The words were interfering in a nightmare.
He was stuck in the wreckage of a house, rafters pinning his legs down. The mag-ac rifle in his hands was beeping from overheating, flashing the warning light that the ammobloc was almost dead, the burning dim red light signifying the power pack was drained. His armor was cracked, broken, his face shield smashed and torn away, exposing him to air that tasted of burnt metal, acrid chemicals, and scorched meat. The Precursor machines were swarming, he couldn't get up, couldn't have gotten away even if he could have gotten the house off of him, his leg broken, his breathing agony as he hitched each breath and the metal band tightened around his chest. The rest of the squad, all Terrans, were dead around him, all staring at him with dead eyes, asking him over and over...
why did you let us die?
he kept firing, kept screaming in defiance...
"Marine, can you hear me? Marine!" the voice snapped through the nightmare and he was vaguely aware of a Mantid in a sterisuit looking down at him. "Marine!"
"Ayut," he managed to grunt around the tube down his throat.
"Choice time. Either a regen-cast and quick growth, which means you're off the line for at least two weeks, or a cybernetic prosthetic, which means you'll be out for forty-eight hours. Look left for regen, right for cyberware," the Mantid clacked.
He looked right.
"All right. You aren't going to like this, Marine," the Mantid warned. She looked to the side. "Get a bare bones warsteel Telkan prosthetic arm," she looked back at him. "You have to be awake for this, we need the nerve channels live."
He tried to nod, the tube down his throat, his head held still by tractor/pressor beams, his body strapped down.
"All right, let's prepare the site. We'll save as many nerves as we can," the Mantid said. "Put in the mouth-guard, we don't want him biting through the tubes," She looked down at him again. "This is going to be extremely painful. Your mind needs to be awake for this. We'll save what we can of your nerves."
She paused a second. "You may scream. There is no shame, Marine."
He just managed to gag out another "Ayut," before it started.
He could feel the laser scalpel slicing away the flesh on the stump of his arm where the suit's auto-doc systems had cauterized the flesh and sealed it with non-permeable plastic. He knew when the nerves were left exposed to air. He could smell the heavy laser carving away the bone of his arm.
The whole time he stared above him, at the waldos moving around to make sure the lighting was the best, at the positive pressure tent, at the shadows. He recited the words of the Omnimessiah to himself, praying for strength and endurance as Enraged Phillip had possessed when he walked the sands of Mars to find Bellona the Grave Bound Beauty, the Omnimessiah on one side, Vat Born Luke on the other.
He knew tears were leaking from his eyes, that he couldn't stop them, even as the nanite and the sterile field wicked them away.
He focused on the Digital Omnimessiah's promise that anything could be endured if it must be endured, that there was the strength within all people, even those not yet found. He focused on how Enraged Phillip had waded through liquid warsteel at one point, the pool of blood red metal igniting in response to the wrath that had filled him. How Phillip had endured that pain to reach the Lost Little Ones.
It went on and on, the pain was a living thing that soon he learned to accept, almost to cherish. It became a friend, a companion, someone who knew him more intimately than his parents, his siblings, even his few and far between lovers. Pain. Mother. Father. Lover. Secret Confidant.
Still the pain went on, but he was beyond it now, bouyied by it, supported by it. It was deep in his soul, tempering him, as the nerves all the way into his chest burned with cold agonizing fire. It felt like talons scraping on the bones, carving patterns upon his very skeletal structure. The nerves all the way to his spine burned and throbbed with fiery agony.
Eventually he was just lost, adrift in a sea of pain, his lips moving around the tubes as he mumbled prayers and recited parts of not only the Digital Omnimessiah but those who had come before him. Tears falling from his eyes even though he did not weep.
Finally, suddenly, it was over. The pain was replaced by a warm tingling feeling.
"All right, run a connection check," the Mantid doctor said. "Go through the fingers. All right. Fist. Open. Relaxed. Wrist. All right. Elbow. Open hand. Fist. Wiggle fingers. All right, release control," the Mantid looked down. "Look left for yes, right for no."
He looked left.
"Hot? Yes or no?" she asked as warmth seemed to envelop the arm. He looked left then right then left again. "So, warm, not hot?" He looked left.
She went through pressure, pain, hot, cold, tingles, prickly feeling.
"All right. We'll finish up and move you to recovery," the Mantid said. "Nighty-night, Marine."
Darkness took him as he looked left.
------------------
He looked at the arm. Flat black warsteel. What looked like bands on the biceps and forearm and fingers. It was bare bones, standard Telkan strength, right now but apparently it would have more added. The smart-link was dead, felt weird, like a piece of frosted wire in his arm.
The Mantid doctor, Screams, moved daintily as she came up and sat down. "Any problems?"
He shook his head.
"Let's run another set of tests now that your nerves, spinal column, and motor control centers are fully integrated," she said.
"Yes, ma'am," he rasped. His throat was raw and sore.
"Let me up!" a Terran bellowed, struggling against the pressors holding the Terran down. "I can fight! Let me up!" He could hear the pressor beam emitter focused on the Terran begin to beep an overload warning. "Let me up! You can't keep me here! I'm still fit to fight!" When the Terran looked at him he saw the Terran's eyes were glowing bright red.
