Arse candles. Where had it gone? Perhaps the teleportation system didn’t let you carry anything through, but he couldn’t see how that would work, given the amount of foreign objects that were embedded in his person.
He rose into the staging area once again, in time to see another unit muster themselves and ship out. Their leader glanced his way momentarily as they headed for the diagonally sliding doorway. He looked like Zorlak, but that was impossible, as Zorlak was lying out on the battlefield in a state of irretrievable disassembly. Plus, it wasn’t prejudiced to say that, to the unaccustomed eye, one mechanised zombie cobbled together from alloy plates and harvested body parts looks rather like another.
A glance was all the notice he got. Nobody hailed the conquering hero, but neither did anybody ask what he was doing or what had happened to his unit. He wanted answers, though. He needed to find out more about this virus, for a start. Kamnor and the troop of soldiers who’d followed him had been coming from the other side of the complex, through that link corridor. It had been demolished by the fuselage, but there was probably a way through the wreckage.
He made his way across the staging area towards the same exit as before, bracing himself for the carnage and possible flames ahead. The sliding doors parted for him, revealing the same initial stretch of passageway, surprisingly unscathed by the impact. The angle of the bend not only hid what was ahead, but must have prevented debris from scattering this far. Once again he could see the play of light on the grey concrete of the opposite wall as he approached. From this position it was easy to imagine that the crash had never happened.
Once he had reached the bend, the picture changed, and not in the way he was expecting. From this position, it was even easier to imagine that the crash had never happened, as there was absolutely no evidence that it had. The corridor was corpse-and debris-free, the walls were still where the architect had envisaged them and the burning-fuselage count was down one on before.
Ross stood gaping in bewilderment, then turned to look out of the huge window again, making sure he hadn’t confused himself concerning the layout and exited the staging area down a different corridor. Nope: he could see the unnecessarily phallic artillery cannon gobbing its death-spunk at the invasion force from exactly the same position. He stared up at the sky, focusing on individual craft and trying to remember whether he had seen them destroyed before, but none of them was memorably distinct.
‘It’s an awe-inspiring sight, isn’t it?’ said a soft, clipped and rather posh voice from behind him.
It was only momentary paralysis brought on by shock that prevented Ross from jumping in the air and letting loose a most uncyborg-like shriek of fright.
‘Lieutenant Kamnor,’ he eventually stumbled.
‘In the flesh,’ Kamnor replied, for it was unquestionably he. ‘Well, what there is of it.’
Ross stared at him, transfixed. It was only the ongoing shock and confusion that stayed an impulse to hug the guy in sheer relief that he hadn’t killed him after all.
But he had killed him. He had quite unmistakably inflicted stomach-churningly horrific injuries of a nature seldom remedied by a couple of Paracetamol and a quiet lie-down.
There was only one explanation. It defied all that was known about physics and the very fabric of reality, but it was considerably more probable than a ton of debris spontaneously re-assembling itself in blatant violation of entropy.
He hadn’t been teleported: he had gone back in time.
‘Shouldn’t you be with—’
‘My unit, yes, lieutenant, sir,’ Ross interrupted, grasping the advantage he’d been inexplicably dealt. ‘Rapier squad. Mopping-up duty. It’s just that I suspect I have been hit by the Gaians’ virus. Sergeant Gortoss sent me back for tests and to find out whatever I can about the condition, lieutenant, sir.’
‘Well, that was uncharacteristically understanding of him.’
‘I believe he described me as “a useless arse-rag of a liability” and suggested I “go and get my brains cleaned out or he would suck them out for me and shit in my head as a replacement”.’
‘Yes, that sounds more like Gortoss,’ Kamnor admitted.
‘I gather other victims have reported it wearing off in combat, but I suspect I’ve got a more resistant strain. Sergeant Gortoss expressed concern that a subsequent symptom of the variant might be an impulse to attack our own forces. He didn’t put it in precisely those words, but—’
‘Quite. No, this requires further investigation, certainly. You should report to med bay. In fact, I’ll come with you. If the enemy have uploaded a more powerful version of this virus, then we need to identify it immediately.’
Kamnor began leading him down the corridor towards the double doors, through which a familiar troop of soldiers was now advancing. Ross felt the inrushing power surge, heard the cannon boom. From somewhere in the sky, there then followed a high keening sound.
‘INCOMING!’ Ross shouted, pulling Kamnor towards him with one hand and gesticulating manically to the troop. The soldiers scrambled back behind the threshold of the blast doors just a moment before the corridor got its extreme makeover.
Ross couldn’t see beyond the fuselage, flames, smoke and heat haze, but he could hear voices calling out, enquiring whether the lieutenant was all right. Ross had intervened in time. He had saved them.
Result! He had saved several grimly visaged zombie death-troopers serving an army that by its own admission had slaughtered a quarter of a million humans for spare parts. Yay, he thought. Go me!
Just as last time, he and Kamnor had ended up in a tangle on the floor after the impact, but this time the lieutenant was alive to help him to his alloy-clad feet, which Ross regarded briefly as he climbed upright. He wasn’t going to find a pair of astro-turf trainers to fit him for five-a-sides ever again, but on the plus side, he wouldn’t have to worry about any more verrucas or fungal infections, and he wouldn’t be needing shin pads.
