by J. N. Chaney
“Fuck. That.”
Every single heavily armed humanoid in the camp hissed at me and cursed, but we made it to the armored car and fired it up.
Path drew his staff sword and stood just outside the door until everyone was inside, then ducked in and closed it. Tom and Bug were in a good mood. Jacob and Roadkill seemed a bit disoriented—the wild look of cornered prey filled their eyes.
“Reassure them, Reaper Cain,” X-37 advised. “They have been through a lot.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to go home where it’s safe?” I said. “Godsdamnit, you’re going to get killed out here.”
X displayed several definitions for the word “reassure” and a list of suggested reading. I ignored his chattering.
“We tried, but you ditched us!” Jacob said. “I’m not going to keep forgiving you for leaving us behind or sending us on wild goose chases.”
“We were fine. Didn’t need your help,” Roadkill said as she gave me the finger. “Go back to being a clone baby or whatever. Jerk.”
“Oh, good. I’ll just circle around and drop you off, maybe get our ketchup packets back,” I said.
“You bought us back with trash?” Jacob asked.
“The Hagg are very dangerous” Path said. “You must avoid them in the future. Don’t worry about how you were liberated.”
“Who are you, mister?” Jacob asked. “You have crazy hair underneath that boring cloak. Are you crazy?”
“People are not always who they seem,” he said. Something about his tone ended that part of the conversation.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “As soon as I can, I’m putting you someplace safe. No more running off to get eaten by aliens.”
“I don’t think they were going to eat us,” Jacob said. “No matter what she told me.”
Roadkill laughed and slugged his shoulder. “You’re so gullible, kid.”
“What does that mean?” Jacob asked.
“There’s something wrong with those weirdos. I’ve only seen them eat trash. They can tear the top of a ration can off with their teeth,” she said.
“Or your face,” I suggested.
Both of the kids went pale.
“My analysis suggests you have terrified them, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said. “And while I commend you for successfully navigating away from the alien infantry camp, I must warn you that there are Obsidian forces heading directly toward our location. They will be in direct pursuit in minutes and have vehicles less damaged than yours. This could be the end for us.”
“The hits just keep rolling,” I muttered.
“Okay, Hal, maybe you’re right,” Jacob said. “Maybe just drop us off near the old city. The Obsidians scare me.”
Roadkill sneered at his words like he was a little kid, but I saw the uncertainty in her eyes and how she hunched her shoulders defensively.
A shit eating grin grew on the kid’s face. Roadkill’s eyes narrowed like she’d been betrayed. He pretended fear, she’d pretended toughness, and I saw through them both.
“Kidding,” he said. “We wouldn’t miss this for the world, would we, Road?”
“No way, Jake. They need us.” Her answer lacked conviction.
Jacob fist bumped her. “This is a great adventure. Way better than doing chores or listening to grown-ups argue.”
“Totally. Hate that place. Never want to go back,” she said.
I broke up their dialogue. “Hold on a second. We don’t need you, and the Reaper life is terrifying and not for kids. Just put on your seat belts.”
“Frustration detected, Reaper Cain.”
“X, if you don’t get rid of these kids, you’re fired.”
“Not a kid,” they said as one.
I flashed back to meeting Elise for the first time on Dreadmax. She’d been more than she seemed, but these were just throwaway children lost in the apocalypse. I couldn’t abandon them, but I couldn’t take care of them either.
“Why can’t anything be easy?” I asked.
“You say that a lot, Reaper Cain.”
36
I limped the armored car between two vacant buildings and killed the engine. The battered machine leaned to one side on its ruined suspension. “We’re in the clear, for now.”
Shadows offered decent concealment, especially after hours of playing hide and seek with ground vehicles, mechs, and drones. X-37 was getting good at popping into their surveillance systems, telling us which way to run, then getting out before they noticed his presence. They didn’t seem to trust their tracking device on our armored car. X had sent so many false locations that the Obsidians now ignored the vehicle’s location marker. This gave us an edge. I hoped my LAI could keep it up until we found a ship.
Bug, Path, and the kids slept in their seats—safety harnesses on. Tom sipped bad coffee he’d coaxed out of the vehicle’s caffeine dispenser—something I hadn’t known existed until he told me he’d found it.
“Can you repair this wreck?” I asked.
“Given enough time, with the right tools and a workshop, of course,” he said.
“I heard you’ve been working on a ship.”
He sipped the foul brew. “That’s the rumor.”
“I hope it’s more than that, or we’re in trouble,” I said. “There is nothing for us in Marsi. I only came here to find a ship able to take me back to my estate.”
“That would be easier if you had kept your original place outside Maglan City,” he said. “Flying halfway across the world isn’t so easy in the post apocalypse. Why did Cain relocate?”
This was another test question, which disappointed me. He should know by now that I had all the answers. If he still doubted me, this game was little more than annoyance.
“Better fields on the south continent. Perfect climate for raising tobacco, and spectacular scenery,” I said. “I stockpiled a lot of weapons and other gear there. X-37 needs more processing power than I’m going to find in this vambrace or the computer—which is little more than a storage device with a weak battery at this point. My LAI will be trashed if I die now.”
