Colony 41- Volume 2

by S J Taylor

  “You! Stop there!”

  With the warning I had time to dodge sideways, around a stasis pod. The Enforcer came for me from the other side.

  I went up.

  The sides of the pods were perfect for climbing, and I raced up to the flat top of this one, turned, and pushed off to come down again, landing on the soldier’s head with my boot heel. Crashing to the floor with my weight on him might not have killed him, not in that battlesuit, but my foot crushing his neck as easily as the Corporal’s had broken in my arms… that killed him.

  Dropping to my knees with the rest of my momentum from the jump I reached for the Enforcer’s MAR. I was still trying to untangle the strap when two other soldiers came at me, stun pistols raised.

  I leapt up from the floor, throwing my right leg out to catch the side of the nearest pod, then pushed off with that foot across the row, to the pod on that side, and then jumped off again, my foot extended in a straight kick that took one of the Enforcers in the chest, knocking him into his companion, sending both of them tumbling to the ground. One of them got off a shot that hummed past my cheek.

  They kept hold of their stun pistols. As they were struggling to get off each other I grabbed at one of their hands and pulled and twisted and I think broke the wrist, making the gun mine. I took it out of limp fingers and fired two shots, aiming between the insulated protective padding of their suits. The weapon was set to low yield and they would both live but they wouldn’t be in the fight again any time soon.

  Which narrowed our odds almost not at all.

  I turned and ran as I adjusted the stun pistol setting to high yield, narrow beam. At full speed I dashed across the pod chamber, shooting at as many Enforcers as I could as I went, missing some, hitting others, dodging their return fire at every step. A fierce smile spread across my face. This could work. We had the element of surprise. It could work!

  As I went I saw the others. All of them looked like me. Fought like me. Thought and moved and reacted like me. I watched them fight like I was seeing memories of things I’d never done.

  An uppercut strike that disarmed an Enforcer.

  A running sprint that ended in a slide between another soldier’s legs, and a spin, and then two hands fisted together and driven up into the man’s crotch to devastating results.

  One clone in a white jumper like mine took a MAR blast to her midsection and went down hard. Another duplicate came in from the side and drove a stun stick up under the Enforcer’s chin, causing the woman to scream behind her helmet’s visor and then fall limp and dead to the floor.

  They were fighting and dying for me. To be like I was.

  Distracted, I didn’t see the arm stuck out across my path until my face was running into it. Both of my feet flew up from under me and I landed a few feet further on, my ass and my shoulder blades taking the brunt of the impact. Then my head bounced off the metal floor plates and stars swam in my vision.

  I think I tried to raise the stun pistol up over my head. It was kicked out of my wrist by a heavy boot.

  The Enforcer aimed an MAR at my head, point blank. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t try to pacify me, either. I guess they were past any point of trying to take us alive.

  Then she stopped, and leaned in to look closer at me.

  “You aren’t like the others,” she said through the helmet speakers. “Your hair’s shorter. And there’s something different about your face. Not a clone, then. You’re the original.”

  “My name,” I told her, “is Era Rae.”

  Pulling my legs up, I rolled over my back, throwing my shins into her weapon and knocking the MAR away from me. Both of my legs stung from the impact but I ignored the pain as I came around to my hands and knees again and then launched myself at the Enforcer’s waist, taking her off balance, throwing us both down to the floor. She tried to bring her MAR in for a shot but the weapon was far too long to be useful in close-quarter fighting.

  Straddling her as she fell I drove several punches into her midsection that didn’t do a whole lot more through the protective layers of her suit than keep her on guard. Punch, punch, dodge her clumsy palm strike, punch, reach around to the side of her utility belt and withdraw the stun stick.

  Raise stun stick.

  Slam it down hard at midsection, between the seams. Activated, the electricity burned through the battlesuit in short order. It did the same thing to her flesh.

  I left her there, with the stick protruding out of her body, and I ran.

  Hellfire.

  Were we winning? Were we losing? The entire room was chaos and shouting and weapons fire, and blood.

  And then a new noise joined the others. One that was eerily familiar.

  Fzzzzt.

  A laser cutter, modified with a beam stabilizer.

  The floating metal death machines. The killer robot Fluffy-bots.

  Fighting against what remained of three columns of Enforcers had been barely an even fight for us. Now I watched in horror as several gold colored, hovering attack pods came sailing into the stasis pod room. Round on top, tapering down to a pointed tip below, with pincer arms and metal appendages stuck out from all sides, hosting a variety of weapons and sensors. Security droids, Avin Blake had once told me they were called.

  I preferred to call them Fluffy drones. It made them less scary.

  Although not by much.

  The fight had turned against us in a hurry. My duplicates began backing up toward my position at the far end of the room, losing ground to the security droids and the Enforcers. We’d taken down a lot of them. It wasn’t enough.

  I saw one of the clones break an Enforcer’s leg and take away his MAR and then shoot another Enforcer point blank in her chest and turn the weapon on a third solider… only to be cut down with a single shot from a Fluffy death machine. Then another clone fell. And another.

  Anger flooded through me. I had to help them.

  I took two steps back toward the fighting when an arm grabbed mine and spun me around.

