Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

Quick flashes of light that reminded me of sheet lightning broke and faded on the other side of the building. Evans and his squad had begun firing their rockets at the tanks. The flashes followed each other quickly, with less than a second’s separation. The audio equipment in my helmet picked up the explosions and played them as ambient noise.

The rockets made a sizzling sound when they launched. Their explosions reverberated and echoed through the dark city. I imagined millions of civilians around me, scared, huddled like mice in their apartments, hearing the explosions and praying to whatever god the Mogats believed in for the battle to end. I thought about those three boys who had tried to stand up to my platoon with a knife. I spared them. Big specking deal. I’d bought them a few more hours and a more painful way to die.

For the Mogats, the universe was ending. They would all die. I could not save them if I wanted to. I might not be able to save any of my men. I might not be able to save my own sorry carcass, not that it deserved to be saved. Friend, foe, soldier, civilian…if we did not escape this very moment, we would all die as one. The men, women, and children would certainly die. They were innocents, but they could not be saved.

Exploding rockets and firing cannons make different sounds. To the untrained ear, it all sounds like a big bang. Once you’ve been in combat, you learn to listen for pitch, intensity, duration, and volume. I heard the sound of the tanks returning fire.

“Evacuate the building. Now!” I yelled. “Now! Now! Now!” Without shields, those shells would tear right through the building. In another minute, the entire building would come down.

“They got Evans,” Thomer called back.

“Out of there!” I screamed. The planet was dissolving, the building was crumbling, and Thomer was taking roll. “Move it!”

“Are there Mogats out the back?” Thomer shouted. I could tell he was running. He sounded winded.

“The street is clear!” I yelled.

I’d started to say something else, when the colonel’s voice sounded over the interLink. He shouted, “Everyone, fall back to the transports. Anyone who does not make it back to the transports in fifteen minutes will be left behind.”

Had he somehow reached Washington or just gotten the lowdown from an officer in the Confederate Arms Fleet? Somehow, he now knew the truth.

Marines understand exactly what it means when they receive the order to fall back. It means that your invasion has gone to shit. Fall back means that you cannot hold your position, and the situation has become critical. It means that the enemy is on your heels. It means stragglers will be captured or killed. Marines are trained to lead the way into battle. They don’t much care for the order to fall back.

Of all the Marines that landed on the Mogat planet, only my platoon had begun its retreat when the colonel gave the order to fall back. The rockets my guys fired from the building crippled a lot of Mogat hardware, and my gas had opened a route for them to escape.

The back door of the apartment building flew open, and out ran my platoon, or what remained of it. A twenty-man stampede. They ran straight ahead, straight into the clutter of bodies that filled the street. By this time the noxium had largely accomplished its purpose. Without so much as a glance at the ground, Sergeant Greer stepped into a corpse. He should have tripped over that dead soldier. Instead, he kicked through him.

Philips and I saw the scene from two blocks up the street. Our boys dashed out of the building. Moments later, another platoon followed. They could follow us if they liked, but I would not waste time waiting for them.

I jumped into the street, making a pinwheel motion with my arm to direct my men on. “Philips, take the lead,” I yelled. He knew the way to the elevator station. I had shown it to him in the Laundromat.

“You heard him,” Philips called over the interLink. With the platoon under fire, the lowest-ranking man took the lead. “This way…now move it!”

I had just joined Thomer at the back of the pack when the first of the Targs rounded a corner ahead of us. Its spotlight cut through the darkness. Its beam looked as hard and pale as a marble pillar. The light never found us; and inside the tank, the driver only saw what his spotlight showed him.

A moment later, one of our grenadiers fired a rocket at the Targ. After the explosion, the jagged remains of the turret looked like an enormous crown. Small fires danced on the top. I saw spotlights and headlights cruising back and forth on the streets around us. Those tanks should have had radars; but for some reason, the drivers were hunting for us by sight.

By this time we had almost reached the elevator station. The road we were on came to a dead end at the door of the station—which towered above everything around it. The elevator station reached all the way to the ceiling, a hundred feet above us. With the power down, I could now see a rough rock ceiling instead of a sky overhead.

Three Rumsfelds rolled out onto the street a thousand feet behind us. Their searchlights sniffed along the ground until they located Marines from the other platoon. Machine guns opened fire.

“Light ’em!” I yelled over the interLink.

My last remaining grenadiers spun and fired rockets at the tanks. One actually hit his target. The other two missed. At a thousand feet, a shot from the hip was too much to ask. They fired again and hit a second tank. Seeing the wreckage of the tanks on either side of it, the third Rumsfeld ambled for safety.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Philips called back to me. He had already reached the door of the elevator station. He stood in the doorway, letting other men pass him, his M27 pointing up the street. “Now they know we’re here.”

My training told me to stay on the street and clear the way for the other Marines. My programming ordered me to survive. The Mogats used Targ Tanks like wolves. They dodged in and out of alleys and streets, picking at groups of Marines, herding them away from the elevator station. There must have been thousands of tanks rumbling around the city. I might get some of them, but I would never get all of them. The most I could accomplish now was saving my men. By waiting and trying to save another platoon, I would only endanger the few men I had left.

I ran in the door of the elevator station and turned to see the street. I saw searchlights, tanks, and Marines in retreat. “Philips, Thomer, get them topside.”

There were no stairs in the elevator station. With the power down, the elevators would no longer work. Since we did not come with jetpacks, the only way up was using ropes. Fortunately, the magnetic link between our armor and the rappel cords would make the climb easier. Any man who could not climb those hundred feet would stay behind and die.

With the power out, I did not know if the gravity chute would work. All I could do was hope that it ran on a natural convection created by the distilled shit gas. On the other hand, I did not want to know what the gas might do to a transport.

A searchlight shone across the entrance of the elevator station. It was from a Rumsfeld at least a hundred yards away. The light formed a blinding circle that scoured the road outside the station, then shone on the door. I stepped back and hid behind a wall as the light played past me.

I looked back at the men. A few had started the climb. Most stood in front of the shaft, waiting their turn. “Any of you have rockets?” I called.

One of the men came over and handed me a launcher and three rockets. They were small, no bigger than my fist.

“Thanks,” I said. “Now get topside.”