We Stand Together

We Stand Together

  By: Sonya Noble

  Copyright 2011 Sonya Noble

  License Notes:

  I dedicate this book to my BFFLAA's, Carissa and Liz, you guys both rock! 

  Oh yeah, and thanks to my sister, Relli, and my mom for great ideas and suggestions that totally helped with this book! And also, thank you, my dear little brothers and daddy, for giving me MORE ideas while playing Halo! Thanks guys! And thanks, Kiki, for...being my baby sister  *insert heart here*

  If any of these characters sound, act, or are in any way similar to someone you know, sorry, not my fault. So maybe I did base most of these people off of people I know, those people are awesome.  *insert another heart here*

  Chapter 1: Waiting

  Year:2626

  Trooper 0119468, or Clone 1158, or Pariah, picked her way carefully through the forest. This was just a training session, but that didn’t help the freezing temperature rise any.

  Pariah was a part of a successful cloning experiment, and though she wasn’t very intimidating, she made up for that in strength, physically and mentally.

  She looked like any thirteen-year-old girl, short, skinny, brown eyes and hair, light skin, but you shouldn’t ever judge a book by its cover.

  Ever since she was three years old, Pariah had been able to defeat men a hundred times her size and weight, crack any combination, hack any computer system, and out run/swim anything on the planet. She had also been an outcast since that age. Her name described her almost perfectly.

  Pariah paused when she heard a twig snap. She grabbed the branch above her and swung up into the tree just as two other troopers stepped out from the brush.

  “I thought I heard something,” one of the girls said, shouldering her weapon.

  “It was probably just a small robotic animal, just part of the sim,” the other girl replied.

  Pariah took careful aim with her sniper rifle filled with balls of paralyzing paint and fired two quick shots, each pointed at the two girls’ heads. They both met their targets.

  The paralyzing paint, obviously, paralyzed you for a while, and if it hit any of the major parts, (heart, head, etc.) then you were out for the count, or ‘dead’.

  Pariah took out any other troopers that had the bad luck of going underneath her tree. Right then, her only instincts were to survive and conquer.

  The simulation ended with Pariah as the still undefeated survivor. She welcomed the warmth of the locker room as she changed into her uniform, a black bodysuit with a stretchy black-brown leather tunic covering it and black leather boots. Then, she headed to the barracks.

  When she got there she found a few girls sitting on a bed, talking. Pariah thought about joining them, but quickly discarded the thought. Who wanted to hang with an overly strong, fast, and altogether unordinary girl? Not even the guys at the base wanted to hang out.

  Sometimes she wondered how clones could have the same face yet be so different. Some of the girls dyed their hair blond or highlighted or neon streaks. Some were more girly than others; some read all the time; some were more sentimental.

  Pariah wandered about the base, waiting for someone to give her something to do. Sometimes the weapons needed checking, the vehicles needed work, or somebody wanted to try out a new fighting style. She was probably the only girl who could take a beating without getting a single scratch.

  After a while of wandering around aimlessly with her hands in her pockets, nobody needing her at all, Pariah opened a door and walked outside. The forest surrounding the base was alive with sound and it beckoned to her with it’s many mysteries. She’d been out there before, to help retrieve broken-down vehicles and weapons caches that’d been set up for practice missions.

  “What’re you doing out here?” one of the clones asked her. She was helping a few officers who were trying to fix a broken-down jeep's engine.

  Pariah didn’t answer, just strode over to the tree line and pulled herself into a tree. The branches were thick and comfortable, and gave Pariah a clear view of everything without being seen. She leaned back against the sturdy trunk and closed her eyes, wondering if life would ever get interesting.

  Sometimes she wondered what it would’ve been like to be ‘normal’. A mother, a father, maybe a sibling or two.

  Pariah shook her head. She had many ‘sisters’ here, at the military base. She was just what some people would probably call in the ‘normal’ world, the black sheep of the family.

