Bred for war. Engineered for conflict. Destined for rebellion.
Sole surviving member of his unit, the gene-engineered supersoldier known as the Rogue Trooper is cut off from Souther lines and hunted remorselessly by the enemy Nort forces – and by his own side, who consider him a deserter.
Rogue is hot on the trail of a man with no name, a figure they call the Traitor General – a Souther officer who sold out Rogue and his fellow GIs in a horrific ambush known as the Quartz Zone Massacre.
Three of Rogue’s buddies travel with him on this endless quest for revenge, dead soldiers whose personalities exist on bio-chips stored in his high-tech weaponry; like Rogue, Gunnar, Bagman and Helm long for vengeance and the day they can finally go home to be remade as whole men once more.
When his latest lead on the Traitor General takes him back to the stark glass wilderness of the Quartz Zone and the site of the massacre, Rogue gets much more than he bargained for at the hands of a unit of brutal bio-warriors…and the brilliantly ruthless scientist who created them.
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AUTHOR’S NOTES:
My second 2000AD tie-in novel features one of my favourite characters from the comic’s long and illustrious history – the Genetic Infantryman Rogue Trooper.
Blood Relative is my fifth adventure based on the characters of 2000AD, the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic; I worked in continuity references from other Rogue Trooper strips; Helm talks about “programme #228” which refers to Prog #228, the first issue of 2000AD that Rogue appeared in. The Clavel Corporation was introduced in the Friday series of Rogue Trooper strips, as the company that developed the GI biotechnology.
Several elements from other stories are touched on in passing, including “Crystal Nightmare”. “Doomsday Valley”, “Sea Wars”, “Moving Target”, “Triple Cross”, “Steel Shaft Blues”, “Nu Hamerlin”, “Menace of the Dreamweavers”, “Glasshouse-G”, “Bagman Blues”, “All Hell on the Dix-I Front”, “The Assassination Run” and “Milli-Com Memories”.
Chapter titles; ‘The Scheme’s the Thing’ refers to a line from Milli-Com in the very first Rogue strip; ‘Heart of Glass’ comes from the song by Blondie; ‘Death and Rebirth’ from the movie version of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion; ‘Gods and Monsters’ from the film of the same name.
Other references; the android simulant DeeTrick is modelled on singer Marlene Dietrich, and she briefly sings an alternate version of Dietrich’s famous “Falling in Love Again”. Nort Trooper Furni’s name is an oblique Fight Club/Ikea reference. General Rössa is named after a friend of mine. Souther soldiers Purcell, Ruiz, Johnson and Zeke take their names from soldiers in the Vietnam War drama series Tour of Duty. The registration number 1138 on Ferris’s ship refers to the movie THX 1138. The mention of a “tubeway army” refers to the works of pop star Gary Newman. The dead GI’s Cowboy and Joker take their names from characters in the movie Full Metal Jacket. The corporation Steiner-Bisley refer to Daisy Steiner and Tim Bisley from the nerd sitcom series Spaced. The Argentine Moons appear briefly in the movie Soldier. The Nort scientist Friemann is inspired by Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life games. Schrader mentions the battle zones of Ararat (from the 2000AD strip Bad Company), Ixion (Space: Above and Beyond), Horst (from the later Rogue Trooper strips) and Tango Urilla (from Starship Troopers).
Continuity; the events of Rogue Trooper: Blood Relative occur between the storylines “Assassination Run” (Progs 278-279) and “The Marauders” (Progs 282-289), after the multi-part “Dix-I Front” storyline. A reference to a fight with a sniper in Nordstadt refers to the events of Gordon Rennie’s Rogue Trooper novel Crucible.
