Blood Relative Read Online Free PDF Page A

all."
    "Well, talk to me. Don't bother Bagman." He swallowed the last of the tasteless freezemeat and washed it down with a sip from his canteen.
    "You really think we're gonna find something in that box of chips?" Helm asked. "I mean, we went a long way on the word of some half-dead Nort technogeek."
    "That we did." Rogue remembered the injured technician they'd discovered inside the crashed atmocraft, desperate for air, desperate enough to spill his guts about the listening post. "It's not like we had a choice. We lost his trail after the Norts took Dix-I and this is the best chance to pick it up again." He nodded at the datacore. "If there's even a scrap of intel in that thing about the Traitor General, it's more than we got now."
    Talking about the Traitor brought a sudden silence into the cave. The faceless nemesis that Rogue had dedicated his life to hunting had slipped out of his grasp, and with him the Genetic Infantryman's purpose for living. Out there somewhere in the Nu Earth wilderness, the unnamed man still drew breath, and every moment he was alive was an insult to the legions of Rogue's brother GIs who had died because of his duplicity. Rogue looked away from the dingy depths of the sandstone cave, where the shadows called up black memories of drop-pods blossoming into smoke, of bloodshed on fields of glass and the screams of betrayed soldiers. His eyes ranged over Helm, Bagman and Gunnar. Three minds rescued from the massacre, entombed on biochips: three dead comrades and him. They were all that remained of the GI legions and if they had a purpose beyond revenge, Rogue could not see it.
    "That tech would have given up his own mother for a fresh ox-bottle," he said quietly. "We're gonna find that rat bastard traitor soon. I know it."
    "Ah," Bagman made a satisfied noise. "Here we are... " A string of indicators on the surface of the datacore blinked from blue to green. "And the crowd goes wild."
    "You cracked it?" Helm was surprised.
    "Never doubt my skills."
    Rogue smiled thinly. "Good work, Bagman. Run the search; you know the drill, look for the keywords, GI, Rogue, Buzzard." Buzzard-Three was the closest they had ever got to naming the Traitor General, a code designation given by the Norts when the double-agent had served aboard an orbital Souther command satellite - perhaps as some kind of twisted private joke, the traitor sometimes used the title. It had almost been his undoing at Glasshouse-G, a Nort stockade where Rogue had tightened the noose on the spy. However, the traitor had played the game of espionage long enough to have had an escape route prepared and the GI had been left chasing a shadow.
    "I got something!" Bagman's voice couldn't hide a tone of excitement. "Listen to this; an advisory from Nort High Command to one General Rössa, Internal Affairs Apparat. Regarding NexGen Project at Domain Delta lab complex, proceed to facility and initiate directive 'S'."
    "What does that have to do with us?" said Helm.
    "There's a reference attached to the message with two code words. 'Prog #228' and 'Buzzard'."
    Rogue cursed to himself. Programme #228 had been the Souther Army's classification for the research and development that had created the Genetic Infantrymen, a top-secret operation that the Norts had never been able to duplicate. The enemy's crude attempts at making their own Genetik Soldats had been a spectacular failure where Rogue and his brethren could easily breathe poisoned air and survive the harsh toxins of the battlefield. Their Nort "cousins" soon succumbed to the relentless taints and died on their feet after just a few weeks of service.
    "You thinking what I'm thinking?" said Helm.
    "Reckon so. This Domain Delta has gotta be a gene-lab, maybe where the Norts are still trying to cook up their own brand of GI troopers." Rogue considered this for a moment. "We know the Traitor General sold us out to the Norts when we dropped on the Quartz Zone... But what if that's not all he gave