The Clone Sedition

by Steven L. Kent

  They stood in a spacious lobby with marble floors and leather furniture. Elevator doors opened at the back wall, and out walked Ray Freeman, tall and massive and dressed in combat armor.

  Watson, who stood six-foot-five, was used to being the tallest man wherever he went. With Freeman in the room, he felt a disorienting shudder to his psyche. At a glance, Watson could tell that Freeman was taller, stronger, older, more dangerous.

  He had dark skin and nearly black eyes. The icy indifference in his expression revealed nothing. He had a rifle and an oversized particle-beam cannon strapped to his back. Bandoliers packed with ammunition and weapons crisscrossed his chest.

  To Watson, Freeman personified death.

  A tiny man with white hair stood beside Freeman. At first, Watson thought the white-haired man might have been a dwarf, because the top of his head was even with the big man’s chest; then he remembered Freeman’s height and realized that the white-haired man might have been five-eight or even five-nine. It was Gordon Hughes, the governor of Mars.

  Freeman asked, “Do you still work for Harris?”

  Watson shook his head. He said, “I think he was reprogrammed.”

  Freeman nodded, and asked, “If you’re not with Harris, who are you with?”

  “Admiral Cutter.”

  “Does he know what’s happening in the spaceport?” asked Hughes.

  Watson said, “Nobody knows what is happening. You sent us a message about having Howard Tasman; that’s the only thing that anybody knows.”

  Hughes looked up at Freeman in astonishment, and asked, “You got a message through?”

  Freeman ignored him. He asked, “Where is Harris now?”

  “He’s retired. Cutter relieved him of command.”

  “Gone to the islands?” Freeman asked.

  “I don’t know where he went,” Watson admitted. “Admiral Cutter relieved him of command, and that was the last I heard.”

  “He relieved Harris of command?” asked Hughes. “He relieved Harris, and he’s still alive? That’s a good sign. Maybe there’s hope.”

  Freeman did not answer. He listened and considered the news.

  Watson said, “If that’s Harris.”

  “What do you mean, ‘If that’s Harris’?” asked Hughes.

  “I saw a video feed of you assassinating Harris.” Watson spoke to Freeman, not Hughes.

  “You shot Harris?” asked Hughes.

  Freeman did not answer, though the slightest of smiles formed on his lips.

  “What about Tasman?” asked Watson. “You said you had him.”

  “He’s upstairs resting,” said Hughes.

  “He’s the one who got us in this cockspeck,” said one of the bodyguards. “Him and Harris.”

  “Things never went back to normal after Harris arrived,” said Hughes. “They’ve been blocking all communications.”

  “Who?” asked Watson. “Is it the Martian Legion?”

  Freeman said nothing.

  Hughes said, “The Martian Legion? Gawd, you’re not still talking about the Martian Legion; Harris massacred those misguided bastards.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-ONE

  Location: Hawaii

  Date: May 1, 2519

  I wasn’t under arrest, or Cutter would have locked me in a brig. I wasn’t under house arrest, either. I lived in officer housing on Kaneohe Marine Base, and I could come and go as I pleased.

  I was under surveillance. They—“they” probably meaning Naval Intelligence—had people watching my house. When I borrowed a jeep from the motor pool, it came complete with a tracking device in the steering column—a small sender about the size of a ladybug. It included a microphone, a camera, a stress sensor that read my pulse and heart rate, and a locator—a marvel of eavesdropping engineering.

  The incompetent speck who installed the device did a shitty job. I didn’t even need to break anything to find it. Running my hand along the bottom of the steering column, I felt a tiny pimple, and there it was. I could have yanked the device, but I didn’t think they’d let me off base without some kind of tracking device. Had I not found it, I would have still assumed it was there, just like I assumed there was a backup monitor hidden somewhere else in the jeep.

  I drove the jeep to the front gate, and the guard let me out.

  Oahu had bases for all of the branches, an Air Force base and a Naval yard along its south shore, an Army base in its central region, and a Marine base in the northeast.

