Читать книгу The Fallen Heroine - Fabienne Gschwind - Страница 16

Sunday was actually a day of rest, but not for us. At nine o'clock sharp we were all ready. Tartelette was waiting for us in the office in full battle gear with her visor on.

We sat down.

"Yesterday was a complete disaster. I've never seen such a disaster, and I officially blame the stupid USDU troops. Don't have a clue about repros, all of them. Had simply said that it was just a couple of cats. And that we could go there safely. I don't know what they were thinking…. They were absolutely sure they could just do it quickly...just run into the cave without any real equipment!"

Tartelette spoke extremely slurred and in choppy sentences.

"And then no one was probing the situation in that cave either. And to make matters worse, the critters were trained."

We looked at each other perplexed, what was she talking about?

"I've never been so angry in my life."

She suddenly let her combat visor ride up and we gasped.

The right side of Tartelette's face was torn away almost to the bone and covered all over with translucent synthetic skin and regeneration packs. But one could still clearly see the deep claw mark.

"A full-grown Bengal tiger knocked me over and dented my visor with a paw strike!"

She angrily snapped the new visor shut. And started to explain everything:

Essentially, what French intelligence believed had happened was this: these were not repros from a private zoo, as had been initially believed. It was much worse! Some terrorists who wanted to harm France had produced their own repros and somehow trained them! Tartelette further explained: "To some extent, they can control them. We don't know how. But we could save a couple corpse and pass them to research center. The Intelligence believes that the terrorist or terrorists probably set up a base in another cave system in Auvergne.

And here's the ironic part of all this:

The King President, after seeing the bodies, or what was left of ten USDU representatives, accepted all my proposals and conditions. The USDU was dissolved. The Regent proclaimed us the only active ReS special unit an hour ago and ordered us to solve the mess in Auvergne. We have four days to do so. Otherwise, the area will be evacuated and the beautiful region will be turned into a radioactive inferno. And I will get the blame! Countdown is on!"

I gulped, that was quite a bit of dramatic information all at once.

She sent Gabin and Emily off to pack the equipment. Thibault had already, left to set up a command post at a Hotel in Saint-Nectaire. Then she looked at me: "Junior, you can join me for breakfast."

Ten minutes later, we were sitting by the harbor in a sinfully expensive seafood restaurant.

"We don't serve at this hour yet," said an grumpy waiter. Wrong answer, I thought to myself, because Tartelette was extremely irritable today and I was already grinning to myself in anticipation of what was about to happen. Like Gabin I was beginning to enjoy my captain's games. And finally, the landlord would simply publish the camera footage where he was threatened by Tartelette and could enjoy thriving sales for the next few months. So this was all just a gimmick.

The captain unabashedly walked over to the counter and sniffed the unopened oysters that had just been delivered.

"Ah, don't I smell repro smell?"

She wordlessly took the shotgun out of its holster and pointed it at the oysters. The waiter lost his nerve.

"I'm calling the police," he screeched. A woman - by the look of her, the bistro manager - joined in and stopped her co-worker from using the communicator.

"It's not necessary," she said to him and to Tartelette, who was loading her pump-action shotgun, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

"Please, it's not necessary," she repeated to Tartelette, raising her hands imploringly, "Please."

I was beginning to feel uncomfortable myself.

"My waiter didn't mean it, he didn't recognize you, Captain Arlette. We will serve you any time of the day or night."

Tartelette slowly turned to the woman, pointing her loaded pump shotgun at her head. It remained that way for a few interminable seconds before the weapon smoothly locked into the back holster. The ashen-faced manager disappeared into the kitchen.

"A double oyster platter for the ReS commander who saved our city from nuclear strike, stat!", I heard her shout loudly.

Tartelette managed to slurp down oysters despite synthetic skin, and I settled for a plaice. All this at barely 10 in the morning. The manager had the courage to serve us herself, though she was still shaking like a leaf.

