Of course they give us camo sticks to paint our faces with. What's the fuck-fuck circus without the clowns. - SFC Bit.nek, 12th Telkan Marine Division, 35 2PW
We didn't know.-- From "The Darkness of the Hasslehoff", Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru'udaDa'ay, EPOW Camp 90210, New Singapore Press, TerraSol, 2nd Year Post-Sol Invasion
No matter how well you plan there will always be some detail that you overlooked. A good plan can adapt to that detail.
A bad one, well, we know what happens with bad plans. - General of the Iron P'Kank, Treana'ad Officer's Course Graduation Lecture, Class 48,818
Who knows what would have happened if humans had been left to just play. There are ruins of those who came before that somehow ascended to something else, possibly pure energy, and went beyond the petty concerns of the universe. The humans have surpassed those ancient people's achievements, who knows where they might have gone. Instead, each of us, every one of us, have attacked them, and forced them to turn what could have been technology for peace and advancement into the cold tools of war. - Thoughts of Terra - Blanarkak Numekrekvian, Mulmanik Philospher
It is a miracle designed by an insane genius. It was constructed in a place beyond imagination and theory. A vast mechanism, beyond understanding. A mechanism that does not even fully understand itself. A creation, a mechanism, a device interlocking jeweled movements cobbled together by a lunatic with a sledgehammer.
I can no more describe it to you than you can describe a dream. - Nakteti the Traveler
Mwillik looked at the lemur, who was crushing out the cigarette before dropping it into the empty beer bottle that he then put into the reclaimer built into the six-pack at his feet. He'd never actually seen a Mad Lemur of Terra in the living flesh but he had seen plenty of artwork, most of it lewd, of them. He admired the heavy muscle and bone, tendon and flesh. The square skull of the male, designed to take hard hits to the forward facing structures. Mwillik knew that unlike most species in the Confederacy, the Mad Lemurs of Terra had never undergone gentling at the hands of the Lanaktallan.
Mwillik had a lot in common with the lemur.
He was a genetic throwback, a freak of nature, a Puntimat still built for fighting and winning.
Of course, he was smart enough to know that the lemur would rip him part bare handed.
"Grip strength alone would kill you," the lemur said. He held up his hands. "Three hundred fifty pounds per square inch."
Mwillik nodded. "Twenty-five," he said, holding up his gloved hands.
The Terran clacked his teeth. "Five hundred pounds per square inch bite strength unmodified. Thanks to the hardware, chrome, and vatflesh I've got, I'm sitting at about two thousands bite strength, grip strength of at about a thousand pounds per square inch."
Mwillik clicked his teeth. "Seventy-five."
The Terran nodded. "Soft tubers and fruits, probably. Molars are narrow, meaning you didn't need large surface area crushing surfaces, wide flat front teeth designed for fruit and tuber bite chopping. Wide eyes, slightly forward. Tree climber, some threats. Soft fur, sensitive to pressure changes and touch."
Mwillik frowned, knowing that the lemur couldn't see it. "Why are you stating such data?"
The Terran just shrugged. "Making observations. I haven't seen one of your people in a long time," the Terran took a long drink off the beer. "Been sleeping for a while. Mom put me and my brothers to bed a while back."
"Don't worry, Mom's coming. She wants to see you," the Terran said. He smiled again. "Before she gets here, allow me to introduce myself: I am Major John Earl Tom."
The lights brightened slightly and the Terran looked up.
There was a humming that started quiet and soft and quickly cycled up to loud and mind numbing.
It only lasted a few seconds before the lights faded back to the normal level.
The door opened up, releasing steam, fog, mist.
From inside stepped another Terran. A female. Short, heavy of body, with piercing gray eyes.
"This him, Johnny?" the Terran female asked.
"Yuppers," the male Terran said.
Mwillik frowned. "You were not unconscious for your transfer through the mat-trans."
The female giggled. "No. I was not. I never am," she smiled, her teeth bared in such a manner that Mwillik wanted to cover his throat with his hands. "The system stuns anyone else but me or unauthorized users that I decide that I hate," she stepped forward and Mwillik realized that she was naked for a moment beneath the mist.
The mist seemed to solidify into a severe business skirt. Dark blue, almost black, with a red kerchief in one breast pocket and an enameled pin that made Mwillik feel anxious on the other breast. From the pocket below the pin she withdrew a pack of cigarettes and a brushed steel cased lighter.
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Mwillik saw that the lighter was engraved with 03 FEB 1943 - LOS ALAMOS BOYS RANCH SCHOOL STAFF RECRUITMENT DRIVE on one side. A single movement of thumb and forefinger snapped the lid open and made a steel wheel scrape loudly against a tiny rod, showering sparks against a wick, causing it to light with yellow flame.
Mwillik watched as she lit a cigarette from a box that had a simple red circle and a LUCKY STRIKES on the pack.
He noted that there was no filter on the cigarette as she took a long drag and exhaled. She snapped the lighter closed then spun the lighter over her fingers. He saw "I have no regrets" scratched deeply into the metal before she tucked it away with the pack of cigarettes as she exhaled smoke.
His suit warned him that the smoke was contaminated with scorched blood, sulfar-dioxide, and burnt flesh when the smoke reached him.
The female sat down, primly crossing her legs, smoothing her skirt with her hand.
"I am not on one of the starships," Mwillik stated.
The female shook her head. "No. No we are not."
"You changed the destination," Mwillik said. "You have some kind of control over the mat-trans system."
