Blood Relative (17 page)

Kolt turned and saw Lars keying in the code to open the hatch. "What are you doing? He didn't give the password!"

Lars had the door half-open before he realised his error, but by then it was too late. He tried to slide the heavy hatch back, but a muscular arm shot through the gap and grabbed a handful of his tunic. Lars was pulled straight into the doorframe with a bone-jarring impact. Rogue curled his thick fingers around the edges of the hatch and pushed, his enhanced musculature widening the gap against the whine of the automatic servos. The GI dived into the armoury, tucking and rolling; behind him, the hatch slammed shut and resealed.

He barely had a moment to get his bearings before a laser bolt skipped off the floor near his head. Rogue scrambled into cover behind a cluster of ammunition cases.

Kolt yelled out across the room. "Lars! Lars! Are you all right?"

"He's out for the count, Nort," Rogue replied, glancing at the unconscious trooper. "Just you and me."

"Good!" snapped the sergeant and fired again. "I won't have to share the kill, then!"

Rogue weighed the vibro-dagger in his hand; he'd have to get closer if he wanted to use it. But there was something that rang a wrong note in his mind, something familiar about the report of the gun that the Nort was using. He chanced a quick look over the top of the crates and glimpsed the sergeant sweeping the room with a GI rifle in his hand.

"Come on!" Kolt said, as if he sensed Rogue's scrutiny. "I'll take you down with your own weapon!"

"Gunnar!" shouted Rogue. "Trigger lock!" The GI leapt from his cover and sprinted through the lines of gun racks.

But Kolt didn't react; he drew a bead and - impossibly - fired again. Rogue saw it coming and twisted aside behind a cargo pod, but he was too slow to avoid a glancing burn as the beam lanced over his shoulder. The Nort swore and he heard him shifting position.

Rogue examined his injury. Could the Norts have done something to his weapon? The command to the biochip in his rifle should have automatically engaged a safety catch that only he could override, but that clearly wasn't working. "Gunnar! Helm! Bagman! Sound off!" he called out. No reply came in return.

"Not so cocky now are you, gene-freak?" said Kolt. "You know, this is a nice gun. Too good for the likes of a blue-skin. I think I might keep it."

Rogue said nothing, listening to the Nort's voice, trying to pinpoint where he was standing. Silently, he ran his fingers over the equipment cases in the cargo pod, looking for anything he could use. He had to move quickly; although the gunfire wouldn't carry through the armoury's soundproofed walls, it wouldn't take Volks long to figure out where Rogue had gone.

"Nothing to say? No matter, I can still find you." Kolt raised the rifle to his face and squinted down the target scope. With a flick of his finger, the Nort switched through the sight's vision modes. "You can't hide from eyes that see in the dark..."

The GI's hands closed around a rod-shaped device and he gave a cool smile.

Kolt swept the gun over Rogue's position and saw the faint trace of warm flesh; even though the Genetic Infantryman's engineered skin was designed to give off an extremely low heat signature, at this close a range it was still enough to target him. "Now I see you!" the sergeant grinned.

"Now you don't," Rogue snapped and threw the rod into the air; it burst into a brilliant glare of orange light. The signal flare alone would have been enough to flash-blind a man, but peering through the enhanced infrared scope on the rifle made Kolt's eye burn with a sudden, terrible agony. The Nort clawed at his face and reeled away.

The nictitating membranes over Rogue's eyeballs protected him and he easily disarmed the sergeant, clubbing the flailing Nort unconscious with the rifle. "Mine, I think." The GI flipped over the weapon and his blood ran cold; the reason for Gunnar's failure to obey his order became clear. The chip slot on the rifle was empty.

He felt tightness in his throat. The air in the armoury seemed to be getting thinner. Ignoring the sensation, he scrambled to the rostrum where his helmet and backpack were secured. Both Helm and Bagman's dog-chips were missing from their slots as well.

"What the hell?" Rogue wheezed. He was finding it hard to breathe and his vision was fogging. The air! He strained to listen and heard a faint hiss of escaping atmosphere. Volks had found him, but instead of sending in more men, the kapten had sealed off the armoury and evacuated the air. Rogue fumbled at his backpack. "Need... oxy-bottle..." he said aloud, but without a biochip in the pack's slot, the manipulator arm remained inert.