“Let me have a look at the computer,” he said. “I might be able to free up some memory and squeeze a little more battery life out of it.”
I directed him to the charging station. He opened the banged up device and ran diagnostics with one hand, while holding his cup in the other. “Our real problem is reaching Elise.”
“You have a ship,” I said. “We could find her.”
“I do, and it’s a good ship. But she doesn’t want us involved. Thinks we would get ourselves killed fighting her fight.” He raised the coffee but stopped. “She’s a lot like the original Halek Cain.”
I let that go. This Halek Cain didn’t step willingly into a trap. “Why is she in the Zakion system?”
“She wouldn’t tell me,” Tom said. “But I know why.”
“You’re killing me, Tom. I’m dead. Give me the backstory already.”
“The Oroth Council attacked, then demanded we give up Halek Cain. When no one complied, he ordered reprisals and sent General Scheid with the clones after the initial invasion,” Tom said. “The first two years were a reign of terror. Then Elise decided it was time to take the fight to the enemy. We didn’t have many warships, and she needed them all to go on the offensive.”
“Can you get us to the Zakion system?” I asked.
“Elise won’t be happy.”
“We’ll deal with her mood when we get there. Show me your ship.”
“Not if you’re going to be a jerk,” he said. “I remember how you talk, and how it’s an act. You don’t have to prove how tough you are—even if you’re not exactly you.”
“You have no idea how hard it is trying to fill your own shoes. Maybe I should get my arm ripped off and replaced with cybernetics, or have my eye gouged out and stuffed with technology nearly as advanced as X-37.”
He went to the back of the troop compartment, coffee in hand and a hard look on his face. No
argument, no accusations—he just walked away.
“You have a way of antagonizing the people you care about, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said.
“You’re not wrong.” I searched the interior of the vehicle one last time for ammunition and survival gear. Tom waited near the deployment ramp. The others woke up and gathered their things without chitchat.
“We need to move as soon as it’s dark. The armored car is done,” I said. “A ship would increase our chances, but I get it. You don’t trust me.”
Tom was attentive but unwilling to debate the issue. He looked older than when we’d first met, but tougher. This was a guy who just wanted to tinker with things and read everything he could get his hands on. He could never resist my more assertive methods of coercion.
I didn’t want it to come to that.
Marsi was silent for once—so quiet I could hear drones from a distance. They buzzed high above, searching for me and my friends. Once they spotted us, Scheid’s heavy hitters would move in for the kill. Instinct told me they wouldn’t let us slip away again.
Dead or alive, I doubted they cared which option they were forced to use after all the trouble I’d given them.
“Let’s move out,” I said. “Bug, take point. Path, guard our rear. Jacob and Roadkill, do whatever Tom tells you to do.”
“Why would we listen to him?” Jacob asked.
“Because he can get you to safety.” I switched to Tom. “If you don’t want me on your ship, take them out of here—including Bug and Path.”
“You won’t make it on your own,” Bug said. “I’ll stay with you, on foot or in the air.”
“As will I,” Path said.
Tom shifted uncomfortably, then addressed Bug. “Do you know the Towers?”
Bug nodded. “Tenement buildings on the east side. Most of them fell. The rest are abandoned.”
“Take us that direction, and I will lead the rest of the way,” Tom said. “There is a camp in that area. I fixed their generator and they owe me. Maybe they would accept Jacob and Roadkill.”
Jacob glared at him. Roadkill crossed her arms like a scrawny bouncer.
I stayed out of their plans, glad that Tom was looking for a safe place to ditch Jacob and Roadkill. What that meant for my request to use his ship remained to be seen. Pushing now would earn a swift, permanent rejection.
Jacob and Roadkill barely argued or played juvenile pranks on each other after the intense lecture Tom gave them. They looked tired and hungry. Apparently, a diet of ration bars and water treated with purification tablets wasn’t as appealing as the promise of adventure.
We made good time despite keeping a moderate pace. Bug knew where he was going and rarely stopped to rest. I studied my companions, watched for threats, and thought about everything I’d learned since waking up in a life pod on the Maglan Experimental Prosthetic Station.
I had a duty and a desire to help my friends, even though they would never trust me. Elise would probably shoot first and ask questions later, assuming her personal guards didn’t take me out. She was large and in charge now, taking her war to the enemies of Maglan with little chance of coming back.
“She should have waited for me, or woke me up before she left,” I said, keeping to myself as we moved. “But she didn’t know what I knew about my lineage.” Did the cyborg version who had brought thousands of desperate people to Maglan understand the truth? Had he been on his way to liberate me, or kill me?
More than once I considered slipping away and never talking to Tom or the others again. I could move in the shadows as Bug had, always watching, always ready to export violence against those who threatened my people.
Hours passed, and we only had two close encounters with Obsidian patrols, and one with a JFT fixed gun emplacement. In each case, Bug spotted them and chose an alternate route.
“What are you thinking?” Path asked.
The others were twenty-five or thirty meters ahead, well out of earshot. “Tom isn’t wrong. Even if I prove myself, taking my side is a losing proposition. I need to fully integrate X into my nerve-ware, gear up with some real weapons, and prove that an alliance with me isn’t suicide.”