  For a long time the clone trooper watched from her camouflaged view the trucks that came bearing supplies and weapons and ammunition for the live-practice sessions that the officers made the girls do. It was almost like the Spartan-II’s from a twentieth-century book that Pariah had ‘borrowed’ from one of the older girls when she was eleven years old. The only difference was Pariah hadn’t been kidnapped from her family, they’d started her training when she was out of the cloning chamber and walking around, and she had no one to talk to about the regular things that girls normally talked about.

  All Pariah ever did every day was train, eat, sleep, and wait to be put on a team and deployed.

  Chapter 2: Squadmate

  “This is the day you’ve all been waiting for,” General Whitaker said.

  The girl troopers waited restlessly for him to continue. Pariah stifled a yawn. Get on with it! she thought impatiently, hoping she didn’t look as disgusted as she felt. The General had been droning on, and on, and on about all of the training and augmentations and stuff that the military had made the clones do their whole lives for about an hour already!

  “All of you will be put into separate squads,” the general continued, finally. “Colonels Gonzales and White will team you up. Dismissed!”

  The troopers snapped to attention as the General left the room and waited anxiously as the two Colonels came forward.

  Colonel Gonzales, a tough Hispanic woman, motioned for some of the girls to line up as she separated them into their new squads, teams of five to eight.

  Pariah went up to Colonel White, a man with balding white hair and white skin, who reminded her of a big, white teddy bear or what she thought that a grandfather must look and be like when the Colonel wasn’t yelling at anybody.

  “Trooper number and clone number,” he said, not even looking up from the clipboard he held.

  “Trooper zero-one-one-nine-four-six-eight, clone one-one-five-eight, sir!” Pariah said, saluting and standing at attention.

  “At ease, Pariah,” White said, smiling. Pariah was, out of all the clones, his favorite. She got the job done and tied up any loose ends, and always the top of her class. He'd even watched her when she was 'born,' when they'd first taken her out of the cloning tank.

  Pariah relaxed her soldier posture.

  “I said ‘at ease’ not ‘slouch like a regular teenager‘,” he laughed.

  Pariah straightened up slightly and kept her face blank.

  Colonel White stopped laughing and got back to business. “I’m sorry, but since you don’t usually work with anybody I’m putting you on Beta Squad. I’ve noticed that some of them seem to like doing their own thing with no help whatsoever. Is that okay?”

  Pariah's jaw dropped and she wondered if she was dreaming or not. Beta Squad was legendary! Their skill, speed, and overall performance was unmatched! If she was put on Beta Squad, her life’s goal would‘ve been reached.

  “Stop gaping, soldier, and report to Beta Squad immediately!” White shouted, snapping Pariah out of her daze.

  “Yes, sir!” she shouted, saluting the colonel and marching over to where Beta Squad was standing.

  “They sent a twerp to us?” one of the squad members, Daron, sneered.

  Pariah’s elation turned to anger, but she did her
best not to show it. She took a deep breath.

  “Trooper zero-one-one-nine-four-six-eight, ready to roll,” she said, saluting.

  “They sent us a little kid?” another squadmate, Helen, shook her head.

  “They sent us a clone!” Katar, another part of the team, spat the word like a curse.

  Pariah dropped her salute, put her hands on her hips, and shot a dangerous look at the three squad mates. “You got a problem with me?”

  “Yeah, you gonna do something about it?” Katar sneered.

  “Come on, be nice,” Carson, the leader, said, trying to wave them off.

  “She asked for it,” Daron said, standing up.

  “And we’re finishing it,” Helen said, following Daron.

  Katar, Daron, and Helen surrounded Pariah. She didn’t hold anything back, figuring that three tough-as-nails people like them could take it and took a deep breath. She punched Daron’s jaw as he charged, sending him wheeling and caught Helen’s elbows and hurled her into Katar.

  Katar was the first to recover, and she ran at Pariah with her fists swinging. Pariah stepped aside and caught her wrists just as Helen tried to kick her legs out from under her. Pariah flipped back, slamming Katar into Helen and leaving them both on the ground.

