Toni gave the Hammerhead a long, hard look, the problem before him having finally presented itself. There was no orifice for opening the titan's breastplate, and its large and heavy frame made plain to him what he hadn't considered when accepting the colonel's proposal; the Hammerhead was an entirely different species from the Moca Suit, and he simply hadn't the training or experience to operate it. He didn't, in fact, even know how to access its interface cavity.

"You gonna keep screwing it with your eyes? Get in, rook," Jonah ordered as she stowed her gear in a plastic duffel bag, her travel pack's fate having already been tragically sealed.

"There's just one problem, corporal. How do I get inside?"

She paused in the midst of her activities and remained there for a while, taking the remark in and slowly realizing what it implied. She had been on the juice for a while, and her jaw bulged before it met her ears in a very masculine way, a trait in stark contrast to her full lips and feminine pose.

"How in the hell wouldn't you know?" she asked bitingly.

"I've only ever been trained in the Moca. Never drove a Hammerhead before."

"So the Suit you faced the Unmil with ..."

"... Was a Moca, yes."

"Fucking rooks!" she exclaimed angrily as she shook her shaved skull. "You're missing an arm and haven't the slightest idea of how to get into a Hammerhead, much less dri–"

"He has a very good idea how to drive a hammer ..." Park interrupted, oblivious to the drama. "That's what the Moca's for, don't you remember?"

The man had enough muscle on him to make Jonah look scrawny, but Toni had quickly realized that he possessed the more moderate disposition between the two EWAC corporals. Toni had also become conscious of the fact that his being a sergeant-cadet carried absolutely no weight with either, his unofficial rank of "rook" having promptly relegated him to a category below human.

"You need the appropriate pen-key, rook, yours just won't do," Park informed the cadet levelly. There was something about the man, probably the wide lion-like interval between his Korean eyes, that made Toni want to turn away. But he didn't, giving him a firm nod instead.

"How do I get one?"

The corporal smiled.

"You simply use the one your predecessor left behind when he stroked out," he replied, tossing the device to a surprised Toni.

"Sorry 'bout that. Didn't know he was dead."

"Dead? Oh no, the dickhead's alive enough, but he's probably not going to have it easy for a while. You better learn from his mistake. If you tighten your straps too much and keep hard at it for long enough without rest, once you loosen them again you might be sending a blood clot on its way to your thinker. Understood?"

"Yes, sir. Where do I insert it?"

"Up its ass, of course. No, no, I'm just kidding, cadet, leave that alone. There's no insert for your pen-key; you just touch the stick against one of its oculars and infrared comms will do the rest. The user-manual's in a compartment in the cavity's left flank. Give it a quick read-through, but focus on the customizable settings, 'cause you're probably going to have to make some in-stride adjustments."

The moment Toni touched the pen-key against the bowed helm's left ocular there was a swoosh of hydraulics, and the thorax's access doors opened before him like twin petals, exposing what was by his standards a very spacious interior.

His view of its hydraulic interface was partly obscured by a wide sternum the access doors locked into when they shut, and as he clambered onto the titan's kneepad he became aware of its impressive thickness. The doors themselves, which when closed constituted about the only frontal armor he could reasonably expect to protect him, proved to be of even greater thickness, and a side view made it clear to him that they were laminated, spaced and well-backed. Awesome.

"Your diapers, rook!" Toni heard from behind.

Expecting literal diapers, he turned to find Jonah offering him several new Scopolamine patches. Taking them from her outstretched hand, he thanked her, only to have her sniff disapprovingly and turn away. The patches were thicker than he was used to, and he realized they were meant for five-day jaunts. He almost wished they had been diapers.

Almost.

The Hydraulic interface appeared much sleeker than that of the Mocas', with its wires and piping conveniently secured and protected in adhesive cable organizers, and the suit's strapping system was much sturdier, having apparently been conceived for aggressive maneuvering. And so the old problem arose once more; the tighter the fit, the more precise the interface was, but the greater the chances of constriction of the circulatory system. Toni remembered Kaiser's uniform, and of how it had appeared to possess a thin layer of some protective liquid beneath it. They seemed to be on the right track there.

