by G J Ogden
“Sonner, fall back, now!” Taylor shouted out, his powerful artificial voice carrying over the melee loudly enough to catch Sonner’s attention. She dropped fully behind cover and looked at him as if he was crazy.
“That’s what we’re trying to do, genius!” she shouted back, as a shard of plasma melted the corner of the container next to her head. In his peripheral vision, Taylor saw James lean out and fire, hitting two of the four other Hedalt combatants that were bearing down on Sonner’s position. She peeked out, checking the position of the remaining two, and then called out to Taylor again, “Just get everyone else back on the ship!”
The precarious nature of their situation and the imminent and lethal danger had the effect of a bucket of iced water on Taylor’s head, clearing his mind of its cotton-ball fuzziness. He sprinted out towards Casey, moving too quickly for even Adra or Lux to get a shot off at him, and crouched at her side.
“Hey there, Cap,” said Casey, as if he’d just walked into a bar on a Friday night, “What took you so long?”
“How the hell can you be so damn cheerful at a time like this?” said Taylor, almost laughing, but a plasma shard flashed past and slammed into the wall behind them, causing both to flinch and duck tighter behind cover.
“Can you reach my weapon?” asked Casey, suddenly serious, “If you can rain down some shots on the scary armored guys back there, I’ll make a run for the ship.”
Taylor shuffled lower and then reached underneath Casey’s crouching body, careful not to expose himself to any incoming fire. He just managed to reach the weapon attached to her hip with the tips of his fingers, before drawing it out of its holster. “Got it!” he said, grasping it cleanly and checking that it was loaded. “Are you ready?” Casey nodded, “Then make a run for it on my mark. Three... Two... One, go!”
Taylor sprung up first and aimed at the two military figures in the distance, thanking his simulant body for its laser-precise steadiness, before opening fire. At virtually the same moment, Casey shot up and ran for the airlock hatch, calling to James to follow her. Taylor glanced back seeing that both had made it safely inside, and then continued to aim shots down the long room, successfully keeping the two soldiers in black armored uniforms suppressed. But then he saw the other two Hedalt in blue overalls round on Sonner, and he adjusted his aim, but it was too late; Sonner had already jumped up and was blocking his line of fire. He tracked the closest Hedalt with the barrel of his weapon, but despite his simulant frame giving him a steady hand, he still wasn’t confident that he could get a shot off without risking hitting Sonner. But to his surprise and relief, he didn’t need to. In a flash, Sonner had stripped the long silver bar from the first Hedalt’s grasp, slamming his body into the containers as she did so, before using the stolen weapon to club the second one over the head, knocking it out as cleanly as a general anesthetic. She then kneed the first Hedalt in the gut and swung an uppercut that connected with its jaw with an audible, organic crunch. She was back behind cover again before the Hedalt had even hit the deck.
Sonner saw Taylor gawping – a mix of incredulity and admiration – and she again stared at him like he was crazy. “Are you taking a nap, Captain?” she bellowed at him, as he stood there with a stupefied look on his face, “Get the hell out of here!”
Taylor snapped out of his trance and raced back to the Contingency One, but as he did so, Provost Adra stepped out from her cover and began marching towards him, weapon held low. “Surrender now!” Adra called out to him. “You cannot run, simulant, I will destroy your ship before you can jump away. Save your friends and give yourself to me!”
Taylor aimed his weapon as he ran and fired two shots at Provost Adra, both of which pinged off her dense armor. Then he pressed himself behind the row of lockers where James had been moments earlier and called over to Sonner, who was still taking cover, “Commander, go now, I’ll hold her off!” he shouted, before firing again. This time the round cracked Adra’s armor and bit into her shoulder, but still she advanced. Sonner made a dash for the airlock door and Adra raised her weapon and fired, striking her on the back of her shoulder. Her body armor absorbed most of the energy, but the impact made her tumble forward and fall heavily inside the airlock door, ricocheting off the metal corridor wall. Taylor backed towards the airlock too, firing again and again, striking Adra in the chest and abdomen and then finally managing to slip a round between her armor plates and into her leg, forcing her to drop to one knee. She cried out, more in frustration than pain, and Taylor used the opportunity to flee.
Plasma shards flashed past and he glanced back to see the second soldier advancing, though his gait was awkward and his aim was wild; unlike Adra, he looked like he had already suffered through an arduous battle. Taylor fired blindly at him and scored a lucky hit to his chest armor; it wasn’t enough to penetrate through, but it seemed to wind him and he faltered and dropped to his knees. The opening was sufficient to allow Taylor to dart towards the ship and reach the airlock.
“Simulant!” a voice cried out, and despite the situation, the power and gravitas of the shout compelled Taylor to turn. “I will find you!” Adra bellowed, still on one knee, but eyes fixed on Taylor’s silver orbs. “Whether here or inside the CoreNet, there is nowhere you can hide from me. Nowhere you can run!”
“Taylor, what the hell are you doing, shut the hatch!” cried Sonner, struggling to clamber up after her fall. But as she had done when Taylor was in the Fabric and had possessed the simulant frame of one of Adra’s crew, the military Provost had riled him.