A nurse moved up, increasing the anesthetic. The Terran turned and looked at her, his burning red gaze fixed on her. "Let me up, Phillip stab your eyes!"
"What's wrong with him?" he asked the Mantid.
The Terran was still struggling, still fighting, but getting weaker as the anesthetic beam did its work.
"We're not sure," the Mantid said. "But that's part of why I came to talk to you," she glanced at the Terran then back at him. "In your battle, did you run into anything strange. Anything out of place that you can think of?"
He shook his head. "It got down to my chainsword at the end, but I was pretty busy."
"Nothing out of place?" the Mantid asked.
"They were Precursor AWM's, new ones, I wasn't looking for anything weird, just killing them," he said. He leaned back. "Some of the lighter ones had armaglass globes that glowed blue, and inside the big one, at the end, there was a bunch of them, like twenty or thirty of them, but I was down to my magac pistol and grenades by that point. And my one hand," he admitted.
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She nodded at that. "Anything strange?"
"My little brother had to turn my psychic shielding all the way up, but that's standard with Precursor AWM's," he said.
"I'm going to check your armor logs," the Mantid said. "A nurse will be by in a few moments. No combat, no wearing your armor, no linking up with your neural interface for a day or two."
"Let me up. Please, let me up, I can still fight," the Terran said quietly, almost pleadingly. He looked and saw that Terran was asleep, unconscious, and still muttering.
"Why am I strapped down?" he asked.
"You had some brain damage. Microstrokes, nothing major, nothing we couldn't handle, but you're going to be out of the fight for a couple of days," the Mantid stood up and leaned forward. "If there's anything strange, anything you need to tell us, do not hesitate. These AWM's are new, every little bit of data can help."
The Mantid turned away, motioning at the nurse. "Go ahead and let him up. We need the bed," the Mantid said. She shuddered, yawning. "Prep the next patient."
He looked up, staring at the ceiling of the inflatable positive pressure system, ignoring the lingering aches and pains. He recited the mantra for strength and endurance, calling upon the patience and endurance of Vat Grown Luke and Enraged Phillip.
A nurse, an Ikeeki who's feathers were hidden by the adaptive camouflage uniform she wore, bobbed up and looked down at him.
"All right, I'm going to reduce the anesthetic. You tell me if you start to feel woozy," the Ikeeki said.
He just nodded.
Sensation came rushing back. His knee ached with remembered pain, his right shoulder ached from strained muscles, his back ached from everything he had been doing. All of the pain, but the pain in his left arm, had the tingling warmth of quikheal compounds going to work.
He remembered who he was.
"Name?" the Ikeeki asked.
"Ralvex," he said simply. He smacked his lips for a moment, wincing at the sour taste. "My mouth tastes like green."
"Yeah, that happens," the Ikeeki said, still adjusting the instruments. Ralvex felt the restraint systems release.
"Let me up. Please, let me up, my men need me," the Terran moaned in his sleep.
The Ikeeki went through the standard questions, ensuring that his brain was still functional, that he wasn't suffering any lingering effects of his ordeal in the draw.
"All right. You can go out and move around the fire base. No combat, no getting in your armor, no using your neural jack, don't lift anything with your left arm for at least twenty hours while the support systems set into the bones," she said. "You try to lift something too heavy, you'll tear your arm off at the shoulder and rip all the cyberware out of your shoulder and upper chest."
"I won't, ma'am," Ralvex said. More and more of his mind was coming back, still flooding in. She helped him up off the gurney and out the door.
"Get something to eat. Those quikheal proteins for Telkans tear through your stores and ramp your metabolism up something fierce," the nurse said.
"I will, ma'am, thank you. And thank Doctor Screams for me, please," Ralvex said.
"Of course, Marine," the nurse said, then ducked back into the positive pressure tent.
Ralvex looked around, checking the time on his datalink. He'd only been down three hours but now he got a good look at the 'firebase' now that he was moving under his own power.
The berm was dirt, with integrity fields glittering in them, overlaid with sheets of anti-spalling material. Battlescreens and psychic shields rippled and glimmered and snarled in the afternoon light above the berm. There was a landing field for hover-strikers, a small parking lot that the tents and equipment was being moved away from that had three heavy tanks and two armored scout vehicles parked in the cleared area with mechanics swarming over them. Another berm area that he could see heavy duty ammunition producing nano-forges inside.
And where they were stacking up bodies.
He moved away from that, heading over to the antenna. A Telkan with the rank of Private Second Class on his light pilot's armor was listening to a Terran Army Captain as Ralvex walked up.
"Pretty much all the communications are down," the Terran said.
"You can't get anything working?" the Telkan asked. Ralvex could see his nametage, Mukstet, on his armor.
"Not at any distance farther than ten miles or so, and not into orbit," the Captain said. "I've got an idea, but to be honest, it's going to affect you combat guys more than anything else, but it might work."
Ralvex sat down on the box, pulling his numb and tingling cyberarm into his lap and rubbing the forearm.
