The Clone Alliance

by Steven L. Kent

  “Does anybody have a puppet ready?” I called over the open frequency. “Nielsen and Adams are boxed in.”

  “I’ve got a stiffy for you,” Philips said.

  “A stiffy?” I asked.

  “Where do you want it?” Philips asked.

  “They’re in second-deck sick bay,” I said.

  I called to Adams. “Hang tight. I’m sending Philips in your direction.”

  “Think you can hurry?” Adams asked. “It’s looking crowded next door.”

  A moment later I radioed Philips. “Where are you?”

  “Master Sarge, there are a lot of Mogats down there,” Philips said.

  “You in place?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir, Master Sergeant, right over their heads.”

  “Think you can lead them on a chase and still get away?”

  “No problem. I left old Wallace with his head sticking out of a vent two blocks away.”

  “Who’s Wallace?”

  “The stiffy you wanted. I posed him two blocks away.”

  “Adams, Nielsen, prepare to bolt.” I radioed, still not sure how much to trust Philips.

  “Just give the word,” Adams said.

  “Philips, you’re on,” I said.

  I imagined the scene in my head. The ventilation shafts were four feet wide and four feet tall. Without gravity pulling you down, you could easily fly through them without ever touching the aluminum-alloy walls. Philips would turn off his kit and scramble to the vent where he left his puppet poking out. The Mogats would chase him. If he lived up to his battle record, Philips would pass the puppet and turn on his stealth kit. Knowing his recklessness, he would fire a shot at the Mogats before clearing out, but he could still get away.

  “Adams, what’s happening?” I asked.

  “Sick bay is clear,” Adams said.

  “Get the hell out,” I shouted.

  A moment later they signaled to say they had entered the vents.

  “See you on the other side, Wallace,” Philips muttered. “Here they come. Can I hit a Mogat when they come, Master Sarge? It would make me feel a whole lot better about sacrificing old Wallace.”

  “Get serious,” I said.

  “I am serious,” Philips said. A second later he said, “That one’s for Wallace. Sorry about that, Master Sarge. I accidentally hit one of them Mogats.”

  I remembered the time we spent drilling and Philips outscoring me on the firing range. “Accidentally my ass,” I said. “Get out of there, Philips.”

  “Uhh! Poor Wallace,” Philips groaned.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “They just shot his head off,” Philips said. “You should have seen it, Master Sarge. Wallace’s head just about burst like a damned water bomb. His legs are still in the vent but the rest of him went flying across the room.”

  “Philips, get out of there!” I yelled.

  “I’m leaving…I’m leaving,” Philips grumbled. “See you around, Wallace.”

  “Sergeant, may I just take a moment to point out that Private Philips is a lunatic and a danger to this mission,” Evans chimed in.

  “He just saved two men from your squad,” Thomer said.

  Evans did not answer.

  I chanced another look across the launch bay. A few guards congregated near the entrance to the corridor. The closest ship, no more than twenty feet from the elevator shaft in which I was hiding, sat entirely unguarded.

  Adams and Nielsen might have nearly gotten themselves caught, but they had also drawn off most of the Mogats milling around the landing deck.

  “Start the final act, I’m going in,” I said over the platoon-wide band.

  If everything worked right, all of my men would converge in the corridor near the bridge, where Evans and Kasdan had built a barricade. Hidden in the bridge, Evans and Sutherland would track the Mogats’ movements while the rest of my men put on that last act, hiding behind the barricade and staging a losing gunfight. As the Mogats shot their puppets, my men would hopefully escape into the vent system.

  At this point I no longer had time to worry about how the show went over. I had a trick of my own to perform. I needed to slip into one of the transports.

  Before leaving the lift shaft, I pushed off the walls and went up as high as I could for one last look around the flight deck. The Mogats had left their landing lights on, flooding the bay with bright illumination. Across the way, fifteen guards clustered around a ship on the far side of the deck.

  I felt the combat hormone enter my circulatory system. I felt the warmth and the calm. My breathing slowed. The wing of the nearest transport was no more than a few feet from me. I took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. I took another breath, held it, and launched myself at the landing gear of the nearest transport.

  With the landing gear between me and the guards, I could not see them. I could not listen to them because of all of the chatter on the Mogat frequencies. The Mogats’ commandos were excited. They were closing in on the enemy.

  “Evans, report,” I called as I peered around the landing gear. The guards were still in place, still clustered together uselessly by the entrance. Idiots.

  “All according to plan,” Evans said. “They’ve nailed all but three of our puppets?”

  “And our guys?” I asked.

  “Everybody but Philips is out of there.”

  That was according to plan. We couldn’t make the puppets aim and shoot, so we had to do it for them. Philips had volunteered for the job. He liked the idea of shooting at Mogats.

  “Okay, I’m almost on board. I want you boys to go dark and stay dark the moment I’m in place. You got that?”

  “Got it,” Evans said.

  “And that goes double for Philips,” I said.

  By this time the hormone had saturated my blood. My muscles tingled the way they might tingle after a perfect workout. My skin had a pleasant sting that reminded me of stepping into a hot shower on a cold night. I took a quick glance around the transport’s landing gear. If the guards had been looking for me, they would have spotted me; but they were too busy talking among themselves.

