“Sir, yes, sir,” we shouted as a group.
“And they said you Leathernecks could not be taught,” the captain muttered into his microphone.
“The only problem with Little Man is location.” The screen dissolved into a map of the galaxy, with its six spiral arms. A glowing red ball showed on the outermost edge of the Scutum-Crux Arm. “Some of you sea-soldiers may not be familiar with astronomical maps. This is a map of our galaxy. As you can see, Little Man is located on the edge of the galaxy. In real estate terms, this is not a prime location.” The captain pointed to the red ball with his laser pointer.
“The edge of the galaxy is called ‘the extreme frontier.’ For strategic reasons, the Unified Authority has not seen fit to settle the extreme frontier.
“It has come to our attention that squatters have trespassed on this valuable piece of property. Your government wants these extreme frontier trespassers evicted with extreme frontier prejudice.
“Do you understand me, Marines?”
“Sir, yes, sir!” we yelled, and we meant it. For all of his disdain and his condescending attitude, the captain knew how to communicate with Marines. Give us an enemy and aim us at said enemy, then let us do what we do best. Electricity surged through every man in the auditorium.
The image shifted to the surface of the planet. “This will be a land-op. The enemy has established a stronghold along the west coast of this continent. That means, sea-soldiers, you will launch your attack here.” The pointer landed on a long stretch of beach. “You will establish a beachhead and force these squatters off our property. Do you understand me, Marines?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Once we have broken the enemy’s backbone, we will proceed through these foothills, chasing the enemy inland. You will be provided with limited air support for that part of your mission.” As the captain said that, a red trail appeared on the screen, marking the path we would take.
The map vanished from the screen and was replaced by the face of a middle-aged Japanese man with graying hair and wire-rimmed spectacles. “This is Yoshi Yamashiro. From what Captain Olivera tells me, you sea-soldiers have a score to settle with Mr. Yamashiro from Ezer Kri. For those of you with short memories, he is the man who looked the other way when one of your platoons was massacred.
“I may not be a Marine, but I understand that U.A. Marines always collect on debts. Is that correct?”
At those words the enthusiasm doubled. “Sir, yes, sir!”
“Sea-soldiers, the Unified Authority does not care if you return with prisoners from this conflict. You are to carry out your duties with extreme prejudice. I should not have to say this to you Leathernecks, but I will. Do not hesitate to fire when fired upon. Do you understand me, Marines?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
The briefing ended at 1800 hours. Lee and I stopped by the sea-soldier’s bar on the way to the barracks. We found a table in the back and spoke quietly as we watched other men enter.
“Was I hearing things or were we just given permission to massacre everybody on that planet?” I asked, as the bartender brought us our beers.
“That’s what it sounded like to me,” Lee agreed.
“I may be mistaken, but isn’t that considered a criminal act?” I asked.
“Shit, Wayson! We’re trying to prevent a war. Those bastards ambushed a platoon. They shot down a frigate.” He picked up his beer and downed it in two long swigs.
Never before had I noticed the dangerous side of Vince’s programming. Vince Lee had received instructions from a superior officer, and he accepted those instructions without further examination. That was how his generation of clones was programmed to act.
“If the news of this massacre gets out, we may find our citizenship officially revoked,” I said. “The Liberators who fought in the Galactic Central War were never allowed back into the Orion Arm for massacring prisoners on Albatross Island.”
“I heard that they killed the guards,” Lee said. “And how would that news get out, anyway? We’re on the extreme frontier.”
I knew about neural programming. Dammit, I knew that the new clones were programmed to take orders, but still I could not believe my ears. “You’re not bothered by any of this?”
“Hold that thought,” Lee said. He got up from the table and went to the bar. By that time, a pretty big crowd of noncoms and conscripts had drifted in. It took Lee nearly fifteen minutes to order four beers and return with the bottles.
“Okay,” he said as he sat down. “I think you were just telling me your latest conspiracy theory.”
