The Clone Redemption

by Steven L. Kent

  The Marines he took with him fired RPGs that sailed past him. Ritz did not turn to see what they were shooting at.

  “Let’s get the speck out of here!” he screamed to his backup.

  “What the speck does it take to kill that specking whorehumper?” asked one of the men.

  “More than you’re packing,” Ritz said. He huffed and puffed as he ran, wheezing with each step.

  The sound of high-caliber machine guns tore through the forest. A tree off to Ritz’s left splintered and split. He muttered, “Are you trying to shoot me in the back, you bastards?” He spun and fired another RPG without aiming. It hit a tree or a rock and exploded. Ritz turned and continued running into the woods.

  The Jackal darted ahead of him, skidding around trees without coming to a stop. Fire flashed from the machine gun in the turret. He should have dived for cover, but Ritz fired another RPG instead, hitting the Jackal above the rear tires. Had it not been for the shields, the Jackal would have exploded. Even with the shields, the percussion of Ritz’s grenade knocked the Jackal for a loop. It spun like a dog chasing its own tail, slid down a rise, and disappeared into the shadows.

  “That’s two up your ass,” Ritz screamed as he panted. Then, more quietly, he added, “I got more where that came from.”

  He stumbled up a rise. As he ran down the other side, he was surrounded by Marines. He had rejoined us.

  “General,” he said over the interLink, fighting to breathe, “General Harris.”

  “Colonel,” I said. I did not want him to know I’d been spying on him, so I asked, “Were you able to locate a Jackal?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said as he panted. “I took two men with me. We hit it three or four times.”

  “Did you destroy it?”

  “We couldn’t get past the shields,” he said.

  “Good to know,” I said. “Thank you, Colonel.”

  Their fighters could have annihilated us. We could not penetrate the shields on their light-armored vehicles. They were using us to test their equipment, and all that remained to be tested was their troops.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  We’d been on the ground for nearly four hours when we reached the municipal spaceport. We came out from the trees, and there it was—a chain-link-wrapped clearing that ran as far as I could see. It sat as flat as a pond and as wide as the plains.

  The twenty-foot fence that ran its length posed no challenge. When one of my officers asked if I thought it was electrified, I answered, “Doesn’t matter.”

  I pulled the particle-beam pistol from my belt, and shouted, “Stand clear” as I fired at the nearest post. The emerald green beam did not heat or burn the metal post, the beam disrupted it, leaving molten splinters in its place. I aimed at the chain link. It tore like a spiderweb.

  Beyond the fence, the spaceport was a patchwork of shadows. The ground was black and smooth like a lake on a dark, still night. No light shone in the windows of the terminal building, but the reflection of the moonlight showed on the glass.

  “They’re specking with us, aren’t they, sir?” Ritz asked.

  “Colonel,” I said, “they are playing with us the way a misguided feline plays with a rabid mouse. They have no idea what we have in store for them.” I wanted to sound confident, but probably sounded deluded.

  I switched frequencies, and said, “Ray, we’re just about at the end of the line here.”

  Freeman said, “I was wondering when you’d call.”

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I’ve set two of the detonators.”

  “They never found them?” I asked. When Freeman didn’t answer, I mumbled the answer for him, “Apparently not.” Then I said, “I hope you get to the third one fast, the bastards have us bottled in a spaceport.”

  Freeman said, “Shouldn’t be long.”

  “Let me know,” I said.

  “You’ll be the second person to know,” Freeman said, and he signed off. He meant that he would signal Don Cutter first.

  The Unifieds had chosen a battlefield designed around our defense. We had long-range weapons, M27s, snipers, and grenadiers with rockets; but we needed cover. Their short-range weapons would not work until they reached the spaceport, a man-made butte in the middle of an asphalt desert. The spaceport was a massive building surrounded by runways, open fields, and parking lots. In that building, we’d have cover.

