by Shuvom Ghose
I started yelling into my mike. "Fuck you, Oakley! We're going to kick down the door of that res room you're in, and then we're going to hold you down as we feed your brain to the white slugs we've hidden in the res tanks! Get your BlackShirts ready, and prepare to be eaten, because HERE WE COME!"
Zazlu and Butcher were looking at me like I was insane. I covered my mike and whispered, "Let's go to Comms."
Into our ears, Oakley was saying, "What? Those white things- what are those? Are they supposed to be there?" as we threw away our throat mikes, backed away from that hallway and climbed the stairs leading to the Comms tower.
Where our last hope lay.
After a short firefight with two BlackShirts we unfortunately had to kill (one resurrected), we kicked open the door to Comms and discovered it was where something else also lay.
Inspector General Himenez.
His leg was bandaged, propped up on the counter as he was uploading something and listening to comms traffic with another officer. There was a gun and a walkie-talkie on the counter as well. He saw us and dove for it. So did I.
I got to the gun first. But he was going for the radio.
"They're in here! Comms tower!" he yelled before we wrestled the walkie-talkie away from him.
"Now why did you have to go and do that?" I said.
Himenez put on his own buffering band and held it down. "I don't care if they kill us all. Anywhere you wake up, I'll follow and bring you to justice."
"Not anywhere," I said, and then there was knock on the door.
"Lieutenant Forrest?" Doctor Murphy said, being let in by Butcher. "It's chaos out there, the slugs are everywhere and I was looking for you when I heard this voice telling me..." Her eyes got wide, seeing the five spiders crammed into the tiny office with us.
"This is the correct female?" Blue Wave asked me. "The one that is easy to tip over?"
"Yep, you did great Blue Wave." I turned to their leader. "Red-Stripe, you better get your guys out of here. They don't make these in your size," I said, tapping my buffering band.
"It has been a pleasure," the knives-on-knives voice said in my head. "You are truly one of the greatest hunters of your clan."
Why did his praise make me so proud again? I looked up at the towering spider.
"Thanks, Red-Stripe. As are you." I touched his slick, black shell. "Also, no matter what happens, search for a man called 'Tornier' in the farms behind the base. Working together, your clan and his could tame this planet in ways you can only dream of."
"I will. Good luck."
The spiders left and we shooed the terrified Comms officer out with them, but I grabbed the buffering band off her head as she passed. Himenez wouldn't move.
"Anywhere you go," he said, holding his own buffering band around his head with both hands.
"Suit yourself," I said.
Zazlu caught my arm. "We are trapped in a tower. If they just kill us here, we will resurrect into their hands."
"Or their slugs," Butcher added. "What's the plan?"
In response, I used Comms to radio to the orbiting station.
Lieutenant Grant answered.
"So that's where you've been this whole time," I laughed. "I thought you were sitting this one out because you loved us."
"Don't try it," Grant said. "Just because we were in prison once doesn't mean we're on your side."
"That's not what I was thinking. In fact, you're one of the few men left that I can trust to do the right thing."
"I don't care what you say, Forrest. We're guarding the lifeboat. We're protecting the last hope for everyone on this planet. If you resurrect here, we'll arrest you and turn you in."
"I know. That's why I want you to turn that resurrection station off."
"Off?"
"Just for a minute. There will still be two stations down here to take any casualties, but we're not planning on making any more."
"Why should I?"
"Have you been listening to what's been going on down here?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Have you been watching? The satellite feeds? You saw those Immortals make a run to those caves and come back, right?"
"Yeah, we saw that."
"In the middle of the most important battle yet? Kind of weird, huh? We need you to remember that after we're gone. Tell people what you saw, what you heard. Now, is that station switched off yet?"
I heard him take a deep exhale. "Okay. It is. We still read the other two stations on the ground. If you do anything to hurt those people down there while this lifeboat is off-"
"We never hurt anyone but ourselves. That's the Infinity Squad way. You're a good soldier, Grant. Give us at least a minute. Out."
