The young soldier awoke naked in darkness and total confusion. He had no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there. He was on some kind of angled table; he could feel restraints at his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck. He could see some glowing points of light floating in space around him. In the state he was in, it took him a few moments to realize that they were indicator lights on pieces of equipment. That helped him get his bearings a little, gave him some indication of the shape and size of the room. The air was cool but not cold. By turning his head a little - about as much as he could move at all - he could see a flashing red light.

Okay, think, he told himself. Am I wounded? Is this sickbay aboard the Liberator, or maybe back at Sara Base? No... doesn't smell right, and anyway, it wouldn't be dark there. I don't feel injured. So why am I restrained?

He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. Think of the last thing that happened. Where was I? What was I doing? I was... I was in a fight. With GENOM Vulture boomer fighters. They were... they destroyed...

It was all very hazy. He was still struggling with that when he heard the doors open. He opened his eyes and winced, dazzled - overhead lights had come on while he wasn't paying attention. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust enough that he could make out anything about the figure advancing across the room toward him.

It was a man, tall and rather thin, and he was wearing a dark blue uniform with a shoulder patch that instantly clarified the situation - the black and white gearwheel of GENOM Corporation. MIDNIGHT! The man was an operative of MIDNIGHT, the corporation's deniable operations branch.

I must've been captured, the soldier thought. He wondered why. GENOM wasn't known for taking prisoners. They maintained the public illusion that they were an ordinary gigacorporation, not the kind of outfit that put itself in situations where it might have prisoners, so anyone who went up against them tended to just disappear. Besides, for the last two years they'd made a very public point of not taking Wedge Defense Force personnel alive.

Either way, it didn't bode well, and the fact that he was in the hands of MIDNIGHT made it that much worse.

"Ah, hell," the GENOM operative said, sounding more annoyed than sinister. "What are you doing awake?"

The young soldier said nothing. Grumbling, the man went to the panel next to him and punched a few keys, then cursed under his breath. Turning to the soldier, he said, "Identify yourself."

Keeping his voice as even as possible, the soldier replied as he had been trained: name, rank, serial number.

The MIDNIGHT agent gave the soldier a curious look. "Are you trying to be funny?" he asked, sounding puzzled and annoyed.

Stone-faced, the young soldier repeated his name, rank, and serial number.

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time. Shit, this is all screwed up. I'm gonna have to get Vardler." He poked at the console again, then said, "Oops."

The restraints holding the soldier to the table retracted.

He wasn't sure how well he'd be able to move, having just been strapped to a table for who knew how long, but he was young and resilient, his body honed to a perfect balance of strength and agility. He sprang from the table, ready for a fight. Before the MIDNIGHT agent could do more than utter a wordless exclamation of surprise and fear, the soldier had grabbed him by the back of the head and smashed his face into the console he was working at, shattering the screen. The soldier pulled his bloodied, stunned opponent back by the scruff of the neck. The MIDNIGHT agent grabbed for a gun on his belt. Smoothly, with the absolutely unhesitant deftness of a trained special-ops fighter, the soldier broke his neck and dropped him to the floor.

Then, blinking in shock, the young man stared at his hands.

How did I do that? he wondered. And... what did the name I gave him mean? It's not my name - is it? ... What is my name?

Never mind. I need to get out of here. Then I can worry about little things like who I am.

He didn't bother stripping the dead man of his uniform - there was no way it would ever fit him. He merely took the man's weapon and headed out. Beyond the door was a featureless metal corridor. He could've been anywhere. Cocking an ear, he listened carefully and heard the low, almost subliminal rumble of big fusion reactors. Starship, maybe? No drive subsonics, though. Probably a space station.

He looked around, but there were no deck or wall markings indicating anything useful. While he was taking stock of his situation, he heard approaching footsteps. He turned, thinking to go back into the room he'd just come from, but the door had locked behind him. He was trapped. He whirled just in time to see two very surprised-looking MIDNIGHT agents rounding a corner.

"What the hell?" one of them blurted. "What are you doing out?"

"Look out, it's armed!" the other cried - then seemed to explode, bursting out of human-like skin and uniform to reveal the gleaming blue biosteel armor of a 55-series combat boomer.

Okay, not good.

The other - apparently a real human - pulled a blaster. The young soldier was faster. Without hesitation, he shot the second MIDNIGHT agent, killing him on the spot. Then, knowing he couldn't hope to stand up to a boomer, he turned and ran. Ordinarily the boomer would have found chasing down a naked human no problem - 55s could fly, or sort of hover, using jet thrusters in their backs and lower legs, giving them a speed across the ground that no unaugmented human could match. The boomer couldn't really use his hover thrusters in these close quarters, though - he had to do it the old-fashioned way, and the young man was a terrific sprinter. Using his plasmacaster was not one of the boomer's options, either - a miss could hole the corridor, which wouldn't bother the boomer much, but would probably tick off the management.

