by C. S. Harte
Should the marines not ram into each other and survive the fall, the Voidi, or “Squid Faces” as they’ve been not-so-affectionately christened, waited for them in the jungle.
According to Fleet Intel, Gedia Prime had four Anchors, one in each cardinal direction of the super-continent, and four means of travel between this universe and the one where the Voidi originated. The Voidi commanded all four Anchors which meant four bases needed capturing to stop the flood of alien invaders.
Gedia Prime was a strategically important planet because it acted as a springboard to all neighboring systems. Whoever owned it, also controlled all sectors within the Alliance of Faith.
The Fleet Admiralty had been sending wave after wave of marines to take over the planet. As a lowly private, Dren wasn’t privy to the reasoning why so many of his clone brothers needed to die, over and over, on the disease-filled, spinning terrarium they called a planet. “Point and shoot at anything that doesn’t look human. That’s all you need to know,” Kara said to him the one time he found the courage to ask.
The overall squad mission objectives shined in the top right corner of Dren’s HUD.
Capture Eastern Anchor
Secure any high-value targets.
Fleet left the instructions vague on purpose, leaving it up to the soldiers in the field to complete the objectives however they saw fit. “Figure it out!” Kara would frequently say. “We cloned you with a brain for a reason!”
Dren closed his eyes, tired of staring into the face of his ghost. He hasn’t slept since his reshelling. Memories of the alien spaceship, RAI-17, and the Fleet Marshal haunted him; too many things were unexplained. Like the presence of Mimics. After the Battle of Final Hope, all Mimics were reported to have instantly died. Before getting on the Lazarus, Dren asked if Kingston and Jann remembered anything from the alien ship. They did not; their memory saves happened before stepping on the vessel of nightmares.
Maybe his recollections were wrong. It shouldn’t be possible for a clone to remember things that happened after his last repository save. Dren release a long-held in breath. Another possible scenario was that he was going crazy. It wouldn’t be the first time he saw something that wasn’t there or recalled things that never happened. As much as he wanted to believe there was nothing wrong with him, he couldn’t. Dren urgently needed help or at least a person to talk to, but the risk of being erased was too high.
He sighed and peeled his eyes open. The standing ghost disappeared. Time jumped forward four hours; they were minutes away from dropping onto Gedia Prime. Somehow Dren fell asleep without realizing it.
Commander Kara’s avatar popped up on Dren’s HUD. “Listen up, Dupes!” her voice blasted through the Tempest suit speakers. “In five minutes, we will enter Hell for Clones, also known as the Gedia Battlefront.” She paused as her eyes squinted smaller. “We have two Commander’s Intents,” Kara continued. A map overlay appeared on Dren’s HUD. It animated as she spoke. “Phoenix Company is tasked with taking Checkpoint Bravo, on the eastern side of the Gedia super-continent, 53 klicks from the drop site. You know the drill. Kill anything that doesn’t look like us. But capture the biggest, ugliest ones for interrogation. They probably know something.”
Kara continued her pre-battle briefing but her words melded into an amorphous blob inside Dren’s head. She gave the same speech each time the company headed into battle. “Kill, kill, kill. Try to be useful and not die.”
Of course, Dren didn’t want to die. It was a bizarre feeling to die, to feel a rush of air leaving your body as all your senses shut off at the same time. Other clones have compared it to falling asleep. Like going to bed one night, sleeping a dreamless slumber, then waking up somewhere else. Disorientating to be sure, but not painful and not something to fear. One line Kara would repeat to Dren and the squad, “Death is the last thing you should be afraid of. You’re clones. You’ll get reshelled, and you won’t remember a thing about your death. Be afraid of letting your squad down because I’ll kill you myself if you do.”
Her words rang hollow for Dren. Death was much worse if you could remember how and why. Instead of going to sleep and waking up in a different place, it was like waking up from one nightmare straight into another, complete with the memories of the previous nightmare.