I walked over with the buffering band I had taken from the Comms officer and put it on Doc Murphy's head. "What is this?" she asked, suddenly scared. "A suicide cult?"
"Yeah sir, I'm not seeing the plan here either," Ann-Marie said.
"He is trying to get you lost in a crowd of clones," Himenez laughed. "But it will not work."
I switched the main antenna to transmit on all the main interstellar frequencies as we heard boots marching up the tower steps. I picked up the mike. "This is Lieutenant Forrest of Infinity Squad! I'm looking for Encounter Bot Two, if that is your real name."
The pounding on the door became louder, like a battering ram was being used. And then shots started coming through it. We all ducked behind the last row of computers, except Himenez, who just yelled, "They're in here! Come get them!"
"Sir, seriously, what's the plan?" Zazlu demanded, trading shots through the closed door at our attackers.
"The plan is to get lost and never be seen again," I said. "Encounter Bot 2, we need evacuation! I know you are still around! Two females and three... okay, four males. We need evacuation, now!"
"They will never get here in time," Himenez gloated as the door was almost broken down.
"Not unless we go to them," I said, and pulled my last grenade out.
Damn. And I was really hoping to save it for Oakley's office.
"Sir, I don't think that-" Butcher began, then got a certain horrified look on her face I had only seen once before. I knew why. Her buffering band had just gone red too.
I pulled the pin.
"Lieutenant! Please!" Murphy screamed.
"Forrest!"
"Sir!"
"You have to trust me," I said, dropping the grenade as the door crashed in.
We woke up in a tank of hot, relaxing water.
Everyone was screaming except me. I was either going to be right or be dead, there was no need to scream about it.
I looked around. The resurrection tubs were just like ours, fifteen of them laid out in three rows of five. But the room we were in, none of us had ever seen before. It seemed like it was grown, not built. All the walls were curvy organic shapes like we were inside some big metal heart.
"What just happened? Where are we?" asked a stunning blonde pleasure model to my right, sitting up in the tanks without bothering to cover herself. That would be Ann-Marie.
"Where... what..." an identical stunning blonde pleasure model said, waking to my left. She saw her new, huge, wet breasts and shrieked, throwing her hands over them. That would be Doc Murphy. I would miss her red hair.
The male clone in front of me was looking around. "Is this..."
"Yeah, Zaz, it is," I said.
"Woah!" the clone behind me laughed. That would be Juan.
To the back left, a clone was sitting up and looking around in a very precise manner. That would be Himenez.
"Now that we're actually here," I told the group, "I feel obligated to mention that I was only about 50% sure that this would work."
"But this isn't the lifeboat," Ann-Marie said. "I've been there."
"No, but we are in space."
The door to the room opened, and we all tensed when a clone walked in. He was unarmed, and didn't wear fatigues, just a plain flightsuit. He had no nametag and no distinguishing features.<
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"Hey Lieutenant Ridley," I said. "Long time no see."
The man chuckled and shook his head. "You always were too smart for your own good."
"Lieutenant!" Ann-Marie gasped. "You resurrected on a Benefactor ship after you died?"
"Yes," he chuckled. "But the bodies back then weren't nearly as good as the ones you're in. The Benefactors hadn't stolen the secret recipe from the humans yet."
"How many trips to the lifeboat did it take you?" I asked. "That Encounter Bot can't be fun to steer in zero-g."
"Five. Who knew cloning was so complicated?" He looked at me. "You shouldn't have been able to figure this out."
"You shouldn't have gotten photographed next to an Encounter bot trying to make peace with a bunch of Hell-Spiders," I shot back. "That caused us a lot of trouble."
"Satellite pics? No one looks at all of those anyway."
I nodded at Himenez, who still hadn't spoken. "He does."
Despite the hot water, Doc Murphy was shivering in her new body, tucked into a tight ball in her tank. "What's going on? What resurrection station is this?"
