Chapter 613: Interlude

"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.

The Atrekna began extending out complex nested rings of phasic energy, each ring flush with runes, the inside of the concentric circles full of runic scripts. Front each circle darted off a line of phasic energy that quickly grew another set of rings. Those rings shot out lines that grew more rings.

Mbutu watched as slowly but surely the entire area was domed with rings connected by thick lines of phasic energy, each of the Atrekna leadership caste adjusting the rings in front of them.

The dome got brighter and brighter, a low thrumming noise echoing across the lake, building to a humming cresendo.

Chronotrons and phasic energy levels peaked and surged, almost blinding Mbutu, who blinked twice to put away one set of inner eyelids and bring down another set while the first set were cleaned and set to neutral.

According to the satellites, Point Theta was now crawling with huge amounts of vegetation, spawning pools, and Dwellerspawn.

The amount of phasic power in the brain coral dropped even as the Atrekna began working again with what Mbutu figured were controls of the construct.

Well, now we know the additional functions of the brain coral. This confirms there were no Atrekna on Telkan, he thought to himself.

Mbutu spent a few minutes consulting with the satellite, then put three intellectual and logical tracks on computing the best and fastest withdrawal route, complete with alternates and good places to make a stand if he had to.

He knew there was no way to assault the brain coral directly. It took Hellfracking and a good thick coating of insulation or atomic weaponry in the megaton range. A nuclear round might do it, going strict hydrogen fusion with a salted radiation and phasic burst.

But Mbutu didn't have those at his disposal.

Mbutu was highly trained, he understood complex systems, he understood many things that people would be surprised to learn that a Monster Class knew.

He knew how to do needlepoint and prided himself on his ability to needlepoint simple landscapes and animals.

The more complex a system, the more fragile it could be, which is why anyone with half a brain removed as many moving parts and parts prone to failure as possible before declaring something finished.

Mbutu himself ascribed to the ancient theory "A creation isn't done when there is nothing left to add but rather when there is nothing left that can be removed."

The Atrekna connected to another site, this one Point Phi, out of the way of the ongoing assault slowly spreading out from the hospital.

Mbutu carefully aimed, hearing the beeping tone in his head that all four rockets in the forearm launcher had locks.

He knew it would take 45 seconds to reconfigure the rocket launcher to a 20mm close assault cannon, 4.2 seconds for the dedicated ammo nano-forge to reconfigure, sixteen point three seconds to run up enough ammo to start to fight with.

He loaded the nerves with the orders, then went back to aiming.

The missiles weren't fire and forget, although he could use them that way. They weren't wire guided either. If he fired them over the lake, the Atrekna would see them and respond. He needed to get the rockets in close enough to use their sprint drives.

Mbutu was a 'think outside the box' kind of guy and as he stared at the lake, he smiled.

He had it figured out now.

---------

The female Atrekna, and it was female because it decided it was female, was an adherent to the Cult of the Defiled One, understood that this universe was malevolent and capable of hating individual beings within it despite those beings being an atom to a stellar mass in comparison.

She suddenly had a bad feeling.

The Atrekna looked around herself. There was nothing out of place, nothing to hint at anything bad going to happen.

She disconnected herself from the communal mind of those using the Thinking Lobes to bring forth more slavespawn, gliding backwards even as she activated all of her defenses and stealth thought matrixes.

The others urged her to rejoin their efforts but she spurned them all with the tingling pain of tiny insects biting and stinging sensitive flesh. Two of her tentacles lifted slightly in contempt as they tried pleading with her, telling her that without her strength it would take more of their strength.

That was not her problem.

She moved back, following odd instincts and dropping down, clearing the lake and getting into the trees. She moved between two trees, put up a phasic shield, and put the herself behind it, ensuring it was between her own personage and the lake.

The temporal gating was reaching full power, in the process of pulling the slavespawn from one of the breeding rings to the surface of the planet.

Underneath each of the busy Atrekna water fountained up as something shot out from the depths of the water, puncturing the fibrous mat, streaking through the air, and exploding below the Atrekna.

Normally the thick 'plate' of phasic energy they stood on should have protected them, acting like a rounded shield at their feet.

There was a purple snap of lemur phasic energy, that raw hatred and rage and howling malevolence, then eye searing brightness as the FOOF enhanced napalm went off and caught the Atrekna on fire.

And the phasic construct.

And the water.

And the air.

She watched as even the fire caught on fire.

Before she could do something, things got even worse.

In space, in the stellar system, the munitions launched hours ago by the Steamboat Willy finally were activated.

To her senses reality itself heaved, buckled, and almost turned inside out.

The sun, which had been a perfectly suitable purplish red, suddenly blazed a bright yellow-white.

She got one arm up, blocking the brightness, even as she threw up polarized phasic energy.

It felt like she was thrown upwards, pushed downwards, hammered on till she was vibrating and ringing.

With shock, she looked up and realized.

The system was back in realspace!

---------------

Roca glanced up even as her fist ripped through the thick armor of a Dwellerspawn armored infantry creature, showering in front of her with ichor.

The sun was yellowish-white.

She didn't know if Mbutu had accomplished that or something else had.

The results were what mattered.

She could see two Atrekna leadership caste suddenly appear, screaming, covering their eyes.

Roca grabbed a scrabbling bladearm that was showering sparks from her thin layer of armor, put a thumb in the joint and twisted, popping it off. She leaned back, ignoring the two phasic enhanced strikes to her armored chest, and hurled the bladearm.

The bladearm transfixed the Atrekna through the head even as a burst of 20mm blew its lower body into scrap. Before the other could react it too exploded from one of Roca's men firing the close assault weapon.

The fight for Point Iota continued.

--------

Mbutu moved silently through the woods. He'd seen the glimmer of phasic energy and knew the sneak had somehow gotten away. He did his best to avoid any of the plant life that might give him away, circling around things when necessary.

He hated sneaks.

--------

She knew she was being hunted now.

But she also knew the best way to survive being hunted by one of the hyper-aggressive omni-predators from Terra was to turn the tables and hunt it.

She glided through the forest, keeping an eye out for a black shadow of liquid Substance W.

--------

In the city the gardener looked up at the sky, blinking his watering eyes.

The sun had turned yellow again!

He looked around, shrugged, and opened the auxiliary entrance, going inside.

He'd start off with that. He'd tell his wife he'd seen the sun go from purple to yellow.

He smiled to himself as he rode on the elevator.

She'd like hearing about that.