I lifted her as something crackled behind me. I glanced over to see that the three men had charged up electron repulsors. Normally they were used to catch falling hovercars over a cityscape, but these men had them around their fists and feet and heads. Like little invincible fists. And they began a furious barrage of blows against the woman.
A hovercar came to stop in front of us. Three men were inside, along with a ghost. A republic AI. I reached for my blaster.
“That won’t be necessary,” one of the men said. “If you want to live, get in. If you want to die you’re more than welcome to stay here.”
I glanced back. The woman was cutting and spinning and flipping faster than I could see. The men were just as fast. Whoever won, I didn’t want to be around to meet them. I helped Ava into the hovercar first, laying her down in the back, and then climbed in.
The hovercar sped away and the woman in the black suit looked to me, her eyes turning to slits as she watched us speed away, and a chill went up my back.
NEPHI
I stared at the image in front of us. I couldn’t believe it. Down the hill in the little, quiet village, was a fighter unlike any I had ever seen. The clones were fast and they appeared to be armed. A few words were exchanged and the clones flipped up from the table and attacked nearly in unison.
But the woman was … otherworldly. An energy sword of some kind flipped to life and she began cutting through the clones like dolls.
“What is that?” I asked Monica.
“A plasma blade. Outlawed in 2345 by the Ministry of Weaponry. Plasma blades were used primarily for—”
“I know what they were used for. How the hell did she get a hold of a four hundred-year-old weapon?”
“Unknown.”
One clone put up a fight, a male covered in dark tattoos. But he wasn’t a match for her. The woman then spun on Prator. She forced him down to his knees by kicking out his legs and then she held the tip of the blade near his throat.
Just then, my two targets ran out of the house. The woman thrust the blade into Prator and lifted him into the air as my female target sprinted for her. Sliding Prator’s corpse off the blade, the woman then shot a blast of plasma energy toward the clone, who flew a dozen meters and hit the ground hard on her back.
“We’re not letting them die without speaking with them.” I turned to the Elites. “Go stop her.”
I loaded into the hovercar with Tiberius and his assistant as the Elites sprinted down the hill. They tossed some sort of detonator and knocked the woman on her back. We sped down there and I stopped next to my two targets. The male lifted a sonic blaster.
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “If you want to live get in. If you want to die you’re more than welcome to stay here.”
The man thought a moment and then climbed in. Once they were both secure we sped away. I glanced to the woman who was fighting the Elites and she glared at me, but was too occupied to do anything.
I looked to Monica. “You sure about this?”
“It is ninety-nine point three percent certain now that the Elites will be terminated.”
We sped through the city and to the spaceport. As we turned a corner I heard the sound of sirens wailing behind us. I looked back to see an administrative authority vessel behind us, a flashing hologram above the hovercar stating to stop and pull to the side.
“Cap me,” Tiberius whispered. “Let me handle this.”
We stopped and waited as the authority stepped out of his hovercar. He was dressed in purple, the official color of government on King’s Grace. He checked the bottom of our hovercar before coming close.
“Where the cap are you going so fast, Tiberius?” he said.
“Authority Welhelm, it’s so nice to see you. I was just wondering who it was that was dressed so dapper for such an honorable job.”
“Shut your mouth, you wretch. Your compliments are like filth in my ears.” He glanced over to the two in the back. “What the cap are you doing up here?”
“Just transporting some friends to the spaceport to see them off. They truly did enjoy their stay here and they said I should tell anybody that will listen how wonderful—”
He reached into the hovercar with a glowing black rod and zapped Tiberius with it, who nearly jumped out of his seat.
“I don’t like being lied to.”
“We’re not lying,” he said, panic in his voice. “Isn’t that right, Nephi?”
The authority looked at me. “Where you goin’?”
“Spaceport.”
“What business did you have in King’s Grace?”
“Pleasure, what else.”
He eyed me and then took a few steps back. “I’m having you detained until we verify your identity. Turn off the engines, now.”
Tiberius spoke in a desperate voice now. “Authority, please! We’ve done nothing wrong. Why must you take up this man’s valuable time and—”
“I told you to shut your mouth, Tiberius. I’ve had just about enough of your—”
The man’s brains spattered over the nice sidewalks. I replaced the pistol and turned to Tiberius who was staring at me in shock.
“Drive,” I said. “Hurry up, come on, drive!”
The hovercar kicked to life again and we zipped to the spaceport. There weren’t any other problems as we boarded the ship. The target, the male, was cooperative and seemed to have a sense that his odds were better with me than with the King’s Grace authorities and so he climbed aboard and strapped himself in to the back after helping the female.
“Take us back to Earth, Monica.”
“Yes, Nephi. You should be aware that the female clone’s life signs are weak. Without proper medical attention, she will die shortly.”
“Well, then hurry up cause I got some questions for her.”
