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To whom, Veronique did not know.

Chapter 3
    Otto
     
    They were times of fire, famine and blood. There was little out of the ordinary in that.
      Leutnant Otto Klein of the EU Deutsche Kybernetisch Spezielkraft leapt off the back of the copter onto the forest floor, feet pounding. To say he enjoyed war would be untrue – his modifications numbed enjoyment along with much else – but Mankind had made times such as these, and men had made Otto to be the man suitable for them. He took a certain Teutonic satisfaction at the neatness of that.
      Otto took up station in cover at the edge of the landing zone. The copter's turbofans sucked up the forest floor as it turned, weaving dust into spirals with its interference smoke. The smoke was a sophisticated concoction of programmable baffle motes; the activity at the landing zone would appear to anyone watching to be nothing more significant than a dust devil.
      The landing was professionally brief. The fourth member of Otto's squad leapt from the ramp as it began to close. The turbocopter rose into the air, dropping further counter-measures. Images of bare branches shimmered across lamellar camo as fan pods slid back into the copter's body and it turned. At the same time, air-breathing jets extended and whined into life. For a moment the copter hung in the air, then it shot off back towards the distant coast in the east and the EU mission there, a glimmer quickly lost amid the crowns of the dead forest trees. The shush of a suppressed sonic boom spoke of its passing, then it was gone.
      The dust dispersed and the landing zone fell eerily quiet. There were no animal sounds in this part of the jungle, not any more. Otto leant against the buttress root of a tree. It had been a giant; fifty metres of wood soared above him, bleached and barkless. All the trees were dead, painted white by the sun. The ground was red dirt where it was not grey ash or black charcoal, naked but for a few splashes of green where the hardiest of plants clung to life. This part of Brazil was among the most degraded of areas in a country fast becoming nothing but. Otto wondered why anyone thought it worth fighting over, but fight over it was what they had been told to do.
      Otto did what he was told.
      He snapped off the safety on his assault rifle, had his near-I adjutant check for faults, and ran a full-frequency scan until he was satisfied they had not been noticed, that no missile with tiny mind aflame with hate and suicide was burning its way toward them. He cleared the dust from his mouth and spat, spat again. The dust was cloying, his saliva thick with it. The dust was in his hair, in his clothes, in his food, it choked him while he slept. He thought: I am going to die with the taste of it in my mouth.
      His eyes slid shut, his adjutant helping him drop into a semitrance. He cycled his breath, clearing his mind. The forest retreated until he was alone in endless black, the adjutant discreetly waiting at the edge of his perception.
      Five seconds of peace, then the world rushed back. He was ready.
      He thought out over the unit's closed machine telepathy comnet. Squad sound off .
      The names of his men came out from the dead forest, each delivered directly into his mind by the mentaug in his skull:
    Buchwald, check.
    Muller, check.
    Lehmann, check.
      Their voices were distorted. The machine telepathy they employed stripped everything away from the words bar their literal meaning, rendering it in an emotionless monotone. It had to be that way; the near-I that translated their neurological impulses got confused otherwise.
      Kaplinski was slow to respond. I'm not dead yet, he said eventually.
    Less of the cynicism, Kaplinski. Use standard responses. When you get sloppy is when you get dead. Do you hear me?
      Silence.
    Kaplinksi!
    Yes, sir.
    Visual check, Otto ordered. He stared at the positions where each of his men hid. His near-I told him the others were doing the same.