MSG: In Vain Doth Valour Bleed

Chapter 11 (part 1)

Near Hattersheim, Hessen, Central Europe
November 9, 0087

Wide. The world was so wide here. Endless expanses of it, as far as the eye could see. Awesome in its beauty, terrifying in its scope. Everything was so real, so new, that it was like a dream given solid form. It even had its own smell; composed of a thousand other smells granted, but still a very particular smell. For lack of a better name, he called it freedom, and he reveled in every inhalation of it.

Even the cold could not touch Dietrich von Mellenthin at this moment, as he stood like a triumphant god in the wide palm of McKenna's speeding Dom, snow lashing him across the face and spattering across the goggles on his numbing face, wind whipping about him, forcing him to steady himself with a hand on the huge index finger of the mobile suit. It was a sensation he had not felt in a long time, the numbness of cold, not since the War. New Koenigsberg never enabled its weather pattern for snow, and it had been a shock to see it here that first time. That time, its curious majesty had been overshadowed by the fact that they had been in retreat, which was a taste in which to sour the finest wine on the palate. But not so with this snowfall. This one was different. This one held the promise of glory.

The other two suits were ahead and on the flanks, weaponry in hand and on call. The ice was kept at bay by the heat of their reactors and the huge GES thrusters that enabled them to skim on their cushions of air. Von Mellenthin admitted that he was indeed behind the times in the world of modern armored warfare and its weapons. The Dom had seemed a fantasy to them on the European front, where logistics had been scarce and equipment upgrades scarcer yet. There would be quite a catching-up session once the staging area at the Taunus Mountains was reached. He would make Reinhardt bring him up to speed, since the Colonel had probably memorized the capabilities of the new suits already. That was his way, after all, and it saved von Mellenthin the necessity of doing so himself, even though he was more than capable of the task.

Glancing around, his eyes on the white vista that was slowly sinking to gray as the sun set, he viewed his domain. His domain. Hessen. Hessia. So much history contained in this land, his history. Every snow-capped rooftop, every sentinel evergreen tree, every road and stream and soul. His blood hummed with the ambience of this place, and he wanted to purr and curl up and sleep, knowing that the only walls that contained him now were the ones he chose to place around himself. He was thankful his ancestors had finally returned to Germania after their exile in South Africa, but not to their old lands of Silesia, but to here. Now this was his to do with as he desired, his inheritance. The old Grand Duchy of Hessen-Nassau, established by Philip, the Landgrave of Hessen who had brought this area under his sway during the Lutheran Schmalkaldic War of the 1540s, whose power now rested on the person of one man, born to Space and bred to War, destined to lay the oppressors low and unite all Terra under the sway of blood and iron, to prove once and for all the righteousness of the Ordnung and the divine rule of the Emperors, sealed under the power of Zeon forever.

No pressure.

Ahead of them, the darkening masses that signaled the foothills of Taunus. It was a low range, but one heavily shrouded with forests, where the 10th Panzerkaempfer was lord and master. Mountains and forests, ever their shield and home. It would shelter them from Federation eyes as well now as it did during the War, though this forest was new to their touch. It would serve. A good thing that after the pollution of the 20th Century, the Greens had managed to wheedle their legislation through, and after a couple of centuries without acid rain, the forests that were a facet of German life still stood proudly, to grant the loyal sons of this piece of earth rest in their shade, and keep their enemies at bay.

But as nice as it would be to maintain a fairy tale that hiding in the woods would make them immune to the oppressors, von Mellenthin was too much the military realist to buy that line. Their foe cared nothing for this land or its people, and would burn every tree to cinders to destroy them. Even now, he was certain they were mobilizing, even with the threat of Nemesis hanging over them. They had no choice. The gauntlet had been thrown, and to simply let it lie would mean that the Federation admitted that it was too weak to deal with the 10th Panzerkaempfer. There would be battle, and carnage, and death again. There would also be victory, redemption, and vindication at last. It would feel as good as it did to be free again, of that he was sure.

He would not have wanted it any other way.

