by Isaac Hooke
Earth, the most well-defended planet in human space, was under attack by aliens. This was insane. Where were the United Systems fleets that protected the inner and outer solar system?
Rade heard a clicking sound as someone attempted to open the locked house door that led to the cellar. He turned his weapon toward that door, aiming past the edge of the rack beside him. The other combat robots with him transferred their aim as well.
He zoomed in on the handle with his scope and watched it jiggle left and right. Then the handle ceased all motion. Rade zoomed out again, centering the reticle on the middle of the door.
A loud bang from around the bend behind him drew his attention back to the exterior cellar entrance. He spun his rifle toward the sloping barn doors, and saw that a human fist had punched right through the wooden structure. It was searching for the blocking bar.
Rade was confused. If the hand belonged to whoever was aboard that object, then that meant humans were piloting the vehicles. He thought of the dark shapes he had seen emerging from the crashed pods on the city feeds. Though the clouds of dust from the impact had obscured their features, they had in fact seemed humanoid. Perhaps these weren’t aliens after all.
He glanced at his overhead map on the off chance that the hand belonged to a friendly. No. The indicator that had appeared on the map was colored red, not blue.
He aimed his rifle at the hand while it searched for the bar, and considered moving his aim to the right slightly, where he estimated the body belonging to the hand resided. He decided he didn’t want to kill whoever had come here outright, not until he knew exactly who he was facing. So he kept his aim on the hand and squeezed the trigger.
The arm retracted immediately, vanishing.
Chew on that for a while, Rade thought.
A moment later the barn doors broke inward as two tires taken from farm machines in the Quonset hurtled through the wood with tremendous force. The tires crashed into the far wall of the cellar beside Rade and bounced halfway back to the stairs.
Three men hurried down the steps. He caught a glimpse of camos, rifles, and soldiers’ helmets. With their legs crouched, and their rifles held to eye level, these were men who moved with the intention—the intent to kill.
“Open fire!” Rade ordered as he squeezed the trigger, striking one of them in the chest. The man didn’t go down. The intruder immediately swung his rifle toward him.
A part of Rade’s mind noted that the weapon was of an odd design: the muzzle was flared, bell-shaped.
Rade ducked behind the wall. The edge blackened beside him as the invisible beam struck; dark veins spread across the bricks. Filled with a mixture of repulsion and fear, he pulled farther back, squeezing against the wine rack beside him, but the veins ceased their spread a moment later, and seemed to crystallize, as if whatever composed them had died.
“What the hell kind of weapon is this?” Rade muttered.
The other combat robots with him were opening fire past the bend.
“Aim for the eyes,” Algorithm said. “That drops them!”
Rade swung his rifle around the bend once more. The three attackers had fallen, but three more were rushing inside the cellar from the fields beyond.
Rade aimed at the rightmost newcomer and utilized his Implant to steady his aim as the soldier rushed down the stairs. The helmet, reminiscent of a crescent moon in the way it curved around the face, occluded much of the man’s features, but Rade could see the eyes. The cold, dead eyes.
He targeted the right eye, which alternately jostled up, down, left and right within his reticle. The instant the eye was centered in his cross-hairs, Rade squeezed the trigger.
The soldier dropped.
Beside him, one of the humanoid farming units that had joined the attack was struck in the hand. It dropped to one knee, black veins spreading across its metal body from the arm region, then it collapsed. Rade noticed that the veins didn’t seem to crystallize this time, but remained black.
“Charles!” Algorithm said, rushing to the robot and pulling it out of the line of fire. Algorithm examined the unit, then glanced at Rade. “He’s gone.”
Rade returned his attention past the bend. The latest wave of attackers had fallen, but another group was coming down the stairs.
A loud thud behind him made him jump. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the house door had been kicked in. More soldiers were rushing inside from that vector.
Outflanked.
Shaw and the other robots in charge of guarding that door opened fire.
