TransWorld: The stronger, the weaker [continued] (338 hits)
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Submitted by <interloper> (View user info) at 2007-09-10 14:51:53 EDT
Parts I and II are here: http://www.ubersite.com/m/111528
Part III: Like Angels Fall
It was early winter, early summer in the North, but unlike in the North the air remained warm and the foliage alive. The Felis had, to the Pit Viper's approval, reacted predictably. We had circled back and retrieved our scouts, and the next three checking maneuvers suggested we were no longer being followed. The Felis clans had changed their priorities.
Gabriella's head was cocked slightly to the side and her rifle cradled gently in her arms. When she spoke, her voice was soft. "Los gatos... the clans... many years ago, when I was still child, they fought for their autonomía... their freedom. Los soldados de gorilas, they were sent to stop la revolución . When they came, they killed the men. They raped women and took children, they hanged them all up, and they skinned them alive."
"The clans, when los gatos saw what they has done," Gabriella turned her head to face me, "they came for the silverbacks. They took them, they hang them from the tree. With their intestinos."
This was, of course, the sight we were looking at. A silverback... the commanding officer of a gorilla shocktrooper platoon... was hanging limply from a tree, a length of his own thick intestines tied to the branch five feet above where it was wrapped around his neck. From his neck it drooped in a lazy wet parabola to where it snaked back into the purple gash in his abdomen. And, below that, a certain part of his anatomy had been cut off and stuffed into his mouth. Behind him were six of what was presumably his platoon, strung up in the same way. Their bodies hung like ghosts in the forest's morning mist.
"We go now," the Pit Viper ordered. And as we did, she turned to me, her eyes thoughtful. "Perhaps you wonder, amigo, why I did not have uno de my men skin el asesino... the assassin. Perhaps you wonder why I do it myself?"
I nodded. The question had crossed my mind, though I knew that like all other seemingly casual decisions the Pit Viper made, it had a very specific answer.
"My men, they must not become los animales. My mind, for now, is strong enough to resist. But all of us can become los animales very easy, even me... even you amigo mio. Los gatos, los gorilas, they were not animals. They were men... but they became animales when they began to do this... when they started to use la crueldad as more than a tool. Not teeth or fur made them animals. This..." she gestured her hand over her shoulder towards the hanging bodies, "this made them animales."
"Pero porqué, but why should this matter, you wonder?" she asked. "Because, many thousand years ago man was weak, and los animales were strong. Pero, man's weakness become strength, and la strength de los animales... that become weakness. Many thousand years ago man defeat animal, and, from then, animal never defeat man. This is why I must keep mis soldados human."
"If you become un animal, you will be defeated by un humano. Maybe it has fang, maybe it has claw, but if it es humano, you will lose."
We continued our walk in silence for a while, the Pit Viper lost in thought, her teeth gently chewing her lower lip. Her men, grim faced and silent, were spread around us stalking quietly through the shadows, lost in their own thoughts. I wondered how long it had taken for them to place their absolute and unquestioning trust in her. Was it one, perhaps two of her improbable but inevitable victories? Did they find her, or did she find them? What had shaped a commander with her talent, her genius?
One of the men in the front must have raised a fist in a warning gesture, for within two beats of my heart it had spread through the soldiers like a wave, each man echoing the gesture with a raised fist as they silently moved to cover and melted into the shadows. Then, pressed against trees and crouching behind boulders, they looked to the Pit Viper where we stood, our backs to the trunk of a large tree. Another signal was relayed from the unseen men in the front: two fingers pointing to the eyes, then a single finger pointing to the sky. The Pit Viper nodded and held her palm out flat, and within moments it had been silently relayed to every soldier in the group. Moments after that the shadow of an avian scout passed overhead, flying low above the forest's canopy.
The bird patrols had become more numerous over the past few months, and were making it more difficult for us to move. These mountains were crawling with troglo platoons: hundreds of gorilla infantry and avian scouts scouring the terrain for the Pit Viper, hunting her and her men.
"Time, time," she whispered, her voice almost musical, "it's time again. Es la hora de matar."
* * *
Part IV: Of Men and Beasts
"If your enimego sees only what you allow him to see..." her voice trailed off, and she looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
"Then he thinks only what you allow him to think," I continued.
"Si, yes," she smiled, her tired eyes reflecting the moonlight. "Now, amigo, when what you show tu enemigo is exactamente what he expect to see, then he believes exactamente what he expect to believe. Entienda? Understand?"
I nodded my head. "Yes."
She leaned in close, her voice dropping almost to a whisper. "Bueno. When your enemigo believes exactamente what he expect to believe, then he react exactly how you expect him to react. This, amigo mio, is your tool. This is why we do what we are about to do."
