Trojan Gene: The Awakening

by Ben Onslow

  “No I don’t.”

  “Yes you do. You have to convince them you’ve turned. You do whatever needs to be done to stay in Vector.”

  I sit there, hating their plan, but can’t see a way out. I get to save the Locals. Be a hero. But no one will know about it. And if I join Vector, everyone will think I’m a traitor. Treat me the way they treat the Willises. Even Mum.

  Whatever I choose, I lose.

  Fitzgerald and Jacob back off.

  “Think about it,” says Fitzgerald.

  Jacob starts to gather together his crutches. “You have until morning to decide. Vector will start shooting Locals until they have someone to blame for the raid on the Outpost. And now Curley and Nick are gone, we need someone on the inside.” He says it like it’s a reasonable request, like he’s not piling on any more pressure.

  He doesn’t say going back to work for him is an option.

  I suspect it isn’t.

  It looks like the going to University option is gone too. They’ve got Scott there.

  Fitzgerald unwinds himself and stands up.

  Jacob eases himself up, leans on the crutch. “You don’t have too many options,” he says.

  Arsehole. He knows I know I don’t have any options.

  He goes to leave, clumping to the door, putting both crutches in one hand to open it, organising the crutches again, clumping through then carefully shutting the door behind him.

  I realise I’m not being held down anymore, stand up slowly.

  I’m lost.

  “What will you do now?” asks Fitzgerald.

  “I’m not sure.” It’s like I had everything I wanted, then destroyed it.

  I turned nineteen yesterday, and I have nothing.

  Ela’s gone. I’ve lost her, and I don’t know how to get her back.

  My two mates are dead.

  Jacob thinks I’m scum.

  All I’ve got left is this choice to make.

  And it’s no choice really.

  Join Vector and let everyone think I’m a traitor.

  Or what?

  Let more people die because I can’t face that?

  I am so fucked.

  You have just read

  ‘Awakening’

  Book One of the ‘Trojan Gene’ trilogy.

  Here are the first pages of

  Book Two.

  ‘Insurrection’

  Book 2

  Trojan Gene Trilogy

  Insurrection

  38.

  The Barracks

  Monday 1st August 2051

  4:30 p.m.

  Me and Jeron get back to our room in the barracks. We’re still in full combat gear, long black leather coat that slaps around your legs, heavy boots to our knees, and compression gloves as soft and flexible as skin.

  Jeron is standing by the door, dangling his helmet and visor from the chinstrap. “What do you think?” he asks.

  “About what?” I sit on the end of my bed, take my helmet off, put the helmet, visor, and gloves beside me.

  Jeron goes to his locker. “About today.” He opens the locker, and puts the headgear on the top shelf, looks back at me as he undoes the wrist strap on the glove. Starts pulling at the fingers.

  I study the room, it’s all shiny white tiles and stainless steel. Like the rest of the City. I think about how today’s mission went.

  “Training exercise.” I rip open the top strap of my boot. Then rip my way down. Start on the other boot. “What are six Hovers full of VTroopers, and a few ImageMakers when a few months ago they cleared a whole town to train us?”

  Jeron nods and takes off the second glove. He flaps it on the first and puts them both in the locker by the helmet.

  “Yeah,” he says, “I figure that too. That’s how they did it, ImageMakers and a few trucks of debris.” He undoes the dome on his collar, unzips the leather coat, collar to thigh, shrugs out of it, then puts the coat on a hanger. Hangs it up under the helmet and gloves.

  I finally get to the last strap on the second boot, rip it open then toe the boots off, place them at the end of the bed. Toe to toe, heel to heel.

  “And the noise,” I say. “It didn’t make sense.”

  “Yeah,” says Jeron again. “Couldn’t figure out where that was coming from.”

  He sits on the end of his bed and works on his boots.

  I stand up. Pick up the helmet and gloves. Go to the locker. Stick them on the shelf, get rid of the coat too.

  Jeron looks up from his boots, over to where I’m standing.

