In Perpetuity

by Jake Bible

  All doublegangers deserved to die.

  Metzger stepped all the way into the simulation room and then pressed his wrist. A map came up, showing him exactly what the layout of the simulation was and where he could find North and Linklater. There were plenty of Estelian traitors all around him, but those two were the only ones he cared about. They were his target and he would let nothing get in his way from taking them down.

  A scream off to Metzger’s right made him wipe away the map and grab up his scorcher. It wasn’t until he heard a second scream that he realized what was happening right in front of him. He’d been so engrossed in studying the map, and riding the exhilaration of fresh pharma, that hadn’t realized there was quite a bit of death and destruction he would have to wade through to get to his targets.

  “Better get started,” Metzger said as he opened fire.

  He knew the basic direction he needed to go, so he aimed his scorcher that way and held the trigger down, wiping his path clear with every plasma bolt that barked from his scorcher’s barrel. Cadets, and even some station personnel that seemed to have stumbled into the simulation bay, turned and roared at him, coming together in a show of psychotic solidarity at their new foe. Metzger just grinned at them as he casually swung his scorcher from left to right, right to left, obliterating the attackers the second they were in range.

  His scorcher beeped and he looked down to see the bolt count at zero. He ejected the power cartridge and then slapped in a new one, drawing from the absurd amount of ammunition strapped to his belt.

  Metzger pressed the trigger again just before three cadets reached his position. Two of them lost their heads in a spray of blood and the third spun about, his hands clutching at the gaping hole that went completely through his chest and out his back. The young man had a split-second to actually press a hand inside himself before collapsing onto the gore-covered ground at his feet.

  “You need to die,” Metzger said, taking aim at a cadet that was crouched over another, his mouth stuffed full of the dead woman’s entrails. The cadet didn’t even see the plasma bolt coming. “And you need to die.” Metzger swung about and vaporized the legs off of a master sergeant that was just standing there, his hands raised in the air, his mouth wide open and issuing a war cry that turned into a wail of agony. “And you. And you. And you.”

  Metzger fired bolt after bolt into the mayhem and madness. Cadets fell like sheaves of wheat before the scythe that was Metzger’s scorcher. He barely had to aim, the battlefield was so full of targets to hit. A head and shoulder gone, an arm, a leg, belly after belly, faces burned off, chests torn through.

  Metzger did not slow until he had traversed the entire battlefield without getting a single scratch. None of the cadets or personnel even got within five feet of him. Many tried, but all died quickly and horribly.

  The valley below Metzger was green and lush and untouched. The horrors of battle had been kept to the rocky and barren plateau that it bordered. Metzger smiled at the beauty of it all and then smiled at the simple path that cut right down the middle of the valley.

  “I’m coming for you, boys!” Metzger bellowed. “I am so coming for you!”

  He slung his scorcher across his back and felt at the pouch at his waist. He pulled out another injector and almost did a little jig in anticipation of getting his head right. Those stupid cadets had ruined his previous buzz. He needed to make sure his head was clear for what came next.

  “Oh, yeah, baby,” Metzger sighed as yet another dose of pharma entered his bloodstream. “Oh, you are so good to me.”

  Metzger tossed the spent injector over his shoulder, rolled his head on his neck, savoring the cracking of vertebrae, then lifted his scorcher and marched down into the valley.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because evil should fucking fear me!”

  Forty-Nine

  “Last missile is being locked in by Demon right now,” London said over the comm. “You coming out of there, boss?”

  “Yeah. Give me a minute,” Valencio said.

  She had counted how much ammunition and missiles had left Phobos’ hidden cache and knew it wasn’t anywhere near what they would need to take out the Estelian armada. Even if all the fighter skiffs unloaded on the armada at once, and hit their targets, they could only hope to take out a couple of battleships and maybe a destroyer and a cruiser. That would leave at least another cruiser and a couple of destroyers. And, if the last scan she saw was correct, more than one squadrons of quads.

  “But I need to take them all out,” she said. “Perpetuity won’t last against even one destroyer. Maybe a cruiser, but not a destroyer.”

  She finished her task and then sprinted to her skiff, hopping into the cockpit and closing the hatch in one fluid movement.

  “Boss?” London called.

  “Coming,” Valencio snapped. “Keep your shirt on.”

  “Are you sure? Because I do work out and these abs are something to look at,” London said.

  “London?” Valencio growled.

  “Right. Not appropriate at this time,” London said. “Got it.”

  Valencio launched her skiff from the landing bay and sped out to meet her squadron. She flew right into the middle of them and couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the heavy missiles locked under the wings of each fighter.

  “I’m going to be completely honest with all of you,” Valencio said over the open comm. “I don’t expect any of us to live very long once the Estelians get here. This red planet before us will be the last planet you ever see. I would advise you gaze upon it and appreciate it for what it is.”

  “What is it?” Richtoff asked. “I just see red and orange.”

  “You can totally see more than that!” Zenobia said. “Check that out over there! That’s the Newman Colony! And right there is the Greer Colo—”

  From the surface of the planet, right where the Mars colony Greer should have been, was a bright flash and a massive fireball. It had to be massive if it could be seen from where the squadron waited.

