"The ice queen, she gives everyone a piece of kit," Sanchez continued. "Up to you how you use it."
Rogue accepted this with a nod and found a bag, ripping it down the seam. Inside was a revolver with a couple of extra reloads. He glanced at Sanchez; the prisoner had an assault rifle gripped in his trembling hands. "Here," Rogue offered him the pistol. "Trade with me."
"Nuh, I'll keep this," said the other man.
Rogue shook his head slowly. "I wasn't asking you."
After a moment Sanchez nodded and took the revolver in exchange. "Aye. Guess you'd be a better shot with those GI peepers of yours, right?"
The clone soldier gave the Nort rifle a quick once-over. Satisfied, he studied the lay of the land around them. Where the Quartz Zone proper was a maze of razor-cracked glass crevasses, spires of fused rock and plains of silicon, the test range had been bombarded so many times that it resembled more the crater-pocked surface of Nu Earth's airless moons. Burnt-out frames of dead tanks sprouted from pits of thick grey mud, trenches snaked back and forth with no obvious pattern, and broken porta-domes lay cracked open all across the barren landscape. Once more, Rogue was in his element.
"What do we have?" said Zeke, studying the bandoleer of grenades he held. "We need to pool all the kit, maybe figure out who would be best with what-"
"You ain't the sarge no more!" snapped another prisoner, who sat cross-legged on the dirt, fumbling at the collar of another bag. "This ain't some exercise, bucko, this is every man for himself!" Something made a clicking noise and the sack gave an explosive splutter. The Souther tumbled backwards, a fleshy knot of red skin and white bone where his head had been.
"Griswold grenade," said Rogue grimly, recognising the telltale discharge of the fist-sized anti-personnel weapon. "Better watch the rest of those sacks."
Sanchez nodded in agreement. "She usually booby-traps one piece of kit each time."
Zeke gave him a hard look. "Thanks for mentioning that in advance! Is there anything else we should know?"
The prisoner shrugged and opened his arms to take in the whole vista of the test range. "We'll probably get a five, maybe ten minute start on the Soldats."
Ruiz eyed Sanchez. "You seem to know a lot about this set-up, pal. How do we know you ain't in it with the Norts? A spy in the ranks?"
Rogue watched the interplay between the two men carefully. Sanchez seemed unconcerned. "You wanna tear me?" The prisoner nodded at the combat knife in Ruiz's hand. "Go ahead. Now or later, here or there, I'll be dead. You too. I watched this happen a hundred times from the cellblock."
"To hell with that," snapped Purcell. "I say we double-time it to the perimeter and take a gamble getting over the barriers. If we can make it into open country outside the range, we got a chance."
"Never happen," said Zeke. "You saw this place on the way in, all bunkers and ferrocrete walls. You'd need a tank-mek to crack them."
Ferris gave a cough. "Uh, I got an idea..."
"Go on," said Rogue.
"Yesterday, those Nort atmocraft that got shot at... Well, uh, there was one that went down to the west. There's a chance it could still be airworthy... The Norts build them tough, see."
"You could fly it?" Zeke said. "Get us out of here?"
The pilot shrugged. "No guarantees, but it's a chance, right?"
Rogue hefted the rifle and checked the ammunition pack. "Let's do it."
"Movement," said one of other prisoners. "I see movement back at the dome."
The GI grabbed Ferris's binox and trained them on Domain Delta a few kilometres distant to the point where they'd been dropped. Three hawk-like shapes were lifting away from the landing pad, climbing into the sky and turning toward the range. Rogue caught sight of a figure leaping aboard the last hopper as it took off; a hulking form with dark green skin. "They're coming for us. Three squads."
"We gotta move," said Zeke. "If one of them catches us in the open, the other two will be on us in seconds."
Rogue nodded. "Affirmative. Make for the atmocraft but take an indirect route. We don't want them figuring out what we're up to."
"Just one thing," said Sanchez, drifting over towards Purcell, "what if that ship is wrecked? Then what?"
Rogue handed Ferris back his binox. "Then we'll have to stand and fight."
"Where is he now?" Schrader demanded, scanning the map of the test range from the command centre dais. All trace of her earlier emotional outburst had vanished as if it never happened. She was her clinical, calm self once more, focussed and controlled.
