The Clone Redemption

by Steven L. Kent

  The two nearest men to me lay squirming on the floor. I shot one. The other climbed to his feet, leaving his gun on the floor. He was blind, but he tried to run just the same. I capped him in the back. I didn’t worry about the morality of shooting a blind, unarmed janitor in the back. Morality was a game played by college professors.

  A few yards away, two men staggered along the floor. Both men carried guns, but neither man had his gun up to shoot. One guy held his right hand over his eyes like a kid promising not to peek. I shot them.

  Short bursts of gunfire rang through the cabin.

  Ritz’s men secured the ship quickly, and we rushed our pilots to the cockpit. We did not bother checking the engine for booby traps. The Unifieds would not do anything to endanger the barges. They couldn’t. In a few short weeks, they would need the birds as much as we did.

  The other barges were commandeered without taking casualties. We were the only team that encountered resistance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Stealing the barges went smoothly. Getting away did not.

  As I entered the cockpit, I heard our pilot say, “What the hell do you mean they’re off-line? No one shuts their reactors down.”

  The nuclear reactors were made to run without interruption. The only time you shut onboard reactors down was for engine maintenance or to retire the ship. With the Avatari making their way across the galaxy, the Unified Authority could not retire the barges.

  The answer came from a squawk box. “It’s not the reactors. We can’t engage the engines.”

  “Why would they take their engines off-line?” asked the pilot, now sounding nervous.

  “Maybe it’s a security measure,” the engineer said over the squawk box.

  The pilot turned to me, and said, “We’ve got a problem, sir. The engines aren’t responding.”

  I wanted to ask the bastard what he expected me to do about it, but I kept my mouth shut.

  Like the rest of the ship, the cockpit was crude—not much more than a two-man booth with windows instead of walls. This bird did not have a wheel or a stick, just large touch screens for the pilot and navigator.

  “There must be a security code. See if you can override it.” the pilot shouted into the console.

  “How the speck am I supposed to do that?”

  I had to remind myself that these were not real officers. They were enlisted men who had received minimal training when they were bootstrapped to officer country.

  “Find the docking computer and disengage it,” the pilot shouted.

  “If this specker has a docking computer, it’s going to be in the cockpit.”

  “He’s probably right,” said the navigator.

  The pilot played with his computer, then mumbled, “Specking hell. I found it.”

  Now that he knew what to do, the pilot mumbled, “Disengaging docking buoys,” the floor trembled, and the barge hummed to life.

  Then we pulled away from the buoy, and the barge went completely dark. There wasn’t any warning. One moment we were moving, and the next moment, the lights went out and the power shut off.

  “What the speck just happened?” the pilot asked. I was not sure if he spoke to himself, to me, or to his engineers.

  A moment later, the mission coordinator sent a message from the spy ship informing me that the power had died on all twenty-five barges. I stepped to the window of the cockpit and looked out at the row of darkened ships beside us.

  Off in the distance, five anomalies appeared like small explosions—the Unifieds had broadcasted ships in to intercept us. They were tens of thousands of miles away, but the term “thousands of miles” loses its meaning when discussing ships capable of traveling thirty-nine million miles in an hour.

  Using the commandLink in my visor, I told the mission coordinator, “We have a serious problem here. Have your engineers hacked into the broadcast station?”

  That was the beauty of having a spy ship in your fleet. Somewhere out there, a team of engineers sat on an invisible cruiser as they broke into Unified Authority transportation computers.

  Figuring that the security signal stopping our barges must be coming from the broadcast station, I said, “The Unifieds must have remote access to our controls.”

  “I am aware of the situation,” said the coordinating officer. He sounded so damned cool. What did he care about the approaching ships? He was safe in an invisible ship.

  “Are you also aware that half the damned U.A. Navy just broadcasted in to stop us?” I wasn’t scared. Hell, I was in the middle of a combat reflex; fear would have felt good at the moment. Frustration, on the other hand ...

