Steven Kent: The Clone Betrayal

“Hold your fire. Hold your fire,” Thomer told his men. He crouched below a broken window, his first grenade launcher out and ready to fire. “Those are just the scouts. Save it for the ranks.”

Waiting for Mooreland, peering over a casing, I got a close look at the new armor. The shielding glowed no brighter than a candle, but it covered the entire suit in a single continuous sheen.

“Once the shooting starts, fire one shot, and leave,” I whispered over an open frequency. “One shot, no heroics.” Mooreland might well have been listening. I didn’t care. The information would do him no good.

Down in the kill zone, Mooreland’s scouts timidly made their way toward the two outstretched wings of the building. They came within a hundred feet of the entrance and stopped to wait for the rest of the brigade to catch up.

The point men moved forward until they were right below me. I peered over the windowsill and watched them. To me, they looked like a team of confused spirits haunting the bat tleground before the war even began.

Something caught my eye—their weapons were inside their shields, built into their armor. Inch-wide barrels ran along the outsides of their arms, ending just shy of the fingers on their gloves. The barrels did not look wide enough for bullets. The bastards were probably packing fléchettes, the same deadly needles we used in our S9 stealth weapons.

Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of men appeared at the head of the buildings. They did not walk right into our gauntlet. They waited, surveying the area, filling our view with glow and bodies. One minute passed, then another. They had to know where we were hiding, but they did not fire blindly to flush us out. Watching them mass, I considered beginning our evacuation. Just as I started to issue the command, Mooreland ordered his men in.

The space between the buildings was twice the length of a football field and just as wide. Mooreland could have fit three thousand men in that space, but it might have been tight. His first wave broke into a wedge formation, facing out, arms up so they could return fire when we emerged from our painfully obvious hiding place.

“Fire!” Thomer yelled. “Shoot and run. Shoot and run. Shoot and run!”

Along the long hall, men jumped to their feet, fired a single rocket into the courtyard, tossed their empty launcher tubes aside, and ran for the stairs. The rockets hissed and flashed out of their tubes, leaving a thin smoke trail behind them.

On the ground below, the glow of the shields faded in a storm of smoke and explosions. The blasts created a strobe-light effect. In the start-and-stop motion of an ancient movie, Marines fired weapons, ran along the hall, and vanished down stairwells. Flash, five men ran crouched along the inner wall of the corridor. Flash, the first reached the door to a stairwell and wrenched it open. Flash, the third man in the line threw his hands over his head as the first two disappeared through the door. Flash, tiny holes and fine drops of blood appeared on the wall as the man crumpled to the floor. Flash, the fourth and fifth men in the line jumped over the body and disappeared down the stairs.

Sharp as needles and harder than steel, the fléchettes pierced combat armor, leaving a pinprick entrance hole on one side and a pinprick exit hole on the other. The lethal darts bored into the concrete walls as if they were made of cloth. They burrowed into the ceiling above us, vanishing into soft tiles and shattering light fixtures.

In the courtyard, our rockets were about as effective as a strong wind. The blasts threw Mooreland’s Marines off their feet and cast them aside like toys, but their shielded armor protected them from shrapnel.

“We can’t hurt the speckers!” somebody called on an open line.

“Shoot and run! Shoot and run! Shoot and run!” Thomer shouted, as he moved up and down the hall, his voice as dry as desert sand.

Men were dying. I watched one of my men stand, aim, and fall before he could fire; fléchette holes dotted in his helmet, his chest plates, and his shoulder plates. He fell on his back, and thin streams of blood leaked out of the holes. The man next to him sprang for the window, tripped over the body, and was shot in the head at least five times before he could steady himself.

I prepared to fire my first rocket. Taking a deep breath, I slid up to the edge of the casing, aimed the launcher into the crowd, and pulled the trigger. I did not wait to see what I hit. The moment I fired, I dropped down to safety. Dozens of fléchettes struck the spot from which I had fired. By the time they hit, I had already pulled my second rocket launcher and moved to a new spot.

As I lay on the floor, I looked across the darkened hall. Dead men in armor lay in odd poses along the floor. The waist-high window casing protected us as long as we stayed down waiting to shoot, but they left our heads and chests unprotected when we stood to fire. I saw men with shattered visors and men with holes in their helmets, men with blood leaking from so many holes in their armor that they looked like they were covered in sweat.

I climbed to my knees, peered out from behind the casing, and fired my second rocket.

“Harris, where are you?” It was Hollingsworth.

“I’m still in the building,” I said.

“You need to get out of there, sir. If we don’t blow those charges now, the Unifieds are going to enter the building,” Hollingsworth said. He was polite, respectful, a nice guy. In a deferential way, he had just told me to get my ass out of the building.

Looking around the hall, I realized I was the last man there. In the time it took me to fire my second shot, everyone else had left or died. As I crawled toward the stairs, I saw a man rolling on the floor. He held an armored hand against his left shoulder as he rolled from side to side. My visor identified him as Corporal James Mattock.

“Mattock,” I said on an open frequency, “we need to get out of here.” I saw three separate streams of blood running down his arm. “Mattock,” I repeated.

He did not answer. He just lay there, writhing like a dying snake. I reached a hand under his arm and pulled him with me. When we reached the stairs, I heaved him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The Unified Authority did not necessarily make the fléchettes the new Marines used out of the same depleted uranium we used in our stealth weapons. It occurred to me that the uranium they used could even be enriched.

If Mooreland’s men were using hot uranium, the damage to his shoulder would be the least of Mattock’s problems. Shooting heavily radioactive materials through your enemies was a good way to make sure they died no matter where you hit them.

Mattock did not sag like a dying man; he rolled and twisted and tried to put a hand over his wound. Holding him tight so that he would not roll out of my grip, I started down the stairs. Along the walls, I saw the charges Thomer’s men left behind. Wires wound around the corners, leading from one bundle of explosives to the next.

“Are you clear, General?” Hollingsworth asked.

“Still on the stairs.”

“You better hurry, sir. They’re already entering the garage.”

I clattered down the stairs as quickly as I could with Mattock over my shoulder. Jumping a couple of stairs, I overshot a landing and slammed into the wall. Somewhere along the line, Mattock’s hand dropped from his wound and he hung limp and lifeless along my back. Hating the situation and loathing myself for doing what I had to do, I dropped the inert body and ran.

Skipping the top floor of the garage, where the fighting had already begun, I sprinted down to the second floor. “Clear!” I yelled, as I crashed out of the stairwell, slamming the door behind me.