First Contact

Chapter 523: Resurgence

General NoDra'ak looked at the gathered officers as he exhaled smoke.

"So nobody else received the template file or a tank upgrade?" he asked.

General Warkrawk shook her head. "No, sir. Just V Corps (Old Blood)."

"Do we know why?" General NoDra'ak asked. "This would have been disastrous if we had tried to field those tanks?"

Warkrawk nodded. "So, the tank was designed on Terra, part of the Force 86C Project. Full force modernization with lessons learned from the Lanaktallan War. The tanks we had, that replaced the tanks we had three years ago, were a stopgap to try to cover defects we discovered facing the Dwellerspawn."

"Right," Smokey 'No said. He shuffled the cards and dealt them out, politely ignoring how Ge'ermo'o squinted at him.

"The tank was fielded, was performing quite well. That means design moved from theory to proof of concept for the next tank generation sometime last year, even though the tanks we're all currently using are still undergoing full trials with Eighty-Six-Charlie," Warkrawk said. She glanced at her cards, then threw a chit in. "In in."

"Why is it still undergoing trials if we are using it?" A'armo'o asked. He glared at his cards as if they were to blame for his shitty hand.

"Standard Confed procedure," Trucker said. He tossed in the chits. "I see and raise."

"Anyway, we all know that the current Warsteel, based off of the old Cole-Bunch Imperium X, has been the standard for eight thousand years. There's always been pressure to improve on it or replace it with something better," Warkrawk said. She tossed two cards down. "Take two."

Smokey 'No nodded, tossing her two cards, keeping his face expressionless that he'd pulled her second card off the bottom of the deck.

"Well, a couple of months ago, Treana'ad scientists managed to produce a new warsteel variant, listed as Mark V, with the code-name 'Peanut Brittle Super Crunch', and immediately sent the data to the design teams," Warkrawk said. She made a face and tossed her cards down. "Fold."

"How long till the WM5 catches on fire or turns out to give you ball cancer?" Trucker wondered. He tossed a single card done. "I'll take one."

Smokey 'No dealt it out of the middle of the deck smoothly, without anyone noticing, after seeing Ge'ermo'o was busy picking peanuts out of the bowl.

"Probably next week. Anyway, there's a weight difference with WM5, as well as the new laminates having different profiles, so that means that tank's armor and superstructure needs redone. That meant that the designers had to push a new tank model to Force Eighty-Six-Charlie," Warkrawk said.

"How did we get it?" NoDra'ak asked. "Raise."

A'armo'o looked at his cards suspiciously. "Raise."

"That's where the fun comes in," Warkrawk said. "We suffered severe time dilation effects during the fighting here."

"And it affected the file," Trucker guessed. He grabbed a handful of pretzels and shoved some into his mouth.

"No. It actually just compounded a problem," Warkrawk said. She tossed another chit. "Raise."

Ge'ermo'o tossed his cards down. "Fold."

"What was the problem?" Smokey 'No asked, exhaling smoke and using it as cover to swap one of his cards with another from the bottom of the deck after glancing at Ge'ermo'o.

"I was with Eight-Six before being accepted to V Corps," she said. She took a hit off her drink and picked up a cigar, snipping the end off. "I was reassigned there due to the Die Off. I'd just gotten orders when we dropped in-system."

"The time dilation made it so that your personal timestamp and the shipboard timestamps, which the needlecast and superluminal communications array rely upon, was after your reporting date to this new unit," A'armo'o guessed.

"You got it in one," Warkrawk said. She lit the cigar with a match, puffing out smoke. "Since PERSCOM stated I was at my duty station and the fleet timestamp on my communications was after my reporting date to Eight-Six, I was forwarded that file," she exhaled a long plume of smoke. "I'll be accepting command of the Armor Testing Group. Since it was a testbed mockup, the file was locked so that unauthorized changes that were not directly from the planning group couldn't be added and mess up the trials. It was marked priority because they want to test the new warsteel ASAP."

"And so the file instructions were immediate replacement of all current super-heavy tanks," Smokey 'No said. "Call."

"Yup. I informed PERSCOM and a few other relevant groups that we're under temporal warfare protocols out here, so they might want to make sure that people are where they say they are," she said. She put down her cards. "Full house, nines over threes."