  “They won’t attack, General. The Unifieds need those barges.” The bastard threw my arguments for launching this mission back in my face.

  I looked out the cockpit and into space. The U.A. ships had already closed the gap and were hovering less than a hundred miles away. I could not see the ships themselves, just the goldcolored glow of their shields. The Unified Authority had placed their ships between us and the broadcast station. We were trapped.

  “They have us cornered,” I told the officer.

  “I have the situation under control,” he said.

  Outside our barge, the Unified Authority continued to close in on us. Now I could see the shapes of their ships. They were long and narrow, shaped like daggers. They slowly inched toward us, circling the area like sharks smelling blood, evaluating the situation.

  Our barges sat defenseless. We sat defenseless. They would not attack us with their cannons and fighters, but we weren’t going anywhere with our engines down and our power off.

  “You better do something,” I said.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “What the speck are you waiting for?” I asked, the beginnings of desperation sounding in my voice as I watched the U.A. ships wade toward us. I felt helpless. I felt vulnerable; but I did not feel afraid. I did not like the idea of being shot, but I feared failure more than dying. Pathetic as it sounds, I only cared about completing my specking mission.

  “General, you do realize that the Unifieds may be listening in on our conversation,” the officer said.

  The Unifieds had sent five ships to stop us, five capital ships. I could see them clearly. I could see the sharp tips of their bows and the flares from their engines. Only a few miles away, they drifted toward us, circling in for the kill. One of the ships lowered its shields and a line of transports drifted out from each of its landing bays.

  The same lack of precautions that had enabled us to enter this barge would now work against us. In another five minutes, those transports would attach themselves to our barge.

  The coordinating officer’s next comment came over the interLink on a frequency that every man on the mission would hear. He said, “Engage tint shields.” I obeyed, but I did not understand.

  “Shit,” said my pilot, as he pointed out into space. He was not looking at the advancing Unified Authority transports or the battleships.

  Behind the battleships, the Mars broadcast station flared into overdrive, its power glowing as bright as a star. It was closer to the Unified ships than I had imagined and moving in fast with threads of lightning flashing across its dish.

  I did not know how they accomplished it, but somehow our hackers had freed the station from its orbit and sent it flying in our direction. In another moment, its anomaly would destroy the Unified Authority’s self-broadcasting ships. Ships with built-in broadcast engines need to avoid broadcast stations because exposure to an externally generated anomaly overloads their broadcast generators. The anomaly destroyed the U.A. transports as well.

  And then the juice from the broadcast station engulfed the barges. I saw the lightning through my tint shields, jagged, dancing slabs of white fire that wrapped around the cockpit, then vanished. When I lowered my tint shields and looked out into space, we were orbiting Gobi.

  Moments later, the spy ship materialized. I leaned against the cockpit wall and let out my breat
h. Using my commandLink, I asked, “Did we get any of their ships?”

  Admiral Jolly answered. He said, “We got all of them, General.” He sounded ecstatic. “We destroyed two self-broadcasting destroyers and three self-broadcasting battleships.”

  Jolly paused for a breath or maybe to let me get in a word. When I did not say anything, he added, “I don’t know how many battleships they have left, but I bet they don’t have any to spare.”

  We did not have any reliable intelligence about the U.A. Fleet, but it had to be small. The Enlisted Man’s Navy had taken a big chunk out of their Navy when they fought us at Terraneau at the start of our rebellion, and they’d not had a chance to rebuild.

  “No,” I agreed. “Sooner or later, they’re going to run out of ships.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Earthdate: November 22, A.D. 2517

  Location: Open Space

  Galactic Position: Outside Solar System A-361

  Astronomic Location: Bode’s Galaxy

  With the lights dimmed, Yamashiro and a few of his officers studied every detail as the holographic image played over the conference table. It showed the destruction of the Kyoto. For some reason, the satellite monitoring the Kyoto had captured the destruction more clearly than the satellites covering the other ships, not that it made much of a difference. Whatever happened to the three battleships had happened in an instant.