Finding his predecessor's spare uniform jammed into the compartment Park had referred to, Toni pulled it on over his own in the hope that the straps' constrictive effect would somehow lessen that way, feeling only stiffness in his arm where days ago he had felt pain. He then removed the pristine user-manual from its plastic wrapping, leaned against the cavity's tilted floor and began to do some heavy reading.

It wasn't long before he realized his initial impressions of the Suit had been wrong; the Hammerhead had apparently been conceived to more closely emulate human maneuverability, and as a result it relied on more than just germane as its pneumatic gas of choice. Germane was apparently also known as germanium hydride, and above a certain temperature it decomposed into amorphous germanium and hydrogen gas. The hydrogen was then recycled and stored in a separate tank for use in powering a significant portion of the Suit's artificial muscles.

Thus germane was employed in slow-twitch PAMs for greater power due to its high gaseous density, while hydrogen was employed in fast-twitch PAMs for greater speed due to its high fluidity, and the ratio of G to H could be decreased by passing the gas through a resistance and storing the resulting solid. The Suit possessed two different types of CAT, as well as a specialized compartment between them intended to store all excess germanium. Also within that compartment was an apparatus that manufactured germane gas by extracting Hydrogen from one tank, heating it in the presence of the amassed solid, and depositing the final product in the other. It was known as a GH reactor, and its activity was closely linked to the battery of compressors that partly encircled it. Among the first in-stride adjustments he would soon be expected to make was to follow the OS's instructions, maneuvering the Suit until the ideal ratio of slow-to-fast twitch PAMs could be calculated, as well as their precise locations in the general muscle structure.

It was all fairly impressive, but Toni could only remember how easily the MEWAC Suits had exploded into crimson flames that day at the mines. Germane burns with a bright red flame, he reminded himself.

Peering once more at the interface cavity above and around him, Toni tried to memorize its interior. Its almost spherical wall was well-padded with square panels of beige-colored foam and, aside from reinforced tubing that snaked up the HINT's articulated support crane and into the roof, was entirely devoid of the innards he'd become accustomed to seeing inside the Moca. The crane itself possessed some padding of its own around its sharper corners, although its hydraulic cylinders, much more robust in section and length than their equivalents in the Moca, were still plainly visible to his admiring eyes. A few panels were bordered in bright orange, and their centers were covered in writing that explained what could be accessed behind it; RIGHT DOOR HYDRAULIC NODE – DO NOT CUT, GENERAL ELECTRICAL GRID – RISK OF ELECTROCUTION, DANGER – LIVE WEAPON INSIDE, among others. The only exception consisted of a small transparent panel inside of which was a pen-key insert and the door controls.

"Hey there, Mr. Tardy!" an ecstatic voice sounded from below, causing Toni to smile.

"Hey there yourself, Happyface! So, do you like your new partner?"

True to her handle, Hannah beamed up at him from between the titan's kneepads, clearly exhilarated at the state-of-the-art war-maker she had just been handed.

"You're my new partner. Didn't you know?" she quipped, causing him to blush.

Her happy face momentarily became serious.

"Toni, I know what the colonel said about sorting out that business with Ian, but that's no reason to go berserk out there. Remember what Baylen keeps saying ..."

"The Pair is the army's smallest unit, I know," he replied seriously. "I don't have any plans to die today, Hannah."

Hannah was about to say something else, but an EWAC captain's sudden arrival cut her short.

"Cadet Miura? Please come down," he ordered curtly.

Toni clambered down from his unit and approached the captain uneasily. Not bothering to salute due to not having donned an appropriate head-covering, he stood instead at attention before the officer and awaited recognition.

"At ease, cadet, let's leave formalities aside. And, Arakaki, you stay too. I have a few questions to ask, and I need them answered within the hour."

"Uh, sir, I've been doing a lot of that today, I don't know what else to say."

"Listen. These Unmils, they're humans, right? What are they like? What are they here for?"

