by Kent, Steven
“They’re gone,” I said, trying to sound confident even though I had my doubts. “They don’t have time for sightseeing, not with an entire galaxy to destroy.”
“Do you have the torpedo ready?” I asked the pilot.
As a rule, military transports flew unarmed, but this particular bird had been modified. Our engineers had attached a tube below the cockpit armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo—the key we would use to unlock a trapdoor through the ion curtain.
If it worked, we might have a one-minute window to penetrate the curtain and land on the planet. If we didn’t get through the curtain quickly enough, the electrical systems on the transport would fail while we entered the atmosphere. If the ion curtain proved impenetrable, our fleet would be stranded in space with no port for food and supplies. Even if the torpedo got us in, and we landed safely, we might run into aliens. We might also enter an atmosphere so saturated with toxic gas that our ship would dissolve around us.
“Ready to go, sir,” the pilot said.
“Do you think this will work?” Thomer asked. He didn’t usually ask so many questions. Nerves.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I said; though, in truth, I thought we had a good shot. We were firing our torpedo directly over the spot where the aliens had landed. Assuming our calculations held up, and the spheres from which they emerged were still down there, the radiation from our torpedo would tear a hole in the curtain.
I didn’t feel as confident about what would happen next. Once we made a hole through the curtain, we had to enter the atmosphere before our hole closed in around us. If we successfully entered a breathable atmosphere, then we had to land without running into aliens. If we landed safely, we would need to evict the aliens. The odds grew longer with every step.
For Thomer, though, my first answer was good enough. I said, “We’ll know one way or the other in about five seconds.” Then I told the pilot to fire the torpedo.
He reached up and flipped the trigger. I caught the quickest glimpse of the torpedo as it sped off from under the ship—just a flash of dull white casing and bright orange flames—and the torpedo was gone.
The official reason for liberating Terraneau was to use it as a base for the Scutum-Crux Fleet, the largest fleet in the Unified Authority Navy; but I had reasons of my own. I wanted to wage a war against mankind.
The Pentagon had sent us out to the farthest corner of the galaxy and stranded us here. Back in Washington, they thought they could leave us out here to rot. The politicians and generals thought they were sweeping their clone problem under the carpet, but I would show them. I knew something they did not know, I knew a backdoor that would lead to Earth.
Clones have ghosts, and this time their deceit would come back to haunt them.
PART I
THE WORKINGS OF WAR
CHAPTER ONE
Earthdate: December 31, A.D. 2515
Location: Washington, DC, Earth
Galactic Position: Orion Arm
“Ava, this is Lieutenant Wayson Harris. I told you about Harris.”
“The big hero,” Ava said, her voice betraying a distinct lack of interest. “Didn’t you say he was a Liberator clone?”
I had been talking with three of the men from my color guard detail, and now found myself speechless.
Colonel Theodore Mooreland stood before us with his date, Ava Gardner—Hollywood’s brightest star and the subject of more debates and fantasies than any woman of her time. Mooreland casually threw his arm around her tiny waist. Maybe it was my imagination, but his expression reminded me of a dog marking its territory. Most of the men in the room would have died happy if they could have placed one of their hands where Mooreland now had his.
“He’s the one,” he said. “Lieutenant Wayson Harris, the toughest man in the Marines.”
Ava threw back her head as if about to laugh. Her lips spread in an inviting smile. Trying to keep from staring at the neckline of her dress, I studied the gentle cleft in her chin.
“How’s it hanging, Lieutenant?” Mooreland asked.
It wasn’t hanging at the moment, but I answered, “Fine, sir,” just the same.
I had never paid much attention to Ava Gardner; but now, seeing her up close, I understood the Ava obsession. She exuded sensuality the way officers exude arrogance and politicians exude snobbishness. She inspected me with her olivine eyes, her gaze both appraising and dismissive. I got the feeling she found me inadequate; but coming from her, even feelings of inadequacy were strangely erotic.
Her hair, a deep and lustrous brown with just a hint of red that only showed in the light, hung over her shoulders in a wave of curls and tresses that somehow managed to look both wild and organized at the same moment. The hair, the eyes, and the body all did their job, but I think it was her indifference that got my blood pumping. The aloof way in which she viewed the world around her came across as a challenge, like the slap of the gauntlet before the duel.
“Where do they have you stationed?” Mooreland more or less grunted his question, wrestling my attention away from the girl in his arms.
“I’m running errands for Glade,” I said. That was General James Ptolemeus Glade, commandant of the Marines.
“An officer like you in the Pentagon, what a specking waste of talent,” Mooreland said. “They should have you out in the field somewhere. Maybe they should send you to the outer planets . . . see if we can reclaim lost territory.”
“Teddy, I’m ready for a drink,” Ava said.
“Yeah, let’s head over to the bar,” Mooreland said.
“Nice meeting you, Harris,” Ava said in a voice so sweet and soft it sounded like she’d sung the words.
It was like I was in a trance. I extended my arm as if I wanted to shake hands with her. She giggled, took my hand, and gave it a soft squeeze, then she turned away. Mooreland remained another second and gave me a smirk that said it all.