Volks traced a circle with a laser pointer. "In this sector, I believe. Seismic sensors registered a grenade detonation."
She nodded. Another dead Souther. It would not have been Rogue who was caught by the bag trap; he was too smart to fall for something so crude. Such a death would be without artistry or panache and she wanted the GI to perish in a far more meaningful way - at the hands of his former comrades.
A signal blinked on the monitor. "Detection from a static munition test grid," Volks reeled off the information. "Multiple footsteps, westerly direction."
Schrader glanced at the arrow shapes indicating the hunter flyers; they were too far away to converge on the location and besides, to bring them in all at once would ruin the game. She turned her attention to Volks. "What kind of munitions are buried there? Pulse mines, rot-spray nozzles?"
Volks checked a display. "Puffball packs."
A smile crossed her face. "Set the trigger to fire on the last man in line."
"As you order, Kolonel-Doktor."
There was a momentary pause before the indicator for the buried weapon went red, signifying a successful detonation. Schrader visualised the moment in her mind - the instant when the foamy ball of artificially cultured organic muscle inflated into a sphere as large as man's head. It would erupt from its shallow hiding place under the ground like a fast-forward fungal growth, the bio-weapon releasing a deadly shot of fine bone needles in a tight swarm. As a distraction from her main duties, the scientist had cultured the puffball from a class of Nu Earth plant life that had survived into the early years of the war, making it tougher and more resilient, and breeding in a chemical trigger that turned it from a harmless fungus into something far more dangerous. The weapon was ideal for anti-infantry operations, spitting out spines that lanced right through armour weave and chem-suit material.
"Sensors register kill probability, one casualty, ninety-seven per cent," said Volks. "Other targets moving out of the grid's detection range."
She could have used the puffball to kill more of them; but where would the sport be in that? It would be far more enjoyable to cut down the prisoners one by one until only the GI remained.
"Detonation, section four." Schrader recognised Gunnar's voice over the radio from the lead hopper. "What's the situation?"
She tapped the communicator controls on her console, speaking aloud as she manipulated the microwave sub-channels that broadcast alongside the voice band. "Target proceeding toward western sectors of the range. Englobe and attack."
"Say again, Delta?" From the second hopper, Helm's voice was hesitant. She would have to watch his loyalty index closely.
"Units one through three, use your own discretion and attack. Weapons are free, all targets to be considered hostile."
"Please confirm," Bagman joined the conversation. "We are not to apprehend targets? What is the order?"
Volks looked up at her from the operations level. "The conditioning is weakening, I think. They should not be questioning your commands so soon."
Schrader brought up the sub-channel controls and increased the gain. The bio-implants in the G-Soldat bodies were one of her finest pieces of work. The complex knots of vat-grown neural matter and calcium-silicon circuits inside them gave her a window into the minds of her clone soldiers. It had taken months of research, trial and error, but now the current generation of her NexGen carried in their heads an organic receptor designed to accept certain frequencies of microwa
ve radiation. She had conditioned their brains in the gestation stages with cues tied to pre-programmed pulse cycles; at the push of a button, she could make them obey her, as easily as a tug on the leash of an attack dog.
Schrader sent the obedience signal into the minds of the reborn GIs. "The order is to locate and terminate all targets."
"With pleasure," Gunnar growled and his hopper peeled off from the formation. She nodded to herself. Trooper G's innate ambivalence had made him the easiest to manipulate, playing on his rivalry and resentment of Rogue. She doubted that the GI would survive a one-on-one confrontation with the enhanced Gunnar.
"Ferris, come on," said Rogue, placing a hand on his shoulder. "She's dead."
The pilot couldn't look away from the dead Souther's body, the woman's chem-suit riddled with dozens of glistening spikes as long as a human finger. "Who was she?" he asked quietly. "What was her name?"
"Rossi," said Sanchez. "Don't know what unit. She came from the Neverglades front."
"She took my place on the line," Ferris said quietly. "Swapped over with me. I'd have been dead if she hadn't done that." He had not seen Rossi's death; rather, he'd heard it, the hissing thud of noise and the slice of bone skewers through the air.
