I Can Fix It
The situation, to put it mildly, was kuso.
She didn't voice such concerns. Inside the forward operating base of the Yellow Comet 11th Army, Sonja didn't say anything. Nestled near the south coast of Marco Land, she watched her father and his generals discuss their campaign against Black Hole. Specifically, their last bastion of power in the world.
"We cut off the head of the snake," her father said, as he moved plastic tanks to point their plastic guns at plastic soldiers. "The poison is removed, and the dark is lifted."
Her father was no fool, even if he had trouble finding his socks. The generals he'd gathered raised questions, her father answered them. Troop size. Enemy composition. Supplies. Air recon. General Yoshimatsu once again raised the prospect of using tactical nuclear weaponry, and once again, her father shot them down.
"We are Yellow Comet," her father said, clutching the hilt of his sword "It is not our way to unleash such fire upon our foes."
Except, Sonja recalled, when they'd used Yellow Comet's missile network to blunt one of Black Hole's early advances. But still, those warheads hadn't been atomic.
"Black Hole has unleashed lasers and much worse," Yoshimatsu protested. "Our spies report that a giant missile is being constructed at their main base of operations."
Kanbei looked at his daughter. "Sonja?"
She bit her lip. Her father had faith in her – a faith won through two world wars, and more victories than she could count. The other generals, however, possessed no such grace.
All men. All older. And for all their experience, they belonged to an older era of warfare. Wars World had earned its name, and those who didn't keep up with the changing ways of conflict were doomed to be swept away. Given how slow Yellow Comet had been to adapt, it was frankly a miracle it was still standing.
"The intelligence reports are unverified," she said stiffly. "But with enough time, we-"
"Oh to hell with time!" General Miyamoto slammed his fist upon the war table. "We should attack now."
No, thought Sonja. We shouldn't.
"We need more time to plan."
"We should move on their outlying bases."
"Or a treaty," suggested General Kimori. "We have them on the ropes, but our numbers are thinned. We-"
A glass of water was by her father. A glass that was shattered as he toppled it off the table, shattering into over a dozen pieces. Silence filled the room, as all looked to their commander-in-chief to speak.
"There's your peace," he said. "Black Hole saw to that the moment they invaded our homeland."
And when they presented the false armistice, Sonja thought. True to his namesake, Adder was as slippery as a serpent, and the poison he injected could not be removed. Her father had darkened over this last year, and she feared that the man Kanbei had once been might not return.
"Kimori is right in a sense," Sonja whispered. "Our numbers have been thinned, whereas Black Hole's army size is as of yet unknown. We-"
"Excuse me, why is she here?" Miyamoto asked.
Sonja blinked. "Excuse me?"
He looked at her father, not giving her a second glance. "Kanbei, I-"
"General Kanbei," her father corrected.
"…General Kanbei," Miyamoto repeated. "I respect your desire to train your daughter in the ways of war, but I-"
"Is Sonja not already familiar with the ways of war?" Her father asked stiffly. "Has she not defeated Black Hole on countless occasions."
Miyamoto looked like he'd eaten a pufferfish.
"Has she even once provided us with faulty intelligence?"
"No, but-"
"Has my daughter insulted you, General Miyamoto? Do you wish to raise a complaint concerning her conduct?"
"General, I…" Miyamoto looked around, as did Sonja. Half of them were evading her father's gaze. The other half were looking at him in the same way that Miyamoto did.
"Speak now, General Miyamoto. Tomorrow is too late."
"General Kanbei, I'm sure that when your daughter is older, she will make a fine…contributor to the Yellow Army," Miyamoto said in a low voice. "But she is but a girl of nineteen, and-"
"Is it my age that offends you, General Miyamoto?" Sonja asked. "Or that I lack balls?"
Miyamoto sneered. "Have you ever shot a man, Sonja?"
"General, that's enough," said Kanbei.
"Have you ever taken to the field yourself?"
No and no, she thought. Though as she fingered her pistol, she was tempted to change that. Instead, she pointed out that she'd commanded more than one battle. Had wiped out an entire Black Hole attack force in her canyon ambush. That she'd played the game of war, and won it.
