Sleep Away

***...current passed through a half coil of memory metal sprang the metal to whatever shape it was in when it first firmed in its electrified stamping mold. Looping the coils all around the Skaps various equators, a sequencer and gyro could spring the coils in quick succession and push the device like arms flying against the ground at the rear of a wagon or an infinite set of oars shoving against the water. The Homann's perfected them. A metal was used that was so strong as to be thin enough to slide through flesh like a speeding whip through a sheet of paper. Capacitors were used that could quickly store charges strong enough to whip the 40 kilogram things 50 centimeters into the air and a meter across the ground with a single discharge. Trailing each arm were barbs tipped with enough biological material to outright slay a healthy man under favorable conditions and require amputation of wounded limbs when simply grazed. And when the battery completely discharged or forward progress ceased they did not simply shut down, but triggered an internal explosive charge that converted them into fragmenting grenades...***




The fighting front swept through Yalud and receded just as quickly once the armored division's trails of supplies were located and severed by the nearly suicidal attacks of the Sons of Faith during the onset of Winter. The city of Yalud was the gateway to the fertile valleys and tributaries and dried lake beds that made for launch center's too perfect to dare not attempt. Many of the lake bed's platforms were now turned to the east and the sky streaked daily with the thick columns of booster exhaust. The far horizon was permanently lit with the flickering reds, oranges, and deep yellows of wildfires started by the very rocket installations the invaders built on the soil they attempted to steal from the hand of God himself.

Door to door gun battle left the streets and corridors of Yalud scarred with torn brickwork and statuary disfigured by hand held anti-armor fire. The temples were not spared by foot soldier, looter, and war criminal alike. When sunlight was able to break through the gray pall of sky flecks of red seemed to shine in the burgundy cake of spilled life that filled every seam and crack of masonry, mosaic, street, and earth work that made up the once shining undeniable city of a grand and perfect Lord.

The front was dozens of miles distant, but protection was still necessary. Necessary and easy to come by, as even the children of the city were familiar with war. Yalud was the gateway west to all who desired to gain the bounty of the land and the western sea. Before this war there was the Opsidann invasion of 1009. Before that was the war for independence in 988. And before that came the nearly uncountable civil uprisings as one warlord crushed another to gain hold of the greatest precious stone on the crown of the river Sem-Yalu.

"Hate is the heart of the Yaluan man!" Leaflets of propaganda still blew too and fro in the torn streets. The eastern hounds tossed them about on their initial landing after driving back the conscript Yaluans from the coast of the Sem-Yalu. They rode over the very same notes as they were driven back by the ceaseless appetite of their own voracious and formidable tracked tanks. Yalud, and the country beyond it, was not rich in mechanical fuels, but in human fuels and once the supply ran short and every man fought on his own two feet with nothing more than the forged metal and ammunition at his hip, God prevailed.

In times of conflict, every boy and man of Yalud took up arms and this, the border dispute of 1021, was no exception. The eastern principality of Homann was wrenching itself away from Yalu and sought to take Yalud, the diamond of the western kingdom, with it. Each Yaluan to a household knew it was a movement sparked of a lie from the unknowable prince of darkness himself, and each Yaluan to a household offered up his sons to fight amongst the Sons of Faith to protect the ordained kingdom from the dissenters heresy.

The Sons able to march to the front, now pushed so far east as to require clandestine, speedy and hulking aircraft to supply their operations swiftly enough, and those too young for the searing heat of the Homann war mongers trained and fought as a forward guard at the borders of the city itself. This training was not a light matter and was taken very seriously. Many of the youths never returned, buried at the border camps, and hazards abounded. Though the Homann threat was pushed far distance and though Yalud and the lands beyond rained death day and night from every launcher captured from the retreating heretics, the Homann war machine did not fail to sew fear where ever its boot fell.

Loosed upon the slopes of the lowlands and the beaches and the blast barren orchards of the hills were the Skaps. Skaps were small machines, no larger than a man's head, and about the same roundness. All around their circumference were strands of memory metal no thicker than a man's index finger and filling their interiors were enough battery packs to power the night devils for weeks and sometimes months. Nested within the packs of battery acids were tightly packed vials of phosphorous. Nested inside of them were shaped charges peppered with scrap metal. Each rod was covered on its backside with poison tipped barbs. They rolled constantly once deployed, hardwired to use global positioning to proceed ever westward and dispensed by the thousands. Always rolling and always seeking traces of warm, respiratory, human life.

