Steven Kent - The Clone Elite

“They make a really loud bang, sir,” Herrington said.

“Damn specking right it makes a big bang. Gyrene, you are specking officer material. You’re a goddamned genius. Nukes make big, hot bangs. They make big, hot, radioactive bangs. Tell me, Herrington, what do you think about giving the specking Mudders a big, hot, radioactive bang?”

“I like it, sir.”

“You say you like it? That’s all? Shoving a nuke up these planet-stealing motherspeckers’ asses is just okay with you. Is that what you just said?”

“Sir, no sir,” Herrington yelled. I could hear Herrington’s confidence building. He did not want to be treated with respect; he wanted to be cudgeled. “It makes me horny all over!”

Burton’s disdainful approach made Herrington feel relaxed. It had the same effect on the entire company. Men sat up straight, they smiled. The verbal beating placed them in territory they knew.

“Just so you assholes know, I believe in the big bang theory,” Burton said. “I believe we should shove something that makes a big bang up every one of our enemies’ asses.”

The funny thing was that giving the briefing, Burton’s confidence also seemed to grow as he went on. Until this moment, I had never realized the yin and yang in the relationship between natural-born officers and general-issue clones. These boys did not want respect and honesty. They deserved the truth; but going into battle, what they really wanted to hear was assurance. Burton, an experienced officer, gave them what they needed instead of what they deserved.

“We reserve the really big bangs for the pecker speckers we hate the most. And let me tell you, Gyrenes, fifty-megatons is the biggest bang of them all. Now what does that tell you about Mudders?”

“We hate the speckers,” yelled Thomer—mild-mannered Kelly Thomer, the Boy Scout.

“Damn straight, we goddamn hate those pecker speckers. There is no one and nothing we hate more than those speckers. I hate those bastards more than my wife’s time of the month. Do you read me, you mean horn-dog sons of bitches?”

Burton sent the men into a frenzy. They didn’t just respond, they ignited.

“Listen here, Gyrenes; these nukes are the second-worst weapon in this man’s universe. You ugly sons of bitches are the specking worst. You are the cruelest, meanest, most lowdown, dirty weapon in the Unified specking Authority’s arsenal.”

As Burton put on his show, Sweetwater shambled down the ladder and came to stand next to me. He looked scared but determined. He glanced over at me, then mimicked my stance and posture—feet shoulder-width apart, hands clasped behind his back, chest out. The stance looked unnatural with his short, dumpy posture, thick glasses, and lank hair.

“We are going to shove you forty-seven sons of bitches so far down those speckers’ throats that nothing else will ever fit. You got that, Gyrenes?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” the company shouted so loud that their voices frayed.

“Did you Gyrenes say something? I think I almost heard you. Think you peckerwoods can put enough voice into it so I can hear you?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” they screamed.

Burton took a step back, and whispered to me, “Tell them what you need to, but for God’s sake, try to keep them warmed up.”

I explained what we would do, and the briefing ended. The men went back to speaking among themselves, clearly more relaxed than before. As I headed toward the cockpit, Major Burton quietly whispered, “You Liberators may be killing machines, but you don’t know shit about giving briefings.”

Looking ahead through the windshield, I could see the serrated silhouette of the distant mountains. “I’m going to park us next to Breeze’s plane,” Freeman said. Sweetwater leaned over the copilot’s seat for a look below. He did not speak a word.

“What’s our ETA?” I asked.

“Ten minutes,” Freeman said.

Outside the transport, the plains gave way to steppes and the steppes gave way to foothills. Soon we would cross the guardians of the mountains. I could imagine these granite giants framed by an orange sunset, as dark as shadows and as mysterious as the night. I could also imagine them turned to dunes of ash with Avatari spider-things creeping across them.

I looked out and saw something I had not seen for a couple of years, something I had hoped never to see again. A series of trenches crisscrossed the flat areas between some of the mountains. “Snake shafts,” I said.

“Those weren’t there last time you came,” Freeman commented.

“No, they weren’t,” I said as I studied the network of trenches and troughs that the drones had dug. Until that moment, I had never put two and two together properly. Nobody knew what snake shafts were used for, but the common consensus was that it had something to do with smuggling. Now I understood all too well. The Avatari would cover the trenches without filling them in, and they would serve as a capillary system for harvesting shit gas from the planet.

As Freeman circled for a landing, Sweetwater and I returned to the kettle. I found most of the men in the cargo hold sitting in clusters, checking their weapons or simply talking. Burton stood at the rear staring at the crates with the nukes.

Sweetwater found a shadowy corner where he could be alone. He sat with his head down, examining his breathing mask.

“Doctor,” I said in a soft voice, as if waking a sleeping child. “Dr. Sweetwater?”

“Lieutenant,” he said. “Please tell us you’re not giving another briefing.”

“Ha, very funny,” I said.

Sweetwater smiled. “So it’s showtime.”

“Yes, Doctor,” I said.

“Call us William, Lieutenant.”

“Freeman wanted me to warn you Dr. Breeze’s body is just inside the caves. He also told me to warn you that the body is pretty messed up.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Sweetwater said.

“You really don’t need to go in there,” I said.

“You’re wrong, Lieutenant,” Sweetwater said, a new stiffness in his voice. “We do need to go in there. That is the very place we need to be.”

The late Arthur Breeze must have been one hell of a pilot.

Freeman had a far easier time lowering our big bird than Breeze must have had landing his plane. Our ship weighed at least twenty times more than Breeze’s craft, but transports had rockets for vertical landings. Breeze’s light craft required a runway. The ridge on which he had landed was too short and too bumpy for a safe landing; and if he’d overshot the landing, he would have either crashed into the mountain or skidded off a cliff.

We touched down not more than a hundred feet from Breeze’s ride. The loose ground settled unevenly beneath our skids, and forty-six Marines lunged for the crates with the nukes to make sure they didn’t slide.

“You don’t need to do that,” I told them over the interLink. “You can toss those bad boys off the side of the mountain, and they won’t go off. The specking Hotel Valhalla fell on them, and they didn’t go off.”

I heard some nervous laughter, and the men backed away from the crates.

I pulled off my helmet and looked down at Sweetwater; he stood beside me waiting to exit the transport. “Maybe I should go out there first and check the air quality,” I said.

“You’re worried about us? Lieutenant, we’re touched.” The little bastard might have had a better facility with sarcasm than scientific terms. “We already agreed this was a one-way trip.”

“Know what, Dr. Sweetwater? You’d make a hell of a Marine,” I said.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah, well, except for the height requirement,” I said.

He smiled. “That means something coming from a homicidal clone like you. We heard you killed your commanding officer last night.”