Jack McKinney RoboTech 11 Metamorphosis

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Sensor there was identical to the other in its physical shape, but its color
was a putrid, lit-from-within green. But in one particular way, this was a
very different scene: The Regis had manifested herself.
An oval energy flux surrounded by a blue nimbus, its long axis vertical,
hung over the Sensor. The mauve flux gave off solar prominences of light.
Within it were swirling lights and within the swirl, barely discernible in the
brilliance, was the female form of the Regis.
"Our Matrix is now approaching the bio-energy level needed for
transmutation."
Regis and Sensor were attended by several Shock Troopers. One of these
the Regis instructed, "Trooper, step forward!"
The Shock Trooper obeyed, somehow seeming subdued despite its immense
size and armaments. The incandescence played across its armor as it stared at
its ruler-deity, the Regis.
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"You have proved yourself time and again," she told it, "as both a
soldier and a shape-changer. In both these capacities you have helped ensure
the survival of our race. Your outstanding achievements won you the honor of
engaging the enemy in the Shock Trooper armor that now enfolds your being."
Her face was little more than a blank mask with shadowed eye sockets and
the ridge of a nose. "Now the time has come for you to continue your
evolution, to take the next step upward in the spiral of Protogenetic
progress! Are you ready?"
The Trooper, watching her with its single optical sensor, made a
biotechnic gurgling and a kind of hunching bow of obeisance.
"Very well! As I have spoken, so it shall be done! Prepare yourself for
disembodiment and transmutation!" The Regis flung her arms wide, and the green
Sensor was aglow. Energy crackled and sizzled through the Hive Center.
Vines of living Protoculture power snaked out from the Sensor to
envelope the Trooper. In another moment it seemed to be in a rictus of agony,
its superhard armor crumbling from it like plaster, as it stood in the center
of a globe of transplendence.
Abruptly the armor was gone, and a pulsating egg hung in the center of
the solar fury. "The disembodiment is complete," the Regis decreed. "You are
yourself, unadorned, without identity, awaiting transmutation into the shell
that will make you invincible!"
The egg beat like a heart. What it held was like the drone Rand and
Annie had seen, and yet unlike it, the product of a long evolutionary
progression.
The Regis gathered her indistinct hands to her blank breasts, palm to
palm. "Behold the final stage in your evolution! Behold the Enforcer!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They had moved so fast they had forgotten something. They were racing to save
a world, and particularly the Human species, but nobody had ever said anybody
was going to be grateful. It was just as well that they started getting used
to that fact then.
Xandu Reem, A Stranger at Home: A Biography of Scott Bernard
The Invid anome hung before the Regis, a minor sun throwing off streamers of
starflare. She threw her hands out wide, and the sunlet was swallowed up in a
roaring pillar of ravening power. It burned upward like a huge searchlight
beam, as something took shape within.
The light died and it was revealed. Twice the size of the Shock
Troopers, it mounted a shoulder cannon like theirs but had a suggestion of the
Controller's long muzzle. Its claws were proportionately smaller, adapted for
finer work, but much more powerful than those of the mecha standing around it
paying homage. It held all the power of the Matrix outpouring that had created
it.
Its optical sensor fixed on the Regis, the Enforcer awaited her command.
The cool, clean water felt so good that Lancer could almost believe he
was back at the o-faro, the bath. When he had lathered and rinsed himself, he
began a little Musume exercise, like the ones his masters used to give him.
Using a theatrical depilatory, he removed the hair from his chest, legs,
armpits, and so on. Then Yellow Dancer performed a maiden's bathing ritual,
abandoning self for role. Each stylized gesture and movement would make an [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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