The Clone Apocalypse by Steven L. Kent Read Free Book Online Page A

traveling at a speed that might have seemed slow to a bicyclist.
    The gunner said, “I’m going to feel real guilty about killing these bastards if that’s the best they can do.” He fired a countermeasure in the rockets’ direction. The countermeasure, an exploding canister of flak, ended the barrage in an instant, creating bright explosions that filled the viewing window in my visor as the pilot yelled in triumph.
    The gunner fired a Theron rocket in response. Therons killed with heat instead of percussion. The rocket had a lutetium alloy nose that punctured stone, brick, metal, and most armor with the ease of a hypodermic needle stabbing a new recruit in the ass. The rocket struck the building and windows shattered in a spray of glass, smoke, and flame.
    “Think they’re dead?” asked the pilot.
    “They ain’t happy,” said the gunner.
    “What if they’re wearing shielded armor?” asked the pilot.
    That didn’t matter. It wasn’t the armor, it was the bodysuit that protected Marines against heat and cold, and at six hundred degrees, bodysuits failed. Theron missiles generated a flash of thirty-five hundred degrees.
    My twenty-five gunships broke formation. They scattered across the sky. Looking through the lead pilot’s visor, I watched the carnage. They drifted over the city, like fish circling a reef in search of prey. They were black oblong shapes, nothing more than silhouettes, like the buildings below them.
    A little more than a minute had passed when my nameless lieutenant reported, “General, we’ve reached the other side of the river.”
    I answered. “Move ’em out.”
    Every captain, every lieutenant, and every platoon sergeant had been briefed, and specific assignments had been uploaded into their visors. With a simple ocular command, they could access street maps and compasses. Virtual beacons marked their routes and their objectives.
    The door of our transport dropped open, revealing the fiery sky.
    Amphibious transports are built to operate like tunnels. You enter one side and leave through the other—first on, first off. We were the last vehicle to enter this transport, meaning we’d be the last one off. I watched the carriers ahead of us as they purred to life and loped down the ramp.
    The sky was a swirl of oranges and reds, but the ground remained dark as night. Twenty vehicles ahead of me, the first transport in our column started moving. The vehicle behind it roared to life immediately.
    In my Jackal, I remained in the gunner’s turret, my hands on the handles of the 60-caliber. A squeeze of my finger would release a burst of steel-jacketed rounds, four inches long, a half inch across. These bullets could split a twenty-foot tree. Line six men in front of a thick cement wall, and I could produce a half dozen corpses and a hole in that wall behind them with a single round.
    The personnel carrier in front of mine began its slow march toward the ramp. A moment later, we followed. Last on; last off.
    We drove through the red-lit innards of the amphibious transport, passing metal ribs, traffic-control booths, cameras, and a communications array.
    I looked up into the sky, then down into the shadows. Some of my officers might have wanted to contact me, but I had closed my commandLink to them. They had their orders.
    Our tires squealed as we hit the bottom of the ramp, and my driver accelerated. Standing in the turret, I fell back against the wall, then tightened my grip on the handles and pulled myself back toward the gun.
    The gunfire had already begun. In the distant darkness, muzzle fire glittered and vanished like sparks from a grinding wheel. I heard the growl of the Jackal’s engine through my armor; these vehicles were louder on the inside than the outside.
    First came the gunships, then the Targs and Schwarzkopfs followed. These wagons didn’t lumber like dinosaurs, they scurried like spiders, maneuvering perfectly well at speeds of over seventy miles per hour.
    As we drove