26
"How'd this happen, jefe? Are the Benito Juarez as sloppy like we been joking?" Pablo Gonzalez Garcia asked from the jump seat he'd installed in Octavio Duarte Garcia's Zaku.
Duarte glowered at the road in front of him as the 505th's mobile suits jogged northeast. "No. After working with those guys, I'm pretty happy with them. The Fedichos set a trap and we fell right into it. Putamadre! How could we be so stupid?"
"You're not stupid, Tavi. No way. You had to keep Oaxaca out of the Fedicho's hands or Prince Garma was going to lose all sorts of points with the people. You swore fealty, so you had to back him. Otherwise, the Virgin of Guadalupe was gonna have your ass."
"Not to mention Abuelo," Duarte grumbled.
"He still going on about Garma being Huitzilopochtli?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry, man. You did so much work to keep this from happening."
"I thought we had enough IEDs out!" Duarte exclaimed for the third or fourth time this trip, and they had only been on the road two hours. "Now not only do we have to walk to Veracruz--"
"We gotta clean up our own dog bombs as we do it. Yeah, I know, jefe, I know."
Duarte sighed, thinking of the combat engineers up ahead, clearing the way. So much time lost. So much time being lost as the Federation moved on the city from the south. Plus his companions in the 505th were running on adrenaline as it was, having fought all night in Oaxaca. He himself was glad that Pablo was there to talk to him and make sure he didn't fall asleep at the controls.
His radio came on and he adjusted the viewscreen to see an equally weary-looking Greifenstein. "Just wanted to give you the latest," the Benito Juarez commander said to Duarte.
"Give me some good news, compañero."
"I would if I had it, Duarte. Fact is, I just had a big go-round with City Council."
"They want you to surrender the city to the Fedichos?"
"Worse. They want to destroy it themselves."
Duarte paused. "Wouldn't be the first time, but it'd be bad for our side. What'd you tell them?"
"That we need the city intact as much as the Fedichos do. They said that maybe neither of us should have it. Not everybody sees Jion as the liberators."
"I know. The Fedichos used that against us with Oaxaca."
Greifenstein shook his head. "Don't beat yourself up over it, Duarte. Anyway, we compromised. Everybody who wants out of the city is moving north. The city's swarming with Jion soldiers, some of whom Garma sent down from the States. They're setting up in town strategically, to draw fire and fire right back. We're having a language issue though. Brigade did its best, but the fact is that a lot of these guys don't speak Spanish and it's freaking the locals out. Nobody alive remembers the American offensive on Veracruz in 1912, but they might as well. These people have long memories."
"We'll be there by dark, we hope. They caught us in a position that we couldn't fly over there. The Gaus are back in Teotihuacan."
"You got to us what we really need; the Dopps. We'll hang tough, Duarte. I'll keep you posted."
As the 505th made their painfully slow way towards Veracruz, the Benito Juarez moved into position on the southern approaches of the city. Xochitl Madero stood with her machine gun at the ready, watching the skies through the upper rear cameras of her Zaku.
The Jion forces were hoping to keep this battle in the air as much as possible. Knowing that the 505th were on their way was encouraging, but if they had to use the mobile suits very much, the chances of destroying the city would go far higher than anyone wanted.
In his own Zaku, Greifenstein listened to the sitrep from the Benito Juarez CP. His brow furrowed as he received the details on what was heading his way. "Don Escargots," he sighed. "Fly Mantas to do us in. Even some FF-4s to keep the Dopps busy." He opened a channel to his companions.
"We're going to have to use all our skills, compañeros y compañeras," he said into his mike. "There's Fedicho tanks incoming and a choice selection of aircraft too." He summarized that for them. "The 505th are on their way, but I don't think they'll be here before 1900. So we fan out."
He paused, trying to think of the best configuration. The Benito Juarez only had two teams, and each team was meant to fight together, not to be split apart. No choice now, though. "Sgt Camacho, you're with me. We'll take Highway Sin Nombre. Corporal Menendez, Lieutenant Madero, you take Highway 150. Reyes, Amixtlan, you stand inside the triangle of 180, 150, and 140 by Las Bajadas."
The grouping was too loose; he knew it, even though it was as close in to the city as he could place the suits while still guarding the major highways. As he and Camacho moved into place, Greifenstein could see the battle in the sky overhead. The Dopps were working hard to keep the Fly Mantas and Don Escargots from coming in at the Zakus. Dodais would come in later to strafe the Federation tanks, which would be coming in…
…now.
Greifenstein could see Type 61s and infantry. This would be the usual challenge; to keep the tanks and Federation column from advancing while avoiding being killed by aforementioned tanks from below and the bombers overhead.
First step: stopping those advancing ground troops. Greifenstein peered into the rising dust and as he had done so many times before in the past eight months, pointed his machine gun and opened fire.
Back in her position, Xochitl Madero was having a struggle of a different sort. She'd been paired up with Corporal Marta Menendez Ruiz because Menendez was the greenest of them all while Xochitl was the second-most experienced.
"How do we do this, ma'am?" There was a slight edge of nerves in the corporal's voice. That was usual for her, but it never failed to set Xochitl's teeth on edge.
"How you happier, blowing up tanks or planes?"
"Tanks, ma'am."
"Okay, take my back. I'm facing into the city."
