Merc

AN: This is a darker chapter, no angst or anything, just complete disassociation of murder, fair warning. Man, I love my little mercenary. *smirk*

This isn't a new chapter, just an edit/add on to a previous chapter. The new addition is coming, but I forgot quite a bit of info that would be hella hard to explain later in the fic. That's what happens when I rush a post...which stalled the whole thing because I was trying to figure out how to "fix" this chapter without changing it. Didn't work. I had to add stuffs. Sorry.
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My plan laid out before me, and the flow of blood at the wound sufficiently ceased, I headed back to the trees.

It was more difficult with my hands cut to hell and weaker from blood loss, but I had little choice.

The forest was alive on the return trip. Leaves shook just outside the reach of my night vision, and animal calls echoed across the canopy. It was so much more peaceful listening to nature from base camp than from the animals’ home territory.

I had kept the man’s switchblade, but otherwise I was unarmed. That would change when I got back to base camp, but for now there wasn’t much I could do since I wasn’t willing to stop for any length of time.

As I traveled from branch to branch, a deformity of one tree caught my eye and made me pause. Focusing on it, I realized it wasn’t part of the tree just as two large green-yellow eyes opened and pinned me. A large jaguar lay across a branch in my path. Its maw was bloodstained, and the remains of its kill littered the ground below us.

The moonlight caught its speckled pattern just right; it was almost invisible, and I just stood there in awe of that top predator.

I should have felt fear, but I knew it wasn’t interested in me as food. Looking into the eyes of such a huge animal showed me its view of me. I was no concern of hers. Through her eyes, she only saw things of importance to her. Other creatures were food, rivals, potential mates, or insubstantial.

As if to show my insignificance, she leapt off the branch to the forest floor beneath me and disappeared gracefully into the brush I had struggled through earlier, perfectly at ease on the ground where I had felt vulnerable.

Upon return to base camp, I got to work. I retrieved the gun from my tent. I had gone into town unarmed to avoid potential chaos if it was discovered. The baggy clothes concealed it well, but didn’t hold the weight well, and sometimes it slipped out of place. Plus, I wouldn’t have made it through the forest.

I slipped through the tents of the heaviest sleepers of Cauldwell’s men and relieved them of their extra weapons.

I wanted them dead, but if they were good enough to take me out, too, so be it.

Then I went to my suit. It was the source of my foolish pride, the pride that cost me the only family I had ever known. A few explosives, strategically placed, would ignite the ammunition and rock the entire camp. Chaos would let me take out any survivors.

I positioned myself in the trees surrounding the suits, farthest from mine. As the sun rose, I hit the button.

Brilliant light momentarily put the sun to shame before the violent sound of explosions sent tremors through the trees and leveled the first line of tents.

Those few men that were watching the perimeter far enough from the suits were first to the scene, and a few bullets took them down easily.

Still shaking the fog of sleep from their vision, it was quick work to kill most of the remaining survivors. There were a few that woke up quick enough to realize where the shots were coming from, so they took cover and aimed for the trees.

But I didn’t stay stationary for long, and soon enough I had circled the boundaries of camp enough that they were no longer behind the cover they had sought. Then they died, too.

I sat among the limbs to watch the camp burn and smolder into nothing feeling very removed from it all.

Afterwards, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I wandered. It would have taken little effort to find another merc unit to join up with, but it didn’t feel right. Like I didn’t deserve to reunite with a comfortable way of life. I had destroyed two merc units in less than three days. I knew I would never be a merc again. I had failed as a mercenary.

But now I had nothing for myself. I was no longer a pilot; I had no suit. I wasn’t a mercenary; I had no unit. I wasn’t a mechanic; I had no tools. I was just a killer.

So I wandered, but I found out very quickly that it wasn’t wise to wander around an area where you don’t understand the language well. I could handle myself in a fight well enough, but after a few new scars, I decided not to stay.

I returned to the European continent. I was, if not fluent, then familiar with the majority of the languages spoken there. The mercs I ran with were very careful that they weren’t traceable. So they never spoke their native language in a foreign country. It was obvious they were foreign because of the accents we used, but none could tell their homeland. And me, I learned their accents from listening to them, though I had no homeland.

