Gene Drifters: The Clone Soldier Chronicles-Book III

by Takemoto, D. J.

  They reached the exit portal, waiting until Rose gave the yelp signal. Roxanne could overhear Rose making friends with the outside guards. But now there were angry shouts, and sounds of runners behind them, in the last tunnel. Chad was being chased from behind, probably by pissed off pirates. Apparently they weren’t patient enough to listen to Chad’s stock deal, or didn’t believe him; probably thought he’d changed sides.

  “Rose says more like twenty WME security guards are up top, all in those god awful sting suits. We’ve got to keep going, Gimlet. I have to make it back to the rig or all hell will break loose; it will be worse than the security suit thing, much worse. If the WME security thinks a rig haul is endangered they’ll target a laser sat at us. We’ll all be toast”

  Roxanne exited the portal, slowly opening the door to the backs of twenty guards, standing around a big black hand-licking Doberman. You’ve got to love Rose. She’d given them several seconds for a surprise attack.

  Roxanne crouched to the ground as two guards turned, astonished by her sudden appearance at the exit portal. Usually the sewer city rats never came out this way; it was too well guarded, as protection from the constant attacks by food terrorists. But, here was this half gorgeous/half leprous fat/stunning woman with a melting right side of her face. They hesitated, not knowing whether to say wow, or yuck; it came out in unison as “wuck.”

  “Wuck, to you too, guys.” Roxanne knocked three guards off their feet with her whip, while Gimlet, who had just exited the portal, fired on them with her sonic set to stun.

  Now they had about three minutes to put a safe distance between themselves and the rest of the culling guards. A sonic gun signal would be recorded by the overhead recon satellite, noted by headquarters in Nigeria, recorded appropriately by one of the new worker robots in Manila, and a giant mass of mini-biters, nano-drones charged with a knockout drug, would descend upon them.

  A while back, the security division of the WME decided it was easier that way. Just put everyone to sleep and send in the street sweepers. They’d be scooped up, taken to a security holding cell, and the offenders would be separated from the guards at a later time. First time offenders would be given that inviting choice, slavery or the flash freeze. The guards would receive purple hearts, and then sent to guard the maximum security prison, up top and outside, in Leavenworth, Kansas, or the ADX in Florence.

  But now, they all knew the fight was on a close time schedule. Either one side would win in three minutes, or they would all be stunned into oblivion. Once Roxanne went into fight mode, Rose turned into her face-eating persona so fast she completely surprised the four guards who’d been tossing her a ball. With one fast turn she grabbed a stunner in her mouth and stunned the guard nearest to her.

  A rapid fire fight was now in progress.

  Roxanne and Gimlet were pinned down behind some porta-johns, firing the sonic, and Glock, at the guards. Of course, Gimlet, with her glow in the dark eyes had the advantage. For her, it was like target practice. Roxanne was not so fortunate. She got surrounded by eight guards, using her whip to keep them at bay. They were circling, coming closer.

  One guard came from around the porta-john and grabbed Gimlet, clutching her in a choke hold. At rebel headquarters, Dorian already had him targeted with a laser satellite, but he was too close to Gimlet; she would be fried along with him. He’d have to use his on the ground weapon. Luckily Segev was in the area. The rebel alpha had been called in as back up.

  Suddenly Chad, only not Chad, jumped screaming, from behind a metal barrel of Stem-wads® growth media. Unfortunately he only had himself, no weapons. But half of his left hand was attached to some strange metallic contraption that looked like a pink mini-growth chamber with R&R embossed on it, the kind used to expand a bunch of stem cells in a smaller batch. He used it to knock one guy out, grabbing the guard’s ankle knife in the process. He missed the next guy, but he managed to slit the next guard’s throat.

  Apparently, clone soldiers had no fear of culling guard murder legalities, or maybe they understood it too well.

  “Chad?” Gimlet asked.

  “No, Jason,” not Chad replied, with that same gorgeous smile. Somewhere in the back of her mind Gimlet got this rather x-rated picture of herself with two Chads, which she quickly discarded with a shake of her head.

