Echo’s Of War {Redux} In Full01:29 Mar 03 2013
Times Read: 630
Echo’s Of War
Beneath a blue cloudless sky, sweat dripping down his forehead, Leon crouched low. In the middle of a fire-fight it was a good idea. He brought his rifle to his shoulder and the scope to his right eye, as he closed his left.
‘Damn fool,’ he thought, as he noticed the top of an Old Russian helmet appear above the rubble ahead and, a little to the right.
Leon squeezed the trigger gently and fired a single shot.
Brick and cement dust flew from the top of the pile of old bricks and masonry; and the helmet fell to the floor.
A series of returning rapid-fire shots told Leon his adversary was still very much alive. So knowing he had now been targeted, Leon ran in a zig-zag across the old main street.
More shots followed in his wake, with each coming within a few cubits of hitting him.
Yet, finally he found succour, from an old wall that had somehow withstood the recent bombardment on what had been a stronghold for the insurgents.
He stood with his back to the wall, breathing heavily.
The cumbersome battle armour augmented one’s strength; and the reds and blues increased and stamina.
But, overt use of both as in the conflict he now found himself in the midst of, would be injurious to the user.
And, Leon had been in combat now for over two weeks, without rest, or either liquid or solid nutrients.
The blue and red chews and the battle-suit he wore were for all intent and purposes Leon Echo the third, grandson of Leon Echo the first, one of the initial batch of clone soldiers, bred for combat.
Echo brought his reader up to his eye-line. Momentarily he wished he’d acquired the battle-suit upgrade, with onscreen display. Instead, he was forced to use the reader, a device worn on the back of his left wrist.
And, as sweat beads ran down his forehead, Leon allowed a smile to cross his lips: his prey was nearby.
And though this area had supposed to be cleared, it hadn’t been: obviously.
But, his prey was nearby.
Most of his squad had been killed in the kill-zone, the results of several unremitting fire-fights. And now, there were only two of them left.
Leon gulped hard: he’d heard stories of his enemy, those they had been fighting, for over thirty years now.
His adversary was a monster, so horrible that if seen out of it’s battle-suit, it’s visage would drive a man insane.
In the stories, his enemy would rape the innocent, rampaging and mutilating the young and infirm; they would burn crops, though none had existed in this region for over twenty years: such were the horror stories, that followed these last years of the fuel wars.
Leon crouched lower against the wall, slumping down, with his head against his knees. The war-hardened soldier was nearing complete exhaustion, so believed the rumble he had heard to be thunder, until the wall toppled, as the tank rolled over him.
Echo’s Of War – Birth, Death & Renewal
From single-cell to full maturity in less than an hour was the axiom of maleCorps, the leading supplier of armed combatants.
And, as the two workers in the sterile white-coats walked the corridors built from the many vertical chambers around them, one formed a question, which he finally asked.
“So do you think they can know The One?” It’d been a question he had asked his colleagues many times, as they readied one contract after another.
Lowly tech’s they had simply tended too the nutrient tank levels, that was until the increase in production recently, due to great losses on the field.
Keira, a handsome brunette walked with her right hand behind her back, as she noted new instruction form on the pad she held in her left hand.
‘Newform needed, for…’ she read the words as they appeared, “Echo 3.’
Her colleague a young man of her age by the name of Jerome looked at her, “That series still bein used Keira?”
She looked at her notes: “Seems so.”
He looked at her momentarily puzzled.
“Why just one? Why not a squad?” The order was a curio, but he followed orders, even though he found much that they were told to be foolish and worth questioning.
He still did as instructed, after all, that’s what they did, they obeyed blindly, as they’d been taught was right for the individual; and for society.
Even so, Jerome was becoming more and more uneasy with each day.
“Seems he was on recon, the last of a squad,” Keira told him; “An the Echo series were built with independence that the Fox Series were never given…” She explained slowly to her blonde assistant, who she felt needed the explanation: “He has intel that they need, to move them back, where they should be. So, it’s just one
In fact, though Jerome had seniority over her, Keira often found that she had to explain the system they worked within to the man. At times it was almost as though he wasn’t interested in preserving their current way of life.
To her that was unthinkable. “After all,” she had explained to him, just yesterday, “the super soldier programme was designed so that the warriors we make can fight our wars and, so preserve our freedoms.”
“Freedom’s!” He had exclaimed, “Like the freedoms to be observed through the eye of a lens, wherever you go? Or, the one’s that entail you being told what to do from the moment you rise to the moment you sleep, and for all I know, then an all!”
