Chapter 30 - The Warthog's Legend

Author's Note:

Decided to post the beginning of this chapter, since the ending of the last chapter really only makes sense if you read the beginning of this one. Which by the way, I'm fully willing to finish writing by this weekend if I get a new little review on the main page. Hehe, my precious!

Look forward to it, and thanks for reading!

P.S. Welp, I felt bad about holding a chapter hostage, so I'll go ahead and post it for the enjoyment of all. That said, I would still greatly appreciate a new review on that shiny main page, har har.

Three Rivers Pass, Inwha Region. Local Time: 22:21

“Fucking boss, godammit! I swear,” growled the massive mountain of a man, but his countenance looked sickly and pallid as his shaking hands gently cradled the tiny, almost toy-like device in his hands, firmly pointed in the direction of approximately one metric fuckton of guns, cannons and missiles which were all currently aimed at precisely him.

“I knew he’d be the death of me,” Major Ombue Akatombe lamented once more.

“I repeat, this is Colonel Lin Feng of the glorious Obsidian Eagle Army. Put down your weapon and come down with your hands over your head or we WILL open fire!” Came the authoritative voice, exuding confidence and a strong sense of disdain. “This is your last warning. Surrender immediately and submit for questioning or you will be annihilated.”

Standing behind an EM field so strong that ripples of air could be seen with the naked eye, the short, pudgy man wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigar stood fearlessly in front of his army. Of course, his men had been constantly scanning the surrounding mountain range and had been unable to detect any signatures from weapons that could pose a threat to him.

Unfortunately, this major Lin seemed to know as well as Akatombe or any other expert would, that mere small infantry weapons fire would bounce from his huge ass EM field like bb pellets fired at a an elephant’s ass - it would only serve to further enrage the elephant before it squashed him down like an ant.

Let alone the fact that Akatombe knew the moment they’d been spotted - well, they’d spotted him, not the men under his command, since he was pretty much dismal at the whole hiding and skulking in the shadows stuff - they would have scanned him and found that he did not possess any weapons other than that strange-looking handgun cradled in his hands.

Hah. A handgun. A polymer-based handgun, at that. While they would escape enemy detection via scans, their stopping power was truly abysmal. Major Lin had every right to look down his nose and snort derisively at Akatombe’s poor weaponless, defenseless, helpless ass.

“Ah, what I wouldn’t give to have good old Bertha in my hands again,” silently mused Akatombe in his mind. Bertha was his custom-ordered vulcan gatling gun. At a rate of 9,000 rounds per minute, he could go through his exo-skeleton’s entire arsenal of 20,000 rounds in roughly 2 minutes of continuous fire. By that point, either he would be cooking alive due to the extreme heat produced from the unholy barrage of bullets, or the enemy would.

Ah, now that was what life should be all about. Either you die, or I do. Such were the simple pleasures that kept Ombue “Warthog” Akatombe going. Surely, it wasn’t asking for too much?

Instead, the goddamn insane Boss had wanted him to play chicken while aiming a ridiculous toy gun at an enemy with enough of a payload to blow him and his men up alongside this whole forsaken mountain to boot. And that would just be the first salvo.

Hell, his trained eye could see RZ-12 missile platforms, mortars, field guns, self-propelled infantry guns, even a few laser batteries which were bundled up all nice and neat, ready for deployment. Minimally defended too, from what he could see. Akatombe only wished he had his exo-skeleton with him.

Now, that’d be a dance!

Instead, he was stuck holding this damn useless laser beacon gun, the trigger of which he hadn’t even dared to press since the laser was plainly visible to the naked eye. Then the whole game would be up. Thus far, the laser device had been cleverly modified to look like a standard polycarbonate weapon. A decent personal defense weapon, he supposed, when stealth was a major concern and you were a wimpy little four year old toddler! Given that he had not a single other device or weapon, and garbed as he was in a camo-striped, thermal-shielding suit, it was obvious he was part of a stealth-recon force, detached to scout out the area perhaps.

