Blood Relative (4 page)

"Nort foil." Gunnar's voice was close to Rogue's ear. "Going for the rig, maybe?"

"Reckon so." Rogue watched the vessel until it went out of sight. He slipped the rifle to a stand-easy stance and ran a hand through the queue of wire-hard white hair that bisected the top of his head.

"Chalk up another victory for the mysterious Rogue Trooper and his biochip buddies," Gunnar mimicked the slick tones of a vid announcer. "Just hope it was worth the effort."

The GI walked back toward the mouth of a small cavern, flicking out the legs of Gunnar's bipod. "We'll know soon enough." He placed the rifle on the sand, facing across the beach. "You know the drill. Watch and wait."

"Yeah, yeah," the chip retorted irritably. "I hear you."

"I mean it, Gunnar. You get trigger-happy and I'll swap you with Helm. See how you like the view from up there."

"Whatever."

Rogue threw the gun a last look and then ducked into the cave. Bagman was propped against a wall, his manipulator claw exploring the datacore's innards, trails of fibre-optic cable running into his service ports. Helm rested on a rock, watching over a cluster of G-rations on a heater pad. Helm was in full flow, recounting his exploits on the rig. "So I pushed up the gain on my output, right, and started broadcasting the sounds of the Nort guys looking for me! Footsteps, voices, the works! I swear they were running around in circles down there, chasing echoes!"

"Helm..." Bagman's artificial voice was curt.

"And when they started firing, I beamed that out too! They must've thought we had a whole platoon on board!"

"Helm!"

"Then Rogue and Gunnar turn up and snag me, but the Norts were real close, so quick as you like I pull punchbag duty and break those Norty noses like a-"

"Helm, for synth's sake, will you quit it?" Bagman snarled. "I'm trying to bust a class nine encryption here. I don't wanna hear your damn hero stories!"

"Well, excuse me, ya miserable kook!"

"Don't call me a kook, you tin-plate piece of-"

"Hey!" Rogue silenced them both with a sharp growl. "Can't you two ladies stop bickering for ten mikes? Keep it down, the pair of you." The GI sat heavily and took a bite from the ration pack.

"Sorry, Rogue," said Helm. "I was just talking, is all."

"Well, talk to me. Don't bother Bagman." He swallowed the last of the tasteless freezemeat and washed it down with a sip from his canteen.

"You really think we're gonna find something in that box of chips?" Helm asked. "I mean, we went a long way on the word of some half-dead Nort technogeek."

"That we did." Rogue remembered the injured technician they'd discovered inside the crashed atmocraft, desperate for air, desperate enough to spill his guts about the listening post. "It's not like we had a choice. We lost his trail after the Norts took Dix-I and this is the best chance to pick it up again." He nodded at the datacore. "If there's even a scrap of intel in that thing about the Traitor General, it's more than we got now."

Talking about the Traitor brought a sudden silence into the cave. The faceless nemesis that Rogue had dedicated his life to hunting had slipped out of his grasp, and with him the Genetic Infantryman's purpose for living. Out there somewhere in the Nu Earth wilderness, the unnamed man still drew breath, and every moment he was alive was an insult to the legions of Rogue's brother GIs who had died because of his duplicity. Rogue looked away from the dingy depths of the sandstone cave, where the shadows called up black memories of drop-pods blossoming into smoke, of bloodshed on fields of glass and the screams of betrayed soldiers. His eyes ranged over Helm, Bagman and Gunnar. Three minds rescued from the massacre, entombed on biochips: three dead comrades and him. They were all that remained of the GI legions and if they had a purpose beyond revenge, Rogue could not see it.

"That tech would have given up his own mother for a fresh ox-bottle," he said quietly. "We're gonna find that rat bastard traitor soon. I know it."

"Ah," Bagman made a satisfied noise. "Here we are... " A string of indicators on the surface of the datacore blinked from blue to green. "And the crowd goes wild."

"You cracked it?" Helm was surprised.

"Never doubt my skills."

Rogue smiled thinly. "Good work, Bagman. Run the search; you know the drill, look for the keywords, GI, Rogue, Buzzard." Buzzard-Three was the closest they had ever got to naming the Traitor General, a code designation given by the Norts when the double-agent had served aboard an orbital Souther command satellite - perhaps as some kind of twisted private joke, the traitor sometimes used the title. It had almost been his undoing at Glasshouse-G, a Nort stockade where Rogue had tightened the noose on the spy. However, the traitor had played the game of espionage long enough to have had an escape route prepared and the GI had been left chasing a shadow.