Xochitl turned her Zaku around. Thick, dark grey smoke was billowing up from the perimeters of Veracruz, but the majority of the city looked all right. Unnaturally still, but intact. Above was the glitter of tracer fire from the aircraft overhead. Suddenly, a Depp Rog bomber came into sight, heading towards her, Xochitl aimed her machine gun and fired off one burst. The bomber exploded in a most satisfying way, but there were two Fly Mantas behind. Xochitl yanked on the controls of her Zaku and the big machine lurched rapidly to her left, dodging the missiles that tore into the air where she had just been. Beside her, Menendez did the same, but her Zaku fell to the ground.
"You all right, Corporal?"
Menendez grunted. "I just feel stupid. ¡Ay!" From her suit's prone position, she started firing at the nearest Federation vehicles as they approached. The spray of rounds coming from near their height stopped them cold.
"Good work!" Xochitl said, blasting away at more enemy aircraft heading her way. Menendez's Zaku got up and threw a cracker down the road with an underhanded toss; it exploded in a spray of plasma and electrical discharge, consuming a pair of Type-61 tanks, effectively blocking off the road for the rest of the Federation's heavy vehicles. Their infantry, however, pressed on, flanking the Zeon position in spite of the firefight going on around them.
"Dios mío, where the hell these come from?" Menendez asked.,snapping off another burst at an enemy infantry platoon that was maneuvering towards the neighborhood structures on the outskirts of the suburbs.
"Does it matter?" Xochitl snapped. Menendez wasted oxygen. Even on Earth, she wasted oxygen.
"Madero? Be aware, there's about six Fly Mantas coming your way. They're smelling blood." a voice reported from the Benito Juarez CP.
"Great."
"Gattles coming in to engage them. You take care of any survivors."
"Wilco." Xochitl reflected for a second about how much she wished they could all just communicate in Spanish. English got tiring for her. An explosion overhead marked the death of a Fly Manta, but two more escaped their Dopp pursuers and came her way.
"Menendez! Behind you! Up!"
"¡Andalé!" Menendez acknowledged the warning, but a Type 61 was closing on her. She fired her machine gun once, turned as Xochitl blew up one of two Fly Mantas—
And Menendez's Zaku caught a missile right in the chest right as she raised her machine gun.
"Xochitl!" she shrieked from inside her doomed suit, "Ayuda—"
Xochitl watched helplessly as plasma arced along the outside of the other woman's Zaku. Since Menendez's cry for help had been cut off, she had to have already died in there. At least, Xochitl hoped so, hoped that it was not just that Menendez's radio had cut out before the pilot's life did.
All Xochitl could do was backstep to avoid the explosion. In contrast to the dulled thumps of evaded enemy fire exploding around her Zaku, the demise of Menendez's suit made her ears ring.
She kept her Zaku's footing and called Greifenstein. "Captain…we lost Menendez. I'm alone out here."
Her commander was silent for a moment. "I'll send you some Magellas as backup. Best I can do."
"Roger." She couldn't feel her body. Xochitl looked up and saw some Type 61s approaching, the enemy having pushed aside Menendez's barricade with annoying swiftness. She reached for a cracker but aerial backup took care of it instead, the Gattles' cluster bombs and strafing runs punishing the Federation column and their exposed infantry.
She held her position for the longest five hours of her life, alone and trying not to look at the fragmentary remains of Menendez's suit. Ironically, when the Feddies finally broke through the Jion defenses, it was to the north where a roundabout route paid off in getting past Reyes and Amixtlan.
"That's what they think," Greifenstein growled from his own cockpit. "Company! Fishook after the invader; we'll get 'em from the rear, then move northeast. We gotta keep them away from the port."
In the Federation TOC, Major Mike Donegal was looking at the latest aerial views of the city as he projected them onto a screen on the wall.
"You can see where the Jeeks have set up their artillery. They've got those emplacements, and they've got tanks behind that too. It's gonna be tough, but we can cope. We've already got infantry in the city as a welcome wagon and airstrikes to keep them busy and distracted. What we have to do is make sure we contain those Zakus at the same time. Leave that to the Fly Manthas. We'll shell the emplacements surgically and that should give us the city."
"Are we pushing the Zakus back towards Puebla or towards the ocean?" one of his captains asked.
"That was a tough decision, but Jabro thinks the ocean's better. Even if they'll be fighting from a corner, they'll be stuck. Zakus don't swim real well. If we push them back towards Puebla, yeah, they'll be on the run but they'll also be in a position to defend the capitol better, and we can't let them have that. We should have the city well in hand in a few hours."
The street seemed deserted in the late afternoon sun, except for the sound of gunfire and explosions in the near distance. The pavement was now a broken mess of cobblestones turned up by tank and armoured vehicle tracks. The street was narrow, only meant to handle two cars abreast, and two Volkswagens at that, but no cars or civilian vehicles of any sort were in sight or hearing range. The squadron of Federation infantry known as "Snickers Team" moved cautiously between the colonial buildings, wary of the sonic distortions generated by the old buildings.
Sergeant James Rule motioned with his rifle towards the tallest of the structures, a three-story grey stone building that took up half the block and seemed to go around the corner. It was almost windowless, a convenient fortress for guerillas.
"That's a convent, Sarge," their interpreter Rivera whispered into his microphone.
"Might not be active. A lot of 'em are just preserved as museums. Rest of the street's clean. Let's check this one out."
On a hand motion from Rule, four soldiers stacked themselves to the right of the door, each standing with left foot forward, pressed "nut to butt" against the soldier in front. Two more soldiers came forward with a battering ram. They stood in front of the big, iron-studded wood door, drew the ram back, and swung it forward into the door. Ancient wood splintered as the bolt inside gave way. The four soldiers poured into the space inside, moving swiftly into to cover every corner of the room with their rifles.
