maybe just a couple hundred feet up, low enough that I almost lost track of them as they vanished behind high- rise buildings. Then the ground crew attached the gangway to our shuttle and opened the hatch.
“Welcome to Valhalla,” the pilot called back as he cut the engines.
As we deplaned, a squadron of duty officers descended upon us and divided us by rank and branch. I was greeted by a Marine captain, who told me where to claim my gear and meet my ride.
The spaceport pulsed with tension as Navy and civilian transports arrived and departed every minute. Four hundred thousand Marines had flown through here over the last few days with enough field equipment and supplies to wage a war. The Navy had commandeered Valhalla Spaceport, replacing its former civilian splendor with martial sensibility. MPs and duty officers patrolled the halls, uberefficient supply officers off-loaded cargo, and information desks now posted duty rosters instead of flight schedules.
Snow-brightened sunlight poured in through every wall-length window of the terminal. Officers and packs of enlisted men moved through the halls with purpose but little urgency. I saw Marine khaki wherever I looked—the floors, the gates, even on the balcony fifteen feet above me. Officers ripped past me riding carts and honking their horns to clear paths through the crowds. The natural-borns might have sat out other battles, but they could not avoid this one.
I was an officer, too …a second lieutenant. I found a head and changed into my uniform, sneering at the single gold bar on my lapel. That made me the lowest evolution of officer. No one over the rank of private took second lieutenants seriously in combat, but the bar would get me a billet in officer country. I made sure the bar was straight and went to grab my gear.
“Twenty-third Marines, Company B. If you’re from Company B, grab your gear and head out!” a sergeant yelled at the old recruits as they stepped around a corner. It was a touching intergenerational scene—the sergeant, a clone in his late thirties screaming so loud that strands of spit flew from his lips, reactivated Marines in their forties, fifties, and maybe even their sixties jumping to comply.
“Move it, assholes! The captain is waiting,” the sergeant yelled. “You, Grandpa, you hoping for a second retirement check?” he yelled to no recruit in particular, so far as I could tell. “Move it, move it, move it!”
“Sergeant, where do I go to gather my gear?” I asked.
He looked at me with too much mirth in his smile. Like every other clone, he thought he was a natural-born, and here was a clone in an officer’s uniform asking him for a ride.
“See something amusing, Sergeant?” I asked. The smile vanished from his lips.
“No, sir,” he said.
“ ’Cause if you see something funny, Sergeant, I’d like to be in on the specking joke.”
“No, sir! The sergeant sees nothing funny, sir.”
“Where are they unloading the officers’ gear?” I asked.
“I have your gear, Lieutenant Harris,” someone said from behind me.
The man standing behind me was a clone with the same brown stubble and brown eyes as every other clone in the spaceport, but I recognized him nonetheless. I had no trouble identifying the men who served with me during the Mogat invasion. “Hello, Thomer,” I said.
“I knew you would be here,” Sergeant Kelly Thomer said, after we traded salutes. “There was no way you’d sit this one out.”
“Glad you knew it,” I said. “I didn’t. It took an armed guard just to drag me to Mars.” I was happy to see Thomer. We’d fought together, and I respected him. I could trust him under any circumstances.
“I don’t see anyone guarding you now,” Thomer said.
“Yeah, I shook ’em,” I said.
Thomer acknowledged my joke with a grin and a nod, then said, “Come with me, sir. Philips is warming up our jeep.”
“Philips? He’s still around?” I asked. I liked Mark Philips; but I would not have been surprised to hear he had been shot, drummed out of the Corps, or thrown in the brig for life. He had a talent for rubbing people the wrong way, especially officers.
“Sure he’s around; the Corps needs every man,” Thomer said.
Thomer led the way through the terminal and out to the street. We passed a team of Marines loading gear into the backs of trucks. We passed companies waiting for rides to arrive. The snow-lined sidewalks glistened in the sunlight. The cold, fresh air stung my skin in a pleasant way. A fine powder of dry snow hung in the air.
“Any sign of the aliens yet?” I asked Thomer.
“You would know more about that than I do, sir. They’ve kept us completely in the dark so far,” he said. “If we’re fighting aliens this time, are these the same aliens you saw when we invaded the Mogats?”
“Officially?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“How about unofficially?” Thomer asked.
“I still don’t know,” I said.
“Thanks, sir.”
“Anytime, Sergeant.”
Thomer pointed to a jeep up ahead. “That’s our ride.”
“Have you been on New Copenhagen long?” I asked, as we walked toward the jeep. I half expected Thomer to ask, “Officially?”
“Two days, sir. I was in the third rotation for Terraneau and Bristol Kri. If those fights had lasted another day, they would have flown me in.”
“You’re all right for a natural-born,” I said. “At least you’re up to the fight.”
“Thank you, sir,” Thomer said.
Kelly Thomer was a clone, of course, but like every other clone, he had been programmed to believe he was natural-born. Clones like Thomer, who had an introspective nature, tended to question the logic of their neural programming. Introspection was a self-destructive trait for a clone. If they convinced themselves they were synthetic, they would trigger the death reflex, but ignoring the questions caused them cognitive dissonance. So clones like Thomer spent a lot of time trying to convince themselves that they were clones even though they harbored deep suspicions that they weren’t. It was an intellectual juggling act that might one day prove fatal.
“If it ain’t the new XO,” Philips said, as Thomer stowed my twin duffel bags in the back of the jeep. “Things must really be desperate if they’re letting an asshole like you back in, sir.”
“Philips, shouldn’t you be in a brig somewhere?” I asked, climbing in the passenger’s seat.
“Yeah, but they sent me here to face the alien firing squad instead,” Philips said. “It’s one of them opportunities to die with honor.”
“And they made you a sergeant?” I asked, looking at the stripes on his uniform.
“Everyone who survived the invasion got promoted,” Thomer said. “Even Philips.”
“Well, I’m not surprised he got promoted, though I am surprised he was able to hold on to it,” I said. Philips, who was once the oldest buck private in the history of the Marines, had a knack for bouncing up and down in rank.
Philips laughed. “How are you doing, Harris?” he asked. “And how the hell did you end up as an officer?”
I ignored him calling me by my last name because he’d won my respect in combat. I ignored his question because I hated the gold bar on my collar.
“Thomer, how did you know I was coming in?” I asked.
“It’s on the duty roster, you’re our executive officer,” Thomer said. “Somebody went out of their way to surround you with old friends. Your buddy Freeman is the company’s civilian advisor.”
“Ray Freeman is here?”
“Oh sure, he’s here,” Philips muttered as he put the jeep in gear. The sun was a white-gold disc in the sky. Tall buildings cast clearly defined shadows that stretched across streets and painted empty parking lots. The day was as bright as a summer day, but the air was winter crisp.
I had never seen such preparation for battle. We turned a corner and passed a team of technicians placing the final touches on a rocket launcher. A few blocks later, we saw soldiers stringing wires through a bombproof barricade.
Philips drove to the lakeshore, where a shattered layer of ice stretched into the horizon in a web of tiny white
