“My name is Lieutenant Noah Cage. Sergeant Romero, do you know me?”
The voice was toneless, as if artificially generated. “Noah Cage. Target. Awaiting instructions."
“Sergeant Romero, do you remember anything from before? The Martian War, you were a member of my Lifer unit. I was Lieutenant Cage."
“Awaiting instructions."
Rob’s weapon was in his hand, and the arm hung loosely at his side. If he brought it up and tried to blast him, Cage knew he’d fail. No matter how many shots he put into that cybernetic body, the creature would retain enough function to devastate the room with gunfire until they were all dead. There’d be no hesitation and no fear, just the urge to carry out his mission.
Cage tried something different. “Rob, we’re leaving now. Time to go, before they overrun this section."
“No. Awaiting instructions."
Shit.
Yet he saw something, deep within the crudely repaired eyes.
A flicker of…what, humanity or inhumanity, the electronic circuits sparking and firing, making the decision to draw and fire? Kill.
It was a frozen moment, and they stared at each other. It was as if every person in the room was holding their breath.
And then Jamison’s voice sounded from outside. “Open the airlock door. They’re coming. They broke through further along the tunnel, so it’s time to evacuate.”
“We’ll be along,” he shouted and turned to Rob. “Time to go.
“No. Awaiting instructions.” This time, he brought up the gun, as if a spell had been broken. Cage was a second from death, and he prepared for a fast draw to try and dodge the first burst. To get in a few shots that may, if he was lucky, hit something lethal. A million to one shot, the creature was designed to take more punishment than even a Lifer could sustain, and still go on fighting.
The cybernetic finger was tightening on the trigger, when Rose flung herself at him. Wrapped her arms around him, and he didn’t resist.
“Rob, don’t do this. It’s Rose. Rose Romero, your wife.”
Incredibly, he lowered the gun.
“Do you remember?”
The battered face appeared to change, with something that resembled recognition. But would it be enough to override the programming? The tortured machine looked at her, and then shifted ever so slightly to look back at Cage. He tried again. “Rob, we must go."
There was a long hesitation. Rose was stroking his hair, or at least, the few tufts that remained on his head. A gesture she would have done long ago, when he was a man. It was touching, and it worked. Somewhere, deep inside, they’d failed. Travers looked on astonished. His Frankenstein creation had a flaw, a flaw that could save their lives. Something Human resided inside the wiped and rebuilt brain.
It spoke. “Yes.”
He breathed a sigh of relief and glanced at Vos. “I think we’ll be okay. You and Bowen should stay with Rob and watch him. You know, just in case.”
“Yeah.”
In case they have to try to kill him.
“We brought him in. We’ll handle him.” A smile, “I can always put him under arrest. Although it didn’t work in your case, Cage. I doubt it will with him. Does it have some place vulnerable? I mean, if it comes to it?”
“It’s still a man, just like you, Cage. His bones are thicker, and much of his internals are protected by internal plates, but everything is still controlled from up here.”
He tapped his forehead.
“Put a shot in the brain to stop it. It would stop a Lifer, but him? You’ll just have to keep firing until you get through the armor.”
“Okay. I’ll stay.”
He looked at Rose. “You’re sure?”
“I think I can handle him. Either there’s something inside that brain, or I’ve reached him in some way. It’s our best chance of keeping him under control, seems to be, anyway.”
Cage didn’t like it, especially with them barely holding their own as it was. Every fiber in his body told him to end that thing right now, but he could tell Rose was already attached to him. And there was always the chance it might come in useful.
“Agreed. Luther, you coming?”
“I can’t, Cage. I’m sorry.” Every face in the room stared at him. He’d drawn his weapon, and it was pointed at a spot midway between Cage and Rose.
“Luther, what gives?”
His hand shook, and he was clearly going through some terrible moral dilemma. Cage moved closer, but Luther turned the gun towards the Lifer’s face.
“Don’t screw with me, Cage. I want to go home. I want off this planet.”
