“You weren’t supposed to follow me.” I grimaced moving past her.
“Wait, where are you going now?” Mara demanded drawing a phase pistol and training it on me.
Janet, who had followed Mara’s group in, stepped forward, but I held my hand up before she could interject.
I swirled around and yanked the weapon out of her hands and stood there with it clutched in my grip. Clearly what I had told her earlier hadn’t quite set in. “Those dre’k were attacking children.”
I tossed Mara her gun, spun away and traipsed off toward the house where we’d left the children. I just hoped they hadn’t fled. If the girl really was injured I need to get her to the doctor before it was too late.
The little boy and girl looked up at me their eyes wide with terror as I knelt down to check their older sibling for signs of life. The moment my fingers touched her neck she stirred and I let out a sigh of relief as her eyes shot back open. She tried to pull away from me, but she didn’t have much fight left in her and her attempts failed.
“Dammit!” I called over my shoulder as I pulled the girl’s shirt up revealing the wound on her belly. It was gushing pretty badly and I didn’t really have anything to stem the blood.
“Rodriquez,” Mara snapped her fingers at one of her soldier escorts.
One of the soldier’s pulled her helmet free revealing an appealing face with wide-set eyes and thin lips, dropped down on her knees on the other side of the girl. She slipped a pack over her shoulder and unceremoniously dumped on the ground at her side. She started rummaging through her bag, producing bandages, a bottle of clear liquid and strips of something that looked an awful lot like rawhide leather.
“She’s in bad shape,” Rodriquez said glancing up at Mara. “Normally, I wouldn’t recommend moving her, but I doubt, in these conditions, that we’d want to keep her here.”
Dupli-Mara nodded. “Do what you can for her,” she paused then turned to face a trio of soldiers. “Lewis, Patterson, Dorian, prep a stretch. I think the young lady would benefit from the attention of a certain Dexagarmetrax doctor which if I’m correct is waiting for our friends back at their ship.”
I felt my eyebrows twitch, but I didn’t say a word as Rodriquez started working on the girl. Mara could have easily know about the doctor by studying recording of our transmission with the E-R-F, but there was something about the way she spoke when she mentioned Vakrexid that suggested that there may be more to it than that. Maybe it was just my imagination. I shook my head and watched the medic do her work. She had already gotten the wound cleaned and had started to apply the strips of leather.
Her siblings had given up any hopes of resisting and instead stood off to the side and watched us with wide eyes as Rodriquez worked. As for the patient herself, she’d lost consciousness soon after the soldier had started work on her.
“They’re synthetic flesh, we call them flash strips. They’ll affix to the wound and keep any dirt or grime from getting in,” Rodriquez glanced over at me perhaps noticing my interest.
“Then what are the bandages for?”
“To keep the wound bound tight,” she replied glancing at me. “At least until we can get her to this doctor of yours.”
Lewis, Patterson and Dorian returned several moments later with their packs and produced a collapsible stretcher from inside their packs. Careful not to harm her, we got the girl loaded up on the stretcher and started back toward the ship with her two siblings in tow.
Chapter Two
By the time we found the clearing outside the city where we’d landed the ship the night sky had softened and taken on the brilliant reds and oranges of the early dawn. Mara stopped in her tracks, her eyes wide with wonder as she looked up at the morning sky.
“Patterson, how long has it been since you’ve seen a sunset on Earth?” Mara said placing a hand on the soldier’s shoulder.
“Never,” he replied back, his voice muffled by his helmet. “And neither have you.”
Mara smiled and let out a dramatic sigh as she glanced back at him. “I gave up trying to differentiate my memories from the original Mara Briggs years ago. They are as much a part of me as they were her and for all intents and purposes I am her. ”
“Yeah, but there’s only one of you,” Patterson replied pulling his helmet free from his head revealing a shockingly familiar set of features. “I got stuck with a mug identical to hundreds of my clone brothers and all of us share the same memories until the moment we popped out of our tubes. You might be able to maintain the illusion that you are the same person as your originator, but the rest of us ain’t so lucky.”
“Holy fucking hell,” Janet cursed stepping back with her hand cupped around her mouth. I couldn’t blame her for her reaction. I was struggling to wrap my head around it, too. Save for a few less lines of age on his face, Patterson was a perfect doppleganger for Rayland. It hadn’t quite sunk in that he shared the same last name as the major, but given that Rayland was a clone it made a certain amount of sense.
“What’s wrong?” Ray-wannabe, grinned looking first at Neada, then glanced at Becca, Lily, and me. “You all look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“You just a lot like someone we know,” I shook my head and walked past him before turning to Mara. “Come on, we need to get our patient inside the ship. Or have you forgotten?”
“Of course not,” she replied. “But the girl is in relatively stable condition and we could do with a bit a rest. Your ship is not in sight which leads me to believe that it’s still some distance away.”
“It’s a whole lot closer than you think,” Lily said twirling her fingers around a lock of her hair.
“Oh, what did you do, bury it?” Lewis grinned chuckling at his joke. No one else seemed to find it funny. I rolled my eyes and turned away before closing my eyes and stepping forward.