  Daron was furious, and that small fact clouded his judgment as he went to punch Pariah’s face. She simply ducked and elbowed him in the knee. He howled in agony and was incapacitated when she pulled his leg. There was a distinct snap! that echoed across the room.

  Helen and Katar were up and after her again, but weren’t fast enough to avoid Pariah’s kick that sent Helen crashing into Katar, again.

  “Had enough from a clone?” Pariah spat, dropping into a crouch.

  “Nobody, especially a clone, defeats me!” Katar ran at the girl again and managed to land a punch on Pariah’s shoulder, but she finally went down when Pariah dislocated the Beta Squad woman’s arm.

  That left Helen, who after seeing what Pariah had done to her squad mates should’ve taken the hint that maybe this kid was a little tougher than most, but being as stubborn and thickheaded as she was, decided to keep up the fight. Unfortunately for her, that nearly cost her an arm.

  Pariah grabbed Helen as she swung past and flipped her down on her back. Helen tried to twist out of the girl's grasp, causing Pariah to accidentally break the arm she was holding just above the elbow. Helen gasped and dropped to her knees, cradling her arm.

  Pariah straightened, clenching and unclenching her fists. Only then did she notice the crowd of clones and disbelieving stares being shot at her. Two older, more experienced clones grabbed her arms and pulled her away from the three either unconscious or moaning Beta Squad mates. Pariah knew she could’ve easily gotten away from them, but she was already in a heap of pig manure. The clones, Talia and Reese they were called, brought her before General Whittaker. Or, more accurately, shoved her at his feet.

  After they explained to him what had happened he slowly shook his head and turned his attention to Pariah.

  “You took out Katar, Helen, and Daron, without breaking a sweat?” he asked levelly.

  “Yes, sir.” Pariah stood up and at attention.

  “Did you kill them?”

  “No, sir. Beta Squad member Katar has a dislocated arm and probably a few broken ribs, Beta Squad member Daron has a broken leg and a dislocated jaw, and Beta Squad member--”

  “You don’t have to keep saying ‘Beta Squad member’,” the general cut in. "I know who they are."

  “Sir, yes sir! Helen has a broken arm,” Pariah finished. “No other injuries that I could see, except for a few bruises and bloody noses.”

  “Amazing,” General Whittaker murmured. Pariah barely caught the word and she was taken aback by the General’s reaction.

  Following that incident, she spent a long time in the ‘corrective room‘ where they gave long, boring lectures on misconduct. It was better than the Incinerator where they burned 'defective clones' alive, as if they were garbage, but still boring. Eventually, she was put on another squad.

  Pariah remembered when she was nine, and some of the younger more exceptional clones were let out on their first ‘mission’. She was part of a group they‘d named the ‘Jaguars‘, and had helped with planning the attack to get the ‘enemy’s’ flag. She’d proposed going through a dark cave that led right to the flag, but the rest of them had sarcastically told her to ‘try something that dangerous on your own.’ She’d done it, just to prove to them that it could be done, and she’d emerged victorious, to a group of very jealous and very angry clones.

  Sometimes she wondered if, given the chance, whether she’d change her decision, and back then, she’d decided no, she wouldn’t have. It was the same now, watching ¾’s of Beta Squad pass her, giving her the space she needed to pass them through the hall.

  Chapter 3: “One of us, now.”

  Pariah walked to her new squad barracks with her bag looped over her arm. As the door slid open, she yelped in surprise.

  Eight girls jumped out and cried, “Congrats!” or, “Hi!” or, “Surprise!”

  All the girls had the about the same face and height as Pariah, being as they were all cloned from the same person: Dr. Hera Moore. She was a very intelligent biologist and nuclear physicist, and she experimented with cloning technology and bio-augmentation. She’d cloned herself and experimented with the living being when it was old enough to decide if it would let itself be experimented on, acknowledging its human rights, and she made many scientific breakthroughs in the medical field and human anatomy. She had made the first ‘superhuman’ and of course, the military wanted her to create more. When she refused, they’d used ‘aggressive negotiations’, which included threatening her family and friends. She finally agreed and the CTP (clone trooper program) was made. It became her life and Dr. Moore was now one of the most famous scientists in history.