“Get specked,” I said. “Look, Lee, we’re not going to do this drop in boats. If the plan is to trap and massacre the enemy, why not drop down on the land side of the foothills and chase the enemy into the sea.”
“They’re Japanese,” Lee said. “Maybe they are good swimmers.” He shrugged and downed his next beer.
“You think that’s funny?” I asked.
“Calm down. Robert Thurston planned this invasion. The guy is a friggin’ genius. He kicked Klyber’s ass.”
I put up my hand to quiet Lee. So many noisy Marines had come to the bar to celebrate by then that I could barely hear him anyway. But not all of the patrons were enlisted men. Captain McKay sat at a nearby table flanked by Lector, Saul, and Marshall.
“What is it?” Lee asked. He started to turn for a look, but stopped when I told him to sit still.
“It’s McKay,” I said. “He’s sitting three tables from us with Lector and his boys.” I had never spoken with Saul or Marshall, but they were cut from the same helix as Lector. The three ghouls spent their free time clustered together, speaking in quiet tones and bullying enlisted men. Just then, they were huddled around McKay.
“The Kamehameha was a better place before they transferred in,” one of the privates from our platoon said as he joined us. “Got room at your table?”
“Have a seat,” Lee said, smiling. His expression turned serious again quickly. “Those bastards are evil. I thought Shannon was bad. No offense, Harris, but you and Shannon are defective. Lector is the real Liberator. He almost killed a guy in Doherty’s platoon today . . . sent him to sick bay with a dislocated shoulder and a broken collarbone.”
“I don’t think Captain McKay likes them,” the private said. “I saw them come in together. McKay looked nervous.”
Risking a quick glance, I peered around Lee and noticed the stiff way McKay sat in his chair. He stared angrily at Lector. Though all three of the new sergeants had the exact same face, I had no trouble telling them apart by their scars. Lector had that wide gash through his left eyebrow and a long, spiraling scar on his left cheek. Marshall had bald spots, probably the result of shrapnel, in his thinning white hair. Of the three, Saul might have had it the worst. The skin on his face was lumpy and blotched. He must have been burned in some kind of chemical fire. The scarring most likely covered his entire body.
McKay said something quietly. I could not hear him above the chatter in the bar. He placed his hand on the table and started to stand, but Lector placed a hand over McKay’s and held him down. They traded more inaudible talk. Lector said something, and Captain McKay nodded. Lector removed his hand from McKay’s, and the captain stormed away from the table.
Lee had turned to watch the exchange. “Look at them, Wayson,” Lee whispered. “I’d kill myself if I were a clone.”
“How you going to do it?” I asked distractedly.
Lee laughed. “I would not joke about that if I were you.”
Apparently, Admiral Thurston believed one ship could handle our mission. The Kamehameha was almost alone in the quadrant. We had no accompanying frigates or cruisers; only one lone communications ship hovered nearby.
The logistics were simple enough. The Kamehameha carried fifteen armored transports, each of which could carry two platoons and supplies. Two trips per transport, and all twenty-three hundred Marines would be in position. My platoon, of course, got to land in the
first wave.
As we prepared to take our place in the kettle, I found out what Lector and McKay were discussing in the bar. Captain McKay’s command included the Twelfth and Thirteenth Platoons—Sergeant Grayson’s. But it wasn’t Grayson I saw at the head of the Thirteenth when I led my squad into the kettle. Lector paced the floor goading his men. Marshall and Saul sat at the stern of the ship.
“Harris.” I turned and was surprised to see Captain McKay, wearing full armor with his helmet off, boarding the AT.
I saluted. “You’re coming down in the kettle, sir?” This was the first time I had seen an officer ride with the ground fodder. Usually they stayed a safe distance away.
“Orders,” McKay said, returning my salute. “Harris, you saw that they switched Grayson out of the thirteenth Platoon. Somebody placed all four Liberators in one company. I get the feeling they want to make a clean sweep.”
“I get that feeling too, sir.”
