The Live Soldier Trilogy Box Set

by Liam Clay

  “Well how do you like that?” Peace says brightly. “Good thing you pansies have me with you.”

  Over a dozen minds start to talk at once, and it becomes difficult to understand anything clearly. Only Kalana volunteers nothing at all.

  CHAPTER 20

  Two days later, Ethan is leading me through a virtual training program for the sonic shear - a new weapon they’ve designed for us. Not one to waste a captive audience, he’s also using the opportunity to complain about Lucy.

  “I swear she wanted me to pass out.” He says sulkily. “Kept making me slam beers with her until I couldn’t see straight. What kind of girl does that, I ask you?”

  “The awesome kind?” I hazard.

  “Awesome? Try evil! I’m still hung over. Still!”

  “Ah, the two-day hangover. Undisputable proof that you’re getting old.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He mutters. “A saturday night out with the boys these days and I’m still feeling like shit on Monday.”

  “You should try the stuff we drink in the Underworld sometime. It’s made out of fermented kelp, ground up particle board and children’s tears. That shit will teach you the true meaning of hungover.”

  He considers this for a moment. “How does it taste?”

  “Like gin.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure, if the gin’s been spiked with garbage juice.”

  “Ugh, shut up - my stomach can’t take that kind of talk.”

  “Sorry.”

  It would be rude to tell him so, but I’m in relatively high spirits myself. With my pooled link experiment a success, the platoon now has a secure means of communication. Nor have the techs clued in that we all ‘passed out’ at the same time the other night. Most of them were already unconscious, it seems - bunch of lightweights.

  My feelings about having my secret out in the open are less clear. In a way, the timing couldn’t be better. Under normal circumstances my admission would have incited the group’s hatred, or fear at the very least. But now there is an incentive to view me as an asset, an inside man, as it were. But that doesn’t mean everyone is just going to accept me for who I am and move on.

  Beside me, Ethan goes suddenly still. It looks like he’s receiving instructions through his retcom. A survey of the room reveals that his colleagues have been similarly affected.

  “Holy shit.” He says a few seconds later.

  “What is it?”

  He turns to face me, trying unsuccessfully to mask how shaken he is.

  “Something’s happened. They, uh, want us to send you in.”

  The relative calm of recent weeks must have dulled my bad news sensing apparatus, because my response is, “In where?”

  Ethan swallows. “You know... there. The Hive.”

  Fear spreads through me like flames over an oil spill. “Are you serious? When?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Why do people keep asking me that? Yes, I want to know.”

  “The exact phrasing was ASAP or sooner.” He looks away. “Sorry.”

  All around us, techs are packing up their gear and making hasty goodbyes.

  “But don’t they know that we’re not ready?” I say as Ethan starts to edge away. “This has got to be some sort of mistake!”

  He stops. “It’s no mistake, bro. What you’ve got to do is stop thinking of this as a professional operation. Here’s what I’ll bet happened. Some government official calls Porter and says, ‘Hey, things are going sideways over here. We need you to send in what you’ve got right away.’ Porter starts whining, to which the official replies, ‘I don’t give a shit if they’re not ready! The election is six weeks away and Korezon is behind in the poles. He’s on the warpath, and it will be my head on a platter if we don’t at least make a token effort.’ So Porter throws up his hands and says, ‘Fine, but don’t blame me when they all get killed in the first five minutes.’ And he cuts the feed smiling, because now he’s off the hook if you guys don’t, uh, perform.”

  “So we’re being sent off to die so some middle manager can cover his ass? Typical.”

  “Totally.” He glances toward the door. “So anyway, I should probably be going...”

  “Hold on a second! At least tell me what happened to make them send us in like this. I deserve that much for getting you that sweet corporate apartment.”

  He sighs. “My promotion hasn’t been officially confirmed yet, but fine. Word is, the last convoy we sent to the Thresh never came back. Communications have gone down between the two cities, and no one has any idea when the next food shipment will come through. As it stands, Opacity will be starving within a month - right in the middle of the final election push.”