"I'm sorry! Let me get you some towels and clothes," Ridley said, opening a cabinet that was growing out of the curved wall.
While he passed out towels, I answered, "Doc, this is the station that the Benefactors use to abduct people at the moment of their death, while making it look like their buffering band failed."
"Why?"
"Well, in Ridley's case, because they needed someone to talk to the Hell-Spiders," I said. "Spiders are psychic, they talk between organic minds. Doesn't work so well if all you use are the Encounter bots."
"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you guys," Ridley said, passing out clothes behind me. "I didn't choose to wake up in these tanks, and when I did, the Benefactors told me I could talk to the spiders and no one else. I almost lost it the next time I saw you all, straggling in through the gate, sweaty, muddy and all snake-bitten."
"I wondered why an encounter bot wanted to read my report," I laughed.
"And why did the Benefactors need to talk to the spiders?" Zazlu asked.
"Hell if I know," I said, looking expectantly at Ridley.
He sat on the edge of a res tank as we dried ourselves. In these tanks, the water drained out the bottom after a while, so you didn't have to stand up and show your goods to everyone as you dressed. I still tied the towel around my waist as I dressed, just like I had hundreds of times during my childhood on the beach.
"The Benefactors believe they are charged with giving alien races access to the wormgates when they meet a certain standard," Ridley said. "That was only one other race for the last three hundred years. But now five separate species, including humans, are being given access to the wormgates almost at once. They're going to meet, eventually. There will be misunderstandings, and there will be conflict. The Benefactors want to limit that."
"So they wanted to set up a special force, to protect neutral sites where the different races could have safe places to meet and talk," Ridley continued. "To prevent incidents during meetings which could lead to inter-wormgate war. And to gather information for disputes leveled by one race against another."
"Sort of like a security force for a space U.N.," I said.
"Kind of," Ridley replied. "This force would also be responsible for preventing unauthorized items from passing through the wormgates. The really nasty stuff like nukes, self-replicating nanotech, Precursor viruses. Stuff that could kill whole worlds."
Ridley looked at us. "This force needed to be adaptable to all environments and circumstances, astute in politics and personal relations, unmatched as border guards and detectives, and absolutely unsurpassed in the art of personal combat. Of all the known sentient species, one fit the bill best."
Juan was nodding. "Humans."
Ridley made a face. "No. Hell-Spiders. Humans were third on the list. The Benefactors actually approached the spider clans a year ago, in the flesh."
Ann-Marie sat up. "Sir, have you seen a Benefactor? In person?"
Ridley smiled. "I was a Benefactor, for a while. That's what I resurrected into, I think. Or some half-human mix. That's why it's hard to keep the 'I' and 'we' separate when I talk about them now."
"What do they look like?" I asked.
"That's classified," he said, smiling, then continued. "But the spiders weren't interested. Too insular, too attached to their jungle. And I don't think we ever really got the point across that we were from outer space. That's hard for them to picture." He frowned. "And then some exploding bee killed the Benefactor envoy. Which was a big deal to us. Them. Anyway, then the Benefactors made sure humans were given access to specific gates that would let them 'discover' the Hell-Spider planet."
"So we could meet and talk some sense into the spiders?" Zazlu asked.
The Lieutenant laughed. "No, so we could do what humans always do. See big, black, scary seven foot tall monsters and try to kill them!"
Juan was zipping up his flightsuit. "How does that help? That would just piss the spiders off."
"Exactly," Ridley said. "The idea was to finally get the spiders to realize what beings from outer space could do to them, and why it would be better if they were the ones doing the policing. You can't beat mind-readers for a pre-emptive peacekeeping force, and no one's more motivated to become peacekeepers than those who have just been massacred."
"That's why you went to the northern city after I bombed it," I said. "You were trying to recruit again. But it didn't work."
Ridley shrugged. "That was the wrong type of spider clan, so I didn't really want it to work. I'm low on the totem pole here, but I've convinced them I know how to recruit."
