Akam’s Anvil
Disclaimer: Akam’s Anvil is a ‘real’ merc command, and Rabbit’s adventures with the unit will occur at irregular intervals in the future, as his story only advances with that of the whole command. When Akam’s Anvil gets a contract and deploys, so will Rabbit. His fate is now literally up to a roll of the dice. We’ll see how this goes. There will be an explanation and backstory for Akam’s Anvil throughout, and when needed. I don’t want to spend several thousand words explaining how the unit got formed, or how they ended up where they are to meet Rabbit, at least not all at once.
In other news, my personal works on “The Descendant” are still advancing. As ever E-books and paperbacks are still available on amazon. I’m nearly done recording the audiobook. The cover art for the sequel, “The Fallen” Got finished yesterday (03-30-21) and the editor has just finished another project, so we may take up work on editing the completed sequel next week. The third and fourth books are also complete, various drafts are in the hands of my beta readers currently. The audiobook is part of the reason for my delay between the previous part and this one, but I am making progress on all fronts, anyway back to the main event...
Three days. Rabbit had been on his own in this desert for three days. Living on the fringes of the dusty little town, sneaking in under the cover of darkness in search of easily stolen vehicles, with the intent to drive to the spaceport. Unfortunately for him, that was a full day’s drive away, across the flat hot open desert. He had watched what was left of the mercenary command slink out of the city at the heels of their Blakist employers, their massive battle mechs, now empty and useless were good for nothing more than very expensive decorations, no more threatening than any other looming gargoyles, as the command had effectively been lobotomized by two angry and motivated men who had slunk in under the cover of darkness and killed all the mech warriors in their sleep.
Rabbit idly spun the data drive in the palm of his hand, as it contained all the information he needed to sentence what was left of that traitorous unit to eternal damnation. The thin high altitude clouds moved on and the little bit of shade he had, vanished. His brow sunk lower as the sunlight beat down on him, so bright it made his eyes ache.
Rabbit had taken to hiding out in a ravine, and under the sun’s glare, he shrunk back into the crevice he had been sheltering in. It was just narrower than his shoulders and deep enough that it had shadows to hide him. He wriggled his way backwards, further into the crack, stirring the sand, dried so hard it was almost clay. His rifle was wrapped in a plastic bag he had found on one of his nightly forays into the town to keep the dust out of the action. Returning the data drive to his pocket he stepped over his pack, which was becoming lighter and lighter by the day, as he either used its contents or realized he didn’t need some items and ditched them. Slipping all the way back into the fissure to lean against the back wall. Letting the hard-packed dirt and gravel hold him up.
In theory, the crevasse that was sheltering him may collapse at any time, and bury him alive and the evidence on the data drive with him. But, Rabbit had been in lots of hairy situations that were much more likely to have killed him, being buried alive as he eeked out a tired, sweaty, dehydrated existence in the barren sands was low on his list of worries.
He felt terrible. He was so tired of the sand. His clothes, even his very skin was no longer the right color, for the seemingly permanent layer of supremely fine sand that coated all of his possession. It had now been four days since he had running water to bathe. Or was it five? Or Six? He had lost count. He leaned his head back, his matted hair almost as hard as the shell of his helmet as he rested it against the sand he was growing to loath more and more with every passing hour.
The frustration and the hopelessness were only compounded by his perpetual thirst, hunger, and grime. He was beyond irritable and had to put mental effort into controlling his temper, as his hands shook with irritation-induced rage, and every fiber in his body demanded he move, he do something, he go somewhere else, and get out of this terrible, hot sandy place.
But he resisted the urge, he needed to save his energy for the coming night’s attempt to make off with a vehicle, he closed his eyes and exhaled, the air so laden with the fine sand, and he perpetually so close to dehydration, that he winced as he inhaled. His throat felt like an ancient cracked pipe, dry from time immemorial. He huffed again and remembered to inhale through his nose, and added the air to his mental list of things he hated, not just the sand, the heat, the sun, and the insects. He waited, not really awake, not really asleep, just in power saving mode, hiding from the sun, trying to stay hydrated as best he could until he could make it back into the city that night and refill the hydration bladder in his pack, and hope to make it last another day if he couldn’t find a set of wheels.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been resting his eyes. He never wore a wristwatch, a holdover habit from when he worked as a mechanic, since, on occasion, those skills had been called upon again by his employers and his personal datapad had long since run out of battery power. It may have been ten minutes or two hours, but he was stirred from his rest by voices. The unmistakable kind of whisper shouting that was intended to be as quiet as possible so others couldn’t hear, but needed to stretch over some distance so the intended recipient could.
