More Roll of Thunder
*Wails* I didn't mean it!
Pretty quiet chapter, really just a setup for 15.
What’s the matter, Kashim? Don’t you love me?
I woke suddenly, rigid and angry. “No!” I snarled.
But my surroundings looked nothing like the Russian hotel that I could have sworn I was just in, nor did they look like -
Wait. Hadn’t I been on the roof of that Russian hotel?
The eyes upon me now were nothing like the ones that I remembered seeing last. I blinked. I was in the medical wing of the de Daanan. How had that happened? “Kalinin?” Followed by, “…Sir?”
“Good morning, Sergeant,” he said calmly. “Do you feel better?”
I stopped and thought about that as I reoriented myself. “I… think so.” There was a dull throbbing in my head, but beyond that, my brain was mercifully clear. For the first time in almost… a day? How long had I been out?... I felt normal. The fog that had persistently clouded my thoughts had lifted, and I was no longer distracted by the smallest disturbances around me. The drugs must have worn off. “What happened?”
“When you were recovered, you were unconscious, but not seriously injured,” Kalinin explained. “You would have woken on your own not long after, but when you were deposited in the medical wing of the de Daanan, there were traces of a toxin in your bloodstream that we did not recognize, and your brain waves were considerably altered.” His eyes returned to the book he had been reading previously. “There was also temporary brain damage consistent with the kind brought on by the use of certain hallucinogens. The toxins in your system, however, failed to match with common street drugs.”
“That’s because it wasn’t a common street drug,” I explained. “MUSE has been taking their experiments on the Whispered beyond simply the technological, and some of the things they’ve been producing are drugs. And Raskowitz,” I added darkly, “decided to lace my drink with one of them.”
“We noticed that there was a disagreement between your two parties,” he remarked dryly.
I tensed, then grabbed the IV needle in my arm to keep it from coming out. “Where is he?”
He knew without hesitation that I didn’t mean Raskowitz. “I don’t know. He wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity when our team arrived to retrieve you. A group would have been dispatched to find him, but we have precious little time to find Miss Chidori.”
Betrayal wrenched through my stomach, followed by the wave of comprehension cut short by the blow to my head earlier. “How was she taken?” I asked, quiet and angry.
“She was separated from Major Mao at a train station in Hong Kong. Sergeant Weber was wounded, but aside from some bruises and cuts, he’s recovering well. They were outnumbered; we had hoped our decoy would work, but we were wrong. Thanks to the information you secured from Raskowitz, however, we know where they’re taking her. That is where the Tuatha de Daanan is headed now.”
“Where is that?”
“The Chihuahua Desert, in Mexico. Their home base will only be there for another four days, then they relocate to the wilds of Nigeria. Due to the political situation in that part of the country, we would rather deal with Mexican authorities.”
My head spun, and I felt I could only comprehend half of the things he was saying. “Did they hurt her?”
“No,” he reassured me, although the unspoken yet kept me from being reassured. “They can’t afford to; from what we can tell, Chidori holds the exact information that they need. Her knowledge as a Whispered has surfaced most prominently when you are battling an enemy in the Arbalest - Captain Testarossa and I suspect that her mind holds the key to the LAMDA driver. If they get the information they need from her, it might solve the major problem of that device.”
“Which is what?”
“It only responds to one pilot in four. We don’t know why. Because of that, there are only a handful of people who can even turn it on, and only two pilots in the world who can fluently pilot an Arm Slave with that equipment,” he said heavily. “And we can’t locate the other one.”
My hands fisted around my sheets. “I should have known,” I seethed. “There was no way he wouldn’t make an attempt to escape - and I virtually let him. I didn’t consider for even a moment that he would -“
“Sergeant.” His voice was firm and invited no interruption. “Until two hours ago, you were at a considerable mental disadvantage; no one will hold you responsible for his escape. You, meanwhile, are lucky that you were not given a higher dose of that substance - any more, and the damage would have been permanent. Your brain would have been more or less melted by the chemicals in the drug - you are very lucky to have survived with little more than an unpleasant memory of the experience.”