"War is not a game," Miyamoto snapped.
Sonja shivered – she'd said something similar to Lash.
"And as valuable as your intel has been, I suggest you leave war to the professionals. I-"
"General Miyamoto, you're dismissed."
The general stared at her father. He stared right back.
"Pack your things. Get out."
"Sir?"
"Are you hard of hearing, general? Shall I put it in writing?"
"General, I…you can't…"
"Do not presume to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own staff, General Miyamoto," Kanbei whispered. "Better men than you have been punished for less."
Sonja's heart raced a mile a minute. On one side of the heart was pride in her father. Love, even. But on the other, concern. Concern at the look in the generals' eyes. Concern that her father was about to make a terrible mistake on her behalf.
"Father, let General Miyamoto stay."
In the end, concern won out.
"He is a pig, but war is dirty. Let us wait until it's over before washing off the mud."
Miyamoto's pufferfish had grown in size. It was as if he was unable to decide whether he should thank her, or hurl further insults. The other generals were likewise toeing the line. She could expect no support from them. And as great a man as her father was, she could not have him fight her battles.
"I take my leave," Sonja said. "I believe the motor pool requires my attention."
"The motor pool?" Her father asked.
"Yes." She headed for the exit. "I hope that by the time I return, cooler heads will have prevailed."
Across her nineteen years, Sonja had been no stranger to making scenes.
The earliest one she could recall was when the servants in the Palace of the Comet had kept giving her dolls. When she'd started using them to fight against each other instead of being properly ladylike. When they'd taught her in the ways of calligraphy rather than the sword. News filtered up to her father that his only heir was more like him and less like her mother, and by the end of it, more than one window in the palace had been shattered. He wanted her to lead, she wanted to serve. He wanted her to be a flower, she wanted to be the shears. He wanted her to wear a kimono, she wanted to wear an army uniform.
In the end, they'd reached a compromise. She could serve in the Yellow Army, but explicitly in non-combat positions. Intelligence, recon, that sort of thing. Wars World was finally at peace, Yellow Comet had reached understanding between parliament and monarchy, the people were content, and the other nations weren't about to ruin that. So with pursed lip, she'd obliged. She'd studied at the finest military academies in Yellow Comet, and even spent some time in Orange Star, before finally earning herself a place in the Army's SIGINT unit. After that, it was just a matter of climbing the ranks, doing so with the speed of a monkey.
But that was a different time. Black Hole had orchestrated a global conflict two years ago, and had waged a second, far bloodier war over the past twelve months. And as much as Sonja feared the current situation, she also feared that Miyamoto had a point.
The FOB was manned by the Yellow Army, but soldiers from the other three nations came and went. The armed forces of the four nations each operated in their own way, but months of carnage had formed bonds that had never before existed. She saw Blue Army soldiers drinking tea with her own soldiers, Green Army officers pouring over maps, and in the skies above, a squadron of the Orange Air Force was carrying out a joint patrol with Yellow Comet's. In the distance, the repeated 'boom' of artillery cut through the air, as the combined armies reminded Black Hole that they were here to stay, but so far, neither side had made a move.
I should be back in there.
She quickened her pace as she headed for the motor pool.
So help us if we make a mistake.
Black Hole hadn't contested their landing on the shores of Marco Land. Black Hole hadn't contested their presence, period. It bore all the signs of a trap, and in one sense, that gave Sonja hope – perhaps a trap was all they had left. But on the other hand, Black Hole had set a trap for her in the last war, when she thought she was the one doing the trapping. Sturm had unleashed everything he'd had, and only the combined forces of three armies had managed to drive him back. And two years later, he had returned with legions of men and material at his back, all of which were operating from a position of technological superiority. A simultaneous invasion of four countries had been launched, and all had been repelled by the skin of their defenders' teeth.
The war was about to end, Sonja reflected. She just couldn't vouch who'd win. Which was why she was headed for the FOB's motor pool, to work with a contact on improving Yellow Comet's tank designs.
If he's arrived yet.
