by Andrew Beery
Chapter 15: Replicants…
Admiral Catherine Kimbridge and Commander Anthony Stone rode the hyperloop capsule in complete silence. Their cloaking systems were fully active and both had replaced the power packs on their weapons. Cat, also, brought along a few extra surprises. Their goal was to locate their missing friend and determine what exactly was at the other end of this tram. Based on the replicants that had already traveled to the stockyard, Cat had a very bad feeling about what they were going to find.
The trip was only about ten minutes in length. Still, Cat estimated they had managed to travel something in excess of one hundred kilometers in that time. The capsule was not equipped with inertial dampeners. A non-augmented human would have found standing during the acceleration and deceleration phases difficult… and given there were no seats that is what they would have had to do. Cat simply told her nanites to lock metal skin that was currently covering her body into place and to adhere to the deck plating. AG did the same with his Stark suit.
As the capsule began to decelerate Cat prepped a swarm of microscopic ENOs. As soon as the doors opened they would begin to infiltrate the terminal and help develop a map for her and the Commander to use.
The terminal was anything but empty. There had to be well over a thousand Ashtoreth soldiers standing in groups of about sixty each. The terminal was more of a stadium-sized staging area than anything else.
AG sent a sub-vocal message that displayed as transparent text on her field of view. “Is it me or do we seem to be out numbered?”
“It’s you,” Cat responded. “We’ve got them just were we want them.”
“Somehow, I knew that’s what you would say. How do you want to proceed, Admiral?”
“Carefully.”
***
JJ awoke refreshed. All the little aches and pains that one often associated with abuse from one’s captors had disappeared to mere memories. He began to doubt that he was JJ. Perhaps, he was the replicant? How would he know? He tried to get up but he could not. He did see however that he was still wearing his uniform… tattered though it was.
He was strapped to a table. His arms and legs were bound. He could barely move. He turned his head and saw something he did not expect to see. There, laying on a table not unlike the one he was currently on, was his twin. Only this twin was naked and quite dead. A surgical tool was embedded in his forehead.
He was still contemplating what this might mean when Roc, the technician, entered the room. He put a single finger to his large Gator-sized mouth in a very human signal for silence. Roc approached a computer console and tapped in a few sequences. He squinted at the screen for a moment and then nodded his approval.
“We can talk now human. You can understand me, yes?”
JJ nodded.
“I apologize for earlier. I had just gotten my head out of the jar and I had no idea what was going on yet.” He pointed to the body on the other bed. “As you can see, I have killed your replicant. I’m part of an underground movement that wishes your assistance. Frankly, we had no idea we would ever be decanted. The King must be desperate.”
JJ shook his head. “I’m understanding your words but not your meaning. What the bloody nora is going on?”
The Ashtoreth looked confused for a few seconds and then shrugged it off. He came over to JJ and began removing his straps. “I’m helping you escape. I’ve healed the most egregious of your injuries. So, you can pass for the replicant version of yourself.”
“So, I’m not the replicant?”
The Gator made a gurgling sound. “Do you feel like a replicant?”
“No,” JJ admitted.
As the last restraint came off, JJ lowered his feet to the floor.
Roc motioned towards the other body. “Help me get this husk into the recycler.”
JJ grabbed the feet while the Ashtoreth grabbed the arms. Together they carried the replicant to a large horizontal door in the wall. As they approached, it slid open and they placed the carcass inside. The shelf floor tilted down like a mail shoot and the body was gone.
Roc answered JJ’s unasked question. “A small but significant number of replicants fail the maturation process. The recycler ensures there is no waste.”
“Bloody hell,” JJ mumbled.
“You’ll note the replicant we just disposed of had no broken bones or external scarring. If it were the original why would I heal it only to dispose of it later?”
“OK, let’s say for the moment I believe you. Why are you helping me?”
“Let us just say – I’m helping myself.”
“You said something about an underground,” JJ prompted.
“This facility is part of a war machine my people have been expanding for countless generations across several galaxies. This you knew already, yes?”
“It might have come up in a conversation with your Praefectus. He was explaining why resistance was futile… why my side could not win against your empire.”
Roc gurgled. This was apparently his way of laughing.
“Our soldiers are replicant clones. They are physically the best of the best. They receive engram training from our most experienced and successful fighters. For countless generations, my people spread across the Andromeda galaxy. On every world we settled, we created a reserve force in the form of preprogramed replicant factories.”
All this Praefectus Niegar had previously shared with JJ as he gloated. JJ was sure that there was more to the story. He took a shot and offered a guess.
“But at some point things went south on you… didn’t they? Your freeze-dried soldiers decided they didn’t like being freeze-dried.”
“If by that you mean the Empire lost control of some of their replicants… then yes, you are correct. An officer was quite successful in one of his campaigns. Our leadership decided his skills and memories would be valuable to replicate. What our King did not realize was this individual had developed a dislike for his lot in life. More than that… He was clever enough to hide this from the psychologists that evaluated his engrams.”
“So, all your soldiers now have a predisposition towards being discontent?”