The GI opened the pack, but his sight was now turning grey, tunnelling. Reasoning became difficult, each thought as slow and heavy as a glacier. Every movement of his lungs seemed like a colossal effort; Rogue's kind could breathe anything in the mess of poisons that made up Nu Earth's atmosphere, but he still needed some amount of air to survive. He fumbled through lazooka shells, aerosol canisters, chem-tone tubes, his desperation increasing. "Can't... Bagman, help..."

Rogue collapsed, dragging the backpack off the stand as he fell. The contents spilled out across the armoury floor in a confused scatter, the emergency oxygen cylinder rolling to a halt close to his outstretched hand, too late to save him from oblivion.

Kolonel-Doktor Schrader entered the command centre and the duty officers parted before her automatically, like flights of birds startled from trees. She didn't spare any of them a glance; until they had some purpose to fulfil, they were beneath her notice. In the middle of the circular room, Kapten Volks stood on the observation dais, elevated above the duty stations so that he could keep a watch on all of them. He came to attention as she approached.

"Madam Director, I apologise for disturbing you at this early hour."

She silenced him with a glare; Schrader had been awake since well before the dawn, unable to sleep, eager with the possibilities that her new acquisition represented. "I have been reviewing the GI's bio-sample results. Most interesting."

"Indeed." Volks had taken the opportunity to let Schrader's tek-droids perform a number of other "examinations" while Rogue was unconscious, before placing the clone in a secure holding cell guarded by a las-web. "Has he recovered?"

Schrader nodded. "How many Nort soldiers do you think he has killed since they decanted him, Johann? Hundreds? Thousands? He's a fascinating specimen."

Volks looked away. "Was it necessary to let him run loose through the facility? He could have done anything..."

"Don't second guess me, Kapten," she replied. "I understand the mindset of these gene-troopers better than you ever will." Schrader nodded to herself. "I must break him, do you see? He must come to understand that I alone control his fate. When he does, Rogue will give me his loyalty willingly." She paused. "He's down there in his cell, unable to think of anything else but what has happened to his biochip comrades."

Volks glanced up at a monitor screen displaying the interior of Rogue's cell. The GI was carefully performing a series of unarmed combat exercises, swift katas blending the most lethal elements of a dozen martial arts. He seemed none the worse for wear after his asphyxiation a day earlier.

"The Southers programmed that into him," Schrader continued. "Loyalty to his fellows, obedience to authority, the need to protect the innocent..."

In spite of himself, Volks gave a low snort of derision. "He doesn't seem that obedient to me. He's a deserter, after all."

"Only because his morals have given him a higher dictate to adhere to. I'm going to use that to my advantage." She turned away from the monitor, the ardour for her pet project cooling. "I hope you did not summon me here to hear more of your trivial worries, Johann."

Volks let the insult pass and indicated the main screen. A sector map of the Quartz Zone was displayed there, focussed on Domain Delta's position. A quartet of dart-shaped targets was approaching the base. "Long-range sensors detected a formation of Vulture-class atmocraft on an convergent vector. IFF signals match those of hoppers from General Rössa's command." He faced her. "The lead ship has been transmitting a hailing code on the general's private frequency and they've broadcast repeated requests to speak to you."

"You have not replied?"

"No, as per your standing orders."

Schrader considered this for a moment then snapped out a command to one of the other officers. "Have the Rogue Trooper brought up here, quickly."

Volks was startled. "Kolonel, are you mad? You would allow the blue-skin to simply walk into the heart of our operations?"

"I see an opportunity to use this to my advantage." She gave the kapten a loaded stare. "I do not need to explain myself to you, Johann. For your own good, I advise you to never question my sanity again." Schrader turned and summoned another officer. "You. What is the position of the flyers?"

"Uh, passing over the outer perimeter of the test range now, Madam Director,"

"Excellent. Activate area effect countermeasures and ready the dome's defence batteries."

Volks saw what Schrader was planning and lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. "Kolonel, this will only escalate matters! Perhaps, if we allow them to believe that the general was killed by an enemy attack, or-"

"You're second-guessing me again," she said, her voice deceptively light. "If you make a habit of it, you will displease me."

