Blood Relative (13 page)

G-Soldat NG/181-Beta smelled the death scent of its team-mate on the cold air and stiffened, the tactical effects of Sigma's killing racing through its brain. The wound on its torso was severe but not crippling. In Beta's regimented mindset, it saw the burnt skin and organ damage like a checklist of plus and minus points: kidney impaired, blood loss increasing, epidermal integrity lost.

The G-Soldat's fight or flight reflex kicked in. The balance of the skirmish had altered radically in the last few minutes, the disoriented Souther soldiers suddenly gaining not one but two allies from out of nowhere - one of which had terminated Sigma without the use of a firearm. The sporadic laser fire from the second new arrival suggested to Beta that the shooter was inexperienced, but the lucky round that had hit him in the gut said otherwise.

All this, the reasoning and evaluation, raced through the warrior mind in a flash. G-Soldat NG/181-Beta's self-preservation protocols rose to the top; retreat and evade, it decided.

"What is that?" Ruiz asked, aiming his Blowpipe at the blue-skinned figure as it walked carefully down the ridge toward the troopers. "He ain't got no mask!"

Rogue tossed away the smashed fragments of the Mowzer rifle; he'd broken it in two after spotting the gun camera lens on the barrel, the transmitter still active. "Who's in command here?"

Zeke frowned behind his chem-hood. "I'll ask the questions. What's your unit?"

Purcell made a spitting noise. "Hell, Sarge, you know what he is! It's the Rogue, man. The Rogue Trooper." She shook her head. "Skev me. In the flesh!"

"Stay away, you monster!" Johnson had his rifle raised and aimed at the GI. "You're no different from those other ones!" He flicked a look at Zeke. "It'll kill us! Just 'cos the skin's a different colour, that don't mean nothing!"

"Stow it!" Zeke snapped.

"Well, that's gratitude for you," said Bagman.

Rogue stood clear of the soldiers, hands at his sides, doing his best to appear non-threatening. The GI had dealt with twitchy types like these on dozens of occasions and he wasn't about to give them an excuse to start shooting. He inclined his head at the broken church tower. "You were walking right into a sniper snare. I dealt with him."

Zeke eyed the splashes of emerald blood on Rogue's chest. "I can see that. There was another one, though..."

"Got away." Gunnar's voice came through the smoke.

Ferris emerged carrying the rifle and jerked to a halt as Ruiz and Purcell swung their guns to bear in him. "Whoa! Easy there! We're all pals here, okay?" He gave a feeble grin. "Southside? Yeah!"

The confederate rallying cry carried little weight with the soldiers, however. "Who the hell are you?" demanded Ruiz.

"He's with me," Rogue answered. "Gunnar, the other soldat?"

Ruiz's eyes widened as the rifle in Ferris's grip spoke in a disgusted snarl. "Flyboy here messed up my aim. I wounded the Nort, but it cut and ran before I could finish him off."

The Souther soldier blinked. "Dead men talking. Now I seen it all."

"Yeah, we're a real freak show," added Helm.

Johnson mumbled a prayer under his breath. Zeke gave him another hard look, then waved down the soldiers. "I suppose we should thank you."

"Yeah, you should," agreed Bagman. "You'd be ventilated like your friend back there if Rogue hadn't waded in."

The GI crossed over to Ferris and accepted his rifle. "How come you're out this far?"

Zeke shifted uncomfortably. "We got cut off from our unit... Lost the radio. Norts didn't give us time to take a breath and get our bearings."

"That's their way," Rogue nodded. "I'm looking for somewhere called Domain Delta, a Nort base hidden in the zone. You heard of it?"

"Inside the zone?" Purcell tapped her mask thoughtfully. "We did get reports of an enemy convoy passing through recently; couple of Nort atmocraft heading out into the wilds. There's nothing out there, though. Seemed pretty strange."

"Could have been supplies for Delta," said Ferris.

"Maybe." Rogue considered the soldiers for a moment.

"We need to get back to our lines," Zeke insisted. "I imagine you won't be following us, though, what with you being a deserter and all..."

The thinly-veiled insult didn't rankle the GI; he'd heard it too many times. Rogue pointed to the south. "That way. You start walking now and you'll hit allied turf in a day or so. But you better be ready for more of those Nort G-Soldats and their buddies."

