Читать книгу The Fallen Heroine - Fabienne Gschwind - Страница 5

The last two weeks were very intense and I hardly got to write. I had to go through an intensive "boot camp" and get to know everything. Meanwhile, the equipment is already very familiar to me and I have learned many procedures and behaviors. A few more weeks and I would be ready for my first real mission! I have seen our commander only a little, because she was on a large mission in Lion. But now she is back, that means I have to write down everything what we do.

So let's start from the beginning: The way to my new workplace in La Rochelle is like something out of a travel magazine....

First a few steps on the beach boulevard, then along the marina and turn right into a small street where the barracks are.

In the north wing of this building we have six rooms on the first floor, and in the basement we have a gym, storage, the locker room and our shooting theater.

I headed for the office in the very back corner; the large office of our boss, Captain Tamara Arlette, commander of the La Rochelle ReS unit. The acronym ReS meant Repro Security and encompasses all the units and the organization that works to protect humanity against these beasts and strives to one day eradicate them altogether.

On the door sign, someone had stuck an old-fashioned Post-it note with the words 'Tartelette'. Tartelette, that was the nickname of our boss. On the one hand, because it phonetically reminded of her name, on the other hand, because she loved to eat; because 'Tartelette' meant 'tartlet' in French. And the commander was really exceedingly voracious, as I knew after a couple of days. I sat down at my makeshift workstation at the windowsill, and put on my service beret, which belonged to the fancy dark blue ReS uniform.

The apocalypse caused by the repros was only three generations ago. My great-grandfather had experienced it himself. He used to often tell how suddenly the disease broke out and reprogrammed people's genes. They became intelligence-less monsters who wanted to kill everything.

Decapitating a repro was (and still is) the only way to kill them, it is the only way to prevent further commands from the brain to the body. Well, if you shoot the repro to a pulp, you get rid of it too. Now, 75 years later, we have a good vaccine and only rarely a human is still reprogrammed by the retroviruses. But with animals it is still a problem, the mutated genes lie dormant in them, and again and again they turn into repros.

I myself actually wanted to become an animal keeper. After graduating from high school and successfully getting accepted to study in animal medicine, I got an internship at the animal hospital. Two weeks later and after three repros, which I had sensed in time, I was called to serve in the ReS. There are only a few people who are sensitive to the repro smell. And there is a big shortage of personnel in the ReS because of that.

Normally, training starts with a Backcountry ReS unit that controls the large uninhabited parts of France. From a safe distance, the repros are hunted down by simply shooting them down with bombs and rockets. The ReS soldiers are in safe Combat helicopter - called decacopters- or heavily armored robotic combat suits.

However, I was assigned directly to a city ReS, which mostly has to fight repros in close combat to avoid killing bypassers and destroying infrastructure. I don't know why, but I was stationed in La Rochelle. A small town on the Atlantic coast. And so I've been an apprentice at ReS La Rochelle for two weeks, or to be more precise a cadet because we are a military organization.

The work is extraordinarily well paid, but also tremendously dangerous.

In public, ReS soldiers are celebrated like heroes. Parades, commemorations, speeches and many many fan events show how important the ReS soldiers are so that the society can live safely. But unfortunately...The death rate is extremely high, average service time in active patrols is barely seven years.

My mother burst into tears when she saw the "job offer" from ReS headquarters. She was full of fear that I might die early. My brother and father only saw the monthly salary and were thrilled. My father comforted my mother. "No, no don't worry, Matthis is smart, they will quickly get him off front line duty and put him to work as a coordinator or strategist."

The ReS organization also promised me a lot of things to make my service palatable. After ten years of service, they would send me back and also pay for my medical studies. I would receive a pension for life and if I unfortunately died in service, the pension would go to my family and they would give the money for my studies to my sibling.

But there was a second letter. It was addressed to me and was highly confidential.