“Don’t let their beams touch any part of you,” Rade warned the robots there. “Even a hit to a hand or foot will bring you down.” He wondered what that beam would do to a human being.
He aimed past the corner once more, targeting the eyes of another soldier. He downed the tango.
“Boss, look out!” Algorithm shouted.
Instinctively Rade dove to the side, away from the bend, and rolled on the floor, smashing painfully into a rack. Where he was standing a moment before, a small black bore had appeared in the brick wall, wisping fresh smoke.
If he had stayed in place, he would have been hit in the back. But who was firing at him? A tango at the house entry? No... the angle was off.
When Algorithm unleashed its rifle at the floor a moment later, Rade saw that the stricken farming unit had apparently returned to life. Its rifle was tracking Rade.
Rade rolled again, but Algorithm fired a few more shots into the AI core, and the robot slumped lifelessly.
In the passageway behind him, another robot was hit by an enemy beam.
“I’m hit!” the farming unit said.
Staying on the floor, Rade aimed at the AI core as black veins spread across the humanoid body, and he put the robot out of its misery.
“If any robots are hit,” Rade said. “Take them down immediately!”
The toddlers were wailing loudly in their beds by that point, and Cora was still talking to them quietly, consoling them, ensuring they didn’t try to leave the beds; Shaw guarded their rear, rifle in hand.
Rade rose to a crouch. He noticed blood on his upper arm. A glass fragment from a broken wine bottle was sticking out. Grimacing, he pulled the shard out.
Staying low, Rade moved behind one of the racks and then helped defend the house entrance.
After three more soldiers fell, the attack from that vector ceased. Rade returned to his position by the bend—the robots there made room for him—and peered past with his rifle. There were no more tangos. The floor in that section was littered with the bodies of nine men.
“They’ve stopped coming,” Algorithm said.
His attention was drawn to the external camera feed, which he had kept in the far upper right of his vision. The tentacled pod was quickly moving away from the chateau.
“They’ll be back with reinforcements,” Rade said. “We have to leave the estate as soon as possible.”
He glanced at Shaw. She had slid the rifle over her shoulder, and was holding the hands of both Alex and Sil, whom she had moved onto the same toddler bed. They had stopped crying, but their eyes were still wide with fear.
“Algorithm, Brat, post guards at the entrances,” Rade said. “Then take two teams with you and do a quick search. Start with the house. Make sure it’s clear up there. Then move on to the field and outbuildings.”
“Roger that,” Algorithm said.
Eight robots left the cellar, while two more took up guard positions at the tops of the different sets of stairs.
Cora left the children in Shaw’s care, and crouched beside a dead body. Cora removed the helmet. The robot seemed puzzled, but then repeated the action, moving to another corpse and also removed the helmet.
“Boss, you’re not going to like this,” Cora said.
“What is it?” Rade said, walking toward the robot.
Cora glanced at him. “These men... they’re all you.”
six
Rade gazed between the faces of
the two corpses in confusion. Cora was right. The pair bore a disturbing resemblance to him. He went to the next fallen soldier and ripped off the helmet. Then the next.
They all looked like him.
“What the hell is this?” Rade said.
“Cora, come watch the twins,” Shaw said.
Cora took her place, and Shaw joined Rade.
“How can this be?” Shaw said.
Rade sat on a nearby cask.
“There are a couple of explanations,” Rade said.
“The United Systems has access to your DNA profile...” Shaw said.
“Yes,” Rade said. “As does a certain alien species.”
“The chateau is clear,” Algorithm transmitted. “Our two teams are proceeding to search the vineyard and remaining outbuildings.”
“Thank you,” Rade replied. He glanced at one of the robots that had remained behind. “Formaldehyde, install a dissection program, and learn what you can about these things. Also examine one of our converted robots, and see if you can find out what happened. Shaw, let’s get our kids upstairs and away from this massacre.”
“Wait, you’re going to let the robot make a mess down here with one of those bodies?” Shaw asked.
