chapter=Chapter 3 Private Ian Hitchmouth was one of the few men in his unit to be born and raised on the mother planet. He was truly an earth boy, for him all other planets were weird, foreign, dangerous and definitely full of unpleasant and untrustworthy people. His role as peacekeeper did not come naturally. He was a born scrapper; in a very orderly and calm society Hitchmouth's family were unruly, wild, violent and dangerous to live next door to. His mother had also been a U.P. grunt, serving in a total of four inter-planetaries during her service. On home leave she would boast, swagger, drink and occasionally batter her children, usually in that order. Hitchmouth senior was repeatedly arrested on domestic violence charges but the family always stuck by her. "My mum can hit me, that's fair." said the six year old Hitchmouth during a counselling session which ended in violence. "Anyone else hits me and I kill 'em." Private Ian Hitchmouth had been in the U.P. for eight earth years, a period of time which sees most serving soldiers at least make it into the non commissioned ranks. Hitchmouth was not bothered by promotion and had been in enough trouble to keep him firmly at the bottom of the military pecking order. With his fairly lax attitude to exchanging fire with the various militias he was under orders merely to observe, he had felt the wrath of many a commanding officer. Although not officially reported at the time, Hitchmouth was considered responsible for the huge flare up on Magdelluth the previous winter where over forty thousand residents of the previously peaceful city were killed in monstrous purges and eth-cleansings. As the smoke slowly cleared from above the beautiful Waj Valley, Hitchmouth stood outside the dug out nervously toeing the burnt sods that littered the once neat entranceway. Behind his sturdy form, thick clumps of billowing smoke were still rising from the newly blasted clearing where the U.P. impulse weapons he fired had found their target. In front of him was the U.P. ground transport vehicle resting at an odd angle with a blackened scorch mark visible along one side. He could see Sanjit helping a very tall figure out of the crumpled passenger hatch. "Shaggin heck." Hitchmouth muttered to himself. "Look at the size of him!" From a distance the two approaching men looked like father and son, so great was the difference in height. The fact that Sanjit was helping the Commander who had clearly hurt his leg was approaching the comical. Sanjit had his arm around the Commanders hips to support him, and even then it looked like he was reaching up. However Hitchmouth was not suppressing any laughter, he could smell the steel walls of the lock up at Nafos central command, a place he had already seen too much of for one life time. "Good shooting soldier." said Commander Luke Hunter as he hobbled toward the camp. "My fault entirely, I hadn't warned of my approach, you were in the middle of what looked to be a pretty nasty fire fight, you did the right thing." "Sorry sir. Thank you sir." said Hitchmouth automatically. The Commander stood in front of him, his chin being level with Hitchmouth's forehead. As a six foot niner, Krut Hitchmouth was not used to looking up to anyone, he had seen people the Commanders size before, and bigger, "off world breeders." Children raised in low gravity, high pressure growth cr¸ches tended to reach far greater heights and muscle density than on world people. However Hitchmouth had never had to be in close quarters with someone like Hunter. "Let me get you inside Commander," said Sanjit. "We're not exactly sure of the situation with the militias at present, it might be best to be inside the command post monitoring what's going on." "Most wise sergeant." said the Commander as he started to bend down with difficulty and make his way inside the dug out. "I'll stay out here Sanj." said Hitchmouth, not wanting to spend more time than was necessary in the cramped conditions of the command post. "As you wish Hitchy." said Sanjit with a smile. As the Commanders huge, wide back sank into the darkness of the post, Sanjit turned to discreetly face the Private. "You are one very lucky soldier, Hitchy." "Just doing my job Sanj." said Hitchmouth. "On the other hand you've got a point. Thank fuck he's a twat." Both men knew that firing at a U.P. vehicle, no matter what the circumstances, was tantamount to treason. Hitchmouth could have gone down for a long time. Just as well this new commander seemed as thick as two short ones, he'd forgotten that any U.P. vehicle would send out an encrypted warning signal if another U.P. weapons system got a lock on. Hitchmouth had completely ignored this as he often did in the heat of battle. He decided to get as far away from the command post as he could, get well tooled up and have a look see at the lay of the land. In the back of his dug-in U.P. vehicle next to the command post Hitchmouth found the belt mounted pulse cannon, his favourite weapon. It had the severed, dried ears of a Nafoolian rabbit tied around the stock, a symbol, so Hitchmouth had learned, of fearlessness for all Mullambimbis. Nafoolian rabbits measured up to about the same size as earth Kangaroos but were carnivorous. They would not normally attack humans, but if cornered, they could be deadly adversaries. They could also traverse the thick forest vegetation at amazing speed, even with heat seekers you had to be a good shot to down one. Hitchmouth then shouldered a plastisack of micro-Claymores, tiny anti personnel mines which he would distribute liberally around any foxhole he dug. Strictly illegal under U.P. tactical guidelines, Hitchmouth had found the Claymores on the body of a downed Royal Nafoolian and it seemed a pity to waste them. On his side he wore a traditional firearm, a forty five round automatic, handed down through the Hitchmouth Clan from mother to son. On the other side a quarter kilo pulse sidearm, two kilometre range, ten thousand rounds between charges. Thus clad, Hitchmouth made his way across the U.P. clearing towards the unknown murk of the thick Nafoolian forest. A pall of smoke still