The Clone Conundrum (Forgotten Fodder Book 2)

by MJ Blehart

  “It beat the alternative,” Jace said.

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” Onima added.

  “Not in the least,” Kara agreed. “Onima, you and Deputy Director Samarin are right to suspect a mole. I think I am not the only one on your team working for him.”

  “And you were my prime suspect in that position,” Onima said. It didn’t get by Jace that she used the past tense.

  “I suppose nearly the whole team is suspect,” Kara remarked.

  “Not quite,” Onima said. “Jace, for one, is definitely not working for Rand. Right?”

  Jace laughed. “Right.”

  “I’m fairly confident that Yael is entirely trustworthy,” Onima went on. “I’ve known her a long time now. Captain Barr and I have worked together for years, and technically he’s not an agent of the Bureau. I’m pretty sure of Feroz and Dr. Patel, too.”

  “Are you sure someone on the ship is working against us?” Jace asked.

  “Yes,” Kara said. “Because the armor-shelled goons Bettani had capture us weren’t just on standby in case there was an emergency.”

  Jace got her meaning. “He knew we were coming.”

  “Which means someone on the Aquila told him,” Onima said.

  “How possible is it for someone to monitor comm signals?” asked Jace.

  “Why do you think we’ve not contacted Yael?” Onima replied. “Nor let anyone know that Bettani is going to get away?”

  “Well, not entirely,” Kara said, smirking again.

  “What do you mean?” Onima asked.

  “Another piece of tech I’m implanted with,” Kara said. “I can pass a microchip via touch with my hand. One of its best features is that it puts an untraceable tracker where I deliver it.”

  “How did you manage that?” asked Jace. He knew about that sort of tech, but it was almost exclusively used by military special agents, black ops, and spies.

  “When I shook his hand,” Kara said.

  They walked for a bit in silence as the sun descended.

  The trio reached the outskirts of the spaceport. A nearby terminal showed charters for hire.

  Jace looked around and was gratified to see that nobody was paying them any mind. Enough other people had been on the streets as they’d walked that they’d drawn no undue attention to themselves.

  “Now what?” Kara asked.

  Onima bit her lower lip. It was not something Jace had seen her do before. It was a tell, showing her uncertainty. She had never shown uncertainty in Jace’s presence before.

  “Someone on the Aquila is a traitor,” Onima said. “That’s the only way Bettani would have had Gray and Chuang goons on hand to capture us. If we turn our comms back on, we will be traceable. They know full well we need to contact Yael to get a pickup. They’ll be waiting for us. Part of why we didn’t go the correct spaceport was to avoid being spotted.”

  Jace stepped up to the terminal and tapped on it, looking at the charter options available.

  “If we contact the ship, we expose ourselves,” Kara added. “If we contact Special Agent Amber, we expose ourselves.”

  “And if we charter a flight,” Onima added, “we potentially share where we are. It’s a rock and a hard place. Pity none of us are pilots.”

  Jace found what he was looking for and smiled.

  He turned to Onima and Kara. “I have an idea.”

  19

  Onima had never felt such uncertainty.

  At least, not since she was a new agent on one of her first assignments. Back then, she was still only by-the-book familiar with how to handle situations. Every trip to the field was a new experience where the textbook knowledge might need to be disregarded for unexpected events in real-time.

  Now she was remembering how that felt. The ways she would normally handle such a situation were not going to work.

  Onima once more went over their situation. For the armor-shelled guards to have been with Bettani, someone from her team had to have let him know. Even those she could trust might have had their comms tapped by whoever the mole was.

  She knew she could trust Jace. The clone was certainly not in contact with anyone outside of her team. What was more, she was entirely certain he was of the same mind as she. He would not stand for his fellow clones being used like they were, so solving the case was not something he’d sabotage.

  While overall she had no choice, Onima still believed she could trust Kara. Despite her governor being the director both Onima and her own governor were suspicious of—and Kara being the most recent addition to her team—Kara’s explanations were plausible.

  Moreover, her actions had been of greater help than hindrance on the investigation.

  Yael had been Onima’s pilot and friend a long time. Their working relationship had evolved into a friendship, and on more than one occasion, Yael had been there when Onima had needed her most.

  Yael was at the spaceport on the other side of town awaiting them. But while Onima felt she could trust Yael, she couldn’t be sure their communications were safe and clear, nor that their assailants wouldn’t get to Onima, Jace, and Kara before Yael could.

  Feroz and Dr. Patel had been members of Onima’s team for quite a while, and she considered both friends. Maira Patel had figured out the virus and where it was hitting, and her surprise at how it targeted the clones was genuine enough that Onima didn’t suspect her.

