A bio-engineered attack force designed to surround, absorb and destroy the enemy, microphages aren’t supposed to survive the battlefield…
Microphage
It’s 3080 of the Common Era, two decades after the end of the Great Struggle, where tensions across the planets of the Council of Seven had exploded into a hundred year war that affected human imperialists, indigenous civilisations, and hordes of modified beings created in the laboratories of the empire. Much of life settled back to its former patterns amongst the war-ravaged communities of the 84 planets in the seven star systems, but some things would change forever.
“I was one of those.” Chinwendu, Chin to his friends, raised a glass of local ale to his new companion at the crowded, noisy Lighthouse bar.
“A microphage?!” Donata, just arrived at the space port with a huge rucksack and the weariness of deep space travel smeared across her face, laughed, slapping at the sticky bar counter. “Damn, I thought they, you’d all gone.”
“Yeah, well, we were supposed to.” Chinwendu lifted the still-human side of his face into a smile. He signalled to the low-grade robot who served as a bar tender, and made the appropriate signs with his fingers. “No words necessary here.” He looked back at Donata who’d been chatting with him since she dumped her rucksack on an empty chair and failed to order a drink for several minutes before Chinwendu noticed her.
“So, what are you doing here, if you don’t mind me asking?” Chinwendu asked.
“Oh, sight-seeing, try to find a job. Always wanted to visit this star system, get away from everything I grew up with, now destroyed by the militia. I can’t bear to see our beautiful city now, almost all of it’s rubble.”
“Well it’s not much better here!”
“Hah, it different, you have some trees at least.”
“Oh, yes, but I think they were planted after the war.”
“So how about you then, how did you end up here?”
“Oh, we Phages were grown in a lab for one purpose, to surround, absorb and destroy the enemy.”
“You seem pretty sanguine about that.”
“I hated it, all of us did, but that’s what we were bred to do, we didn’t know any better.”
“But tales about you all are heroic – the Legendary Microphages!”
“No, no, nothing about killing, let alone killing on that scale, is heroic. We were just biologically created mercenaries, millions of us, and, unlike the Macros ––“
“The Macrophages, yeah, I’ve seen them. Huge.”
“Yeah, they were designed to stick around for a long time. Unlike the Macros, once our job was over we were supposed to die off, triggered by the end-of-mission report. There were so many more of us than the macros we just had the one task.”
“So was that here?”
“Oh no, another star system, it was the biggest mission in the history of the Phages, we landed, a million of us in a thousand space carriers, on a rebellion planet in the Alpha quadrant, both Micro and Macro phages swarmed across the land and carpet bombed the locals. Our mission statement told us to pick out the enemy soldiers and engage, but as we landed the instructions were re-synced and we were instructed to kill everything, every living thing, burn the forests, torch the land, animals, people.”
“And that’s what you did.” Donata stared at him.
“Yes.” Chinwendu stared back.
“Your eyes–“ Donata began.
“Are not mine.”
“What?”
“We finished the slaughter, those of us left, probably half who had arrived, began to file our reports. We hadn’t been told what would happen after the mission, but I saw the Macros head back to the carriers, while all us Microphages began filing our reports like dumb little animals. One by one we all fell, sort of slithered to the blistered, smoking ground.”
“But not you?”
“I was injured, my right arm couldn’t lift my main weapon, my left was blackened by a laser blast. I fumbled for the sensors on the back of my neck, but my fingers were too unresponsive, much easier to press a trigger than find the right key sequence.” Chinwendu took a long swig of ale, “and I kept seeing the Micros around me just slipping to the floor.”
“So you hesitated.”
“Well, I was disgusted, exhausted, enraged. The adrenaline had drained from me and I saw what we’d done, not just a civilisation, but an entire planet once teaming with life, now eradicated. I wanted to die, but not like that, waiting for some clean-up operation to scoop me up and recycle me with the rest of them.”
“And you were the only one?”
“Oh no, several others, I could see them dotted around, looking puzzled while their battalion mates fell around them. I think we shared the same epiphany. I vomited and cried. I’m not ashamed to say. All those people, creatures –“ Chinwendu’s voice dimmed.
“Yeah.” Donata looked at the man-creature next to her. Handsome, she thought, but damaged. She observed the bio-mechancial reconstructions, the oddly mismatched arms, the slightly misaligned shoulders.
“You’re looking at me funny.” Chinwendu returned her gaze, and saw a strong jaw, hair tied back, a muscular torso.
“Sorry,”
“I don’t mean,”
“To be rude.” They both spoke at the same time. Laughed. And stayed silent for a moment.
“Anyway,” Donata shifted on her barstool a little. “What’re you doing here?”
“I fill my time with hired jobs, I paid for these new eyes by smuggling rocket fuel. This arm came from a mercy mission to rescue refugees in the Northern Sector. But mostly I’m waiting.”
“Oh? What for?” Donata shifted a little more.
“Someone like you?”
“Uh, not sure what you mean?” Donata absently reached across to her rucksack.
“Come on, we didn’t meet by accident.”
“Of course we did.”
“I know what you are.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re just like me.” Chinwendu opened his arms wide, and closed his eyes. “And I’ve had enough, I’m ready.” Donata pulled a laser knife from a concealed pocket in her jacket, and thrust it forward, swiftly, silently sinking it into his chest. She put her arms around him as he slumped forward and they rested for a moment on the bar stools, like lovers, embracing their last moments together.
“Just do one thing for me.” Chinwendu choked his final words, “Don’t file a report.”
“Oh I won’t.” Donata smiled, her dark eyes buried in the chest of the now deceased Microphage. “Not until I’ve found every last one of you.”
[End]Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher, Vurbl and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.
Text, image, audio © 2021 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells, Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, and Scrivener.
More Tales, More Audio
Here some of the many other stories available:
- Tragic Beauty
- Collector
- One – Insurrection
- Two – Human Nature
- Three – Deliberation
- Four – Manifesto
- Ritual Renewal
- Tall Trees
- Angelo
- First People
- The Meadow by the Pool
- Polly Hedron
- Stewards and Avatars
- The Blacksmith and the Stars
- Chrysalis
- Custodian of Giants
- Quantum Loop
- Peak Democracy
- Lifer
- The Good Doctor
- Complicit
- Cosmic Hall
- Righteous
- Lost Voice
- Daily Mask
- The Big Man
- Shaman
- Ophelia A.I.
- Henge
And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.
Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.