The offi?cer waited for a full fi?ve minutes to make sure that the aircraft wouldn’t circle back before leaving his hiding place and crossing the ledge. Two heavily armed Seebos were on guard just inside the entrance to the mine and nodded to their CO as he entered. The rest of the company was camped about a hundred feet back and well out of sight. Lieutenant Seebo-790,444, better known to the troops as Four-Four, looked up from the pot he was tending. The junior offi?cer looked much as Six had twenty years earlier. “Pull up a rock, sir. Your tea will be ready in a minute.”
It felt good to sit down, and as Six held his hands out to collect some of the fuel tab’s excess heat, he knew the chill in the air was nothing compared to what winter would bring.
“So,” the younger offi?cer ventured. “How does it look?”
“The town is crawling with bugs,” Six answered gloomily.
“It’s my guess that they were dropped in during the early hours of the invasion.”
“So you were right,” Lieutenant-44 mused, as he poured steaming-hot water into a metal mug. “They’re after the iridium.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Colonel Six observed as he accepted his share of the tea. “I can’t think of any other reason to attack this slush ball.”
Four-Four took a tentative sip from his mug, found the brew to his liking, and cupped the container with both hands. His breath fogged the air. “So what’s the plan?”
“We’ll wait for nightfall, go down into the valley, and kill every chit we fi?nd,” Six replied coldly. The junior offi?cer raised an eyebrow. “And then?”
“And then we’ll cut the tracks, blow the processing plant, and seal the mine. Winter’s coming, so it will be a good six months before the Ramanthians can reopen the facility. Assuming we don’t kick their assess off the planet before then.”
Lieutenant-44 was silent for a moment as if considering what his superior had said. “What about the workers?” he inquired seriously. “There could be reprisals.”
Colonel Six remembered the townspeople who had been loaded onto the Ramanthian shuttle for transportation to who knows where. “Yes,” he answered soberly. “Based on reports from inside the Confederacy, reprisals are extremely likely. Those who can fi?ght will be asked to join us. Those who can’t will create places to hide in old mine shafts like this one. And the locals know where they are.”
Four-Four wasn’t sure how people would survive something like that but was careful to keep his thoughts to himself. The clones spent the afternoon catching up on sleep, cooking a communal meal, and maintaining their gear. Once the sun had set, the guerrilla fi?ghters followed their commanding offi?cer out of the mine shaft and down a weather-eroded access road toward the dimly lit town below. Thanks to the night-vision goggles they wore, everything had a greenish glow, but the soldiers were used to that, and quickly split into platoons. The fi?rst platoon, under Colonel Six, made its way toward the administration building. Meanwhile the second platoon, under Lieutenant-44, was headed for the processing plant.
Having had the town under observation all afternoon, the Seebos had a pretty good idea where most of the Ramanthians were, but there were other problems to cope with. Not the least of which was the necessity to eliminate all resistance without giving the bugs a chance to call in reinforcements. Fortunately, the clones had the element of surprise working in their favor. But they had something else going for them as well—and that was the strange, almost supernatural, relationship that existed between them. Because having been created from the same DNA, and raised with replicas of themselves, the Seebos were like fi?ngers on the same hand as they ghosted between the town’s mostly darkened buildings.
There was little more than a series of soft pops as the sentries stationed outside the administration building fell, and the clones rushed to surround the structure. The clones knew that the facility had two entrances, and once both of them were covered, Six led a squad up onto the front porch. The door seemed to open on its own as one of the bugs sought to exit. So the offi?cer shot him in the face and pushed his way into the vestibule beyond.
A second door opened onto a reception area, and three Ramanthians were already headed his way as Colonel Six entered. The offi?cer took them down with short bursts from his submachine gun (SMG) and shouted, “Kill the radio!” as the rest of the squad came in behind him.
“Got it, sir!” a corporal replied as he fi?red three rounds into the rugged com set that occupied one of the desks. The alien RT took exception to that, produced a pistol, and was trying to bring the weapon to bear when the corporal fi?red again. The bug jerked spastically, fell over sideways, and began to leak green digestive goo onto the fl?oor.
“Good work,” Six said grimly. “Find the rest of them.”
“You came!” a female voice said gratefully, as the rest of the squad went looking for additional chits. “Thanks be to the founder!”
That was when Colonel Six turned to see that half a dozen townspeople had been tied to chairs that lined one of the walls. The individual who had spoken was a member of the Mogundo line and therefore an administrator. The rest were Ortovs. A hardy line commonly used for industrial applications. “How many of you are there?” the offi?cer demanded brusquely.
“Twenty-six,” the woman replied crisply. She had brown skin, fl?ashing black eyes, and a full fi?gure. The offi?cer imagined what she would look like without any clothes on, felt the usual response, and pushed the image away. Such thoughts were less frequent than they had been twenty years earlier but still plagued him.
The sound of muted gunfi?re interrupted the offi?cer’s thoughts as the second platoon dealt with the Ramanthians in the processing plant. “Please! Stop the fi?ghting!” one of the Ortovs pleaded. “They have our children!”
“She’s right,” the administrator put in, as a soldier cut her loose. “The Ramanthians took hostages earlier today.”
Six nodded. “Yes, I know. And I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do about it. Gather your people together. . . . Tell them to pack cold-weather gear, plus food that won’t spoil, and bring it here. But only what they can carry on their backs. Because the bugs will return, and when they do, they’ll kill everyone they fi?nd.”
“But what about our children?” the Ortov sobbed. “The ones they took?”
Under normal circumstances, on planets like Alpha-001, clone children were raised in crèchelike institutions where they could be properly socialized. But that wasn’t always possible on less-developed planets like Gamma-014, where children were occasionally assigned to an appropriate community at the age of two, to be raised within the embrace of the profession to which they would one day belong. But that practice could lead to unacceptably strong bonds between individual adults and children, as was clearly the case where the distraught Ortov was concerned. Because even though she hadn’t given birth to a child, she clearly felt as if she had, and that was wrong.
“Maybe the children will survive,” Colonel Six allowed, as the Ortov was freed. “But I doubt it. The Ramanthians regard mercy as a weakness, and if we’re going to beat them, we’ll have to be just as hard as they are. Now stop crying, get your things, and hurry back. I plan to pull out thirty minutes from now.”