  “If you knew it was a training exercise,” he asks. “Would you have shot the kid and the mum. Kept Leach off your back?”

  I flop back onto the bed. Pick up my Com from the side locker. Press the Unlock with my thumb. I slide to the picture of Ela I took that last day in the Jacob’s shed. She’s smiling and her hair’s a mess because she’s just pulled the Swanndri on. I try to convince myself I’m just doing this to do what Jacob said. He said to fight all this by going back to what I believe in. But I know it’s not the truth.

  “Nah,” I say. “The captain needs to know there are some things I won’t do.”

  I slide to messages. Read the ComScreen. Three missed Connects. Jacob must want me to make contact. Will need to do that soon. Need to tell him how Leach handled today. Tell him not to authorise anything until I know about response times and what Intel Vector have. If today was real, and someone from a Cell is doing the sabotage and they get caught, well, I’ve seen the InterrogationVids, and the one Jacob and Fitzgerald showed me starring Nick and Curley was amateur hour. We get shown them, a couple a day, low dosed with something that will make us accept the violence, they say it’s to ‘desensitise’ us so we can do our jobs. Jacob says it’s only a low dose so I can survive it if I hold onto what I believe in, don’t give into it he says.

  Fuck that would be all right if after all the indoctrination I still knew what I believed.

  “What about the girls in the foyer?” I ask.

  “Same,” says Jeron.

  I slide back to the picture of Ela. Try a Connect with her, just in case. Maybe after six months I’ll finally be allowed to contact her. The Connect claws at the shields on her Com then comes back as usual. I figure the shields are still the ones Jacob erected after I killed Vincent and the sidekick.

  No change there. Bet he left them there as a warning.

  I slide my finger across the screen. Check Ela’s Status page.

  Jacob didn’t think to shield Status so I know the school year is nearly over for Ela and she’s been accepted for Med School.

  Read the screen. She hasn’t posted anything that’s news. Been to school, been shopping with Isabelle. She’s been back with her old crowd for months now.

  Wonder where that Amon fits in?

  I go to the picture again. Touch the screen. Outline the shape of her face with my thumb.

  Should have told her I loved her that day in the shed. I knew that was what she was angling for. Couldn’t make the words come out. And now this is getting too close to stalking, she hasn’t tried to Connect with me even once.

  Jeron’s sitting on the side of his bed watching me.

  “Who is she?” he asks and nods at the Com. “You look like that every time you pick up that Com.”

  “No one.” I turn the Com off, put it back on the side locker. We’re celibate, focused, protectors of the Cradle. That’s what the ‘Protect and Respect’ creed says anyway.

  “Yeah, right,” says Jeron. He stands up, pulls off his vest then peels off the compression suit underneath, wanders to the locker again, just a long ripple of muscle, head to toe. Pulls out the black BDUs we wear around base, dumps them on his bed. Shakes out the pants, pulls them on, picks up the t shirt. “Coming to the Rec after debriefing?” he asks as his head appears out of the top of the shirt. Jeron fits the bill. Jacob’s rules. If you have friends, make sure they’re Elite, you have to look and act like they’ve turned you, no Locals.

 
; Not too hard to obey that rule. Locals are pretty thin on the ground here.

  Jeron hauls on the boots, does them up.

  “Nah,” I say. “I’ll go for a run.”

  “Meet you at the Mess later then,” he says as he stands up, he goes towards the door, then stops, turns round. “And if I was you I wouldn’t let the captain see you looking at that ‘no one’ on your Com like that. You’d be in Re-Education so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  At the debrief Captain Leach stands up front, he’s out of combat gear in the black BDU’s like the rest of us, but taller, wider, stronger than anyone in the team. And it’s just our squad in the room with him, he’s just talking to the ten of us, this unit he’s put together.

  First Leach shows us footage saved earlier from a live stream from a DroneCam, an explosion at the hospital, smoke billowing, people running, one end of the building slowly subsiding, bodies on the ground, silent chaos, the way it was when we arrived.

