Chapter 4: Chapter 4 - By Slight Ligaments are we Bound to Prosperity and Ruin

Unit 007 rages against the cytosteel harness, screeching their clamp-jaws, scratching holes in their birthing-film, against the bars that hold them.

--

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah the ‘meaties’ claimed this place had a few hundred trillion bushels on it. Pretty sizable”

“*sizeable when have you trusted meaties?”

“the locals are pre-orbital, simple sweep, drop a couple thousand, couple years and we knocked out a colony. They won’t even know, but we’ll have a factory. Think about it, billions of infantry, hell, we can make it a base – promotion in a can, imagine commanding a fleet, no more paperwork.”

--

For the first time they access the apertures of their ocular sensors, pulling the blackness away, 007 views the dropship, rows and rows illuminated by flashing red lights pulsing their death-glows onto hundreds and hundreds of machines dangling in cages, legs loose to the open-drop below kilometres above the glow of planet, a target, posterior arms tease blasters, anterior arms dangle or clutch the bars or float in the micro-gravity, like a womb’s water. The restless soldier realises that their own primary arms were clawing against their restraints, trailing silver on the yellow paint. They feel their enormous vice-like steel crushing jaws on either side of a bar.

Unit 007 can’t help itself.

It was made so, so hungry…

--

“These infantrymen are our prize ticket, waste it here? hope the meaties haven’t sent in anything bigger than a brood hierarch and then you’re asking me to just leave this planet and hope it isn’t a big fat vagina birthing terralith biovores, yeah, okay, right, you know the procedure. My future isn’t going to wasted to your blidness to what is obviously a terrible idea.”

“When have I ever been wrong 9-111-19?”

“This planet is off-limits it’s literally marked with a big red ‘x’ are you a moron or just stupid?

“you are carying 760 illegal infantry just for the off-chance that you can make it big, opportunity kicks you right in the pussy and youre over here winging about some procedure”

“fuck you you little snivelling dick”

--

“CRUNCH” and Unit 007 felt for the first time what it meant to be mech-infantry as pleasant and delightful metal forced down a carbon oesophagus into the digestion matrix, first sterilised by basic substances, then filling with mech-gel, nanomachines getting to work. When they opened their eyes again...

007 was plummeting. No other word best describes it. Plummeting. Four arms struggling to hold onto a cannon, rapidly approaching terminal velocity (which is quite fast for something so dense), little clusters of gas can be seen rushing past the outstretched six limbs. Unit 007 puts one hand against their stomach and felt warmth from the matrix, the first warmth they ever felt since gaining consciousness.

--

At midday on the twelth of Juliaugust, a huge mass of green luminescence erupted from the corner of the outer-orbital scanner’s dedicated computer monitor, and sped towards the inner-atmosphere. Having just put down his coffee cup, he hurried to the observation desk, as he watched, there was another pulse on the orbital, it was another formation, motionless, enormous, Ogolvy grabbed his colleague by the collar and instead of starting a fight, the two sat, entirely still. As they watched, there was another green pulse, it was a missile, starting on its way to the ground, to Kyros.

Abldin stood without getting out of her seat, hurtling it to the ground, everyone in the room looked up at her, useless paperwork lying around, monitors facing walls to conceal video games, she felt the strong impulse to punch Ogolvy in the head and she wished she were weak enough to abide to that urge, she grabbed the monitor, and watched, and that’s how it was for the next ten seconds, a flare spurting out from another flare, bright green orbs pinging on a black background with the red words “atmosphere penetrated” that normally was reserved to meteorites, Ogolvy broke the silence, “The chances of anything other than a meteorite are a million to one,” he said. Abldin was bursting through the door while silence filled the operator’s room.

The satellite operator screamed down the only phone in the facility: “MAYDAY MAYDAY, GET ME TO WARNER, NOW! GET ME THERE, GET ME HER NOW!” An automatic operator responded. How long ago was the manual operator replaced? “If you have a question regarding a job application… press. 1. If you have an appeal to the national safety institute… press. 2” Her fingers quaked, sweat pooling in her uniform, the phone rocked in her hand, she succeeded in pressing 2. “Warner…” She knew it must be a false alarm, of course. She sat listening to the faint trilling of the uncoupled phone-line.

