Steven Kent - The Clone Elite

“On my way,” Burton said.

To my left, a grenadier stood to fire a rocket. The bolt that killed him traveled straight up his extended arm and out through his shoulder, leaving only a shred of hollow armor behind. Had it been a bullet or even a laser, the man would have lived. He collapsed in convulsions, flopping around on the ground like a fish on a dock. I ended his suffering, firing a quick green burst from my cannon that exploded his helmet in a splash of blood and shreds of armor.

Sweetwater stared at me, a frantic mixture of shock and fear in his eyes.

“Looks like this is as far as we’re going to get,” Burton warned as he slid in beside me.

“Bullshit,” I said. “Freeman, if this doesn’t work, grab Sweetwater and make a run for the spheres.” I rose to my feet, then spun so that my back was against a massive rock wall. I needed to clear a hole, just enough of a lane for us to get past this trap. If push came to shove, we’d detonate the nukes before reaching the gas, but only as a last resort. Prematurely detonating the nukes might not charge the gas, but it would do more than giving up and dying.

There were too many Avatari for us to fight our way through, and time was running out. In another five minutes, Sweetwater would die whether we got him close enough to calibrate the nuke or not.

Just when I thought we would never waltz out of the trap, I peered around the rock and saw something promising—aliens of a feather were flocking together. There may have been as many as a hundred Avatari soldiers out there, but they grouped together in a cluster. It might have been because they were not designed for underground combat, or it could have been because the aliens controlling those avatars were not used to this sort of firefight, but the soldiers massed in one small area were forcing the guardian spiders to handle the legwork.

“Boll, you got any more thermite tips?” I asked.

“Only legal loads from here on out,” he answered.

“Shit,” I said.

“I got one,” Herrington said.

“You said I was insane for—” Boll said.

“You wanna point fingers or win this?” Herrington snapped. Then, in a calmer voice, he said, “Lieutenant, I have a thermite load to fire.”

“Herrington, I’m placing a virtual beacon on the spot I need you to hit. Then I am going to break left and draw fire,” I said. “Wait until you get a clear shot, then you light those bastards.”

“Once you get clear of them?” Herrington asked.

“The moment you have the shot, you specking take it!” I said. As I said this, a barrage of light bolts splattered the ground around us. Two guardian spiders marched over a rock off in the distance. Freeman picked them off.

Crouching low and darting for cover, I tried to find a path that offered me cover as I circled around the Avatari. I sent messages as I ran, telling Burton and the rest of the company to move toward the spheres whether my plan worked or not. The clock was ticking; in the next few minutes every one of us might well die whether we succeeded or not.

Some sharp-eyed specker of an Avatari spotted me as I made my way toward a wall. A bolt missed my shoulder by inches. As I dived for cover in a trench, a bolt hit the rifle I kept strapped to my back. A few bolts flew over my head, then the attack simply stopped.

I peered out from the trench in time to see Ray Freeman stowing his particle-beam cannon. Freeman, murderous son of a bitch that he was, may have been the best man I had ever known.

I had already wasted seconds I could not afford. With Freeman as my guardian angel and trusting that none of the other Avatari had noticed me, I sprang from the trench and sprinted across open ground. At first I had a clear path, then one of the drone spider-things crawled out of a hole. I jumped left to avoid it, and the shooting began. Bolts flew through the air around me, not just one or two, but en masse. Four, maybe five bolts struck a rock ledge not more than twenty feet from me. The ledge exploded with such force that it threw me into a waist-deep hole.

Over the interLink, I heard Boll talking to Herrington.

“He makes a good distraction,” Boll said.

“Shhh! I’m looking for my shot. I’ve waited my whole life to fire off one of these thermite jobs. It’s kind of a life’s ambition.”

In order for Herrington to hit the target, I would need to distract the bastards. I placed my virtual beacon, then I sprang from cover. Bolts streaked around me, but they could not get a clear shot at me because I ran between rocks and stayed low to the ground. One bolt passed just a few inches from my face.

“Hey, there’s the beacon,” Herrington said.

“Fire the specking thing!” Boll shouted.

The flash Herrington’s thermite rocket made seemed to make the world around me disappear. I had no idea if he had cleared the enemy stronghold, and I would need to go in to make sure the path was secure. As I lay facedown preparing to leap out, the dark form of a guardian appeared over the lip of the hole. It slashed at me with one of its forelegs, but I managed to jump out of its reach.

I couldn’t kill the damned thing. If I shot and it fell on me, it would crush me under its bulk. If it touched me with its leg, my armor would short out, and I’d be blind.

The guardian lashed at me with a foreleg. I rolled to the other side of the hole and shot at the bastard’s head. The spider reeled but did not fall, so I shot out its legs. The guardian fell backward, out of the hole. I did not waste time looking to see what happened to it.

“Cut your way through,” I called over an open frequency. The message was mostly for Burton and Peterson—the men on point—but it was also meant for Boll and Herrington, our best grenadiers. I ran ahead until I had a clear view of the spot Herrington hit with that thermite rocket. I don’t know how many Avatari had been there, but they were all gone now.

The grenadiers led our formation, with Burton and his riflemen coming up next. They had formed a tight circle around Sweetwater and the nukes. Even from a distance, I could see that Freeman was carrying William Sweetwater like a mother carrying a child.

Targeting guardians and drones, I cut across the ground between me and the rest of the company, leaping over holes and rocks, and skirting boulders. Somewhere in the distance, the Avatari regrouped and began shooting at us. Light bolts tore into two men behind me. As I turned to sight the aliens, I saw another of my riflemen fall.

My grenadiers went to work, firing rocket after rocket into the path to clear the way. The explosions cast a staccato of flashes across the bleak cavern. Their rockets exploded, sending twisting columns of smoke that rose from the ground and evaporated into the blackness.

In the flash from the rockets, I saw more guardians moving in the distance. “What the hell is it going to take to break through, damn it!” I yelled in frustration. I turned to look at the ridge to our rear and saw ten Avatari standing on an outcropping. Freeman cut down three of them. A dozen sparkling green beams demolished the others as the riflemen in the rear opened fire. The Avatari shot back at us, and I lost two more of my men.

The riflemen were falling back as the grenadiers forced their way ahead. “Stay together! Stay together!” I yelled.

Burton repeated the order.

Thomer fell back to help Freeman.

We found a twenty-foot rise that seemed to run the length of the cavern and climbed it. Along the crest of that rise I could see the light from the spheres as it traveled along its spine. We had to stick to the rise—the ground around us was buried under a layer of drones working so close together that their legs touched. The rise, though, left us as exposed as a can on a post in a shooting gallery.