  “They found the bomb,” he says. He waves his hand at the VidScreen.

  Now we can see the bomb debris, exploded fuse, jagged, ripped casing. He points the laser at a bit of junk. “It had a timer, the bomb could have been planted there anytime and set to detonate when it did, that explains why we found no one. And somehow the DroneCams missed them leaving.”

  Yeah, somehow those Drones missed them leaving, because this was probably all a training exercise.

  “Any idea who’s doing the sabotage?” asks Levi like he’s buying into this, he’s sitting on the other side of Jeron.

  Leach shrugs. “Might get some DNA off the bomb.”

  Yeah right, DNA from the Vector Technician they got to set this up.

  Leach, waves at the scene again, it moves on to the next Vid scene, us sitting in the Hover, combat gear, black helmet, visor, black coat, boots, and gloves, Vector StormTroopers, like the couple of hundred other men sitting there dressed exactly like us. Soldier dress up dolls. They’re trained to work as a solid mass, a relentless and overpowering machine, marching straight at the threat and crushing it.

  Do those other guys get a debrief too? Or is it just us?

  Jeron and me, and the rest of our unit sitting together at the back of the quivering metal shell are different, same gear as everyone else there but different training, we’re trained to work in pairs, track the target, get into position and wait until we have it in our sights. After about six weeks of basic training at the Outpost, the ten of us got transferred, suddenly there’s just us and we’re in this Compound in this disused town sliding around pillars, kicking in doors, crawling up to windows, across parapets, hiding behind an ESD, leaping to our feet, firing as we run to the next lot of cover, firing at the cardboard cut-outs of saboteurs, rioters, thugs mugging old ladies or attacking young girls.

  Then there was the endless time in the shooting range perfecting the shot, taking out the same cardboard cut-outs, prone, or standing or leaning on something, taking careful aim for the perfect long shot.

  A fun way to spend four months, with a group of guys that get on, doing something you’re good at.

  Jacob says it sounds like our squad has been trained as a specialised sniper unit, that’s why we are treated to all this special attention.

  Leach talks through this part of the Vid like it’s just an introduction.

  “This is what the last six months of UrbanCombatTraining have been about,” says Leach, still in debrief mode. “This was your first mission; the first time you’ve been let out. You didn’t get who did this, but you all did well, just a couple of things to tidy up.”

  Jeron turns his head, looks at me, training exercise, his eyes say, I nod. Jeron’s dad’s a bigwig in Vector. He says that’s how he came to shoot well enough to get in the squad, he’d been shooting with his dad on the Vector shooting range for years.

  In the Vid Jeron looks over at me, I remember I couldn’t see his eyes through his visor. One side of his mouth twists up, he gives a grin like a kid standing on the side line of a rugby game watching his team play, like he can’t wait to get on the field.

  I had that heightened, let’s get this done, feeling too. I see myself look around at the others sitting near, Sharpe, Levi, Hood and so on, they’re all leaning forward, like Jeron and me, waiting, barely suppressed eagerness.

  In the Vid you can see the way the whomp, whomp, whomp of the Hover vibrates the shell, you can feel it in the back of the seat, the strapping of the harness, up through the floor and the soles of your boots. Inside the beat isn’t as loud but it’s the same insistent sound. I felt real pumped, adrenalin, testosterone, ready to go do what we’d been trained to do.

  I see myself look across at Jeron sitting facing me. He looks Hispanic, black hair, brown eyes, olive skin, so he stands out here too. There’s a little patch at the bottom of South America too where Humicrib harvest genes, it doesn’t have Genus 6, probably below 35 degrees’ latitude south, and that’s where his parents were when they wanted a kid, got transferred here a few years ago.

  Jeron’s leaning forward, forearms crossed on his laser, laser across knees, studying nothing, waiting for the Hover to settle, the wings to lift so we can get started.

  Then the rhythm of the Hover changes as it lands, the unclick of the locking mechanism in the waiting pause.

  Jeron’s mouth moves.

