The Clone Redemption (3 page)

Per special orders given them by Admiral Yamashiro, the sailors raised a hand in salute and shouted
BANZAI
as the device fired each pod into space.

The SEALs did not hear their cheers. InterLink transmissions did not penetrate the walls of their pods. For the duration of their flight, the SEALs heard nothing more than the sound of their own breathing as they streaked through space. Barely larger than old-fashioned space suits, the pods carried their cargo a half million miles in a matter of seconds.

In the history of mankind, no human had ever traveled so far in such a small vessel. Tasked with saving humanity, the SEALs went to space with equipment that Congress had previously labeled “too expensive to be practical.” Concerns about practicality vanished when it came to saving the human race.

It cost approximately eighty million dollars to build a stealth infiltration pod. The SEALs had brought five thousand of them to Bode's Galaxy.

The pods traveled from the transport to the planet at top speed and did not slow until they pierced the atmosphere, leaving no more traces of their entry than needles slicing steam. Invisible to radar, sonar, and visual contact, the pods continued their computer-controlled deceleration until they touched down at the preappointed target as gently as autumn leaves landing in a grassy field.

All twelve pods landed within a forty-foot radius, their cargo bay doors opened, and the SEALs emerged. This was the first time man had set foot on a planet outside the Milky Way, a benchmark that meant nothing to Emerson Illych and his men. They had not come to explore. They had come to destroy.

Illych and his team knew what to expect. This planet was known as “A-361-F,” as it was the sixth planet from the star labeled “A-361.” A-361-F had an unbreathable atmosphere—a toxic cocktail of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane. Because it was so far from the sun, a foot-thick layer of poisonous frost covered its surface. Had they not been wearing atmosphere-adjusting combat armor, the SEALs would have frozen to death before they got a chance to die of asphyxiation.

Illych thought the planet looked a lot like Earth's moon might have looked had it been frozen under ice. Nothing had color. The ground was gray. The sky was black. The SEALs had landed during the period that passed for day, but the sun was four billion miles away, and day on A-361-F looked a lot like night.

The SEALs did not waste time chatting about the dreary surroundings. They quietly checked to make sure they had not left gear in their pods and began their mission.

In the hours before the mission began, remote surveillance technicians had used satellite drones to map the planet. Designed for military use, the satellites were not equipped to take air samples from space. They tested for radiation, located nonnatural structures, recorded ground movement, and searched for possible targets. On this planet, the satellites found only one point of interest, an abandoned building complex.

Looking at the satellite reports, Yamashiro's intelligence officers said that complex was “inactive,” possibly an abandoned fort or a fueling station for space travelers. They had no way of knowing if it belonged to the Avatari, the aliens who had created such havoc upon the Milky Way. The author of the report did speculate that the enormous cylindrical structures along one face of the complex might be storage silos, suggesting that the facility might have been used as a fuel refinery.

The land around the complex was completely flat, no hills or craters. A labyrinth of tunnels and trenches might have been hiding beneath the foot-thick frost; but if so, it was invisible to the recon satellites. To Illych's eyes, the plain had no notable features except for the buildings.

Illych did not bother telling his men what to do, they already knew their assigned duties. The SEALs had trained together since the day of their manufacture, twelve years earlier. They knew their objectives and performed their duties.

The SEALs divided into three four-man reconnaissance teams. Illych led his team toward the complex itself. If the buildings had had walls, doors, or windows, the master chief and his men would have searched from outside, looking for guards or security equipment. No doors, no walls, no roof. More than anything else, the place was a tangle of pipes and chambers. Inch-thick frost had formed on the structure, creating gray camouflage over the jet-black metallic surfaces below.

The building stood no more than fifty feet tall, built on an open-faced foundation. Using the thermal lenses in his visor, Illych scanned the area for heat signatures. He found nothing. Either the structure was out of use, or the material flowing through the pipes was of a type that could not be frozen.

Illych and his team looked for signs of the Avatari. They searched the platform for doors and compartments, using the sonar and X-ray equipment in their helmets; then they used the enhanced handheld equipment that they had brought with them. The pipes and chambers were hollow, the foundation and the ground around it were solid.