It stood to reason that they hadn’t opened fire the instant he had shifted his massive weight one too many times, and someone had finally picked up the moment from below. Which truly, it wasn’t his fault! With his mass, and with his training, or lack-thereof, it was a wonder he’d lasted as long as he had. This had been a mission destined to fail from the very beginning. If only he weren’t even more scared of the damn boss than of all these warheads and gun muzzles pointed at him, he would have flatly refused to come. It was practically running to his death!

Indeed, they hadn’t killed him, and instead sought to capture him for information. That was typical operating procedure. If the enemy did not pose an immediate threat, and could have valuable intel, capture rather than neutralization was the priority.

“You big, ugly brute. Why don’t you put down your little toy gun and obediently come to prostrate yourself before Colonel Lin Feng’s glorious Obsidian Eagle Army? Come, there’s a good boy!” Came the taunting call once more, and a series of loud guffaws followed immediately after.

Akatombe’s knuckles went white as his grip tightened into a vise. If only he had a knife, a simple kitchen knife. Or not even, just a nail clipper would do. Then he would happily run down the hill and stick it so far up the smug son-of-a-gun’s ass, they’d need an industrial wrecker to dig it out. Then we’d see how he liked the Warthog’s little toys.

Instead, he was stuck with the useless laser homing gun which was actually starting to crumple up a little in his grip. Hell, had he broken it? The Boss would not be happy.

Ah, then again, at this point he ought to be beyond caring what the Boss did or did not like.

At least they had only spotted him, and not the rest of his crew. Akatombe sighed wretchedly as his gaze caught just a shadow of movement from a corner of his eyes. That had been one of the soldiers that had come with him signaling him with an all-ok sign.

Sure, the damn bastard didn’t have a million kilotons of ordnance pointed at his ass. Of course it was all-ok.

They had spread out as per the instructions from the Boss. Now they were hiding, as proper stealth-recon specialists that they were, in the hills and behind the rocks all around the military convoy below. Of course, Akatombe had been the only one to be spotted.

That was him, always drawing the shitstick.

It hadn’t always been that way. He could still recall the good old days, which had been all of what, up to a couple days ago when the Boss had still liked him. How did he know that?

“Go crazy, Little Bue,” the Boss would say. Then everything would be swell and good in the world. He’d smash, burn, tear, maim and kill to his heart’s content, and in the end, the Boss would nod happily at him and take care of the rest. No more damn paperwork, no more prison cells, no more military tribunals and all that crap.

In fact, the very first time he’d met the boss had been within the confines of a military prison, awaiting to stand trial before yet another military tribunal..

***

“Damn it all, if I get my hands on that little punk of a captain, I will break both his arms and wring his own hands around his neck until his head pops up like a bottle cap from a beer bottle,” snarled Akatombe, pacing back and forth within the dark cell. The inmates in the cells directly next to his crawled just a little farther away from the dividing wall, paling visibly.

“What are you looking at, you worms?” Akatombe growled, turning around and slamming a heavy punch against the bars which rattled the entire cell with a loud metallic ping, as though it had been concrete instead of flesh and bone which had hit the metal bars.

“N.. nothing! We’re sorry! Sorry!” Cried out the man he’d yelled at, squirming even further back against the back wall, as though he wished he could simply melt into the surface. Puny little thing, he probably massed a mere 230 pounds or so.

Weaklings, all of them.

“Damn right nothing,” Akatombe huffed out, cracking his knuckles one by one, the loud sound echoing like gunshots in the silence. “Now roll them eyeballs towards me one more time and I’ll scoop them out and shove them into your own mouth, then crush them like grapes along with all your teeth, little man! Just see if I don’t!”

“Eeep!” The man cried out, turning his head around to slam his own forehead into the ground. He lay there motionless except for the continuous trembling which he could simply not suppress. Nothing but a sorry looking heap of quivering muscles.

So weak, all of them!