"We've gone into the structure at the corner of Paraguay and Montevideo," Rule reported back to the TOC. For security, all the streets in this sector had been re-named with those of South American countries and cities. "We're looking for inhabitants now."
The room-clearing team found themselves in a stone-paved atrium with a short corridor behind that opened onto a porticoed garden. Within, a nun in a white habit with a black scapular and veil peered at them quizzically as she hoisted a basket of peppers. She turned on the heel of her sensible black shoe, walked a few steps across the garden, and yanked the cord of a bell that stood on a pole.
As the bell clanged, hands reached out and closed the shutters of the windows on the upper floors. The rifles went back up, but Rule had the presence of mind to order, "Hold your fire!"
A moment later, an older nun came out of a door behind them, hands tucked beneath her scapular. She marched up to the soldiers and asked, "Quien estan ustedes y porque estan aquí?"
Rule looked to Rivera. "She wants to know who we are and why we're here," Rivera told him.
"Tell her we're soldiers of the Earth Federation, here to liberate the city, and that we're looking for guerillas."
The nun listened to this and responded to the interpreter. "She says that the convent has nothing to hide and to go ahead and search."
"Thank the good sister for us, but we need everybody in the building in one place, with a full accounting for all personnel."
Rivera passed this on and said, "She says get everybody into the kitchen."
Rule turned around. "Get moving, round up every last breathing body in this place and bring 'em down to the courtyard."
They split up into teams and charged through all the rooms, of which there were many., grabbing nuns by the arm and steering them downstairs. Nobody wanted to disturb the chapel much. The statues gazed down on them eerily with glass eyes, looking too real with their human-hair wigs and neat satin clothing. The confessionals were of the old Latin American kind where the priest sat in a chair with a penitent on either side in plain view , so there was no way to hide in them. The nuns' rooms were tiny, with no one under the beds and their storage chests too small to hold a person, although the soldiers opened them anyway. The cemetery contained nothing but the dead.
Finally, they stood in the cavernous kitchen, surrounded by tile fireplaces, modern stoves, work tables, and bins of beans, rice, and vegetables. The nuns who had already been working in the kitchen hadn't moved from their places despite the armed men, although the soldiers had taken all the knives.
Rivera came up to Rule. "None of the sisters has seen or heard anything beyond what they can get on the radio. They don't leave the convent walls anyway, and they're staying put for when the people come back and they come to the convent for food. They want to be ready. If the convent gets hit and they get killed, that's the will of God." He pointed with his chin at large wooden bins along the walls. "Those are a problem. They contain tons of food: rice, beans, peppers, masa. Understandably, the sisters don't want them touched, but they're pretty obvious hiding places for weapons."
"My instinct says dump 'em."
"They're too heavy for that. We can with the ones with the dried peppers, but with the grains that's a no-go."
Rule turned on his microphone. "Captain. We got a situation in the convent. They've got huge bins of rice and beans, weigh a ton each it looks like. They're too large and permanent to lift and dump out. Instructions?"
There was silence on the4 other end. "Listen for false bottoms, sift through for anything hidden in there."
"We could pull the front panels off the bins."
"Negative, Snickers. Higher doesn't want that kind of negative PR. No destruction of private property." Rule could hear bitterness in the Voice, who he knew had been in-theatre long enough to have seen this kind of order go terribly wrong.
"Roger." Rule looked up at his team. "Start banging on these things, listen for false bottoms, checking as best we can for anything hidden in them."
Two of them put on latex gloves from a first aid kit to run through them manually but one of the nuns supplied them with broomsticks instead. Rule's team spent the next half hour stirring through the bins, poking to the bottom and dragging broom handles through the loose grain, hoping to find something.
From the expressions some of the nuns wore, you'd think they were stripping the altars of their silver. Rule clenched his teeth to hide his own anger. Couldn't these people realize that this was red-carpet treatment in war? Nobody was going to take so much as a fucking tortilla and the beaners needed to get over themselves.
Finally Rule was able to say into his microphone, "Voice? Looks clear, just a bunch of women who are really stubborn or really brave."
TheVoice came back to him, "Nuns always gave me nightmares about giant penguins. If it's clear, leave 'em before they rap you on the knuckles with their rulers."
"They look more like snowmen with black scarves, sir."
"Doesn't matter. Apologize for the inconvenience and keep going. And watch out for the rulers, like I said."
"Disculpanos, Madres," the interpreter told them, and they withdrew.
Once the Superior had seen the last soldier out, she shoved the shattered door closed, and motioned for a novice and a younger nun to slide a big wooden sideboard in front of it. She went into the kitchen and said in Spanish, "They're gone."
Four of the nuns unpinned their veils and let their hair free. Under their habits they were wearing civilian clothes, the only common detail being the white handkerchiefs tied around their arms. One of the women fetched their white Stetsons from the laundry, where they had been hanging, covered by white under-veils. A satchel of rocket-launched grenades came up from the recently-tilled soil of the garden. Another went into the chapel, crossed herself apologetically and pulled two RPGs from under Virgin of Soledad's purple gown. Some old-fashioned machine guns came out of a disused chimney. The Superior nodded and led them up to the roof.
"Why are you doing this, Madre?" the leader of the four Adelitas asked as they set up behind the low wall around the roof. "You are a woman of God."