As the young soldier ran for his life, he heard the overhead PA crackle and then announce, in the voice of the boomer that was chasing him, "Attention! Subject 21 has gone rogue! Man down! Subject 21 is armed and at large in sector G!"

Subject 21? the soldier thought. I guess that's me.

He ran, hearing the boomer's pounding metallic tread behind him, defying the natural instinct that made him want to look back. His puny hand blaster couldn't do a thing against a Bu-55C's armor. His only hope was to either find someplace to go where it couldn't follow him, or get his hands on a better weapon.

And maybe some clothes, though that was a relatively low combat priority, considering.

He rounded a corner - corridors seemed to all be about the same length - a square space hab, maybe? - and found two surprised-looking uniformed guards standing outside a door partway down. Hoping neither of them was a boomer like his pursuer, Subject 21 fired from the hip, nailing one before he could draw his weapon. The other tagged a wall alarm and faded back slightly, keeping the door he'd been guarding within his field of fire so his attacker couldn't get to it.

Whatever's in there must be important, Subject 21 thought, then applied all his concentration to the problem of staying alive. He had a gunman in front of him, a boomer coming up behind him, a light weapon, and no body armor. His mind was racing now, eyes taking in everything, brain processing what it all meant: relying on his training and experience, looking for levers. Small gaps in the floor and ceiling every 20 feet or so. Segmented construction. The surviving guard had just backed across one.

Hoping he was right, Subject 21 suddenly dove toward the inside wall of what he now believed was a square ring corridor, straightarmed his blaster toward the outside wall, and fired. The blaster bolt punched a neat half-inch hole in the wall - and the atmosphere immediately began escaping with a howl like a steam whistle. The overhead lights turned red, some of them began flashing, and a decompression alarm hooted.

And just as he had hoped, emergency bulkheads slammed down in all those expansion-joint-like gaps, sealing off the damaged section - and sealing out both the guard on one side and the boomer on the other.

Of course, that meant Subject 21 was trapped, naked, in a compartment that was open to space, but hey, one problem at a time.

With a great WHANG, something heavy - the boomer, no doubt - plowed into the bulkhead behind him, causing the wall to bulge. The Bu-55C had apparently done a booster dash, trying to beat the bulkhead, but he'd lost the race. The temperature in the corridor section was dropping fast, and Subject 21's ears popped as the pressure fell. He slapped the activator for the inside door the two men had been guarding, and to his relief, it opened. Wind gushed out, nearly knocking him down, but he braced himself, hauled himself inside, and shut the door behind him.

"Okay," he panted, leaning against the wall for a moment to catch his breath. "So far, so good."

I just hope there's something in here I can use, he thought, and proceeded warily down the narrow inner hallway. It went on for a dozen yards and then debouched into a small, bunker-like room. Subject 21 edged down the hall with his back to the wall, then swung around the corner into the room, covering all angles. It was empty.

Or rather, there was no one there. Technically speaking, the room was not empty. There was an object standing in the middle of the floor - one the young soldier was very pleased to see.

A Cyclone! A brand-new-looking VR-052F Battler Cyclone, resting on its center stand in cycle mode, its armor thermocoated in the distinctive mint green of the Wedge Defense Force's Mars Division. Next to it, nestled into compartments in a wall locker, was a suit of matching CVR-3 modular armor. Quickly, with the sure movements of an expert, Subject 21 put it on, first skinning into the tight-fitting, puncture-resistant underglove, then clipping the duraplast hard armor sections on over it. Before putting on the helmet, he paused for a moment to regard himself in the mirror next to the armor locker.

He was a tall, broad-shouldered, but rather slim young man, built like a well-conditioned swimmer or a baseball player. He had a chiseled face with a thin nose, a rather pointy chin, and penetrating blue eyes, and his slightly unkempt hair was a lustrous blue-black. As his mind was starting to fire on more cylinders, he was pleased to see that he recognized himself. It was exactly the face he had unconsciously expected to have.

He fitted his helmet onto his head and sealed the neck closure of his armor, then closed the visor, completing the suit's vacuum integrity. Then he swung a leg over the Cyclone, eased it down from its center stand, and thumbed the starter. The micro-fusion turbine fired up instantly, lighting up the indicator panel and showing all the right start conditions. The Cyclone was fully armed and ready to go. Glancing down, he saw that there was a name painted on the tank - the same name, in fact, that was marked on the left side of his CVR-3's sloped plastron. It still didn't seem quite right somehow, but he was growing to like it.

