Spears hummed curiously, then gestured to Mattis. “Go. Take care of this. Let me know what he wants.”
“Will do,” said Mattis, and made his way toward the hangar bay.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Hangar Bay
HMS Caernarvon
Z-Space
Mattis was expecting a lot of things when he went to see the dented, half-melted shuttle in the Caernarvon’s hanger bay. But as its buckled loading ramp lowered, he was not expecting so much blood.
“What the hell happened here?” he asked, staring wide-eyed at the rusty red stains on the deck plating.
Blair came out to meet him, her hair tousled, her hands covered in blood. She had obviously thrown up, probably when the shuttle had pitched and rolled around when it had been towed in. “Sammy got shot,” she said, simply. “He’s in emergency surgery right now. Reardon’s…” she clicked her tongue. “Just trying to deal with it all.”
Mattis grimaced. “Damn. He going to be okay?”
To that, she just shrugged lightly. “I’m not a medic,” she said simply.
Still unwilling to presume the answers to questions he didn’t know for sure, Mattis played a little coy. “Did you get the lead?”
“Definitely did,” said Yim, moving up from the rear of the shuttle and stepping down the loading ramp. He smiled warmly and extended his hand. “Good to see you again, Admiral.”
He knew it. Yim himself, in the flesh. Mattis took his hand, giving it a firm shake. “It’s Captain these days,” he said, ruefully. He was getting mighty sick of explaining it over and over. “Court-martial. Loss of rank. All the bells and whistles. Lovely garbage.”
“Hey,” said Yim, grinning a little bit. “At least your government isn’t trying to have you assassinated.”
“Speaking of which…” Mattis squinted. “I saw a very interesting video starring you, and I was curious—”
“Wasn’t me,” said Yim, firm as a brick wall. “I promise you, Mattis. I wasn’t there, I didn’t shoot her, and when miss Apple showed me the footage—”
Blair spoke up. “It’s Special Agent Denelle Blair,” she said, tiredly. “The whole Apple thing was a… bad joke, and a bad cover.”
Yim stared, laughed, and then nodded understandingly. “It worked, though. That’s the benefit of accidents; a fake identity can sometimes be spotted because of its normalcy. A cover developed randomly might have a part of it that is totally absurd, but that is reality. So it is the absurdity that grants the cover an air of legitimacy. After all, nobody would be stupid enough to actually call their kid Detective Apple.”
Mattis had seen a lot of stupid in his years. Very little seemed to genuinely surprise him anymore. Or maybe he was just getting old. Old and past the threshold where this kind of life was an acceptable choice for him. Maybe he should consider retirement…
So many little nagging doubts, so subtle and yet so insidious. They ate at Mattis from within, stealing the joy from his life, the excitement, the purpose.
Or maybe that was just the gaping black hole Chuck had left in his life.
The dark, quiet thoughts weren’t genuine doubts of his abilities. It was just that nothing made sense anymore; the natural order of things had been shattered. Fathers weren’t supposed to outlive their sons.
“Hey,” said Blair, and he realized with a start that she had been talking to him. “You awake, Mattis?”
“Yeah,” he said, somewhat vaguely. “I was… It’s fine. I’m here. What’s up?”
“Well,” said Yim earnestly. “There… is something very important I have to tell you, Mattis.”
Mattis straightened up his back, trying to push everything else out of his mind. “Okay. I’m here. Go.”
“The Avenir,” said Yim, sighing softly. “I do know one thing. Chinese intelligence had discovered that there was a possibility there was a ship in the Sol system. Possibly in the shadow of Earth’s moon. There was a lot of chatter about it before I disappeared, and I have absolutely no idea if it’s related to Spectre and his cloning, but we would be fools to discount the possibility. It could be under his control. Or it could be hunting him. I don’t know. The Chinese don’t know its precise location—or at least they didn’t last I heard,—but I promise you, there is a ship there.”
