A Call to Arms

by Bradley Hutchinson

  James pulled the records of the house: the Balcer household, three people: Aaron, stationed aboard the Emden, his wife Pamela and their son, Mitchel.

  “Ma’am?” he asked as he jogged across her front lawn, his hand reaching absently for his sidearm. “Ma’am, it’s time to go.”

  She couldn’t maintain eye contact with him as she shivered, almost as if she was cold. She must’ve been in some kind of shock. And I don’t have a counsellor with me.

  “Mrs. Balcer, it’s time to go,” James said, more forcefully. “Where’s your son?”

  That got her attention. Her bottom lip trembling, she looked at him – almost as if she was seeing him for the first time – and pointed inside her house, stammering something about her son being hurt.

  “I’ll get him,” he snapped, pointing towards the shuttle, his VA pinging his colleagues for assistance. “Go to the shuttles, I’ll bring him out.”

  It was a short jog to the house, and James was approaching the open front door when a hideous, inhuman growl brought him to a sudden, jarring halt. He knew that sound – every soldier knew that sound, and feared it, and rightly so. N’xin.

  “Fuck off,” James muttered to himself, even as his combat implants readied themselves for action. A sheer personal force-field flared to life over his skin and uniform. “I’ve got a bogey on foot over here,” he said over his VA, and got a series of acknowledgement replied from his squad.

  A barrel-chested, three legged creature – two in the front, with a third between them and protruding back – with rusty, leathery skin (protected by an armoured helmet that gave the alien a vaguely demonic look) and an elongated face that was akin to a large dog in aesthetics appeared in the front doorway, fitted out in a burly combat suit. It was brandishing an oversized sword-like weapon – a kli’nat, if James remembered correctly – and had it pointed at James’ head; scarcely three meters separated them.

  The creature gurgled something at him, but the Commonwealth’s translators had yet to decipher the alien’s language – violence seemed to be the only thing the two sides had in common.

  James instinctively bought his rifle up and loosed a trio of bolts at the alien soldier; the crimson bolts of plasma-energy poured into the protected torso, furrowing deep scorch marks into its metal-plated armour. No sooner had a fourth shot splashed across the helmet – which projected some kind of protective shield like James’ cybernetics offered – and James found himself ducking as a savage blow attempted to bisect his head and neck, losing the business end of his rifle as the barrel was sliced clean off near the mid-point, sparks spewing from the ruined weapon.

  James dropped the remains of the rifle as he danced around the slicing and dicing N’xin foot soldier, his left hand reaching for his pistol… but as he continued the dance for his life, he realized that, even with his enhanced reflexes, he’d never get sufficient distance between them to line up a shot, no matter how quick a shot he was – and James was reasonably quick.

  Fortunately, given the N’xin predilection for hand-to-hand combat, the Commonwealth Navy had decided to equip its own ground troops with human-friendly melee weapons, like the kind carried by the knights of old centuries earlier.

  Grasping the hilt of the weapon as he detached it from his waist, a solid, collapsible blade snapped out with a twang, and James bought it out and up, countering a rather powerful blow as the N’xin bought his blade down like a cleaver. The two opponents spent a copious amount of time trading blows, parrying and blocking at every opportunity, neither one gaining a real advantage – James weighed more, and, coming from a higher gravity environment, had greater stamina and strength… unfortunately, his balance was off on account of not being acclimated with the gravity on New Baltimore, and he had to rely on his cybernetics to prevent his blows from sending him off-balance.

  The N’xin, however, was obviously more comfortable in a lower gravity environment, and thus, could move around easier, and unaided, on New Baltimore… it also meant that they were more frail and were comparatively weaker to the average human from Earth or Bastion.

  In other words, James thought as all these facts bounced around his head, we’re evenly matched here.

  “I’ve got another here,” Chekov reported, and there was a similar report from Grayling. “I’ve dealt with it, however.”

  James had never been one for fisticuffs, but, since hand-to-hand combat was a strict requirement at the Academy, it meant that he was more than competent at it – especially considering how much in the way of fighting software he’d loaded his cybernetics up with. In civilian life, I’d be barred from participating in any kind of competitive sport.

  While James may have been a novice combatant, as it turned out, he was clearly superior, despite the martial acumen of his foe: with a few deft movements of the wrist, and some fancy footwork, the N’xin – having one of his massive swings thrown aside, and off-balance – became impaled on James’ blade, which sliced through its armour like it was butter.

  The body of the dead N’xin – at least, James presumed it was dead, as he’d aimed his blow where the N’xin equivalent of a heart was kept – slid off the blade and landed in a heap on the ground at James’ feet.

  James stared at the weapon for long moments. He’d never seen a kli’nat in action, but had heard stories about it – Commonwealth anthropologists believed each weapon was unique to a warrior, designed, built and customised by each N’xin soldier to their own preferences. They’re as much a status symbol as large cars are for those with small dicks.

  James bent over and hefted the weapon. It fit awkwardly in his hand – there was no way a human would be able to wield such a weapon without radical genetic enhancements; the weight of it was fine, but there was no easy way to hold it, especially with a single hand, during combat. It’s basically a paperweight for a human.