If I refused to come or violated the laws of the ReS, my family would be vilified and lose house and all property. I myself would be exiled to a colony as a traitor to the country, where I would have to toil as a kind of modern slave. The ReS laws were simple, I had to pretend that serving in the ReS was the greatest honor and play the proud soldier. Never was I allowed to talk about depression or anything like that.

I kept this letter a secret. My family was not allowed to know about it under any circumstances! I quickly replied to the ReS headquarters that I would accept the offer. I loved my family and pretended that I was looking forward to contributing to the security of the society.

My father had said encouragingly, "La Rochelle, that's where the legendary Captain Tamara Arlette is stationed, the most famous repro-hunter in France, and even world-wide. You'll really learn something there."

He and my brother would occasionally watch the live missions broadcasted on the ReS channel. The ones from ReS La Rochelle were the most popular. Only I, of all people, had always refused to watch these brutal recordings. Ironically, I was now one of them.

The commander of ReS La Rochelle, Tamara Arlette, was a living legend with superhero status not only in France but around the world. Thousands of people owed their lives directly to her and tens of thousands indirectly, as she saved entire cities from repro catastrophe with ingenious strategies and unmatched intuition. Her heroic deeds were told all over the world. Not only told, she and her troops always wore helmet cameras during missions and these films were broadcast by ReS headquarters on a dedicated channel. It was rumored that the income from these films alone covered a large part of the costs of the ReS. The other part was covered by the repro propagation softwares that the captain programmed herself.

But then there was her shadowy character: notoriously irascible, she snapped and yelled at her soldiers or anyone else who got in her way. No less often she enforced her will at gunpoint. There were more than enough videos where she threatened a restaurant owner to get free food. And she liked to mess with politicians and aristocrats. These videos gave her even more popularity. She could easily pay the fines she got and nobody dared to lock her up...

So, of course, the ReS headquarters asked me to write down exactly what this superheroine was doing all day. That meant to look exactly what Tamara Arlette does and makes the whole day and even thinks. It will be not only a Diary but a kind testament should I nevertheless perish. Even an unfinished work would bring a lot of money to my family....

Then I heard a metallic clacking. It was Thibault with his automated exoskeleton, because five years ago he had fallen under the stomp of a repro elephant. Despite the modern nerve growth boosters, there was no saving his almost completely shattered spine. He was a paraplegic from the shoulder down.

"Moussaillon, there you are. Is Tartelette there too?"

Since I was the apprentice, I was called all sorts of nicknames by my colleagues, such as Moussaillon, ship's boy namely, Junior or Kid. But that's not a problem and I've already gotten used to it. By the way, our team is great, everyone has a great sense of humor, and not a day goes by without a few jokes. Sometimes the sparks fly when it comes to a fight and Tartelette makes wild threats, but a few hours later everyone is reconciled again. So it wasn't as bad as everyone had described Tamara to me, she had even been very caring with me...at least until now.

"No, the captain hasn't arrived yet, ...but I can go to the bakery already."

When Tartelette arrived, breakfast was the first thing and I was in charge of croissants and coffee.

"That would be nice, boy."

With that, the exoskeleton turned with a jerk and Thibault stomped out of the room. I quickly threw on my fancy uniform jacket and hurried to the bakery across the street.

Two weeks earlier, Tartelette had guideded me through all the bakeries, butcher shops, traiteurs and bistros in the vicinity. This has the advantage that they all know me and the things I buy go straight to the ReS's account.

So I returned to the barracks with a dozen croissants, a baguette for Gabin, and a large thermos of the finest French coffee. Back at the barracks I collided with Tartelette, who was just stepping into the office and putting on her combat gear.

She is the only one in the troop who always wears her hightech combat armor. If I don't wear combat gear, no one will recognize me, she told me on the first day.

Tartelette is a sturdy woman in her fifties. Her grayish hair is cut short and she has the wiry, well-toned body of an athlete. During the first Training, I had already painfully learned that she is considerably stronger than she looks.

