My new life flashed before my eyes, weapons instructions, a decade of twenty mile hikes that ended in live fire drills, constant wargames, simunition -a sort of non lethal projectile- games that lasted months on end. Trench warfare with and without live artillery support. Accidents took their toll, some gave up and were euthanized by our instructors. Singularity conscripts obeyed or died. All told, we started with a thousand of us ‘clones’ by the end one hundred and five of us remained. Veterans of war before we ever set foot on the battlefield. I knew it was all a dream, a product of the cryotube’s flash training. But I was no longer the pilot of my own body. It moved and obeyed the whims of Sable Yurten. My new identity.
I am Sable Yurten, elite conscript of the Holy Singularity.
Our body is teleported once more, this time to a holding area. The cryotubes here are identical, aligned in a hexagonal shape that matches the room we now call home. Only my eyes are open. All others are still asleep, including Sable Yurten.
Cryotubes line the walls ceiling and floor, allowing six rows of human beings to be crammed into the space. Our bodies float in gel under reduced gravity, at peace. Except for me. My heart slows, often stopping but I never sleep. No, one eye is always cracked, watching as armed instructors enter the room, waking my former Earthlings. Who don their clothing and gear, then seal gasmasks over their faces, with only a faint red glow leaking out of their eyes.
Through the glass I see a familiar woman. Attractive despite her shaved head. We both took science 102 a semester ago, and sat opposite each other. So when Doctor Abrahms went on his rants about railguns being a thousand years out, we had front row seats. Wonder where old Dr. Abrahms is now. In the lecture hall, a semicircular room where the professor stood at the center. I never learned her name. And curse her. She’s resisting the clothes, covering herself and crying. I curse her stupidity, praying she’ll play along. Please, don’t make a scene! Medics are not your friend–
–It's too late. One of the proctors has stepped behind her. Pistol exits holster. An energy weapon that creates a tiny ball of plasma no larger than your pinky nail. Precise, there won’t be any overpenetration. Sable’s seen it before. Highly effective against soft targets. Bordering on useless in a fight against the Technocracy who favors heavy cyborgs and vehicles. My classmate’s skull is a soft target, putting on a gory display as the medic provides ‘recursive retraining.’ She’s learned the last lesson of her life, and has no more need of further instruction.
Not wanting to emulate her, I go limp in my tube. Sable’s false memories guide my eye as the recruits cloth themselves. The ritual is strange really, there are hundreds of us within this corridor, yet only twelve are ever awoken. Without guns or bayonets the proctors have the upper hand, no amount of wig outs could overpower them. Yet they limit themselves to twelve people on the walkway and twelve tubes decanting. The cycle repeats ad infinitum til I realize why. Each of the twelve is a flash trained human that follows a pattern, the first likes to wear his laces tight, cinching them down so hard his feet turn white. He’s nervous, those laces will have to be loosened soon. A mistake I see repeated in each squad, always by number one.
Meanwhile the seventh soldier is always a woman, slender, and taller than average, she has to receive specific gear, or else the rebreather hose won’t reach from her face to the air scrubber. Our drafters were thorough and have tailored every detail of our flash trainings to individuals. Yet always repeating certain patterns. Which is when I notice number eleven.
Busty, not too tall, or short, painfully average really in both height and weight. A fascinating error in the otherwise thorough simulations. We’re Americans, which is to say, fat as fuc. Not half starved levies who completed a hundred mile march in full kit before shipping off to this planet. Sable’s memories explain it, but it’s all I can do to not break into laughter at the realization. I endure the mirth silently, chuckling until my ribs are sore. Our flash training explained the weight gain as ‘cryo sickness’. Since we’re asleep but in a vat of nutrients our bodies supposedly absorb everything, putting on extra weight in a necessary inconvenience that will prepare us for half rations in the future.
The excuse is so half baked I let out a real snort, triggering a blinking alarm on my cryopod.
Aw crap… I’ve done it now. Play along,. Don’t get shot.
