With that the two scouts disappeared into the jungle, and Colonel Rudd turned to face the rest of the squadron.
‘Are y’all ready to kill!’
‘SIR YES SIR!’
‘I SAID, YOU LIMP-WRISTED DICK-SLURPING CUM-GUZZLING PANSIES, ARE YOU MOTHERFUCKIN’ READY TO FUCKIN’ KILL?!’
‘SIR YES SIR!’
After Colonel Rudd slung his M-16 over his shoulder he pulled out his gold-plated Magnum .44 and held it high above his head, like a battle-emperor of old raising his ancestral sword to the sky.
‘Well what the fuck are y’all waiting for?! Move the fuck out! Let’s go!’
As the blood streak of dawn began to seep through the dark skin of the sky in subtle slivers, with a roar of naked bloodlust the mercenaries moved off into the jungle.
***
T’Kalanjathu
Before Margaret could ask any further questions about the barrels bobbing in the river, a teenage soldier came sprinting down the path. She skidded to a halt at the jetty’s edge, saluting the General with a stiff, rail-thin forearm and a long-fingered pianist’s hand.
The General, who looked as if he had been about to say something to Margaret, turned and faced the newcomer.
‘Sergeant,’ he said curtly, ‘I gave specific orders that I was not to be disturbed this afternoon for any reason whatsoever, unless it was an emergency. You had better be coming to me with something rather important.’
‘It is extremely important, sir!’ the teenager replied, half shouting as she communicated. She had thus far not dared to make eye contact with the General.
He folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head as he stared intently at the girl.
‘Well go on then Sergeant, inform me of the situation.’
The girl’s gaze darted quickly to Margaret, upon whom it lingered for an uncomfortable moment or two, before returning to an unseen spot on the surface of the river, where it then remained.
‘Sir, I think, er, with a, um, civilian present, we should—’
‘Dr Green is my honoured guest, sergeant, and she is not a security risk to us in any way. Please, go ahead and speak. It does not matter if the good doctor hears.’
The girl swallowed and looked distinctly uncomfortable, but she nonetheless obeyed the General’s command and started to speak in a harsh, almost robotic tone.
‘Sir, I bring a report of a skirmish near an observational outpost in the jungle near the remains of Mine CF-3HV.’
A look that Margaret had never seen on the General suddenly clouded his visage. Indeed, this was a look seemingly alien to that hard, angular face with its prominent features: it was worry, it was puzzlement, and it was consternation.
‘A skirmish? With whom? M-23? The LRA?’ he asked.
‘No sir. They appear, from what the survivors have said, to have been foreign mercenaries. They were not Africans, sir.’
The General narrowed his eyes, and something else now crackled in his irises. It wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t his characteristic gunpowder-fuse anger … no, it seemed rather more like a blend of the two, a mix flavoured heavily with tense anxiety.
‘Wait a minute,’ he replied, his tone low and flat, his brow furrowed with deep lines of concern. ‘Survivors, you say? These mercenaries killed our troops? They defeated our forces?’
The girl swallowed slowly before replying and shifted uneasily on her feet. The focus of her gaze on the river seemed to grow more intense.
‘Yes sir, they took a patrol by surprise. There were five casualties and only two survivors, who had to retreat in the face of heavy fire. The outpost was overrun and taken by the enemy.’
The General’s face began to pale over, and a haggardness grew evident in his features; it seemed as if all of the strength that had formerly glowed bronze-like just beneath his skin had abruptly lost the fire of its burnished brilliance, and that a sudden and corrosive oxidation had occurred, leaving the metal dulled and tarnished by green patina that showed through like mould on a rotting corpse.
‘My children … my dear, dear children…’
The sound was as a death rattle, creeping cockroach-like through between barely parted lips. ‘All ye gods above and below, my poor, innocent children…’
Now Margaret saw something that she had never expected to see in those obsidian eyes of his: forming and condensing around their creased edges, and beginning to navigate a snail’s path down his high cheekbones were tears. Despite her dislike of the General, she could not help but be moved by the depth of emotion churning with tectonic force in his expression. She bowed her head and looked away as a flush of emotion heated the surface of her skin.
‘Five killed, you say?’ he eventually asked, his voice soft now like a child’s, almost.
‘Yes sir.’
He nodded slowly.
‘We must arrange a ceremony for their departed souls then. Mobilise the city when you are done here, for we will hold the ceremony in the Moon Hall tonight. Tell me, what of the survivors?’
‘They fled through the jungle and joined the garrison at the fortified outpost of T’Kalagelellerani, sir.’
‘When did all of this happen?’
‘They were attacked in the early hours of the morning, sir.’
The General’s familiar wrath began to find its footing once more, recovering from the unexpected jab and subsequent nosebleed it had suffered from the sucker-punch of grief.
‘Why was I not informed immediately?’ he asked, his displeasure apparent.
‘The mercenaries had some sort of tech that disabled all of our troops’ electronic equipment at the outpost, sir. They were therefore not able to communicate with any other units; all they could do was fight, heavily outnumbered, for their lives, sir. We only found out about this when they reached T’Kalagelellerani, half-dead from both their wounds and the exhaustion of their flight through the jungle, sir.’
Tears were running freely from the General’s eyes; indeed, with the force of their flow they were dripping off of his cheeks and jawline onto his uniform, creating dark patches of moisture all about his shoulders. His eyes themselves, however, were hard and sharp as katana blades; the resolution crystallised in his dark orbs could have sliced through steel or diamonds.
‘When did they
