by Shuvom Ghose
Infinity Squad
Copyright 2012, Shuvom Ghose
Thanks to my incredible writer’s group, Chandler, Rich, Rick, Dale and of course my wife Llalania, for motivating me and helping me to finish this book. It wouldn’t have been possible without you guys!
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Chapter One
Hell-Spiders have always been hard to kill.
They're fast; I bet Private Fredricks won't be able to raise the food tray in front of his chest before that foot long razor claw- yeah, he's done.
They're tough; I watched the chef dive over the counter and break his carving knife on the horse-sized spider's black shell even as I drew my equally effective Colt .45 and started forward.
And they're mean as hell; the Hell-Spider who had managed to sneak into our base cafeteria in the middle of night knocked the chef down, stepped on his head with one tree-trunk-sized leg and THEN turned back to finish disemboweling Fredricks as the private screamed and screamed.
But luckily, besides wearing his wife-beater and sweatpants, Fredricks was wearing his buffering band around his head, five lights green, and would live again. The chef was not. I hoped Fredricks knew how to cook.
I jumped onto the cafeteria table and started running diagonally to the intruder. I could see the fucker tracking me even as three other soldiers fell on it. It's uncanny how the Hell-Spiders are able to multi-task like that. The Spider ducked its head just enough to dodge the lead pipe Sergeant Ashoka was swinging at it from behind, then mule-kicked Ashoka into the wall even as it cut some female quartermaster in half and blocked a chair another private was thrusting at it. All while tracking me with its four calm, black eyes.
The Spider threw the chair at me after wrenching it from the private's warm, dead hands- really dead; the private wasn't wearing his buffering band, no matter how many times we officers had told him to.
But I knew it didn't matter how fast, tough or mean this Hell-Spider was. Not when he was standing right in front of a full propane tank.
I rolled under the flying chair and came up lying on my side, in a perfect firing position. The propane tank was sitting there as big as the moon behind the Spider's legs and it was all I thought about as I pulled the trigger smooth and steady. A perfect shot.
The Spider moved its leg as if it knew where I was aiming all along and my bullet hit its armored shin instead of the tank. And then it threw a table at me.
The table broke my arm and I was switching the gun to my left hand when the Spider jumped over to me and, with a look of pleasure, brought his injured leg down to collapse my chest. I felt the clawed foot pass through my ribs, my heart and spine before coming to a hard stop on the linoleum floor.
I woke up in a tank of luke-warm water, screaming.
There were wires coming from my head, my aching head, and I was naked. I grabbed at what should have been a gaping hole in my chest and felt only smooth, undamaged pecs. With unfamiliar, brown-skinned hands. I started screaming again.
A red-headed woman in a lab coat rushed over and put her hand on my shoulder.
"Calm down, trooper, it's okay, you'll be fine. You were just killed and you have been resurrected, just like they covered in Boot Camp."
That at least got me breathing again. "Hell-Spiders!" I gasped. "Fucking spiders-"
"Are gone now. You're safe here. Now, what's your name, trooper?"
I looked at her again. Clear green eyes, a long, elegant neck, and a smile that made you feel like home. Heck, if you took off her glasses, she could even have been prom-queen. Unlike me. Now I'd look like half the idiots in this army. No, correction- ALL the idiots in the army. The smart ones didn't get killed.
"Jonah... Second Lieutenant Jonah Forrest," I sighed, sinking back into the warm water. "Second in command, Infinity Squad."
She smiled and looked down at her clipboard. "Okay, good, I've got you in our records. Now, what is your Key Phrase, so that I can confirm your identity?" When I didn't say anything, she looked up from her digital clipboard. "What's wrong?"
"I just...it's... I really expected to get through my tour and get back to Earth. Whole."
She smiled again. "Trooper, everything that is important to who you are has been preserved. Your memories, hopes and dreams, even your thoughts right up until you died were transmitted perfectly into this new clone body. You're still you in every way that matters."
I sighed, then said, "War does not determine who is right, only who is left."
"What's that?"
"My key phrase."
"Well, that's quite profound for a front line soldier, isn't it?" she said with an amused smile, looking at her clipboard and pressing a button. "Yes, that matches what I see here. I confirm you are Second Lieutenant Jonah Forrest."
She hit a button on her clipboard, then pulled a barcode scanner-like device from a deep pocket of her lab coat and pressed it over my heart. But instead of reading a barcode, it burnt one into my skin.
"Ahh! Dammit Doc! Warn a guy!"
She put a soothing lotion on the singed flesh right away, and when her gloved hand pulled away, a barcode and "Lt. Jonah Forrest" were printed in black ink on my chest.
"Sorry, soldier. Now can I have your wrists, please?" I offered them up. She held the scanner up again, then paused and said, "Now this may sting a teensy weensy bit."
"Thanks Doc. That makes it so much better." I frowned, but didn't give her the satisfaction of crying out as she singed both my wrists.
The corner of her mouth turned in a wry smirk and she turned away. "A person's first death is always the toughest. Take all the time you need, Lieutenant."