  Feroz Jones was one of the finest cryptanalysts in the Bureau. Over the years, his special code breaks had helped Onima get a great deal of information and out of numerous scrapes. He had always been an invaluable resource. What’s more, Onima thought of Feroz as another friend.

  There were many other members of Onima’s team that were naught but professional relations. Onima didn’t relish having to dig into all the backgrounds of the CBI agents aboard the Aquila - but someone had to be the mole.

  It was possible, albeit unlikely, that a member of the crew of the Aquila itself could be the problem. But there was no logic in that scenario. The connection between the crews of the starships and their CBI teams were largely separate.

  Of course, to figure any of this out further, they needed to get back to the ship.

  Jace had been leading them to an office attached to a hangar at the spaceport. Starships and local air transports took off and landed every ten minutes or so. It was a relatively busy spaceport and served not just flights on and off the planet, but also across Aarde.

  The sign atop the office read Jacobastad Affordable Space Transport. Although Jace had explained his reasoning, Onima was still feeling some trepidation about his plan.

  Rather than enter the building, they started walking toward the hangar itself. The massive bay door was open, and a trio of shuttles waited within.

  Two were slightly larger than the Aquila’s biggest shuttles, and the third was smaller, but still looked somewhat larger than the one Yael had used to pilot them down to Aarde.

  As they drew near to the hangar, someone walked out toward them.

  She was in a flight suit with the same logo that was on the sign above the office. And she was a clone.

  “Yeagar!” Jace called.

  She paused to look at them, then walked over and stopped when she reached Jace.

  “Do I know you?” she asked.

  “No,” Jace said. “But during the war, my squad was flown many times by one like you. I remembered the surname.”

  “Right,” she said, putting a hand on her hip. “You’re a Rojas?”

  “That’s right,” Jace replied, offering her a hand. “Jace Rojas.”

  She took it. “Calliope Yeager.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jace said. He gestured. “My companions, CBI Marshal Onima Gwok and Deputy Marshal Kara Martinez.”

  Yeager looked skeptical. “Your ‘companions’?”

  “That’s right,” Onima said. “Jace is currently working for us as a special consultant.”

  “I’ve never heard of the CBI using clones,�
� said Yeager.

  Jace grinned. “That’s because they don’t. Mine is a unique situation.”

  “Is that so?” asked Yeager.

  “It is,” Jace said. “Which is why I was hoping to catch you or another pilot.”

  “Really?”

  “Can we go into the hangar?” Jace asked. “We’d prefer not to stay out here in the open for long.”

  Yeager raised an eyebrow. “You in trouble?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Jace said.

  Yeager shrugged, then gestured for the trio to follow her. Jace fell into step with her, Onima and Kara side by side behind him.

  “Now I see why Jace chose this charter,” Kara said to Onima. “Affordable because they employ clone pilots.”

  Onima had seldom given that much thought. But it was utterly logical.

  They were soon inside the hangar, which helped Onima relax somewhat. While they seemed to have managed not to have been followed after the hovervan crash, being out in the open made it possible for drones or satellites to spot them.

  Another clone approached, and Onima recognized he was similar to the one who had been murdered alongside Palmer Cadoret.

  “Dee-two,” Yeager called to the Lavi clone, “I want you to meet someone.”

  Onima and Kara hung back as Jace introduced himself and his companions to the second clone.

  “We’ve got ourselves a problem,” Jace informed the pair. “We made a lot more noise than we had expected to and can’t use normal channels to contact our ship in orbit, or our shuttle at the eastern spaceport. Any regular charter we hire might also get unwanted attention. We were hoping you could help us.”

  The Lavi clone looked skeptical. “What kind of game is this, Rojas?”

  “We don’t do charity work,” Yeager added.

  “Of course not,” Onima interjected. She flashed her digital warrant card. “As Jace said, I am a marshal of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation, and Ms. Martinez here is a deputy marshal.”

  Kara obligingly flashed her digital warrant card.

  “It is imperative we depart with as little fanfare as possible,” Onima concluded.

  Dee-two, the Lavi clone, turned to Yeager. “You want to take ‘em up?”

  “Yes,” Yeager said, then looked at Jace. “How do you plan to pay?”

  Onima stepped in. “What’s a charter run?”

  “Two thousand,” said Yeager.

  Onima nodded. She hardly cared what trouble this much discretionary spending might get her in later. “So, let me guess, twenty-five hundred gets us a charter without booking?”

  “No, that was the rate I told you,” Yeager said. She shook her head. “I knew I should have upped the rate.”

  “Two thousand,” Onima agreed. Then, “What do you two normally get paid?”

  “Hundred a flight,” Dee-two said.

