“Five million seems awfully generous,” I said. I remembered Admiral Brocius’s house and the casino on the second floor. He liked house odds. Maybe he was betting Freeman would not live to collect.
Freeman sat silent for a moment. He opened his rifle case and pulled out a magnificent sniper rifle with a computerized scope. Returning the rifle, he pulled out his gear and sorted it. He had rope, grenades, and a knife. He pulled the knife half out of its scabbard, looked at the blade, then pushed it back in.
Around the kettle men stood or sat in silence. A few well-trained Marines stripped and tested their M27s. Most of the men wore their helmets. If they spoke among themselves, I would not hear it unless I located their frequency.
“So what is that guy doing here?” Philips asked over a platoon-wide frequency.
“Just so you know, Philips, Ray Freeman is the best friend you can have on this mission. In the entire Mogat Empire, there is only one great military mind, and Freeman came to put a bullet through it,” I answered on a private band.
“He came to assassinate Crowley?”
“He did.”
“So he’s a sniper?” Philips asked.
“A sniper? Philips, snipers are guys who sneak around with rifles waiting for someone to shoot. Freeman doesn’t wait.”
“No shit? A specking corpse factory,” Philips said. He sounded impressed.
“Just keep out of his way.”
Freeman had his helmet on. Since he was not a Marine, and his armor was of civilian make, he could not legally access the frequencies we used on the interLink. “Freeman, you on?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Did you and Admiral Brocius discuss any other work he might have for you after you’ve collected on Crowley?”
“No,” Freeman said.
“You do know that civilians are not allowed to listen in on communications on this frequency?” I asked. Then, without waiting for Freeman to answer, I added, “If you listen in on my communications, we won’t need to waste time updating each other.”
Freeman did not respond.
We touched down on our base ship. We would step off of our transport, tucked away in the launch bay. Once all of the transports checked in, the battleships would broadcast to a spot 100 million miles from Mogatopolis, where no one would detect the electrical anomaly. Then we would fly the four-hour trip into Mogat space under the cloak of the new stealth engines.
Once every last destroyer and battleship was in place, we would launch our transports. There was no way to cloak or protect our transports, so we would scramble down to the planet as quickly as possible.
Standing there, in the dim and anxious atmosphere, I comforted myself by looking for things that would make me feel safe. I did not come up with much.
I thought about the Mogats…the Believers. They might know we were coming. They had to know that we hijacked their battleship and that we now knew how to find them, but they would think we had no way of striking them. Since they did not know about our alliance with the Confederate Arms and the Japanese, they would not know that we had access to a self-broadcasting fleet. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the alliance was both our best-kept secret and our greatest strength. Even the men in my platoon did not realize we were riding in a Confederate Arms ship.
Time passed slowly now. We could not hear what happened outside our sealed world. Had our host ship already broadcasted itself? Were we nearing enemy space? What if the Mogats spotted us? We could die in a flash, never knowing the battle had already begun.
Then, after hours of sitting, we received our warning. Lights flashed in the cabin as our pilot prepared to launch.
The invasion had begun.
CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE
“Sergeant Harris, do you want to come up to the cockpit?” the pilot asked.
“On my way,” I said.
I looked up at Freeman. “I have to go to the cockpit,” I said. He continued checking his gear.
“Where are you going?” Private Philips asked, as I started toward the ladder.
“The pilot wants to see me,” I said. I thought for a moment, then radioed back to the pilot. “Can I bring one of my men?”
“We have room for a fourth.” That might not have applied if I tried to bring Freeman.
“Philips, you want to come?”
“Sure,” he said.
I had a reason for taking Philips. He might have been old and irreverent, but he was a leader. When the bullets started flying, and bombs started to burst, the guys in the platoon would forget all about who wore stripes and who wore clusters. Despite his antics around the barracks, Philips kept his head under fire. During an extended campaign, the rest of the platoon would look up to a Marine like him.
We climbed the ladder and removed our helmets before entering the cockpit.
The inside of the cockpit was dark except for the light from the dials and gauges. We had a pilot and a copilot for the flight. Both men wore combat gear without helmets. The pilot looked back, and said, “Which one of you is Harris?”
“Me, sir,” I said. He was a lieutenant.
The transport had just entered the planet’s atmosphere. Below us, an endless plain stretched ahead. Special gear under our transport shined a blinding light down on the landscape.
“I hear you’ve been down here before,” the pilot said.
“Once,” I said.
“Think you can find one of those gravity chutes?” the pilot asked.
“I might recognize one if we passed close to it,” I said.
“Good enough,” the pilot said. “They sent an explorer yesterday to scout the place. The pilot mapped a path for us, but I want you up here just in case.”
I nodded. “The gate we entered was in the mountains,” I said.
“Oh, man, that’s one shitty-looking planet,” Philips said.
“We’re not landing on this part. The place we’re going has air,” I said.
There was a radar scope beside the pilot’s seat. My gaze strayed toward it, and I froze. If I read that display correctly, hundreds of ships had gathered behind us. Then I realized they were other transports. “Those are all ours, right?” I asked.
