by R J Johnson
Emeline once again experienced the strange, déjà vu-like experience of watching herself clutch at Meade’s hand while he was dying.
Meade’s breathing quickened, and then, stopped. Emeline bit her lip, trying to keep herself from sobbing.
“Meade!” Emmy shouted. “Not now. Not like this.”
The timer on her armbar beeped, letting them know they had less than three minutes to find an escape pod and get off the ship.
“We gotta go,” Kansas’s clone said, pulling gently at Emmy’s arm.
It wasn’t easy, but Emmy eventually let go of Meade as Kansas dragged her off, leaving him slumped to the side of the narrow corridor.
She refused to look back at her dead lover’s body – even if it was a clone. They only had a few minutes left to get off this boat safely and she wasn’t about to fail her mission.
Kansas scooped Emmy up into his arms and followed Emeline through the corridor as they made their way up the stairs to the hangar bay. There should be a ship or escape pod they could use to get off the dreadnaught.
They dashed up the stairs and Emeline tried to keep her eyes off the timer, knowing it was counting down their last few moments.
They burst out on the cargo bay floor where they saw hundreds of the professor’s clones working on the ship as it engaged in furious battle with the Coalition and Consortium navies. Emeline looked around the enormous room until she spotted what they were looking for.
“Over there!” she shouted to Kansas.
He followed her as they weaved their way through the crowded cargo bay floor.
The timer reached zero.
A low rumbling echoed from deep inside the ship and the entire deck shook, knocking the three of them and the rest of the cloned crew members to the ground.
At that point, things appeared to go into slow motion. Red fire blew out of the rear hatch as the ship moaned in protest. The hull cracked in half and Emeline could hear the unmistakable hiss that meant the air in the hangar bay was about to be vented into space.
Emeline tried getting to her feet, but fell when the ship shuddered, a loud rumble echoing through the hull. She cracked her head against a railing, which left her in a daze.
After what felt like eons, or seconds (she really couldn’t tell), she noticed Kansas was standing over her shouting something incomprehensible at her.
“Get up,” Kansas barked, trying to snap her back into reality. “We still have time to get off this bucket, but you need to GET UP. This ship is about to go up fast.”
Emeline tried shaking herself back to reality, but it was tough to focus. She touched the wound on the side of her head and could feel the slippery, wet, heat of fresh blood.
She looked around and heard screaming from the professor’s clones who were vainly trying to deal with the disaster unfolding on the dreadnaught. The forcefield keeping the cargo bay secured against the vacuum of space failed briefly, and several clones were sucked into space. Emeline watched in curious horror as one of them held on for dear life, until his fingers froze. Then the clone released his grip on the ship and let go.
She watched him float out into the inky black and wondered how long until it would be her turn to die like that.
That was enough to get her moving. She stood, fighting for every inch as she tried to reach the dreadnaught’s escape pods.
The security clones, apparently programmed to accomplish their mission no matter what was happening, resumed their pursuit of Kansas, Emeline and Emmy.
The meat puppets charged after them, opening fire even as flames belched out of bulkheads and sparks flew. Emeline grabbed the rifle barrel from one clone as she rounded the corner. She used her leverage to flip the rifle up and over the meat puppet’s shoulder, pulling the trigger as the barrel went into the clone’s back.
The meat puppet shuddered as the bullets ripped through him. She pulled the rifle up and used it as a club on another clone who was running toward her with a murderous look in his eyes. She used the club to send him flying toward an open crack in the primary hull.
The look of surprise on the meat puppet’s face when his body folded in half to fit through the hole, was an ugly image that was instantly burned into her memory.
Emeline turned to see Kansas reached one of the escape pods, still holding her clone. She watched her mentor open the small ship’s door and step inside with her clone.
“Go!” she shouted at them. This might be their only chance for them to get out alive. Kansas hesitated, looking back at her. She waved him off, giving him a look. If she had to stay behind to make sure they survived this godforsaken ship, then at least there was a “second chance” out there for her.
Emeline turned back to the massive security clones who were advancing on her.
Kansas screamed in protest from the escape pod’s door. Emeline ignored him, raising her fists in grim determination as the professor’s meat puppets approached.
“Come on!” she challenged the nearest security clone. She stepped forward and exchanged with the team who pounced on her.
Kansas set Emmy down inside the escape pod and moved to go help Emeline when another explosion ripped through the cargo bay, knocking him back into the pod.
The ship shuddered again as flames through the hangar bay deck from below. Emeline swept the legs of one of the meat puppets, knowing she was out of time. If the escape pod was going to survive the dreadnaught’s explosion, then Kansas and her clone had to get out now.
Emeline looked at the escape pod and saw Kansas on his back, unconscious. She opened her armbar and typed quickly, hacking into the escape pod’s controls, locking the hatch and sending the pod on its way.
The escape pod ejected out of the dreadnaught and she watched it go, a smile on her face.
