MSG: In Vain Doth Valour Bleed

Chapter 5

Mannheim, Hessen, Central Europe
August 23, 0087

"So you see," spoke the voice around the pistachios the teeth inside the mouth were masticating with some relish, "we're offering you quite the opportunity, considering that most people here and abroad would rather have seen you dead. You ought to be grateful."

You have no idea. Dietrich von Mellenthin did not take his eyes from the other man's face, despite the repulsive display of poor manners. "Oh, rest assured that my gratitude is at your service, Warden Grissom."

The Warden of Mannheim Military Penitentiary finished chewing and swallowed a gulp of coffee from the mug next to his hand before speaking again. "Now, there are some rules you'll have to follow, but they should be easy to remember for the likes of you. First, no touching the nice reporter lady. You will be chained for the duration of the live interview and at all times prior to and afterwards, and you will be guarded, so no funny business."

"Understood," replied von Mellenthin, raising his hands from the tabletop slightly in order to rattle his cuffs, signaling that he did, indeed, understand. A Styrofoam cup was next to his hands, the coffee inside untouched. This whole chatting session was so wretched that he simply did not want to touch anything more than he absolutely had to. Yet another attempt to show who was in charge and who was not. Dietrich von Mellenthin understood the true meaning of power, and he knew who in this room had some and who did not.

"You will answer each and every question simply and without rancor or obscenity, or we will conclude the broadcast with you being dragged away like a common convict. Then I can assure you, General, that you will spend a great deal of time in a dark and terrible place. And I will personally select the hole we dump you in for the maximum effect. Get it?"

"Ich verstehe," was the reply.

Grissom met the stare of the blue-green eyes with his own rather plain ones, unflinching. "If I had my way, this entire thing wouldn't even be happening. I don't care what kind of weird propaganda bit the higher-ups have concocted allowing for the first live broadcast interview of your esteemed eminence, von Mellenthin, but they speak and I am obliged to listen."

"The price of responsibility in an officer, Warden Grissom."

Grissom stared hard at the face of the Zeon general, but von Mellenthin betrayed no sign of disrespect or patronization. It had simply been a statement of fact. He frowned and then cleared his throat loudly.

"That's all set for November, then. Just in time for the fall sweeps, which I'm sure you'll take great pleasure in knowing. You may even out-Nielsen the football game that week. Our business is concluded." Grissom waved the at the guards, who each took a step forward, a very apparent signal that this little jam session was quite over.

Von Mellenthin did not rise from his seat, or move in any other fashion for that matter. Grissom furrowed his brow, confused. "What is it, von Mellenthin? You have a problem with your feet or something?"

"Aside from the chains, of course not. I do, however, wish to tender a request from you."

That statement put Grissom back in his seat promptly, and the guards stepped back again. "That's not like you, General. This has to be a good one."

Von Mellenthin smiled in a friendly way. "My uniform. May I wear it for the interview?"

Grissom's reply was a snort. "Hell, no."

The expression on the Zeon's face was one of pained confusion, bordering on something that came close to anger. "Why not, if I may dare ask?"

"Because I'm not going to allow you to parade around in a uniform of a dead cause, General. You'll wear your prison greens so that the viewers everywhere know that you're a convict and a murderer, locked away to be forgotten, not some status symbol for traitors and rebels."

"I'll already be in chains. Having me in my uniform makes me no more free than me sitting in this room with you than in Gen-Pop."

"Forget it."

"Think about it, Warden Grissom; a Zeon general, in full uniform and regalia, in chains, on camera before the world, forced to reveal every dark secret some unarmed woman is asking him or suffer your wrath. Isn't the uniform of the evil Duchy of Zeon still a hated sight? Isn't the mere sight of it enough to trigger even the most pacifist of people's inner rage at the Zavis and what they did to Terra? The symbol of the strength of the Federation is heightened by the sight of me in chains, wearing the abhorred uniform of your old enemy, as is your own display of authority in that you can allow for such a spectacle and still be the one in charge. The value of such a production can't be calculated in long-term impact, both for the Federation and your own career." Von Mellenthin did not fail to note that the last statement hit home with the Warden. Weakling, and stupid as well. I'll make you dance the dizzy dance until you fall down, and you'll never know I did it to you.

