by James Evans
“Sir, we might be able to. We’d need a tech to operate them, though. A few minutes for each dropship, maybe.”
“Great. Get going, folks, I want those dropships on the surface and under our control. Milton, I want overwatch on the dropship bays. Let's make this an orderly retreat and deal with any crew we’ve missed before they have a chance to hit back.” They’d lost Fletcher and Parker when the monster on the bridge had attacked and he didn’t want to lose anyone else on the retreat.
Warden got back to the dropship bay more or less intact. He could feel a dull ache from his ribs though and his back ached. If he pushed it, he would be out of action himself.
This had not been a good day, but at least it was almost over. Nothing much left to do now but clean up, he thought.
Then the flashing red lights and a klaxon started.
“What the hell is that? Anyone got an idea what’s going on? Come on, people – is the bridge crew still alive?”
It was a long, agonising minute before Richardson responded.
“Err. Yeah, we have a bit of a problem, sir. We may not have as much time as we thought.”
“Spit it out, Richardson.”
“We’re falling out of orbit. Either someone scuttled the ship or we damaged something important a bit prematurely, sir. Maybe six minutes before it’s going to get a bit dicey launching these dropships. As soon as we hit the upper atmosphere, it’ll get really bumpy and very hot very quickly.”
“Acknowledged. Has anyone got another dropship ready yet? We’re in this bay and I don’t see a tech inside the cockpit.” Six minutes wasn’t long to get to the next bay.
“We’ve got two more going, sir. Can you get to the port bay? It’s closer than the stern one?” Goodwin responded.
“Roger that,” Warden responded, turning to his snipers and Marine X. “Get moving and keep your eyes peeled. If the ship was scuttled, we might not be alone.”
They moved out, darting across the dropship bay and towards the storerooms, moving fast. Warden ignored the tightness in his chest, gritting his teeth at the grinding sensation.
A chatter of fire from behind made him turn his head.
“Moyes, get the lieutenant out of here, now! I’ll hold these bastards!” Ten shouted over his shoulder.
Moyes dropped the railgun and inserted herself under Warden’s arm. They started to jog as fast as Warden could manage with her supporting him.
“Lieutenant, you’re bleeding. There’s blood all over my hand,” she panted.
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied through gritted teeth as they reached the dropship hangar, “it’s not my body anyway.” Probably explained why a broken rib was giving him so much trouble though, and why he was suddenly feeling cold. He’d probably caught some shrapnel when the giant alien had triggered Ten’s booby trap.
Then they were at the ramp of the dropship, pushing past Milton who was crouched at the base firing bursts across the bay. Warden tried to turn but Moyes insisted and bundled him up the ramp. She and Goodwin forced him into a chair and strapped him in.
“Get that stupid bastard Marine X back here on the double,” he slurred. Something was making his forearm hurt; he looked down to see a needle sticking out of it and frowned. Where had that come from? he wondered.
He heard shouting in the background, gunfire; then the world swam in front of his eyes for a moment or two.
Warden felt his stomach lurch, the distinctive sensation of a dropship entering the atmosphere.
“Back with us, Lieutenant?” said Ten, grinning from the seat opposite. Warden blinked. He must have blacked out for a few minutes. He looked down to see a blood pack attached to his chest and a tube leading to the needle in his arm. Well, that was a bit worrying. Judging by how alert he felt, they’d given him a combat stimulant as well.
“What happened? Milton?”
She was sitting next to Ten.
“We got two of the dropships ready, but you came under attack as you retreated. You’ve been bleeding for a while now. We’ve slapped a bandage on it, but you’ll need some attention once we hit the ground. The aliens backed off when most of you got to the ship and we laid down enough fire for Ten to reach us. We dropped the moment the ramp was sealed. Richardson hit the detonator as soon as we were clear. It blew a hole in the hangar and caused a fair bit of damage. I don’t think they’ll be able to pull the ship out of its decaying orbit but we’re monitoring it.”
“Good work, everyone. Good work,” Warden said, tilting his head back as the world shook and went dark around him.
Epilogue
“Captain? Can you hear me, Captain Atticus?” asked Wilson, leaning over the open pod.
Atticus raised his eyelids, blinking against the harsh light of the EDB. His new eyes stung and he felt strange. It was always strange waking up in a new body. Even though the blank clones came in very few varieties, a new one always seemed unfamiliar. The muscles hadn’t been used for ages. Neither had the brain, for that matter.
He reached up to feel his face, a habit that he’d had for years. The facial features were always the last part of the clone that the tank grew after the imprint was designated to a particular blank. Essentially, the face was finished last and often took a few extra hours to settle in. The old joke was that if you played with your face before it had settled, it would set in a strange shape.
The earliest blanks, when the cloning technology had first been deployed, had been left complete but the result was that an entire deployment of troops would look exactly the same, which caused an astonishing number of problems. Instead, a close approximation of the person’s real face was built in the final stages of clone deployment. It added hours to the process but it was better in the long run.