Putting the matter out of his head, he revved the Cyclone, toed it into gear, and launched it down the hallway.

The security boomer had just punched his way through the pressure bulkhead, then slammed part of it against the holed outer wall to stop the leak, when the Cyclone smashed down the inner door and jumped out of the doorway into the main corridor. The boomer turned, snarling, and deployed his plasmacaster -

- just as the Cyclone rider thumbed a trigger and fired one of the four missiles mounted in pairs on either side of the cycle's front wheel. The missile burst free from its launch tube, spiraled once, and blew the boomer clean in half. The plasma beam went wide, carving a furrow in the ceiling instead of the rider.

Suddenly alone, the Cyclone rider considered his options for a moment. Then the lights flashed again, a siren sounded, and the pressure bulkheads began to retract.

"Attention, all personnel," a voice announced on the PA system. "Subject 21 has escaped. All personnel converge on sector E and destroy Subject 21. Exception: Section A personnel, secure spacecraft bay."

If I'm in E and I came from G, that must mean A is this way, the rider thought. He gunned his Cyclone and headed clockwise. The guard he'd outwitted and trapped behind the bulkhead to the right was gone, presumably regrouping with the others.

It didn't take the security systems long to figure out what he was up to; he had been riding for only a few seconds when the voice came back on the overhead and ordered everyone to sector B to intercept him. A moment later, he rounded another bend and saw them, a dozen men and a handful of Boomers, massing in front of a bulkhead door that cut the ring corridor off into a dead end.

"Subject 21!" one of the men shouted, his voice amplified by speakers in his riot helmet. "Stand down! You are in violation of core programming!"

"Subject 21" revved his Cyclone a couple of times, switched in his own speakers, and replied, "Try it on someone else, pal. You may have intended to brainwash me, but you didn't have me long enough for it to take. I was a little confused before, but I know who I am now. Riding a Cyclone brought it alllll back to me."

So saying, he revved the bike once more, dropped it into gear, and laid a strip of duravulc on the deck plates as he launched himself toward the blockade.

"Last chance, Subject 21!" the man in the lead yelled, leveling a wide-mouthed riot blaster. "Command override, delta delta two six seven niner! Stop where you are and shut down your vehicle!"

The man on the Cyclone didn't even slow down. The "override" made no more impression on him than if the MIDNIGHT commander had said "killing boomers makes the baby Jesus cry." He gritted his teeth fiercely inside his helmet as he flicked another control with his thumb and felt the Cyclone respond.

Yes, it had all come back to him now. All of it. Sonset. The desperate weeks and months that followed. Hunted, hunted, hunted... cornered. The last stand of the Mars Division. The horror as the Liberator fell, burning, toward the heart of the sun.

Marlene...

"I told you, try it on someone else!" he snarled.

The Cyclone reared, popping a wheelie, then boosted clean off the deck. Still speeding forward, it reconfigured, fairing splitting, wheels folding, components interlocking with hardpoints on the CVR-3 to combine machine and rider into a single Veritech war machine. Now flying instead of riding, the last Mars Division armored trooper hurtled into the teeth of the GENOM "roadblock", energy blasts and bullets sparking against his shields and whining from his armor. Panels popped open on both sides of his plastron, revealing the gleaming heads of micro-missiles.

Everything made sense now. Everything.

And that meant nothing did, because he lived in a galaxy that had gone mad two years before.

As he fired all his missiles at once, each one spiraling out with a different target locked into its seeker head, he repeated - with a rising note of white-hot fury in his voice and total certainty in his heart - the information he'd confusedly parroted to the first MIDNIGHT agent back in the medical lab.

"Scott Bernard! Lieutenant commander, Wedge Defense Force! MD38416!

"My name is Scott Bernard!"



The battle was furious, but brief. Against the full power of a trained, experienced, battle-hardened Cyclone soldier, a bunch of MIDNIGHT agents in fatigues and a handful of low-end combat boomers didn't stand a chance.

After the battle, Bernard breached the spacecraft bay and took out the personnel in there. They offered him little choice, refusing to even consider surrender, but if he was being honest, Bernard would have to admit that he preferred it that way. Fewer loose ends. Nobody to escape and tell their central command what had happened. He figured that, following standard MIDNIGHT procedure, GENOM Central would roll up whatever operation had been planned here when the base didn't make its regular check-in. No investigations when MIDNIGHT ops went bad. Someone might get caught. Seal the file and walk away. Preserve the cell structure that enabled MIDNIGHT to operate like the terrorist army it was.