Grissom ran a hand down his face, still staring at von Mellenthin, but remained silent. This did not prevent him from popping another pistachio into his mouth and chewing slowly.

"It's hard, isn't it?" asked von Mellenthin, a hint of sympathy in his baritone, German-accented voice. "The waiting, the wondering, being here in this place instead of serving in the capacity for which you were trained. You feel as though the Federation you spent your life defending has exiled you here, and raised up the Titans in your place to take what was yours."

Grissom nodded involuntarily, still chewing. Von Mellenthin could see the thoughts churning behind his eyes, and smiled. Your eyes are floating, Warden.

"This interview is your best chance to show the world, the Federation, the Titans, and your superiors that they're wasting your talents here. Watching over the rabble of the past while the world moves forward is no place for a combat veteran, is it? They will see this and know that you aren't some goonish bullyboy hired from a dock, but a soldier who commands. Admit that my request isn't outlandish, and grant it, and I will make certain this interview proceeds without a hitch, flaw, or unexpected event, and you will garner great accolades from it."

Grissom swallowed, then exhaled, long and loud. "You swear it, on your parents' honor and your own as an officer, that this isn't some trick or any bullshit game you're playing."

"I play the piano, not games, Warden Grissom. I swear it on my father's life that absolutely nothing untoward will happen to cause you any grief, humiliation, or heartburn for the duration of the interview."

"All right," said Grissom after a long silence, "I'll have the guards take you to the prison wardrobe to be measured and have the uniform altered if needed. I have your word on this, and I'll hold you to it."

"Consider me held. I promise you you'll get what you've deserved for a long time once I display to the world the kind of person you are." Von Mellenthin picked up the Styrofoam cup with his cuffed hands, and then touched it to Grissom's mug in a toast. "A uniform's just another coat to die in, anyway."

Augsburg, Bayern, Central Europe
August 23, 0087

The phone rang just at the perfectly wrong time. At the moment of the first piercing beep from the little pink phone, form-molded into the shape of a naked woman with the receiver as her ample cleavage, Camael Balke was suspended on the next-to-last rung of a fifteen-foot ladder, hand outstretched to its fullest. The customer that had prompted his ascent to this dangerous level was paying attention to nothing but the row of boxes and their contents that Balke was attempting without success to grasp.

"Ignore it," said Balke from above. "Is it this one?"

"No, the one to the right," was the customer's reply, as he licked his lips in an anticipation that almost made Balke wince.

"Okay, is it this one then?" Balke moved his hand one box to the right, forcing him to lean over even further. The ladder wobbled underneath him, but it managed to remain upright and not topple to the floor, carrying its reluctant passenger with it.

"No, the purple one is the one I want," was the customer's response to the latest query.

Balke was no longer certain how long he had been up here, but it seemed an eternity. Then again, for him everything seemed like an eternity these days. He had imagined some insane things in his day, but being suspended from a too-short ladder while reaching for a specific sex toy was not one of them. He could imagine what this had to look like from the outside, but thankfully there was only the single customer here at the moment.

He was the general proprietor for X-Dream, a subsidiary sex shop underneath the larger Erotex GmbH chain line of erotic and sensual paraphernalia suppliers. It was the last thing he'd ever thought he would be doing, but this life had been full of surprises for him. In fact, it was becoming quite hard to surprise him anymore. He admitted to himself that he would probably not even blink if a dozen people were below, all of them taking pictures of him groping for this battery-operated vaginal-anal dildo, also known as 'the purple one', for the purpose of printing them on the front page of the Augsbuerger Zeitung newspaper's morning edition.

The phone continued to beep its insistence at attention at him, and Balke continued to ignore it. "Which direction from my hand is 'the purple one'?"

"Still to the right. Just one over."

Why didn't you mention that before? Balke sighed, then reached with the entirety of his form, leaving one foot on the ladder while the other swung into the air to give him a few more inches of grasping range.

As his hand snagged the target box, three things happened simultaneously: the phone gave forth its call once again, the customer smiled in near-ecstasy (probably the anticipation of what would happen once he got 'the purple one' home to his new wife, as Balke had noticed the brand new wedding band on the customer's left hand), and the ladder decided that standing was too much effort.

