So he just said, "Couldn't tell you. You Norts all look the same to me. But I killed a good hundred of you scum, so I guess your brother might have been one of them."
Pietr lifted a fist, preparing to smash it down into Helm's face. Helm looked up at him impassively. "What you waiting for, Nort?" he said. "Not like I can fight back."
Pietr lowered his hand, looking at it as if puzzled to find it acting in that way. He stood up and stumbled away from Helm, pursued by more mocking laughter from the other Norts.
Helm carefully breathed out. He could only hope the Norts where he was heading were as easy to control.
Surgeon-Kapten Natashov surveyed the table in front of her with pleasure. She'd had to modify it in a hurry - they'd only given her a few hours notice that they were bringing the GI prisoner to her - but she thought she'd done a good job of it.
Everything was gleaming, surgical. The surfaces, the knives, the other instruments. She didn't want to risk any infections, anything that might give her prisoner a premature release from her ministrations.
When she was satisfied that all the instruments were ready, ranked in neat rows, gleaming wickedly up at the high metal ceiling of the base, she turned her attention to the toxins. She prided herself on her collection. For a fan of poisons, and Natashov considered herself a fan, there was no better place to be than Nu Earth. Two thousand seven hundred man-made toxins had been released into the atmosphere in the last year alone. And once there they'd bred, mutated, transformed. Poisons were a form of life, Natashov thought, always multiplying, always changing.
Only the fittest survived. She smiled at the array of tubes in front of her, then turned to the Nort commander beside her. "The GI prisoner, he is ready for me?"
The foil commander nodded, then grimaced. "You'll be lucky to get anything out of him," he said. "The Souther scientists created their Genetic Infantrymen to endure anything."
Natashov smiled. "Excellent. I enjoy a challenge." Her eyes returned to her poisons as she continued, "Grand Admiral Hoffa ordered the complete destruction of all the GIs, but that doesn't mean I can't do a little experimentation first."
A body was wheeled into position on a heavy steel trolley scored with grooves to carry the blood away. Natashov looked down into the taut face of her prisoner, blue skin shining dully in the bright lights. "Shall we begin, GI?"
Rogue only had to take one look at the base to realise that a frontal assault was out of the question. The base itself was large enough, hugging the shore like a steel limpet. And after that he still had to get to the heart of the huge Nort ship docked there, as big as an island.
They'd had stealth and infiltration training, but that had relied on them getting into places where everyone was suited up. Here they were all walking bare-faced, the scum sea the one place on Nu Earth where the poisonous atmosphere was burned clean away by the chem of the water itself.
The first area proved easy, just a matter of avoiding the Norts, navy men in blue mask-less chem suits, who were clustered in small groups shifting cargo around the enormous docks at the heart of the base, loading and unloading the small patrol boats which lived in there.
Then, there was a problem. There was a gate he needed to pass to get through to the section of the base that led to the ship, and the gate was up, leaving a precipitous drop to the water below. He could see the controls - on the other side, completely inaccessible even if he did come out of hiding. He had to find a way to get the Norts to lower that gate themselves.
"Bagman," Rogue said. "Get me some micro-mines ready."
"You can't blow the place up, Rogue!" Bagman said worriedly. "If it goes, Helm might go with it."
"Don't worry," Rogue hissed, "I'm not looking for anything major, just a little distraction."
After a second's hesitation, Bagman's robo-arm popped out and deposited one of the tiny grey micro-mines into Rogue's palm. Rogue put it in his mouth to keep his hands free, carefully guarding his teeth with his lips. The Gene Genies had assured them that the devices were safe until primed, but then the Gene Genies had told them the Quartz Zone offensive would be a walk-through, so what did they know?
There was only one soldier defending the nearest patrol boat below him in the water, a bored-looking Nort leaning against his rifle rather than holding it to attention. They'd obviously gotten cocky since taking out the GIs.
