Chương 209: Chapter 67: Hammerer Project

Aurele stood in front of one of the largest specimens, a beast that seemed sculpted from obsidian and amber. His voice, for the first time, held a tone of genuine pride, almost paternal. —The Hammerer Project is here, colonel. The biological hammerers. We named them that because of the massive… explosion they can generate. —He paused, letting the loaded word settle— We have spent nearly forty years trying to master their breeding, their genetics, their control. These… these are the best.

Bred, selected, trained, improved. They are the ultimate weapons. He looked at Selena, and in his light brown eyes shone differently, it was the reflection of a military scientist's fanaticism. —Though I admit they eat like… well, like beasts. The resource expenditure is astronomical. But above all… they are wonderful.

—He extended a hand, without touching it, toward the massive beetle, which tilted its head slightly, its antennae sensing the air— Insects that can hammer the air with such concentrated force, that no wall, no known fortress, will be able to withstand it. They are the hammer, and the kingdom… is the hand that guides them. Selena had sensed it for a long time, a dull restlessness in her chest that now echoed with the thunder of confirmation.

The place, the colossal coniferous trees, the monstrous beetles, the orange patterns on black, even the military red of her own uniform… everything was familiar. It was not memories that plagued her now, but the distorted and prophetic echo of dreams. She had been here. Not once, nor twice, but three times. The halom, that whimsical and cruel gift, had been showing her destiny with a clarity that now sent shivers through her. The giant beetles in stone tunnels, the men under her command, the impenetrable forest…

everything fit together like pieces of a puzzle that had been assembling in her subconscious while she slept. It is just as the blindfolded mage said, she thought, a bitter taste in her mouth.

"Correct and immutable." A power to see the unalterable future, and that which was always accurate. There was no escape. She had seen the hammer fall, and now she was standing right beneath it. After a deep sigh that seemed to draw the stale air out of her own lungs, Selena spoke, forcing her voice into a professional and controlled tone. —Wonderful… and terrifying —she said, her words measured— Coleoptera used as a weapon of war of the highest caliber.

Aurele frowned slightly, as if the negative epithet were a personal insult to his masterpiece. However, there was no reply, and his lips did not move. —I need more information about my specific duties here, lieutenant colonel. The tour of the chambers was enriching, but insufficient. —Selena looked him over with a gaze, almost coaxing him— I need the technical reports. I need to know: exactly how much they eat, how many of those…

explosions they are capable of generating, how resistant their chitin is, in what manner you trained them, whether it was with pheromones, classical conditioning, or something else. All of those questions. She paused, the air hanging suspended for a second in the room, only the faint sound of vapor mixed with the walking of the beetles filling everything. Until the marchioness, after her gaze locked eyes on Aurele once again. —And the most important of all: What is my true duty on this project?

Because as I see it, it is practically finished and operational. Aurele looked at her, and for an instant, Selena thought she saw a flash of annoyance in his eyes, quickly stifled by discipline. —The larvae consume between ten and fifteen kilos of enriched plant pulp a day, depending on the strain. The adults, once mature, require between ten and twelve kilos of solid food, plus five liters of sugary water. The maturation process, from egg to operational adult, takes almost a full year.

—The data flowed from his mouth with the precision of someone who has recited it a thousand times, as if he had practiced for this moment— They are capable of generating an explosive discharge every thirty minutes, with an effective cooldown. Each individual has a physiological limit of five shots before emptying themselves completely, but they can be replenished with food and rest. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

His body, which had remained straight due to military training, now leaned forward slightly, his gaze having shifted, becoming direct, unyielding. —His Majesty said that you, my colonel, were the best at order, at systematic organization. What we need, and what you have been assigned for, is a logistics solution for transporting the operational specimens. A wagon with a cage for each one would be… extremely conspicuous, slow, and vulnerable.

We need an efficient, discreet, and fast method to deploy the hammerers wherever they are needed. That is the last link in the chain. I see, it is just as I had imagined. Theron sees me as the solver of his problems, thought Selena, and an involuntary shake of her head betrayed her resignation. —It's because of the achievements he decorated me for —she murmured, almost to herself— Improving the medical system, implementing the scientific method…

I suppose he sees me as a prodigy of management, of the kingdom's logistics. She sighed, the sound laden with the weight of expectation. An expectation that now also looked directly at her in front of her; Aurele did not take his eyes off her. —Very well. Today I needed to rest; the journey was long. First thing tomorrow morning, I will need all relevant documents on my desk. She was assigned a private room, the most spacious in the barracks, with a desk of solid titarde.

It was clearly the commanding officer's quarters, and perhaps it had been built recently for her, because the wood still released a faint scent of resin and sap, a smell of novelty that contrasted with the thousand-year antiquity of the forest outside. Selena let herself drop onto the bed, sleeping a deep and dreamless sleep, a physical escape from the mental whirlwind. The following morning began with the metallic and penetrating sound of a bell.

She barely had time to put on the blood-red suit when a private knocked on her door. The boy, with a youthful face but serious eyes, handed her a stack of leather folders tied with twine. His uniform was an earthy brown color tending toward olive green, a single plain and practical tone, very different from the command red or the wine of the officers. It was the uniform of the troops, of those who do the dirty, quiet work.

Selena sat at the desk, with the aroma of new resin and her hot tea filling her nostrils and immersed herself in the reports. The history of the Hammerer Project unfolded before her eyes with chilling bureaucratic efficiency. It had begun under the final years of Richard Volgthar "The Visionary", passing the torch to his son Thaerón; since then, forty years of research had passed.

Selective breeding and rudimentary genetic manipulation based on selecting the largest and most social ones had transformed a native species of beetles of barely forty centimeters into these monsters of over two meters. Details were laid out with military precision: daily consumption, the reproduction rate of fourteen viable individuals per year for breeding, a low figure that explained the slowness of the project, and training using artificial pheromones synthesized in the alchemy laboratories beneath her feet.

The numbers were overwhelming: each beast consumed up to three tons of specialized food until reaching maturity, added to the expensive sugary nectar. The expense was astronomical, a black hole of resources that only the crown could sustain. Among the lists of scientists and consultants, one name jumped out, written in the neat handwriting of a report: "Bramis, head of the Science track. Chief consultant. Synthesis of colony, attack, alert, and reproduction pheromones."

The alchemy professor, the man with sad eyes who had shown her the etching with hydrofluoric acid, was up to his neck in this. His chemical knowledge served not only to etch glass, but to manufacture the chemical keys that controlled these war beasts. The crown's net was vast, and everyone, in one way or another, was a gear. The following weeks were an exercise in disciplined futility.

Selena walked around the camp, asking questions, observing, getting to know the hardened, specialized male and female soldiers who looked at her with a mix of respect for her rank and skepticism for her youth. She practiced her combat forms with Fjora in the training area, under curious gazes. She conducted "research" into transport options that she knew would lead to nothing. In her mind, she already had the answer.

She vaguely remembered, from another life, concepts of military logistics, of heavy cargo transport. She knew, instinctively, that the solution lay in taking advantage of the insects' own biology, in taming them for the long march, not in caging them. But Meilan's advice echoed in her head:"Search for a third way out, and if it doesn't exist… create it." And she did not want to create the way out that the kingdom desired. Her heart was clear only about its priorities: that she would not support the war machine.

So, she stalled, deliberately, in a swamp of useless paperwork, slowly investigating among the laboratory alchemists, among the breeder entomologists; questions came and went, but whenever they thought she was making progress, she asked for absurd things, knowing that bureaucracy would delay them regardless of her opinion. It was the most effective long-term strategy, and though she showed restlessness every night, something told her she couldn't keep going like this forever.