Appetizer

SSG Girardeau increased the heat on the old man, fingers gripping him by the wrists in one hand, flamethrower mounted on the other.

"I am going to ask you one more time," he said, "Where is the one you call Tear-Eater?"

The voice emanated from a speaker mounted on the head of the mech, where the mouth would be on a real man--a speaker nearly ten-times the size of the old man's head.

The old man mumbled silently, eyes closed.

"What's that?" the speaker boomed.

The man continued to mumble.

"Heat making you sleepy?" Girardeau quipped. He heard the other pilots laugh through radio. He tightened his fingers around the old man's wrists, and could swear he heard a crunching through the speakers in his cockpit.

The old man shuddered for a couple of moments, but continued his muttering.

"Speak up," Girardeau barked through the speaker.

"I am praying for you," the old man said.

"For the repose of our souls?" Girardeau said. "How sweet."

"No," the old man said, "I am praying for what happens to you next."

"I know what'll happen to you next if you don't tell me what I want to know," Girardeau said through the static, hiding his frustration well, instead speaking in his usual relaxed, slightly low nasal whine. "I've seen it happen many, many times. Some old geezer thinks he can play stoic hero against guys like us, play the martyr, play the lamb. It never works. We find a way to him. And even if we don't find a way to him, we find a way to his daughter. We find a way into the whole village. You got grandkids, old man? Daughter? Granddaughter?"

The old man looked down at the ground. It was a long way down. He could see the crowd down below. He wondered if Cataline was there.

"See, you thought you were being selfless, didn't you? But your little act is just going to get more of your people hurt. We don't want that. We might enjoy it while we're doing it, but we don't want it--not in the long run. What you think is selflessness is just ego."

"I don't know where he is."

SSG Girardeau was good at this. It took a special science, feathering the trigger inside the cockpit just enough to keep the victim uncomfortable, and still lightly enough to keep him from disappearing into a puff of smoke. Like a moth in flame. Girardeau had seen it happen many, many times, with amateurs.

But he was no amateur.

He hit the trigger lightly, lightly, again and again, the old man squinting into the heat. His hair was starting to singe and disappear into black smoke.

"Now I know you are lying," Girardeau said.

"I--I do not lie," the old man coughed.

"Like hell! His mech is right there!" Girardeau screamed, losing his temper.

The mech known as Lacryphagus, or Tear-Eater, at least by some of the more primitive elements, stood looming over the village, almost like a joke. It was a blackened, horrible thing, scarred and mangled, made from mismatched parts, all jagged edges and skeletal limbs. It was almost impossible to tell that it had once been manufactured by the same company that built the thick, tan, tank-like shells Girardeau and his men were encased in. It was a different model, Girardeau knew. He recalled that it had originally been gray. It had always had a thinner, taller appearance than the Sandblasters Girardeau's platoon used. What exactly Col. Harper had done to it to make it look like this was almost unimaginable--like he had cannibalized from every mech in the world.

"His shell is there," the old man said, "But he is not."

"No shit, Sherlock," Girardeau said. He groaned. He composed himself, and raised the volume on his voicebox, so that all the village could hear him. "Listen, I've had it about up to here with you primitives. I know you're protecting him. I don't care what he threatened to do to you. We will make sure that it's infinitely worse. He's got a mech. We've got the camps. Take your pick. Now, where is he?"

"Closer than you think," a voice said through the radio. It was not a voice Girardeau knew.

He turned to view his two subordinates, PFC Velazquez and PFC Nolan. Nolan's mech had turned towards Velazquez. Velazquez's hadn't moved.

There was a crunching sound through the static of the radio. A wet sound.

"Velazquez?" Girardeau said.

"Tempes fugit," the voice said through the radio, "Et carpe diem."

The left-arm of Velazquez's mech jerked up underneath Nolan's chin, the wrist-cannon right up against it, and fired.

The sound nearly deafened Girardeau, but he didn't have time to turn down the radio. He pointed his wrist-mounted flame-thrower away from the old man and toward Velazquez's mech, and pulled the trigger.