“Better check for frostbite, Lieutenant; I bet that bitch has icebergs flowing in her veins,” one of my Marines said.
“What a ball-buster,” another said.
“I’d kill to put my arm around her like that,” said the third man on my detail. Watching Ava and Mooreland disappear into the crowd, we all agreed with him.
We were at a party that few Marines thought would take place—a New Year’s Eve celebration ushering in the year 2516. I began the year battening down the hatches on a planet called New Copenhagen, making a last stand for mankind against an alien onslaught. Other than Earth, New Copenhagen was the only Unified Authority planet that had not been conquered by the aliens which the top brass now knew as the “Avatari.”
At the time, all we knew was that wherever the Avatari appeared, our planets fell in a matter of minutes. We’d gone from 180 planets spread across the galaxy to two in a couple of years. Even after winning the battle on New Copenhagen, we were still down to two planets.
Across the floor, a handful of silver-haired couples danced to moldy songs performed by a live orchestra. A buffet of desserts and finger foods stood mostly ignored, but a large crowd of men in tuxedos and military uniforms milled around the bar. On the far side of the ballroom, women in sparkling gowns sat and gossiped. Waiters in white uniforms walked the floor carrying trays with champagne and hors d’oeuvres, offering food and drinks to everyone except me and my Marines.
But we only had eyes for Mooreland and his date. We watched Mooreland in astonishment as he guided Ava around the floor, introducing her to officers and politicians.
An air of scandal surrounded the “glamorous” Ms. Gardner. Gossip columnists and Hollywood reporters spread dark rumors about her being cloned from an actress who died five hundred years ago. Despite the fact that the nearly all-clone military had just saved mankind, the natural-born crowd still looked down their un-engineered noses at us clones. If the rumors proved accurate, her career would be ruined; but the hint of scandalous dirty secrets surrounding her only made Ava more intriguing so long as they remained un
proven. There is a mystique about a starlet who is rumored to have worked her way into Hollywood as a call girl, but an actress known to have worked as a prostitute is nothing but a whore.
Since I was a lowly lieutenant, I came to this party as the hired help. That was one of the differences between me and Ted Mooreland; he came as a guest, and I came as part of the color guard. He and I were both officers, we both put our asses on the line on New Copenhagen; but I was a clone and he was a natural-born.
The ballroom hummed with the sounds of music, muffled voices, and the clink of ice cubes in glass. The only light in the room came from dimmed chandeliers and candles on tables. When they had the chance, the Washington elite preferred to lurk in shadows.
“I never paid much attention to her movies,” I told the Marine beside me.
“You made up for it just now,” the Marine said. “I thought your eyes were going to fall out.”
“Go speck yourself,” I whispered. A Marine could end his career using that word at an occasion like this.
“I’d rather speck her,” the Marine answered. We both laughed.
“Speck” was the obscenity of choice among the Marines. It referred to the fluid being transferred rather than the act of transferring it.
For the rest of the night, I tried to forget about Ava Gardner. I went about my duty, occasionally catching glimpses of her here and there. As the evening went on, Tobias Andropov, the newest rising star in the Unified Authority Senate, made glowing remarks about the recovery of our Earth-based economy. Generals and admirals gave three-minute speeches about the readiness of the U.A. military. The presentations ended with William Grace, the retiring head of the Linear Committee, presenting plans to rebuild the Republic.
Hiding in the back, I listened to these optimistic speeches and wondered what galaxy these people lived in. From what I could tell, we had barely survived the attack and had no real means of defending ourselves if the aliens returned.
The speeches ended at 2300. With an hour to go before the climax of the evening, the orchestra returned, and the night became festive. Some of the politicians put on party hats and played with noisemakers. The pace of the drinking picked up, and a steady herd remained on the dance floor. I caught a brief glimpse of Colonel Mooreland and Ava on the floor. They cut a striking couple. He was about my height, six-three, but more muscled, with a broad face, a dark crew cut, and a square jaw. She was petite, and her head rested in the hollow between his chest and shoulder.
I had an inexplicable desire to shoot Mooreland as I watched them dance. She was scrub, nothing more, just another girl, prettier than most to be sure; but just a skirt all the same.
At midnight the guests drank, shouted, and shot off party favors. Mooreland and Ava stood in an exclusive knot of revelers that included “Wild Bill” Grace and two of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mooreland was their boy, a man with a thor oughbred bloodline and a good combat record. His father, a former commandant of the Marines, had died fighting the Avatari. Now Ted stood shoulder to shoulder with generals and politicians, a man with a future and Ava Gardner in his arms. Whatever angels looked after him, I hated the speckers.
As I presented the color guard to end the evening, I spotted Ava and Mooreland in the front row of tables. I performed my duties, staring past them into space. The revelers stood at attention as we marched the flags out of the room, and the party came to a close.
For the next few weeks, I fantasized about Ava calling me; but, of course, she never did. All that came of Ava was a string of cold showers. When I went out with other women, I sometimes thought of her; but those daydreams faded away.
