|
|
|
Seventy-six bladed falcis strode out into a bright dawn, sunlight catching reflective armor in a blazonry of spangles. Gathering clouds would soon efface the light, but they would certainly not quench the energy of this unique gathering. Inside his own mech, Major Rhys Barisor signaled to his captains to join him at the tip of the wedge. Communications built directly into his link enabled him to speak to his soldiers at will and have them hear as if he were standing beside them. Quickly one each of the red, white, and black marked falcis loped easily to where Rhys himself walked.
The coordination of movement from inside these falcis was both simple and difficult. It had taken a great deal of practice for most of the lance to learn to simply issue mental commands to their mechs and have them obeyed. Some few had tried to control the placement of limbs directly; this invariably led to a shining metallic warrior winding up face-down on turf or tarmac, its operator somewhat chastened by the sheer embarrassment of having tipped over.
Shortly Rhys was joined by Captain Ianoma of the black lance as well as Captains Jakuv and Haitam of the white and red. The major knew all three to be excellent soldiers; Ianoma, in particular, was someone in whom he had invested a great deal of trust in the past. She was a hardy and resourceful individual, a woman tempered and honed into a formidable weapon in her own right. Inside a falcis, she was positively lethal.
“Captains, today is the day. General Uspa has charged us with the removal of the corrupted android Max Haiden. It is possible his condition is contagious, so it is imperative that we approach him only when linked. He has demonstrated cunning and the ability to kill; our orders are to destroy him and any in close proximity to him.”
Rhys paused in case his Captains had any questions, but firm silence relayed the confidence they felt in his command. From inside the belly of his armored symbiote, Major Barisor nodded.
“Then begin. Each lance will search a delta pattern vector as follows. Keep your teams in groups of at least five; Max Haiden has used unorthodox methods before. Expect him capable of anything.”
Keying a few buttons inside his falcis, Rhys relayed assigned coordinates to each lance. Holoscreens flared blue as HUDs were activated, information organized and displayed according to each individual’s personal preferences. Quickly the entire wedge split into its three lances, each one moving with amazing speed in a different direction. The hunt was on.
The major launched himself into motion. Propulsion enhanced strides threw his falcis through the air, each stride tearing up turf in a small explosion of power. With every arcing step Rhys Barisor placed more of Mission behind him. He would rendezvous with his captains at the mining station where Max Haiden had eluded capture, and from there plan stage two of the search.
As he bounded across the roads and into more open areas, Rhys spent much of his time imagining the outcome of this victory. The capture of a rogue was a simple matter, in truth, but the creation of this wedge of falcis under his own direct command was a major stepping stone towards a high-level command position. Though many other things as well, Rhys was truly ambitious, an odd trait for an android but perhaps one that, in the current military structure, fit very well. The drive to improve was motivated by reward, and rank was the true signifier in the military. It was feasible that he would be assigned to work inner-city when the colonists came, a direct liaison to human-led planetary powers. His deep reverie made his eyes tighten in anticipation and, being slightly distracted, almost cost him his life.
The attack came from a thick stand of trees bordering a greater wooded area. Three huge vemethgar launched themselves at the falcis, bringing it crashing down to the soft turf by sheer force. Instantly alert, Rhys rolled and spun, throwing two of the three clear. One of the creatures clung to the back of the mech, tearing at the armour with huge claws. Coming to its feet, the falcis was once again assaulted by the other two creatures, but this time Rhys managed to keep the mech upright. Warnings flashed on the screen; another small pack of the creatures was approaching quickly through the trees.
Deftly Rhys’ falcis spun in a sharp semi-circle, this time with its twin scythes fully extended. Dark crimson splashed in a wide arc as the two closest vemethgar were cleaved in two, their writhing forms leaving trails of blood and gore on the ground and nearby trees. Blades wet and dripping, Rhys lunged forward at the third vemethgar in a mantis-like attack. The beast’s howl ended in a wet gurgle as its head was split down to the base of its thick neck. Wrenching the falcis’ blades apart, the rent beast fell heavily to the ground, twitched, and was still.
The second group was nearly upon him. Turning to meet the charge, Rhys activated the shoulder-mounted cannons with a flick of a thought. Twin mounts extended from the heavy falcis almost too quickly to see. A white blast to rival the noon sun erupted from the mech just as the pack of creatures launched themselves at him.
Most of the pack was vaporized in mid-leap. Flesh and bone and blood were not equipped to contend with such power, and at point blank range there was no hope of avoiding the burst. Still, Rhys had misjudged the speed of the pack. Three survivors slammed into him at the last moment, their dense bulk toppling him to the blood-spattered earth.