Truth of the matter was, she was actually hoping to see him. It wasn't just her gender that made her an oddity in the Yellow Army, it was her age as well. Men saluted her as she walked by, soldiers from the other nations gave her the odd nod, but for every nod, there was a catcall, and for every catcall, a whisper about her age.
Also whispers about her working with a foreigner, but she'd got past that. Yellow Comet was decades behind the other nations – their fighters still used propellors, for goodness sake. While she couldn't fault her people's conviction, drawing on the warrior spirit that had served their island home for millennia, she could fault parliament for rejecting one modernization initiative after another, and her father being as stubborn as a cove.
Why coves were stubborn, Sonja didn't know. But as she walked into the motor pool, she could take comfort in knowing that not all stubbornness was an evil.
"Sonja!"
Case in point, Sensei. Her grandfather in every sense bar blood, who threw his arms around her. Who in turn, she hugged back.
"What are you doing here?" They asked at the same time. After laughter, Sensei went first.
"Came to see how the ground pounders are doing." He nodded at the motor pool – at the numerous tanks, jeeps, APCs, and other vehicles undergoing maintenance and repair. "Not too bad, not too bad at all."
"Slow day on the airfield then?"
"Oh, me and my boys are good to go. But until then…" He spread out his arms. "Brave new world, Sonja."
Brave new world indeed, she thought. Only problem was it could end in a second.
"Listen, I was expecting to meet someone," she said. "I was wondering if you-"
There was a roar from outside. One that belonged to a Md. Tank.
What the heck?
She and Sensei rushed out.
Oh come on.
Gaped, at least in her case. Sensei however was grinning as the Orange Star tank did a 180, leaving black scorch marks in its wake. Most of the soldiers were cheering, none more so than the Orange Star commandos hanging onto the vehicle.
The giant gorilla known as Max was among them. He climbed off to the cheers of the troops, mainly his own men. He wouldn't get any such cheers in an artillery unit, but the men loved him. Max got into the thick of things, even fighting alongside his own men, and rumour had it he'd even lifted up a tank once.
But it was Sami who climbed out of the tank's hatch. A commando, Sonja's former colleague from the academy in Orange Star, and someone whose nose she wanted to break.
"Hello princess."
Now more than ever.
Sami climbed down, bringing her rifle with her. "Recovered this baby from the field," she said. "Thought your engineers might look at it."
"How kind of you," Sonja said stiffly.
Sami scowled. "Don't get your panties twisted princess, some of us have to get our hands dirty. Not spend time looking at the chessboard."
"Of course," Sonja replied. "Though frankly, I'm more of a xiangqi player."
Sami smirked, and accepted a flask from a trooper.
"You had air recon I assume?" Sonja asked.
Sami took a swig.
"I mean, you spend so much time in the bird's nest, I'm sure you're used to flying by the seat of your pants."
Slowly…very slowly…Sami lowered the flask. Was it an admission? Hard to say. It really didn't matter. Every army of every country had rules against fraternization, but these days, the rules went out the window. Current estimates put the death toll at 64 million – a figure that even she, with her penchant for numbers, found it hard to wrap her head around. But nine months from now, Sonja expected millions of screaming idiots to pop out ready to plug the gaps.
"Anyway, where's Andy?" Sonja asked, as the tank started to be rolled into the motor pool. "I was told to expect him."
Sami shrugged. "Not coming."
"What?"
"He's doing his own thing." Sami took another sip of the flask and handed it back to the trooper. "Anyway, I've got a recon op in thirteen hours, so-"
"Sami," Sonja said, taking her arm. "Where is he?"
The commando gave her a funny look. One that remained even as Sonja withdrew her grasp. When it came to brawn, Sami had the right of it. When it came to brains, however? Well, who was it that said that those who couldn't think, fought?
"Kid needs a break," Sami murmured.
General Shimada, she reflected, before the weight of Sami's words sunk in.
"Look, Sonja, I'll be frank. It's none of your business and-"
"He's in Haverbrook."
"Max!"
"What?" Asked the CO. "That's where he was." He grinned, before looking at Sonja. "We offered him a ride on the tank for old times' sake. But kid's got the blues."
