Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

The door rattled.

“I cut their communications the moment we left,” Illych said. The man had ice in his veins.

The door rattled again. This time someone started pounding on it.

“This will quiet them,” Illych said. He reached across the controls and flipped the switch that controlled the gravity generator.

“Let’s hope no one was taking a shit,” I said.

By the annoyed look Illych shot me, I could tell that he did not approve of my language.

Pounding on a door in zero gravity takes some thinking. Hit the door hard and you will fly in the other direction. Try to shake the door without finding some way to anchor yourself, and you end up shaking yourself instead of the door.

“You’d better do something,” Illych said. “They’re going to pull their lasers next.” The door to the cockpit was made with a laser-dampening clay-and-metal alloy. It would hold for a minute or two of laser abuse.

“How long before we land?” I asked.

“Almost there,” Illych said, still as cool as ever.

I looked through the windshield. We were just outside the launch bay. The door was wide open. The atmospheric locks were disabled. We drifted in and hovered for a moment as Illych rotated the ship.

“Motherbird, we have landed. Repeat, Motherbird, transport one has landed. The coast appears to be clear,” Illych called in.

Outside the cockpit, a dozen laser beams pecked away at our door.

“I believe they’re calling your name,” Illych said.

“Thanks, pal,” I said.

“Harris, I have a present for you.” I looked back and saw him holding out his right hand in a fist, palm up. When he spread his fingers, I saw he was holding a grenade.

“Won’t that damage the transport?” I asked as I took the grenade.

“Not a chance,” Illych said. “It’s a dud.”

“A dud? Why do I want a dud?”

“Those boys are in zero gravity,” Illych said. “Chasing a grenade should keep them busy.”

A distraction, I thought. It would work on me. “Can you crank up the lights in the cabin? Let’s let them see it coming.”

Illych switched off the emergency bulbs and turned on the cargo lights. The kettle would not be bright by any means, but the commandos would see what I tossed to them.

“Are you going to share in the fun?” I asked Illych as I went to the hatch.

“Sorry, sport, I have to sit this one out. As the only qualified pilot on this mission, I’m indispensable.”

“Indispensable my ass,” I said, knowing that he was right. I put on my helmet. In another moment, having sealed armor would be the deciding factor on who lived and who died.

I opened the door just a crack. In the moment before the storm of lasers speared the door and wall, I saw men floating under the metallic cathedral ceiling. I bowled the grenade underhanded and resealed the door as the first lasers struck around me. Then I waited for the grenade to have its effect.

When I opened the door again, nobody fired at me. The commandos were hiding as best they could and waiting for the grenade to explode.

Had the grenade been real, it would have juiced every last one of them. It would not have destroyed the transport, but it would have done damage. The dud, however, just tumbled harmlessly through the air, causing absolute chaos. The Mogat commandos pushed off each other and collided into one another in their general panic.

The cockpit opened to a three-foot-wide catwalk which led to the ten-foot ladder from the floor of the kettle. Seeing my grenade, everyone had scattered down. When I peered over the ledge of the catwalk, I saw men hiding under benches and men floating pell-mell across the cabin.

“Illych, drop them,” I called over the interLink. He restarted the gravity generator, and the commandos who had been floating dropped to the deck. Then I opened fire.

My job was to distract the commandos. In this case, death was a perfectly acceptable form of distraction. I saw a man hiding behind a girder and fired, hitting him in the arm. He dropped into a crouching position. My next shot hit the top of his helmet.

No one seemed to know what happened, so I targeted another Mogat as he ran to help my first victim. I waited until he bent over with his back to me, then aimed at the knot in his armor that housed his rebreather. He collapsed onto the first guy. It would have looked comical, like one dead guy had tripped over the other, but the rebreather exploded, and flames danced out of the hole.

I had visions of building a pile of dead Mogats.

Another commando looked up in my direction and fired at me before seeing where I hid. His laser seared into the wall about five feet to my left. My shot hit him square in the visor. He fell near the metal doors at the rear of the kettle. So much for my pile.

It felt good to be back in combat. I felt the hormone surging through my blood, but I knew I could stop when the battle was over. Early Liberator clones had crawled out of the tube battle-ready. Most of them got hooked on violence because they never knew anything else. I was raised in an orphanage and steeped in military protocol. Self-control was less of an issue.

At least twenty commandos fired back at me. I ducked low. I had the high-ground advantage. They could hit the catwalk, but they could not hit me. Some guy bucking for a medal leaped toward the front of the kettle. He probably wanted to shoot up from under the catwalk. He might have even planned to shoot through it. I hit him as he jumped, and he fell facedown on the deck.

“Grab a handhold,” Illych called over the interLink.

As I wedged myself into a corner, Illych cut the gravity. A commando immediately launched himself in the air. I shot him, and his dead body slammed headfirst into the roof.

It wasn’t the gravity that Illych was warning me about. On the other side of the kettle, the heavy metal doors started to slide apart. As their seal broke, the pressure of our oxygenated atmosphere swept unprepared commandos against the rear of the transport like leaves in a hurricane.

It took approximately three seconds for the pressure to right itself. During that time, at least a third of the Mogat commandos were sucked up and flung against the rear of the kettle. I have no idea how many survived the experience.

Then the SEALs stormed up the ramp. Five Navy SEALs, dressed in the same antiquated armor as Mogat commandos, charged up the ramp firing lasers. They charged into the cargo-loading area, killing everyone they saw, then found cover and dug in. More SEALs waited outside the transport doors. The entire shooting match took less than a minute.

“The transport is secure,” I called out over an open frequency.

“That was easy,” Illych responded. “Now for the hard part.”

“Motherbird, this is Away Team.”

“Did you find anything?” the Mogat communications officer asked.

“The ship’s clean,” Illych said.

“Clean?” the officer asked.

“Not a clone to be found,” Illych said.

“I’ll put you through to the captain.”

A moment later a voice asked, “What is the situation, Away Team?”

“The ship is clean, sir,” Illych said. In the movies, soldiers always push it when they make these calls. They say puns or play with words, giving their enemies clues that go unnoticed. Illych, a SEAL instead of a Hollywood actor, did not play that game. We had an unarmed transport, they had a heavily armed battleship with seemingly impregnable shields. Illych stuck to the script.

“Have you searched the ship?”

“Yes, sir, every deck. I’ve been monitoring the security sensors. They picked up our guys, but that’s it.”

“Somebody set off the alarms,” the Mogat officer said.