Germline: The Subterrene War: Book 1

by T. C. McCarthy

  “Look… He paused to light it for me and then tossed the lighter to the kid. “That’s just it. In America, this wouldn’t be a problem, or in an American unit, but I’m not American and neither is my staff, half of whom are Uzbeks. You’re used to these things. We are not.”

  “Maybe you better tell me what’s going on.”

  “I will show you.”

  The doctor stood and ushered us from his office, leading us down the front steps and into the street, where the wind bit through our thin clothes and made me shiver. We moved quickly. The next structure over had been an apartment building of some kind, and when we stepped through the door, a pair of Marines stood and asked for identification. I didn’t have any, and neither did the kid. Ours was stored in our suit computers, but the doctor held out a card, which the two men scanned, and then he vouched for us. We headed up the stairs nearby, climbed three flights, and then pushed through a pair of double doors into a wide room that looked as though it had once been an entire floor of apartments, whose walls had been completely ripped out.

  “This,” the doc said, “is my problem.”

  What got me first wasn’t the sight; it was the smell. The room was filled with steel cages about ten feet by ten feet, inside of which had been placed beds, and on most of these lay a genetic. I went numb. The place smelled as though someone had died, and it had been long enough since I’d smelled anything like it that I felt sick.

  “What the hell is this?” the kid asked.

  The doctor looked angry. “This is what they’ve given me to handle. Command asked my staff to oversee medical for the rear-guard task force, which I gladly did. But now your Marines want to save these girls and put them on the line again—girls who have gone beyond their shelf life and who are literally rotting alive. Look.”

  He pointed to the nearest cage, and I didn’t want to look but forced myself to, then wished immediately afterward that I hadn’t. Bridgette sat on a bed. Her fingers had gone black and she had a vacant look on her face, as though she wasn’t seeing anything clearly or maybe wasn’t seeing anything at all.

  “These are abominations. It’s one thing to field combat robots or plasma or any one of the millions of weapons we have, but it’s another to play God. I don’t want these girls here. My staff doesn’t want to come near them.”

  I cleared my throat. “What do you want us to do?”

  “You take care of them.”

  “We’re not doctors,” the kid said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “Oui, yes. You can do something. You can handle the daily routine, monitor things for me, you can clean their beds, and Marines will help provide security in the event that something goes wrong.”

  I fought asking the question, but it came out anyway, like someone else had taken over my brain. “Why don’t they just shoot them?”

  “Samarkand is not just another defense,” the doc explained. “Samarkand is where we have to convince the Russians to come no further; it’s where we have to bloody them so badly that they won’t take another step toward Bandar. What happens if we hold them for a while and then run but don’t cripple them?”

  “They follow us all the way, and we never make it out,” I said.

  “Correct. So the Marines have tasked me to find a way to reverse the girls’ spoiling, to stop the rot and give them additional life in the field, where they can do the most damage to Russian forces. Every weapon is needed. We have four thousand genetics at the point of discharge, one thousand beyond their discharge, and we need them fielded for at least another few months. Perhaps less.”

  “Can’t our scientists just give you some kind of magic formula?” I asked. “To reverse everything?”

  “Maybe. Maybe they could.” He took a long drag and then flicked his cigarette at the closest cage, where the butt burst into sparks. “But they won’t. The Marine general is doing this against orders, so even if he asked for the proper medications, none would be delivered. And one more thing—if you do this for me, and I succeed in reversing their problems, I’ll do everything in my power to try and get a plane in here; I’ll make sure you two are the first on board, for home.”

  The room went quiet then, and I noticed some of the girls looking at us, cocking their heads in the same way she always had, and I had to get out. Why me? The newfound clarity that moments before had seemed welcome revealed a major flaw when it unleashed a wave of memories of Bridgette and her hands, which had gone over every inch of me because I was so strange to her. And yet these weren’t Bridgette. These were images of her, exact replicas that wouldn’t replace anything and only reminded me of what couldn’t be had.

