Descent into Mayhem

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - FUGITIVE

Above Base Fido, Nature's Day, 21st of June, 2771

Toni returned to consciousness inside the personnel cabin of an air force copter. It was probably noisy out there, since all those without earmuffs were presently pressing their hands against their ears. One of the earmuffed soldiers noticed that he was conscious and said something to the high-ranking officer beside him. The old officer, whose appearance suggested that he had just survived hell, leaned over him and spoke a few words.

Toni wasn't too good at reading lips, but the man seemed to be trying to console him. Toni asked whether the Unmil was dead, and was surprised to discover that he couldn't hear his own voice. The sad expression on the officer alarmed him. Was he sad because it was not? Or was it because he hadn't understood the question?

He tried to move but found that he couldn't, and he began to panic, wondering whether he was strapped down or whether he no longer had use of his body. He closed his eyes, preferring the darkness, and felt hot tears roll down his face.

He returned to the warm void where his savage self roamed, and remained there for a while.

When he awoke again, Toni lay in a cot in a medical bay quite different from the one he had known at Base Fido.

That single compartment possessed a surface area larger than Fido's medical bay, and hospital cots like his lined both sides of its considerable length. To his right was a wide entrance, its double-doors kept open as nurses and orderlies passed busily through to attend to the injured. The patients numbered at least thirty.

He suddenly realized that he was able to hear again, and he lay there for a while, weeping quietly and thanking the gods for their mercy. He then closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of his surroundings. His ears felt like they had been stuffed with cotton, but still he could hear nearby patients in conversation, the howling wind outside and even the occasional groan of pain.

Discovering also that he had the use of his left arm, he touched his hand to an ear and felt through its folds, finding nothing jammed in there. His ears were back, but they weren't in good shape and possibly never would be. His sadness was greatly lessened when he found he could also move his legs. Slowly he flexed them, and felt more than heard his knees snap painfully. It was an acceptable pain, one that told him he might one day run again.

Something struck Toni's head and he opened his eyes, peering about. Finding a crinkled piece of paper on his bandaged chest, he searched for its thrower, and found a patient of his age smiling in the cot beside him.

"Got your ears pretty hammered, huh?" the boy asked cheerily.

Toni had no difficulty in understanding the question, and indeed the other patients had winced at the loudness with which the boy had spoken.

The soldier turned out to be an aircraft maintenance assistant by the name of Harry Osaka. Four days previously, as they had been prepping a drone with missiles for an attack sortie, someone had made the mistake of maneuvering the forklift a little too aggressively and had collided against the craft, rupturing its fuel tank. The end result had been an escalating chain of fires, deflagrations and detonations that had left two base personnel dead and more than twenty injured, Harry among them.

When asked if he knew anything about what had happened at Base Fido, Harry appeared puzzled, and the base-rat was forced to grapevine with the remaining patients before presenting Toni with the sole tidbit of information regarding ROWAC's and EWAC's delaying activities; ROWAC's commander was dead and a score more injured, both unit commands having been effectively put out of action by a single nuke. The information was known only due to the fact that the injured had been evacced to Lograin, all other details being classified. Swallowing his sadness for the old natural, Toni thanked the runway jockey for the intel.