  “Ah. That would do it.”

  “Yeah, so we’re all rooting for you. I mean, we would have been anyway, but now... just take care of yourselves, okay?”

  And with that he scuttles away, leaving me to enjoy the sensation of having my balls retract into my body.

  .

  You may recall a time in your life when shit has ‘gotten real’ in a hurry. It takes a while, sometimes, for your mind to absorb the change. So it is with me now. I allow myself to be led into a staging area where we are hosed down, suited up, and armed to the gills with weaponry still imbued with that new armament smell. Then it’s onto an elevator and up into blinding morning sunlight. We find Porter there waiting for us. For the first time since I’ve known him, his hair is in a state of ever-so-slight disarray.

  “Listen up!” He shouts. “By now you will all have heard the news. For the record, I want you to know that I’m not happy about this. But my hands, sadly, are tied. Your orders are to infiltrate the Hive and run reconnaissance. The island has an advanced signal jamming mechanism in place, so we will lose contact with you the moment you set foot on their soil. But don’t go getting any bright ideas! As soon as you return from the deadzone, your retcoms will transmit everything you have seen and done in the intervening time. You have three weeks to find your way back out. If we don’t hear from you by then, it will be assumed that you have broken contract, and we will be forced to send the entire Underworld army in blind. Not to mention what will happen to your children.”

  “What if we don’t come back because we’re all dead?” Tiana asks.

  “I will repeat myself.” Porter says blandly. “If, for any reason, we fail to receive a transmission from you within three weeks, there will be severe consequences. Dying is no excuse.”

  “Lovely. And if we do make it back?”

  “Your transmitted intel will be used to plan the main invasion, and your children’s futures will be assured. Until then they will continue to be held in Kore Tower, just a few stories below the Aviary itself.” He flashes an intentionally fake smile. “Good luck.”

  We board a waiting troop transport in a daze. Then someone starts to sob. Peace tells the culprit to shut up; someone shouts at her to leave the guy alone. She tries to jump on the offending party only to have Delez intercept her. Tiana is laughing wildly, Fort keeps glaring at Lucy for some reason, and I can’t seem to snap out of whatever funk I’m in.

  “Hey!” Kalana’s shout cuts the discord like a chainsaw through string cheese. “I know everyone is frightened, but this isn’t helping.”

  Astonishment reigns. Then Lucy says, “Those are practically the first words I’ve heard you speak to someone who hasn’t popped out a baby. Why join the fun now?”

  “Because no one else was doing anything useful.” Kalana replies with a pointed glance in Delez’s direction.

  “How is this my fault?” The Fractal says defensively. “Oh shit, we’re stopping.”

  Eager to escape the conversation, I move to the back of the flatbed and peek outside. The view makes me flinch. We are parked on a stretch of cleared ground that leads down to a plasticized beach. Ancient containers litter the coastline as far as the eye can see, so thick that it’s hard to tell where land and water meet. Bad memories float
with the refuse.

  “What in the funky hell...” Tiana murmurs beside me. Turning away from the ocean, I see Tikal, Menta and Voranez waiting nearby. The method actors are wearing their usual fatigues, but Tikal is kitted out in the same combat armor as us. (No contest who wears it better.) They are standing beside what appears to be two planes having sex. One is a jet of the sort used to transport officials to the Thresh on trade missions. And strapped to its back is an exquisitely crafted glider. Painted entirely in sky blue, it has a sleek fuselage and elegant, upswept wings. Fascinated, I jump down and move closer. The others follow.

  It’s been a while since I’ve seen Tikal’s lighter side, and looking at her now, it’s hard to imagine I ever will again. Death row inmates have looked happier. (At least they’ve got a last supper to look forward to.)

  “It must be my lucky day,” she barks without preamble, “because I’ve been chosen to fly you poor bastards to the Hive.”

  “In which plane?” Tiana asks.