Velazquez's Sandblaster tore through the flame, and with a not even a flash cut through the fuel-line on the flamethrower. There was a second's pause, and then a flash of light as the tank blew outward, scorching the roofs of some of the small huts below, and killing at least five villagers.

The old man felt the last of the hair on the left side of his face fizzle away into oblivion.

Velazquez's mech stood there, a piece of jagged-metal in its left-hand. He'd torn it from Nolan's wreckage something like a second before Girardeau even knew what was happening, and cut Girardeau's fuel-line with it, igniting the entire tank.

Girardeau sat, stunned for a moment, unable to think, unable to move, then curled his fist around the old-man, leaving just enough room inside not to crush him.

"I have--

Valezquez's mech's arm gripped that of Girardeau's in one hand, and came down with the jagged blade of shrapnel in the other.

Girardeau looked at the stump of his mech's arm, stunned.

"Sorry, please continue," the voice said through the radio.

Girardeau stood there, armless on one side, out of fuel and useless on the other. A small fire burned along his remaining arm and backside, residual chemicals from the flamethrower which burned more slowly, in odd, orange-blue-green colors.

There was only one last chance. Nolan's rifle was lying beside his headless smouldering wreck of a mech. The rest of them hadn't brought one, thinking it overkill to use on mountain primitives like these. But how could Girardeau make it in time?

"Cat got your tongue?" the voice said through the radio. It was dark, charismatic. "Then please excuse me while I slip into something more comfortable."

Velazquez's mech walked calmly across the landscape towards the towering thing known as Lacryphagus, still as a statue, still holding Girardeau's arm in hand, the old man encased safely inside it.

SSG Girardeau took a breath, and began on his way towards the mech with the smouldering neck.

Velazquez's mech extended the arm holding the other arm towards the head of Lachryphagus, until the fist of the severed mechanical arm was almost touching its head. Girardeau didn't stop to look, but if he did, he would've seen a tall, thin, pale man with dark hair emerge from the cockpit of his friend's old mech.

Girardeau bent his mech to pick up Nolan's rifle, and fell to the ground in the process. His neck snapped forward painfully, then slammed back into the seat.

Must've burned apart a piston, he thought. It was hard to think, even with the helmet absorbing most of the impact. He scrambled for the rifle, unable to figure out how to grasp it with one arm.

Finally, getting it by the grip, he rolled onto his back, extinguishing the remaining flame and doing his best to aim the thing one handed at the enemy mech.

Girardeau was at first confused by what he saw. It was a little speck standing on top of Valezquez's mech.

"Enhance," he told the computer.

The mech's monitor zoomed in on the image.

Col. Winslow S. Harper was standing atop the shoulder of Velazquez's mech, covered in blood. Girardeau could just barely make out Valezquez's mangled, bloodied body as Harper nudged it from into the abyss with a shove of his boot.

The bastard, Girardaeu thought. Don't get emotional, now. Only one chance to make this shot.

Girardeau pressed a button, and a crosshair lit up around Harper's tall, thin, nimble body, and just like that he was scrambling across the arm of Valezquez's mech, then across the severed arm of Girardeau's, which was clasped in its fist.

Girardeau took the shot.

Girardeau wasn't used to firing one handed.

The rounds disappeared into the sky, just as Colonel Winslow S. Harper disappeared into the cockpit of the giant mechanical body known here as Tear-Eater.

Girardeau dropped the rifle onto his own mech involuntarily, unable to control it one handed. He swiped it off his mech's torso, and used his remaining hand to shove himself up from the ground. He could still run--

The long, sharp, skeletal fingers of the blackened enemy mech pierced the head of Girardeau's Sandblaster, one long thin one skewering the cockpit and barring him to his chair.

What seemed like forever and a second passed as the plate-glass of the cockpit caved in, and Girardeau found a tall, thin, blood covered man looming over him, smirking.

"Bet you wish you could trade places with that old man right about now," Colonel Harper said.

"There's still a chance," Girardeau whined nasally. "We weren't here to kill you. You--you know that, don't you? We were here to bring you back. You can--you can be one of us again."

"Son, the last thing I'd want to be right now is you."

He descended, and began to feed.