  I looked at the kid. He grinned, and even though he didn’t say a word, I knew what he was thinking: he didn’t care about them or Bridgette; he had only heard that we had a chance to get out.

  “We’ll do it,” I said.

  “Excellent! We’ve established a procedure for initial treatment, and some of these girls will have to be put down, because they’ve lost too much tissue. My staff will handle those.”

  “Do you have tranq tabs?”

  “Quoi?” He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  My thoughts shifted to Ox and that day we’d gotten high in the observation post. “Tranq tabs are pills, a mixture of haloperidol, fentanyl, and some kind of speed. It helps the girls with their mental crap.”

  “No. This I do not have, not in large quantities and what we do have is reserved for our human forces. But I might be able to work something with local drug dealers. Do you know how much, the doses?”

  I shook my head, wondering if this was a good idea after all, because it would put me in proximity to my favorite drugs again. “I don’t know exactly, but I know they take huge doses. Enough to make the sun rise.”

  We got a short reprieve from duty with the genetics the next day when the British Legionnaire found out where we were; their unit had been assigned an eastern patrol—before Popov arrived—to get a lay of the land and preestablish artillery coordinates on likely spots of cover so we could concentrate fire effectively if the Russians tried an overland assault. He had remembered that the kid spoke Russian, and they needed a translator.

  “You’re welcome to join us,” he said to me, and I hesitated, because it wasn’t an easy decision: start the job of watching Bridgette duplicates rot in cages or risk my life on a patrol with the Foreign Legion.

  “I’ll go.” I suited up and sent a quick message to the doctor.

  We loaded into a scout car with about ten other men, and they nodded to us, squeezing over to make room. The ride was bumpy. Once we left the area of downtown Samarkand, I saw that we headed north again, back toward Jizzakh, and overhead the clouds looked low and even, the temperature just right for snow. Flakes had started to fall by the time we reached the outer perimeter, and the car slowed to a stop before letting everyone out.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  The Brit grinned before buttoning up. “Bo’ston. But not the Boston you’re thinking of, mate. We’ll head east from here to Ul’yanovo and then do a sweep a few klicks north before heading back overland.”

  The kid hadn’t said a word all day and I clicked my gauntlet against his shoulder. “Everything cool?”

  “Yeah. Cool. Fuck it.”

  I hadn’t noticed it until then but should have. When I’d first met the kid, he’d been young still and I’d been foggy with the haze of having just come off drugs, so I’d missed the transition. It was like seeing a butterfly that the day before had been a caterpillar. The short time in Almaty and then here had begun the transformation, and the kid aged without my noticing, but when I looked at him closely, I saw it in the way he carried his carbine—not like a weapon, a separate piece of kit, but like it had grown out of his body. It was meant to be there. On one hand, it was sad to see him warped, but on the other hand, it was a necessary thing, because if we made it out and he wound up back in the world, at least he’d be alive; the warping would
keep him safe. And a life twisted was better than no life at all.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Cool as whatever.”

  A fight broke out between two of the Legion guys, and one of them fell back against me, knocking me on my ass. The Brit picked me up.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Okonkwo,” he said, “a Nigerian. His term was up last week but the Legion won’t let him go, say he’s stuck for the duration of the war. It’s part of the contract and the boy’s an asshole, anyway.”

  Okonkwo cursed in French, and I hadn’t spoken it in years but picked up some of what he said as he faced off against a sergeant.

  “I’m not going. Find someone else.”

  “You’re going or I’ll shove this grenade launcher up your ass until you shit thermal gel.”

  Okonkwo threw another punch, which was really pointless in armor, because although he connected, the gauntlet bounced from the sergeant’s helmet and left Okonkwo off balance. Within a second the sergeant had thrown him to the ground, sitting on his back before dropping his grenade launcher and pushing a fléchette pistol against Okonkwo’s head.