Emeline turned back to the professor’s advancing clones, ready to finish the fight.
She was about to bring them one they’d never forget.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Promises
Emmy regained consciousness, looking around her in a daze as it took a moment to realize where she was. She was on board an escape pod and no longer on the dreadnaught.
She sat up, wincing, seeing Kansas laying on the other side of the deck. He was bleeding from a head wound that didn’t look too bad.
She reached for a med kit and began applying Durablast to her own injuries to stem the bleeding and applied a bandage to help keep it from getting infected.
It was only she finished inspecting her work that she realized Emeline was not on board the escape pod with them.
She looked at Kansas’s armbar, which was beeping. Someone was trying to contact him.
She reached for the armbar and opened it. Emeline’s image appeared on the viewscreen.
“Hey,” Emmy said, feeling disoriented. “You OK? You made it on another pod, right?”
“Not exactly,” Emeline said, looking embarrassed. “Turns out, my journey ends here on the dreadnaught. Meade would call it, ‘bad luck of the draw’ or something foolish like that.”
Emmy’s jaw dropped and she shook her head. “No, you can’t… We’ll come back. We’ll find you!”
“You don’t have time,” Emeline said patiently. She panned her viewscreen around to show the cargo bay around her, engulfed in flames. Several of the professor’s clones lay around her unconscious or dead.
“There’s no getting out of this for me this time. We did a good thing today. Make sure you tell Meade that. That we did a good thing today.”
“You’ll tell him yourself,” Emmy said weakly. But she knew Emeline was right. The escape pod was too delicate to be any closer to the dreadnaught when it exploded. They needed to put as much distance between them as they could if they were going to survive the next few minutes.
Emeline looked back at the viewscreen, coughing as the smoke became thicker in the cargo bay. “Promise me one thing.”
“What is it?” Emmy asked, feeling tears flow down her cheeks.
�
��Will you tell him how much I love him?” Emeline asked. “You’re the only person who really knows how I feel about Jim. I don’t expect you to take over for me or anything like that. I understand how that might be weird. Tell him that he was the best thing to ever happen to me…”
Emeline paused and then looked directly at the screen, a tear running down her cheek as the dreadnaught exploded around her.
“You can’t ask me…” Emmy said desperately. “We’ve got to get you off that ship. There’s always a way.”
“Not this time,” Emeline said wistfully. “It’s been a hell of a ride and I wouldn’t change a thing. I hope you continue it on your own terms.”
The clone looked up and out the window at the massive dreadnaught that was rapidly shrinking in size as the escape pod glided away to safety back on Venus. Emmy could see a series of explosions rip through the hull of the massive vessel as it began to list to one side.
The Coalition and Consortium ships had stopped fighting long enough to see the dreadnaught was going down and they had begun concentrating their fire on it. The ship was being torn apart.
“I’ll do what I can,” Emmy said.
Emeline closed her eyes gratefully.
She would never open them again.
In her last moments, she thought about the first time she met Meade, and the moment she’d fallen in love with his crooked smile.
It was a good memory and one that she was grateful to have.
The viewscreen winked out as the dreadnaught exploded, taking Emeline, and thousands of the professor’s clones with it.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Celestial Bodies
Meade’s armbar beeped and he looked down at the indicator Emeline had set for him before they split up. One of the dreadnaughts was offline which meant she’d accomplished phase one of their mission.
He silently cheered and then refocused on the task in front of him.
He watched the eleven remaining security clones start to approach his position and he grinned.
“This is your last chance Mr. Meade,” the professor’s voice sounded out through the courtyard. It was being broadcast from every armbar worn by the clones standing in front of him. “You’re finished. Your diversion has failed.”
“Sorry professor,” Meade said, checking how many rounds he had left. “I was over here celebrating your three new dreadnaughts launching… oh wait, I’m mistaken, aren’t I? There are only two left.”
There was a pause and he imagined the professor opening his armbar to confirm what Meade told him. A few moments passed and the professor’s voice hissed over the courtyard once again.
“One ship doesn’t matter. I still have the manpower, materials and clones to build a thousand more,” the professor said, still sounding triumphant. “Losing one is a rounding error.”
“Only if you’re still alive to create ‘em,” he said. “And I don’t think you’ll have that privilege much longer.”
“Is that so?” the professor sneered.
“That’s so,” Meade said, snapping the slide back on his pistol. It was now or never. “’Cause I plan on killing you myself.”
He stepped around the pillar and fired several shots into three of the exposed security clones. They went down, their bodies shredded by the gunfire. He stepped over their bodies and advanced on the remaining clones who were scattering in advance of Meade’s attack.
They returned fire, and he sprinted behind a pillar taking cover. Counting briefly, he stepped around the pillar to grab one of the clone’s arms and take his weapon.
Meade pointed the rifle at the meat puppet’s partner and pulled the trigger on the automatic weapon, killing another one of the professor’s clones.
