Winds of Vengeance (8 page)

*    *    *

“The second squad is deviating from optimal positioning by seven percent.”

Lieutenant Devon Fortis-Cameron stood, watching the Marines of his platoon run through the simulation. He didn’t hear the AI’s words, not audibly, at least. The probe inside his armor was connected to a small implant on his neck, providing a direct connection between the artificial intelligence running his fighting suit and his own cerebral cortex. It wasn’t quite like a thought either, it was something completely different. It was a two-way communications node, but Cameron usually answered the computer presence audibly. It was creepy enough knowing the thing had direct access to his brain, and while he knew speaking didn’t do anything to change that fact, it made him feel better somehow anyway.

“Sergeant Hearns…your people are lagging. Pay attention, and get them in place now. If someone was actually shooting at you, you’d probably all be scragged by now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cameron was still getting used to the ‘sir’ stuff. His commission was barely a month old, and he was definitely still adapting to being responsible for forty-nine other Marines. He looked out over the valley—his people were scattered over a simulated front line almost eight kilometers long. He had them all on his scanner, but he could only see the second squad. The rest were on the other side of a low ridge. He was about to tell the AI to switch his visor to one of the drone inputs, but the computer acted on his thought before he could get the words out.

Useful…but so creepy…

He looked out over the forces beyond the ridge, the view from one of his recon drones moving over the simulated battlefield. The squads beyond the ridgeline were in perfect position, within one or two percent of optimal performance.

Second squad’s minor sloppiness notwithstanding, his platoon had performed well, very well indeed. They were looking good to finish in the top five percent, perhaps even higher. And that was cause for a rookie platoon commander to be satisfied.

Like all Tanks, Cameron’s first name had been assigned to him at birth, though he’d never been able to get a clear answer on how the selection process worked.

Probably an AI with a random number sequencer and a database of baby names…

Also like the rest of the Tanks, he carried two last names. The first was the surname of his sire, the individual who contributed the genetic material for his quickening. Gabriel Fortis had been a decorated officer, and ranked in the top fifty of the male members of the fleet in the genetic testing that had preceded the selection of donors for the first round of quickenings.

It had been all the rage among the Tanks over the past few years to seek out their DNA sponsors. Cameron knew a dozen others who had done it, and he was far from sure it was a good idea. It wasn’t like finding a lost parent…the DNA sponsor was an exact replica genetically, like a twin, but older. He imagined such connections could be difficult, especially on the donor, who might find dozens of closes seeking him or her out.

That wasn’t an issue for Cameron and his crèche-mates. Gabriel Fortis had survived the journey to Earth Two, but he’d been killed less than six months after his clones were quickened. It had been a routine attack by remnant First Imperium forces, a squadron that had escaped the Regent’s destruct order. The fleet had been ready, and some of the new planetary defenses were functional as well. The First Imperium force had been easily destroyed, eighteen ships blown to atoms…with only a dozen human casualties. But one of those had been Gabriel Fortis, killed instantly when a structural support crashed to the deck and almost crushed him.

Cameron had never been sure how he felt about that. He regretted the loss of one of his fellow humans, a man who had died in the line of duty, protecting the nascent republic. But he’d never been able to decide if he felt more than that, some kind of connection, a feeling of loss for the closest thing he had to a parent. It was something he still wrestled with in his more pensive moments.

He’d chosen the second surname himself, on the day he had left the campus on his sixteenth birthday, fully educated and legally an adult. He’d still been a civilian then, unsure of whether he intended to pursue a military career, but he nevertheless selected the name of a Marine who had died almost fifty years before, in the legendary battle known as the Slaughter Pen.

Kyle Cameron had been a Marine too, and a comrade of the legendary Erik Cain. Cameron couldn’t explain why he’d chosen that namesake over any other, except to note that the story of the original Cameron’s death had resonated with him, how the Marine had stayed behind and held off an enemy platoon with his heavy weapon while the rest of his squad withdrew.

