Steven Kent - The Clone Elite

By day’s end, we had lost over seventy-five thousand men, but we had won the war!

That was what we all kept telling ourselves, that we had won the war.

When we left the hotel for the battle that morning, we needed 250 trucks to transport the troops. We returned in 121, what was left of us at least. On balance, things seemed hopeful.

Other regiments continued to fight as we turned to leave the field, but our part of the battle had ended. All we knew as we loaded into the trucks and headed back to the hotel was that we had lost nearly one-third of our men. We were exhausted both physically and emotionally, but mostly I think we were nervous about how the other regiments would fare. No one spoke as the trucks rumbled back toward town.

The trucks dropped us in front of the lobby. As I climbed out, I felt the eyes of my men resting on me. “We sent those speckers packing. Now go clean up,” I said, then I brooded as I wandered up to my room and changed out of my armor. There was tension in the air. I took a bath and a nap and ignored the noise when somebody knocked on my door. I kept the curtains closed and the lights off, creating my own personal nightfall.

A few minutes later the first reports leaked. I heard shouting outside my door and stuck my head out. I saw a group of officers celebrating in the hall and asked what happened. One of the officers turned toward me long enough to say, “It’s another massacre, just like last time. Better!” The officer said he was on his way to Valhalla Skyline, the restaurant and bar that occupied the top two floors of the hotel, and asked if I wanted to come. I thanked him and went back to bed. I tried to sleep, but I was too keyed up, so I dressed in my Charlie service uniform and took the elevator up the Skyline. The bar was packed with officers, hundreds of them. Rings of officers swapped battlefield stories in the open area that was intended to be the dance floor. I wrestled my way into the crowd and felt the excitement.

Moments later, an officer made his way to the stage and gave the first official update. The Eighth, Tenth, and Sixteenth Regiments successfully engaged the aliens, sweeping in from the south. He did not release casualty numbers but could confirm that the attack had been entirely successful. A few minutes later, the officer returned with more information—the Ninth Infantry Regiment and the Twelfth Light Artillery Regiment had flanked the aliens from the west while three more regiments surprised the enemy on their eastern flank.

Thousands of officers shouted at the tops of their lungs.

Forty minutes later, the briefing officer appeared again, and this time he made it official, announcing complete and total victory. Moments later, the message was repeated over the hotel speaker system.

A trio of colonels climbed onto the bar and began tossing bottles of booze into the sea of officers. Arms waved in anticipation, and feeding frenzies flared wherever the bottles landed.

I never stopped to wonder why this victory should be more permanent than the one we had three days earlier. Nothing had changed, the Mudders had come at us with an army exactly like the one we just routed. But that first victory seemed insignificant, like an opening act. This one had finality about it; this time the bastards knew what we had, and we still sent them packing

The elevator doors opened, and a new tide of Marines poured onto the floor. Officers crowded around each other like bullets in a box. By now hundreds and hundreds of officers had packed into the bar, drinking, boasting, yelling at the tops of their lungs.

Bottles of beer slowly trickled across the room. No one could talk above the crowd, you needed to shout as loud as you could if you wanted to speak to the man standing next to you. The more each man shouted, the louder the aggregate noise became.

In one corner of the room, a ring of twenty or maybe thirty officers sang a drunken version of “The Halls of Montezuma,” the anthem of the Unified Authority Marines. All of them held glasses of beer, which they waved and clanked together as they sang. Beer and suds flew everywhere. Nobody cared.

Then a man sitting near the big observation window spotted a convoy of trucks driving into town. The caravan should have been endless. But it was not endless, not endless at all. There might have been a thousand trucks, but not much more than that. Watching them roll into town from way up at the top of the hotel, we could see the end of the procession.

Slowly, as if someone was turning down the volume, the entire bar went silent. The sight of those trucks was like a dirge. Then Base Command ordered all officers down to the enlisted men’s barracks to prepare for debriefing. I took one last look at the end of the line of trucks and headed for the stairs.

Downcast officers stumbled out of the bar. I caught brief snatches of several conversations.

“Weren’t there a lot more trucks this morning? I could have …”

“…damn it. It’s over, right? I mean, we crushed the bastards …”

The celebration had gone out of all of us. Everybody’s mood had changed, including mine. For no reason at all, I had come to believe we had won the war and not just a battle; and though I had no new information, I now knew that something had changed.

As I reached the Valkyrie Ballroom—the barracks my battalion called home—a young major approached me. “Lieutenant Harris?” he asked.

I saluted.

“General Glade would like a word with you.”

“Harris, glad they found you,” General Glade said. We traded salutes.

He looked tired. He was a skinny man with a weak chin, a long, hooked nose, and a round, balding head. Looking at his face and head made me think of a parakeet.

“Congratulations, General,” I said.

Huuuuhh . He cleared his throat. “Not much of a victory, Lieutenant. We lost a lot of men. I’m not so sure congratulations are in order.”

I did not know how to respond, so I said nothing.

“We can talk on the way, Harris. We have a briefing at the Science Lab, and they asked me to bring you along.”

I was a second lieutenant. For me to attend the same briefing with a general was beyond unusual, it was downright bizarre. Then I remembered Freeman mentioning the Science Lab and realized that he might well have mentioned my name to the scientists holding the briefing.

Two staff officers met us as we left the office. They led us through the lobby, a plush indoor palace with burgundy carpeting and crystal chandeliers. The area was abandoned. Briefings had already begun in the ballrooms; every Marine on the premises was required to attend.

Almost every Marine. Since I was traveling with a general, I was excused. The two staff officers led us out to the main entrance, where a sedan waited under the portico. Glade and I climbed into the back. The staff officers, both of whom outranked me, sat in the front.

News of the victory had already spread through Valhalla. With the Marines and Army holding mass briefings, most parts of the city lay empty; but hysteria had erupted in the areas occupied by the civilian militia. We passed neighborhoods in which rapturous mobs filled the streets—men dancing and drinking and celebrating. Valhalla has got to be the galaxy’s happiest ghost town, I thought to myself. Loud music rang in the air. I saw a man in a heavy jacket carrying four bottles of whiskey, two under each arm, while waving a fifth bottle in the air.

Glade cleared his throat. “It’s a bit early to celebrate,” he grumbled. The officers in the front seat heard him and nodded. One sighed, and said, “Civilians.”

We drove to the University of Valhalla, a sprawling campus that reminded me of just about every other university I had ever seen. We passed a large fountain that had become the domicile of hundreds of ducks. We passed walkways lined by trees that had long since shed their leaves for the winter. Except for the military supply trucks and security stops, I might have guessed that the university had closed for the season.