  Pulling myself quickly along the outside of the transport, I rounded a corner and had to grab anything I could find to stop my momentum. Floating inside the kettle, all by himself, was a lone guard.

  I managed to hook my foot on a pole before I flew into view. Then I backed out and headed for the next transport.

  Maybe the Mogats had assigned a man to stay on each ship or maybe the guy simply did not like a crowd. I should have known something was wrong. Fifteen men guarding four ships—had I stopped to do the math I would have noticed the uneven number.

  I pulled myself back off the transport and glanced around the edge of the kettle. Those fifteen useless Mogat guards all faced away from me. Why should they stay alert? Their security systems told them that the only enemies on the ship were a quarter mile away, surrounded by hundreds of commandos.

  I looked at the guards and wondered what they were doing. They must have been chatting. You can’t play cards in zero gravity. You can’t smoke or drink in a space suit.

  After one last perfunctory glance, I launched myself toward the next transport. It was a tense moment. I had to cross an eighty-foot open area in which I would be completely visible. If someone happened to notice me, I would be an easy target. But my stealth kit jammed their sensors and the guards never looked in my direction. I jetted across the open area at what might well have been fifty miles per hour and caught hold of one of the shield antennae on the next transport seconds later.

  From the outside, transports looked bulky and bloated. The kettle, the soldier-and cargo-carrying part of the ship, was a dome with a twelve-foot roof. The core of the ship was a narrow spine with stubby wings. The spine ran across the top of the kettle. From the side, transports reminded me of a severely pregnant dragonfly.

  I pulled my way around the next transport. When I came to the opening at the back, I looked around the door and
saw three men floating inside. Given the opportunity, I would have pulled my particle beam and shot all three of them. I did not have that option.

  “Philips?” I called on the interLink.

  “Master Sarge, you on their transport yet? It’s getting a bit hot up here,” Philips said, sounding more bored than anything else.

  “I’m in trouble here. You have any puppets left?”

  “Sure, Sergeant. I’ve still got a stiffy for you.” The rest of the platoon heard this. I heard them giggling over the interLink.

  “Grab your stiff…your puppet, and get down here,” I ordered. “Thomer, watch his back.”

  “I’m already on it,” Thomer said. Thomer protected Philips, not that the guy needed much in the way of protection.

  Less than ten seconds passed before Evans came on line, and said, “They’re sending in a scout to check out the barricade.”

  “Are you dark?” I asked. Dark meant that he had engaged his stealth kit and hidden himself.

  “I’m in a vent. I can see them from here. They’re examining the bodies.”

  “Are they fooled?” I asked.

  “You sick bastard,” Sutherland yelled.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “There’s a Mogat playing with one of the bodies. He’s posing it like a doll.”

  “Someone’s playing with my stiffy?” Philips asked.

  “Where are you, Philips?” I asked.

  “Right outside your hangar. You ready to roll?”

  That was the thing about Philips—you never knew whether you should court-martial him or give him a medal. He could fight better than any Marine in my platoon. In his own way, Philips was a specking battlefield genius.

  I looked around the ship just in time to see the bright green flash of a particle beam. Philips fired three times and hit three guards. The rest scattered and ran for cover.

  “I don’t know what’s happening on your side of the boat, but this side just emptied in a hurry,” Evans called down from the bridge.

  “I’ll bet. They’re all headed this way,” I said.

  The Mogats in the transport flew out, their pistols drawn. Across the launch bay, the twelve remaining guards fired at the doorway.

  “You okay out there, Philips?” I asked as I glided into the empty kettle.

  “It’s like kicking an anthill,” Philips said. “My oh my, do those little buggies come after you.” A moment later, “Oh, they got my stiffy in the leg. Guess I better hide.”

  Once inside the transport, I opened a cargo hatch and hid. The compartment was dark, small, and empty. I pulled my pistol and kept my finger on the trigger. In my mind, I imagined myself as a scorpion hiding under a leaf, waiting to sting anything that disturbed it.

  I could not see what was happening around me. If somebody happened to open this compartment, they would spot me one moment and die the next.

  “Okay, I’m in,” I called over the interLink.

  “I hope this works,” Evans said.

  “Watch your back, Master Sergeant,” Sutherland said.

  “I miss my stiffies,” said Philips.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  My time in the compartment was not quite as bad as being buried alive. Everything around me was dark and still, but I could move my arms around my sides. The compartment was so shallow that moving my arms across my chest took serious squirming.

  Even after they boarded the transport and the kettle doors closed, the Mogats continued communicating over their obsolete interLink band. I listened in to some of their chatter—one hundred soldiers babbling on in two dozen different conversations. One guy bragged endlessly about the three “bargers” he bagged. “Bargers” must have been Mogat slang for U.A. sailors.

  I did not hear a shred of valuable information eavesdropping on these lowlifes. When the pilot restored the atmosphere inside the kettle, the men took off their helmets and the interLink went silent.