Mattis grinned a little, despite himself. “Nope, I can personally guarantee you that there isn’t. The Caernarvon found it and destroyed it. I almost got myself blown up salvaging bits from it. And … yes, it was controlled by Spectre, apparently. It started to fire on us before we slagged it.”
“Ahh,” said Yim, concerned. “But you’re okay now?”
“Yeah.”
That seemed to mollify him. “Find anything interesting?”
Mattis wasn’t sure how much he should tell Yim, or Blair. But, to hell with it—he was sick of secrets. “A bunch of clones of the dead president. Schuyler.”
Yim and Blair gasped.
“Wait,” Blair said, “like… copies of her?”
“Perfect copies,” The memory surfaced in Mattis’s mind. “They even had suits on, as though they were frozen little Presidents, waiting to get popped out of the fridge and put into service.”
“You make it sound like they’re soldiers,” said Yim.
“Spies are soldiers.”
Suddenly, everyone was looking over his shoulder. At someone behind him.
“Hey,” said Lieutenant Corrick, flanked by a pair of Marines and wearing a hospital gown, her head heavily bandaged. She was propping herself up using an IV stand and staring pointedly at Yim. How long had she been standing there? She looked awful, like she was half a foot in the grave already. “You’re Admiral Yim, right?”
“Y-…es,” said Yim, hesitantly. “Who are you?”
“I’m Lieutenant Patricia Corrick,” she said, “and I know why the Chinese government was trying to kill you.”
Chapter Fifty
Hangar Bay
HMS Caernarvon
Z-Space
Mattis frowned and turned on Corrick, folding his arms in frustration. “Are you sure you’re in a condition to be up and about?” he asked, casting a critical eye on her heavily bandaged head. She had been in surgery, presumably on her brain. That wasn’t the kind of thing one could just walk off.
Fighter pilots… they never knew when to quit.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I’m not,” said Corrick, grunting softly and ambling forward like some kind of half-zombie, using the IV stand as a walking stick. “Pretty sure I am one sick motherfucker, physically and otherwise, but I…” she groaned, reaching up and touching the bandages on her head. “You need to know. When I was in surgery, they… they gave a lot of energy to the nanobots. And I got—I… I hallucinated a scene with Spectre.”
Mattis’s face clouded and he felt anger surge within him. “More of that bastard’s clones, I presume.”
“Mmm.” Corrick sighed. “So, funny you should mention clones and shit, right? Because…” She was obviously struggling, and not just from the painkillers, or the pain from surgery. “He… said that he could bring back Roadie and Flatline through cloning.”
“Like the clones of the president,” said Mattis, the memory of the rows of frozen corpses still fresh.
“Right, and you know what?” Corrick smiled grimly at Yim. “That’s probably why the Chinese military were trying to disappear you. Because they weren’t really the Chinese military at all, and they were going to, you know…” she jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Get rid of you, and replace you with a clone they could control.”
It was an interesting theory, but Mattis didn’t believe it. “What proof do you have of this?” he asked firmly. “Apart from the possibly hallucinated conversation with Spectre?”
Corrick took a long, low breath. “He said I was a clone too,” she said, looking away at a bulkhead. “Look, I know it’s crazy, but… I feel like it’s true.”
Well, as long as they were making plans based on feelings
… “That isn’t really good enough.”
“I know, I know.” Corrick held up a hand. “But look, there’s a way to find out who has these things in their heads now, right? We know that for an objective fact.” Her voice hardened. “And we know they can make people do things. And make people… act normal, blend in, until they do horrible things.”
Mattis blinked. Opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Corrick looked him straight in the eyes, if swaying slightly. “Right,” Mattis said.
“Right. Then we should test everyone.” Corrick swept her hand energetically around the hangar bay, and her knees buckled. One of her Marine guards—a tall kid with vaguely Middle Eastern features—sprang forward to catch her, but she swatted him away impatiently. “Everyone aboard this ship as a starting point. Then we should check Goalkeeper and the various other satellite defense stations all around the galaxy, and also…” her eyes flicked to Yim. “Also we should share this technology with the Chinese. They need it. There’s no doubt in my mind that Spectre has agents in the PRC as well.”