"That you do," I laughed.
He looked me right in the eye and smiled at me. "And based on what I'm hearing about your exploits on that planet down there, I'm also halfway to convincing the Benefactors that an all-spider team may not be the best way to go."
I gulped. "Well, if you're making a force like you described...I'd probably want to start with someone who's great in the field. Someone tough as nails that people will follow into the gates of hell."
"Yep. You always need one of those," he said, patting Zazlu's shoulder.
"And a dead-eye sniper who's the best damn intelligence officer in the army wouldn't hurt."
"Love to have one of those," Ridley admitted, nodding at Butcher.
"And you always need a doctor," I offered, watching Murphy's reaction out of the corner of my eye. "One that specializes in resurrection technology."
"That would be handy," Ridley agreed.
I sighed. "And I guess... if you're trying to catch smugglers and resolve trade disputes across seven different alien cultures and languages, you'd need someone fearless, someone who's an absolute bulldog for hunting down records and can gather facts like a supercomputer."
Ridley made a face again. "Who? Juan?"
"No!" I laughed. "Our Inspector General over there. If he's willing."
Himenez was just looking at me. He still hadn't spoken, but I saw the gleam in his eye.
"We'll see," Ridley said, looking the bureaucrat over. "But what I do need is a team leader."
"That you do. But you've already got one of the best, sir," I sighed.
"I was talking about you, doofus. I'm going to be too busy recruiting the other teams to lead the first one."
"Oh," I said, blushing. I hadn't expected to lead anything, now that Ridley was back.
He looked me in the eyes. "Lieutenant, you did a good job, no, an exceptional job, keeping this team together, achieving your objectives and most importantly, keeping them true to their conscience, when a lot of temptations, stress and bad orders were thrown your way. That's the kind of man I want guarding a wormgate when literally an entire star system is trying to bribe or force their way through it."
I felt my chest swell. I had made a lot of mistakes the last few months, tried to do the best I could in his absence. But hearing him say that now made m
e feel I had done the right-
"And you'll need someone to talk to reporters!" Juan added. "I know a good one!"
Ridley set his mouth in a line. "No. We don't need that. At all. We stay out of the press. I don't want people to even know we're there, like the Secret Service."
"We'll find something for you to do, Juan," I said. "We may need an alien food taster. Or someone who's killed a dinosaur." A sudden thought hit me. "And if we're dealing with Benefactor technology and six other advanced species, we'll need a tech. Someone incredible who can hook a printer to a toaster."
"Yeah. I know," Ridley said. "Lucky we went and abducted him too before he got arrested. He and the other squad members you left on planet are playing pool in the break room." Ridley frowned. "It's 3D pool, though, and I don't think they understand the rules yet."
I sighed in relief. I hadn't wanted to leave the privates and Steve on-planet, but my options had gotten too limited too quickly. I had told them to blame everything on me and hope for a dishonorable discharge. But this was better. There was real potential in some of them.
Ridley smiled. "It also doesn't hurt to have one psychic, terrifying horse-sized monster on your team, either." And then Three-Spot walked in the door, with a shiny new metal razor claw grafted to his arm.
I stared at it, then Ridley. "What the fu- how long have we been out?"
"Three days," he laughed. "Our buffering bands really buffer." He laughed again at my shocked face. "What? We had to make your new bodies." He shook his head. "Two females and four males. With less than a minute's notice. What are we, a fast food joint?"
I was just shaking my head, then grinned at Three-Spot.
"You really want to go policing the universe with me?"
"Yes, Group of Trees. With your expert pack of hunters." He looked at Doc Murphy. "And your future mate."
"What! No! I'm not..." Shannon protested, but then started blushing very deeply. And when I reached a hand over from my tank to hers, she took it. Sometimes having a psychic wingman helps.
"So no ill effects from all that poison?" I asked the spider.
"With enough freshly-killed food, I am recovering steadily."
"And having one claw hacked off? That won't stop you?"