He couldn’t make out the words, but the sound of a human voice was unmistakable against the utter silence and stillness of the desert. His eyes shot open, wide, and unfocused, glaring out through the opening of his crevice, not looking or seeing anything specific, but hungrily waiting like a predatory spider for any sign of movement. His ears strained, and for a moment he cursed the beating of his own heart as the blood pounding inside his own head made it harder for him to hear.
Seconds passed, and another voice answered, the words still unintelligible. Part of Rabbit wanted to lay back, and sink into his semi-sleeping rest state, wishing the intruders would go away so he could carry on about his business uninterrupted. The other part of him wanted to take up his pack, rip the plastic bag off his rifle and go meet the newcomers, and deal with the problem head-on. The dehydration-induced headache, and hunger-induced sluggishness stayed in his hand, and he decided on a wait-and-see course of action. Remaining in the shadows of his hidey-hole, completely still, scarcely daring to breathe, for fear his breath, so near to the walls of the ravine would stir up dust.
The form of a man slunk past the opening. A man clad in dark camouflage, carrying a black rifle, wearing a backpack with several antennas sticking up out of it, and a helmet with some sort of night vision goggles flipped up, so they stuck out above the wearer’s forehead like the grotesque horn of a beetle. His shoulders were low, and his stride slow, his footsteps planted meticulously, like that of a stalking cat. He oozed past silently and after a moment, a second man slipped by, then a third and a fourth.
Seven men, all clad in dark camouflage with rifles and face paint and large packs full of gear strode past Rabbit’s hiding place. They were all ‘switched on’ and ready to go as they slunk across the sandy bottom of the ravine, hidden from the eyes above, where at a casual glance anyone could see for miles in any direction. If someone was up to no good, a ravine like this, carved by the sporadic and violent rainstorms at random intervals across the desert were like highways for those wanting to stay hidden. But why were they in his ravine?
Were these men looking for him? They shouldn’t have been from the unit of Blacklist-loving lackeys. He had watched them leave from beneath a small scrub bush. Who were these new players? Did he even need to bother finding out? Did he want to find out? Was it safe to find out?
That urge to do something came back as did the various ideas writhing in his head. With a sudden jerk, he took up his rifle but left it in its plastic bag, and with a small grunt made his way back out of the crevasse into the ravine. He detached himself from the shadows as the other men continued down the ravine, he considered following them or announcing himself or letting them march on buy. Who were they? What were they doing?
Rabbit stood and watched as they shuffled through the sand. He let them get a few paces ahead, still unsure of what he was going to do. For lack of a better idea, he decided to follow them. He was familiar enough with this ravine having spent the last couple days living in it, that he knew there was another crevasse just ahead. Still unsure of how things were going to play out, he slipped back into his burrow, and pulled a spare magazine from his pack, and shoved it in the back pocket of his trousers and gingerly, being sure to keep quiet pulled the plastic shroud off of his rifle.
Rabbit took another peek, seeing the troopers were still skulking down the ravine, he slipped out again and made a light-footed dash to the next fissure in the ravine’s wall. Drawing scant meters away from the last trooper in line. The patches on his uniform and pack the man wore were unfamiliar to Rabbit. The silhouette of a white fist slamming down on a black anvil over a medium gray background. Assumedly they were more mercenaries and not part of any official government. Meaning they could be working for anyone, and have any motivations.
Rabbit decided it was best to keep a low profile and was about to slink back to his hideout and let these mercs go about their business when he overheard one of them, still whisper shouting, said something about looking for the Word of Blake. That was enough to make Rabbit freeze.
These fools, whoever they were, were looking for the Word of Blake, but why? That’s when Rabbit’s luck ran out. The butt of his rifle brushed the wall of the ravine and knocked loose a clod of dirt the size of his head, it bounced off his shoulder, fell to the ground behind him, and shattered with a solid thump, he winced. The sound of the gently shuffling feet in the soft sand stopped. When he opened his eyes again there were three men, with laser pistols drawn cramming their way into the opening, the muzzles of their weapons only a meter from his face.
