by F. C. Reed
“That’s not you. That’s Commander General Ryna Nysnvor Strann when she was your age.”
Amalia staggered backward. Her knees felt as though they would buckle. “I still don’t believe it. It’s a mistake or something.”
“Oh it gets better,” Janil said. “Where did General Strann call the plane you were from?”
Bewildered, Amalia said, “Harkhemenes.”
“And what did you think that plane was?”
Amalia’s eyes shot up to him. “She said it was the Verellen name of the plane that held Earth.”
Janil shook his head. “It’s called the Wastes now, well on its way to being rendered inert. The old Earth, the one you think you know, is actually a barren hunk of rock, destroyed centuries ago, along with all the other planets in that plane. She probably kept that information from you as long as she could, since the fine general couldn’t have you running around saying you’re from Earth when Earth is actually a void planet. I wish I would have caught on sooner.”
“But what about Star Wars, and Latin, and pancakes, and Earth stuff? How do you even know?”
Janil nodded. “The thing about history is that it never leaves us. Earth has been studied and chronicled for centuries. All the info we could ever want on it, we have. Although Earth didn’t seem like the ideal place to live for many reasons, there were some good ideas there. We scavenge those ideas. And you can watch all twelve Star Wars movies in any holoprojector.”
“Twelve, huh? Seems I missed out on the last three.” Amalia sighed. “Strann didn’t mention any of this to me.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She told me I couldn’t refer to her as family once I got here,” Amalia said, realizing how the pieces started to fit. “That’s about it.”
“Think about what you’ve been through and what you remember, Amalia.” Janil reached out and grabbed both her shoulders. “One of the containment systems was labeled ‘Triple A.’ What do you think that might stand for, Amalia Autumn Anders?”
Amalia batted his hands away and backed up. “That’s impossible.” The words left her mouth in little more than a breathless whisper.
“Oh yeah? Then how is it you passed through a sourceway created by General Strann? The only way that would happen is if you had her exact likeness, right down to every strand of DNA, every freckle, and every butt pimple when she was your age. You literally have to be her to pass through that sourceway. You can’t not be her and pass through it if she was the one who made it. There is no other way that could have possibly happened. I think the aethersphere might have consumed itself and then spontaneously combusted if you were not her, or in this case, her exact clone. It would be like trying to divide by zero.”
“I don’t have the energy to believe this. It’s too absurd,” Amalia said, but the wheels were spinning faster and faster.
“All right. When is your birthday?” Janil asked abruptly.
“What?” she said, perplexed.
“I said, when is your birthday? You know, the day you were born. Everyone knows the day they were born.” Janil crossed his arms over his chest. “Everyone except you and me, that is.”
“Well, it’s on—
Her voice trailed off as no date popped in her head. Nothing, absolutely no memories of any birthdays came to mind. She struggled and stammered, confused by her lack of ability to answer a simple question that she should have known. “It will come to me in a minute. I know it.”
“No, you don’t,” Janil said. “That emptiness you feel? That big old bucket of weirdness you can’t untangle right now? Feel it? Yeah, well, they didn’t see fit to even give you a birthdate. Apparently it isn’t important in the grand scheme of things.”
Amalia’s stomach wrenched into a knot. “What does it mean?” she said in a whisper. She shook her head and sat down before the urge to pass out overtook her. “I’m a clone?” she asked no one in particular.
“I can’t help but think so. But not just any old clone. You are a clone of Commander General Ryna Nysnvor Strann,” Janil said. “Not a bad set of genes to copy, if you ask me.”
Amalia breathed quieter as she gathered some of her thoughts. She couldn’t stop shaking her head. What Janil brought to her attention made some sense. She distinctly remembered a strange shift in her parents’ behavior, almost as if someone got the details wrong. She thought back to the feeling of having known people whom she had never met before. How all of her sets of armor fit so perfectly with no one ever measuring her or tailoring it to her body. And her skills in combat could not be from playing lacrosse. She always figured that. And the dreams! The dreams of being stuck in a glass enclosure, unable to escape, suddenly didn’t seem much like dreams anymore.