"It's on the house," she then said in a firm voice. I felt uneasy; it hadn't been as funny as I had thought after all. Did the commander really think it was funny, or was she just playing to make money?

When she was gone, Tartelette grinned. "Must have been sweating blood for her beautiful interior," she said with a laugh.

More like for her life, I thought, and didn't find it quite so funny anymore. I was uncomfortable. Lately I had read enough newspapers from the area and knew that Tartelette had quite an ambivalent image. Like a superhero, but with weaknesses. That made her all the more human and even more people admired her because of that. Her orgies of swearing and insults when she slaughtered repros had also made her legendary.

Many people watched the missions for that very reason. There was a newspaper article or two with Tartelette’s 'waiter's terror' nickname. It was openly known that she liked to order a menu at gunpoint. Fortunately, however, she had never physicaly harmed anybody.

Tartelette, of course, took pains to maintain this 'bad girl' image. On video platforms and picture galleries, there were tons of posts depicting her in full action and ready for Hollywood. Some clips had been clicked multiple millions of times worldwide, especially her infamous freak-outs. For example, when she smashed a reporter's drone with the antlers of a repro deer, or when she flung a decapitated repro cat up into a journalists' copter. Or how at some vernissage she lifted a nobleman who had provoked her completely off the ground and hurled him over several meters into a pool of koi carp. Funnily enough, these freak-outs had become more and more frequent over the past year. I wondered if Tamara was just a great actress, or if she was really freaking out as the press would have us believe.

Also in international newspapers one could regularly read articles about the 'French Reproslayer Arlette'. Reproslayer had already become her second name. The farther away the country was, the more legendary her deeds were portrayed. ReS headquarters had to earn vast amounts of advertising money from these clips.

But suddenly I had to smile:

If I stayed with Tamara and learned from her, I was sure I would soon be as famous. I imagined myself as the 'bad boy' of France, with media appearances everywhere and heaps of girls who dreamed of getting into bed with a repro hunter like me. That was it! I just had to take a good look at how Tamara was doing it and let her inspire me. Soon I would be a superhero too. Provided I lived long enough.

With the help of the three jetcopter pilots, we packed everything up and Tartelette gave us a crash course on how to sit properly in the pressure seats. After all, none of us had ever been in a jetcopter except for her.

"Put the headband tightly over your temples. That sends out a signal and keeps you from getting sick during the extreme accelerartion. It also affects your heartbeat to keep blood flowing to your brain so you don't black out."

Already the pilot was counting down the seconds to takeoff, and a visor with a built-in display slid over my face from above. I could access the outside camera as well as view current flight data.

Then we were off. Despite the special seat and sensor control, I felt like I was being crushed as the jetcopter shot into the sky at nearly 5 Gs. Then the jets folded to the side and at 12 kilometers altitude we performed the supersonic fly-through almost from a standing start. I watched us accelerate from Mach1 to Mach6. Only a few minutes later we slowed down again. I had heard that some billionaires and aristocrats afforded such jetcopters to fly to America within two hours.

Then we were already in free fall towards the ground. Fortunately, the sensor band suppressed my nausea. Because I could really feel how my plaice, which I had eaten earlier, turned over in my stomach.

Then we braked brutally and the pilot landed butter-softly on the main street of Saint-Nectaire.

We got out with wobbly legs. Only Tartelette took out a cookie from her breast pocket and nibbled on it. The soldiers and policemen present unloaded our luggage and transported it to the hotel. This had been forcibly confiscated as a command post. We were in deepest Auvergne, wedged between hills and forests. The volcanoes were not far away and there were countless caves in the area.

Saint-Nectaire was now just a ghost village and no one lived in the village except for the hotel, the famous spas and the "Grotte petrifiante" tourist attraction. It would take quite a while for the population to return to pre-apocalypse levels.

"Sailors, I need about thirty minutes to confer with the leets here, so be in the lobby at twelve sharp in full gear."

