The Clone Redemption

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 armor 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.