One of the SEALs shined a laser on pipes and panels to test for vibrations and found nothing. Petty Officer Andrew Call aimed a torch at a patch of frost from a pipe that was so big around he could have stood in it. The gray layer turned to steam under the heat and quickly evaporated.

Speaking on an open frequency, Call asked Illych, “Do you want me to cut the pipe open?” He did not refer to the master chief as “sir.” By design, none of the cloned SEALs were officers.

“Didn't you say the pipe is empty?” Illych asked.

“As far as I can tell.”

“What's the point in cutting it open?”

“It will give us a chance to see what it's made of,” said Call. “I've never seen anything like this. It X-rays easily, but I can't find wires or circuits, none of the components you expect to find inside a machine. Whatever passes for power around here, it's not electricity-based.”

Illych considered this. “Hold off,” he said. “For now, let's just figure out what we're dealing with.”

Illych stood at the edge of the foundation, tracing the shapes of the pipes that formed the structure. The building had an organic, random feeling. Like vines in jungle, the pipes weaved in and out in a haphazard braid. So much frost covered the pipes that they looked like an ice sculpture, but only a thin layer of powdery frost had formed on the foundation. Looking for footprints in that powder, Illych thought that centuries might have passed since the aliens had last visited the facility.

Using optical commands, he raised the volume of the sound sensors in his helmet so that he could better monitor the ambient sounds. He heard only the mouselike whisper of the wind and the footsteps of his men. The planet had a thin atmosphere, and much of it was frozen.

The master chief went to an N-shaped stand of pipes and tapped it with his finger. He could see the structure of the pipes deep inside a dirty frozen layer. Using a knife, he scraped the skin of the ice, letting the peelings fall into an analysis kit.

He checked the reading, saw nothing of importance, and scraped deeper. The kit checked for radiation, chemicals, and age. The content of the ice remained the same; but as Illych gouged deeper into the frozen sheath, the age changed. The readings struck Illych as odd, but he did not question the results.

“Do you think this belongs to the same aliens that invaded us?” asked Kapeliela.

“I'm sure of it,” said Illych.

“This place is weird. I never seen anything like it,” said Kapeliela.

“It looks like a refinery,” said Illych.

Kapeliela agreed. “Yeah, an abandoned refinery. That makes sense, but it's been out of service for a long, long time.”

Chief Petty Officer Humble joined the conversation. “So what? It's a refinery?”

Illych asked, “What kind of ships did the aliens fly when they attacked our planets?”

“They didn't have . . .”

“You don't need remote fuel depots once you stop flying ships,” Illych said.

Beside the building, a row of twenty-seven identical cylindrical structures rose out of the ground. They stood 970 feet tall. They had the same hyperbolic shape as the cooling towers of nuclear power facilities only turned upside down. The structures were wider at the top than at the base.

While Illych and his men surveyed the building, Chief Petty Officer Humble's team studied the towers. Using equipment in his helmet, Humble measured the nearest tower—223 feet wide at the base and 352 feet wide at the top.

“You got anything?” Illych asked Humble.

“Yeah. It's like these things are made of eggshells,” Humble said. “Once you get through all the ice, the walls are a twentieth of an inch thick. I'm surprised they don't collapse under the weight of the ice.”

“Can you see inside it?” Illych asked.

“Yeah, they X-ray right up. They're empty and hollow all the way down.”

“All the way down?” Illych asked.

“If you think this thing is tall, you should see how far down it goes.”

“How far?”

“Over a mile.”

“Do you think it's a silo?” Illych asked.

“That's my best guess; but it's empty.”

Kapeliela waited for Illych to run out of questions, then asked one of his own. “Do we know if these pipes are made of the same stuff?”

“They aren't as thin as eggshells,” Illych said. “It looks like this place was abandoned a long, long time ago. Some of the ice on these pipes is over a hundred thousand years old.”

That was when Illych saw the light. All of the SEALs saw it. A dull sun shone in the distance; but far brighter 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.