“Holy fucking shit, she disappeared,” a voice cursed and I spun around to face the owner. It belonged to one of the soldiers, a lanky fellow whose name I’d never learned. I leaned forward and poked my head through the energy barrier which invoked some fairly amusing results. Half of Mara’s men looked ready to bolt and the rest looked like they might not be far behind.
“A holocloaker,” Mara said a smile touching the corner of her lips. “And a pretty sophisticated one from the looks of it. I’m surprised any survived the invasion.”
“You’d be surprised how much old junk is sitting around,” Lily said glancing at Mara. “That is if you know where to look.”
Mara stepped through the cloak field and stopped dead when she got her first look at the ship. “One of the omega-seven prototypes,” she mused looking it over with a fine eye before turning toward me. “We were so close, but the technology came too late. The omega-sevens were the basis for everything the E-R-F has now. If we could have developed the technology sooner and had enough time to work some of the kinks out of the early prototypes, the outcome of the war might have been different.”
“Yeah, and we’d all live happily ever after and there’d be soft little kittens and puppies for us all to snuggle.” I met her gaze and then drew very close so only she could hear. “I’ve spent most my life regretting what happened. I gave up on changing the past a long time ago. The best we can do is change the future.”
I stepped past her moving toward the ship without waiting for the others to follow. The front exit ramp was open and Vakrexid poked his head through and locked eyes with me. “Vakrexid is most gladdened to see you.”
“I thought I told you to keep the front ramp closed. If we had needed a quick takeoff, we’d have been royally screwed.”
“Vakrexid is most apologetic, but I opened the ramp so that Vakrexid could more easily bring in the supplies that I have gathered. Going in and out through the airlock was most tedious.”
“Supplies?” I blinked. “What sort of supplies?”
“Edible plants, herbs, the carcass of a deer,” Vakrexid tweetled back at me.
“Indeed.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head then glanced back over my shoulder. “Whatever, just… we have a new patient for you. She’s on a stretcher, the folks from the E-R-F are carrying her in now.”
“The E-R-F?” The doctor twitched lurching down the ramp to watch as Lewis and Dorian carried the young girl through the cloak field, but his eyes were on someone else entirely.
“Mara.” His voice was a whisper. “She is with the E-R-F?”
Vakrexid didn’t seem surprised, merely curious, and I was beginning to see certain pieces of the puzzle that was the doctor fit into place. He’d known Mara, our Mara, for a long time, perhaps that relationship had extended back further than we’d all thought. Either way, he had been her friend and confidant for many years. Who knows what she might have told him?
He ran across the clearing toward the group where he met Mara and clasped his hands atop her shoulder.
“Hello doctor,” she said reaching up to touch one of his hands. “It has been a very long time.”
“Truly? Are you not a clone? Has Vakrexid encountered this version of Mara before?”
“No doctor, I’ve never personally met you, but I have the memories of my predecessor. Her experiences belong to me now.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Vakrexid understands. We shall make much discourse later! For now, I have a patient to attend to!” He exclaimed running toward the stretcher. “Take the girl inside. Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
The duo of soldiers carrying the stretcher, appeared at the bottom of the ramp, lugging the girl up into the ship. I matched gazes with Mara who pursed her lips and followed the others into the bowels of the vessel. I waited a moment and followed Lily, Becca and Janet in.
We got the girl and her two siblings tucked safely away in the infirmary before we retreated to the bridge with Farris in tow. He was still in fairly rough shape, but the doctor had given him permission to leave the infirmary and he had jumped at the chance. The command center was crowded with Mara and her crew present, to say the least, but there was enough space to accommodate all of us.
“Shit.” Farris shook his head, thrumming his fingers against the console and stared up at Mara with eyes wide. “I can’t be the only one who’s weirded out by this. Mara risen from the dead and of course, we have Mr. Smile’s look-a-like standing in the corner. I can’t be the only one who noticed that, can I?”
“They’re both clones, Matt,” Becca said running her hand through his mop of hair.
“Well, I know that. I knew Mara for ten years before she died and… Rayland, just look at the guys face. Not even a hint of a smile, or a grin or even a damn smirk! It’s god damned unnerving!”
“Rayland?” Patterson tweaked an eyebrow. “This Rayland fellow who you say looks so much like me. Is he another clone?”
Janet nodded. “He is… he was one of the last clone batches from before the invasion. He had a defect and was scheduled to be terminated, but one of the doctor’s working in the cloning facility saved him from his fate, eventually repairing the defect with a mechanical implant and raised him as her own son.”
Patterson nodded in understanding. “Well, that certainly explains it. I was always told the last of the Pattersons left on Earth went down defending New Nuremberg.”
“Well,” Mara cleared her throat and looked around the room. “This is all just so fascinating, but I do believe we have more pressing matters to discuss, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I replied batting the hair out of my eyes as I surveyed the room. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to say. I’d spent so much time leading up to this point that I hadn’t planned for anything once we’d reached it. The resistance was pale shadow of its former self and we’d been carrying on hoping for a miracle.