Balke felt the ladder shift and begin its slide towards the ground in gravity's embrace. He closed his eyes as the world began to slide from underneath him.

"Oh, no," was the only thing he said, as his free hand reflexively took hold of the shelves nearest to it, the ladder falling into space and hitting the floor with a clatter.

The customer gawked, not hearing the phone or remembering the purchase he wanted to make. Now, he was riveted on Balke hanging almost three meters off the floor by one hand, and the bare foothold he had on one of the lower shelves, his boot toe knocking over boxes of condoms and tubes of varying fluids, mostly lubricants and spermicides. After scrabbling amongst the jetsam on the shelf, Balke's boot planted itself firmly on the shelf, and his balance regained itself.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Balke took this opportunity to look at the box in his right hand. Sure enough, it was 'the purple one'. Managing a smile, he craned his neck until he could see his customer below him. "This one, right?"

The customer nodded, mouth still hanging open. Balke, relieved, began to puzzle out how to get down without killing himself. He had just about decided to jump the remaining distance down when several popping sounds issued from the walls.

Sounds like the mooring bolts just pulled loose, was his first thought. Then he realized he was right.

With a creak and a rush, the entire shelving unit, and Balke, toppled in the direction of the most weight, which happened to be the store-ward side, guaranteeing Balke would land first.

The phone rang again just before he landed on the prone ladder, wrenching almost every rib on his left side out of place. Against his will, he cried out from the pain, just before the contents of the shelves, and then the shelves themselves, slammed on top of him, covering him with sex devices, supplies, toys, magazines, guides, erotica books, and other various assortments of lovemaking enhancement tools of the trade in which he worked.

After the thunderous crash of the landing shelves, there was a moment of silence in the store. Even the customer barely breathed. Then the phone rang, and the peace was shattered again.

"AArRRrrGhhHhh!!!" was Balke's exclamation to the universe once he'd managed to inhale enough air to spit the condom he'd caught in his mouth out from between his jaws. Pain wracked him, and he decided not to move until he took stock in the damage.

"Are-are you okay, sir?" asked the customer hesitantly. He had not been touched by the catastrophe in any way, except as a witness.

"Can you see my right hand?" hissed Balke from beneath the pile, his voice obviously informing the customer that he was most certainly not 'okay'.

"Yes." Balke's hand was the only visible portion of him, with half his right arm sticking up from the pile between two of the shelves.

"Is the 'purple one' in it?"

"Yes." Sure enough, the prized device was still in his grip. The phone rang yet again, punctuating the affirmative.

"Take it from my hand, and then pick up the phone and place the receiver in my open palm. It's cordless, so it will reach. The cost of the 'purple one' is 20 credits. Leave it on the register, turn my window sign to 'Closed', and leave this place." Temper, temper.

"You got it, mister," said the customer as he did as was requested of him. He even left the money on the register.

"Thanks. Enjoy your purchase and come again," spoke Balke's agonized voice from the heap of merchandise and heavy shelves. His fingers closed over the telephone receiver, middle and ring fingers between the 'breasts', and he gingerly lowered it down towards where he presumed his head was.

The customer had not failed to notice the tattoo on Balke's right palm. "Nice tattoo, man," he commented as he left.

Balke waved his hand, clutching the receiver, as a signal of farewell. When the bells on the door jingled the departure of his customer, he was finally satisfied that the ultimate cause for his injury had departed his immediate zone of influence.

"X-Dream Love Supplies, pleasure at prices you can afford," he began the usual required answering spiel, trying to keep the pain out of his voice.

The voice on the other end was not one he recognized. "Is-?" began the speaker on the other end, obviously confused, "I-I'm sorry, I must have a wrong number. I'm looking for Camael Balke."

"This is Camael Balke speaking. How may I help you?"

The voice on the other end sounded almost relieved. "Forgive me, Captain Balke, I was-"

Balke sat upright, spilling merchandise from off of himself, as well as managing to push the shelves over to where he could conceivably escape them. "Who in hell is this?"

"I got your number from-"

"WHO ARE YOU?" Had anyone been there to see it, Balke's face wore the picture-perfect shifting mixture of anger and shame.

"I-I'm sorry, my name is Peter Dorff. I was a member of the 32nd Pioniere during the War-"

"I don't know you! Why are you calling me 'Captain'?"