“Why would anyone do this?” she asked.
“Why, indeed,” said Janil. “I believe I was the prototype, and Kharius cloned himself several times to perfect the process. Once the kinks were ironed out, he must have cloned the general. I’m assuming for the time being, with her knowledge and approval.”
Amalia was only half listening.
“Perhaps we should keep this to ourselves until we can figure out the why. Because unlike my many cloned predecessors, I have a strong and fervent desire to continue existing,” Janil declared. “And there’s this group of fanatics who really come down hard on cloning. The Imperium. They can’t find out, or we’re screwed.”
Amalia stared at the space in front of her face, the years of her life falling away as nothing more than fabricated lies. She was still shaking her head, trying hard to force away the evidence and its implications and keep this new information from consuming her.
Janil gathered himself. “What we do next will be very important. We need to know who we can trust. We need to know who else knows the truth about this. General Strann and Kharius can’t be the only ones who know. We can probably count Marchand in the list of who knows. It wasn’t until just now that I remembered him visiting Kharius regularly. About once a week. They have absolutely nothing in common, but Marchand would always disappear for about an hour.”
Amalia thought she would be sick. The memories of her “therapy” gave her chills.
Janil noticed her blanch and turned to her in concern. “What is it?”
Still shaking her head, she said, “So it is true. Those meetings would have been my sessions with Marchand. We often talked about the strange images only I saw.” She gave up on the truth she knew, allowing for a recreated reality. The pain of what she was leaving behind in the process stifled and suffocated her.
“Hey, kiddo,” Janil rested a hand on her shoulder. “No need to let this get you down. Think of it this way: you have more answers than questions now, right?” He looked at her for some affirmation, but she just stared. A tear rolled down her cheek. “And for what it’s worth, if they cloned you to be the next commander general, then I’ll follow you to the gates of the green hells. There must be a reason for them to break rules and law, and probably metaphysics, to create you, and put you in charge of the most powerful army in the entire realm. We just don’t know what that reason is yet.”
“I want to talk to Strann. I need to find her.” She pushed toward the exit, the thought of her beloved ‘grandmother’ bringing a nasty curl to her lip.
Janil stopped her. “Hold on a sec. We can’t go around declaring ourselves clones. Cloning is outlawed by the Imperium and has been for a very long time. If anyone finds out we’re clones, we’re dead. Kharius and the general, too. And anyone else who knows about it.”
“I just want to talk to her,” Amalia said. She could feel her anger rising, spurred on by the general’s lies and deceit. Having looked up to a woman whom she thought was her grandmother for such a long time, soured in her stomach. She wanted to confront General Strann at the very least. “I just want to know why.”
“I’m sure we can make time for that, but right now let’s find a way to—
Janil’s words were cut short by a high-pitched whine, fol
lowed by a deafening crack-hiss, and a flash of light that jumped at him from the doorway, bathing the entire room in a brilliant orange.
He stood for a moment, his eyes fixed on her. A hand came up slowly, and twitched at the hole where his heart might have been, the edges charred black and still burning with embers. He gurgled as blood, red with hints of gold, foamed through lips which tried to force out a last word. The thump of his lifeless body pushed her against the wall. She wanted to scream, but clenched her jaws and eased herself to the floor instead.
Kharius walked into the room, the powergun swinging carelessly at his side. His face radiated a seriousness, moreso than she had previously seen. The high-pitched whine of the gun forced Amalia to focus on it instead of his steel-piercing gaze.
“Well, damn,” Kharius said as he glanced down at the lifeless body of Janil. “He found out again. The two of you were the best clones I’ve made yet.” Kharius shook his head. “I will make him an idiot next time, but that would mean I wouldn’t have help around the lab. Anyway, I guess it’s a good thing I fitted the both of you with tracking devices. Always know where to find you.”
