up from one of her swings, caught downward fire from an aircraft and disintegrated in her hands. She let out a wail of outrage and had to fight the urge to fire upwards. Another explosion told her it might not have been necessary anyway.
"Eight tanks down!" Duarte's voice said from the speakers in their cockpits. "Villaseca upstairs says they've killed three Fedicho planes. Infantry's behind us, they're moving in to protect the city."
Duarte thought quickly about Veracruz, and the fact that they were having to divert troops that could be sent there to defend it into Oaxaca to keep that city out of enemy hands. Between that and the relatively small force of their attackers, the situation spelled trouble down the line. He was snapped out of that line of thought as another Type 61 neared, blowing the right-side track off the Magella behind him, skirt armor tearing away. Duarte pointed his machinegun downward, firing.
It was just before dawn when another call came into Duarte's cockpit. He answered it and saw Greifenstein on his screen. The Benito Juarez commander was clearly in his own mobile suit, looking as if he hadn't slept in a couple of nights.
"I know you're busy," he said quietly to Duarte, "but if you could find a way to send some of the Cuauhtemocs down to Veracruz, it'd be appreciated. While the Fedichos have you tied up in Oaxaca there, the bulk of their forces are closing in on Veracruz."
Xochitl, which means "flower" is pronounced SHO-shtl. Believe it or not, it's a common name.
Dwarf
Whew! This was another difficult one to write. Parts came relatively easily, like Luna's drop out of the Gau. I've noticed that as long as it's something I can picture, I can write it.
Hence, there is no way I could have done the IED scene on my own. I wrote a sketchier version and then handed it over to HDS, who had a field day with it. He also did the usual editor thang of pointing out bad transitions as well as sending me pictures of what the view is like through the periscope of a tank, which allows me to imagine the view from an infrared Zaku camera.
I'll try not to make it be a year in between this and the next chapter, promise!