  “What the fuck just happened?” London asked.

  “The same thing that happened with the platforms,” Richtoff replied. “People have lost their minds.”

  “Motherfucker,” Zenobia sighed. “That really sucked to look at.”

  “Listen up, folks,” Valencio said as she struggled to keep a sense of strength in her voice despite the demoralizing sight of the still burning fireball that had been Greer Colony. “What you see there is what is going to happen to the Perpetuity if we don’t stop the Estelians. We are vastly outnumbered, and grossly underpowered, but we have something that the Estelians don’t have. We have position.”

  Valencio tapped at her control screen and brought up a map of the area surrounding Mars. The platforms and the two moons came into view. She pressed her wrist and then started to draw on the map with her fingers.

  “You should be seeing what I am seeing,” Valencio said. “We have the planet, the platforms, and the moons to work with. The platforms are obviously compromised and not our allies, but they do have some firepower. We need to use that firepower against the Estelian warships. If the timing is right then these platforms here, here, and here will be in sight when the Estelians punch into Mars space. Our goal is to draw the Estelians into battle and direct them this way. If we can get them close enough that the platform cannons can reach then we’ll use ourselves as bait to get the platforms to fire, hopefully sending stray bolts at the Estelians.”

  “Captain?” London said, his voice cautious and careful. “I think I have some bad news.”

  “What is it, London?” Valencio barked. “I’m in the middle of something here.”

  “I’m pretty sure everyone on the platforms is dead, boss,” London said. “I’ve been monitoring their comm and I haven’t heard a single voice in close to an hour. If they aren’t dead then they are being very, very quiet.”

  “Shit,” Valencio said. She a
lmost punched her control console then stopped and smiled. “No. No shit. This is better.”

  “It is?” London asked. “How?”

  “We can take control of the platforms and use their weaponry against the Estelians without resorting to subterfuge,” Valencio replied.

  “Oh, good, I hate resorting to subterfuge,” London said.

  “Wouldn’t that mean we’d have to board the platforms and operate the cannons ourselves?” Zenobia asked.

  “Not if we set them to auto,” Valencio said. “It would be a risk to us since the cannons could easily target us just as much as they target the Estelians, but we were going to deal with that anyway.”

  “Great,” London said. “How do we make this happen?”

  “Someone has to go on board the platforms,” Valencio said. “That person will need to manually enter a defense protocol. Being a TO from Perpetuity, I have the codes for that protocol.”

  “Yeah, but boss, we’re going to need you up here,” London said. “You’ve gotta lead the squadron when the Estelians get here.”

  “I know, London,” Valencio said. “That’s why I’m sending you the codes now. As soon as the platforms show up, you need to hustle and get those abs of yours onto the first one. Go straight to the bridge and enter the code. The automatic defense system will take over from there.”

  “There’s one problem with that, Captain,” Zenobia said. “The defense protocol will be in place when London leaves that platform. He’ll be the first target the cannons will lock onto.”

  “Yeah, I was kinda thinking the same thing,” London said.

  “Then you better move ass when you leave the first platform,” Valencio said. “You’re always bragging about how well you can fly that cargo skiff. Time to prove it, Warrant Officer London.”

  “Wonderful,” London sighed. “Just fucking wonderful.”

  Fifty

  The forest was dense with tall trees that towered above North and Linklater. They had to be close to seventy meters high at least. But despite the over-arching canopy, there was still plenty of underbrush that proved to be a thick barrier for the two officers.

  “No way to go around,” Linklater said. “Gotta go through.”

  “You giving yourself a pep talk?” North asked as he kicked at a thorny branch that grabbed at the leg of his uniform.

  “Just reminding myself why we didn’t skirt the forest,” Linklater said. “Gotta go through if we want to get to the lake before Metzger catches up with us. You’d think not hearing scorcher fire would be comforting, but it’s not. I am not delusional enough to think the man was killed by all those crazies. He stopped firing because he’s hit the valley.”

  “That’s probably a pretty good assessment,” North said. “Which means we only have a few minutes, maybe half an hour if we’re lucky, to get to the lake and get set up.”

  “You really think this will work?” Linklater said. “This is a simulation bay, not the actual planet it represents.”

  “And you happen to be the tech officer that designed this protocol,” North said. “We get to the lake and you can take it from there. All we have to do is make sure Metzger goes down to the shore once you’ve reprogrammed the levels.”

  “When I do that then this place becomes just as deadly to us as it does to him,” Linklater said. “We’re probably going to die too.”

  “I don’t want Metzger to die,” North said. “Not right away. I have to find out from him if he has the medal or if it’s in security somewhere. Once he tells me where it is, and he’s subdued, then I don’t give a shit if he lives or not.”

  “I do what you want and he’s probably going to die,” Linklater said. “Just being realistic.”

  “That’s the risk we have to take,” North said. He stopped as the light in the forest grew brighter. North pointed ahead to a break in the trees. “Here we go.”

