Blood Relative by James Swallow Read Free Book Online Page B

look on Trager's face as he swept down the stadium corridors, and they parted like a bow wave. Two steps behind him, DeeTrick blew kisses to the soldiers as she passed, the elliptical hovercam trailing behind her like a toy balloon.
    Trager punched his command code into the hatchlock and shoved the sliding door open to enter the holding area. There were four men waiting inside and they snapped to parade ground attention as he strode in. The brigadier's angry gaze ranged the room and came across the sight of a blue-skinned man slumped on the floor. He swore a gutter oath, forgetting the camera's eye upon him.
    "What is this?" he roared, grabbing the GI's chin, then casting him away. He stabbed a finger at the nearest soldier, a twitchy korporal. "Explain!"
    "Sir, we spotted the creature in an alley off the boulevard. It was making for the warehouse district." He hesitated. "It, uh, appeared to be injured..."
    Trager rounded on the duty officer in the holding area and the man blanched. "It escaped?" he bellowed, stabbing a finger at the slumped GI. "This unholy abortion of a thing escaped from its cell and you knew nothing about it?"
    "But brigadier," the officer faltered, "the confinement cell is a sealed ferrocrete cube with a solid plastisteel door!" He jerked his thumb at the thick circular hatch behind him. "The vent shafts are no bigger than a credi-card, there's no way out!" He togged a screen, and the display showed a lone, blue-skinned figure slumped in a featureless grey cell. "This is a live feed from the monitor in there!"
    Trager's temper fractured and he cuffed the officer about the head. "Dolt! The camera has obviously been tampered with!" The commander glanced at the korporal. "Fortunate for you that this observant trooper was able to apprehend the freak before it could go to ground."
    "Sir, I-" the officer spoke again, "let me just-" He worked the console, beginning the unlocking sequence that would open the cell.
    "You are a disgrace!" Trager snapped, and in one swift motion, he drew his pistol and shot the officer between the eyes. "I will not have incompetents in my command!"
    "Yes sir!" snapped the korporal. He gestured to one of the other troopers, who clutched a peculiar-looking rifle and backpack. "It was carrying some unfamiliar equipment, brigadier..."
    As the cell door yawned open, something in Trager's mind rang a wrong note. He'd seen the weapon before, on briefing files about the GI - but the one they captured in the desert had been carrying looted Nort gear, not GI-issue hardware. "Wait, where did he get-"
    "Oh my," simpered DeeTrick, pointing into the cell. "That can't be right."
    Trager looked at the GI on the floor, and then at the other GI in the cell. "Two?" he managed.
    "Surprise," said the prone infantryman.

FOUR
    ZERO SUM
     
    Everything happened at once. The GI on the floor - the second one, Trager realised with surprise - flashed across the room in a streak of blue, slamming into the trooper holding the backpack. At the same moment, the peculiar rifle cradled in a lazy grip by the other soldier clattered and charged into life. On full autofire, las-rounds roared through the confines of the holding area and tore the third member of Patrol Three-Alfa to pieces. The man grasping the gun had two choices and he made the wrong one; instead of dropping the weapon instantly, he tried to hold it down, like a rider dealing with a troublesome mount. The rifle rose on its own recoil, past the falling corpse of the third trooper and marched energy bolts up the seamless silver torso of DeeTrick.
    The feminine simulant did not scream; she wasn't programmed to. Instead, she twittered and babbled as the shots tore though the logic centres in her midriff. The robot crashed to the floor, her velvet voice now a shower of gibberish.
    All of this in seconds. The GI they had brought before Trager, broken and sickly, had exhibited none of this power. The new arrival was a whirlwind. The Nort with the backpack