‘Bloody good show, soldier,’ Kamnor said. ‘That virus certainly isn’t hindering your powers of observation or your reflexes. You saved my life; I salute you.’
And he did, sending out his arm, fist clenched at the end.
Ross eyed it anxiously.
‘Sir, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t reciprocate. The virus interferes with certain actions and behaviours.’
‘That’s unfortunate, but as it appears to have given you a sixth sense, I shan’t complain.’
A sixth sense, Ross thought, briefly considering another explanation, albeit one that didn’t so much challenge the laws of science as completely give them the finger. What if he hadn’t travelled in time, but instead experienced a Final Destination-style premonition?
Well, were that to be the case, the outlook wasn’t good for any of them. They were in the middle of a war-zone. If Death needed to balance the books, He should be thoroughly embarrassed if it took Him more than three minutes.
Four of the troops Ross had saved made their way to Kamnor, passing briefly outside to get around the wreckage. The other two had retrieved fire-extinguishing equipment from somewhere close by and were spraying some kind of gel on the debris, instantly containing the flames.
Kamnor seemed to lose focus for a moment, staring blankly like his face was lagging.
‘Incoming communication,’ he reported. ‘There are reports of a landing force having made it through. They are attempting an incursion of the south perimeter. Cutlass squad, I need you to come with me.’
‘Yes sir,’ they responded.
Kamnor turned to Ross.
‘You’ll have to find your own way to med lab. Best of luck with sorting that virus.’
‘Thank you sir,’ he replied, resisting the impulse to offer a warning about staying away from kitchen implements and heavy machinery just in case the Final Destination theory was correct.
If it was, then Death must have noted Ross’s thoughts on an acceptable time-frame, as Kamnor didn’t make it five yards before being ki
lled. His metal body was sliced into several pieces as though it was no tougher than a melon, julienned by a form of ultra-high-velocity projectile weapon with which Ross had become recently familiar.
Because of their respective positions, he didn’t have line of sight on where the shots had come from, but he knew it was the card collector who had sniped Kamnor from somewhere out in the wastes.
He decided he ought to have a word.
Ross was about to venture out in pursuit of the assassin but was halted by two obstacles. The first was the timely realisation that, unlike during their last duel, on this occasion he was completely unarmed. The second was more literal: he couldn’t get through the gap in the wall anyway, because it had become rapidly choked with body parts previously belonging to members of Cutlass squad. They had gone charging out in immediate response to the attack, exhibiting the same battle prowess and tactical awareness of their comrades in Rapier and Dagger squads by proceeding into a narrow bottleneck and being picked off one by one, each apparently heedless of the fate that had just befallen the man in front of him.
Kudos to Death, He had brought it home in about ninety seconds, tops.
On the plus side, the second obstacle had at least negated the first. He had several identical rifles to choose from, none of them fused to their previous owners this time.
Ross got down low and crawled cautiously through the now-even-narrower channel, occasionally risking a glimpse over the pile of blood- and unidentified-yellow-green-fluid-spattered limbs, heads, legs and torsos. He spotted the card collector, his back to Ross as he scurried away, heading out into the disasterscape.
Ross considered it safe to get to his feet, and hastened after his prey, zigzagging between rocks, wreckage and crates for cover. What the hell were these boxes made of, he wondered? Everything else that had fallen from above was in bits, but the crates were unscathed and unopened. He briefly tried prising the top off one, but got nowhere and abandoned the attempt, as his priority was pursuit.
Having got a bead on where the collector appeared to be heading, he veered left, intending to come around and flank him a little further ahead: take him by surprise and he could get the bastard to talk before matters descended into another shooting match.
Ross took up position beneath the head of a rocky spur and waited to make his move. Another thirty yards and they would converge, the collector seemingly oblivious to being stalked as he continued on a course that would take him right into Ross’s path. But just as he readied himself to spring, Ross felt his legs taken from beneath him and he was dragged into a narrow crevice in the rock.
‘Stay down,’ his attacker told him with urgency and concern.
He was another cyborg, resembling Ross in terms of the dead-flesh/steel-and-glass balance, and similar also in wearing a hunted and confused look upon his circuitry-adorned face.
‘You don’t want to get into a fight with that one,’ he went on.
‘I’m not afraid of him,’ Ross insisted with frustration, pinned down as he was by his would-be rescuer’s weight.
‘That’s not the issue, believe me.’
‘Well it’s moot now,’ Ross added huffily.
His captor got off of him and scrambled nimbly to the lip of the escarpment to check.
‘Yes, I’m relieved to say that it is,’ he reported. ‘He’s gone. Come here, though. This way. I need you to take a look at something.’
Ross hauled himself out of the crevice and up the slope with heavy limbs and bad grace.
‘So what is it you wanted me to … oh.’
