Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“You know what, Sutherland, you’d make a good engineer,” I said as I traversed the scaffold.

“Thank you,” he said.

“That was an insult,” I said.

“Then go speck yourself,” Sutherland said.

Taking one last look up and down the length of our work, I asked Sutherland if he had everything he would need for the mission. He held up his satchel. “I’m good for a day,” he said. That was an exaggeration. In the discomfort of space, he would not be able to eat or shit. Our armor did have a hydration wire to protect us from the dry air our rebreathers produced, and our undergarments included a vacuum tube and bottle for urine. If everything went according to plan, however, Sutherland might not have much of a stay on that wretched battleship.

The stealth kits I had requisitioned for this mission were not the sleek three-inch remotes used by the SEALs. Central Cygnus Fleet did not carry those. Our general-issue kits were ten inches long and shaped like the bottom half of a combat boot. Our stealth kit had meters for measuring sensor fields. They even had a handy-dandy little device that left virtual beacons so you could mark your trail.

When I was in boot camp, I used to like cunning, space-saving devices that combined knives, cooking utensils, and communications equipment in one convenient handle. After a battle or two, I learned to despise them. I wanted my gun to shoot, my knife to stab, and everything else to perform the task God meant it to do. I did not like fishing through handles to find the right blade. The only exception was my combat helmet. God went above and beyond the call of duty when he created Marine combat armor. I loved each and every lens in my visor, and I liked the way my helmet protected my head, too.

My helmet had lenses that let me see in the dark, scan areas for heat, and zoom in on objects. It also had a sonar device that did double duty measuring distances and locating hollow areas. The lenses in my visor also contained a chip that recorded everything I saw and an interLink terminal that let me communicate with everybody or anybody in my platoon. In my religion, with the government as God, combat armor was divine.

Using the oversized stealth device to jam the Mogats’ security sensors, Sutherland made his way to the engine room. There he would set up camp and wait. I watched him pull his way into the belly of that battleship, an insignificant speck moving through layers of metal, plastic, and wiring that really did look like a wound.

“Lieutenant, are you there?” I hailed the explorer.

“Sergeant?” The pilot tried to control his voice, but I heard desperation in it. “Are you finished?”

“We’re dividing up now. Most of the platoon is ready to leave whenever you are, sir,” I said.

“What about the rest?” the pilot asked.

“You get to leave us here,” I said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that you are going to miss the big show.” I added, “Come back in five hours. We’ll need you to pick up whatever is left.”

The explorer lit up and drifted in our direction. Old as it was, the little ship had a bright, sleek look. If this had been a transport, it would have been bulky and bulged around its center. Civilian-designed vessels like this explorer had style. The explorer had a brightly colored fuselage, dramatic hull lighting, and an all-glass cockpit that bulged like a bubble. It would never hold up under fire, but it was not meant for war.

The explorer pulled right up to the scaffold at a speed so slow you would have thought someone was pushing it.

“Master Sergeant, are you sure you don’t need more hands?” one of my men asked. “I wouldn’t mind staying back.”

“I can stay,” another Marine volunteered.

“Better to have too many men than too few,” a third man offered.

“You have your orders,” I said, barely acknowledging the offer. Master gunnery sergeants do not thank people often. Soldiers can be as polite as they want; Marine sergeants do not say “please” or “thank you” to their men.

The dome at the rear of the explorer opened. When we’d arrived a few hours earlier, we had four sled-loads of men and equipment. Now thirty-one men would return. Watching the last load of men disappear into the explorer ship, it occurred to me that this was not a Marine operation. It was a bloody SEAL op being run by an overly ambitious Marine.

“You going to be okay out here?” the pilot asked over the interLink. It was a hollow inquiry. He did not ask this until he had sealed up his ship and started away.

I wanted to ask if he was offering to stay, but I played it politic. “We’re good, sir,” I said. “See you in five hours.”

The first time out, we fooled the Mogats with a cat-and-mouse chase and a single body. We didn’t need luck that time, the SEALs were more skilled at playing that kind of game than my Marines.

I stood on that scaffold with the torn section of hull above me and the vastness of space as a backdrop. I watched the explorer pick its way out of the space graveyard, nudging the ruins of fighter craft out of its way. Ten men had stayed behind with me. Some of the men waited beside me on the scaffold. We watched the explorer, none of us saying a word. It was a small ship, and it soon vanished out of sight. A moment later, I saw the flash of a distant anomaly and knew that the ship had broadcasted.

Watching the anomaly fade, I realized that the silence in my helmet had a profoundly sobering effect on me.

Marines generally chatter over an open interLink. This time they stood silent and still. I wanted to tell them that everything would work out. I wanted to tell them that they would be back on the Obama in a few hours and they would get to rest in their own racks.

“Okay, ladies. Switch on those Stealth kits, we have work to do,” I said. “The first man I catch slacking gets a particle-beam enema.” For the average Marine clone, hearing a sergeant growl offered more comfort than a glass of mother’s milk.

Last time out, I rode up the gash in a sled. This time we kicked off the scaffolding and leaped up three floors. We did not take spotlights or laser torches. We took satchels with clothing, oversized stealth kits, and particle-beam pistols.

Our props for this delicate performance included empty suits of soft-shelled armor. The combat armor used by Marines was not bulletproof, but it was rigid. Engineers, firemen, and other noncombat personnel wore flexible armor. It was not as pliable as cloth, but it was a lot softer than the metal-resin alloy used in our armor.

“You boys ready for the cadaver roundup?” I asked. We split up in groups and searched the ship.

The next task on the agenda was morbid but necessary. We went scouting for bodies.

When the U.A. sank this boat, the bodies in the open areas were flushed into space. We would need to scour closed rooms and compartments now. I started my search in a latrine on the third deck, just behind the birthing area.

The entire ship would have been pitch-black had I not used the night-for-day lens, but the latrine seemed particularly dark. Maybe it was the small size of the room and the way the stalls reached out like fingers. The darkness just seemed to close in around me. There was something eerie about the empty latrine. It reminded me of walking across the barracks late at night. Stainless-steel urinals hung from the walls, the sinks were pristine, and the floor was clean, but no one moved. I went to look in the toilet stalls.

I found the first of my corpses wedged into a stall. The man hovered an inch or two above the seat. When the lasers struck the ship, he had probably just finished his business. His pants were up and sealed. His neck was broken. Depending on his luck, that might have killed him. Otherwise, he might have suffocated, or died as his own blood pressure caused his body to explode, or froze to death. Death in space came in many flavors, all of them fast.