by James Evans
He reached up to feel his face, a habit that he’d had for years now. The facial features were always the last part of the clone that the tank grew after the imprint was designated to a particular blank. Essentially, the face was finished off last and often took a few extra hours to settle in. The old joke was that if you played with your face before it had settled, it would set in a strange shape.
The earliest blanks had been left complete, but the result was that an entire deployment of troops would look the same and it caused a surprising amount of problems in commanding and interacting with them. Instead, a close approximation of the person’s real face was built in the final stages of clone deployment. It added hours to the process, but it was better in the long run.
Wilson gripped his wrist before he could reach his face. His fingers felt odd on his skin. “Wait, Sir. We have to tell you something.”
Atticus croaked, “What?”. His voice sounded strange.
The cloning specialist looked a bit uncomfortable.
“We haven’t been able to get our cloning bays working yet, Sir. We had to improvise to get you redeployed.”
“What is it?” Atticus demanded, trying to get the hang of his vocal chords.
“Barlow, whatever it is can wait. I need to talk to the Captain, just hold your horses and I’ll get to you in a minute,” Warden said. He moved into Atticus’s eye line, supporting himself awkwardly on a crutch. “Don’t panic, Captain but what Wilson is dancing around, is that we had to redeploy you in an enemy clone. You’re in a military body, Sir, just not a human one.”
Atticus pulled his wrist from Wilson‘s grip and raised his hand. It was humanoid. Opposable thumb and four fingers, albeit unusually long and delicate. The palms were soft, but the back of the hand was covered in scales.
“Oh. Shit. I’m a lizardman,” Atticus sighed, “you really had to put me in an alien clone? Are things that desperate?”
“I don’t know, Sir,“ said Warden, “but we’re still growing new clones in the remaining bay and repairing the civilian one. I thought we should at least try this, though, because we captured three alien dropships since you went down. We have dozens of their clones and a working bay in each of the dropships, so a trial seemed like a good idea and I didn’t think you’d be happy if I used anyone else. I’m concerned they might have more troops deployed across the planet already. We have no way of knowing how many dropships landed or when,” Warden explained, “we destroyed the ship they had in orbit, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with them.”
“So we’re trapped planetside, and the aliens could have a battalion of soldiers somewhere on New Bristol?” Atticus asked.
“No, Sir, that’s what I’ve been…” Barlow started from the corner of the room, but Warden cut him off. “Marine, I will get to you in a minute.”
Atticus put an arm on Warden’s shoulder and pulled himself upright.
“No, let him speak, Warden. He looks like he might burst. What’s so urgent, Barlow?”
“They’re not aliens, Captain,” the tech specialist said.
There was a chorus of disagreement around the room and Atticus waved his scaled hand for silence.
“How do you come to that conclusion, Barlow?” looking at his hand as if to emphasise the evidence to the contrary.
“I thought something seemed odd, so I’ve been examining the bodies and equipment. I sampled the DNA of a few of the clones and ran it through the colony‘s sequencer. It’s human, or at least, mostly human.”
“You mean these are human military clones? But they have a different language; different character sets to any Sol culture. They even have new technology like that chameleon coating. Are you saying they’re from Sol? A black op perhaps from another government or a corporation?” Warden asked.
“Not sure where they came from, Sir, but the bodies are human. Brains too. I don’t think these are aliens in human clones. I think you’d have to clone an alien brain format to be able to imprint an alien mind on a blank,” he said, turning to Wilson for support.
“That makes a lot of sense, Sir,“ said Warden, “I was surprised when we were able to deploy you to that blank. I thought they must have created an interface to edit their pattern so it would fit a human brain. We can’t imprint a human on a gorilla brain; the structure isn’t similar enough. If we meet an actual alien species, they’d need to adjust the brain of the blanks they were using at a minimum, or else they’d never be able to imprint to them. The rest could stay human, but they couldn’t get away without changing that.“
“Can you be more specific about who these people are, Barlow?” Atticus asked.
“Only if we contact Sol, Sir. They might have records of the Lost Arks, and we could compare the DNA we have here with the blanks that went out with the arks that went missing out in this region. The earliest ark ships didn’t even carry blanks; they pre-dated cloning so we can rule those out. We could rule out more recent ones if we knew when some parts of the DNA of our basic and military blanks were first used,” Barlow confirmed, “I’d need to contact HQ and send them a lot of data though.”
“Noted. Draft a report, and I’ll speak to HQ, explain the situation. Do we still have wormhole communications?” Atticus said, turning to Warden.
“No, Sir,“ said the Lieutenant, shaking his head, “they went down at some point while we were dealing with the alien, I mean, enemy base. I’m expecting it back up in a few hours though, we prioritised it so we could get updates and in case we needed more deployments.”
“Ok. Get to it then Barlow, we still need something to send when we have communications back up.”