"What do you mean?" said Ruiz, failing to keep the fear from his voice.

"I know their kind," Rogue said without irony. "They're not going to stop hunting you until they got all your scalps. It's how the Norts made them."

"You got a better idea?" asked Purcell. Behind, Ferris saw Zeke's expression harden; suddenly the sergeant's troops were deferring to the GI like he was in charge.

Rogue gave a curt nod. "We play their move against them. Set up a fire zone, let them come in and then waste them all."

"Here?" said Johnson, glancing around nervously.

"No, too open. We'll go deeper into the zone."

Zeke was suddenly aware that the other soldiers were staring at him, waiting for him to agree. He fumed inwardly; he couldn't deny that the Genetic Infantryman knew what he was talking about, but instant erosion of his command irritated the veteran. He sure as hell didn't like taking orders from this blue freak - but if the GI was right, they'd never make it back to safe ground.

"Fine," he said brusquely. "You take point, seeing as you know this plate-glass hellhole better than any of us... But any funny stuff and I'll waste you myself."

Rogue didn't acknowledge the order and started off into the glass. Ferris kept pace with him. "You sure this is a good idea, hooking up with these guys? Can't you just give them a digi-map and let them go?"

"They'd be dead in an hour," Rogue replied flatly. "Besides, you saw those Nort GIs. If they're being deployed in the Quartz Zone, then they've gotta have a base nearby."

"You think you could get a live one?"

The clone soldier's eyes narrowed. "We'll see. For now, it's the best lead I got."

Ferris was silent for a moment before speaking. "You're using those dogfaces as bait. What if they're not up to it?"

Rogue gave him a sideways glance but did not answer.

EIGHT

FIRE MISSION

As the elevator rose through the levels of Domain Delta, Kapten Volks nervously brushed stray hair out of his eyes and flicked a tiny speck of lint from the front of his uniform. The hour was late; he had been completing a triple-check of the perimeter sensors in the test range west of the domeplex when the autovox chimed on his communicator.

"Kolonel-Doktor Schrader requests your immediate presence in her chambers," it said. Johann knew from previous experience that such "requests" were not to be taken lightly and returned quickly in a fast fan-jeep. The line troopers and men he passed said nothing as he made his way to the elevator bank. Volks knew that many of them talked about him behind his back, making fun of his liaisons with the director. That bothered the officer; he was afraid that their relationship would erode his authority with the soldiers, making him appear weak in their eyes. Schrader's behaviour towards him did not help the matter. She was frequently critical of him in full view of his subordinates, on some occasions even openly mocking.

Just the thought of it made Volks's jaw clench, his fists tighten. In his darker, more secret moments he wondered what it might be like to strike her, to force the icy bitch to do what he said for a change... But then the tiny fantasy of his bravado evaporated as the lift halted and the doors opened at Schrader's personal penthouse at the dome's crown. Volks stepped out into the dimly lit room, the dark of the night through the plastibubble roof casting pools of gloom all around him.

"Reporting as ordered," he said, somewhat redundantly. There was a line of monitor screens glowing in bright actinic hues along a nearby console and one showed the empty interior of the lift. She had been watching him since the moment he entered the dome.

A shadow moved in the dimness and Schrader approached, her ankle-length laboratory coat moving like a cloak around her. She had a digi-pad in one hand and was studying it intently. Volks stifled a gasp as he realised that aside from soft deck shoes, she was nude beneath the lab coat. One glimpse of her lean, strong body made the Kapten's resolve melt and it took a near-physical effort for him to shut away his desire.

She saw the expression on his face and made a show of covering herself up. "Don't stare at me like an addled kadet, Johann. I have something to show you." There was a flash of mischief in her eyes, a certain knowledge of her control over him. "Something else." Schrader approached the monitor console and brought up a replay of jumpy vid footage on the largest of the screens.

Volks recognised the coding on the display immediately. "A mission log from the training cadres?" he said. The Nort officer looked to Schrader for confirmation.

She nodded, smiling thinly. "G-Soldat NG/181-Beta and 442-Sigma. Part of the evaluation group set out for live fire sorties."

"Yes, they were sent after that Souther patrol," he said. "They were ordered to track and kill them."

"I changed those priorities," Schrader noted. "I wanted to let the NexGen toy with them a little first." She sighed. "It's important for a good predator to know the pleasure of the hunt before the prey is dispatched."