"The what?" Sonja spoke Rangeo fluently, but many of its phrases escaped her understanding.
"The blues," Max repeated. "Y'know, down, sad, not with it? Said he needed to fix something."
"Fix something," Sonja said, taking a breath. "Did he say what, by any chance?"
Max and Sami glanced at each other.
"Fine," Sonja sniffed. "I'll go."
"Sonja," said Sensei, putting a hand on her shoulder. "It might not be a good idea to leave the-"
She ignored him as she mounted a motorbike, roaring off.
Smiling as she covered Sami in dust.
##
Haverbrook was a town of three-hundred or so people on Marco Land's southern coast, and had been liberated by the Orange Army when it had made landfall. The intel reports that passed Sonja's desk indicated that Black Hole had operated as it always had – killing anyone who resisted, killing a few who didn't to set an example, stripped the town of anything useful, then had left it to its own devices.
Some of the citizens in Marco Land had conducted guerrilla attacks against Black Hole. After their cities were reduced to dust, the smart ones kept their heads down. So while Haverbrook was mostly intact, Sonja had no delusion as to what it had cost them.
The thump of artillery shells cut through the air, each of them hitting her like a bullet. Not that she knew what it meant to be hit by a bullet, but she'd visited med tents. Had seen men screaming from bullet wounds, and much worse. She could surmise that being hit by bullets (or anything really) was quite unpleasant, and that she should endeavour to minimize contact with them.
But more bullets would hit more bodies before this was all over. And as she pulled up by a farmhouse, right near the seventeen year old tinkering with a bike, she reflected that might not be the best way to start the conversation.
"Hello, Andy."
He looked up at her and gave a small smile, before returning to the bike. An orange-coloured pedal bike, not the mechanical one she was driving. The one with a side car and machine gun attached to it.
"I expected you at the motor pool today," she said as she dismounted. "I must admit, I was surprised to hear you were out here tinkering."
"I like tinkering," Andy murmured.
"Yes, but, you must understand that some vehicles demand your attention more than-"
"Fixed it!"
Sonja jumped – she had no idea why Andy had just shouted. At least, not until a young child ran out of the farmhouse, while his mother watched nervously from the door.
"Fixed it?" The kid asked.
Andy smiled. "Fixed it. Go on. Give it a try."
The boy must have been five, six tops, Sonja deduced, as he mounted the bike and rode it to his mother. He was overjoyed. She, however, had the fear of one who knew that joy was temporary.
Sonja didn't know where the boy's father was. But she could guess that things hadn't ended well for him.
"Fraternizing with the locals then," she murmured, as Andy began packing his tools. "A WHAM policy, I take it?"
"What?"
"Not what, WHAM." Seeing Andy's blank look, she added, "winning hearts and minds."
The blank look continued.
"You seriously don't know what WHAM means?"
"I know a lot of things."
"Yes, I know you do, and…" She trailed off. Back in the last war, she'd intercepted a transmission that Andy didn't know what an airport was, so maybe he was that clueless. "Look, it doesn't matter. I need you at the motor pool now."
He remained silent, and while she waited for a response, Sonja took a good look at him. Black messy hair, overalls, a giant spanner he was never without. Andy was the youngest CO in Orange Star's history. A mechanical whizz kid who by all rights should have serviced their arsenal rather than directed it. There was a reason he'd relied on an advisor in the last war.
But then, this was the same boy who, in that same war, had saved her from Sturm. Had accompanied Max and Sami into the bunker where she'd been imprisoned. In that moment, Sonja had realized that Andy was kinda cute.
And he still was, though that, of course, was irrelevant. What was relevant was the fact that he was slowly packing away his tools, and not meeting her eyes.
"Andy?" She asked. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," he murmured.
Fine, she thought, suppressing a sigh. She wasn't good with people's feelings. Her father, she understood, but that was because he hadn't let her out of his sight since her mother had died. Everyone else was a jumble of contradictions that never made sense.
"They're going to have me break things," Andy murmured as he got to his feet. "Send more people to break stuff."
