“Form up! Form up! Secure the perimeter!” the smallgod SQUADLEADER inside one lion cries.
This time, one lion called Yttrium listens. She must listen. Her body knows how to listen. How to form up. How to understand the idea of perimeter. She turns away from the road to the steelveldt Szent Istvan. She never takes her eyes from one lion called Tantalum in the watering hole as she crosses back into the steelveldt Vergulde Draeck. She crosses the part of the steelveldt where the million black dead snakes sprawl but never rot. The smallgod MEDICALOFFICER send the words electro-plasmic wiring into her skull like a twig into the brain pan of a lizard. In the watering hole one lion called Tantalum roars:
“Enemy will come in range at 0900!”
One lion called Yttrium crosses the part of the steelveldt where the wings of the billion dead butterflies lie shattered. The smallgod MEDICALOFFICER writes the words navigational arrays on the inside of her eyelids. In the watering hole, one lion called Radium approaches one lion called Tantalum. The smallgod GUNNERMAN inside one lion rumbles:
“Nathan, this is a shitty life and you know it. We should have majored in Literature.”
One lion called Tantalum roars another form up! before answering: “Yeah? You ever tried to write a poem, Izzie? You’d get two lines into a damn haiku and quit because it didn’t shoot lasers of death and kickback into your teeth.”
One lion called Yttrium crosses into the part of the steelveldt where the hundred thousand dead silver scorpions lie barbed and broken. The smallgod MEDICALOFFICER wraps the words weapons hold around her heart.
One lion called Radium laughs so that her black teeth catch the heavy gold light of the endless dusk of the watering hole. “True. Drink?”
“Drink,” agrees the smallgod SQUADLEADER from inside one striped green male.
One lion called Yttrium crosses into the part of the steelveldt where the husks of giant redpaw fruit lie broken open. The smallgod MEDICALOFFICER pushes the words radioactive sludgepack engine core into her soft palate. Other lions stand in formation. All of them carry the smallgod MEDICALOFFICER. All of them crackle with the musk of aggression. Their mouths glow blue. One lion called Yttrium experiences the sensation of a door opening and closing in a wall of ice. The experience takes place in her chest and in her muzzle. One lion called Yttrium stops. She becomes six hundred lions.
Six hundred lions called Emma roar.
PROGRESS REPORT: PROJECT Myrmidion
Logged by: Dr. Pietro S. Aguirre, Senior Research Fellow, V.S.S. Szent Istvan
Attention: Captain Griet Hulle, V.S.S. Johannesburg
Captain Bernard Saikkonen, V.S.S. Vergulde Draeck
This is a classic good news/bad news situation. The good news is that the project has achieved an enormous measure of success and is ready to deploy in small trials. I foresee few to no field issues. We recommend Planetoid 94BR110 (Snegurechka) for initial mid-range testing. There is a small colony of about fifteen hundred on Snegurechka, enough that any transcription errors will quickly become apparent. I have great confidence. We should be able to disperse the sludgeware into the atmosphere and, within six to eight days, have a squadron of about fifteen hundred fully trained soldiers, networked into a cooperative and highly adaptive real-time engagement matrix, which will program itself to conform to the cultural expectations of the subject in order to create a seamless installation. The population should split, more or less equally, among the eight typoprints specified. No adverse medical effects are anticipated. The sludge works with the organic material at hand, enhancing and fortifying it. If anything, they should end up in better health than before.
Now, the bad news. It has not proved possible to separate the skillsets of the typoprints from the personalities of the personnel from whom we pulled the prints. In a way, this makes sense—the process of learning is a deeply personal and individualized one. We do not only retain facts or muscle memory, but private contextual sense-tags. The smell of the foxglove growing in the summer when we took fencing lessons for the first time. The smeared lipstick of our childhood algebra teacher. Arguing about the fall of Rome with a fellow student who later became a lover. We cannot separate the engineer’s understanding of propulsion from the engineer’s boyfriend leaving her in the middle of her course, the VR game she played incessantly to blow off steam that summer, the terrible coffee at the shop near her dormitory. We may yet find a way to isolate the knowledge without the person, but it won’t happen soon, and I understand that time is of the essence. At the moment, the process of print transfer suppresses the original personality to varying degrees, and, as time passes, the domination of the print approaches total.
It doesn’t have to be bad news. The original squad consisted of basically stable personalities. They grew very close over the series of brief but intense missions we devised in order to achieve and log a full typoprint. (Casualty reports attached. Unfortunately, the final mission proved to be poorly chosen for research purposes.) They functioned excellently as a unit—they screwed around a lot, but these kinds of small squads usually do. Besides, no one expects these sludgetroops to last all that long. They are the definition of fodder. What difference does it make if they miss some guy back in Aberdeen for a few minutes before taking a shot to the head?
SIX HUNDRED LIONS called Emma race across the steelveldt Vergulde Draeck. Eight hundred lions called Ben lope across the part of the steelveldt where the husks of giant redpaw fruit lie broken open and oozing.
“You said you loved me!” bellow six hundred green lions called Emma.
“You never had time for me!” comes the battle cry of eight hundred lions called Ben.
They collide. Black claws enter fur and flesh. Black teeth sink into meat. Many lions open their mouths. The blue heat and the blue light of the watering hole rips out of their great jaws. It twists through the static-roughened air. The sludgelight seizes one lion called Osmium and one lion called Nickel and one lion called Manganese and one lion called Niobium and one lion called Tungsten and dashes their brains against the floor of the steelveldt.
“I am alone.”
“She’s twenty-two!”
The jungle shakes. The jungle buckles. The jungle burns. The watering hole cannot handle so much information at once. It shivers. It cuts in and out. This also occurs in the steelveldt Bolingbroke and the steelveldt Duchess Anne and the steelveldt Johannesburg and the steelveldt Anansi and the hundred groaning steelveldts of the world.
“Don’t leave me,” shriek a million gasping emerald lions. “I’ll come home. All the way home. It’ll be good like it was a million years ago.”
“It’s too late. I don’t even think I want it not to be too late,” answer a million striped and bleeding lions too exhausted to stand.
SITUATION REPORT: PLANET 6MQ441 (Bakeneko), Alaraph System
Logged by: Captain Naamen Tripp, Y.S.S. Mariana Trench
Attention: Anna Tereshkova, Chief Prosecutor
Bakeneko has been profoundly impacted by the disastrous engagement in the system. The planet is covered in the toxic wreckage of some seventy-three ships lost in action, many the size of cities. Spills of every kind have contaminated the environment and several species are rapidly approaching extinction already.