Free Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) by Bruno Goncalves

branches as it progressed, clearly not caring in the least for the pathway of destruction it was leaving in its wake. The V-38 Hellmouth Harrower was nearly as beautiful to his eyes as the driver currently inside it.
    “Guten morgen, mein Lippie.” He playfully greeted her.
    “Morgen, dag, oder nacht? You know as well as I that this rock has no morning, mein Kompaniechef. Are the others lost?” Lippard inquired.
    “Lippie, it doesn’t pay to criticize our kinder so. They will find their way here in good time. Find anything of interest?” He kindly asked, laughing secretly at the tone of her voice. Lippard had a habit of firing her cannon indiscriminately when she felt rattled by something, and she was certainly rattled at the moment.
    “There is no fight here! I was expecting everything, anything, except for that and the verdammte birds. They have shat on my Suit. They have shat on my gewehr. And they’ve shat on your helm!”
    Lippard was met by her commander’s raucous laughter, his mobile Suit shaking slightly as he chortled at the idea of being covered in guano.
    “Silence, you swine! Do you want my report or not?!” She demanded.
    “Begin.” He replied.
    Lippard filled him in. Speaking mostly in English, but reverting occasionally back to Germanic, as she was prone to do whenever they were alone, his lieutenant informed him that there were no recent traces of human activity to the north of their position, and that she had found three streams flanked by deep ravines, the closest of which was the one previously detected in the orbital images. Other than that, she had found nothing of interest for her commander.
    By the time she was finishing, Kaiser’s motion alert informed him of movement to the east of the clearing. Unlike his or Lippie’s Suit, Moose was equipped with the V-35, an earlier Hellmouth design developed as a heavy weapons platform. Presently its weapon pods were empty, its only operational armament being the laser platform and heavy combat knife that had been distributed to all members of the team.
    “Moose here. Apologies for the delay.” He said simply as he sauntered over.
    It was quite unlike Moose to say much more than that. That trait had apparently been a source of irritation for many of the soldier’s previous superiors, but it was what Kaiser most liked about him. Moose never said more than he really needed to, and he always got the job done without muss or fuss.
    “Your report?”
    “No local inhabitants. And no one’s been around for the last several months. This place feels like a plantation of some kind, but I can’t tell what they’re growing.”
    “Trees, perhaps?” Lippard mocked.
    They waited for a full five minutes before Deadhand finally arrived. The latecomer closed in not from the south, but from Kaiser’s arrival point instead, his V-38 heavily smeared with mud and leaves.
    “Deadhand here!” He stated obviously, out of breath by the sound of his voice.
    “My dear sergeant, you are very well camouflaged.” Kaiser remarked.
    ”Hah! Well, there was one hell of a ravine to cross. I kept moving to the east for a better crossing, but I didn’t find it. So I crossed where the river was wider. Place had a couple of meters of mud there, for certain. I slipped down the opposite bank when the ground collapsed and camouflaged myself in the process. Also had some trouble figuring north. This land must have some heavy-duty iron deposits, ‘cause I kept losing my bearings over some points.”
    “Yes, it seems we must resolve this problem in the future. Very well, Deadhand, any contacts?”
    “Not a soul. This place has been empty a while.”
    “Yes, we are in luck. Before we contact Command, we should take a short trip to the nearby stream. I believe it is time to take care of ourselves.” Kaiser suggested.
    In Command’s infinite wisdom, and partly due to water restrictions on board the EFF Leviathan, his teams had been strictly prohibited from using their usual