by Jamie Sawyer
In the blink of an eye the commando and the prisoners were gone. Our team’s number had been slashed. Novak just hunched there, his expression unreadable.
“They knew risks,” he said without explaining himself. “Get up here, rest of you.”
The other prisoners hauled ass. In an effort to move faster, most of them had abandoned their weapons.
“Proceed ahead,” said the Voice. “Objective is next carriage.”
“Easier said than done,” I replied. Speaking was tough; every time I opened my mouth the freezing wind seemed to fill my lungs. “Jackals, move up.”
We skulked low.
Behind us, both surviving commandos were fully deployed from the hatch. They crouch-crawled along the roof and were gaining on us, fast. Not for them the blistering cold wind—their suits were fully sealed, impervious to such weather conditions.
“Watch your left flank,” the Voice said.
“Left!” I yelled to the others, aware that they had no communicators.
There was a flicker of light out of the corner of my eye. Something was racing alongside us: beside the train tracks, keeping pace.
“Is that you?” I asked, hopefully.
“No,” the Voice said. “It’s not.”
A combat buggy coalesced out of the dust. Wireframe military model, with six big wheels and an open crew cabin. Xenon headlamps piercing the gloom.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit …” Feng said under his breath.
The buggy’s engine roared as it was pushed into overdrive, the small vehicle swinging left and right to avoid debris beside the track. For one heart-stopping moment it lurched close enough to the train’s flank that I managed to make out the passengers. Six figures in full hard-suits, faces concealed behind masks, goggles pulled over their eyes. The buggy’s back was hunched with some kind of pintle-mounted heavy automatic gun, and as the vehicle pulled alongside the train, the weapon shifted on its mount to track us.
“They aren’t going to use that on us, surely?” Lopez asked. “I mean, we’re just escaped prisoners, right?”
I glanced back down the train. There were dozens of shapes on the roof now, all heading in our direction. I picked out the familiar orange of prison gang-workers—probably escapees like Novak’s crew—but also other, more agile shapes …
The train was infested with—
“Krell!” someone shouted.
The Krell crept onto the train roof. Its long, sinewy limbs allowed it to move with relative ease, and it advanced on the two remaining commandos. The closest was focused entirely on us, lining up a burst from his PDW.
I almost felt sorry for the fucker. The Krell primary-form lurched upwards, claws outstretched, and reduced the commando to nothing but a red mist: body torn from the mag-locks, sailing free from the moving train.
The second commando hunkered down, and started to fire at the Krell. The xeno went down in a splatter of ichor.
But where there’s one …
Dozens of alien bio-forms clambered up the train’s roof.
And Lopez got her answer. The buggy’s cannon opened fire on the Krell.
“Fish heads are infected,” Novak said, pointing at the closest alien.
The Krell were grotesque bastards, and ordinarily I’d struggle to tell one Collective from another, but this alien was different. In the briefest of snapshots, I saw the xeno’s pallid, diseased skin. Its bio-suit was tattered, hanging from its skeletal frame like strips of meat, and its carapace was burst in numerous places. Worst yet was the thing’s expression. Vacant, uncaring eyes: silver orbs that reflected back the carnage around it. Webbed hands extended, using its upper limbs to stabilise itself, the alien crawled onto the roof. It moved with all the grace of animated roadkill.
“Not like Pariah at all …” I whispered to myself.
The Directorate commando put a round in the monster’s head, but that wasn’t going to stop the Krell. There weren’t enough rounds in that pistol to put down the swarm of aliens converging on the roof.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Feng. “This place is turning into a warzone.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Move.”
We fell back into formation, and I got a glimpse of the length of the train ahead. Dozens of identical carriages, and through the fog and pollution-banks, I couldn’t even see the train’s driver cabin. The idea of walking all of those carriages made my spirits plummet.
“Please tell me that we don’t have to get across all of those,” I said.
The Voice answered by implication: “Just the next carriage. Door seal X-23.”
