Gene Drifters: The Clone Soldier Chronicles-Book III

by Takemoto, D. J.

  Dina is not an ordinary mutant like Gimlet; she’s a half viral mutant and half some off-planet version. Let’s not go into it. Let me just say she’s unusual…and very dangerous. I guess it’s why she does a lot of the rebel spy missions, when someone needs to get a mind-fuck.

  “What is the issue, Irma? Does the legal counsel wish to alter the terms?” Dina asked through the portal, but did not yet open the security-hut door. She first had to determine why the hell Leo’s Songtain’s legal counselor’s assistant had followed her to a security-hut, and what she wanted.

  “No please, this is about something else. I need your help. I need to escape. Leo sent me to talk you into dinner, but I need your help to escape. Please let me in. Please help me.” Dina knew she spoke the truth. She opened the hatch and let Irma enter, allowing three spy nano-drones to get in, which she had to immediately swat. Irma smashed the final one under one of those four inch high heels. Ouch!

  “What is this about?” Dina asked after they’d hatched the security-hut door, eliminated the intruding spybots, and read the green secure signal on the hatch door. For extra security, Dina pressed the one-way vid, to shut out any visuals from outsiders. As it closed off she noticed the knowing smirk on the face of a passer-by. Someone thought she and Irma were in hook-up mode for a quickie.

  “I need your help to get away from Max, Ms. Turner. Can you help me disappear? I can do any kind of work. I don’t have anyone else to turn to. I had a family once, a real family, maybe like you. I’m not one of those party tunnel employees, you know, the ones trained for the job? My dad was a cook in one of the tram station walk-ups. He kept me hidden in the back room until a year ago, when he died. I didn’t inherit his job license. It went on the Blacks to someone else. I couldn’t afford the price. But I made a nice, but illegal living in the tunnels, in the tattoo division,” Irma finished, sucking in her breath.

  “How did you end up with someone like Max?” Dina asked.

  “I don’t have a legit worker ID, so one night Max found me. He told me he was out recruiting for a new secretary; would get me an ID and work permit. Later I found out it’s how he nabs his slaves. It’s cheaper for him that way. He doesn’t have to purchase at top price at the sex auctions. I’m his slave. I don’t have a choice. You know those without workers’ IDs don’t have citizen rights anymore. He uses me during his business deals, and for whatever else he wants. Here, see?” Irma raised her miniscule jade green skirt, showing a large purplish/red bruise on her inner and very upper thigh.

  “There are more, fresh nightly. He’s got ugly habits. Max is very nasty, more so than most legal snakes. Please, can you help me escape? I could stand the bruising, but he’s planning to have me stem cell implanted, for enhanced sexual efficiency; he says it’s something related to the worker efficiency protocol,” Irma said.

  “Don’t you have a choice in that?” Dina asked.

  “Normal human workers with IDs still have a choice on whether to accept implantation; but, I don’t. Illegals can be implanted now, without informed consent.” Irma lowered her skirt and waited for Dina’s response, with tears in her eyes.

  A worker efficiency implant, established by the new worker efficiency protocol, was required in jobs now threatened by robotic take-over, or for all illegal workers. An ID’ed worker could refuse, but was usually fired. Those without IDs could be implanted against their will; they were illegal workers, after all. The implant made the worker extremely efficient in various ways, but caused increased chance of cancer, dementia, breast growth in males, and baldness; and, sandwiched in tiny fonts at the bottom of the list, between facial hair growth, and hangnails, was erectile dysfunction.

  Of course Dina had to help her. And it wouldn’t take much time. “Meet me at my hotel in an hour. Tell Leo you are stopping by to pick me up for dinner. I’ll see what I can arrange.” Irma left the hut, turning left to the underground tunnel; Dina hailed a hovercab. She told the robo-cabbie to take her to the Opus, explaining everything to Dorian on the way.

  “Hello, Mr. Songtain. I spoke with my client. He wishes to add me as bonus for faster delivery of the product. It will only be for a single evening, of course. I know this is most unusual, but would you grant me security access entry? Perhaps you may also wish to inform your counselor, Max. If you wish, we can include him in the bonus. I will wait in the lobby for your decision to accept the bonus. Of course there will be no economic liability should you wish to refuse the offer,” Dina spoke into the com.