Smokey 'No laid down his cards. "Straight flush."

That brought cursing.

Smokey 'No shuffled the cards with one hand as he raked in the pot with his bladearm.

"That's one problem solved. Here's to solving tomorrow's problems before they cost lives," he said.

Everyone raised their glasses to that as Smokey 'No dealt the cards.

---------------

Vuxten limped across the dining hall and sat down at a table where only one person was sitting at. He dragged his cast around and shifted till he was comfortable.

"Evening, sir," Casey said, staring at his food.

Vuxten noticed he'd only taken a few bites.

"Something wrong with the food, Lance Corporal?" Vuxten asked mildly.

Casey nodded. "It tastes like cardboard and wet plascrete."

Vuxten nodded. He held out his fork. "Mind if I check it?"

Casey snorted, tapping the red jello with his fork so it bounced. "Go ahead."

Vuxten speared some of the sauce covered noodles with his fork and tasted it.

It was tasteless, slightly greasy, and the noodles were weird unpleasant mushy feeling.

"It's not in your head. Something's wrong with it," Vuxten said.

"Light was blinking on the dispenser. Figured it was still good for one more meal before it needed reloaded," Casey sighed. He pushed his tray to the side. "I'm not really hungry anyway."

Vuxten shook his head. "Go get another tray," he told the human, making a note on his datalink to talk to whoever was in charge of the food forges.

"Yes, sir," Casey said, his tone slightly mournful. He got up picked up his tray, and Vuxten watched him walk over to the big row of food forges. After a couple of minutes the human sat back down, the food on his tray steaming. Vuxten could see an omelette, an orange, a pack of vitamin supplements, and a glass of grapefruit juice on the tray.

"Breakfast?" Vuxten asked.

"I like omelettes," Casey said. He took a bite, closed his eye, and sighed in pleasure as he chewed.

Vuxten ate silently, watching the big human. Casey scarfed down the omelette before Vuxten finished his food, pushing the empty tray to the side and smiling.

"Much better," Casey said. He rubbed his stomach. "That hits the spot."

Vuxten nodded, setting his fork down. "Casey, do you mind if I ask you some questions?"

Casey sighed. "Is it about my religion?"

"Actually, yes," Vuxten held up his hand. "Religion was largely suppressed under the Lanaktallans. My people had a few old legends, mostly broodcarrier genetic memory, but nobody really had any religion, much less followed it with any adherence."

Casey nodded. "All right."

"But it's more than that. Most of your file is redacted. It's over nine hundred years worth the service record," Vuxten chuckled. "Your duty station list takes up twenty-two pages."

Casey nodded. "Yeah, I've been around."

Vuxten tapped his green jello, making it dance and ripple. "Religion is beginning to catch on with my people, especially in the military."

"You fought next to Chromium Phillip, met Bellona the Gravebound Beauty," Casey said seriously. "You fought next to living legends, got sent on a quest by them to save your entire world. I think that seeing two of the Biological Apostles would make it so the Digital Omnimessiah caught on."

Vuxten nodded. "My wife sent me a needlecast today. Apparently the Digital Omnimessiah has returned, and named one of my people The Widow, and has been seen comforting her. There's been reports of miracles. First and Second Telkan have seen the Biological Apostles recently in their ancient garb, not their post-Imperium avatars."

Casey closed his eye and inhaled. "That's... these are strange times, sir."

"Yes, yes they are," Vuxten said. "So you see, you're the only person I know who really holds tight to his religion, even if it hurts, even if it's difficult. I want to know more, so I know how to advise my wife, advise other officers, in handling what's going to be widespread really soon."

Casey got up, without a word, carrying his tray over and putting it on the rack. He grabbed a clean glass and got a drink of carbonated beverage, then sat down, still frowning.

"I get called a hysteric sometimes, sir. I've been called a zealot too," Casey said.

"If anyone calls you that, you come to me or one of the other officers of First Telkan," Vuxten said, his voice hard. "I won't have that."

Casey nodded. "I will. It doesn't help that my people are, well, there's been some history there."

"Is it relevant?" Vuxten asked.