I unloaded the groceries on the table.

"Cadet, did you buy me an extra baguette? That's sweet."

Gabin patted me on the shoulders so hard my collarbone cracked. He sat down and broke his baguette into four pieces before eating them conscientiously. Gabin was our strongman, a two meter guy who had dreamed of serving in a ReS unit from a young age, just like his father, sisters, and brothers. In La Rochelle, he was called 'the hunk' and probably could have won bodybuilding contests or strongman competitions with ease. As the others had told me, he regularly demolished the weight machines in our gym because he put more weights on them than the machine could hold.

Emily now joined us. Small and chubby as she was, she sat down next to Gabin and spread an extra helping of butter on a croissant. Every now and then her wavy, dark blond hair fell in front of her eyes and she routinely wiped it back. She, too, had been forcibly recruited, but very late. She already had another profession when her talent became apparent. But she, too, had been given no choice. She was always very serious.

Thibault sat down on a chair with his exoskeleton. Tartelette helped him and sniffed the croissant. I had sat down between Thibault and Emily and poured myself a large cup of coffee while listening with half an ear to the banter of my colleagues. Tartelette, as usual, was sharing the latest gossip about the many other ReS patrols. Her favorite gossip was about how inefficient the others were, and then she vented about her favorite topic: Her vision of how the ReS system should be organized.

Then it was back to work. For me, that first meant nipping at Tartelette's heels and keeping my eyes and ears open. In addition, there were manuals with theory units that I learned by heart and the famous shooting and simulation theater, where I spent a lot of time. Plus, of course, frequent fitness training, because we had to trim our bodies for top performance like top athletes. Today was no different.

"Kid, I evaluated your shooting results, you've made good progress. That means you're coming along on the next emergency call. Now go to the shooting cellar and keep practicing."

I obediently set off for the shooting exercises, even though I felt sick with fear. After two weeks of training, I was already supposed to be fighting real repros? But there was no point in arguing, I had made the mistake on the first day of doubting some request of the commander. Then she had fetched my employment contract and read to me with pleasure the paragraph about disobeying orders.

The ReS belonged to the army and was organized militarily.

We had three main weapons: the zapper, a slender electro pulse pistol that briefly overloaded the repros' muscles and nerves, paralyzing them. Then we had a long and extremely sharp machete to decapitate the repros. And last, a kind of old-fashioned shotgun loaded with explosive ammunition. It could be used to take down whole flocks of repro birds or blow the heads off animals. Tartelette would have liked a few more weapons. But it was too expensive for ReS headquarters and they had forbidden the purchase of more weapons.

I had started the training program, zapped three simulated boars, and decapitated a dummy when my communications device, which we merely called 'radio,' beeped:

"Alert! Get your gear on!"

So I quickly sprinted to the locker room and squeezed into the tailored combat armor. The combat armor was a kind of tight-fitting state-of-the-art knight's armor that completely encased our bodies. The helmet was seamlessly screwed onto it, and a visor with an intelligent lens hermetically sealed it. The blue armor weighed quite a bit, but had light muscle enhancers, so it was easy to move around in.

A few minutes later, we were all seated in the powerful turbo car. The driver had his driving helmet on and was roaring down the highway at speed. He was linked directly to Thibault, who gave him directions.

"A repro cattle has been reported in the Marais Poitevin," Tartelette called from the passenger seat.

Emily checked to make sure my weapons were properly secured. The machete on my right hip, the zapper on my left forearm, and a short shotgun in the holster on my back.

"The Marais Poitevin is a beautiful marsh north of La Rochelle. You can rent canoes and small boats there and paddle through the many channels," Emily explained to me. "And how does a bovine get into a swamp?", I inquired, irritated.

"There are islands between the canals, and that's where the farmers like to let their Charolais cattle graze. Hmmm ... delicious cote de boeuf," Tartelette said dreamily.