One of the proctors sees my light blink. Face unreadable under their gas mask. An emotionless stare of twin rubies that sweeps the rows of people ahead of us. Her head jerks facing another proctor. Beneath all the gasmasks and flashtraining we’re still human. Facing someone when we talk is a deeply ingrained habit. Not even helmet integrated radios can defy human nature.
The nearest proctor points to me, and the other shrugs, counting the pods. They’re doing the wall opposite to me, I'm situated near the back of the room. If they continue their rotation and start at the front of my aisle then I have hours. Two more squads are activated, clothed and sent to war. No guns are dispensed. Probably an anti wig-out measure. Which is when they turned around, and started opening my squad. Easier to start at the end and work their way back to front. Our cryotubes hiss open, glass parting along invisible seams. It’s probably not glass at all, but I’m no material engineer. Not yet at least. Most my comrades are slow to wake, allowing the proctors to open twenty four capsules at once, so one squad may arm while the other rises from the coma. I feign sleep, until the flash training rears its ugly conditioning. My body moves without instructions, I extend a hand out of the goo, and the proctors take hold of me, pulling my naked ass out. A surprisingly clean affair. In the low gravity the goo remains in the pod, somehow adhering tighter to the steel tube than to my hairless body, which slurps out of the cryogel entirely clean. A quick examination shows that my eyelashes and eyebrows are gone. Creepy. Not that anyone will see under my helmet. My body dons the wargear, helmet, gasmask, then a thin layer of almost spandex, tighter, more form fitting and entirely meant for hazardous conditions. A sort of anti-radiation spanxs-suit. Then comes bra -no way am I going to war without support!-, shirt, pants, body armor for the chest, outer trousers, overjacket, gloves, boots, and the whole mess is then sealed. Like a fremen stillsuit, except meant to keep out radiation instead of keeping us in water. We’ll sweat worse than boiled pigs in these, but we won’t die of cancer. A tradeoff that might be meaningless. Jim’s download warns me of Syrak-9, an irradiated helscape for half the planet, where only mobile mining cities can exist. Scrapping by on merit of being the only ones stupid enough to risk their lives for the wealth of Solarium mining. While the other half of the planet is a forest world, engineered plants scrub the atmosphere, and cities that would be more at home in the forests of LothLorien than in space rise thousands of meters into the air. Bioengineering at its pinnacle. It helps to have a planetary shield as well. Orbital bombardments can’t hit the forest cities. They say knowledge is power, but none of that knowledge helps me now.
Of a thousand candidates only one hundred and five remain.
I watch as my body moves, in control of nothing.
This is going to be a problem! I think, watching as my body jogs out of the tuberoom and into some kind of staging area. Steel walls rise a hundred feet into the air, and probably far deeper below, catwalks run from our hexagonal cryotube rooms across empty space towards a glowing portal. Some kind of instant teleportation gate. To my Earthling brain it looks like one of those old stargates from the series where a twenty year old was played by a gray haired badass. Captain Kirk he was not, but the series was fun. Maybe it was the psi op it always joked about being, preparing us for the day our world was culled. Damn, the goa’uld even used the same terminology. Creepy. Each catwalk passes in front of a floating disk where a dozen officers watch us, several aids move to and fro, giving reports and keeping the logistical war machine running.
Speakers blare, repeating a simple briefing.
“will seek out and destroy all alien lifeforms. Syrak-9 is a solarium mining world, do not use any form of irradiation. Per treaty, no orbital support is permitted, nor may you leave the continent. Violators are subject to immediate execution. Good Luck. You will seek out and destroy all alien…”
That’s all we hear before our turn comes. An officer points to us, number one knows the order and marches into the gate.
“Your weapons will be on the other side.” Says the officer.
My squad trusts him, I trust him. He has no reason to lie. Through the gate we go, the inhospitable climate imperceptible through our heavy clothes. What is perceptible however, is the muddy trenches and bodies. We’re surrounded by a score of corpses, mostly laying in tattered shreds, as if an uncountable number of conscripts were fed into a wood chipper. This is not an armory. Nor any kind of staging ground.
Memories of how most of the thousand recruits died comes to mind. Friendly fire incidents, when artillery shells encountered a strong headwind and fell short, onto our positions. A lottery that no skill on your part could influence. It simply came down to if you got lucky or not.