“In case you haven’t noticed, your cellar is already a mess,” Rade said.
“At the very least, have Formaldehyde take the body outside,” Shaw said.
“Fine,” Rade said. “Formaldehyde, pick a body, and a turned robot, and take them into the vineyard before you begin your work. The rest of you, gather supplies from the house. We’re taking the vehicles in fifteen minutes and leaving the estate behind. Cora, join Shaw and me.”
Formaldehyde grabbed a robot, and a corpse, and then hurried around the bend toward the broken barn doors.
“Have fun,” a farming robot told Formaldehyde.
“I’m used to it!” Formaldehyde said. “I’m always tasked with the dirty jobs.”
“I suppose they named you Formaldehyde for a reason,” the farming robot offered.
Shaw stared at a nearby body. “I wonder...”
She knelt, wrenched the rifle from the dead man’s clutches, aimed at the brick wall across from her, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Must be bio-imprinted to the owners,” Shaw said.
“Bio-imprinted?” Rade said. He stowed his rifle and then grabbed the weapon from her. It seemed designed to be used without jumpsuit gloves, as it fit his barehanded grip readily. Too readily, in fact.
He aimed the flared muzzle at the same wall and squeezed the trigger. He saw no beam, but black veins spidered outward from the impact site. Those veins quickly crystallized, becoming white and ceasing their spread.
“Hmm,” Rade said.
“They really are your clones,” Shaw said.
Rade decided to keep the weapon, swinging the strap over his shoulder and looping it over the hardpoint there.
Rade and Shaw brought the twins upstairs and set them down in their high chairs at the kitchen table. While the robots cleaned out the pantry, loading food and water into the jeep and SUV, Shaw grabbed the first aid kit and set to treating Rade’s arm. Cora meanwhile fed and entertained the children.
Shaw rolled up his sleeve, hooking it over his shoulder hardpoint to keep it out of the way.
“Where’d you get this bruise?” She ran her warm fingers across a purple blotch blemishing the skin underneath the hardpoint. It was a ways above the wound.
“I slammed into a rack down there pretty good at one point,” Rade said.
“And how about this wound?” she asked.
“Broken wine bottle,” Rade explained.
“Nice.” She dipped a cotton ball in alcohol and wiped the wound. Rade flinched at the sting.
“It’s fairly superficial,” Shaw said, setting aside the swab, which had become red with his dried blood. “A few stitches and you’ll be good to go.”
Rade glanced at the wound. “That doesn’t even need stitches.”
“Sure it does,” Shaw said. “I wouldn’t want my warrior’s beautiful bicep to have a scar marring its perfection now, would I?”
“Har.” Rade watched her grab a threading needle, and joked: “Where’s a Weaver when you need one, huh?”
“Your body’s natural healing will suit you well enough,” Shaw said. “Unless you were whining because of the coming pain.”
“Bad joke,” Rade said. “I think you know by now I’ve never been one to whine at pain.”
“No,” Shaw said. “I suppose not.”
He gritted his teeth while she jabbed the needle in, rather hard.
“Sorry,” Shaw said. “I don’t do this every day. I’ll go real slow.”
“Faster would be better,” Rade said. “While you’re doing that, I’m going to see if I can get in touch with the team.”
The local Internet appeared to be still online. He accessed the virtual browser and pulled up the local news feed; nearby farms and vineyards had reported troop pod sightings, but Rade had to wonder if that was the same pod he had already seen.
All out battles were taking place in Paris, Marseille, and Lyon. On the Marseille feed, he saw that mechs, gunships, and Centurions faced not just the humanoid clones emerging from the troop pods, but also scorpion-shaped units that appeared to tote lasers on the tips of their curved tails. The enemy troop pods themselves participated in the battle, wrapping tentacles around gunships and pulling them out of the sky. Jets occasionally roared past, dropping surgical bombs in certain overrun areas. Several of the mechs and Centurions had turned on the human defenders, their metal skins covered in black veins. Some of the jets and gunships had been converted as well, apparently struck by ground-based particle fire.
