The Clone Assassin

by Steven L. Kent

  I looked up and saw that the night sky had begun to fade. Fingers of light showed in the distance. Up ahead, no more than fifty feet away, the slant of the mountain twisted, giving us more ledge to stand on. Up there, the slope became gradual, and the rocks and rifts formed a steep and stable trail. We’d be able to walk instead of hugging the mountain. We’d still have a climb after that, but we wouldn’t need to worry about U.A. Marines dropping grenades from overhead.

  I felt my heart racing, my mood lightening, my pace speeding up. We made it, I thought, and that thought, of course, offended the gods of war. Fifty feet to the path. Forty feet. Thirty feet. Twenty. I was less than ten feet away when thunder shook the mountain. Rocks and pebbles rained down on us. Stones of all sizes cascaded from above us like hail.

  I jumped to the trail, my feet digging into a solid ledge, pressing my face into the side of the mountain, hoping the ridge above didn’t come down on top of me. Rocks the size of a man’s fist rained down, and I ducked my head. I felt bumps and bashes, most light, but some of the blows were heavy.

  More thunder. More avalanche.

  Mortars had struck the ridge above us. It wasn’t the Unifieds firing those mortars, it was my men.

  Mortars are powerful weapons, indispensable in mountain fighting, when adjusting to elevation means the difference between killing the enemy or dying with no way to strike back. Bullets, rockets, and RPGs are line-of-sight weapons; mortars let you fire at the enemy on the other side of the mountain. Depending on the shells you fire, they can be powerful, powerful weapons. The ones my men were firing shook the entire ridge, and that was dangerous.

  I looked back along the slope and saw that I had lost at least ten Marines, maybe twenty.

  Another mortar shell. Trying to hold on to the shaking rock face was like hugging an erupting volcano. I could have run to safety at this point, but if this kept up, I would lose every last one of my men.

  But this was the First of the First. This was the First Battalion of the First Marines. These men didn’t flinch. They kept pushing forward. There were holes where men had been. We’d taken casualties. One man had lost his footing and dropped fifteen feet before he’d stopped himself. Now he scratched and clawed his way back up the steep face, clubbing rocks and clods to dig his fist into the mountain, kicking his boot into the side of the mountain. He’d lost his M27, but he refused to fall.

  The man’s name was Lance Corporal Ian Minter, I read it as I watched him climb. If the interLink had been up, I’d have promoted Minter on the spot. Instead, all I could do was read his name from the label his smart gear projected, and soon enough, I didn’t even have that much.

  Minter found a spot where he felt safe, and he did something very intelligent. He tore off his helmet and let it drop. With his helmet off, he could turn his head and see what was above him. He could search for handholds and watch for men trying to help him.

  The mortars stopped. I thanked God for silence and pulled men onto my ledge.

  It only took Minter another minute to climb those last few feet. With his helmet off and his eyes wild with rage, he found places to step and nubs to grab, then two men pulled him up by his shoulders.

  Someone asked, “You good?” and he said, “Damn straight.”

  If the fighting went the way that I expected on the ridge, Lance Corporal Ian Minter might find that he had only earned himself a brief reprieve.

  I’d started out with a hundred men and lost twenty-six of them. Twenty-six men, one helmet, and one M27, a small down payment in a battle like this one. The Romans were undoubtedly surprised to see Hannibal climbing down the mountains with his elephants and his cavalry, but that doesn’t mean they surrendered. Neither would the Unifieds.

  The air rang with gunfire and the occasional grenade. If I’d been able to access the interLink, I would have radioed Ritz and told him to start firing mortars again, but communications stayed down. I’d checked again and again.

  I listened to the battle, trying to read its sounds as we ran. The trail switched back and forth, tracing along the rock precipice in pendulum-like swings that led us closer to the fighting, and then farther away, then closer than before. I jumped over a rise and saw the battle spread out ahead of me.

  We crested a peak overlooking two ridges. The men on the closer ridge, Unified Authority Marines, had a slight high-ground advantage. They had dug in, too, but that was their undoing. Instead of digging in, they should have attacked while the batteries in their armor were still fresh. Now, most of them had run out of battery life.