The old nun's eyes narrowed. "Because I haven't seen my brother's family since the Fedichos rounded them up and sent them into space. They write to me sometimes; the young ones have all lost their religion in such a soulless place. Are you fighting to make Mexico a place that doesn't have to lose or send away her children?"
"I've been hiding from the Fedichos for seven years. Yes, Madre."
The old nun gripped her shoulder reassuringly. "Then shoot straight, daughter. What is your name?"
"I'm Lolita, Madre. That's Conchita, Stefania, and Roberta."
"I'll name you all in my prayers." The nun made the sign of the Cross in the air; the four women crossed themselves and raised their fingers to their lips, then turned to the business at hand.
Lolita picked up a cell phone in walkie-talkie mode. "Barbara team ready."
Another female voice answered, "We hear you, Barbara."
"We had to let a bunch of Fedichos go. They searched the Santa Rosa here and left."
"They're small change. Listen. There's a Fedicho column coming in eight streets north of you. Here are the coordinates." Lolita jotted down the numbers and handed them to Roberta. "We'll tell you when to fire."
They waited for what seemed like an hour but was really just over a minute before the voice told them, "Fire."
Roberta and Stefania positioned their weapons on their shoulders and fired. A moment later there was a loud explosion and a burst of fire and smoke that was visible over the buildings. They heard men shouting. All four women picked up their machine guns and trained them down the street, expecting some very pissed-off and heavily-armed Fedichos to appear in a few minutes.
Instead, what they saw was a low-flying Gattle coming from the west. They saw it open fire downward, to where they had just attacked. More explosions followed.
"Good work, compañeras," Lolita said. "Now let's leave the good sisters to their prayers; I'm sure they have many of them to say."
It was late evening and the sun was going down when Captain Greifenstein saw the sight he'd been longing for. As his Zaku stood knee-deep in the devastated buildings of Veracruz, eight black shapes appeared in the distance. He filtered the light in the image on his viewscreen and recognized the paint jobs. "It's the 505th," he reported to the remaining members of his team. He heard applause in response, then tuned in to Duarte's frequency. "Good to see you, Tavi!"
"Sorry it took us so long," Duarte responded, "We had to stop and chat with some Fedichos along the way."
"I expect you did. Join the party; you know what to do."
Chavez looked down from the view from his Zaku's head and gasped. He'd never been to Veracruz before, but he could tell that it would never again look as it had only a couple of days before. A long path of devastation stretched from the south, a path of blackened, smoking ruins. Even away from that, he could see hollow shells of buildings, burned-out cars and trucks, some deliberately placed to block streets. From 50 feet up he could also see artillery emplacements here and there, and his GPS marked clearly which ones were friendly.
"We're seeing a lot of guerilla activity," Greifenstein's voice went on. "We're getting very sporadic intel from some Adelitas who aren't attached to our unit, and given their targets, it's clear they're on our side."
"Let them be," Duarte's voice answered. "The last thing they probably want is orders from us. If we can coordinate with them, that'd be best, but they'll probably want that on their own terms."
"Bad guys, ten o'clock!" Provi Alcaraz cried out. "Five Type 61s, infantry with them!"
"Put them out of our misery, compañera," Duarte ordered. "Company, split into your teams. Head east; we have to keep these Fedichos away from that port."
"There's a lot of weird activity going on near the port, sir," Staff Sergeant Orbach said to Donegal.
"Show me."
Orbach put the latest satellite photos on the overhead computer screen. "Long line of trucks, headed northwest."
Donegal examined it. "Looks like the ones who made the last-minute decision to be refugees, going up the coast."
The woman increased the magnification. "I'm not so sure about that, sir. There's a lot of people on horseback."
"People still use horses for transportation and agriculture." Donegal frowned. "I don't like it either, and my instinct's to tell the Don Escargots to let loose on them. Thing is, if it is just all the last-minute refugees, we are going to have Hell to pay afterwards, and a very unwelcoming population we'll have to beat into submission." He breathed out heavily through his teeth. "Leave them alone for now, but keep an eye on them."
"Yes, sir." Orbach continued to study the pictures. She had a cold, itchy feeling between her shoulder blades. She wasn't sure, but she thought one of those figures on horseback had been wearing a ski mask.
Sub-commandante Francisco refilled his pipe as he watched the citizens defend their city. His horse, Dulce, stood placidly, munching on some leaves she was contentedly pulling off a tree. Francisco was from Chiapas, the scion of a hereditary Zapatista family who had originally gone there to encourage revolution among the Maya in the late 20th century. Now the revolution was more complicated. The Earth Federation, with its program of deporting the poor, was clearly the enemy. The only Maya they left behind were those skilled in making traditional handicrafts or willing to let tourists point cameras at them as they lived in a "traditional village". Francisco lit his pipe. "Traditional village" to him meant "anthropological zoo".
The Kingdom of Jion was repatriating Mexico's stolen children, but the Zapatistas agreed that they had to be viewed with extreme suspicion. Even if the destruction of far-away Sidney didn't matter much to them, the fact that they willingly put on the trappings of royalty rather than being servants of the people like Emiliano Zapata and Che Guevara did not earn the Zabis trust. Francisco's superiors the Comandantes had refused an invitation to meet Garma Zabi in San Cristobal de las Casas. The child had apparently been quite offended. Garma liked to use words like "revolution" and "justice" but unless he truly came to understand the writings of Guevara and Francisco's forefather Marcos, he wasn't worth meeting.