I took a deep breath. “I would like to be dispatched with the team that goes in after Miss Chidori, sir.”
He smiled faintly. “I thought as much. Sergeant Weber and Major Mao have already made the same request. We will notify you an hour before your deployment.” Kalinin closed his book and stood up.
“Due to your impaired judgment,” he added over his shoulder, “there will be no inquiries over that particular part of your mission. We will need to know everything that happened with Raskowitz and the woman we assume is his wife, but beyond that, our records will consider you out of commission due to personal injury, unless you are aware of any classified information Gauron might have discovered concerning Mithril.”
I shook my head. “There’s none, sir.”
“Good.” His eyebrows rose, and with one scorching look, I felt very small and very aware that he was keeping a considerable amount of displeasure hidden from me. “In the meantime, Sergeant, I recommend you wear the scarf Miss Chidori so thoughtfully gave you, to avoid questions.”
My stomach dropped through the floor. “Yes, sir,” I said when I could find my voice again. He nodded once and departed briskly.
The curtain that kept my bed private from the others in the wing was swept aside, and a sly grin greeted me. “Brrr,” Kurz remarked cheerfully. “Frosty!”
“Shut up, Weber,” Mao snapped from the chair beside his bed, hitting him with a clipboard.
“Hey, hey, take it easy!” he yelped. “I’m injured!”
“You’re injured?” she repeated. “Yeah, right, you get kicked around and you’re dying. Keep it up, and I’ll show you injured.” She turned her gaze to me. “How do you feel?”
“Oh, so you’re all worried about Sousuke, but let’s just throw me to the dogs,” he sighed.
“Give me a chance,” she threatened. “Just one opportunity, you idiot.” Back to me. “Doing better?”
“I suppose,” I said glumly. Kalinin’s disappointment stung more than Chidori’s rolled-up newspaper.
“You look like a kicked puppy,” Kurz remarked, only to be smacked with the clipboard again.
“CAN IT, WEBER!” Sympathetic violet eyes returned to me. “Heard you had a rough mission.”
“I heard the same about you,” I mumbled.
She cringed. “I’m sorry, Sousuke… Kurz went into the bathroom, and when he didn’t come out after fifteen minutes, I started to think he’d asked some girl to meet him in there - he was drooling all over some blond bimbo who was waiting for the same train as us. But Miss Kaname didn’t want to go into the guy’s bathroom, and I just stuck my head in the door so that I didn’t leave her out there by herself, and I saw Kurz unconscious on the floor. When I turned around, we were pretty much surrounded. We hadn’t noticed anything suspicious; it was pretty cold outside, and everyone was wearing heavy coats, so we couldn’t tell if anyone was packing.”
I put my head in my hands.
“Three guys jumped me while I was in the bathroom,” Kurz added, the humor gone from his face. “I almost had two of them, but then the third one came up behind me, and they pretty much had me.”
“We thought we could lose them,” she admitted. “We took different trains all around the city to ditch anyone who might have been following us, and then we were going to meet up with some of our guys at a private airport and get Kaname back to Tokyo…”
“I should have been there,” I said tightly.
“That wouldn’t have changed anything,” Mao snapped. “And that’s probably why it happened then - they knew you weren’t with us.”
“D’you think Gauron was in on it?” Kurz wondered.
I shook my head. “Somehow, I doubt it. He knocked me out as soon as Kalinin told us Chidori was gone; if he’d known about it, he would have made sure to tell me. What’s the use in betraying someone if you don’t get to wallow in your victory?” I sighed.
“Besides,” Melissa added, “Tessa said there are still guys from MUSE out looking for him. They want him dead, not alive. I think they’d change the requirements if he helped set that up.” Her eyes were sympathetic. “None of this is your fault, Sousuke. You’re a lot of things, but psychic isn’t one of them.”