McKay signaled toward Lector with the slightest of eye motions. “Watch my back, Harris. I want to survive this mission. I don’t want to die on Little Man.”
“I will do what I can for you, sir.” In my gut, I had the sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be much.
We were both sergeants, but Booth Lector outranked me. I was just a sergeant. He was a first sergeant. In the noncommissioned ranks, Lector was just one step from the top.
“Okay, so now I am nervous,” Lee said over a private interLink frequency. “What are Lector and Saul doing on our AT? What is McKay doing here? God, I hate Liberators.”
“They shuffled the sergeants,” I said. “And you are speaking to a Liberator.”
“You’re only a Liberator in theory,” Lee said. “Lector’s the real thing.”
Several of my men removed their helmets and placed them on the floor. Judging by their expressions, I got the feeling that the grim mood had spread across the kettle. No one spoke. No one, that is, except Sergeants Lector, Marshall, and Saul. After liftoff, while the rest of the men quietly attached rifle stocks to their M27s or inspected the inventory in their belts, Lector and his friends continued to chat.
I sat with Lee in the back of the ship, whispering back and forth with him over the interLink.
“Why would McKay trade Grayson for those three?” Lee asked.
“I don’t think McKay calls the shots anymore,” I said. “He looked pretty nervous at the bar last night. He must have gotten a memo about the change in platoons right after the briefing. He probably took Lector to the bar to discuss the transfer.
“Remember when McKay tried to leave and Lector stopped him? McKay must have told them how he wanted to run things and found out that Lector and his pals had ideas of their own.”
“You think they threatened him?” Lee asked.
“He’s staying as far from them as he can. Lector probably said something about friendly fire or battlefield accidents.”
“That cuts two ways,” Lee said.
“It should,” I agreed. Looking around the kettle, I knew that it did not. Standard clones were incapable of that kind of initiative; it was not in their programming.
A yellow light flashed over the cabin, warning us that we were broaching the atmosphere. The kettle shuttered. Men who were standing jolted forward but did not lose their balance.
Then the amber light turned red.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“They must be firing at us,” Lee said.
The men who had removed their helmets fastened them in place so that they would not smell the acrid ozone stench of the shields. In the vacuum of space, the shields were odorless. In an atmosphere, they burned oxygen and produced quite a stink.
The thick walls of the kettle muffled outside sounds. We heard the soft plink as bullets struck our hull. They must have been enormous bullets. The average M27 bullets turned to steam as they pierced the shields, but these shots had enough mass and momentum to tap the hull.
Whoever the “squatters” were, they had lots of firepower. Artillery shells burst all around us. All we heard in the kettle was a soft rumble as our shields disintegrated the shrapnel in the air. The bigger explosions created air pockets, causing our clumsy, armored transport to drop a few feet at a time.
The kettle shook violently. The lights flashed off, and we dropped at least a hundred feet before the lights kicked on again and the pilots regained control.
“They have a particle-beam cannon!” McKay yelled over the interLink.
“Take positions,” I called to my men.
We were hit with another particle-beam barrage. That time, as we dropped, I heard the rat-a-tat sound of bullets striking the side of the ship. The shields were out, and bullets were hitting our unprotected hull.
There was a loud, hollow boom as a shell struck the top of the kettle, flopping the entire AT on its side. Two more struck. We were like a boxer who is out on his feet, taking shots with no way to protect himself.
In the flashing red emergency light, I saw a private jump to his feet and run toward the front of the cabin. As if out of nowhere, someone reached out a hand and smashed the man across the front of his helmet with so much force that the Marine fell to the floor. My visor identified Sergeant Marshall as he pulled back his M27 and knelt over the fallen man.
The lights came back on, and within moments, we were down on the beach.
The ATs landed in a row, their shields facing the bluffs at the top of the beach. The enemy’s guns could not penetrate the barrier created by the shields—the only danger came from accidentally stumbling into them.
