There comes a point for some mortals in which they transcend to a new understanding of things and sanity as we know it becomes irrelevant.
For most, it is the point at which they give up their mortality and be-come something else.
Dhohanoids are a readily apparent example. A person who has under-gone the Rite of Transfiguration has forever become a monster in every sense, even if from time to time he still wears the skin of a man. What might have warped his psyche once is now commonplace – suffering, death, destruction, and the existence of things that should not be. This is the world he now lives in and that is the set point for what his mind comprehends as reality. A Dhohanoid might be able to fake a psycho-logical evaluation if he tried to remember what he once was like, but for most those memories have faded.
Another example of such a being is a sorcerer who has transcended the World of Elements (see Chapter Eleven) to command magic outside the world we know. This route is difficult as the road itself erodes the un-derstanding of such a mortal. He must hope that he can overcome the pitfalls of insanity or progress carefully so that he does not lose himself to his own diseased mind. Once such a sorcerer has gone beyond his own mortality, his mortal mind goes beyond as well. No longer is bound by the rules of the World of Elements or of agreement reality and the things that would bend the mind of most mortals he now understands on a whole new level.
One might think that Tagers would qualify in such a category, but they do not. The Rite of Sacred Union joins a mortal in symbiosis, so they are not consumed the way those who undergo the Rite of Transfigura-tion are. Tagers retain who they are on a very deep level and do not sacrifice their precious mortality and core connection with other mortal life. They do, however, become more resistant to the things that cause a mortal mind to bend as the alien thing that is forever a part of them shifts, in some small way, their understanding of things.
CHAPTER NINE...life, death, and madness
reunion
The mission looked pretty routine. The Migou had overstepped their bounds again. They’d built themselves a little advance post further out of the DMZ that we’d have liked. Hence us. Drop in.
Plant a bunch of explosives. Blow the place up. Go home. Watch out for mecha.
We’d dropped two days out. Weather was nice, so camping was pleasant. Didn’t get to sleep much, though. We were on the move most of the time. Used all the usual tricks so that you’d have no idea we were ever there. We moved in on the bunker about an hour after dark – when we do our best work. There was that electricity that comes as everybody buried their fear and passed the point of no return.
Vora signaled from point. Ikura and Kurina moved into position. Slick like the wind and quiet like mice, you’d have had to been an owl to catch us in the act. All Nazzadi night ops squads are the best – don’t have to wait for the Humans to keep up. There was that pesky “our eyes reflect red if you shine a light into them,” but we tried not to do that.
I was up next. Sliding through the trees ninja-style, I hit the corner of the building. I poked my head around. Two Migou guards that I could see.
A couple Locusts sat cold. A Wasp hung in the air, daring something to have the balls. So far, everything was according to plan. The mecha being home was a problem, but only because one of them was still running around.
I waited there to see if our friend planned on staying or leaving. It looked for a while like we were going to have to do this the hard way when the Wasp took off on what looked like routine patrol. I finally gave the signal. You know those scenes in the movies? The ones where the crack special ops guys sneak up and take out the Migou in one silenced shot. Those are complete crap. The first one didn’t quite go down when he got shot and the other one took off and was making to talk to his friends.
We must have filled the damn air with a hundred silenced bullets – it sounded like a swarm of angry bees. But finally he was toast. As usual, they were hell to drag off. They’re like trying to move a downed para-glider. We got lucky because the one didn’t get to alert his buddies, so we were good.
After that, it looked fairly easy. The bunker was pretty straightforward, thanks to a certain level of bug predictability. Haily had the explosives – just enough to let the Migou know they were poking too far out of their turf. Okay, maybe a little more than that.
I think we all saw it at the same time. Radar started blinking. The way the things moved I didn’t need the IFF to tell me they were Nazzadi. Two Storms and a Blizzard coming in. You could tell by the way we were all looking at each other that none of us had any idea what was going on. This was supposed to be covert ops. What the hell were a couple fast attack mecha doing closing in at over 100 mph?
You’re supposed to be warned about these things ahead of time. And besides, that size a force was only even odds with what was sitting around here.
Not terribly tactically sound.
We just sat tight to find out what was going on.
It only took them a couple minutes to cover the miles of distance. We could hear them closing in.
There really is nothing like the sound of Nazzadi mecha tearing across the ground. They busted out
142
of the trees like hell on wheels, hit the makeshift parking lot, and came to a complete stop. The pilots crawled out of the mecha as the machines sighed and powered down. Nazzadi pilots. Old school loyalist to the damn bugs that cloned us Nazzadi pilots. I didn’t really think there were any of those left.
I thought we’d hunted them all down.
A few hand signals and it was obvious that our mission had taken on a new direction – a personal
one. First, we tie these chumps up. Second, we quietly place the charges to blow up the bunker and we wire some to destroy the mecha, too. And last, but not least, after the place goes up, we torture these two lab rats until they die.
Effing race traitors.
143
reunion
To say that mecha are the new war machine is understating things. It’s more like the introduction of mecha completely revolution-ized warfare. Not since gunpowder has an invention had such an impact on the tools and tactics of conflict. The D-Engine Operator Side-Effect gave the military something of which it never dreamed – thirty-foot tall armored infantry with the firepower to level build-ings. Versatile, fast, tough, and lethal, they are the primary tools of the Aeon War.
In this chapter, we’ll introduce you to the parts that go into mecha, as well as presenting you with many of the ones used in the Aeon War. You’ll find tough angular New Earth Government mecha, fast sleek Nazzadi mecha, strange alien Migou mecha, and monstrous amphibious Esoteric Order of Dagon mecha. You’ll also meet the mysterious Tagers, who fit nicely into a discussion of war machines though they are Vitality and not Integrity scale.
Now, let’s take a look at these systems in detail.