4
May
The second piece in the JNY serial. This isn’t standalone, so make sure to read the first short.
The desert was cold, and the sky was ash. A week had passed since JNY-35197 had stared at the meteors. Half the grunts were dead, not that Jenny had known them well. They’d all been organ replacements like him. Command was gone too, or at least it was a different voice coming from his speakers. This one was female, not that it made a difference how command acted.
That first day, the meteors had spit chunks of rock and asteroid at the bungalow, blowing it apart. Other pieces had impacted on Jenny’s position. That was why there were now twenty-one grunts, not forty. They’d been running since then, dodging through the desert, surviving on the emergency rations from the battlesuits. Command had come and gone, but at least this new woman had given Jenny coordinates to march towards.
Command had also explained the ash in the sky. The enemy had used bombs to fill the air with radioactive dust and debris, so taking off a battlesuit would result in death. JNY-35197 was glad that claustrophobia had been ironed out of his genetics as part of the standard clone procedure, otherwise he’d have lost it. A week in a cramped, ill-fitting suit. Of course, the suit had stopped a repeater shell, so Jenny figured he should be somewhat thankful.
The heads up display in Jenny’s suit told him he was looking at the coordinates. Another barren dune. No supplies, nothing. Still, the grunts fanned out like they had been trained, and advanced on the dune. Jenny reached the top, and saw more desert. Command then crackled into life, and ordered them all to the summit. Bemused, they gathered in a tight circle on the peak.
The sand moved, and Jenny fell through like so much quicksand, arriving in an underground room. Above, the tunnel they had fallen through seal shut, and command told them to unsuit, eat the food, and rest. The room was barren, emptier than the bungalow. Twenty-one mats lay on the floor, each with food beside it. Otherwise, there was one locked door, and the tunnel.
Jenny followed command’s advice, and woke to find his suit swapped out. Same model, same used stink, but no bullet dent. Fit him better too. More food came, but command did not, and so Jenny went back to sleep. This pattern followed for two days, and then command spoke. Jenny crawled into his battlesuit, grabbed his repeater, and climbed up the ladder in the tunnel.
A trench had been dug around the summit, and the twenty-one grunts dug in, a thin ring facing outwards. Soon the horizon filled with the sounds of battle, and massive treaded beasts trundled forward, and among them Jenny could see the tiny forms of battlesuits. This time, when command ordered him to fire, he fired. The repeaters worked against the battlesuits, and so Jenny picked them off, one by one. Then the bombs came again, and the sky rained ash.
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