Dead Force Box Set

by S D Tanner

  He didn’t need to be reminded that Jessica was dying, pinned to a wall, inside the floating city. It was the whole reason he needed the Dead Force, or at least a good part of it. “Is she ok?”

  “For now, but whatever you’re planning to do then you need to get on with it.”

  “Who’s running the ark?”

  Grinning again, Joker snorted. “What do you think I’ve been doing while you’ve been playing hero?” He had no idea what Joker had been doing while they’d been on Earth. Seeing his blank expression, Joker added, “I’m a tech head. Jess has been teaching me what she knows.”

  “Can you fly the ark?” Judge asked, sounding surprised.

  “They pretty much fly themselves, but I can command it now. I’ve spent more time looking at the gear I found inside one of the domes.”

  He’d forgotten about the domes attached to the ark. One had been full of the embryos, and another with plants and insects used to feed the sleepers. The other two had contained equipment that Jessica and Joker had been analyzing. “What did you find?”

  “All sorts of good shit, including some gear that looks like a gun.”

  “Can we use it?”

  Joker shook his head. “I haven’t got that far yet. It’s not easy to test a gun on a ship, not without putting it at risk.”

  “What else did you find?”

  “Hard to say. The stuff doesn’t come with a manual. I’m still pulling gear apart trying to understand what it is and how it works.” Joker turned and pointed at a console with a large screen in front of it. “But I’ve had more success with the teleporter.”

  “In what way?”

  Joker sat in the chair in front of the console and, after tapping the screen, a three-dimensional grid appeared. “We can do more than teleport a person. Providing you lay pulsers, I can program it to pick up everything within that area.”

  “How does that help us?”

  Spinning his chair around, Joker looked up at him and smirked. “It means I can do more than teleport people on and off the Extrema. I can do point-to-point teleportation of larger groups of people or gear.”

  It didn’t sound like much, but he understood what Joker was offering him. They could move their troops from one position to another without needing vehicles or shuttles. “Good work.” Turning toward Hawk, Flak and Jack, he said, “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” Jack asked.

  Pointing upward, he replied, “Joker’s going drop us onto a beacon.” Looking down at Joker, he added, “You better know what you’re doing.”

  Spinning his chair until he was facing the console again, Joker laughed. “Never do, Tag. Where would be the fun in that?”

  He didn’t have a chance to challenge Joker before finding himself inside the teleporter. Although he couldn’t remember much about his officer training, they’d drilled into him the need for planning, but events kept eclipsing him. Jessica was dying and his army wasn’t ready to fight. If he attacked the city now, although he had twenty thousand boots, he was guaranteed to fail. Dragging through his patchy memory, he tried to remember the rest of his training. He needed to set objectives, create a unity of command to manage his troops, go on the offensive, and maneuver the enemy until he had them in a position of disadvantage. It sounded good, but he had no idea how to do any of it quickly. If he had unlimited time then it might have been doable, but up against the ticking clock of Jessica’s death, he didn’t even know how long he had.

  All thoughts of strategy disintegrated once he materialized onboard the beacon. Suddenly his head and shoulders were bent under a low frame, and he was staring through a wide window at Earth. The blissfully peaceful white clouds were drifting above the blue and brown, oblivious to the deadly beacons circling them. Like the round exterior of the beacon, the inside followed the same curve. No more than ten feet in circumference, there was a single chair in front of a control panel that was butted up against the window. Just as Jack had said, the control panel had a thick toggle in the center with another smaller one next to it. On the other side was an oversized red colored button, identical to an emergency stop on a large machine.

  Sitting in front of the console was a man dressed in a red jumpsuit, who didn’t even turn around at the arrival of three large, armored men. Easing himself from the curved wall until he was standing upright, his helmet skimmed the roof inside the beacon. The only light in the room appeared to come from the sun through the wide window, otherwise the rear of the beacon was hidden under a grainy gloom.