  Yamashiro’s analysts had searched the transmission for lasers, particle beams, and other rays. Nothing. They found no distortions around the ship in the moments before the attack. There were no signs of missiles, rockets, or enemy ships.

  Yamashiro paused the feed. The analysts had added a red arrow to the display to mark the mass that they claimed was the wreckage of the ship. The arrow pointed at an unidentifiable wad of material that looked like a glob of soft wax. Measurements appeared along the bottom of the image. The unidentifiable wad was 336 feet long and 56 feet wide. The measurements were about one-tenth the size of the battleship the wad had supposedly replaced. Intelligence analysts said that properly compressed, the Kyoto could fit into an even smaller space.

  Admiral Yamashiro spoke in a low, slow voice as he said, “This is all that is left of the ship.”

  The other officers remained silent for several seconds.

  Captain Takahashi broke the silence. “That cannot be,” he said. “It happened so fast.”

  Yamashiro had made the same comment when the analysts showed him the image.

  Takahashi rose from his chair and leaned over the conference table until his nose almost poked into the ethereal image. He stared at the thing that had once been a battleship, then moved around the table, studying it from different angles. “It’s too small to be the Kyoto.”

  Yamashiro said, “You need to read Hara’s report. He explains it.” Lieutenant Tatsu Hara, a computer-simulations specialist and intelligence officer, ran the Sakura’s Pachinko parlors, bars, and casinos. Every sailor on the ship knew him. In Japan, the Yakuza had always run the Pachinko parlors and casinos. The Yakuza ran the fleet’s casinos and Pachinko parlors as well. Tatsu Hara was a gangster.

  “Hara says that the right amount of heat applied inside the hull, maybe ten thousand degrees, would cause a battleship to melt and implode.”

  Takahashi continued studying the display. “Ten thousand degrees inside the ship? How do you heat the inside of the ship? It’s not possible.”

  Before the Avatari invasion and the Mogat Wars, when his daughter Yoko had first brought a boy named Takahashi Hironobu home, Yamashiro had found the boy impressive. He was studying finance at a good university. Yamashiro approved of the boy’s life’s goals, though he would not have admitted as much to his daughter. When Takahashi graduated, he took a job as a stockbroker ... a salesman.

  Still a salesman, Yamashiro thought to himself.

  Master Chief Corey Oliver showed no emotion as he watched the feed. Sitting beside him, Chief Petty Officer Brad Warren followed his lead. When the feed finished, Oliver asked, “May I have permission to speak candidly, Admiral?”

  “Speak,” said Yamashiro, giving his son-in-law, Captain Takahashi, a glare. Takahashi did not demonstrate the same martial intelligence as the SEALs. Though he knew it was based on an old prejudice, Yamashiro could not shake off feelings that Takahashi was more of an administrator than an officer.

  “I don’t see how this changes anything,” said the master chief.

  “You lost three-quarters of your men. You had twelve thousand SEALs, now you have three thousand. I commanded a fleet, now I have one ship, and you have only three thousand SEALs.”

  “Three thousand men . . . twelve thousand men, we never had enough men to capture a planet,” said Oliver. “This was a suicide mission from the start. At least it was for us. I still have enough men to accomplish my objectives.”

  “What are your objectives?” asked Takahashi.

  “The SEALs came to make sure the aliens never attack Earth again,” said Oliver.

  “Can you do that with three thousand men?” asked Yamashiro.

  “We could do it with three hundred men, sir. We just couldn’t do it with conventional tactics.”

  “Master Chief, we came here to protect Earth, not to commit suicide,” said Takahashi.

  “With all due respect, Captain, we can’t protect Earth and ourselves at the same time,” said Corey Oliver.