The people of Veracruz were doing well. The people always did, once you earned their trust and they accepted your guidance. The Zapatistas weren't the only guerillas involved; there was a contingent of Adelitas as well. That was problematic; while some of them were Mexican, some were returnees from Side 3, taking orders from the command structure in Oaxaca.
One of his footsoldiers came walking up to him. Alberto was recognizable by the Virgin of Zapopan holy card pinned to his ski mask. "Sub-commandante. The vehicles are lined up, and the people are making good progress building the barricades on top of them."
"Very good work. How is morale?"
"Good, but they are wondering if they will be able to hold against the Federation onslaught. Some feel we should contact the Jions and join our strengths."
Francisco considered. "Let them contact us. This is our land; they are the late arrivals." He paused to think for a moment. "At least three forces are fighting for the soul of this city. This next dawn will show who it prefers."
The Benito Juarez had set up a position in the shell of an abandoned factory between Veracruz and the town of José Cardel. As soon as the 505th joined them, they were greeted with mugs of instant coffee, large bowls of chicken soup and tortillas. Mike Chavez accepted the food gratefully, although he still pushed the chicken meat around with his spoon before eating. A couple of weeks ago he'd encountered whole feet in his bowl, and he hadn't recovered yet.
The summer sun was still blazing down through the open roof of the building as they all sat down at a wooden picnic table to eat. As soon as everyone was assembled, Greifenstein opened up a laptop to show them maps and videos of what was going on in the city.
"Battalion is going crazy with this," he said. "There are so many pieces in motion that they are having a hard time coming up with a plan. So far, we've got the Feddies on approach from the south, with all the ancillary air units. Our own aircraft have been handling them, with of course a little backup from our Zakus on the ground."
"They can't leave home without us," Reyes quipped, but nobody laughed.
"So that's good, for the moment," Greifenstein went on. "We've all made it here, with one casualty; Corporal Menendez fell to a Type 61 along the 150. There are independent guerilla units at work in the city, and word has come to us that more are setting up barricades at the port along Mercante and Insurgentes, stretching out towards San Juan de Ulúa. Reliable intelligence says they're Zapatistas."
The two companies expressed a mixed reaction to this news, with a third grimacing, a third showing a lightened mood, and a third looking puzzled. Chavez predictably was in the third category. "Is this a good thing?"
"It depends," Duarte said, just as Madero spoke up, "It's good news!" Greifenstein glared at her and she shut up again. Ruiz, who was another one who'd wondered what to think, noticed that this was the first happy reaction she'd seen from Madero since the 505th had returned.
"The problem is that they're an unknown," Duarte said. "We know they're anti-Federation, but they're not great fans of us. They refused to meet with Garma Zabi, for instance, said there were too many 'philosophical differences'. On the other hand, in the past they've been faithful about telling us whenever they've seen the Federation sniffing around their territory." He shrugged. "
Xochitl Madero glanced over at Ruiz, then up at Greifenstein. "Captain? I have an idea for that, if you can spare me and Luna here."
"I'm listening."
"Pues, the Zapatistas see themselves as the champions of the oppressed, ¿verdad? I'm a full-blooded Nahua and both of us are women. Since the Zapatistas are willing to send informal reports to us on what the Fedichos are doing, maybe, if Ruiz and I go to ask them, we can get them to side with us."
Greifenstein looked over at Duarte. Duarte nodded. "We have to start fighting our way into the city to begin with. You two might as well be the ones to lead the way. Greifenstein, I want to ask for some of our Dopps to back them up."
Greifenstein nodded. "Absolutely." He smiled wearily at Xochitl and Luna. "Que Díos se bendiga."
Luna rubbed at her eyes as she steered her Zaku out of the carrier-heli's bay. The daylight was starting to soften and her mobile suit cast a long shadow. Veracruz itself was concealed beneath a dark-grey cloud of rising dust and smoke. Part of her wished they could let the Federation have the city and then just nuke it from the sky. Certainly the population didn't seem too interested in keeping their town intact.
She shook the thought off. It wasn't her home the Fedichos were going after. She tried to imagine how she'd feel if they were in Juarez Colony and reasoned that she might do the same.
Xochitl's Zaku pulled up alongside hers. She reached out her suit's hand to touch the shoulder of Luna's and said, "The Zapatista camp is right there."
"Think they'll attack us if we approach?"
"Hard to say. Even if they do, what can they do to us? They're on horses with 20th century firearms. I don't think they can hurt a Zaku with them."
"Yeah, but who knows if that's all they have?"
"From what we've seen, it is. They won't take anything from the Fedichos and they lost their chance to get any armaments out of us. We can remind them of this if we have to."
The two Zakus stepped along as carefully as they could down the beach. In a few minutes, they were looming over the end of the Zapatista barricade, the army-surplus tents of their headquarters about a quarter mile down, and a ring of black-masked personnel on horseback. One of the men raised a megaphone and asked into it, "What do you Jions want? Those Zakus of you are going to draw the Fedichos here!"
"We're here to ask for help," Luna said. "Just for this one battle, because we all know we have to win it."
The man raised the megaphone again. "Who is 'we'? Mexicans? Jions?"
"Some of us are both," Xochitl told him, and before Luna could say anything she opened the hatch of her cockpit and stepped down onto the lower door. Luna recognized immediately what her compañera was doing; letting the Zapatistas get a good look at her brown skin, long black braids, and Jion uniform.
It obviously made an impression because the man said, "All right. Come with us to see the commandantes."