Before Toni could answer, Park appeared and warned the captain that Command was waiting on them to deploy. Irritably waving the corporal away, the perspiring captain focused on the cadet before him once more, apparently not caring in the least for his superiors' order-of-operations. The senior corporal gave his commanding officer a long, expressionless stare before finally departing for his unit.

"Sir, they are definitely human. One of them is already dead, so they can most definitely be killed, and they're not adapted to our planet's gravity or atmosphere like we are. And if I didn't get it wrong, they're basically here to annex Capicua to Earth, and they've no problem in wiping out our capital to get it done, sir."

"They're not willing to compromise, then? At all?" he asked tensely.

"I don't think they really need to, sir ..." he replied, beginning to doubt the officer's nerve.

"Right ..." the captain declared with a skyward glance.

Toni tried to reassure the captain, but the officer cut him short and ordered them to Suit up and run through the setup sequence. He could see the alarm on Hannah's face as they turned to their units, but he suddenly remembered something that caused him to turn once more.

"Sir? We don't know our call-signs yet ..."

The captain took a long while to think on it before finally answering.

"Right, you're Digger Three and the other's is Digger Five. You'll stay paired up with Park like your predecessor was, and Five will be with Jonah."

"Sir, I'd prefer to –"

"You'd prefer nothing, cadet! I'm not pairing up a couple of rookies with no walking experience an hour before combat! Get to your Suits!" he roared, scaring the notion out of Toni's mind like a bat from a twilit cave.

"Yessir!" he hollered and snapped about smartly, earning himself a stifled snort of laughter from his fellow cadet.

Accelerating to a jog, Toni leapt upon a buckled kneepad and into the cavity's lobby, pausing to hurriedly insert the pen-key into its slot, seal the doors and stow the manual before finally laying his back snugly against the HINT. He then carefully inserted one leg at a time into the device, strapping both securely in before doing the same with his arms, and lastly with his abdominal and thoracic bindings. After checking his straps carefully for their tightness, he pulled down and donned the light-weight helmet and facemask.

"Activate Suit!" he ordered.

The graphic display made him feel like he had just fast-forwarded a full century, and when he ordered outside-visual the image quality left Toni almost immersed in his surroundings. The foreground display prompts were comparatively streamlined, but their organization greatly resembled the Mocas' and he quickly initiated the customization process. Hannah's Digger Five, which had only moments ago been kneeling on his left side, was already beginning to move and, not wishing to retain his notorious handle, Toni rushed through the ocular calibration and ordered biomechanical diagnostics to initiate.

"Initiating bio-diagnostics," his sister's sweet voice began. "Your full cooperation is fundamental for successful calibration. Please stand!"

Armored gauntlets pressed against Digger Three's left kneepad as he heaved upwards, and he felt the HINT straps pressing against his extremities and shoulders as the device's hydraulic interface fought his effort to stand. Moments later he was ordered to return to position one and then, once again, to stand. The second effort proved easier. He followed the computer's instructions very diligently over the entire process, fully aware that, although the OS was conceived to keep a running diagnostic on its driver and update its settings accordingly, he would probably find himself in the midst of battle before his ideal ratio had been reached.

"Here Digger Prime, Diggers inform romeo conditions, over."

As the silence stretched out Toni began to wonder whether he was supposed to be the first to sound off. A crackling voice corrected him of the thought.

"Here Digger Two, romeo conditions fine," Park's calm voice hailed over the comm.

"Here Digger Three, conditions fine," Toni reported cautiously.

"Here Digger Four, comm fine," Jonah reported.

"Here Digger Five, romeo comms fine," Hannah sounded enthusiastically.

Toni smiled and peered to his left, where Hannah's Digger Five was on its pads and eagerly flexing its upper appendages. He prayed her armor would hold, but as he did so an image of Sueli hugging her severed leg momentarily flashed before his eyes, earning him a warning from his OS as it registered the brief palpitation of his heartbeat.