  They would not switch on their shields until they strolled within range of our snipers. The Unifieds knew how long their batteries lasted. The power would spike every time we hit the shields. If we hit them with a steady stream of bullets, the armor might wear out in eight minutes; but that required continuous attack.

  If we stalled their charge ... if we could keep them from entering the spaceport for forty-five minutes, their armor would run out of power. The fléchette guns on their armor were great short-range weapons; but once the batteries ran out on their shields, the enemy would be as vulnerable as us.

  So many variables. Could we slow them down? What would they do if we took control of the battle? Would they send in tanks and fighters? And then there was Freeman—the man was always a wild card. If he managed to shut down the missile defense ... how long would Cutter need to send in reinforcements?

  We crossed the runway. Three-foot-tall posts with lanterns rose like cattails out of the tarmac, but the lights remained out. Dressed in dark green armor, my men looked like shadows in the night. They crossed the ground in fire teams and formations, guns ready, moving quickly and covering their flanks.

  If the Unifieds caught us crossing the runway, we’d have no place to hide and absolutely no cover. They would have mowed us down. We were twenty thousand men, out in the open, with no place to hide; but the cocky bastards did not want to squander the opportunity to test their soldiers. They wanted to give their ground troops live targets and hand-tohand combat experience. They would let us reach the building and dig ourselves in. What did it matter to them?

  The second and third stories of the terminal had walls made of thick glass. Those were the passenger areas. The Unifieds did not squander taxpayer dollars on the ground floor, the service area used by luggage handlers and mechanics. That floor had cement walls and metal doors.

  The first of my Marines entered the terminal building. A fire team opened a side door and tossed in a flash grenade. The phosphorous light blazed like a flash of silver-white, like a sheet of lightning that did not fade for nearly a minute.

  I watched as teams scrambled into the building. Silver-white glare lit up the windows as teams reached the second floor. The building was empty. Not a shot was fired.

  “We’ve entered the building, sir, and we have not encountered enemy resistance,” one of my colonels reported. “A bit too easy if you ask me.”

  Another genius of the officer corps, I thought. “Yes, it’s almost like they wanted us to take the building,” I said in a mechanical voice.

  I surveyed the building from the runway. “Break the windows,” I said. “Riflemen and automatic riflemen on the second floor. Grenadiers on the third. Snipers on the roof.”

  I’d done all of this before, and I knew how it would work. You can only slow an enemy who has something to fear. Our bullets would not hurt these men. The blasts from our rockets might knock them over, but they would resume their attack unhurt. They had nothing to fear, and they would cross the runway in five minutes flat.

  That would leave them with forty minutes to sweep the terminal building. Under normal circumstances, capturing a building the size of a spaceport could take days; but that was against an enemy who could injure your men. Again, with that damned shielded armor, the Unifieds could throw cautionary procedures to the wind. They could storm up the stairs and run through the halls. Tactical maneuvers be damned, they could walk right into our fire.

  Glass shattered above my head as I reached the building. A blizzard of shards and slivers poured down and shattered behind me. I didn’t worry about getting cut, my armo
r would protect me from falling glass. Fléchettes were another story.

  The ground level of the terminal building was little more than a garage, a cavernous empty space with an oil-stained cement floor. A fleet of electric carts sat in a line along one of the walls. I saw conveyor belts for moving luggage, security posts, and a bumper crop of stairwells and service elevators.

  Climbing to the next level was like entering a different world. The second floor looked like a shopping mall. It had carpeted hallways, storefronts, restaurants, and seating areas with padded benches and rows of chairs. I didn’t know if there was power in the building or if my men had left the lights off. During combat, you usually want your environs darker than your enemies’. Darkness offers its own brand of camouflage.

  Looking around the lobby, I saw sergeants running their squads. If I had listened in on their frequencies, I would have heard platoon leaders and company commanders screaming themselves hoarse. Everything they said would be “specking this” and “specking that,” and they’d call everyone “bastard,” friend and foe alike.