"We can't leave our mobile suits. We have to be able to be able to get into them if we're attacked."
The man took a walkie-talkie phone from his pocket and spoke into it. A few minutes later he said, "Francisco will come over here, but you have to meet him on the ground. Get out of the Zakus or no deal."
Xochitl nodded and climbed back into the cockpit so that she could have her Zaku crouch and put one hand on the ground, allowing her to climb down. Luna did the same. They approached the man on horseback as he nudged his mount forward. The man peered at both Luna and Xochitl, and then spoke in Nahuatl to Xochitl, who responded. They conversed for a few moments as Francisco rode up.
"Commandante," the soldier they were speaking to said to Francisco, "the compañeras who want to speak to you."
Francisco dismounted and took a moment to bring out a pipe. Luna opened her mouth to speak, but Xochitl put a hand on her shoulder and shook her head. They waited until he'd filled his pipe from a pouch stored on his belt, lit it, and taken the first puff. "So, what can I do for you soldiers of the Crown?"
"Commandante, I'm Lt. Xochitl Madero of the Benito Juarez company of the North American Division. This is my comrade Lt. Luna Ruiz of the Royal Cuauhtemoc Company. We're here on behalf of our superiors to make a temporary alliance with you."
He nodded. Luna could see that he was bearded beneath his mask and that the skin around his eyes was deeply lined. His life couldn't be an easy one, she reasoned, and she hoped that he wouldn't arbitrarily decide that they weren't worth dealing with because of their fat spacenoid lifestyles. "What's in it for us?"
"We aren't in a position to do much negotiation right now," Xochitl apologized. "We just want the same thing you do: the Federation out of Veracruz without more damage to the city. It's been tortured enough."
Francisco nodded. "I am curious. Are you both Mexicans?"
The two women looked at each other. "I'm from Side 3," Luna said. "This is my first time in Mexico." Her brain scrambled for what to say next. "I feel very...connected here." She winced mentally.
"I was born in a town called Huamantla, near Tlaxcala," Xochitl told him, steely-eyed. "You know it? It was famous for its running of the bulls every year. Was famous, in the past. We were sent to Side 3 when I was a little kid, and when we came back this past March, I went there. It's empty now, a ghost town. Am I a Mexican or a Jion? That's a good question, my friend. When we drive the Fedichos from this land, I intend to stay, but the first step is to drive the Fedichos from Veracruz. They get the port, forget it. They have Mexico. So I beg you, let's drop this game and do what we must do."
"What must we do?" Francisco looked more amused than moved.
"Many of those Jion artillery placements and the infantry too, speak only English. Many of the guerillas speak only Spanish, or not even that, indigenous languages. I know that among your people you have soldiers who speak English, Spanish, Nahuatl, Maya, and many others. We need you to coordinate their efforts, because you are the one group who can communicate with all of them. Together we can all rid ourselves of the Fedichos. After that, who knows? I am very sure you will not be left with empty hands; none of us have been so far."
Francisco nodded. "You've convinced me, my flowery friend. We have enough radios and walkie-talkies to have a good network. Give me a little time and we'll give the Federation a good look at what we oppressed of the earth can do."
By 2200, the sounds of fighting in the streets became much quieter.
"Perhaps they're giving up," Sgt. Orbach said to Donegal in the Federation TOC.
"Maybe," he said. There were still close to two hours of daylight left. Because the resistance to the Federation invaders had been erratic, Donegal didn't know if they considered daylight prime fighting time or not. "Any word about those two Zakus that are in the port?"
"No change, sir. They're parked. The pilots spoke to a couple of insurgents there, but haven't done anything or gone anywhere. Intel thinks they deserted."
"And the rest of them?"
"Minovsky particles interfere as usual, but something's moving south." She listened to her radio for a moment more. "There's a Himalaya class aircraft carrier hailing us from ten miles offshore."
Donegal nodded. "I'm calling Brigade. I think it's time to go meet them."
Brigade agreed. Shortly after 2300, the Federation troops in the streets, including their armoured units, picked up and moved northeast, towards the shore. Sgt. Rule greeted the order with relief.
"Time to get our own back," he said to his soldiers as they shoved what was left of the MREs they'd been eating when they got the order into their rucks. "We let Zabi get six of our guys when we missed that RPG somewhere near the convent. We'll have six of Zabi's finest in return. Let's roll."
They fell into a patrol formation and started up the street. They'd been walking for two or three quiet minutes when suddenly the eerie near-silence was broken by the sounds of gunfire and explosions. They hit the dirt and rolled for cover, but a few moments of careful listening revealed that it wasn't near them—yet.
Rule knelt on one knee with his rifle in his hands, slowly scanning the street ahead of him. Through the transmitter in his helmet he heard "The Voice" from the TOC saying, "Snickers team, here's the new sitrep. Bad news, guys. The beaners have got their act together. Look out for small columns of the enemy heading southwest, targeting artillery emplacements particularly, infantry looks like their second priority. They're not going to want you heading towards the port, so watch it. Lots of small arms, rocket launched grenades, even bayonets. Avoid 'Chile' and 'Buenos Aires'."
The channel changed and he heard the Voice add, "Snickers team leader? Confirm your location, over."
"We're on 'Ecuador', near 'Montevideo'."
"Three Musketeers needs help on 'Ecuador' and 'Quito', over."
"Moving, Snickers team leader out."