A frightened receptionist, who had also been forcibly recruited, showed us to our reserved rooms. Gabin and I moved into a spacious suite, while Emily got a small single room. Gabin threw his gym bag on a suitcase rack and dug out his hygienic underpants from it before going to the bathroom. I had put on these special underpants earlier and didn't need to change. Combat gear provided you with air and nutrient solution for 36 hours, but if you couldn't remove your pants for some reason, that was a bit of a problem.

An hour later, a decacopter had dropped us off on a ridge where a frightened tourist had thought he saw a strange animal there. We walked along the narrow trail to locate the said spot and look for tracks. Our troop once again made a memorable picture.

I was carrying a set of HAN grenades and an Ex10 strapped to my chest, in addition to the standard equipment. The Ex10 is an intermediate between a shotgun and a large-caliber pistol loaded with explosive ammunition. HAN grenades are extremely small grenades that create a plasma cloud when they explode. Emily had two additional belts of HAN grenades and a matching grenade launcher plus a Pox9, a type of short submachine gun. Gabin lugged a compact Gatling in addition to his normal gear. On his back he carried the container with several thousand rounds of ammunition. He was the only one who could operate this monster weapon in a force-directed manner. The rest of us needed an additional exoskeleton for that, and Tartelette didn't want that. The commander herself also still carried a Pox9 and two short hatchets.

Finally, we arrived at the place in question. We were all well-trained trackers, but there wasn't much to make out on the igneous rocks and hard-dried soil.

The whole thing was a rather fruitless endeavor. We spotted the odd track of a smaller predator, but the scent faded as a light wind picked up.

"Either we get a tracking dog or leave it alone," Gabin grumbled, unloading his back by leaning the Gatling against a rock.

There were many ReS units that used trained dogs to sniff out the repro smell. Tartelette refrained from doing so because their survival time was too short. While many had been trained to fight repros, it was not effective. The only way to kill repros was by destroying the brain. You could also decapitate an animal or shoot it to a pulp. A dog could bite again and again or tear pieces out of a zombie, but all that didn't kill it.

Finally, word reached us from Thibault that a drone flying over the region had spotted a larger predator. The decacopter picked us up and took us near the said spot.

Then we found the animal. It was easy, because it smelled strongly with the typical repro smell. However, this predatory cat, probably a panther, had taken refuge in some thick brush. Occasionally we could make out its movements between the leaves.

I lay with Tartelette behind a mound of earth and watched the bushes. We waited for Gabin and Emily to move around it to cut off the path. We had orders to stun and decapitate the animal so the scientists could examine it. No one understood what exactly was going on, and the examinations of the big cats in this private zoo had revealed that someone had probably implanted electrodes in the muscle. So with targeted electrical impulses, the animal could be more or less controlled.

Gabin was now aiming his zapper at the bushes and Emily was almost in position, too.

"Don't shoot! Repros don't move like that! Something's wrong" Tamara suddenly opined, "Retreat all to cover."

The Repro didn't react to us and kept repeating the movement. Tamara aimed the zapper and fired from a safe distance.

A blast wave pinned me flat to the ground. Fortunately, the helmet had automatically set to highest isolation, otherwise my eardrums would have burst. The armor was certified to withstand a HAN grenade at a distance of five meters. It had done its job.

Somebody had preped a cadaver with a bomb and it was triggered when Tartelte shot at it with the zapper. Luckliy we had been in safe distanc, in our usual combat distance we would all be a soup of molten metal and plastic!

Tartelette looked at the crater and fumed. We flew back to the hotel. I was shaking; we had been hit. This attack was targeting us. After all, we were the only ReS patrol on duty here. That meant that we not only had to defend ourselves against repros, but that people were also planting bombs to kill us! Gabin looked at me worriedly and showed me where I could located the menu to instruct the combat unit to inject me with Adalin. At first I didn't know if I should take on purpose military drugs, but Emily also took a shot. A few milligrams wouldn't hurt!