It was an exciting time. As the politicians had predicted, the Unified Authority began to rebuild. For the first time that I could remember, no one questioned the military. The Senate enacted a new holiday celebrating the victory on New Copenhagen. In past times, the House of Representatives had been a vipers’ pit of sedition. Since the war, it had become the soldiers’ best friend, calling for improved GI benefits, increased military spending, and the erection of a New Copenhagen Memorial in Washington, DC.
In January 2516, the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Military History opened a wing dedicated to the history of cloned soldiers. Clones in the Smithsonian—I never thought I would see the day, but there it was.
I visited the exhibit and learned things about clone history that I had never known. One display showed the first cloned soldiers—big, brainless, and brawny; a force of brutes that lived and died like robots. The evolution of synthetic humanity quickly selected those first Neanderthals for extinction, and a new class of smaller, smarter synthetic soldiers replaced them.
One display showed wax figures of the twelve generations of clone evolution. In that lineup was a man with my exact face and physique, a Liberator. Another display depicted Liberators invading the Mogat home world. The display included twenty-five figures that looked exactly like me—six feet three inches tall, wiry frame, and the same brown hair and brown eyes found on every other clone.
The plaque read:LIBERATOR CLONES
The product of a top secret collaboration between the U.A. Navy and the Linear Committee, Liberator clones were designed as a weapon in the war against aliens believed to inhabit the Galactic Eye. When the Liberators advanced on the enemy stronghold, they discovered a planet populated by humans.
I appreciated the whitewash. What the plaque did not mention was that we Liberator clones were the missing link of synthetic evolution. The Pentagon had its scientists strip our genes from the DNA of all future generations.
The problem with the Liberators was their fundamental addiction to violence. The Liberator physique included a gland that secreted a combination of testosterone and adrenaline into our bloodstreams during combat. The hormone made us faster and fiercer. It kept our thoughts clear during combat; but it was also addictive. Once the fighting was over, most Liberators would happily sell their souls to keep the hormone pumping through their veins. The only way to keep it flowing was to continue fighting. That led to battles like New Prague and Albatross Island, where Liberators slaughtered allies and civilians once they ran out of enemies.
After a few massacres, Liberator clones were banned from the Orion Arm, the galactic arm in which Earth was located, and the Pentagon began manufacturing a new generation of clones.
We did leave our mark on future generations, however. Instead of building a gland with testosterone and adrenaline in later models, Congress opted to build a fail-safe into later generations of clones—a gland that caused their brains to shut down if they discovered their origins. They called it the “Death Reflex.” It was a stopgap designed to prevent clones from rebelling against their natural-born creators.
Along with their deadly new gland, the latest clones received some impressive neural programming. They were raised in special all-clone orphanages by mentors who convinced each clone that he was the only natural-born child in the facility. Neural programming filled in the blanks. When they saw themselves in the mirror, the new clones saw themselves as having blond hair and blue eyes even though they saw perfectly well that the clones around them had brown hair and brown eyes. That same programming made them docile in the face of authority, fearless in combat, and unable to call each other out as clones.
As a Liberator, I did not need to worry about the Death Reflex. I was the last of the Liberators, a one-of-a-kind clone. Twenty-six years ago, someone decided to run one last batch of Liberator juice through the old clone factory, and out I came.
The clone wing in the Museum of Military History had displays and holographic movies offering in-depth explanations of the evolution of clones in the same cheery light that the Air and Space Museum showed the evolution of jet fighters and broadcast technology.
Seeing my kind displayed without a warning that we were all mass murderers brought an ironic smile to my face.
The New Year’s Eve party, the monument, and the new wing all happened in the months before the Joint He
arings. Those hearings changed everything.
CHAPTER TWO
VIDEO RECORD OF THE JOINT HEARINGS
ON MILITARY ACCOUNTABILITY
Earthdate: March 25, A.D. 2516
Location: Washington, DC, Earth
Galactic Position: Orion Arm
“General Smith, according to your records, the Air Force did not lose a single jet during the battle for New Copenhagen. Is that correct?” Senator MacKay asked as he sifted through his notes.
The eleven other politicians sitting behind the judiciary bar had crisp suits, immaculate hair, and polished personas. Senator Evan MacKay wore a rumpled navy blue suit that had gone out of fashion nearly a decade ago. The spoon-shaped lenses of his reading glasses rode low on the bridge of his nose. With his disheveled clothes and smudged glasses, Senator MacKay had an endearing professorial look.
More than a year had passed since the Avatari invasion, but the Senate investigation into the war had just begun. The politicians and populace in general had spent the last twelve months glad to be alive. Now, a year after the threat had passed, the witch hunt began. The politicians wanted to know what went wrong. They wanted somebody to blame.
So Congress launched an investigation into the war, ostensibly to determine our readiness should the aliens return.
Through the first weeks of the hearings, the mood of the investigation remained friendly but tense. As the investigation continued, it became obvious that the Pentagon had no idea what to do if the aliens returned, and tension turned to hostility. The galaxy-conquering Republic that once claimed to have manifest destiny in its corner now floated as helpless as a raft adrift on a stormy sea.
Senator MacKay did not ask about the fighter jets in an accusatory way, but General Alexander Smith became defensive nonetheless. “Our pilots took their chances just like everybody else, Senator,” he said, sounding defensive—a man with something to hide.