The meat puppet screamed in anger and tried to slice at him with a knife, but Meade was too quick. He touched the clone’s neck and felt the electric shock run through his arm. The clone quickly dissolved into a gray goo, the professor’s nanites making short work of the man.
Meade stepped forward, laying down fire to buy time for the Coalition president and the remaining Consortium Elders to follow him across the courtyard to Central Command.
Taking cover behind one of the podiums, Meade held up a fist. He glanced back at his charges, who looked shaky, but alive. The president looked perfectly calm, almost confident about their situation. That didn’t surprise Meade, who knew the president had served as a Coalition MP Alpha for several years.
The man might be a politician, Meade thought to himself, but at least he knows how to act when people were shooting at him.
Meade poked his head out around the podium and saw his chance. He moved quickly, running across another section of the courtyard, falling to his knees as he fired at two more of the professor’s clones. He stood up against the third pedestal and waved at the president signaling him to make his move.
The president followed Meade’s path through the courtyard, escorting the final four Elders to the next piece of cover.
Their plan was working so far, but he always got a funny feeling when things were going too well.
Suddenly a rush of wind pushed down on the courtyard, scattering the leaves and other debris left behind during the confrontation between Meade and the professor’s clones.
He shielded his eyes and looked up at the approaching craft, gasping when he saw it.
It was the professor’s personal yacht, the one he had taken to Venus with Emeline.
A panel opened on the port side of the ship and a huge .50 caliber machine gun emerged from the opening. A stream of bullets began raining down on the courtyard, chewing up the expansive marble and heading directly for the podiums.
His eyes went wide, and he shouted at the president and the Elders to get down, but he was overpowered by the sound of the yacht hovering above them.
From the looks of things, he didn’t need to. The Elders and the president recognized the threat and huddled together behind the podium.
The gunfire ceased and a loudspeaker squealed, the professor’s voice echoing over the ruined courtyard. “You could have had it so easy in the new world Mr. Meade.”
“New world didn’t look like so much fun to me,” he said. Meade checked the clip in his gun to find that he only had a few rounds remaining.
He could hear the Elders whimpering and the president attempting to calm them down. They were running out of options. The clones were one thing. He couldn’t possibly take on the yacht by himself.
Or could he?
Meade opened his armbar and typed a message out, sending it. He typed out a second message, sending it to the Coalition president letting him know to make a break for Central Command on his signal.
The president glanced over at him, raising his eyebrows.
Meade nodded, letting him know that this was the only way.
He opened his armbar and pinged the professor.
“I surrender. I’ll kill the president and the rest of the Elders.”
“Oh, it’s far too late for something like that Mr. Meade,” the professor intoned over the loudspeaker. “I don’t need anything like that any longer. I only need to see you dead.”
“Yeah, well, I’m always going to disappoint you on that,” Meade said. He flipped open his armbar and saw that his message had been received and acknowledged. He squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for what came next.
“Jokes,” the professor scoffed. “At a time like this...”
Suddenly his armbar chimed and world around him turned a bright shade of purple as energy began swirling around him.
Meade grunted as he suddenly felt like his body had been compressed into a five-pound sack, feeling every inch of his body compact together until suddenly, he felt the sensation of being stretched impossibly thin.
Then, everything snapped back into place all at once.
Instead of huddling in the courtyard, Meade now found himself on the deck of the professor’s personal yacht. The message containing his coordinates had been received
by his allies back on Mars and they used them to teleport him aboard the professor’s vessel using the same device that had started this whole shitshow.
The professor shouted in surprise, scrambling out of his seat to attack Meade, who was still woozy from the effects of the teleportation.
The professor was fast for a man of his size and he managed to knock the pistol out of Meade’s hands which went flying into the next room.
He made a move for his weapon but found himself being pulled back by the professor clawing at his duster. He turned, shrugging himself out of the jacket and kicking at the professor’s face.
The man snarled in rage as he pulled the duster off him and grabbed a nearby pipe.
“You’ve done enough damage,” the professor roared, swinging the metal rod at his head.
Meade ducked the under the rod, tucking himself down and rolling down and out the door heading for the pistol he had dropped.
He scrambled to his feet and looked around the room desperately for the weapon.
The professor sprung out the door kicking at the square of his back and he went down painfully to the ground. Meade tried to roll with the momentum, but there was nowhere for him to go. His body crashed through a glass table that shattered into a thousand tiny slivers.
The professor stood over him, barely breathing hard, shaking his head.
“I expected more from you Mr. Meade,” he said, holding the pipe above his head.
Meade rolled his head around and saw his grandfather’s pistol underneath the couch next to him. His fingers were inches away, but he was awkwardly positioned. If he tried to go for the weapon, the professor would see him.
Instead, he held out his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“You win professor,” Meade croaked. “That’s all you really wanted to hear right? That you won?”
The professor stood over him, holding the pipe staring down at him with hatred in his eyes.