Cerval saw them in action on a daily basis. The numbers were falling satisfactorily, but some dozens still butted against the training camps earthen walls daily. They were much easier to locate in the smoke streaked half light of day and so as the ranking Yaluan Son of Faith in the border camp, he ordered much of the exercises during daylight hours. Gun emplacements farther up the coast, nearer to the residential settlements and fringe trade districts of the port city, were necessarily dismantled and taken to the receding front in the east to speed the eradication of the fleeing heretics.

"Tonight?" Yarone could not hide his emotions for the children, though he was easily Cerval's senior. "Why? The battle is nearly won. You know that." A broad, worried, and deceptively steady hand combed the thin white hairs of his chin as his wide brown eyes held Cervals cold stare. Yarone was not a Yaluan by birth, but by naturalization. His premature white hair, long limbs, wide eyes, and large ears were clearly from a line of thorough Obsidanns. Still Cerval kept him as his second in command knowing his faith in the God of Yalu and his worthiness of the Sons was spoken for through more years of service than Cerval had enjoyed life.

"Tonight must be their first evening exercise. It can be no other way," Cerval stood and allowed himself to gaze past Yarone's armored shoulder through the wide and shattered window of the command station, the only fixed structure in the border camp aside from the the 3 meter high, 3 meter thick, steeply raked clay brick wall.

"Cerval," Yarone took a short sidelong step to block the simplest path Cerval could follow from behind his wide low desk to the door, "Cerval, why?"

Cerval brought the coolness of his Yaluan muddy green eyes to match Yarone's own smoldering orbs before speaking. "Two transports were downed this morning 60 kilometers from the eastern bank of the Sem-Yalu. Over flights have confirmed that the transports were packed with Skaps. Not a single Homann was aboard either craft." Yarone stood in stunned silence. Cerval strode calmly from behind his desk. "The transports were counter punches. The hounds of Homann assumed we would attack and destroy them mid-air, thus dispersing the plague ourselves."

"The upper camp?"

"Has marched for the north eastern front Yesterday. We are the only Sons of Faith close enough to fan out and intercept their movement."

Hours passed and the sun set before the tell tale stinging pangs of the Skaps drifted through the night. In a concentrated formation during the day it was a simple matter to start a large fire and let the carbon dioxide, monoxide, and heat draw them in one by one. The children in training were adept enough at the semi-automatic Gussaw rifles to rake the bouncing and bounding things like rolling toys. It even warmed Cerval's heart to hear the whoops and haws of the youngsters as the Skaps exploded harmlessly, hundreds of meters away like kernels of corn in an iron skillet. But now, as Cerval breathed as little as possible and hid as much of his body behind the camps earthen dam and trained his Muss-Rassaw, the heavy assault variant of the Gussaw made specifically for stationary mounting by all but the most able footman, Cerval's heart was cold and hard as the copper jacketed slugs on his ammunition belt.

all along the crest of the river facing wall were men, the finest combat educators of Yalud, and their dozens of young charges. What burned Cerval's heart beneath its solid steel shell, and what burned in Yarone's eyes even as he left the camps rear gates with an entire squad of armed youth, was the knowledge that all along the western bank of the Sem-Yalu, holy country, were men and boys in simple pits and fox holes. Some even with nothing, but a collection of bags of sand whipped up in the waning moments of the day. Silently Cerval cursed himself for wasting even the few hours he did on making his decision. He knew they were hours the city, lights dimmed to darkness behind the camp and the men that lay between it and unseen mechanical nightmare, could have spent preparing. Hours the Sons could have spent preparing. The front was spread too far, too many kilometers between the entrenched Sons of Faith, to make use of fires and in the darkness, alight in the garish green cloak of Cerval's wide angle night scope, the tell tale whistling whip-crack of hundreds of Skaps began to drift to his ears.