Under other circumstances the coastline might have been beautiful. A bright blue sky with puffy clouds stretched off to the horizon. We had landed on a beach with white sand and still, gray water. Ahead, through the electrified window of our shields, I saw sandy bluffs leading to coral rock foothills. The melting air in front of the shields blurred my vision, but I thought I saw men scurrying along the tops of the bluffs.
Then I heard the guttural growl of gunships. Two ships waddled across the sky, traveling over our heads and stopping over the enemy. They hovered in the air firing rockets and side-mounted chain guns. A huge explosion churned up a geyser of sand and a blinding green flash as the enemy’s particle-beam cannon exploded.
Debris from the explosion flew in all directions. Concrete, dirt, and bits of rocks rained down around us. Fire burned at the top of the bluffs. The radioactive core of the particle-beam cannon might well have irradiated the enemy. The firefight seemed to have ended.
Though we did not have tanks with us, our transports brought several cavalry units with gun-mounted, all-terrain vehicles—sprite four-wheel two-man buggies—with mounted chain guns and missile launchers. As the platoons organized behind the shields, the ATVs sped up the beach, kicking plumes of sand in their wake.
They drove in a zigzagging pattern, weaving toward the bluffs. When the first unit drove within a hundred yards of the hill, a single rocket fired. It was all so fast. I heard the hiss, saw the contrail, and the ATV vanished in a ball of flames.
The two gunships that had pulled back from the scene flew back and hovered over the area looking for targets. They continued over the area for minutes without firing. Whoever was down there was well hidden.
With no other options, we prepared to rush the bluffs. “Prepare for attack,” McKay yelled over the interLink. The shield in front of our AT extinguished. For a moment I saw the distant hills clearly.
“Attack.”
We started up the beach, running hard and kicking up loose sand. I kept my eye on the top of the bluffs, the enemy fortification. “Vince, do you see anything?” I called on a private frequency.
“If anybody’s alive up there,” Lee panted, “they’re either wearing radiation armor or they glow in the dark.”
The body gloves we wore under our armor would protect us from radiation poisoning, but technicians would need to neutralize the radiation before we could remove so much as a glove. In that kind of bat
tle, radioactivity worked for us.
The gunships continued to float over the attack area looking for targets. They did not fire. Perhaps Lee was right. Perhaps some dying soldier flamed our ATV as his last act of defiance. As the first men reached the flaming, smoking remains of that ATV, gunfire erupted from the hillside.
“Drop!” I yelled over the platoon frequency.
Up ahead, machine guns fired so many shots into the first few men that their armor exploded, spraying blood and shredded plastic.
The gunships fired, but their shots were blind. The men on the ships must have been hunting human targets. Their heat sensors and radar would not locate motion-tracking drones.
“It’s trackers,” I said to Lee.
“It looks that way,” Lee agreed.
“Think we can go around them?” I asked.
“It’s not worth the trouble,” Lee answered. “You watch, they’re going to light up the hill.”
As if on cue, the gunships fired incendiary rockets. One moment the bluffs were green and white, covered with sand and vines, the next they glowed ocher as chemical fires superheated the ground to well over eighteen hundred degrees. The flash heat vanished quickly; but wiring melted and munitions exploded as the bunkers at the far end of the beach turned into ovens. The air boiled with the crackle of bullets and the boom of artillery shells as the once-smooth ridge at the top of the bluffs convulsed into a jagged scar.
The problem with “lighting the hill” was that it took three hours for the heat to dissipate. Until the temperature went down, the most our ground forces could do was sit. Thurston sent Harriers and bombers to patrol the other side of the foothills, but the heavily forested terrain made flybys ineffective. We’d gone to Little Man to annihilate the enemy; but for the time being, all we could do was sit tight as the enemy fled to safety.
When we crested the hill, we saw the remains of a mile-long concrete bunker with yard-thick walls. With its ground cover blown to the winds, the concrete shell of the bunker lay exposed like a giant trench. Heat and explosions had blown the top off the structure, leaving a mazelike complex beneath. No other path was left for us, so we dropped down into the ruins.
The Clone Republic (Clone 1) Page 30