Rade could only shake his head.
Once again our reliance on machines proves a weakness.
He began to wonder if it was really a good idea to take the Centurions with him. He decided he needed their rifles: he would deal with any turncoats on an individual basis when the time came.
He grimaced as Shaw pricked him again, and then looked up Tahoe’s ID and initiated a call. The calling tone repeated several times. Finally Tahoe picked up, voice-only.
“Rade!” Tahoe said. “You all right?”
“Fine,” Rade said. “Is that fighting I hear in the background?”
What sounded like a distant explosion came on the line, followed by shouts. Definitely fighting.
“We’re helping with the defense of Saint Tropez,” Tahoe said. “We’ve got at least seventy tangos in the city. The number keeps rising, because they’re converting our robots to their side. It’s like the Phant war all over again.”
“No,” Rade said. “It’s a different war. A later war.”
“What have you found out?” Tahoe asked.
“Have you seen the enemy troops yet?” Rade asked.
“Most of them seem human,” Tahoe said. “Though they have a couple of, well, best word for them would be scorpions. They seem right out of the Second Alien War.”
“Have you seen the faces of the human attackers?” Rade said.
“No,” Tahoe said. “Not clearly. Their helmets block most of their features, save for their eyes.”
“All right.” Rade winced as Shaw threaded the needle through his skin. “You said the scorpions seem right out of the Second Alien War. You’re exactly right. I believe the invaders are the Mahasattva.”
“So it’s true then,” Tahoe said. “But I thought the Mahasattva weren’t supposed to have space travel, their planet quarantined. The United Systems built an observation base in orbit around the homeworld, with a fleet of five destroyers keeping watch above the planet year round to enforce the quarantine.”
“Apparently they found a way to get around that,” Rade said. “Assuming I’m right.”
“What evidence have you found so far?” Tahoe said. “Well, other than the oddly familiar scorpion units?”
“The troops,” Rade said. “They’re
my clones.”
“Clones?” Tahoe said.
“Yes,” Rade said. “And who else do we know, other than the United Systems military, who possesses a copy of my DNA?”
“The Mahasattva,” Tahoe said.
“There you go,” Rade said.
“When war comes back to bite you in the ass, it’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Tahoe said. “I’ve watched some footage of the mothership in orbit. Now that I think about it, the design is definitely Mahasattva. You remember how all their ships are dodecahedral, right? Well, the mothership looks like they took five of those ships and glued them together.”
“Interesting,” Rade said. “Anyway, I’m having one of my Centurions dissect a clone as we speak. I have a feeling we’ll find more than a few robotic parts inside. I’ll tell you when I learn more later.”
“Dissecting a clone?” Tahoe asked. “You’re not at the vineyard?”
“Actually, we are,” Rade said. “We were attacked here. Apparently the invaders aren’t concentrating solely on the cities: they’re sending troops pods into the rural areas to convert anyone they find out here. Check the news, there are sightings all over the region.”
“Unless they’re targeting you specifically,” Tahoe said.
“It’s possible, but doubtful,” Rade said. “How would they even know where I lived?”
“If they were able to access the restricted weather grid,” Tahoe said, “I’d expect they could gain entry into other restricted systems, such as governmental ID databases.”
“Well then they made a mistake by sending only a few clones to get me,” Rade said. “Either way, Shaw and I are leaving. We’re going to make our way down to Saint Tropez to get you guys out.”
“Wait,” Shaw interrupted. “We have to get my parents out of Marseille.”
“Have you seen Marseille?” Rade said. “It’s a mess out there at the moment.”
“Exactly why we have to go,” Shaw said. “I can’t leave them.”
“The highways will be clogged with people fleeing the city,” Rade said. “We’ll never get in.”
He flinched as Shaw pricked the needle through his flesh, hard. For such a small superficial wound, she was sure taking her time. Then again, as she had mentioned, she doesn’t do this every day...