Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“It’s getting crowded in here,” Illych called.

We opened fire, and the Mogats turned on us. It looked like stalemate for a moment. We had cover and position, but they had three men for every man in our group. The stalemate ended quickly, though. With the Mogats packed so close together, we hit them with every shot.

They did not give up easily, though, and we lost men. One lucky bastard hit Sutherland as he and his squad ducked for cover.

“Keep them pinned,” a SEAL leader radioed me over the interLink.

“Lay down fire,” I shouted to my men. We hid behind corners and in hatches. Lasers burned into walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Had the hatch not presented a bottleneck, the Mogats would have escaped into the engine room. Because it did, Illych managed to pick off the Mogats who tried.

In the meantime, more SEALs and Marines poured into the hall. We had cut off the Mogats’ escape routes, then we pinned them down. Soon we closed in on them. That ended the battle.

“Illych?” I asked.

“Blue Team, reporting.” Illych and another SEAL emerged from the engine room. When we’d arrived, Blue Team had forty men. Only two survived.

The battle for control of the bridge went much more smoothly. The Mogats never managed to cut through the thick bulkheads surrounding the bridge.

We captured the bridge, the engine room, the launch bay, and more. Realizing that they had lost the battle, two hundred Mogat sailors fell back into a cargo hold to make a last stand. When they refused to surrender, the SEALs welded the cargo-hold hatch and carried them home as prisoners of war.

“Colonel Grayson died a hero, sir,” I said, looking Admiral Brocius straight in the eye. “One of the bravest officers I have ever known.” Now that I had killed the late Colonel Grayson, it only seemed fitting that I should elevate the son of a bitch to hero status. Semper fi, Marine.

“A hero to the last, I’m sure,” Brocius growled. Whether he admitted it or not, he knew the score. Grayson had died in a sealed room surrounded by over a thousand men. Someone from our side shot him, and I fit the profile.

“I always hate it when natural-borns die in battle,” Brocius said. “Reports, letters to relatives, all that hero bullshit. Any idea who shot him?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Did you shoot him?” Brocius asked.

“Certainly not, sir,” I said.

“Harris, you came back with a specking Mogat battleship. You come back with another prize like that, and you can shoot ‘Wild Bill’ for all I care.” “Wild Bill” Grace was the most powerful man in Unified Authority government.

“I do not want to shoot anyone but the enemy, sir,” I said.

“Whoever that enemy might be,” Illych muttered under his breath. He knew me too well.

This was a private briefing. Illych and I stood at attention. Admiral Brocius and Admiral Brallier sat behind a table reviewing us. Brocius would give me a one-on-one briefing when he got the chance. I would learn a lot more without a competing admiral in the room. Brallier would do the same with Illych.

“Harris, I’ve reviewed the records from the battle,” Brallier said. “I must say, I’m impressed.”

I stood at attention, staring straight ahead, but I could see the satisfaction on Brocius’s face. His man had stolen the show. Illych might have been the first man on the Mogat planet and one of the last men holding the engine room, but nothing upstaged my launch-bay pyrotechnics.

“You bucking to become an officer again?” Brocius asked.

“No, sir. The sergeant is not looking for a promotion, sir,” I said. Later I would ask him about promoting Philips, but this was neither the time nor the place.

“How about you, Illych?” Admiral Brallier asked. “Do you think you deserve some bars for this?”

“No, sir,” Illych answered.

We both knew the same thing—becoming an officer meant living with natural-borns and dabbling in their petty politics. We preferred field work to command.

“I see,” said Brallier, sounding a little like the late Colonel Grayson.

The interview went on for an entire hour. Both admirals wasted time beating us down to make sure we did not put in for promotions. As we left the office, our caps tucked under our left arms and our minds swollen with frustration, Illych said, “Colonel, can I buy you a drink?”

“I’m a sergeant,” I said.

“A master gunnery sergeant…yes, I know,” Illych said. “You were a colonel when I met you, you did nothing to get demoted, and thinking of you as a colonel makes me feel better about the boys with bars and clusters.

“So, can I buy you a drink, Colonel?”

“How do you feel about doubling up?” I asked.

“Doubling up?”

We were in the administrative offices of the Golan Dry Docks. The polished plastic floor showed our reflection as cleanly as any mirror. The white walls gleamed under the bright fluorescent lights. The halls ran as far as the eye could see. Men in pressed uniforms and men in business suits, natural-borns all, walked the floor.

At the end of the hall was a sight that seemed incongruous in these polished premises. Thirty-six men in Marine tans stood loitering near an elevator. Everyone around them moved silently and efficiently. The boys joked in loud voices and laughed like drunks.

“I promised to take my boys out. You mind drinking with a bunch of Leatherneck clones?”

“Can I bring my SEALs?”

“We’ll drink with them if they’ll drink with us,” I said.

Illych gave me a rare smile. “I’ll get them.”

“Did you have to invite them SEALs?” Philips asked as he watched Illych and his SEALs enter the bar. “Those boys give me the willies.” Philips sat on a stool with his back to the bar. He held his beer in his right hand and leaned back on his left elbow.

“They should scare you,” I said. “Those ‘boys’ are death dressed in a Navy uniform.”

The bar was big and dim with brass lamps and lots of mirrors. Along the walls were models of the many different spacecrafts designed in this facility. Behind the bar, three bartenders in white shirts and red vests sorted through shelves of odd-shaped bottles.

This was a businessman’s bar. People came here to talk, not to drink. Soft music rolled from the speakers.

“Do they make you nervous?” Philips asked.

“Not especially. Not as much as you do,” I lied.

In truth, Philips would be more dangerous than the SEALs in most battlefield situations. He had absolutely no fear of dying. He could shoot as well as any man I knew, and he did not hesitate when it came to pulling the trigger. With his temperament, Philips would have washed out of recon training, but he knew how to carry himself on the battlefield.

“Shit, Master Sarge, you’re embarrassing me,” Philips said as he downed the rest of his beer. He immediately turned around and asked the bartender for another one.

I’d known men who preferred hard drinks or insisted on Earth-brewed beers. Not Philips. The man held no pretensions. He wanted his drinks cheap and fast and plentiful.

Thomer came to join us just as Illych and his company arrived.

“Are we still invited?” Illych asked as he strolled up.

There was something I noticed about Illych and his strain of clone—they all had an inferiority complex. They seemed to think that no one could like them.

When I first met them, the SEALs’ quiet mannerisms impressed me as independence. Later I amended that and thought they were introverts. Now I realized that they considered themselves somehow beneath the rest of society, even other clones.

“It’s an open bar,” Philips said, waving his beer to show the mostly empty tavern. “Pull up a seat.”