“You’re damn lucky, is what you are,” Kurz agreed. “What the hell happened with Raskowitz, anyways? I thought they were supposed to be friends.”
“Being friends with Gauron doesn’t do much for a person’s life expectancy,” I told him grimly. “There was some bad blood between them - some personal problems involving Raskowitz’s wife several years ago. They tried to get revenge, but it backfired.” I almost smiled at the pun, but my heart was still too heavy in my chest. I couldn’t get Kaname’s face out of my head - somehow, I could have helped her. I was certain of it.
Her bad feeling had been dead-on.
“And he drugged you?” Kurz chuckled. “Last I heard, you didn’t punish someone by making them trip out. Where I come from, that’s more like a recreational thing. Although normally you don’t really know how to have fun.”
“Shut up, Kurz,” Mao snapped absently.
He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, sorry. I forgot - you have some fun schedule for February.”
“Shut up, Kurz!”
“In enemy territory,” I said shortly, “it’s a weakness. If I’d been on top of my game… lots of the things that happened, wouldn’t have happened.”
“Yeah, we noticed,” he grinned, waving my scarf for emphasis. “Or would that have happened anyways?”
I turned crimson, and Melissa raised the clipboard warningly. “Want another one, asshole?” she threatened.
Almost as an afterthought, she swung the clipboard and hit me across the head. “By the way, have you gone insane?” she snapped. “This doesn’t look like you’re keeping the situation under control!” She sounds just like Chidori, I thought.
“Hey, he was trippin’, yo,” Kurz snickered. “You never know - maybe he just hallucinated those things.”
“Things?” I repeated.
“Your neck,” Melissa said darkly. “You’ve got some new ones.”
“Who else saw?” I demanded.
“Just us, Peggy, and Kalinin. Your jacket covered them when they brought you in.”
I gave up. “Oh.”
“At least you had fun,” Kurz offered.
I didn’t look at him.
“Sousuke, you did what you were supposed to do,” she sighed. “We needed the skinny from Raskowitz, and you got it. Now we know where to find Kaname. If you two hadn’t gone to Russia, we wouldn’t even know where to start looking. They might have killed her by the time we found her.”
“They might anyways,” I said grimly. “MUSE isn’t easy on the Whispered - when they’ve gotten what they need from her, they’ll dispose of her.”
“Knowing Kaname, that might take awhile,” Kurz grinned. “She put up a fight last time, didn’t she? I don’t see them cracking her on the first try.”
“If she proves herself useless, they’ll kill her and go after someone else,” I snapped. “We have to find her before they start their experiments.”
“Don’t they have to find out what… um… kind of Whispered she is first?” he countered.
Melissa rolled her eyes. “Don’t you even know how to eavesdrop? Kalinin just said that she probably has information on how to perfect the LAMDA driver, which is probably exactly what they’re after. I know our tech teams would shit themselves if they could figure that out. If we could fill in the blanks and fix the glitches, then we could equip all our mechs with one. The three of us are pretty dangerous with just our M-9’s - it’s even harder when Sousuke has the Arbalest. Imagine if all three of us had weapons like that.”
I tensed. “It would be a disaster. Those things are too unreliable to depend on in battle. If it doesn’t turn on, then you’re just another fighter in a multi-billion dollar robot.”
“It was only once that you couldn’t get your LAMDA driver to work,” she reminded me.
“And you could have been killed,” I shot back. “If it’s too heavily relied upon in battle, other vital skills go stale, and when it fails to work, you’re left at a disadvantage. I’m glad it only works for two people,” I said coldly.
Kurz shrugged. “So don’t let your fine-ass combat skills get all rusty. Then, when you inevitably have to fight Gauron again, you’ve still got an advantage.”
“I don’t have an advantage,” I sighed. “I never did. He’s been in combat far longer than I have; one of these days, I’m going to lose.”
“I think you have an advantage,” he replied smoothly. “You went to Russia with the guy and survived with nothing but a bump on the head - the real danger was from someone else. I don’t think you would have lived through that if you didn’t have something in your favor.”