  I generally thrived on those sounds ... the shouting, the cursing, the intensity; but on this night, I preferred the solitude of my helmet. I felt the weight of the entire galaxy upon me. Today, every death and injury would color my conscience. I had led these men into this disaster. If we lost, I would have their deaths on my head. If we won, I would likely preside over the deaths of everyone on Earth.

  How did I get myself in these situations? By recommending the invasion? I did not regret making that recommendation though I wished the Unifieds had not anticipated our every step. Maybe we would all die. Maybe a few of us would survive. It didn’t matter, not really. The only action that mattered would take place on Terraneau.

  After all my big talk about antisyntheticism, maybe I was the ultimate bigot. I had brought thousands of clones to Earth, with millions more in reserve. Why was I sacrificing them?

  Had I bought into the whole “expendability” argument? I asked myself the question, and I hated the answer.

  At least we were killing natural-borns as well as saving them. The thought of taking a few hundred natural-borns down almost made up for my mistakes. We’d give them an evening to remember. We would not go down without a . . .

  “Harris, the missile bases are down.”

  “You did it?” I asked.

  I walked to the window and saw the red glow in the sky. It wasn’t bright, and it did not appear and disappear like an atomic explosion. Whatever Freeman had set off, it filled the sky with a burned orange glow that lit the bottoms of the clouds.

  Beside me, thousands of men lay on their guts or knelt beside window casings, their guns pointing out into the night.

  “Have you reached Cutter?” I asked.

  “He’s on his way with the second wave,” said Freeman.

  I smiled, but the smile was bitter. How far away had he taken the fleet? A million miles? Ten million miles?

  No one paid attention to me as I inspected our ranks, and I knew why. On the far end of the runway, an eerie golden glow shone from between the trees.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Even using the telescopic lenses in my visor, I could not get a clear view of the bastards. I only saw the glow of their shields emanating from the edge of the woods. They were testing their armor, getting ready to strike.

  A few minutes passed, and the ghost light vanished on the far end of the runway. I watched them through my telescopic lenses, saw how they slowly moved in, keeping a wary eye out for ambushes. Our snipers could not hit them that far away, but our mortars and RPGs sure as hell could. The moment our shells started rumbling, the glow of their shields came back on.

  It took us ten minutes to cross the runway. Wearing shield armor, knowing that the clock would run out if the battle lasted forty-five minutes, the Unifieds rushed ahead.

  As they surged toward us, a soft ruffle of thunder rolled through the air, and it began to snow. At first the flakes were tiny, like salt crystals falling from the sky. Then the gates of an unseen dam spread wide, and coin-sized flakes tumbled out of the clouds. A strong wind picked up and drove the snow as it fluttered to the ground. Partially blinded by the snowstorm, the U.A. Marines slowed their charge.

  The snow and wind played havoc on our mortars. Shells seemed to fly wild. It didn’t matter. They had their shields going, and we needed to conserve ammo.

  Hoping to get a better look at the enemy, I found a stairwell and raced up the four flights that led to the roof. The door was hanging open on a quiet scene under low clouds. Wearing armor, I could not feel the wind; but I saw the angle of the falling snow. A powerful wind was blowing.

  I could have taken a temperature reading with the gear in my visor, but I did not bother. Whatever it was, it must have been cold. The snow had already started to pile up. A quarterinch layer of it already covered the roof. On the runway, the tarmac looked gray instead of black.

  “General,” a major said when he turned and saw me. He snapped to attention and saluted. His men remained as they were; this was a battle situation.

  I pointed to one of the snipers and asked to see his rifle. The major retrieved it for me.

  How long will it take them? I asked myself, thinking of Cutter and the fleet, not the U.A. Marines. Our ships could cross a million miles in a couple of minutes, but launching transports and fighters would add time.