Dren stared at the drop pod release switch, the emergency failsafe for when a dropship was hit. Pulling it while the craft was in warp would be suicide. Not just for him, but everyone on board. He wondered if it mattered if they died here or in the mud on Gedia Prime. Maybe something would fail with the repo system. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to be erased. Would my ghosts still haunt me then, when I no longer had a life to live?
A countdown clock appeared on Dren’s HUD, taking up a sizeable portion of his vision. The Lazarus was ten seconds from their destination. At zero, the ship would exit warp. The floor would open, and into the fray he would be sent.
Eight seconds.
Kara spoke again. Dren had tuned her out so well her voice dissolved into the humming of the Lazarus’ engines.
Six seconds.
The Lazarus vibrated. Dren’s orbital insertion pod swung into his neighbor.
Clang.
The jolt was nearly enough to prematurely disengage his pod.
Four seconds.
Crimson emergency lights flooded the ship. Something was wrong.
Two seconds.
The Lazarus left warp early. The pilot said something about too much debris to get closer. Dren switched his HUD feed to the external ship cameras.
Massive streaks of fiery blue light, rocketed from the planet’s surface, engulfing any Fleet ship it neared like an immune response. Anti-ship artillery. Almost immediately, the vessels inside would burst into flames then explode, taking with it all the clones on board; Dren’s brothers-in-arms.
“Almost there,” said the pilot through the static and chaos. “Trying to approach from a higher vector.”
“Phoenix Company!” Kara shouted, trying to match the level of discord on comms. “Let’s show them what we’re made…”
Dren noticed one pixel of blue in the center of his HUD growing larger and larger as it neared. That’s… heading directly for us…
Others on board noticed it. Screams filled the cabin of the ship, loud enough to permeate through his Tempest suit — a booming wall of sound; of death and violence.
The fiery ball of light consumed the Lazarus.
The floor suddenly opened.
Someone activated the emergency drop mechanism.
But the ship was too far from the planet.
Their current trajectory had them drifting into space, away from the planet, indefinitely.
Blue flames greeted Dren outside the ship.
One by one, the avatars of his squadmates turned gray.
The fires melted the outer layers of the drop pods.
External suit temperatures soared. Extreme temperature warnings flashed on Dren’s HUD.
After cooking for too long, The Lazarus exploded.
Blackness returned to Dren’s world, blocking out all light and sound. He was alone again, adrift in some dark void.
12 sol-hours later, Dren opened his eyes to see Walder, the technician who last prepped his shell.
“I knew you were a useless offprint when I saw you.” Walder sneered and moved on to the next shell without given time for Dren to respond.
The searing pain of being on fire lingered on Dren’s flesh. It pulsed in intensity, overloading the nerves in his skin.
“Is it too much to ask to not die so quickly this time?” Walder asked upon his return. “If it were up to me, I’d erase you right now.” He rubbed his chin. “Then again, if you offprints keep dying, maybe it’ll show the Commonwealth and Admiralty that clones are less capable fighters than humans and we can finally switch to birthing more real humans.” He pressed a switch. The glass tube holding Dren lifted. “Offprints are an abomination, you know. Something that shouldn’t exis
t,” Walder muttered under his breath.
This is torture. Dren closed his eyes. Dying over and over. Listening to this idiot blather about birther superiority. I should kill him… He doesn’t deserve to live. He’s not who I fight for…
A console next to Dren beeped.
Walder sighed. “What’s wrong with you now?” He glanced at the screen. “There’s something wrong with your nervous system. Figures. Offprints are so weak.” Walter snorted. He picked up a hyper-syringe. “Some opioids should make the beeping stop.”
The burning left Dren’s skin as his mind clouded.
“Not even a thank you?” Walder asked with his lips pressed together. “You’re lucky to have me as your corpsman, you know. Others wouldn’t bother giving you opioids.”
Dren tried to ignore the voices outside as he gave into the calming effects of the drugs.
“Integration and repo, then I can get you out of my sight.” Walder tapped away on his datapad.