  He dropped his hand on the man’s lean shoulder. “Hey!” Seeming surprised to see him, the clone jerked away from his hand and his eyes widened with alarm.

  Jack squeezed onto the chair until the clone was forced to stand. Once Jack was seated, he pushed the toggle on the console forward. The beacon jerked so sharply he was flung backward and slammed into the curved wall. It looked as if Earth had moved, but he knew it hadn’t. The beacon must have been flying at a ridiculous speed, and the exterior was spinning around madly. Unlike him, the clone had been smart enough to hang onto the front of the beacon, but he made no move to stop Jack.

  “Jack! Cut it out!”

  Hawk elbowed the clone away from the window and peered through it. “Woah, look at the speed of this thing!”

  Raising his hand so it hovered above the oversized red button, Jack asked, “What do ya think this does?”.

  “Give it a go,” Hawk replied enthusiastically.

  Jack slammed his hand down on the red button, and he heard a small explosion from somewhere outside the capsule. “What did you just do?”

  “Wooo hooo! Look at it go!” Hawk shouted in delight.

  The beacon had launched a missile, but he had no idea where it was going, and suspected neither did Hawk or Jack. Hawk was pushing Jack from the chair, clearly wanting a turn at the controls. “Move over, dude. Give a real flyboy a go.”

  Pulling the clone away from the console, he kept a firm grip on his arm. “Hawk, what the hell are you doing?”

  His answer came in the form of being slammed into the curved ceiling on the beacon. The clone hit the roof with him and then they both tumbled onto the arced floor. “Stop it! That’s an order.”

  “Dunno how to do that, boss, but I’ll learn,” Hawk replied cheerfully.

  Hawk’s cavalier attitude and flagrant disregard for orders was annoying, but it was better the man was crazy than not. Like Joker had said, the gear didn’t come with a manual, meaning the only way they would learn was through trial and error.

  Sighing deeply, he hauled the clone onto his feet. “Don’t get yourself killed. Call Joker for an extract when you’re ready.”

  Hawk was busy playing with the controls, and he dismissively waved a gloved hand at him. Deciding to leave Hawk to do his thing, he said, “Joker, teleport me back.”

  The beacon jolted and his body was thrown sharply to the left, but he and the clone were snatched by the teleporter before he landed. With no supply lines or logistics, they would have to steal what they needed from their enemy, which meant Hawk and Jack were getting the job done. Maybe one day he would have a real army, but not today and perhaps not ever.

  CHAPTER THREE: Silent Running

  While he’d been on the beacon, Joker had woken the robot Jessica, who was now studying the clone sitting in his command chair.

  “It is not human.”

  With his feet planted side-by-side on the floor, the clone’s hands hung loosely between his legs. Slack-faced and detached from his surroundings, the clone wasn’t looking at Jessica, instead he stared unseeingly at the main screen on the Bridge. Like all the clones, one eye was blue and the other was brown. It made his face appear non-symmetrical, as if two different people had been mashed together to make one.

  “Why are his eyes different colors?”

  His question was heard and answered by Cogless. “Heterochromia is caused by the excess or lack of melanin. It may be inherited or
the result of genetics or caused by injury.”

  “It is not genetic,” Jessica replied. “The clone is an artificial creation.”

  Despite knowing the real Jessica was being held prisoner inside the city, he was pleased to see the robot version of her. He couldn’t explain it, much less justify his feelings, but knowing she was on his side was giving him the confidence to start an impossible war. “He looks human enough.”

  Tilting her head in his direction, Jessica smiled as she were happy to see him too. “The creation was not born of woman, not like you were.”

  He supposed the aliens couldn’t take away his heritage. Although he’d been reanimated, at least he had a mother and a father and, feeling some sympathy for the clone, he hunkered next to the chair and looked up at the slack face.

  “Who are you?”

  Dropping to her haunches on the other side of the clone, Jessica looked across the command chair at him. “It is not a human.”

  “Is it sentient?”