Amalia stole a glance at him, but kept her eyes low. Scenarios danced through her head of the next several seconds. She edged herself up, raising her hands. The gun came flashing up into view once again, pointed at her head.
“Oh no, no, no,” Kharius sang. “Stay where you are, sweetheart. I wouldn’t want to be taken by surprise. You’re probably good at that, being a clone of the general and all.”
Amalia frowned and shook her head as if she was hearing the news for the first time.
The clunk of metal against the floor caused her to start. A pair of cuffs slid up to her foot. “Put them on,” Kharius said.
Chapter Forty-One
The door opened slowly into the medicus’ primary exam room. She tinkered with a vial of blue liquid and a syringe.
“Have a seat on the table and come out of your shirt for me,” she said without turning. Her full figure covered the view of her tools of trade. When she heard no further movements, she stopped her work and glanced out of the corner of her eye and over her shoulder. “Don’t be shy, sprocket. We’ve done this before. It’s just your annual—
Oshalla broke off at the figure standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. A frown slowly dug into her forehead as she set down her tools and turned around. “You don’t much resemble my next patient, sergeant, unless you have a fancy trick of being able to turn yourself into a ten-year-old girl.”
“Lieutenant,” he corrected her. Larue did not seem amused, judging by the way he continued to stare at her.
“Lieutenant, is it? Wonder how that came about.” Oshalla snapped off her white gloves and cautiously laid them on the table beside her. “I take it this is no courtesy call.”
Larue dropped his arms to his side, fingers flicking over the butt of his holstered powergun. “Oshalla Vennone,” he said in what he must have thought was a commanding voice. “You are to be arrested and detained under suspicion of conspiracy and treason for aiding an identified enemy of the nation-state.”
“Nonsense,” Oshalla sniffed.
“You are suspected of assisting in the act of artificial human reproduction via systematic and deliberate duplication and placement of foundational life bearing cells and tissues, and using unlawful techniques to fabricate, alter, and erase memories.”
“It’s called cloning, you silly sod.” Oshalla’s head slumped with a bitter smile. “So that crafty wench has finally made her move. Took you all long enough.”
“You will be tried for your crimes and assigned a punishment befitting those crimes before being turned over to the Imperium,” Lieutenant Larue said.
Oshalla reached up and popped open the first two buttons of her shirt, rolling her shoulders in the process.
“You will be taken by force, if necessary,” he said.
She cocked an eyebrow at that. “I’d just as soon have someone shove hot bricks up my arse sideways before I let you or your goons lay a finger on me. You don’t know what I did in the Divini Foras conflict, do you? Well, I’ll give you a hint: my great, great uncle was Oros Qharmac.”
Larue sucked in his breath and took a step back.
“Yes, that Oros Qharmac, mind you.” She thumbed her nose. “And the legendary Bergoshi lineman battlestance didn’t pass me by. Haven’t had to use it in ages, but it’s as easy to remember as riding a hovercycle. And for the gods’ sake, look at me, all big and blocky. How could you not have guessed?”
Larue pressed on, a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead. He also found it difficult to swallow. The confidence seemed to bleed out of him, along with the color in his face, at the mention of the infamous Bergoshi lineman. “You will be taken by force, if necessary,” he said again, with a quiver in his voice. “Or you can come peaceably and without physical duress. What would you—
She cut him off by shushing him. “All right, you floppy-spined son of a bastard. Enough talk.” As she spoke, she widened her stance and lowered her center of gravity into a comfortable squat while shaking out her wrists before flexing her hands open and closed. “Let’s do this.”
The floor boards groaned under her exponentially increasing mass, and her usually fair skin mottled into a coppery bronze tone. Her eyes darkened into black orbs, characteristic of the Bergoshi battlestance. She seemed to grow six inches as her shoulders broadened and her forearms and biceps thickened, straining against the fabric of her uniform. Even the air in the room seemed heavier.
