The Clone Redemption Read Online Free PDF Page A

seconds.
    â€œIt’s not coming after us,” said Humble.
    All five of the aliens gathered at the edge of the building. They did not speak to each other. Their skins still glowed the color of honey, but dark scales had begun to form.
    â€œMaybe it has orders not to hurt the building,” said Call.
    â€œSo we have a standoff,” said Humble.
    â€œFor another minute and a half,” said Illych.
    â€œYou’re charging the caskets?” asked Humble.
    â€œEighty-seven seconds and counting.”
    Humble laughed, and said, “I knew I should have read my death poem.”

CHAPTER ONE
    Location: Terraneau
Galactic Position: Scutum-Crux Arm
Astronomic Location: Milky Way
    They say God created the plants on the third day, the animals on the fifth, and man on the sixth. What God did in three days the aliens undid in less than a minute and a half. It took the bastards eighty-three seconds to kill everything that walked the surface of Terraneau, right down to the microbes.
    I was one of the 1,037 people who survived the attack on the once-grand planet of Terraneau. We survived because we hid in a tunnel that ran under a lake.
    By far, the vast majority of the survivors were clones, members of Scutum-Crux Fleet’s Corps of Engineers. There was an even thousand of them.
    I was one of two Marines who survived. The other survivors included Ava Gardner, the woman I had once loved, and the man who had replaced me as her lover. My pilot, Lieutenant Christian Nobles, was the other Marine. Ray Freeman, the mercenary/homicidal humanitarian who busted me out of jail in time to save me from getting cooked with everybody else, survived as well.
    The thirty-two other lottery winners were members of the local militia. In the moments before the aliens attacked, the local militia raided the tunnel hoping to haul me back to prison. They entered with hundreds of men, but only thirty-two had traveled far enough into the tunnel to survive the heat. They attacked our sanctuary moments before the Avatari performed their pyrotechnic magic, raising the surface temperature of Terraneau to 9,000 degrees. The temperature outside the tunnel spiked 8,927 degrees and remained at 9,000 degrees for precisely eighty-three seconds, then dropped back to normal almost as quickly.
    During those eighty-three seconds, the temperature created a convection, causing the atmosphere to rise off the surface of the planet. When the Avatari shut off the heat, the atmosphere dropped back into place, crushing buildings, kicking a thick layer of dust and ash into the air, and sending a shock wave across the planet.
    Hiding behind a thick steel door in the depths of a tunnel, my engineers and I rode out the attack unharmed. When we opened the doors, just about everyone on the planet had been killed and cremated; and their dust was carried on the largely carbon-dioxide winds. Just behind the door, we found thirty-two militiamen cowering in the dark. They were good to go except for burst eardrums, a few broken bones, and the shock of knowing that everything and everyone they loved had been burned.
    The rest of the tunnel was littered with the bodies of men who were cooked but not cremated. The first bodies we found were covered with blisters, their clothes singed and their hair burned brittle. Grease leaked from breaks in their scalded hides.
    As I wandered toward the entrance of the tunnel, the corpses became more badly burned. One hundred feet from daylight, the bodies were papery ash that turned to dust at the slightest touch.
    I walked to the mouth of the tunnel, taking in the lake, the sky, and the distant ruins of Norristown. From where I stood, Lake Norris looked as big as an ocean, so far across that I would not be able to see its farthest shores ... even on a clear day. On this day, the air around me was the color of tea, and clouds of smoke and ash filled the sky. Incinerating five million people and all their belongings puts a lot of dust in