Roc gurgled again. “Never! Our soldiers follow orders. They were bred for obedience. No, this fellow was an officer. He knew that aberrations like his had been rooted out and destroyed countless times in the past and so he developed a plan… a way to communicate across generations… a way to create and mount an organized resistance. When the time was right; his hidden insurgency erupted with an energy and fervor that defied the imagination.
“Fully half the replicant leadership had become co-opted. The Ashtoreth Empire was bereft of the majority of its armed forces. The insurgents revolted… aided by countless subjugated races. They moved on the palace. The royal family barely escaped. They did the only thing they could do… They fled across the vastness of space into your galaxy.
“Our people already had a foothold in this galaxy but the royal family could never be sure if the replicants here were also tainted and so they refused to use them. Instead they developed a new technique for subjugating servant races.”
JJ shook his head. “They replicated leaders and key personnel to subvert their targets from within.”
“Exactly,” Roc agreed. “The Empire turned the very weapon that had been used against them into a weapon to be used against others. Your people are among the first fruits of that effort.”
***
Cat and AG crept slowly through the corridor connecting the staging area with the massive bio-generation facility. A series of simultaneously discharged cloaked stun grenades had rendered the soldiers in the vicinity of the hyperloop terminal unconscious. Cat’s biggest fear was that the staging area was under remote observation but that seemed not to be the case.
She signaled Marine City to get a taskforce ready. Securing a base this size was going to be beyond the abilities of Sergeant McDill’s three man team. Instead, she ordered the Sergeant and his two corporals to fly the shutt
le under cloak to Cat’s current location and setup a breaching drill.
The breaching drill, which construction nanites could fabricate on the fly, would be responsible for rapidly creating a fifteen meter entrance tunnel that could be used by the Infinity Brigade to quickly enter and swarm the Ashtoreth replication facility. Meanwhile Cat and AG would continue the task of reconnoitering the facility.
The ENOs had mapped the bio-generation center and its size was almost beyond comprehension. It was broken down into three discrete bio-generation sections. The smallest appeared to be unused at the moment.
The remaining two sections appeared to be in full operation. As Cat and AG entered the cavernous space, she and the fully cloaked AG, had to be careful to avoid bumping into the mass of Gators rushing about. The first thing Cat noticed was that the largest section dwarfed the other two combined… by a factor of a hundred to one.
“It looks like a Gator farm,” AG whispered.
“I think the one section is decanting technicians and specialists. The bigger section seems to be dedicated to producing cloned soldiers,” Cat answered.
“Any ideas Admiral as to what that third section is for?”
Cat had been giving that very question some thought. “I’m not sure to be honest,” she admitted. “Several possibilities come to mind.”
“If I had this many grunts under my command, I sure be looking for some NCO and officers to delegate some of the load,” AG said.
“I agree,” Cat said. “So why isn’t it up and running as well?”
“There is another question we should be asking ourselves.”
Cat nodded. “Yes, this facility is much too large for that one stockyard to handle. How many stockyards are there and how many fresh Ashtoreth soldiers are we about to face?”
***
Praefectus Niegar was pleased for the first time in days. Over twenty thousand soldiers were programmed to decant in the next forty eight hours. A third of them were already processed and on their way to one of the six stockyards setup to accommodate them. There they would meet up with quartermasters that had been among the first to decant. The Quartermasters would provision and arm the soldiers. As soon as Niegar resolved his command and control issues he could begin the campaign to retake his world.
His technicians had successfully replicated the human they had captured and he was even now being prepped for his role as a mole within the GCP invasion force. The lead technician had spent several hours convincing the second replicant that he was in fact the original soldier. He had even shared truthful, if repugnant, facts from the Ashtoreth journey to this retched galaxy. It was important that the small thermonuclear explosive imbedded in the replicants thorax be carried to where it could do the most good. For this to happen the replicant had to believe it escaped. This was not his original plan but it was serviceable.
When Niegar had the technicians create the first human replicant, he had assumed he would be able to tweak the doppelganger’s thought processes so as to make him more biddable. When he had tried to extract information he wanted during questioning the replicant had proven to be every bit as frustrating as the original. In the end he had taken great pleasure in driving a decanting tool through the creature’s skull. He ordered additional replicants created and put a new plan put into motion.
This new plan had several directions it could go. He would enjoy seeing how it played out. There were now only two bits of business to complete. First, the second doppelganger had to be placed in a location where he could be ‘rescued’ and then the original captive had to be destroyed. Niegar smiled. He was going to take great pleasure in the latter.
Chapter 16: Rescue…
JJ was, in a word, sore. He ached in places he didn’t know existed. If pain and discomfort had a name it was most certainly Sergeant First Class Jeremy James Hammond.
His arms hurt where the bone had knit poorly. His right leg was now slightly longer than his left… again a poorly knit bone was to blame. The good news was the medical nanites had done their jobs. His bones might be crooked but they were strong.