Cage looked confused.
“Fair enough. But, if we win, we’ll all be going home.”
“If we win? You won’t win, Cage. Not ever, not against Martian tech. I was in the First War, and you were in the Third. Same result, we lost.”
“So, what’s your plan, you’re going to kill us all, and hope the Martians are grateful?”
“Sort of. Thing is, I did a deal with Hartmann. I had to. You know, back in Westbank, when they were beating the crap out of me. His sergeant, a guy named Guzman, said for me to string along with you. Just as insurance, you know? If you slipped away, I was to stop you and call them in. I didn’t have a choice. It was that or they’d kill me. Sorry, Cage, but I reckon we’ll just wait here until RedCorp arrives. They can’t open that door from the outside, so we’re safe.”
“Luther, don’t be stupid. When they’ve killed me, they’ll kill you. That’s the way these people work. Don’t do this.”
“I have to.” His voice shook with emotion, and they could all see the fear in his eyes. Fear of playing the Judas, and fear of not fulfilling the role they’d pressed him to. Outside, Jamison was frantic, and rifle butts beat on the door.
“We’re evacuating. You have to get out now. They’re pouring through the entire tunnel system, hundreds of enemy troopers, and they’ve killed around thirty of our people already. They’ll be here in minutes. Cage, can you hear me?”
He shouted back. “We’ll be out in a minute or two, Ray.”
“No longer, we’re pulling our people out.”
“Copy that.” He turned to Luther. “We can’t stay here any longer.”
“No. You move, and I’ll shoot you.”
It happened fast. Rose stepped in front of Cage so that Luther’s gun now pointed directly at her. The single shot was loud in the confined space. The Martian handgun, a miniaturized version of the vaunted railgun, and the finest their technicians could produce to equip their new breed of invincible warriors, the Janissaries, blew a huge hole in Luther Jackson’s chest. He didn’t fall, not at first, and his brain retained some function. His eyes were on Cage, who swore he saw an apology in that final, ghastly glance. Then he fell, dead before his body hit the ground. Rob had already holstered the gun.
Cage nodded to Rose.
“Well, okay. That worked.”
“Yes.”
He raced to the airlock door and opened it. Jamison was walking away, but he turned.
“Thank God, I wondered what the hell was going on in there. You okay now?”
“Yeah, all done.”
“I heard shooting.”
“It was nothing, just a rat.”
“On Mars? You’ve gotta be kidding me. It must have stowed away on a lighter.”
“I guess. What’s the plan?”
“Plan? There is no plan.”
“There is now. We don’t run. That’s what they want us to do, keep running, until they’ve picked us off one by one. We don’t do it their way. We do it our way. We fight.
“Fight! How do we fight, they’re all over us? Our people are already bolting. They can’t take anymore.”
“They have to. Get every man and woman who can hold a gun, and get them back here. We’re going out to meet them head on. No more running. This is it. We turn and fight.”
“I dunno. Who’s gonna lead them?”
“Last time around, y
ou all wanted me. Does that still stand?’
“If you’re up to it.”
“I’ll be in the front, leading the attack. Call them back. It’s time to regroup, lock and load, and get out there and kick Martian ass.”
“On the surface? Are you crazy?”
“Bring down the roof on the troopers coming at us underground. Then find a way to get into their command and control center. I want us to come out in the center of the enemy force. You said this place is honeycombed with tunnels and caves.”
“Well, yeah, it is. But in the middle, are you serious? There’ll be hundreds of the bastards.”
Cage gave him a wolfish smile. “If we’re in the center of their main force, it won’t be too hard to find targets. Any direction our people point their weapons; they’ll find a target. When the Martians want to shoot back, they’ll be aiming at their own people as well as us.”
He shook his head. “Damn, I’ve never heard anything like it. You said you’ll lead?”
“I’ll be in front. Now get those people back here.”
The puzzlement disappeared from his face. “Copy that.” He raced away.
