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  "They were, once upon a time." She glanced at the GI and beckoned him over to a different chamber. "Look here, Rogue. Perhaps you might see a family resemblance."

  Inside the other cell there were dozens, perhaps hundreds of hulking, crippled figures and Rogue knew instantly what they were. They sported abnormal, crooked limbs, bloated torsos and monstrous faces. The poor, pathetic creatures looked like some hideous parody of a human body, moulded out of dull green clay by someone with only a vague concept of what a man should look like.

  "My first attempts at a new breed of Genetik Soldat," Schrader had a hint of perverse pride in her voice. "Sadly, the mixture of recovered GI DNA and the original Nort Soldat templates had some unfortunate side-effects."

  One of the largest of the freakish NexGen pressed up against the glass and studied Rogue, some semblance of confusion on its disfigured face. He realised that the thing recognised him on some bone-deep genetic level and unbidden he raised a hand to touch the glass.

  "Keep away!" Schrader barked suddenly. "They are unpredictable."

  After a moment, Rogue broke eye contact with the creature and walked on, his mind spinning back to a similar encounter in his twelfth year, when he and Bagman had stumbled upon a collection of similar genetic rejects aboard Milli-Com. He shook off the memory. "How does Zero fit into all this?" he demanded of the scientist.

  She nodded to herself. "Ah yes, Bio-Subject GI: 3530972/Z4. My one and only viable decant using recovered material."

  "Recovered?" Rogue repeated. "You have his corpse!"

  "Yes. I wanted to clone a Souther pattern GI and Zero seemed like the most suitable candidate. His body had been excellently preserved, thanks to the ministrations of the Kashar's salvage operatives. After six attempts to copy him, I was finally able to accelerate a blank adult body for reanimation, although the life span was severely shortened." She shook her head, as if she were perturbed at the outcome. "Despite all the data your traitor provided, I was never able to duplicate the Souther process exactly... And Zero proved far more resourceful than I ever could have anticipated."

  "He escaped."

  "Yes," Schrader smiled at him, her eyes flashing, "but now I have you."

  Rogue ignored the implication and pressed the point. "You may have been able to make a clone of Zero's body, but how did you clone his mind? His biochip was destroyed! After sixty seconds outside a support frame or an organic host, every GI personality matrix becomes useless!"

  Schrader threw him a condescending look and halted outside another security hatch. "Oh, my poor, poor Rogue. That is what your creators at Milli-Com told you," she pressed a control and the hatch yawned open, "but you'll find the truth is much different."

  The door folded back into the wall to reveal an oval room pulsing with muted energy. On a wide central platform there was a vertical wall of translucent plastic extending to the ceiling; the vast panel was compartmentalised into grids, each separate pocket linked into a network of glowing power nodes. On every node there was a GI biochip, each a twin to the one that lay buried in the soft flesh of Rogue's cerebral cortex.

  It was as if he had walked into a war memorial for the troopers who had perished in the Quartz Zone; there were hundreds of chips pulsing in the slots, some of them bearing code letters and numbers from men he had fought and trained with. Rogue approached the panel, his steps leaden. He felt heavy and hollow all at the same time, as if the gravity in the chamber had suddenly increased.

  On closer inspection, he could see that most of the dog-chips were ruined, blackened by laser fire or had melted. Some were shattered like broken glass, held together by twisted meshes of fine wire; others were dry remains where their organic protein matrix had been leached away. A cascade of emotions thundered through him; anger, disgust and terrible sorrow.

  Volks watched the play across the GI's face and felt a curious surge of empathy for the clone. As a soldier, he understood only too well what Rogue would be feeling as he took in the enormity of Schrader's revelation. On some level, he pitied the trooper; his creators had never granted him the human release of tears.

  Schrader's voice was low and reverent, as if she were in a church. "It is true that after one minute the biochip matrix begins an irreversible process of decay, but under certain conditions that decay can be retarded. Even after months, some tiny elements of the original pattern imprint remain. Zero's biochip retained almost thirty per cent of his mental engrams and I was able to enhance the rest using splinters recovered from the other, less well preserved specimens."