"Why don't we just shoot them off using a decacopter? One good missile and the problems are solved," Gabin said in wonder. But Thibault answered on the radio: "The Marais Poitevin is a protected area and a Unesco World Heritage Site, you can't just do massive damage to property...I told you that last year".

All those helmet video shots came to mind. Big repros were even more dangerous than small repros, because even my modern combat gear would not survive a collision with a wild bovine unharmed. Like a horror movie, all these shots came to my mind of armor being crushed under repro teeth. How a deer would hit someone high up in the air, how two bulldogs tore a soldier's limbs away. And then the badger that kept hitting the visor until it broke. Then he tore away the woman's face. This footage was not shown to the public, but on the first day of work, Thibault unlocked it for me. "Extra motivation to train a lot." he had meant.

The most depressing thing: None of the recordings was older than three months. This was the brutal reality behind the shiny facade of the Repro Security. The life expectancy of soldiers in urban ReS was even lower, five years on average.

We were quickly at a parking lot. Thibault had already let prepared some canoes for us. He had tried to organize a decacopter that would fly us to the small island. But since no one's life was in danger, the ReS center had not deemed it necessary to release a copter. This meant we had to paddle the old fashioned way. Tartelette then tossed me a paddle. "You paddle and I'll watch. Allez!"

Somewhat clumsily, I climbed into the rickety boat. Fortunately, I had paddled a canoe as a child on my great-uncle's carp pond. At least I kept my direction while Gabin's and Emily's boat zigzagged behind.

"We're not at a waltzing class, put some effort into it," Tartelette snapped at the two.

I had already been warned about this: When we were hunting, the boss always turned into a drill sergeant and cursed savagely all over the place. I hadn't experienced it until now, but Gabin said she hurled insults and occasionally got physical. Everyone had advised me not to take it seriously, should she ever really snap at me. I should just be glad to get out alive. And who better to guarantee that than the captain? She was, after all, one of the best repro hunters in the world!

Or as Gabin had said. "If you can't take a good rub you will never become a polish Gemstone."

Through low hanging trees and root systems sticking out of the water, we continued. To this day, I wonder what kind of image we gave off - four heavily armed soldiers paddling along through the idyllic canal. Then I smelled it: the funny smell of a repro. Tartelette nodded appreciatively when she saw me sniffing.

Quickly, I closed my combat visor. The intelligent visor flashed additional information. But we could not see the bovine. All the green stuff obstructed the view.

I began to sweat from rowing and the summer temperatures, but my battle suit automatically cooled.

"Gabin, Emily stay there. We'll circle the island and drive the cattle to you from the other side. Cadet, paddle fast and quiet."

I strained. Thibault was tracking all our movements via satellite. With his instructions, we paddled around the island in the tangle of channels.

Then Tartelette jumped off the boat and waved at me. I shivered with nervousness and stayed close to her. She stalked through the undergrowth.

Through a bush we had a direct view of five beefy Charolais cattle. They were about to attack a sixth and crack its skull open. They still looked like normal cattle, in a few days, they would be covered in an ugly slime.

The reality was horrible, much more horrible than the footage. And here we were about to take on five of these huge beasts. My heart slipped into my pants. I looked at my little zapper. It seemed completely inadequate. Especially because repros were much stronger and faster than normal animals.

"Attack," trumpeted Tartelette, leaping toward the animals. Two immediately stomped away, but Emily and Gabin took them on. Two more glared angrily at us. But Tamara didn't flinch, in a flash she shot the one with the zapper. The third bovine raced toward me. I had no time to think. I aimed my zapper, and sure enough, the bovine fell twitching to the ground, the force carrying it to my feet.

"Hurry up, it won't last forever," Tartelette shouted as she hacked into the cattle's thick neck with her machete. As she did so she muttered various recipes to herself. Every muscle she cut, she would much rather have turned into a tidbit.

I raised the machete and struck. Never did I think it would be so easy to kill. But the fear of the beast's horns was greater. Like a berserker, I struck and zapped incessantly. Then it was over, the head dropped.

