Mutons: Unit

Berserker

"Fighting a Berserker is fighting a drug-influenced mother with nothing to lose."

- Aegis

CODEX File ****

Subject: Muton Female Augmentations

Location: Blacksite ***

Author: Engineer Fectorian

The Muton females continue to be a tiring project to deal with. While they certainly have their value in producing Muton soldiers, I would find this project far easier to complete were I able to acquire some actually healthy Muton females. Their usefulness is too great to ignore, but only working with sub-par specimens with precious little to show for it has me considering scrapping the project entirely.

The main issue is their aggression, already naturally higher than the standard male Muton, but it is far worse after reaching the age of sterility. Sana might have been right in pointing out that constant impregnation might have adverse effects on their mental state. Not that these creatures had much of a mental state to begin with, but it is noticeably worse now.

Augmenting the body is fairly easy, as the multiple enhancements on discarded Mutons have shown, and females have a similar cybernetic tolerance that I can easily modify to accept more intrusive modifications. Unfortunately, even if the body accepts enhancements, it only makes the creature even more aggressive. More than once it has attempted to attack my assistants or myself.

It is irritating.

Obviously this is not acceptable for front-line combat, which only leaves trying to slave the brain to cybernetic enhancements. Initial attempts were failures, and further attempts have only seen marginal success. Unlike the males, females seem to reject modification to the brain for an unknown reason. This seems highly irregular, yet I cannot determine if it is natural or the result of years of constant childbirth.

I believe it is best to postpone the project for now, until I get healthy females, which will likely be when the Battlemaster decides he can live with Muton production being slowed down by a miniscule degree. In the meantime, there are far more viable projects to be worked on. Far more interesting ones as well.

Battlemaster,

As you have requested my overview of the units currently in use, I will continue with the Muton females, commonly titled as "Berserkers". The current role they serve is as a close-combat, armored unit that sows chaos within an opposing military force. However, current analysis indicates some inefficiencies in their deployment and stature.

The largest weakness of these units is that they are overly predictable, and thus that makes them easy to counter with outside factors such as enemy losses and unrealistic numbers to deploy. Berserkers are pumped with combat drugs to increase their aggression, yet this reduces their already low intellectual capability and results in a single genetically enhanced XCOM soldier being able to outmaneuver and kill it in a one-on-one match, which should be clearly mismatched.

Intellectual capabilities aside, the most obvious weaknesses are the legs, which despite being adequately armored, will not sustain heavy or concentrated fire and will leave them crippled and ineffective if wounded too far away from hostile enemy forces. Their regeneration is useful, but is too inefficient to be of any actual worth on the battlefield. The optimal place for them to be wounded is the torso or arms, where such injuries will not be debilitating.

Berserkers are also heavily vulnerable to psionic attacks of all kinds, as well as high explosives. The armor composition is simply not durable enough for high-explosive rockets, although it will absorb most grenades, excluding those of the plasma variety. The largest issue is that they can be negated with a variety of tactics long before they can actually make an impact.

Another potential concern regarding them is that in combat, they have been observed being highly unstable and show a troubling lack of distinction between friend and foe. The risk of this is reduced behind our lines, since I am aware that the Berserkers are conditioned to fight based on certain commands and shocks, but once they have ingested their combat drugs, such conditioning appears completely ineffective. Fortunately, by the time they ingest the combat drugs, their enemies are usually in front of, or surrounding them. Nevertheless, the risk of them turning on friendly forces in their bloodlust is not something that should be ignored. Steps must be taken to address this.

Upon further review, I am unsure that they have what I can easily identify as a purpose on the battlefield beyond simply using Muton females who have outlived their usefulness. They do not appear to be suicide units, as there is too much of a material investment in them, yet they also do not appear to fit a specific role in battle other than to cause confusion. This results in what I can only identify as a net loss of resources.

The immediate solution is to tailor these Berserkers to fulfill a specific role, and not simply throw them at an opposing enemy force with unknown results. Like all tools, they must be used strategically and carefully. I have noted that even if they do not ultimately kill enemies, they distract and scatter them until one of them is dead. We can utilize this against specific enemies.

XCOM in particular is vulnerable to Berserker disruption. One of their greatest strengths is holding down a position. Force them to move and their effectiveness is drastically reduced. This same tactic could also be effective on Defense and Attack-based psions, as it could force them to focus their abilities on the Berserkers rather than our encroaching forces.

For maximum effectiveness, Berserkers should only be used on specific groups of enemies, and in overwhelming numbers to ensure victory. I also recommend that the alloy composition in the leg armor be significantly enhanced to increase survivability and some might undergo genetic enhancement to remove pain receptors entirely instead of simply increasing tolerance.

- Disciple-7, Sargon of the Battlemaster

XCOM Autopsy MUT04

Species: Muton

Unit Identity: Berserker

Codename: Anaconda

Alien Autopsy Overseer: Head of XCOM Research and Development Dr. Moira Vahlen

Audio Notes of Dr. Moira Vahlen

"This Muton specimen is unique for several reasons, some apparent and some hidden under the armor they wear. These aliens have been designated as "Berserkers" due to their aggressive actions such as charging our soldiers with little or no regard for their own safety. The Commander, Zhang, and Patricia note a lack of any sort of cohesive tactics other than killing everything around it."