As I watched what her low heels did to her bare calves under her lab coat as she walked away, I considered doing just that. I hadn't seen a real woman since we had gotten planetside a month ago. Well, there was Ann-Marie, but she didn't really count, did she? I settled deeper into the warm water.
"So... how long was I gone for?"
The doctor gave me a strange look as she checked the vitals of one of the other of the thirty clones waiting in half-filled tubs. "You've forgotten a lot since Basic, haven't you, Lieutenant? We always have the tubs on automatic stand-by. The download and imprinting shouldn't have taken more than a few seconds after your buffering band detected your dea-WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
What I was doing was ripping wires from my head, leaping from the tank nude, and throwing on my standard-issue fatigues soaking wet.
"WAIT! You shouldn't even stand up yet! Your brain is still adjusting to the new body!"
"Everything's still in the same place, right? Then I should be fine! I'm getting this fucker back!"
I caught a look at myself in the mirror. I was taller than before, a few years younger, and a mix of Black, Hispanic, and Asian origin. The light brown skin made my lean, wiry muscles stand out even more. I felt lighter on my feet, but stronger too. The perfect all-around athlete. And then the dizziness hit.
I gripped the side of the tub and the doctor ran back to steady me. "See? You're not ready for duty just yet-"
I shook her hand off and stood again. "I don't need to go far, Doc, just the cafeteria!"
Her eyes got wide and she clutched the clipboard to her chest. "Wait- THEY'RE INSIDE THE BASE? RIGHT NOW?"
"Of course! Can't you hear the sirens?"
"What sirens?"
The annoying buzzing in my ears since I had woken up had grown into an emergency klaxon I couldn't ignore anymore. In fact, it was still getting louder. I slapped at my ears. "The clones," I yelled, "are their implants deeper than normal bodies?"
She nodded. "Yes, we can implant them right at birth, directly into the ear canal- WAIT! Please, just stay until a security team arrives!"
But I was already at the door. I grabbed another buffering band and put it on my head, just in case. "Keep those tanks warm, Doc, I'll be back in less than two minutes!"
"Why? Where are you going?"
"To get my real body back!"
There were soldiers running every direction in the hallways, most in their sleep clothes. It was 3 AM in Greenwich, England, 78 light years away, so of course most of our base had just been in bed.
The emergency klaxon being transmitted directly into our ear canals had thankfully switched to a baritone voice repeating "Intrusion in the cafeteria. Single Hell Spider. All troopers arm yourself and respond," at ten second intervals. So at least I could think again.
One minute for waking in the tank and talking to the doc. One minute to get back to the cafeteria. Thirty seconds to deal with the eight-legged bullet catcher. And one minute to get back to the doc. Three and a half minutes; the human brain could live without oxygen for four. I would just make it.
At the end of the hallway, a group of soldiers were lining up to get rifles and body armor out of the armory. A sign to the right said "Hangar" and one to the left said "Cafeteria". I turned right at a full sprint.
I had to pound on the hangar door and yell my name three times before the techs let me in. Because, you know, Hell-Spiders always announce themselves before coming in to slaughter you. That took ten seconds I didn't have.
"Halon canisters!" I yelled at the tech who finally unlocked the door.
"Wha-"
"HALON CANISTERS!"
He jumped back and pointed with a shaking hand at a stack of metal cylinders on a rack, each about the size of a breadbox. I grabbed one and an oxygen mask and sprinted out the door.
I put on the mask as I ran past the group of soldiers still getting equipment out of the armory. The group outside the cafeteria was a different story. It was a ragged collection of cooks, troopers and pencil pushers, armed with baseball bats, shovels, or even chairs and metal cafeteria trays. They were clustered around the glass cafeteria door, looking in with trepidation. I felt a small twinge of pride that the only one who had both his buffering band and sidearm on him was Private Rex Grimstone from Infinity Squad.
Rex pushed his glasses back on his nose and replied back to the walkie-talkie in his unsteady hand.
"General, he's not coming out. But he's... he's... just sitting there, waiting. And he's stacked the bodies around him and the propane tank for the stove."
"PRIVATE!" General Oakley's voice barked from the walkie-talkie. "I don't care what he's doing! You lead those men IN THERE and GET ME HIS SKULL!"
Grimstone looked like a lost sheep. "But General, some of the people against the explosive tank are still alive. And I've only got..." He looked at the motley collection, including a few rifle-armed soldiers who were just arriving. "It's... a bad situation General. It's going to get messy."
"I DON'T CARE IF IT-" the General was yelling as I turned off the radio in Grimmy's hand.
"I've got this," I told him, my voice muffled through the mask. Then I stole the sidearm out of his holster and kicked in the door.
I heard Grimmy call out behind me: "Wait, who was that?"
The spider was sitting on the floor, legs folded like it was meditating, with bloody bodies piled all around it. Most of the still moving bodies were draped around the propane tank I had tried to blow up before. When I kicked the door in, the spider looked right at me, then tilted its head like a dog watching TV and even through the gas mask I heard a low, gravelly voice between my ears.