  “Did I miss something?” Pariah asked as the girls surrounded her.

  “You’re officially part of Zeta Squad,” one girl with purple-streaked hair said, clapping Pariah on the shoulder. She was about six inches taller that Pariah, obviously an older clone.

  “I’m, uh, what?” Pariah was confused.

  “So sorry! I’m called Hope,” the girl said. “I’m eighteen.”

  “I’m called Dreamer,” another girl with orange-streaked hair added. “And since we’re listing ages, I’m fourteen years old.”

  “I’m called Shiloh.” A girl with a scar across her face stepped up.

  “I’m called Angel,” said a girl with highlighted hair.

  “Because she’s anything but!” another girl with curly hair blurted. “I’m Peace. Me, Angel, and Shiloh are all fifteen.”

  “We have Peace and an Angel! How ironic!” laughed a girl with silver-streaked hair. “I’m called Hawk’s Eye, or just Hawk, and I am seventeen years old.”

  “I’m called Anaconda, and I‘m sixteen,” said a girl with pink-streaked hair and lots of visible scars.

  “And I’m called Tigress, age fourteen,” said the last girl. She had red streaks through her hair. She was one of the ‘muscle-girls’, a group that had been given extra muscle-augmentations. They were incredibly strong and looked the part, too. Her voice was deeper and gruffer than most of the other girls, but Pariah had the feeling that underneath the tough-act Tigress was probably really nice.

  “So, all of you have names that are either ironic or literal?” Pariah asked.

  “Yep,” Hope said.

  “What’re you called?” Peace asked.

  “Pariah,” she said, quickly.

  “You’re an outcast?” Hawk asked.

  “Not anymore,” Hope said, happily.

  “That’s for sure!” Dreamer said.

  “Really?” Pariah asked.

  “Duh, of course!” Shiloh said.

  “You’re one of us now," Tigress said.

  “And Zeta Squad always sticks together like glue,” Anaconda said, coming up behind
Pariah and latching on to her shoulders. For once in Pariah’s life, she let someone touch her, squelching the instinct to throw the girl through the nuclear missile-proof window to their left.

  “We’re more than just a squad,” Tigress said.

  “We’re a family,” added Peace.

  “And families stick together, no matter what,” Shiloh finished softly.

  Pariah had never been a part of anything except experimentation, let alone a family. For the first time in her life, she felt like she actually belonged.

  “So, official tour of Zeta Squads’ awesome barracks!” Hawk said, taking Pariah’s arm and leading her around the room.

  The squad’s barracks was more nicely furnished than the regular barracks that Pariah had known. There were wooden bunks that lined the walls and three regular single beds in the middle. Pariah thought about the steel bunks in her old room and remembered the bad bruise she’d gotten from hitting her head on the metal headboard.

  “This is Hope’s bed,” Hawk explained, stopping.

  The bed had a pink camo bedspread, which surprised Pariah, because the blankets in her old barracks were a drab grey. There was a lump in the covers, and when Pariah bent to smooth it, she discovered a small stuffed cat.

  “On one of our missions we had to evacuate some civilians,” Hope explained, picking up the cat. “A little girl gave me this as a thank-you gift.”

  Hawk lead Pariah away to the next bunk.

  “This is where Angel and Peace sleep,” she said. “Angel takes the top bunk and Peace had to take the bottom one.”

  The top bunk had a fleecy pink blanket over the grey blanket that covered it, and a small piece of paper stuck out underneath the white pillow.

  “Whoops, don’t look at that!” Angel said, quickly jumping up and pushing the paper back underneath so that her pillow concealed it.

  Peace’s bottom bunk had a grey-camo comforter on it and there were pieces of a big gun and some scary-looking explosives that she was obviously recalibrating.

  “Demolitions expert,” Peace said, shrugging as she got back to work.