Slave Soldiers
"So I'm starting to think we're a bit like the Janissaries."
"Who?"
"Janissaries. Slave soldiers of the Ottoman Empire."
"The what?"
Lyle Wainfleet rolled his eyes at the soldier opposite him, and said, "read a book you cultural Neanderthal."
Miles Quaritch, currently in the transport bay of a Samson, remained silent, deciding it better not to admit that he didn't know what a Neanderthal was, and that he wasn't one for reading books. Especially since books didn't really exist anymore, and everything was electronic.
He did know, however, what a slave was. He knew, because the man that had originally been Miles Quaritch knew. He knew, because the man's memories were locked inside his head, and those memories had included three tours in Nigeria. A country in western Africa ravaged by environmental collapse and war, which of course, made conditions ripe for slavery. He, or rather, the original him, had seen soldiers (or terrorists, or insurgents, or whatever term had been in vogue), fought alongside Nigerian soldiers, and seen quite a few slaves. Who, as his original self had seen, were a mite happy at no longer being slaves once their captors were lying on the ground with bullets in their skulls.
So it was puzzling to him to see the recombinant called Lyle Wainfleet talking about slave soldiers. But then, that was Earth. This was Pandora. He, Miles Quaritch, recombinant, had never been to Earth, and never would. He had the memories of a man who was over a decade dead, locked up in his synthetic skull, implanted in a micro-chip that could shut down his brain if he ever "went native," as the Company techs had made quite clear when he'd woken up on the operating table. Lest he get any idea about joining the line of traitors that went from Ryan Lorenz to Jake Sully.
He fingered the gun in his hand. Too big for a human to carry by themselves, the equivalent of a rifle for his. Flying over the Pandoran rainforest, he looked down on the canopy below. Searching his memories for anything that came close to this.
In the memories of the original Miles Quaritch, there was nothing. City, desert, city, desert…fair bit of ocean, granted…but nothing like this. This endless sea of green, that this far away from Hell's Gate, had managed to remain pristine. Or, rather, recover from the battle that had been waged here fifteen years prior.
"Bring back any memories?"
The pilot spoke over Quaritch's radio. Putting a long, blue finger to a big blue ear, he asked, "what?"
"This is where your original died, right?"
"My memories don't go that far back."
"Ah. Right." The pilot sniggered. "Sucks to be you."
Why it sucked to not remember his predecessor's death, Quaritch didn't know. But as he continued to look down, he could still see the scars.
A tree felled here. A fallen AMP suit there. Countless gunships rusting away, at least when there was enough of them left to rust. He'd read the reports, and while accounts ranged from the natives overrunning SecOps and nothing else, to the forest literally coming alive and devouring soldiers, the one thing the reports agreed on was that Colonel Miles Quaritch had led his men into the slaughterhouse.
"Anyway, setting you down in five," said the pilot. "Don't know what this day trip is about, but hey, I'm not paid to ask questions."
Nor am I, Quaritch reflected. He might have the memories of his template, but that didn't mean he had access to the man's personal record, or much else. General Ardmore ran things on Pandora now, and she'd made it clear that he was just here to fight. And that if he had a problem with that, then, well…
He looked at Wainfleet, in the midst of checking his gun (cheerfully painted "Hippy Killer"), and chewing gum. Or rather, a synthetic gum that could deliver taste to synthetic tastebuds, located inside a synthetic body. Property of the Resources Development Administration, all rights reserved.
Janissaries, Quaritch reflected. He looked at Wainfleet, but the man was silent, and what was going on in his head, he couldn't say. There was precious little information on the original Lyle Wainfleet, only he'd been in this jungle as well, and was presumed KIA, like hundreds of other troopers.
Still, Quaritch reflected, as the Samson set down in the undergrowth, those men at least had a choice in coming to Pandora. Recombinants like him and Wainfleet didn't. And if they thought otherwise?
Well, if the chip was given a kill order, death would be quick and painless.
Or so he'd been told.
##
"Thunder One-One calling Rooster, we're commencing our sweep."
"Rodger One-One, Rooster staying on station. Have a nice day trip."
Fuck you. Quaritch deactivated the feed and looked at Thunder Two-Two. "Ready?"
"Sure boss. Ready for our daytrip. Just like dad used to take me on."
