Read Owner 03 - Jupiter War for Free Online Page A

trigger. A figure, just glimpsed, tried to escape, shattered assault rifle tumbling away. Alex kept firing until there was no more voluntary movement there, snatched ammunition clips from a belt half-concealed by a bulging mass of viscera, moved on . . .
    Tactical analysis: you weren’t conserving ammunition.
    He killed again, then again. He responded to direct fire against him by just confronting it and moving in, firing continuously.
    Tactical analysis: how the hell did you survive that?
    Through the killing haze he started to realize something was wrong with the attackers. They seemed to be responding to him too slowly. When a grenade flung him tumbling, he located its source and fired on a soldier who seemed to be trying get back out of the Arboretum through a penetration lock. Bullets tore flinders from the lock, but only briefly before they ran out. Alex reached down for another clip as he flung himself forwards, but found none. Hardly thinking about it, he discarded his rifle and drew his commando knife as he came down on the man fumbling to open the lock. The man seemed hardly able to defend himself as Alex dragged him round, scanned the armouring of his VC suit, then drove the carbide blade towards a weak point under the arm. He shoved it in to the hilt, then tilted it down, slicing to the heart, blood jetting out.
    Next he was strangling someone, with no recollection of the intervening time. After that it seemed he could only find the dead or dying. He caught one soldier slowly towing himself along the base of the Arboretum dividing wall, pulled him up and gazed in puzzlement at the bloodshot eyes and foam around his mouth, before snapping his neck.
    Tactical analysis: they were dying of the Scour virus.
    Finally he realized the shooting was over. Then, almost as if operating on some homing instinct, he made his way back to where Chairman Messina had died. He went down on his knees, covered in blood – most of which was not his own.
    It was over.
    Alex drew the sidearm he had taken earlier from the other corpse here and which, during his killing spree, he had completely forgotten. He put the barrel in his mouth and there he paused for a brief eternity, until he realized he had no reason to pull the trigger . . .
    Alex was a clone of Chairman Alessandro Messina, but also a soldier who was surgically and chemically programmed to be totally loyal to that one man. He had been loyal. He had remained loyal to the best of his abilities, even when Messina had been mind-wiped and turned into someone else – even until the end. But he didn’t pull the trigger because the initial programming was not so strong any more, and he was now older and wiser than a clone new from the vat. He realized in that moment, as so many people do, that having a new purpose might be better than blowing out the back of his skull.
    ‘I know what you’re capable of,’ the commander of the station police, Langstrom, had said, shortly after finding him in the Arboretum. ‘I can offer you a place with my men. You’d be one of the first to be issued with weapons if we’re attacked again which, considering our recent history, seems highly likely.’
    Alex had not even needed to think about his answer.
    ‘No,’ he’d replied, ‘I need a totally new purpose, preferably with less guns and blood involved.’
    Langstrom had then not known what to do with him, hence Alex ending up in here.
    Floating above his hammock, Alex opened his eyes, reached up to wipe his face with a shaking hand. He was covered in sweat but now felt he had severed some link to his past. It was as if he’d finally shaken off a fever. He reached down and grabbed the edge of the hammock, using it to drag himself to the wall. A swift kick against it sent him drifting across the room to a pack, gecko-stuck to a wall-shelf. He took out one of the bottles inside, uncapped it and squeezed its contents into his mouth. After a moment he lowered the bottle and stared at it,