  "You gave him a patchwork mind," Rogue moaned. "You put him in a body that fell apart."

  "I saved him," she insisted and gestured to the chips. "I saved them all, don't you understand that?"

  Rogue ran his hand over the panel. "How many of them are still... still aware of themselves?"

  "You must understand, none of the personalities stored here are whole," Schrader insisted. "These are just fragments, less than ghosts."

  "Show me!" Rogue turned on her, his face thunderous.

  With a slow nod, Schrader tapped in a command. Suddenly the room was filled with a chorus of voices, some of them babbling, some screaming, an incoherent flood of pain and anguish.

  "Can you hear me?" the GI shouted over the din. "It's Rogue! Do you understand?" The rush of yelling synths grew in volume until he finally shook his head. "Enough!"

  Schrader silenced the voices of the dead. "I have had no success in my attempts to recover them, but perhaps with your help, I could do more."

  Rogue crossed the distance to Schrader in a flash, his hands tight in hard fists. "Help you? I'm a heartbeat away from killing you!"

  She waved Volks away as he went for his gun. "Rogue, please. We want the same thing, you and I. An end to the war and a future for your kind."

  "What future?" he demanded bitterly.

  "You are unique, Rogue. In the entire galaxy, you are the oldest surviving genetically engineered life form. No other clone has ever come close to you. Perhaps it was by design or some random chance, but you are the most superior artificial being mankind has ever created." She gently touched him. "Within your genetic code, you have the key to a creation that will irrevocably change the face of this planet and this war!" Schrader removed a small canister from her pocket; inside was a vial of clear liquid, swirling with flecks of blue. "This is an early generation of a synthetic retrovirus. It is my life's work. Any human infected with this solution will instantly begin a process of controlled genetic mutation. DNA will be rewritten at the molecular level and a new form will arise!" Her eyes were bright and shining.

  "What do you mean, a new form?" said Rogue.

  "Like you," she smiled. "It will change a normal person into a NexGen, a mixture of human and GI!"

  "Nain..." Volks shook his head, unable to comprehend the scope of Schrader's vision.

  "Think of it," Schrader whispered. "An army of enhanced soldiers unfettered by toxins and human weakness! Nu Earth would fall beneath their heels in weeks!"

  "You are insane," said Volks. "This is monstrous!"

  She sneered at the officer. "Your fear disgusts me, Johann. This is the chance for greatness, the chance to become more than human! I will begin the next stage in our evolution and this planet will be the first step in a campaign that will shake the stars! Your petty human concerns are worthless in comparison."

  Schrader turned to the GI and ran her hand over the rough plastiflesh of his hairless chest, enjoying the sensuous thrill of the contact. "I need you, Rogue. And there is so much I can do for you in return."

  THIRTEEN

  WAR GAME

  Schrader's heart was racing; she felt giddy at the prospect of what was about to happen and unfamiliar, uncontrolled emotions welled up inside her. She leaned into Rogue; he was so close now that she could taste his scent on her lips. It wasn't the dry musk of a human male nor the poor perfume of a weak, ordinary man like Volks, but something darker, more reptilian. She felt the undeniable
thrill of primal and animalistic sexual arousal.

  With perfect clarity, Lisle suddenly understood that everything in her life had been leading up to this very moment, preparing and moulding her. The child of a career military family, Schrader's youth in Nordland's Niebelung protectorate had been a clinical affair. She saw little of her parents, both of them serving on different fronts in the colonial wars, their contacts limited to brusque vid-messages on her birthdays, rare visits and more often than not, severe letters to underline their disappointments when she performed poorly in the Youth Cadre. Despite the expectations of her parents, it was clear from the start that Lisle would never be a soldier, but her intellect grasped the rudiments of biochemistry with the ferocity of a steel trap and the ever-watchful party instructors selected her for the science directorate. If her childhood had given her anything, it was a loathing for the weakness of emotion in any form and Lisle went into her new life determined to never give any of herself to anyone ever again.