  “The glider. The jet is just to get us airborne.” She nods at Voranez. “Unless this dipshit panics and forgets everything I taught him about flying, that is, in which case it will be a very short trip for everyone.”

  There are a few snickers, and we all wait to see what the method actor will do. But he just clenches his jaw and looks away.

  “The glider.” Tiana repeats slowly. “And what are we supposed to do, hang from the wings?”

  She has a point. The cockpit barely looks big enough for one, never mind an entire platoon in full gear. Then I notice a sliding panel running the length of the glider’s underbelly.

  Lucy must have seen it too, because she says, “Are you fucking shitting me?” (I get the sense that she is impressed by Tikal, wants to make the feeling mutual, and thinks excessive swearing is the best way to accomplish this.) “Nothing you say could possibly make me get in there.”

  The pilot smiles dangerously. “It’s more what I could do that I’m counting on to convince you.”

  The threat rolls off Lucy like rainwater. “But why can’t we just travel in the jet?”

  “Because Opacity has been trying to fly normal aircraft over the Hive for years, but anything with an engine just drops out of the sky a click out. No one knows how the Designer does it. Apparently we sent a balloon that got within sight of shore last year, but the island has backup defenses as well. The results were...regrettable.”

  Lucy gestures to the glider. “And what makes you think this origami shitpiece is going to fare any better?”

  “Because three days ago this same model ran a successful coastal fly by.”

  “Where’s the guy who did that, then?”

  “So you would feel safer if it was a man doing the flying? Nice to see the women’s lib movement is alive and well. But since you ask, he crashed into the ocean trying to make a second pass. Don’t worry though, I’ve got more skill in my right armpit than he had in his entire body - may he rest in peace.”

  Tikal’s sarcasm and disrespect for the dead don’t faze Lucy either. “If you’re so good, why did they give the mission to him?” She asks.

  “Not sure. Maybe because I haven’t logged a single flight hour since they disbanded the RDC ten years ago.”

  This shuts Lucy up, and for good reason. The Regional Defense Corps is a fabled outfit. The last arm of the military to be scrapped by the Korezons, its former members are the only Opacians who can legitimately lay claim to the term globetrotter. Countless films have been made about their exploits. They are cast as the perennial mavericks, roaming the skies in their two seat spitfires, having sexy adventures in strange and factually dubious locales. Never in all their iterations, however, have they been depicted as anyone you would want to piss off, which is why all 16 of us are packed inside the glider’s fuselage a few minutes later. It’s pitch black, all but airless, and my face is uncomfortably close to someone’s butt cheeks.

  But before we embark on this insane expedition, I should probably give you another of my little history lessons. And I recommend that you pay close attention to this one, because it’s kind of important.

  As I’ve mentioned, the Korezon family has ruled Opacity for almost a hundred years. And throughout that time, they have always succeeded in presenting a united front to the world.

  With one rather epic exception.

  That exception was Sheva Korezon, elder brother of Carlel and heir presumptive to the family throne in his day. Now despite their political status, the Korezons have always self-identified primarily as business people. But Sheva was different. From a young age he excelled in both science and the arts, while spurning commercial concerns almost entirely. Jania Korezon, the ruling matriarch of that period, encouraged her son’s idiosyncrasies at first. She set him up with an internship at a leading Korezon-owned laboratory, where he worked alongside the best minds the government’s lavishly funded science program could produce.

  But in his teenage years, as Sheva began to fraternize with fringe intellectuals, black market surgeons and conceptual artists, her tone changed. Ultimatums were issued. Threats against his trust fund were made, and then acted upon. Opacity being Opacity, the entire affair was highly publicized. But even then Sheva had an almost preternatural ability to avoid cameras, and although stories of his bizarre exploits were commonplace in the media, footage of the boy himself was exceedingly rare.