  My fist flashed out and narrowly missed Jadran’s face. He knew my moves. Good thing, too. If that had been an Enforcer I would have broken my knuckles against their helmet.

  “What are you—?” I started to demand.

  “No time, Era Rae. We have to leave. Get the clones to follow us, we have to run!”

  I saw in his eyes what he had done.

  He was right. There was no more time.

  “The tunnels,” I said, thinking out loud. “We’ll make it out through there.”

  “They will be waiting for us.” He wasn’t arguing. He was just pointing out the problem that we both already understood.

  I nodded, as the cold sound of weapons fire mixed with the chilling sound of people dying all around us. He nodded back. We were decided.

  Further back in the chamber, one of the stasis pods exploded as its power unit took a hit from someone’s errant shot. Clone or Enforcer, it was impossible to say.

  “Rae!” I called out to the group of retreating clones. They continued to fight as they came, unwilling to give up their freedom even at the cost of their own lives. I guess they were more like me than I was willing to admit. “Rae, where are you!”

  One of them finally turned to me. I know they all look the same, and they all look like me, but there was something different about her. In a crowd of exactly identical faces, hers was the one I could pick out from all the others. “Rae, bring everyone this way! We’re leaving!”

  Two Enforcers had flanked everyone else and now they came at me and Jadran, one from each side. With a backward somersault I kicked the MAR of one up into his helmet, hard enough to break through his visor, and as I came to my feet again I grabbed the weapon and shoved him back with it until we fell against the side of a stasis pod and the barrel of his weapon slammed up into his throat. When I pulled the trigger it took his head off his shoulders.

  Jadran’s Enforcer was already on the floor with his neck twisted impossibly around.

&nb
sp; “Time to go,” he said to me.

  And so it was.

  Our rush to the back of the chamber was taken as a victory by the Enforcers. The weapons fire ceased, and they only crowded us, herding us to what they thought was no escape. Rae fell in beside me, and Jadran limped with us. I don’t know how bad his injuries were but I was willing to bet he was at the end of his reserves.

  “How much longer?” I asked him, eying the remains of the Enforcer army warily.

  He didn’t have to ask what I meant. He pursed his lips for a moment, calculating in his head. “It was on a five minute timer. Thirty seconds left. Maybe.”

  “Go,” I said, the little word surprisingly hard to say. “Take them out. I’ll buy you time.”

  “Era Rae, no. All of us together, is how we get out.”

  “Don’t argue with me, Jadran. This is the only way.”

  The security droids were spread out around us, in front of the advancing Enforcers who were more than happy to let the robots do the hard work for them. They’d lost a lot of their people. There were maybe thirty of them left standing.

  Then again, half of the clones weren’t with us anymore, either.

  One of the Enforcers stepped forward from the rest, still making sure to keep himself behind the Fluffy-bots. “This is ended,” he shouted at us. “Stand down. All of you will be returned to the pods. The Restored Society will cure what’s wrong with you.”

  “Like Hellfire,” I growled. “Jadran, get everyone out. I’ll deal with this.”

  Jadran’s hand was a vise around my wrist. “We leave together, or we do not leave at all.”

  “No,” Rae said suddenly. She smiled at me, and then at Jadran. “I wish I could’ve known you. It’s obvious how she loves you. I wish I could’ve felt that. I don’t know you, but I know her. Never argue with Era Rae, Jadran. She’s always right.”

  “You there at the back,” the Enforcer’s voice boomed. He was focusing his attention on me and Jadran now. We’d been found out. “Step forward. Make no sudden moves, or you will be put down.”

  Rae’s smile turned sad. “Someone has to end this, Jadran, and give the rest of us a chance to live. Hellfire. That’s what being free means. The chance to make our own choices.”

  It wasn’t lost on me that we even swore alike. She hugged me, and then looked into the mirror of my eyes. “Never argue with Era Rae. We’re always right.”

  With a simple shove, she pushed me into Jadran’s chest, off balance just long enough that I couldn’t stop her when she ran forward from our little group to face the soldiers.

  “It’s me!” she told them. “It’s me. I’m Era Rae! I’m the one you want!”

  “What’s she doing?” I demanded.

  “Following her instincts,” Jadran answered. “Just like you have always done. She is saving those she cares about.”

  “It’s supposed to be me,” I said in a small voice.

  “You taught her to make her own choices.” Jadran tugged on my arm. “It will be for nothing, if we stay here. Come on.”

  Making as much noise as she could, waving her arms and making sure she had the attention of every Enforcer and Fluffy-bot out there, Rae diverted their focus long enough for the rest of us to fall back further, through the door that led to the stairs up to the second level, and the tunnels out.

  Just as the entire facility was rocked sideways by a massive explosion.

  Jadran kept me standing up. I’m sure I did the same for him. We were on our way up the stairs, filing out onto the second level walkway with its low railing that looked down into the stasis pod chamber below.

  The self-destruct. Jadran had mentioned the facility was rigged to destruct as a defensive measure. Then, when he’d found me again just now, I’d read it clearly in his eyes. He’d set off the self-destruct. We might have stood a chance, my little army of Era Raes, when it was just the Enforcer troopers. When the security droids came into it… We were going to lose, and Jadran had seen as much from the monitors in the control room. He’d set the self-destruct and then came to find me.