"I got something!" Bagman's voice couldn't hide a tone of excitement. "Listen to this; an advisory from Nort High Command to one General Rössa, Internal Affairs Apparat. Regarding NexGen Project at Domain Delta lab complex, proceed to facility and initiate directive 'S'."

"What does that have to do with us?" said Helm.

"There's a reference attached to the message with two code words. 'Prog #228' and 'Buzzard'."

Rogue cursed to himself. Programme #228 had been the Souther Army's classification for the research and development that had created the Genetic Infantrymen, a top-secret operation that the Norts had never been able to duplicate. The enemy's crude attempts at making their own Genetik Soldats had been a spectacular failure where Rogue and his brethren could easily breathe poisoned air and survive the harsh toxins of the battlefield. Their Nort "cousins" soon succumbed to the relentless taints and died on their feet after just a few weeks of service.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" said Helm.

"Reckon so. This Domain Delta has gotta be a gene-lab, maybe where the Norts are still trying to cook up their own brand of GI troopers." Rogue considered this for a moment. "We know the Traitor General sold us out to the Norts when we dropped on the Quartz Zone... But what if that's not all he gave them?"

"You reckon he passed on data from Programme #228?"

"Some of it, at least. Why else would his code be tagged to this message?"

"Then we gotta find this Delta place," said Helm. "Bag, you got a location?"

"Negative," Bagman replied. "This is just an addendum to orders already sent. Wherever this Domain Delta place is, it's too sensitive for standard channels."

"Damn!" growled Rogue. "Then we're back at square one."

"Maybe not." Bagman sent a new set of pulses down the cables to the datacore. "I'm gonna widen the search, see if I can find anything else that..." His words trailed off into silence. When he spoke again, it was in a hushed whisper. "Synth me..."

Helm's voice was low. "What you got?"

"Forget that Delta stuff for a second. You ain't gonna believe this." He paused, and then from the opening on the pack, the manipulator produced a digi-pad. "Here, see for yourself."

Rogue took the panel and activated the screen. The telltale Nort symbology of a lightning bolt striking downwards from a darkened sky filled the display. "It's a vidiganda broadcast."

"Time-stamp says it's going to air tomorrow. Keep watching."

The Nort simulant DeeTrick appeared on the screen and winked. "Hello my brave boychiks! Oh, do I have a surprise for you! I'm here in the cityplex of San Diablo, which you might recall we took from those silly Suds like candy from a baby, yah? Well, our handsome lads in covert operations have asked me to announce the capture of a very, very special person." The svelte android woman was walking through the streets of the captured city toward the stadium that lay at its centre. Her tone turned serious and grim; Rogue's ultra-sensitive hearing picked out the subliminal audio cues as she spoke. "Many of you have heard the legend of a Sud super-duper-soldier that stalks the combat zones, preying on our fighters and performing unspeakable acts of barbarism." DeeTrick paused and wiped a theatrically large tear from her eye. "Those poor boys... But now they're going to have their debts paid in full! The proud army of the Nordland Territories has seized one of Nu Earth's most horrific and deadly Souther war criminals!" The simulant threw open the stadium doors and there in the middle of the vast arena was a lone figure strapped to an X-shaped crucifix. "Sons of Nordland, I bring before you the monstrous Genetik Infantryman: the Rogue Trooper!"

The camera's view panned in to reveal a blue-skinned male, heavily beaten, hanging loosely in his restraints. DeeTrick clasped his chin and held up his face; weak yellow eyes blinked back at them from the screen.

"What the hell is this?" Rogue hissed.

"The war criminal's trial will take place here in twenty-four hours, after which he will be found guilty and executed by firing squad," the android said happily. "Don't forget to tune in, folks! We'll be live across Nu Earth to say bye-bye to blue-boy!"

The screen went blank. "If that's a trap, then it's the most overdone one I've ever come across."

"It's gotta be," insisted Helm. "That tech in the wreck, he had to be a plant."

"I don't think so," Bagman broke in. "I've been monitoring the comm channels since we left Dix-I, and there's some hush-hush stuff going on in San Diablo. This vid and the radio traffic I'm seeing in the datacore... It looks legit."

Rogue called out. "Gunnar, you hearing this?"

