The Soldier: The X-Ship

by Vaughn Heppner

  He pushed the box aside as he folded his fingers on the desk, studying Rohan in earnest.

  “From your description of the situation, it sounds as if the IPO monitors are set to destroy any vessel attempting to land, never mind leave Avalon IV, with the young woman.”

  “You are correct in your assumptions. I imagine it makes more sense now why the company has chosen you.”

  “No, not really.”

  “Oh. But I thought—” Rohan stopped and cleared his throat. It sounded like a man changing gears. “Ordinary procedures will not work on Avalon IV. Logically, that means extraordinary procedures are in order. Naturally, before we can begin a rescue operation, we must locate the young woman. She must be near the crash site, certainly, but every day widens the circumference of possibilities. We therefore require an advance team to locate her. According to my investigation, you are uniquely qualified to reach the surface, as you are a trained Anza Drop Trooper. Your specialty is finding missing persons. That dovetails perfectly with our requirement.”

  “You’re forgetting about the orbital monitors,” Brune said.

  “On no account is that true. It is precisely the opposite, in fact. Your training is highly specialized and hard to come by. I doubt if the monitors are programmed to target bio-matter, which means you should have no problem dropping onto the surface.”

  “You doubt?” Brune said. “You doubt if the monitors will target me?”

  “I understand your objection. You wish for clarity.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “We have calculated a sixty-nine percent probability that you will be able to insert without any problem.”

  Brune blinked several times.

  “In the unlikely event that the monitors do target you,” Rohan said, “the company has already begun to develop a foolproof deception plan.”

  “Super,” Brune said. “One thing confuses me, though. Who’s the fool, you or me?”

  “I am well aware of your penchant for ill-suited attempts at humor, Mr. Brune.”

  “Penchant? Did you just say penchant?”

  “Liking, proclivity, fondness, desire, partiality—”

  “Thanks, Rohan. I get it.”

  The man nodded.

  “Once you have located the young woman, you will signal us. We will provide you with the signaling tool, of course. After receiving the signal, we will launch a special retrieval boat. Have no fear concerning its ability to slip past the monitors undetected.”

  “Who said anything about that?”

  “Your manner has implied concern regarding the monitors.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” asked Brune.

  Rohan glanced at his silent partners. They didn’t respond. He regarded Brune again.

  “The company has developed a special retrieval boat. It will be able to enter the atmosphere without triggering any of the orbital monitors’ sensors. Upon its landing, you and the woman will enter the boat. It will lift off and slip to our waiting spaceship deeper in the system. The vessel will, of course, return you to Helos with payment in full.”

  Brune had his doubts about that, given that he’d be stupid enough to attempt this and actually succeeded. Anyone willing to flout the IPO as Rohan suggested would have no compunction about murdering him. They wouldn’t do it to save money, but to snip off any loose ends or possible leaks about what they’d done. Nor did Brune believe the young woman in question would ever set foot anywhere but where the company explicitly wanted her.

  What made Rohan think Brune would trust him?

  There was another thing. Until now, only three people knew about Brune’s advanced Anza training and bodily reconstruction. One of the three was Brune. Another was Dr. Halifax—he’d been the one who had figured it out in the first place. The last was Senior Lieutenant Dan Clarke of the Rigel Branch IPO. Would Clarke have put the data into the interstellar police computer? If so, it would have likely gone into the secret files. How would Rohan have managed to retrieve secret IPO data?

  “By your increased perspiration rate, you seem agitated, Mr. Brune. Why?”

  Brune’s eyes narrowed. Rohan Mars appeared to have much better than normal vision. Who were these three jokers, anyway? What tech company did they work for? Why were they such weirdoes?

  “I want to get this straight,” Brune said as he struggled to quell his slipping temper. “You really expect me to make an undetected space drop onto Avalon IV?”

  “That is the plan I outlined. Yes.”

  “And once I’m down on the Eden world, I’m supposed to find your missing girl for you?”

  “I spoke straightforwardly. Find and bring the young woman with you to the retrieval site. You will be amply compensated for your efforts, I assure you.”

  “Uh-huh. And what is the penalty again for trespassing onto Avalon IV?”

  “I thought I made that clear. It is death. But that is only if apprehended or successfully targeted by a monitor. The ample pay derives from the fact that yours is a highly desirable skill and that implementing it implies a certain degree of risk. High risk equals high reward. That is the way of the universe.”

  “That’s nice,” Brune said, “especially the way you say it. Now, let’s go back to the death problem. It’s death because the act is a felony offense against the IPO.”

  “You are wasting time stating obvious truths. Surely you must realize that time is at a premium if we are to successfully rescue the young woman.”

  “Bear with me a second,” Brune said. “I think you’ll find this interesting. In this case, a felony offense equals the death penalty, which makes this terribly serious. What you’re asking me to do necessarily means that you three are attempting to conspire with me to commit a felony against the Concord.”

  “If you are making this statement as part of your negotiating strategy—”

  “Rohan,” Brune said, interrupting him.

  “Mr. Brune, I have already explained that I made an intensive study regarding you and your background. I am aware that you awoke alone and afraid far from your native Earth.”