Blood ... blood everywhere, but the repro was dead and I was alive. I sat dripping in a pool of red. I felt sick as a dog and shaking like never before. An intense surge of emotion, adrenaline, fear and endomorphins washed over me and I threw up in the helmet.

Tartelette, meanwhile, had decapitated the third bovine and approached me with a blood-dripping machete.

"It's all right, kid. It happens to all of us. The trick is, with every repro you killed, you had to think of all the people you saved as a result."

I immediately felt a little better and was grateful to the captain.

We stopped briefly so I could wash my face, then paddled back. Gabin had taken a leg kick from one of the cattle full in the chest and had been thrown meters into the channel. Emily dug him out of the mud and he joked.

The rest of the morning we searched the entire area but could not find any more repro. Muddy and blood-crusted, we returned to the parking lot. It was lunchtime and many autonomous cars were parked here. People wanted to enjoy the beautiful nature. The ReS headquarters had not initiated an evaluation. After all, one could not stop public life because of every repro.

Tartelette spied a small restaurant and devoutly studied the menu. With the tip of her machete, she tapped the dishes she liked.

"Good stuff here, now for lunch," she called out cheerfully, then asked, "Thibault, are we still on the air?" Our mission had been broadcast live, as usual. I glanced at the LEDs at the edge of the screen, which were flickering red. That meant there was no broadcast.

"Go see for yourself, Tamara," Thibault said morosely, and Tartelette wanted to sit down at a table. The other customers seemed uncomfortable and cleared their seats. A waiter came running up: "Sorry, you can't eat here like that ... you can ..." Tartelette turned to him and flipped up her visor with the bare machete. "Yes?"

Her blue eyes looked icily at the waiter. Was I glad I'd never had that look directed at me before. The waiter stumbled back.

"You are Captain Arlette ... Then please sit here." More or less skillfully, he placed us at the end of the terrace.

"Tartelette is called 'the waiter's terror' in La Rochelle and the surrounding area ... but you'll see for yourself," Emily whispered to me.

Tartelette was hungry after this effort and ordered up and down the menu. She was a fan of the 'vielle cuisine française' and asked the waiter in detail about all the ingredients and cooking methods. In addition to a dozen oysters, a calf's head and a paté du chasseur, she ate a handful of ecrivisse - crayfish - and a trout. I contented myself with a steak à cheval. This is not a horse steak, but a normal hamburger covered with a fried egg. And couldn't believe at first that I was able to eat anything at all. But after all the excitement and stress, it soon seemed like the best thing I had ever eaten. Emily filled her belly at the cake buffet and Gabin just ate some snails with salad.

On this team, you became a compulsive gourmet.

"Of course, everything tastes so good. That's just because you don't know if you're not eating your last supper...", Gabin said laconically.

When we got back to the barracks, it was already close to two o'clock in the afternoon and Tartelette ordered me to have another collation - that is, a snack - together with her. The others had somehow talked their way out of it, and so the two of us sat down at "Chez Pierrot," a brasserie on the harbor of La Rochelle that serves wonderful crêpes. We were still in gear, mind you. Tartelette looked at me with motherly love, or so it seemed to me as I polished off the second crêpe. "I think it's okay for you to gain a few kilos so you can ..."

What should have become of the few extra kilos remained a mystery, because we got a new alarm.

This time from the aquarium in La Rochelle, which was conveniently located just down the street.

"Fishes can't be reprogrammed ... Every kid knows that." Tartelette was a bit grouchy about being interrupted while eating. While we were still hurrying through the street in mud-encrusted gear and weapons.

A few minutes later we found ourselves in the back of the aquarium, where visitors were not allowed to go. The curator of the aquarium was terribly upset. Apparently there had been an incident in one of the saltwater aquariums and somehow the fish had 'degenerated'.