Rabbit blinked hard several times and cleared his throat, to say something, what he wasn’t sure, and he never got a chance to decide, as an armored glove with carbon fiber knuckle plates over ballistic mesh slammed into his face, and suddenly he wasn’t skulking in the hot sand on a late afternoon anymore, he was unconscious.
Rabbit didn’t know how long it had been, but it was still light when he woke. He found himself staring at the sky, he was unable to move, and as he strained his eyes in his sockets, too look to his right, looking down the length of one of the laser pistols pressed firmly against his temple.
He tried to mutter a swear word, but after days of disuse and sandy dehydration, he only managed a faint croak. Which earned him a boot in the ribs. He curled into the fetal position, or at least an approximation of it, as his hands were bound behind his back, and his legs bound both at the ankles and the knees. Now on his left side, he looked up into the face of another of the troopers whose dusty gray uniform cast a long shadow over him as the evening light was beginning to fade. This man held Rabbit’s rifle, the muzzle nearly touching Rabbit’s chest.
They stared hard at each other for a long moment, one hardened warrior to another, both of them knowing what was coming, neither of them shied from it.
The man sunk down, crouching on the balls of his feet, pressing the barrel of Rabbits own rifle into his sternum. He spoke slowly, forcefully. His voice was thick and heavily accented.
“Who. The. ******. Are. You?”
Rabbit groaned again. Knowing this was how torture started. Buying himself time as he gently wiggled his hands behind him, feeling the binding, which was good and tight, leaving him no slack to escape. These guys knew what they were doing. He slowly, deliberately rolled his head around, looking back over his shoulder to the other trooper with the laser pistol. Who had stood and moved off to the side, lowering his weapon, so the two men weren’t pointing guns at each other through Rabbit. He was able to glimpse the other troopers, who had found his crevasse in the ravine's wall and drug what was left of his dusty gear out of into the open and were sorting through his belongings. The soldier holding his rifle jabbed him with the pronged muzzle break. Hitting him hard enough to cause bruising. Rabbit coughed and spluttered, desperately wishing for some water. The jolt demanded all of his attention and his head snapped back around to the other soldier.
“How did you find us?”
Rabbit inhaled a painful raggedy breath ready to speak again when the voice of another man, bearing a similar accent spoke from behind him. “Uh.. chief, look at this…”
The man with his rifle waved to the other with the laser pistol stepped around him and leveled his gun at Rabbit as the other man slung Rabbit’s rifle and walked over to the others who were sifting through Rabbit’s gear.
Still trying to wet his throat enough to speak, Rabbit swallowed hard again. Unafraid of the laser pistol shoved in his face. If these men truly cared who he was, they wouldn't kill him, because then he couldn’t tell them. If they were going to kill him, they would have done it already instead of wasting everyone’s time with talk.
The trooper with his rifle came back around in front of him, holding his other shirt. The one he had worn for the first couple days of this ordeal, it was even dirtier than the one he was currently wearing, but the significance of the shirt, in this case, was that it still bore his unit patches and rank designation on the shoulders. The trooper holding the shirt sank back down onto the balls of his feet, looking over Rabbit.
“Where did you get this?” His voice was grave and heavy with barely contained rage, despite how calm and slab-like his face was.
It hurt to speak, and his voice was barely functional, but Rabbit managed to wheeze out. “They’re standard issue, it’s mine.”
The other man narrowed his eyes, and stepped away again, finger to his ear as he whispered into his radio, turning away so Rabbit couldn’t read his lips. There was a pause, then the man turned back. “We’ll see”.
Not wanting to hurt his voice by speaking again he shrugged. And the others came about, but looking outwards, their eyes and weapons pointing up and down the Ravine, only the laser pistol stayed trained on Rabbit. They were still worried about someone or something else than they were about him.
The silence drug on for several minutes. Rabbit managed to roll back onto his back. unable to bear the silence he grunted. “Pocket.”
The man with the laser pistol jabbed the gun back into his temple and using some creative cursing in the way only veteran soldiers can ‘gently’ told Rabbit to stop speaking.
The other man, Rabbit’s other shirt still clutched in his balled fist came back after cocking his head to listen to someone talk on the radio in his ear.
“You mean to tell me you’re part of 5th Guardsmen?”