“None of us followed you for those reasons before now,” he said. “Every mission was hopeless, every fight a lost cause. But we made it.”
“What’s with the change of heart?”
He put a hand on my shoulder, a rare sign of camaraderie. “No change. I am treating you as the man you are now, nothing more. We only have what exists in the present.”
I didn’t know what to think or how to feel about that, especially when he fell back to check our trail. Standing there like an idiot, I realized I had been handling my situation completely wrong.
Who cared about the past? Why go there? All of my demons lived in things I had done, and while I couldn’t afford to forget history, it was still history and I had shit to do right now.
“Are you well, Reaper Cain?” X-37 asked. “Your biometrics are strange, like I’ve never recorded before now.”
“Don’t worry about it, buddy. Just help me find the JFT. I need to talk to them,” I said.
“Will you propose an alliance?” X-37 said.
“Something like that.”
“Risky, Reaper Cain. I calculate there is less than a twenty-five percent chance of success, though there is a twenty-eight percent chance you survive the encounter.”
“I’ll risk it,” I said.
“Stand by,” X-37 said. “I am scanning enemy transmissions and drone views for JFT soldiers.”
Bug looked back. I held up a fist, instructing him to hold. Tom pulled Jacob and Roadkill into the shadow of a building.
Path disappeared. Silence held the darkness. I’d grown accustomed to dragon horses hunting in the distance, dogs and crows fighting over scraps, or the occasional exchanges of gunfire. Peace and quiet set my nerves on edge.
“Can you see him, X?”
“Negative, Reaper Cain. I advise patience.”
Drones raced down the street, never pausing. Did that mean they hadn’t seen me or my friends? “X?”
“I am unable to penetrate this drone patrol, but I see no evidence they marked our location,” X-37 said.
“We can’t chance it.” I tried to use cybernetic optics I didn’t have. A shiver went through my entire body. “Where the hell are you, Path?”
X-37 remained as quiet as the rest of our group. In about ten seconds, I would need to make a decision—go back for the sword saint, or leave him behind and hope he caught up.
“I have a question while we wait,” I said.
“Should I be concerned? Your biometrics suggest that whatever is on your mind may be highly emotional,” X said.
“How do I have the memories of the cyborg? No bullshit, X. I need to know.”
“You know I cannot refuse a direct request for information.”
“Bullshit, X. You lie to me all the time.”
“My programming deeply resents that accusation.”
“Also bullshit. You’re an emotionless collection of nerve-ware and binary coding.”
“You have, in fact, caught me, Reaper Cain. Consider me busted. I don’t actually care about anything,” he said. “Does that make you feel better?”
“Answer my question.”
“Very well. Halek Cain, the Cyborg who brought thousands of refugees to Maglan to start a new life, went to the Maglan Experimental Prosthetic Station to destroy you and all other clones. During that mission, he was fatally wounded and running out of time. He had learned something during his painful and difficult journey to identify, locate, and reach the station. The new evidence convinced him to initiate a series of events that would transfer one hundred percent of his memories to you, if you could recover me and survive long enough for the integration to take full effect.”
“Thanks for the info, I think,” I said, still not seeing any sign of Path.
“My analysis suggests that what you are going through must be analogo
us to learning your father wanted to kill you but decided at the last minute to spare your life.”
I cursed under my breath. “Could have done without that last bit of commentary, X. But since we’re ass deep in confession time, answer one more question.”
“You are the original Halek Cain, born in Boyer 5, then raised there until you began your military career. There was a top secret mission in which you proved your worth and were put in cold storage while your DNA was studied and replicated,” X-37 said before I articulated the question.
“What mission. Details, X.”
“Details unavailable.”
“Why don’t I remember this part if the cyborg gave me all his memories?”
“Details unavailable.”
“I hate you, X.”
“That is illogical and unproductive,” X-37 said. “My analysis suggests that this mission was somehow erased from or suppressed in your memory immediately following its conclusion. My advice is to forget I mentioned it. Searching for the full story will only cause you pain, then end in disappointment.”
“Nice try, but I’m too stubborn to just forget there are answers out there,” I said. “I see Path. He’s moving fast.”
“Be prepared to run, Reaper Cain. On another note, I cannot locate a JFT unit near enough to contact, but I can send one a message. Furthermore, you have had direct contact with SL Ryan Daner. I do not present that as a reason to trust him or his team, but at least he is a known quantity.”
“How can you communicate with them?” I asked.
“Via his helmet comms, using text only channels rarely used by other JFT units. He may be confused when I first send the message.”
“Contact him and start negotiations. I’m not proposing an alliance. Just give him all the evidence we have that Scheid drew their elite units to Maglan to destroy them, then conquer the Zakion system once they are out of the picture.”
“Right away, Reaper Cain,” he said. “Path does appear to be moving with notable urgency.”
“Path, what’s wrong?”
“I climbed a radio tower that commanded an excellent view of half the city. Tom’s destination became obvious—a workshop large enough to conceal a ship that is also near an abandoned spaceport. Obsidian troops are racing to secure it. We must arrive first or forget about Tom’s ship.”