“Most likely,” conceded Yim.
Mattis let that rattle around inside his head for a little moment. “So, theory,” he said, saying the words as soon as they came into his head. “The Spectre-aligned agents in the PRC were trying to get Yim quietly arrested so that they could replace him with a clone. But when he escaped and disappeared, well, that was good enough for them to move forward with whatever plan they wanted to originally put into motion anyway. But they know Yim is still alive now. So they want to wrap up that loose end.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Corrick. She reached up and adjusted the IV, giving herself more drugs. Not very safe behavior, but Mattis wasn’t about to tell her off; they were working together now, it seemed. He could look at her for more than a minute now without wanting to throw something, and the kid was obviously in a lot of pain.
“It’s a great theory,” Mattis said slowly. “But… why?”
Corrick shrugged. “I dunno. I’m not a mind reader. Well, technically, given that messed up dream, I guess I am—or rather, I was. Until the nanobots got removed.” She grimaced. “But I dunno why Spectre would want to replace Yim. Or why anyone would.”
“Maybe they wanted my ship,” said Yim, considering. “I’m a high ranking PRC Naval officer. They might have wanted me to be in their power because…” he paused, eyes widening. “Because they wanted to restart the Sino-American war. Imagine, Mattis, if you still had the Midway, and you were their puppet? You could fire on Earth, you could fire on a Chinese warship.There would be no limit to the amount of damage you could cause.”
Of course. Make humanity fight itself so that there would be no way they could defend themselves against Spectre, or further Avenir attacks. It was only a theory, but it made sense.
“Right,” said Mattis, frustration mounting. “But we have no proof—”
“Actually, we do,” said a voice from inside the shuttle. Reardon. His voice thin and scratchy. “Sorry to eavesdrop, but, Mattis—there was a reason we were trying to nab the salvage back when you nearly got yourself frozen to death.” He coughed pointedly, then had to blow his nose, destroying the intended effect. “When we saved your ass,” he finished.
“Okay,” said Mattis, raising his voice so he could be heard from inside the shuttle. It made sense why Reardon didn’t want to come out, but still. They had important things to discuss. “What’s that?”
A pause. Then, “I needed to know what was inside the thing. Not because it might be valuable, not because I wanted to know or anything, but I needed to give Sammy more time to work it out. Because… it’s not about me being Han Solo. It’s about him.” Reardon looked away. “This life I lead? It’s great. Honestly. It is. It’s perfect for me… but it’s not for him. It’s not just his legs either. It’s everything. He’s… too good for this.”
“I understand,” said Mattis, softly.
“Anyway.” Reardon brushed some invisible dust off his chest. “The computer. Sammy got a lot of information once it was turned on—information about the clones. Something about genetic markers in their DNA. And more than just the brutish mutants, too… in regular people. Or mutants that were human enough to pass as human. And I wanted to find out more.”
A memory flickered into Mattis’s mind. “That’s right,” he said, the memories coming back to him like a lightning bolt through his brain. “The mito-… mito…” he snapped his fingers, trying to remember. “Some DNA in the mutants is shared. It’s a part of them and it’s shared, and it means that… we can figure out who’s a clone, because all the clones have that. That’ll work on humans too?”
“Yeah,” said Reardon. “Bratta developed a working prototype. It’s crude, but it does the job. I’ve seen it in action. It works.”
“Great,” said Corrick, coughing wetly. “You should test my blood. I’ll get Doctor Manda to extract some for you.”
“We’ll all need to be tested,” said Blair, wincing. “I hate needles.”
Corrick upped her medication again. She should definitely stop doing that. “But,” she said, “we should test us first. The people in this room. Just in case. Because if we tip anyone off, and they’re a clone, whatever screwed up programming is in their heads might activate. A kind of… fail safe.”
