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Apr. 7th, 2009 04:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3nanashiAC 188
27 Mai. 1600 hours
somewhere near Szczecin
"Come on, sir!" Friedrich Otto is blond, narrow-faced, and vastly irritated, even though he's trying not to show it. "The Alliance has more troops, more money, home ground on ninety percent of the planet -- why don't we side with them? We want to be on the winning side, after all!"
Captain Singh snorts, his single eye glinting in the afternoon light. The other eye is an old brown scar over a sunken socket, long-healed. "Mercenaries get paid for fighting, kid." He leans back for emphasis, lounging on the upturned crate he's using as a seat. "If the Alliance wins, no more war. Fighting for the rebels means we keep getting paid."
The boy listening has heard this argument a dozen times before. He knows that the captain will win, because he's Captain Singh, and he always wins. He also knows that Friedrich is unconvinced; that it's only a matter of time before Friedrich asks for his wages and leaves to find a troop whose priorities suit him better.
Friedrich is young. The nameless boy, probably-eight years old, observes this but doesn't fully comprehend it. Young at twenty is different than young at eight. What he knows is that Friedrich is impatient, and Friedrich wants to fight and win and spend money.
The boy sights down the barrel of his pistol, clicks it back together, reholsters and begins to clean a longer rifle. He doesn't understand why anyone would choose to leave the captain. He won't miss Friedrich -- just another soldier, competent enough but nothing special. He'll miss Sonia more, when she inevitably leaves with Friedrich. Sonia isn't special to him either, not really, but she plays flute. She's been teaching the boy on quiet camp nights -- playing a swift run of notes or a long meandering melody phrase by phrase, handing the flute over so he can play it back, correcting his breath and fingering. When they leave, her flute will go away too.
"If the Alliance wins anyway," Friedrich grumbles, "not like we'll get paid then either."
Captain Singh's grin is sudden, amused and fierce. "Then you'd better fight harder, huh?"
No-name knows that Captain Singh wants to fight for the rebels, and against the Alliance. The captain believes his own logic, but he also wants to find logic that will let him fight on the side he wants to. The boy doesn't understand why, and doesn't care. In a few years, he'll have a better idea of his world's politics, but right now he just cares what the people around him are thinking.
"Oi, nanashi!" Nanashi: no-name. The boy glances up. Hino Takashi is grinning at him. The boy reloads his rifle, and stands. Captain Singh and Friedrich will be arguing for some time yet, covering predictable ground, and he feels no need to listen.
"I'm gonna strip down my suit's left knee," Takashi says. The boy likes him. He's speaking Japanese, of course; English is the lingua franca of the troop, but plenty of the soldiers speak other languages by preference. Many of them seem to like teaching the quiet, quick-learning boy, and he's grown up multilingual. "Old Neimou's been a little creaky lately. Burnout in one of the piston connections, maybe, and that socket probably needs another magnet-coating. Wanna help me?"
The boy nods.
"Great! Grab my toolkit out of the truck, will you?"
"Sure."
Takashi slings his jacket over his shoulder and strides off toward the hulking shapes of the Leo and Tragos mobile suits, mud-brown beneath mottled camouflage nets. The boy trots between trees towards the circle of bunk-trucks. Takashi's toolkit and all the rest of his personal gear, like no-name's own, is stashed tidily under his bunk. Captain Singh insists on neatness and efficiency from all his soldiers.
No-name climbs up the steel-grid stairs -- they're made for adults, not an eight-year-old's short legs, but he's used to it -- and pushes open the heavy hanging curtain.
27 Mai. 1600 hours
somewhere near Szczecin
"Come on, sir!" Friedrich Otto is blond, narrow-faced, and vastly irritated, even though he's trying not to show it. "The Alliance has more troops, more money, home ground on ninety percent of the planet -- why don't we side with them? We want to be on the winning side, after all!"
Captain Singh snorts, his single eye glinting in the afternoon light. The other eye is an old brown scar over a sunken socket, long-healed. "Mercenaries get paid for fighting, kid." He leans back for emphasis, lounging on the upturned crate he's using as a seat. "If the Alliance wins, no more war. Fighting for the rebels means we keep getting paid."
The boy listening has heard this argument a dozen times before. He knows that the captain will win, because he's Captain Singh, and he always wins. He also knows that Friedrich is unconvinced; that it's only a matter of time before Friedrich asks for his wages and leaves to find a troop whose priorities suit him better.
Friedrich is young. The nameless boy, probably-eight years old, observes this but doesn't fully comprehend it. Young at twenty is different than young at eight. What he knows is that Friedrich is impatient, and Friedrich wants to fight and win and spend money.
The boy sights down the barrel of his pistol, clicks it back together, reholsters and begins to clean a longer rifle. He doesn't understand why anyone would choose to leave the captain. He won't miss Friedrich -- just another soldier, competent enough but nothing special. He'll miss Sonia more, when she inevitably leaves with Friedrich. Sonia isn't special to him either, not really, but she plays flute. She's been teaching the boy on quiet camp nights -- playing a swift run of notes or a long meandering melody phrase by phrase, handing the flute over so he can play it back, correcting his breath and fingering. When they leave, her flute will go away too.
"If the Alliance wins anyway," Friedrich grumbles, "not like we'll get paid then either."
Captain Singh's grin is sudden, amused and fierce. "Then you'd better fight harder, huh?"
No-name knows that Captain Singh wants to fight for the rebels, and against the Alliance. The captain believes his own logic, but he also wants to find logic that will let him fight on the side he wants to. The boy doesn't understand why, and doesn't care. In a few years, he'll have a better idea of his world's politics, but right now he just cares what the people around him are thinking.
"Oi, nanashi!" Nanashi: no-name. The boy glances up. Hino Takashi is grinning at him. The boy reloads his rifle, and stands. Captain Singh and Friedrich will be arguing for some time yet, covering predictable ground, and he feels no need to listen.
"I'm gonna strip down my suit's left knee," Takashi says. The boy likes him. He's speaking Japanese, of course; English is the lingua franca of the troop, but plenty of the soldiers speak other languages by preference. Many of them seem to like teaching the quiet, quick-learning boy, and he's grown up multilingual. "Old Neimou's been a little creaky lately. Burnout in one of the piston connections, maybe, and that socket probably needs another magnet-coating. Wanna help me?"
The boy nods.
"Great! Grab my toolkit out of the truck, will you?"
"Sure."
Takashi slings his jacket over his shoulder and strides off toward the hulking shapes of the Leo and Tragos mobile suits, mud-brown beneath mottled camouflage nets. The boy trots between trees towards the circle of bunk-trucks. Takashi's toolkit and all the rest of his personal gear, like no-name's own, is stashed tidily under his bunk. Captain Singh insists on neatness and efficiency from all his soldiers.
No-name climbs up the steel-grid stairs -- they're made for adults, not an eight-year-old's short legs, but he's used to it -- and pushes open the heavy hanging curtain.