Today, we did not get lucky.
I’m eleventh through the gate, but that matters little when the artillery vaporizes number one. Direct hit. A high explosive shell crushes the man, plowing six feet into muddy trench before the proximity fuse understands it hit something. Fire annihilates most the squad, only tearing me in half. Being second to last has it’s perks.
Ouch. At least I got to help mom… I just wish, I wish I could have mattered. Done more…
Memories remind me that Mom gets nothing if we don’t win these wargames. We must take the planet. The pressure wave knocks me unconscious before I can feel pain, killing Sable Yurten.
—
>Matriarch Hygieia: OW! WHAT THE HELL! WARN ME
>Executrix Alaea: Wasn’t me
>Executrix Alaea: I felt it, we have a third
>Matriarch Hygieia: had a third. feels like we are gonna die.
>Executrix Alaea: There s time. have location, sending my bots.
>Executrix Alaea: need biomass
>Matriarch Hygieia: shit
>Matriarch Hygieia: die now or tomorrow
>Executrix Alaea: I don’t want to die…
>Matriarch Hygieia: take it… oh man, this is gonna hurt.
—
Sable Yurten died. As people tend to do when they are killed.
Her veneer of lies stripped away by unfriendly fire–
–And the bitch left me holding the bag. I became aware slowly, light coming back into my pupils. Legs tingle for several minutes as feeling returns, coming in a distinct wave that starts near my ribs and ripples down, through my pelvis, over my hips, into knees, calves, feet, and finally my toes. They’re all weirdly cold, I look down and find blue arcs of light crawling over my –once again– naked lower half. Weird, how did my toenails get painted black?
I shake the distraction, more annoyed at an emergent pattern, one I am already fed up with! What philandering jerk leaves a woman naked in the trenches? Baz-hole?
The blue sparks tickle my legs, creeping entirely too close to my bits.
“Eek!” I swat them away, or try to.
Fingers touch sparks and I get gently tased. Like licking a nine volt battery mixed with spicy shaving cream, thick, painfully tingly and now all over my freaking hands! I throw myself sideways, kicking and flailing until my sparkly hands land on the severed torso of twelve. Sparks leap from me to her, encircling her upper half and arcing to her legs, she was cut in half like me, not vaporized like number one. In a sort of negative flash the sparkles and body vanish.
[+1 biomass]
“What the hel–”
Before I can finish the thought, text appears in my mind, so similar to the chat function in Wings of Liberty, a game I once played. It's been years since I’ve seen that style of text, mainly because I have the chat function muted. Nothing is left there except friends who haven’t logged on in three years and edgy politics.
>Matriarch Hygieia: Tasty, but I thought you needed biomass? You sent extra back.
>Executrix Alaea: Wasn’t me.
>Matriarch Hygieia: Is our other half alive?
>Executrix Alaea: Other third… Hey! Athena Finley, say hello! You know which buttons to press.
“This can’t be real…” I begin to say, coming up short.
My voice trails off as I stare at my toes, whatever is making the nails dark isn’t polish. My legs are no longer the same, already showing more muscle and less fat, although that might just be the perfect shave. I run my fingers over them, glass has more friction than these sexy bitches. My mouth works out my thoughts.
“In the past day I was cheated on, conscripted into a galactic military, cloned or something, transported across planets, and implanted with the memories of an entire life.Blown in half and rebuilt by… something indistinguishable from magic. This really isn’t all that strange.” I say aloud, scrambling into the pants left behind by number twelve.
Hey, I don’t like graverobbing at all, but I ain't running around a planet without pants on! Besides, twelve’s body is gone, no blood or viscera remains behind, leaving guilt free pants behind. Boots too. Ambient radiation will give me cancer inside of an hour, best armor up. Why they sent humans here and not sealed tanks and mechs is a strategic error I struggle to comprehend. So stupid. Earth has tanks! Jim said those were taken, so why not use them?
