Here you'll find

 

Mount Robillard

 

 

 

 

28. An Emergency

Rori's leg muscles didn't enjoy the position in which he'd spent the past few minutes, but their protests had to go unheeded. He and André were squeezed behind a half-collapsed section of the concrete fence, not daring to move a finger, barely breathing aloud. Their current shelter felt sadly inadequate, but none of the people standing only a few meters from them had noticed them. Or, to be precise, the two that did know didn't betray their presence to the others who hadn't observed them yet.

André tried to peer around the rubble but Rori grabbed his forearm and shook his head. André frowned in reply and then his mouth fell open.

On the other side of the rubble, Lancer's eyes narrowed as he leveled a hard stare at the man who walked in a no-nonsense manner closer and stopped to study them. Very clearly he was an M-clone, too, but he looked somewhat older. That in itself was rather odd, for his face was just as regular, unlined, and smooth as the others'. Perhaps it was the expression in his eyes, or the set of his mouth, or simply the competence that he oozed. Whatever it was, it somehow managed to mark him as a senior among his kin. It also made it appear almost natural that the other clones should immediately begin to explain him their dilemma.

The older clone, whom the others consistency addressed as 'Adam', listened and nodded, then turned assessing dark eyes to the humans.

"You are intruders," the clone said calmly. "Why are you here? I can see that you have guns, but you have not damaged any one of us. What is the purpose of this?"

Lancer stared, Orwel gasped. Both of them knew that this was an anomaly that should've been impossible: an M-clone boldly questioning two obvious humans. The patterns of speech were familiar enough even to Lancer from his early discussions with Scott: the stilted and precise wording, limited vocabulary, crisp but unhurried delivery, almost painfully perfect grammar. And yet the words had been spoken in a self-assured tone which clearly conveyed that the clone fully expected to be answered.

Orwel was completely at a loss. He'd known that he was going to be out of his depth at the moment he encountered the first T-clone, but he hadn't been able to even imagine that the M-clones might pose this kind of problems. Commanding them, getting control over them, yes, those were things he was prepared for. But how to deal with an M-clone who looked him coolly in the eye and practically demanded an explanation?

He took another deep breath and opened his mouth to say something but Lancer, who was by now literally trembling with anxiety, beat him to it.

"We don't want to cause any harm to you or the other clones," Lancer said in a barely controlled voice. "We only use our guns on those who threaten either us or clones. We're here to to get rid of the Union people. Please help us!"

"You want to dispose of the Union people. Why?" Adam asked.

"It's very complicated," Lancer breathed. "They want to do many things that cause harm to very very many people, and we want to stop them. Right now they are sending S-clones to fight, but very many of those SC's will be destroyed, and they will also destroy our friends..."

He swallowed with difficulty.

"You are degenerates," Adam observed.

"Yes," Orwel stated. The clone looked at him for a while.

"You said to my boys that you are a Captain."

His 'boys'? Orwel blinked a couple of times before finding his voice to answer.

"Yes. I am a Captain, and I worked here earlier. But I have realized that the things we did here were wrong, and I am now with the rebels that's what the degenerates call themselves."

"Rebels. Degenerates." Adam savored both words. "You were a Captain here, but you do not want to work for the Union any more. That is why you have broken the fence and intruded the base. You do not want to harm us or the S-clones, but you want to stop the S-clones from flying into battle. And you need our help to do that."

Orwel and Lancer could only gape as they listened to the methodical summary of their current pursuit. The steady, deliberate way it was spoken sounded extremely bizarre under the circumstances. However, any effort at replying was cut off by a light rattling sound from behind them that made both whirl around.

"André!" Lancer closed his eyes for a moment and pushed his gun back into the holster as the blond clone straightened himself and stepped fully into sight. "Shit, you scared me..."

"My fault," Rori said, shamefaced, and followed his partner with a limp. "My leg simply died under me..."

"T!" the MC's chorused under their breath, and all except Adam took a couple of hasty steps backwards. The two clones looked at each other for a few moments, Adam wary but clearly fascinated, André slightly nervous but determined. Neither spoke a word.

"Is this T-clone a degenerate as well?" Adam asked finally.