“Is that possible?” asked Mattis. A slight worming doubt whispered into his ear. What if Corrick was still… affected? What if the whole thing was just more of Spectre’s lies, more of his manipulations? What if he was talking to one of Spectre’s agents right now?
You’re getting paranoid, old man. So paranoid you can’t tell good from bad anymore.
Corrick’s tired eyes were full of an emotion he couldn’t identify. “They got me to shoot my two best friends,” she said, flatly. “They can make you do anything.”
“Right,” said Mattis. It was like Spears had said; either they trusted her, or they didn’t. “So. All of us, on my authority, let’s head down to the infirmary and test this shit. What do we need?”
“Just something from my ship,” said Reardon.
“Get it. Then let’s get going. We’re not far from Earth, and we have to get this shit sorted now. Before more people…” he wanted to say die, but a glance at Reardon told him that was a bad idea. “Get hurt.”
“You can just say die,” said Reardon, cutting the connection angrily.
Chapter Fifty-One
Corridor en route to the Infirmary
HMS Caernarvon
Z-Space
Clones. Nanobots. Cloaking devices. Mass drivers… Mattis ruminated on the discussion they’d just had. Spears had been right. Spectre was full of tricks, in all his incarnations, whether he was working through Avenir he controlled, or shadowy factions within the Chinese military, or the United States government for that matter. He seemed to be everywhere, making it impossible to know who to trust.
But he had to make mistake. Eventually. And Mattis had to be ready for it.
He stomped his feet along the deck as he walked, trying to keep his temper under control. Mattis didn’t like to lose—most people didn’t—but the loss of Chuck had been slowly chewing at him, eating away at his restraint.
Humanity needed something. They needed their own edge, or at least to level the playing field.
“Hey, slow down,” panted Corrick.
He did so, suddenly realizing he had been storming ahead of everyone. “Sorry,” he said, feeling a tinge of guilt. “You know you shouldn’t even be up…”
“I know, but I needed to.” Corrick shuffled forward, her IV stand squeaking. “I gotta find out if I’m real, you know?”
“Pretty certain you are real, Lieutenant.”
“You know what I mean. I mean if… if I’m not the real Corrick, what happened to the real me? And why do I have her memories?”
Mattis wasn’t sure what to say. “Does it matter what you find out?”
“Not really,” said Corrick. “But I should still kn
ow anyway.” She hobbled along. “Also, I guess, I should probably get a new callsign.”
That made him chuckle. “What’s your current one?”
“Guano,” she said. “Everyone calls me that. Maybe I’ll get a new one. Scalper. Or Psycho… or TK.”
“TK?”
“Teamkiller.” Well, that kind of put a damper on things. “Or something else.” She shrugged. She was speaking rapidly, her eyes dilated and words slurred. “A callsign is meant to be embarrassing, or humiliating. Like… a constant reminder of that time you ate twenty pounds of gummy bears and threw them all up in a porta potty at a rock concert in Arizona, and because it was so hot all the puke melted, so when the next person entered the porta potty, they got stuck to the seat and the fire department had to be called to unstick them.”
A very specific example. “Did that really happen?”
Corrick coughed wetly again. “Uhh… no.”
Right. Mattis lead the crew toward the infirmary in silence, entirely unconvinced that gummy bears could cause such a powerful adhesive effect, but very unwilling to question a person who had just undergone massive brain surgery and was undoubtedly high on some serious uppers.
Which, he was forced to remind himself, was also a problem. If Corrick’s cognitive abilities were all scrambled, how did he know there was anything in what she was telling him? She might well believe it, but even so…
It was an awful risk.
Maybe he was wrong to trust her. Maybe his guilt for blaming her and withholding forgiveness was making him act stupidly. Maybe he should do what he always did; go it alone.
But that approach hadn’t worked, and Chuck had implored him to take another route. To put his trust in people. To use kindness. To be the champion he could be.
Mattis had to forgive her, he had to trust her, and he had to listen to his gut. She was on their side—he had to believe it…
The Last Strike: Book 5 of The Last War Series Page 20