"Form a single column behind my unit's position," Digger Prime ordered, and a Hammerhead that strode south-easterly on the dirt road lifted its massive gauntlet skywards, its index digit protruding.

All units walked and took up positions on the leading Digger's rearguard, and Toni marveled at the fresh fluidity of his movements. Had he not strapped himself in only moments before, he mightn't have believed that he was currently encased in a HINT. He had barely taken up position behind Digger Two before they were off at marching speed.

One and a half kilometers further on, after having passed by the deposit and then a Command Bunker surrounded by decoys, wiring and camouflage nets, the column finally arrived at the point where the path and frontline intersected. To their left was an improvised staging area where armored Suits loitered among several flat-bed trucks, and where pack charges had been laid out on the ground as if in formation, eight columns of twelve or thirteen devices each. Digger Prime then had the entire section huddle and instructed them on the nature and function of their new weapons, before giving them the opportunity to do practice throws with duffel bags packed with the appropriate weight in rocks.

And so, after fifteen minutes' worth of practice, where the Suits settled into opposite sides of the clearing to launch their improvised practice grenades at one other, all Diggers were finally permitted to snap on lower-torso webbing and attach their charges securely to it. Toni's allotted grenades consisted of twelve of the rigged travel packs, six of them red-cords.

"You know, I think I just got my own travel pack handed back to me ..." Toni heard Park mutter over their private comm channel.

"Don't despair, Two, if you leave it for last you might not need to toss it," he shot back, and was rewarded with a chuckle and accusations of being an optimist.

Shortly after, Toni's OS privileged him with an up-to-date virtual map of the surrounding area, and all titans momentarily stopped whatever they were doing as their drivers studied the chart, taking special note of the minefield's location and of their designated starting points.

"FORTSEC, take your positions," Digger Prime finally ordered.

Encumbered with the four charges that Toni hadn't managed to strap on to his webbing, Digger Three strode towards his designated spot, situated only a few dozen meters north of the path and behind a bump in the terrain. The remaining Hammerheads also dispersed to their locations, some raising their closed gauntlets in salutation to each another, all appearing pregnant due to their protruding payloads. Studying the map again, Toni realized that Diggers Two, Three, Seven and Eight bracketed the path where it became MEWAC's axis of retreat, the remaining Suits having been dispersed along the front in much lower density.

His hair crawled as he suddenly realized what that meant. Some brain in the bunker had probably realized that the Unmil would appear while following that axis, and had decided to place his most senior or combat-experienced assets at its flanks. Which put Toni smack in the expected center of action yet again. The coward in him sighed tremulously and, getting down on a kneepad, he compulsively surveyed his unstrapped weapons.

Having decided to favor mobility, Toni had clipped the six lighter reds and two blues onto his lower torso, which left him with four DIME charges for the initial ambush, after which he would have to make do with whatever he could easily carry in hand and webbing. And he knew the enemy Suit would probably not remain still long enough for all four devices to be thrown. He also disliked the charges' lightness of weight, finding himself disappointed that the travel packs hadn't more space for explosives.

The thought gave him an idea.

He clipped the packs two-to-two and, unpocketing one of the oversized rolls of duct tape the engineers appeared to carry on their Suits at all times, he reinforced the union and then overlapped the blue armbands' extremities from opposite ends, bonding them together.

As he proudly surveyed the product of his labor, his private comm panel blinked on once more.

"Whatcha doin' there, pilgrim?"

Park apparently had a thing for the legendary American west.

"There probably won't be time to lob all our excess charges, so I'm preparing double-whammies."

"Of course you realize you haven't drilled to throw anything that heavy ..."

Toni shook his head, the act emulated by his Suit's hammerhead as the OS processed the data from his helmet's gyroscope.

"From what I noticed in our session, those duffel grenades weighed in between a redcord and a bluecord, and varied a lot between them. Added to that, I couldn't even throw with full force, every time I did that the duffels would tear or hit the trees on the other side. So I'd say I haven't been drilled in throwing any real grenades anyway, so I don't care. All I know is that I don't like leaving grenades behind, and this way the first detonations will be felt."