She had shaken her head sadly at his naivety, reminding him that their way of life had to be maintained; otherwise ‘they’ would win. And no one, not even those who spoke as subversives, could want that for their society.
And, with a smile, she recalled how he’d gone ever-so quiet after that; obviously mulling over the sense of what she had said to him.
That was what she’d thought. The reality was far different though, as Jerome had listened and, as he’d done so, realised how intransigent she was; ‘A pity.’
So when he started his shift this night, Jerome had already decided not to push it and try to get her to see sense. Keira wouldn’t, or couldn’t do so and though it frustrated Jerome, he understood why. She was as much a part of the system, as the soldiers they brought back from the dead, into new cloned bodies.
And now here he was, about to start the Echo 3 download, as instructed.
“Damn,’ he mused, ‘poor bastard, no memories, except those he saw in conflict!’
But, it was part of the system, which helped maintain their lifestyle.
And, it was his job.
Jerome frowned and looked at Keira, whose blue-eyes looked at him stoically.
She knew he would rather be in another job, but this was his allocation, ‘so he’d better get damned used to it and shape up, or they wouldn’t be happy. And maybe, just maybe, he’d disappear like she’d heard happened, to subversives.’
Keira looked down, at the toes of her boots, momentarily displeased with herself.
She knew that Jerome was a good man, having witnessed how he was with his family and even, with the robot that the family owned.
‘The ‘droid was the last in a line, an should’ve been scrapped years ago,’ she considered, as she watched Jerome begin the sequence that would bring life to one of the newforms, the man-made bio-constructs, that housed the warriors consciousness.
He turned to her: and grinned.
“Behold, I am the shatterer of worlds,” he told her with a grin.
She couldn’t help but smile, then groan. He said it almost every time that they did this and, it was getting annoying. But, it had been funny of course, the first time.
An as the mist within the chamber swirled around the newform, features formed that matched the Bio, Keira had been reading for the last few minutes.
None of this was new to her though. Yet, she had been present he day there’d been a mix-up and a female med ended up in one of the Fox series: ending in termination of many of the series.
‘After all,’ someone high up had reasoned, ‘we don’t know which of the clones is which, so…’
One by one, the unit had had their suits shutdown and their meds withdrawn.
The warriors had stared blankly ahead, as their inoperable suits stood immobile, the pollution of the med stemmed in its wake, as soldiers were killed by the enemies barrage.
That day had gone down in their recorded history as one of the fiercest firefights yet, in which over twenty units had ceased: such was the need for secrecy.
‘After all,’ they had reasoned, ‘the public had to be able to have full confidence in their ability to wage war on their enemy, without making such mistakes.’
That had been the day when the new safe-guards had been set in place and the former unified consciousness that had been the Fox series had been set aside, in favour of the next that followed.
Keira had been just been a trainee back then, shortly before she’d ended up beneath Jerome, who she loved and hated in equal measure.
She watched his fingers run deftly over a sequence of keys on the pad on a stand, next to Three’s vat. And, as the download began, she wondered not for the first time, ‘how had Jerome had stayed in this position he had?’
And, ‘why had he been promoted when she had?’ To Keira, it just didn’t make sense.
But, he had been, so she had learnt to live with it; after all she had to work with the fellow, didn’t she?’ As a loyal member of the team, she would do so.
‘Besides,’ she thought with a slight smirk watching him lean forward over the vat as he studied its contents, ‘the sex was good.’
So it was, he had studied well, at Uni, taking lessons in ‘Female Biology and the realities of the clitoral orgasm’, as many men had to as part of their formal education.
It was either that, or accept download of ‘Understanding woman’, which few men’s brains could take.
An Jerome stood upright, “The mists clearing Keira, so I’m utilising the spine, now!”
He pulled a lever: and deep insides the massive warehouse, the mainframe found the Echo link, that precipitated Three’s personality download.
Keira looked at the pad in her hand, “Twenty thirty-three,” she informed Jerome.
“It’ll take an hour for the full download and updates, so maybe…?”
She caressed his face and Jerome knew what would be next: and inwardly, he groaned: she couldn’t understand, he wasn’t a sex object, even if she seemed to think he was. But, women were on top and, he liked it that way, mostly…
Echo’s Of War – Echo Screams
The nutrient was drawn from the chamber and the connections to his newform body were withdrawn and Echo woke thrashing and screaming.