  In my borrowed jeep, I set out to exercise. I drove a few miles and parked near a long stretch of sandy beach.

  It was a beautiful day, bright sun, turquoise water, powder blue sky. The Hawaiian summer had already dried out the brush growing on the nearby hills, turning it gray.

  The sun-warmed sand felt good under my bare feet, and the temperature of the water was comfortable as I entered the shallows. Two feet deep, the ocean was clear as glass. I could see the sand beneath me and could watch for rocks as I started my run.

  The sun beat down on my head and shoulders, and the water fought against my stride. Fifty yards out, surfers caught waves on boards and kayaks. Kids built sand castles on the beach. Dogs played. A little mongrel kept up with me for a few yards, running sideways along the beach so it could bark and snarl in my direction.

  The heat, the air, and the exercise worked in concert to clear my thoughts. My thoughts. I kept wrestling the same questions. I remembered everything that happened on Mars, a full week’s worth of events; but the details remained hazy. I remembered landing in the spaceport and fighting the Martian Legion, but very little in between.

  How had I lost those days?

  I usually preferred swimming to jogging. I liked diving, my lungs burning as I struggled to wring energy out of every oxygen molecule. I liked pushing myself to see how deep I could go without wearing breathing equipment. I liked the feel of gliding through water.

  In the past, I preferred swimming to running; but ever since returning from Mars, the thought of swimming made me nervous. I wasn’t sure why. I used to ignore my fears, but now I was giving in to them.

  I stopped running and turned away from the shore. The water was only up to my knees at this point. I waded into thigh-deep water and paused. A swell rolled past. That first cold splash across my crotch was always the most bracing.

  The water around me was the color of clean glass. It turned darker as I looked farther out. The bluing started a few yards away. Then there was the drop, where the ocean turned royal blue.

  Before going to Mars, I could not have resisted the urge to dive into those depths. They called to me even now. Little islands rose out of the water not far from me. I wondered if I could reach them, dared myself to try.

  I took another step out. The sky was bright, and the horizon was a perfect division of pale sky and blue sea; but in my mind, I saw water so cold that the world seemed to freeze around it. I saw strange shapes gliding in water as dark as ink.

  Looking for fins cutting cross the surface of the depths, I took another step out. The water came up to my waist. Cool water on a warm day, it felt refreshing.

  I started to dive, but that was as far as I got. I stood there another minute, staring out to sea, hating the invisible barrier that stood in my way; and then I turned and walked back to my jeep.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-TWO

  Someone was tailing me.

  They drove the most nondescript car they could find, a boxy white sedan that I might have mistaken for a tourist rental had it not had darkened windows.

  These guys were not from Naval Intelligence. The swabbie spooks didn’t need to follow me; they had doped my jeep and programmed their satellites to track me. I couldn’t pick my nose without those clones watching, so why send a car to follow? Even military redundancy has its limits.

  The car traveled a hundred yards back as I drove toward the base, then turned into a neighborhood as I reached the gate. Well-trained monkeys, I thought. They’re smart eno
ugh to watch the gate instead of the subject. Built on a small peninsula, Kaneohe Marine Base had only one entrance. Watch that gate, and they would spot me when I left again.

  The sergeant at the gate saluted me as I entered.

  I drove to my billet. Having been relieved of command, I should not have had access to weapons, such as grenades and S9 stealth pistols; but I was on a Marine base. Relieved of command or not, I was among friends. My first day on base, a captain had dropped by to look in on me and told me about the box of weapons he’d hidden in my closet.

  I pulled out the small box and removed the grenade. It was the size of a golf ball, all black, with a little screen for setting detonation parameters. Not wanting to take any innocent bystanders with me, I selected the lowest possible setting. On high yield, the blast from this grenade would conflagrate half a city block. On low yield, it wouldn’t do much more than spray my guts and ceiling into the neighbor’s yard.