“Every last one of them,” the pilot said. “Believe me, you’ll hear alarms if the Mogats show.”
“Transport pilots, this is Fleet Command. Be advised that enemy ships are approaching. We are going to evacuate orbit in twenty seconds. Repeat, we will evacuate in twenty seconds.”
“Now that’s just specking great,” the pilot said.
Below our ship, the plains ended at the foot of a tall, sheer mountain range. The peaks looked like they were made of obsidian. They were as black as deepest, darkest space and reflected the transport lights with all the clarity of mirrors.
“There’s your entrance,” I said, pointing toward a particularly tall and jagged peak ahead and to the left. The entrance itself was not lit, and the mountain looked like a shadow against a night sky, but blue-and-white marker lights flashed on its face.
“We’re going there?” Philips asked. He did not sound scared, he sounded incredulous.
“That’s just the doorway,” I said. Having not been admitted to the briefing, Philips had no idea what to expect.
“You know we’ll drop straight down like a rock if the Mogats cut power to that gravity chute?” the pilot said.
“Let’s hope they don’t,” I said. Could they cut the power to a gravity chute? They knew we were coming. If they could cut the power, they would.
We slowed to a crawl and dropped several hundred feet until we pulled parallel with the mountain. Then we hovered toward the entrance at a very slow speed. Our searchlight shone all the way across the entrance. It looked like a giant tunnel. A short way in, the floor suddenly disappeared.
“So that’s a gravity chute?” the pilot asked.
“That’s a gravity chute,” I agreed.
“Do you remember how your ship approached
it?” the pilot asked.
“We flew in. I think I felt the engines cut…”
“I was afraid you would say that,” the pilot said.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Everything else was automatic. The pilot came into the cabin and stood around talking to passengers.”
“I hope we’re not missing anything here,” the pilot said. We inched ahead. The light from our searchlight reflected and refracted from the walls. Its glare seemed to multiply and fill the cavern around us; and yet, the cavern still seemed dark.
We hovered ten feet off the deck as we ambled forward. I looked down and saw the shimmering black floor below us. Then we dropped over the edge.
“Here’s your leap of faith,” the pilot said.
“Damn, why’d you ask me up here, Harris? I’d rather be back there and ignorant with the rest of the grunts,” Philips complained.
At first we hung in the air. With our spotlight shining on the walls around us, I could see dozens of spotlights as hundreds of transports followed us in. The beams of light looked like spokes as they cut through the darkness.
One moment we seemed to hang in the air, the next we dropped at least fifty feet. Not a peep came from the kettle where eighty Marines probably thought we’d hit an air pocket. In the cockpit, we braced ourselves and held on for the ride. Then the transport found its equilibrium.
“Good thing I have one of them siphon lines attached to my pecker,” Philips said. “I’d hate to have all that piss running down my leg.”
We were in the chute for nearly one minute when a synthetic voice spoke over the radio. “Transport pilots, be advised that enemy ships have entered this orbital space.” The message came from a cloaked satellite.
“Can we all make it into the chute that quick?” Philips asked.
“There are six hundred transports,” the pilot said.
The frantic messages started a moment later. Pilots screamed at the transports in front of them to hurry. Someone yelled, “Oh, God! They got the transport behind me!” Another pilot yelled, “We’re going to run for it! We’re going—” and his radio went dead.
Our pilot looked over to his copilot, then switched off the radio. We went the rest of the way in silence. I could not tell how anyone else felt, but I agreed with what Philips had said right before we entered the chute. I wished I was back in the kettle, unaware of everything.
CHAPTER
FORTY-SIX
We started the invasion with 582 transports. By the time we reached the target, we were down to 461. The Confederate Arms Fleet evacuated the area long before the Mogats arrived, leaving their ships to pick off one-fifth of our transports as they waited to enter the gravity chute.
“Line up! Move it! Move it! Move it!” I shouted into the microphone in my helmet. The circuits in the receiving helmets would filter out my volume, but the intensity and voice would still resonate. We were going to war. No time for questions. No time for thinking. These clones were designed to respond.
With the exception of Ray Freeman, who sat in a far corner sorting his gear, every man stood at attention. My platoon moved to the rear of the kettle, ready to charge the moment the doors opened. They held their M27s across their chests. From here on out, we would act like war machines, not men.
The heavy metal doors of the kettle started their slow swing apart. They seemed to move at the speed of an ocean tide. I noticed my fingers squeezing and relaxing along the butt and barrel of my gun. The neural programming inside my brain had already sent my nerves into their clockwork movement. The combat reflex had not taken effect yet. That highly engineered gland was back in sync. It would not secrete its euphoric mixture until the enemy closed around us. With the bullets would come peace of mind. With the killing would come warmth. It was the Zen of the deranged.
When the opening was large enough for two men to run out side by side, I sent my men out. “Move it! Move it! Move it!” I screamed, prodding them in the backs with the butt of my M27.