A technology pioneered by the Obsidanns years before and proliferated to the Homanns, Solemonts, and many other unbelievers jealous of the grace of God, the Skap was a device of terror and brutality. Electric current passed through a half coil of memory metal sprang the metal to whatever shape it was in when it first firmed in its electrified stamping mold. Looping the coils all around the Skaps various equators, a sequencer and gyro could spring the coils in quick succession and push the device like arms flying against the ground at the rear of a wagon or an infinite set of oars shoving against the water. The Homann's perfected them. A metal was used that was so strong as to be thin enough to slide through flesh like a speeding whip through a sheet of paper. Capacitors were used that could quickly store charges strong enough to whip the 40 kilogram things 50 centimeters into the air and a meter across the ground with a single discharge. Trailing each arm were barbs tipped with enough biological material to outright slay a healthy man under favorable conditions and require amputation of wounded limbs when simply grazed. And when the battery completely discharged or forward progress ceased they did not simply shut down, but triggered an internal explosive charge that converted them into fragmenting grenades that spread a cloud of biological contamination for meters around that could linger in the air downwind for hours and sometimes days and spattered enough raw phosphorous to eat through the flesh of ten men's torsos.

To witness a man cut down by a Skap, or the horror of many Skaps, was a thing Cerval was not anxious to see. "When do I shoot, Second Father?" Cerval did not have to take his eye from his scope to know the hard edged voice of Arrow, easily the most ready for the operation at hand amongst all of the youth at the camp though he was only 12. Arrow knew instinctively that the ranges were deceiving under the curtain of night.

"Soon, Son," the proper militia designation came naturally as every Yaluan household that gave up its males to the Sons of Faith knew they were really giving them up to a new and holy family. "On the water you will not see them, but once they come to land fire carefully and quickly." He did not need to repeat the footman's mantra. Every Son of Faith grew up knowing the fastest path was the one that needed no second action. In the scope tiny flecks of dark green embankment flew into the air as one, then two, then more than Cerval could quickly count, Skaps tore from the underbrush and low tree line on the east bank of the Sem-Yalu, whipping arms whistling loud enough to stab needles into Cerval's hardened nerves. He turned his scope up and then down river. Frothing wakes carved their way across the undulant surface of the dark river, and behind them more Skaps poured forward. Far to his left he could hear the rattle of fear gripping some of the youth and shaking them mercilessly. A few shook so violently in their perfunctory ditches and holes that the brims of their cast iron helmets rattled against the large night scopes perched atop the angry and fiercely functional metal and wood of their Gussaws. Still silently and with controlled breath Cerval sent up prayers for their souls. Their heavy breathing and shaking hands would surely be their death.

The flailing Skaps were still meters from land when Gussaws began to report. Yarone held his Muss-Rassaw in check, but yanked back the heavy safety bold and braced the gas piston cushioned stock against an armored shoulder. "The glory of a thousand riches and a thousand praises and ten thousand kingdoms awaits," he murmured, tightening his finger and depressing the trigger through its sprung travel until it rested directly on the firing pin release.

Freed from fluid suction the Skaps black matte painted bodies bounded into the air and tore forward, unpredictable as whistling bats. Cerval allowed the heavy casing of the Muss-Rassaw to below with all of its might as the air for nearly a meter before him lit up with searing white fire.

The Sons held their ground through the minutes that quickly dragged into hours with the only saving grace to Cerval and his youth being that Skaps never doubled back. Always westward. Yarone wept, not only for the wails of the youth he could not see in the darkness, wails that grew thicker as wave after wave washed through the camp and its hasty line of defenses, but also for those within the limits of Yalud. Ample warning was given, but Yarone knew there were many who simply could not erect defense enough. Homes would be burned, collapsed, residents maimed, dismembered, store houses exploded. He wept, but he did not wither though his shoulder ached.

Arrow fell a single time. One of the murderous devices slipped beneath the current of depleted rounds Cerval and his squad laid from the walls of the camp proper and lodged itself in the spikes on the steeply raked slope of the wall. The explosion flung a bit of flesh searing chemical onto Arrow's shoulder that nearly instantly bore through the fabric us his fatigues. without so much as a cry of surprise Arrow slid from his perch on the wall beside Cerval, took out his commando knife, the first weapon all of the youth train with, and cut the bit of chemical out of his own flesh and flung it aside before resuming his post. Cerval watched without a word in quick sideways glances. "When Arrow is ready," he thought to himself, "he will make a fine Second Father to youth of his own."