We bent over the open tank, but nothing could be seen through the bloody water. An employee held up a display with a scientific journal and claimed that it had been proven last month that the retrovirus - which was responsible for genetic reprogramming - had mutated and could now attack fishes.

This, of course, would be a disaster....

The curator bent over the basin. A scallop jumped out of the water and bit off his nose. The man cried out. There was nothing more we could do. Everyone knew a bite was as good as a death sentence. Too many retroviruses entered the bloodstream, genes were reprogrammed too quickly. Knowing it was one thing, seeing it was another.

The curator was already standing up again and gazing at us mindlessly. My blood froze in my veins; this was the worst thing ever, a human being who had mutated. Zombie was the colloquial name for human repro. "Don't look at it little one, you're not ready for this." Tamara drew her Machete.

But just at that moment, another staff member came over in a panic. "Repro fishes, repro fishes ... in the big tank," he shouted, agitated. I ran there with him and Tamara beheaded the curator. At least I was spared to see it with my own eyes.

We rushed with him to the big basin and met Emily and Gabin there. Through the large front window we could see the carnage. Fishes were attacking their fellow fishes and the water immediately turned red. There was a dull thud as a stingray crashed against the glass. A crack formed and we heard the glass crunch telltale.

"The battle cry of the day is 'bouillabaisse'!" Even in this situation, Tartelette was still coming up with cool sayings.

We ran as fast as we could away from the pool as the glass burst. Several thousand liters of water washed us through the aisles. The combat armor kept me from breaking all my limbs as I kept banging into walls. I had lost sight of the employee; afterwards I learned that he had been killed. He had broken his neck when the mass of water hurled him against a wall.

Already two dead on my first mission!

But fortunately, the building had been evacuated in time, so there were no other fatalities.

The rest of the evening, deep into the night, was pretty messy. We waded through the knee-deep, bloody water, decapitating anything that wriggled. The large aquarium must have housed several hundred fishes. We did everything to save at least some valuable and endangered animals that were not contaminated and put them in a separate tank.

A barracuda had crushed my combat boot and I was limping. Gabin had been slammed into a wall so hard that he broke two ribs. But the pain blocker was automatically administered and he kept going. Tartelette also almost got it when she was pushed into the polar pool by a crocodile. Emily saw no other option but to shoot the still intact glass, flushing out all the aquarium inhabitants. I ran over to help. Tartelette had no weapon left and was wrestling the crocodile with her bare hands. "Get on with it, you fucking idiots!" she cursed, and I shot her and the crocodile with the zapper on maximal power. Our combat suits protected us from the discharges.

Sometime in the deep of night, I had painstakingly decapitated a whole row of clownfish with my pocket knife. Before, I had sniffed one after the other to make sure that really all were repros. The boss had stepped behind me. She had organized a coffee from somewhere and was sipping it from a paper cup. "Kid, I'm impressed. No training yet and better than a regular repro hunter..."

She picked up a passing lobster and smelled it.

"It's not infected ... it's going to come along and end up in the crock pot. That's way too expensive to waste!"

An hour later, nothing could be done; all the remaining fishes had been reprogrammed and had to be killed. Thibault, at Tartelette's behest, organized two units of army robo-infantrymen. Protected in their robot armor, the soldiers would scour the aquarium and kill everything. Bombing the aquarium was out of the question; it was centrally located in La Rochelle and the collateral damage would be too great.

So that had been my very first combat mission, and it was fierce. We all got back to the barracks at midnight and Tartelette hurried to write her report because the reprogrammed fishes were a terribly serious danger. At the same time, she ordered Emily to cook the crawfish and yapped all over us about recipes for cooking crustaceans.

I was so exhausted that Pierre, the driver, chauffeured me home. There, after all the excitement, I still couldn't fall asleep. While dozing off, I reflected on my first mission and was dismayed at how many times I had jumped from the brink of death. The average life span of seven years suddenly seemed very very long. This could not end well.