He was right. The Enlisted Man’s Empire sent an endless supply of freighters between Earth and Mars.
“That would be an interesting way of solving our sedition problem, starving one-third of our citizens to death,” I said, knowing that Cutter’s neural programming would not allow him to take my bait. On some level, the need to protect human society was hardwired into his brain.
Changing the subject, I said, “I have some ideas about the identity of Legion. Have either of you ever read the Bible?”
We were in the stateroom of the Churchill, the fighter carrier that served as the flagship of the Enlisted Man’s Fleet. At the moment, Mars was one hundred and fifteen million miles from Earth, meaning we had a four-hour trip ahead of us.
“The Bible?” Cutter asked, barely stifling a laugh. “I’m not a fan of mythology.”
“I haven’t read it,” Watson admitted.
“I’ve read it,” I said.
“You read the Bible?” asked Cutter. He sounded incredulous. “Of all the people I have ever met, you would be the last one I would ever expect to read the Bible.”
He wasn’t commenting on the content of my character but rather the questionable existence of my soul. All of the major religions of the world agreed that clones did not have immortal souls. “I once spent a month trapped on a transport with no one but Ray Freeman,” I said.
Cutter, who had met Freeman, said, “Good Lord! I would have shot myself.”
“I tried,” I said. “My neural programming does not allow for suicide.” That was true though I had not actually tried to shoot myself. My modus operandi had been suicide by grenade.
“Freeman, that’s the guy you were looking for in Seattle. What’s so bad about him?” asked Watson. “I thought you were friends.”
“We are friends,” I said.
“He’s never met Ray Freeman?” asked Cutter.
“Obviously,” I said.
“Ray’s not much for conversation,” I said. “Traveling with him is lonelier than traveling alone.
“Anyway, the only book I had was a Bible. It was read the Bible or talk to Ray. I went through the specking book five or six times as I recall.”
Watson gave me a sly smile, and asked, “Did you just refer to the Bible as a ‘specking book’?” The guy read me well. He knew how to kid around and still get along.
“Did I?” I asked.
The term, “speck,” by the way, referred to that one particular bodily fluid that Marines and other military men lived to excrete. “Specking” was a gerund, the verb form of a noun. It referred to the act of transferring that fluid.
“I take it you were not converted,” said Cutter.
“Oh, but I was,” I said. “Maybe not so much by the New Testament, but the Old Testament made perfect sense once I accepted God as a metaphor for the government. The government created all things and the government took them away. It made perfect sense.”
Cutter asked, “What does a New Olympian militia have to do with the Bible?”
“The Bible has a story about a guy named Legion who was possessed by demons,” said Watson. “Christ banished the demons, and they went into a herd of pigs, and the pigs killed themselves.
“One of the guys you killed in Seattle had a Bible; but if you’re saying this is about devils and demons, that wouldn’t make sense.”
A chilled silence filled the room when I did not answer immediately. We sat around Cutter’s desk, none of us quite meeting the other men’s eyes.
Cutter said, “The Bibles, the suicides, it has all the trappings of fanatics and zealots.”
Watson laughed, and said, “Harris, maybe they think you’re the antichrist.”
“Maybe they do,” I agreed.
Watson attempted to be serious, then laughed. He said, “I can’t say that I blame them. I kind of do, too.”
“This really could be the Mogats all over again,” said Cutter. Like me, he had fought in the last religious uprising and found no humor in the situation. Watson, on the other hand, had still been in school. He didn’t see the massacre on Little Man or the ugly battle on a cinder of a planet called Hubble. The only natural-borns who fought on the Unified Authority side of the war were officers, and most of them fought from the sidelines.
“Harris, if it is another religious fanatical uprising, you’ll be walking into a real shitstorm when you land on Mars,” said Cutter.
I said, “Just like any other cancer. Catch it early enough, and you might even survive the treatment.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Location: Mars Spaceport
Date: April 3, 2519
Providing Mars Spaceport with power, water, and oxygen did not pose a problem. With seventeen million refugees living in a facility designed for six to eight million travelers, providing space, food, and bathing facilities did. The refugees lived as crowded together as termites in a nest; and the once-elegant spaceport now smelled of grime and sweat. Lines one hundred people long extended out of every bathroom. Soup lines shuffled along the halls.
For the first time in known history, Mars had an indigenous species of life—a form of lice. The creatures must have come from Olympus Kri, riding in some refugee’s hair; but, as there was no record of a home planet for this particular variety of pest, it was now known as the “Martian louse.” With all of the grime and overcrowding in the space station, the little bastards proliferated.
Spaceport Security sprayed chemicals through the ventilation system in an unsuccessful bid to kill the lice, but there was nothing anyone could do to fix the stench in the air. Engineers built shower facilities and added air filters to the vents, but the place still stunk. Because of the overcrowding, the residents of Mars Spaceport only showered twice per month. A black market had formed for shower passes.
Throughout history, relocation centers had always been breeding grounds for crime, dysentery, and insurrection. Mars was no exception.
I was in one of the fifteen transports preparing to launch when Admiral Cutter contacted me from the bridge. He and Travis Watson would remain safe on his ship while I went down among the heathen.
