Chapter 446 (1/2)

General of the Copper (1-Star) P'Kank had been in charge of the 3283rd Infantry Horde less than twenty-four hours before, largely tasked with defending the eastern flank of the capital city of Hesstla.

Now he was in charge of the whole damn planet.

The big Treana'ad warrior turned slowly, shuffling his feet, and he nervously puffed on a cigarette. The damage from three Enraged humans attacking each other was largely repaired, just slagged and carbonized pathways on some of the walls from where one of them had thrown lighting at everything that had caught his attention and ire.

His command staff, if you could call it that, consisted of almost every species in the Terran Confederacy, barring the Terrans themselves. There was exactly zero Terrans in the command center, as the highest ranking Terran on the planet still alive was the Mosizlak of the Hesstlan Diplomatic Liaison Team and he wasn't exactly an officer.

The Atrekna were engaged with Space Force across the system, huge ships larger than even a Goliath Class Harvester were going toe to toe with the major capital ships of 52nd Task Force. For the first few hours everything had been under control, with the heavy guns of the 52nd destroying Atrekna ships as they made translation to real space inside the resonance zone.

Then the ships started going dead, no longer responding to communications.

Then the Terrans groundside started dropping dead.

P'Kank breathed a sigh of relief as he dropped the cigarette but in the disposal and lit another one. Thankfully, Terran Confederate Military regulations stated that at least 35% of all ship crews not on special duty were to be non-Terran officers, enlisted, and crewmen.

The Atrekna had ignored the Terran ships long enough for the TCM to regain control of the ships.

In the meantime, the Atrekna had started making landfall and P'Kank had been forced to take the lives of several longtime friends as they succumbed to Enragement.

Finally, P'Kank turned and looked at the gathered members of his 'command staff.'

”How bad is it?” P'Kank asked.

A Rigellian stood up, her right arm marked with paler skin from a lightning graze that had been quikhealed. ”It's bad. As you know the Terran Confederate Military is largely made up of humans. Roughly eighty-five percent, some units are entirely Terran Descent Human.”

P'Kank exhaled smoke around his feet. ”So we've taken 85% casualties before the enemy even made landfall in strength?”

The Rigellian nodded. ”Eighty-three point six two two, to be exact,” she said. ”With the cloning banks and the SUDS relay out, we can't rely on clone forces either.”

P'Kank frowned, tapping his antenna together. ”What happened there, do we know?”

The Rigellian sat down as P'Kank looked over the other officers. A gold mantid stood up, nearly thirty little green mantids behind her.

”Security charges. The operating system for the cloning banks, fast growth, medical, and standard tanks followed their programming and melted down the systems,” she said.

”Why?” P'Kank asked.

The gold mantid turned and looked at the greens, who were all flashing icons and mathematical formula. After nearly a minute she turned back.

”The cloning bank operating systems have, when combined, three hundred billion lines of code, much of the backbone written in extremely secure proprietary language. The backbone doesn't even use modern quantum computing but rather binary and hexidemical,” she said.

”All right. So what happened?” P'Kank asked.

Chief Warrant Officer Four I Understood That turned back the green mantids, then back to P'Kank.

”After several hours of examination, they believe they have not only isolated the systems that ordered the meltdown, but the 'coding age' of the programming, as well as why it melted down,” she said. She took a deep breath. ”The systems that ordered the meltdown were the cerebral tissue generators. The coding looks like original programming. You have to understand, just the original backbone programming, which is fundamentally unchanged since before the Second Clone War, is still billions of lines of code. The coding reacted to preprogrammed instructions by not only shorting out all the tissue generation systems but also by attacking the medical system's clone tissue databanks.”

”But why?” A Rigellian Saurian asked, slapping his tail nervously on the floor. He fanned out his ears, then reached up and stroked them till the folded back against his head. ”Why would the system self-destruction?”

Understood looked around. ”At the same time as the Terrans began dying or becoming enraged, the tissue samples, including digital and holographic memory storage records, all altered to the same thing. That new structural design is what caused everything.”

P'Kank turned as the holotank flickered and came up. One it were two different profiles. One of the previous commander of 28th Army, the other of a Combine Marine. Below them was a breakdown of the medical profile.

The Sublime of DNA moved forward, delicately walking up to the tank and climbing up on the provided ramp so that she could point at the holograms. The russet mantid was the Chief Medical Operations Officer, a General in her own right, but by the Terran Confederate Unified Code of Military Justice, she could not take any type of combat command.

She pointed at the deceased General's medical profile, bringing it up.