"Your dad?"
"Sure. My dad. Or rather, the original guy's dad…"
What the father of Lyle Wainfleet had been like, Quaritch didn't know. But he did remember the father of the original Miles Quaritch, which was a mindscrew all by itself. Made worse by the fact that his memories made it clear that Daddy Quaritch had been an asshole who'd developed a nasty habit of pushing Mummy Quaritch down the stairs made it all the easier to segregate those memories and remind himself that he was his own man.
Property of the Company, a genetic supersoldier designed to keep the natives in their place, or infiltrate them if it came to it, but still, his own man.
The two recombinants began making their way through the jungle. Armed with M30 machine guns, wearing body armour capable of stopping rounds from those same weapons, giants on Earth, quite average sized for this moon. Officially, their exercise was standard recon and patrol – Hell's Gate had been quite secure ever since the Company returned in force, but the RDA had been caught unawares once before, and had no intention of doing so again. If the natives were operating around here, then recoms were a good way of gathering intelligence.
Unofficially, however, their mission was to simply get a feel for the rainforest. For their own bodies, decanted only a month prior. Once they 'graduated,' they'd be posted at Bridgehead – the RDA's second, larger, and more important base, and on the frontlines of an ocean-based war.
Not a war, Quaritch reminded himself, as they kept moving through the undergrowth. An insurrection.
Such was the RDA's terminology. How it was an insurrection, he wasn't sure, since insurrection would imply that the natives were "insurging" against something the RDA actually owned, but then, "war" didn't do good with the people back on Earth. Why he cared about the people of a world he'd never go to, he didn't know, especially since the memories of his template showed it was a shithole, but still…
"So," Wainfleet said, as they continued walking. "This is Ground Zero."
"What?"
"Ground Zero." He looked at Quaritch, still chewing gum. "Where everything hit the fan."
The advantage of having a template's memory was that phrases like 'hitting the fan' made perfect sense. So, on the ground, looking at the destruction, Quaritch concluded that the fan had indeed been hit, and hit hard.
AMP suits rusting away. Gunships in an even worse statate. He'd seen them from above, but down here, the view was even starker. Starker than anything in his own memories. The savages had fought hard, and…
He kept walking, reminding himself as to who the savages actually were, and that he couldn't afford to think otherwise lest his brain go dead.
"Weird how there's no bodies," Wainfleet murmured. "Human or native."
"It's been fifteen years. Decomposition, predators, not to mention-"
Bam.
Quaritch spun around, and looked at Wainfleet. And a second after that, the flying creature that dropped from a tree. A stingbat, if he recalled correctly.
"The fuck?!"
"What?" Wainfleet asked, still chewing gum. "It was hostile."
"That? Hostile?"
Wainfleet gave him a look. Up, down, then up again.
"What?" Quaritch asked.
"Just checking your dick ain't limp, boss."
"We're on patrol, you don't shoot without good reason."
"Yeah, but you're forgetting one thing."
"Which is?"
"We were created to kick arse and chew gum." Wainfleet spat out a pink blob into the soil, and started walking again. "And I'm all out of gum."
Quaritch watched him walk away. Looked at the stingbat, a giant hole having torn through its stomach. First rule of Pandora, he'd been told, was that everything wanted to kill you. Second rule was to not question the first rule. And there wasn't a third rule, because he was a recombinant, and wasn't made to think about rules. If there was a third rule, General Ardmore would let him know. But unlike his predecessor, he didn't hold any real rank. He was told to fight, he fought.
Like Janissaries, Quaritch reflected, as they kept walking. Or worse.
He hadn't been given that much history on Earth. There was no reason to. But he was starting to feel that the Janissaries had it better. They, at least, had a chance of escape. Of rising through their station. Until the 22nd century, no slave had a chip implanted in their brain, and those that did, well…
There was an upside to this, he supposed. His body could give out, but his memories would be beamed back to an RDA base, and he'd be put in a new body. Functionally immortal, to kick ass and chew gum until the end of his days.
As they continued to make their way through the jungle, Quaritch wished he could feel better about that.
##
An hour into their patrol, they'd found more evidence of the battle that had taken place fifteen years prior.
