Chapter 613: Interlude (1/2)
”So, Congresswoman, you authorized, on your own authority, a change to the Man Amplification Project, code named Project Bronze Cabbage?”
”I object to that nomenclature and such a stupid code name. I had it renamed the People of Military Employment Artificial Augmentation and Perceived Improvements through Technological Amplification Project, code named Project People Improvement.”
”Congresswoman, did you or did you not authorize a change to the project?”
”That depends on whether or not a change in the exact criteria and process is a change to the project as a whole, and as the military research projects are now solely under the auspices of the Congressional Military Research Oversight Committee, minor changes to any project are not needed to be reported to anyone but...”
”Congresswoman! Yes or no?”
”I am trying to explain that the definition of 'changes to the project' depends entirely upon how you define...”
”Yes or no?”
”You have to let me finish. The Person Amplification Project was widely nebulous in its application to People of Military Employment Artificial Improvement and Alterations Project goals, and as one of the ranking Congresspeople in charge of determining the goals of the...”
”Madame Congresswoman, is this memo accurate? Yes or no.”
”It depends upon your definition of memo and accuracy, and what it refers to. Right now I cannot say for certain whether or not...”
”Congresswoman, this memo instructs the lead psychochemical researchers to, and I quote: ”Dumb those welfare retards down to the point they follow instructions like a robot instead of questioning every order their given” and instructing them to remove any and all emotional context to the killing of living humans.”
”Well, that's taken out of context, General, and frankly, I find your tone borderline verbal assault. The project's goal was, if you had paid attention to anything beyond headlines, is to enable people like you to do their jobs so we do not have another Malaysia Incident where the people of military employment, your people I might remind you, refused to fire upon a crowd of people who were upset at colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism and had mistakenly taken out their anger on embassy staff, ambassadors, peacekeepers...”
”Madame Congresswoman, did you or did you not instruct the scientists at the Man Amplification Project to remove emotional content from combat, specifically the taking of human life?”
”That depends, you see, combat is not only the direct taking of a human life in the modern battlefield, which you should know, General, it also involves engaging drones, robotic vehicles, and...”
”General, your time is up.”
--Record Fragment, Congressional Inquiry on the Ugandan Incident, Hamburger Kingdom, Pre-Diaspora
Mbutu had stayed behind, just in case their was a sneak.
To be honest, he hated sneaks.
He used passive scanners, watching for any phasic or chronotron energy signatures, keeping still where he was knelt down in the middle of a parking lot that had been turned into an inferno. The melting and burning point of plasteel was too low to even raise his internal temperature, his 'blood' and internal cooling systems able to carry the heat away from the surface of his 'skin' and allow him to exhale it back into the atmosphere without breaking thermal signature.
He scanned the area again, feeling a slight trickle of anxiety at the thought Roca and he might have been wrong and there wasn't a...
A slight eddy of phasic energy with a few sparks of chronotrons popping into existence ended that anxiety.
”Sergeant, we got a sneak,” Mbutu t-linked to Roca.
”Roger. Keep an eye out. We're circling around Target Bravo, we'll hit it from the north,” Roca answered. ”We're unsupported here, so watch yourself.”
”I will,” Mbutu answered.
The eddy appeared again, having moved nearly a mile, following the ad-hoc squad.
”He's coming up behind you,” Mbutu said. ”On him,” he clicked the link closed and darted to the tree line, venting heat from his mouth and anus to drop his temperature.
By the time he was under the second eddy's location, he'd spotted two more eddies, both heading north, and his body temperature was at the ambient air temperature.
He privately hoped he hadn't stunned any wildlife when he'd expelled high thermal concentrate gas.
Mbutu stopped at one point, again crouching down, watching where he could see the slight signature he'd been following and refining his sensor's abilities to detect. He looked at the trees, the branches above him, and the dirt. Frowning, he checked his tracheal filter, checking mucus level against dissolved inhalants.
”Roca, come in, Roca,” he t-linked, mentally envisioning lifting a tin can to his mouth, the can attached to a glowing string..
”Roca here,” he could tell the NCO was engaged in combat by the breathless feeling of the thought.
”Spores are up, pollen is up, seeing insect hives with nutrient veins that are starting to swell,” Mbutu said. ”Still fifteen clicks off, Sneak is up to something in the forest I'm in.”
”Roger. Extreme prejudice. Out,” Roca returned.
The t-link popped as it relaxed, the envisioned cable going dark.
It only took a few seconds of spiral checking, moving fast and quiet, to figure out which direction the nutrient veins were coming from, which direction the alien, for the planet, vegetation was thicker.
Mbutu wasn't surprised it was the same direction Sneak was heading for.
Mbutu had to slow down, being nearly five tons, five meters high, a two meters wide, made it so that it didn't really matter how agile he actually was, he needed to go slow and doublecheck his path.
