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Metal Eyed Rats – a Chronicle of the Cyberian Death Commandos

Blip 1 – The Bunker

Commander Vortan scratched the necrotic skin around his cranial implant and gazed intently at the holomap. Before him, in vivid neon colours that danced and flickered in the semi-darkness of the command bunker, was a three dimensional display of the battlefield. Around the industrial looking projector table sat his Kraskom officers they looked tired and just a little afraid. He touched a small area on the map and immediately its pixels shifted and morphed to display a close up view of the area he had just selected.

“Comrades, our forces are grouped here and are set for heavy assault” he intoned “The Shogunate has chosen a formal defence, Kendo seems to want to fight us in the rubble man to man. In this I intend to oblige him.” A number of officers stroked their chins in thought “Why do we not just bombard these targets into dust with our orbital mass drivers?” one asked pensively.

“Because higher command has not assigned us any, comrade and it is not your place to question that wisdom!” barked a voice from the back of the room. Commissar Kang strode forward into the light just as a distant wave of explosions gently rocked the bunker, causing rivulets of sparkling dust to fall on to the projector table. Eyes that gleamed with fanatic intent stared at each officer in turn from behind a black, synth-leather facemask. “Remember comrades that you have only one duty, to obey!”. The assembled officers seemed cowed by his outburst and they lowered their weary eyes back to the map.

Vortan continued “The first wave of zomborgs, reinforced by warbots, will assault the enemy positions along this axis here” he said as he stabbed at the map with his long, dirty fingers. Death Commandos will form the second wave, while our mag-lev tank forces will exploit any breakthroughs and act as heavy reserve.” Another volley of explosions, much closer than the last, made the whole bunker shake violently and a hairline crack forked its way across the armoured structure’s ceiling. Vortan looked up at the pressure wave induced crack “They are walking that fire onto us, their cyber-ninjas must have us under observation!”

He snatched up his omni-comm unit that hung from a hook on his belt “Sector sum of the quadrant four alpha, malachite!” he snapped in CDC battle language. After a brief burst of static hiss a muffled reply acknowledged the order and gave a short, but alarming, situation report. Vortan grimaced and returned his attention to the assembled men. “It seems Kendo does not wish to wait for our assault and is putting in a spoiling attack! Return to your men, I need you all at your posts to deal with this!” he ordered.

The assembled Kraskom officers bolted out of the bunker, not even pausing for the customary salute as they left. After they had gone Kang turned to Vortan “The Shogunate is far tougher than had been expected.” he said. “I know” replied Vortan “Have the flesh recycling battalions put on stand by and try to find out what really happened to our orbital support.” Kang nodded and stalked out of the bunker, his steel heeled jackboots could be heard pounding the duckboards of the trench outside.

Blip 2 – Manitou

Svetlana Nevskaya paced forward upon the matt black omni-directional travelling floor of the Manitou control pod. Around her in the darkened surroundings of the secret control facility a hundred other suit operators also walked. They walked but they did not move, almost as if they were hamsters on a treadmill. Each operator wore a liquorice green skin-tight nerve induction suit. Each had a noticeable implant at the base of the skull that fire-wired them to their con-pod. One thousand miles away the 1^st Company of the 4^th Regiment Red Banner Manitou began to advance. The robotic powered armour suits responded precisely to the directions of their human operators in the secret facility, theirs was a satellite up linked symbiotic relationship.

On the circular walls of Svetlana’s con-pod micro-cameras implanted in the Manitou itself relayed digital pictures of the battle environment. She could see the shock waves of light orbital artillery as it pounded the Cyberian trenches and hear the deafening explosions of the impacts. She felt a lashing of tiny stings across her body as shrapnel and laser fire peppered the Manitou she controlled. Using only focused thought she overlaid thermal imaging onto the terrible vista before her and instantly picked out a number of human heat signatures off to her right. She pointed at the targets displayed on the pod wall and squeezed her finger on the trigger of an imaginary gun. One thousand miles away her Manitou levelled it’s phased plasma rifle at the same targets and let loose a burst of nuclear blue superheated plasma that instantly immolated one of the them. Off to her left two other Manitou came striding forward with their guns blazing. They liquidated the remaining targets she had missed.

“You are getting slow in your old age commander!” said a jovial female voice through the pod’s surround sound speakers. Svetlana recognised it as belonging to Tanya Olegavich one of her junior officers. “And if I killed them all Tanya what would be left for you to do?” she retorted in jest. Then, returning her attention to the battle, she spotted a wave of Neon Samurai warriors accompanied by Spider Tanks approaching from the East; her suit’s rangefinder put them at three kilometres away. “First company follow me!” she barked out into her microphone and activated the Manitou’s jump jet pack. Far away on the battlefield the lumbering plasteel hulk powered it’s way into the air and leapt the three thousand-metre distance in a single bound. Followed by the rest of her company Svetlana touched down just in front of the Samurai and proceeded to bathe them in fire from their suit’s shoulder mounted rocket launchers. The micro-missiles had high explosive fragmentation warheads that shredded unprotected flesh straight to the bone.