The voice on the other end was almost pleading. "Will you please just hear me out? I got your number from a man, a man who knew you, back during the War. His name was Friedrich Heine, and he-"

Freddie? He gave this man my number? Balke felt a pang of loss. "That explains much. He was in the 32nd Pioniere. He died just before the War ended, helping drive the Zeon from Europe in Operation Odessa."

"Yes," spoke the voice, sounding relieved.

Don't be relieved yet, I can still hang up this phone. "He was a good man, and a good friend. He died wastefully, as did so many others in the War. Now, why have you called me? Don't you know who I am?"

"Who you are is why I've called you, sir. I need your help, and Friedrich told me that you were the one to call when someone needed help."

"Help with what? I sell pornography, not part-time labor-filling."

"'In matters pertaining to a Crusade', Captain Balke. That's what Friedrich told me to say if you asked that."

There was a long silence as those words sank into Balke's mind, an almost euphoric rush that felt like aloe on a sunburn.

"Where are you?" was Balke's response when he could speak again, dragging himself to his feet slowly and painfully, but his words and thoughts were clear and focused on a singular question: Is this the moment I've been waiting for?

"I live in Ligeretalm, in Obersalzburg. Can we meet?"

"I'm in Augsburg, so a suitable halfway point would be-"

"Forgive me for insisting, but I think you need to come see me. I can meet you in Bad Reichenhall, but there is something here I think you should see. It's what prompted me to call your number."

Balke thought for a moment, then replied, "I will meet you in Bad Reichenhall in three days. This had best be good, Herr Dorff. If you knew Freddie, then you know that I don't like red herrings."

"I fear you will not be disappointed, Captain Balke."

Duisberg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Central Europe
August 25, 0087

It was obvious that this hotel room had been lived in for a very long time by a single person. There were the telltale signs all over the place; personal effects placed in a single location and never moved, the lack of intrusion by cleaners and hotel staff, and the apparent comfort of the individual inside the environment. This pattern fit what was happening to Commander Karl Weissdrake to a tee, and he knew it.

God cursed union workers and their stinking labor contracts! If this were Zeon during the War, these modifications would have taken seven weeks instead of seven months! he raged in his head, a gloved hand rubbing across his nearly-hairless scalp. Despite whatever Reinhardt von Seydlitz was thinking, the waiting was making him equally stir-crazy, if not more so. Of course, he was in the position of being here to view the headway, unlike the rest of the Division. Two of the ships were finished and ready. The third was a work-in-progress.

And as if he did not have enough to worry about, there were the two others sitting in his room. Vladimir Margul's bullyboys, Lacerta and Reiter, looking at him with all the love of jackals to a wounded impala. Weissdrake kept his gaze riveted on the digital photographs of Lammersdorf the two had delivered. He knew that was a pretense, though. They were actually sent to spy on him, a pleasant reminder from von Seydlitz that everything was resting on his shoulders.

Karl Weissdrake was not insulted by this in the slightest. He had been a part of the 10th Panzerkaempfer Division back when it was more like just a slightly overstrength brigade, commanded by a fresh-faced Colonel Dietrich von Mellenthin, and he'd known both he and then-Captain von Seydlitz from even before the War. Von Mellenthin had been an addict for information since forever, and von Seydlitz had picked up the habit from him. It was only natural now that their august leader was itching for a play-by-play in this whole affair.

It was a matter of trust, and Wesisdrake knew that deep within, von Seydlitz did not even trust himself, much less another person. He did not have anything that could be called faith, just a will to make certain that something as ertswhile and unreliable as faith was not a necessity to be counted upon.

"These are the best you two could do after seven days?" he asked the two 2nd 'Grimravers'.

Sergeant Paul Lacerta's grin looked like a sneer, making his already-evil face appear that much more sinister. "Lammersdorf's a backwater, Commander. You try spending a week out with the trees and bugs and **** and see how interested you are in getting up close to a Feddie base."

"I would, Sergeant," replied Weissdrake, shifting his eyes towards the rat-faced enlisted man, "because I knew I'd be going there. Your ineptitude puts me and my men at jeopardy. I'm of a mind to send you back."