"Yes I am," André replied raising his chin a little. "I, too, fight against the Union."

Adam seemed to think hard for a few seconds, then he nodded to himself and turned to look at the intruders. The four men held their breath, desperately trying to control the growing urge to act instead of just standing idly by.

"The Union masters terminate many S-clones," he stated, and Orwel felt like someone had just kicked him hard into the stomach. "They terminate M-clones that do not perform satisfactorily. They cause much discomfort to T-clones. I have seen it. That is not a good thing. It is a wrong thing to do. We will help you."

Adam turned to speak to the other M-clones and swept Orwel's legs completely from under him. "Boys, we will help these degenerates. The Union masters want to capture them but we will prevent them from doing that. We will stop the Union masters."

"Yes, Adam," the 'boys' echoed, and their commander faced the rebels once more.

"How do we do it?" he asked simply.

"The planes must not be launched," Orwel managed. Adam nodded again, pulled a small comm out of his pocket and activated it.

"Cain, this is Adam. The planes will not fly today."

He listened for a moment. "I know that. But I say that the planes will not fly. That is highest priority."

The comm disappeared inside his fist and he contemplated a while, then looked at Orwel and frowned. "The air defence cannons are shooting. But the planes that are attacking are piloted by degenerates, are they not? The degenerates are helping us. So it is not right that the AD shoots at them. Therefore we must stop them as well."

Adam lifted once more the small thing close to his mouth, but his next words were totally lost on the rebels who were listening to something else: the hangars were rapidly falling silent. No more planes were rolling out and taking off, and after a few seconds even the AD fire began to die down. Only the deafening sounds of air battle still raging above them remained. Lancer looked at Orwel with huge green eyes.

"When you said that we needed to get the MC's on our side," he said in a low voice, "I never realized how right you were."

"Believe me, I had no idea either," Orwel muttered. "I mean, this is impossible."

"I don't care if it's impossible, as long as it's working!" Lancer shook his head in disbelief. "I can wait for explanations, right now I just want this thing over and done with."

Orwel kicked himself out of his stupor. Lancer was right, at the moment it was not necessary to understand the hows and whys. Adam was standing there, willing to help them, and by the sound of it he was the one man around who could shut down the entire base if needed.

"Adam, now we must stop the Union masters from harming anybody." Orwel spent a split second debating with himself about what should be their most urgent concern. "Their communications must be stopped, and they must be detained..."

"I want to see where the other T's are," André interrupted tensely. "Something's going on there, I can feel it. I have to get there now!"

"All right. Do you know the way from here?" Orwel asked, but Adam simply pointed to one of the M-clones.

"Joshua, you go and show the way to the T-clone building. Quickly."

"Yes, Adam!"

The M-clone ran off, followed by Rori and André. Lancer glanced at the anguished look on the blond clone's face, then turned his attention back to the astonishing Adam who was now listening attentively to Orwel. After a while he nodded gravely and began to issue orders and instructions all around the base.

Orwel eyed him with an expression that said he still didn't quite believe his own senses, and Lancer couldn't help agreeing. It looked like they were rapidly gaining exactly what they'd set out to do, within minutes of entering the base and without firing a single shot.

The M-clone identified to them as Joshua led André and Rori towards a low, square building in brisk jog. He seemed to head more or less straight towards it, only taking a slight detour to avoid the largest open space between buildings which wasn't at all a bad thing, as they didn't wish to be seen too soon anyway.

The building had windows, some of them completely dark, some light visible through others. André breathed in shuddering pants and Rori felt a chill, knowing that it was less for running than for something the clone could feel, or perhaps hear in his mind. When they reached the door, the M-clone stopped and turned frightened eyes to André.

"You can go back to Adam," Rori told him and the clone ran away without another word.

Rori turned to look at André who was standing by the closed door, palm pressed against it and a gun in the other hand, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Despite repeated jabs at the switch the door stubbornly refused to open. Rori cursed in frustration and felt a dizzying burst of fury emanate from the blond clone. His eyes were blazing as he pulled himself to his full height and threw his head back, and Rori looked at him, uncomprehending. He reached out to touch André but quickly snatched his hand back, every nerve screaming danger, and reflexively took a step backwards.