  In the hothouse climate of genius she excelled. Where other students dickered over insignificant concerns like morality and ethics, Kadet Schrader used her talents to conceive of horrific new methods for the Norts to kill their enemies. She opened up avenues of research in gene-manipulation, striving to find ways to excise the deficiencies of men through the application of controlled mutation. When other students got in her way, she found it easy to arrange fatal accidents for them in the laboratories. Her ruthlessness earned her an officer commission on graduation and the army took her to Nu Earth, the playground of a billion bio-weapons and man-made toxins. By then, Lisle's mother was dead, killed in a sortie on Horst, but her father had risen to a division command and with pride she contacted the old man to tell him of her accomplishment. General Kurno Schrader, a man to whom only cold steel and the absence of mercy were weapons, suggested instead that his daughter stop toying with her silly test tubes and become a real soldier, perhaps on the frontlines where her life might have some actual value to the Fatherland.

  Lisle hated herself in that moment, hated her own weakness, her pathetic need for his approval - but she hated the old bastard even more, so she carefully organised the delivery of an untraceable packet of the agent magenta nerve bane to his private quarters.

  Then she was free, but with her parents dead and buried she found herself adrift. Without her hate, her need, Lisle's life had no focus. Like Nu Earth itself, forever tidally locked into orbit around the Valhalla singularity, Schrader craved a dark star of obsession to hold her in place. Her work began to suffer and eventually High Command shifted her sideways into what most of the science directorate considered a dead-end posting; the costly and unproductive G-Soldat program.

  It was there that she first saw Rogue, his cerulean face staring up at her from a grainy security vid-feed. He was frozen in the middle of a kill, ripping the mask from a soldier in some nameless Hellstreak bunker. She studied the picture for hours, examining every line on his countenance, absorbing the controlled energy of his personality she glimpsed there, daring to wonder how it would be to touch him. All her life, Lisle had been searching for a way to expunge the fragility that she saw in herself, in her species, her nation - and she found it in the Rogue Trooper.

  The GI was the perfect embodiment of her ideals; heartless and inimical, bred for strength, trained to feel no pity or remorse. An organic machine designed only for killing and superiority. Lisle found a new goal in Rogue's eyes. She wanted to possess him, and even more, she wanted to become him.

  And now he was here, in her grasp, ready for her. Schrader ran her hand over Rogue's chest. The skin was cool and dry like a snake and beneath there wasn't an inch of wasted flesh, not a single pocket of useless flab. He was all hard muscle, a statue cut from blue steel. The scientist licked her lips, savouring her excitement. Schrader allowed herself a tiny gasp of delight as she toyed with the idea of engaging in other activities with the GI...

  She cocked her head to kiss Rogue, to touch her perfect azure icon, and with a look of utter loathing and disgust, he turned away. "Don't ever touch me again," he said in low tones loaded with antipathy.

  "What?" she choked, an abrupt heat rising on her cheeks. "What did you say to me?" Her eyes fluttered, she must have misheard. She and Rogue were alike, couldn't he see that? He would never, ever reject her... "You must-"

  This time he forced her away with the flat of his hand. "Get away from me, you demented witch! You're out of your mind!"

  For the first time since her childhood, tears sprang to Schrader's eyes. "No, no. You don't understand! You and I, we will be gods, mother and father to a new order-"

  "You're insane if you think I'd ever help you unleash something like that," he stabbed a finger at the retrovirus vial, "on the galaxy!"

  Anger flooded into her, a brilliant, searing hate hotter than anything she'd ever felt before. "Fool! You cannot defy me!"

  Schrader grabbed Rogue's arm and then he did the unthinkable. The GI slapped her across the face. He pulled the blow, but it was still hard enough to send her tumbling to the ground. Volks, the pistol still in his hand, watched the pair of them. The moment seemed unreal, disconnected from reality.

  The scientist came to her feet, ignoring the trickle of blood that seeped from the corner of her lips. Schrader's whole body was tense with a white-hot fury, every muscle in her body vibrating like a struck chord. "You worthless blue bastard!" she bellowed. "You have betrayed me like everyone else! How could I ever have loved you? You're just like every other man. You're wretched, useless!" She spat at him. "I don't need you! I've taken what I want from your flesh, raped you while you slept!" Tears streamed down her face. "I could have given you immortality, but instead I'll watch you die screaming!"

