Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

I pointed to the canisters on the other wall. They were filled with compressed silver gas. They looked like they might have contained mercury. “You know what this is, right?” I asked.

Philips shook his head.

“That’s noxium gas. You’ve heard of noxium gas before?” I said.

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of it.” Terrorists favored noxium because it was cheap and scary. It bored into people and turned them to jelly, then dispersed into the air. You could shoot it into a building, kill everyone inside, then enter the building yourself five minutes later. The air would be clean.

“How are you holding up out there?” I called on a frequency that reached only my squad leaders.

“Rumsfelds,” Evans said. “They’ve got specking Rumsfelds!”

Of course there were Rumsfelds. I should have known there would be Rumsfelds. That explained the gas canisters. Rumsfelds were designed to spew supercharged gas. They also packed the standard machine guns and cannons.

Despite all the weapons and armor, the Rumsfeld was obsolete before it rolled off the assembly line. It moved too slowly for practical use in battle. Other battlefield units could outmaneuver Rumsfelds and ultimately cut them down. The government had labeled them obsolete thirty years ago, but they should have been discontinued long before that.

“Are they on you?” I asked. I worked as I spoke, hoping to find the guns that foot soldiers used to shoot gas canisters. I found a rack of compressed-gas shooters near the door. These were breech-loading rifles with barrels as thick as baseball bats.

“Bearing down,” Evans said.

“Just hold on,” I said. “Help is on the way.”

Rumsfelds had a closed circulation system with filters that could weed out noxium gas—a biogas that quickly evaporated into the environment. I did not think the tanks’ filters would hold up against distilled shit gas, however. That long-lasting corrosive would eat through the filters. Shit gas hung around for hours as it seeped into the ground. The Rumsfelds would probably fire the canisters in one direction, then drive off in the other.

I pulled off my helmet and placed four canisters of shit gas into it. The canisters were about three inches tall and two inches in diameter. I removed three of the other canisters as well, the ones with the gray-colored gas.

Philips removed his helmet and did the same.

Strapping a shooter to my back, I climbed to the top of the train. Up ahead, I saw at least twenty Targs facing into the station. Rumsfelds lurked in the distance, rumbling in like dinosaurs. I sat on the edge of the doorway with my feet dangling down as I unstrapped that shooter. “Philips, pass me my helmet,” I said.

Each of the tanks had brown camouflage paint and a golden crown painted on its turrets. The Targs had formed an elliptical row about forty feet from the station. They fired cannons into the station in rapid and unordered succession. I saw the flashes, then heard the rumble of their guns a split second later.

Hoping to create an uncrossable puddle, I planned to fire distilled shit gas into the street behind the station. Distilled shit gas was heavy, and that puddle would last for hours. I would shoot canisters of noxium gas in front of the station to clear a path. In the open air, the noxium would do its work and evaporate in a minute.

“If you see gas floating in your direction, run,” I said over the platoon-wide band.

“In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve got tanks out there,” Greer said.

“Not for long,” I said as I loaded a canister of noxium gas into my shooter.

“When I give you the signal, I want you to run,” I said.

“They’ll hit us,” Greer said.

“Take my word on this one, Greer,” I said. “Getting hit by a shell would be a lot better than waiting around for this shit.” I fired. The canister sailed through the air so slowly that I could actually watch it as it hurtled toward the target. The shot lobbed over the roof of the train station. A moment later, the top of a silver-white cloud appeared in the air.

I quickly loaded a canister of distilled shit gas and fired behind the train station. The canister flew into the center of the tanks, where it vanished in a rapidly spreading cloud of brown haze.

“That gas won’t hurt those tanks,” Philips said, as I loaded another canister of shit gas. “They have shields.”

“It won’t hurt the outside of those tanks,” I said, and squeezed off the next shot, lobbing this canister deeper into the tank column. “Those boys have to breathe something. It’s like spraying insects.”

Philips handed me the next canister. It was gray—noxium gas. I loaded it into the shooter and fired over the roof of the train station.

“Get running!” I yelled to my squad leaders.

Philips handed me another canister of distilled shit gas. I raised my trajectory and fired at the Rumsfelds in the distance. Dinosaurs that they were, the first of the Rumsfelds charged straight ahead, directly into the spreading cloud. Philips handed me another canister. I loaded it and fired deeper into their lines. I did not want any stragglers to escape.

One of the Rumsfelds fired back.

“Incoming,” I yelled, bracing myself in the door of the train for cover.

The shell hit the train like a giant hammer. Standing below me, Philips lost his balance and fell, his arms cradling the canister-filled helmet. The canisters did not break. They were designed not to break until fired, but I did not want to test the quality of their manufacture.

“Give me a brown one,” I told Philips.

Tanks were now coming in our direction. I reached down without saying a word, and he slapped the canister into my hand. I loaded and fired at the tanks, and they fired at us.

“Duck!” I yelled, as I dropped into the train.

Philips placed his helmet top down on the floor and laid over it, cradling it in his arms. If he’d seen what those gases could do to a man, he would not have been so brave.

One shell hit the train, followed by a second, then a third and a fourth, in rapid succession. Then there was silence.

I emptied the remaining canisters out of my helmet, then pulled my helmet down over my head. I called my squad leaders. “Report.”

“What was that?” Thomer asked.

“What is your status?” I asked.

“Safe for now,” Evans said. “We made it to an apartment building.”

“What did you hit them with?” Thomer repeated.

“Bug spray,” I said. “Be ready to make a quick exit from your building. The reason they brought that shit out here was to feed it to you.”

General Crowley, I thought to myself. The son of a bitch was always ahead of the game. He knew that if we made it to this planet, we would hide in buildings with tank-proof shields; and he found a way around it. Gas the buildings, and the occupants would die. Bastard.

“What are you doing?” Philips asked, as I headed back into the car with all of the gas canisters. The shelling had stopped but more Rumsfelds were undoubtedly on the way. The last place he wanted to be was in a train car carrying canisters filled with deadly gases. I didn’t want to go back there any more than he did.

I had not worked with Ray Freeman for two full years without learning a trick or two. The man did not talk much, but he knew the angles for every situation. He knew how to find winning solutions to desperate situations and how to turn traps to his advantage.

“The Mogats know we’re here,” I said as I pulled a grenade from my armor. Grenades were all-purpose devices. You could pull the pins and toss them, or you could program them, then pull the pins. In this case, I programmed the grenade for maximum yield and set it to explode on impact, then I pulled the pin and laid it to rest between two canisters of distilled shit gas. Then I set three more grenades the same way.