Hunted: Chapter 6

Doppelganger

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Mae yawned as she sprinted into the cockpit. Her hand slapped down on three toggles and an iridescent flicker thrummed to life around the ship. A bolt of condensed lightning crackled over the cockpit, dissipating over the shields. 'Shields should hold unless they have something even larger,' the pilot dropped into her chair with another yawn.

'Activate the guns and get shooting,' Padoan headed for the armoury.

'They're offline for repairs,' Mae shouted down to him.

'Of course they are,' Padoan muttered to himself. He grabbed a lasrifle and three spare cells from the locker and joined Trent, Raun, and Shogun near the exit ramp. Mercenaries ran manoeuvres outside, running one way and the other, setting up cover and readying themselves for a siege. 'What's the plan?'

'Grenades,' Raun said. 'Lob a dozen and we're bound to hit someone.'

'Wasteful,' Shogun tutted. 'Better to wait for them to attack and get stuck in the bottleneck at the ramp. Once a wave or two have failed they'll try and cut through the hull. That's when we can attack.'

'How do you know that?' Raun glowered.

'It's what I would do. Test your defences first then send in the sappers.'

'What about the ship weapons?' Trent said. He was prone and aiming down the sight on his lasrifle. At best he had an inch of the jungle in view, at worst he was a target for a sniper.

'Offline. Sasha's repairing them.'

'Negative. The engineer is working on that irritating ball that follows her around,' Shogun said.

'Doesn't matter, wouldn't be fixed in time,' Padoan assured himself more than the others. 'I'm not having some second-rate mercs cut a hole in my ship.' A beeping hand flashed at the base of the ramp. Clinking rang out from the grenade that landed and wedged itself near the top of the ramp. The beeping quickened.

Trent grabbed the grenade and tossed it down the ramp. The explosion rattled the ship and blew a hole in the jungle floor. He reached for his own grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it down the ramp. It rolled, bounced off the end and landed in a clump of dirt from the last explosion. VPIC mercs yelled and fled. 'We need to get out there.'

'I'd rather not have my legs blown off or suffer lasburns before I even get the chance to pop one of those fools in the head,' Raun growled. 'Like I said before, grenades.'

'I'm inclined to agree,' Padoan said. Without waiting for the droid or Trent he hurried to the armoury locker and found a case of grenades. There were four remaining with the Tarikay promise of “Big Explosions” stamped on the side in angry lettering. 'Four grenades, four throwers. Cook 'em long, throw 'em far, and then charge out. Got it?'

Shogun accepted the grenade with a dainty grip of his thumb and forefinger, 'I continue to advise allowing the enemy to come to us.'

'You've changed since your upgrades,' Padoan handed the last grenade to Trent who got into a crouch.

'I'm more attuned to tactics than I was before,' Shogun pulled the pin, counted to four as he slunk down the first metre of ramp and then lobbed his grenade.

'Come on, after the droid,' Padoan moaned.

Shogun let out an electrical roar and charged down the ramp. His grenade exploded, showering the base of the ramp in leaves and soil. Fires raged through the foliage providing cover from the acrid smoke. Shogun fired wildly into the smoke but every shot hit.

Padoan, Trent, and Raun followed suit. Padoan threw his grenade to were he thought the railgun was before darting up towards a waist high durasteel block. A VPIC merc lay dead on the other side, the right side of his face shredded by shrapnel. The last grenade exploded and Raun and Trent sprinted for the cover kindly provided by the enemy. Shogun continued to fire indiscriminately through the black smoke coursing through the jungle underbrush.

The mercenaries yelled incomprehensibly to one another while the whir of the railgun pierced the air. 'These new photoreceptors are marvellous,' Shogun chuckled. He dove behind a durasteel block as a blast of blue energy tore a hole through the smoke searing the air over Padoan and then carving a perfect circle into one of the massive trees with roots like stilts. The tree groaned, the thinner of the roots snapping one by one until there was a great crunch as the tree fell. A second tree creaked and was brought low by the might of the first, the ground shaking for miles around.

The whir of the railgun sounded again.

Padoan knew he had four seconds. He burst out from cover and sent a stream of molten laser through the rapidly closing hole in the smoke. For two seconds the laser beams pinged harmlessly off the barrel of the railgun, the third second saw the shot go wide. As the pale dot gathered in the depths of the railgun and the whir slipped from high to low pitch a las bolt pierced the forehead of the merc operating the gun. He slumped forward over the barrel, a steaming hole in his forehead, making the railgun tip up to the sky where it fired harmlessly. 'Take them out! Now! Now!' Padoan vaulted over the durasteel box blasting two mercs in rapid succession.

Raun slipped out and sprinted across to the railgun and slammed the butt of his rifle into a mercs nose as he was trying to remove the corpse of his comrade. Raun fired two point blank blasts into the man's torso and grabbed the twin triggers of the railgun. He spun it round and charged the weapon, firing it in an arc that tore the remaining four VPIC mercs in two.