  Listening to the SEAL fascinated Yamashiro. He was a clone. He had the face of a monster, no, a demon ... The nickname kage no yasha ran through the admiral’s mind, and he dismissed it. Yamashiro gazed at the clone with the oversized bald head. The SEAL’s gray skin reminded him of a cadaver lying in a morgue. For the first time, Yamashiro looked past the low, bony brow and saw only admirable qualities.

  The SEAL spread his hands on the conference table, and Yamashiro studied his long fingers with their sharp, clawlike tips. They looked like human fingers somehow merged with an eagle’s talons.

  Senior Chief Warren sat silently beside Oliver. Except for their uniforms, the two SEAL clones looked exactly alike. Yamashiro wondered if they thought alike as well.

  “I am not privy to your orders, Admiral, but they can’t possibly have included capturing the planet,” said Oliver.

  “Ships are not used for capturing planets,” said Yamashiro, spouting dogma he’d read since becoming an officer.

  “Neither are SEALs. We’re the fifth column,” said Oliver. “The SEALs are the men hiding inside the Trojan horse. We creep inside the walls and open the gate for an invading force. We don’t take the town ourselves, that falls to the Marines.”

  “There are no Marines,” said Takahashi. “Not on this mission.”

  Yamashiro turned to glare at Takahashi. Just for a moment, he felt ashamed of the boy. The admiral’s gaze strayed to Senior Chief Warren, sitting silently, allowing his superior to speak as the lone voice. He admired Warren. He admired Oliver. Then he thought about his son-in-law, who had left his wife and children to fly this mission. Yamashiro recognized Takahashi’s sacrifices, and his irritation eased.

  “What do you suggest, Master Chief?” asked Yamashiro.

  Takahashi spoke before the SEAL could reply. He said, “Admiral, we have lost three-fourths of our fleet. We no longer have the firepower we need to carry out our mission. We must return to Earth. We must report that we have located the aliens and request a larger fleet and more troops. As the master chief has suggested, we should have our SEALs open the way, then send in Marines.”

  Oliver did not speak. Yamashiro asked a second time, “What do you think we should do, Master Chief?”

  Oliver paused to consider his words, and said, “Maybe we should return to Earth.”

  “We should return?” Yamashiro repeated.

  “We should return and report what we have found. If we attack now and we fail, everything we have learned will be lost. If the Linear Committee sends another fleet after us, that fleet will be forced to begin the search all over a
gain unless you report our findings.

  “We should return to Earth, but not for Marines. We need to make our report, then launch our attack. We’re not here to defeat this enemy—we need to destroy them.”

  Yamashiro listened to the SEAL explain his case and realized something about himself. He didn’t want to go back to Earth, not empty-handed. Forced to choose between carrying out a Kamikaze mission and returning to Earth for more ships, he preferred the Kamikaze mission.

  Maybe my flagship should have been the Onoda, he thought, reminding himself about the war hero for whom the ship was named.

  After the meeting ended, Master Chief Oliver remained standing beside the conference table as Takahashi escaped like an alley cat running from a fight. He waited for Admiral Yamashiro to finish speaking to his assistant, then he asked, “Admiral, sir, this SEAL wishes permission to speak?”

  “What is it, Master Chief?” barked Yamashiro.

  “We fired weapons at two moons, is that correct?” asked Oliver. “We fired infiltration pods at the moons?”

  “That is correct,” the admiral answered in a voice calculated to convey mild irritation.

  “As I understand it, only one of the moons was destroyed. Is that correct?”

  “What is your point, Master Chief?”

  “One of the moons had an atmosphere, the other did not,” said Oliver.

  “Do you want to see the video feed?” asked Yamashiro.

  “No, sir,” said Oliver. “Admiral, it seems like the aliens’ technology only works when there is an atmosphere present. There was no atmosphere on the smaller moon, and the aliens were not able to prevent our attack. The large moon had an atmosphere, and the aliens destroyed our pods.”

  Caught off guard by the theory, Yamashiro asked, “What about the battleships?” He figured out the answer to the question even as he asked it.

  “Our battleships have atmospheres, sir,” said the SEAL.