396: Chapter 396 The Forged Ancestral Sacred Stone

"Ancestral Prophet." Zhang Cheng's voice came through the satellite link with a very slight delay. "That is the highest honorific of the Makua people. You obtained it in just one day."

"I didn't obtain it. My mother did—the Fatima Mutale implanted by the system. She died in a fire in Palma in 1998, and before she died, she treated over two hundred cholera patients. Sebastião's son was one of them. These memories—" João paused, "—are fake, but the life of Sebastião's son is real. He is standing in front of me right now, thirty-two years old, with three children, and he helped me distribute three hundred rations this afternoon."

The communication link was silent for a few seconds. Zhang Cheng did not address the topic of whether the "memories were real or fake"—he didn't need to. He knew when he customized João that the memory implantation for an Advanced Death Soldier would generate a complete life story with a chain of causality. The pain, hatred, and warmth in this story were neurochemically indistinguishable from real memories in the implanted subject's brain. Truth or falsehood didn't matter; only the result mattered.

"The natural gas exploration site in Block 4 of the Ruvuma Basin—how far is it from you?"

"Eleven kilometers, north along the coastline," João said. "The onshore terminal is guarded by a platoon of government troops, thirty-two men, with light weapons, no radar, and no night-vision equipment. There is a two-meter-high barbed wire fence around the terminal, and a section on the north side was washed away by the floods during last year's rainy season and hasn't been repaired. The natural gas pretreatment equipment inside the station is intact; the French didn't dismantle it when they withdrew—they thought they would be able to return in a few months."

"They aren't coming back," Zhang Cheng said. "The control of the terminal must be in your hands. Legally—through authorization from the Mozambique government, or through a local community agreement. The latter is faster."

"A community agreement requires the signature of Council of Elders. Sebastião's influence is enough to get the Mueda village to sign, but to expand it to the entire coastal Makua community in Cabo Delgado Province, we need one more thing," João said, looking up toward the sound of drums deep in the coconut grove. "Something that will make the elders feel that 'the ancestors have agreed'."

"For example?"

"There is a 'Sacred Stone' at the mouth of the Ruvuma River—a granite rock eroded into a circular shape by seawater, which is exposed during low tide. In Makua legend, it was the first stone the first ancestor stepped on when walking from the sea onto land. In 2017, Total used a bulldozer to push the Sacred Stone away and drove the first exploration pile into it. The elders still refuse to sign any agreements because the Sacred Stone is gone, and the ancestors no longer speak to them."

Zhang Cheng was silent for a few seconds, then said: "Does the system have data on the original appearance of the Sacred Stone?"

"Total's 2015 environmental assessment report has photos and 3D scan data—a public version is available online, but the precision isn't sufficient," João said. "However, the geological modeling module in the system store can perform a reverse reconstruction. It would require consuming about—"

"Credits are not an issue," Zhang Cheng interrupted him. "I will send you the precise replication data for the Sacred Stone. You have the elders choose a location themselves, and I will airdrop it. Not pushed on by a bulldozer—it will 'appear' on its own after low tide. Let them discover it for themselves."

The corners of João's mouth twitched—an expression rarely seen in his implanted memories, and one he didn't even notice himself.

"There is one more thing." His tone dropped from a moment of lightness back to vigilance. "Strangers appeared in the village this afternoon. Two of them, wearing ragged fisherman's clothes, but there were no sand flea bite scars on their ankles—all the locals have them on their ankles. They stood outside the food distribution line for ten minutes, then made a three-minute call on a satellite phone. Then they headed south."

"To the south is Jial's territory."

"Correct."

"How do you plan to handle it?"

João stood up. The sea breeze on the lighthouse stone steps blew his linen shirt against his body, outlining the silhouette of the holster hidden beneath his shoulder blades. "I'll clear out Jial's scouts tonight. Then—" He paused. "Jial is worth three hundred thousand dollars. Killing him isn't worth much; making him defect is what's valuable."

"Go ahead. The arms airdrop is at 3:00 AM, with coordinates set for the beach four hundred meters north of your lighthouse. Use your medical pod's encrypted channel for the reception signal. The manifest: twenty assault rifles, two general-purpose machine guns, four anti-tank rocket launchers, twelve folding-wing reconnaissance drones, and—" Zhang Cheng paused, "—a seven-ton, artificially aged granite 'Sacred Stone'."

João turned off the communicator and looked up at the night sky to the south. At the edge of the coconut grove's shadows, two infrared heat sources that shouldn't have been there were moving—the heat emitted by human bodies, captured by his system's enhanced vision module as two orange-red humanoid silhouettes, slowly approaching the lighthouse along the abandoned breakwater.

He drew his dagger from his waist; the blade did not reflect in the moonlight—it was a ceramic composite material produced by the system, harder than diamond but half the weight of steel. He slid silently down the lighthouse steps, his bare feet treading on the sand as he walked toward the two heat sources.

Maputo, Mozambique Defense Forces Headquarters, 9:00 PM.

The air conditioning in General Makamo's office, the Chief of the General Staff, was set too low. Harper sat on a leather sofa with a ruggedized military laptop spread across his knees; the screen displayed aerial photos of Mueda village taken by a drone. The photos were taken at 4:00 PM that day—João was distributing rations under a baobab tree, with a line of about two hundred people stretching from under the tree to the beach.

"This man." Harper used a laser pointer to tap on the blurry close-up of João's face on the screen. "He smuggled himself into the country from South Africa three days ago and landed on the coast of Cabo Delgado Province. He has only been in Mueda for less than forty-eight hours and has already distributed enough medicine and rations to cover three villages. Satellite reconnaissance shows he has planted a Federation of Myanmar flag on the abandoned lighthouse. General Makamo, this is not humanitarian aid—this is the Burmese using the cover of an NGO to establish a strategic foothold on your country's territory."

General Makamo sat behind his desk, hands crossed over his paunch, his fingers rhythmically tapping the bracelet of the Rolex on his wrist. There were three stars on his epaulets, and hand-embroidered golden general's olive branches on his cuffs. A portrait of the current President, Nyusi, and a Mozambique flag hung on the office wall.

"Mr. Harper, your intelligence is very detailed," Makamo's English carried the soft palate tail of Portuguese. "But you have omitted one thing: Mueda village has not received a single grain of rice or a single pill from the government in the past two years. When the dengue fever outbreak occurred during this year's rainy season, seventeen children died. The budget for Doctors Without Borders was slashed, and the United Nations' relief supplies were held at Nacala Port by customs for three months—because your sanctions list designated that port as a transit point 'requiring special review.' Now, an unidentified African man has distributed medicine to the fishermen and saved their children, and you want me to send troops to wipe him out?"