  Jessica’s eyes grew distant and he hoped her protocols wouldn’t stop her from answering. “It…it was assembled and replicated.”

  Her hand was resting on the arm of the chair, and pleased she was still with him, he reached across the clone’s lap and covered it with his own. “But is it built like a human.”

  She glanced at his hand on hers, but didn’t pull away like she usually did. “Yes.”

  “Then why do you say he isn’t human?”

  “It cannot speak.” Her reply suggested the aliens had deliberately created mute slaves, and his mouth pursed in anger. Seeing his rage, Jessica pulled away her hand. “It has not been taught to speak.”

  Not wanting to alarm her, he forced his face to relax and spoke in a softer voice. “Are you saying he doesn’t know how to use words.” When Jessica nodded, he shuffled until he was crouched in front of the clone. Tapping his chest, he said, “Tag.”

  The blue and brown eyes studied him, acknowledging his presence for the first time. Opening his mouth, the clone then closed it again, seeming unsure how to answer him. Instead, the clone leaned forward, as if he was eager to connect with him.

  Taking the clone’s hand, he said with as much warmth as he knew how, “You are safe here.”

  Judging by the clone’s unlined face, he couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, and it seemed no one had ever touched him before. The clone lifted his hand, turning it inside his own until they were side-by-side. When he stretched his fingers, the clone copied him. He clenched his hand into a fist and the clone did the same. By mimicking his movement, the clone had proved he wasn’t a mindless body under the control of the aliens. The body might have been cobbled together from the DNA of many different people, but he was still a person in his own right.

  “He’s not an it. He’s human.”

  “What makes us human?” Jessica asked.

  Glancing at her in surprise, a familiar small smile was playing across her perfect lips. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

  “Because you need to know.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  She smiled again. “It is you that needs to know.”

  He couldn’t answer her question, not in any definitive way, other than to know the young man in front of him was as much of a prisoner as he had been. The clone deserved a life, just like they all did, but he didn’t know how to give him one any more than he knew how to free the people left on Earth.

  “Don’t toy with me, Jessica. I’m doing what I can.”

  Appearing to feel his frustration, she took his hand from the clone. “And it is enough.”

  It was nowhere enough and he knew it. The human Jessica was running out of time, and he felt guilty for burdening her with his problems. She was trying to wake all of mankind and give them the future that was rightfully theirs. Rising to his feet, he asked, “Where’s Judge?”

  “On his way to the Bridge,” Joker replied. Flicking his head at the clone, he asked, “What do we do with him?”

  With no ability to communicate the young man was close to useless, but he didn’t have the resources to play nursemaid, so he would have to take care of himself. “Give him to Robert. Maybe he can help him.”

  Sounding doubtful, Joker asked, “To do what?”

  “Feed himself. Use the bathroom.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how independent he will be without the aliens controlling his every move.”

  “Can they control him now?” Joker asked, suddenly sounding worried.

  It hadn’t occurred to him the clone might still be under the control of the aliens. Realizing he would have to put the clone in the same prison Lolo had been in, he looked down at him. The clone appeared to understand he was no longer welcome and pulled back into the command chair. The blue and brown eyes widened, and then he thrust his fingers into the back of his neck, ripping at the flesh with his nails. Blood flowed from the deep rends, ran down his back and onto the red shirt, proving once and for all he was human.

  “Woah! What’s he doing?” Joker shouted.

  He didn’t know, but the clone was rummaging through his flesh and grunting in pain. When he reached for the clone’s arm, intending to stop him from causing himself any more harm, the man sank even further into the chair. Continuing to pant with the effort and groaning, the clone placed both hands against the back of his neck and clawed it open. Before he could get behind him to pull his hands away, the clone began tugging something away from the base of his neck. Covered in blood, initially he thought the clone was pulling out his spinal cord, but then something snapped free. When the clone held out his clenched hand, something was waving through the cracks between his fingers. Reminding him of a skinny starfish, six blood-soaked tentacles wiggled in the air.