Through my helmet I hear whistling. The sound of a artillery shells coming for me. I duck and run, sprinting through the muddy trenches in search of safety or cover. There’s none. Someone built this trench to be a highway. Thirty feet deep with logs or metal grating to limit how deep you’ll sink into the mud, a Technomancy tactic so their war machines can keep on warring without getting stuck. I’m exposed here. A trench alone isn’t enough to protect from bombardment, standard singularity training says bunkers should be placed every quarter mile at a minimum. While the Technomancy standard is a mile or two. A shell lands in front of me, burying itself in the wet dirt before exploding. Dirt rises in a split second, sending a concussion wave that kicks me in the face. My helmet takes the brunt, and I'm grateful for the integrated gas mask. Quality gear, built to function after a direct hit. Which I’ve taken two of. Together they manage to keep my head intact as the wind forcibly exits my lungs, ears pop. Silence follows. Were it not for the twin glass circles my eyes would be gone as well. I lay in the mud for several seconds, wheezing as my entire body reels in pain. Like I’ve been tenderized by a dozen Rock Johnsons. Or a dildo factory, but I repeat myself.
No one comes to save me, there are no weapons here, only the odd chat window. Executrix Alaea is right, I know the buttons. The window isn’t really a window, it's a borderless square in the bottom right hand corner of my vision.
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>Executrix Alaea: Ouch! Please don’t die, mom needs us. Can’t heal you again.
>Matriarch Hygieia: I’ll kill you if you die! Stay alive! Hide in a hole if you have to!!!!!!
Mentally I press enter, flicking my pinky to open chat.
>Human Athena: artillery strike. I’m alive. ouch.
>Matriarch Hygieia: what the hell… HUMAN?
>Matriarch Hygieia: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
>Executrix Alaea: Ignore her. Shes uh… I don’t know how to say this, not human anymore? Kinda zergy, but don’t worry about that.
>Human Athena: Is that why my toenails are black? Did you make me half zergy?
>Matriarch Hygieia: HA!
Pain rakes my body, yet the flash training drives me onwards, clawing my feet back and forcing me down the trench, limping on my left foot, must have twisted it. Zerg are tough, guess I’m still human. Like my name. I really dislike that moniker but chat comes after I’m not running for my life.
>Human Athena: I’m alone, in a trench war with terminators. Fuck this shit. Teleport me out? Or give me a shield? Or a gun? These jackoffs didn’t even give me a combat shovel!
A moment passes, the only feedback being the metal mesh beneath my half tied boots. Someone must have lined the trench with them, a way of fortifying it so heavy vehicles can drive through. That’s not standard policy for Singularity trenches, we only use infantry and all terrain equipment, mud doesn’t stop us. I pray no artillery shells are whistling my way, but I'm deaf. Not like I can do anything if I hear the shells coming. In a way, that’s relaxing.
>Executrix Alaea: I have teleportation access… but I can’t move any of us three. Or give you my weapons.
>Human Athena: WHY NOT?!?
>Executrix Alaea: idk, just can’t. Besides… We’re no longer human. These names weren’t picked by us. Matriarch can’t give you her weapons, and mine are all coded to uhm. My uhm, brainwaves or DNA or something.
>Human Athena: I’m going to die if you don’t help me.
>Matriarch Hygieia: Survive bitch.
>Matriarch Hygieia: Hey, send me more biomass I can squeeze out a warrior or two. Takes time. But I’m safe. Sorta.
“AAAAAHHH! What do you expect me to do? Hide in a hole and poop bodies?” I shout, the sound muffled by my gasmask.
A bend in the trench slows me, apprehension about turning the corner, until I realize I'm gonna be lucky or dead, and walk forward like I'm the limping bombed out Queen of Trenchlandia. I glance back at the pile of comrades, just in time to see dozens of electric pink iguanas jump into the trench. Tulverians, aliens with laser rifles and blast armor over half their otherwise exposed scales. I jog forward, ankle bringing tears to my eyes as pain sledgehammers my leg. Around the bend I run, hoping the crocodilianoids are sated by eating other earthlings. On second thought, I hope we taste like shit. The last thing I need is iguanas thinking i’m a snack. The trench in front of me lies empty, except for the very thing I’ve been looking for. A black maw, the entrance to an underground bunker. Twenty feet wide and nearly thirty feet tall the orifice dares me to advance. Such an entrance is never constructed by Singularity forces, it’s too exposed. Any half competent rocketeer could drop a nuke through such a gaping hole from ten clicks away. At night! Of all alien races Jim informed me of, only heavy warmachines like Technocracy Juggernauts would need this.