Besides - it was that much less GENOM scum walking free in the universe. Death was the least they deserved after what they did to the SDF-17, the Indignation, the Liberator.

After what they did to his life.

In the spacecraft bay, Bernard found his ride, a complete VF-6H/VB-9D Legios Veritech starfighter system in the standard Mars Division blue and white. He left it alone for the moment and performed a full sweep of the base. It appeared that he'd accounted for everybody there; the place was compact, like most MIDNIGHT bases of his experience, and lightly staffed. Now that he was through with it, it was utterly deserted.

To his surprise, he found an empty, deactivated warship docked at the back of the base. It was one of the old Ikazuchi-class battlecarriers, first fielded by GENOM in the late 20th century, later sold off to a Salusian company that had built them for the Royal Salusian Navy for many years thereafter. This one was done up as a facsimile of WDF Liberator, the old home ship of the Mars Division. Scott supposed that was some MIDNIGHT wonk's idea of a joke. Capture the last survivor of the Mars Division, reprogram him into a killer like some said they'd done to Gryphon, turn him loose on the galaxy with a fake Liberator full of boomers to wreak havoc and further stain what was left of the WDF's good name.

Bastards. Bastards!

Well, it wasn't going to be like that. Oh, he'd use their ship, all right. But it wouldn't be to drag the WDF through more mud - it'd be to start doing what he could to clean the name, if such a thing could even be done.

Yes, he'd use the warship his GENOM hosts had so graciously provided him. Not right now; he couldn't possibly operate an Ikazuchi-class battlecarrier all by himself. But someday, once he'd assembled a new Mars Division - gathered to himself some trustworthy folks, people he could count on to fight the good fight his way - he'd be back, and they'd claim the new Liberator for their own.

Standing in the observation bay, looking out at the carrier with tears blurring his vision, Scott Bernard clenched his fist around the holo-pendant that was all that remained of his comrades and swore an oath on their memory and their blood that the Mars Division would live again - and that all their deaths would be avenged a thousandfold.

GENOM will pay, he promised them. The galaxy will be free again. Or I'll die trying to make it so.

Then, regaining his composure, he came to attention, saluted the ghosts of his comrades, about-faced smartly, and went down to the starfighter bay. He had a lot of work to do, and it was about time he got started. A quick detour to the command center to put the base into hibernation mode, and then a short walk through the corridors, now eerily lit with the dull greenish glow of the standby lights, and he was gone, riding - in an abstract sense, anyway - to the rescue of a galaxy that needed his help now more than ever before.

Down in the medical lab where he'd awakened, a printout remained, unnoticed, sticking out of the slot on top of the printer next to the console he'd smashed with the first MIDNIGHT agent's face.

G-OS UNIX System XLII Release 6 version 1.12 (root@angband)
33/S MYTHOS-21 OFFLINE
base operating system OK
installing memory A.................... OK
installing personality matrix A........ OK
installing memory B.................... ERROR
Transmission error. Upload aborted.
personality matrix B: failed dependency. Upload aborted.
system activating
WARNING: MEMORY/BEHAVIOR CORE INCOMPLETE
This unit may be erratic or behave in unexpected ways.
33/S MYTHOS-21 ONLINE

"The Bernard Identity" - an Exile Mini-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins
Plotted by Benjamin D. Hutchins and Philip J. Moyer
Special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2007 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

And the irony of him being a malfunctioning 33/S that is actually anti-GENOM, when the original Bernard was a myth and he was obviously created to tarnish that myth, is just wonderful. Well done!

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

As said, a VERY lovely read, and something that would be interesting to know more about. But then, that's not entirely new among the works. This, along with the one about Ivanova, is the only Mini-story that I would like to see more of, though. The others work on their own.

This could be great.

Very nice. And as other readers have said, this combined with the previous article on Bernard makes for good intrigue. I look forward to reading what happens.

Thanks,
-T.Zukumori

=============================================

"What happened to this one here?"
"I did."
"Uh-huh... and how did you subdue him?"
"I know kung fu."
--cropped from Titans: Convergence by Benjamin D. Hutchins

"Scotty doesn't know, Scotty doesn't know, Scotty doesn't know, don't tell Scotty cause Scotty doesn't know..." (Lustra, "Scotty Doesn't Know" prominently featured in Eurotrip)

:)

Oh yeah, and "Matt Damon!"