The Clone Alliance

sarcastic, but I had trouble whispering in a sardonic tone. “When the Mogats sacrificed this ship, they had something up their sleeves.”

We moved ahead. I continued to listen to the Mogats, leaving Illych to figure out our course.

“Stop,” I hissed, just in time.

We lost them again, one of the Mogats said. No, wait, there they are. They’re near the engine room.

These guys are fast.

Get down there, the captain bellowed. Don’t let them anywhere near that broadcast engine.

“You hear that,” Illych radioed over an open frequency for the rest of us to hear. “Stay away from the engine room. Lead them back to midship.”

Up ahead, a squad of soldiers crossed the hall. They had not adjusted to the lack of gravity and tried to move along the floor as if in a ship with gravity and an atmosphere. We slid gracefully above the deck; they waddled and bounced with every step.

There were eight men, all carrying lasers in one hand and searchlights in the other. Had they shined their lights in our direction, they could easily have spotted us; but not a one of them even paused to make certain the path was clear before crossing. They simply cut across the hall and continued walking in their square formation without looking back. Had I wanted to, I could have ambushed the lot of them just for sport.

“Pathetic,” Illych said. “Didn’t anyone ever teach them to look both ways before crossing? We should have picked them off, just on principle. What do these Mogats teach their boys in basic, knitting?”

He turned toward me. “I cannot believe they are winning this war!”

Illych yelled this so loud that I jumped and half expected the Mogats to hear him. The Mogats would not hear him, I reminded myself, not wearing combat helmets in nonatmospheric conditions. I had been whispering, but I wore combat armor so often that I sometimes forgot it was on. He seldom worked in his armor.

“Are you always this chatty on stealth missions?” I asked.

“Is that a rhetorical question, sir?” Illych asked. Now that the action had begun, I sensed a mildly giddy tone in his voice and wondered if the Special Operations clones had some form of combat reflex.

Illych and I remained perfectly still as we waited to make sure that the Mogats did not have a fire team bringing up the rear. They did not, so we turned down the hall and headed in the direction from which they had come.

This part of the ship had significant internal damage. We passed shattered bulkheads and an occasional corpse. Thanks to their torches, we spotted the next squad of Mogats the moment they entered the area. They passed without looking as we dodged into the first open hatch.

“They’re like robots,” I said. “They didn’t even shine a light into the room.”

“They know the room is empty,” Illych said. “Their motion sensors aren’t picking anything up, so they know that no one is down here.”

“Because you’re jamming the sensors,” I said.

“But they don’t know I’m jamming their sensors. All they know is that their alarm system says the coast is clear.”

When I considered that point, that their alarm system told them the coast was clear, I realized that the Mogats had made an easy mistake. I did not like to admit it, but I might have made the same mistake, though I would have remained more alert. I filed the lesson away as we started down that hall again.

Looking down the various arteries that we passed, I spotted distant lights as the Mogat squads and fire teams made their way through the ship.

“They’re getting too close,” I said to Illych.

“I’ll take care of it,” Illych said. He contacted the team in the bridge and had them set off some sensors. Moments later, the Mogats turned and headed toward the bow of the ship.

“It’s all too easy,” I said. “They’re idiots.”

By this time we had nearly reached the main launch bay. Crossing that last empty stretch of corridor, we peered in. Two transports sat on the launch-bay deck. Lights shone in the nearest transport’s cockpit. Using a telescopic lens, I could see the shape of a pilot’s head though the glass. I pointed him out to Illych.

“I see him,” Illych said.

Three guards stood talking at the base of the transport. I could easily have killed them, but our plans would have failed if I had. In order for our plan to work, we needed the guards to give the all clear.

“You do know how to fly one of these birds?” I asked.

“Fly a transport? Colonel, I picked that up in basic,” Illych assured me.

“This one is fifty years old,” I said.

“No problem.”

“But what do you do once you touch down on their ship?” I asked.

“I catch a ride to their base,” Illych said.

“They may have to broadcast there. Then what? You won’t be able to tell us where you are.”

“This is recon,” Illych said. “Never underestimate the value of having a trained saboteur in your enemy’s base.”

I had to admire him. The clone had nerve.

The launch bay gaped into space, as depressurized as the rest of the ship. The locks and blast doors might have been blasted open as the Outer Perseus Fleet sank this ship, but my guess was that the same person that lowered the shields opened the locks.

Why did the Mogats care about a wrecked ship? How had they known we were here? Why had they gone to all of the trouble of installing a second broadcast engine and protecting it during the attack? The same questions flashed again and again in my mind.

Those thoughts running through my head, I hid beside the door and aimed my pistol at the men guarding the nearest transport. I could have picked them off so easily. I could have hit the first two Mogats and finished the job so quickly that the third man would not have had time to notice his two buddies explode before he died as well.

But that was not the plan.

“Do you know how to use this?” Illych asked, showing me the handy little remote he had used to jam the motion sensors.

I pulled out my remote. It was the size of a deck of cards. Light emitted from one of those buttons. “As long as this light is on, the sensors are off,” I said, pointing at the lit button.

“Close enough,” Illych said.

“Then I’m good,” I said. “Good luck, Illych.”

“Thank you, sir,” Illych said. He crouched in the hatch and waited until the guards looked the other way, then he entered the landing area and sprang up the side of the wall, reaching the forty-foot ceiling in mere seconds.

The rear of the nearest kettle sat wide open—an easy target. With their obsolete design, the guards’ helmets offered limited peripheral vision. Their helmets were what Unified Authority Marines had worn fifty years ago. I knelt in the shadows and watched as Illych glided along the ceiling, then dropped onto the roof of the transport.

“How does it look from there?” he asked.

“Free for the taking,” I said.

I stood and took a deep breath. I could feel the soothing warmth of the adrenaline and endorphins mixture filtering into my veins. I was out of practice. I should never have had a combat reflex watching somebody else in action. Now, after all that time I spent living among the farmers, the reflex started prematurely.

“My turn to play fox,” I called out over the interLink, warning the SEALs to lie low. I pressed the lit button on my stealth kit, shutting off the jamming device. The sensors discovered me instantly. Inside the launch bay, all three guards drew their guns. Though they did not see me, alarms inside their helmets told them I was just outside the hatch.

They’re inside the launch bay! the Mogat captain shouted.

Just outside it! a guard called back.