"Um…"
"Break things. Kill people." A 'boom' cut through the air, while a bomber could be seen returning to the FOB's temporary airstrip. "Everything's gone, but they still want me to command troopers, and I…I'm not meant for that, y'know?"
Sonja stared. Every time she'd seen Andy, he'd struck her as a happy go lucky idiot. An endearing idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. It was one of life's great mysteries as to why she even put up with him, considering that she had no time for idiots of any stripe.
But she had to say something. So instead murmured, "we have to beat Black Hole."
"Oh yeah, sure. And what then? What happens to Marco Land? What happens to our own countries?"
"We…fix them."
"Right. And how long until the next war starts." He grunted, and headed back to the motorbike. Willing to come with her at least, but not willing to be the CO that they needed.
"Maybe that's the rub of it," she said. "We win this war so there's never another one."
He grunted.
"I mean it," she said, as she walked up to him. "We take out Sturm. We beat Black Hole. Then we go our separate ways, rebuild, and…"
She trailed off. It sounded so simple to put it like that. And the look in Andy's face told her that he knew it.
"Maybe it's not simple then," she said. "But if you fix things now, maybe there'll be less things to fix later. Maybe that's what you're here for."
He sighed, sitting down on the edge of the bike. He wiped his eyes, and he looked like he was on the verge of tears.
Please don't. She had no idea how to deal with tears. She'd tried visiting her soldiers, but she never knew what to say. That it would be alright? A lie. That they'd died for a good cause? A truth, but a cold one. That she was proud of them? Not really, she had no emotional attachment with the grunts. But-
"Nell should have never made me CO."
…okay, that was new.
"I'm just a kid," he protested. "I don't belong here. I…you know I fixed bikes before all this, right? I fixed bikes, I built bikes, then Nell comes along, and starts having me fix trucks, and tanks, and planes, and next thing I know people are dying around me and I…" He wiped his eyes. "I just don't know anymore."
He sniffed, and Sonja's insides squirmed. He was two years her junior. At his age, she'd been thick in military strategy, but then, Andy wasn't her, for better or worse. He was just a kid. A brilliant kid in his own way, but a kid nonetheless. A boy thrust into a war he never should have been part of.
Maybe her father was right to worry she thought. Maybe the generals were right as well. War wasn't a game. It wasn't meant for children. And yet, here they both were.
"Andy," she said.
He wiped his eyes again.
"Andy, look at me."
He did so. Just in time for Sonja to say the first things that came to mind.
"I get it," she whispered. "Really, I do. The world's gone mad. Black Hole's evil. Sturm…" She shuddered, as she kept the memories that had played out as nightmare at bay. "I don't even know what Sturm is, but we have to beat him. Because if we don't, what's happened to you is going to happen to everyone else. And they don't deserve that, Andy. We can fix things. But if we win this war now, we can stop more things from being broken."
He looked at her.
"Things," she repeated. "People, family lives, I…look, I'm not good with this kind of stuff, but I really want your help right now, because…because I don't want to be the emperor's daughter anymore, I want someone like me beside me, and I like you, and-"
"You like me?"
…what little colour there was left in her face.
"You like me," Andy repeated.
"As a friend," she added hastily.
"Right. Totally."
"As a friend."
"Fellow commander."
"Nothing else."
"Of course not."
"Good. Glad that's-
"Out of the way, so-"
"We'll get going," Sonja said, as she mounted the bike. "And not talk about this again."
"No," said Andy grinning. "Of course not."
She revved the bike up, eager to get back to tanks and APCs as soon as possible.
"Just wait until Max and Sami learn that you like me."
Sonja whacked him over the head before driving back to the FOB. Gave a wave to the mother and son behind them.
I have to fix this.
"Sonja likes me, Sonja likes me," Andy said in a sing-song voice.
She groaned, and toyed with the idea of crashing the bike so they died in a fiery inferno. A better fate than this twerp running his mouth.
Still, she reflected, Andy seemed in better spirits now.
And maybe some things didn't have to be fixed.
A/N
The idea for this actually came from the trailer for Reboot Camp, where Andy is seen fixing a bike at the start. Just ended up running with it.