Rogue ghosted towards him, sticking to the shadows, letting his blue skin work for him. Gunnar was strapped to his back, too noisy for a stealth mission.
He was only a foot away when the Nort saw him and by then there was nothing he could do about it. He opened his mouth to shout an alarm, but before any sound came out Rogue's hands were around his neck and with a sharp jerk he snapped it. The only sound the man managed to let out was a choked gurgle, too quiet for anyone to hear.
Rogue took the micro mine out of his mouth, spitting out the metallic taste along with it, and dropped it into the belly of the patrol boat. Then he ran like hell.
For a second he might have been conspicuous. Then the boat exploded: a vast gout of fire belched up into the night sky, and suddenly everyone was running. Men sprinted from the other side to see what had caused the explosion - and they were lowering the bridge across the water to do it.
"Good one, Rogue," Bagman said.
As he'd hoped, they seemed to be treating it as an accident. Too sure of themselves, unable to contemplate that the Southers might have struck back so soon. Stupid. And stupid got you dead.
Rogue wasn't in the killing business at that moment. He planned to remain undetected at least until he located Helm. An officer he passed in the shadows shouted out to him to turn around and help with the patrol boat, but Rogue ignored him and that seemed to be okay. When there was an emergency, a lot of soldiers disobeyed a lot of orders.
"You really think we're going to get away with his?" Bagman whispered.
"Nope," Rogue said.
"Don't see why we just couldn't go in shooting," Gunnar grumbled quietly, but not quietly enough.
The Nort squadron who'd been marching past turned to stare at Rogue. Then the leader stepped closer and stared even more carefully.
"Soldier," he said suspiciously, "just what happened to your skin?"
It seemed like a genuine question. These must be base personnel, Rogue realised, not veterans from the Quartz Zone fight. He guessed that the GIs had been kept secret from them too. Armies generally liked their left arms not to know what their right arms were doing.
Making his voice into a desperate rasp, Rogue said, "Got splashed with chem from the explosion before I could suit up. I need... I think I need to go to detox, sir."
The sergeant frowned and for a moment Rogue thought he wasn't buying it. But then he pushed Rogue gently in the back and said, "Hurry along then, soldier," and Rogue realised that the expression was because the sergeant thought Rogue was a goner and didn't know how to tell him.
Rogue sketched a Nort salute and trotted off. So far, so good.
Elsewhere on the base, two visitors were annoyed to find their attempt to get an audience with Surgeon-Kapten Natashov delayed by this unexpected calamity.
"This is most inconvenient, Mr Brass," Bland said.
"Indeed." Brass surveyed the room, considering trying to chivvy things along, but he could tell he would meet with short shrift. He sighed. "Well, I suppose our information will keep for a few hours."
Bland, his face squashed slightly under the transparent gel of his chem suit, didn't look happy. "But this is Natashov we're talking about. If reputations are to be believed, the soldier in her... care, may not have a few hours. And as you know, it is imperative that the chip be removed from him while he is still alive."
Natashov was enjoying herself. She'd heard the alarm going off, but had ignored it, secure in the knowledge that her operating room was safely hidden in the heart of the huge ship. Nothing would be allowed to interrupt her fun.
She looked down at the face of the Souther exper
iment, the so-called Genetic Infantryman. It already looked ten years older than when she'd begun work on him a few hours ago. There were deep lines of pain scored into his cheeks and beside his eyes, though he had yet to utter anything above a muffled gasp. She could see what his silence was costing him in the tight white squeeze of his fists as she brought the scalpel down again and carefully severed the middle finger on his left hand. There were only three left now. Soon she'd have to move on to something else.
He didn't make any sound of protest, just glared fiercely at her out of his blank white eyes. "You'll never get me to tell you anything," he snarled.
The foil captain had been right - these GIs were tough. That was fine with her: breaking the strong was always more satisfying than breaking the weak. But maybe it was time to move on to her favourite toys.