  I lifted the rifle and peered through the scope. Nine-tenths of a mile away, men in armor lit the edge of the runway as they poured out from between trees and ran onto the tarmac. I could hit them from that distance. Most of my snipers could hit a target from a mile away, but we could not afford to waste ammunition. At that point, our high-powered rifles were no more effective than a swarm of mosquitoes.

  As I watched through the scope, the flood of men in glowing armor continued to flow out from behind the trees. They came from every direction, completely closing us in. Confident their armor could protect them, they jogged toward us. By that time, only the blizzard conditions stood between us and them.

  Looking for a clean shot through all of the snow, I aimed the rifle at one Marine’s head and pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked in my hand. It did not have much of a kick. Three seconds passed. My aim was off, the scope was calibrated for another shooter. My bullet missed the target and struck the man behind him. There was a flash where the bullet hit, just over his right cheek.

  I handed the rifle back to its owner. The other snipers waited for me to give the order to fire. The snow would not help their accuracy; but at seven hundred yards and firing at a slow-rushing tide, the bullets would hit enemy Marines.

  Using a channel that only the snipers would hear, I said, “Fire.”

  Along the roof, the muzzles of the guns flashed and went dark. The boys spent more time aiming than I would have liked, waiting ten and sometimes twenty seconds between shots.

  “When the Unifieds get within one hundred yards, bring your boys in,” I told the major.

  “Should I take them down to the third floor?” he asked.

  “No, just bring them in from the ledges. We’ll leave them up on the roof for now.”

  “Aye, sir,” he said.

  At one hundred yards, M27s and RPGs are nearly as accurate as sniper rifles. Once the Unifieds reached that point, we’d need to dig in and prepare to fight at close range.

  By that time, a thick layer of snow had begun to crunch under my boots. I slid in it as I walked back to the stairs. When I stepped in the open doorway, I kicked the jam to get the snow off my boots.

  Cutter’s voice came over the interLink. “Harris, where are you?”

  “We’re holding a spaceport just outside Washington, D.C.,” I said. “The bastards have us surrounded.”

  “Just hold on,” Cutter said. “We’re almost ready to launch.”

  Almost ready to launch. Almost ready to launch. The words made my insides knot like a kick to the crotch.

  “Thanks,” I said
in a voice that was distracted and weak. We’re specked, I thought. Maybe the second wave would win the ground war. No, it will be Ray Freeman and his hidden bombs who win the war, if we win it.

  As for me, I liked the idea of going down swinging. I didn’t feel hope, but I did feel a sense of excitement. I ran down the stairs and took my place by the grenadiers on the second floor.

  The Unifieds were four hundred yards away, too far away to return fire with their fléchettes. Along with my snipers, my grenadiers began firing rockets and grenades, squeezing off shots, then tossing old tubes out the window and grabbing the next. Below us, the runway looked like a moonscape. It was white from the snow and pockmarked with craters from our rockets, grenades, and even a few mortars. And crossing that moonscape, slowed more by the damage to the tarmac than the rockets themselves, the Unified Authority Marines tightened their ranks as they approached the building.

  There were more of them than there were of us. I couldn’t count them, wouldn’t even have tried, but I estimated them at fifty thousand strong.

  “Harris, I’m almost at the spaceport,” Freeman said.

  “Go away,” I said.

  “I can . . .”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a nuke that knows the difference between clones and natural-borns?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Ray, there’s nothing you can do here.” I thought for a moment. “Ray, can you hack into their shields?”

  “What?” Freeman asked.

  “The shields. The shielded armor. Do you think there’s some way you can hack into it with a computer?”

  “No,” he said. “How many are you up against?”

  “I’m guessing fifty thousand.”

  “And you?”

  “Not even half that many.”

  They were closing in. In another few minutes, the Unifieds would enter the building. They would pour into the vacant bottom floor of the terminal. They would charge up the stairs, and we would be in range of their fléchettes—depleted uranium needles coated with neurotoxin. Once they entered the building, the slaughter would begin.