It was a savage little skirmish amidst the shrieking cacophony of a greater battle that swirled about them like an angry thunderstorm. Tides of scalding laser fire washed over 1^st Company while the nimble Samurai reaped a deadly harvest with their photonic Katanas. The Manitou replied with missiles and blue fire plasma and, in the end, Svetlana and her troops held the field and had the victory, though the cost was dear. Only later, as she watched her dead comrades being carried out of their con-pods on stretchers, did she realise just how many had fallen. She shuddered to think what would happen to their bodies after the flesh recycling battalions had had their way with them and hoped those black clad ghouls would never have to come for her, life as a Zomborg was no life at all she thought.

Blip 3 – Death of a Scientist

Kornilov looked at the results of the field trials and sensed his career was over. Sorrow was in his heart and anger also. For he knew that the experimental new Manitou had been rushed into action too early in its development. The fact that the 4^th Regiment had won its engagement seemed to be of secondary concern to his military masters. To them Kornilov had committed the ultimate sin, he had killed humans. Since the Time of Fire, when human populations were decimated by the digital holocaust, the Great Khan had decreed that only syborgs (synthetic biological organisms) were to be wasted in war. But the scientist’s invention could not be operated by syborgs, their artificial brains simply could not cope with the task, so he had been forced to use human test subjects instead.

The special dispensation required to send actual humans into battle had been granted on the understanding that Kornilov’s remote controlled Manitou would incur no casualties to the operators. But that had not been the case, the reverberation circuits had failed and when a suit was destroyed its operator could not disengage from the necro-feedback wave that rushed into their cerebral cortex. What the mind believes to be real becomes real to the mind, the operators died and in at least four cases their heads had actually blown up, spattering the control pod with red gore. It was a disaster.

Lost in thoughts of his failure, Kornilov did not notice the red suited commissars entering his laboratory, nor did he respond to their perfunctory request for him to go with them. They frog marched him out into the wire fenced compound of the secret facility and took him behind a large camouflaged barracks, whereupon he noticed a row of eight shallow, unmarked graves. A ninth grave stood open, cut through the permafrost by a laser. “Comrade Kornilov, you are charged with the crime of causing human death by negligence, the sentence is termination. However, because of your status, you may enact a request to transfer to the zomborg corps if you so wish. Do you wish to?” intoned one of the commissars, a flat nosed syborg with green eyes and wispy brown hair. The scientist shook his head.

A single shot rang out across the secret facility and a cold, snow flecked wind blew the sound away.

Blip 4 – Birth of a Scientist

The blood red coloured maturation pod hung from the laboratory ceiling, a slick and slimy sack of gelatinous flesh inside which something squirmed and writhed. Small spider-bots scurried over the wet surface of the pod cleaning and maintaining it, the time for birth was near and they knew that. The pulsing womb convulsed and the tiny robots withdrew up its metal placenta and back into a recess in the ceiling. Again the pod convulsed, but this time with more force than before and from inside it could be heard a muffled scream. Finally the flesh of the pod began to tear, one humanoid arm burst forth from its centre followed by another, they tore open a gash and a mercury like amniotic fluid poured onto the metal grilled lab floor. With a heave a naked human form flopped from the pod and lay there gasping for breath. Technicians clad in white rushed forward to help the newborn stand. It was disorientated and covered in gore from its birth, it swayed back and forth blinking and shaking as if experiencing gravity for the first ever time.

From behind a mirrored glass control booth set into the wall of the lab, flesh-engineers processed the data of the birth. This was the tenth incarnation of the Kornilov clone that they had fathered and they hoped that this one would be more successful than the previous few, which had begun to show tendencies of what they called longevity psychosis. The problem was simple; there were only so many times a human mind could experience death and rebirth before it was driven mad. The newly born tenth Kornilov would carry the memories of what it was like to die nine times and that weighed heavy on the soul.

Over the next few days the clone would undergo reality adjustment and orientation. He would be uploaded with the most recent memory-chip of his previous self and sent back to the secret facility to continue his research.

Blip 5 – Random Quote

“For every stimulus there is a response. Man is stimulated by his environment and this elicits response from Man. In turn Man's response acts as stimulus on his environment and this elicits response from it. This is a circle. The choices Man makes will always be limited by the environment’s capacity to stimulate and vice versa. The fact that an environment can be so stimulating as to elicit a range of possible responses should not be mistaken for free will. The fact that an environment only has a finite capacity to stimulate (and therefore elicit response) should not be mistaken for predestination.”

Oblax Blathscar “Anatomy of Revolution”