Many of the Tanks had taken the names of famous warriors. There were Cains, Holms, Garrets, Prestons…just about every celebrated hero of both the Corps and the navy. But Cameron had been drawn to the less renowned hero, feeling he was righting a wrong, giving a courageous Marine the overdue recognition he had long deserved.

There had been one hundred Fortis clones in that first group, and the last time he’d checked there were ninety-one remaining. Seven had experienced various degrees of replicative failure, and they’d been terminated in the crèche. One had been killed in a military training accident. And one had died of the Plague.

He still remembered when he first read the entry on the library computer. Evan Fortis-Jackson, an engineer. That had been almost nine years before. The Tanks enjoyed a greatly enhanced immunity to most of the diseases that preyed upon the NBs. They rarely suffered from cancer, heart disease, even the drug-resistant pathogens that had become a moderate danger to their naturally born cousins. For almost twenty years, as the first group of Tanks grew to adulthood and beyond, it was widely believed the cloning process had been successful in screening out harmful susceptibilities.

Then the first Tank got sick. Not just ailing, not seriously afflicted, but horribly, painfully ill. The Plague had come. Its first victim lasted three days after onset, writhing in indescribable pain the entire time as the cells of his body simply withered and died. Medical science was stumped. Even the Mules, using the medical knowledge of the First Imperium, had been helpless to treat the disease, or even provide effective palliative care.

Then it struck again. And again. At first, there was fear a deadly epidemic was sweeping through the nascent republic. The Regent had deployed an engineered pathogen against its enemies millennia before, and a public panic almost resulted, a widespread terror that the ancient disease had returned in some mutated form. But then it became apparent that only the Tanks were affected. And despite the efforts of the greatest medical and scientific minds in the republic, every attempt to cure or prevent the disease ended in failure.

It was a genetic abnormality, that much the researchers had surmised, some kind of malfunction in the cloning process, one that was not detectable before outbreak. Some donor DNA was more susceptible, that became clear as more cases developed. Cameron was fortunate. His own Fortis DNA had exhibited one of the lowest incidence rates of all the genetic lines, with just one case so far out of one hundred specimens. The average was much higher, almost five percent…and one DNA line, the Larsons, had lost sixteen of the ninety-four of their number who had survived quickening.

“Second squad’s positioning is back within mission parameters.”

Cameron nodded as the AI’s report pulled him from his rambling thoughts. Nodding was a pointless gesture, he knew, but instinctive nonetheless. He couldn’t imagine commanding in the field without the sophisticated computer personality assisting him…but he wondered sometimes if people had become too dependent on technology. Knowing the AI was watching everything, that he could access all its input and analyses directly in his mind, even as he did his own memories…was it too much? Could it help but degrade attentiveness?

And encourage wandering minds thinking of names and training and the Plague…

He didn’t have an answer…and the AI that was privy to his thoughts didn’t offer one. His training had also included some time with an old-style AI unit, the kind the Marines on the fleet used, before First Imperium technology moved human computer technology hundreds of years into the future in an instant. The Marines back then had given their primitive units names, but that practice had fallen out of favor. A Marine thirty years before would speak to his AI, identifying it by name, to activate it or to make clear he was speaking to the unit and not, say, another Marine on the com. But that wasn’t necessary anymore…even when Cameron spoke to the AI, the unit was integrated fully with his brain. It knew he was speaking to it before the words came out, even as he formulated what he was going to say.

The bond between a modern Marine and his AI was far closer than it had been in the days of the fleet. Most Marines came to think of the machines as extensions of themselves, some voice from the back of their mind helping them keep track of things. And it felt weird to give part of yourself a name.

He turned to the side, his suit almost anticipating the movement, the AI acting on his thought impulses, precisely controlling the elaborate servo-mechanicals to make the move seem almost completely natural. Cameron remembered when he’d first arrived to begin training. There had been weapons and suits of armor waiting, old models, the one the Marines on the fleet had worn into battle.