"Repeat, this is Falkon Two on secured channel, Internal Affairs Apparat code gamma. General Rössa, respond please." The atmocraft's co-pilot threw a glance over his shoulder at the kommander standing behind him, clasping a digi-pad. The Nort officer bore the IAA badge over his left breast, a Nordland lightning bolt capped with an unblinking blue eye; the Apparat were the police force of the military machine and their unswerving dedication to the letter of the party law was known and feared by all line troopers. "Still no reply, sir."

Kommander Yest grimaced. "Ach, this is all wrong. Do you have the general's personal locator signal?" Yest had served as Rössa's adjutant for two tours on Nu Earth and he had developed a gut instinct for a bad situation.

The co-pilot shook his head. "No, sir. We are certainly close enough to pick it up now."

"Then he's dead, or worse." Yest tapped the atmocraft's senior officer on the shoulder. "Pilot, you have a tight-beam laser for ship-to-ship communication?"

"Of course, kommander."

"Use it," Yest insisted, "and send a message to the other craft in the flight. Tell them to go to weapons-free status and stand by to open fire."

"Sir?" the pilot's eyes widened. "But this is a Nort facility!"

"Do as I say." He turned to the co-pilot. "You, get me a sat-link to High Command."

The co-pilot tapped his headphones in confusion. "Standard communications are inoperable, sir! It just happened - all I hear is static!"

"They're jamming us?" said the Nort pilot. "Why?"

"Verkammt!" Yest spat. "Break formation, quickly!"

A strident alert tone blared from the cockpit console, overlapping the kommander's orders. Threat lights blinked on in rapid sequence; radar and lidar-guided weapons were locking on to the aircraft.

The command centre doors parted to allow Rogue to enter, flanked by not two but four armed Nort troopers, each one watching the clone soldier for the slightest hint of movement. All of them had heard about the guards he'd killed in the elevator and none of them were going to take any chances with the blank-eyed devil.

Schrader gave a little clap of amusement as he came closer, a disturbingly childlike gesture for someone so malevolent. "Perfect timing," she said, "I want to show you something, Rogue."

The GI took in the screens, the tactical map of the Zone and the Nort ships. "What's this? More of your friends, Schrader?"

The woman's face soured. "Hardly. Associates of the late General Rössa, formerly of Nordland's internal investigation division."

Rogue remembered the name from the communiqué in the Vok-IV datacore but said nothing, letting Schrader play out her little performance for him.

"The General took issue with my... my research, and so I was forced to take certain steps." She gestured at the flyers. "These are the consequences."

"Falkon One and Four are veering off," said Volks. "Falkon Two and Three moving into attack postures."

Schrader never took her eyes off Rogue. "Eliminate them."

"Missile batteries, fire on all targets." The kapten glared down at the weapons officer below him, an unmistakable threat in his eyes. "Now!"

Monitors fixed on the outer walls showed plumes of yellow fire belching from honeycomb launcher pods dotted around the dome's equator. Slender surface-to-air missiles leapt away, leaving corkscrew trails as they spiralled towards their targets.

Schrader turned to study the monitors. "Target view," she ordered.

One of the screens switched to a nose camera mounted in the leading missile and Rogue saw a Nort Vulture appear in its crosshairs, expanding from a black dot to a shape that filled the view; there was a fraction-of-a-second impression of a screaming face framed in a vu-port and then the screen turned into static.

Rogue saw long-range telemetry of the other missiles streaking through the air; two more hits and positive kills, the warheads impacting the atmocraft directly in the engines. The fourth and last missile looped around, temporarily baffled by a burst of chaff and flares from the surviving ship. Switching to a proximity fuse, the smart munition got as close as it could to the fleeing atmocraft and then detonated.

On the screen, the Vulture flipped over as if an invisible hand had slapped it from the sky.

Aboard Falkon Two, the missile blast turned the cockpit into chaos. The explosion threw Yest to the deck, his arm snapping under him as he fell. The pilot's head ricocheted off the inside of the canopy and lolled, as blood streamed from his nostrils. Electrical short-circuits skipped across the console in trails of blue sparks, spitting streams of acrid smoke from burning components.