Steven Kent - The Clone Redemption

One thing about mortars, you could modify their shells. You could attach a radioactive charge, or a nuclear warhead, or a gas canister. In this case, Ritz had added a warhead that emitted an electromagnetic pulse.

The gunships hovered over the highway like cats watching over a mousehole. When the mortar shell reached the apex of its arc in the center of the flock of gun birds, it dropped a dozen yards, and burst. There was a double flash. First, there was the white and black you get with your basic explosion. Next came a burst of something that looked like steam. It filled the sky and vanished.

The force of the first explosion sent the gunships skittering into each other. They slid through the air. A few rotor blades collided. Before the collisions could result in real damage, the pulse struck, sending the birds into hibernation. Shields would have protected the gunships from that pulse; but these birds carried heavy armor instead of shields.

The Unifieds had twenty, maybe twenty-five, gunships in that flock. Ritz knocked them all down with a single shot.

“Nice shot, Colonel,” I told Ritz on an open frequency that every man on the planet could listen in on.

“I’m a major, sir,” he said.

“Not anymore,” I said.

Ritz’s trick might have slowed them down, but the Unifieds were still herding us, still driving toward the location of their choice. They had more gunships, and their fighters still streaked over the trees. They could end the fight from the air if they wanted, but apparently they didn’t.

They’re still using us for military exercises, I thought. That strategy had backfired on them before, when we established our empire. It could backfire again.

We crossed the road and waded back into the woods. It was late in the afternoon, and the winter sky was darkening. The low-hanging layer of gray clouds turned to charcoal as the sun went down, then the trees looked like shadows.

Traveling through the dark woods, we needed to rely on night-for-day vision. Our lenses would show the world in blue-white monochrome, ignoring shadows and indirect sources of light. We could not, for instance, see the glow of shielded armor once we switched to night-for-day vision. We could not see ten yards ahead without it.

I issued an order to my company commanders. “Team leaders, automatic riflemen, and grenadiers, switch to night-for-day vision. Riflemen stay with tactical lenses. Fall to the rear of your fire teams. Aim your Viridians on the man in front of you and stay close in behind.”

Viridian lasers were the laser aiming devices we attached to our guns. They housed both a thin green laser beam used for aiming and a flashlight.

Darkness came quickly. A suffocating stillness filled the woods. There might have been owls in the trees, but I did not hear them. There might have been a breeze, but I did not hear the rustling of branches. In the solitude of my helmet, I was alone.

The U.A. fighters ran a flyby. First the woods were silent, then they rang with the roar of engines. Those pilots knew our location and just how to hit us. A few of the men ahead of me stopped to stare into the sky.

“They could kill us if they wanted to,” commented one of my majors.

I did not answer. If I confirmed his theory, his fear would spread like a virus through my troops; and I did not like lying to my officers. Better to ignore my men than to scare them or lie.

We first spotted the glow of shielded armor at 19:00. The golden light looked ghostly as it weaved through the trees at improbable speeds. The units stayed far away. We heard their engines, saw the pale, golden glow, and knew the Jackals were behind us. They wanted us to know they were there, the bastards. They were pushing us forward, guiding us to their trap. Fighters forcing us to stay on the path, Jackals hurrying us along, we were cattle headed to the slaughterhouse.

Jackals were upgraded jeeps with powerful engines and armored turrets. I’d used them in battle, but I’d never seen Jackals with shields.

“Ritz, you hear those Jackals back there?” I asked on a direct Link.

“Hard to miss ’em,” he said.

“Think you could hit one with a rocket?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t be much of a problem,” he said.

“Do you think you can hit one and get away alive?”

“Wouldn’t do it any other way.”

“Take three grenadiers. Have them cover your ass in case it comes after you,” I said.

“Aye, sir,” he said.

Every man in armor had access to the interLink; but I was the only officer in the field with the commandLink. I could look through any man’s visor, see the world as he saw it. Using optical commands, I created a window that let me look through Ritz’s helmet. I saw his world as he dropped back from our ranks, hiding behind trees, darting behind bushes.

He did not carry a mortar for this job, just a handheld RPG, a foot-long silver tube that he held in his right hand. He stuck to the shadows. I could hear his breathing over the audio. If we made it through this mission, I would have a word with him about his conditioning. He was breathing heavily, like a man who had just run two miles instead of a couple of hundred feet.

He scurried to a mound of leaves and logs, slid in behind it, and switched to his tactical view. Dark forest surrounded him.

“You guys back there?” he asked as he went back to night-for-day vision.

“Yes, sir.”

“Right behind you.”

“Just making sure,” Ritz told them.

He took one last scan of the landscape, then darted to a spot where three spindly trees grew out of the rotted trunk of a long-dead oak. He switched his visor back to night-for-day and spotted a Jackal a few hundred yards away and closing the distance.

His breathing slowed. “Yeah, I see you, specker,” he said to himself. “Yeah, that’s right, you just bring your fat ass this way. I got a present for you.” He switched his visor to tactical.

Seeing the world through the unenhanced tactical view, Ritz was surrounded by darkness. Looking through his visor using my commandLink, I could make out the trees he used for cover, but I saw them only as textures in the blackness. He held out the RPG. I could not see the tube, just the shape of his arm.

In the distance, the Jackal sped through the forest, dodging obstacles. It juked around trees and skipped over ditches, disappearing briefly behind a hill, then emerging not more than twenty yards from Ritz. He could have hopped out of his hiding hole and popped it. Instead, he waited, letting the vehicle approach.

“That’s right, darlin’. A little closer. A little specking closer.”

The kid was patient. The best Marines are patient.

He didn’t move. The Jackal came within thirty feet of him, dashed right past, and went by unmolested. It streaked away, offering him a clear shot at its tailpipe and turret.

Ritz stepped out from behind his blind and fired.

“Next time watch your ass, boys!” he yelled as he switched to night-for-day vision and sprinted for safety. He was screaming. He was whooping. He ran without breathing, then struggled for air, never looking back to see what his grenade had done. He jumped over a fallen log, cut to the left behind a clump of trees, and yelled, “Hell yeah!” as he scrambled up a small rise.

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.