Trent and Shogun emerged from the smoke. 'We need to move fast,' Trent said. 'Search every body.'

Padoan searched the nearest corpse to him but all he found were spare energy cells and a burnt photograph of a pair of legs on a beach. He looked up to see Mae's smiling and waving from the cockpit window. The Firethorn's lower turret popped down, watching for targets. 'Gather what you can and meet me on board.'

'Sure thing, Captain,' Trent said.

Raun deposited the second railgun in the armoury locker. Trent threw a keycard on the mess table while Shogun fitted himself with a bandolier littered with grenades. 'If you get shot you're going to go up like a nuke,' Raun said.

'Your lack of confidence wounds me.'

'Trent what's the card for?' Padoan ignored the bickering, there was no use to it and more VPIC mercs could show up at any moment.

'Access card to a military base. Least that's what I think it is. Hard to say without an ID on it,' Trent turned the card over in his hand, the edges were worn down to the white plastic and there had once been a logo in the top right corner, something with some bird of prey but it was too faded to tell. It was striped red and black. 'All we can do is try it.'

'But where?' Raun said.

'Pick a base and we go there.'

'That simple?'

'That simple. Trent, which is the closest and most straightforward to get to?' Padoan checked the energy cell of his lasrifle, plenty of juice. 'I want to get paid.'

'This one,' Trent's finger landed on a clearing in the jungle, at least one that had been there when the maps had been commissioned. 'Mostly flat terrain, roughly an hour away.'

'An hour's a long time,' Raun said.

'An hour for us is an hour for them. Sooner we move the better,' Padoan said. 'Get your gear and meet outside.'

Padoan and Sasha waited in silence for the others to arrive. Z3 beeped and booped as it gathered data on the externals of the Firethorn checking for cracks, fractures, and whatever else would cause problems in spaceflight. Shogun and Trent came down the ramp bickering over rifles, the droid lamenting the bog-standard quality of Padoan's armoury but the Varis Peak Interstellar Consortium were worse. 'I had this wonderful lasrifle, bespoke, like me, kitted out just the way I like, with a wonderfully potent energy cell that was near infinite.'

'Where'd it go?' Trent sighed. He stared into the jungle, eyes glassy.

'Not a clue. My memory cores are oddly vacant of much before you meatbags found me. Either the Qing miners have the lasrifle, which I must insist we go and search that base once our current objectives are satisfied, and if not there then I fear it to be lost. Oh, if it were in the hand of some organic, some lowlife pirate or grunt. My servos whine just calculating the insult.'

'Where's Raun?' Padoan had chosen to ignore most of the droid's rants. It was too easy to be sucked into the insults and the lamentations, in fact it seemed Shogun wanted the argument. He supposed a droid programmed to fight would like any sort of fight, no matter how petty.

'Selecting a sight for his sidearm,' Trent said.

'Unusual.'

'It was a joke.'

'Oh...' was all Padoan could muster. A stony silence befell them while Sasha scanned Shogun up and down. Padoan turned the engineer, 'Seal the ship, keep the shields up, and have the turrets scanning for hostiles at all times.'

'Don't have to tell me twice, Captain. Mae'll be at the other end of Shogun if you need her,' Sasha yawned. A slick of glossy brown grease stained her greying hair.

'Where are you going?'

'To my rack. It's been a long day, the ship is... operational and I don't see you coming back anytime soon.'

'Boip tzzt hunhun,' Z3 bobbed past Shogun's head.

'Good,' Sasha nodded. 'Head back to the workshop.'

'Gzz, baap roo doboop,' Z3 spun past Shogun and hovered off up the ramp.

'That ball needs to be programmed with some manners,' Shogun hissed.

'Good hunting, Captain,' Sasha patted Padoan on the shoulder and boarded the Firethorn.

The four of them ventured along a winding path hugging the craggy cliff face. Stilted trees didn't grow so close to the almost vertical rock and instead thick shrubs and miles of long leafed ivy clogged the soil. The long three pronged leaves were everywhere, ensnaring other bushes and shrubs and small trees, along the ground, and even climbing up the rock, the thin branches covered in tiny hooks that clawed into plants and rock alike. Padoan pored over the maps, not that the decades old cartography matched the current day. The topography hadn't changed but the flora had. Large swathes of jungle had been cleared, why was unclear as the ion cannons and military bases already existed and there were no signs of new construction, even an attempt. At first he thought it was landing pads, fuelling depots, potentially barracks but there was nothing to suggest anything so much as a foundation stone or an electrical cable had been laid. He followed the overgrown path until it curled away from the cliffs and into the jungle proper. The behemoth trees returned and he stopped beneath the cover of a stilted tree.