clung over the area that Hitchmouth had cleared with the U.P. pulse impact. He crept through the initial scrub which reached five meters over his head and skirted one of the magnificent green-wood trees which dominated the skyline. With unconscious stealth he dropped to one knee when he saw a figure in the still smouldering clearing where the rounds had impacted. Freshly split timbers were strewn all around, everything blackened and smouldering, but there, in the middle of the clearing, a mop of bright blonde hair. Hitchmouth got out his bio-scanner and pointed it at the figure. The scanner told him there were two life forms present, one in trauma, the other reading as normal for a humanoid female of thirty three to thirty five earth years. He fired up his belt mounted pulse, it's slowly building wine muffled by his large hand, he could feel the heat from the resource chamber. He aimed the weapon and got a lock on the injured life form, then started to move forward. A pulse weapon of this size required no aiming once it's inner telemetry had achieved lock-on status, just point and squirt, easy-kill. Hitchmouth, although a large man and almost carrying his own body weight in equipment, was no slouch. He could travel through this dense tree ridden area in almost complete silence. He came up behind the blonde haired figure and levelled his side arm at the blood soaked body on the ground before her. "Okay, everybody stay very calm, turn very slowly where I can see your hands." said Hitchmouth quietly, his finger on the remote button of his belt mounted. "Hitchmouth, could you pass me that long white bandage, the one on top of my medipack." said the woman with the blonde hair. She hadn't turned, she made no sudden movement. "Sorry, what?" said Hitchmouth. "The bandage man, the one in my medipack, what's wrong with you, are you deaf? I'll look at your ears in a moment, as soon as I have managed to put this poor fellows intestines back into his stomach cavity." Hitchmouth looked down, by his feet was an MSA medipack and sure enough, on top was a sealed plastibandage. He picked it up carefully, could be booby trapped he thought, he passed it gingerly to the woman on the floor. "There you go." he said, but at that moment he glanced over her shoulder and saw the horrific truth of what an impulse round can do to blood, flesh and bone. "Mash up bad," as Sanjit would say. "Bloomin" heck." said Hitchmouth. He turned away, looking up at the bright twin suns of Naf glinting through the dense tree canopy behind him. He heard the sound of a plastibandage being applied. A strange ripping sound as it aligned itself with the contours of the body it was attached to and created just the right level of pressure to halt bleeding, sealing the wound off from infection whilst simultaneously applying powerful herb based pain killers and macrobiotic drugs. "There we go." said the woman. "We'll soon have you medivac'd out of here my man." The patient groaned and muttered something in Nafoolian. The woman stood up and Hitchmouth took a pace backwards. As soon as she turned he recognised her. It was Doctor Helena Smutts, the woman who'd saved his life on Magdalooth. "What the friggin' hell are you doing here?" he asked. "I might ask the same of you Private." "Bloomin' heck, where d'you come from though, this is a highly dangerous area!" "I am here with MSA, healing these stupid people who are indulging in a pointless futile exchange of pain." Okay, let's retrench. Throwing in terms like M.S.A. and hoping people will pick up on what it stands for is ridiculous. Life is complicated enough already. No one wants to stop and explain, but sometimes you just have to. It's important to see these things in a historical context. M.S.A. stands for Medcin Sans Atmosphere, which for those of you not "aux fait" with the ancient earth language of French, means "Doctors who work across any atmospheric frontier and will treat all casualties of war regardless of race, genetic background of socio-political outlook." It's shorter in French. "Doctor Smutts. I don't believe it." said Hitchmouth, he embraced her without thinking and as she struggled for breath and tried to remove the hulk that had suddenly engulfed her she inadvertently pressed the fire button on his belt mounted. Luckily for Smutts and Hitchmouth the nozzle of the pulse weapon was sticking out to one side, but the sound was unmistakable. "Hit dirt." screamed Hitchmouth, knowing that the pulse, although fired off in a random direction, was pre-programmed to find it's original targets, those targets being Dr Smutts and the wounded man. He had less than a quarter of a second to act, but if there was one area of gross motor skill and tech proficiency that Private Krut Hitchmouth excelled in, it was weapons control. He swung the belt mounted around, killed the pre-ordained target sequence and released a stream of pulse rounds. Fourteen meters from Dr Smutts and the injured man, pulse met pulse and the resulting explosion left all three people partially deaf for the next three days. "Sorry about that!" screamed Hitchmouth. "It's okay." replied Dr Smutts at the top of her voice, "You saved our lives Hitchmouth. Even though you almost killed us in the first place. Is that damn thing switched off?" "Yes it is." said Hitchmouth, double checking. "Help me get this fellow back to your command post!" she screeched into Hitchmouth's ear. He could only just make out what she was screaming. "He needs serious medical intervention, how far are we from your base." "About half a click." said Hitchmouth, pointing in the direction of the command post. The Doctor looked at him accusingly. "Is this devastation your handiwork Hitchmouth?" she asked as she helped the injured man struggle to his feet. "We've been under attack." shouted Hitchmouth. "We returned fire, that's all. Bloomin heck! What do they expect!" Hitchmouth lifted the injured man onto his back and started to trudge across the scorched earth, stepping gingerly over a humanoid leg that was still smouldering beside a shattered tree trunk. "Typical of the U.P.." screamed Doctor Smutts as she followed him.