Wilson gripped his wrist before he could reach his face. His fingers felt odd on his skin.
“Wait, sir. We have to tell you something.”
Atticus croaked, “What?” His voice sounded strange.
The cloning specialist looked a bit uncomfortable.
“We haven’t been able to get our cloning bays working yet, sir. We had to improvise to get you redeployed.”
“What is it?” Atticus demanded, trying to get the hang of his vocal chords.
“Barlow, whatever it is can wait. I need to talk to the captain. Just hold your horses and I’ll get to you in a minute,” Warden said. He moved into Atticus’s eye line, supporting himself awkwardly on a crutch. “Don’t panic, Captain, but what Wilson is dancing around is that we had to redeploy you in an enemy clone. You’re in a military body, sir, just not a human one.”
Atticus pulled his wrist from Wilson’s grip and raised his hand. It was humanoid. Opposable thumb and four fingers, albeit unusually long and delicate. The palms were soft but the back of the hand was covered in scales.
“Oh. Shit. I’m an alien,” Atticus sighed. “You really had to put me in an enemy clone? Are things that desperate?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Warden, “but we’re still growing new clones in the remaining bay and repairing the civilian one. I thought we should at least try this, though, because we captured three alien dropships since you went down. We have dozens of their clones and a working bay in each of the dropships, so a trial seemed like a good idea, and I didn’t think you’d be happy if I used anyone else. I’m concerned they might have more troops deployed across the planet already. We have no way of knowing how many dropships landed or when,” Warden explained. “We destroyed the ship they had in orbit, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with them.”
“So we’re trapped planetside and the aliens could have a battalion of soldiers somewhere on New Bristol?” Atticus asked.
“No, sir, that’s what I’ve been –” Barlow started from the corner of the room but W
arden cut him off, “Marine, I will get to you in a minute.”
Atticus put an arm on Warden’s shoulder and pulled himself upright.
“No, let him speak, Warden. He looks like he might burst. What’s so urgent, Barlow?”
“They’re not aliens, Captain,” the tech specialist said.
There was a chorus of disagreement around the room and Atticus waved his scaled hand for silence.
“How do you come to that conclusion, Barlow?” looking at his hand as if to emphasise the evidence to the contrary.
“I thought something seemed odd, so I’ve been examining the bodies and equipment. I sampled the DNA of a few of the clones and ran it through the colony’s sequencer. It’s human, or at least, mostly human.”
“You mean these are human military clones? But they have a different language, different character sets to any Sol culture. They even have new technology like that chameleon coating. Are you saying they’re from Sol? A black op perhaps from another government or a corporation?” Warden asked.
“Not sure where they came from, sir, but the bodies are human. Brains too. I don’t think these are aliens in human clones. I think you’d have to clone an alien brain format to be able to imprint an alien mind on a blank,” he said, turning to Wilson for support.
“That makes a lot of sense, sir,” said Wilson, “I was surprised when we were able to deploy you to that blank. I thought they must have created an interface to edit their pattern so it would fit a human brain. We can’t imprint a human on a gorilla brain; the structure isn’t similar enough. If we meet an actual alien species, they’d need to adjust the brain of the blanks they were using at a minimum or else they’d never be able to imprint to them. The rest could stay human but they couldn’t get away with it without changing that.”
“Can you be more specific about who these people are, Barlow?” Atticus asked.
“Only if we contact Sol, sir. They might have records of the Lost Arks and we could compare the DNA we have here with the blanks that went out with the arks that went missing in this region. The earliest ark ships didn’t even carry blanks; they pre-dated cloning, so we can rule those out. We could rule out more recent ones if we knew when some parts of the DNA of our basic and military blanks were first used,” Barlow confirmed. “I’d need to contact HQ and send them a lot of data, though.”
“Noted. Draft a report and I’ll speak to HQ, explain the situation. Do we still have wormhole communications?” Atticus said, turning to Warden.
“No, sir,” said the Lieutenant, shaking his head, “they went down at some point while we were dealing with the alien, I mean, enemy base. I’m expecting it back up in a few hours, though. We prioritised it so we could get updates and in case we needed more deployments.”
“Okay. Get to it then, Barlow, we still need something to send when we have communications back up.”
“How are you feeling, sir?” Warden asked.
“I seem to have picked up a bit of a skin complaint,” said Atticus, staring at the back of his hand, “but I’m definitely better than last time we spoke. I need to get up to date. What’s our current strength?”
Warden gave a rapid account of everything that had happened since Atticus had died.
“So we’re down to twenty, including you, Captain.”
Atticus frowned.
“That could be better, but it could be a lot worse, Lieutenant. I’m sure our people sold themselves dearly.”
“They did, sir. We captured three of the four enemy dropships as well as a good number of their clones, including some heavily modified for combat. We also have a lot of their armour, weapons and munitions. It’s good gear, some of it is better than ours.”
“Well done, Lieutenant. Give me a moment to put something on and then I need to see the governor.”