"Is... that you... again...?"
That spider did not just fucking talk to me inside my head.
I shook my head to clear it, causing another short dizzy spell even as I jumped up on the tables and started running diagonally towards it again. The spider sprang to his feet, tracking me. Then it grabbed a chair and threw it at me. I rolled under it just like I had the first time, then rolled immediately again, dodging the table that landed where I would have stopped.
My new body was longer than the old. So when I came out of the roll into a firing position, I had traveled farther than before and had a piss-poor shot at just the corner of the propane tank. A hopeless shot. But it didn't matter. I sighted along the barrel.
The spider moved to block the propane tank again, with his whole body this time. At the last second, I shifted my aim to the Halon canister I had thrown on the ground between us before starting my rolls and shot it instead. White, powdery gas filled our half of the room instantly.
"It IS you..." the voice said again, deep between my ears, and then the Hell-Spider wobbled on its legs and collapsed in a heap. I kept my gun trained on the fucker for another second, then holstered it and ran to my body. What was left of it.
But the head was all I needed. Everything else was just an organ donation, right? I looked down on my beautiful, sleeping face and blond hair as I started dragging the body towards the door. With my new body, my smaller birth frame seemed amazingly light. I was easily halfway to the door when I saw him.
The wounded soldiers piled around the tank were gasping like fish out of water. One of them, a red-headed sergeant, reached for me, begging with his eyes as he struggled to breathe. God damn it.
I gently lay my body down and sprinted over to the sergeant who was bleeding from both legs.
"What the hell happened in there?" Grimstone demanded when I emerged from the glass door, dragging the sergeant. Grimstone tried to enter the room, took one step inside and started coughing. Then gasping. He stumbled out again. "What did you do?"
"No air in there!" I yelled, lifting the sergeant into a waiting stretcher cart. "Take a deep breath and get the wounded out!" I ran into the room again, still wearing the oxygen mask.
"Seriously," Grimstone demanded behind me. "Who IS that?"
He still didn't know as I burst out ten seconds later, dragging my original body out. That he recognized.
"Oh god... Lieutenant..." Grimstone shook his head, then took a deep breath and dove into the cafeteria with the other waiting soldiers.
As I was muscling my own body onto a second stretcher cart, two medics were looking at the sergeant I had dragged out. One put a buffering band on him while the other checked his legs.
"Leg trauma, probably some broken ribs. Looks pretty bad," the second medic said.
"Probably be months before he's ready for patrols again," the one attaching his buffering band said, checked that all the lights were green, then drew his sidearm.
I heard three gunshots behind me as I was sprinting my cart down the halls.
I raced my cart past two confused looking guards back into the Resurrection room.
"I'm back, Doc! And less than four minutes total!"
"GAAAH!" she cried, recoiling from the bloody mess on the cart. "What is THAT?"
"It's my body- my original one!"
"What do you want ME to do with it?"
The lights on one of the resurrection tubs changed from green to red and the clone in it came alive with a rush of breath and splashes.
"God-damn medics!" he yelled, sitting up and feeling his chest.
The doctor started towards him. "Look, Lieutenant Forrest, was it? I can't deal with that now. I've got others to attend to."
"Doc, they can wait- this is my life! MY body!"
Another clone woke up in a tank, cursing the medics just like the first.
"Lieutenant, look- I can't put you back in. We don't have the tech for that, and even if we did..." She glanced over my body on t
he cart. "No heartbeat, no HEART, barely one lung, a severed spine and foot-wide trauma in the middle of your chest... it wouldn't be much of a life."
She gave me a weak smile. "The best I can do is take some...um... samples from it. So that your kids can still look like you." She pulled out a foot-long needle and syringe from her cabinet. "But you don't want to be here when I do it."
I sagged forward, holding the cart for balance.
Damn it. So this was going to be it? Goodbye to the body I had worn since birth? I looked down at my sleeping blond face, still ruggedly handsome even in death. And how many miles had I logged on the running trails outside of boot camp, day after day near the Wyoming space port, or in the weight room, or everything, to give it up now? There was the scar from when that dog attacked me when I was ten.
God damn it. I'd have to learn how to shave again.
The Doctor put her hand on my shoulder. "I'll make sure your body is taken care of properly. You should head back to your barracks."
I sighed, then let go of the cart and walked towards the door.
"So, did you want me to take a sper-... um, sample?" she asked.
"No Doc, I gave at the office."
"What's that?"
"Earth. They've got my sample back on Earth." I sighed, then looked up at the red-headed woman. "Hey, Doc. What's your name?"
"Shannon Murphy. Nice to meet you, Second Lieutenant Forrest."
"Yeah, likewise. Hey, Doc, do soldiers ever complain of hearing strange... voices in their head the first time they come back?"
"The tactical implants would be much deeper in your new ear canal than your old one. It may seem like a different voice at first."
I shook my head. "No, this wasn't like the sirens. This was more... personal. Like a voice talking just to me."