But I still had no destination or career in mind, so I took to the streets.

When someone mistook me for a hooker, offering me money for a handjob, I accepted. I didn’t intend for that to become my new life. At first, when the offer was made, my first inclination was to make sure he never woke up for the insult. But I was short on money, and it was my pride that led to the death of my former companions. So I did it.

It became my new life for a few months. I immersed myself in the filth of the backstreets and alleyways; I became what I had considered myself better than only a few months prior.

Well, almost. I still had that need for control; and a dislike of being touched turned into an absolute revulsion. Because of this, it was really left to handjobs and blowjobs. I could touch them, and I did, but if they tried to force their touch on me, they were lucky if they limped away.

Looking back, I know I had the skills to do many other things, but I think, subconsciously, I was still punishing myself.

I tried to wash away the pride that had cost me my former life, but it was also easy to get addicted to the power I held over someone while they were a slave to their lust.

Sex was meaningless. Faceless people getting off while I did the work, but, at the same time, I knew how easy it would be to end their life while they so carelessly thrust into my mouth. They probably wouldn’t even notice until it was too late.

It was never meant to be a permanent thing. I moved around a lot, anyways, so when I got a restless itch, I just picked up and left. But instead of finding the next alleyway, my feet took me to the shuttle port.

Watching the power behind such a machine awed me. I knew I wanted to be nearer to it than at the edge of the fence surrounding the launching strips.

I broke into the port and made myself at home for a few days until I got the layout down. It turns out this one was an educational facility for training shuttle pilots. I learned quite a bit from the shadows, what I couldn’t find out for myself, I employed a little help.

On the streets, one has to know how to read people. I already knew a great deal on the subject from growing up with quick-tempered men, but my education was completed as a prostitute. I learned how to manipulate people to make them want what I wanted them to want. Its essentially tricking them into thinking everything was their idea entirely.

One of the students was very easy to read; he wanted sex, but that was off limits among the ranks of students. I let him think I was a stock boy for the shuttle port, they weren’t. We traded favors; he got off, and I learned the last few sequences I needed to know to pilot a shuttle.

The more I was around those engines, the more I watched them launch and land, the more I wanted to follow them into space, but shuttle fare was no where near my budget, and traffic between earth and the colonies was severely restricted. Only the extremely rich or politically powerful were allowed. However, there are always ways around such restrictions. There were many places large enough for a person or two to hide in a shuttle, my encounters with the student pilot showed me just a few.

I was an orphan; I was a mercenary. I was a hooker; I was a stowaway. Life kept handing me different roles, but this was the first one I actively sought. It wasn’t very comfortable, and I had to make arrangements for certain bodily needs like food, water, and evacuation because I had to remain hidden for several days.

But to ride in something as powerful, to feel the vibrations, hear the roar of take off. It was enough to make me hard.

After landing, I found out I was on a colony in the L3 sector. It didn’t matter to me where I landed because I was on the streets again; those seem to be the same no matter where home base is. But the view was different.

It didn’t take long to orient myself, the streets were all planned: a perfect grid. Easy. It also didn’t take long to pick up the tension underlying all actions taking place in the streets. With my background, finding a spot I deemed ‘safe’ was finding a defensible location.

In finding that location, I found the Barton Foundation. They didn’t notice me, they should have because I wasn’t necessarily trying to be unnoticed, but their security was more lax than it should have been for people with plans as big as theirs. I had no plans for my new location, and a soldier’s life was really the only one I considered myself any good at, so why not?

I was “recruited” by the Foundation as a mechanic.

It was different than I had expected. I had been a soldier since memory began, but I always had a group. I was an outsider, never truly belonging, but there was never really any interest in me outside of inquiring about suit repair and modification.

But here, I was the new blood. There were only a few other new recruits, and I was the only one that wasn’t trying to fit in with the established members. I kept to myself and did my job, expecting to be noticed only for my skill as a mechanic.

And I was, but not for what I considered the “right” reasons. I hadn’t realized how easily people recognized that I was from earth rather than colony-born. I had known on some superficial level that the artificial sunlight of the colonies were not powerful enough to darken the skin unless subjected to it on a near-constant basis, but the sun was able to brown skin easily. I hadn’t related that knowledge to my intention of concealing my origins.