  Reaching back, he attached the weapon to his back with a magnetic clasp. It felt uncomfortable and unwieldy, but James was intent on keeping it as a trophy. It’s easy enough to ditch if it gets in the way.

  “Situation under control,” James announced to his troops, taking a calming breath as he approached the front door of the house more cautiously. Grayling reported a similar sit-rep, despite having received a few minor injuries… and had lost the husband/wife she’d been escorting to the shuttles.

  “For the moment,” James finished to himself, as he plunged into the half-ruined house.

  *

  Palhares had to double check the orders scrolling over his main terminal in front of his flight control stick – although his cybernetics were connected to the flight systems of his fighter, he preferred the feel of his flight through the antiquated device; a lot of pilots did, and since the difference in performance was minimal, it was allowed.

  These orders, however, were another matter.

  “Alright guys,” he said, as he brought his fighter around onto his assigned heading. “Form up below the fleet. We’re on escort duty for the next ten minutes, until we get new orders.”

  A chorus of affirmatives echoed, and Palhares pointed the bow of his fighter for a spot just ten kilometres below the Crazy Horse. So far the fighter squadrons of the Commonwealth had been reduced by almost half, including Palhare’s squadron – the N’xin, on the other hand, had suffered significantly more, almost wiped out completely, leaving their capital-class warships to be slowly stung to death.

  Give us half a day, and we could eliminate all of them. N’xin anti-fighter defences were very inferior when compared to the Commonwealth; instead they relied heavily on their own fighter screens to prevent them from being overwhelmed.

  Half a million kilometres out, the N’xin fleet had finished their extended regrouping manoeuvre and was bearing down at them, though was still some minutes out from optimum weapons range.

  “Are we going to slug it out, Lead?”

  “Maybe,” Palhares said, though in his opinion these looked more like a “regroup-and-retreat” orders. He’d been aro
und enough to recognize the pattern. “Stay sharp, and shoot straight.”

  *

  “Fuck.”

  James looked at the prone body of Mitchel Balcer and frowned, his heart breaking. A young life, cut short… even with a re-life policy – being the son of a Naval officer, a re-life policy applied to every member of the officers family – the clone would just be a carbon copy of the body of the boy… it would retain nothing of the personality or experiences of the person preceding it.

  In normal cases, where a body was recovered (and assuming its cybernetic array was intact) a simple transfer between the corpse and the new clone would take place – in a best case situation, a person missed a mere eighteen months of their life (eighteen months being the time required to grow a clone to adulthood).

  However, there were always exceptions to this rule – particularly in this day-and-age of war. If the body was unrecoverable, then a cloning facility had to rely on a stored neural profile that was periodically updated as time went by. In these cases, depending on how long there was between the update and the growth of the clone, a person could be missing years from their life when they finally recovered from being temporarily dead.

  But James seriously doubted that this kid would have uploaded a neural print recently… if at all. Which meant that he’d have to bring the body with him. If I do that, I reduce the number of living people I can take. He frowned. Unless...

  He bent down over the body, touching his palm to the boy’s still-warm forehead as if taking his temperature. His cybernetic systems automatically connected with the boys, data scrolling down the bottom of his vision.

  It would be a squeeze, but James’ system – which was significantly more advanced than the standard military getup – could handle the download. Since a genetic sample and profile was already on record…

  The download took a mere eighty seconds – obviously, the older a person, the more data there would be to download – but it was the longest eighty seconds of his life. In the distance, he heard the occasional crackle of weapons fire, often punctuated with a shout from one of his men as they continued the loading of the shuttles.

  When he was finally done, he sprinted from the house – two shuttles had already departed, with a third in the process of lifting off, scattering swirls of dust and leaves. Scores of people were lingering though, and he pinged the shuttle that was circling overhead to come down.

  In the distance, his virtual-vision enhanced his view of further down the street, and identified an approaching crowd of people headed their way. There were easily forty people inbound, all intent on being saved. We have maybe two minutes.

  “What the hell is that?” Ensign Koenig asked, his skeletally thin face frowning severely at the weapon attached to James’ back.

  “Never mind,” James snapped impatiently. “Let’s get these people out,” he continued sharply, even as more and more people were ushered onto the remaining shuttles. He unclipped the kli’nat and rested it between a pair of seats and the bulkhead. “Ensign Koenig, where’s that woman you took away for me?”

  “I had her sedated and put on Shuttle Six,” the young officer said as he was giving prospective refugees a once over. His voice was high-pitched, panicky – probably on one of his first deployments. “Why?”

  James pointed at his head; even as a prosecutor, he’d never had to deal with a dead child in anything more than an abstract matter… so if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t all that under control, his hands having developed a tremor to match the quaver in his voice. “I’ve got her son up in here.”

  *

  “Shuttles will be here in moments, Captain.”

  Captain Atwood nodded, his gaze unshifting from the viewscreen. Numbers on the left indicated the distance between the Commonwealth fleet and the N’xin advance units, and a countdown on the right – which was nearly at zero – indicated how long until both sides could open fire.

