Steven Kent - The Clone Elite

“Last chance for you to turn back,” I said to him through the speaker in my helmet. My respect for the diminutive scientist would not have changed if he’d soiled his pants and run back to the transport, but I knew he would not. Sweetwater turned toward me and pointed at the back of his hand. His skin was already turning an inflamed red as if he were having an allergic reaction. Given a little more time, blisters would form. The skin on his cheeks and forehead had a ruddy look as well.

“It’s too late to turn back now,” he yelled through the mask. He did not need to yell for me to hear him, but he did not know that.

“You took a reading before you left the ship. Did you know this was going to happen?” I asked.

He shrugged and walked away.

“Plucky little son of a bitch,” I whispered to myself. That was heartfelt praise in Marine-ese. From where I stood, with their backs to me, Freeman and Sweetwater looked like a father-and-son act. Freeman, tall and broad, Sweetwater short and stubby. Sweetwater stayed in perfect sync with the big man. When Freeman turned left, so did Sweetwater.

Noticing Sweetwater’s physical deterioration, Thomer fell back, and asked, “Is he going to be okay?”

“You mean Sweetwater?” I asked.

“Yeah, is he going to be all right?” Thomer asked.

“He’s melting. The air out here is like acid.”

Like the entrance Freeman and I used when we explored the mines, this entrance led to a foyer filled with light from the ion curtain. Burton and two of his riflemen led the way in. I entered next, followed by the teams carrying the bombs. Freeman and Sweetwater came next, with more riflemen and grenadiers bringing up the rear.

Burton hiked ahead, checked for enemies, then doubled back. “It looks clear this far in,” Burton said.

“Did you see any openings along the walls?” I asked.

“I did,” Burton said.

“The fun starts once we enter one of those openings,” I said.

“Fair enough,” Burton said. “Harris, do we really need two bombs? I could use four extra guns.”

“We need them …both of them,” I said.

“We’re not just bringing the second in case we lose one?”

“Major, did you ever fly through Mars Spaceport on a busy day?” I asked.

“Sure, it’s a real zoo,” he said.

“Shoulder-to-shoulder crowds; you can’t even swing your arms without hitting someone. That’s about how crowded it was last time I stepped into those caverns—except instead of people with suitcases, you get drone spiders.”

“You said they weren’t any more dangerous than a footlocker,” Burton said.

“I meant a footlocker with a forty thousand-volt charge. If one of those spiders so much as rubs against you, all the electronics in your armor go dead, then you either have to walk around blind or breathe whatever that lethal shit is in the air.

“I’m betting that we lose both bombs long before we reach the target area. This is one of those ‘the fate of humanity is resting on us’ moments, sir. Do you really want to cut the odds in half by leaving one of the nukes behind?”

Burton made a laughing noise, but it sounded short, sour, and forced. “So we’re going to set off a nuclear bomb to save humanity? Did I ever mention that my parents left Earth and moved to the Norma Arm because they did not approve of all the violence?”

“They’re probably dead now,” I said. “Norma was one of the first arms to go.”

A bat came flapping down from the ceiling. It was hit by green flashes from so many particle-beam cannons that all that was left was a fine, red mist and a few shreds of fur.

“Steady,” I said over the open frequency, just glad that no one had fired a rocket at it.

“They probably are dead,” Burton agreed. “Are you a praying man, Lieutenant Harris? I heard somewhere that you read the Bible.”

“I stopped reading it,” I said. “I lost my faith.”

“I’ve never been much for religion, but I said a shitload of prayers on the flight over here.”

“Yeah, well, if God is any good with a particle beam, we sure as hell could use him on our team right about now,” I said. “We better move out, sir.”

Major Burton gave the order to mount up, and we walked ahead. The ion light faded slightly as we moved deeper into the caves. Freeman led us toward the tunnel opening that would take us into the cavern.

“Breeze went in through this tube,” Freeman said, as we came to the first opening. Under normal circumstances he would have communicated this over the interLink, but this time he used his external speaker so that Sweetwater would hear.

“Maybe we should go to the next one,” I said over the open mike as well.

Sweetwater stared into the darkened doorway. “We want to see him,” he said. It was hard to hear him, and I wondered how much of the gas his mask allowed in. The damage to his throat might have already begun.

“Okay, if you are sure,” I said. Then I switched to a company-wide channel on the interLink. “The angle is going to be like going down a spiral staircase. Got it? The tube is wide with a low ceiling. You men on point, no stopping until we get to the bottom, then fan out. I want the first men down to form a shield by the time the nukes make it through.”

I heard a collective “Aye, aye, sir.” Burton led the way in.

The tube was just as I remembered it, long and wide with a six-foot ceiling, deep scratches in the walls and ceiling. Like me,

Burton had to duck his head to get through. Because their helmets added an inch to their height, the general-issue clones had to bow their heads, but Sweetwater could have skipped rope in there.

The light from the curtain faded out quickly. By the time we reached the second bend in the downward-spiraling tube, my visor had switched to night-for-day vision, and I saw the world around me in blue-white images. I listened to my men over the interLink. Some of them were breathing heavily, a sign of fear.

“Steady,” I said. “There are two kinds of spiders in here, small ones and big ones. The small ones are drones. Don’t bother shooting them, they won’t know you are there. It’s the big ones you have to worry about.”

This was all review, of course, but Herrington asked, “How big are the big ones, sir?”

“What the speck!” Burton gasped.

“Hold,” I told the men.

Burton had located a guardian spider. The damn thing had had to climb in here with its legs spread wide, and its girth left the tunnel half-filled. It remained perfectly still.

“Please tell me that is one of the big ones,” Burton said.

“Stay here.” I stepped past Burton and the men on point as I approached the guardian spider. It lay there absolutely still, just lurking there, blending into the darkness. I watched it for several seconds, then said, “It’s dead.”

As I approached, I saw that two of its legs had broken away. Its body was cracked and desiccated. The gash in its underbelly stretched from its head to its tail, and dust poured out of it.

Arthur Breeze had killed the creature that killed him. He sat against the far wall of the tunnel, his legs spread out before him. He held a standard-issue particle-beam pistol in his right hand. The spider-thing had slashed his white combat armor, breaking his chest plate and shattering his visor. I don’t think I felt any special bond with Breeze; but looking at his corpse, I felt outrage. I spun my particle-beam cannon around and smashed the butt into the guardian spider’s head. I hit it a second time. The hollow shell of the monster cracked under the force of that blow, and I hit it again and again.

“Harris, is it alive?” Burton sounded scared.

“Mother-specking son of a bitch!” I yelled. Spit was flying from my mouth into the microphone. I hit the spider again, and the uppermost ridge of its back and its exoskeleton crushed in on itself.