Dren wanted to tell Walder the repo wasn’t necessary. He remembered everything about his death. But it was too late, Integration had started. Images flooded his mind. They immediately competed with the existing ones. RAI-17’s face rose to the forefront of his thoughts. She was important to him, that much he knew, even if he didn’t understand why.
After suiting up, Dren stepped into another orbital drop pod on another troop transport ship.
“Five minutes, Dupes!” yelled Kara from the front of the cabin.
Kingston stood inside the drop pod across from him.
Dren saw a faint outline of another marine inside the pod with Kingston. A ghost. Details were overlapping in his head — too many memories competing. His mind was fracturing. Much worse, he was aware of all the incongruent realities, and there was nothing he could do about it. No solutions he knew of short of taking his own life. Would that even work? Will I find peace in a true death?
“Dead and death are not the same,” the soft, melodic voice of RAI-17 echoed in his head. “In this universe, or any…”
A new set of mission objectives appeared on Dren’s HUD. The 6th Battalion had somehow taken control of the Eastern Voidi base. One of the Anchors was in Fleet hands. Phoenix Company’s new assignment was to defend it.
“Exiting warp in 10 seconds,” Kara shouted. “Phoenix Company, if you die again before we see combat action, I swear I will kill your next shell myself.”
The transport ship exited warp.
The floor parted.
Dren and his squad dropped into the planet’s thermosphere.
10
At 10,000 meters above sea level, Dren’s orbital pod exploded in half, freeing him from the capsule. Thrusters in the back of his Tempest suit sprung to life, firing in bursts, slowing his descent.
“Get to the Landing Zone!” Kara instructed over suit comm. “The LZ’s are marked on your mini-map as big fat, flashing red triangles. You’d be an idiot to get lost, and I don’t have idiots in my company, right Dupes?”
A million marines in drop-capable Tempest suits blanketed the skies of Gedia Prime, blocking out the planet’s class-M sun like a swarm of locusts.
Dren had trouble finding a suitable landing spot that wasn’t on top of another soldier. He was one of the last to touch the ground.
Jann settled next to him. “We made it, brother!” He retrieved his rifle from his back holster and removed the safety. “That was my first time surviving an orbital drop! It feels nice!”
Dren patted him on the back and smiled. “It gets easier. I promise.” As the words left his mouth, he knew it wasn’t true. But Jann returned the smile, and it made the well-intentioned lie seem all right.
His mini-map flashed as Dren checked his current position. Blue dots overlapped every pixel on his HUD. He removed allied data and switched to squad-only view, leaving 50 green dots representing Phoenix Company. 31.4 klicks northeast. Through thick jungle vegetation, it would take most of the day to get to the Eastern Voidi base.
Immediately, Dren’s suit cooling systems went into overdrive. External temperatures were 99 Kelvins. Humidity at 82%. Safe to say he wouldn’t be taking off his helmet on Gedia Prime.
“Huddle on me,” Kara ordered over squad comm. “Double time!”
She was half-a-click away from Dren at his 2-o’clock position.
With eye movements, he activated a speed neuromod and rushed to join his commander.
A thunderous sound boomed like a volcano exploding. Dren skidded to a halt and looked up into the sky behind him. Night came early as the temperature dropped.
Kingston caught up with Dren and stopped with him. “What are you looking at, marine?” His eyes followed Dren’s, peering up. A ship had just left warp and entered a synchronous orbit around the planet. The mystery ship was not a Fleet design. Fleet had nothing that massive, capable of blocking out all of Gedia Prime’s three suns.
“You don’t see it?” Dren asked. “It must have just come out of warp.”
Kingston panned his head. “See what? Our transport ships are too small to be seen from here.” He patted Dren on the head. “You should get your ocular implant looked at after the mission. C’mon, you know what the commander will do if we’re the last ones there.”
But… He was about to argue. Then the colossal ship stretched itself to an infinitely tiny point as it warped away. As quickly as it arrived, it disappeared, allowing sunlight and heat to return. How can something so big, move so fast? And did it warp without being inside a star’s gravity well?