Inside the falcis, Rhys was nearly apoplectic. He panicked momentarily as three engineered monsters began tearing into the mech. Synthetic alloy plates screeched as they were torn from the main chassis. The android inside sent his sprawling mech into a series of desperate lurches, trying desperately to dislodge the creatures. He’d never allowed the vermin this close before; he was too sure of himself, too skilled, but now…
New warning lights erupted onto his heads up display, penetrated Rhys’ desperation. Three forms moving rapidly on intercept, all of them mechanical. The sound of metallic tearing continued until a muffled explosion rocked the area.
A cluster of sonic charges sent the vemethgar sprawling clear of the fallen mech, just as Captain Ianoma had hoped. On cue, her two sergeants unleashed destructive beams of force from their cannons. Two of the three vemethgar were killed instantly, but the third rolled clear of the blast. Maimed and bleeding, the beast roared once before racing back to the trees. Ianoma signaled to her two sergeants to find the creature and finish it off while she attended the fallen mech. The two acknowledged her as they launched into the air in propelled arcs that would take them into the trees in pursuit of the fleeing monster.
Major Barisor was just getting his mech to its feet when Ianoma approached. The damage to the Major’s falcis was not as bad as it might have been; only three or four plates had been torn loose, and the central protective cage had remained completely intact.
“Thank you, Captain,” Rhys stated coldly. Clearly he was unhappy at having required rescuing. “The beasts attacked in concert much more aggressively than I had predicted.”
Ianoma signaled in the affirmative without speaking. She knew better, having worked with him very closely for almost a decade. Her display reported the approach of her lance, so she ordered them on a tight patrol loop of the area. Three small, spider-like repair probes were already crawling over her superior’s falcis, gauging the damage and preparing to reaffix the detached plates.
Inside his falcis, teeth clenched, Rhys filed away this embarrassment for future review. He could castigate himself later; for now, it was enough that his mission would continue with only a minor delay. Waiting for the micro-mechanics to complete their works, he thought about his future following the capture of the renegade Max Haiden.
Copyright © 2004-2005 Jay and David Steele. All rights reserved.
yldbqjfn bvhguoja rfkesbxu vlyfuer cjhv myidoc mgcl
Posted by: qbxwe nfvjmiol | May 20, 2008 at 06:29 AM
would need good drugs to enjoy this freaky mind glop
here's a better (reality based) read
WORST SCIENCE JOBS
ORANGUTAN-PEE COLLECTOR
Their work is noninvasive—for the apes, that is . . . "Have I been pissed on? Yes," says anthropologist Cheryl Knott of Harvard University. Knott is a pioneer of "noninvasive monitoring of steroids through urine sampling." Translation: Look out below! For the past 11 years, Knott and her colleagues have trekked into Gunung Palung National Park in Borneo, Indonesia, in search of the endangered primates. Once a subject is spotted, they deploy plastic sheets like a firemen's rescue trampoline and wait for the tree-swinging apes to go see a man about a mule. For more pee-catching precision, they attach bags to poles and follow beneath the animals. "It's kind of gross when you get hit, but this is the best way to figure out what's going on in their bodies," Knott says.
SEMEN WASHERS
It's a job that separates the boys from the men, OK, OK, their real job title is usually something like "cryobiologist" or "laboratory technician," but at sperm banks around the country, they are known as semen washers. "Every time I interview someone I make sure I ask them, 'Do you know you'll be working with semen?' " says Diana Schillinger, the Los Angeles lab manager at the country's largest sperm bank, California Cryobank. Let's start at the beginning. Laboriously prescreened "donors" emerge from a so-called collection room that is stocked with girlie mags and triple-X DVDs. They hand over their deposit, get their $75, and leave. The semen washers take the seminal goo and place a sample under the microscope for a sperm count. Next comes the washing. The techs spin the sample in a centrifuge to separate the "plasma" from the motile cells. Then they add a preservative, and it's off to the freezer, where it can stay for 20 years. Or not. Thanks to semen washers (and in vitro fertilization), more than 250,000 babies have been delivered in the U.S. since 1995.
"The hardest part is explaining it to friends," Schillinger says. "But we do have stories." Like what? "Like the donor who was in the room for the longest time. We had a big discussion about who was going to check on him. Turns out he thought he had to fill up the entire specimen cup."
MANURE INSPECTOR
The smell is just the start of the nastiness. Almost 1.5 billion tons of manure are produced annually by animals in this country—90 percent of it from cattle. That's the same weight as 14,432 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. You get the point: It's a load of crap. And it's loaded with nasty contaminants like campylobacter (the number-one cause of acute gastroenteritis in the U.S.), salmonella (the number-two cause) and E.coli 0157:H7, which can cause kidney failure in children and painful, bloody diarrhea in everybody else.
Farmers fertilize their fields with manure, but if the excrement is rife with E.coli, then so will be the vegetables. Luckily for us, researchers at the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety are knee-deep in figuring out how to eliminate these bacteria from our animals, their poop and our food. But to develop techniques to neutralize the nasty critters, they must go to the source.