Deep into the night a handful of snipers stationed on the rooftops of the undamaged coastal residences could handle the sporadic arrivals of the Skaps since their frequency fell well below one or two every hour. Cerval sat once again behind his desk taking down figures for resupply from each of the Fourth Fathers as they reported in. Yarone sat silently in far corner, a hand about his mouth. The sour stink of burned flesh was thick in the air. The wind had been at their backs throughout the night and nearly all of the bio contaminants that did manage to get airborne were well away from the city and camp, but though their combat was blessed, the cost of the victory was painfully easy to determine with a simple taste of the air.

"Homann will be cast into dust for this day," Yarone rumbled as another squad leader and training commander placed a report on Cerval's desk, snapped a bow, and retreated through the open door.

"I know it," Cerval replied, not looking up. A stretch of skin beneath his right eye was still blackened from the fiery and formidable kick back of the Muss-Rassaw. Blood stains on both of Yarone's hands and lap told Cerval that he must have gone to the infirmary again to see the dead and the dieing. "Rage is God's alone, Yarone."

"I know it." Another squad leader entered, and paused awkwardly having caught Yarone's voice and realized with a start that he sat near the rooms poorly lit corner instead of in the Third Fathers customary position at the right hand of Cerval's desk. He gave a quick nod to Yarone before proceeding and making a sharp exit. "But the Sons will be his sword upon the heretics neck." Both men knew the scrolls backwards and forwards. Silence filled the air as thickly as the scent of suffering, broken only by the dutiful clap of metal report binders on Cerval's desk as he opened each one, gathered the necessary figures, and returned it to the desk. "I will go to the front," Yarone barked, his hand coming away from his mouth as the words exploded forward into the room.

"If God wills it," Cerval spoke with the finality becoming of the camps commander. He rose and approached Yarone and took his great old blood smeared hand into the strength of his own measured grasp. "There is still a great need for you here. They will be made to pay and allow yourself to rest in that assurance." He let his hand fall and returned to his desk. Beneath his elbow was another report he did not share with Yarone that arrived in the thick of the Skap onslaught. Intelligence from scouts at the front were surfacing that several hundred hangars and airfields were being prepared deep behind the Homann front. Signs were beginning to point toward an unthinkable alliance between Obsidann and Homan, the earlier attack being a strength scouting operation. "Prepare all forces," was the final line in the report.

"Second Father!" A squad leader burst into the office, startling neither Yarone nor Cerval. "You're needed quickly. In the field," the man was completely out of breath, but sprinted from the office with a speed trained of mental toughness. Cerval and Yarone followed suit, kicking up small plumes of sandy earth as they hustled through the night.

In the dark distance muzzle flashes flared inside a fox hole covered over with a steel plate and the sound of small, heaving, breaths followed. The fatigued squad leader drew himself to a halt and fell to his knees, bracing himself somewhat erect with his arms alone. "There, inside. You have to help. They won't come out," he gasped and swallowed, his face barely visible against the dark beachhead and still water.

Cautiously, Cerval doffed his iron helmet and began to worm his way into the foxholes entrance. "Cerval!" Yarone began to protest, but restrained himself. "The Second Father never acts without considering the whole," he thought to himself, "as the First Father acts only in perfect knowledge." He calmed himself and cleared his mind and attended to the squad leaders immediate pains.

Cerval slid about a meter against the sandy flank of the dark and steeply sloped wall until his combat boots pressed against pliant ground. He knew he was standing atop a crumpled body, though there was not light to see. The feeling was at once familiar. A single low lamp shone at tip of a Gussaw and it flickered, tremulous as a lick of flame atop a candle. He could not see the total width of the foxhole, but he knew there could not be more than two other people in it, the other person very likely also holding a Gussaw. "What happened here," his words were strong and simple, but no answer was given. "Names?" He spoke again, taking a few steps to solid earth that he would not desecrate the fallen frame of a countryman.

"Crane." The voice was thin and flighty and came from the corner opposite the trembling light. "Crane, Second Father."

"What happened, Crane?" A long pause followed, punctuated by the nearly metronomic rattle of the other man's shaking.

