Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“Uhh! Poor Wallace,” Philips groaned.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They just shot his head off,” Philips said. “You should have seen it, Master Sarge. Wallace’s head just about burst like a damned water bomb. His legs are still in the vent but the rest of him went flying across the room.”

“Philips, get out of there!” I yelled.

“I’m leaving…I’m leaving,” Philips grumbled. “See you around, Wallace.”

“Sergeant, may I just take a moment to point out that Private Philips is a lunatic and a danger to this mission,” Evans chimed in.

“He just saved two men from your squad,” Thomer said.

Evans did not answer.

I chanced another look across the launch bay. A few guards congregated near the entrance to the corridor. The closest ship, no more than twenty feet from the elevator shaft in which I was hiding, sat entirely unguarded.

Adams and Nielsen might have nearly gotten themselves caught, but they had also drawn off most of the Mogats milling around the landing deck.

“Start the final act, I’m going in,” I said over the platoon-wide band.

If everything worked right, all of my men would converge in the corridor near the bridge, where Evans and Kasdan had built a barricade. Hidden in the bridge, Evans and Sutherland would track the Mogats’ movements while the rest of my men put on that last act, hiding behind the barricade and staging a losing gunfight. As the Mogats shot their puppets, my men would hopefully escape into the vent system.

At this point I no longer had time to worry about how the show went over. I had a trick of my own to perform. I needed to slip into one of the transports.

Before leaving the lift shaft, I pushed off the walls and went up as high as I could for one last look around the flight deck. The Mogats had left their landing lights on, flooding the bay with bright illumination. Across the way, fifteen guards clustered around a ship on the far side of the deck.

I felt the combat hormone enter my circulatory system. I felt the warmth and the calm. My breathing slowed. The wing of the nearest transport was no more than a few feet from me. I took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. I took another breath, held it, and launched myself at the landing gear of the nearest transport.

With the landing gear between me and the guards, I could not see them. I could not listen to them because of all of the chatter on the Mogat frequencies. The Mogats’ commandos were excited. They were closing in on the enemy.

“Evans, report,” I called as I peered around the landing gear. The guards were still in place, still clustered together uselessly by the entrance. Idiots.

“All according to plan,” Evans said. “They’ve nailed all but three of our puppets?”

“And our guys?” I asked.

“Everybody but Philips is out of there.”

That was according to plan. We couldn’t make the puppets aim and shoot, so we had to do it for them. Philips had volunteered for the job. He liked the idea of shooting at Mogats.

“Okay, I’m almost on board. I want you boys to go dark and stay dark the moment I’m in place. You got that?”

“Got it,” Evans said.

“And that goes double for Philips,” I said.

By this time the hormone had saturated my blood. My muscles tingled the way they might tingle after a perfect workout. My skin had a pleasant sting that reminded me of stepping into a hot shower on a cold night. I took a quick glance around the transport’s landing gear. If the guards had been looking for me, they would have spotted me; but they were too busy talking among themselves.

Pulling myself quickly along the outside of the transport, I rounded a corner and had to grab anything I could find to stop my momentum. Floating inside the kettle, all by himself, was a lone guard.

I managed to hook my foot on a pole before I flew into view. Then I backed out and headed for the next transport.

Maybe the Mogats had assigned a man to stay on each ship or maybe the guy simply did not like a crowd. I should have known something was wrong. Fifteen men guarding four ships—had I stopped to do the math I would have noticed the uneven number.

I pulled myself back off the transport and glanced around the edge of the kettle. Those fifteen useless Mogat guards all faced away from me. Why should they stay alert? Their security systems told them that the only enemies on the ship were a quarter mile away, surrounded by hundreds of commandos.

I looked at the guards and wondered what they were doing. They must have been chatting. You can’t play cards in zero gravity. You can’t smoke or drink in a space suit.

After one last perfunctory glance, I launched myself toward the next transport. It was a tense moment. I had to cross an eighty-foot open area in which I would be completely visible. If someone happened to notice me, I would be an easy target. But my stealth kit jammed their sensors and the guards never looked in my direction. I jetted across the open area at what might well have been fifty miles per hour and caught hold of one of the shield antennae on the next transport seconds later.

From the outside, transports looked bulky and bloated. The kettle, the soldier-and cargo-carrying part of the ship, was a dome with a twelve-foot roof. The core of the ship was a narrow spine with stubby wings. The spine ran across the top of the kettle. From the side, transports reminded me of a severely pregnant dragonfly.

I pulled my way around the next transport. When I came to the opening at the back, I looked around the door and saw three men floating inside. Given the opportunity, I would have pulled my particle beam and shot all three of them. I did not have that option.

“Philips?” I called on the interLink.

“Master Sarge, you on their transport yet? It’s getting a bit hot up here,” Philips said, sounding more bored than anything else.

“I’m in trouble here. You have any puppets left?”

“Sure, Sergeant. I’ve still got a stiffy for you.” The rest of the platoon heard this. I heard them giggling over the interLink.

“Grab your stiff…your puppet, and get down here,” I ordered. “Thomer, watch his back.”

“I’m already on it,” Thomer said. Thomer protected Philips, not that the guy needed much in the way of protection.

Less than ten seconds passed before Evans came on line, and said, “They’re sending in a scout to check out the barricade.”

“Are you dark?” I asked. Dark meant that he had engaged his stealth kit and hidden himself.

“I’m in a vent. I can see them from here. They’re examining the bodies.”

“Are they fooled?” I asked.

“You sick bastard,” Sutherland yelled.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s a Mogat playing with one of the bodies. He’s posing it like a doll.”

“Someone’s playing with my stiffy?” Philips asked.

“Where are you, Philips?” I asked.

“Right outside your hangar. You ready to roll?”

That was the thing about Philips—you never knew whether you should court-martial him or give him a medal. He could fight better than any Marine in my platoon. In his own way, Philips was a specking battlefield genius.

I looked around the ship just in time to see the bright green flash of a particle beam. Philips fired three times and hit three guards. The rest scattered and ran for cover.

“I don’t know what’s happening on your side of the boat, but this side just emptied in a hurry,” Evans called down from the bridge.

“I’ll bet. They’re all headed this way,” I said.

The Mogats in the transport flew out, their pistols drawn. Across the launch bay, the twelve remaining guards fired at the doorway.

“You okay out there, Philips?” I asked as I glided into the empty kettle.