  She stood in front of the vid outside the impenetrable entry door to the Opus, speaking to a red satin-robbed Leo. At first he was angry with the intrusion, was half-way through the 3rd installment of “Romance and the CEO,” a popular soap. But when he saw who was at his front door, he went all creamy in some places and hard in others.

  “What a pleasant surprise, Ms. Turner. May I call you Elizabeth? I will buzz you in immediately. Max can wait,” he said, again in that unnaturally low voice.

  “Thank you, Leo. I’ll be right up.” Dina smiled her best, ‘yes, let’s fuck’ smile at the vid of Leo, standing there in his red satin, bulge in the lower middle, robe.

  Ten minutes later, Dina exited the Opus, carrying the rolled up Roxanne Smoot bounty poster. It was not difficult to alter Leo’s train of thought, to do what Gimlet called a mind-fuck. Her mutant abilities were unique; she could control what people wanted to do, change their minds, implant memories. She was one of only a few rebels capable of this. She left him with a clear memory of lunch, to sell clone soldiers to that Las Vegas client, then of steamy sex with that caramel-skinned assistant, and with the absolute certainty that he’d also given Irma to the new client, thrown in as a bonus, with the clone soldier purchase deal. Or did he throw her in as a gift?

  Leo couldn’t remember, but was perturbed that he’d missed ten whole minutes of his show, peeing. Plus, he was genuinely upset about his missing Roxanne Smoot bounty poster. He thought maybe the housekeeper had taken it. It was a special one, artistically modified to show her naked, and spread eagle. Well, he’d been thinking of a further modification anyway; something involving her tongue and his dong, which was now, once again, in the on mode.

  Max proved a tad more difficult for Dina to mind fuck. All legal counselors wore protective head gear against possible mental intrusion. That’s legal speak for reading your mind. However, it was not difficult to find Max; his law offices took up an entire floor in the Stemworm, Inc. building in central Hong Kong. Dina coded in level 27, and stood in front of the ID scanner. On the way, she’d explained everything to Dorian. He had to do a fast scan-hack for her, so she would pass muster at the lift security vids for the ever-paranoid legal counsel floor of the Songtain office building. Dorian just sighed when she explained things to him. He knew his wife would never pass up the opportunity to help a slave escape. She’d done it for him once; had helped him escape from his underground prison.

  It took a bit longer to seduce Max out of his protective head gear. He and she were both in his inner office, lying on a white polar bear rug, half naked by the time he removed the apparatus and turned it to off. Dina left him with the certainty that he had indeed thrown in Irma as a bonus to Ms. Turner’s client, to sweeten the clonie deal. That’s how he would describe it to Leo the next morning, when he arrived at the outer penthouse office to go over the morning stock trades. Leo would totally agree.

  By midnight, Irma was in the back compartment of Morton’s underwater low-way rig, with a new rig-ryder approved ID, and eastbound for bubble-stop #4. Eldridge said he could use her help in the kitchen, but she’d have to work minimum wage, and sleep in a made-over storage space at the back of the house. Dina burned that Roxanne Smoot bounty poster in her Hong Kong hotel room fireplace. If Roxanne ever saw it, that poster would end up in a ball inside Leo Songtain’s smooth, HAIRLESS, TINY BUTT.

  6

  AND SPEAKING OF LEO’S BUTT, it was currently on Roxanne’s mind.

  “Man that was a bizarre dr
eam.” Roxanne stretched across her single-sized bed, wedged against the wall of her 10 by 10 foot bedroom.

  Space is preemo in any plasmon under ocean bubble-stop, but especially the ones with no close land base. Roxanne’s little town is just a giant under and on the ocean floor, plasmon bubble. They’re larger versions of vending machine rest stops, but with the necessary robotics to check the rigs and loads, and for use by rig-ryders to do their down-time. The bars, whore houses, and churches logically followed. To even have your own room in a water-based bubble-stop was living in the lap of luxury, especially to a native born rig-ryder like Roxanne, who’d grown up living in the back compartment of her dad’s rig.

  Eldridge spared nothing to trick out his baby girl’s room. He’d painted it blue, a color that would go better with her fire red hair, had a plasmon window installed so she could watch weird deep ocean fish swim by, and even added a desk, chair, and small bookcase, complete with a collection of real paper books. The later were yellowed and somewhat moldy, leftovers from when Eldridge was a kid, growing up on land, in a place near Liberal, Kansas.