  Not Chad looked over at her, grinned quizzically and said, “Could be interesting,” and then threw his knife into the eye of an oncoming guard. Roxanne and Rose worked to get free from their circle of new best friends; seven still remained, and they could hear the pirates coming through the sewer tunnels, yelling at the real Chad.

  “Chad said not to wait for him. Let’s go,” Jason yelled, after hitting one of the seven remaining guards with his incubator hand.

  The guard hesitated, did not know how to counter an incubator-hand attack; he was just kind of puzzled. It must not have been in the WME official training program at their boot camp. A mano-a-mano was now in progress. They were lucky to have the not Chad guy with them. A single clone soldier could easily take out six fully armed and trained guards, except the drones were coming, and the guards did have those sting suits.

  Gimlet and Roxanne were no matches for these security guards, not with those protective sting suits turned on. Every time you hit one, you got a pulse wave shock that hurt like a killer bee sting. Even Rose yelped every time she took a bite out of a leg or arm. She couldn’t even enjoy the fruits, or rather meats, of her labor, because the dismembered hand or arm would continue to glow, giving off a freaking sting pulse, and causing her lips to swell. Rose was beginning to resemble a runway model with collagen-implanted lips.

  And Roxanne was getting exhausted, missing her whip aiming technique; the circle was getting closer. Rose had the wind knocked out of her from a strategically placed kick to her side. She wasn’t sure what hurt worse, the kick or the stinging.

  Jason, the not-Chad guy, was in a knife fight with a guy who looked like The Terminator, and Gimlet was still held in a choke hold by someone about twice her size, although she had managed to twist and grab his crotch, one of the few areas that did not seem to give off a sting.

  Back at rebel headquarters, Dorian was helpless. He couldn’t possibly fire up a laser satellite without also zapping his daughter. And they would not be getting help from the real Chad. From the sounds coming from the bilge tunnel, Chad would not be bringing friendlies to the party.

  To make matters worse, they could all hear the tranquilizer-drone buzz in the distance. They had fifteen seconds to impact.

  Everyone stopped fighting, squeezed their eyes tight, and hunkered down, even the culling guards. Most had only been hit with a mass attack of knockout drones one time, in boot camp training. It hurt like hell, your legs and arms swelled up to twice their size, and you woke with a blasting headache that lasted for three days.

  The drones made their clearance, hopping off the containment fence, heading straight to their individually designated targets. Someone at the WME knockout drone production facility, with a rather psychotic sense of humor, had programmed them to hum the William Tell Overture.

  The singing drones scampered towards their targets, while a peanut butter and jelly sandwich eating vid secretary watched their approach from her control desk, in Peoria, filing her nails, discussing how her kid was progressing in Little League, and planning what she’d be bringing to the church pot luck.

  Then, just as the drones reached the clearing, a low-pitched whine emitted from someplace…maybe a satellite…maybe an angel…maybe a Mossad type person with a special digi-fry whistle, set to drone-zap mode.

  No one was certain what had happened, and they all still had their eyes shut; all except for Roxanne. She saw it all.

  The drones just stopped, fell to the ground, several crawling spastically in a last tragic attempt to reach their target, humming the William Tell Overture, following the protocol. One finally did reach the most peripheral guard, stinging him into oblivion, and then they wer
e all dead before they could sting the others.

  What happened next would be debated among world strategic arms committees for years. Oddly and strategically, those Dorian-fogged vids would be played back, data analyzed; a commission would be established to come up with a report on their findings, at a cost of seventy billion gold vouchers.

  Someone on the commission felt the fogged vids were the result of industrial espionage by the opposing political party. Their report would be debated at great length in the news and late night comedy shows, until finally three additional nonpartisan committees would be commissioned to study it further, at a cost to the public of another seventy billion gold vouchers, for each report.

  Finally, after two small countries had gone bankrupt from the cost, all sides would point fingers, especially during the up-coming election campaigns.

  The sandwich eating Peoria secretary was given an award for ideal employee of the year, and promoted to the position of Assistant Manager of Human Resources.

  They were all wrong, of course. Only Roxanne had opened her eyes before the drones almost bit them all into oblivion. She was trying to re-latch the bilge portal after the real Chad almost flew out at them; she was trying to keep the pirates from exiting the sewer tunnel.