I cup my ears, forgetting that I'm deaf.
“Get lucky or die.” I say, jogging along the trench wall to the bunker’s mouth.
I pass an exit ramp, a place in the trench wall that’s been bulldozed so tanks can enter and exit. On a whim I jog up it, hoping to find cover in the contested land outside the trenches. Speak of the devil and he shall appear. No sooner have I stuck my head above the ramp do twelve Juggernauts rise above their own trenches trailing black smoke as they launch hundreds of missiles each. So many that white chemtrails blot out the sun. Energy batteries whine and fire, detonating dozens of missiles. A futile waste of power. Thousands of the missile fleet strike home sending a shockwave that even my deaf ears can register. Twelve Juggernauts is an armored division, Singularity protocol states we should call in an orbital bombardment or sacrifice ten thousand infantrymen to clog up their treads. They call that a ‘mobility kill’, since the tank will be a sitting duck until real guns can show up.
I NEED to hide, turning to limp down the ramp, reaching the bottom simultaneously with three Tulverians. Mouths stained red. Laser rifles armed, charged, and at the ready. The lead one sees me, skull crest rising, gun rising, mouth opening to–
-He blinks. Eyes shifting towards the bunker.
I feel the rumble more than hear it. Like a massage chair dialed up to ‘beat them silly with hammers then ask for a big tip’. Thousands of slugs rupture the trio, turning them into pink mist before I can blink. One second they are there, the next they aren’t.
“Cute magic trick.” I mutter, darkly smiling.
My brain registers my response as abnormal. But I ignore it, wondering how much blood I lost today. Adrenaline should be spiking now, but my glands seem to be empty. Exhaustion hits. I slump against the trench wall, sitting down.
A Juggernaut, three stories of gun barrels sensors and armor plates rolls into view, turning away from me and rolling up the far ramp. A dozen autocannons aim at me, tracking as the juggernaut rises above the trench’s lip. For some inexplicable reason it doesn’t fire. Maybe because I’m unarmed, no threat to it. But Sable’s seen Juggernauts fire their guns just to feel recoil, some vestigial reflex from it’s human pilot. There is only one, located at the center mass. Five feet above the solarium reactor. So maybe this one is out of bullets? Its an autocannon type, armed with scores of individual guns all pulling from individual magazines. Either way, it turns to join the other twelve Juggernaughts, firing a handful of missiles to support their advance.
I’m left there. Alone. Waiting for the end. Until Alaea’s words reach me. We can’t die here. Earth is going to be raped unless we win. They took four billion of us. If only one in thirty of us survive, we’ll still have enough to drown thousands of juggernaughts under our bodies. It’s time to win. Not bitch out and F10 S. Cold logic knows I’m not firing on all cylinders so in anagolizes life with Starcraft 2. This is a damn cannon rush and I’m an itty bitty SCV, But unlike in the game, I can armor up and become a Warhound. Before I can talk sense into my ramblings I jog into the bunker, jumping over the wires they left near the entrance. Nightvision activates automatically, illuminating the bunker’s interior with twin green beams.
“Nightvision, dial to minimum.”
The beams dim to almost nothing, still too much light. A juggernaut has sensor suites, and their technicians are infamous for replacing organic eyeballs for scanners with a wider spectrum analysis. But no one is present. In fact, all lights are off and most of the equipment is gone. This isn’t a real bunker, just an ammo cache. Stacks of rockets with red and yellow hazard striping on the nosecones rise into the air. High explosive warheads. Too large for me. Hundreds of empty crates line the walls and floor, autocannon ammo of various calibers, all empty. I quickly scrounge through the bunker, finding a flechette pistol and two thousand rounds. Which really sounds like a lot until you realize the ‘pistol’ is the size of a briefcase, not really a pistol at all. Instead it's a miniaturized railgun that fires steel spikes -sewing needles- with fins duck taped on. But hey, it’ll go bang. I won’t get sodomized by the first rat who looks my way. Or the damn iguanas!