  At the moment, it was a race between the shuttles and the N’xin warships.

  “All torpedo tubes stand ready, Captain,” Merkerson continued darkly. “But we only have forty-four rounds left.”

  “Begin charging FTL capacitors,” Atwood ordered as he resumed his seat, wishing the tension in his shoulders would go away – he felt like he was about to seize up, he was so tense.

  “We’re not going to be making a fight of it?” Merkerson asked, stepping out of the shadows. “We could do some serious damage –”

  “I’m well aware of that, Commander, but those are not my orders!” Atwood snapped. He nodded at the helm officer, who had turned to watch the discussion, uncertainty playing across his features. “Make it happen.”

  *

  In all, the entire battle of New Baltimore – or the Capitulation at New Baltimore, as it was becoming known in every bar, pub, or dining room in the Commonwealth – lasted a little over three hours, with a fifty-minute interlude in the middle of it. If not for that interlude, James decided – when the N’xin decided to make a wide berth and regroup and reform – then Commonwealth casualties in that theatre would have been near total, save for the few ships that managed to limp away.

  As it was, they’d only managed to save a little over eleven thousand people on thirty-three ships – eight thousand from the main colony Dorchester, and three from the surrounding satellite towns. That meant they’d left behind millions, including more than seven thousand military personnel who had opted to remain behind so more civilians could get off.

  Admiral Williams was among the dead, choosing to go down with his command than face the ignominy of defeat. Which is just as well, considering how much of the blame is being thrown onto him. Commonwealth tactics during the battle were being roundly disparaged – it wasn’t that it was believed that defeat was preventable, the general feeling was just that the N’xin should have paid more dearly for their victory than they did.

  Now, the survivors were headed for the colony on Calder II – with the fall of New Baltimore, the Calder system was now the sector capital, and was the only world that had a hope of supporting such a large influx of people. Not that it’ll be easy, James thought bitterly. Calder II was a much younger colony than New Baltimore, and was facing a drastic increase in its population literally overnight.

  “That’s quite a download, Lieutenant,” the med-tech standing next to him said, frowning at the readouts. “What the hell have you got in there?”

  James sighed. He’d uploaded the dead kid’s neural profile a few minutes ago, and was now undergoing a routine physical to make sure he was hale and hearty, ready to return to duty… at whichever duty station would have him.

  “Some kid I found,” he explained darkly. He was more settled now, a light sedative helping to take the edge off his trauma. “He was killed just minutes before his evac shuttle arrived… I managed to save him… sort of.”

  “That truly sucks,” the medtech said neutrally after a few seconds of trawling through the data. “That must be some hardware you’re carrying, Lieutenant.”

  James wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed at the medtechs insouciance towards the dead child. Maybe he’s just become too desensitized to this sort of thing. James smiled grimly as he shrugged, choosing not to pursue the melancholy subject. “The best money can buy.”

  The medic looked at him, confused. “You don’t sound very… enthused.”

  James looked at him archly. “There’s not a great deal to be enthused about.”

  *

  A persistent tapping sound roused Elias Hunter from his… nap! He’d actually fallen asleep in his darkened sanctum. Jolting upright, he looked across his desk, through the holographic data feeds that floated above it, to find one his brother’s staring at him, their holographic foot tapping lightly on the floor.

  “Keeping you up, am I?”

  “Quiet, Troy,” Elias murmured as he rose, stretching as he blinked away his sleepiness, his VA gradually raising the lighting in his office to a more comfortable level. “No, w
ait, James.” He waved away his mistake as James pointed, rather angrily, at his uniform. “You all look the same.”

  “Very droll,” James sneered. “I forgot how grouchy you are when you’ve been woken up.” He didn’t look much different than when Elias had seen him at their Christmas dinner twelve days earlier… save that he looked off, as if he was unwell, or… haunted. Elias regarded him evenly for a moment, and then waved him off as he went to the small bar fridge he kept in the corner of his office; he took out a bottle of water – made from one of the springs on Sanctuary – and took a swig.

  “It’s alright, James,” Elias said. “I’m, uh, assuming this isn’t a social call, and that you aren’t here to wish me a belated New Year?” He nodded at James’ uniform, which looked like it could have come straight from the laundry, it was so well-pressed. “How can my humble operation help you?”

  “Your cloning facilities are operational, yes?”

  “Yes.” Elias frowned. “But, uh, given the limited budget and resources I’m being allocated at the moment, they’re not in use… why? What do you want them for? Uh, I’ve already said I’m not going to clone an army for the Commonwealth.”

  A soft chime from his desk called for Elias’ attention. He’d received a data transfer.

  “It’s just me,” James said casually, gesturing vaguely with his left hand.

  “What is it?” Elias asked, puzzled as he called up the packet on his VA. “It’s enormous, James… nearly a petabyte!”

  “It’s the collective memories and personalities of a child that died before I could help him… I dumped the data from his VA into mine. A sort-of emergency repository.”

  Elias nodded in understanding as he watched the status of the download, keeping an eye to make sure there was no data corruption – despite the extranet having multiple redundancies, accidents and mishaps did happen. “And now you need a body to put them in?”