P'Kank noted with interest that it had two different medical scans.

”The General went through Preparation for Interplanetary Military Movement, PIMM, and had a full medical scan. That is here,” the russet mantid said, tapping the scan on the left with one bladearm. She brought up the cerebral tissue scan and the neural electrochemical scan. ”This is his brain scan, including a SUDS backup scan made six months ago,” she tapped another box. ”This is ten years ago. As you can see, he did suffer minor effects from what's being called Neural Archeobiological Reversion at that time, but it was easily correctable and fairly minor.”

She turned and tapped the second one, immediately opening up the cerebral scan.

”This is his neural scan and SUDS backup scan at the time of his death,” she said.

Several of the gathered staff murmured. They could see the differences, even though they were fairly slight.

”Cause of death was cybernetic implant rejection, implantation cascading error syndrome, implant induced aggressive auto-immune disorder, and neural scorching,” she said.

P'Kank lit another cigarette. He had liked the General, who had mentored him at one point, and seeing his death scans made P'Kank aware of his own mortality.

She touched the other one. ”This is Lancer Second Class Mateo Rojas, Combine Armored Infantry, from his Combine service records,” She tapped the neural section and it expanded.

There was silence for a long moment.

”While they are not exact on a one by one comparison, they are structurally the same,” she said. ”In particular, these sections of the brain that are largely atrophied and suffer from calcification at roughly the age of seven in Terrans.”

”What exactly does that control in the Terran body?” a Kelkark asked, nervously nibbling on the end of his tail. Major Freezik was nominally in charge of fuel logistics, pulled from the position of Executive Officer of a Sustainment Battalion.

”Now? Nothing too deep of note,” Sublime said. ”However, since the Sixth Precursor War started, more and more Terrans have begun suffering headaches, and this tissue, which had undergone calcification and gone dormant, has begun regenerating.”

The russet mantid did a slow circle so she could face everyone.

”It's the Terran Phasic Response Lobe,” she tapped it on all three scans. ”As you can see, the General had the nominal regeneration common in those exposed to Precursor Type-Two 'screams' here,” she tapped the first one, waited a moment and tapped the other one. ”At the time of death, the full Terran Phasic Reponse Limbic System in charge of autonomic and endocrine reponses to phasic energy exposure, had appeared in his cerebral tissue at the same density, folding, and ridging,” she tapped the neural scan for the Combine soldier. ”as Lancer Rojas.”

She turned and looked at P'Kank. ”We believe, and have believed, for the last year, that there was an attack by the Atrekna against Terran Descent Humanity that altered their brain, in minor ways, in an attempt to 'gentle' TDH.”

”So is this another attack?” P'Kank asked.

Sublime signaled both assent and negative. ”It is, but the response isn't,” she sighed. ”At first, we believed in the initial two hours following the attack that the Atrekna had figured out a way past the temporal stabilization and dampener systems in use,” she wiped away the scans. ”We believe that this is the end result of the attack, which was interrupted here on Hesstla before it could be completed.”

She opened up an image of the Atrekna, robed, slippered, standing on a disk of purple light. Below it was one of the massive ships that Space Force was engaged with.

”We believe, and Space Force concurs, that there was a massive phasic burst occurred from two of the capital ships before they blew up,” she said. ”There was no overload to the temporal stabilization systems.”

She brought back up a Terran again. ”It was the Enraged status of the survivors and a crosscheck by myself that provided the key,” she turned and faced the command staff. ”My primary field is biological counter-warfare, with a subspecialty in genetic warfare. One of the reasons I am in the field is due to the Lanaktallan history of 'gentling' through biowarfare. Which means, I was able to easily identify a few key things.”

P'Kank watched with interest as she brought up several schematics.

”For your information, the majority of intelligent species in the Galactic Arm Spur use only a single multi-purpose cell for their immune system,” she tossed up a quick picture of blood cells. ”Terrans, on the other hand, have the most robust immune system in an intelligent species anyone has ever seen. Multiple immune system cell structures and types. Additionally, a signifigant part of their biology is dedicated to immune system response.”

She highlighted two pieces of cyberware and a piece of bioware. ”Terrans use three types of artificial immunosuppresants to keep their immune system from actually attacking non-Terran biospheres and biological entities. A blood filtering cybernetic, usually implanted into the femoral artery on the inside of the thigh. An immuno response inhibitor in the brain, and another multi-organ system that ensures that the Terran immune system only protects the Terran itself.”