“We’re done running from you!” Taylor shouted back. He was fortunate that his rage was contained only inside his mind; a fully human, emotional Taylor Ray might have charged back out to fight her, and get himself killed in the process. But in his more rational state, he was able to notice something that might otherwise have passed him by. Adra was hurt, and she was also bleeding. She wasn’t invulnerable. She could be beaten. And if she could be beaten then so could all the rest from Warfare Command. “Get used to kneeling in front of me, Provost!” he spat, “Your time is coming to an end.”
Adra roared and raised her weapon, firing wildly towards the airlock, but Taylor had already ducked back inside, and instead the shards of plasma lashed the walls of the docking corridor, scorching and melting the metal like soft plastic.
“Help me close the hatch!” Sonner cried out. She had clambered behind the heavy door, but was unable to push it shut. Taylor joined her, and with his simulant strength added to Sonner’s tired muscles the hatch thudded shut and sealed with a sharp hiss.
Sonner shot a reproving look at Taylor, but did not have the energy to berate him further. Instead, she staggered to the comms panel and opened a ship-wide broadcast, “Casey, we’re all on-board, get us the out of here, and make it fast!”
SEVENTEEN
Provost Adra rose to her feet and glanced down at the wound to her leg, which was slowly leaking blood. Holstering her pistol, she shifted the position of the armor plate to expose the wound, and then reached inside her long, black coat and withdrew her knife. Angling the tip of the serrated edge towards the bullet hole she pushed it inside the wound. For several seconds she dug the blade into her own flesh, until eventually a silver projectile was levered out. It fell to the deck in a pool of blood, covered in small clumps of her skin and tissue. Adra kicked the bullet away and then walked over to where one of the dead dock workers lay prone on the floor. Leaning over the body she cleaned the blade on the back of the corpse’s dark blue overalls, before returning the weapon to its sheath inside her coat. Finally, she re-adjusted the armor on her thigh to cover the now bloodied and ragged hole, tightening the fasteners to seal the injury tightly underneath the onyx-black plating.
“Provost,” groaned Lux, attempting to stand, but barely making it to a low stoop before he had to drop to one knee. The weakness in his body infuriated him. “There is still time to catch them, before they can jump,” he added, after catching his breath again.
The main lights flickered on inside the docking section, replacing the orange hue of the lower level emergency illumination with vibrant white light. Adra stared out across the facility and saw that power was slowly returning to every quadrant and section. The familiar beat of a Hunter Corvette’s engines powering up then drew her attention back to the dock. She glowered at the rogue Hunter Corvette, knowing that there was no way she could return to her frigate in time to catch them. But first they would need to clear the facility, and until then there was still a chance to stop them.
Adra moved beside Lux, grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet; she waited a second or two until Lux’s own legs and body finally held his weight and then released her grip. Lux remained standing, but only just. “Get back to the frigate,” said Adra, glancing back at the scorpion-like ship through the window. “Arm all weapons and prepare to pursue the rogue Hunter Corvette.”
“At once, Provost Adra,” replied Lux, his voice crackly and hoarse, and he immediately turned towards the exit, as quickly as he could manage without risking falling again.
But Adra did not follow Lux; she was already running in the opposite direction, towards the still open airlock of the second Hunter Corvette. She didn’t need her frigate in order to stop them; there was already an arsenal of weapons directly in front of her, if she could reach them in time.
Adra entered the ship and charged down the central corridor of the Corvette, feeling the deck plating vibrate as the ship at the adjacent dock detached. It would still need to navigate out from within the maze of corridors, before it could engage its main ion engines, which gave Adra a window of less than a minute to act. She burst onto the bridge, raced across to the tactical station and slid her hand underneath the counter top of the console. Finding the override switch she held it down and spoke out loud, “Warfare Command control override, Provost Adra.” There was a momentary pause, before the console powered up and the main viewport activated. Adra accessed the weapon systems and selected manual control of the dorsal turret. The bridge trembled as the ship containing the rogue simulants and two humans maneuvered above her, still only using its RCS thrusters. Adra locked onto the ship and its image appeared on the main viewport, spiraling and weaving through the web of corridors and sections at improbable speeds, as if it was fixed to invisible rails. But Adra was not looking at the viewport; she was focused on the targeting console, trying to predict their course and next maneuver, all the while manually tracking their progress with the barrel of the dorsal turret. The rogue Corvette cleared the facility and Adra saw its primary ion engines ignite. She would only get one shot.
Adra’s focus became almost transcendental, blanking out her anger and the pain that throbbed inside her still bleeding thigh. In an instant she had considered the rogue Hunter Corvette’s range; its acceleration curve and trajectory; the weakest sections of its armor, and calculated the tracking speed and angle of the turret in order for the rounds to arrive at the exact moment the enemy ship passed in front of them. To anyone else, it would have been overwhelming, but Adra’s mind was as a sharp as the black blade concealed inside her coat, and her instincts were sharper still.