He motioned to his platoon. They jumped to their feet and jogged down the street towards increasing noise. He could make out that there were fighter-bombers overhead, pursued by Jeek Dopps. Around them, the sounds of fighting grew more distinct with the pop of rifles, the rattles of fully-automated weapons, and the boom of mortars.
The smoke and dust got thicker the closer they came to their destination. Rule's eyes burned with it. One thing nagged at him. The patchwork of weaponry they'd faced earlier that day and in the days before was still in place, but before, it had been more random and scattershot. Now it seemed more organized. Could the locals have somehow decided to actually work together, rather than nearly individually, towards victory? If so, he wondered if they could be walking into an—
His thought about an ambush was cut off suddenly as rifle fire erupted from somewhere around them. He only realized that they were being fired upon from the storm drains when Private Bertolli went down screaming, grabbing at his right leg below the knee. Private Erkhart dropped down beside him, grabbing for the field dressing in his LBE but never got a chance to use it before both he was hit square in the face by a sniper from above.
As a grenade came flying right into the middle of the platoon, Rule reflected for some reason that he was glad the setting sun wasn't in his eyes.
At approximately 2330, Luna and Xochitl watched as several detachments of mounted Zapatistas spurred their mounts towards the growing conflagration in downtown Veracruz. "Kind of funny to look at them and think , we're the most recent version of cavalry," she said. "They're carrying revolvers and machetes."
"Yes, well they practice aiming those machetes at the unprotected parts of a Fedicho's body,"Xochitl told her. "Don't go thinking they're quaint. You'll see that in a couple of minutes."
Their orders were to let the Zapatistas and guerilla infantry keep striking at the Federation with Luna and Xochitl providing heavy armoured backup. The battle in the air was going well; new aircraft had stopped coming in from Jaburo and the bombers were starting to retreat. Their Zakus moved forward.
At first, Luna had been concerned about the narrower streets and the amount of damage a pair of Zakus could do to them. That fear was rapidly shown to be pointless as both Jion and Federation tanks had already plowed paths through city blocks.
"Señorita Luna! Fedicho mortar emplacement, Ladero and Cinco de Mayo!" The voice of one of their new Zapatista allies came in through the noise in her cockpit.
"I'm there." To her right she could see Xochitl, who continued to scan the sky, firing once in a while at the last bombers she could find. Luna's Zaku hop-scotched from ruin to ruin, which was just as easy as plowing a new route through buildings that were still standing. Her screens soon showed her the building in which the mortar nest was located.
"Xochitl, there." She pointed with her Zaku's hand. "Cover me."
"Roger."
Federation small-arms fire came towards her as she drove her Zaku towards the spot where she knew the mortar emplacement was located. Luna was cautious, but still laughed to herself. This was the best part of being a Zaku pilot; the feeling of being a nearly-invulnerable giant in the face of her enemies. Through the cameras on her Zaku's legs, she could see the tracers from 5.6 mm shells pinging off helplessly. She targeted the emplacement with her own machine gun and fired. Her accuracy was confirmed by the very satisfactory explosion that erupted, followed by the gunfire slowing to almost nothing.
"Behind us!"
Luna checked an ancillary screen to see four Type 61s coming in a single column down the street behind them. She turned her Zaku, deciding to sacrifice the buildings beside her in the interest of speed. Clouds of smoke and dust rose in the darkness, obscuring her vision. She found herself wishing for a gigantic electric fan to dispel it. Nonetheless, Xochitl's Zaku was moving forward, holding its heat hawk in both hands in front of it.
As Luna watched, Xochitl used the heat hawk as a narrow shield, swinging it like a pendulum to deflect the shells the tanks started firing on them as soon as they had a clear shot at the Zakus. That the tanks were coming at them at all was, Luna quickly realized, a desperate measure. They found themselves too close to the Zakus to use their firepower with any efficiency, by which time they also could not reverse.
"Perate," Luna said, and raised her machine gun to fire directly into the three tanks behind the one closest to Xochitl. As they exploded, Xochitl's Zaku was taking the near tank in both hands by its cannons, turning the barrels towards the presumably empty buildings to its right. The tank swiveled helplessly with its turret as the pivot for a moment before tearing free of it. Xochitl tossed the cannons aside like the legs of an insect torn off by a thoughtless child, then brought her Zaku down onto one knee and shoved its hand into the cavity that remained.
Luna cringed. "Madero, don't play with it!"
"But I want to," Xochitl said, shaking the tank back and forth. It stopped showing signs of life almost immediately and she withdrew her Zaku's red-streaked fingers. "I really want to throw it, but I don't want to wreck this city more. I'm going to leave this here though, to warn the others." She stood and focused her suit's monoeye on Luna."It's not like I took them prisoner and tore their living hearts out, Luna, and it's just me getting back at them for killing my compañera today."
Luna nodded inside her own cockpit. It wasn't as if she had never thought about bloody retribution for losing comrades. "True." She was quiet for a moment to listen to the radio and said, "Come on. They want us to move down towards Park #4. Let's go."
Several blocks to the north, Mike Chavez and Maria Franco were the first to notice that the Federation was retreating. As he watched, his infrared showed him a Federation troop carrier moving back south.
"Did you see that?" Franco asked, echoing what he was thinking.
"Yeah, that's weird. Let me call Duarte."
As he made the call, there was a loud "boom", a flash of orange light, and the ground shook. As a result, his first words to his commander were, "What was that?"
"Federation carrier, offshore. Cruise missiles, last move against us, it looks like."
"Franco and I just saw a bunch of Fedichos heading south, away from the port."