  I held the grenade in my left hand, studied it carefully, and pulled the pin. The countdown would not begin until I released the lever that my thumb now pressed. I released it. I had known I would be able to release the lever even as I had pulled the grenade out of the box. Now I sat and watched as the seconds ticked down on the screen. When the screen reached two, I casually covered the lever with my thumb and replaced the pin. I had no doubt in my mind that I could have waited those last two seconds. Had I wanted to, I could have detonated that grenade.

  Fear had entered into my psyche. I felt afraid of swimming in the ocean even though I knew I was in good shape and would not drown. Fear.

  I remembered everything that happened on Mars as if it was written on a list, not as if I had experienced it. There was that breakdown in which I had ranted like a madman at Don Cutter, an ally and a friend. And now I could commit suicide. I had simply pulled the pin of the grenade and watched as its timer wound down, something that had been made impossible by my neural programming. I added it all up and came to an obvious conclusion. Somebody had tinkered with my neural programming. Somebody had reprogrammed me.

  Before Mars, I had not had the ability to commit suicide. It was not in my programming. I could not have pulled that pin without a target other than myself in mind. Now I could pull the pin as easily as I could unzip my pants.

  I considered pulling the pin a second time and letting the timer finish its countdown, not because I wanted to test my theory but because I hated myself. I had allowed myself to be reprogrammed. I had allowed someone else to control the gears inside my head.

  But there was something I wanted more than an easy way out. I wanted to know who had specked with my head, and I wanted to give that person a very different piece of my mind.

  After that, maybe I would pull the pin on my life, too.

  I stashed the grenade back in the box and took a shower. I shaved, I ran the blue light over my teeth, then I dressed like a civilian. My clothes included slacks and a loose shirt that hid the form of the S9 pistol I had tucked inside my waistband.

  Then I went to my jeep and drove away. It was now early afternoon, with a bright, high sun and a few crawling clouds. As I coasted to the front gate, the sergeant saluted. I returned his salute, and he let me through.

  Instead of heading over the mountains and into Honolulu, I headed east, back toward the beach I had just visited. A minute later, when I checked my rearview mirror, I saw the white sedan.

  They kept far away, which was fine, though I would have preferred for them to close the gap. I slowed, they slowed, cars came between us. Apparently the bastards did not worry about keeping me in their sights. I turned left into a small neighborhood of beachfront homes. They followed.

  I parked beside a public access way that led between two houses. Off ahead of me, the ocean sparkled in the sunlight. Walking casually, I traveled from the road to the beach, glanced back to make sure no one was watching, and sprinted along the sand. I ran past three houses, then hopped a fence and cut across somebody’s yard.

  I ran along the side of the house and out along the driveway, staying low, keeping an eye on the street. And there it was, the white sedan, parked along the side of the road with three men standing beside it. They must have wondered where I had gone, and they’d climbed out of their car for a better look.

  All three stood with their backs to me, facing the access way I had used to enter the beach. They might or might not have been civilians, but they were not clones. They came in different heights and builds. One had brown hair, two had blond. They chatted quietly among themselves. Their voices sounded like a low rumble. Staying low and quiet, darting between parked cars and hedges, I stole within twenty feet of the bastards.

  As I said before, I only needed one of them to get the information I wanted, so I shot the blonds in the back with my S9. The third guy watched his buddies fall and still needed a moment to process what happened. He spun to face me. I showed him my gun, and he raised his hands. He had some kind of metal box in his left hand.

  My combat reflex took over. I fired the first fléchette through his thigh, causing the bastard to topple to his knees. He fell to the ground as silent as a leaf. My second fléchette passed through the bastard’s left bicep. It was like cutting the strings from a puppet’s limbs. His hand flopped to the ground, but he managed to hold on to that box.

  It must be some kind of weapon, I thought.

  His hands twitching as he struggled to maintain his grip on the metal cylinder, he fell on his ass and tried to sit up. My third shot drilled through his wrist. His fingers fell open, and the box rolled out of his hand. That was when he started screaming.