"Lucky for you," said Sanchez. "Lucky for us. No pilot, no escape, eh?"
"Tell that to Rossi," Ferris replied and followed Rogue.
Strung out in a loose line, they crested a low ridge. Below them, cradled in a shallow valley, the Vulture-class atmocraft rested half-on and half-off a slight incline. The pilot's trained eye instantly saw a dozen pieces of damage, any one of which could mean the ship was beyond saving.
Zeke gave him an expectant look, but then the sergeant looked away. "Trooper!" he called to Rogue. "You hear that?"
The GI nodded, pointing back toward Domain Delta. "Hopper grav-engines, closing fast. Can't see them, they must be coming in low."
Zeke barked out orders. "Ruiz, with me! Purcell, Sanchez, take the others and spread out! We'll draw them off from the wreck." He looked back at Rogue. "You think you can get the flyboy down there in one piece?"
"Count on it." Rogue brought up his assault rifle. "You just keep them outta my hair."
Ferris spoke in a low voice. "Rogue, that ship's worse off than I thought..."
The soldier rounded on him and the pilot was startled by the controlled anger in his yellow eyes. "Ferris, don't quit on me now. You fall to pieces here and I swear I will shoot you myself, got it?"
"Uh, okay."
Rogue sprinted down from the ridgeline as the noise of thruster jets grew louder behind them.
Gunnar looked at the other G-Soldats in the hopper and grimaced; it was like staring into a mirror, but it still turned his gut on some deep, instinctive level. These creeps were still Norts, after a fashion, never mind what Schrader told him. Old habits died hard and his finger was twitchy around the pistol grip of his GI-issue rifle. It was in excellent condition, as well maintained now as it had been on the day that he'd drawn it from stores aboard Milli-Com. It fell easily into his grip in the same way it had since he'd first laid hands on such a weapon, when he was ten Earth-standard years old. Gunnar felt a churn of animosity, another surge in the slow burning fury that directed itself at Rogue. Why had it been him that had to die first in the Quartz Zone? Why not Rogue or Helm or one of the others? They lost six hundred men in the first wave of landings and Gunnar had only made it a dozen metres from the place where he put down, before the blast from a plasma sphere opened him up from thigh to shoulder. He should have lived. It should have been Rogue's dog-chip inhabiting his rifle, not Gunnar reduced to a rectangle of plastic and rage, jammed into the frame of his own damn gun!
His free hand rubbed at a spot on the back of his neck where a bloom of heat was making his muscles bunch. Damn Rogue and his bloody-minded quest for revenge! Gunnar was sick of him making all the choices, running their pitiful excuses for lives. He held the gun in his hands and gestured to the hopper pilot to bring the flyer low. Things had changed now, though. Schrader had given them all the chance to live again and as usual it was Rogue who laid down the law, trying to tell them what to do, to go back to that synthetic hell. Gunnar slid off the safety catch and checked the ammo counter. The rifle was full and ready.
Rogue would have to learn the hard way, Gunnar decided, his eye twitching as the warmth in his head reached forward. The only way Rogue would give up his self-centred quest was if he saw it from their point of view; if only he could know what it was like to walk around in one of these NexGen skins, he would understand how they felt. Gunnar sighted through the rifle's scope as the hopper drifted low and the other clone soldiers leapt out. He saw a crumpled corpse in a chem-suit and held the crosshairs over its heart, imagining he saw blue skin.
If Rogue wouldn't submit to taking Schrader's upgrade willingly, Gunnar would have to force his hand. One shot, then sixty seconds to recover his biochip. Once he was regened, Rogue would be thanking Gunnar for doing it.
The rifleman swung himself out of the Nort hopper and landed in the dirt, his weapon scanning the horizon.
FOURTEEN
COUNTER STRIKE
With Gunnar and the first G-Soldat team on the ground, the lead hopper thundered over the landscape in a wide, low turn.
"Down!" shouted Zeke and the Southers threw themselves into whatever cover they could find; all except Ruiz, who stumbled and fell short of a crater where Purcell and Sanchez had hidden.
"Ruiz!" shouted the woman, peering over the lip of the pit, beckoning. "Come on, man. Get over here!"