  As a last ditch effort, I approved of blowing things up. I’d done more than a little of it myself.

  I just wish we didn’t have to be inside the building when the explosions started.

  Looking down over the railing now, I saw complete chaos. Enforcers ran everywhere. A few of them were still trying to capture or kill the clones, but most of them were heading for the exits. They’d lost every last one of their command structure now, and the little soldiers had no idea what to do without someone directing them. Even the security droids looked lost, floating up and down in place, rotating their sensor lenses around and around. Attack? Flee? They needed direction, and they weren’t getting any.

  They were going to pay a heavy price for not securing the building first, thus giving Jadran free rein in the control room. Typical Enforcer tactic. Neutralize the threat first, then secure the premises.

  Stupeheads.

  Then I saw Rae. She was still down there, fighting her way through Enforcer after Enforcer, as alarms blared, and another explosion shuddered through the walls. She was amazing. She was the graceful dance of death itself, and she was unstoppable.

  Until she got caught by the edge of a stun stick across her neck. She went down, and she went down hard.

  “Rae!” I cried down to her, although there was little chance of her hearing me over the shouts and the alarms and the other noises that filled the space around us. I reached out over the railing, unable to do anything but watch as three, and then four, and then five Enforcers fell on her.

  “Move!” Jadran ordered me, forcefully pulling me back away from the railing. We fell in with the others, escaping the destruction to come.

  Era’s Journal, Entry #3176

  We passed the storage bin on our way out where I’d stashed this journal. I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is my most important possession. My only possession, at this point, except for the white jumpsuit I escaped the genetics facility with. Jadran and me had each other. Maybe that’s all we need.

  We passed Laria’s grave on the way out, too. He paused there, putting his hand over the sealed door of the cramped space we’d found to lay her body. She deserved better. I can admit that, now. She’d been a pain in my side the entire time that I knew her, and then in the end she risked her own life to save mine.

  Rest in peace, Laria.

  Rae’s grave was bigger. She was buried with a hundred others under tons of metal and rock and secrets.

  The entire facility has collapsed in on itself. The fires burned away the building and the people and probably the ground itself. It happened quickly, and our group made it into the rock tunnels that led away from the complex just as a wave of dust and rock burst over us from behind. The hellish noise of it left my ears ringing for hours after. Every last trace of that evil place was gone. Choking, stumbling, half-blind, we all made it to the other end of the tunnels, to a spot where the sun shone down into the darkness through a break in the surface above. We were out.

  We were free.

  We’d stumbled over bodies on the way out. The cannibals. The poor children who had been turned into monsters of a different kind by the guiding hand of the Restored Society. All of them were dead. I was glad to see they were at peace. In a strange way, Avin Blake had done them a favor.

  He hadn’t done me any favors. I still hated the man for everything he’d taken away from me. I just hoped this time, he stayed dead.

  Jadran had been right. There were Enforcers waiting for us at the other end. Two of them, left behind by Avin Blake and the nameless Master Field Sergeant to protect the exit to the tunnels. The two of them took one look at a couple dozen girls climbing out of the ground at their feet, all of them with the same face, and they turned and ran.

  Just as well. I didn’t have any more stomach for killing. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  Or, maybe fighting was too ingrained in my DNA for me to ever give it up.


  How many people have I killed? I’ve lost track.

  Rae would have told me to stop being stupid. I know she would, because she was me. I still remember one of the last things she said to me. I always would.

  Being free means being able to make choices for ourselves.

  I choose to be who I am. No one is choosing it for me.

  That’s where the Restored Society failed with me, and with all the others. That’s where they would always fail.

  You can’t take away the desire to be free. It’s not in our genetics.

  It’s in our heart.

  Epilogue

  In the distance we watched the fires spewing up out of the Earth. It was a marker, of sorts, over the mass grave that we had created. The ground had fallen in like a pit and taken all of the support staff and vehicles of the Enforcer army, waiting up on the surface above the genetics facility, down with it. They were all dead.

  Except for those two that had been waiting at this end of the tunnel. I didn’t really know where those two had gone. I didn’t care, either.

  “Well,” Jadran said to me, leaning his arm around my shoulder where we sat together. “When you start a war, Era Rae, you really start a war.”

  “I warned them,” I said, weakly. They could have stopped. They could have left me alone. I guess it just wasn’t in their nature. Just like giving up wasn’t in mine. “Did it go out? Jadran, did the signal go out?”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d asked him. Still, he patiently answered me again, just like he had every time before. “It went out. They saw it.”

  “Who? Who saw it, Jadran?”

  “Everyone, Era Rae. Everyone who is left in the world. Anyone who has the ability to receive a vid transmission. They saw everything. The images from the pod chamber. Avin Blake. The Enforcers attacking the clones. All of it.”

  I nestled into his side, careful of his injuries. He was going to need medical attention very soon, and here we were in the middle of the Outlands with nothing around us for days in any direction. We’d make do. We always did.