His skin would be immune to anything the plants could put out yet according to logic, but his briefings on the Second Telkan War had shown that the plants used phasic energy to enable it to penetrate warsteel. The longer he was there, the more chance that cellular shedding might provide the planets enough genetic and protein data to allow the plant life to gain angles of attack.
So Mbutu was careful. He adjusted the chemical levels in his 'sweat' to make it more caustic as he moved around the thicker underbrush, jumping where he needed to.
The moss on the trees was changing them somehow. The wood looked different where the moss had peeled away than it did where the moss hadn't quite reached. The local equivalent of ferns and bushes were being taken over by moss and fungus, in some cases the local plants were pale and white, the chlorophyll stripped out of them. Twice he saw insects with what looked like small mushrooms extending from their heads and abdomens wandering along behind groups of other hive insects.
”Roca, I've got xenoforming around me, thickening along Sneak's path,” Mbutu sent.
”Roger,” Roca replied.
Again, Mbutu could tell by the tension and her fierce joy that she was engaged in combat.
Sneak had come to rest up ahead and Mbutu slowed down, circling to come in at a different angle. Mbutu's heat was still wonky and his slush was having problems, still sticking at roughly 2%, meaning there was no 'bed' to line the nanoforges.
Still, he had a rocket pack fully loaded with anti-armor incendiary rounds.
The dying forest opened up on a good sized lake. The bank was full of bulbs resting on leaves in the middle of complex vein networks and fibrous moss. The lake center was mostly covered with a dark reddish purple fibrous mat.
In the center was what looked like four brain coral surrounded by thick cabbage leaves that were sticking up around them, angled away from the coral and the end curled up.
”Roca, found brain coral,” Mbutu t-linked. ”Going silent running.”
All he got back was two clicks to signal that his message had been received and acknowledged.
Mbutu watched the eddy move down, over empty section between the brain coral. There was a flare of phasic energy and a shower of chronotrons over it.
A dozen more Atrekna ruling caste appeared in a flash of chronotrons and phasic energy.
Mbutu watched as the Atrekna ruling caste began emitting a high output of phasic energy, building some kind of elaborate construct out of pure psychic energy. Mbutu could see the heavy phasic links to the four brain corals.
A little bit of concentration, waiting a moment, and a welt rose on Mbutu's back. After a moment it ruptured, the welt quickly scabbing over as molten warsteel went cool. The ejected object spun, drying, and extended wings before banking off through the forest.
It took nearly ten minutes for the drone to beep in his brain. By that time the welt had vanished, the warsteel scab had dropped off, and Mbutu was watching them begin working on more intricate sections. He had released two other drones that were line of sight repeaters, the scabs had fallen away and he'd picked up all three scabs and popped them in his mouth, chewing them up and reclaiming the warsteel.
He tried not to think about it.
The sat uplink was waiting as Mbutu shot off a message.
ATREKNA LEADERSHIP MOVEMENT METHOD SPOTTED STOP UNITS BUILDING PHASIC ENERGY DEVICE STOP WATCHING PLANETARY SCANNERS FOR TEMPORAL SURGES STOP UNDER EMCOM STOP
He attached a compressed visual file showing the Atrekna leadership beings appearing and then the construction.
A large part of him urged him to lunge forward, firing FOOF rockets on the brain coral and ripping apart the leadership caste, but intel was more important.
Mbutu and the rest of the Monster Class had been wandering around in a haze of screaming death for who knew how long, data and intel was something they were heavily lacking and were in sore need of.
Plus, as far as Mbutu knew, this was the first time anyone had gotten close enough to watch, much less not been engaged in combat.
Mbutu divided his thought process twice. Once to track the surface scans for any flare of chronotron and phasic energy release, the second time to keep track of the vegetation growth around him. The moss around his feet had tried to climb onto his feet and toes but the black warsteel layer of skin kept it from being able to get its roots in even with phasic energy.
He uploaded his observations about the performance of the Mark-V warsteel against the phasic enhanced vegetation.
”Moving to Point Gamma. Go to supersonic leap,” Roca ordered. ”Mbutu, hold position at your discretion,” the call was over broadband t-link, not something that the Atrekna ruling caste might pick up.
Mbutu just clicked twice to let Roca know he'd heard her.
The Atrekna suddenly moved back, dropping their stealth, and all facing the phasic construct they had slowly built and hooked into the brain coral. The massive 'pipes' of nutrient veins began pulsing and Mbutu watched as the level of the lake rose by nearly an inch in less than a minute. He could see the stains spreading out where the nutrients were being pumped into the water. The fibrous mat glimmered and began to sparkle, motes of phasic energy dancing off of it.
The sats beeped and he pulled the thought train into the primary intellectual cogency channel.
Chronotrons and phasic energy was spiking at one of the sites that Roca had tagged, listed as Point Theta.