“Harris, are you sure you want to run this mission?” Cutter asked. “The empire might be better served…”
“When I come back, we should have a conversation about renaming our government,” I said. “We’re not an empire. We don’t have an emperor and we only have one planet. I think ‘republic’ would be a more accurate term.”
“Harris, you could direct this mission as easily from the ship,” Cutter said, not acknowledging my attempt to change the subject. “You are a general, not a platoon leader. When they talk about boots on the ground, they don’t mean boots with stars.”
“I want to make sure Governor Hughes gets the message,” I said. “If I’m there, he will know we mean business.”
“Call him and tell him,” said Cutter.
“I don’t think it would have the same impact.”
“Do you want me to send Watson down once the area is secured?”
“No,” I said. We were sending fifteen hundred Marines into a hostile population of seventeen million. Nothing short of destroying the spaceport would secure the area.
If it came down to a fight, we didn’t stand a chance. We were going into a battle zone in which tanks, gunships, and air support would be out of the question. Marching like an early-twentieth-century army with only small arms for weapons, we would try to intimidate an enemy that could simply trample us; but we didn’t have a choice. The spaceport was a civilian structure, a thin bubble of life support on a planet with a carbon-dioxide atmosphere. Firing a rocket could cause the spaceport to explode; even a grenade might cause enough added pressure to burst the outer walls.
“Have you told Colonel Riley that you are coming?” he asked.
As the head of the spaceport security detail, Riley had a right to know I was on my way. He was an officer in the Marines, which placed him under my command. Military courtesy dic
tated my warning him about the mission as a formality. Three-stars do not drop in unannounced.
“Yes and no,” I said. “He knows that I am coming, but he doesn’t know when. I didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”
“Do you have a problem with Riley?” Cutter asked.
“Not at all,” I said. I didn’t. “This is a diplomatic operation, Riley and Spaceport Security should not be involved.”
Watson asked, “What if you run into trouble?”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Harris, if things get hot down there…” Cutter began.
“Just be ready to pick us up when we’re done. I don’t want to bring any indigenous Martian life home with me in my hair,” I said. I signed off.
Our transports had two compartments…three if you included the head. They had a two-man cockpit up front. The rest of the bird was all cargo hold. Most people referred to this area as the “kettle” because it was somewhat domed like an oblong teakettle, made of metal, and had no windows.
We loaded the maximum recommended number of Marines in the kettle of each of our birds—one hundred killing machines in combat armor. Some stood, their bodies attached to harnesses in case we came under fire. Some sat on the bench that ran around the wall. Almost all of them would try to occupy their minds with thoughts about R&R as we flew down to the planet. They’d need that, the accommodations were dreary on the transport, and the destination did not give them much to look forward to.
As we prepared to launch, I climbed the ladder that led to the cockpit. Like every man on board, I wore standard-issue Marine combat armor though I did have one additional piece of equipment built into my helmet—a piece of communications equipment known as a commandLink. Using the commandLink, I could address every man, fire team, platoon, and company under my command, or I could speak to each Marine individually. I could peer through their visors or send them information.
As the commanding officer on this operation, I had the commandLink. Everyone else had interLink equipment.
Using the commandLink, I addressed the platoon sergeants and officers in the group. I said, “This is General Wayson Harris. You’ve all been briefed; but on the off chance that any of you were not paying attention, I will remind you that this is not, repeat, not an invasion. Mars Spaceport is EME-held territory.
“This is not an invasion. It is an inspection.”
That much was bullshit, by the way. This was not an inspection or an invasion, it was a damn pissing match. We were sending a small but lethal force into the belly of the beast to prove to the New Olympians that we were still in charge. We were sending a force that was too small to protect itself and daring the bastards to attack.
“We are fifteen hundred men patrolling an area populated by seventeen million hostiles. We cannot afford to pick a fight. Sergeants, do not allow your men to touch triggers or disengage the safeties unless specifically ordered to do so. That is all.”
I entered the cockpit and watched as we launched. We floated out of the ship and penetrated the atmosphere.
Below us, Mars Spaceport sparkled on an otherwise dismally dark landscape. The planet’s rotation had the spaceport pointing away from the sun. As we descended, I saw the three raised train tracks that ran the ten miles between the spaceport and Mars Air Force Base. They looked as slender as guitar strings from a half mile up.
I surveyed the landscape below. Some people played down Mars’s unique beauty by comparing it to places like the Mojave Desert on Earth. To me, the surface of Mars looked like the deepest depths of the ocean, a silent, alien world filled with familiar elements.
I left the quiet surroundings of the cockpit and returned to the kettle, with its capacity crowd. As I came down the ladder, I used the commandLink to eavesdrop on a few of my lieutenants as they briefed their men. The company commander in my shuttle told his men, “Remember, these are friendlies. Even if they act hostile, do not aim or shoot unless ordered to do so.”
Good information, though delivered in too timid a tone.
I listened to the briefings on other transports until I heard:
“…you are a grenadier, damn it, you specking better have some launchers on you.”