The Type-K Genetik Soldats - which Schrader had christened the "NexGen" - were the product of two decades of playing catch-up with the Southers in the field of gene engineering. But they still possessed the flaws of their predecessors, and while the war on Nu Earth had rumbled on, Domain Delta had been set up to improve Nort bio-science to a point that would surpass the enemy's advancements. That had been the dome's mandate, but under Lisle Schrader's control, what happened in Delta's sealed sub-levels had taken on a very different purpose. Like everything in the facility, the G-Soldats were just serving the higher goal that the Kolonel-Doktor had envisaged, the secret design to which she ceaselessly worked. Volks felt a weary weight in his chest as he realised that he was just as much a cog in her infernal machine as the clone soldiers were.

Schrader was scrolling through the footage from the gun-camera at high speed. Volks saw flash-fast images of las-bolts striking Souther troops, figures whipping around and vanishing in churns of splashed red. "G-Soldat NG/442-Sigma was terminated," she said offhandedly. "A close range melee kill, it appears."

The Nort officer frowned, confused. The woman's tone was light, unconcerned. In previous incidents where her precious NexGen had died, she had been positively incandescent with rage. Moreover, the killing of a Genetik Trooper by a typical Souther was freakishly unlikely. "How could that happen?" he asked. "Those suds are no match for our G-units."

"Very true," Schrader demurred. "Soldat Sigma lost its life to something very different." A new emotion entered her voice; longing. "Watch."

The gun-camera footage switched to a new view of several Southers approaching a sniper point, then suddenly the image went wild, sky and ground flickering around as the weapon where the camera was mounted flailed around. Volks got the impression of two muscular shapes wrestling in the half-light before the view fell away to the dirt. After long moments, the angle shifted again and a single yellow eye peered into the lens, followed by a rain of static and the screen displaying the words: "Signal lost".

"I don't understand. What are we seeing?"

Schrader tutted and used two more screens to display freeze frames from the video. One was the close-up of the yellow eye, the other the two figures. She tapped the first screen. "I ran a comparative ocular scan. This optic does not belong to any of our units or test subjects. The age pattern indicates a far older specimen."

"Another G-Soldat?" said Volks. "Perhaps General Rössa-"

"Ach, you are such a limited thinker, Johann!" she broke in, her irritation rising. "Look here." She tapped a nail on the second screen. "I ran an image transform protocol on this display to clean up the image."

The still picture became washed out as the computer programme artificially added light and shade. Volks watched the two figures gain definition by degrees. One was clearly a Type-K unit, but the other... The other wore a mottled helmet low over his eyes, accenting a grim face locked in angry conflict with the G-Soldat. The helmet bore a circular sigil with the Souther nation's upward facing arrow and two letters.

"GI," Volks read aloud. "Impossible..."

"Is it?" Schrader retorted, barely concealing her eagerness. "The tonal analysis shows a skin coloration variance of more than twenty per cent between 442-Sigma and his killer. Blue skin, Johann! It's him."

"Here?" The officer swallowed hard. "Verkammt... The Rogue Trooper."

Schrader's hand strayed to her chest. "I want him. You will assemble a skirmish team of the best G-Soldats from the current crop and go out into the Quartz Zone. Find Rogue and bring him to me."

"Alive?"

She eyed him. "Don't be a fool! Of course! You understand what he's worth to my work? Rogue is the supreme example of a gene-engineered warrior, the toughest of his breed. He's lived through everything that Nu Earth has thrown at him and survived..." Schrader's voice trailed off for a moment. Volks felt unnerved by the sudden change in her manner. He felt as if she were revealing a new side of herself to him and the officer found it disturbing. "He will be most useful for the project," she concluded. "I must possess him."

"As you order, Kolonel-Doktor. But there are... other matters of concern," Volks said tightly.

Schrader's mood changed with the swiftness of a binary switch. "Elucidate. What petty anxieties do you have now?"

"Your dispatch of General Rössa has created unrest among the men. There may be a problem with regard to issues of continued loyalty."

"Loyalty?" she echoed harshly. "If I wanted loyal men, I would breed some." She prodded him with a slender finger. "It is your job to keep the troops in line, Johann, not mine. I expect you to handle your responsibilities with competence, dak?"