She pulled the rack of toxins nearer and selected a tube of thick red gel. On a normal human, it caused an agonising and drawn-out death as all the blood leeched from the body through the pores. It would be interesting to see what effect it had on a GI.
Pietr knew he should be back with his platoon. The all-clear had sounded a few minutes ago. It seemed there'd just been an accident with one of the patrol boats. Everyone else would be drifting back to the Kashan quarters on the vast troop carrier. They'd be wondering where Pietr had got to.
Pietr didn't know what was the matter with him, and he needed some time alone to figure it out. He'd failed on the battlefield, on the Hoverfoil. He knew that. He hadn't been the man his brother would have wanted him to be.
But that could change, he told himself. That had to change. He could become a better soldier, the soldier his brother would have wanted him to be. The soldier who could avenge his brother's death.
Pietr lifted his chin, trying to put pride and determination into his step. He hefted his beam rifle in his arms, testing the weight of it, convincing himself that he could grow used to it, that it would become his friend. Head high, gun at the ready, he marched down the corridor to rejoin his squad.
Pietr saw him.
His blue skin was quite visible, even in the dim corridor lighting. Pietr was amazed that no one else had spotted him, but then he guessed that everyone had been busy dealing with the alarm, an alarm which suddenly made a lot more sense. Pietr swallowed past a lump of fear in his throat and pressed himself against the wall as hard as he could, as if he could actually melt away into it and out of danger.
But the Souther's attention wasn't on him. He was peering round a corner, no doubt scanning the way ahead. Pietr had a very clear view of his profile, and he was suddenly absolutely sure that this was the man who had killed Jaze. He didn't know how he was so certain - they were clones, they all looked alike - but there was something, some subtle cast to the creature's face, that put it beyond doubt.
Pietr couldn't believe it, couldn't credit that his chance for revenge had come so easily. His hands tensed, ready to lift and target his gun. But then he started looking at the Souther, really looking at him. The thing's whole body was nothing but wiry muscle. The training video had said the GIs were ten, twenty times as strong as an ordinary man, and looking at this one Pietr could believe it. And their reflexes were super-fast, too, their senses hyper-fine.
What if I move and he senses me before I can target him? Pietr thought. What if I'm too slow and he kills me before I can kill him? He could hear my breathing now. He might have some sixth sense that can detect my presence when I don't even make a noise. So in the end Pietr just turned and ran, and only when he was well away, a hundred feet from the blue soldier, did he sound the alarm.
When the alarm changed in tone, Natashov lifted her head from her work. She knew that sound. It was an intruder alert. As if on cue, her radio crackled. "Surgeon-Kapten, there's an intruder on the ship," the foil commander said. Then, flatly, as if this shouldn't matter, "It's another GI." He ended the message just after she heard him barking orders to bring the blue-skinned scum down.
She looked down at her own personal GI. He had proved disappointingly resistant to her poisons. And she could tell that her time with him was drawing to a close. "One of your comrades coming to rescue you?" she said to him. She looked back at her poisons, at the one vial she had yet to use, and smiled. "A pity you won't be alive when he gets here."
She removed the vial from its case and carefully slotted it into the back of her strongest hypodermic; the first two she'd used had snapped off without penetrating the GI's skin. The vial had a small symbol on its side: a skull icon, rather like the one the GI wore on his equipment. Appropriate, really.
"You Genetic Infantrymen are supposed to be immune to every kind of poison." She squeezed out a little liquid from the end of her syringe, being very careful to keep it away from her own skin. "Let us see how true that is."
She plunged the vial straight into the trooper's neck.
She had one second to enjoy the expression of agony on the man's face and the helpless scream that was wrenched from his throat as the skin around the point of contact bubbled and burst.
Then blue hell burst into the room and all she could concentrate on was keeping herself alive.
Helm was in agony, the deepest pain he'd ever felt. The wounds he'd received after the Quartz Zone were nothing compared to this. He could feel himself burning up from the inside. It shouldn't be possible, but the Nort torturer's toxin was killing him.