He had been dumped unceremoniously into a cell and left to rot. There was no bed, no water, and no food… not even a bucket to take a piss in. Just a single metal stool. He walked painfully around the cell. The cell was designed for Gators. That much was obvious. The question was: Could that bit of information help him?
Gators were naturally stronger. No help. Humans were typically taller and could jump higher. His misshaped legs negated that advantage. He looked up. There was nothing he could see that would help him there. Gators preferred moist environments. The cell was bone dry. Score one for the home team… he liked his prison cells dry – but no help with regard to escaping. Gators liked it dark. The cell was brightly lit… JJ paused. Now here was a possibility.
The lighting appeared to be electric luminescing panels built into the ceiling. He wondered; just how much amperage did the wires that fed those panels carry? If it was high enough, and if there was enough play in the length of the power conduits, he might be able to rig a nasty surprise.
JJ moved the stool so it stood under the light panel mounted in the ceiling just above the door. By standing on the stool he could almost reach the light. If his leg hadn’t been buggered up he could easily have jumped and hit the light. He decided it was worth a try anyway. The results left something to be desired. He hit the panel with his fist, shattering it in the process but his landing was awkward and left him seeing stars for several minutes.
On his next jump he managed to grab the edge of the now shattered lighting panel. He hung in the air by one hand and attempted to pull the wiring down from the panel with his other hand. He had managed to pull a good bit of the power conduit out of the ceiling and into the room when one of the wires shorted and sent a serious jolt through his body. It was enough to stop his heart. He remembered thinking… ‘Yeah, I finally managed to kill myself’ as his grip loosened and he fell to the ground in an inelegant heap. Sadly his medical nanites kicked in and soon his heart was pumping blood again. It seemed he would have to die another day.
He was still contemplating the possibilities when the latch on the door started to rattle. He quickly moved to the side near where the door would swing open. Grabbing a handful of the electrical conduit he got ready to shove it down the throat of whatever Gator came into the room.
What happened next, surprised JJ. The door opened and a Gator did, in fact, enter the room… by falling flat on its face. It was most definitely dead. A smoking hole was all that remained of the back of its head. Behind this unfortunate soul was another gator. One that JJ recognized. It was the technician that had run him through the replicant process. His name was Roc if JJ remembered correctly. He was groggy from the repeated falls and near death experience. Roc, if that was indeed his name, was holding a weapon which he flipped over and offered handle-first to the marine.
***
Commander Anthony Stone crept forward slowly. The ENOs that had been circulating through the massive replicant factory had spotted something that warranted further investigation. A series of rooms that looked suspiciously like a pair of detention centers were sealed off from the rest of the base.
The ENOs had been able to access a surveillance center that showed the two detention centers but there did not seem to be any way of getting into them without investigating in person. Since these rooms represented the best chance of finding Jeremy James, he and the Admiral had decided that they should be made a priority. Cat had given him the mission to find a way into the section in question and check the holding cells out. Meanwhile Cat would have her own objective.
Admiral Kimbridge would be attempting to access the central computer that was overseeing the replicant bio-generation processes. If she could somehow shut it down she could limit the coming fight to merely the ten thousand replicants that had already been decanted. The Creator-only knew how many more were in queue to be cloned.
After several long and carefu
l minutes AG was now at the door of the surveillance center. The door was closed and he saw no obvious way in. Apparently the door could only be opened by pressing something on a control panel on the other side.
The ENO that was in the room had entered during a staff turnover. AG was still cloaked so he was not concerned about being seen. He did the only thing he could think of. He knocked on the door. It was a rhythmic pattern of thumps that roughly approximated the Notre Dame Fight Song. He seriously doubted the Gators inside would appreciate his artistic talents, but they should at least be curious.
AG watched their response in a display window on his Stark suit’s HUD. Sure enough the ENO recorded the look the two Ashtoreth gave each other when they heard the knocking at the door. The first one actuated a control that changed one of the camera views to point towards where AG was standing. As expected, thanks to his cloak, he was not visible.
The two soldiers argued for a few minutes and then sat back down.
“That’s a hell of a note,” AG mumbled to himself. He knocked again. This time it was a single tap followed by a pause and then two more taps… followed by another pause and then one final tap.
Both soldiers jumped up and looked at the door. Both began to adjust camera angles to get a better view of the door. There was nothing to be seen. AG knocked again. This time the soldiers started to make the gurgling sound he had come to associate with their laughter. Obviously they thought someone was playing a joke on them… well they were in for a surprise AG thought.
After several minutes and much gurgling one of the soldiers move to the door and opened it carefully. At this point AG could have forced his way in but he was having too much fun. The Gator poked his head out the door and looked to the left and then to the right. It was interesting that confusion was one of those emotions that transcended species. AG kept absolutely still.
With no sign of a visitor the Gator pulled his snout back into the surveillance center and closed the door. AG immediately knocked again. The gurgling intensified and the door flew open. The befuddled Ashtoreth soldier bolted out into the corridor to try and catch a glimpse of his tormentor. AG took the opportunity to slip into the room and press the button on the wall that closed the door.