Steven Kent - The Clone Elite

“Huish grew up in the same orphanage as me,” Philips said.

“Did you know him?” I asked.

“Are you specking kidding me? He was twenty-three years younger than me. I made corporal by the time he was three.”

“I’ve read your record,” I said. “You were probably busted back down to private again by the time he was four.”

“I specked it all up, didn’t I?” asked Philips. He shook his head. All of the old arrogance drained from his face. He looked physically tired and mentally exhausted.

“You mean at the Hen House? Yes, you specked up royally.”

“You don’t get it, Harris,” Philips said.

“I don’t get what?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Moffat or what he does. Let him shoot me. I don’t give a shit. Thomer says I deserve it. That’s what you think, too.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“I guess I deserve a good specking, but not because I boffed Moffat’s wife.” He laughed. “Hell, more guys have ridden her than the goddamned Broadcast Network. I’m surprised she managed to work me into her busy schedule.”

“You’re shitting me?” I asked.

“Would I shit you about something like that? I think she has a thing for clones. Half the men guarding the specking Hen House had a roll with her. I think Skittles might have. I was the only one who talked about it.

“He’s doesn’t give a rat’s ass who sleeps with the old girl. He’s just mad ’cause I didn’t keep quiet about it.”

Philips unbuttoned his shirt and showed me his upper arm. “He’s pissed about this,” he said as he displayed the tattoo he’d had placed over the biceps on his right arm. It showed a naked woman, a modern Venus in a half shell with one hand cupped over a breast and the other covering her pelvis. The banner around the picture said “LILLY MOFFAT, COUNT ME IN.”

“Shit, Philips,” I said. “When did you get that?”

“I got this while I was at the Hen House. It was her idea. Harris, she hates Moffat; she offered to pay for the damn tattoo.”

“Nice, Philips. Very nice,” I said. Philips missed the irony in my choice of compliments. “How did Moffat hear about it?”

The truck slowed to a stop. We had come to a busy stretch in which teams of soldiers dragged heavy carts across the six-lane street.

The other men jumped from the truck. Philips stood to join them.

“How did Moffat find out about the tattoo?” I repeated. “Did she tell him about it?”

Philips shook his head. “Not likely. She’s had so many guys since me, I bet she doesn’t even remember my name. He saw it when I showed up for morning calisthenics. I came in a tank top.”

“You what?” I asked.

Philips shrugged. “And I lined up front and center.”

“Were you trying to get yourself shot?”

“And I started doing arm curls while he was counting out jumping jacks.”

While the rest of the men gathered in front of the truck, I held Philips back for another moment. “You really do want to die, don’t you?” I asked.

“You know what, Harris. I don’t care what happens,” Philips said. I looked into his eyes. The fight was gone. The mischief was gone as well. He looked tired.

Groaning deep in my gut, I let my friend go join the other men. There was no way both Philips and Moffat would survive this war. Sooner or later Moffat would find a way to kill Philips, and Philips would do nothing to protect himself, the stupid prick. There are a lot of ways to kill yourself. At least suicide by screwing was unique.

The mine-placer looked like an industrial vacuum cleaner. It had a twenty-foot telescoping hose with ribbing for flexibility. You could have rolled a tennis ball down the length of the hose, but a baseball would not fit.

The Corps of Engineers had painted foot-wide Xs all along the street. Our job was to roll the mine-placer to each location, press the nozzle over the axis of the X, and plant the mine. The mine-placer literally shot the explosive right through asphalt or concrete.

We worked in five-man teams. It was grueling work. The mine-placer sat on wheels, but fully loaded with fifty mines, the damned thing weighed about four hundred pounds. The Corps assigned us a stretch of posh neighborhood with a row of elm trees between the roads. Pushing that specking mine-placer up hills and over speed bumps damn near killed us. Once we got to the X, it took three men to hold the hose in place as it blasted the mines through the street. The blast struck with so much power that it bounced all three men in the air.

The blast both placed the mine and removed the painted X without cracking the pavement beneath. The only trace the mine-placer left was a clean spot of road where the mine now sat. As a kid I thought it was magic. It wasn’t. First the Corps of Engineers had used a sonic device to create a hollow spot under the surface of the concrete. The mines were made of liquid chemicals, which the mine-placer broke into a vapor so fine that it could pass through concrete. When we fired it off, the mine-placer blasted the atomized chemicals with so much power that it forced them through concrete, where they mixed to create a volatile, pressure-sensitive bubble. The chemicals washed away paint, grease, dirt, and anything else that got in the way into the ground.

“You think these are strong enough to kill one of those Mudders?” Skittles asked. My crew included Herrington, Boll, Skittles, and Thorpe. Boll and Herrington, both veteran Marines with more years in the Corps than me, worked quietly. Thorpe and Skittles, both three-year men who had joined the year before the orphanages were destroyed, kept up an endless string of commentary.

About a hundred yards away, Thomer and Philips led another crew. Thomer had a calming influence on Philips. Philips would not do anything crazy with Thomer around.

“Charge is up!” Skittles called.

“Hold!” I shouted. Herrington, Boll, and I braced our weight against the nozzle, and Skittles pulled the trigger. The sound the mine-placer made was a hollow thwoop as it sent a jolt that traveled up our arms and into our shoulders. Boll and I pulled the hose away, and Herrington crouched and inspected the placement.

“Good,” he said, and we moved on to the next X.

We stood a few feet away from the skeletal frame of one of the destroyed rocket launchers. The structure stood thirty feet tall, a charred skeleton of twisted rods and melted wires.

Around the grounds, soldiers and Marines placed traps of many descriptions. A team of soldiers strung hot-wire fences. Once they finished the fence, they would hook it up to an electrical circuit, and four thousand volts would surge through the wires. A fence like that could wipe out a whole platoon, but I doubted the Avatari would even notice it.

“What do you think?” Herrington asked, standing straight and stretching out his back. “This should give us an edge.”

“The mines might slow them down,” I said.

“It’s going to come down to a firefight again, isn’t it?” Boll asked.

If Skittles or some other lightweight asked that question, I might well have lied, but I would not lie to Boll or Herrington. They deserved better. “There’s a lot going on that I can’t tell you about,” I said.

“It’s bad?” Herrington asked.

“Yeah, it’s bad,” I agreed.

General Glade sent an aide to retrieve me from the DMZ. We were on our fourth load of mines. My arms were numb, and the muscles in my back felt like they were tied in a knot. I wanted to head back to base and take a nap, but no one was handing out furloughs.

“Lieutenant Harris, General Glade sent for you,” the man said. He was wearing his Charlie-service khakis—a captain with a chestful of ribbons for typing and filing. If they gave out purple hearts for paper cuts, this guy would have one.