  They were all wrong because they had not examined that very tiny region of the vids off to the far right, behind the desalination storage tank, next to that crate of cat food balls bound for Beijing. But Roxanne saw what she saw…a hand, gripping a Glock, connected to a silencer; it was nothing else, just a hand, with what looked like the beginning of a black orchid tattoo.

  When she came to her senses, she noticed her circle of guards were all dead; single shots to the center forehead, each one.

  It was clean, a mass execution.

  It was something only possible by one individual, at least that she knew of. She called out to him, in a whisper. But by then, Gimlet and the others were dragging her away, back to the rig dock, with only four minutes to spare before that required rig haul re-track. As they climbed through a hole in the wire fence, Gimlet heard the guy with the black orchid tattoo say,

  “TELL DORIAN, MAX PEABODY IS NEXT.”

  15

  “WHAT IF I’M NEXT? What if someone tries to kill me?” Max looked down at the Carrera marble floor, pacing back and forth in his inner office, the one within the outer office that took up the entire 27th floor in the Songtain Building, in Hong Kong, with the giant wall of windows overlooking the harbor.

  It was that office.

  The floor had been ripped from some historical villa in the south of Italy, and set intact into Max’s office. At present he was not admiring his floor, or any of his ten latest illegal purchases from the Louvre black market.

  Max had just received word of the demise of the Nutria-blend Inc. CEO, at the Kabuki-za in Tokyo. He knew it wasn’t an accident.

  “Stupid idiot! It has industrial espionage written all over it. I told him to lay low until the product was in place. I told him not to appear in public. I told him someone would find out and target us. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! Now they’ll have an official WME legal investigation; they always investigate when a CEO bites it.”

  “Calm down Maxie, you’ll get your blood pressure up. You’ll work it all out. Everything’s going to be alright. You always work everything out.” His latest assistant was naked and spread eagle on Leo’s backside, giving him a massage with her tongue, over the spots where she’d spanked him several minutes prior.

  Max had purchased her the previous week, at top voucher from the sex slave commodities market. He usually stole his assistants off the streets; it was much more economically efficient. But she was his birthday present to himself, a replacement for Irma, and she was so much nicer. He had no idea what her real name was, as market commodities always came with new and glitzy names. Her market name was Honeybuns, and she had them.

  Honeybuns was the absolute opposite of Irma, dark curly hair, dark brown eyes, perfect sculpted body, and a wide sunny smile. It was that smile that gave him pause, made him pay real gold vouchers for her, at the sex slave auction.

  Max was tired of frowns. Everyone was always frowning at him, his client, Leo Songtain, his staff, his security guards, and especially Irma. He was glad he’d given Irma away to that client in Tokyo the previous week. Let the client deal with Irma’s frowns; she could frown all over his stupid Las Vegas casino for all he cared. He never knew what Irma’s problem was, why she always frowned at him. What was her problem? He gave her nice clothes. He fed her. What more did she want?

  He had not asked Honeybuns about her prior history; why she smiled so nicely at him. Max supposed it didn’t matter. But still, sometimes he liked to know things about his sex assistants, in case he wanted to tease them. Or sometimes, if his assistant was especially nice to him, he’d send a small gift, like flowers to her family. Irma didn’t have a family. And anyway, although she was beautiful she was quite cool towards him; she was always frowning. In contrast, Honeybuns really got into him, smiled all the time. He liked that. Maybe he’d send her family some flowers. Yes, flowers were just the thing to brighten up a hut in the lower zones, or an apartment in one of the sewer cities, or wherever she came from.

  Naturally, it never occurred to Max that Honeybun’s family might live in a kibbutz near the Israeli border, or that the flowers he bought for his female sex slaves were grown in greenhouses in that kibbutz, or that Honeybuns was not her real name, or even that she was an agent for the Israeli Mossad.

  “I suppose you’re right, Honeybuns. But, you’re not trained like I am. I know about espionage spy stuff. Competing industries will stop at nothing to get that nutria-blend formula. Plus, it’s especially altered. We have a plan.” Max rolled over and looked at Honeybuns, raising one eyebrow in genuine, two-year-old intrigue mode.