The chief met in the command station with the other senior ReS officers and strategists for a briefing. Even outside, we could hear her loudly berating everyone and everything. Tartelette was unresponsive and extremely angry because someone must have purposefully laid this trap for a ReS Patrol. We waited outside the room in full gear, not knowing what to do next. Thanks to the mini-squirt Adalin, I felt really good, brave, strong and fearless.

The captain came out and slammed the door so hard that a hinge broke. I saw two soldiers helping themselves at the coffee machine quickly make their exit. I would have liked to do the same. But the captain headed straight for us. One of the many seams on her face had broken open and blood was dripping out. She screwed off her helmet. Her icy gaze lingered on us.

"Follow me. Emily get the first aid kit and take care of my wound," she hissed coldly.

We followed Tamara along the swimming pool outside into the garden. Suddenly she grabbed me by the shoulder and smiled, "Do you have an account of any of the many social media platforms?" I replied in the negative. Tamara was suddenly super friendly, there was no longer any sign of anger. So she had probably played it.

"Then you're about to start one. Because I'll show you how to get pocket money: turn on the helmet camera, look at me and keep your head still."

I had no idea what was going on and did as told.

Emily came running up and held the well-endowed emergency kit.

"What took you so long!" the boss hissed, snatching the backpack from Emily. With a kick, she launched her into the water of the pool.

"Gabin get the stapler and sew up my wound!" she threw herself on a lounge chair. But Gabin huge paws were not fit to operate the small medical stapler. And as he slid and ripped open another suture, Tamara slammed her fist through the open visor. She waved me over.

"Cadet, you're a semi-trained zookeeper! Get to work!" the boss ordered angrily.

I quickly approached, but carefully closed my visor. I stapled the wound together, it was now clear to me what Tamara had planned. I was almost envious of the commander; surely the scene of me stitching her up would be clicked on a million times and everyone would rave about what a badass fighter Tartelette was.

"Very good and cut!" Tamara sat up and ordered Gabin: “Show to our Junior how to upload the video. If he's lucky he can make a few chunks before headquarters shuts down and markets the footage themselves." She laughed.

Emily was visibly pissed off by the kick and complained, "We agreed you'd warn us if you faked another tantrum like that!"

While Gabin pulled me away I heard Tamara say that Emily and Gabin were grotty actors and would screw up the movie scenes otherwise.

I was relieved that if Tamara behaved irascibly or stomped us, it was only meant so we could make some pocket money from movie earnings.

The video was quickly uploaded, but the control center also reacted quickly and deleted it after a few minutes. But at least I had secured the income of a week's wages. "You'll be a superstar yet!" grinned Gabin when he saw all the comments.

"That cadet’s really got it!"

"Professional, I'm sure he got a medical degree before the ReS pulled him off."

"Has anyone seen him without a helmet yet?"

"Badass, bravo keep up the good work!”

Gabin was proud and showed me a further trick: “If you want to earn more money you need to use a private camera. “ He showed me his small high quality camera. “The footage captured with our helmets camera belongs to ReS.” He went on to explain that even our private recordings would not be online for long because the ReS confiscated them each time, claiming that we had recorded them while on duty and therefore it belonged to them. They were mostly proven right by the streaming platforms as well. But it took a good week for the law to be enforced, so plenty of time to make extra ramp money.

I happily took a real shower with water and hung out in the room with Gabin for a bit. After that we got Emily and took a walk around the village. There were many villas and other gorgeous houses that used to be hotels. After all, Saint-Nectaire was known as a spa in Roman times. All the houses were uninhabited and renovation robots kept them in good repair. We then arrived at the 'Grottes Petrifiantes'. That is, caves from which extremely calcareous water gushes, at one point as a 14 meter high waterfall. In former times one let things 'petrify' in it. Any object was covered with lime and after a few days it looked like a work of art. A robot let us in and took us on a tour.

Afterwards we visited the old Romanesque church and trundled back. After dinner, at which Tartelette did not appear, we all turned in early. There was no telling what would happen next.