Everyone knew I wasn’t a spacer, but I told them nothing hoping to go unnoticed, hoping they would forget me due to my silence. But that only made some of them more curious.

If I didn’t want them making up their own stories, I had to create some myself. I told them very little, based loosely on reality, but mostly junk stories that were easy to remember.

Because of my earthen home, some of the more fanatic fighters began to make it their mission to “convert” me. I was a project of theirs, to turn an earther against his former home. It was easy to convince them that I agreed with their theories of all violence and fighting originating from the war-loving people of earth. That I was willing to destroy the root of all war, the earth.

Barton even took the opportunity in between shifts to show me a picture of the child the foundation intended to use as its figurehead.

After that, they pretty much left me alone. I was grateful; there weren’t as many eyes spying on my actions. There was more freedom for me to observe the others. And I needed to.

There were many differences between terran-bound suits and suits meant for space fighting. I had a lot to learn, but it kept me interested. I was a poor mechanic due to my inexperience with space flights, but it averaged out when presenting my advanced knowledge of increasing thruster efficiency. My familiarity with making gravity-limited thrusters more efficient meant I had vast improvements I could make on the thrusters used in space.

But I had no idea of the strategies and maneuvers needed for space combat, so I started sneaking into the classes the fighters were required to attend. It was easy to do as I had become very fond of the rafters throughout the base. I spent quite a bit of time up there listening to the combat lessons, watching the interactions of the Barton Foundation members, and enjoying the solitude.

I was a dedicated pupil to the combat strategies, but what I really wanted to do was test my skills against the simulators. Only fighters were allowed to operate those, but I knew the codes to start the programs from observing.

Sneaking into the room at night, I tested my newly learned but never practiced knowledge of space combat. I trained myself for hours every night, modifying the difficulty levels, the number of opponents, the weapons the suit was fitted with.

I had wanted the chance to learn the more computerized, modern cockpits as opposed to my old suit, and I used this opportunity to the fullest. I even taught myself how to hack into the program, meaning I was able to start the “suit” without the initiation sequence.

With the better understanding of what a pilot needed for effective space combat, I quickly became one of the best mechanics within the Barton Foundation. It felt good, knowing I was of some worth again. And I needed those skills because the foundation was building an army of suits. I had no problems working overtime.

My work got noticed.

Some one from the upper ranks approached me, briefed me on security protocol, then showed me to my new assignment.

I was put on a team building a mobile suit for Operation Meteor.

What the operation consisted of was on a need to know basis. All I needed to know was what portion of the suit I was responsible for and what plans I had to follow. The layout was beautiful and so different from other suits I had studied.

That suit was awe-inspiring.

Its armament was intense, with missiles, rockets, and guns; its armor was the strongest material man had ever known, taking ten times the damage as other suits. It was an army in and of itself.

However it was almost defenseless in close range combat.

I knew who was meant to pilot the suit. Trowa Barton was the golden child, fanatical leader, always preaching always ready to convince others to die for this cause…but he was unwilling to die for his own cause. That was obvious to me within seconds of meeting him.

But then again, I had gotten very good at reading people, my life had depended on that ability on several occasions.

And the suit suited him well: loud, obvious, and very powerful, (did I mention the color scheme was red, orange, and yellow) but nothing to back up the boast if someone called his bluff and got in his face. If an enemy could withstand his initial assault, Barton had nothing to defend himself.

I didn’t care for his cause; it mattered little to me whether he lived or died, but the suit deserved better. That was the ultimate suit, and it should not be incomplete. I mentioned my observation to one of the other peon mechanics within hearing range of the right person, a sniveling suck up of a man who wanted in the good graces of the higher ups, and soon enough there was an addition of a switchblade-like apparatus for close range fighting.

It wasn’t the modification I would have made, but it was sufficient. I worked nearly round the clock to perfect that suit to the best of my abilities.

Despite my busy schedule, I still needed to take leave with the rest of the men about once a month to keep the sexual tension from plaguing me during the waking hours.

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Next chapter is the introduction of the other pilots. Hope the re-format isn't too irritating, it won't be a common occurence. Much love to my reviewers and everyone else who is still with me.