Infinity Squad (35 page)

He drew back. "What?"

"The Benefactors... they've broken the code to our tactical implants and they can talk to us whenever they like," I said, stammering. "They just keep talking and you have no choice but to listen. They ordered us to kill Hector. They told us about the spider village. But they said they'd kill us all if we told anyone!"

His eyes narrowed. "What motive would the Benefactors have for that?"

I shook my head. "I don't know! But just show them the tape of that mission and see what they say! I bet they order us to stop using the attack helicopters."

Himenez leaned back in thought. "I may just do that."

"But you can't let on that you know! They've got Oakley too! They're too powerful to go after!"

His eyes narrowed. "We'll see about that."

General Oakley burst into the room, followed by two BlackShirts. "What's the meaning of this? Why is this Lieutenant under arrest?"

Himenez looked up at the General, appraising him, looking very hard at him. "He has committed crimes. He filed false reports. He attacked a target three hours from his stated plan."

"And killed one hundred Hell-Spiders in one mission!" Oakley barked back. "He was doing what I ordered. I told Lieutenant Forrest to step it up, and he did. He's a fuck-up, but I need this fuck-up's results right now." He turned to the BlackShirts. "Uncuff him."

"General, I must strongly disagree," Himenez said, setting his mouth in a thin line. "I am still in the middle of my investigation." The cuffs fell off me and the bureaucrat got more tense. "This
will
go into my report."

I saw Oakley flinch for a second, but then he said, "And I'll attach the video of his actions to
my
report, and we'll see how the higher powers want this war prosecuted! Have you seen the satellite images of where he attacked today? I've got TacOps counting the heat signatures now. There are
thousands
of spiders up there to kill!"

Oh fuck.

"And we're going to keep sending those Apaches up there until we get them all!"

Double fuck.

Himenez stood up. "General, you've read my recommended tactics. We need to be methodical, using the clones to grind across the sectors non-stop until-"

"And we're still going to do that! We're installing your extra tanks, aren't we? We'll have the capacity for 500 resurrections on-planet in two more days. But in the mean time, I've still got a war to fight."

"Very well," Himenez said, walking to the door. He glanced at me as he left. "I have a new investigation to start at the moment."

Oakley watched the door close behind the bureaucrat and snorted, "I'm getting tired of that fucking number pusher thinking he owns the place. I bet he's never gotten his boots dirty." Then he looked at me. "And if you tell anyone I said that, Lieutenant, I
will
have you arrested and stripped of command."

"Yes sir! And I agree sir, crunching numbers is no substitute for battlefield decisions, snap judgments being the bread and butter of comm-"

"Shut up, Lieutenant. Next time, file proper flight plans with TacOps so everyone knows where you're going or I'll give your squad to the Immortals and make you a janitor."

I rubbed my wrists. "Sir, I would, but..." I leaned forward. "I think there's something going on."

"What do you mean?"

"Talking to that bureaucrat, I think... something's gotten into his head. I didn't want him knowing about our target because I think something or someone is controlling him from a distance. I think he's going to start asking very strange questions soon. He's going to start babbling about Benefactors or mind control. He may try to make us do things which would tear this command apart."

"Keep your conspiracies to yourself. I won't have that kind of talk on my base. Now get the fuck out of here."

I knew I hadn't convinced him, not by a long shot. But I had planted the seed, and that was enough.

I had set the clash of the titans in motion.

I met back up with Zazlu and Butcher in our barracks. All told, it had been eight hours since I had last seen them.

"You're still here. I guess that means Red-Stripe has accepted our balancing of the scales?"

"He sent his scouts out to check about three hours ago, when you first radioed back," Ann-Marie said, now letting the skin on her face
and
neck show to the world. "He had scouts hidden like snipers close to that city. He's learning from us fast."

"Or his kind has been doing this type of thing for so long it's instinctual," I replied. "Anything else?"

Zazlu was frowning. "Two things you should see."

The first was a room under construction. Storage space and offices had been cleared out and now workers were laying all sorts of piping and wires through the floor. The pipes seemed to be preparing for each room to have over a hundred sinks spaced eight feet apart in them.

"Oakley mentioned this," I said, peeking through the open door. "Himenez wants to increase the number of simultaneous resurrections we can do."

"There's three more like it being built on base," Ann-Marie said. She mentioned the room numbers and I pictured it. The base buildings were set up like a letter 'H', and each new resurrection room would be at one corner of the letter, as far apart as possible from the others.

"Three more like this," she continued, "the same size, means around four hundred clones waiting at any time."

"They're stripping the lifeboat to build this," Zazlu said. "But a second lifeboat is expected in orbit in a few days."

"That's enough to give Himenez his rolling army of clones," I sighed. "God knows how many deaths we'll all go through then. We'll all be craving strawberry ice-cream and walks on the beach."

"You guys will," Butcher snorted. "My clone stock doesn't-" Her eyes got big. "Oh GOD! Am I going to become a dumb blonde? Oh fuck!"

"Butcher, don't worry. I'm not going to let you die seven times. Trust me."

"What were this chick's SAT scores? Did her mom drop her on her head?"

I sighed and turned to Zaz. "What's the second thing you wanted to show me?"

We stood in the back of the cafeteria, watching. The Immortals all sat at one long table, whispering, smiling at each other and looking around at the rest of us like we were prey. That was sort of normal. But they also had half the Omegas sitting with them, which usually didn't happen between two competitive squads. And every now and then, one of the Omegas would reach back and scratch a little red bump on the back of his neck.