  “I wasn’t afraid.”

  “You have an exaggerated sense of courage and a dislike of openly admitting to what you consider the gentler emotions.”

  “Listen, pal—”

  “You coped with your predicament in a most awkward manner,” Rohan said, plowing past Brune’s objection. “I would think that a man such as you would feel pity for a young woman in a similar predicament. In fact, we calculated that you would want to help the woman avoid your unseemly and grotesque follies.”

  “I have a calculation for you,” Brune said. “Conspiring to break a first-class IPO directive—”

  “I understand,” Rohan said, interrupting. “You consider yourself a skilled negotiator, and this is a prime example of it. Unfortunately for you, Mr. Brune, I happen to know that you have little regard for the law and even fewer qualms regarding dangerous work.”

  Brune kept thinking about the retrieval boat—theirs—and him being in it at the end of the mission. He also thought how loose lips sink ships and elite tech companies.

  “Fortunately for you,” Rohan said, “I am authorized to pay you a substantial amount for your services.”

  “Just how substantial are we talking?”

  Rohan told him.

  Brune’s eyes widened. That was a lot more than he’d expected. It would easily cover his debts. But it was also easier to promise big money than to pay it. Besides, a few years ago, he’d gotten in a terrible fix by borrowing money from a loan shark in the Rigel underworld. He almost hadn’t come back from that. Even if Rohan was legitimate, accepting money for breaking onto a proscribed planet—

  “I should point out,” Rohan said, “that the woman’s ship malfunctioned. She was fleeing abductors. In the process, she skimmed too near the atmosphere. Monitors destroyed the abductors’ vessels, but by then it was too late for her. She had to crash-land on the surface.”

 
Instead of that mollifying Brune, that raised his hackles. “How do you know any of this?”

  Rohan showed his teeth in a poor imitation of a smile. “We are a highly successful tech company. We have large reserves of funds and have found it useful to pay well for the information we desire.”

  Brune studied the little prick, and finally shook his head. “No. That’s not it. Your company either hired or provided the crew for the ships chasing the woman. Something about you boys terrified her. How do I know? Because the IPO would never have sold you such data.”

  Rohan glanced at his silent partners. They seemed to all reach the same conclusion at the same time. As one, they stood quickly, knives appearing in their left hands.

  Fortunately, metaphorically, Brune had put a finger in the air and had seen which way the wind was blowing. He had been right that men who spoke so casually about breaking an IPO directive wouldn’t hesitate to take care of loose ends. As the three had stared into each other’s tinted goggles, Brune had leaned forward, slid open a bottom drawer and taken hold of a WAK .55 Magnum revolver he kept handy.

  As the knives appeared, so did the hand cannon. It was at that point Brune realized they didn’t hold the knives, but that killing blades had sprouted from their knuckles.

  That was it. Brune squeezed the trigger. The first retort was the loudest as a bullet with enough heft and punch to penetrate military-grade body armor left the short barrel and smashed against one of the silent partner’s faces. The small man catapulted backward over the chair, his head a gory ruin of pseudo-flesh and jagged shards of metal.

  Brune didn’t have time to worry about that as he swiveled the revolver just enough, blasting the second silent partner in the chest as he climbed over the desk. The man was ready for it, though. He didn’t blow backward, even though an evil-looking hole appeared in him. Worse, he coughed, spitting oil onto the desk.

  Brune pulled the trigger twice more in rapid succession. The WAK .55 Magnum short barrel had a massive kick. But Brune was strong, bigger than ordinary and used to the revolver. Still, the next shot missed clearly, blowing out a chunk of wall behind the thing. By that point, even as it spit more oil, it lunged at Brune, stabbing. The tip of the blade entered his left shoulder.

  BOOM!

  The next bullet caught the thing square in the face. That checked its lunge, causing him, it, whatever, to twist aside and thump against the desk.

  At point blank range, Brune fired two more shots against the ruin of its head. It was an instinctive, primeval reaction, like stomping on a snake. Parts flew off its pseudo-flesh/metallic head, and the entire body chassis sagged against the desk, out of commission.

  As smoke poured from the barrel of the gun, with his ears ringing, Brune realized that Rohan Mars was no longer in the office.

  He barely looked up in time.

  Rohan must have raced down the hall, for he stood by the stairwell. Without hesitation, the spokesman for the tech company vaulted the railing. He twisted in the air as he did so, and for a second, their eyes met. Brune stared into the dark-tinted goggles.

  Rohan fired a small gun.

  Brune heard the retort, and then his head slammed back as something hot shoved against his brain. It was the last thing Jack Brune the Earthman remembered as his shattered cranium slumped forward against his desk.

  Chapter Three

  On Earth, in a deep location in the heart of old North America, the big man floating in the green solution dreamed. It was an evil dream. In truth, it was an ancient memory, as he had been in stasis for a long, long time before those of Group Six found him and others like him. The dream, the memory, was of a time of battle. When he’d lived, he had always been fighting. The designers had made him for war.

