Chapter 257: (Hesstla) (1/2)
Screams at Ta'Xet was working on the Terran's brain when it happened. She had just removed the last of the bone shrapnel and repaired the tiny capillaries when the human neural tissue, which felt like firm jelly at the best of times, suddenly seemed to soften.
”All stop,” Screams snapped. The robotic surgical assist lifted its arms even as her assistants moved back.
As she watched the furrows and ridges suddenly squirmed, realigned, and changed. On her display the dendrite patterns changed, impulse trails shifted, and the brain itself altered.
Screams frowned as she stared at the suddenly altered neural tissue of the Terran Descent Human on her operating table. The differences were subtle, but there.
Alarms started wailing and her cybernetic implant that provided psychic shielding against injured and enraged Terrans cranked up so hard that sparks jumped from her antenna. Two of her nurses fainted, and the greenie in charge of making sure the surgical equipment worked at optimum efficiency collapsed in a faint.
WARNING WARNING WARNING! PHYSIC LEVELS DETECTED! WARNING WARNING WARNING! flashed on her retinal link, two-thirds of the screens, and over the holodisplay of the Terran's brain activity.
”Oh no,” Screams breathed. She recognized those patterns. It was the first time she'd ever seen them in real life, but she recognized them anyway.
From lectures on Terran Neural Evolution.
Screams turned and lunged, slapping the button on the psychic suppression field.
The Terran on the surgical table opened his eyes as Screams turned around. He looked around, his eyes glowing a dull red. That burning predator gaze settled on Screams and the three foot tall russet colored preying mantis went perfectly still as her brain reacted to the presence of a superior predator.
”Am I going to be OK, Doc?” the Terran asked, his voice calm and level.
Screams made a human nod. ”I'm finishing up now,” she said.
”Oh.”
”I brought you out from under the anesthetic beam to check for any defects,” she lied.
”All right,” the Terran said. He sighed. ”I'm grateful for your assistance.”
The voice was calm, even, as if discussing the weather, not speaking about the fact the top of his skull was open and there were still medical probes and instruments lodged in his brain.
Screams moved around behind him and activated the holo. ”Can you see that?”
”Yes.”
She brought up a picture of two Telkan podlings playing in the grass in a sunny park. ”What is this?”
”Telkan children playing on a sunny day.”
She brought up a black warborg. ”This?”
”Confederate Army infantryman, Sixteenth Infantry Division by the patches. Red sky, sand, from the Mar-gite Invasion.”
”Good, good, this?”
”An apple on a lace table-cloth.”
”Solve this equation.”
”N equals B squared over R,” he said. ”Graviton particle movement equation.”
She was watching his emotional tracker as she went through the questions. The jumping line moved within tolerances for a Terran at a calm rest even as she went through all of the images and found no mental defects.
Terran emotions were tough to baseline anyway.
”You're fine, soldier,” Screams said, watching as her two nurses and the tech were carried out and new beings came in to replace them. ”I'm going to keep you awake while I finish up.”
”All right, ma'am,” the voice said, cold and steady.
It wasn't like she had a choice, the anesthetic beam was having trouble finding what to suppress to put the big Terran infantryman back under. She worked quickly, resealing the brain's protective membrane, adding synthetic cerebro-spinal fluid to bring the pressure up to the correct level, then placing the top of the skull and using the nanites to reaffix the capillaries and nerves. She put the skinflap back and used the nanites to reseal it.
”How long until,” the Terran started to ask.
”At least 42 hours,” Screams told him. ”The enemy is using psychic warfare and you just had neurosurgery.”
”Oh.”
Again, perfectly calm, as if Screams had simply told him that dawn was eight hours away. None of the ”Let me go... I can still fight...” struggling that had been there only an hour ago. The Terran had been mumbling to let him up and go fight until right before... whatever had happened.
She motioned for her nurse to move him into recovery then signaled to wait before bringing in the next patient, a Treana'ad who had taken an armor breach on his abdomen. He was stable for the moments she needed. She didn't store the data and wipe the instruments, instead leaving it live.
She moved over and activated the holographic keyboard. She ran a search on the medical database that came up empty. She checked that datalinks and saw the BOLO Daisy was in communications.
>BOLO DAISY, this is MAJOR SCREAMS AT TA'XET. DO YOU READ? OVER.