  “What the heck is that?” Joker asked, but he was leaning forward, his eyes wide with curiosity.

  When the clone flung the squirming creature to the floor, Jessica quickly rose to her feet, stomping on it before it couldn’t slime away. Grinding her boot into the decking, the creature emitted a sad squeak and then stopped moving.

  “Dead. That’s what the heck that is,” he replied.

  Although the clone’s hands were red with his own blood and shaking, he let out a deep sigh, as if he’d finally managed to scratch an itch that had been bothering him.

  Smiling down at him, he placed his hand on the blood-soaked shoulder. “Bet that feels better.”

  The man looked up at him and then his lips curled upward, imitating his smile. It meant that, although the young man couldn’t speak, at least he could communicate. Just like everything else he was dealing with, teaching the clone to talk was going to take time. If nothing else, by ousting what he assumed to be his controlling hitchhiker, the man had shown courage. Not only was the clone a real human, but he was one who had some serious balls.

  Judge walked onto the Bridge and, looking at the blood trickling down the clone’s neck, he asked irritably, “What did you do to him?”

  “Good to see you too, Judge, and I didn’t do anything to him. The clones have a creature controlling them.” Winking at the clone, he added, “And it just lost its free ride.”

  Bending over, Jessica plucked the squashed creature from the floor, holding it up disdainfully by one limp tentacle. Judge’s upper lip curled and he shook his head. “It was probably just as much of a prisoner as the clone.”

  “Maybe so, but the clones are human.”

  Jessica held the creature up to her eyes, contemplating it with interest. “I will give it to the Medicus.”

  “Robert, his name is Robert.” Taking the clone by one arm, he helped him onto his feet. “Take this man to Robert as well. Get him patched up and fed.”

  CHAPTER FOUR: Winning Argument

  “What do you want?” Judge asked, throwing himself into one of the chairs next to the row of consoles.

  He answered Judge’s question with one of his own. “What have you been doing while I was r
isking my life?”

  Narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips, Judge replied sharply, “Can’t risk what you don’t have, and I’ve been directing Rok and Ash.” He leaned forward in the chair, placing his elbows on his knees. “Leaving them with the Dead Force was a bit beyond their capabilities. They’re gunners, not leaders.”

  Spinning the command chair around until it was facing Judge, he dropped into the cushioned base that was still covered in the clone’s blood. “They have to step up, we all have to.”

  “They’re up for that, Tag, but they don’t have the skills.”

  “How are they doing?”

  “Twenty thousand confused and angry zombie troopers are more than any commander can deal with.”

  Judge had a point, but it was the least of his worries. He had a mission, to be exact he had at least six different ones. “We have bigger problems than the Dead Force.” When Judge raised his eyebrows, he leaned forward, mirroring his pose. “War is about real estate, Judge. We need to seize and hold territory.”

  “I hear you.”

  “We can only weaken and kill our enemy by expanding the Dead Force to include civilians and the prisoner aliens.”

  Shaking his head, Judge sat back in his chair. “Where did you get those objectives? We need to arm the soldiers we have.” Eyeing him skeptically, he added, “And I’m surprised rescuing Jessica isn’t your first order of business.”

  Saving Jessica was his highest priority, but that didn’t make it the first thing he needed to do. Although breaking into the city might make for a dramatic entrance, if Jessica died it would cost him control of the Extrema, and losing the ark would mean the death of another half a million sleepers. He needed control of more territory than a single ark, which meant he would have to attack the floating cities. Even taking over one floating city wouldn’t be enough to secure the real estate, and he’d already decided to take five of them.

  He waved his hand dismissively. “Yeah, saving Jessica is a given, but we can’t do it by storming a city and kidnapping her.” Judge cocked his head, appearing puzzled by his answer. “We need to claim some real estate, Judge. Somewhere we can hold onto, otherwise saving Jessica is pointless.”