"Maybe. I don't feel like it is, but others do, so maybe it is," Casey said. He sighed. "I'm seen as stiff necked," he noticed Vuxten's confusion. "That means I'm inflexible. I've been accused of being 'holier than thou' and stuck up and arrogant."

"Are you?" Vuxten asked.

Casey shrugged. "I don't feel like I am."

"I've never seen you treat any subordinate or comrade disrespectfully or with malice," Vuxten said. "You haven't been with First Telkan long and already you're praised by our NCO's and liked by the enlisted and a lot of the officers."

"Thanks," Casey said. He sighed, running his finger along the table. A reddish spark jumped, squeezed out from between his fingertip and the macroplas of the table. "I've been accused of holding people to impossible standards, or holding judgement on others."

"Do you?" Vuxten asked.

Casey shook his head. "No," he said softly. "That's a sin. Judgement laid upon others in arrogance and pride shall lay their sin upon you doubly. Guide others to their path, do not give in to the sin of pride and attempt to force others down the road you think they should follow."

"What's that from?" Vuxten asked.

"One of the Tenets of the Ninth Prophet," Casey said. "From the Book of Prophet's Wisdom, which isn't a bible, just the collected advice and observations of the various prophets over the last few thousand years," he shrugged. "My religion is a living religion."

"Like the Dee-Oh," Vuxten guessed.

Casey nodded. "Yeah."

"How come you left, joined the Confederate Military?" Vuxten asked, getting right to the point.

Casey clenched his jaw and fists, then obviously willed himself to relax. "A girl."

"Really?" Vuxten raised an eyebrow. "A girl?"

Casey nodded, rolling his shoulders. "I know, I know, talk about cliche. I fell in love with a girl, she fell in love with me, she married someone else. I left. I wanted her to be happy, but seeing her walking with him and laughing physically hurt."

Vuxten nodded. "I get that."

"We're emotional, my people," Casey said. He took a sip of his soda. "I'm close to baseline human. Original Gen-Zero Human. Not Terran. Not Solarian. Human. Genetic alteration outside of medical procedures for physical defects is forbidden."

"As is cyberware," Vuxten noted.

"Yeah. That and I reject cloned tissue," he gave a laugh. "There's actually an annotation in my medical file to be careful trying to run off cloned tissue in a vatbank with my DNA, it's been known to bork up the system," he smiled, a honest thing. "About four hundred years ago I had a commander who tried to 'prove' to me that cloned tissue was fine. He ran my DNA into the system and it blew out the entire clone bank for the base hospital."

Vuxten tilted his head. "What?"

Casey nodded. "He took a DNA sample, put it in the analyzer. He had the doctor override the warning and when they hit go for the cellular printer, the whole thing blew out. Even fried the local SUDS array."

Vuxten sat still. "Has that ever happened any other time?"

Casey nodded. He reached into his shirt and pulled out his dogtags. Vuxten noticed that there was a red tinted one. Casey separated that one and held it out. "NO CLONING" was stamped on it, along with an allergy code.

"Had a medic miss that," he tucked it back into his shirt and tapped his chest, "When I took the shrapnel. They ran off a new heart and right after it printed it blew the whole system out. Took the local SUDS node with it."

"Casey," Vuxten said gently. "Do you have heretics or those who turn their back on your religion?"

Casey nodded. "A few. They're rare, though."

"Can they get SUDS?" Vuxten asked.

Casey shook his head. "No. The SUDS scanning throws an incompatible neural scan error, if it doesn't just lock up and melt down."

"Have your people had any genetic modification?"

"No."

"When did you leave Terra?" Vuxten asked, feeling his stomach clench.

"Back when it was called Earth. Long haul colony ship, hypersleep, took about three hundred years for us to get there," Casey looked a little pained. "It was... bad. Things went real bad."

"How so?" Vuxten asked, standing up. "Come on, I wanna talk to Smokey 'No real quick and I want you there."

"OK," Casey stood up. "The Mantid attacked Earth right as our colony ship was leaving," he shook his head. "The Digital Sentience got damaged. The trip was bad. Real bad."

"I'm sorry," Vuxten said, stopping by the turbolift. "Did it affect your people greatly?"

Casey nodded. "Yeah. Kind of the reason I left and joined the Confederate military."

"Why?" Vuxten asked as the doors opened.

"We're a martial people."