I ground my teeth. “He tormented me for two days straight.”
He grinned. “See? Advantage! If he kills you, who’s he gonna play with?”
“If that’s supposed to be reassuring,” Melissa scowled, “it’s not working.”
“How are we going to retrieve Chidori?” I asked, changing the subject.
They exchanged glances. “That’s where it gets hairy,” Melissa admitted. “There was just a huge cocaine bust on the border, so the Americans have shut down all the crossover points we were going to use. We’re going to have to approach this place from the south, which means we have to take a train to the rendezvous point. Kalinin thinks we’re going to have a tough time keeping a low profile, since none of us are Mexican, and if we have three huge train cars dragging our mechs behind us, we’re probably screwed. So we’re going to meet our AS’s just outside the restricted zone.”
I frowned. “I don’t like it.”
“None of us do,” Kurz grumbled. “I mean, we’ll be totally packing, but… I just keep thinking that someone’s gonna hijack our machines before we can get to them, and then we’ll be stranded until someone comes to rescue us.”
“In the Mexican desert,” Melissa agreed. “Our AS’s will be coming down through Acunia in ECS mode and they’ll be waiting for us when we get there.”
Kurz rolled his eyes. “It’s actually easier to smuggle three humongous machines across the border than it is three foreigners. Mexico.”
“Hey, don’t knock it,” she shot back. “As soon as we get Chidori back, I swear I’m going to Acunia, getting drunk, and passing out.” At my disapproving look, she added, “Once she’s safely back on the sub, I mean.”
“I hear it’s quite the party town,” Kurz agreed, perking. “D’you think the captain would let us?”
“She has to,” Mao decided. “After the absolute shit we’ve gone through lately, there’s no way she can say no.”
I continued to disapprove silently.
“Dude, you don’t have to go,” Kurz sighed. “If you want, you can just stay on the sub and shadow Chidori around and make sure no one bumps into her for two days straight.”
“It’s unwise to leave yourselves exposed and intoxicated in enemy territory,” was all I had to say about it.
Kurz glanced at Melissa. “All this negativity,” he said mournfully. “Guess I shouldn’t have mocked Fun February.”
She snorted in spite of herself, but recovered quickly. “Don’t be a douchebag,” she finally snapped. “He knows what he’s talking about - didn’t his last mission just go awry because of that?”
“That was only part of it,” Kurz returned. “I think Gauron being a crazy son of a bitch was a bigger part.”
My mind flashed back to that last impossible situation - handcuffed, unarmed, lined up for execution. “His insanity is the only reason we’re still alive,” I sighed, and proceeded to explain to them the situation we had been in, and how we got out.
Kurz gave a low whistle.
“He’s out of his fucking mind,” Mao declared finally. “That’s not a gamble; that’s a bluff, and it’s a crazy one. I can’t believe you actually survived that.”
Kurz was shaking his head. “It wasn’t a complicated situation with a whole lot of variables,” he agreed. “Those are usually the ones that get professionals killed. And… yeah. He’s fucking lost it.”
“He never had it to begin with,” I grumbled.
“You can sure pick them,” he said wryly.
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t pick him, I wanted to tell him. Somehow, he chose me. But I still said nothing. And the twist of resent that usually followed that thought was completely absent.
“He’s certainly insane,” I agreed after a long silence.
But you love me anyways.
I folded my arms and tried to relax. Even when he was gone, he… wasn’t.
Whether he was involved in Chidori’s capture or not, I was certain that I hadn’t heard the last of him yet.
My thoughts drifted again to Chidori. We wouldn’t be too late - we couldn’t be. I knew that logically, my presence wouldn’t have kept her from being taken - it might have even resulted in someone getting seriously hurt, if I thought about it. But responsibility was impossible to shake, and it was my responsibility to get her back. If I owed it to no one else, I owed it to her.
As for Gauron - I would cross that bridge when I came to it.
All I could do for now was wait.
It was like that when I got here, I swear.