Descent into Mayhem

PROLOGUE

Ten kilometers south of the Northern Wetlands Conservation Hub, 14H05, 5th of January 2750

First-sergeant Devonport suppressed a renewed urge to vomit. He struggled to get his labored breathing under control, dismally aware that it was only a matter of time before his stomach betrayed him. If there was one thing he knew about motion sickness, it was that the nausea would only settle down once the movement that was causing it had subsided.

He pushed the uncomfortable thought out of his mind and focused on his situation instead.

Devonport knelt before the crest of a steep elevation, his surroundings cloaked by rain that had been pouring down since the end of the previous month. Near to him a few stunted trees stood, their trunks turned up in a way that suggested the wind blew uphill on its southern face. There was still some strength left in the day's wind, although it was only a shadow of the katabatic storm that had preceded it. The gusts instilled slight rocking motions upon the MEHEI as he waited, his helmet playing the falling rain's static sound endlessly into his ears.

Well beyond the elevation's summit, someone keyed a radio three times. To Devonport's ears, the sound was barely audible above the background static, but still he tensed as he caught the unmistakable squawks, steeling himself for what was to come.

Maybe if I croak there'll be a footnote about me in some history book, he mused, a humorless smile spreading across his face. His severely cropped moustache, almost Hitlerian in design, brushed against the edges of the undersized mouth-piece.

Devonport's stomach lurched as he rose to a standing position. He shifted his body forwards and began to advance in bounding strides, his pace picking up to a slow, ponderous jog. Pulling from its resting-pylon his sole weapon for the coming fight, he then launched his armored Suit over the crest and became airborne.

The new feeling that invaded him had very little to do with nausea.

He landed heavily with seven tons of hardware tipping perilously forwards. He instinctively buckled his appendages, slamming a right kneepad into the waterlogged ground while allowing his left footpad to slide forward to counter an eventual roll. The impact shook his body, the hydraulic interface's shock-absorbing capability failing to entirely cancel out the vibrations. Gravity conspired with inertia to send him onwards with hardly-diminished speed.

He began to savor the ferrous taste of his own blood.

He pounded his way down the tall hill, unable to see the way ahead except for a twenty-meter extension before him, backsword held one-handed and high over his pauldron. The thick-bladed implement, originally a combat engineering tool, weighed over two hundred Kilo-mass and was single-edged, with the blade remaining rectangular right up to its abrupt end. The hilt allowed for a wide two-handed grip suitable for felling trees, and more than a fifth of the weapon's weight rested in its sizable tungsten pommel. The only disruption to its smooth design was a robust crow-hook at the end of the back of the weapon's blade.

Devonport was counting on the crow-hook to afford him victory in the fight to come.

He picked up several frantic squawks over the comm from his advanced observer. Moments later a disembodied male voice began to offer warning in Japanese.

"Would be sweet if I knew what you were saying, kozo ..." Devonport rasped at the automated voice.

His view suddenly became obscured by several virtual panels offering him urgent instruction in Kanji writing.

The sergeant smirked but forewent any witty remarks. If only he had figured out how to change the language settings, then he wouldn't be about to die from an overdose of ignorance. A twisted grin came to his face as the unit's operating system began to display icons of incoming targets.