  The shell of the transport vibrated as the thrusters lifted it off the launch bay deck. I did not hear the engines so much as feel them. The metal beneath my back trembled so hard that its spasms shook me inside my armor.

  “Evans, can you hear me?” I called over the interLink.

  “Did you make it out?” Sergeant Evans asked.

  “I’m on the transport,” I said.

  “Are you hidden?” he asked.

  “I’m in a crawl space under the floor,” I said. “What’s the situation over there?”

  “Three of their transports are out. The Mogats on that last one must not be in any rush to get home. They’re taking a stroll around the ship.”

  “And our guys?” I asked.

  The shell of the transport began to spasm again. I heard the thrusters working. They whispered through the hull. The transport made an eerie creaking sound.

  “We’re all in the vents.”

  “Stay hidden,” I said.

  “Aye, aye,” Evans responded.

  He was a good and reliable Marine. He was a bore.

  The landing gear clanked as it struck the deck and its struts whined under the weight of the transport. We had landed on a Mogat battleship. The men in the kettle would file off the ship as fast as they could. Pilots usually took their time shutting down systems. I was deaf and blind down in the crawl space, so I would allot him plenty of time to leave the ship before opening the hatch above me. I remained motionless, lying on my back, alone in the dark.

  I went over the layout of the derelict battleship in my mind. The layout of this ship would be identical. I remembered the path I took to get to the launch bay. I could not hide in an emergency elevator or pass through the vents this time. I would have to blend in.

  “You there, Master Sergeant?” It was Evans on the interLink.

  “What is it?”

  “The last transport just flew out.”

  “Did they leave sentries?” I asked.

  “The ship is clear,” he said.

  “How long till the explorer comes back?” I asked. I should have known that, but I had lost track of time.

  “Should be another hour,” Evans said.

  “Okay, Evans, keep an eye out for my signal.” That was the point of the entire exercise. If Yamashiro was right, and the Mogats had built themselves a communications superhighway, I would be able to send messages back to Evans no matter where the ship went.

  Hiding in that small compartment went more smoothly than getting myself out, thanks to the zero-gravity conditions inside the derelict battleship. When I entered, I’d floated into place. Now, in gravity, I had to drag my own weight. The process would have been easier and quieter in soft-shell armor. I could barely move my limbs in the tight space, and that formerly weightless door now weighed over a hundred pounds.

  If I ran into a guard or a maintenance worker, I could easily kill him; but I had learned from experience that the Mogats kept count of their crewmen. They were a religious people and they kept careful tabs on all of the sheep in the herd.

  The kettle was dark and the rear doors were closed when I emerged from the compartment. I knew I was alone. At that moment I realized the stupid mistake I had made. My only access to the interLink was built into my helmet, but I could not walk around this Mogat ship wearing the combat armor of a Unified Authority Marine. I would need the Link, though; so even if I left my armor hidden on the transport, I had no choice about taking my helmet. I considered hiding in the transport until I was sure we had broadcasted into Mogat space, then trying to slip out; but down here in this compartment, I would not know when we broadcasted into Mogat space.

  “Master Sergeant?” It was Evans.

  “What is it?”

  “You’re reading me?”

  Dumb question, I thought. “Sure, I’m reading you.”

  “Then your plan worked,” Evans said, sounding excited.

  “We’ve already broadcasted?” I asked.

  “The last Mogat ships just broadcasted out.”

 
; “Thanks for the update,” I said, trying to sound calm.

  “Nice going,” Evans said.

  In the early days of the war, I received promotions for doing a lot less than this. Locating the Mogat home world could be the key to the war. With any luck, I would find their galactic coordinates and take an informal inventory of their military strength. Wars were won and lost on that kind of information.

  But I did not have time to celebrate just yet. I still had to get out of the transport and on to the Mogat home world unnoticed. I had to gather information. I had to transmit the information back to Earth. I had to survive.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  The kettle was dark and the hatch was sealed when I emerged from my lair. No one remained on board, not even the pilot. Sitting on the floor with my legs dangling into the crawl space, I removed my armor and stripped down to my tank top and skivvies. I’d brought a change of clothes for the occasion—a pair of unmarked fatigues that I borrowed from a mechanic on board the Obama. My costume might fool people around the battleship, but I needed a Mogat uniform. I also needed a box for my helmet. I left most of my armor buried at the very back of the crawl space under the floor.

  Taking one last look through the night-for-day lens in my helmet, I located the controls for the rear hatch and opened the kettle. As the thick metal doors slowly rolled apart, revealing a bustling launch bay, I stowed my helmet in the latrine. Armor that had helped me slip past a dozen guards deserved better than a stay in a Mogat shitting booth, but I had no choice.

  Teams of mechanics stood around the opened engine compartment of a nearby transport. A pack of commandos entertained several onlookers telling stories about how they had routed “those U.A. bargers,” using their guns as props as they spoke.

  None of this could have happened without Philips. If I survived this, I planned to petition for him to be restored to the rank of corporal. I thought I could talk Brocius into approving the request, but I had no idea how to keep Philips from getting himself busted back down to private without retiring him or throwing him in the brig.