The soldier tried to push himself up from the dirt and failed, slipping. Like a fast-moving bird of prey, the hopper was sweeping up behind him, nose dipping downward to present a barbed chin turret.
Purcell bunched her muscles and hauled herself up over the edge of the crater, holding her arms out as far as they would reach. "Ruiz! Get off your ass and run!" Her feet scrambled against the burnt earth. Shots from the hopper churned the ground as the Nort pilot marched the laser bolts toward Ruiz's crawling form. "I'm going to get him!" she snapped, vaulting over the rim.
Sanchez caught her by the straps on her oxy-filter and pulled hard, dragging her back into the crater. "He's already dead."
"No, you son of a bitch!"
Purcell saw Ruiz get to his knees just as the hopper strafed over him in a blare of thruster noise; the shadow of the Nort ship swept by and was gone.
The soldier wobbled, hands coming up to touch the fist-sized hole in his chest, then Private First Class Ruiz fell back into the dirt and died.
Sanchez's chem-hood rang as Purcell backhanded him across the visor. "Bastard!" she spat. "I could have got to him!"
The other trooper rolled up and over the crater edge, throwing her a look. "Maybe I should have let you. Then you'd have been ventilated too." Sanchez dropped to a crouch and took the combat knife from the corpse's grip. "This guy, he was injured, he was slowing us down, aye? Better he bought it now than later, when it cost one of us?"
"Skev you. He was a friend of mine."
Sanchez looked around. "That don't count for nothing out here." He drew his revolver. "Those greenies will be here any second. Move it."
They raced down the steep incline of the valley, half-running and half-falling as the loosely packed earth crumbled around them. The dirt in the test range had been reorganised so many times by bombs and artillery that it resembled a thick layer of dead powder, settling in drifts and dunes. When the winds roared in off the Quartz, there were dust storms thicker than thunderclouds. Rogue was sure-footed and quick, while Ferris flapped his arms trying to keep his balance. The pilot almost collided with the grounded fuselage of the atmocraft as he skidded to a halt.
Rogue panned around with his ersatz rifle. "Do your thing," he ordered.
Ferris hesitated; he now wished that he hadn't said anything about the Nort ship. His suggestion had led them here and if the flyer turned out to be a total loss, it would be on his head.
Ice water flooded his gut as he examined the Vulture. There were the signs of massive fire damage around the engine bells and the odour of spilt thruster fuel even managed to penetrate the chem-filters of his air mask. One of the wings was crumpled against an incline and the cockpit glass was white with shatter lines. "Oh man, this thing isn't going to touch sky ever again."
Rogue gave him a hard stare. "Be sure."
"I am sure!" he retorted, pulling at a hatch that had popped open on impact. "Trust me, don't you think if I could get the hell out of here, I would?" The door fell open and a figure came with it, tumbling out on to the ground. Ferris jumped back in surprise.
"Nort officer," Rogue said, turning over the body. "A kommander, by the rank pins." He tapped the sigil on the dead man's chest. "Internal Affairs. Must have been out here to shut down Schrader's GI stud farm." Rogue looted the body of a handgun and gave it to the pilot. "Take this. We may not be able to get this wreck airborne, but there's gotta be gear on board we can use."
Ferris nodded. "Copy that."
They scrambled into the dim interior of the atmocraft. Sooty deposits from smoke blackened the inner walls of the fuselage and fittings dislodged by the crash dangled like trailing vines. In some places, entire pieces of the hull were missing where curls of plastisteel were folded back in peels. "It's a wonder this thing never went up in a fireball," said the pilot.
"There's still time," Rogue noted. "Get up to the cockpit, see what you can salvage. I'll look for weapons."
Gunnar moved silently, flashing between slabs of cover, ducking into trenches to pass unseen around the Southers. His enhanced hearing picked up the rasping breaths of Purcell and the others and in one moment Zeke dodged by him without ever knowing he was there, hiding in the shadows of a spent fuel tank. He listened to Zeke's thudding heartbeat as he faded away; it would have taken no effort at all to just reach out and kill the veteran. The warm patch on the back of his neck throbbed as the thought crossed his mind. It was a curious sensation, part of him excited at the idea of murdering the soldier, another part sickened at himself for even considering such a thing.
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