”Which led us to another problem. Terran bodies would aggressive attack cybernetic and bioware implants without the immune system suppressor,” she highlighted another section, this time of the Combine soldier and the General's autopsy. ”Here is the neural tissue dedicated to the immune system. It interacts with the Terran body's lymphatic system to help fend off diseases and remove waste.”

She tapped another one, bringing up a picture of two nanofibers commonly used in cybernetics. ”The Combine used a different type of nanofiber, mainly a synthetic system. Modern cybernetics and bioware use a biological nanofiber tailored to fool the immune system.”

She turned and looked at the command staff again. ”The Terran immune system is literally capable of degrading and attacking metal. The changed in the Terran brain removed the regulators on the Terran immune system and it immediately attacked their own implants.”

”Additionally, it appears now, according to spot research, that the Terran immune system also contains a phasic response,” she said.

”The Enraged Ones,” P'Kank said.

”Exactly. An Enraged Terran is their immune system's response to foreign phasic and psychic attacks upon the body. In the same way as a Terran immune system will produce additional immune system cells and raise internal temperature to fight off an infection, they flood their body with phasic energy to counteract foreign phasic energy.”

She was silent a moment. ”The Atrekna did not precisely attack again. Imagine what the Atrekna did as an initial infection. The body's immune system starts to correct it, and the infection receives an additional boost in the form of more infected material. That would be what you could call a second attack, but was actually just re-energizing and revitalizing the first attack.”

”And the Terran immune system went crazy,” A Rigellian female said, tapping her leg with her long strong fingers.

”Correct. A Terran immune system that goes out of control will attack everything, including a Terran's bodily tissues, in the theory of 'scorched earth' to attempt to rid itself of the infection,” Sublime agreed.

”So why did the SUDS and clone systems explode?” a Telkan asked from the back. He was the ranking Telkan officer of Third Telkan Marine Division.

Sublime waved at Understood, who moved up to the tank. ”Because of this,” she said, tapping the two neural scans she brought up. One of the Combine trooper, one of the General. ”Notice that structurally, they are virtually identical.”

”We got that,” A Treana'ad Colonel said.

”Good. Now, follow,” she brought up and brightened a box full of neural scans. ”These are what we know of as Terran Descent Humans for nearly eight thousand years. Evolutionary micropressures have resulted in some changed, but not much. The cloning system and SUDS system use this cerebral tissue arrangement.”

The green mantids flashed icons and formula for a moment before Understood nodded. ”Now, stay with me. When the Atrekna attacked, the first one was basically the implosion charge of an atomic weapon. The second hit was the atomic explosion.”

”We got that,” A Skelmark officer said, ruffling his feathers.

”No, you don't,” Understood said stiffly. ”When the second charge hit, it turned all of the Terran cerebral tissue configurations into this,” she tapped the Combine scan. ”When that happened, the SUDS and the Cloning banks fired off security protocols, destroying the systems before any Terran could be rebuilt with that cerebral configuration.”

”Additionally, Terran DNA underwent a massive mutation, changing their entire DNA,” Sublime said. ”Unless you want an explanation of genetic prosthetics and veneers, suffice to say that it unlocked some nasty stuff.”

”When the SUDS system saw the cerebral and neural configurations, it locked out any and all rebirths. When the cloning vats found only altered, or should I say, devolved Terran DNA, it destroyed itself,” Understood said. ”Which leads to...”

”Why,” P'Kank said.

Understood nodded. ”The code has been in the operating systems for as long as the operating system has existed. As near as we can tell, it dates all the way back to the Second Clone War.”

A Leebawian raised his hand. ”Legion's War?”

Understood nodded again. ”Correct. Legion's War.”

P'Kank had a sneaking suspicion of why. He glanced at the scorch marks and the long trails of slagged warsteel on the walls.

”But why?” the Skelmark asked.

”Because it brought back something that all of us are secretly glad is no longer part of the Terran makeup,” she said.

”What?” the Skelmark said.

”Psychic powers and phasic energy channeling and control,” the Leebawian officer said.

”Like the Crusade,” the Telkan officer added.

Understood nodded. ”Both the SUDS and the cloning banks had deep level core programming to prevent any recreation of a human from the Combine or Imperium Eras.”

MY WRATH BURNS HUMANITY FOES ETERNALLY, sounded in P'Kank's memories. For a moment he could smell hot warsteel and vaporized armor.

The Leebawain commando officer raised one webbed hand. ”What if we bring them back anyway? Bypass the safeguards and bring back the ones we know aren't enraged?”