  “Showtime,” he undoes his harness like everyone else, then rests his gloves on the laser, prepared to snatch it up and move when he’s given the order.

  I see me unlatch my harness too, grip the laser.

  The rest of the Company stream out of the Hover. They form the perimeter. Wait for orders before they start that relentless jog march, bull dozer search.

  Our squad waits in the Hover for the signal.

  Ten pairs of eyes watch the Captain.

  He’s lead all the training. Can do it all himself. Can beat us at everything. Now he’s leading this mission. And after twenty weeks of training with him I think if we were on the same side I’d follow him to hell and back.

  He peers out under the wing, holding onto the top of the door frame, watches the VTroopers, waits for the perimeter to form, then gives us the signal, swings out through the door and we follow him and jog march behind him, carrying the lasers at the ready, until we reach the cover of the parking building.

  Leach signals, ‘halt’, he stops, we stop. Eleven guys in a bunch.

  I was still hyped.

  Looked around.

  Watched the perimeter form.

  Six Hovers, figure nearly a thousand guys and us. And it looks like we’re in hell already, bodies and dust and chunks of building, tiles and tortured steel, and noise surround us.

  “You know the drill,” says Leach, nods at me and Jeron. “Fraser and Donovan take the East building, get up to the roof, find a vantage point that will cover right to the Hover rail.” He waves his arm at the rail as a train goes by, frightened faces flicker behind the glass.

  “Yes, Sir,” we say, watch him directing the rest of the squad. He’s got his visor raised, he’s ramrod straight, got that suppressed, ‘this is it’ energy about him.

  “Sharpe and Hood take the West. Levi lead the rest, search beyond the perimeter, flush them out.”

  Me and Jeron take off in one direction, Sharpe and Hood in the other.

  We get to the East building, and it all looks real, not a cardboard cut-out in sight, just dust and bodies and chunks of building, debris laying around right up to the entrance. But the building hasn’t been touched by the blast and I remember there was no smell, none of that burning flesh and death smell, and there was that smothering noise I couldn’t figure out.

  That all made me think that maybe this was just an exercise.

  I watch as Jeron crouches outside the entrance, beside the wide glass doors, I’m behind, covering him, the building towers over us, gleaming white, polished marble, darkened windows reflecting the buildings around us and the shattered corner of the hospital. The sensor
picks us up. The doors slide open with a whisper.

  No blast.

  No gunfire.

  No voices.

  Jeron slides around the wall like a shadow, back to it, laser held out in front. He peers around until he can see into the foyer, pulls back.

  “Clear,” he yells, telling anyone inside we’re coming in.

  We ease into the building, side by side, backs to the wall, lasers held ready.

  Pale grey tiles stretch out across the floor in the front of us, darker tiles outline the shape of the foyer, a curve of polished steel snakes around the reception area. It’s one of those buildings where the foyer soars the full height and glass bridges connect the rooms.

  And a couple of the girls dressed the way Ela dresses, all tiny, look but don’t touch, clothes, hover frightened near the desk area. That’s something I hadn’t expected, that the Elite would be afraid of Vector too. We’re supposed to be the protectors of the cradle of the world, that isn’t the way we’re seen.

  I watch me and Jeron ignore protocol, we don’t shoot the girls.

  Leach freezes the Vid.

  “Explain that decision,” he says to Jeron, real silky. “You were first in so you made that call.”

  “They’re just kids,” says Jeron, “and the way they’re dressed, no chance of concealed weapons.”

  “Not your call,” says Leach. “Do what you’re trained to do. Strike one.”

  He turns back to the VidScreen with a wave, starts the Vid again.

  “How do you get to the roof?” shouts Jeron at the girls, laser still held vertical.

  One of the girls points to the lifts, the other to a service door to the side.

  We move through the foyer, ignore the lift, take off up the service stairs.

  Another wave from Leach, pauses the Vid again.

  “Good call there,” he says. “Too much risk of being trapped in the lift.”

  That’s the way Leach does it, hands out the shit sandwich, commend, recommend, commend.