Now that supposed miracle was the figurative elephant in the room, I wasn’t quite ready to accept it. Particularly when it took the form of my dead aunt, a woman I’d never would have described as warm and inviting in the first place. It all seemed too damned good to be true and there was a voice screaming in the back of my head to run and keep going.
I bit my lip and leveled my eyes on Mara. “What exactly is it that you’ve come to do here?”
“Like I said,” Mara replied. “We’ve come to retake Earth.”
“What do you think you can do with ten soldiers, a handful of resistance fighters and Dexagarmetrax doctor?”
“You don’t honestly believe that I brought just ten soldier do you, dear?” Mara pursed her lips and leaned back in her chair.
“Okay,” I paused, gritted my teeth and clasped my hands together. “Just how many soldiers did you bring along?”
She narrowed her eyes and a slow smile formed on her face just before she gave her response. “More than enough to do the job, I should think.”
“Right and what exactly would that involve. What’s your plan to drive the gray skins from Earth?”
Mara smiled and clasped her hand over mine. “All in good time, dear child, all in good time.”
I pulled away and leapt to my feet clenching my hands at my side as I rounded on her. “God! You’re no different than the other Mara. I spent weeks trying to get her to trust me and now I’ll have to do it all over again.”
She didn’t flinch, but instead slowly craned her neck to look up at me with those cool calculating eyes so like the ones that had belonged to the other clone. She clasped her hands in her lap and frowned. “Did you expect any less? Earth is hanging in the balance. I will not risk humanity’s future on a group of rag tag resistance fighters I know almost nothing about. Familial relations aside, can you honestly say that you trust me completely?”
“No,” I admitted sinking back into my seat. “But, we have plenty of time to work things out, don’t we?”
“Yes, dear, yes we do.” She replied, a smile forming on her face that sent cold chills down my spine.
What the hell sort of trouble had I gotten us into this time? The more I talked with her the more trouble I had distinguishing her from the old Mara. It seemed so odd that after almost a two and a half decades of separate experiences that the two had deviated so little from one another. I wasn’t quite sure what that might implied, but it made me shudder nonetheless.
A high-pitched wail filled the room and the sound was so similar to that made by the dre’ks that I spun around to face the door both phase pistols in hand. I wasn’t the only one, Becca, Lily and half of Mara’s soldiers all swirled around ready to pounce on the vicious beast that had attempted to sneak in on us. Fortunately, the only creature that came lumbering through the door was the doctor.
“Vakrexid has glad tidings to share!” he proclaimed holding his hands up in the air giving the impression that he was about to conduct a piece of music. “The girl will survive!”
“That’s splendid news, doctor, why don’t you join us? I’m sure you can help us clear some things up. You’ve examined Lexa, tell me what you think of these K’teth.”
The doctor tilted his waist back and forth and let out a low warble. “The K’teth? Most fascinating creatures. Vakrexid could go into great details about their biology! Their cell structure alone is unlike anything I’ve ever seen and their–”
“Doctor!” Mara held her hand up cutting the doctor short. “I’d love to hear about it all later, but I was referring to the individual parasites. Are they dangerous? Can they be trusted?”
“Dangerous? Most certainly, but only to those who are enemies to their hosts. The K’teth bonded to Lexa and Lily can almost certainly be trusted, but Vakrexid is most sorrowful to inform you that I believe the third symbiote is most untrustworthy.”
“And why would you say that?”
“He became joined to Rebecca after the death of his previous host and has been most uncooperative. Vakrexid does not believe he has communicated with Becca since first being joined with her.”
Mara’s head jerked sideways and s
he studied my sister with those eyes. Becca lurched back almost as if she’d been dealt a physical blow and looked back at her with her mouth agape. It was clear Mara wasn’t turning out to be quite like what Becca had expected.
‘Lexa,’ Khala’s voice wafted into my mind like the scent of a meadow of flowers carried into a building through a window. ‘Let me speak to her.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ I replied. ‘The old Mara never did warm up to you. I doubt this one will be any different.’
‘Please, just… trust me.’
I bit my lip and winced as I stared at Mara. There was certain pleading tone to the way Khala spoke that hit just the right nerve that I finally closed my eyes, let out a deep breath and relinquished control to my symbiote.
“Lex?” I felt a hand on my shoulder and Khala craned my neck to match gazes with Lily who’s eye grew wide when she looked me over. And she mouthed Khala’s name just before taking a single step back.
“No,” Khala said standing up tugging at the hem of my shirt. “Lexa is… how is it you humans put it? Taking a fiver?”
“Oh the parasite,” Mara leaned back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve been wondering when you might rear your head, but honestly I hadn’t expected it to be quite so soon. What is it that you want?”
“I am not parasite, my relationship with a host is more of a symbiosis.”
“That remains to be seen.”
Khala narrowed my eyes and I felt my fingernails dig into my palms as she clenched my fists at my side. “I went through this with that other contemptible woman. What must I do to convince you people that my daughter and I are only interested in securing the future of our race. The battle for Earth is the only chance at liberation my people has seen in the many millennia since our creation. Our goals are not so different. Why is it so hard for you to understand?”
Battle For Earth Page 50