  Hiding behind a boulder on a ridge above and behind the Unifieds, I saw where the three mortar shells had landed, great divots that were both black with soot and red with blood. By this time, the morning was in full bloom. Stripes of white and peach and ice blue filled the sky. The men of the First of the First were on the next ridge over, huddled like barbarians at the base of a parapet.

  My men and I had pulled a Hannibal, having crossed our own personal Alps. We had a momentary element of surprise. It would not last long. In fact . . .

  I announced our arrival with a grenade.

  While my men took cover, I pulled the pill from my belt. I set the yield to maximum, slipped the pin out, and tossed the grenade toward the spot on the ridge where the Unifieds pressed together like sheep in a pen.

  My grenade hit the ground and the officers leaped in every direction. Most of them made it to safety. The grenade splattered those who didn’t all over those who did.

  The mountain formed a wall behind me, a craggy, rust-colored rise with a wide, straight-edged opening that must have led into a mine. I understood the mysteries of this battle the moment I saw that entrance. This was where Freeman had chosen to make his stand. Maybe he’d been wounded; maybe the Unifieds had overwhelmed him with their numbers. He’d ducked into the mine, and they’d sent men in after him.

  As I ran for cover, the Unifieds turned their sights on me. Most of them had used up the power in their shields and fired M27s, but a few fired fléchettes from their wrist cannons. I dived behind a boulder and hoped no one would throw a grenade.

  About fifty feet away from me, Lance Corporal Ian Minter—the guy who had lost his helmet and his weapon—knelt behind a row of rocks, his left hand tense and empty and ready to grab anyone unfortunate enough to pass nearby, his right hand wrapped around a combat knife. I could see his face, his mouth turned down in an angry grimace, his eyes staring straight ahead as he waited for the opportunity to strike.

  Even as I watched, a trio of U.A. Marines came looking for me. The one on the right had an M27. He stepped within a foot or two of Minter—and then he was dead. Minter wrestled him to the ground, pried his twelve-inch blade under the rim of the man’s helmet, and blood splashed out.

  The man’s partners were slow to react. They turned to see what had happened, and one of my automatic riflemen cut them down.

  Minter pulled his knife out of the dead man’s throat. He wiped the blade on the ground then replaced it in his scabbard. Minter also took the dead man’s M27.

  The First of the First, I thought to myself. They always get it done.

  I didn’t have time to linger on warm thoughts. We were seventy-three men, flanking the remainder of what had once been nine hundred men. I now estimated their strength at below five hundred.

  A few of them shot at me, their bullets and fléchettes scraping the rocks around me, kicking up dust, spitting chips in the air. They were unorganized. Now was when their sludging would hamper their efforts more than ours. They couldn’t warn their men in the mine. They were flanked and outnumbered and unable to organize.

  A wave of U.A. Marines rushed my position, firing a steady barrage of bullets meant to drive me and my men behind the rocks. They had us pinned, but they stood in the open. I looked out from behind my cover, fired three shots, then ducked as bullets tore into the wall behind. Lance Corporal Minter, who still had not replaced his helmet, stood and fired three shots, then dropped back.
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br />   While we abused the Unifieds from the rear, Ritz and his men advanced up the ridge. Almost certainly taking heavy casualties, they fired M27s and threw grenades as they forged ahead. Mortars would have been more effective if they could have used them, but without the interLink, they had no way of knowing where we were and how to avoid hitting us.

  Their attention split and their options running dry, the Unifieds didn’t back down. They fired at us. They fired at Ritz. Bullets scraping above my head, I leaped from behind my cover, fired six shots, hit the six nearest Marines, and darted into their ranks.

  Yes, in my armor I looked exactly identical to the men I was attacking, but my instincts no longer cared what my brain had to say. I had been nursing the mother of all combat reflexes. It had started as we crossed the cliffs, continued as we ducked for cover, and now I needed to kill enemies before my head exploded.