Rabbit nodded, somewhat sheepish. The trooper continued. “Local authorities told us they were all wiped out. That some contract breaking ******, under Blakist direction walked in unprovoked, took the 5th off the map, and took whatever they wanted from the warehouses. And are liable to still be in the area.”
Rabbit shook his head, meaning “No they’re not in the area” but realised the other troopers wouldn’t know what he meant, so then he nodded meaning “Yes I am a member of 5th Guardsmen” and then tried to answer the other statement by shaking his head yes again. He realised he was only making the situation worse by confusing the other men before anyone spoke, but the other man began speaking before Rabbit had the chance to clarify.
“Don’t be playing games with me boy. I’ve got a job to do, and I’m in no mood to waste time with liars.”
Rabbit tried to speak again, but his dry throat hurt too bad, and he stopped after a small gasp, deciding he didn't want to try and speak a whole sentence again, he reiterated his earlier statement. “Pocket” and shook his head, trying to indicate his front pocket with his chin, since his hands were bound and he couldn't pull out the finger-sized data drive on his own, to show them the proof of the other merc’s treachery. He gave up, sagging back into the sand, his ragged breath hurting his parched throat even more.
They sat in silence, looking at each other for a long moment. Rabbit conceded he would have to use more words to explain this to them. But his voice hurt something awful, so this time he asked a question, his parched voice croaking out. “water.” The troopers looked back and forth between each other, and Rabbit tried to clear his throat, which instead felt like he was gargling sand and he winced. Grunting out in his hoarse voice, “need water”.
The man with his rifle again glanced to the others, but this time he nodded. Someone grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up roughly into the sitting position. A hand appeared from behind him and held out a canteen, which they let him take a couple little sips from. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing, right? His throat was so parched it hurt to drink the water, and he winced as he swallowed each painful gulp. He panted and looked up to them, four men now standing in a semi-circle looked down at him.
He coughed as he tried to speak again but managed to choke the words out anyway. “ I was there. They came in with Mechs, and a hover APC full of shock troopers. Burned down everything before our pilots had time to get in their mounts. Another grunt and I, as far as I know, were the only survivors. We hid amongst the crates in the warehouse as they had a platoon worth of troops load up whatever it was they were after into their APC and left. We walked out here, and the other guy with me said something about his wife and kid and we split.”
The man, with his rifle, who Rabbit assumed was the leader since none of their uniforms bore any markings leaned in closer. “What did they take?”
Rabbit shrugged. “Don’t know, we didn’t have permission to open any of the crates ourselves, we had no idea what we were guarding. I hope It was worth enough for someone to kill a few dozen men during shift change and not even give them a chance to defend themselves. Cold-blooded bastards.”
The leader nodded to someone behind Rabbit, and a pair of hands roughly lifted him to his feet by his armpits. They questioned him more. “What happened to those bastards after they wiped your unit?”
Rabbit grunted again as he worked to keep his balance with his feet and hands bound. “They happened to be staying in the same town we managed to walk to, and the other guy with me… The two of us managed to sneak into their circle of wagons and blapped their MechWarriors in their sleep.” He nodded to his rifle, still held by the other man.
No one said anything, so with his voice still hurting, he grudgingly continued. “ we found a laptop and made off with it, slipping into the night. The rest of the unit slipped out of town early in the morning, tails between their legs. That was a few days ago. Three, four, five days. I’m not sure, I lost count. It’s too damn hot out here. The other guy with me, we copied the data off the laptop onto external data drives and that’s when we split ways. I’ve got one in my pocket right now.
“Is that so?” There was another nod and a hand from behind him forced its way into the front pocket of his pants and fished out the data drive before tossing it over Rabbit’s shoulder to the leader, who caught it, and pulled a small touch screen datapad in a ruggedized case from his thigh pocket and plugged the data drive into it. For five minutes the man paced back and forth across the bottom of the ravine, as he flipped through the various files on the drive. Without warning he yanked the data drive from his datapad and turned back to Rabbit, pointing to one of the other men behind him.
He heard the click of a folding knife as it snapped into place. He half expected it to plunge in between his ribs, but instead, they cut him loose. Rabbit rubbed his wrists and the rapidly swelling black eye he was growing. The other men stepped from behind him and started to line back up, making as if to leave.
“The data seems legit enough, if what you say is true, and you offed all their pilots in the night after surviving the attack.” He paused and nodded before he continued.