You had to look, but the signs were there. Arrows. Shell casings. Guns. Armour. Clothing. Not much, time and the elements having done their work, but they were there.
The details of the battle were something Wainfleet was just as much in the dark about. Both of their templates had uploaded their memories one day prior to the operation – why, exactly, was something that Quaritch didn't know. By some quirk of the technology, memories closer to the upload were hazier than those further away. Something to do with how the human brain worked, and memory retention, the human mind sorting out what it wanted/needing to keep, and discarding the rest. After that, the data had been beamed at lightspeed to Earth, stored, downloaded, and then, as the scar in his skull reminded him, implanted.
He wondered if Wainfleet, either the human or the recombinant, resented the old colonel for leading them into the valley of death. Hundreds had found their rendezvous with it, after all, and after that, the natives had overrun the barricades of Hell's Gate, and things had gone south very quickly back at Sol, from what he'd heard. He'd wondered if there might have been a better way of dealing with the RDA's presence on Pandora then going in guns blazing, but then, again, he hadn't been created to think.
He grit his teeth, and kept walking. Through the valley. The Hallelujah Mountains up above, a dead tree at the valley's end, destroyed by a mass driver round when the RDA had returned to Pandora. A weapon that was illegal in Sol, but…
The fuck is wrong with you?
He picked up his pace. People called him Quaritch. He was Miles Quaritch, or at least, as close a replica as it was possible to get. By all rights, he should have been angered as to what the natives had done to the colonel's men, but instead…
"Yo, boss."
…but instead, he stopped walking, glad to have the distraction.
"On your nine."
Quaritch followed Wainfleet's gaze and gun to the small clearing.
"What in the world?" He asked.
"Which world are you on about?" Wainfleet asked. "Because I can think of a few answers to that question."
As far as Quaritch could tell, there was only one answer. Because what was in the clearing were two things of note.
One, a modular unit, designed for research done far away from Hell's Gate or Bridgehead. The type SciOps did on their limited budget, on the rare occasion the Company let them leave the base (and always with an armed escort lest they get any funny ideas). Only while those units were crisp and new, this one had seen better days.
Vines were covering it. One of its windows had been smashed. And given the thing beside it, Quaritch could guess at least part of what had caused that to happen.
An AMP suit. No different from the rest of them, only its gun had been painted with some fireball art, and it was missing its bayonet.
"Well," Wainfleet murmured, "this is new."
Quaritch began walking over. Not to the unit, as Wainfleet did, but to the AMP. Call it instinct, call it intuition, call it a sixth sense, something, somehow, was calling to him.
"Huh," Wainfleet said, as he looked through the unit's shattered window. "These are avatar pods."
Quaritch, approaching the AMP, was barely listening.
"Mask is gone…one of the pods has been smashed…the fuck is this doing in the jungle anyway?"
Quaritch was now no longer listening at all. Instead, he approached the AMP.
Its cockpit was missing. Dried blood stained its interior. But what caught most of his attention was the skeleton still strapped in. The one with two arrow shafts jutting through it.
"Poor bastard."
He glanced at Wainfleet, who'd walked over to him.
"Those arrows would have killed him by themselves, even without the poison." Wainfleet let out a whistle. "Semper fi, bitch."
Quaritch remained silent.. As a recombinant, he had little to fear from arrows. At least not the poison, his lymphatic system was designed to fight off any known toxin used by the natives. But this guy…
He reached down, reaching for the dog tags at the skeleton's neck. His eyes widening, as he saw the details on them.
"We should call this in," Wainfleet said. "Dunno what use the eggheads might have for an old avatar pod, but you never know."
Quaritch, slowly stepping away from the pod, remained silent.
"Hey boss, you all here?"
Quaritch tried to stop his hand from shaking.
"Hey!" Wainfleet gave him a shove. "You with me?"
Quaritch, slowly, steadily, whispered, "sure."
"You sure about that? Because it I think you-"
"You're not paid to think, Lyle, you're paid to follow the Company's orders," Quaritch murmured, as he walked away from the clearing. "And mine."
Wainfleet muttered something about not being paid at all. Which was technically true. As recombinants, they were given credits that could be exchanged for benefits, but not actual money. But right now, that meant nothing to Quaritch.
After all, it wasn't every day that you encountered your own corpse.