by C. S. Harte
Dren woke up inside his Tempest suit. He turned on his external lamps. Lying next to him were the bodies of Kara and Kingston, blood leaking out of their suits. Looking through their visors, their faces were blue. They died some time ago. Jann’s corpse was nowhere to be found. “Am I dead too?” he muttered to himself. His suit light caught a reflection — the sphere console. They were back to where they started on board the alien ship.
Clicking noises sounded from behind.
Mimics! Dren spun around. His light projected into the dark tunnels before him yet revealed nothing.
The clicking grew louder.
Dren could not see his enemies, but he knew they were out there. Somehow, he needed to get word back to Fleet about what he had seen. He had no idea what exactly he experienced, but he knew it was important — to someone. Dren tried establishing a comm signal on all channels.
Nothing connected. His suit’s comm systems were too weak to reach anything far.
Glowing blood-red eyes rushed toward Dren.
He emptied round after round killing waves of Reapers.
The onslaught persisted without a break.
Warnings flashed on his HUD. Low ammo count. In less than a minute, Reapers would tear him to pieces. Rather than endure the torturous fate, Dren activated the self-destruct sequence on his suit. After a series of confirmations, a countdown clock appeared on his HUD.
30 seconds until self-destruct.
RAI-17 was right. Death was his only escape.
He dropped his rifle and picked up Kingston’s. Empty. “Voids… When can I get a break?”
20 seconds.
He pulled out his pistol and combat knife from his thigh compartment.
15 seconds.
Reapers lined up 10 meters away from Dren.
“What are you waiting for?” he shouted.
10 seconds.
Remember. I must remember what happened to me…
5 seconds.
Every Reaper lunged at Dren like jackals going for the kill.
7
Through the murky darkness of nonexistence, a warbled voice called out to Dren. The siren’s call was unintelligible at first. With no effort, Dren felt the sensation of soaring. Am I dead? He continued to float upward. The voice beckoned again, like a shepherd calling one of its lost sheep, pleading for it to find its way back.
Light filtered through nets of shadows; blackness gave way to natural colors. Dren saw he was underwater, yet there was no feeling of wetness against his skin. Immediately, panic set in. He thought he could be drowning as his lungs refused to inflate. He had no memories of how he arrived in this aqueous world, no sense of when he took his last breath.
His ghosts followed him into the nightmarish waters. Their images were wavy; blurred by the rippling of the currents. They circled him in the murkiness, fading in and out of his perception. Instead of fear, the hauntings had a relaxing effect on him. Dren assumed himself to be dead, which meant he no longer required trivial, mortal things like air.
Curiosity crested inside Dren’s mind. He wanted to reach out to his ghosts and learn who they were, why they kept chasing him, even in death. The shepherd’s call was stronger than his curiosity, and so he ignored his ghosts, for now, choosing to continue his ascent.
The spirits followed closely behind.
As Dren neared the surface, rays of purple and navy crashed against his retinas. He willed his body to move faster, and to his surprise, it did. Though it wasn’t just Dren who wanted a meeting at the surface. Dren felt a force reeling him upward. The thought of being on his way to meet his maker crossed his mind. This notion neither terrified nor excited him. His short life had been a steady dose of pain and suffering, jumping from one ferocious battle to another. If he should stand before his creator, he had but one question to ask in an infinite variety of forms.
“Why?”
When Dren broke through the ocean’s skin, he felt a sharp pain as his chest inflated for the first time in what seemed like forever. Bullets of rain pelted his face, forcing him back under. The sky had broken, water spilled from above.
For the first time, he noticed gashes on his chest, lacerations on his arms and legs and large chunks missing from his flesh. Mimics. I remember fighting Mimics. They killed me didn’t they?
His limbs were under his complete control now; he struggled to steady himself, treading just above the waterline, bobbing up and down to avoid the heavy rain. With quick glances, he searched for clues of his location. Where am I? How did I get here? The night hid the boundaries of the horizon.