“That’s a hellof a thing son. What’s your name?”
His voice still hurt terribly and now his face did too. It hadn’t hurt until after he touched it. He didn’t want to talk anymore. But resigning his fate to being abandoned in the desert he sighed. “ Call sign Rabbit.” Already reassuring himself that these guys would use the data drive to destroy those traitors.
The leader had moved a half dozen paces further down the ravine and leaned his rifle against the wall of the ravine when he stood up straight in shock. “Rabbit?”
He nodded.
“Like fed-com civil war from a few years ago Rabbit? Bump in the night Rabbit?”
Unsure now, he nodded again, wary of what the other man was thinking.
The trooper picked the rifle back up and walked back to him quickly. Not with malice, but with a different kind of excitement. He held out the rifle and put it back in Rabbit’s hands.
“What the hell are you doing way out here in the periphery? Slinking through the dust in this trench? You’re a damn legend. A war hero. What happened to Spaceman?”
Protecting his friend's privacy, he didn’t so much as acknowledge the last question. “I wouldn’t call myself a hero, was just a man doing a job that I was kinda good and very lucky at doing. I’m out here, cause I have been looking for work and chasing paychecks ever since the war ended.”
Rabbit pressure checked his rifle to make sure it was still loaded as the other man looked at the sand between his feet. After a moment he asked. “Since the 5th is gone… You want a job?”
The two men stood there staring blankly at each other for a moment.
“We’re from a unit called ‘Akam’s Anvil’ and these bastards are just the latest in a growing list of mercs who have broken contracts and done bad shit because the word of blake has paid them lotsa money. The merc review board has us contracted to hunt these SOB’s down. I fear this is only the begging of something long, and nasty. All kinds of rumors and shit happening that can’t be directly blamed on the word of Blake, but they're caught in the shadows too often to not be involved.”
“Come’s with a ticket off this hot rock?”
“Probably…”
“Let me get my pack…”
Six hours later Rabbit found himself shuffling up the ramp of a Leopard class dropship. He had learned much in that time. Akam’s Anvil were bounty hunters, with a mixed lance of mechs, a mixed lance of tanks, and a single platoon of shock troopers. They called themselves ‘Rangers’. In Rabbit’s mind, Rangers were synonymous with Air cavalry, and Akam’s Anvil didn’t even have VTOLs much less fast movers. But they were all well trained, and very well equipped and did all kinds of recon, sabotage, espionage bump in the night type stuff like Rabbit had done during the bloodletting known as the Fed Com civil war.
In this case, the platoon had been deployed by squads, spread out across the desert looking for the very same unit that had wiped out Rabbit’s previous employers. But with the death of their Mechwarriors and the damming proof against them that Rabbit had generously provided, the Mercenary review board not only had the info they needed to confirm their suspicions and condemn the unit, but they had already been punished and forced off-world. Rabbit was greeted with congratulations and slaps on the back by everyone he met as he was lead through the bowels of the Leopard class dropship named ‘Razor’.
He was shown to a locker and told to familiarize himself with its contents while they waited for the rest of the unit to return so they could dust off. He opened the locker and was treated to a glimpse of two of everything an infantryman could ask for. From full-body suits of hard plate ballistic armor, that was the next best thing to power armor without wearing a reactor or a power cell. Rifles, shotguns, machine guns, pistols, suppressors, goggles, every bit of kit he could readily think of for any mission he could quickly dream up. But before he got to inspect any of the gear a dozen people squeezed into the locker room with him.
“You’re Rabbit? Thee Rabbit?” Soon he was swarmed by people who had heard tell of his exploits, most of the stories were completely made up. He had no idea he had become so popular among the fireside stories of the inner sphere's infantrymen. He was overwhelmed with questions about his actions during the war, and if they were true. He tried to answer as many as his parched throat would let him. Really he just wanted a drink of water.
He was much loved, and it seemed he had found a new home. The biggest takeaway he had from the friendly interrogation, was that he and Spaceman hadn’t been as low-key or stealthy as he wanted to be back in the day. It seemed nearly everything they had done was known by the universe at large. Rabbit was bewildered and confused by his borderline celebrity status amongst his fellow ground pounders. Finally permitted a moment of peace and privacy he sunk down on one of the benches in the locker room, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He muttered to himself. “I’m too old for this.”