Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

I saw a man lying facedown in a puddle of blood so deep that he could have drowned. His hand was wrapped around a gun, and his finger was on the trigger, so I shot him. Another man sat limp in a corner of the train. His hair was matted with blood, but he sat vertically and had a gun on his lap. He looked dead, and I saw no sign of breathing as I fired a shot into his chest. Either of them might have been alive enough to shoot me in the back as I passed.

I heard a crash, pivoted around and aimed my M27, then saw that it was Philips. “Don’t shoot, Harris, it’s me,” he said, holding his hands in front of his face.

I lowered my gun and started for the next car.

“I heard gunshots,” Philips said.

“I’m making sure there aren’t any survivors,” I said.

“You think any of these guys are alive?” Philips asked. He prodded a pile of bodies with the barrel of his M27. The man on the top slid over the other side showing no more signs of life than a sack of potatoes.

“Not in this car,” I said.

“What’s going on out there?” I called to my squad leaders.

“It’s getting ugly,” Thomer shouted. “They parked two trains out of range and off-loaded tanks. There’s a column headed right for us.” I could hear gunfire in the background.

“Targs?” I asked.

“Bigger. I think the Targs were meant to pin us down while they waited for the real guns to arrive.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“We’re still in the station,” Evans said. “They sent Targs around the building to cut us off.”

The door to the next compartment fell open and machine-gun fire sprayed across the wall above my head. I dropped to one knee and fired back, knowing I would not hit the gunman.

I snatched a grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it through the open doorway. The grenade exploded, blowing out most of the wall between our car and the next one. Nothing stirred when I got a look in the next car. I climbed over the remains of the door. With the train on its side, the doorway formed a horizontal stripe. It looked more like a window than a door.

“I’m not sure how long they’ll hold up against those tanks,” Philips said as he followed me into the next car.

I sighed. Maybe all of the bodies were bothering me. So much blood and carnage and no one left to shoot.

“Good news, gentlemen,” the colonel called over an open frequency. He had to be calling about the shields. If they were down, we could shoot our way out of this killing bottle. A rocket or two would take care of the Targs once the shields were down, and our grenadiers had plenty of rockets. If the shields were down, all we would have to do was hold out for a few more minutes, then the reinforcements would arrive—wave upon wave of soldiers.

“Navy SEALs have touched down on Mogat territory,” the colonel said. He spoke in a cheerful tone that radiated his utter ignorance about the fight. He was probably tucked away safely in a transport, a million miles from the action.

“Speck,” I hissed. “They’ve only specking touched down?” I asked. They’d barely begun their damn mission. “That’s great, sir,” I said. “Why don’t you call me when they shut down the specking power.”

“Watch yourself, Sergeant,” the colonel said. For a moment, it occurred to me that the spirit of the late Colonel Grayson had returned to haunt me through that fool.

“Sorry, sir,” I said.

“You and I are going to have a conversation when this is over, Harris,” he said over an open frequency that every Marine on the planet could hear.

Several Mogat survivors fired at us from inside the next car. I took cover behind the metal walls of a storage locker and radioed back to Philips. “Can you go up top and flank these guys?” I asked.

“I’ve got ’em, sir,” Philips answered. He called me “sir.” Enlisted men never called other enlisted men “sir.” That kind of respect was reserved for officers. By reprimanding me, the colonel had won me respect that I could never have earned on my own.

Bullets clattered against the metal and ricocheted around the compartment. The firing stopped for a moment. I looked around the locker and fired shots through the open door. I had nothing to shoot at, but I wanted to distract the Mogats on the other side. It did not work. When no one fired back, I ventured for a closer look and peered into the next car. I saw a Mogat trying to shoot through the windows along the top of the train. He must have been shooting at Philips, but his bullets would never get through the shielded glass.

One of the Mogats spotted me. I rolled back behind my cover as he shot. Then I heard the creaking of metal. I rolled out and fired at the man as he tried to climb onto my side of the door. I missed, and he ducked back for safety.

“How’s it going, Philips?” I called over the interLink.

“Keep your panties on, Master Sarge,” Philips sneered back. So much for respect.

“They’re expecting you,” I said, warning Philips.

“I know…I know.”

The gunfire continued, but now it was farther away. I rolled for a quick look, shot the Mogat who was supposed to be covering me, then rushed the door of the next compartment, where I got the drop on one of the three men tracking Philips. I shot him. As the other two turned on me, Philips shot them.

“Harris, are you there?” Thomer called in over the interLink.

“I’m here,” I said. “What’s going on out there?”

“They’re closing in on us,” Thomer said.

“Did the other platoon make it out?” I asked.

“Some of them,” Thomer said. “Those tanks caught a bunch of them in the open. Half of them did not make it across.”

“Squad counts,” I ordered.

“I’m down to nine,” Thomer said. One of those nine would be Philips, who was in here with me.

“Seven,” said Evans.

“Five,” said Greer.

Of my original forty-two men, I now had twenty-three remaining, including myself. If I did not find some way to get my men out of there, the roll call might only find two.

“Hold on,” I called over the platoon-wide band. “I’ll find a way to draw some of the heat off you. Just hold on.”

“You want to draw some heat?” Philips asked. “You should see what we have in here.”

The Mogats had only launched the first wave of their counterattack and already our invasion was unraveling around us. I wondered how long the platoons guarding the traffic ramps would hold out. I wondered if the Mogats would send gunships across the planet to attack our transports. Probably not. Why should they? Their Navy ruled orbital space. If they waited for us to surrender, they could take our transports intact.

Everything hinged on the SEALs. Our invasion was meant to draw Mogat forces away. Well, we’d pulled that one off. If the SEALs could just accomplish their objectives, some of us might survive.

“Harris, over here,” Philips called excitedly, as I came across the car.

Along the left wall, which had become the floor when the whole train tipped on its side, lay stacks of clear canisters filled with some sort of swirling brown gas. The canisters were strapped down tight. Nothing short of a grenade would have shattered them; the Mogats did not take any chances with this cargo.

Stacks of a different sort hung from the top of the train—canisters filled with gray, glittering gas. Seeing these lethal weapons, I could not help but smile.

“What is this shit?” Philips asked.

“The brown ones are distilled shit gas,” I said, borrowing that briefing officer’s parlance. “This is the most corrosive stuff you’ll ever see. Eats anything soft—skin, wires, rubber.”