by Andrew Beery
JJ pulled the useless poncho off his head. The technician’s robe he wore was actually better camouflage at this point… But only so long as he could keep Gators from seeing his hands, feet and head.
More Gators appeared from both directions. AG started to fire as well. His Stark suit still kept him cloaked and it had personal shields that the Gator’s weapons were not especially effective against. He rushed to JJ’s side. At least his body could shield one side of the other marine as they fought their way out of this mess.
“Kind of reminds me of that time you set up O’Brady sisters,” AG said between shots.
“I invited the one… how was I to know she had an identical twin sister when I reminded her that you would be wait’n for her at the pub?” JJ laughed.
“Yes, well as I recall, her older brothers did not find it so amusing. Neither one of us had proper training at that point. We got the tar beat out of us.”
“You’ll forgive me sir, but I’m hoping for a better outcome today.”
AG toggled his commlink. “Admiral, I have a situation here.”
“Does it involve alarms and a whole lot of shooting?”
“Indeed it does Ma’am. Can I recommend a hasty retreat and allow our troopers free reign when they arrive in a few minutes?”
“A capital idea Commander. You’ll be pleased to know I have Sergeant Hammond with me.”
AG looked at the man next to him. “Now that is interesting Admiral. So do I.”
Chapter 18: A Tale of Two Hammonds…
Praefectus Niegar awoke confused yet again… He had just poured himself a Saba cocktail. He had wanted the liquor to calm his nerves. He was about to take his first sip… and then, without warning, he was here. ‘Here’ had the distinctive smell of a bio-generation chamber. Had he died again? Had his drink been poisoned? This whole death and rebirth thing was getting old. So many questions… so few answers.
He realized suddenly that this time he was not in his personal bio-generator. He seemed to be in the main decanting facility with common soldiers. This alone would have told him that something was seriously wrong. The yelling that was taking place outside of his decanting pod was the other indication. The lid to the pod automatically retracted when the computer controlling it detected a certain level of consciousness. Obviously that level had been achieved as the lid was now retracting.
He struggled to sit up. He would get to the bottom of this soon enough.
“You there, fetch me a robe he yelled.”
“Get your own damn robe,” the soldier responded. There was something oddly familiar about his voice. When the soldier turned to face him he got the shock of his life. He was staring at the spitting image of himself. In fact, as he looked around the room there were dozens of copies of Praefectus Niegar walking around and arguing.
Before he could completely orient himself he saw a group of soldiers, real ones, approach. Someone had ordered them to investigate the disturbance that was growing louder by the minute as more and more copies of Niegar decanted.
Acting on instinct he ordered the nearest soldier to surrender his weapon. To his great relief, the soldier complied. Niegar began firing at his clones. There could be only one of him. Sadly, he was not the only version of himself to have come to this conclusion. Gunfire echoed across the massive chamber as versions of himself managed to secure weapons and began to take out the competition.
He swung his bare feet, claws extended, over the edge of the bio-bed and tried to take a few steps to get a better angle on a few more opponents. Unfortunately it gave one of his replicant brothers a better angle on him. He felt a burning sensation on his upper shoulder as an energy beam grazed his arm. He turned to face his attacker but it was too late. The next blast caught him right between the eyes.
***
Praefectus Niegar awoke confused yet again… He had just… gotten shot between the eyes! As soon as the lid to the bio-generator retracted he rolled off the bed and looked about the room. There was fighting everywhere! He started to crawl towards a fallen version of himself. The doppelganger was dead in a pool of his own blood but he had a rifle. As he reached for the rifle he felt a familiar burning sensation in his lower back. A plasma rifle was burning away tissue and bone as it traveled from the small of his back up until it arrived at the base of his neck. He was dead within seconds.
***
Praefectus Niegar swore an oath that would have made any sailor blush. He adjusted his uniform and turned his back on the surveillance display that was showing the absolute mayhem that was taking place in the main replication facility.
He looked at one of his guards. “Take a team down there and deal with this. Kill anything that moves unless it is wearing a uniform. No exceptions. If it’s not wearing a uniform, it is to be dead… Even if it means shooting someone that looks like me… is that clear?”
“With pleasure Sir!” the guard responded with just a little too much enthusiasm for Niegar’s comfort.
***
Commander Anthony Grant Stone looked at the man that he had thought was his friend. There had been that odd exchange when they first encountered each other near the security office but by-in-large this seemed to be his friend. Was it possible he was a replicant? Was it possible he didn’t even know it? Why would the Gator’s create a replicant of Sergeant Hammond unless it was to infiltrate Admiral Kimbridge’s organization?
Several Gators attempted to rush their position again. They could only come at the humans from two directions. AG and JJ had their backs against a large metallic tank that seemed to hold some kind of liquid that the bio-generators needed to do their work. The tank seemed to be fairly sturdy as it had been hit numerous times by both energy weapons and depleted uranium kinetic rounds.
AG decided enough was enough. He pulled four stun grenades from his belt and tossed two of the grenades in each direction. The grenades were a marvel of modern warfare engineering. They were no bigger than a large coin and yet they packed quite a wallop.