“How are you feeling, Sir?” Warden asked.
“I seem to have a bit of a skin complaint,“ said Atticus, staring at the back of his hand, “but I‘m definitely better than last time we spoke. I need to get up to date, what’s our current strength?”
Warden gave a rapid account of everything that had happened since Atticus had died.
“So we’re down to twenty, including you, Captain.”
Atticus frowned.
“That could be better, but it could be a lot worse, Lieutenant. I’m sure our people sold themselves dearly.”
“They did, Sir. We captured three of the four enemy dropships as well as a good number of their clones, including some heavily modified for combat. We also have a lot of their armour, weapons and munitions. It’s good gear, some of it is better than ours.”
“Well done, Lieutenant. Give me a moment to put something on and then I need to see the Governor.”
“She’s waiting outside for you, Sir. I told her we were going to try and deploy you to an enemy clone.”
Atticus nodded and began to get dressed. He slipped some underwear on without daring to look at what these people might use, he’d worry about that later. At least this body wasn’t permanent. As long they could still back-up their imprints, he’d be able to get home and leave this body for fertiliser.
He’d worn plenty of military clones in the past but this one was different. The vision was particularly sharp and his hearing was excellent. He rapped a knuckle against the scales on the back of his arm. Tough but flexible. Nice, but he still wanted to get out of this body as soon as he could. He sighed and opened the door, stepping into the room beyond.
“Governor Denmead. How is New Bristol holding up?” he said, wondering if his scales were showing the blushing sensation he could feel creeping up his neck.
“Captain Atticus, glad to see you back on your feet,“ said the Governor, barely glancing at his new body, “or on someone‘s feet, at least. We’re doing as well as can be expected, given the week we’ve had. Let’s go outside and you can see for yourself.” She hadn’t batted an eyelid when confronted with his strange new body. Not easily phased.
An elevator took them to the roof. The building stood only four storeys above the ground but Ashton was a new colony city and lacked the horrific concrete canyons common to the metropolises of Earth or Mars.
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“You can see the damage,” Denmead said, pointing at a number of locations across the city that had collapsed or were still smoking. “We’ve lost a lot of people too and even if we had a cloning bay it would take months to grow enough blanks to decant everyone.”
“Warden tells me the enemy had four dropships but only one at their planetside base. There could be more of them out there. If I were them, I’d have landed across the planet and set up more than one base, then gathered intelligence about the colony. I’m not sure their grasp of strategy is that good, though. They strike me as a touch brash. Satellites down I assume? Drones up?”
Warden shook his head. “We don’t have long-range scouting drones, Sir. We’re repairing the fabricators and the production facilities and arming the citizens with whatever we can scrape together.”
Atticus thought about this for a moment as he stared across the smoking city. Then he nodded.
“We need to reassess our priorities; arming civilians won‘t help if we have hundreds of enemy troops out there. Let’s get inside and take a look at hard numbers,” Atticus said.
They took a final look across the city and then turned to leave the roof. There was a beep from a communicator in Governor Denmead’s jacket pocket. She took it out and flipped it open, “Yes, Johnson. What is it?”
“Governor, we need you in the command centre urgently.”
“We were just on our way. What’s wrong, Johnson? Don’t be coy, spit it out man!” she said, a hint of impatience in her tone.
“A beacon, Ma‘am, on the edge of the system. Ships dropping out of hyperspace,” he said, his voice betraying a definite hint of panic. Denmead made a mental not to speak to him about the importance of remaining calm for the citizens of New Bristol.
“It’s just the fleet, Johnson. We requested support when we called in the Marines,” she said, turning to Atticus and rolling her eyes apologetically. Atticus frowned, the expression amplified by his inhuman face, and glanced at Warden, who was looking distinctly worried. What was wrong with them? Denmead wondered.
“But there are no transponder signals, Ma‘am,“ said Johnson, now sounding truly scared, “it’s not our fleet. I think it’s them, Ma’am. I think it’s the aliens.”
Denmead took a couple of seconds to digest this.
“We’re on our way, Johnson.”
She turned to Atticus and Warden and gave them a brittle smile.
“Well, it could be worse. It could be raining.”
Thank you for Reading
Thank you for reading, Commando, Book One of The Royal Marine Space Commandos trilogy.
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We both have our own series underway.
James is writing the Vensille Saga, an epic fantasy tale that begins with A Gathering of Fools and will continue with the A Gathering of Princes, due for release later this year.
A Gathering of Fools
Betrayed, imprisoned and named traitor. Freed by shipwreck, will Marrinek choose the safety of exile or seek revenge against the most powerful players in the Empire?
Jon is writing the Edrin Loft Mysteries of murder mysteries and adventures in The Shattered Empire.
The Mutilated Merchant
Can the first detective in Kalider find the man who murdered a seemingly innocent shopkeeper?