Daisy responded almost instantly and Screams asked the massive supertank to check the datastores for what she needed. Every Bolo carried volumes of information, everything from historical data to medical data to music and literature.
Daisy transmitted the data and broke the linkage, the combined brains of Captain Thurgood and the Bolo's robotic brain busy with stopping a landing in force of the enemy.
Screams checked the data, comparing it, until she got a baseline match.
Her implosion wire went cold and dead, ice from her brainstem all the way down to the end of her abdomen, even her legs, arms, and bladearms feeling cold inside as she stared at the match. There was no doubt, it was as much of an exact match as could be expected when comparing two different people's brains.
Structurally and performance wise, they were exact matches.
Her bladearms trembled and she cleaned her antenna nervously as she ran comparisons.
She knew several dark secrets. Secrets that whispered and murmured to themselves in the darkness of history and the Terran soul. As a neurosurgeon, especially a battlefield trauma neurosurgeon, she had need to know of those secrets.
That the Terrans had altered themselves in ways they did not admit. That they had changed neural functions, altered synaptic paths, changed dendrite chains.
She knew, better than anyone without her highly specialized skillset, that it had been done of necessity, that it had been performed to not only save humanity, but save the universe itself.
Psychic potential so strong it suppresses the psychic potential of those around it, she thought to herself. An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred, bubbled up in her mind. Blessed be the mind too small for doubt.
She shivered reflexively at those cold, burning, hateful words.
We did it to them. The monkey was happily playing in the jungle, excited with its new toys, its new vistas, its new friends, and we ran up and smashed it across the back of the head with a club and stuck our bladearms in its brain, she thought to herself as she stared at the holograms. When it was over, where most races would have felt there was no going back, they locked the door and walked away.
She shuddered again.
The Digital Omnimessiah protect us all from what someone has done, she thought to herself staring at the highly active portions of the cerebral tissue on the holograms.
Where normally it was coldly dormant, almost vestigial.
Now it burned with cold sullen fire as synapses fired within tissue unused for thousands of years of evolution, manipulation, and suppression.
Screams shuddered as she remembered the dull red of the Terran's wholly biological eyes.
The last thing so many of her race's upper caste ever saw.
The last thing some entire species had ever seen.
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Mukstet raced across the snowy sky, hitting the afterburners and getting up higher where the air was cold. The 80mm Hellbore shot fired from the ground had heated up the air around the battlefield and he was having problems dumping heat as fast as he was generating it. His creation engines were at 85% slush and rising, 82% heat and rising, his armor was pebbled and cracked, and his port graviton engine had picked up an ugly harmonic.
”Foxtrot-Nine-Two, disengaging,” he radioed back, the channel full of static from the atomic hammers pounding the planet across the entire globe. ”Heat and slush levels critical, severe armor and systems damage. ”Alpha Wing disengaging.”
”Roger that, flight plan incoming, over,” the radio crackled back.
Mukstet couldn't believe it. In an age of quantum communication, laser and microwave communication, digital communication, they were reduced to electromagnetic bandwidth with the interlinked Battle Tactical Net operating on something the communication technicians called the ”Six Meter Band” that used ionosphere bouncing somehow.
It took almost fifteen seconds for the battleplan to load into his system, and even then it was just a series of coordinates and single symbol flight instructions.
That made him raise his eyebrows. The Hesstlan people were hunkered down at an old Lanaktallan pleasure craft airport, a handful of tanks from 3/67 providing protection as they were broadcasting their willingness to check.
”Flight plan recieved. Foxtrot-Nine-Two, out,” Mukstet said.
--need nitrogen slush-- 973 told him. --tanks empty air scoop is damaged can't fix airscoop without nitrogen slush can't gather nitrogen slush without airscoop if tank is empty--
”Did you get the tanks fixed?” Mukstet asked.
--main tank still under repair, aux tanks three and five are repaired, aux tanks one and four are just gone, aux tank two under repair-- 973 reported. --graviton pump on port engine has an organic superlubricant harmonic needs flushed--
Mukstet nodded, knowing his helmet would relay the motion. ”All right. Hang tite, we're going to a friendly base.”
--roger roger-- 973 said, turning his attention back to the loading mechanism for the starboard 25mm cannon.
Behind the quartet of damaged strikers another Hellbore blast lit up the sky. The clouds rushed back in as soon as the overpressure wave collapsed.
”STAMPY HOT!” the little robot reported, sending out an emoji of a panting canine.