The female gave another one of the lemur smiles, an expression of pleasure. "That I do, Mister Mwillik. That I do."
"Why?" Mwillik asked. "Not why me, not why now, but why intercept me after I have begun to suffer cerebral injury from rapid recurring mat-trans."
The female raised one eyebrow. "Interesting. You asked 'why now' instead of any of the rest."
The female nodded. "Your equipment, designed to freeze your brain, keep you from experiencing the effects of going through life. You froze your brain, froze that digital sentience, that way you were transferred using the cargo system and not the living creature systems."
She grinned. "Much more rapid than the living creature systems. Seconds instead of full minutes. It bypasses the error checking for electron and quark locations that living creatures depend upon."
"Clever way of bypassing my systems. Who figured it out?" she asked.
"I do not know. The only one who uses it is the Confederate Marine Raiders," Mwillik stated. "There's never been a reason to use it before. I'm the first."
The female bared her teeth again, then took a long drag off of the cigarette before exhaling the smoke. "And caught my attention."
Mwillik nodded. "So, why now?"
The female smiled again. "You should have arrived at the mat-trans for the Nine Little Ducklings with your brain boiling out of your ears, the Digital Sentience should be screaming inside that case until the crystalline matrix implodes."
The male lifted the beer bottle. "I hit the button, you went through error correction, and you ended up here."
"Again, why now?" Mwillik asked.
The male threw his booted feet back onto the desk surface, leaning back in the chair.
"Because now you belong to me," the female said.
Mwillik frowned. "What makes you say that? I am a Confederate Marine. I am not the property of a Terran woman."
"Do you know who I am?" the woman asked.
Mwillik shook his head. "No, ma'am, I do not."
The woman looked at the male. "Being dead I can handle," she said.
"But being forgotten, now that's a bitch," the male said.
The female shook her head, smiling, then looked up. "There's a little fact about me that makes being forgotten a bit more emotionally painful than it would be for others."
Mwillik stared at her. "Oh?"
"Not even I remember a certain part about myself," the woman admitted. "Thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, of research, of searching, of everything, and that one little thing eludes me."
Mwillik could feel the tension surrounding him but refused to show any sign of it. "What is that?"
"My name," the female said.
"Pleased to meet you, won't you guess my name," the man said, his voice slightly sing-songy.
"Why do you not know your own name?" Mwillik asked.
"A long story," the female said. "That's not to say I'm not well known. Or, at least, at one time I was well known."
"I am known as Mwillik the Unloving," Mwillik said. "What are you known by?"
"The Detainee," the female said.
Mwillik's eyes opened wide behind the goggles. "You are real. You exist."
The female nodded. "I do."
"You are considered by those who even know of you to be a rumor, a legend. I did not hear of you before I attended Basic Training for the Confederate Marine Corps," Mwillik said.
The male shook his head. "She may slumber, heroes may lock her away, but Mom exists."
Mwillik looked down, pressing the button on the case.
Amber "Zzzzz..." appeared on the digital display.
"He would not have survived another jump. He did not survive the jump," the male said.
"I save him. As I saved you," the female said. "I grabbed you at the edge of madness and death."
"And that makes me yours," Mwillik interrupted. "As if I was a disposed of damaged object you then picked up and repaired."
The female smiled. "Indeed. I fixed you, that makes you mine."
"And if I refuse, I die," Mwillik said.
The female shrugged. "If you refuse, I'll simply put you right back into the mat-trans system. I'll reset your biological memory pointers, erase this meeting, then drop you right onto the pad of the Nine Little Ducklings like nothing ever happened."
Mwillik looked at the male then the female. "But what about the battle? What about those ships of the lost fleet?"
The female shrugged. "I am unconcerned about one battle."
The male tapped his bottle against the top of the table. "She worries about the war."
"I am no general. No military leader. I understand war in macro but only to an extant," the female said. "What I do know is weapons," she leaned forward. "You are a weapon. I repaired you."
"You need me," Mwillik said. He pointed at the male sitting in the chair drinking beer. "He is an old weapon, still highly effective, highly trained, but not trained on current Confederate military equipment, tactics, or training."
"Like you, little buddy," the Terran male said.
"And you know what my answer will be," Mwillik said.
The female nodded. "I do."
"How?" Mwillik asked.
"By looking over your entire life. Examining you in ways you, right now, do not understand," the woman said. "I peeled open your brain and looked you over," she smiled. "I know you far more than you would believe."
"It was your name, that's what did it," the male said. The female looked over and made a face and the male shrugged. "I get bored easy, Mom, you know that."
The female sighed. "I know."
"My name?" Mwillik asked. "Mwillik?" the male shook his head and Mwillik sighed. "The Unloving?"
The female just smiled.
"Why?" Mwillik asked again.
"Certain training you received," the female said. She looked at the male.
The male sighed. "You were a Marine Recon trainer. You were a Marine Basic Training instructor."
Mwillik nodded. "I get it."
"Do you?" the female asked.
Mwillik nodded. "You need me to train this male and his 'younger brothers' that he referred to in modern Confederate equipment, tactics, and battlefield doctrine."
The male gave a big grin, looking at the female. "Told you."
The female smiled and nodded.
Mwillik thought it out and nodded. "It's not the most optimum way to be recruited by a figure of myth and legend, but I'll take it."
Mwillik looked down at the floor for a moment then up at the female.
"How is it said in the media?" he said. He nodded slowly. "I'm in."
The female smiled widely. "The Unloving."
The male made a noise and Mwillik looked over. "What?"
He just grunted. "I hate prophecy."