'How is it you don't remember anything before the mining base? Do you remember what happened to you on the mining base?' Raun pressed Shogun again. Not long after they'd set off from the ship had Raun decided to air his grievances. He was right too, trust was needed, but the timing was, to Padoan, rotten.

Shogun shrugged and rolled his head in imitation of fatigue, 'I cannot recall data I do not possess. As the second-rate mechanic said, my form has been damaged, abused, and infringed while my functionality as been reduced by these attacks I assure you my loyalty is with the Captain.'

'Why?'

'He is the Captain, and the mechanic works for him. For all her faults she did repair me to basic functionality, which is far more than can be said of those butchers in the mining base.'

'A VPIC merc recognised you, does that not concern you? Do you not understand my trepidation?' Raun halted under a parcel of shade, 'Trepidation... now I'm talking like you.'

'A common case of flattery by imitation,' Shogun chimed. 'While I may not have the memories relevant to the time you enquire about I do possess an age via my central core clock.'

'And?' Padoan fixed the droid with a glare.

'It reports first initialisation of systems two hundred and seventy-five years, six months, thirteen days, four hours, fifty-five minutes, and eleven seconds ago. It does not record location of creation and so I can only assume this is Core Standard Time originating from the planet Eleth.'

'That's like four hundred Bethsemanni years,' Trent whistled.

'That's a lot of life to not remember,' Raun jousted. 'Could your memories be locked away in that metal shell of yours?' he rang his knuckles against Shogun's breast.

'Rude,' Shogun batted Raun's hand aside. 'It is... possible but given I cannot access them at all I do not know. If there is a rogue memory core within my frame, I do not know about it.'

Raun turned to Padoan, 'No droids in the future. Not unless we've built it from the ground up.' He crashed between Shogun and Trent to march on ahead. 'Where we headed?'

'Ahead and left, under that gnarled tree trunk,' Padoan said.

There was a crunch of leaves and roots up ahead. The four dropped to their knees and fell silent, the dulcet song of the jungle snapped as a raucous barrage of bird cries split the air followed by the shudder of branches and leaves.

Gentle words in a strange language reached Padoan's ear. There were footsteps too, soft and distant. He listened, counting the number of pairs as at least eight. His finger slid down to the small dial on his lasrifle, above the trigger, to prime the weapon. He froze and exhaled, the footsteps moving further away. Their cover remained. The four of them waited for another ten minutes before talking or moving, just to make sure.

'You think they're heading to the ship?' Trent whispered.

'I hope not. The auto-turrets are good but not that good,' Padoan said. 'The base is close, hopefully they came from the one we're going to.'

'Hopefully,' Trent and Raun said.

A short creep later and they'd arrived at the bunker. The ground floor roof was overgrown with ivy while the door and card scanner were pristine. 'You think it goes underground again?' Trent whispered, he rolled the keycard between the fingers of his right hand.

'Definitely,' Raun said.

Shogun returned from his scout around the outside of the structure. 'Small ground floor, no windows or other entrances. Likely descends into a larger base.'

'Scan the card,' Padoan said, lasrifle primed and ready.

Trent tapped the red and black keycard on the scanner. The three lights on the top cycled yellow and blinked one by one for what seemed an age. It pinged green and the door slid across. The room was small and barren save for a weapons cage in one corner and a table in the centre. Three men sat around the table playing cards, the forth player was a droid with a well polished silver exterior. 'Hands up!' Trent entered, his lasrifle trained on the bearded man's head. Raun entered after, checking the four corners, then taking aim at the man with a cigarette.

Padoan stalked in as the third man, a gnarled scar where his ear had been, reached for his sidearm, the captain fired, knocking the pistol out of the man's hand and leaving him with a searing burn. 'Weapons over there. Toss 'em,' he pointed with his lasrifle to a spot well out of reach.

The three men obliged without comment.

Shogun entered and cocked his head to one side, 'What are you?' he hissed.

The silver droid set his cards on the table and rose, a pistol magnetised to his hip. 'Specialist combat droid, designation Ixion the Third,' his voice was eerily similar to Shogun's but a notch faster. The droids were identical in size and shape.

'Lose the pistol, imitator, or you lose your head,' Shogun's vocals gained a rumbling quality.

'So quick to violence, did you lose your negotiation module?' Ixion the Third spun the pistol around his finger and tossed it to the side. 'We have no desire to die.'

'Does this droid speak for all of you?' Raun asked.

The three men nodded.

'They don't have tongues and the Consortium has not approved vocal module replacements,' Ixion the Third said, his hands lazily held up. 'Which designation are you? By the holes and rust I imagine you are a very old model.'

'Silence, imitator. Cheap copy,' Shogun's finger rested on the trigger of his lasrifle, his eyes turning blood red.

'I am many things but cheap is not one of them,' Ixion the Third said with smug satisfaction.

Raun stepped forward, 'While we have you at our leisure, perhaps you can answer some questions about your origin, and his?' he gestured to Shogun.

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