  He knew she’d take the bait. Then, he’d demand something outrageous before he told her about anything. It was not a danger. He’d made sure all his market commodity sex assistants were not very smart. Smartness was not what he was after in his sex assistants. She had to be beautiful, look great in or out of clothing, be available for sex at all times, with him or a client, and most important, she had to be malleable. He liked them obedient. Max guessed it was because he spent so much time kissing Leo’s ass. As Leo Songtain’s legal, he kissed a lot of ass. So why not get an assistant who did the same for him, especially with her tongue, like right now?

  “Oh, puleeese tell me about your plan, Maxie. I’ve got to know. I hate secrets.” Honeybuns pouted, whined, smiled, sucked, and touched until Max was sweaty all over and willing to divulge even the passwords to his offshore accounts, if she asked. He even let her hold his special ring of keys, the ones to his bank boxes.

  But the dam bot-com chimed, and it was Leo Songtain, and he could hear his senior legal assistant coughing outside his office to get his attention, and well, work was such a bitch!

  “I can’t tell you now, Honeybuns. Maybe later, if you…” Max whispered something scandalous in her ear. She looked wide-eyed, then laughed that tinkling cute baby laugh of hers, and lightly slapped his butt.

  “OOOOO, Maxie, you are so naughty,” Honeybuns said, as she handed the ring of keys, minus one, back to Max, and got up to put on the red and white polka dot robe he’d demanded she wear at all times, when not naked. He never noticed the missing key, because the bot-com chimed again and Max knew he’d have to pick up; it was Leo Songtain.

  “Yes Mr Songtain, what can I do for you, sir? What? How late will the shipment be? Do you wish me to work this out with the client? Perhaps we can add another small bonus due to the late delivery. I have several in mind. Oh yes, I suppose that one would be just the thing. No Mr. Songtain that will not be a problem. Yes Mr. Songtain, I’ll be by tomorrow morning for our usual stock go over. Yes, I will deliver the bonus in person today, fine, goodbye Mr. Songtain.”

  Max was unhappy.

  Leo Songtain wanted him to send Honeybuns to tha
t clonie buyer in Las Vegas, as a bonus for late shipment of the product. Evidently one of the hover trains had derailed, and large shipments, such as a cargo of clone soldiers, were backlogged for two days. The client had demanded Honeybuns as a bonus for late delivery. He supposed he’d have to give her up, given the delayed goods. Plus, they were still three clones short. That security guy had not been able to find them, and no one wanted to sell theirs. It seemed the word had gotten out. Clones were a hot commodity. Max would have to throw in some refund vouchers and bury the evidence from his client, Leo.

  The Lanai R&R management figured out how to use those clones for most anything and well, you can imagine where that went; sex-ramped clonies, with almost limitless ability to “stay in form” so to speak. Max wished he had that gift. He hadn’t told anyone about his little issue, but he planned to get that stem cell willie-wonker treatment on his next vacation, in Las Vegas of course. They had the best weenie clinic in the world. Max was interrupted from his self-conversation by the return of Honeybuns, now clad in her polka dotted robe.

  “What was that about, my sweet Maxie baby?” She smiled. Yes, she was really sweet, and sincere, and not very smart. Max thought he could probably tell her anything, even the truth, and she wouldn’t even understand it. He would hate giving her away. But, keeping his major client happy was the bottom line.

  “It was Leo Songtain. Go back to your room, Honeybuns. Dress in outfit #24, and have the hair doer person, whatever her name is, fix you up. Tell her I said, “Meeting a new client” mode. Can you remember that? Just tell her those words; she’ll know what to do. Then you march right back here and wait until I come get you. Oh, and eat something. Here, take this sack of my dog’s food balls. I don’t want you hungry during the meeting. You understand?” Max asked, and patted her butt.

  “Yes, Maxie, whatever you say.” Honeybuns exited to her room in back of Max’s office, changed into her designated outfit, and went down to the basement to have her hair done, taking the back employee stairs. After she left, Max opened his hallway door to a patiently awaiting legal assistant.