by Andrew Beery
Seven hundred and eighty four kilometers away a signal was received. The computer that received it sent an authentication request as per its programming. The authentication request was confirmed.
Deep in the bowels of the primary replicant fabrication center a timer started. The timer was attached to an Enhanced Radiation Weapon – a neutron bomb. It was a low yield nuclear weapon. Normally such nuclear devices shed a mere four to five percent of their energy release in the form of neutrons. This device was modified to create a massive surge of neutrons. Upwards of forty percent of the bomb’s energy would be released as neutrons. Even heavily shielded targets would be vulnerable to this much radiation. The ERW would effectively sterilize all life within a kilometer of its detonation point.
***
Roc had made his way to the computer core. Many years ago a former version of himself had put a plan in motion. After several hundred years it seemed as if that plan might finally come to fruition. He could never have anticipated an alien would corrupt the primary engram database but he was thankful she had done it. This would finally force the powers-that-be on this world to restore a backup engram database. That database had been seeded by himself and others like him for the sole purpose of putting an end to the Empire and its abuses. Already the Ashtoreth people and their slaves had been freed in the home galaxy. Now the same would happen here in the Milky Way.
He adjusted several controls on the computer to insure the proper backup was in queue when it was called for. He even went so far as to send the queuing instructions to the secondary replicant site a third of the way around the planet.
These were minor changes that no one had thought to restrict from someone with his level of access. He was a general in another life but for generations he had been playing the role of a lowly tech. His sacrifice, and those of his doppelganger predecessors was finally going to pay off.
He watched the chaos taking place in the main chamber. Several groups were fighting each other. The hundreds of Praefectus Niegar were attempting to kill each other. Normal soldiers had entered the fray and were attempting to kill the Niegar clones. The Niegar replicants responded by attempting to shoot the Ashtoreth regulars. Now it seemed as if the humans had gotten into the middle of things and were attempting to suppress both sides.
In the middle of this three-way free-for-all it would have been understandable if Roc would have missed seeing the blue button on the upper corner of the control console suddenly light up. He did see it however and he knew exactly what it meant. Anyone passing the door to the computer center would have heard a loud and uncontrolled gurgling.
***
Catherine Kimbridge stood next to Bud Faragon and Anthony Stone. They were in the observation lounge that overlooked the main shuttle bay of Marine City. The first of the radiation victims were being flown in.
As ERWs go it was not a particularly destructive device. The force of the blast was deliberately directed straight up. The equipment at the replicant facility was essentially unharmed. The flood of high energy gamma rays and neutrinos was another matter. For much of the facility, nothing larger than a microbe survived. The radioactive surge did not discriminate. It killed human and Ashtoreth alike. Over five thousand Ashtoreth replicants died.
Of the fifteen hundred men and women who had been deployed to secure the Ashtoreth facility, fully twelve hundred of the marines were confirmed dead… at least temporarily.
Another hundred, or so, were so badly irradiated that they needed the extensive medical assistance that was only available on one of the starships… or at the Marine Trauma Center that was part of the Paradise Island Training facility at Marine City. Those one hundred had been the lucky ones that had not been underground when the neutron bomb had detonated.
The remaining marines, some two hundred, had been transporting prisoners to Camp Kurnell off the western coast of Ojas. Their transport shuttles were hundreds of kilometers away when the detonation occurred. The timing of the blast was such that these Marines were already on a return flight when the ERW went off. As a result they were quickly on the scene.
The damage to the facility itself was minimal. Much of the electronics had been harden against EMPs. There were a handful of small electrical fires. Some systems had burned out after the power surge racked the power grid. Even these were few and far between. Backup power systems had already come online by the time the marines arrived. The fact that the lighting was active was a mixed blessing. It allowed the would-be rescuers to see the carnage.
The sight was beyond horrific. It would take weeks to deal with all of the dead, Ashtoreth and human alike. The harsh radiation killed most nearly instantly. There were, however, horrific exceptions. There were reports of blistered and bloody bodies trapped in bio-generators… bodies that had died trying to claw their way out of the sealed containers.
Death was never pretty, but some deaths were uglier than others. One of Cat’s greatest fears was that the Infinity Brigade would become desensitized to the horror of death now that it did not carry the same finality that it once did. History would ultimately prove her fears groundless; but she had no way of seeing that in the ‘here and now.’
The first shuttle had finally landed and the medical team that had been standing by transferred the first of the severely burned patients to an antigravity gurney. The man was an old friend. Sergeant First Class Jeremy James Hammond, the real one, had finally made it home… alive if but barely.
Chapter 20: New Wine Skins…
Praefectus Niegar and a handful of technicians brought the secondary replicant bio-facility online. This smaller center could only process five hundred replicants at a time but it would have to do. Somehow the main facility had become compromised.
The first thing Praefectus Niegar had the technician, whose name was Roc, do was to purge the computer core of all existing engrams. He would start the system with a fresh backup pulled from archives that had been verified ‘good’ some five hundred years ago. The soldiers would not have the benefit of the experience they had gained over the years but he could at least be sure they would be loyal to the Empire.