We knew the drill, and we ran it by the numbers. First we would secure the area. We would not encounter resistance, of course. Not on this level of the planet. It was just for landing and taking off.
We might run into some hostility one deck down, but we had landed in the civilian sector, and the military had not yet had time to mobilize. In the meantime, we would make ourselves a thorn in their side by disrupting their home world. I had my platoon break into squads and my squads break into fire teams. Only when we were ready for battle did I observe my surroundings.
The topography of the civilian sector looked no different than the top layer of the military district. The space was flat and open, with elevator stations spaced miles apart. We had landed in a spaceport that was probably identical to every other spaceport on the whole specking planet.
I heard a whining siren that sounded like it was coming from hundreds of miles away. The wailing was just a whisper in the air that the audio equipment in my helmet registered and amplified. If I removed my helmet, I might not hear the siren at all.
Hundreds of transports landed around us. They dropped out of the gravity chute, engaged their boosters, and hovered until they found clear spots on which to land.
Clearly the brass had done a poor job of planning for this part of the invasion. The transports should have landed in some sort of order that arranged their shields into a protective picket line. Instead, they dropped down here and there, some with their cockpits facing me, some offering their broad sides, some pointing their asses in my general direction.
Two hundred feet above me, the gravity chute kept spitting out transports. Every five seconds another one fell from that hole in the sky. But I did not have time to watch. “Platoon one-zero-three, move out!” I yelled.
“Where is he going?” Thomer asked. He pointed across an open stretch. I turned and saw Freeman tromping toward an elevator station, his rifle case in one hand. “Do they call it ‘absent without leave’ when civilians abandon their platoon?”
“Just you worry about your own men,” I said. “If that man does what he came here to do, this battle is going to go a whole lot easier.”
“That guy scares me,” Thomer said.
“He ought to,” I agreed.
I had my platoon move double time toward the nearest elevator station. Other platoons followed. Hundreds of men in desert beige armor lined up behind us.
“Harris, what is this place?” The colonel called on his direct frequency so that no one would hear us. He could not afford to sound confused; he was the ranking officer.
“This is the foyer,” I said.
“The what?” he barked.
“We’re on the top floor. The Mogats only use this floor for spaceports. From what I saw, nothing happens up here. Those buildings around us, those are elevator stations,” I said. “Didn’t they brief you on this, sir?”
The colonel did not answer immediately. “Yeah, they did. I just didn’t believe them.” A moment later, he yelled, “Secure that elevator station!” on a command frequency.
My men reached the station first. A four-man fire team lined up with two men on either side of the door. The automatic rifleman, Private Mark Philips, peered in the door then gave the all clear sign. The siren blared through the open doorway, but the audio filters in my helmet censored the sound to a hum.
“I think they know we are here,” Thomer said.
“I get that feeling,” I said.
“I hope them Mogie boys weren’t planning on using this little elevator station, because I claim this in the name of the Unified Authority,” Philips radioed from inside the elevator station.
“Stow it, Philips,” I said.
Across the flatness of the man-made plain, tens of thousands of armor-clad Marines captured five elevator stations. By taking different stations, we spread ourselves over a several-mile area. We would need to regroup before the enemy arrived, but we had no choice. The elevator stations were a bottleneck. It could take hours to funnel forty-eight thousan
d Marines through them, and we had minutes, not hours.
I followed my men into the building. Ahead of me, one of my men stared down to the lower levels through the opening in the center of the floor. The virtual dog tag identified him as Evans. “It’s like we’re invading a specking anthill,” he said, as I stared down as well.
It was like invading an anthill, except all of the ants had run for cover. The ground below us looked like a bedroom community. I saw buildings that looked like apartment complexes. I saw stores. What I did not see was people.
“Welcome to Planet HomeMo,” I said.
“HomeMo?” Evans asked.
“It’s short for Planetary Home of Morgan,” I said.
“That sounds like something Philips would say,” Evans said.
I laughed.
We stationed snipers around the railing to fire at anyone they saw on the level below. Then we forced the doors of the elevators open and sent men rappelling down the shafts to the next level. Other Marines lowered themselves from the balcony using rappel cords that created magnetic links with their suits, eliminating much of the muscle work. We needed to secure the area around the station and hold it. Nearly ten thousand Marines would have to pass through that elevator station. Even if we sent one hundred men through every minute, it would take us over an hour; and the Mogats were not going to wait around.
My men were among the first to drop to the next level. We hit the deck below and looked for enemies. We found the area abandoned. The sirens still blared their doleful warning. The people must have run for cover.
This was the civilian district. I saw four-story tenements in every direction. I saw roads and storehouses and medical clinics. The Mogats had built churches with steeples that stood thirty feet in the air.
With the exception of the landing, we had executed our invasion in an orderly way. The officers leading the attack knew their objectives and signaled them to their platoon leaders. A message signal flashed. As I turned toward the nearest tenement, a blue frame appeared around the building in my visor. A simple message appeared along the bottom of my visor: “CAPTURE OBJECTIVE.”
The Clone Alliance Page 29