  The two men stepped from the shade of the forest and into the glaring reflection of the huge lake before them. North squinted and shielded his eyes with his hand as he walked from the soft loam of the forest floor and out into hard and rocky beach that lined the lake.

  “Not much transition here,” North said. “Pretty sure there was more vegetation at the lake’s edge than this.”

  “There was,” Linklater said as he looked about the beach for the exact spot he needed. “But erosion and damage from the solar winds has cut back on any greenery exposed to the suns.”

  North reluctantly looked up in the sky at the two orbs that shone down on the simulated planet. One was a bright orange, similar to the sun that Earth’s solar system was anchored by, while the other was a deep red and seemed to flicker every few seconds. He squinted then looked away.

  “Is that it over there?” North asked, pointing to a boulder that had moss on the forest side, but was bare and smooth on the side facing the lake. “That looks like your signature?”

  Within the moss was an almost imperceptible “ML”- Linklater’s initials.

  “Perfect,” Linklater said as he hurried over to the rock. “Good eye. I would have wandered for a while. These suns are killing my head.”

  “You built the simulation,” North said. “You could have dialed back the brightness a bit.”

  “I didn’t expect to be in here,” Linklater said. “And it wouldn’t have been an authentic training experience if the suns weren’t so bright.”

  A far off scream caught their attention and they both looked back towards the forest.

  “I think we’re pretty far from authentic at this point,” North said. “Even if we wanted to recreate the Battle of Strell, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as bloody as what is happening back there.”

  Linklater pressed his hand to the moss side of the rock and a small panel popped open. He dug around in a pouch on his belt and pulled out a set of fine tools.

  “Are those solid metal?” North asked. “Seems a bit old fashioned.”

  “I always keep a set on me,” Linklater said. “Just in case my interface isn’t working right. Good thing, don’t you think?”

  “How will you know if you’ve gotten it to work?” North asked, stepping closer to the water’s edge. “There’s no way we can test it without the trap springing on us.”

  “You’ll find out pretty soon if you don’t stay back from those waves,” Linklater said. “This isn’t going to take me long. It’s actually only a matter of moving around a few switches into a specific pattern. It’s easier from my control room, that’s for sure, since it would have been just one command. But I made sure there was a manual backup here just in case of some type of tech issue or I needed to talk a master sergeant through shutting it down.”

  “If there was a tech issue then how would you communicate with the master sergeant?” North asked.

  “Don’t start poking holes in my redundancies,” Linklater said. “Just be grateful I can do what I’m doing right now.”

  “I’ll be grateful once we have that asshole where we want him,” North said. “Are you sure it’s going to be exactly like it needs to be?”

  “I’m sure,” Linklater said. “Are you sure you can handle Metzger when he gets here?”

  “Not a problem,” North said as he watched a far off ripple out in the lake begin to get closer.

  Linklater closed the panel and put away his tools. He stood up, stretched and walked over to North.

  “We are screwed, aren’t we?” Linklater said.

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” North smiled.

  “Yeah, we’re screwed,” Linklater grumbled. “I’m going to go hide now. Just use the thing to distract him. If it grabs him then he’s a goner and you won’t get any info. You know what these things can do.”

  “I got this, don’t worry,” North said. “I didn’t become Chief Training Officer without having an innate sense of timing.”

  “I figured it was because you were just the only one that applied,” Linklater said. “It was the only reason that made—”

 
Linklater went flying into the water as a plasma bolt hit the ground right at his feet.

  “Hey, North,” Metzger said from the edge of the forest, his scorcher trained right on the major. “You boys should really chat less. I pretty much heard everything you said.”

  He walked down from the forest and onto the rocky beach.

  “Sounds like you boys have something in store for me,” Metzger continued. “I have no idea what it is since I don’t recognize this simulation. But I can’t wait to find out.”

  North tensed to run, but Metzger shook his head and kept walking forward.

  “No, North. Just no,” Metzger growled. “You’re going to stand right there and keep your Estelian spy mouth shut.”

  “Metzger, listen,” North started but then found himself diving to the ground as Metzger sent a plasma bolt at his head.

  “No listening,” Metzger said. “Not to your doubleganger lies. You just keep that abomination of a mouth shut and turn around. On your knees, scum.”

  North did as Metzger ordered. He turned around to face the lake and got down on his knees. He looked out and saw the fear on Linklater’s face as the lieutenant sat in the shallows of the lake. North knew there was nothing he could do to alleviate that fear. He just hoped Metzger would make a mistake so he could make a move before the thing he and Linklater had summoned got too close.

  Fifty-One

  Garcia knew she could get things up and running on the cruiser when she got to the bridge. She just hoped that the cruiser would last that long. Several more impacts against the hull could easily be heard. They had to be severe for the sounds to travel all the way to the heart of the ship and into the central lift shaft. Garcia wondered how much time she had left before she’d have to find a new safe haven.

  Not that she felt safe on the CSC Norland.

  Her first assignment right out of training had been to serve on the Norland. She wasn’t a pilot then, just an ensign that worked the flight decks. She had spent hour after hour, shift after shift, watching fighter skiff pilots go out and come back. She’d watched even more go out and never come back.