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Home ¦ Fiction ¦ Nu Earth Tearjerker

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Chapter 2 – A GIRL, A G.I. AND A TALKING HAT  

Within an hour, the strange party had traversed their way past the bio-wire and acid pools that littered the surface of the Plains and reached the lagoon: a seeming verdant paradise compared to the deathly, madness-imbued desolate desert that hemmed it in on all sides. Like a flower that blossoms in the midst of a battlefield, its existence seemed so implausible that it could only be there solely for the purpose of inspiring war poets to write turgid rhymes about its isolated metaphorical beauty that no one would ever really read (although later at parties they would pretend to have done so, in order to impress upon women quite how intellectually deep they really were).

Surrounded by a thin ‘moat’ of water that bubbled from the lagoon somewhere in its centre, the small mass appeared like a tiny clump of overgrown jungle; vines, trees and creepers that burst out into the desert like vomit from a drunk at closing time. Hacking their way through the jungly foliage was a hard job, particularly if you’re carrying a rapidly decomposing corpse on your back, and so it was a good ten minutes before Rogue noticed something was wrong. 

It was the smell. At first he thought it was just his imagination, before he remembered that the Gene Genies hadn’t bred him with one. He could smell food. And not just food, but freshly cooked, mouth-watering food too. Following the scent with their noses, the group soon came upon a small clearing amongst the vegetation, in the middle of which sat a bubble tent – a sealed installation against the deadly chem that smothered those outside it, supplied with fresh oxy from the battery operated air purifiers contained within. Looking through the transparent outer shell, though there was no sign of the cook, Rogue could see a small pot bubbling within. It smelled like G Rations.

Just as Rogue began to consider where the mysterious occupants of this glorified war-tent might be, a sharp strangled cry from behind told him that Paddy had already discovered them. 

Paddy was beginning to feel almost accustomed to this experience. Well, as accustomed as you could feel when the experience in question was that of someone crushing your throat with their freakishly-muscled arm and waving an unfeasibly large las-scalpel less than a gnat’s testicle from your cornea. Funnily enough, he noticed, this arm was blue too. Really, by now he shouldn’t have been surprised. What did particularly surprise him was that, though this arm was both blue and dangerously powerful, it seemed somehow more feminine than the last. This, it seemed, surprised Rogue and crew too: 

“Gasp! Venus Bluegenes – the G.I. Doll who was Helm’s girl on Milli-Com but was secretly in love with Rogue and turned out to be a serial-murdering sociopath! But you’re dead!!” 

“Oh boy…” sighed Bagman wearily, like he was Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap and had just found himself in a really improbably wacky situation. 

Oskar the Beast was feeling happy. Or what passed as happy for him, but which for most people would be read as violent psychopathic rage. Finally his trackers seemed to be leading him in the right direction on his wonky trail of vengeance. Though the unit was now forced into sheltering inside their protective plastic bubbles against the psycho-storm that raged outside, he felt that soon his long-sought prey would be within his murderous grasp. He could feel the presence of the Rogue Trooper out there in the desert in front of him, stoking the fires of homicidal retribution deep in the pit of his belly.  

As he passed around the campfires that burned somewhat unfeasibly in the oxy-light atmosphere of the S.I., he listened to his men and their fireside talk, happy in the quiet contemplation of the certain victory that he faced. Then the conversation of Legionnaire Karl Larson caught his cauliflower ear: 

“…and say that he has killed more than even the entire Kashar Legion put together, that he cannot be killed by conventional weapons and that when he kills you, he murders your very soul!” 

“I have heard that the only thing that the fearsome genetik dog fears is his own fearful-self!” 

“Stak! How can the Beast expect us to fight such an indefatigable warrior? Surely he has gone mad with this endless obsession of his…?” 

Larson was cut short as a giant angry ape-fist suddenly began forcefully throttling his windpipe and dancing a samba with his eyeballs like a maddened, maraca-wielding badger in a washing machine.

It was safe to say that Oskar’s balloon had well and truly been punctured. He was able to lighten his mood somewhat by whiling away the next few hours knocking out Larson’s teeth with a ceremonial toffee hammer and constructing a homemade xylophone out of the bloody sticks of pearly enamel. But still he could not lift this fog of depression that now filled his heart like the banks of chem that swirled and eddied outside the tent in the desert beyond.

The longer the storm lasted, the further his quarry escaped him, eluding his grasp, his trail lost to the raging wind and sand beyond. And he must exact violent retribution on someone soon, or else face the risk of an embolism thanks to the thick and angry vein that pulsed and throbbed on the side of his head. His hunting knife gleamed hungrily at his side. So it was fortuitous for both Oskar and particularly the soldiers under his command that, just as the storm began to lift, they intercepted an unexpectedly fortuitous transmission… 

“Suck it in, Gunnar!” Rogue countered, attempting to calm some extremely volatile waters. “Just because every other woman that I’ve met on this planet (including this one) has turned out to be a double-crossing femme fatale who’s irrationally tried to betray and murder us all like some terrible mad banshee doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll happen again this time.” 

And what magnificent topography she had! If he’d thought that Rogue’s half-naked appearance had been somewhat risqué before, it was altogether thrown into sharp relief by the two-piece swimsuit ensemble that Venus wore as if she had been born into it. She had perfect legs that went from the ground up and just wouldn’t quit until they reached the heavens. Anatomically improbable breasts that you could take bowling and still roll all the way back home. And seductively wet, kissable Black Widow lips that said ‘Sure, you might not survive the experience, but what a way to die!’ The white Mohican that topped this stunning mirage just completed the picture.