"I just got the call a second ago. They're turning tail and heading back to Jabro."
"Are we following them?"
"Negative, that's for the aircraft to---¡CUIDADO!"
A second "boom" and orange light followed, much closer than the one before. It hit a gas main and the resulting fire lit up the area. The already-ruined buildings to the left of Chavez and Franco quivered for a moment before crumbling and sliding into a pile of stone and dust.
"Let's go," Chavez told Franco, and they turned to the southwest, moving as quickly as possible towards the park. "It's a good last move, I must say," he added, observing a squad of dust-covered Zapatistas and other local troops as they tried to find their way out of the choking dust. They looked like ghosts in the darkness, with even their horses now covered from nose to tail in white powder.
"Not long till daylight," Franco observed.
Chavez didn't think sunrise would help anything one way or the other. It would still be murky from the dust in the air, and he was deeply grateful for being in a mobile suit fitted with HEPA filters to screen it out. Even so, the view from his monoeye was cloudy and he'd have to find a way to clear it as the sun came up.
There was another pair of reports from the offshore carrier, striking to the southwest, but not too close to where he and Franco were moving. Despite this, he could see a distinct lightshow to the east, accompanied by the sound of an explosion of the kind he'd never heard before. "That's strange."
"Wait, let's see where the next ones hit," she suggested.
They stood there for a moment, waiting, but the next volley never came. He kept waiting before he said into his radio, "Duarte! What's going on out there? What's that carrier doing?"
There was a long pause before Duarte answered, "Mike…you are not going to believe what just happened."
The Federation had retreated. Veracruz had been turning into a pyrrhic victory anyway, where if they had taken the port, it would be at the price of eradicating the city. The attack by the carrier itself had been evidence of that. The reason the attack had stopped was standing on the beach, dumping out its ballast in two wide rivers of seawater back into the ocean.
"What IS that?" Chavez asked, holding his hand up as a visor against the rising sun. The mobile suit was squat and neckless, lacking a clearly-defined head. Its extra-long, massive arms ended in grappling claws.
Pablo Gonzalez Garcia came up beneath him, holding two coffees that he handed to Chavez and Franco. "That, my friend, is a Gogg."
"A what?"
"A Gogg. I don't know its call letters yet, but it's Zimmad Company built, the pilot told me. Aquatic mobile suit, since the underwater Zaku was a bust. It just came right up and tore the hell out of the carrier from the underside and our bombers finished it off as it lay on its side in the water."
Luna Ruiz and Xochitl Madero came up to join them. "Where did it come from?" Ruiz asked.
Pablo smiled. "Flown in from California Base and launched from Cuba. Maybe they're not letting Garma have any more new suits, but he still had this trick up his sleeve. Just as well I've got a lot of work to do since it's gonna be a while before the pilot can talk to me."
"What, what's up with him?"
Pablo pointed to a tent the Zapatistas had erected as a latrine. "He got out, he was hungry, and he had a quesadilla someone prepared for him. He's just in from Side 3; poor guy never knew what hit him."
Duarte said grimly, "Villalobos got hit by one of the shells from the carrier."
Chavez and Franco turned. "Oh no!" Franco exclaimed.
Duarte didn't feel anything at first but surprise, which quickly turned into a foggy realization that good-natured and funny Villalobos wasn't there anymore. He looked up at Luna, who had her hands over her mouth in grief. Maria Franco went over to her and put her arms around the younger woman.
"I know it's tasteless, but I gotta say this," Pablo said a few moments later, his own voice broken with emotion. "When ol' Jorge first got here, he spent his first couple of days in the latrine too. Now his avenger has the same thing happen to him. Maybe his spirit got into that pilot."
"To give him the shits?" Xochitl snorted.
Luna wiped tears but smiled. "Yeah. Sounds like Villalobos all right."
Chavez turned from the sight of the Gogg to look back at the city. It was still burning and the dust cloud would take days to settle, but already people were at work with kerchiefs over their faces, unmooring the boats that had survived the battle, pushing food carts they had somehow managed to stock, getting ready for some semblance of the day's business. The air already smelled of diesel and frying food. Once again Veracruz had survived the invader and once again it was time to move on.
He might be a Jion originally from Los Angeles, but he really wanted part of himself to belong here. First there was mobile suit maintenance to see to though, and sleep. They would be back in Teotihuacan in a few days. They'd hurt the Feddies badly this time, so he didn't know how long he'd be staying on Earth, which he had to admit, he now wanted to.
"Pablo, is it safe to walk my Zaku into the ocean to get the dust off?" he asked.
"Yeah, we've marked off where it's not mined. Be doing me a favour."
Chavez nodded and headed towards his machine to make the first small steps into whatever mission followed.
Author's Notes: Chapter 6. 20 months. Yikes.
I started this chapter in December of 2004 in Mexico City, usually sitting in the rooftop cafe/bar of my hostel, looking at the Catedral Metropolitana over the other buildings, with a glass of tequila at my elbow.
I revised it in light of what urban combat training I'd received in Ft. Jackson, SC where I went through Army basic training. My joke is that this is the research I'm willing to undertake for reality. I was away from my computer for six months.
I know I've been writing this thing about as quickly as Kohta Hirano who does "Hellsing", although I think I spend my time in far more worthwhile pursuits.
Part of 7 is already written, but I'm going to hold off on my usual, "I don't want the interval between this chapter and the next to be as long," because you never know and I don't want to jinx myself. Thanks for your patience.