Soldier Thirteen

Thirteen had been hopping space-platforms for the last 6 hours. He had had no rest breaks and already suffered 2 shots; one to the outer thigh and one to the right ankle. Luckily for him, his medibots had been upgraded before the mission and worked fast on fighting infection. Unluckily for him, his death was inevitable anyway.

The truth was, Thirteen was just a Soldier, and Soldiers were only distractions. They were said to be the blue collars of the 22nd century, a militia force that were sent out to perform seemingly trivial duties. And while his current mission promised him something a little more dignifying, Thirteen was no .

The real warriors were the Engineers— humans that had been genetically tweaked into cyborg-like machines to fight these sorts of missions. And even though there were over 10,000 Soldiers, (Actual human clones of the 21st century) the Engineers had the better fighting chance of not only surviving but actually completing the mission and retrieving the artefact: the star that supposedly held the elixir of .

Nobody could say for sure which star was the artefact—or how it looked, or how to find it (which made Thirteen wonder if he was just being sent on a wild goose ) but there was one thing they were certain : it must be destroyed. Destroyed before the Scroungers could get hold of it.

Scroungers were a rodent-like race. Not in appearance, or behaviour, but how they spread disease and multiplied. They had been known to wipe out planets at a time. Their method was to deliberately shift their forms to mingle with other species, infect them and watch them die. But their purpose was not murder specifically, it was possession and harvesting. They would kill off the

species, use up their planet's resources and then move on. All it took was one of them to infect the lands, oceans or skies. And heaven knows what would happen if they ever got hold of the star. While it seemed like a good idea to let the Scroungers take it and use it to continuously replenish a large enough planet, it was immoral, unethical. And Thirteen doubted that they would use the elixir ethically anyway. They were killers, after all, and nobody should hold that sort of power over life.

Thirteen, however, hadn't seen a Scrounger in about 45 minutes and he was beginning to think it was a little suspicious. Despite his primary instruction to dispose of the enemy, he still craved the glory of finding the star. So far, he had scanned solar systems and hadn't found a single abnormal star, let alone one that supposedly held the key to immortality. He had seen a few Soldiers and the odd Engineer, but this new absence of the usually confrontational Scroungers gave Thirteen a cold creeping sensation in his neck. He almost wished that they would reappear only so he could feel the satisfaction of blasting a volt of electricity through their snake-like skins. He patted his own armour. It was a simple shuttle-suit with built in repairbots. Good enough to keep his organs from combustion and keep the air flowing, but weak against the Scroungers' own redlead bullets. Thirteen rubbed the sore spots on his legs where he had already been hit.

The star had first dropped into the universe 12 hours before. Seers of all races had confirmed that they had visions of an energy that had whispered through the vacuum of space—d into existence with no atomic or energetic creation. They'd said the only way to find it was by searching the universe. The humans had been doubtful at first but when they had contacted neighbouring species, they had all confirmed that the vision was indeed an interspecial vision— and that the Scroungers had departed in their millions towards the stars.

As soon as he heard about it, Thirteen knew he was in trouble. He had argued with himself that it was a test, or a hoax. He had convinced himself that the whole thing was a load of rubbish, that the age-old seers were losing it, becoming senile. The elixir of life! He had scorned, what a load of philosophical drivel. But a rude awakening of duty sirens just 8 hours later had confirmed Thirteen's fears. Both Soldiers and Engineers were cajoled out of their sleeping chambers and immediately packed into an air ship. The trip between home and the intergalactic council lasted just long enough for a briefing.