“Dren, Kingston… Glad you could join us,” Kara said with a scowl. “We have two hours to rendezvous with Cheetah Company. Together, we’ll be relieving the marines that captured Epsilon base.” She turned her head to Dren and Kingston. “Since you two are the last ones here, you get to carry the heavy artillery weapons.”
Kingston glared at Dren.
“I’ll help you if you want, Pops,” Jann said.
“No,” he shook his head. “I’m not that old.”
“Form up!” Kara yelled. “I want two columns. We move out in one minute.”
Dren and Kingston bent over and picked up a cube-shaped camouflaged container, each weighing over 200 kilograms. A slight buzzing sounded as they activated their strength neuromods. Blue spiderwebs flashed on their faces for a second before fading away as a dose of specially engineered adrenaline coursed through their veins.
“Well, thank Hasha it’s only 30 klicks,” Kingston said as he hoisted the container onto his shoulder.
“I didn’t know you believed in a god,” Dren said after doing the same.
They took their position behind the rest of Phoenix Company as they marched through the alien jungle.
“I don’t know if I really do,” Kingston said after a kilometer to consider his answer.
“Do you think Hasha cares about clones?”
“I’ve been around longer than you have, Dren.” Kingston kept his stare forward as he talked. “Been to more places, talked to more people. My batch was one of the first created after the Battle of Final Hope. Long before Phoenix Company was even formed. That’s a long way of saying, I don’t know, I guess.” He chuckled.
Dren smiled. “So what made you start thanking gods?”
“Not gods. Just one God.” Kingston paused, choosing his words carefully. “One of my first assignments was on Ishin. There were Alliance survivors on that planet after the war against Mimics. Hundreds.”
“Mimics never reached their planet?”
“Oh, they did.” Kingston snorted. “These survivors hid inside a Hashan temple. Apparently, it was built with a huge underground catacomb, which was where we found them. My job was to coordinate their rescue and relocation. The planet was devastated, they would have starved if they stayed. And Fleet needed people for their new ship and clone factories. I watched as each person climbed out of their little hiding hole. Every time someone climbed out, didn’t matter if it was a man, woman, or child, they would look me in the eyes and say, ‘T
hank Hasha,’ with a bright smile. Their beliefs kept them alive during that impossible time.”
“They thought their god protected them but conveniently ignored that their god didn’t protect the rest of the planet.” Dren huffed. “Isn’t it cruel for a god to only care about some but not others? Why were they deserving to live but not the rest?”
Kingston shifted the cargo to his other shoulder. “A little girl named Shenna, their youngest survivor, asked me if I was Hasha himself that day. I must have looked like a God with all my gear and lights. I told her no. Next, she asked if Hasha sent me. I said, ‘No, Fleet did.’ Then she asked who sent Fleet. I didn’t know, and that’s how I answered.” He turned his head to look at Dren. “Look, I don’t know what answers you’re trying to get out of me, but I get the sense you have some anger inside you about something.”
His cloned brothers may not remember, but Dren recalled the last shell he was in that was burned alive in a fiery blue flame. The Lazarus and hundreds of ships exploded in orbit around Gedia Prime with each vessel carrying 50 cloned marines that never had a chance. Fleet treated clones as disposable decoys. Their lives were worth less than garbage. The entire Fleet strategy against the Defiled was to literally throw clones at them as distractions.
“These Alliance people you rescued,” Dren tried to remove the edge from his voice. “They saw you as a Savior, right? Do you think they would think differently of you if they knew you were a clone? Someone created in a test tube instead of being born? Someone in the words of one Faither I know, ‘an abomination’ that should not exist?”
Kingston released a long sigh. “There are idiots in every group. That little girl, Shenna… We send messages to each other now and then. She’s in the Academy now and wants to join Fleet one day. She has aspirations to be a navigator or pilot. She always ends her messages by thanking me for saving her life. Says I’m her inspiration for joining Fleet.” He patted Dren’s shoulder. “We both have seen a lot of bad things. But we can’t dwell on those. That’s why Fleet’s motto is ‘Always forward.’”