The Clone Redemption

light now shone directly above them. Having been briefed about the invasion of their own galaxy, the SEALs knew what that light meant. The aliens had arrived.

“Looks like the home team knows we’re here,” said Illych. A few yards away, Call left his X-ray camera beside a pipe and pulled out his gun. Three of the SEALs carried pistols, six carried M27s, three carried sniper rifles. All of their weapons were loaded with custom-made rounds, bullets designed to explode like miniature grenades.

“Okay, we’ve trained for this,” Illych told his men.

Light so bright it almost looked solid shone on the other side of the building. The SEALs knew what to expect: First came the light, then the aliens that traveled inside it.

Illych told his men, “Take your positions. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” He did not believe they would.

Illych held no delusions about being rescued. No one would come to the planet to save them. If his men had any hope of survival, they would need to make it out on their own.

Believing that he and his men would not survive the next five minutes, Illych decided to die on his own terms. The only thing that mattered now was reporting what little they had learned before the aliens “sleeved” the planet. The light in the sky, dubbed by scientists as an “ion curtain,” would quickly enclose the planet, ending all transmissions. Once it spread over the platform, the SEALs would be cut off.

With his team running beside him, Illych relayed findings to the fleet as he dashed from pipes to cylinders to pillars. He kept his M27 out and ready though he still had not yet seen the enemy.

“The atmosphere is toxic, mostly nitrogen and carbon monoxide. The building appears to be a refinery. We think it is out of use but cannot be sure. It’s covered with ice. The ice on the pipes is a hundred thousand years old. I checked the samples myself.”

The pilot of the transport interrupted Illych’s message. “Find a safe position. I’m coming to get you.”

“Negative. Do not attempt to retrieve us.”

The pilot did not argue the point.

An officer from the Onoda asked, “Master Chief, have one of your men fire at the cylinders.”

Illych relayed the order. “Humble, fire a burst at one of the silos.”

Already one hundred yards away, Humble spun and fired five rounds into the nearest silo. Had they been regular rounds, the bullets might have ricocheted off. The special rounds struck the target and exploded.

Even as he pulled the trigger, Humble realized that the bullets should have triggered a chain reaction. They should have broken through the thin wall and caused the structure to collapse.

Seeing that his bullets did not penetrate the silo, Humble fired five more shots. The bullets burst like small grenades, a pop, a flash, a flame. Anyone standing a few feet from the explosions would have been thrown in the air. The bullets blew away the frost, but they did not scratch the structure.

“Bulletproof,” said Humble. He sprinted to catch up to the men in his squad.

Instead of beams, walls, and doorways, the building had pipes and empty spaces. As he ran, Illych looked for elevators or ladders that would lead to the top of the structure. He found nothing.

In the sky, patterns of colors showed in the light, shimmering like heat waves, and the glaring light spread across the sky.

The atmosphere above the building glowed like crystal as the top of the pillar of light spread into a silver-white canopy, the color of lightning, but with spectrums of other colors playing inside it.

Illych looked into the sky long enough for shades and shapes to pop before his eyes, then returned his gaze to the ground. He reached the far side of the building at the same moment as the three other men in his squad.

“You getting this?” he asked the officers on the Onoda.

“Have you seen defenders?” asked the man on the other side of the commandLink.

On the frozen plain not far from the building, a ten-foot-tall globe glowed even more bright than the light around it. It stood out like a platinum sphere in a bed of well-polished silver. As he turned to examine the globe, the tint shields in Illych’s visor deployed to protect his eyes.

Unlike the tint shields in standard combat armor, the tinting in SEAL armor filtered light instead of simply darkening it. Illych saw everything clearly, but the glare was gone. He saw the crystal white sphere and the dirty brown gas that leaked from its base. Illych also saw the aliens inside the globe, ten-foot-tall translucent yellow shadows with arms and legs but no facial features except grapefruit-sized chromesilver eyes. The first humans who saw these creatures had labeled them “space angels.”

The apparitions stepped out of the sphere, and the SEALs opened fire. Their bullets passed through the aliens the same way they passed through light or air. They hit nothing and did not explode.

Above the fight, the ion curtain had spread across both horizons. Illych was too busy to notice, but if he’d tried to contact Onoda, his transmissions would have gone unanswered. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the master chief understood that he was cut off from the fleet. Communications could not penetrate the curtain. Ships could not pass through it. There would be no airlift. He and his men would fight until they died.

But Illych would still achieve one of his objectives. As mission leader, he had access to controls in his visor that the other men on his team did not have. He started the process.

Illych knew his SEALs could not win this firefight. They specialized in stealth combat. They infiltrated bases, sabotaged targets, and occasionally assassinated enemies. This was open combat, the specialty of soldiers and Marines.

When he saw Kapeliela die, Illych felt a stab of doubt and asked himself if the stealth infiltration pods would charge in time.

Kapeliela had run along the side of the building. He came within a few feet of the creatures and fired his weapon. His bullets passed through them as if they were ghosts. He threw a grenade. It exploded without harming them.

One of the creatures swung its chrome-barreled rifle at Kapeliela and fired a yard-long bolt of light that passed through the SEAL and into the ground behind him. The bolt passed so smoothly through the man and his armor that, seen from the side, it looked like the shot missed. Kapeliela’s body did not explode. No blood splashed from the wound. He simply fell backward. Mercifully, he was dead before he hit the ground.

As Illych watched, the aliens’ bodies slowly solidified. “Aim for their rifles,” Illych yelled to his men over the interLink.

A bullet glanced off one of the aliens’ rifles even before Illych finished speaking. It had to have come from one of his snipers, a pinpoint shot that hit the barrel and exploded without leaving a mark.

Hiding behind a pipe, Illych leveled his M27, and fired a long burst. He expected the aliens to return fire, but they didn’t. They stood outside the building, their glowing, translucent hides cooling to the color of honey, and they waited.

For just an instant, Illych considered stopping the countdown, but he decided against it. He read the timer in his visor. In three minutes and twenty-six seconds the field-resonance engines in the twelve stealth infiltration pods would overcharge and explode. Once overcharged, the field-resonance engines inside the pods would become unstable. They’d be like dams holding back an endless flow of energy. In three minutes and twenty seconds, the pods would use that energy to self-destruct, taking the entire planet with them.

One of Illych’s snipers ran out into the open, looking for a shot. An alien fired first, its bolt hit the SEAL in the chest, and he collapsed in a violent spasm that lasted only a few seconds.

“It looks like they don’t want to come in after us,” said Humble.

Illych checked the timer. He and his men needed to hold out for three minutes and twelve seconds. They had to defend the S.I.P.s. If the aliens found the pods and shot them first, the overcharging engines would not explode.

One of the aliens walked to the edge of the building and stopped. Dozens of bullets passed through its body and head without leaving a trace. Several shots hit its weapon.

“Transport, you there?” Illych asked, though he would not get through.

Three of the aliens walked toward the building. They moved slowly, taking shaky steps like drunks or maybe toddlers learning to walk. The SEALs hit the aliens with grenades and bullets and rockets, but their attacks meant nothing. One of the aliens came closer, raised its weapon, scanned back and forth for targets, but did not fire or step onto the foundation.

“You there?” Illych asked again. “I hope they’re getting this.”