Near Darmstadt, Hessen, Central Europe
November 9, 0087

The convoy ran on running lights now, the setting sun finally having prematurely dipped below the western horizon, where its light would not penetrate the triple-layered obstacles of the Hunsbrueck, the Westerwald, and the Eifel ranges. Despite the lateness of the hour, the news helicopters flew, their eyes spying as best they could on the northward-bound collection of Zeon mobile suits and their heavy-lift truck in the center of the herd. The news people, avid for anything after the murder of one of their own at the hands of the man who would command this rebellion against the Federation, were wisely avoiding straying too close after a particularly daring one of their number went in for a close-up in the rapidly dimming light and discovered that the Zaku Cannon was rigged for flak. The wreckage of that helicopter had finally stopped burning somewhere back around Lorsch, but still they circled as long as they could before the lack of light and fuel forced them to withdraw, one at a time. What had been a dozen of them were down to a meager four, and none of them had the fortitude to test that Zaku Cannon's patience by illuminating them with spotlights.

If he'd had his way, the remaining four would have been swatted down as well, but Reinhardt von Seydlitz was a pragmatist. Press goons bred like fleas in the midst of a crisis, and this was no different. They would vanish of their own accord, when that time was nigh.

While dwelling on nigh times, he glanced over at de la Somme, who had managed to drive for the better part of an hour without making a sound. Von Seydlitz knew what that was. De la Somme was fuming mad, and the silent treatment was one of the methods by which he conveyed anger. It also signaled that he was enraged beyond belief, since just a simple mad would have been voiced almost immediately. For almost an hour, von Seydlitz had let the younger man stew, as he always had when they were just boys. It was against de la Somme's nature to hold onto anger for too long, else it made him ill at heart and then he was miserable. As a failsafe, he would get un-angry slowly, until he was capable of rational discussion, but the process took time.

Von Seydlitz could remember once, when von Mellenthin and de la Somme had gotten into a heated debate about whether or not the Federation or the Klingons had developed transporter technology first, when de la Somme had gotten into one of these fits of his and been prompted out of it too soon. He almost smiled as he recalled the event in detail. Von Mellenthin had been twelve, de la Somme all of seven years of age. In what at the time had seemed an amazing display of ignorance on the part of von Mellenthin (at least to von Seydlitz, who had seen his older foster brother judge the character of others to a tee who were far older than he), he had pressed and pressed his ludicrously-wrong point until de la Somme had shut up, then kept right on pressing, until the much-younger de la Somme (who was the Star Trek junkie of their group), had finally flown into a rather impressive shrieking frenzy, complete with thrown projectiles, screaming, and violence that went from point to point in the room, and did include his brother in his hurricane of destruction. It had turned out that he hadn't really cared about the argument at all, and he was upset about something completely different, and was venting it in one titanic burst of emotion.

After twenty entire minutes of this tantrum, and several dozen ruined objects of worth, the steam had finally been let out of their younger foster brother, who promptly collapsed in a heap on the floor, too wiped out to even stand. Antares had eventually 'gotten over it', just as he would eventually get over this. That was inevitable. Von Seydlitz mused at the irony of the fact that the little boy who had devastated a room of their house over his older brothers leaving him had, as an adult, handled the eight years without von Mellenthin's presence far better than he himself had.

Nonetheless, the silence in the cab was becoming uncomfortable, even to him. A quiet de la Somme was an unnatural de la Somme.

"You have my permission to speak, Kommandant," he spoke into the stillness.

"I'm so pissed at you I could chew my lips off," spat de la Somme after a moment.

"I would not recommend doing that. How would you blow kisses at Margul without your lips?"

The younger pilot snorted. "At least without 'em I wouldn't have to kiss your ass, sir."

Von Seydlitz's eyes slid sideways to look at de la Somme, who was pointedly looking straight ahead at the road. "Very well, then. It is just the two of us in this vehicle. Speak freely, like if we were at home."