CALISTA
I sat in the vessel staring out at the stars. The information broker on Lais had been helpful. We had a quadrant where the targets likely were. In that quadrant were forty-one planets. As they were unlikely to go to a planet with a heavy law enforcement presence, that excluded twenty-nine of them. Leaving only twelve that had light military or police presence.
Of those twelve, eight had planet-wide scanners that kept track of every visitor. They wouldn’t risk that, even with false identification information. That left four planets: Thelile, Casa, Festibius 2, and King’s Grace. I sat with the four planets up on my viewscreen and stared at them.
“You all right up there?” Karma said through the comm.
“I’ve got their likely location down to four planets.”
“Which ones?”
“Thelile, Casa, Festibius 2, and King’s Grace.”
“Hmm. Thelile and Festibius are water worlds. I don’t think they’d go there. They’d be trapped in underwater facilities ‘cause that’s where the cities are.”
“Casa is barren. Nothing but rocks and caves. It might not be a bad place to hide if someone with planetary scanners is looking for you.”
“What about King’s Grace?”
“Resort planet. Not hostile but not friendly to the PR government. They keep track of all visitors; it’d be difficult to hide there unless you were a lifelong citizen.”
“Well, let’s go check out Casa then.”
“Hold on, I’m engaging the FTL drive.”
It wasn’t long until we arrived in quadrant 22-G. During FTL travel I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but that didn’t happen. Sleep had always been difficult. Most of the time I felt like I was just barely getting by on enough to keep functioning. Stims helped to sharpen my senses and I had brought a few with me, but I wanted to save them for when I really needed them.
Karma was snoring.
We got to the quadrant and disengaged the FTL drive. I swung over to Casa. The planet was the color of rust and nearly lifeless. A few outposts were there from the handful of people who tried to scratch out a living mining the rocks for hemlight ore. But the planet had been depleted decades a
go and there were fewer and fewer shipments coming out.
We entered the atmosphere and I could still hear Karma’s snoring as the ship began its smooth descent to the surface. We snuck in unannounced and not even a call came up asking us for ship ID. As we broke through the atmosphere and headed for the spaceport flight deck, I ran a quick search for information brokers. Some of the brokers were government sanctioned, allowed to run their businesses out in the open. Some were not. The latter were the more valuable, though more difficult to find.
We landed and I opened the hatch. The planet smelled sulphurous, probably from the hundreds of active and inactive volcanoes that scarred its surface. I hopped down the ramp and saw Karma stretching her arms over her head. She slowly climbed out and twisted from side-to-side. She was wearing a tank-top and the muscles of her arms rippled as she stretched.
“I’m starving.”
“We can get some food here,” I said.
We walked to the security clearance and a man with a holopad came up to us. He did a quick scan before lowering the pad and saying, “That’s be twelve units, please.”
“For what?” Karma said.
“Be’s three for docking time, and three be’s to carry the weapons you have. You’s could leave the weapons on your ship if you’s wished, but me’s never recommend that for women. You’s like to hire a personal guard to escort you’s around the outpost?”
“That won’t be necessary.” I brushed past him and Karma followed.
“Everybody shakes you down just a little bit here and a little bit there,” she said. “Until there’s nothing left.”
“I doubt it’s ever been different.”
“Maybe. Before the Great War.”
“Yeah, and how did that turn out?”
“I’m just saying maybe we haven’t always been the thieving little snakes we are now.”
“I don’t think so. I think in our natural state, with no external pressures, that’s exactly what we are. Snakes.”
We climbed a ramp going into the outpost mainframe. I had a view over the canyons on either side. They were desolate and dry, as if they once had life but it had been suffocated away. I knew a little of Casa and had heard that there were ruins dotting the landscape from an as yet unknown human colony. The rumor was that archaeologists from PR came out here in droves only to get lost in the deserts and canyons and never be heard from again.
The doors slid open and we entered the mainframe. A long corridor led down and I could hear music. The first thing I saw was a merchant display set up behind a kiosk. He was selling weapons and medical supplies but I didn’t see any food. To the left behind him was a bar and to the right more merchants, another bar, an information desk and an armory for the security forces of the outpost.
“Let’s eat first,” Karma said, picking up the scent of roasting meat.
We turned into the bar. The lighting was blue with spots of white from the ground sensors. It had a type of security system whereby rowdy patrons were zapped with a focused plasma beam to the point of unconsciousness so security could haul them out without incident.
Karma approached the bar and ordered roasted Benorian chicken with sweet milk. I asked for the same and then we sat down at a booth in the corner. Music was playing but there was nobody on the dance floor. The few people who were here were just miners getting some food and they gazed at us like we were another species.
“Where you from originally, Calista?”
“Like, where was I born? I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No. I was raised in a republic orphanage.”
“Did you ever try and track down your parents?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“If they didn’t want me I didn’t want them.”