One he tossed as far as he could to the right… then another also to the right but a little closer. He then turned and did the same in the opposite direction. The grenades were set to remote detonation.
When JJ saw what the Commander was doing, his eyes went wide. “Are you bonkers mate? Aren’t those little beauties a little close?”
AG’s only answer was to smile and press the detonation button on his wrist control. Immediately their world was filled with a loud bang and an electrical discharge that would scramble both unprotected electronics and organic nervous systems alike.
Snug in his Mark Ten Stark suit, AG was safe from the effects of the stun grenades. Not so for the Gators attacking them, nor for Sergeant First Class Jeremy James Hammond. JJ collapsed at AG’s feet with a look of disbelief still glued to his face. AG shrugged and lifted the marine as easy as a bag of grass seed and threw him over his shoulder. He grabbed a few more stun grenades off of his belt and proceeded to run towards Admiral Kimbridge’s position.
It wasn’t long before he got to her position. The Gators seemed far more interested in fighting each other all of the sudden. The Admiral was in the tram terminal. The Marine force had landed and secured their LZ. They were just making it down to the Admiral’s position through the series of bore holes Gunny Sergeant Ramirez’s team had cut. In their wake they left several hundred dead, wounded or incapacitated Ashtoreth soldiers.
Cat came over and helped AG with the still unconscious second JJ. A makeshift medical bay was setup in one corner. They secured the unconscious man to a cot. The question of why there were more than one Sergeant Hammond would have to wait.
Cat turned to the doctor supervising the makeshift med bay. She pointed to the two Hammonds, “I want both of these men on the next medical shuttle. They are to be made comfortable but secured at all times. Observe standard POW recovery protocols.”
Next Cat turned to face AG. “Commander, I know you want to get back into the thick of things with your men down here but I think we h
ave a bigger problem to deal with. I’m going to ask you to join me in heading back to Marine City on the medical shuttle.”
“A bigger problem Ma’am”
“Walk with me commander,” Cat said. She led him to a field table. On it was a small holographic projector. She waved it on. It showed a spherical map of Bashar.
“Here is our current location.” She pointed to a familiar point on the map. She then rotated the map thirty degrees. “Here is T’Nagra City… it was one of the largest cities on the planet before the Ashtoreth invaded. It’s basically been abandoned for hundreds of years.”
“And now it’s not?” AG asked.
“And now it’s not,” Cat confirmed. “WhimPy did a detailed planet-wide scan after we stumbled upon this base. Nothing unusual showed up until he detected this...,” she tapped a few buttons on the display. A heat signature overlaid the screen.
“Wow,” was the only thing AG could say.
The entire western quarter of the city showed an undulating mass of red. “What are we looking at there, Admiral?”
“That’s what we need to find out. The electronic emissions that WhimPy has been able to detect are consistent with heavily shielded Ashtoreth tech. We don’t know if this is something new or something that has always been there that we are just discovering. In either case it spells potential trouble. Trouble that we need to deal with sooner rather than later.”
Cat’s comm link signaled for her attention. She listened for a brief moment and then said out loud, “The Commander and I will be right there. Kimbridge out.”
She looked up at AG. “Our shuttle is ready to launch.”
***
JJ thought about all that he had been through in the last week. Beaten, tortured and cloned. Then he was beaten, tortured and cloned again. Some weeks, it was good to be a Marine! He was sitting in a medical shuttle heading back to Marine City on the massive moon-sized WhimPy platform.
Across from him sat… ‘him’... another ‘him’. More to the point a replicant of him. JJ knew why they had created a doppelganger. The Praefectus had hoped that his clone could be more ‘biddable’… a mistake to be sure. But he had watched that replicant be killed. In fact he had helped Roc destroy they body. Why was there yet another copy? What game was the Praefectus playing?
“So,” JJ started to say. Unfortunately his clone started to talk at exactly the same time. It would be funny except that it was not.
“You first,” his clone said.
“Why did Niegar have you made?” JJ asked.
The other JJ laughed. “What makes you think that you’re the original?”
“For starters my legs and right arm are badly set. Whereas you are in pristine shape.”
The other Hammond shook his head. “I have scars on both legs and arms where my bones were surgically re-broken and set properly by medical personnel. The real question is why are yours’s broken unless it was to fool us into thinking you were the original.”
The Hammond with the badly set legs moved to try and ease the chronic pain that was associated with them. “Tell me my cloned friend. What’s it like waking up in a jar? Do you think about all the bodies that have grown in that bed before you? Is it like the Big-D only in reverse?”
His doppelganger sighed. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been in one. Perhaps you should ask yourself the same questions.”
“You know you can be quite irritating.”
“It’s been mentioned by others upon occasion,” he said with a glance at Commander Stone who sat a few feet away with Admiral Kimbrdige.
What neither man suspected was that a chain of events had been put into motion when they were brought to within a few feet of each other. It was one of the possible scenarios that Praefectus Niegar had anticipated. He had reasoned that the only reason they would be placed in proximity of one another would be in the event they were to be questioned by people with some degree of authority.