  Roxanne loved to read real books. Besides Jane Eyre, another of her favorite books, to read when she was still little, was a story about a girl named Laura, who lived in a little house in the middle of nothing. Roxanne could not even imagine what it would be like to live in the middle of nothing. She’d always been in a rig, surrounded by everything and everyone, the medley of engine noises singing her to sleep at night. But, she loved her room, even though she’d had to wait until she was nineteen to get it. She raised her head up on one elbow, turning to Rose.

  “I had this nuts dream that I was back in grad school playing lacrosse against Leo’s team. It was that time I sent the ball straight into his butt, and knocked him flat. He had this thing for me even back then. I think it was because I was the only one who was nice to him. He was such a smart ass rich little freak. Everyone used to make fun of him. I was just being nice, I guess. Then he got obsessive about me; I guess that’s what I get for being nice. You remember me telling you about that, Rose?”

  Rose was sprawled across Roxanne’s long legs, her head at the foot of the bed, and feet planted almost into Roxanne’s left cheek. They were both used to each other. Rose yawned, as only an incisor-enriched best friend can do, and woofed a brief reply of yes. She was not quite ready to rise.

  “Come on Rose, we got us a haul deadline today. The clock says 05:00; we clock onto the tracks in one click. Besides, I can smell Dad’s pancakes.” This got Rose’s attention, although pancakes with turkey sausage would have been even more interesting. Rose thought things were getting leaner here at Eldridge’s place, but she wouldn’t say anything to either of them. It would hurt their feelings. Besides, she was just getting too tired to complain about much anymore. After five years as Roxanne’s rig-ryder co-pilot, she was about ready for the Eldridge Bar kitchen duty. She smothered that thought, guilty that she’d even considered leaving Roxanne to guard her own back against a bunch of lecherous newbies.

  “I’m up, just let me have five more minutes,” Rose replied, slightly raising her left ear. Rose loved to doze.

  “Okay, see you in the kitchen. But hurry up. I’m not saving the sausage for you.”

  Roxanne teased Rose, and rolled off the bed in her bare feet, onto the blue shag rug. She was dressed in one of her dad’s discarded shirts, and not much else. The temperature in the bubble-stop was nice and warm and constant. Sometimes it was too constant for Roxanne, who missed the up-top hauls from back in New Mexico and Colorado. Sometimes she had dreams about when she and her dad would camp outside under the stars, in the real outside and not in a virtual dome.

  Roxanne showered in desal, the cleaned-up ocean water from the outside. She had to step into that awful orange jumpsuit and don the bandanna again for work. Ten minutes later she was in the kitchen, seated at the table, stuffing Eldridge’s fluffy pancakes into her mouth.

  “I had a dream about Leo last night. Can you believe that? It was that lacrosse game I told you about, from grad school; it was that time I sent the ball into his butt,” Roxanne mumbled through a mouth-full of sausage.

  “Probably came up from our talk about him last night. You suggested he was involved in the pirate endeavors. By the way, I told Dorian about your hunch. He had Dina plant a tag on Leo yesterday. She was in Hong Kong in disguise to purchase some clone soldiers from Leo. I also told Dorian about the poisoned nutria-blend. I think he already had some notion of that. But he did say not to touch the stuff.” Eldridge poured fresh coffee for his daughter.

  He never told her, but he didn’t drink it when she wasn’t there. It was just too expensive. He’d also been worried about the bar revenue of late. When the Inc. froze or lowered wages, or hired too many level I’s at minimum wages, it meant a recession for all the bubble-stops. Trickle-down bull shit; that’s what he thought. But he kept it to himself, not wanting to worry Roxanne, or get her in trouble with the Inc. She had enough to do, keeping the rig haul going, and bringing in her share of chits.

  And now, he was expecting new kitchen help. Dorian informed him last night that a rescued slave was on the way, someone named Irma. Unfortunately it would be another mouth to feed. But of course he couldn’t refuse Dorian’s request. After all, Dorian had footed the cost of the bar and rig in the first place. So he said yes, of course. Eldridge thought he could find something for her to do. At any rate, it was the charitable thing to do, and Eldridge still had that in him.

