Steven Kent: The Clone Betrayal

“Think they’ll attack soon?” Hollingsworth asked.

“Not a chance. Not with only thirty transports in place. They’ll want more than three thousand troops before they attack,” I said. I assumed that, like our transports, their transports carried one hundred men.

I told Hollingsworth about the fleet, but we were not about to educate the rank and file until this conflict was over. He knew the Earth Fleet now controlled the skies, and he knew about the last message we’d heard from Warshaw. I did not tell him about the size of the enemy fleet. He did not need to know that the Unified Authority had defeated our 450-ship armada with a mere eighty ships.

“They’ll probably land on the other side of town and build up their forces,” I said. I knew how these operations worked. They would set up a camp and make us wait while their transports ferried in soldiers and equipment.

But I was wrong.

The transports did not stop at the southern edge of town. They flew over the suburbs. By the time they reached the ruins of downtown, the glow from their shields filled the sky. They were not the same antiquated design as the birds we flew in on, they had graceful wings and tapered shields. At about a half mile from our lines, the transports slowed and landed, lighting down like flies.

“Looks like they know we’re here,” Thomer said. He’d been so silent, I’d forgotten he was there.

Of course they know we’re here, they use the same specking interLink frequencies we do. They’re listening in on us, I thought to myself.

And they might not have even needed their damn technological advantage to find us because Sarah Doctorow and her pals would not think twice about ratting us out. And then there were the leaks—Perry Fahey and his friends in Outer Bliss would happily tell them everything they knew.

“Switch off your safeties, boys, we’re going live,” I said over an open frequency. The invaders probably heard me, as well. From here on out, I would keep my conversations short and switch frequencies between calls. I could not stop them from listening, but I didn’t want to make things too easy for them.

I remained on the roof with the snipers, Hollingsworth joined the grenadiers in the wings, and Thomer went down to the underground garage. Between the troops we had manning the buildings and the Marines we positioned in the garage, we had nearly five thousand men. Based on the number of their transports, I estimated their strength at three thousand.

Time ticked away slowly, seconds seemed to stretch themselves into minutes. I wondered what they were doing. Were they off-loading equipment? Were they playing with us, making us wait, to consider our situation? I kept expecting more transports to arrive, but the skies remained clear.

“How’s it hanging, Harris?” The message came over the commandLink, on a frequency reserved for officers. The equipment in my visor identified the caller: General Theodore Mooreland.

“You’re in charge of this one, Ted? They must think I’m real dangerous to send in a veteran like you.” I called him Ted. Why not? We were both generals.

“Nice of you to drill my men,” he said.

“War games are one of my specialties,” I said.

“So, is she here?” Mooreland asked. That meant he was keeping the locals out of the fight. He would not have needed to ask me about Ava if he had talked to Doctorow.

“Please, tell me you did not come all this way just to impress Ava.”

Mooreland laughed. “No, Harris, I came for you.”

“I’m flattered, Ted, really I am. But, um, I’m spoken for.”

“Speck you, clone.”

“Ted, I just told you, I’m not interested.”

“We were going to give you twelve months to prepare, did you know that? We were going to give you a year to get your men ready, but you blew it. You shouldn’t have attacked our battleships. Did you really think we’d look the other way?”

I did not say anything.

The sun started to rise in the east. Pockets of yellow, gold, and white appeared over a horizon of rolling desolation. The ruins of the city looked like a desert in the first light of the morning. If Mooreland was in command, the intruders had to be Marines. They would be wearing combat armor. They would use tactics like ours.

“You’re an interesting man, Harris. I’d love to continue this chat, but my men came to fight,” Mooreland said. “Are you ready?”

“Sporting of you to ask,” I said. “We’re as ready as we’re going to get.” I tried to sound confident, but I knew Mooreland meant business. He was showing me the cat-bird courtesy of a commander who knows he owns the field. But how could he be so confident with only three thousand men? I wondered what I did not know.

“Well, good luck, Harris,” Mooreland said. He signed off.

I stood there on the roof of that enormous government complex, as insecure as an ancient ruler waiting for the Huns to pillage his city.

“Why haven’t they attacked yet?” Thomer’s question brought me out of my thoughts.

“Courtesy,” I said. “They were giving us a moment to say our prayers.”

Somebody else noticed the lights before me. Watching the world through my night-for-day lenses, I stared right at and through the scene without noticing the subtle change in luminescence. One of Thomer’s snipers noticed, however.

The sniper alerted Thomer, and Thomer told me.

“There’s light coming from the enemy camp, sir.”

“Light?” I asked.

I switched to tactical view. At first, I thought they had fired up the shields on their transports. Patches of golden glow lit up the air. “What is that?” I asked, in a whisper directed at myself, but Thomer picked it up over the interLink and answered.

“It looks like they have the shields up on their transports,” he said.

“The light isn’t coming from the transports.” I could see that much. Using my telescopic lenses, I zoomed in on the glow. I could not see what the light was coming from, but it wasn’t the transports. I had a clear view of the tops of several U.A. transports, and their shields were down.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“Sir?” Thomer asked.

Thank God for the commandLink, it enabled me to bring Hollingsworth in on the conversation. He was in the garage, blind to the world above him. Using my Link, I showed Hollingsworth and Thomer what I saw.

“What is that?” Hollingsworth asked.

“Shields,” I said.

Thomer started to say something, but I interrupted him.

“The shields aren’t on the transports,” I said. I shifted my focus to show the sleeping birds.

“Then what are they shielding?” Hollingsworth asked.

“Shielded armor,” I said.

The patch of glowing light moved as the first of Mooreland’s Marines began their march into battle.

“Hang on,” I said. I ripped off my helmet and picked up a sniper rifle. The other snipers had had enough time to program their scopes to their armor so that they could look through their visors and aim their rifles. Since the visor in this suit was not yet calibrated, I had to aim the old-fashioned way. I pressed the scope against my eye and homed in on the front echelon.

We had built our strategy around waiting for Mooreland to meander into our trap, but tactics be damned. If we were about to fight men in shielded armor, the rules had just changed.

Looking through the scope, I picked out a man and studied him. His armor looked a lot like mine—the same helmet, the same chest plates and shoulder pads. It appeared to be a rich, dark brown in color, but that might have been an optical effect. Viewed through the golden glow of the shields that shone from the plating, the dark green of my armor would probably appear brown.