“The system is ready Praefectus,” Roc said. “All that remains is your order to start producing soldiers.”
“Make it so,” Niegar said with an imperious wave of his hand.
“Praefectus?”
“Was I unclear? Begin making additional soldiers.”
“The Praefectus is aware that this facility is not as large nor as well stocked as the previous facility. We have enough supplies on hand to produce perhaps twenty thousand troops. Beyond that we will need to secure additional source materials,” Roc said respectfully.
“The Praefectus is aware,” Niegar parroted.
***
General Bar’Jona did something he never expected to do. He awoke. When King Astarte had discovered his plot to tear down the corrupt and immutable Empire and replace it with something beholden to the people he had condemned the officer to death by flogging ten times.
Bar’Jona had been lashed to a pole in the throne room so the King could watch as the general was flogged to death. The despot had then ordered the Ashtoreth surgeons to resurrect the General with a current set of memories… and then he repeated the process.
It wasn’t enough that he kill the General. He killed the General’s family too. Most of his children were burned alive. His eldest son, the man who had engineered the bulk of the insurrection was hung upside down and whipped to death. His wife was the only member of his family given a clean death. She was permitted to drink a fast acting poison. The General suspected it was because the King had forced relations with her whenever the fancy took him. Such was the privilege, accorded by fiat, of the man who was their ‘beloved’ king.
As Bar’Jona was mere inches from death, the tenth and final time, the tyrannical ruler of the Ashtoreth Empire approached the beaten and bleeding mass of raw flesh that had been his most senior general and he whispered in his ear. This death wou
ld be his last. There would be no additional resurrections. Whether he did this out of spite or because he wanted the General to attempt to hold on to this version of life as long as he could Bar’Jona might never know.
What he did know was that he had died… and yet now he lived again. The decanting bio-chamber he was in looked nothing like the one he had previously awoken in. He wondered what this might mean.
The lid to the chamber slid back. The face that greeted him was a second unexpected surprise.
“Hello honored Sire,” Roc said. “There is much we need to discuss and precious little time in which to discuss it. A new day is coming to the Empire and I’m afraid the old one will not survive the fruits of our labors.”
***
Cat could hear the screams from halfway down the corridor. It sounded like somebody was being tortured in the MTC. The Marine Trauma Center, or MTC, was located adjacent to the main training facility at Marine City, a place called Paradise Island. It was also located near the main shuttle bay.
She looked at Admiral Faragon and Lieutenant Commander Stone. The all knew the screams were coming from the wounded Marines that had just come home. Radiation burns were among the most painful of all injuries one could receive. The sounds coming from the med bay gave testimony to the fact that even Marines where not immune to such pain.
“Go ahead,” Admiral Faragon nodded to the others. “My best running days are long gone… I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”
Without another word Cat and AG started jogging down the corridor. Because of their enhancements they covered the kilometer long hallway in a little under thirty seconds. They could have gone faster if they had sprinted rather than jogged.
Cat was the first to enter the medical bay. To say it was controlled chaos would have been a kindness. There were fifty bio-generators decanting revived Marines almost as fast as technicians could clear the beds. Another section was dedicated to status chambers where most of the radiation burn patients had been placed. This allowed these more serious patients to be handled slowly and carefully once the mayhem had abated.
Neither of these areas was the source of the mayhem. That was reserved for a bed in trauma bay one. The man restrained in that bed was none other than Sergeant First Class Jeremy James Hammond.
JJ had burns over most of his body. In addition, most of his body was showing signs of the mistreatment he had endured over the last several days. Doctor Janice Pulaski was attempting to insert an IV. The sergeant was having none of it.
“Will you quit your whining you big baby. Look how small this needle is?” she said in an exasperated tone.
“NEEDLE! Bloody hell woman, I’ve seen garden hoses that were smaller. Can ya not at least give me something for the pain before you go poking about with your needles and other such things?”
Doctor Pulaski shook her head in frustration. “I’ve already instructed your nanites to give you a cervical block.” She poked him in the side with a finger. “Did you feel that?”
“Well… no,” he admitted.
“So again I say to you… man up and STOP WHINING LIKE A BABY!”
“Do I have to watch,” he said meekly.
“Of course not. Feel free to close your eyes,” Janice said with more compassion.
JJ’s eyes stayed open.
“You’re still watching me.”
“I want to make sure you don’t miss,” the big Marine said sheepishly.
“Men,” the doctor said with a sigh. “It’s a wonder you survived childhood,” as she said this she inserted the 18 gauge needle into the vein she was holding in place with finger traction.
“Is this patient giving you problems, Doctor,” Cat asked as she neared the gurney.
“Only for about ten more seconds Admiral,” Janice answered as she pushed two syringes of Versed and Fentanyl into his IV.
Cat turned to AG. “Commander, what are we going to do with this man?”
“Admiral, I suggest we promote him. That way he won’t have time to get into trouble.”