  Dorian said Irma would come with a temporary new face, to hide her true identity. Evidently she was an escaped slave from the Blacks. Over about six weeks, the Stem-wads® would meld with her own facial cells, and then she’d be someone new, on the outside anyway. Eldridge wondered how many chits Dorian had to hack to cover Irma. Roxanne interrupted his thought train.

  “Dina saw Leo Songtain? You never told me that. What’s that all about?” Roxanne stopped in mid-stuff-your-face mode, her fork in the air next to her mouth. Rose came in and nabbed the sausage off the fork before it got to Roxanne’s mouth.

  “Stop that Rose, where are your manners. Sit down and eat with the rest of us,” Eldridge retorted, then continued,

  “Dina was on some clone mission thing again. It seems that your Leo Songtain has gotten himself into the used clonie market. And you know how Dina feels about clone soldiers. She will absolutely not rest until every single one of those clones is dead. I know it drives Dorian crazy. It’s an obsession of hers, after her dad was killed. I wish she’d just leave it.”

  Eldridge was too overheated for this hour of the day. But he still had such strong feelings for Dina. It was kinda sad to watch. Rose looked into her breakfast plate of pancakes and sausage, and shook her head. Roxanne tried to change the subject.

  “I’ll be having lunch with Gimlet the day after tomorrow. Do you want me to get anything for Thanksgiving dinner while I’m on my down-time? I could stop by the Mitzukoshi basement.” Roxanne usually had about four hours of load time in Tokyo before she turned around to haul back to San Fran. Though her down-time would be at bubble-stop #2 when eastbound, she could ship to Eldridge, on the push tunnel, if the package was small enough.

  “Nope, Dorian already took care of it. He spoke to Dina last night, and she’s going to shop in Hong Kong, send it on the push tube direct from the hoverport. But Gimlet may give you some of her Christmas presents to carry in the back of the rig.” Roxanne responded to Eldridge, “No problem, Dad. I got plenty of room, as long as it’s not a roasted goat.”

  “Listen, you watch yourself on the haul, Roxie. I was thinking about your run-in with the pirates yesterday. They might not be limited to the tunnels, or even to #3. Tokyo can be crazy at dark click. Be sure Rose is with you all the time.” Eldridge worried about his daughter. She tried not to tell him about the weird Nipon business men and their over the top reactions to her.

  Once on the hovertram to Kamakura, a neatly suited, older business man had attempted to stu
ff her hair into his mouth. Another had succeeded in cupping both sides of her butt, one in each hand, before she could shove him off. She had to be careful in Tokyo; Roxanne knew from past run-ins. If she created a scene, or accused someone high up in an Inc., she could jeopardize their position at #4.

  Recently it had gotten to be such a nuisance that she often wore a fat suit, and a temporary facial implant as a disguise. And Rose really couldn’t watch her back in usual fashion, because in Tokyo dog attacks were punishable by a life flash-freeze, to the dog and owner. Although Roxanne guessed she’d be given the choice of being sold on the sex slave market as an alternative to the flash-freeze.

  “Rose always goes with me, Dad,” Roxanne lied, to ease her dad’s concerns. “Anyway, I’ll only be there for a few hours, then back into the rig haul tunnel. It’s funny; I used to feel safe in any low-way tunnel. I mean, the regs for entry are so strict. You’d think nothing could happen in a tunnel. Someone high up was involved in yesterday’s run-in with those #3ers, Daddy. That hijack attempt would not be happening without some high up yes nod.”

  Roxanne finished her coffee and pancakes, wrapped the orange headband around her fire red hair, and gathered up her duffle and clip-vid to check what her cargo would be for her Tokyo pick-up. It seldom varied; a huge shipment of Stem-wads® from San Fran biotech production labs westbound to Tokyo, and the raw ingredients - uncommitted stem cells in vials - for the eastbound return trip to San Fran.

  “Yeah well, things are not improving around here, that’s for sure.” Eldridge was sad. He didn’t want to leave this world in messed up condition for his only kid. He’d worked so hard all his life, trying to make something better for her. All the worker levels did. But it seemed like it just got harder all the time, like the “safe-life” target just kept moving away from him. He knew his old buddies felt the same. They talked about it all the time. Morton told him last night, he’d just have to work until he dropped dead, if they’d let him. He’d lost his entire retirement savings investing in the Inc. annuities plan, during the latest market bust.