Right then the door opened and a suspicious-looking man in Union uniform peered out.

"The door was already open," he began in exasperation, then his eyes widened and he slumped on the floor with a grunt, the chest of his suit smoking slightly. André stepped over him without a second's hesitation and disappeared into the corridor, but Rori had to fight against nausea for a few seconds before he could make himself edge gingerly around the dead man. He knew that he shouldn't leave André alone, but he also realized all of a sudden that he could well have lived without seeing what an infuriated T-clone was capable of.

The golden braid swung at some distance away, straight ahead, and Rori walked cautiously on, wishing that he too possessed André's ability to feel the presence of other minds nearby. Then he heard three shots and panicked.

"André?" He ran towards the end of the corridor and nearly sagged with relief when André stepped from behind the corner, eyes an arctic shade of blue.

"I made a mistake," he stated. "The doors are probably locked, but they are all dead now."

Rori didn't ask who 'they' were. "Are you sure everything's locked? Try the buttons."

Astonishingly, the first door opened and they saw a dimly lit room that was sparsely furnished with a bed and a chair beside it. A shadow stirred in the bed and they could see light reflecting from a pair of slitted eyes.

"What is happening?"

André didn't step closer, and by the silence that followed Rori knew he was communicating with the clone huddled among the blankets. After a while he nodded and pulled Rori out with him closing the door again.

"He's been wiped two days ago," he said quietly. "He's still very ill. Mind-talking is easier than speaking, that's why I used it. Let's go. It's so odd that there are no other grown-ups here. Very many must have been terminated recently."

Rori followed after André who was now stalking swiftly along the corridor, gun in hand, alertly scanning their surroundings. Several doors later he stopped again.

"Such chaos all around," he muttered. "Hard to concentrate... but they're here."

"Who?" Rori asked. André tried in vain to open the door, then resorted to shooting at the lock, and the door reluctantly slid open in front of him. André stepped inside and Rori peered past him, completely unprepared for the surreal sight that greeted his eyes.

Pressed together in a corner of the room were five little angels, complete with slender limbs, regular oval faces, wavy golden-blond hair and huge cerulean eyes that opened even larger when they spotted the T-clone who rushed to them and swept them in his arms. The flash flood of mental communication that followed was so intense that even Rori felt disoriented by the echoes he caught, no doubt leaking from André's mind. Slim arms wound around André like tentacles and hugged him closer, identically dressed boys clamped themselves to him from all sides like leeches, seeking comfort and security, frightened out of their senses and madly relieved to be close to him.

After a while André reluctantly pried himself free, stood up and looked over his shoulder at Rori. The medic suddenly felt an enormous surge of jealousy and couldn't quite be sure whether it was his own emotion or an echo of something else. No, he couldn't be sure.

"I must go downstairs at once," André said in a low voice. "Keep them safe."

"But you can't go alone!" Rori began but André was already gone.

He pulled out his gun and turned tensely to look at the door that wouldn't close anymore, then glanced at the boys behind him, sharpened his ears and eyes again. The little clones sidled closer, hands clutched his coat, slim bodies pressed against him, scared but trusting eyes were raised to meet his. Rori could feel it, questions, curiosity, beseeching whispers of thought whirling around him, and finally one of them spoke to him aloud.

"You and him are friends, aren't you?"

Voice like a silver bell, Rori thought and looked down at the small clone, sensing that his reply was picked up from his mind even before he had time to nod.

"You will not let them hurt us."

"No I won't," he said, thinking immediately how unnecessary it was to say anything at all. "Keep close to me. I'll protect you."

The words felt somehow superfluous but he needed to say them anyway, if for nothing else then to reassure himself. He stood in the dim, bare room, five little angels pressed together behind and around him, staring at the broken door, gun in hand, listening with abated breath at any voices from the eerily silent complex around them. Air conditioning hummed overhead, but that and the nervous breathing of their small group, were the only sounds. It was silent, too silent to his liking. He was a medic. For heaven's sake what do you imagine you're doing here, do you really think you can do anything if you're threatened now? And yet he knew he'd protect the young T-clones or die trying.