Admiral Kimbridge looked at Command Stone. He had a look of consternation on his face. He honestly didn’t know which of these men was his friend. It bothered him that he could not tell. It was a question that would trouble him the remainer of his life… which ended three seconds later when two small thermonuclear charges vaporized the shuttle on its way into orbit.
Chapter 19: A Tale of Rebirth…
Deep in the bowels of WhimPy-101 a subroutine that had been dormant for scores of years suddenly came awake. An unknown and secret prime directive of the entire WhimPy fleet was the preservation of a single human life.
This directive was more than just the perpetual honoring of a life-debt incurred by a Heshe named Yarin. It was an acknowledgement of the critical role this one human would play in the life, not just of her species, but of the entire universe.
Machinery more advanced than anything humanity had ever been allowed to see slowly came back to life. Tissues were fabricated using printers that constructed material on an atom by atom basis. Engrams that were constantly updated via multiple quantum entangled photons were laid down with pristine care on this newly created physical host. By comparison, the bio-generators used by the marines in their medical bays were like old fashion sutures compared to biomimetic skin fusers.
***
Hesitant eyes opened. Light filtered in. “In where?” was the question. The room was stark white and sterile. It could be a hospital but for the fact that nothing was right. The walls were too short, and the light seemed to emanate from everywhere. The air, while fresh, was… ‘wrong.’
Sitting up on an oddly warm metal table she looked down at her hands. She was a ‘she.’ She knew that, but precious little else. Who was she? Why was she here? Why didn’t she remember anything? She had a feeling she should, but her existence prior to this room seemed just out of reach.
She was alone and yet she was not. There seemed to be another within her. It was confusing.
A soft white globe floated towards her. She thought she should be afraid and yet she was not. When the globe touched her forehead memories flooded in. She was Cat Kimbridge.
***
Anthony Grant Stone knew where he was. He had seen the inside of this particular replicant jar many times. He was in what the marines had started calling the ‘canning factory’.
The face that smiled at him when the lid finally pulled away was a welcome sight. Doctor Janice Pulaski was a nice face to wake up to. Especially when she was smiling. Of course ‘nice’ didn’t stop at the face. His eyes wandered down to take in the rest of her.
“Eyes up here Marine,” Janice said in a soft voice.
“Just making sure the optic nerves are working Doc,” AG said with a grin.
“And are they?”
“Oh yeah!”
She slapped his shoulder. “How is it a man can get killed and then wake up horny?” Janice asked.
“Nature of the beast,” AG answered with a grin. “I take it something bad happened on the way up in the shuttle.”
“If by ‘bad’ you mean a tactical nuke going off inside the shuttle… then yes something bad happened,” Doctor Pulaski confirmed.
“How about the others: JJ, the Admiral, the medical staff and the pilots?”
Janice shook her head. “WhimPy took care of Cat. She was down here checking of the rest of you an hour ago. The medical staff and pilots are decanting in a few minutes.”
AG heard what she didn’t say as much as what she did. He pressed her on it. “And Sergeant Hammond… JJ?”
Again Janice shook her head. “WhimPy is still receiving engram updates. He’s not dead.”
“How is that possible? The shuttles aren’t that big. There is no way he survived a tactical nuke.”
“If I had to guess,” Janice said. “He was never on the shuttle.”
“They were both replicants… interesting,” AG said. “I’ve got to talk with the Admiral. Am I clear to go Doc?”
She nodded her head. “Perhaps you should stop by my quarters later for a more thorough asses
sment,” she added coyly.
AG grinned, “Who am I to ignore my doctor’s advice!”
***
Sergeant First Class Jeremy James Hammond watched the shuttle take off with his two friends. He had just made it to the surface through a bolt hole Roc had told him about. He clawed through the underbrush in time to see Lieutenant Commander Stone and Admiral Kimbridge board the craft. He tried to shout to get their attention but the noise of close quarter combat and the natural sound of a spaceport drowned him out. He was about a quarter of a kilometer away when the shuttle lifted off the ground.
Roc had warned him about a plot involving several of his replicants. Roc had been an instrumental part of that plot which he played a role in as part of his cover. Part of the problem with being a double agent was that you had to play both sides of the game. JJ had assured him that even should the worst come to pass
Damn, JJ thought to himself as he watched the shuttle take off. He had information he needed to share with them. He looked around. It looked like he would have to find the OIC for the marines that had been left behind. He was almost to the entrance of the freshly dug access tunnel when an explosion threatened to rupture his ear drums. The sound had come from the sky. He watched as a fireball many times the apparent size of the sun slowly dissipated in the general vicinity of the shuttle. It looked like he had missed another chance at the Big D. The Creator truly did have a sense of humor.
He made his way towards the sandbagged guard shack that protected the borehole that the marines had made into the Ashtoreth base. It was time to go home and get some proper medical care.
***
Praefectus Niegar sat in his underground office in T’Nagra City. He watched the display on his desk which showed what was happening at the replicant facility he had just abandoned. It was unfortunate that he had temporarily lost control of the facility but he had another smaller facility at his disposal.
He pressed the blue button on his desk. It was the only blue button anywhere on this base. There was a reason for that. Blue meant death. It was biometrically tied to him. He was the only one authorized by the Empire to use it… and use it he would.