Descent into Mayhem

CHAPTER ELEVEN - IN THE QUADRANT

945 Kilometers south-east of Lograin, 23H54, 13th of June, 2771

"Grove one-oh-thirty-one up ahead, fifty paces," Toni heard over the comm.

Hirum's voice was regaining that peculiar monotone.

He must be getting tired by now, but he's already popped all his pills, Toni thought, far beyond caring. Anymore and he is going to crash. Again. And then Unit Fourteen will again be autostriding in the rear along with a sleeping Grimm and a handful of burnouts.

Fifty gigantic paces ahead, advancing in single file, they came upon a grove of Diesel Trees. Essentially Baobabs with particularly bulbous bases, the trees elongated somewhat closer to their crowns, only to branch out in a particularly spectacular manner, exposing their broad leaves to the sunlight as far as ten meters from their trunks. Toni identified the likely avenue of approach and stood directly before it, putting a knee to the ground. Units Six and Ten quickly followed suit.

Without delay, eight exoskeleton-clad footmen clambered off each Suit, having until then been hitching a particularly bumpy ride whilst gripping the units' torso webbing. With little time before the main force's arrival, they dispersed into pairs at a run, each approaching a tree on either side of the avenue. Toni watched them momentarily, and then directed his attention to their surroundings.

He had given up imagining enemy formations hidden amongst the foliage; he was simply too tired for the mental effort it required. Instead he observed without searching, counting on his innate ability to spot movement and pattern, his mind too familiarized to the forest sounds to associate any ominous significance to the occasional creak or snap.

The footmen continued their work. The corporal nearest Toni quickly removed equipment from his comrade's travel pack and began to cut into a square scar at the base of the tree. The bark extended more than a palm's breadth into the trunk and was hard enough to require vibrating cutters, but once the block was excised, the far more porous interior was exposed and began to exude a syrupy resin. The other footman then plugged the hole with a square metal peg of just the right size, inserted a thin perforated shaft into the slot at the peg's center and shoved all two meters of it into the broad tree. The last few centimeters required some delicacy as he secured the shaft's base snugly against the slot's outlying lip.

Now came the easy part. The corporal's pack was almost entirely composed of the Portable Refinery Module, a 60 kilo-weight device intended to extract and refine the Resinin oil contained deep within the genetically engineered tree. Laying the PRM on the ground, the corporal connected it to the shaft's base via a wire-coated hose, initiating the diagnostic pump as soon as he connected his terminal to the device.

The pair had been quicker than their comrades; their PRM was the first to activate, the noisy pump breaching the silence violently enough to cause some upheaval among the nesting sparrows.

So much for noise discipline, Toni thought in disgust.

Shortly afterwards, the remaining PRMs added their voices to the din while their operators carefully gauged the progress on their terminals. Before a minute had passed all the devices ceased to operate, with the exception of the first; it continued on for a full twenty seconds more, producing a revving sound before slowing down and then cutting off entirely. The footmen, all logistics personnel, momentarily parleyed among themselves in an encrypted frequency before passing their findings over to Section One, LOGIS.

"Unit Six, this is Lightfoot, over," the corporal sounded over the comm.

"What's the verdict?" Bowker answered with his butch tone. Toni hadn't yet worked up the nerve to discourage him from talking like that. The macho voice sounded fake and Toni suspected the more senior footmen thought so too.