It was almost half an hour before the massive explosion brought down the roof. Anna Ortiz looked smug. “I planted that one myself. Never thought I’d use it, but I guess that took out fifty of the enemy. It’ll teach them to slow down when they’re chasing us through the tunnels.”
“Right. Which way now?”
“The Colonel said to take you beneath the main enemy force, their command and control center. You sure about that?”
“I’m sure.”
She shrugged. “It’s your funeral. Ray said he’d bring as many men as he can to the jump off point. Right below the enemy.”
It took almost two more hours before Jamison joined them, at the head of almost one hundred bedraggled looking fighters. Every one of them wore captured or modified biosuits, and carried the most bizarre array of guns he’d ever seen. “This is it. The rest ran. I’m sorry.”
“What about the reinforcements from the other groups?”
“They’re here. This is all that’s left. The rest…I’m sorry.”
“It’ll have to do.” He pointed to a steeply sloping tunnel. The roof was low, enough to crawl through, “This is it. There’s nothing else?”
“This is it.”
“Let’s go.”
They came out inside a cairn of rocks. The nearest Martians were a mere forty meters away, but looking in the opposite direction. One by one, the rebels slipped from the narrow tunnel mouth, until Cage stood at the head of the entire rebel formation. All fifty of them, and around them, he counted upward of six hundred hostiles. Their attention was on a crater they’d made on the surface, and they were trying to break back through into the tunnels. There were heavy machines hammering away into the surface, and clouds of dust swirling about them as they worked.
Jamison tapped him on the shoulder, speaking through the suit-to-suit intercom.
“They’ll be through any moment. If they get inside…”
“I know.”
“Good. Remember, they won’t know who to shoot at, who’s friend and who’s foe. We’ll chop them to pieces from inside.”
They stayed out of sight, observing men rushing to obey orders, fixing broken gear, reloading weapons. They still looked away, toward the sound of the distant explosions, and where the crawlers and the remainder of their army in the tunnels still fought to hack through. They grinned at the plumes of smoke, flame, and dust sifting through the fissures in the rocks.
Why wouldn’t they grin? They think they are winning. Maybe they are, Cage caught himself thinking, but he dismissed the gloomy thought.
This is our day. It’s time for some payback.
He glanced around at their positions as the last of their troops arrived on the surface and crouched low out of sight. They were few, pitifully few. It was time. A final check, and still they hadn’t been seen. He thumbed the trigger of his rifle. Wondering if this was about to be the end of what had started all those years ago, almost in the exact same place. He squeezed the trigger and kept it held down.
“Attack!”
They came out from cover shooting, formed into a single, mass charge. Aiming at the main communications PDX vehicle, identified because of the numbers of officers and men milling around. They poured out a storm of gunfire from their rifles and raced across the dust. Men went down in their tens and twenties, and a few ran, but not every Martian was about to turn away from the onslaught. Some took cover, some knelt and began to return fire. It became a battle like most battles, a crazy welter of noise, smoke, and chaos, smoke and fire, and the screams of the wounded.
They hurtled across the surface, and the nearest hostiles were less than twenty meters away. A few fired back, single shots, but they were shocked into confusion.
“Fire, keep firing,” Jamison shouted into his helmet mic.
The surface came alive with gunfire, and all of a sudden some of the Martians woke up to the threat. He saw the muzzle flashes, the paths of slugs cutting through the dust clouds, the RedCorp snipers already picking out individual targets. Two rebels went down, and they were two he couldn’t afford to lose.
“Faster, faster, get inside their ranks, or they’ll kill us all.”
He was bounding ahead, propelled on the newly repaired cybernetic limbs. Meters ahead of the pack, and incoming fire slammed into his legs and arms. Mercifully, he didn’t take a hit on his head or body. He ran on, and behind him, he heard the shots of his pitifully small army racing to catch up. Some didn’t make it. Then he was in amongst the hostiles, and in their confusion, they gave him a break. Didn’t know if he was attacking or running from the rebel horde, and so most held their fire. Then he did what they’d trained him to do. What a Lifer did best, killing.