A server-bot dropped off our sweet milk and we each drank a few gulps. “Aren’t you even curious?” she said.
“Of course. But they gave me up. And the orphanage wasn’t exactly a pleasant place to grow up.”
“What was it like?”
“It was like a jungle. The stronger kids ruled the weaker kids. Took their shares of things.”
She grinned. “How come I don’t imagine you as one of the weaker kids?”
I smiled. “It wasn’t because I had any exceptional skills. I just understood something about psychology that the kids who were getting raped and beaten everyday didn’t.”
She took another drink of milk. “And what’s that?”
“You don’t ever have to win a fight. You just have to hurt your opponent so badly they will never want to fight you again.”
“Pyrrhic victory, huh?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know that term then.”
“So what’d you do to show them that?”
“There was this older boy—I was maybe twelve at the time and he was thirteen. He would rape some of the younger girls when the administrators weren’t around, which was common. Most of the girls just gave in. He would tell every single one the same thing: do you want it hard or do you want it soft? If the girls resisted, he would beat them nearly unconscious and then rape them anyway. So most of them would just submit.”
“What happened when it was your turn?” she said, drinking down the rest of her milk.
“I told him I wanted it soft and undressed. He threw me down on the bed and bent me over. He slipped off his pants and I reached behind my legs and grabbed his scrotum. I pulled on it as hard as I could and his body thrust into mine, but I had good leverage so his testicles burst from the pressure. He screamed and crumpled on the ground, crying.”
She smiled. “And he never messed with you after that?”
“He couldn’t,” I said, glancing around the bar. “When he was down on the ground I kicked him to death.”
Karma lost her smile as the food was served. I took a few bites of the chicken and it was dry and tasteless, like it’d been frozen for a long time and then thawed for us. I ordered another sweet milk instead and watched Karma eat. She downed the whole plate and then asked if I was going to eat mine. I slid it toward her and she finished it off before leaning back and wiping the grease off her lips on her sleeve.
“That was good,” she finally said.
“What about you?” I said. “Where were you raised?”
“Earth, actually.”
“Really? I didn’t picture that for you.”
“Yup, I was a spoiled brat. My father was a researcher for one of the members of the politburo so we had the whole big house and lavish parties and all the other cappin’ garbage that comes with being rich.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
She shook her head. “Not one bit. I would stare up at the stars at night and want to be in a dogfight up there, sleeping on metal bunks, working on military strategy … my father wanted me to be a researcher like him. I had no inclination for it. I flunked out of the academy and was sent to the military a little after.”
“Do you ever see your parents?”
“No. It’s not that I dislike them. I just feel better when they’re not around.”
I grinned.
“Can I ask you something, Calista?”
“Sure.”
“What’s it feel like to be…”
“A clone?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how to describe it because I haven’t known anything else.”
“But we’re going to go kill one of your kind. My race says your race is inferior and this clone fights against that and you’re going to kill her.”
“I don’t know how to describe it, but I believe in something bigger than me. In the Republic. It has to continue to exist and clones like her are a threat to that. There is no order in the universe, Karma. No grand design. The only order is the Republic and its ends have to come before anything else.” I finished my milk. “We should go.”
“You have any clue where we’re going?”
“Excuse me, ladies,” the server-bot said
. “The gentlemen at the bar have offered a drink and proposition. They wish to have sexual intercourse with you both.”
Karma said, “Tell them to shove their—”
“No,” I said, “tell them I’ll be right over.” I glanced to Karma. “Wait here.”
2
Four men were gathered at the table and from their stink I could tell they were already drunk. The server-bot followed me over and said, “Gentlemen, most good news, the lady has accepted your request.”
One of the men, a big one with scars over his arms and chest, sucking on a colmb cigar, said, “That so?”
“I’ll have sex with one of you for some information.”
“And what information is that?”
“I need the name of an information broker. The sleazier the better.”
They chuckled. “What you need that for?”
“That’s my business.”
The big one blew out a few puffs of smoke. “Well, I dunno now. I said we wanted both a you.”
“I’m more than enough than you can handle.”
He shrugged and stood up. “Fine, but you have to take care of me first.”
I nodded acquiescence. “Is there someplace we can go outside of the cameras?”
“Yeah.”
I followed him out and caught a glimpse of the other men looking to each other. I had no doubt they would be joining us shortly when I was least expecting it.
I followed the man out of the bar, holding a finger up to Karma indicating I would be back in a moment. The man walked down the corridor past two merchant shops and through another bar, this one illuminated red. The man whistled to the bartender, who looked over and they exchanged some hand signals. The bartender said something to a server-bot that led us to a door in the back and unlocked it. The man motioned for me to go in first and I did.
It was a storage room, filthy and filled with supplies. He shut the door behind him but didn’t lock it, no doubt for his friends to be able to burst in any moment.
“Now,” he said, rubbing his filthy palms together, “where shall we start?”
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