But my attention was elsewhere. A Directorate commando with an RPG—a rocket-propelled grenade launcher—had taken to the buggy’s flatbed, and was aiming at the train. There was no way that the RPG was going to be capable of derailing the transport—it was simply too huge—but it would surely be capable of throwing us off the roof.
“Brace!”
The rocket hissed as it discharged from the launcher, the buggy backing off slightly as it launched.
The rocket wasn’t aimed at us, and I didn’t see where it hit, but that didn’t really matter. We were caught in the blast zone as the warhead detonated. The backwash hit me like a fist, intense and sudden, hot enough to singe my hair. Something extremely sharp hit me in the right arm.
The train abruptly shifted course again, and suddenly I was falling, falling, falling.
CHAPTER SIX
ZERO PROSPECTS
I slid over the edge.
The pain in my right bicep was excruciating, threatening to overcome me. I tried to fight it, and reached out for anything that I could get my hands on.
It was useless. The armour plating gave no purchase …
… but the ladder fixed to the side of the train did.
Hold on. Hold on!
The fingers of my right hand—my injured arm—grazed a rung—
And snagged it.
I slammed into the train. Something crunched as I made impact. Probably broken ribs: shards of pain erupted in my chest.
Stay with it! Stay with it!
I just about managed to remain conscious. Wrapped another hand around the ladder. Holy Gaia, it hurt like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
“Are you still alive?”
The Voice was tinny and distant, and I realised that the comms-bead had almost come free from my ear. I plugged it back in.
“Only just!” I gasped, struggling to speak. “I’m bleeding.”
A piece of shrapnel had hit my right bicep. Penetrated all the way through flesh, likely muscle too. But it wasn’t just the open wound. My whole arm was in torment.
“I think … I think I’ve broken something in my arm.”
“We’ll worry about that later.”
“I’m not sure that there’s going to be a later.”
“Not with that attitude, there won’t.”
“My … my squad,” I said.
What had happened to the rest of the Jackals? Had they also fallen from the train, or were they still on the roof? I couldn’t tell from my position, but didn’t relish the idea of dragging my sorry ass back up there …
“They’re fine.”
“You can tell that?”
“Hmmm. Sure. I can tell.”
There was no time to test the Voice’s rather unconvincing response. “Then tell me what to do, hotshot.”
“You need to go back into the train.” The designation X-23 was printed on the side of the carriage in big, bold lettering, just beside me. “Use that hatch between the carriages.”
I lurched along the ladder, this time into the tight gap between X-23 and the next carriage. The windshear decreased just a little. There was an armoured door into carriage X-23, but the control console glowed with green icons. It was unlocked.
“Get inside, then left flank.”
“Why?”
“You’ll know once you’re in.”
The hatch peeled open, and I col
lapsed into the new cabin. There was an instant shift in temperature and atmosphere. It took a second or so for my tired eyes to adjust to the low light.
Zero!
The scene we’d witnessed in the interrogation chamber played out at the back of the carriage: Zero kneeling on the floor, Commander Kwan towering over her in his exo-suit, flanked by Fire and Ice. Carmine’s almost headless body remained in position in front of them, blood pooling around the corpse. But something had changed here. Although Kwan still had the redactor aimed at Zero’s head—the probes tunnelling into her hair—his expression was neither victorious nor composed. Surgeon-Major Tang was at his side, waving her arms in exasperation. There was shouting, much shouting.
The hatch hummed shut behind me, and such was the chaos that no one noticed my arrival. Not immediately, anyway. That gave me a precious moment to think about how best to solve this problem, about how I could get to Zero. She was at the other end of the chamber. The module was double-length and rectangular, crammed with more scientific equipment. Medics and technicians manned the machines.
Left flank, I remembered. That had been the Voice’s command.
And suddenly I understood why.