“Green hells,” Larue whispered. His eyes grew wide, and his jaw slackened at her transformation. He shook himself from his stupor, turned, and called to the other soldiers in the hallway. “Subdue her!”
Three men armed with electrified batons shuffled in the room and took up positions in a half circle in front of her. More soldiers waited in the hallway. The first two hesitated at the sight of the hulking stone woman, but as the others got themselves into position, their confidence returned.
Oshalla had the advantage. They were forced to come to her, and could only do so two at a time at most without colliding into one another. In her battlestance, she surrendered mobility for the Bergoshi’s trademark bronze coated skin, increased strength, and accelerated reaction time. These were standard Bergoshi defense tactics, and she would use them to her advantage.
The soldier on her far left took a shuffling step forward, his shokstik in front of him. Then he lunged at her when he closed the distance, followed closely by two other soldiers. The back of her hand met his chin even before anyone saw her move. The soldier spun helplessly about, out cold before his limp body bounced against the wall and collapsed into a crumpled heap.
The second soldier closed fairly quickly behind the first. His shokstik buzzed within inches of her face. She turned her shoulder across her body to allow it to pass and brought herself about to ram her elbow into his exposed ribs. He doubled over and fell to his knees as she ripped the shokstik from his grip to repel the third soldier’s attack.
Their batons crashed into one another with a fierce crackle and intensification of light. She muscled him over easily, planting her bronze fist into his jaw in quick succession. The lower portion of his helmet shattered into pieces as he rolled to a stop several feet away.
Turning toward the door, she rose from the deep defensive stance she was in. The barrels of three high-powered rifles came into view. Larue stood behind the line of soldiers, his anxiety being traded with triumph. “Fire,” his voice echoed in the hallway.
The three bolt rifles jumped in the soldiers’ hands as they fired their first volley. The projectile was a microelectric power-lattice designed to attach onto skin, stone, and metal alike, and deliver a nonlethal charge of electricity meant to disarm and disable. One power-lattice was enough to bring an ordinary man to his knees.
Having provided medical support for field training exercises with the peacekeepers, Oshalla knew exactly w
hat to expect. When grouped in threes, the standard protocol was for each soldier to target a different area on the body: the upper chest, the abdominal area, and the legs.
Oshalla twisted away from the shot aimed high, and caught the second at her chest, crushing it in her palm before it had time to release any current. The third found its mark right above her knee. She glanced down at it as the current rammed into her leg, threatening to topple her.
“Again,” called Larue from the general safety of the hallway. Three more projectiles tore through the air at her. The shot meant for her upper torso found the back of her hand as she shielded her face and ear. The abdomen shot slammed into her shoulder, and the lower shot attached to her hip.
“Got her,” Larue whispered in triumph, all doubts of achieving success gone.
Current pulsed and coursed through Oshalla’s body, amplified by not only the localized area of the point of attachment but also the current between each of the points. Her vision faded in and out. The pain and loss of motor control were unbearable. She ground her teeth together as wave after wave of electricity weakened her. Soon, her grip on consciousness began to collapse, and for the first time since her opposition arrived, she found herself vulnerable. She slumped, and her knee hit the ground.
Decorative paintings fell from the wall as glass vials and metal tools crashed and clanged against the floor from the impact. Although the power-lattice affected her ability to maintain the Bergoshi defensive posture, her mass was still enough to crush the white tiles under her knee to a fine powder. But the defensive posture soon became like tensing a muscle under stress and continued to slowly fail. With her strength fading fast, she wanted to use what she had left for maximum effect.
“Shokloks with collar and reinforced waist immobilizer,” Larue said to no one in particular. He stepped further into the room to better direct his men. “I want her escorts to have access—
Oshalla’s last ditch effort shoved the rest of Larue’s words back down his throat. As soon as he pushed past his men and back into the room, she lunged herself at him, muscles screaming in pain, along with a hair-raising, guttural roar.