  “You’re going.”

  “Shoot me, asshole.”

  “You’re going.”

  “The Russians are out there; don’t you even get it? Why do we have to scout? Can’t drones do it for us?”

  That got a grunt of agreement from the Brit and a couple of others, and I found myself nodding at the idea—the senselessness of sending twelve men into the unknown. Okonkwo definitely had a point.

  “You’re going,” the sergeant repeated, holstering his sidearm and moving to let the man up.

  But Okonkwo didn’t move and started crying, pounding his head into a soil that had frozen solid overnight and that now started to look a grayish white from the light dusting of snow. We flinched at the boom of aircraft overhead. But the drones flew northward and were undoubtedly ours, and Okonkwo’s tantrum called our attention back when he switched into his native language. Nobody said anything. The Legionnaires slung their weapons and waited, standing in a semicircle around their comrade until he finished whatever it was he was saying and rose slowly to his feet.

  “Fuck this,” he said.

  The sergeant threw him his carbine. “Yeah, fuck it. But you’re going.”

  “I know I’m going!”

  “It’s all right, mate,” the Brit said to me as we started walking. We passed through the outer minefield and then spread out, leaving about ten feet between us as we marched on either side of a dirt road. “He’ll be all right.”

  The road headed east, and with each step I began to shake more, the uneasy sensation that the Uzbek countryside was alive making it hard to concentrate. As we marched, the snow fell more thickly. I still saw the kid on my right and the Brit on my left, but beyond that things got hazy, so I had to trust my suit display, which they had synced to the Legion system before we headed out. On my heads-up, ten blue dots spread out, barely making progress toward the destination marker of Ul’yanovo.

  We entered a village. According to my map, it was Zarbdor, population ten thousand, but when we moved into the streets, the narrowness forcing us to bunch a little more, the town looked to me as though it had been abandoned. My goggles switched to a combination of visible and infrared, and in the distant haze I saw what looked like people, but they were gone before we could get close enough to see clearly, and then, before we knew it, the town ended. At one point the road curved northeast and we continued on a straight course, due east, leaving the asphalt behind.

  “Why don’t we stay on the road?” I asked the Brit.

  “We’re heading east, and then we’ll hit Ul’yanovo overland from the south. We got some reports yesterday of advance Russian units moving in from Tajikistan and setting up shop.”

  “I didn’t know there were any Russians in Tajikistan.”

  “Neither did we.”

  By now the snowstorm had turned into a blizzard. I wouldn’t have blamed Okonkwo if he’d just turned and run at that point, because who the hell sent out a patrol when it was clear that the weather didn’t have a chance of holding up? What did they expect us to see? The combination of a howling wind and no visibility made everyone jumpy, and just as we prepared to swing northward, I saw a shape charging at us out of the snow, and I fumbled for my carbine, flicking off the safety just in time to open fire at the same instant I yelled like a little girl.

  “Contact!”

  Whatever it was howled, stumbled a few steps to the side, and then keeled over in the snow. The Brit motioned for us to stay put and crawled forward, seeming to take forever to get there, until he stood and waved us on.

  When I arrived, he slapped me on the back. “Goat. Nice shot, Yank.”

  “What?”

  “You shot a goat.”

  Everyone laughed, even Okonkwo. But then another figure came out of the snow, this time a human, and the man stumbled forward wearing some kind of shawl and carrying an ax, which he waved at us while shouting.

  The Brit pointed at the kid. “You catching any of this?”

  “He’s mad that we killed his goat. He wants money.”

  “Fuck all. Tell him if he doesn’t shut up and get back inside, we’ll kill the bastard.”

  The kid did as he was told but it didn’t work and the man kept screaming until he started looking wild-eyed, so we all took a few steps back before turning and jogging northward—hoping to put some distance between us and the crime. I genuinely felt bad. For all I knew, that goat had been like a son to the old man, or his entire winter’s food supply, and I’d just shot it without thinking.