“She’s waiting outside for you, sir. I told her we were going to try to deploy you into an enemy clone.”
Atticus nodded and began to get dressed. He slipped some underwear on without daring to look at what these people might use; he would worry about that later. At least this body wasn’t permanent. As long they could still back up their imprints, he’d be able to get home and leave this body for fertiliser.
He’d worn plenty of military clones in the past, but this one was different. The vision was particularly sharp and his hearing was excellent. He rapped a knuckle against the scales on the back of his arm. Tough but flexible. Nice, but he still wanted to get out of this body as soon as he could. He sighed and opened the door, stepping into the room beyond.
“Governor Denmead. How is New Bristol holding up?” he said, wondering if his scales were showing the blushing sensation he could feel creeping up his neck.
“Captain Atticus, glad to see you back on your feet,” said the governor, barely glancing at his new body, “or on someone’s feet, at least. We’re doing as well as can be expected, given the week we’ve had. Let’s go outside, and you can see for yourself.” She hadn’t batted an eyelid when confronted with his strange new body. A governor of the old school; not easily fazed.
An elevator took them to the roof. The building stood only four storeys above the ground but Ashton was a new colony city and lacked the horrific concrete canyons common to the metropolises of Earth or Mars.
“You can see the damage,” Denmead said, pointing at a number of locations across the city that had collapsed or were still smoking. “We’ve lost a lot of people too, and even if we had a cloning bay, it would take months to grow enough blanks to deploy everyone.”
“Warden tells me the enemy had four dropships but only one at their planetside base. There could be more of them out there. If I were them, I’d have landed across the planet and set up more than one base, then gathered intelligence about the colony. I’m not sure their grasp of strategy is that good, though. They strike me as a touch brash. Satellites down, I assume? Drones up?”
Warden shook his head. “We don’t have long-range scouting drones, sir. We’re repairing the fabricators and the production facilities and arming the citizens with whatever we can scrape together.”
Atticus thought about this for a moment as he stared across the smoking city. Then he nodded.
“We need to reassess our priorities; arming civilians won’t help if we have hundreds of enemy troops out there. Let’s get inside and take a hard look at the numbers,” Atticus said.
They took a final look across the city and then turned to leave the roof. There was a beep from a communicator in Governor Denmead’s jacket pocket. She took it out and flipped it open. “Yes, Johnson. What is it?”
“Governor, we need you in the command centre urgently.”
“We were just on our way. What’s wrong, Johnson? Don’t be coy, spit it out, man!” she said, a hint of impatience in her tone.
“A beacon, ma’am, on the edge of the system. Ships are dropping out of hyperspace," he said, his voice betraying a definite hint of panic. Denmead made a mental note to speak to him about the importance of remaining calm for the citizens of New Bristol.
“It’s just the fleet, Johnson. We requested support when we called in the Marines,” she said, turning to Atticus and rolling her eyes apologetically. Atticus frowned, the expression amplified by his inhuman face, and glanced at Warden, who was looking distinctly worried. What’s wrong with them? Denmead wondered.
“But there are no transponder signals, Governor,” said Johnson, now sounding truly scared. “It’s not our fleet. I think it’s them, ma’am. I think it’s the aliens.”
Denmead took a couple of seconds to digest this.
“We’re on our way, Johnson.”
She turned to Atticus and Warden and gave them a brittle smile.
“Well, it could be worse. It could be raining.”
Guerrilla
The Royal Marine Space Commandos Book 2
Copyright © 2018 by James Evans & Jon Evans
Cover art by Christian Kallias Infinite Scifi - infinitescifi.com
&n
bsp; All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Prologue
The rain was coming down hard across the valley, so hard the scout could no longer see the hills. He squatted behind a shattered wall and tried to shelter from the weather. The three other surviving members of his platoon were squashed together under what was left of the first floor of the building, all trying to stay out of the storm.
He tried the communicator again, tapping at the hardened controls and hoping to get some sort of response from his comrades. They had to be out there, somewhere, but they’d lost touch a few hours before. Then the storm had blown in and shut everything down. He fiddled with the communicator, switching to the orbital channel to try to reach the ship’s crew, but they weren’t answering either.
He swore and stuffed the communicator back in his pocket. Then he ran through the rest of his kit. Uniform, soaked and torn but mostly usable. Rifle and sidearm, both in good working order. His communicator was probably working, although it was impossible to be sure since nobody was bloody answering. But that was about the end of the good news.
They were out of food and water – ha, ha – but that wasn’t going to be a problem for a day or two. They had run out of drones, but they didn’t have enough energy to run them anyway. Worse, their low energy reserves meant they would soon have to ditch their armour if they couldn’t scrounge something from the wreckage of this damned city.
Most worrying was the ammunition, of which they had almost none. The colonists had put up a hell of a fight, for a bunch of civilians, and his platoon had been hard-pressed. Half his team were dead, their corpses spread across the last few blocks of the city as they had fought to extricate themselves from the trap they’d fallen into.