Survivors Dren rescued from Alliance colonies often referred to him and his company as angels sent by the, “Dear Lord Hasha.” They believed their God had allowed them more time as mortals, not ready to pluck their souls to the afterlife. Dren did not believe in life after death. That required religious indoctrination. Clones were not afforded such opportunities. Once created, replicants were shipped to the battlefronts against the Defiled. It didn’t matter if they made it back home, Fleet could always make more.
“We live. We fight. We die,” Kingston often said.
“HELLO?” Dren shouted at the top of his lungs — a whisper compared to the howling of the storm above.
“Over here,” the voice of a young girl said, barely cutting through the roaring of the tempest. She stood alone on an island. The clouds parted just so, shining a focused beam of light onto her, signaling a safe haven.
Dren closed his eyes and swam toward her, using her shouts like a beacon to guide him. The ocean currents had a different agenda for Dren, pushing him back as hard as he pressed forward. No amount of effort could free him from the constant churn of the waves.
Pale blue hands latched onto his arms and legs. His ghosts had caught up to him. Chills surged through Dren’s body as their icy hands connected with his skin, transferring the coldness of the ocean directly to his core.
“Let go of me!” He tried to kick his way free.
But they weren’t dragging him down into the depths. Instead, they were pulling him toward the young girl, toward the light. Together Dren and his ghosts overcame the will of the currents.
His mind shifted from fear to determination. The light meant salvation — it had to be. With one final great surge, his hand arrived at the rocky shore. The coldness in his body melted away as warm sand pushed against his bare feet. He turned around intending to thank his ghosts. The ocean appeared kilometers away like it was a distant memory. All his hauntings disappeared again. It seemed only he made it to shore.
“You came…” the little girl said from behind Dren.
He spun to look at the girl’s face — RAI-17. “You again…” Hope filled his eyes to the brim, condensing as tears, trailing down his cheeks. “Does this mean I’m not dead? The Mimics… They didn’t kill me?”
“Dead and death are not the same in this universe or any.” She waved a hand over his body. “Nothing alive truly ever dies.” As if by magic, the gashes and puncture holes in his body healed themselves.
A newfound vitality swelled within Dren; he had never felt more alive, more filled with strength. Perhaps he was wrong about RAI-17. Maybe she wasn’t the enemy. In attempting to figure her out, he realized the massive gaps in his memory, like trying to remember a story he read long ago. What little smile he had on his face melted away. This much he knew, RAI-17 had never been forthright with him. He needed to ask more direct questions hoping to get more candid answers. “What is this place?”
“A place of many names.” Her eyes peered downward. “A place of sorrow.”
Dren narrowed his gaze. “Sorrow? What do you mean?”
“You have asked this question before, each time you have been here.” She sighed. “This cycle has repeated for far too long.”
“I…” Dren covered his face with his hands. “I don’t remember being here.”
“I know. You are damaged as I have assessed.” She turned her back. “This is the home of Species-1.”
>
“Species-1?” He scratched his temple. “Am I supposed to know what that is?”
“Remember…” Her voice echoed as her body became translucent.
I don’t understand… Dren tried to speak. Water poured from his mouth instead of words. He choked as pain flared in his lungs. He collapsed down to his hands and knees. The gushing continued. Like a river had carved a path through his head. Help! Dren reached out to the disappearing RAI-17.
She stared at him with watering eyes. “Remember…”
The strength in his arms gave out. He fell onto his stomach, with his head turned to the side. The water level rose past his mouth. The cold returned to his body, chilling him once again to his bones.
RAI-17 mouthed one last word, a word that never made it to Dren’s ears, before disappearing altogether.
Darkness blanketed his vision. Not even his ghosts followed him to this new desolation. He felt sleep tugging at his consciousness and allowed it to pull his eyes closed.
A noise jolted him just as slumber settled, sounding like a muffled knock. He choked; there was something in his throat that was hurting him.