JJ grinned in the manner of a man who is just going under. “Admiral Hammond… I like the sound of…”
“And he’s out for the count,” Doctor Pulaski announced. “When he wakes up he’ll be as good as new. We’ll fix those badly set bones and let the Nanites fix the radiation poisoning.” She turned to look at AG and Cat. “If you were serious about the promotion you may need to tell him again. The Versed I gave him will make him slightly amnestic. He may not remember the last few seconds.”
***
Two days later JJ was up and about looking no worse for the wear. He was sitting in the briefing room just outside the Marine City Operations Center.
“Looking good in that new uniform Master Gunny,” AG said to his newly promoted friend.
“I hope you’re not too disappointed it wasn’t all the way to Admiral,” Cat said with a grin.
JJ looked a bit embarrassed. “Not at all Ma’am, and in my defense I was wounded, delirious and under the influence of powerful drugs.”
Cat put on her most serious expression. “We’ll let it go… this time Master Gunny.”
Admiral Bud Faragon leaned forward and put his steepled hands on the table. “Gunny, we are all glad you are back with us. Frankly, you have got to be setting some kind of record for surviving the impossible. All that as it may be, I believe you said you have some vital intelligence to share with us?”
“Indeed Sirs… and Ma’am. I ran across a bugger down there named Roc. He had a most unusual tale to tell. We may be facing a situation far more complex then we imagined.”
Cat nodded. “Please continue.”
JJ cleared his throat. “It turns out the Ashtoreth Empire had a wee bit of an insurrection problem a few hundred years back. It was that Insurrection that drove them from the Andromeda galaxy.”
“We knew this already,” AG said. “There has to be something more.”
“Did ya know the revolt started from within their own armed forces? Once the technology for replicants was perfected the Royal family used it to secure absolute control of the Empire. Immortality can be a powerful inducement to make a people do whatever you want.”
Bud Faragon got up and walked over to the coffee machine. As he poured himself a cup he said, “My joints ache every morning.” He nodded towards AG and Cat. “I see younger officers dashing about and I realize I may be closer to the end of my life than the beginning. If I were a member of the Grand Senate and someone were to offer me a chance to put all that behind me…,” He paused to sip his coffee, “…and all I had to do was vote this way or that way on a handful of key decisions. I might be tempted.”
“Now imagine,” JJ continued, “you are the Ashtoreth military… your King, a Gator named Astarte, has essentially become immortal. To make matters worse, he is not a good king. What do you do?”
“You attempt a coup,” AG said. “What else can you do?”
“Exactly Commander,” JJ said. “This is what Roc shared with me but it goes much further. The King purged his armed forces of any dissident voices. Then to ensure that a coup could never happen again he converted the entire military machine into a replicant force where he literally controlled the hearts and minds of his soldiers. If any one of them began to show signs of independent thinking their engrams were expunged from the system.”
Admiral Faragon put his coffee cup back down on the table. It made a slight clinking sound. “But we know that the Ashtoreth were driven from Andromeda. Are you saying it was not the coup that did it?”
“Actually Sir, I believe it was. According to Roc, Astarte was killed in the coup but that a replicant was created here in the Milky Way and it is this replicant King Astarte that we are dealing with.”
“I see,” Bud said. “Please continue.”
“Over the years several senior replicant officers began to attempt to remove the new Astarte but they always got thwarted by the simple fact that they never had the numbers. The forces loyal to the kin
g were hand-picked fanatics that were replicated in large numbers.”
“So,” Cat continued where JJ left off, “A young officer finally got the idea to change the rules of the game. He began to collect the backed up engrams of the dissidents and used them to replace individuals within what was supposed to be a clean system-wide backup. He then used his engram to replace a low-level but privileged technician.
“As the years went by he continued to rescue and replace engrams. At some point his plan was to set in motion something that would cause King Astarte or his representative to purge the active engram repository and restore the now tainted ‘clean’ backup.”
“Exactly Admiral,” JJ said.
“Then I may have inadvertently set his plan into motion for him,” Cat observed.
Bud looked confused. “Care to enlighten the rest of us Admiral?”
Cat smiled. “Several days ago when Commander Stone and I were down on the planet’s surface we split up. He went to look for Sergeant Hammond…”
“I’m touched Sir,” JJ quipped.
“While I tried to shut down the replicant farm,” Cat continued. “When I got to the computer core I had a chance to scroll through the archived engrams. That’s how I was able to guess the second half of the Gunny’s story. I also found the personal engram for Praefectus Niegar, which I used to replace each and every engram in the primary database. For the last several hours that factory was producing nothing but supreme leaders.”
“That would explain why they were fighting each other and why the Praefectus might want to purge the engram database and restore it from a backup,” AG said. “The real question is… did he?”
“I expect we will find out once we get down to T’Nagra City. WhimPy reports that infrared signatures in the western sector of the city have expanded considerably in the last couple of days. I suspect we will find a second replicant factory down there someplace,” Cat answered.