  Volks's hand tensed around the gun. The Nort wasn't sure which of the two people in the room represented the greatest danger.

  With trembling hands, Schrader wiped at her face, making a vague attempt to regain her composure. Black kohl smeared over her cheekbones. "Take... take him to the test range!" she snarled at Volks. "We'll see how well he can survive against his three friends!"

  Rogue shook his head. "I won't fight them."

  "You will!" she shouted, her hand jerking an electrostunner from a pocket in her coat. "They will give you no choice, trooper! I control them now, it is my conditioning that drives them!"

  "The implants..." he breathed.

  "I will watch you die!" Schrader cried, her voice breaking. "The myth of the Rogue Trooper perishes here! I will build a new world from your ashes!"

  Too late, the GI saw the bright blue flash of discharge from the teeth of the taser. The scientist buried the stun rod in his chest and triggered a massive surge of electrical energy. Darkness rose up around him.

  Rogue floated in a foggy, blood-warm nothingness, images and sensations passing through his mind like light through a warped lens. He saw the faces of his fellow GIs melting and changing, distorting into the mutant forms glimpsed in Schrader's hidden laboratory. He saw Ferris, Zeke and Volks with blue skin and yellow eyes, all of them reaching out to him in some terrible agony.

  He heard a voice calling his name, over and over and over.

  "Rogue? Rogue! Snap out of it, trooper!"

  The clone soldier opened his eyes and felt a fuzzy pressure all across his skull. "Who...?"

  A hand gripped his arm and pulled him to a sitting position. "It's me, Ferris. You okay?"

  There was a constant humming in the GI's skull. "What's that sound?" He blinked; they were inside some kind of moving vehicle.

  Ferris jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "We're in a Nort cargo hopper. They just chucked us in here and set off."

  "Us?" Rogue looked around and saw a ragged handful of figures in Souther chem-suits, Zeke and the others among them. "Schrader said something about a test..."

  "Aye," Sanchez nodded, "the test range. It's the ice queen's little playground for her green toy-boys, comprende? They say if you can find a way out, you can go free." />
  "Has anybody ever done that?" Ferris asked quickly.

  The soldier shrugged. "Nobody has ever come back from the range, if that's what you mean."

  Rogue felt a change in the speed of the flyer and glanced around the enclosed cabin. The Nort guards watching them from the far side of the bay readied their guns. "We're slowing down."

  Zeke pulled Ruiz to his feet. "Here we go." The other soldier looked pallid and weak behind his breath mask, but he managed a vague nod.

  The hopper dropped into a hover mode and the rear door of the cabin opened. Rogue saw broken ground outside.

  "Get out!" snapped one of the Norts, waving his gun to underline the point. When the prisoners hesitated, he let off a three-round burst into the chest of a kneeling Souther, killing him instantly. "Die here or die out there, it's your choice!"

  They needed no encouragement and with a disordered rush the troopers jumped out the door. The ground was several metres below the ramp and some of the Southers landed badly; a second man died, impaling himself on a tank-trap projecting out of the earth.

  Rogue dropped into a cat-like stance as his boots hit the dirt. Like everyone else, he was unarmed, stripped down to just his battle fatigues. Then a flurry of objects fell from the hopper, tossed out by the Norts and the GI instinctively rolled into cover.

  Ferris cowered as a kit bag flopped into the mud at his feet. "Whoa! What the hell is this thing?" A dozen bags, one for each of the prisoners, lay scattered on the ground.

  With a shriek of jet noise, the hopper vectored away and was gone.

  Purcell examined the dead man's body and found a packet of suit patches in a pocket. She tore it open and distributed them among the others as far as they would go. "Don't touch that sack, flyboy," she began. "You've got no clue what's in it."

  Sanchez dropped into a crouch and began to rip open one of the bags. "No, no. It's part of the game, see? To make it sporting."

  Ferris gingerly opened the pouch at his feet and found a pair of Nort-issue binox. "Huh? I was hoping for a mini-nuke, at least."