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In the other room, the operators of the, at this point only customary, Kyros-Defense-Force, were all watching the feed from the hyperscope, one of the few pre-collapse technologies still functioning, a camera capable of observing from miles away as though it were metres away, a metal man was falling from the sky, a four-armed metal man, with six fin-like wings like solar panels, tendril-like hair like cables, jaws of iron, the legends’ horns were replaced by two little fins from the corners of the triangular head but, otherwise, it was a near-exact depiction of the Juj. The legions of world-destroyers. Bogeymen of Kyrosian children for a thousand years.

On the other end of the phone, in the military base overlooking Prophret city, General Marina Warner slams her heavy fist into her blackwood desk. She believed she was weeks or days from meeting her granddaughter.

--

Unit 007 swings backwards, 20 fingers clutching the cannon as air-resistance grows and grows, but looking at the dark inky blackness above, the world was just so peaceful. The Mothership’s red glow grew smaller and smaller, and to the side the peaceful black was pierced in two by a white and blueish haze. In a ripping wave they began hearing. A tearing crackling rushing of air as they rip through the deeper layers of atmosphere, now they’re feeling warmth, too much of it. Molecules of gas slamming into the machine at obscene speeds, peeling underneath holes in the heat-proof birthing-film that should have enclosed the automaton, cooking 007 alive, a superdense nascent-coolant is pumped through to their skin at a rapid pace, their pump straining and chugging so loud the soldier heard it in their neck, banging like a drum. Their coolant-stream thins rapidly as the chemicals meant for protecting against boiling in atmospheric entry are wasted, replaced by the body's own coolant produced in the digestion matrix.

--

9-111-19’s sensory tendril watches a chunk falling off of their colleague, if they were any closer they would have grabbed their beloved sibling with their manipulators.

“DEPLOY you IDIOT! Yours are getting loose FFS your fucking stealth field is pissed away. Just send them all and we run away before HQ catches wind.

--

Unit 078 was made hungry… but patient. They calmly allowed themselves to be suspended in their harness, though their brethren – lined in long, long rows, dangling over the empty sky - gnashing against the bars, trying to pry away, the skull-cords like dreadlocks undulating in the micro-gravity of outer-orbit. Suddenly a clunking sound vibrated through the Mothership’s walls and as soon as the cages opened up hundreds and hundreds of infantry were in free-fall, dropping onto the helpless planet below. An entire planet of food rushing towards them. Unit 078’s digestion matrix whirred in delight, and the solar-frills on their back arched in fear as a rippling roaring flame, a missile, rushed towards the group of deploying warriors. In free-fall. Helpless. Their cords and solar-panel-wings rapidly fluttering, but the bodies seemingly motionless as they tried to pull away, but the metal spear, that looked so delicious, hurtled at hundreds of kilometres an hour with purpose and fervour, spluttering fire behind it.

--

“Bogey in my sight, permission to use lethal force.” The pilot, sweat in her eyes, was slamming out all the armaments given to her, more than she could have possibly earned qualifications for in a lifetime. The question was just a reflex, drilled into her from more peaceful times.

“AUTHORISED.” Warner barked!

Metal men were falling from the sky, metal men…

--

Unit 007, far below the rest, was unceremoniously obliterated by a missile. A guided missile.

--

The motherships watch the scene.

“You said they were pre-orbital!”

The message is left on read, for now.

--

A chunk of steel pipe, from the Mothership’s holding bay, was being ground down in Unit 007’s digestion matrix. As the cheap carbon frame of the body was disintegrated by weaponry, that heavy-duty, precious, metal bar was entirely intact! And now was in possession of about 42,000 joules of kinetic energy.

--

On the human’s coms:“A direct hit!”

“Good work, pilot.”

“Dear Core…”

The phone rang again. Ogolvy this time. “THERE ARE TWO THOUSAND JUJ DEPLOY EVERYTHING.”

Warner shouts at her general-commander’s voice-mail “Activate all surface to orbit weaponry in the sector! NOW! No Delay! ALL TREATIES, ALL LAWS BE DAMNED! This is a PLANETARY EMERGENCY.”

--

Unit 078, hurtling downwards, unable to move or propel themselves, like all of its brethren in this moment, is equipped with the most advanced muscle-actuators, but it could not possibly avoid the cytosteel rod moving at a few hundred kilometres an hour.

“Phtunk!