"The Immortals came back from the caves six hours ago, eight alive and eight resurrected," Butcher whispered to me. "The whole squad turned right around and took eight Omegas patrolling with them. Four Omegas came back alive, and four resurrected. And the eight Immortals that had resurrected the first time, they came back alive this time."

"The slugs are infecting them all and eating half," I said, and Butcher and Zaz nodded. "But it doesn't matter, since the resurrections still feel the pull to go back to the caves, because that's what they were thinking when they died."

"But only the ones coming back alive have the active slug in them," Zazlu said. "If you think of each slug like a little Hell-Spider it makes sense. They're building a psychic network here, the same way the spiders send messages across long distances or work as a group."

I felt a cold shiver in my stomach. "We have to stop this before
we
become the strange minority here," I said. "Or else it will be full-on Revenge of the Body Snatchers and they'll just start overpowering us."

I saw Lieutenant Grant leave the line with a tray of food, trying to decide where to sit. He was looking between the Immortals and some admin folks.

"The Second Chancers been on patrol with the Immortals yet?" I asked Butcher. She shook her head.

I intercepted Grant as he was headed for the infected table, saying, "You don't want to sit with those guys."

"Really?" It was said as a challenge, from someone who had been in tough situations before and didn't appreciate being told where to sit. "Why not?"

"I'll tell you. Come here."

We sat down at a far table and told him the entire story of the brain slugs, what they were doing and what a huge threat they were. We took our time, presented our facts logically and were nothing but sincere.

"Bullshit," Grant replied.

"We're dead serious," I said.

"What is this, some initiation prank on the new squad? And how in the world would you even learn this?"

"We have a source. Someone who knows brains very well."

"What, that cute redheaded doctor in the clone room?" Grant asked.

Now why did I feel a stab of jealousy right then? "Doctor Murphy is aware of this situation, yes, but we have a better source."

"So tell Oakley."

"We can't," Ann-Marie said. "It's not time yet. We need more proof."

"Sure," he laughed. Grant got up, his tray empty. As we had talked, he had eaten quickly and without pauses, just like a Marine. Or a former prisoner.

"Just keep your eyes open," I said. "Watch for what we talked about and you'll see."

"Sure," he laughed again, and then left.

"That's all we can do," Zazlu said.

I shook my head. "I hope it's enough. For some reason I want to fight them less than the others. One more thing- Butcher, do we still have the Key Phrase for one of those Hangar techs?"

"Yeah, McCullough. He got turned into a clone by a hydraulics accident two weeks in."

"Dust it off. We're going to need it."

***

Chapter Thirteen

Bright and early the next morning Oakley ordered all four Apaches to lift off carrying extra ammunition, on a mission to decimate the capital city of the northern Hell-Spider clan and all its suburbs. Unfortunately, Apache 1 had an engine problem that kept it from even starting. Apache 2 encountered a rotor wobble during pre-flight check that would ground it for at least a few days. Apaches 3 and 4 took off without issue, but hit a fuel systems errors just ten minutes into the mission and had to return to base for troubleshooting.

Damn helicopters. You can never trust them when you need them.

"Thanks Grimstone, it worked perfectly," I said, waking him up a few hours later. "Now keep those tats covered up unless you're ready to die again."

"That tranquilizer was pretty fun," he yawned, grabbing his shirt off a hook and buttoning the sleeves over the barcode and the name 'McCullough' tattooed on his wrists. "But I may choose cocaine next time." He was already drifting off again.

"Get some sleep," I laughed. "You had a long night."

We spent the rest of the day preparing.

I had every member of the squad recite each other's Key Phrases and the ones we had stolen from other soldiers, until they knew all of them by heart.

We went over all the battlefield medicine that Steve had taught us and packed little trauma kits into pockets on everyone's fatigues, as if resurrecting during a mission wasn't even an option.

I ran the entire squad out to the farms (passing a shocked Hughes who was running Phoenix Squad back in) and introduced every one of them to Tornier and the others who had taken marksmanship training from us. And then both groups sat down together to a home-cooked farm lunch, relating, understanding. Bonding.

I took the squad out near the perimeter fence under the guise of marching practice and had them each psychically say hello to Red-Stripe, who was still standing vigil
somewhere
right outside the Cleared Zone. They all took it pretty well, and I had Red-Stripe promise he had could now recognize each of their mental images, even though he kept saying that mine was quite different from last time. Then Ann-Marie gave us the heads up that Himenez was coming and we had to pretend we were marching again.

I had Zazlu teach us five stealthy ways to kill someone with a knife while knocking their buffering band off at the same time. And we started practicing with rubber knives, a hundred times each.

Because we knew what was about to happen. Our spot in the patrol rotation would come up again tomorrow, along with Immortal Squad. Hector would push for a mission to the caves again. I was going to put up a fight, but eventually let him win the argument. He wasn't going to kill us again- the slugs didn't want that. They wanted to turn us, eat half and send the rest back to convince even more of the base. Hector had no idea that we knew what the slugs really were, and we weren't about to tip our hand. We were going to let him 'convince' us to go into the second cave again.

If we could kill them without their bands in the first few rooms of the cave, we were going to put on their uniforms, return to base and pretend to be Immortals as we broke Three-Spot out of the Holding Room and delivered him to Red-Stripe. After fire-bombing the cave.