Adra smiled, “You think you’ve escaped,” she spat, fractionally adjusting her aim one final time. “You are wrong.” Then she fired a single burst from the dorsal turret and stepped away from the tactical console, watching the glowing projectiles snake off into space. Seconds later she saw micro explosions as the rounds raked across the rear quarter of the rogue Corvette, followed by the star-bright glow of its port ion engine flickering and fizzling to nothing. The tactical console flashed up a damage assessment and Adra read it with satisfaction. They were not crippled, but they would not be able to recover before her superior War Frigate was upon them. Their defeat was inevitable, even if they did not yet realize it, and she drew pleasure from knowing that the scene on their bridge would now be one of terror, rather than elation at their escape.
She turned to leave, but then her attention was drawn to the mission ops console. She already knew the identity of two of the rogue simulants, and she had also glimpsed the face of the unit that had been hauled from the ship by the Casey Valera model. This meant there was only one other high-functioning simulant that they had yet to reclaim – the Technical Specialist, Satomi Rose. That these manufactured beings seemed to care at all about reforming their crew baffled Adra. They were not the people they believed themselves to be. They were not human. Not individuals. Not a crew. Yet, here they were, trying to reassemble a team that had always been as fake as their synthetic bodies. Sentimentality was their greatest weakness, Adra realized, as it was for all humans. If they cared for this other simulant she would use that against them, to fuel their anger and resentment, draw them back out into the open, and force them to make mistakes.
She marched off the bridge, but instead of heading immediately back to the airlock hatch, Adra detoured to the crew quarters. There was something still on the Hunter Corvette that she wanted.
EIGHTEEN
Before Provost Adra had even arrived at the docking section where her War Frigate was stationed, she could already feel the power of its engines shaking the corridors and interconnected structures of the reclamation facility like seismic waves. Behind her, dragged by its ankle, was the disabled simulant frame of Satomi Rose, her arms splayed out behind her and head bobbing limply from side to side. Warden Holx stood by the airlock hatch, watching the military Provost approach. He was not sure whether to be more worried about the assault on his facility, or the surreal and macabre sight of Adra dragging what looked like a dead body behind her.
“Provost Adra, I saw what happened,” began Holx, his eyes flitting between the Provost and the body being unceremoniously drawn behind her.
Adra slung the frame of Satomi Rose in front of the airlock hatch like a bounty hunter delivering a wanted criminal, dead rather than alive. An anonymous-looking simulant appeared in the hatch and waited, mannequin-like, staring in her direction, though not directly at her. “Take this to the bridge,” commanded Adra, ignoring Holx as if he wasn’t even in the room. The simulant reached down, picked up the body of Satomi Rose and disappeared back inside the airlock.
“Provost, my workers have been killed and my facility has been attacked,” Holx went on, a little more forcefully this time. That Provost Adra had not even acknowledged his presence, or the events that had just transpired, had made him agitated and angry, and he spoke the words more harshly than was wise.
“You forget yourself, Warden Holx,” said Adra, oozing resentment and fixing her intense green eyes onto his. “They are not your workers. This is not your facility. And this is not your concern. You would do well to remember your position.”
Holx swallowed hard, realizing his error of judgment, but he still felt the need to press the issue with the Provost. Adra was correct, but it was also true that as Warden, he would be ultimately held accountable for the loss of life and damage to Warfare Command property. “Apologies, Provost, but it is my duty to report this incident to Warfare Command,” Holx answered, taking care to deliver these words with the proper level of deference. “There have been deaths, but more than that, two of those who attacked the facility were...” Holx paused, unsure of whether to admit to what he’d seen.
“Were what, Warden Holx?” asked Adra, forcing him to commit.
“Humans, Provost,” said Holx, barely believing his own words, “The security feeds came back online shortly before the other systems, and I saw them. I could not believe it!”
Adra’s expression did not alter, but internally she cursed this unfortunate turn of events. She still did not want Warfare Command to become aware of the humans or the rogue simulants, until she had destroyed all their hidden bases, or captured them and dragged them before the War Council herself. Since she had created human-simulant hybrids and the Hunter Simulant Program, this was the only way to ensure her status and reputation remained intact. If Warfare Command learned of the thre
at before Adra had completed her task, she would be dragged back and forced to face tribunal, and potential disgrace. If that happened then she would lose her elite rank. But, more importantly to Adra, she would lose her future privileges to return to Earth to study the history of their race, free from the tiresome responsibilities of warship command.
“Have you reported this discovery yet, Warden Holx?” queried Adra, calmly, giving nothing away.
“Not yet, Provost, I wanted to speak to you first,” replied Holx.
“Good,” Adra replied, before slashing the flat of her hand into Holx’s throat. The attack was so swift and unexpected that Holx was utterly unprepared for it. He dropped to his knees, clutching his crushed windpipe, croaking and gasping for breath. Adra calmly stepped behind him and hooked her arm around his neck, before hauling the Warden back to his feet and then crushing his carotid arteries using all of her formidable physical strength. With no blood flowing to his brain, Holx was unconscious in a matter of seconds. But Adra maintained the hold, squeezing harder and harder, releasing all of her pent up rage and using it to feed her muscles.
