Chapter 608: No Time for Tears (1/2)
”So, Senator, let me get this straight: You authorized specific changes to the cybernetic linkages of the program volunteers on your own authority?”
”That is correct.”
”Despite scientists and psychologists warning you against this? Specialists and experts you then had removed from the program and replaced with your own selected people?”
”I felt, at that time, that their advice was misinformed and did not understand the project.”
”Senator, were you authorized to make changes to the stated program goals, as set down by the Department of Defense?”
”After consulting with my attorney, we determined I did have that authority.”
”And what was the result of your change?”
”An increase in willingness to kill.”
”That seems quite disingenuous, Senator. In reality, and this is according to nearly thirty unbiased experts, that what your change did was stimulate the pleasure center every time a kill was made.”
”That's not exactly...”
”Did they or did they not receive direct electrical stimulation to their pleasure center when the subject killed another human being or simulacrum of a human being?”
”There is a specific difference in...”
”Yes or no, Senator. May I remind you, you are under oath and a truth beam.”
”Yes.”
”Did the program instill limits as to what exactly constituted a 'target elimination induced pleasure reward' in the subjectcs?”
”Well, you have to understand...”
”Yes or no?”
”No. That proved impossible with current technology.”
”So the subject did not need to differentiate between enemies, friendlies, or civilians to receive the stimulation reward?”
”No.”
--Soldier Amplification Project Congressional Inquiry, Pre-Diasporia, Hamburger Kingdom
The Sectiods screeched and tried to adjust to the carnage in their ranks. Almost without exception they fired where the Terrans had been, not where they were or where they would be. For the first five seconds of the fight the majority of them were firing at empty air above the building while Roca and the five infantry following her were already in their ranks fighting at close range.
The Atrekna were taken aback by the sheer fury of the Terran's assault. The tactics were unlike anything they had seen before. They engaged at close range with kinetic assaults with fists, at medium and long range with a heavy kinetic weapon buried in their forearm, at close and medium range with sonic attacks or by clapping their hands together so the shockwave knocked down the Atrekna troops. They even stomped on the ground to throw the Sectiods to the ground.
The heavily armored Sectiods were destroyed by a swung fist that the cannon in the forearm fired point blank into the damaged armor.
The Terrans were roaring and yelling out battlecries, liquid Substance-W streaming from their jaws. Their black armor was some kind of Substance-W alloy that the Atrekna found resisted phasic energy at a higher level than Substance-W normally possessed.
Roca smashed aside four of the big bipedal bugs with one backhand, grabbed the crew served weapon that they were trying to bring into play, spun, and began slamming it against the armored insects while she laughed. A rocket hit her in the cheek and she turned, saw the launcher was being reloaded, and threw the crew served plasma machinegun overhand.
The launcher shattered, the same with the crew.
”Up high! Ground pound!” she called out loud. ”Mbutu, you got any squids?” she asked over t-link.
”Chronotrons all over, Sergeant,” Mbutu t-linked back. ”Keep thinning them out.”
As one the six Heavy Assault Infantry launched themselves into the air as Mbutu scanned the crowd from the sidelines. The Atrekna immediately tried to figure out vectors, to see if the Terrans were fleeing.
Instead the Terrans somersaulted and came back down, slamming into the ground as their onboard grav systems cranked the gravity around them to 10G's, cutting out right as they hit the ground. Feet first, then the one knee at the same time as the fist to bleed off all the kinetic and gravitic energy in one explosive ring.
Half of the remaining Sectiods exploded from the shockwave.
”Got six signals!” Mbutu t-linked.
”Kill any group of three or more, track one runner,” Roca ordered.
The Atrekna were furiously trying to bring up another wave, trying to get the chronotrons to stabilize, but the six Terrans on the ground were disrupting it all. Waves of temporal 'static' as well as time turning into nearly a solid plate around the Terrans were preventing the Atrekna from using their powers to bring through reinforcements.
The Terrans slammed into the ground and the shockwave was more than gravitons and kinetic energy. Chronotrons exploded from their feet, shattering protections, destroying the temporal construct. The phasic 'snap' at the beginning and end of the eruption shattered carefully built psychic constructs.
One small trio of the Quorum were still linked together when the rocket hit their flickering psychic shielding. FOOF enhanced warsteel kicker napalm coated their psychic shielding, eagerly gobbling up the oxygen as even the atmosphere began to burn.
The Atrekna had a split second to feel confident that their psychic shielding would hold, after all, it wasn't like psychic constructs could...
The FOOF and high-tech napalm interacted with the rage infused warsteel, which was vapor form.
The phasic construct erupted into flame.
THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS! one managed to think.
Right before all three Atrekna discovered that they too could burn.
Humans had learned something before they had even left the caves.
Many creatures could remain calm and in fighting mode when stabbed by knives, hit by rocks, punctured by spears, and later: when shot, under artillery, hit by shrapnel.
But nobody, NOBODY, remained calm and collected when they burst into flame.
Even a pack will seriously reconsider things when members of the pack catch on fire.
The Atrekna that burst into flame made of the rest of the Atrekna recoil.
The only one that nodded to itself and remained calm was the single devotee to the Cult of the Defiled One, who felt almost smug at the fact he had known the Terrans would light someone on fire.