"We have to wade through a lot of poop," concedes Michael Doyle, the center's director. "If you want to get the manure, you've got to grab it. Even when you wear gloves, the fecal smell tends to get embedded in your skin." Hog poop smells the worst, Doyle says, but it's chicken poop's chokingly high ammonia content that brings tears to researchers' eyes.
FLATUS ODOR JUDGE
Odor judges are common in the research labs of mouthwash companies, where the halitosis-inflicted blow great gusts of breath in their faces to test product efficacy. But Minneapolis gastroenterologist Michael Levitt recently took the job to another level—or, rather, to the other end. Levitt paid two brave souls to indulge repeatedly in the odors of other people's farts. (Levitt refuses to divulge the remuneration, but it would seem safe to characterize it thusly: Not enough.) Sixteen healthy subjects volunteered to eat pinto beans and insert small plastic collection tubes into their anuses (worst-job runners-up, to be sure). After each "episode of flatulence," Levitt syringed the gas into a discrete container, rigorously maintaining fart integrity. The odor judges then sat down with at least 100 samples, opened the caps one at a time, and inhaled robustly. As their faces writhed in agony, they rated just how noxious the smell was. The samples were also chemically analyzed, and—eureka!—Levitt determined definitively the most malodorous component of the human flatus: hydrogen sulfide.
DYSENTERY STOOL-SAMPLE ANALYZER
In the early '80s, Virginia Tech profs Tracy Wilkins and David Lyerly studied the diarrhea-causing microbe Clostridium difficile in sample after sample after sample of loose stool from the disease's victims. They became such crack dysentery docs that they launched a company, Techlab, dedicated to making stool-analysis kits. Today, Techlab employs 40 people, 19 of whom spend their working hours opening sloppy stool canisters and analyzing their contents in order to test the effectiveness of the company's kits. You'd have to have a pretty good sense of humor, right? Well, fortunately, they do. The Techlab Web site sells T-shirts with cartoons on the front (two flies hover over two blobs of dung; one says to the other, "Pardon me, is this stool taken?") and the company motto on the back: "Techlab: #1 in the #2 Business!"
BARNYARD MASTURBATOR
Researchers who want animal sperm —to study fertility or for artificial insemination—have a suite of attractive options: They can ram an electric probe up an animal's rectum, shove an artificial vagina onto the animal's penis, or simply do it the old-fashioned way—manual stimulation. The first option, electroejaculation, uses a priapic rectal probe to send electricity pulsing through the animal's nether regions. "All the normal excitatory signals that stimulate ejaculation, like touch, sight, sound and smell, can be replaced with the current from the probe," says Trish Berger, professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis. "It's fascinating. Of course, this is a woman talking." Electroejaculation generally requires anesthetizing the animal and is typically used on zoo dwellers. The other two methods—the artificial vagina, or AV, and the good old hand—require that animals be trained to the procedure. The AV—a large latex tube coated with warm lubricant —is used primarily to get sperm from dairy bulls (considered the most ornery and dangerous of bovines). The bull gets randy with a steer; when he mounts the steer with his forelegs, a brave technician, AV in hand, insinuates himself between the two aroused beasts and deftly redirects the bull penis into the mock genitalia, which he must then hold tight while the bull orgasms. (Talk about bull riding!) Three additional technicians attempt to ensure this (fool)hardy soul's safety by anchoring themselves to restraining ropes attached to a ring in the bull's nose. Alas, this isn't always absolutely effective: Everyone who's wielded an AV has had at least one close call, and more than a few have been sent to the hospital. The much safer "digital pressure" is used mostly with pigs, who are trained from an early age to mount a small bench while the researcher reaches around with a gloved hand and provides appropriate pleasure—er, pressure.
CARCASS CLEANER
Natural history museums display clean white skeletons or neatly stuffed animals, but what their field biologists drag in are carcasses flush with rotting flesh. Each museum's taxidermist has his own favorite technique for tidying things up. University of California, Berkeley, zoologist Robert Jones swears by his strain of flesh-eating buffalo-hide beetles and has no problem reaching his bare hand into a drawer to pull out a rancid shrew skeleton swarming with thousands of these quarter-inch bugs. Jeppe Møhl at the University of Copenhagen Zoological Museum deposits sperm whales and dolphins into vast empty tanks and lets nature take its course. And then there's the boiling method, useful for chemically preserved samples that bugs won't touch—an approach favored by archaeologist Sandra Olsen, who has done her own skeleton work. She recalls a particularly vivid experience boiling down hyena paws: "It felt like inhaling the gases would literally kill us." Nah. It merely gave her a lung infection.
Posted by: Weird Science | November 03, 2007 at 02:58 PM
Keep it up guys, I need to catch up on my reading here. I am encouraged by your persistence in writing:)
Posted by: Curtis | October 25, 2006 at 02:15 AM
It's nice to see a new episode. The battle is heating up...
Posted by: David Steele Sr. | December 22, 2005 at 10:56 AM