"I don't know what's wrong with Tarrud," the smell of gunpowder was still fresh and thick. "He won't stop. I can't make him stop." Cerval knew in the tight and small tones of Cranes teary voice that he was a youth and from the shallow breaths and the grip of the Gussaw he knew that Tarrud could not be older than 10. A youth as well. Shock was a thief in the night in the camps during peace time. During war time it could claim nearly 25% of the Sons before they ever saw man to man combat.

"Tarrud," Cerval spoke with command again.

"Don't!" he could feel Crane's small gloved fist reach for and grasp his armored elbowed. "Second Father, he won't listen," he pleaded.

The wavering light came up to level with Cerval's hip, easily eye level for the unseen youth. The light caught the glistening crimson rivulets of blood in the moist rich brown of the sand behind Cerval where Tarrud cut down the now torn body of the third youth who was in the foxhole. "Tarrud, it's over. You're safe now," Cerval held both of his hands palms outward. The light illuminated the blessed silver threads of the ordained commanders gloves. "Tarrud, you are safe. Do you understand that?" Cerval began to clench his teeth tightly as Tarrud's breathing accelerated and his trembling grew increasingly violent.
"Tarrud-"

A cry of despair boiled from Tarruds small throat and surged out of the foxholes entrance with an intensity that forced even war tested Yarone's sure hand to draw his combat knife halfway clear of its sheath. "Cerval!" he cautioned with a single word, but before he could muster even that shorthand response, Cerval drew his .45 caliber Musha and emptied three rounds through the base of Tarruds skull and burried them into the sand behind his head. Tarrud's body fell limp and free against the foxhole's sidewall. The hole fell into darkness again as the the twist switch of the bayonet lamp flickered to the off position and the rifle fell with a wet clap to the floor.

Cerval blinked twice, then slowly allowed his muscles to relax once more as he returned the menacing handgun to its thigh holster. "Cerval, are you well?" Yarone bellowed from above standing just to the side of the foxhole entrance, blade drawn and ready to descend if the need arose.

"Crane," he breathed, "are you unhurt?" The gentle wind had grown to a gale in the space of time that passed since he entered the hole. It was all Crane could do to breath often enough to prevent his small body from collapsing. With a stern hand he clasped the neck of Cranes back plate and spun him toward the exit of the foxhole. His rifle fell from his hands like a worthless toy from the hands of a disinterested baby. His eyes were fixed on a distant and horrific thing no one else could see and his mind retreated as quickly as it could in the opposite and equally intangible direction. "Yarone, help him out."

Yarone hauled on the small boy and easily plucked him from the silty mouth of the foxhole and as Cerval climbed free of the dirt and steel road plate covering the majority of the hole a light rain began to break, beating the bits of misted blood from his lips and cheeks and the bridge of Cranes nose.

"Oh my God." Crane finally spoke as he fell to his knees and then his side. "Oh my God." His voice was a shadow in the night. The rain grew heavier as Yarone stood a short distance away, familiar enough with the signs of permanent shock and what it would require of him later.

Cerval, before he knew what he was doing knelt at Crane's back and lifted his head out of the dirt. The Fourth Father and squad leader who brought them to the foxhole still crouched nearby, but now he too appeared visibly shaken.

Cerval didn't know Crane specifically, or Tarrud. More than likely he addressed both of them on their arrival months or years before, but now as he rocked little Crane back and forth despite himself and as he thought of the report waiting for action on his desk and as Yarone gazed silently over the expanse of the Sem-Yalu and thought about the pain of authorizing another euthanization of a Son of Faith who would never be able to return to an Earthly home, he said the only words that would come to his lips through the knot in his throat. "You've done well, son. You have done well." He wasn't sure if rain or tears stained his cheeks with greater vigor. "Rest now. Rest."

The sharp crack of a long barreled Gussaw breach loader ripped the fabric of the wet night air and far away the shell of Skap blew apart on the eastern bank. A long sheet of rain unfurled across the western bank as Cerval, still whispering in Cranes ear, stood and cradled Cranes tiny small body and walked slowly back toward the camps ramparts. A shudder of thunder peeled back the silence, but the falling water instantly rolled it back into place. Yarone and the squad leader watched them recede into the cold night air. "Help me with the bodies," Yarone spoke and without protest the squad leader rose and began to widen the mouth of the foxholes with just his hands.