"Yeah," came the reply. "Maybe we oughta let the Norts ice that guy. The pressure would be off if they thought we were dead."

"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that," Bagman snapped. "Rogue, whoever the Norts have got there, he ain't you but he is a GI. I got the bio-scans right here."

"But Rogue's the last of us still breathing, right? We know everyone else got scragged in the Zone. So who's that joker?"

After a long moment, Rogue gave the only answer he could. "There's one way to find out."

Helm made an electronic snort. "You want to go get him? What are we gonna do, just waltz into the middle of a fortified Nort city and ask politely?"

"Wasn't thinking about being polite, Helm."

"San Diablo's clear across the continent," rumbled Gunnar. "If the bot-babe is right, we'd never make it there before they killed him."

Rogue buried the remains of his meal and then picked up his helmet. "Bagman, check the digi-map. Where's the nearest airstrip?"

"Searching... There's a Nort base about fifty klicks southwest, but it's a tough nut to crack. How about Pitt City? It's closer and the defences are lame."

"Freeport, huh? Sounds like a plan. We'll slip in and find an atmocraft."

"And how are you going to convince someone to fly us?" snapped Helm.

Rogue picked up Bagman and walked out on to the sands. "I'll let Gunnar do the talking."

THREE

ESCAPE KEY

Ferris's breathing echoed about his chem-hood with every exhalation. He'd been running all day, dodging patrols and skirting the more heavily populated parts of Pitt City. It wasn't easy; the settlement was an aggregation of linked bubbledomes that sat in a fat ring around the mouth of the Pitt, the huge crater that a stray meteor-bomb had gouged in the Nu Earth landscape. There were only ever two directions you could go in Pitt City - for or against the clock - and that made it simpler to find someone on the run. The Milli-Fuzz were running a standard sweep for Ferris, two packs of MPs going around the ring in different directions. Eventually, he'd run out of places to hide.

The army cops were cracking down; anyone who broke the rules was being prosecuted to the full extent of the Confederate Military Code of Justice, which usually meant a .50 calibre "pardon" to the back of the head. That worthless bug Gog had turned Ferris into a dead man running. Once the MPs got him, he was cold meat. The pilot paused in the lee of a hab-capsule, struggling to even out his breathing. He was out of condition; he wasn't cut out for the fugitive life. Ferris wondered why Gog hadn't just had him killed. It was just like the loathsome little insect to amuse itself by letting him scurry and run while the cops closed in on him. Hell, Gog probably had a betting pool going for how long Ferris would survive.

He gave a hollow, dry cough, steaming up the murky faceplate of his civilian chem-suit. His air filter needed replacing and all this exertion wasn't helping the jury-rigged oxy-scrubber in his backpack. Ferris had to get to safety and un-hood, or it wouldn't matter about the MPs. They'd find him collapsed in a corner somewhere, choked to death on his own carbon dioxide. He crossed the mud-slick street and walked as quickly as he dared towards the shuttle pads, peeling back a ragged edge of chain-link fence instead of taking the suicidal route through the main entrance. His luck held; there was a Mili-Fuzz trooper on the gate, spinning his baton with idle menace, but the Souther never saw Ferris as he ducked and wove between fuel bowsers and bombed-out blockhouses. Not for the first time today, Ferris found himself wishing he had a gun; but he'd lost his pistol in a card game and had barely managed to keep hold of the dagger in his belt - a lot of good that would do him against a dozen MPs, if it came down to it.

There were lots of shuttles, hoppers and assorted atmocraft parked on the Pitt City airstrip. It was always busy with cargo, military craft dropping in and civvie ships coming from other Freeports and Disputed Zones. The fuzz would never think of looking for Ferris here, because no one being hunted by MPs would be stupid enough to sneak onto an airfield crawling with Southers. Nobody except Ferris, of course.

He had never felt this nervous before in his life, and his eyes were darting everywhere, desperately trying to look in all directions at once. The pilot almost screamed in fright when he saw something shapeless move at the edge of the rockcrete.

"Damn!" Ferris recovered quickly, watching a bent figure wreathed in a camu-cape shambling toward the vent ducts from the launch pits. Just one of the city's massive number of derelicts, some poor chem-sodden wretch trying to stave off the cold night air by clustering around steam that billowed from the ducts. Vagrants were ten a cred and their life expectancy was short. Ferris was sobered by the realisation that this could be his fate, too, unless he got his ass out of the settlement.