We waited, crouching in the brush, for another hour before the patrol came close. The Pit Viper would have preferred to hit the camp for the greater psychological effect, but with the lookouts it would have been too unlikely to succeed. Rather, we waited for the four shocktroopers out on the isolated night patrol, which would be adequate for her purposes. As they approached, I could see the moonlight gleam off of their body armor, and reflect off the barrel of their rifles. Isolated or not, they were still dangerous. Especially because they were wearing night vision goggles, an expensive rarity on the Southern Continent.
The goggles, of course, were the reason that several hours earlier one of her men had pried apart three old M84 stun grenades and carefully crushed the filler with the butt of his rifle, spreading the resulting pile of powder on a small section of ground. Even with their goggles, they wouldn't see the fuse wires snaking of into the brush, or the hidden soldier who would shake the nearby bushes with a rope.
Understandably, the rustling in the foliage caused the four soldiers to turn and look for the source of the noise, which in turn resulted in them staring directly at the pile of powder. This is when another soldier detonated the mixture. The flash would have blinded anyone who was looking in its general direction without the light amplification goggles, but the four patrolling troglo's might as well have had their eyes pried out. Blind and disoriented, they almost immediately toppled to the ground.
And, naturally, this is when the Pit Viper's men exploded from the brush with military tasers... simple weapons that might as well have been toys under any other circumstance. But here they were more than adequately effective, and the metal-plated, near-bulletproof armor was an easy enough target to hit. And while the gorilla soldiers lay convulsing on the ground, their nervous system in the deepest throes of electrical shock, they were dispatched with knives to their unarmored necks.
"Bueno," the Pit Viper remarked as we climbed out from the brush. "Traigan los cuerpos, tenemos que apurar."
It took four men to carry each troglo, and it was difficult work in the dark, but we had little time. We carried them roughly a hundred yards closer to the encampment along the route they had taken, away from the telltale smell of burnt powder, which would take some time to clear. Then, there in the dark, we removed their armor and set to work.
When we left, barely ten minutes later, there were four dead troglo's hanging from the trees... swinging from their own intestines.
Gabriella shook her head, almost sadly. "They will see what they expect, and expect what they see. They react, and they die. Ven, come, our time is short."
The morning would prove the Pit Viper correct. The Troglo commanders, oblivious to Gabriella's deception, reacted as was expected. Assuming they had been attacked by Felis, and furious for it, they spread their men across the mountainside to flush out a hidden enemy. Two-soldier teams spread fifty to one hundred yards apart, they combed the forest angrily.
This made them individually vulnerable to the kind of attack a Felis assassin would not and could not bring: a concentrated assault by a cohesive unit. Each and every gorilla shocktrooper searching the forest was hopelessly vulnerable.
But the Pit Viper was not immediately interested in the small teams. Rather, she was out for the blood of the lightly guarded command group where the two silverbacks directed the search, issuing orders to the troopers in the forest and the avian scouts who circled uselessly above the forest's canopy. It took several hours of sulking between the trees to maneuver into position, but when we did, it was a massacre.
Predictably, this instantly disorganized the troopers on the mountainside, who were immediately helpless. They were easily hunted and dispatched, their chain of command broken enough that only a few had managed to pull together any semblance of organized resistance. In total, three of Gabriella's soldiers were killed, and five more were wounded. We took the bodies far and buried them.
A few days later, as we marched, Gabriella stopped me with a small hand on my shoulder. I turned around to find her eyes drilling into mine.
"Listen," she commanded, "this es very importante. There are cuatro pasos... four steps... in la evolución of weakness. Primero, first there is a strength. Next, there is use of this strength. Then there is dependencia de esta strength. Dependence, amigo mio, dependence always become weakness."
She shrugged her rifle to a more comfortable position on her back, her eyes still locked on mine. "Find your enemigo's strength..." she told me, "this is his weakness. Pronto, amigo mio, for soon we will be fighting men, not beasts."
User Reviews
Submitted by Alter (user info) at 2007-09-26 22:01:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No, Comment.
Submitted by creman (user info) at 2007-09-11 18:17:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
If you ever make this into a long story or book, I'll buy it. Your version is by far my favorite of the series. Keep up the good work, please!
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-09-11 14:35:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by lover101 (user info) at 2007-09-11 09:45:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
looking forward to more
Submitted by zwerg (user info) at 2007-09-11 09:02:30 EDT (#)
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Look forward to reading the rest
Submitted by PhillipTheGreat (user info) at 2007-09-11 02:27:09 EDT (#)
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Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2007-09-10 20:08:33 EDT (#)
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boooo
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2007-09-10 16:04:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
interesting.
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-09-10 15:58:06 EDT (#)
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Submitted by Zerachi (user info) at 2007-09-10 15:55:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hate Spanglish, but damningly quality writing.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-09-10 15:09:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent. Me gusta muy mucho.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-09-10 15:01:10 EDT (#)
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Submitted by interloper (user info) at 2007-09-10 14:54:37 EDT (#)
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Oh, I forgot: "TO BE CONTINUED/CONCLUDED..."