"Visibly, the Berserker is much larger than the standard Muton, though this might be due to genetic enhancement or steroid usage. While not being as tall or strong as an Elite, they are far stronger than an unmodified soldier and the alloy blades implanted into the armor on their wrist are capable of causing severe damage with repeated attacks."

"I am unsure as of yet if this consuming bloodlust the creature exhibits is actually natural, or the result of drug exposure or simple genetic modification. In either case, the question might be what the aliens hope to accomplish with such a creature, that I suspect might just as easily turn on them if sufficiently provoked."

Report:

The autopsy of the Berserker revealed many fascinating new details. First, these appear to be the first confirmation that female Mutons do, in fact, exist. These Berserkers are clearly not the same gender as the standard soldiers, and there are clear areas for incubation and birthing, thus seeming to indicate that at the minimum, these Mutons are capable of childbirth.

Which begs the question of just why they are being used as such violent soldiers? As far as I can tell, the genetic modification has not been of a greater level than standard Mutons, which seems to point to the fact that this indeed is the natural size of Muton females. The modification I have been able to discover is largely on the skin, which regenerates far faster than most other aliens encountered, with severe wounds healing in mere hours, not days.

There were also indeed trace amounts of an unidentified drug injected through the nose and blood as well, and it does appear to be some kind of drug that dulls pain, and increases aggression in the Muton. I have managed to recreate the drug as best I can, and surprisingly, effect on Human subjects is almost non-existent outside some disgusted faces and coughing. So it is clearly supposed to only react to Muton physiology.

This presents a potential opportunity. If such a drug could only be reliably used on Berserkers, I do wonder what the effect would be if regular Muton soldiers were exposed to it as well? Would they also turn into blood lusting creatures, unconcerned for their own safety? I do not know, but it bears further investigation into the possibility.

However, I will note that like the standard soldiers, these are not clones and do appear to have been naturally born. What was most interesting was the examination of the brains of these aliens. Every single one of them shows signs of breakdown, and can have clear deformities and discolorations in the brain, not all of which are combat related.

I have yet to determine if this is because of exposure to these drugs, or some other psychological reason every single Berserker exhibits these signs. It is curious, if nothing else, and is perhaps another weakness we can one day fully exploit.

Addendum – Aegis' Notes:

These Berserkers, to fully explain, are simply females that have outlived their purpose and usefulness. Muton females are treated much differently than males. During their youth they are treated as well as can be expected, as in, not physically abused. Little effort is put into them from an education standpoint, but they generally understand the basic tenants of language and can follow commands.

The reason for this is because every Muton female is a useful resource, and since the ratio of males to females in the Muton species is 3 to 1, they cannot simply be discarded until there is no genuine use left. Mutons mature fairly quickly, and the instant they are capable of bearing children, they are forcibly impregnated and moved to special facilities where they will do nothing but breed for the rest of their lives.

Muton females have no contact with the hundreds or thousands of children they produce over the span of their lifetimes, all of the surviving children are taken away and raised by Vitakara or Sectoid overseers and after a recovery period of a day, she will be impregnated again to start the process over and over again.

This has admittedly had the effect of reducing the baseline intelligence of the Muton female over several generations, which the Sectoids are looking into to see if it can, or should be, corrected. Although I doubt anything will be done, there is no need for intelligent female Mutons if their only purpose is for breeding. It would be a questionable use of time to say the least.

Muton females are fertile for roughly thirty to forty years, and after that time they are either euthanized and their organic material recycled, or taken away to be converted for combat. You have noted that these Berserkers seem less intelligent, and some of that is due to more than just the drugs. The effects of constant childbirth usually drive females to have complete mental collapses, and it is fairly uncommon for a Muton female to actually last the entire fertility cycle without losing her mind and trying to kill those around her.

This of course does not stop her from being forced to breed. Minds are not necessary for childbirth and the female is put into drug-induced comas until the time comes for birth, and additional drugs start and continue the labor process. However, infant mortality rates are far higher with females in this state, which is why they aren't put into something similar at the beginning.

The ones who emerge from the fertility cycle with their minds somewhat intact are sent to be converted into Berserkers. They are given no training other than placing them in pens and letting them out to often times fight against failed or discarded Mutons and under the influence of the combat drugs, usually rip them apart. Particularly sadistic overseers will sometimes place Mutons birthed from the female against her and watch her destroy her own offspring in her crazed rampage.

Berserkers are treated largely like animals, because that is what they have been reduced to. Whatever sentience they had has long been purged and is only replaced by rage and bloodlust. Most undergo a small bit of genetic enhancement, and there are certain conditioning commands placed within their brains that can force them to be temporarily controlled.

I believe that should answer many of your questions, Dr. Vahlen. The subject is a dark one, but it should give you context as to what you are dealing with here.