Relief sends me into a fit of cackles, stroking the steel pistol as I close my eyes and laugh, taking a few steps towards a row of steel near the back. It looks like a vehicle of some kind, but there’s piles of gear and crates of odds and ends keeping it concealed. My foot snags on something soft, cartwheeling me face first into a pile of lukewarm fabric. Flash training did an excellent job of desensitizing me to war life, but the pile of earthlings in gasmasks sends a shiver down my spine. This isn’t right. We shouldn’t be here. Buuuutttt, the pile is kinda bouncy…
I know something inside me has cracked. Some ancient mechanism to prevent emotional trauma from killing me. I’ll probably pay for it with a life of PTSD, but for now I open my chat log.
>Human Athena: I have biomass. Let me know when you’re ready.
I stare at the words I've mentally typed, surprised at how easy it was. Then inhale before sending. Survive, beat back the Technocracy and save earth. Maybe then I can get laid. Simple as. Well, and maybe punch Bazzhole in the cock-er spaniel. I wonder if he was drafted too…? Whorely is probably knocked up and back on earth. Ick.
>Matriarch Hygieia: Send me 100 kilos. Cant hide more in… cant hide more.
I touch the bodies, mentally tagging them for Executrix’s teleporter. The first body vanishes, then after a delay the second goes after. I hesitate a moment, but only one, before stripping them of everything, my inner and outer layers are made whole once more, as is my shattered gasmask. Then to top it off this squad was at least given weapons. One glance tells a sordid history with the sharpened shovel, red oxides coat one edge, something I hope is rust, but I know better than to try and remove it. One is holding a slender blade, something I once saw Baz call a ‘Fairbain-sykes fighting knife’ whatever that is. Beating someone to death is low on my list of desirable outcomes, but Sable Yurten is capable of the deed.
“Does flash training make you schitzo? Or just bring it out? Whatever, I need a real gun. And… armor.” I say aloud, searching through Technomancy crates.
Missiles and gauss rounds are what I find, all munitions for the rolling buildings they call Juggernauts. No way can I use these, even with powered armor I can’t carry or launch high caliber projectiles. Outside the artillery barrage redoubles. Shells following the Juggernaut’s path. One artillery hit won’t knock out Juggernaut, but it could destroy enough guns to make it combat ineffective, forcing a retreat or giving infantry squads a chance to hit them with focused laser fire or anti tank missiles. A few dozen of those bad girls is enough to knock out anything unshielded.
>Matriarch Hygieia: crap i need an immediate teleport! Eugenic Hitler is counting babies! Feck! Make one zergling and the census shows up.
I stare at the text, giggling at whatever a ‘eugenic hitler’ is. What a term. Almost sounds like a cranky Abathur.
>Executrix Alaea: Zergling? NO. Not on my ship. Thena? Want a puppy?
>Human Athena: A puppyling? THAT’S what you call a WARRIOR? Feck it. I don’t have a choice. Send it. It’ll listen to me right?
>Matriarch Hygieia: Only one way to find out. I’ll tell em to play nice.
>Executrix Alaea: say something if they misbehave.
>Human Athena: yes maam!
Two blue ripples appear in space time, almost like a protoss warp in animation, but way faster and less sparkly. Both creatures materialize in seconds. Spines run down their quadruped backs, talons digging into the bunker’s floor as they scent the air. Elongated snouts full of teeth slip open. Like a wolf’s maw, if said wolf had two rows of shark teeth and sabertoothed canines.
“Sit!” I say, forgetting that I'm wearing a sealed gas mask.
No way they can hear me-
-Both creatures sit, leaning back onto their haunches.
No freaking way can they hear me! Is that a telepathic link? Jim, just what did you do to me?
I order one to hold out it’s paw, like a golden retriever might be trained to shake. It does so, even lolling its tongue out the side of his mouth.
“Do not harm me.” I order, trying to keep the nerves out of my voice.