  Two men turned to face me. I shot them. A Marine ran at me, stopped to aim his M27, and I smashed the butt of my M27 into his visor, shattering it like a mirror. I struck a second time as well, battering shards of broken visor in cheeks and eyes, and blood sprayed in a halo around his face.

  Somewhere in my body, a gland rewarded my every act of violence with an addicting dose of adrenaline and endorphins. My testosterone levels had spiked to unreadable levels; my heart beat so hard it felt like it might claw its way out of my chest, yet my breathing was calm and my brain at peace.

  A Marine ran at me. I stabbed the butt of my M27 into his visor, knocking him back into another man, then I shot them both. The euphoria was damn near orgasmic, but I needed to shut it down. I was about to lose control, and I knew it.

  No that wasn’t true. I had entered the abyss. By the time I came to my senses, I stood thirty feet deep in enemy territory surrounded by hundreds of enemy Marines, shooting men at point-blank range, clubbing them, kicking their legs from under them and shooting them as they fell.

  Fall back, I told myself. Fall back.

  If I stayed here, ahead of either line, my own men would shoot me.

  The fighting continued. A U.A. Marine ran past me. I grabbed his M27 from his hands, spun him, and threw him, using his own momentum against him. He hit the ground hard and slid another few feet. I could have shot him as he rose, but I didn’t. By denying the kill, I hoped to make myself calm down.

  Someone else shot the bastard. He made it to one knee, then a bullet crashed through the side of his helmet in a wave of blood and chunks.

  As the adrenal rush of the combat reflex ended, a sense of melancholy followed. The man’s M27 still in my hands, I watched him crumble. Stray bullets hit the ground around me. I looked at the gun, then I looked at the tiny cattails of dust kicked up by bullets. If anybody had actually tried to shoot me at that moment, they couldn’t have missed. Apparently, neither side did.

  Of all the people who could have saved me, it was Lance Corporal Minter who knocked me out of my stupor. He flew at me like an attack dog, leaping through the air and slamming into my chest with all of his weight and his momentum. I toppled backward and hit the ground hard. The corporal remained on top of me, his weight on my chest.

  He must have been shadowing me from the moment I began my charge. Sometimes Marines do that in combat, they select a buddy and shadow them like a guardian angel.

  Minter fired his gun again and again while other Marines closed in around us. I watched the scene, feeling strangely bemused. I didn’t want to kill. I wanted the Unifieds to surrender. I wanted them to surrender, and to end their war, and to live.

  I wanted to die. That was it. Boiled down to its truest essence, I was done with it. I no longer cared. I had been living on hate, and now it was eating me. Clones created for war cannot allow themselves to become battle-weary.

  The men of the First Battalion kept me safe. I felt bad about the risks they took and the effort they wasted. They closed around me. Some knelt; some stood. A few fell. More blood on my hands. More damage on my account. If only they’d known the thoughts in my head, they might have turned their guns on me.

  The First of the First, I thought. You boys deserve better.

  Moments later, Ritz and his men came storming in.

  Some U.A. Marines handed over their weapons; most died fighting.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-ONE

  With Ritz and his men pressing the front flank, the fighting eased toward the rear. Corporal Minter grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet.

  I said, “Thank you, Corporal.”

  He said, “Looks like your gun jammed, General. Would you like me to fetch you another?”

  We both knew better.

  I said, “That’s a hell of a trick you did with your knife, Corporal. Did you learn that in boot camp?” No one had shown me that move, and there had been many times when it might have come in handy.

  “No, sir, I improvised.” With that, he gave me the old macho nod and went to rejoin his company.

  Don’t spoil him, I told myself, but I knew I would. Nothing ruins an enlisted man more quickly than giving him a lieutenant’s bars.

  • • •

  General Ritz found me as I assembled my men. He said, “It’s almost sewed up. There are a few holdouts, sir.”

  I asked, “How many men have you captured?”

  He discussed this with the man next to him, and answered, “Three hundred.”

  “How many did we kill?” I asked.

  “Four hundred.”