  I picked up the cylinder. It was about three inches tall and an inch wide. It weighed next to nothing. It was not a grenade, not a bomb. The more I looked at it, the less it looked like a weapon.

  The bastard’s screaming had attracted an audience. People came running along the street. They saw me and my pistol and the cylinder. They saw him, squirming on the ground, little fountains of blood shooting out of his leg, arm, and wrist. He cried and screamed, sort of an “Owweee Gawd! Owe. Owe,” sort of noise.

  I said, “We’d better get you to the hospital.”

  He tried to stand, maybe he thought he could run, so I shot him in the other leg and he fell flat on his face, screaming until his mouth filled with dirt. Then he started sobbing, his whole body twitching and blood spurting out of his arm and legs. I grabbed him by the shoulders and tossed him into his own car. Then I threw his buddies in on top of him.

  By this time, a crowd of people stood a long way off, some dressed in bathing suits and some dressed in house clothes. No one came closer than fifty feet. Someone yelled something about calling the police. I didn’t care.

  Slipping into the driver’s seat of the sedan, I remembered my jeep. Once I had my new friend checked into the base hospital, I would send someone to retrieve it.

  I had something else on my mind. I thought about Seattle and how I had inadvertently killed the man I wanted to question. This time, I would make sure the victim survived.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-THREE

  The sergeant at the gate generally waved me through, but this time he stopped me. He came to my door, saluted, and said, “Sir, I have orders…”

  “Sergeant, you better let me through or the sorry son of a bitch in the backseat is going to bleed to death,” I said.

  The sergeant looked behind me, and said, “Sir, my orders…”

  “That man back there is dying,” I said.

  “There are three of them, sir, and they look pretty dead,” said the sergeant.

  “Not the one on the bottom,” I said. In truth, I only hoped he hadn’t. I wasn’t sure.

  The sergeant tapped his earpiece and spoke. He leaned into the window, and said, “They’re sending MPs to meet you at the infirmary.”

  The gate opened, and I sped through. The sound of sirens filled the air. A trio of jeeps with flashing lights caught up to me and stayed snug on my ass. I didn’t
mind.

  I sped around barracks, past a baseball field, and into the infirmary parking lot. I skidded to a stop near the door, then hopped out of the car. Three sets of MPs parked a few feet away and watched as I dumped the stiffs.

  The man I had shot babbled incoherently as I hefted him off the car floor. The blood had drained out of his face, leaving his skin chalk white. The holes the fléchette had left behind were not much bigger than a pinprick. They went all the way through the bastard. In the heat of the fight, I had shot him several times, including the one through the wrist; now I wondered if perhaps that had been a bit excessive.

  The guy was in shock. I slung him over my shoulder and dashed into the infirmary. He hung as limp as a wet towel, still mumbling shit I could not understand.

  Two medics, both clones, waited with a gurney outside the door. I flipped the bleeding, babbling victim onto his back and laid him down for them.

  The medics hauled my victim away and a half dozen MPs came to join me. They did not draw their guns or make any move to arrest me. The urgency had gone out of the situation now that they had me.

  Along with the base cops came a man from Intelligence, a lieutenant who looked scared to death as he approached me. He said, “General, um…sir, I noticed that there were two dead men on the ground beside the car.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you kill them, sir?”

  Somebody had to, I thought. I said, “Affirmative.”

  The poor bastard had no idea what was going on. He was just the highest-ranking Intelligence officer on a far-flung base. Someone from Washington probably told him he had a three-star problem without going into details.

  I walked to a row of chairs and sat down. He followed me; so did the MPs.

  “What are you doing?” asked the lieutenant.

  “I want to have a word with that fellow when he comes out of E.R.,” I said, trying to sound civil.

  He stood a few feet from me nodding and trying to figure out what to do next. Finally, he ordered the MPs to bring in the bodies.