"Colonel von Seydlitz said to come straight back to Berchtesgaden after visiting you," protested Private Derek Reiter, who would have looked like the poster child for Aryan Nation except for the long scar running down the left side of his face. Between he and Lacerta, it was no wonder the 2nd 'Grimravers' were hellions. They looked the part.

"Colonel von Seydlitz isn't here, and he isn't going to Lammersdorf. I am, on both counts. Did you at least get a troop estimate of the base?"

Lacerta's sneer deepened. "No need to get nasty, sir. We do know how to do this job. There's no more than a squad on duty at the same time, and the shift indicate it's just a platoon of standard groundpounders. No mobile suits or tanks. Just them. Lefotver Feddie regulars, none of them Titans pricks. Ought to be a snap of the fingers for you and your boys, Commander."

"Is that supposed to be a joke, Sergeant?" Weissdrake's left hand was missing two fingers under its glove. The lack of digits was the least testimony of the Battle of Poitiers that he carried on his person.

Karl Weissdrake was almost completely bald, because almost half his skull was wrapped in burn scars. His left ear was a melted ruin, as was most of the structure on his face. At Poitiers, his Zaku had taken a hit and fallen too close to an ammunition carrier before it too had been struck, immolating the suit and the pilot before he was able to escape the confines, the heat, and the stench, and make pain his only concern. After Poitiers, nothing had seemed difficult for him, except recovery. When the 555th 'Triple-Nickel' had taken the last Gau out of Metz before the encirclement, he'd been swathed in bandages on over half his body surface. Despite being in an agony he could still recall so many years later, he'd gotten himself, the Foxe twins, and their Zakus to Freiberg, snagged the spoils of Zurich, and made their way across country to Obersalzburg without failure. That he could see from his left eye was miracle enough, but if Lacerta and Reiter thought their visages were terror incarnate, their brand of horror only offered the mewling of babes compared to the throat-wrenching screams that Karl Weissdrake bore as his own face.

It had been so many years this way now, he had even gotten used to children crying in fear when he walked past.

For a moment, Lacerta looked confused. Then, something resembling pity crossed over his face, and he glanced away from Weissdrake's face. "No, sir."

Weissdrake stared a little longer, then turned back to the photographs. "Inform Colonel von Seydlitz upon your return that the final vessel's refit will be complete by mid-October, three weeks before the original estimate."

Reiter's ears perked up. "Really? Is that true, sir?"

"Yes, Private. I'm going to go motivate them a little more, if I can. Mid-October, and no longer than that. Leiger's people are too concerned with contracts and nitpickery. I will make them more concerned with me. Dismissed, and thank you for your work."

The two Zeon enlisted troopers at least had the courtesy to salute the cripple before filing out his door, he noted. Ten minutes and a phone call later, he, too left the building.

Lammersdorf, surrounded by forest, no room for errors. If anyone can do it, the 555th can. We have to.

Heidelberg, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Central Europe
August 26, 0087

This has GOT to be the stupidest thing I've ever been sent to do, rambled the mind of Antares de la Somme. He was sitting perched on the viewing area of the ski-lift resort-waystation on the summit of Koenigstuhl mountain, facing down into the city itself, nestled in the Rhein-Neckar valley. He'd been plinking credit coins into the tourist binoculars, focused on a single location. A set of high-powered televisual zoom lens attached to a video recorder was at his side. He was alone, as this place only saw real business during the winter months, and there were better makeout places than this in Heidelberg below.

If he'd had the time, he would have been in the city, probably having a beer, a pretzel, and a good time, instead of being up here with the birds, the deer, the wolves, the bugs, and the occasional cross-country running high school student jogging past him while training. Better them than me, he mused, you couldn't PAY this boy enough to get him to run up this thing, especially those 559 concrete steps at the beginning.

He had been up here for hours, and his legs were still hurting. This had not been the most fun of nature hikes. To make matters even more enjoyable, something he'd been deriving from alternating the binocular lens from the absolutely wonderful view of Schloss Heidelberg and the topless sunbathers on the banks of the Neckar river below. He was a professional lech enough to make certain the camera stayed on the objective.