He fired a short burst from his Stryker, then another and another, and as his rifle emptied, there were seven more bodies on the ground. The rest began to edge back, and a few fired panicked shots, but they were wild. Some probably hit their own men. He waded in, and then the main rebel force hit.
Cage was wading toward the command vehicle, stepping over bodies, jumping in places where the bodies were heaped high. He slammed in a new magazine and realized it was his last. As he raced past a startled trooper, he fired three shots into his chest. He went down, bleeding out his last into the barren Martian landscape. Cage snatched up the trooper’s railgun before it fell. The digital readout read ‘full’ next to a figure of twenty. An augmented magazine, or a whole new firing system, he didn’t know and didn’t care. Only that he now possessed a big gun with plenty of bullets.
The Martians had the same weapons but couldn’t deploy them for fear of killing their own men. He didn’t have that problem. He stayed standing, so the rebels could group around him, and know he was alive and fighting. They joined him in small groups, cutting their way through the enemy, and a few more fell. Yet more were emerging from below ground, and the enemy was caught on the back foot. Some fired, some hit their own men, but they joined him, and the real killing started. Standing back-to-back and shoulder-to-shoulder, it was like an old battle from the American Civil War. Massed rifles firing into the enemy at point-blank range, unable to bring their heavy weapons to bear. And they died, on both sides.
All that was missing was the battle flags fluttering in the breeze, then more rebels scrambled out from below, and one carried a tattered piece of material fixed to an aluminum pole. It looked as if they’d cut the red fabric from a biosuit, and the multicolor patches were unmistakable. The trooper carrying it fought his way into their center, along with a number of others who surrounded him and blocked the enemy fire. Most died, but the tattered, patched red flag was there, hoisted about their heads.
Ortiz was exhausted, but she looked up, and her expression changed. Her voice rang out even from inside the helmet, “Look, that’s us. That’s our flag. Justice!”
“Justice,” scores of voi
ce echoed.
Cage knew they were losing. Knew they would die, but they could do it in such a way as to give the rest of the rebel groups scattered around Mars the best possible chance to triumph over the likes of RedCorp and the small corporations hunting them. That was to kill as many as possible, and force them to take notice of their hidden citizens. To give them no option but to negotiate a settlement, so they could live as Human beings.
He focused on a dent in the Martian line where some troopers were edging back, fearful of the rebel fire. Jamison was standing next to Ortiz, and he pointed.
“We have to hit them harder. It’s our sole chance. Every man and woman, on my call.”
A nod of reply, and he knew he understood. Passed the word, and they tensed.
“Charge!”
He ran, weapon spitting solid slugs of metal, and in the midst of the mass slaughter, the sudden rebel switch took them by surprise. He was leading less than a hundred rebels, but they punched into the Martian lines. Then he was submerged in a mass of red biosuits, and his own men were battling at his side. They were still moving back, but four RedCorp soldiers stood their ground. Cage pulled the trigger, and two men went down, but the other two were fast, and licks of fire spat out from their guns. His sensors registered the strikes to his limbs, and then a hard burst slammed into his shoulder.
He ignored the pain, stood his ground, and fired back. They went down, and he swapped shots with the next men who blocked him. More debris struck his limbs as rock exploded. The hits slowed him, yet Colonel Travers’ repairs held. He fought on, aware of his troops falling around him, yet each time a gap opened, more stepped in. They were losing; the loss was a magnificent one. Ortiz hesitated, and then checked something her arm.
“Cage. We’re getting transmissions from inside the cities. People are watching the fight, and there’s trouble brewing in the Valley. People are rising up. There’s some fighting against the security units.”
“That’s good.”
Cage twisted to the left and put a round through the visor of an approaching Martian. The impact at this range took the man’s head clean off and sent the two behind him scurrying for cover.
Last Life (Lifers Book 1) Page 26