There was an object hovering impossibly in the air in front of him, spinning in place on the vertical axis. The object was disc-shaped, its rim of red stone encircling a golden caduceus. It was four feet in diameter, beautifully crafted, gleamingly polished, and it wasn’t there.
It passed through Ross’s outstretched fingers, then he stepped into the centre of where it ought to be, watching it continue to spin around him. It was some super-advanced perfect hologram, but what the hell purpose it served was anybody’s guess. The guy who had grabbed him seemed very excited by it, anyway, or at least excited that Ross was aware of it.
‘You can see it?’ he asked breathlessly.
‘Of course I can see it. I can’t touch it, but that’s because it’s some kind of 3D projection.’
‘I knew you’d be able to see it. The others can’t. I knew you weren’t one of them from the way you were running.’
Ross eyed the guy’s shoulder, taking in a symbol that looked like a scimitar.
‘So, what unit are you with?’ he asked wearily.
‘Accounts,’ came the reply, equally tetchy.
‘There’s an accounts unit? What do you audit: body-part distribution?’
‘No, not here. In Leicester. I work for Barret Finch Home Furnishings. We make curtains and sofa covers. That’s why I got hold of you: I’m not from here, and I’m guessing you’re not either.’
Ross gaped, staring blankly for a moment, unable to respond. He felt relieved that there was another human here in the same boat but simultaneously depressed because it seemed to confirm that this was really happening.
‘My name is Bob. I’m a bloody accountant, not an alien stormtrooper. I went to my bed one night and woke up here. I’ve a wife and two daughters in Nottingham and I need to get home.’
‘My name’s Ross,’ he mumbled uncertainly. ‘I’m from Stirling. Or I think I am. I heard there’s this virus …’
‘Talking to a big bloke called Kamnor, were you?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s bollocks. Kamnor’s a political animal and a pragmatist, so he came up with an explanation expedient to their needs. He just told you that to keep you onside and quell any possible unrest, but he doesn’t know any more than we do.’
‘Or maybe he does and he’s hiding the truth,’ Ross suggested, using present tense to skirt around the tricky issue of Kamnor’s recurring deaths. ‘What if our memories are actually those of people recycled by them and turned into cyborgs?’
‘Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that I know I’m not one of them. And recycled when? I don’t know about you, but when I went to sleep that last night on Earth, the furthest anyone had been to was the moon, and we certainly weren’t at war with any alien civilisations.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Days. I’m not sure exactly, because there’s no night. It’s always daytime. I haven’t slept. Don’t feel the need to either.’
The artillery cannon boomed again and the exhaust port of a landing craft thudded into the ground only about twenty yards away.
‘I’m impressed you’ve lasted that long without getting killed,’ Ross told him.
‘Are you kidding? I’ve been killed about a dozen times,’ Bob replied, desperation in his sallow, reanimated face. ‘But I don’t stay dead. I just keep coming back, into this bloody nightmare, this permanent battle.’
Ross felt something lock into place inside his mind, a first connection potentially leading to a truly horrifying thought, and given how his horror scale had been recalibrated recently, that was saying something. All the previous horror had been leavened by making no sense, but this notion, deranged as it was, had a whiff of the logical and thus – being the really scary part – binding about it.
‘That’s why I stopped you from engaging the one they call the card collector. If he hits you with that gun of his, it doesn’t bloody tickle, let me tell you. Searing agony and then whoosh: you suddenly find yourself all in one piece again in some random part of the landscape. But if you kill him, time warps back. I don’t know how or why, but it’s true: everything returns to how it was and starts all over again.’
‘I’d noticed,’ Ross confessed, another piece clicking into place in that disturbingly logical chain.
‘Oh, that was you, last time, was it? You killed him? Well, you’ll understand: whether you killed him the next time or he killed you, I knew I’d have a de
vil of a time finding you again afterwards. I was starting to think that this might be hell, that maybe I had died in my sleep, but once I saw there was somebody else here like me, I realised we both must be alive: this must be real. And if it’s real, then however we got here, there must be a way back too.’
‘What is this place?’ Ross asked with a hollow dread that the answer wasn’t going to be entirely a surprise. ‘I mean, do you know what this planet is called?’
‘Yes,’ Bob replied. ‘Its name is Graxis. I’d never heard of it before.’
Ah, thought Ross, who had heard of it. That being ‘Ah’, as in: ‘My brain is imploding with the enormity of this but at least I finally know what I’m dealing with.’
Graxis: a planet on the outer rim of the Andromeda galaxy, where the dominant race had built a technology that combined advanced robotics with bio-scavenging. They had raided first their own world’s native species and then the species of other planets in order to sustain and augment themselves. They saw all other life-forms as raw material, and felt no more remorse about harvesting humans for spare parts than humans would about turning oil into plastic. That, however, wasn’t the aspect that had precipitated Ross’s hollow dread. There was something much more troubling about Graxis’s nature.
The outer rim of any galaxy is too remote from the black hole at the centre for there to be a sufficiency of the higher elements necessary to create and sustain organic life. Life had evolved on Graxis though, and for one important reason: that whoever wrote the CD-booklet blurb for Digital Excess Software had known jack-shit about astronomy.
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