Heh! The 'objective'. It's a freakin' playground in some elementary school. What the hell is Reinhardt smoking? This can't have a damn thing to do with Nemesis, not in a million years. Shoulda argued harder to make Margul do this crappy job. God, please tell me this is just Reinhardt being spiteful, hateful, and vindictive, so that when I get back I can punish him severely in Your name and not catch naughty points for it.

Straightening from the eyeport of the binoculars, he stretched backwards, feeling vertebrae pop back in place. "THIS SUUUUCKS!!!!" he yelled out, hearing his shout echo through the valley so that it felt like the entire city must have heard him. The hill formations here were so suited to phonetics it was scary, and you could literally call out with the voice of God for miles around if you wanted to. No one would hear you, of course, unless they happened to be away from the white noise of Heidelberg, but it was still fun. Or, more fun than watching a bunch of kids at recess for hours at a time.

God, why am I DOING this? He had argued until he was threatening to hold his breath to not be sent away from Berchtesgaden. Unlike everyone else, de la Somme knew that something was not right with von Seydlitz. He was snappish, irritable, and generally unpleasant to be around. Most everyone else would call that normal, or at worst a reaction to the amount of delays Nemesis was breeding like chinchilla herders on a hot market demand, but de la Somme was not 'most everyone else'. He'd grown up with von Seydlitz, and while the mask was good enough to fool almost anyone on Terra, it was not sufficient to ward off someone like de la Somme.

De la Somme was afraid that his older foster brother was going to do something stupid while he was away, and no one would realize that he was a wreck and needed to be put back together. Von Mellenthin would have known before the fact, and defused it as he had always done. Even Weissdrake might have picked up on it after a little time. But they weren't in Berchtesgaden, and now neither was de la Somme.

What do you expect, though? The man's plan is dependant on sitting on his ass waiting for some tubs to be delivered, and he gets to spend that time mulling over the death of his foster father and the fact that his foster mother is in a sanatarium and isn't expected to live much longer, spoke a voice in de la Somme's head. He concurred with it, of course. Von Seydlitz was not a man to openly grieve, and de la Somme only remembered twice he'd ever seen the usually-stalwart Colonel show any sign of anguish in his entire life. He was entitled to his privacy in such matters, and de la Somme was reasonably confident that von Seydlitz's grief would be a long time dying out.

It had not become bad prior to his departure, and for that de la Somme was grateful. He glanced back into the binoculars and noticed that the current (and supposedly last) class of kiddies was lining up and going back into the school building. Playtime over, back to school they go. Not peeling his eyes from the binoculars and the playground, he reached behind him and snagged his Coke, not even fumbling haphazardly, and drew the straw towards his lips. However, he did manage to misjudge the angle of the cup, and bumped the side of the binoculars several centimeters off target.

"Frell," he cursed, using a word whose origins had been lost to time. He would have to recorrect the positioning. At least the camera was stable and on target. Annoyed, he took a long drag from the cup as a means of personal revenge, then arced it into the trash can several meters away.

He put his eyes back to the binoculars to judge where he was looking now from where he was supposed to be, and stared in fascination.

There was a group of kids coming out of the doors of Hoelderin Gymnasium. NOT high school kids, either, but children ages ten or younger.

"Maybe it's a tour or something," he muttered to himself. No other explanation was rational enough to warrant eight elementary students walking out of a secondary education facility, lined up and following their teacher.

Something's f***ed up here, said his brain to what little rationality he possessed. Proper f***ed, at that.

The kids and their guardian adult made a beeline straight for the elementary school de la Somme had been watching, as he followed them with the binoculars. He was riveted by this, and had no idea why, just that it was imperative that he not lose sight of these kids. Before they'd crossed the second block, he had the camera trained on them, too, using his perception to track the camera at the same rate he used the binoculars to keep them in view.

Antares de la Somme was knowledgeable enough in the psychology of children (mostly because it was very much like his own, and de la Somme knew all about himself) to know that elementary children did NOT walk across busy streets and intersections, even accompanied by an adult, without holding hands. These children did not. In fact, they were moving in almost perfect formation, single file, in step. On top of that, they didn't seem nearly as curious at their surroundings kids of that age were supposed to be. In addition to all of that, it had become apparent that these kids varied in age from about seven years old to as young as four or five, and yet appeared to be in the same class. No, this was NOT normal at all.