“Hold on, hold on,” said an unfamiliar male voice. “Give it a minute for the water to drain.”
8
The ocean receded. Dren’s body descended with the water level, stopping only when his feet touched something solid. He tried to open his eyes, but they were sealed shut.
“Impatient aren’t we?” said the male voice. “Of course, you are. The first offprint I see capable of patience will be the first, lemme tell you… Let’s see, what’s your name here…” he paused. “Dren Arvol. Private. Phoenix Company. Hmm, didn’t I see you here last week?” He chuckled. “Not like you would remember.”
Dren tried to answer but couldn’t. There was a mask covering his mouth with an attachment extending into his throat. However, his ears worked perfectly; he heard the hum of a vibrating laser scalpel inching closer to his face.
“Try to stay still while I unseal your eyes,” said the man. “I have been known to blind the more annoying ones.” He laughed. “On accident, obviously. Fleet Officers get so mad when you damage one of their precious offprints.”
The smell of seared flesh filled Dren’s nostrils.
“There,” said the man. “You can open your eyes now.”
The world came at him as a blur. Why can’t I focus my eyes? He wanted to ask, but his throat was still clogged. All he could see was the slender silhouette of a man wearing a white lab coat.
“OK.” The man cleared his throat. “I will remove the respirator from your throat. Don’t bite it or me. I’ll shove it back down hard if you do. You definitely don’t want me to do that. Understand, offprint?”
Dren pinched his face in response, not appreciating the slur birthers used toward clones.
The man yanked the tube.
Dren choked as he did, fighting a formidable gag reflex. After the respirator finally cleared his mouth, he released a coughing fit, allowing it to go on for several minutes. During this time, Dren’s vision cleared. He watched as the man took notes on his datapad. On his chest was the Fleet insignia interwoven with a snake. He was a Fleet corpsman.
The corpsman threw the mask and tube device to the side on the ground. “I’m Corpsman Walder. According to your documents, you are Dren Arvol, a private in Phoenix Company. Your immediate commanding officer is a Whisper named Kara. Do you understand?”
Dren nodded.
“Say you understand, offprint.”
It was a struggle to force words out of his mouth, but eventually he replied, “I… I understand.”
The datapad in Walder’s hand beeped. After a quick glance, he said, “Great, looks like another one hatched. We need more real people working here.” He groaned. “You offprints die too fast.” The datapad beeped again. Walder grumbled. “I’ll finish your integration when I get back.”
Integration? It was an odd word choice to Dren, but his mind was stuck on that island with RAI-17 to think much of it. She was an unfinished conversation he desperately wanted to continue. He remembered her mentioning Species-1. She kept repeating to remember something. What exactly, he didn’t know.
Dren searched around for RAI-17, hoping she would appear as a ghost. Everywhere he looked he saw cloning pods — tall, cylindrical stations filled with viscous green fluids, each with a still human body floating inside. Empty shells. Clone bodies without consciences. There were dozens of pods in a row, and dozens of rows in the room.
“I’m back on Salvation Station,” he said to himself. “But I died…” He glanced down at his abdomen. He remembered being pierced by a Reaper’s talon. It tore through his Tempest suit like it was tissue before sinking deep into his gut. There were no scars or marks to indicate an injury on his torso or anywhere on his body. “I was on that alien ship… I know I was… I know I died...”
“You look like you’re about to cry, Private,” Walder said. “You offprints are so weak. We would’ve won this war by now if you could fight worth a damn.”
Dren curled his hands into fists.
“Aww, little offprint baby getting mad?” Walder sneered. “Not like you’ll remember any of this after integration.” He pointed a metallic silver device at Dren’s right eye.
Dren turned away, uneasy at the pointy object heading for his face.
“Voids!” Walder grabbed Dren’s chin. “Stop moving. It won’t hurt. I’m downloading your latest repo files.” He checked his datapad and laughed. “Looks like your entire team went MIA. Seriously, you offprints need to stop dying so much. We’re understaffed as is.”