Then I swallow, thinking of the next order. In sync, both creatures –they aren’t really zerglings– begin to wag their tails, proof positive of my total control.
>Human Athena: They’re like dogs. I can control them with thoughts.
Even as I type, I'm looking at ‘human athena’ and frowning, mentally changing it to fit our growing theme.
>Terran Thena: :)
>Matriarch Hygieia: Cheeky bitch.
My nickname should set us apart, and I want to remind the other girls of our final goal, not just that I won our racial cointoss.
Spread out, search this bunker, I’m looking for powered armor and portable guns. I command, sending the two ‘zerglings’ into the bunker’s darkness, flashing their bone tails. Like a whip that ends in a bulbous stinger, scorpion like. I can see why we called them zerglings, they’re longer, and lankier, probably nine feet long -if you count the tail stinger- and their spines rise above our chest. Wait, I’m the only human body left. My chest. I frown, watching the not-zerglings hunt. They are purely quadrupeds, possessing no back arms or hooves or facial horns, so the term is factually wrong. But calling them spinosaurus puppies, extra bitey edition, doesn’t have the same ring as zergling. It’s inaccurate, but a shorthand that tells me exactly what we’re talking about.
In the bunker’s total darkness they spread out, sniffing the air and moving slowly, feet stay low to the ground, almost shuffling forward. Sensory perception enters my mind, we’re linked together, not really seeing through each other’s eyes, but conscious of information only they can see or sense. Somehow they’re able to detect miniscule movements through the earth, a sort of tremor sense. That’s so freaking cool! Together we listen, half-seeing, half-hearing the artillery shells land near Juggernauts. One has been knocked out entirely, flipped upside down and blown to bits. I want whatever did that! Noting that location on my helmet’s built in map function. ‘For later investigation’. Distant impacts fade as the Juggernauts split up, six head back, wounded or empty. At least one heading for us. My heart thunders, but even that is picked up by the zerglings marking it as unique amongst our four heartbeats.
Four?
There are only three of us.
“Find the fourth!” I hiss, coiling my body around the flechette ‘pistol’.
It has a smooth rear plate, just in case unarmored humans need to use it, but the thing is an awkward brick, meant to be carried and used one handed by Technocracy engineers as a weapon of last resort. Like a P90 SMG that’s made of stainless steel and twenty pounds heavier. The pair of zerglings walk to the source, not needing light to find the beating heart. God, they would be a terrifying opponent to face. Able to hunt in pitch black.
>Matriarch Hygieia: You okay?
The chat message makes me jump, sending a burst of flechettes into the wall. One zergling looks at me, as if to say, ‘quit playing around mom.’
“Sorry!” I snap, unsure why I'm apologizing to the spiky killer.
>Terran Thena: Yeah, good doglings.
They reach a crate that is sealed under some kind of foil. Almost shrink wrapped. Its exterior is separated by round studs, like a square ribcage-
-Or a cage. An airtight cage.
I sprint forward, pistol falling and pull out the shovel. One thrust rips into the vacuum sealing, unleashing a hiss as pressure equalizes.
“Rip open the cage!”
Both zerglings leap, their front paws tearing through the steel bars in two swipes. Steel rods shoot into the cage and bounce out towards me.
“Stop! Don’t hurt what’s inside!”
They obey, retreating a pace so I can assess the damage. Inside are a stack of human bodies. Some are white skinned turning blue around the orifices. Long dead. While others leak blood. Fresher… Scraping through the blood my shovel finds it spongy, or in other words, coagulated and at least a day old. I hit a steel bar, seeing it bent beneath the dogling’s paws. Crap, that much strength could damage power armor! Warriors is the right name for these zerglings. Their claws tore through inch thick steel on the first pass. A hand touches my throat, activating the helmet’s external speakers.
“Hello! Is anyone alive in there!”
Zergling hackles rise, and for an instant I wonder if they can launch those back spines. Probably not… But I’m sure Eugenic Hitler would approve of that improvement. Which gives me pause, not sure how I feel about having ‘Eugenic Hitler’ as my cheerleader.