With the playground vacated by the other children, it was completely unrestricted for the use of these eight. Once inside the confines of the fence, things seemed to go become a reasonable facsimile of 'normal', with the teacher watching over her wards as they laughed, played, tussled, and explored as any other group of kids would. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary with that. De la Somme was focusing in on one of the older ones, one who seemed to be content with idly twirling a long red ribbon on a stick while gazing at something at his feet, when the binoculars went black.

He snarled at the device. "Greedy bastard, are we? Fine, glut yourself on this, Root of all Evil!" He shoved about twelve credits' worth of change into the money-hungry viewing apparatus and peered into it again.

Only to discover that his target was staring straight back at him.

Startled, de la Somme reared back from the binoculars, blinking, a look of incredulous wonder on his face. Slowly, almost cautiously, he leaned forward and placed his eyes to the instrument again. He was not imagining things. The boy was looking right at him, from a distance of several kilometers. It was not possible, but there it was.

He studied the features for a moment. About seven, maybe 3 feet even. Sturdy-looking, with honey-blond hair and the BIGGEST green eyes he'd ever seen on a human face. It was almost as though he were looking at something MADE as opposed to born. Normal people did not possess features like that, though children tended to be more pleasant-looking than their adult counterparts. But this was beyond mere childlike beauty. This was something fashioned by Heaven, or at least the closest thing to it.

De la Somme smiled. The boy smiled back. The ace pilot tilted his head to the left in query. The boy reflected the movement by tilting his own head to the right, red ribbon trailing on the ground. De la Somme's smile grew even wider, and so did the boy's.

"God, You can damn me any time now. I do believe there isn't anything left You can show me," he murmured, unable to take his eyes off the boy for more than an instant, long enough to know that none of the other children nor the teacher had detected his presence. Just this one.

The child mouthed something, and de la Somme heard it in his head as clearly as if he'd been standing there beside him. "Who are you?"

"Antares," he replied out loud, matter-of-factly. "Who are YOU?"

Rather than answer, the child began twirling the ribbon, extending it with each whirling motion to its full two-meter length. The red cloth whisked through the air, making a tunnel of itself, then a zig-zag, then several figure-eight forms. Then, with a flick of the wrist, the ribbon snapped itself into a perfect cursive form, for just long enough to make a word with its length, before gravity drew it back to the earth.

In that single moment, written in red across his vision, de la Somme read the name 'Erik', only missing the dot on the 'i'.

De la Somme laughed, his amazement becoming something humorous. "Nice to meet ya, Erik. What'cha doing?"

"School," was the mental reply.

"The Gymnasium? You go to school there?" he felt stupid even asking it. If these children were all like Erik, there was no way they could be kept in a normal elementary school.

The child's laugh rang in his head like the twinkling of wind chimes. "No, THERE." And the boy pointed towards the east.

De la Somme followed the finger with the binoculars, but did not see another school in the vicinity of the east. He turned back, relieved that this child's attention span seemed. . .eternal. "Where? I can't find it."

"The green one," was the return.

"Well, why didn't you say so before?" laughed de la Somme in response, sticking out his tongue.

The child laughed again, and it brought tears of absolute wonder to de la Somme's eyes. He had to wipe them repeatedly to keep his vision clear, and by that point it appeared that their teacher was beginning to round them up to take them from the school grounds and back to wherever is was they came from.

Erik waved as he turned away, his face a mask of almost angelic happiness. De la Somme felt a wrench in his heart at the sight, and he had to restrain himself from reaching out with his hand to take hold of the boy. Instead, he just waved goodbye, though it was more painful than anything he had ever known since he was four.

Then he was gone, and with a monumental effort, he pulled himself away from the binoculars. He wiped more tears from his face with a shirtsleeve, then stood up. "Son of a bitch! What WAS that?? What the f*** have I just seen here?"

The 'green one' was the key to the answer. He shut off the camera and started packing up. He had to go into the city after all. He had to know.

Three hours later, he knew.

"God, remind me when I get back to ask Reinhardt just how in the hell he even knew about this. . ."

Training the camera across the building, he paused on the sign in front of the 'green one'.

It read RZPD Deutsches Ressourcenzentrum fuer Genomforschung GmbH; the RZPD German Resource Center for Genetic Study, Inc.