The floodgate opened. "They're just kids, Reinhardt! Orphaned kids, like I was, you know, before! You're treating them like they're some kind of property, and that's just not cool! You never treated me like I was property, so why's this any different, huh? If you feel the urge to act superior, do me a favor and scare the hell outta me instead of them, okay? Even better, go terrorize someone who f***ing deserves it, like that killer Margul, who shoulda been executed back at the War! Leave the kids alone, Reinhardt, please! It's not their fault that they're NewTypes, or whatever the hell they are, and it's not their fault that there's a war, and it's not their fault that the Feddies are assholes, and it's not their fault that Deet got thrown in the slam for eight years! Take it out on something else, for God's sake! Get a stress ball or a dog to chase or laid or something, but so help me if you ever touch one of those kids back there like that again, I will bitchslap you---"

Von Seydlitz tilted his head to look squarely at de la Somme, put his left fist inside his right hand, and then cracked his knuckles loudly. Mobile suits were one thing, but hand-to-hand was a whole different universe, with a different hill that von Seydlitz stood on top of.

"---Okay, maybe I won't, but something bad will happen to you if you do that again, because God'll see to it. Please just remember that they're kids, okay? You were a kid once, too, you know." With that, de la Somme fell silent, trying to swallow past the lump in his throat as the pent-up anger began to bleed away, and his system tried to find other ways to release it faster. He sank his teeth into his lower lip to try to stop the trembling.

For a long moment, von Seydlitz was silent. Then, "They do not look like children to me. What they are is something different. Pre-pubescent weapons, Antares, that wear the faces of men. They represent a future that was not supposed to occur yet. I am . . .not ready to accept that my time is done so soon, is all, and little children that can speak into my mind are irrefutable proof that the ideals that the Ordnung profess are indeed true. But I---I am not ready to step aside for them yet, even though I am forced to admit that they may be superior to me. Where was our time?"

De la Somme nodded. One of the tenets of life on New Koenigsberg had been the quest to breed a superior human amongst the Elector Houses. Von Mellenthin, and von Seydlitz, had been products of that line of reasoning, one that had been in place for a hundred years, and even then before the Reise zum Raum. But instead of the superior human being a product of Space, it was instead created on Terra, by a nation that refused to believe in the possibility of a superior human. Where de la Somme saw eight children, von Seydlitz saw eight reasons why he and his older foster brother were obsolete.

Von Seydlitz continued, voice and face cold and hard as ice. "There was never a reason to doubt that evolution through birth would see the rise of the next stage in Space, where there was room to evolve away from the hampering effects of Terra. I was born, Dietrich was born, even you were born, and I do not doubt for a moment that we are superior to any Terra-born human. But those things in the back . . .they were made. Constructed, by the Federation. A testament to artificiality, just like the machine-processed NewTypes their Titans use. Everything of Terra has become a thing of unnatural conception, even those 'children'. How are they to recognize what it is to be human if they have no frame of reference for what it is to be of humans? No, there are ten lifeforms in this vehicle, but only two of them are human.

"And I will not allow or accept the reign of an artificial being over the true Spacenoid. Superior humans or not, Ordnung or not, I will defy that fate with every power I can muster. I do not hate them, Antares, just what they were designed to do, and that is to supplant the order of things. The Federation has trod in a realm not even the most insane of us would ever go, and they did it blindfolded and ignorant of the devils they unleashed. Just like when they promised Space its freedom and then refused to relinquish control, and they paid a heavy price for that mistake. What price should they pay for this one? What price will we pay for this one?"

"How---how will Deet handle this?" He licked his lips, mouth dry from listening to his older brother's words.

Von Seydlitz scowled. "I am not certain, Antares. He may see them as you do, or as I do, or neither. You know he prefers his own opinions to base his schemes on. Sometimes I could guess his ultimate intention, but in this one . . .I simply do not know if he will raise them up as gods, or cast them down as proof of the inferiority of anything from Terra. Either of those fills me with a sense of foreboding, but there may yet be a third option that I cannot deduce."

"Hope so, for your sake." A terrible thing indeed to know one's purpose, then have a reason to doubt it. "Worst case, Reinhardt, baby, you get to clamber down here with the rest of us mortals."

"Only a mortal would say something so hateful to one who is not." De la Somme looked over at him with a snide expression on his face, and von Seydlitz suppressed a grin. There was a gulf between them on this, but both had simply decided to let it lie until the one whose word mattered more made the final decision.

Within the ring of moving armor, the heavy-lift vehicle sped northward, to meet with their King.