  Things went smoothly for a while, until I realized that we weren’t making much progress, and according to my now-fixed chronometer, it would be dark soon. Then everyone stopped. The snow still fell as hard as it had for the past several hours, and the Legionnaires pulled white sleeping bags from their kits after setting up a wide circle of alarm sentries. The kid and I just stood there.

  “What’s wrong?” the Brit asked.

  “What are you guys doing?”

  “Camping. What are you doing?”

  “I thought we were patrolling Ul’yanovo and then heading back.”

  The Brit laughed, then pulled the bag over his head before popping his helmet. He shielded a cigarette from the wind; it took a few tries to get it lit, but then he looked up again and smiled. “Mate. It’s thirty klicks from Bo’ston to Ul’yanovo. We’re good, but not that good. Get some rest. We’ll finish the patrol tomorrow.” Then he raised his voice so everyone could hear. “And, Okonkwo. They sent a patrol because drones have a hard time seeing through snow.”

  “Fuck you” was the only response he got.

  The kid and I collapsed to the ground. Someone eventually produced extra bags for us, and we thanked him, pulling the thin tarps over our suits. The bags weren’t really for warmth. But they helped with camouflage and provided at least some insulation from the wind and cold so that the suits didn’t expend as much energy keeping us warm.

  Before dozing off, the kid asked, “How much more of this shit is there?”

  “As much as you want,” I said. “Don’t worry. Tonight we’ll sleep, and tomorrow we’ll finish with Ul’yanovo, be back in Samarkand before you know it. Easy as whatever.”

  I had no idea how wrong that prediction would be.

  Someone shook me awake and I tried to jump up, but the bag wrapped around my feet and I fell into a snowdrift before finally coming to my senses. There was at least two feet of new snow. It was still dark but I heard the flakes blow against my helmet as if they were grains of sand, and in the green haze of night vision, I saw it was the Brit who had woken me. The kid stood next to him.

  “We’re moving out,” the Brit said.

  “What, no breakfast?”

  “Eat while you march.”

  I didn’t taste the food. We resumed our trek northward and the stuff that came out of my pouch felt cold against my che
eks, because the meal pouch had become so frozen overnight that the warming pack barely managed even to thaw it. Everything had changed. Nobody spoke now and the Legionnaires moved more cautiously than they had the previous day, even though the wind and snow kept most of our footsteps quiet. Once we reached a point about a kilometer south of Ul’yanovo, the sergeant whispered over the radio.

  “Go—” and then a French word I didn’t understand.

  “Chameleon,” the Brit whispered for us. “Go to stealth mode.”

  In the snow, the sensation of being invisible made everything seem like a dream. Now I couldn’t see even the men closest to me, although the kid’s footprints appeared out of nowhere, and a couple of times I felt a strange vertigo because there was no horizon and the snow fell so hard that you lost the difference between ground and sky. Soon the morning came, which made everything seem more benign, and then, without warning, we reached the outskirts of Ul’yanovo—a series of low huts that looked as though they were partly underground.

  “Who lives like this these days?” I whispered.

  “Silence!” someone hissed back.

  A red light popped onto my heads-up, the signal to stop, and I lowered myself to the snow so I could bring my carbine to bear on the closest hut. A single blue dot crept forward. It stopped at a point that looked as though it was just inside the line of structures, and then my red light flashed green, so I rose carefully and continued on. When we passed the first buildings, we heard voices inside—a woman and some children—which made me breathe with relief, the realization that a family lived there making things easier to bear.

  Beyond the huts was the town proper, and I climbed over a low stone wall to slide forward against the side of a house before peering around a corner at the same instant the snowfall ebbed. We all froze. In the center of town, three vehicles idled, one Russian APC and two scout cars, and what looked like about thirty soldiers were there. They disappeared a second later when the wind picked up, hiding them behind a haze of blown snow.