“But sir, we have strict orders…”
“I know what General Harris said,” yelled the lieutenant. “I also know how things work in this man’s corps. Riflemen carry rifles, automatic riflemen carry automatic rifles, and grenadiers carry specking grenades. If I want you to carry a slingshot, I will call you a slingadier. If I want you to carry a bucket, I will call you a specking bucketier. You are a grenadier, gawdamnit! Hide some specking grenades in your specking gear or I’ll throw your specking ass in the brig and call you a specking brigadier! Do you read me?”
Using the commandLink, I addressed the entire regiment. “This is General Harris. You have been issued special short-range rounds for your M27s. Any men seen carrying grenades, rockets, or particle-beam weapons will face a summary hearing. Do you read me?”
I then switched to a direct to Lieutenant Geoffrey Bates, he of the “slingadiers-bucketiers,” and I said, ‘If I ever catch you pulling another end run, Lieutenant, I will place your ass in front a firing squad and tell them you are a targetier.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” he shouted in the very loud fashion of a Marine who has been duly chastised by his superior.
And then we touched down. The muffled sounds of booster rockets rumbled through the walls as we lowered into place. The iron deck below my feet gave one hard bounce as we landed.
The only door on a transport was the rear hatch, a slow-moving metal slab that took half a minute to swing open. Outside, a startled crew stared in at us. On an open mike that the dockworkers would hear, I said, “We do not require your assistance, gentlemen. My men are perfectly capable of off-loading themselves.”
Workers rushed out of our way as we marched off the transports, but we still locked the birds tight for safekeeping.
CHAPTER
SIX
I was the first man off the transport. One of the dockworkers asked me, “Who’s in charge of this?” as I waited for my men to form ranks.
Each of my men’s armor gave off a unique signal identifying his name, rank, serial number, and area of military occupational specialty. I could see those signals through my visor. The man who approached me did not have that advantage.
I said, “I am. Is there a problem?”
“Oh,” he said.
He was big, strong, natural-born, and unarmed. I was as tall as him, armed, and wearing combat armor. I had fifteen hundred armed men at my command—all of them carrying M27s with the detachable rifle stock in place. In close quarters like these, the stocks would get in the way if a firefight started, but they made our guns look bigger and more menacing. It was a bluff. I hoped we could avoid shooting our guns by making sure everybody saw them.
Having been built to serve as a pangalactic commercial port, Mars Spaceport had enormous landing areas designed to accommodate freighters. My fifteen transports did not fill even a tenth of the loading area in which we landed, and the spaceport had twenty-five freight docks.
Crews of longshoremen stood still as statues as my men finished forming into ranks. They eyed us warily, not moving, not speaking, afraid to turn away.
In military parlance, this was an inspection, not an invasion; but they did not know our intentions. It was also a show of force, and I would not say anything to change that impression.
Once my various companies had formed into a regiment, we marched out of the hangar without saying a word.
Thanks to our combat armor, we would not need to deal with Mars Spaceport’s unique charms. We could see the squalor, but the head lice could not penetrate our bodysuits. Our rebreathers recycled the air inside our armor, allowing us to breathe without inhaling the sweat-permeated spaceport air.
I saw the grime and wondered if Riley really did sleep in his helmet.
We entered a long service hall. Here the floo
r was only thirty feet across, but rows of families occupied the areas along each wall. The word LEGION had been written in ten-foot-tall letters above their hovels, the letters badly scrawled in runny bright red paint. Beneath the word, the artist had sketched a row of bloody combat helmets, some modern and some that looked like they came from ancient Rome.
“You seeing this, Jackson?” I asked. This mission belonged as much to Colonel Curtis Jackson as it belonged to me. Tarawa was his unit. That had been the nickname for the Second Regiment of the Second Division since the regiment won a battle on a tiny island nearly six hundred years earlier, Tarawa. It was a newly reactivated unit, created over the last month.
“Yes, sir. Hard to miss,” he said.
The spaceport’s lights were dim, and the floors were crowded. Looking around that first corridor, I saw families living on tattered blankets, their only belongings were a pot for water, a few dirty dishes, and the clothing on their backs.
Like a mass picnic in Hell, I told myself. From that moment on, I thought of the people on their blankets as “picnickers.” Assigning names like “picnicker” was a coping mechanism. Thinking of these people as picnickers made the bleak reality of their existence easier for me to ignore.
The blankets were spread one right beside the next. They stretched the length of the hallway. I saw a woman nursing her baby. She did not bother covering her exposed breasts. Living as refugees had forced these people to abandon every hope of privacy. If this woman could not nurse her infant in a crowded hall, the infant would starve.
Walking through that hall, we passed a twenty-foot mountain of trash that touched the ceiling. Flies buzzed around the pile. How flies had migrated to Mars I could not understand. The spaceport must have had equipment for disposing trash into some kind of landfill, but these people had long since abandoned such civilities as burying their trash.
Most of the people we passed just stared at us. One clever fellow, dressed only in his underwear, stood at attention, saluted, and then farted so loudly that I heard it fifty feet away. A little boy no older than three pointed a toy gun at us, and yelled, “Bang! Bang!”
The Clone Sedition Page 5