Cameron and his fellow trainees got the chance to try out the old-style fighting suits, and he had gained an appreciation for the older officers and instructors, men and women from the fleet who had worn the almost medieval suits in battle. Cameron could still remember wincing as more than a dozen needles and probes sliced into him, and the feeling of barely being able to walk in the hulking, clumsy armor was as fresh in his mind as it had been that day. He wondered how the Marines of the fleet had endured it. He’d asked one of his instructors at training camp, but the only reply he’d gotten was that Marines did whatever had to be done.

And it was the only reply he needed. Some things had changed. AIs, armor, weapons. But some things remained, as true now as they had been then, and years before that, beyond the Barrier, when the Corps had fought its great wars before the coming of the First Imperium.

Marines did whatever had to be done.

Chapter Six

Report from Unit 3A6502 to Vengeance One

All units continue to pursue enemy communications drones. Seven destroyed as of this transmission. Estimate 2-3 more have escaped our initial search area. Enemy stealth technology is nearly a match for our own. This is making the detection of the final units difficult.

Analysis suggests we cannot rely upon one hundred percent interception. The original plan for a multi-year systematic sweep of nearby systems may be compromised by the possibility the enemy vessel’s warning will reach their home world. I must therefore develop a secondary strategy…one designed to intercept and destroy any rescue or retaliatory force the enemy may send after their scout vessel.

Cutter Research Compound (Home of the Mules)

Ten Kilometers West of Victory City, Earth Two

Earth Two Date 10.30.30

“How were you able to complete this so quickly, Achilles? And in secret.” Peleus stared at the underground chamber that stretched almost out of sight in the dimly lit gloom.

“Do you recall the ‘delay’ we encountered delivering the new prototype worker robots about three months ago?”

Peleus smiled. “You faked that?” He looked out over the massive room and then back to Achilles. “My compliments, my friend. Even I was fooled.”

“I would have told you, but I thought it was best to maintain maximum secrecy.” Achilles smiled. The extreme automation of the Mules’ massive research and production facility had made it relatively easy to hide his activities from the others. Only Callisto had known he had diverted the new robots to his own purposes.

Achilles gestured toward the room. “This is what ten of the bots can do in two months, my friend. Not just excavation, but the construction of ventilation systems, production equipment…everything we need. I was able to requisition the required supplies by adding it to our weekly manifests gradually. I was concerned someone would question the increase in supplies, but no one said anything.” Achilles paused. “The hardest thing was hiding this from Dr. Cutter…and of course, H2.”

“Yes, the doctor is only a human, but he is the most intelligent of them all…and not to be underestimated. And H2 has been poking around, asking questions. It appears Dr. Cutter is at least suspicious enough to send his clone to spy on us.” Peleus hesitated. “Achilles…Dr. Cutter will try to stop us if he finds out what we are planning. It is my hope that none of this comes to violence, but if the NBs and the Tanks insist on opposing us, I am prepared for what comes. But Dr. Cutter…”

“Yes.” Achilles looked back at his friend. “I share your concerns, Peleus. If the doctor tries to interfere, we must prevent him from stopping us…but he cannot be harmed. Nor H2, nor Dr. Zhukov. Doctors Cutter and Zhukov created us…and however much more capable we have become than they, we cannot be the instruments of their death or injury. And, while H2 may be inferior in many ways, he is still one of us. Indeed, if we are successful in resuming the creation of more of our number, our new brethren will benefit from twenty-five years of continued research. The new generation will almost certainly surpass us, even as we did H2…and H2 did the humans.”

Achilles paused. “Our clandestine activities, what some would call treason…we take these steps to preserve our future, but in our actions we create our own obsolescence. We are dedicated to the pursuit of improving the human species, and when the new generation is created, and when it has reached adulthood, it will be our place to willingly accept the roles of inferiors. We strive now to make ourselves obsolete, to spawn a new generation that will take humanity into the future.”