"All right, that Tri-Vee station in Duskelanst is still on the air, right?" the Terran said.
"Right. I've seen it a couple of times. That poor Hesstlan has been reporting for almost two days straight," Mukstet said. "She's probably chewed more stimgum than our Marine sitting there."
That made the Terran chuckle. "Anyway, her broadcast is coming through loud and clear. I sent a couple of my guys with your guys to test something, and they came through loud and clear," the Terran said. He cocked his head. "How much do you know about commo?"
"I know Terran standard communications devices use quarks and strange matter particles," Mukstet said.
"Right. So I went back a bit. I had BOLO Daisy check his databanks and shoot me some schematics. We built a couple and they work perfectly fine," the Terran said. He turned around and tilted his head forward, showing off that there were three little glowing LED's on his spinal column at the base of his skull. "The SUDS is borked, all the strange matter and quark commo devices are shot, but our intrepid Tri-Vid reporter is still yammering on and telling everyone to stay in the basement and not come looking for Terrans, right?"
"Al right, I kind of follow," Mukstet said.
"That's because she's broadcasting her video on 235.25 Megahertz, her audio on 239.75 Megahertz. When we started firing off atomics, her station stayed up, but for a moment our instruments picked up the entire spectrum. Most of it is abandoned, since like most species they cleared their EM bands by installing cabling," the Terran said.
"OK, you're starting to lose me," Mukstet admitted.
"OK, long story short, Daisy's memory banks had digital transmitter schematics for electromagnetic frequencies, so I nano-forged up a couple of them and they work," the Terran said. "Only problem is, it's line of sight as far as the curvature of the planet goes, and we're going to want to drop repeaters every five miles."
"Not a problem, I can have my communication specialists handle that," Mukstet said.
"You're going to have to take some of my men on your strikers," the Captain said. "This is real old tech, I mean, EM broadcast systems. We're going to have to fab it up, install it, and train on the fly."
The Private Second Class stood there for a moment, turning slightly to look at the landing strikers. After a moment he turned back.
"All right, do it," the Telkan private said.
"No problem. We'll get right on it," the Captain said. He paused for a second. "You hanging together?"
The Telkan nodded. "Yeah. I don't understand why I'm still considered in charge."
The Terran shrugged. "This is a striker base. You're the ranking striker. With the... well... other problem happening right now, there might be even more issues," he said.
"So it's confirmed, its effecting the clones too?" the Telkan suddenly sounded tired.
"It's not effecting the Dee-Ess's or any non Terran Descent, but any Terran Descent, it's pretty much across the board," the Terran said.
"And you?" Pv2 Mukstet asked.
The Terran sighed. "Believe me, me and my men want to get out there. We're tired of being behind these walls. We're tired of fucking hiding. We're fucking Space Force, we're the goddamn Terran Army, the hammer of the Hamburger Kingdom, we're..." The Terran's eyes started glowing amber, then red. "We shouldn't be back here, screw our MOS, when it happens, everyone fights! We'll fight, and we'll win! The Enemy exists to be destroyed and we are the universe's ultimate..."
Ralvex found himself shrinking back slightly as rage poured off the Terran, pounding at his temples, and making his head under the bandages ache.
"You're red-eyed," the Telkan, Mukstet, said calmly.
The Terran blinked, stepping back. "Apologies."
Two Rigellian nurses in power assist loading frames were wrestling a Terran infantyman off the striker, her legs missing from the knees down as she screamed to let her go, that she could still fight, that her boys needed her and GET OFF OF ME GODDAMMIT! PHILLIP STAB YOUR EYES! LET ME GO!
Ralvex shuddered, pushing up and heading for the tent where food was being served. Behind him the female Terran was laughing, screaming, sobbing, and threatening to let her go, she could still fight. He got halfway there when Mukstet caught up to him.
"You see it?" Mukstet asked.
"They're going mad," Ralvex said.
"Seems like they'd back off with their SUDS going down, but if anything, it's made them more aggressive," Mukstet sighed. "I saw a Terran missing and arm and a leg try to crawl out of my striker, still firing their rifle with one hand, screaming that the Precursors couldn't kill them."
"What's doing it?" Ralvex asked.
Mukstet shook his head as he pushed open the biohazard flap and let Ralvex move by.
"I don't know," Mukstet said. "Nobody does," the two Telkan each grabbed a field ration and went and sat down at the table. After a moment Mukstet looked around then leaned toward Ralvex.
"Listen, I'm going to warn you like I've been warning everyone else," he said. "There's something really strange going on out at the line," the Telkan said. "I heard you were engaged in combat, maybe you saw it too."
"What?" Ralvex asked, chewing on the meat flavored nutripaste.
"The Terrans, they keep shooting at stuff I can't see. Even my ship's instruments say it isn't there, but they keep shooting at it, maneuvering to engage something out there," Mukstet said.
"Part of this madness?" Ralvex guessed.
Mukstet shook his head. "Madness doesn't make it so the missiles all explode in the same place, that trace rounds go bouncing off."
Mukstet leaned even closer.
"There's something out there, something we can't see, and it's driving the Terran's crazy."