Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“You mean Amos Crowley, the Mogat general?”

“Crowley is a field general. He likes to go down to the field to fight with his men. He’s down there somewhere right now. At least he should be. He’ll be sleeping with Napoleon and Caesar if Freeman spots him.” I did not believe what I’d just said. In truth, I regretted bringing Freeman on a suicide mission.

“Are the Mogats outside your building, too?” Evans asked.

I looked out the window. The path back to the train station was almost clear. Most of the tanks and troops had gathered around the tenements. The street around the building in which my platoon had hidden looked like a parking lot.

“Nope,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “All’s clear.”

“You should stay put,” Evans said.

“Are you shitting me?” I asked. It might have been the combat hormone speaking by then. If someone had shot me in the head at that moment, I think I might have leaked out more hormone than blood or brains. “Just keep some men by the back door. Philips and I are on our way.”

I switched frequencies. “Philips.”

“Thomer says I should shoot you. He says I should shoot you and lie low until the Army comes.” Thomer must have listened in on part of my conversation with Evans.

Philips stood in front of the window staring down at the street. The sky had turned dark during the time that we hid in the Laundromat. Bright lights shone all over the city, and fires blazed near the train station and some of the traffic ramps.

Philips removed his helmet as he viewed this panorama. He stood still as a tree holding his M27 by the butt in his limp right hand, its muzzle pointing straight at the floor. “Look at all those specking Mogats. Hell, with that many men, they don’t need to shoot us. They can just wait till we run out of bullets, then trample us to death.”

I pulled off my helmet and stood beside Philips. Neither of us spoke for a time. Then I pointed to the building where the rest of the platoon was waiting. “They’re only six blocks away.”

He said, “Damn, Master Sarge, you can’t possibly think we’ll survive those six blocks.”

“You know what, Philips, I really hate being called Master Sarge. The rank is master sergeant, not master sarge.”

He smiled but did not answer.

Still glaring at Philips, I replaced my helmet. It was at that moment that the lights went out.

The city lights did not stutter. They did not blink on and off. They went out. In the pitch-darkness, my visor automatically switched to night-for-day vision. I stared out the big glass window down at a cityscape painted in blue-white and black.

I looked over at Philips as he put on his helmet. “The power is out,” I said.

“I can see that,” he growled.

“You don’t get it,” I said, and I fired my M27 into the window, which shattered into tire-sized pieces of jagged glass and dropped to the street.

“Evans, Thomer, Greer,” I called. “The shields are down.”

“Harris,” a familiar voice interrupted my conversation with my squad leaders. “You out there?”

“Nice to hear from you,” I said.

“I’m the only SEAL with any time on this planet,” Illych said. “They had to send me.

“I’m in their capital sector. You should have seen this place. It’s wild. It’s half government, half religious shrine. Too bad it’s all going away.”

By this time Philips and I had already started down the stairs. The rows of washing machines did not glisten or reflect light. There was no light for them to reflect. This world had become that dark, as black as any hole.

“You guys pulled off a coup turning out the lights,” I said, full of admiration for the SEALs.

“Not just the lights,” Illych said. “We sent two teams into the military sector. Alpha Team took out their broadcast engine. Tango just knocked out their shield generator. Considering all the trouble these guys have caused, we wanted to shut them down for good.”

Philips and I ran into the street. Seen through the night-for-day lens, the scene had no more depth than an old black-and-white photograph. I saw it in the ghostly blue-white. I could see details clearly enough. I could see clearly enough to know I was staring into an empty street. I looked both ways, then switched to heat vision to make sure that no one was hiding. The walls gave off no heat, but tanks, men, and weapons all had heat signatures. The block ahead of us was clean.

“When are you pulling out?” Illych asked.

“We’re not,” I said. “We’re going to hang around until the Green Machine arrives.” The “Green Machine” was a Corps name for the Army.

I didn’t really need my visor to know that the coast was clear. Mogat soldiers typically did not wear armor. They would have needed torches to see anything. With the power out, Mogatopolis was nothing more than a big specking cave. I felt the excitement of a battle won. We had the advantage now. We had better armor. Once the Army arrived, we would have comparable numbers and better equipment.

“Harris, what are you talking about?” Illych asked.

I ran through an alley using a building for cover, not that anyone would be able to see me without some kind of vision enhancement. The tanks and trucks had spotlights—big specking deal. I’d see the spotlights a mile away.

“The second wave,” I said. I stopped and parked myself against a wall. “They’re sending the Army in to occupy…”

“What are you doing?” Philips broke in.

“Quiet,” I snapped.

“Harris, the Army isn’t coming. The Confederate Arms Navy is engaging the Mogat Fleet right now. Once we chew through their Fleet, the Mogats will be landlocked. All we need to do is pin them down on this rock for another two hours and…”

“No Army?” I asked.

“Why would they send in the Army? Now that the power is out, everything down here is going to revert back to elemental gas.”

“Distilled shit gas,” I whispered. The briefing officer had told us that everything down here was made of the stuff.

“They’ll all be dead,” Illych said.

“We’ll all be dead,” I repeated. I felt stunned. I felt like I had received a knee in the groin. This was pain and confusion that even the combat reflex could not mask. I thought of Samson, blinded and captured by the Philistines. In a final show of faith, he killed himself and the Philistines by toppling their temple down upon his head.

Only Samson volunteered to pull the temple on his own head. And then it struck me: the Unified Authority might have been God; but the clones were the sacrifices, not the high priests. Those speckers were offering me up to die.

“Harris, you have to get out of there,” Illych said.

“And go where?” I asked. “Where the speck are we supposed to go?” Even if we made it topside and boarded the transports, who would pick us up? If it were not for my programming, I would have shoved the muzzle of my M27 in my mouth and pulled the trigger. I felt numb. I felt dizzy. The Unified Authority had betrayed us. I should have known they would. And by leading my men into the trap, I had betrayed them.

“Master Sarge, what is going on?” Philips said.

“The battleships are still up there,” Illych said. “If you make it up before they leave, they’ll take you.”

“No, they won’t,” I said. “They came to kill Mogats, not rescue Marines.”

“Harris, you need to hurry,” Illych said. “Without their shields, those Mogat ships won’t last long against the fleet.”

We were a distraction, I thought. They sent us here to clear the way for the SEALs. That was all they wanted us for, and now we’ve outlived our purpose. “Those specking assholes. Ah, shit,” I said as I rested my gun on a the ground. “Bloody hell.”