Crunching comes from inside the cage, chasing away dictators with gory squelches. Movement through the bodies. Tremorsense from the zerglings is somehow linked to my own mind. Together we triangulate the source, finding a heartbeat moving inside the pile. Like a giant birthday cake with a stripper inside, except way, WAY, grosser and hopefully with a different kind of happy ending. I could really use a friend right now. Might keep me sane. I see a Singularity helmeted head bob up and down so I lunge forward, dragging them out of the heap. Head, arms, torso, pelvis and one leg come free. This body is stiff and totally cold. A zergling sniffs at the stump and before I realize what he intends, his jaw unhinges. Rows of teeth unfold and clamp onto exposed thigh, biting through skin, muscle and bone in a single chomp.
“Cmon!” I snap.
The zergling swallows, but gets back on task. He darts forward and drags another corpse out of the cage. Or tries to. The corpse snags on something, probably the shredded bars but the zergling keeps pulling like a dog toy. It all happens so quickly, one second spot the zergling is pulling, the next he is covered in blood, having ripped the body in half. A display that makes his eyes sparkle, he looks at me, expecting dog treats or some nonsense.
“Bro…” I mutter, unable to say anything that won’t insult my protector.
Silence is broken like a wishbone, the other creature dragging another body out and opening a hole in the pile of bodies. I blink. Dumbfounded at what I’m seeing. There is a girl, not a teen, a child. No way is she twelve years old. The little gremlin looks to be eight years old at most. More disturbingly, she’s nude. Thrice concerningly, she is sitting in a sort of craven pocket, as if someone blended all the corpses within reach of her. A manacle around her neck, two inches thick and three inches tall, totally encircling her neck while providing anchor points for a quartet of chains. Each of which is bolted to the cage’s floor.
Her purple eyes stare into mine, piercing the green lenses of my nightvision. She inhales deeply. Gasping for air. How is she still alive? The cage was sealed and stuffed full of bodies.
“What’s your name?” I say, lowering my pistol.
Sable’s training screams at me. Shrieking bloody murder about Technocracy experiments and traps. She would gun down this girl and wipe it from her memory in a heartbeat. But I am not the flashtraining. As if I don’t already know something is seriously wrong here. Cataclysmically wrong.
“Whaths a name?” Asks the girl, lisping slightly.
Her mouth moves strangely. I can’t place it but the sensation of ‘uncanny valley’ creeps up my spine. Something deeply unpleasant has been done to this child, if she even is a child. Maybe Sable is right. I should gun her down right here and now, then detonate the explosives within this bunker. As if reading my mind, she slumps, glancing at both the zerglings. Side to side eye movements, in total darkness. Her purple irises contain vertical pupils, and for a brief instant her eyes reflect green light from my nightvision. This isn’t a girl, it’s a mutant, or a Technomancy bioweapon.
“A name is what we call people- uhm… What we call our friends.” I say, snapping her eyes back onto me. “Mine is Athena Finley.”
Slit pupils narrow slightly, surprisingly they only appear half dilated in the total darkness. Can this girl even see in daylight?
“Are you my frien?” The girl asks.
“Sure I am. Can you tell me your name?” I spot a crate of Singularity rations in the corner, and silently order one of the zerglings to grab a few. I’m not really hungry, but I know there is a ‘c-bar’ in each ration box. No way is it actually chocolate, but it sure tastes good.
“I donfh ave a name.”
There it is, the reason behind the lisp. Her jaw looks human, but is split vertically through the chin. Like an anaconda’s. Complete with extra teeth that are all slightly angled rearwards. If that weren’t enough, they’re sharp, like the zerglings. This is a baby bioweapon. Ha, that reminds me of a similarly purple and equally violent girl.
“-Kerrigan.”
“Ith at my name?” Says Kerrigan.
Uhhhh… My immediate thought is, what the hell? NO! Don’t name a child after a fictional mass murdering queen. But then I hear the sound of a juggernaut volley. Twelve SCUD missiles rip through the air, a deep rumble tells me they’ve landed. I don’t have much time. So again I make a snap decision and pray my luck doesn’t bite me in the ass.
“Yes, your name is Kerrigan, and you’re my friend. Lets get you out of that cage…”