Truly, Paddy pondered dreamily, these two blue-skinned warriors were quite literally made for one another. Then, as suddenly as his tired thoughts had possessed him, he was snapped suddenly out of his reverie as Rogue continued his cross-examination. 

“We’ve got us a fair few things to talk about, doll – not least of all how you’re still alive.” 

“Oh, that’s a long story” began Venus, pouting in an appealingly coquettish fashion. “Let’s just say that after Caliban Island blew up, I washed up in Nu Sudan, worked in a club as a good-time gal rousting easy drunks for management-goons, blah, blah, blah, went off-planet and became a mercenary for a race of telepathic giant bees, blah, blah, shot a vampire monkey, blah, and so on. Y’know, the usual. How about you, Rogue? You look kinda blue.” 

“My lonely quest of eternal monk-like vengeance continues” the weary ultra-hume sighed, his voice soft with companionless desolation and a bit of a sore throat.  

“C’mon, why don’t you come over here, get something to eat and tell me all about it. You look like you could do with some chow, and you remember how much you liked the way I prepared X Rations, don’t you…?” 

“X Rations? From the smell, I could have sworn they were G Rations…” 

“Not the way I cook them, blue-boy…” 

As the two G.I.’s made their way across the shelter to where the cooking pot still bubbled, the undead voices of Rogue’s synthesised pals took up quietly conspiratorial conversation: 

“Do you reckon we can trust her? What if she warps his mind with her sick female powers? And anyway, I though she was your girl Helm?” 

“Heh – yeah, she said you had a great personality, didn’t she? Helm…hey, Helm…?” 

But Helm wasn’t listening. He was thinking, and thinking hard. His emotion-circuits had been thrown into a conflicting whirl like a cyclone having a fistfight with a typhoon on a windswept pub car park in the midst of a hurricane. The very core of his illusory digital being was thrust into convulsions of confusingly apoplectic despair and indecision.  

Later that night his electronic mind was still tossing and turning, as the others took their mandatory ten cycles of downtime, when he subtly became aware of movement inside the S.I. Movement that was nimble and cat-like – like that of a woman. Was that the soft crackle of transmitter inside the tent? What was going on?  

“Hey Rogue, wake up! I, Helm, think there’s someth…nnn!” 

The tinny digital voice was abruptly cut off as soft fingers swiftly placed a magnetic speech-nullifier across the chip’s synthesiser and rendered him mute. Whatever was happening, Helm could tell no one, nor offer a warning as to what was to come. 

Next day, the storm having passed with the night, events progressed as ordinarily as narrative contrivance could allow. Helm’s strange silence was put down to a fit of jealous sulking and he was promptly ignored out of spite. Rogue, meanwhile, was feeling refreshed after the much needed R&R, and was now avidly engaged in deep conversation alone with Venus, greedily drinking in the look in her eyes like a tramp with his first can of White Lightning. 

“Isn’t this just idyllic Rogue? Just the two of us here, amidst this lush and verdant paradise that surrounds us? The war seems so very far away, as though it doesn’t exist. Don’t you just wish that it could just…stay like this forever…?” She moved in close – hot breath on his face. 

Venus’ words drilled willingly seductive holes into Rogue’s love-starved brain like nails into a coffin made of melted butter, while the sight of the thin dew of sweat on Venus’ sheer-blue skin unleashed the longing that he had kept locked deep within him and set his mind adrift on a sea of limitless erotic possibilities.

Avenging his dead comrades. Clearing his name with the Milli-Com brass. Re-gening his biochipped buddies. Finally exing the Traitor General. Could he really leave all these things behind? In his heart it seemed so simple and easy – to give up this crazy hell-war. To settle down with his genetically engineered sweetheart. Maybe even raise themselves some little Rogues and Venuses? He began to think of names – if it was a boy, they’d call him Shoot-R; if a girl, Baglady. He felt like dancing. But could he actually do it? Could he let himself live the dream?

His heart said yes, but his head said no. 

“Damnitt! Venus… I’m sorry.” Rogue pushed her away, holding up his arm to cover his face as he bit back bitter tears of torrid desperation. He mustn’t let her see him cry.  

“I – we – can’t do this! How can I ever be sure that you won’t start killing people again for slightly contrived reasons? I’m a man of war – I don’t even know how to love, damnitt! The genies bred us for survival and killing, but they never prepared us for the destructive emotions that I’m feeling right now. And anyway, you’re Helm’s girl – and he loves you very much. Look at him; he’s been struck dumb, he’s so cut up about this whole affair. I could never betray my buddy. It’d destroy us as an all-action combat team!”

With that, Rogue nobly proffered the still strangely silent plasti-steel helmet in the direction of Venus. 

“You fool!” she snarled, eyes aflame with fury. “Don’t you realise that we’re better than the humes? We were bred to be superior – to be the best, and to survive at all costs! This is their war, not ours! Don’t you understand? I don’t love that…thing…I love you! With that, she drew back the unfortunate helmet in a great arc, and with the power of a Russian shot-putter on performance-enhancing hyper-steroids, flung the luckless headgear into the obscurity of the chem-clouds beyond the rim of the lagoon’s edge.  

It was approximately three seconds later that the assembled group heard a cry, like that of a constipated mountain gorilla shitting out its own lungs into the mouth of a battered brass bassoon, rising up from out of the chem-mist. It was another fraction of a nano-millisecond after that when Bagman sounded the alarm. 

“Rogue – my sensors are detecting an entire Nort squad out there! They’ve got us surrounded, and they’re about to attack! Prepare to fight for your very lives!” 

To be concluded tomorrow!