One of the Santa Fe’s battered simulator-tanks sat beside me. Canopy up, control panel lit, ready to mount. The word CALIFORNIA—my callsign—was stencilled there. This wasn’t just any tank. It was my tank.
Of course, a simulator without sims would be useless. Which made the Directorate’s decision to store the simulator and my skins in the same location incredibly foolish.
The room contained my simulant stash. Every body, I guessed, that remained from the Santa Fe’s salvaged supply. A half-dozen cryogenic capsules lined the walls: emitting a soft blue glow, each containing a pristine, fresh-as-the-day-they-were-farmed copy of me, in fetching deep blue neoprene undersuits. Although frost crept across the outer casing of the capsules—the skins were supposed to be kept on ice until they were needed—it was already cracked, thawing. The sims were not in deep-freeze. They were ready for deployment.
Oh hell, yeah.
The scent of the place reached the back of my throat, invaded my body. An almost sexual desire stirred in my bones.
Finally, someone noticed my arrival.
A Directorate medtech shouted in Korean, reeling away from me.
Surgeon Tang’s head snapped in my direction. Her eyes widened in shock, in horror.
Zero, the redactor still attached to the back of her head like some bizarre metal crab, swayed as though she were in a trance. But she managed to pull herself out of it for just a second, and saw me. I’m here for you, Zero. I prayed that I wasn’t too late, that Zero could still be saved.
“No!” Tang screamed. “Do not let her get into that tank!”
A guard powered across the room, sidearm drawn. The pistol fired—
I was in the tank. The round bounced off the canopy, which was already slipping shut.
NOT READY, flashed the tank’s interior control panel. AMNIOTIC CYCLE NECESSARY. INITIATE REBOOT.
I was hurt, and bleeding, but I could work one of these machines in my sleep. The tank was as good as an extension of my own body. I slammed the CYCLE AMNIOTIC command on the control panel. The technology was largely automated, made for operation by meatheads like me.
Fluid began to fill the tank. I grasped the data-cables, methodically slipping each into my waiting ports. The prison overall came open easily, and each new connection caused an eruption of ecstasy inside me. A respirator hung inside the tank. Again, that was sloppy. I plugged it over my face. The tank was almost filled with amniotic now.
NOT READY, complained the tank. INITIATE REBOOT—
OVERRIDE. EMERGENCY TRANSITION.
Rounds impacted the tank’s canopy. Spiderweb fractures appeared across the armourglass.
Hold. Hold. Hold!
The simulator-tanks weren’t frontline equipment, but they were made to withstand small-arms fire. I’d seen the combat specifications, and read the technical manual a dozen times. Although I knew that it wouldn’t hold out forever, the canopy would take a decent amount of punishment. The hood would be able to take a blast from a PDW.
At least, I hoped so.
COMMENCING TRANSITION … PLEASE WAIT … COMMENCING TRANSITION …
“I want every commando on this train in this room!” Kwan shouted, his eyes bulging from his head, the internal circuitry in his face glowing, such was his anger.
The Voice was probably speaking to me, but I tuned it out. Couldn’t hear anything above the rush of blood in my ears, the hammering of my own heart. Everything else was falling away.
SELECT TARGET FOR TRANSITION, suggested the tank. Now that I was hooked up, one with the machine, we were communicating over the neural-link: the tank just another voice in my head. POSSIBLE TARGETS IDENTIFIED …
“She cannot be allowed to operate that tank!” Tang yelled.
Too late, Tang.
ACTIVATED, the simulator said.
The world around me disappeared.
My perspective shifted. I wasn’t in the simulator anymore. Instead, I was inside one of the cryogenic capsules.
Transition confirmed.
I looked back at the simulator. Christo, the body inside looked alien to me, and I couldn’t actually believe it was mine. Floating almost peacefully: eyes open but unseeing. Blood trailing from the open wound in my arm, curdling with the blue gel inside the tank.
That skin wasn’t mine, I decided. Not anymore.