He felt the scream rather than heard it, it pierced through his brain like a cannonball, tearing tissue and burning nerve ends along its passage. The little ones heard it too, they cried out and whimpered, and Rori pressed a hand over his mouth not to vomit for sheer pain.

"André!" he shouted desperately but no reply came from the corridors. He hovered for a second between the responsibility to keep the young ones safe and the urge to find André, couldn't decide, turned to the clones.

"I must go to him," he said, "come over here, hide, quickly."

He ushered them into a shady corner that wasn't immediately visible from the door, hesitated for a few more seconds and then dashed out. He'd seen André turn to the left and he ran that way as well, very recklessly, yes, but the building was so very silent.

"André? André! Answer me!"

He peered through open doors, saw nothing, sensed that André was somewhere alive, and cursed the blond for fighting so hard to keep his overflowing emotions under control after that first shock. "André... damn you, talk to me!"

He turned yet another corner and there he spotted a slumped figure sitting on the floor, back against the wall, face pressed into hands, on one shoulder a braid that seemed to glow its own light. Rori ran the last few steps and knelt down to shake André whose breathing was a series of labored gasps.

"André, you all right? What's happened?"

"Too late... I was too late... they're dead all dead dead dead..."

The thought ran in a tightening loop around his mind, Rori heard it but this time he was sure that he was feeling a spillover from the clone's mind. He shook André again, got no response, and finally slapped him. The blond head jerked back and some sense returned into his eyes.

"There must have been an alarm," he whispered. "They've terminated everybody."

Rori stood up and squinted towards an open door beside André. A slender hand shot up to grasp his wrist, painfully tight.

"Don't!"

"But I have to," Rori said quietly, stepped closer to the door, looked inside the room.

When he saw the bodies, he swallowed hard and understood. He'd expected to see André lookalikes, or perhaps more of the little angels he'd left behind. This was a nursery, though, a place for the very young T-clones, no doubt the latest batches. The room was full of bodies, and with the exception of the two men lying face down on the floor with lethal-looking holes in their backs, they all looked to be about two-three years old.

Tears filled Rori's eyes, he wiped them clumsily with the back of his hand and backed away. Then he looked again, darted into the room and carefully picked up a tiny boy who blinked dazedly up, an ugly bruise decorating his forehead. Rori forced himself to look around at the bodies scattered haphazardly around very obviously the men had been in one hell of a hurry but none of the others showed any sign of life.

He fixed his gaze at the door, walked there and stepped once more into the corridor. His foot caught on a man's leg so that he stumbled a little but held on tight to the child in his arms. André glanced up and then scrambled on his feet, incredulous eyes locked on the surviving baby T.

"He's alive," he breathed, touched the child's face, frowned. "He's been hurt."

"Do you think the one we saw earlier, the one resting there, would be up to taking this little one next to him?" Rori asked. "We'll have to be ready to fight if necessary, and we can't do that if one of us is carrying around a baby this small. And we have to get back to those five young ones. Are there others here?"

"No," André said with certainty. "Nobody here but us. Let's go, Rori. We'll have to make sure nobody enters this building anymore."

Rori followed his partner, clutching the nodding child with his left arm, right hand resting on the handle of his holstered gun. His head was reeling. How could someone first take care of the T-clones for years, raise them from babies into adults, work with them, train them, look after them, and then just walk into the room to kill them in cold blood? What had they been thinking? Had any one of them resisted the order?

Lancer sprinted towards the door of a large building, lungs burning, hoping and praying that he wouldn't trip on the debris that by now was everywhere. He reached the door, looked around, tried to decide which way to go. A scared-looking M-clone emerged from a small room and waved to his right.

"The dormitories are that way. Captain Dahomey went "

Lancer didn't hear the rest because he was already well on his way along the corridor, towards the noises. He could hear men shouting, then Orwel's deep voice booming over the chaos as the man yelled on top of his lungs for someone to 'get down now', screams, more hollering, and shots. Gunshots. Lancer clutched his gun and plunged headlong into the room, eyes wide open to take in the situation in a flash.

