Steven Kent - The Clone Elite

We had no choice but to yield. The Avatari would take the street and capture the rocket launchers no matter what we did. I could see this clearly; my combat reflex was in full swing. I felt calm. I was a man at peace in a chaotic battle.

“Harris, close in around the launchers,” Moffat yelled. “We need to hold the launchers.”

He was wrong. The batteries were lost, and I saw no point in losing my company along with them. The last thing we should do was cluster together. That would enable the Avatari to kill several men with each shot. Up and down the street, Marines were already dropping a few at a time.

We still had a huge numerical advantage, but that advantage was fading. We needed to attack. I stepped onto the street. The men from my company instinctively followed me. One of my men stepped in front of me, and a bolt slashed him across the throat, vaporizing the bottom of his helmet and taking his chin with it. He fell face-first to the sidewalk.

His virtual dog tag still showed—Corporal Ted Robinson. He had been alive just a moment earlier and ready to follow me even before I’d issued an order. If I had told him to stay back, he would still be alive, but I had no time for regret.

I contacted Burton, the battalion commander, on a direct frequency, bypassing Moffat. “Major, we need to launch a counterattack.”

“How many do you need?” Burton asked.

“All three companies,” I said. “And we need to act fast.”

Burton did not waste a moment considering my recommendation before issuing the order, telling the men to rally together at a virtual beacon he placed precisely where I stood. Our grenadiers held back, concentrating their fire, blasting a hole in the Avatari line.

What was left of our battalion formed behind me. Grenadiers firing over us, soldiers with M27s behind us, we rushed the enemy firing our pistols as we ran across the street and into their line.

I leaped a tangled barrier and flew over the curb onto the other side of the street. I could hear men coming up behind me but kept my eyes straight ahead. Bolts struck into the crowd around me, but almost all of the Avatari fire flew over our heads. A rocket struck in the direction I was headed, sending up a geyser of dirt, concrete, and flames. I could see dark shapes in the haze, towering figures that moved slowly. I fired. The moment I saw any movement in the haze, I fired, all the while hoping that the men behind me would not shoot me in the back.

Remembering how my armor shorted out when that spider-thing attacked me, I shouted, “Don’t let them touch you!” over an open frequency. We were in close now; my warning may have come too late for some. Running forward in a crouch as fast as I could, I almost fell on my face when I stepped onto the layer of loose slag that had once been the bunkers.

An alien stepped in my way and stopped. It did not seem to notice me. I shot it in the leg. As it collapsed, I prepared to shoot it again, then saw that there was no need. A cloud of powder whooshed out around the body as it hit the ground. The thing was severely chipped and dented, probably scars first received as the Avatari massacred our old soldiers out in the forest. My shot to the leg was just the finishing offense.

Crouching beside the broken alien, I moved my pistol from one target to the next. Before I could get back to my feet, another wave of Avatari came. I fired three shots, and more Avatari fell. The battle seemed to swell around me. By charging in, our battalion had broken the Avatari line in this one spot, forcing it to collapse in on itself. Listening to the chatter on the interLink, I could tell that this place was one of the few spots that we had managed to hold. Along Vista Street, the Marines who had tried to hold their positions were now in full retreat. Batteries of rocket launchers had fallen into Avatari hands.

Through the smoke, haze, and dust, I saw green beams and silver-white bolts. Then I saw something new. Across the street, a building lit up. For just a moment it looked like the red bricks along its walls had turned to glass, revealing a bright light in its heart, then the building collapsed to its foundation. The destruction was so fast and so clean that it appeared as if the whole thing imploded.

I did not have time to think about what was happening behind me. Marines continued to charge into the gap we had created. We fanned into the enemy lines and spread behind them. The Avatari seemed more interested in bludgeoning their way across the street than stopping our charge.

One Avatari soldier aimed its rifle at the Marine beside me and fired. I managed to shove the man out of the way, and the bolt struck another Avatari, searing through the big alien the way it might pierce a tank or hill. The wounded Avatari turned stiff and fell.

I caught a quick glimpse of Philips and Thomer leading a squad deeper into the Avatari line. A flash of green struck near Philips, missing him by inches. Philips ran on without noticing.

There were no Avatari where that particle beam hit, just men. As I looked back, I saw Moffat, his particle-beam pistol extended in Philips’s direction.

“Moffat,” I said.

He did not answer.

Three Avatari moved toward me. There was a flash. One of them fired at me. Running on instinct, I dived for the powdery ground, somersaulted, and came up firing. I hit two of the Avatari. Someone else hit the third. I never saw who.

There was a flash across the street, coming from the spot where we had begun our charge. I looked over in time to see another building take on that glassy appearance and collapse. The whole thing happened so quickly that the tint shields in my visor did not react before the flash had imprinted itself on my brain. A negative image of the collapse replayed inside my eyelids.

When the tint cleared from my visor, I saw dust and rubble and the twisted remains of the rocket launcher. I looked for enemies to shoot, but the only survivors around me were Marines.

This part of the battle had ended. We held our ground, but the Avatari had still managed to destroy the rocket launchers. We were screwed.

Before we suspected it was there, the noose had tightened around our necks.

To hear the other generals talk about it, the entire debacle was Newcastle’s fault. I suppose it might have been his fault in a “the buck stops here” way, but he did everything by the book.

He set his soldiers up with a specking five-to-one advantage. Granted, they were all old men, but there were so damn many of them.

The big mistake was authorizing the techs to work on the rocket launchers with the enemy on the way. In a show of no confidence and a play for power, the two Army generals under Newcastle authorized an investigation into the error. We were trapped on a planet, fighting an enemy we could not hurt, cut off from the rest of the galaxy, and the brass was still wrangling for power. I should have seen it coming; these men were career officers, not soldiers. They thought like politicians.

The investigation only took a day. The men in charge concluded that the rocket launchers were complex pieces of machinery that required routine maintenance after every battle—maintenance that generally required a minimum of four days to complete. With the Avatari attacking every three days, finding a good time to disassemble and repair the batteries was pretty much out of the question. The investigators also discovered that Newcastle had nothing to do with the maintenance of the rocket launchers. The order to work on the batteries had come from Brigadier General Samuel Hauer, the tough little weasel who was number two in the Army chain of command. As Hauer was the one who called for the investigation in the first place, the matter was dropped. Hauer resigned his commission the following day.