“Who would want to recall every moment of their death?” Jerome asked Keira with a furrowed brow.
She smiled at him, “Well, he’ll have full recall shortly.”
The two technicians stared at one another, watching him come to full consciousness.
Once empty, the chamber tilted in an arc, until it rested on the horizontal plane.
The lock hissed open and the glass front swung upward slowly.
Fully alert now, Echo 4 stared around himself bug-eyed.
He had died: and, he was back.
As Echo sat and looked around himself, he pulled his arm out of the restraint on his left wrist and he grasped at Jerome’s hand, “I must see my Captain NOW!”
He turned to Keira, his concern showing on his face.
“Echo is wanted in the vault, for debriefing now…” She told her colleague, one hand to the receiver in her left ear.
A short while later Echo was back in the fatigues he felt comfortable in, standing in the large war-room, at one end of a long table, from ‘his Captain.’
“We got from recon at the silo as ordered: an one by one they were killed off by this thing, that looked like man…” Echo told his Captain, thumping hard the desk before himself.
In his mid-fifties, the time worn face of Echo’s superior creased, as the fellow listened with resignation, to all that he was told.
And Echo sighed, clenched fists at his sides, knuckles showing white, “Frakkin Hell Captain,” he began, “the damned thing showed up on the bio-scanner as a Life-form, like us. And yet…”
His words tailed off and after a deep breath, he added, “Goddamnit Sir, Cyborg’s replaced our enemy years ago!”
Echoes Of War – Deadman Rising
The right eye had blood trickling into it: and hazily, the world came into focus.
He was in an empty, dusty street ‘somewhere in the Middle-East’ and, it was hot and getting hotter.
The helmet was dead and, he knew they would have lost all telemetry on him.
He rolled onto his side so he could stare down what remained of the old quarter of town, now naught but rubble.
Ahead, his adversary lay on its side, a large rent in the side of its body armour and much of it’s human looking face, augmented with mechanics; leaving a blackened hole and burnt out circuitry.
He blinked, the blood and sweat trickling into his eyes.
So, gingerly lifting his left arm from the elbow, he unfastened the seal on his right gauntlet.
With his bare hand, he reached to the clip on the left side of his neck, which he unfastened.
The lock hissed open and with a sharp twist, Alpha 3 removed his helmet.
He wiped the blood and sweat from his eyes, then forehead; he blinked, several times.
The behemoth had been felled and, its weaponry silenced.
And, to judge by the pain that swept through his body, the drugs had worn off completely.
So, blinking slowly, with the agony of movement, Alpha groaned, as he flexed each muscle in turn.
“Nothing broken,” He said to himself, with a rueful grin.
His company had fallen, man by man, to superior tech.
And, Alpha knew full well that without his sacrifice, the cyborg would not have been stopped.
It had been a full-frontal assault that he had not planned on living through, yet he had.
Alpha smiled wanly at that thought.
The raid had been more successful that they had expected. They had discovered that their enemy had fallen back and taken refuge beneath ground, in large complex.
And, the adversary they now faced were the remains of an army, given different forms of bio-engineering, to augment their human condition.
And then, a cyborg had followed; and as the company made their way back to their lines it had killed them all, one-by-one, effortlessly and, mercilessly.
Yet through it all, Alpha lived.
The suit had taken the brunt of the fallout from the attack, but it seemed broken beyond repair now; and without his stims Alpha doubted that he could extricate himself from it’s shell.
Though the enemy was using state of the art technology they’d had some useful tech of their own: an experimental sonar weapon, designed to funnel sound in a compressed beam, and thus disrupt cells on a molecular level; and so in effect, tear them apart, on contact.
This had been the weapon he had used on the behemoth, moments before it had struck him, sending him flying several feet, in to a pile of bricks, that hot afternoon, dust billowing outward, as time slowed down.
And, as he had faded into unconsciousness, Alpha saw the hole he had rent in the side of the cyborg’s face, leaving the rest, a mass of flesh, blood and wires.
And, as the flies gathered round and his eyes closed, he smiled.
‘After all,’ Alpha thought, ‘it was less than human, more machine.’
Then as the red sunset and the things came out of the shadows, Alpha pulled himself into an upright position, with the remainder of the wall behind him.
He snapped his head, from sidetoside quickly, and heard: he heard the skitters, skittering, out in the shadows.
Alpha’s lack of stim’s was evident, and his suit was rendered immobile; and so suddenly, he was very, very scared.
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