This obviously was the dormitory, and damn if it didn't look uninviting. Rows of identical beds arranged into small clusters, no other furniture to speak of, bleak and bland and ghastly. What made the sight even more ghastly were the numerous bodies lying on the floor and on some beds. Dead bodies of S-clones, dark blue eyes open, astonishment frozen on their faces for eternity, and looking so much like Scott and Shaun that Lancer felt the ground sinking under his feet. He saw dozens of S-clones who'd apparently obeyed Orwel's command and dropped on the floor between the beds. He saw three bodies in Union uniforms, large guns still in their hands. And he saw several more men running towards them from the other end of the dormitory, equally armed and uniformed, their intention clearly painted on their face.

Lancer and Orwel fired within the same fraction of a second. One of the newcomers fell down but the others merely split their firepower between the rebels and the clones. Clearly they'd been ordered to terminate the lot of them in the quickest way they could think of, and that seemed to be shooting. Well, at least the builders of the base hadn't designed any backup systems for mass-destruction, Lancer thought, but found no time to feel grateful for it. A gunshot missed his head so narrowly that he smelled burning hair.

"Take cover!" Orwel shouted and fired again. Lancer reflexively dropped on his knees beside a bed and tried not to hit the panicking S-clones as he joined in.

By now the entire dormitory was upside down. Some of the S-clones were in total shock, unable to do anything under the assault by guardians they had been taught to trust, while others were trying to escape somewhere, anywhere. Orwel dropped the second but last of the attackers, but the last one held on for far too long and managed to kill several more S-clones with murderously effective sweeping shots before Lancer caught him in the head and he slumped down by the door.

Orwel was on his feet before the man was fully on the floor, and ran back into the corridor. Lancer scrambled on his feet and followed, totally disoriented inside the building.

"There's another few dormitories over here," Orwel shouted over his shoulder. "I don't know how many of those bastards are on the loose, we must check... oh damn fuck..."

They reached the dormitory where the alarming noise had come from. Orwel burst in, then hesitated at the door for a split second, during which Lancer dashed in through the door and shot the man who'd turned to face the newcomers. The man fell down with a wet thump, and that was when Lancer realized that Orwel was pointing his gun at something by the other wall of the room.

Orwel acknowledged Lancer's intervention with a grunt, then turned his attention back to the blond officer who was standing firmly in place and pointing an unwavering gun at his former colleague's solar plexus. Lancer froze, looked warily at the officer and then at Orwel who stood equally still, gun steady. He dared not fire, because even a dying man could still hit the trigger, and even a stray shot might kill Orwel.

"What are you doing here, Dahomey?" the man asked tensely. "What the hell is going on?"

"We're taking over this base," Orwel said. "Get out of the way, Blaine, and I mean now."

"I'm not moving!" Blaine straightened his back and Lancer noticed that he was standing in front of a door. "You're not going to hurt them!"

Orwel's shoulders sagged a little. "Do you mean to say you're protecting them?"

"Yes!" Blaine shouted. "I know the command was to terminate all clones 'cause the Base has been infiltrated and the security's down, but I'm bloody well not going to let my kids be killed just like that!"

"We don't want to harm them," Lancer said and the man turned distrustful eyes to him. "We mean it."

"Blaine." Orwel took a deep breath. "He's telling the truth. The last thing we want is to hurt the clones in any way. I'm not denying that I'm with the rebels, or that we're attacking the base. But it's the Union we're fighting against, not the clones. I wish I'd more time to explain, but right now there's one fucking carnage downstairs, and very many very upset clones. We need to check all dormitories and get rid of anybody who might still be running around there shooting SC's. We need your help!"

"You're concerned for the clones and so are we," Lancer joined in. The man glared at him, hesitant and suspicious, and something snapped inside his head. "Look, just forget for a while that we're rebels and help us to keep as many of them safe as we can! For fuck's sake, discuss philosophies later as much as you wish, but there are probably still people getting killed out there!"

He dashed out of the door.

"People?" Blaine echoed. "A rebel calling clones 'people'?"

"Oh, he's rather intimately acquainted with one," Orwel said dryly. "And he's right. Keep them safe, Blaine."

"Acquainted with an SC?" Captain Blaine lowered his gun as Orwel turned to go. "But how - "

"His lover, Blaine!"

The blond man stared after the renegade Union officer and tried to decide whether or not the grin had meant that Dahomey had been joking.



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