“Excellent,” a new voice called out softly from behind him, casual and easy as though commenting on the price of bread, though there was a weight to them that made Akatombe’s skin crawl. “Fear is a survival mechanism, and it serves that man well.”

Akatombe roared in rage as he turned around to identify the newcomer, ready to unleash his rage upon this new, insufferably arrogant bastard. “Who dares?”

“I see that’s a survival trait you’ve yet to acquire,” the voice continued, abruptly turning icy and cold enough to burn the eerie silence that dominated the entire floor. It came from a figure as yet obscured by the gloom just outside the door to his cell. “We’ll have to work on that. Now, let’s see what you’ve got. Go on. Go crazy, Little Bue.”

Akatombe roared in renewed fury as his eyes became bloodshot, and he instantly charged at the door while foaming at the mouth. Bue? Little Bue? No one had dared call him that since his cadet days, when his drill sergeant had thought it would be funny to call the deadliest, meanest murder machine in the entire squadron by the most ridiculous, adorable abbreviation Ombue Akatombe’s name could afford.

A few years later, Akatombe had made a point to stop by the bar frequented by said drill sergeant, and had beat him within an inch of his death. As he’d walked out from before the pale, horrified stares of the entire squadron that had been drinking at that particular watering hole, he’d made a point of pausing briefly to spit on that bloodied, quivering pile of broken bone and torn tendon. “Bue my ass.”

Afterwards, no one had ever dared to even breathe the word, whether in or out of his immediate presence.

With a furious cry, Akatombe propelled the full weight of his body directly against the door, using his massive shoulder as a battering ram. A violent tearing sound could be heard before the weak metal frame finally gave way, twisting out of his way and sending the whole door flying straight towards the doomed little man.

Indeed, the only reason Akatombe had not busted out of this cell had been because he’d already been relocated twice, resulting in various first-degree burns as half a dozen stun blasters had fired time and time again upon his body. One or two would barely be enough to slow him down, but a massed volley was simply too annoying and painful to deal with.

So, he’d compromised and stayed within their little pen. However, when they finally charged him up for third degree insubordination, damage to military property and excessive use of violence - like usual - and fined him before letting him go - because he was simply too valuable to throw away - then he’d find each and every one of those little bastards and he’d cram those blasters muzzle first into their mouths, then watch as he emptied the entire clip down their throats and out their eye sockets.

Ah, but little did this little worm know that Akatombe simply chose to be imprisoned, and could bust out whenever he damn felt like it. Maniacal laughter rumbled in his chest as he imagined the shock and ensuing terror as he tore the damn limbs off this puny little bastard’s body one by one.

However, when he burst out of the cell, right behind the door, he suddenly found that the hallway was empty and there was nobody there. The cell door crashed loudly against the back wall, and Akatombe stood in bewildered silence as he pivoted his body left and right trying to find the sneaky little bastard.

“You lack discipline,” that same voice intoned right next to his ear, cool and calm at first, but turning low and deadly towards the end. “But I find your enthusiasm.. contagious.”

A slight chill moved down Akatombe’s spine, but he furiously shook it off as he swung his fist blindly over his left shoulder in a backhanded smash.

Nothing. It was as though he were facing a ghost.

“Sneaky little coward, come out and face me if you dare!” Akatombe cried out furiously, the veins in his neck popping out.

“Reckless. I like that,” came the damnable voice once more, this time to his right. “I can work with that.”

As he turned his head in that direction, he could finally see the man clearly. He was dressed in the uniform of an army colonel in the federation, but he looked impossibly young for the position - early 30s at most. He would barely weigh in at 200 pounds soaking wet, and he was not bearing any weapons that could possibly support the manic confidence that could be seen burning within those dark, smoldering eyes.

“Let me teach you of this thing called..” The man whispered, his mouth spreading in a humorless grin, and Akatombe once more felt a chill run down his back.

“Fear.”

Winter howled in Ombue Akatombe’s heart, and his very soul trembled.