Steven Kent - The Clone Elite

The red LED above the keypad said 20:00 .

The goggles had done a fair job of protecting Sweetwater’s eyes. The lids of his eyes were heavily swollen, and the whites of his eyes had mostly turned the color of blood, but he could see. Through the fog in his oxygen mask, I saw that blisters had formed on Sweetwater’s lips around his mouth.

The scientist beckoned with both hands for me to come closer, so I bent down even lower until my helmet was practically against his face.

“What do you think, Harris? Would we have made a good Marine?” he asked.

“I still like you better as a scientist,” I said. He chuckled, a painfully dry sound rising up from his throat.

“You’d make a shitty scientist, Lieutenant. You kill everything you see,” Sweetwater croaked. Then he motioned me even closer. “The case …the case around the device. We’ve set the device to explode in twenty minutes. Put the bomb in the gas.”

“The gas won’t destroy the bomb?” I asked.

Sweetwater shook his head. “Not fast.”

Even if the Avatari knew what we had and went looking for it, I doubted they would find the nuke in the gas. “You know, Sweetwater,” I said. “I was wrong, you’d make a hell of a Marine.”

Sweetwater coughed up something that looked like blood. “Run fast. Maybe you can make it out.”

I wanted to tell him that we’d take him out with us, but I knew better, and so did he.

“The clock starts when you close the case. You better run fast,” he said.

I toyed with the idea of simply setting the bomb off, then I looked at that clock again. If we made a mad dash and the aliens did not pin us in their cross fire, we could probably reach the transport in ten minutes, maybe less. A mile to the slope, a short uphill sprint, then out to the transport.

“The nuke’s on a twenty-minute timer,” I said on an open frequency. “What do you think? Do we stay here, or make a break for it?”

“Think we can make it out?” Grubb asked.

“Maybe we should guard the bomb till it explodes. This whole thing is for nothing if the aliens disarm it,” said Herrington.

“They won’t,” I said, “I’m throwing it into the gas.”

“Well, in that case, I wouldn’t mind collecting my back pay,” Herrington said.

“Yeah, me too,” I said.

I started to slide the inner mechanism of the nuke back in the sleeve, then stopped. Once I closed it, there would be no time to do anything but chuck the nuke in the gas and run, and there was something I needed to do.

A guardian spider dropped off a wall and landed on Private Neery. Herrington and Grubb shot the creature, but Neery was already dead.

Sweetwater lay on his stomach looking away from me toward the spheres. Sure that he could not see me, I slowly pulled out my pistol. The man had suffered too much. I wanted to end his suffering and seal the bomb, but I hesitated before pulling the trigger, and he turned and saw me.

He reached for me with the wad of raw meat that had once been his hand.

“Our gun,” was all he said.

“You’re an amazing man, Dr. Sweetwater,” I said as I aimed my pistol at his head. I had not yet laid my finger across the trigger. I hated what I was about to do.

Freeman pushed my gun away. He dug through the scientist’s canvas bag and pulled out Sweetwater’s small-caliber pistol. Freeman placed the gun in Sweetwater’s hand, then gently closed the little scientist’s fingers around the toy. Through the clear plastic of his oxygen mask, a faint smile formed across Sweetwater’s bloodstained mouth.

“Turn us over,” he called to Freeman, sounding like a sick child.

Freeman carefully rolled him onto his stomach and stretched his arms out so that he looked like a soldier lying in wait. During their time alone in the cockpit, Sweetwater and Freeman must have discussed how the scientist wanted to die.

Herrington looked back over the scene, and said, “Good luck, Doc,” on an open channel that everyone but Sweetwater could hear. “It’s too bad they don’t clone natural-borns; we could use an entire battalion of men like you.”

As I started to slide the nuke into its sleeve, I saw Freeman gently pat Sweetwater on the back. The little pistol fell from his hand, and I knew William Sweetwater had died.

“Okay, boys, I’m going to start the timer. On my mark, start running and shooting, and don’t stop till you’ve reached the transport,” I said.

I heard a round of aye-ayes.

For a brief moment, it seemed like everything would work out, then the world around us suddenly became brighter. I turned and saw that the long line of spheres had begun to dilate; and worse, I saw the yellow outlines of Avatari soldiers inside each sphere.

Half-convinced the bomb would explode the moment I reassembled it, I shoved the inner mechanism back into its sleeve. The window on the outside of the outer cylinder showed that the clock had begun to count down the moment the innards snapped into place. I noted the time in my visor and sprang to my feet.

“Go!” I yelled.

Behind me, Avatari energy forms began marching out of the spheres. There must have been thousands of them, and there might have been tens of thousands more waiting to emerge. They were behind us, not between us and our way back to the transport, and they were slow. If we ran quickly, I thought we might still make it out.

Grabbing the handles on either end of the nuke, I hefted it off the ground, but I was weak from the march down here. I had trouble lifting the damn thing, and I had to wrestle it toward the gas. Less than a hundred feet away from me, more glowing yellow soldiers took form and emerged from the spheres—an army of creatures made of nothing but energy. Seeing the Avatari step into the knee-deep carpet of gas that surrounded the spheres, I had a moment’s hope that the gas would dissolve them.

“Run!” I shouted, and dropped the armed nuke into the gas.

There were only four of us now. Grubb led the way, scrambling up the side of the ridge that led back across the cavern. Herrington followed, his pistol ready in case anything stepped in his way.

In the dark confines of the cavern, thousands of glowing beings poured out of the spheres behind us. They strolled across the layer of gas like a phosphorous tide, the light from their bodies spreading its glow through the gloom.

At the top of the ridge, Herrington stopped and turned to look back. “Harris, you better get moving. The whole specking Mudder Army’s behind you.”

A few yards ahead of me, Ray Freeman ran like an injured man, his back curled, his shoulders hunched and tight. He struggled to climb the loose slag along the ridge until I came up behind him and rammed him forward. It was a struggle—the man weighed at least 350 pounds, and he was weak, but we managed to reach the top together.

I hazarded a look back. Avatari soldiers continued pouring out of the spheres. They walked across the gas and moved in our direction, apparently unaware of the nuclear device I had left. In another minute or two, their rifles would become solid enough to shoot. We could outrun the Avatari but not their light bolts.

Herrington jogged back in my direction carrying a grenade launcher. He said something about slowing the bastards down, and I yelled, “Go! Just go!” At this stage, with their bodies still made of energy, a rocket would not hurt the Avatari, but it might damage the nuclear device.

I had only run a short way before I looked back and saw something that made the hormone-warmed blood freeze in my veins—the glowing front line of the Avatari had reached the spot where William Sweetwater’s body lay on the ground as still as a rock. The light emanating from their bodies gave the ground around his corpse a golden glow.