  In the memory, the dream, he commanded an elite force. Wearing huge and battered battlesuits, the force clanked through a ruined city with fire blazing on the horizon. In the sky, comets streaked planetward. Those weren’t comets, of course, but meteor bombardment from the orbital battleships.

  A sound began ahead of them. Force Leader Cade—yes, his name had been Cade. In the dream, he couldn’t remember if that was a first name, a last name or a nickname. Cade rapped orders over the comm-link. The force members knew what the sound meant: people compelled by cyborg brain chips were screaming.

  “Kneel,” Cade said in the dream.

  The force knelt.

  Seconds later, from sewer openings in hidden locations within skeletons of buildings, masses of people surged. They no longer screamed, but were grimly silent. They carried machine guns, pistols, bottles, rocks, whatever they could find. Bullets pinged off the force’s battlesuits. Hurled grenades exploded but had no visible effect. The hurled bottles and rocks were jokes.

  “Fire,” Cade said over the comm-link.

  His force did, mowing down the charging people—zombies—in butchery.

  On Earth, in the tube of green solution, under the breathing mask, the big man groaned. He had never liked butchery, but he had done it because he was a soldier. He fought to win, he fought to survive.

  After the massacre, Cade gave the order. The force rose, their heavy battlesuits clanking through the field of smoking bleeding dead. One woman, who was twisted in death on the pavement, was missing part of her skull. Her gray matter leaked and oozed. Inside what remained there, something tiny and bright glittered.

  One of Cade’s force members halted, pointing with his flamer at the glittering thing in the ruined brain-mass.

  Cade grunted. The trooper pointed at a cyborg brain chip. The gesture was a comment on the war. The tiny inserted chip had overridden the woman’s personality, forcing her to obey cyborg orders. In this case, charging the battlesuits, making them use up ammo and battery suit power.

  What caused the big man in the tube to dream or remember such a grisly thing? Perhaps, as Dr. Halifax had feared earlier, the man in the tube could hear the outer discussion. Perhaps his sleeping ears had taken in the spoken words, using them to stir an ancient memory. Like all the other memories, this one faded in time, as other more pleasant ones surfaced.

  During that time, Group Six technicians arrived in the holding chamber. They connected a gas canister to the breathing apparatus, making sure the subject would not wake up. Afterward, they drained the green solution, opened the tube and grunted as they hefted the heavy naked man onto a gurney. They wheeled him out of the holding chamber, down a brightly lit corridor and into a large service elevator. Soon enough, they wheeled the big man into an operating chamber. A sensitive soul might have construed it as a chamber of horrors. The technicians were a lesser breed of scientist. They did not experiment to learn new things, but applied ancient lessons, using lost and then hazily rediscovered technology.

  The big man lay face-first on an operating table. The green-cloaked and masked surgeons used a miniscule saw, carefully cutting away a tiny piece of skull.

  Nurses blotted sweaty foreheads. This was delicate work. The Director expected efficiency and success. Failure brought swift punishment.

  A vital spot of the subject’s brain was exposed. The core element Dr. Halifax had brought all the way from Helos in the Rigel System was displayed on a sterile pad. In the bright operating room lights, the core element glittered. It was ancient technology. In fact, it looked much like the glittering thing in the woman’s ruined brain that a trooper had pointed out to Cade in his dream-memory.

  Several of the technicians knew what the core element was: ancient forbidden machinery. It was also one of the secrets of success to Group Six of Earth. Was it not a crime that the cradle of humanity had become a jerkwater planet of little significance in the era of the Concord? The Director, and those like him, surely thought so. The surface of the Earth still burned from the ancient Cyborg War that had destroyed the Old Federation. Earthmen lacked the resources to build gleaming starships. But Earthmen had the lore of thousands of years. If starships could not return glory to the homeworld of man, well, there were other means to do so.<
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  “Now,” the tall chief technician said hoarsely. “We insert.”

  Even though some of them had done this before, they hesitated.

  “For Earth,” the chief technician said.

  Still, the others hesitated.

  “If that’s not good enough, then to save our miserable skins,” the chief technician whispered.

  The surgical team acted, inserting the core element, shoving it into brain tissue. One of them saw slivers of fibers sprout from the core element into the gray matter around it.

  Immediately, the big man, the subject on the table, jerked.

  “Close the opening,” the chief technician said.

  It became a race. The subject moaned. He thrashed, straining against the restraints shackling him to the table.

  “We’re losing him,” a tech said, one studying a screen showing the subject’s vitals.

  The fight to save the subject took two and a half hours. He gritted his teeth. He howled, even though he was under heavy sedation.

  “Cade! I’m Force Leader Marcus Cade!”

  “This is supernatural,” a nurse whispered. “Where does he gain such strength of will? This should be impossible.”

  “Don’t be superstitious,” the chief technician said angrily. “It’s an old core element. It simply must not be operating as it should.”

  “What does that mean?” the nurse asked. She was not privy to the higher and oh-so secret knowledge.

  “Nothing,” the chief technician snapped. “Get on with it.”

  The team succeeded in the end. They sealed the tiny skull breach and used a healing spray to accelerate the repair. They even brought the subject near consciousness, turning him over on the table, the better to observe his reactions. The man had hard heavy features.