  Neither answer was meant to be specific. Still, Unifieds had come in nine transports which supposedly gave them a maximum of nine hundred men, seven hundred of whom were now accounted for. That meant that the Unifieds might have sent as many as two hundred Marines after Freeman, an absurd amount to take into an enclosed and possibly unstable environment like an abandoned mine. There comes a time when adding more men isn’t just overkill, it endangers your operation.

  I said, “I want two platoons of your best.”

  “Ready and waiting, General,” said Ritz. Damn if he hadn’t known my orders before I gave them. Maybe he’d performed the same math as I had and had come up with the same solution—fifty men stood just beyond the mine.

  Generals don’t lead assault teams into subterranean mines, which was precisely what I planned to do.

  I realized Ritz might have planned to go after Freeman as well. I said, “General, we may have won the battle, or we may only have defeated the first wave.”

  He said, “Aye.”

  I said, “We’re going to need to guard this ridge.”

  He nodded, and said, “General, I know your tactics.”

  He’d been with me when I liberated Terraneau and when I led the invasion of Earth. He did indeed know my tactics. Neither of us had anything more to say, so we traded salutes.

  He said, “Good luck, sir. We’ll hold the ridge until you get back.”

  I took my men and entered the tunnel. Maybe I should say, we entered the funnel. We were fifty men, a light force, rushing down an all-rock corridor with barely enough room for us to travel ten abreast.

  If I’d come in with a larger force, we’d have been bogged down in a clusterspeck.

  The sky outside was bright, but we lost the sun the moment we entered the shaft. Here, we had entered an eternal darkness. I imagined Freeman passing this way, chased by an army and feeling claustrophobic. I felt a sense of urgency, one I couldn’t quite explain away. Maybe it was just jitters, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Freeman was dangling at the end of a rope.

  A few hundred feet in, we found the equipment the Unifieds were using to sludge the airwaves. It was a small machine with batwing antennae, a brightly lit dial, and two meters that checked for radio signals. I wasn’t sure which switch would shut the machine down, but if worse came to worst, I figured I could always shut down the transmitter with my M27.

  I knelt beside the machine, found the power switch, and I asked myself a question. Why would Unified Authority Marines want to sludge themselves?

>   I knew why Freeman would want the interLink down—shut down the interLink and men in armor go deaf and dumb. But why would the Unifieds want it down? The answer was obvious; Freeman was a skilled demolitions man. Hell, my transport had flown past the charred remains of a camp as we flew in.

  Son of a bitch, he mined the mine, I said to myself. Of course he had. With the enemy on his ass, outnumbered and alone, he’d probably planted sensors and charges all over these shafts. Feeling that I had just dodged a bullet, I stood up and left the equipment untouched.

  That turned out to be a good choice. A few hundred yards farther into the mountain, we found an abandoned office with lamps with prehistoric bulbs that probably had not produced light for multiple centuries. Beside the office stood an ancient generator.

  The technology of the time favored ironworks—pumps, generators, and motors built to be as durable as combat equipment. The pipes and vents leading into this primeval fixture were thick and sturdy, the motor compartment, practically armor-plated.

  Already knowing what I would find, I took a closer look and spotted a charge connected to a transmitter. If I’d harbored any doubts about whether we’d find Freeman in this mine, they evaporated.

  I motioned my platoon leaders over and showed them my find. They looked and nodded. We were all wearing combat armor and visors, so I couldn’t see their faces.

  We ran into our first U.A. Marines no more then fifty yards past the office. Two of them stood guarding the entrance of an offshoot hallway. I peered around a corner and saw them standing idle and inattentive. Like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, I thought as I switched from my M27 to my S9 stealth pistol. Disposable landmarks, marking the way.

  • • •

  The darkness was almost suffocating. I watched it all through night-for-day lenses, so I saw everything around me, but the darkness still pressed on me, like an oppressive specter.

  The hall was long and straight and narrow, with rough walls. The entrances to tributary crawlways formed shadow designs along the walls. Someone had strung a line of old electric lights along the ceiling, fixtures with rounded bulbs set in wire cages. Most of the bulbs had shattered over the years, but a few remained, coated in dust so thick their light could never have shown through.