Damn it! He didn't want to be just another piece of Rogue's equipment. He tried to make the most of the last feel of his body, agonising as it was. He pressed his arms back against their restraints, thinking: This is what a limb feels like, this is what cold feels like, don't forget it. He knew it might be a while before he experienced those feelings again.
Then he caught sight of Rogue's battle with Natashov and realised that he might not ever feel them again. The Surgeon-Kapten was clearly skilled at more than torture. She seemed to anticipate and dodge every shot Rogue sent off. And she had weapons of her own: knives, whirring blades, spiked balls. Helm had felt them all in his own flesh and now he saw them being used on Rogue.
As he watched, Rogue dodged just a fraction too late, and one of Natashov's knives caught him under the ribs, leaving a thin trail of blue blood. Rogue dodged round and away, but a second slower and the knife would have bitten lethally deep.
"What the hell are you doing, Rogue?" he heard Gunnar shout. "Finish the bitch off!" Helm remembered that it wasn't just his own life that depended on Rogue's survival.
He realised that there was something he could do to help them all. Natashov had left one of her vials of poison next to the tips of Helm's manacled right hand. There was barely anything left in the tube, but that didn't matter. All he wanted was a distraction.
He clawed his fingers desperately towards it, and was terrified for a moment when they didn't move at all, as if the scorching toxin in his system had already severed all the nerve connections there. After a second, his hand seemed to wake up. It was still horribly weak, but he gritted his teeth - feeling them crunch and crumble in his mouth - closed his fingers around the syringe, and flung it towards Natashov.
She was about to plunge her knife into Rogue's exposed thigh, but at the sound of the syringe clattering to the floor her head snapped round. In the second it allowed him, Rogue emptied Gunnar into her with everything he had.
He paused only to check that she was dead, then strode straight towards Helm. Helm didn't know how bad his appearence was, but from Rogue's expression he could tell it wasn't good.
"Hurry up, Rogue," Gunnar said. "He's dying."
Helm knew that Gunnar was right. His vision was already starting to go, showing him the world only in shades of grey. Rogue moved towards his head, ready to remove the biochip. Then he saw the empty vial of toxin with the skull icon on it.
"Some kind of toxin," Bagman told them, as if that wasn't obvious. "One even we're not immune to." His voice sounded suddenly worried. "Where'd the Norts get it from?"
"Good question,"
Rogue said. His face and voice were grim. Even in the half-light of his fading life, Helm could tell that Rogue was having the same thoughts he was. But there was something else he wanted Rogue to know, while he was still a man.
"Rogue... I didn't give her anything," he gasped. His voice was just a thin thread, but he could tell that Rogue had heard him. He nodded. "Just like we were trained," Helm whispered.
Rogue bent towards him, knife in hand. "Take it easy. We'll take care of it." The grey faded to black and Helm was gone...
He returned, seconds later, seeing the world in a completely different way. He knew, instantly, that Rogue had used the slot in his helmet to house him, and he would have smiled if he'd been able to.
He'd been right to try to remember what pain and cold and touch felt like. They were all gone now. He'd lost all ability to move, and for a moment he couldn't escape the thought that he'd been paralysed and he had to fight the urge to scream. He could still see, areas of the spectrum that had been invisible even to his GI eyes, and he had a whole new set of senses, too. His hearing could pick up vibrations as well, and his sense of smell was tied in to a chemical monitoring system, a spectroscope that told him the exact composition of the air around him.
Best of all was the computer. Inside the helmet he was plugged into resided the limited AI that kept all Rogue's equipment running and fed into his HUD. He felt like he was swimming in a pool of information. He knew that if Rogue connected him to any information system, any computer on the planet, he'd be able to swim in a whole sea of it. The primitive hacking he'd carried out as a human paled in comparison.
"There," Rogue said. "Now we're a team again."
The Quartz Massacre Page 7
