Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

Once my platoon settled in, a second platoon joined us. Normally a sprinkling of officers would come along for the ride, but this time we clones traveled alone. My platoon was still shy some men from hijacking that battleship, so we came nowhere near filling the transport to capacity.

I had each of my squad leaders take a roll call. They reported every man present and accounted for. A moment later we got the all clear sign, and the kettle door closed.

We did not know how long it would take to get to the target. It took three minutes to fly to our base ship. Between the Japanese Fleet, the Confederate Arms Fleet, and the battleship we stole, we had thirty-seven self-broadcasting battleships. The Confederate Arms had an additional twenty-five self-broadcasting destroyers.

Battleships had two launch bays, each of which was designed to accommodate four transports. Each destroyer had a single launch bay. Crews had worked around the clock to prepare the ships for attack, not only adding a stealth device, but expanding every launch bay so that it could handle six transports instead of four. In theory, our landing force included 59,400 Marines.

We were a force of nearly 60,000 men being dropped among an enemy with a population in the hundreds of millions. The brass wanted us to distract the enemy; but if the real forces did not land soon, any distraction we provided might be short-lived.

“Five million seems awfully generous,” I said. I remembered Admiral Brocius’s house and the casino on the second floor. He liked house odds. Maybe he was betting Freeman would not live to collect.

Freeman sat silent for a moment. He opened his rifle case and pulled out a magnificent sniper rifle with a computerized scope. Returning the rifle, he pulled out his gear and sorted it. He had rope, grenades, and a knife. He pulled the knife half out of its scabbard, looked at the blade, then pushed it back in.

Around the kettle men stood or sat in silence. A few well-trained Marines stripped and tested their M27s. Most of the men wore their helmets. If they spoke among themselves, I would not hear it unless I located their frequency.

“So what is that guy doing here?” Philips asked over a platoon-wide frequency.

“Just so you know, Philips, Ray Freeman is the best friend you can have on this mission. In the entire Mogat Empire, there is only one great military mind, and Freeman came to put a bullet through it,” I answered on a private band.

“He came to assassinate Crowley?”

“He did.”

“So he’s a sniper?” Philips asked.

“A sniper? Philips, snipers are guys who sneak around with rifles waiting for someone to shoot. Freeman doesn’t wait.”

“No shit? A specking corpse factory,” Philips said. He sounded impressed.

“Just keep out of his way.”

Freeman had his helmet on. Since he was not a Marine, and his armor was of civilian make, he could not legally access the frequencies we used on the interLink. “Freeman, you on?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Did you and Admiral Brocius discuss any other work he might have for you after you’ve collected on Crowley?”

“No,” Freeman said.

“You do know that civilians are not allowed to listen in on communications on this frequency?” I asked. Then, without waiting for Freeman to answer, I added, “If you listen in on my communications, we won’t need to waste time updating each other.”

Freeman did not respond.

We touched down on our base ship. We would step off of our transport, tucked away in the launch bay. Once all of the transports checked in, the battleships would broadcast to a spot 100 million miles from Mogatopolis, where no one would detect the electrical anomaly. Then we would fly the four-hour trip into Mogat space under the cloak of the new stealth engines.

Once every last destroyer and battleship was in place, we would launch our transports. There was no way to cloak or protect our transports, so we would scramble down to the planet as quickly as possible.

Standing there, in the dim and anxious atmosphere, I comforted myself by looking for things that would make me feel safe. I did not come up with much.

I thought about the Mogats…the Believers. They might know we were coming. They had to know that we hijacked their battleship and that we now knew how to find them, but they would think we had no way of striking them. Since they did not know about our alliance with the Confederate Arms and the Japanese, they would not know that we had access to a self-broadcasting fleet. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the alliance was both our best-kept secret and our greatest strength. Even the men in my platoon did not realize we were riding in a Confederate Arms ship.

Time passed slowly now. We could not hear what happened outside our sealed world. Had our host ship already broadcasted itself? Were we nearing enemy space? What if the Mogats spotted us? We could die in a flash, never knowing the battle had already begun.

Then, after hours of sitting, we received our warning. Lights flashed in the cabin as our pilot prepared to launch.

The invasion had begun.

“Sergeant Harris, do you want to come up to the cockpit?” the pilot asked.

“On my way,” I said.

I looked up at Freeman. “I have to go to the cockpit,” I said. He continued checking his gear.

“Where are you going?” Private Philips asked, as I started toward the ladder.

“The pilot wants to see me,” I said. I thought for a moment, then radioed back to the pilot. “Can I bring one of my men?”

“We have room for a fourth.” That might not have applied if I tried to bring Freeman.

“Philips, you want to come?”

“Sure,” he said.

I had a reason for taking Philips. He might have been old and irreverent, but he was a leader. When the bullets started flying, and bombs started to burst, the guys in the platoon would forget all about who wore stripes and who wore clusters. Despite his antics around the barracks, Philips kept his head under fire. During an extended campaign, the rest of the platoon would look up to a Marine like him.

We climbed the ladder and removed our helmets before entering the cockpit.

The inside of the cockpit was dark except for the light from the dials and gauges. We had a pilot and a copilot for the flight. Both men wore combat gear without helmets. The pilot looked back, and said, “Which one of you is Harris?”

“Me, sir,” I said. He was a lieutenant.

The transport had just entered the planet’s atmosphere. Below us, an endless plain stretched ahead. Special gear under our transport shined a blinding light down on the landscape.

“I hear you’ve been down here before,” the pilot said.

“Once,” I said.

“Think you can find one of those gravity chutes?” the pilot asked.

“I might recognize one if we passed close to it,” I said.

“Good enough,” the pilot said. “They sent an explorer yesterday to scout the place. The pilot mapped a path for us, but I want you up here just in case.”

I nodded. “The gate we entered was in the mountains,” I said.

“Oh, man, that’s one shitty-looking planet,” Philips said.

“We’re not landing on this part. The place we’re going has air,” I said.

There was a radar scope beside the pilot’s seat. My gaze strayed toward it, and I froze. If I read that display correctly, hundreds of ships had gathered behind us. Then I realized they were other transports. “Those are all ours, right?” I asked.

“Every last one of them,” the pilot said. “Believe me, you’ll hear alarms if the Mogats show.”

“Transport pilots, this is Fleet Command. Be advised that enemy ships are approaching. We are going to evacuate orbit in twenty seconds. Repeat, we will evacuate in twenty seconds.”