When the device connected with Dren’s ocular implant, he felt a jolt of electricity travel into his brain. It stung for a second before he became numb. Inside his mind, images flooded in, like a dam of memories had broken. Photos flicked through his brain faster than he could comprehend.
The faces of his squadmates, Kara, Kingston, Jann, Wyrick, and Veillon came to the forefront. But he was looking for one face in particular, RAI-17. She never appeared. There was another person who pleaded for him to remember, someone of great importance. But he could not recall who, only that he had to remember, like a name hanging off the tip of a tongue.
A beep sounded on a console near him.
“Hmm, that was fast,” said the corpsman, scratching his cheek. “Less than four minutes…” He grabbed another tool and held it next to Dren’s right eye. “I knew there was something wrong with you when you first opened your eyes.”
Dren’s biggest fear came to light — that there was something wrong with his head. And because of his defectiveness, they would erase his repository and deactivate his clone variant. Throughout his entire existence, he had seen ghosts. Something had corrupted his brain, and it was only a matter of time before his eventual erasure.
“Odd. Odd. Odd.” Walder wrinkled his nose.
“What’s wrong with me?” Dren asked in a meek voice.
“You’re a clone!” he said with an edge. “And we should focus on creating more real humans instead of fake ones!”
Dren’s heart skipped a beat. Corpsman Walder might be crazier than him.
“Well, my job isn’t to diagnose you. Only to get you ready to die for the next mission.”
“My next mission?”
“There’s a fresh batch of uglies on Gedia Prime. Your company’s been assigned to the front line.” Walder grinned. “I guess I’ll be seeing you again real soon.”
9
The transport ship Lazarus was en route to Gedia Prime in the heart of Alliance of Faith territory. Its belly was full of drop pods holding members of Phoenix Company. Dren was one of thousands of cloned marines tasked with repelling the Voidi advances into the sector.
Everyone on board the Lazarus was asleep, except for Dren who spent the entire trip tossing and turning in his pod. He was sweating inside his cool, climate-controlled Tempest suit. His mind cycled through several thoughts, one of which was the eventual
orbital drop straight into the mouth of Hell.
A ghost loitered in front of Dren’s drop pod. Whenever he was to enter an active combat zone, he would see this same specter — a space marine who Dren was sure he’d never met before. Its constant, empty stare used to feel like a weight pressing down on his chest. He had experienced this apparition many times, to the point where it would seem unusual for Dren to not see him. That feeling of burden wasn’t there today.
Gedia Prime was similar in size and habitability as Earth. The one main difference between the two planets was the single, Pangaea-like landmass positioned around the equator resulting in one homogenous jungle climate throughout the lone continent.
At one point, before the Colony Wars and the rise of the Alliance of Faith, Gedia Prime was a hotbed for archaeological activity and home to some of the greatest ancient civilization mysteries. During the first expedition to the planet, scientists discovered an abandoned advanced civilization underneath thick, overgrown vines. Trademarks of this society included numerous dome-shaped structures the size of stadiums, enclosed with a semi-translucent, jade glass. Buildings and bridges were composed of a lightweight, but strong metal alloy, similar to bronze, and unique to Gedia Prime alone.
Subsequent exploration missions were planned but then abandoned when the strife started.
Once the Lazarus arrived at Gedia Prime, the ship would perform a Bine-Tyrell maneuver. In this procedure, the Lazarus would exit warp and rapidly decelerate, stopping a split second before grazing the upper thermosphere of the planet. Immediately after, the clamps locking all the drop pods would disengage. Dren and the Phoenix Company marines on board would plummet 90,000 meters while steering their pods to a beachhead acting as the forward staging area of the campaign. At that height and speed, this was like manually flying a supersonic missile through a ring the exact size and shape of the missile itself. The probability of survival was less than fifty percent. Soldiers had a better chance of winning a coin flip.
