Steven Kent: The Clone Redemption

In the sky, patterns of colors showed in the light, shimmering like heat waves, and the glaring light spread across the sky.

The atmosphere above the building glowed like crystal as the top of the pillar of light spread into a silver-white canopy, the color of lightning, but with spectrums of other colors playing inside it.

Illych looked into the sky long enough for shades and shapes to pop before his eyes, then returned his gaze to the ground. He reached the far side of the building at the same moment as the three other men in his squad.

“You getting this?” he asked the officers on the Onoda .

“Have you seen defenders?” asked the man on the other side of the commandLink.

On the frozen plain not far from the building, a ten-foot-tall globe glowed even more bright than the light around it. It stood out like a platinum sphere in a bed of well-polished silver. As he turned to examine the globe, the tint shields in Illych’s visor deployed to protect his eyes.

Unlike the tint shields in standard combat armor, the tinting in SEAL armor filtered light instead of simply darkening it. Illych saw everything clearly, but the glare was gone. He saw the crystal white sphere and the dirty brown gas that leaked from its base. Illych also saw the aliens inside the globe, ten-foot-tall translucent yellow shadows with arms and legs but no facial features except grapefruit-sized chromesilver eyes. The first humans who saw these creatures had labeled them “space angels.”

The apparitions stepped out of the sphere, and the SEALs opened fire. Their bullets passed through the aliens the same way they passed through light or air. They hit nothing and did not explode.

Above the fight, the ion curtain had spread across both horizons. Illych was too busy to notice, but if he’d tried to contact Onoda , his transmissions would have gone unanswered. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the master chief understood that he was cut off from the fleet. Communications could not penetrate the curtain. Ships could not pass through it. There would be no airlift. He and his men would fight until they died.

But Illych would still achieve one of his objectives. As mission leader, he had access to controls in his visor that the other men on his team did not have. He started the process.

Illych knew his SEALs could not win this firefight. They specialized in stealth combat. They infiltrated bases, sabotaged targets, and occasionally assassinated enemies. This was open combat, the specialty of soldiers and Marines.

When he saw Kapeliela die, Illych felt a stab of doubt and asked himself if the stealth infiltration pods would charge in time.

Kapeliela had run along the side of the building. He came within a few feet of the creatures and fired his weapon. His bullets passed through them as if they were ghosts. He threw a grenade. It exploded without harming them.

One of the creatures swung its chrome-barreled rifle at Kapeliela and fired a yard-long bolt of light that passed through the SEAL and into the ground behind him. The bolt passed so smoothly through the man and his armor that, seen from the side, it looked like the shot missed. Kapeliela’s body did not explode. No blood splashed from the wound. He simply fell backward. Mercifully, he was dead before he hit the ground.

As Illych watched, the aliens’ bodies slowly solidified. “Aim for their rifles,” Illych yelled to his men over the interLink.

A bullet glanced off one of the aliens’ rifles even before Illych finished speaking. It had to have come from one of his snipers, a pinpoint shot that hit the barrel and exploded without leaving a mark.

Hiding behind a pipe, Illych leveled his M27, and fired a long burst. He expected the aliens to return fire, but they didn’t. They stood outside the building, their glowing, translucent hides cooling to the color of honey, and they waited.

For just an instant, Illych considered stopping the countdown, but he decided against it. He read the timer in his visor. In three minutes and twenty-six seconds the field-resonance engines in the twelve stealth infiltration pods would overcharge and explode. Once overcharged, the field-resonance engines inside the pods would become unstable. They’d be like dams holding back an endless flow of energy. In three minutes and twenty seconds, the pods would use that energy to self-destruct, taking the entire planet with them.

One of Illych’s snipers ran out into the open, looking for a shot. An alien fired first, its bolt hit the SEAL in the chest, and he collapsed in a violent spasm that lasted only a few seconds.

“It looks like they don’t want to come in after us,” said Humble.

Illych checked the timer. He and his men needed to hold out for three minutes and twelve seconds. They had to defend the S.I.P.s. If the aliens found the pods and shot them first, the overcharging engines would not explode.

One of the aliens walked to the edge of the building and stopped. Dozens of bullets passed through its body and head without leaving a trace. Several shots hit its weapon.

“Transport, you there?” Illych asked, though he would not get through.

Three of the aliens walked toward the building. They moved slowly, taking shaky steps like drunks or maybe toddlers learning to walk. The SEALs hit the aliens with grenades and bullets and rockets, but their attacks meant nothing. One of the aliens came closer, raised its weapon, scanned back and forth for targets, but did not fire or step onto the foundation.

“You there?” Illych asked again. “I hope they’re getting this.”

The alien either wouldn’t or couldn’t enter the building. It did not fire its weapon at the SEALs. Having read the reports and seen the video feeds, Illych knew the bolts these aliens fired bored through brick, metal, wood, and men alike. Humble’s bullets had not hurt the silo, but this creature’s bolts would probably pierce it.

Illych checked the time. One minute forty-eight seconds.

“It’s not coming after us,” said Humble.

All five of the aliens gathered at the edge of the building. They did not speak to each other. Their skins still glowed the color of honey, but dark scales had begun to form.

“Maybe it has orders not to hurt the building,” said Call.

“So we have a standoff,” said Humble.

“For another minute and a half,” said Illych.

“You’re charging the caskets?” asked Humble.

“Eighty-seven seconds and counting.”

Humble laughed, and said, “I knew I should have read my death poem.”

They say God created the plants on the third day, the animals on the fifth, and man on the sixth. What God did in three days the aliens undid in less than a minute and a half. It took the bastards eighty-three seconds to kill everything that walked the surface of Terraneau, right down to the microbes.

I was one of the 1,037 people who survived the attack on the once-grand planet of Terraneau. We survived because we hid in a tunnel that ran under a lake.

By far, the vast majority of the survivors were clones, members of Scutum-Crux Fleet’s Corps of Engineers. There was an even thousand of them.

I was one of two Marines who survived. The other survivors included Ava Gardner, the woman I had once loved, and the man who had replaced me as her lover. My pilot, Lieutenant Christian Nobles, was the other Marine. Ray Freeman, the mercenary/homicidal humanitarian who busted me out of jail in time to save me from getting cooked with everybody else, survived as well.

The thirty-two other lottery winners were members of the local militia. In the moments before the aliens attacked, the local militia raided the tunnel hoping to haul me back to prison. They entered with hundreds of men, but only thirty-two had traveled far enough into the tunnel to survive the heat. They attacked our sanctuary moments before the Avatari performed their pyrotechnic magic, raising the surface temperature of Terraneau to 9,000 degrees. The temperature outside the tunnel spiked 8,927 degrees and remained at 9,000 degrees for precisely eighty-three seconds, then dropped back to normal almost as quickly.