In my real body, I’d been hurt and in pain. My reactions had been dulled by my time in the prison. I knew that I was worn out and tired. But this skin was fresh. The simulant’s senses were needle-sharp, and the rush of adrenaline and hormones and combat-drugs that hit my bloodstream was very nearly a religious experience.
I wasn’t Keira anymore. I wasn’t weak.
I was Lieutenant Jenkins. I was strong.
And I was fucking angry.
Tactical assessment: three commandos. Tang. Kwan. Fire and Ice.
The nearest commando continued firing on the simulator-tank.
I could imagine his confusion—could almost read it, coming off him in noxious waves—as he saw that there were two bio-signs on his HUD …
Tang realised what was happening. She yelled a warning.
“Aim at the simulants!”
Did the commando see me before I struck?
I hoped so.
The capsule’s control panel flickered with activation lights. The content—the simulant—was now live.
I slammed a hand through the Plasglass of the capsule’s canopy. The cryogen pods weren’t combat-rated, and they were made to be disposable, more or less. The glass was toughened, but not like my simulator. It broke in jagged shards, and cryogenic fluid poured out. I’d almost forgotten how strong a simulant body actually was.
The commando turned. Gun up.
I lurched out of the capsule. Both hands to the target’s neck.
His pistol fired. Once, twice.
I lifted the commando with every ounce of strength that my simulant could muster. Slammed the body against the row of capsules behind him. Hard, harder. More canopies shattered. Something broke inside the commando’s armoured suit, and the body went limp.
“The power!” screamed Tang. “Cut the power!”
Gun.
It fell to the floor, out of the soldier’s lifeless hands. I crouch-rolled forward, through more broken glass, grabbing for the weapon. Touched the cold metal stock—
Another commando behind the first.
He raked the floor with gunfire from a compact defence weapon.
I was wearing a neoprene undersuit. It offered no protection, and the salvo scythed right through it. Detonations of pain exploded across my body.
Not even a simulant could survive that.
But no matter: there were plenty more where that came from.
Neural-link severed, I snapped back to the simulator-tank.
Into my own skin.
EXTRACTION CONFIRMED, the tank told me.
I saw the commando stooping over the dead simulant, popping rounds into the spent body just to be sure.
Smart.
He turned to look at me now. Gun raised, the red lenses of his goggles flickering.
But not smart enough.
COMMENCE TRANSITION, I ordered.
TRANSITION CONFIRMED.
The remaining cryogenic capsules were now mostly ruptured, and I became one of the simulants opposite the body I’d just occupied.
Lightning-fast, I was on the next commando. Before he had even had a chance to register what was happening—his own weapon still trained on the simulator, on the ruins of my real body—I reached for the sidearm holstered at his thigh. As I pulled it free, he twisted to face me.
I flipped the pistol’s activator stud.
Fired.
The commando spattered across the chamber. Dead.
“Stop her!” shouted Kwan.
Tang made for a terminal across the room—perhaps the power control that would shut down the simulator tech. The various techs were all making for cover, too panicked to follow orders.
“I’ll do it, Honoured—” Tang blurted.
Despite her lofty rank, the Surgeon-Major wasn’t a soldier. She slipped on a pool of cryogen, babbling to herself.
I made a split-second decision. As much as I wanted to kill the Surgeon, she would have to wait. Fire and Ice were closing on her, and firing on me too.
Threat evaluation: that was what this called for. More troopers were at the hatch now, entering the cabin. Three more advanced on the room with PDWs drawn. They took in the decimated chamber, and although I couldn’t see much of their faces beyond the goggles and breather masks, I could sense their surprise.
Too slow.
I fired the pistol at the lead trooper. He stumbled forward with puncture wounds across his chest. But the second and third commandos crouched low and made it into the room—
Another spray of PDW fire, and the second simulant was history.
I jumped back into my real body—felt the sting of gunfire across my chest—
—not my chest: just a simulation—
A commando loosed a volley at my dead skin—
