The Clone Elite

with tint shields to protect my eyes.

The dome had spread more quickly than I expected. It was only a mile away at best.

What’s it like once the light spreads over you? Corporal Trevor Boll, who was not with us during the Mogat invasion, asked Thomer.

It’s nothing. It’s just a bright light; don’t worry about it, Thomer answered. He tried to hide the concern in his voice but failed.

Ah, speck. I didn’t ever want to go through this again, Philips said.

I’m sending you an image, Thomer said to Philips. Our helmets had imaging equipment that not only allowed us to view the world through different lenses, it let us record and transmit what we saw. Corporals and up could control the gear to capture video and send it over the interLink. You don’t have to open it if you don’t want to.

Oh, hell no. I don’t want to see it. A moment later. Ah, shit, Thomer. I didn’t want to see that. I still have nightmares from last time.

Brocius called this “sleeving” the planet. That was what it felt like—as if some sort of material closed around us. It certainly did not act like light. The leading edge of the brightly lit curtain did not shine into the sky around it. Where the curtain had spread was bright, while the sky just beyond was still dark. Shimmering waves of elemental colors—pure hues of red, yellow, and blue—showed in the light like an aurora borealis.

Is it radioactive? one of the men asked over the general frequency. He sounded nervous.

No, several voices answered at once. We had a rudimentary Geiger counter in our visors as well.

The light won’t hurt you. That was Thomer.

The light won’t hurt you, but whatever’s inside of it might specking eat you for lunch, Philips, always the charmer, said. At least he had the good sense to say it over a private frequency that only sergeants and higher would hear.

“Well, boys, it’s safe to assume that the enemy is at hand,” I said. “Any suggestions on a good hiding spot?”

“There’s a nice ridge over here. Might make a good place to dig in.” The message came from Private First Class Steven White, one of Philips’s men.

“We’d have the high-ground advantage,” Philips added.

“Set a beacon,” I said. Philips created a virtual beacon—a red spot that appeared in all of our visors showing us the direction to follow, and I ordered the rest of the platoon to follow. As we headed toward the beacon, I spoke to my men. “The light will not hurt you, but we don’t know what else it might be able to do. It might have some kind of sensor ability, like a radar. It might be able to detect our body heat or our breathing or the chemicals in our bodies or the electrical impulses in our brains.”

“Want me to stop thinking?” Philips asked over a private channel.

“I’d be glad enough if you’d stop talking for a change,” I said.

“Sorry, sir,” Philips said in a slow drawl that told me he was not.

We reached the beacon. It marked a low-slung hill. The trees did not grow as close together on this hill, opening the way for a thick layer of snow on the ground.

The dome of light was closing in. At this rate it would spread over us in another minute. So long as the light did not have some sort of radar or sonar to detect us, I thought we might be able to hide. With our white armor, we would be nearly invisible in the snow, and our armor would shield the heat from our bodies.

“Man, this shit is blinding,” one of my Marines said.

“Things are going to be bright for a while, so you might as well get used it,” Philips said.

“Stow it, you two,” I said. We didn’t have time for a philosophical discussion about alien lights. “Gentlemen, the fun is about to begin, you better find a good place to hide and dig in.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I did not know much about physics, but I knew enough to see that the light around the alien landing did not behave like natural light. It didn’t move, it spread like a viscous fluid, slowly flooding the forest and engulfing everything it touched in a bright silvery blanket. Light shining from a source like a star or a bulb casts shadows. This light seemed to turn the very air into a light source so that there were no shadows anywhere.

The light mesmerized my men. Private First Class Harold Messman summed it up best when he said, “Holy specking shit.”

Burrowing through a three-foot mound of snow on the side of the hill, I tried to forget about the phantom light and concentrate on the aliens. We were directly between the origin of the light and Valhalla. Somewhere in that light, an alien army was headed our way.

Most of my men hid behind trees. Up the slope from me, an entire fire team crouched behind a stand of fallen logs. A few feet ahead of me, Ray Freeman concealed himself behind a boulder that was about the size of a large dog. Big as he was, he had to lie chest down in the snow to keep from showing, and even then it was a tight fit. At least his combat armor protected him from the cold.

My own situation wasn’t much better. As I was lying facedown in the snow, my body was pressed against the joints in my armor. The creases in my shoulder guards were wreaking havoc on my neck and chest. Because of the shape of my helmet, I could not lie flat on my stomach, it cocked my neck back. We had to keep our M27s hidden, too. Their black stocks and barrels would be a dead giveaway. I buried mine in the snow. Good thing it was not the kind of gun that jams up when a little mud splashes into the barrel.

I had no idea how many soldiers the enemy might bring, but it seemed likely that an intergalactic army might rely on overwhelming force to secure new territories, wipe their enemies out entirely, then move on to the next conquest. Over the next while, a million soldiers might pass this glade.

“Get comfortable, boys,” I said over the interLink. “We may be here for a long, long time.” Hours, I thought. Then I added, “Keep your eyes open, but hold your fire. We do not want to engage. Repeat, we do not want to engage.”

“What if they spot us?” asked one of my privates.

“Just sit tight, Messman,” I said. “Don’t start shooting until I give you the order.”

“Yes, sir.” He sounded nervous. I needed him to hold tight. All it would take was one loose cannon to give us away.

Now that the flood of light had spread over us, my visor automatically switched to tactical lenses with moderate tinting to protect my eyes from the glare. The trees and moss were awash with color—dark green needles, lime green moss, stones the color of iron, trunks with gray bark, ferns with red leaves.

The light had enveloped the forest for as far as I could see. Everything was drowned in liquid light. During the Mogat invasion, I managed to escape before the light closed in around me. Our transport took off just in time to avoid it. This time, there was no escape.

Using the Geiger counter in my visor, I checked for radiation and found nothing. The environmental equipment showed no change in air temperature, and I could see that the light did not melt the snow, which glistened like a blanket of diamond fragments along the ridge.

“Holy shit! Look at that ugly specker.” Philips spotted the Angels first. “I saw the video feed, but I didn’t believe it.”

The creatures looked like they were made out of light, but not the same light that now flooded the forest. The liquid light pouring across the forest was silver-white, like raw electricity. The creatures were bright yellow.

The first Space Angels around the bend looked like statues sculpted from yellow neon light. Their movements were stiff and stilted, as if their limbs had somehow become locked by the snow. Made of light or glass, they marched along the ground. No floating, no flying, no vehicles. Instead, column after column of eight-foot-tall soldiers that looked no more substantial than a smear of light marched along the ground below us. They had heads, arms, and legs, all with fairly human proportions only larger. They carried enormous chrome rifles cross chest. The aliens might have looked like they were made out of energy, but those damn rifles seemed pretty