  Increasingly desperate to reign her son in, Jania ordered Carlel to start closing down Sheva’s known haunts. (A task he carried out with vicious glee, as the brothers had always hated one another.) Since these were mostly creative enclaves of varying descriptions, Carlel quickly gained a reputation as a hater of the arts; a poor situation to be in, considering his family’s wealth derived largely from film. And just when it seemed like Sheva couldn’t cause his kin any more grief, he proved that he was, in actuality, just getting started.

  Helix has always been the principal rival to Korezon power. Aside from being their main film industry competitor, the breeders also stand in direct opposition on a range of core ideological issues. So when Sheva accepted a research posting with Helix, it caused a scandal of such proportions that Jania altered the succession in favor of Carlel. Sheva didn’t let that slow him down though, and over the next few years, some very weird stories started coming out of Helix. It was classic mad scientist stuff, and most people dismissed the tales as fantasy. But that all changed the day Helix expelled Sheva from their ranks, citing irreconcilable moral differences.

  At that point, everyone expected Sheva to go crawling back under his mother’s apron. But instead he took off to the Thresh. (Yes, you heard me correctly.) Jania was livid, but even in those days the Threshers supplied a solid percentage of Opacity’s food, and so there was nothing she could do but smolder. The farmsteaders are an extremely closed society, and so very little was heard from Sheva for some time after that.

  And then, about 20 years ago, word reached Opacity that Sheva was on the move yet again. He had fled the Thresh with the law on his heels, and was headed toward the city in an ancient one-man helicopter. Naturally, everyone assumed he was trying to return home. Viewing parties were organized across the city’s highest levels, with bets placed on what type of reception he would receive from his family. But the wayward son never showed. It was a great watercooler mystery for a few months, until fresh news started coming out of the Hive.

  To this day, no one knows for sure whether Sheva and the Designer are the same person. But let’s consider the facts, shall we? The media always characterized Jania’s eldest as a bright but troubled rich kid, bouncing from home to home until he ran out of places that would take him in. But when you strip away that preconception, a very different story starts to emerge.

  Over the course of a decade, Sheva talked his way through the looking glass of the three greatest technological powers in the region. And in each instance, he was given unrestricted access to the most cutting edge research available at the time. In the Korezon family labs
, he learned how to do organ transplants and other lifespan-increasing surgeries. With Helix, he engaged in selective breeding and gene editing experiments. And the Threshers taught him how to augment the human body with software and mechanicals.

  When you compare that skill set to the Designer’s, it becomes difficult to dismiss the possibility that they are one and the same. Most Opacians believe it unequivocally, and it is hard to overstate the fear and hatred they hold for him. There are a thousand reasons for this, but the strongest comes straight from the lizard brain. They are afraid that Sheva is trying to create a new race of post-humans, and that if he succeeds, everyone else will become yesterday’s news.

  So anyway, that’s who we’ll be fucking with when we reach the Hive. Assuming we ever escape this death trap of a glider, that is.

  “This remind you of anything?” Delez says from somewhere near my right shoulder blade. I think for a moment.

  “That net we fell into in Girders?”

  “Righto. At least there’s no one around to watch us squirm this time.”

  We lapse back into silence. I still need to talk to him about the whole platoon leader mess, but not where everyone can hear. Hmm. Collecting myself, I activate the pooled link. But this time, instead of latching onto the entire platoon, I roam the ether until I find Delez. When I get close enough, the connection initiates automatically.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Hi.” I begin timidly. “Sorry for barging in like this, but I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  I feel Delez run a mental scan of the link. “And it’s just the two of us? You’re a damn quick study with this new tech. Porter chose well.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

  “And I know what you’re going to say. But the more I think about it, the less I want the job.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, you’ve been leading teams under the Constant for years.”

  “Yeah, and look how great that turned out. She’s dead and so is most of my crew - all people I vowed to protect. I would rather focus on keeping Tiana and Francis alive. Morgan too, if we ever find him and Beta platoon again.” In the real world, I feel his shrug against my back. “Besides, I think you might actually make a good leader, if you would just get on with things instead of worrying about what everyone else will think.”