  Kara whistled. “No wonder charters are a tenth of normal cost with your company. They pay you guys muhl.”

  “It’s better than his kind normally make for anything,” said Dee-two with a gesture toward Jace.

  “Okay,” Onima interrupted. “A hundred-and-fifty ESCA for you each, in addition, to forget our names. Good?”

  “Totally,” Dee-two said.

  Onima nodded and arranged the transfer of ESCA.

  “Well then, you three,” Yeager said, “let’s get this flight off the ground, shall we?”

  Though she was cautiously optimistic, Onima was still unsure if this was the best plan. But it was better than nothing, so she boarded the shuttle.

  Once on the flight deck, Onima allowed Jace the copilot’s seat. She sat behind Yeager, and Kara behind Jace.

  The clone pilot didn’t need long to get the shuttle ready to go. She put an earpiece over her ear and sent a comm signal. “JAST Home, this is Papa-Tango-Sierra-Two-Two-Oh-Three-Alpha. Confirm charter cover.” She paused for a response, then said, “Two-Two-Oh-Three-Alpha, copy that. Patch to port control.”

  The shuttle began to roll out of the hangar and toward an open part of the field. “Tower, this is Papa-Tango-Sierra-Two-Two-Oh-Three-Alpha, requesting orbital insertion launch clearance.” She paused a bit longer than before, then replied, “Roger that. Two-Two-Oh-Thee-Alpha ascending.”

  She turned back. “Hang on,” Yeager called out into the cabin.

  The shuttle shifted as it lifted straight up off its landing gear. They could hear the gear coming up as the shuttle began to climb higher. The noise changed, as the nose of the shuttle pointed upwards, and Onima felt herself pushed back into her seat as the shuttle began forward flight.

  Onima noted that the shuttle was considerably louder than the Bureau shuttles she was used to. Another reason, she figured, why the charter company was called Jacobastad Affordable Space Transport. Clone pilots and serviceable, but not top-of-the-line, starships.

  “How did you get mixed up with the CBI?” Yeager asked Jace.

  “I witnessed a crime,” Jace answered. Onima appreciated that, while he didn’t lie, he gave no clear details.

  “And they believed you?” Yeager asked.

  Jace chuckled. “The gift of eidetic memory proved useful for the first time since the war.”

  Despite the g-forces pressing them into their seats as the shuttle ascended, Jace and Yeager traded a few stories about their wartime service. Both had been cloned for the NEEA, but it sounded to Onima like they’d served in very different locations.

  As the ascent eased, Yeager asked, “What kind of crime, Jace, did you witness that led you to Aarde?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” Jace said.

  “Which is one of the things I most appreciate about Jace,” Onima interjected.

  “Fair,” Yeager said. “I have to admit, you are the first charter that never asked for my designation—just my name.”

  Before Onima could say anything, Kara remarked, “Working with Jace has proven enlightening. Designations were a wartime aspect of the clone armies. Now, as private citizens, you’ve taken names.”

  Yeager chuckled. “I wish more people saw it that way.” She changed her tone. “I had hoped, when I saw Jace was with CBI agents, that maybe—just maybe—you were investigating the disappearances.”

  “Disappearances?” asked Onima.

  “Yes,” Yeager said. “Clones have been randomly disappearing in the last year or so.”

  “You mean the affliction?” Jace asked.

  “No,” Yeager said. “That’s a whole other matter. No, what I mean is that somewhere between a half a dozen to two dozen clones have disappeared from the slums without a trace. And not just here in Jacobastad, but Gerritwereldstad and other planets, too.”

  “Other planets?” Onima asked.

  “That’s according to clones I’ve met on charter flights,” Yeager reported.

  “Despite living in slums and away from normal human society,” Jace said, “our kind do have ways to keep tabs on one another. That’s how we knew about the virus before any of us saw it.”

  “Virus?” asked Yeager.

  Onima weighed the need for security and sharing information. “‘The affliction,’ as you called it. We know that it’s a virus. I can’t get into more than that, but we know a virus is the cause.”

  “That makes sense,” Yeager said. She paused, then asked, “Where am I taking you?”

  Onima noticed that they were clear of the atmosphere completely and in a low orbit. “The CBI Aquila,” she said.

  “Wait,” Jace said, turning toward her. “Given what we did to get up here, we can’t just broadcast in the clear requesting docking. That potentially tells everyone aboard exactly where we will be.”

  “Good point,” Kara said.

  “Can you tell me if we are in line of sight of the Aquila?” Onima asked.

  “Do you have the transponder code?” Yeager asked.

  “Yes.” Kara swiped two fingers over her left forearm, sending the data to the pilot’s terminal.

  “Got it,”
Yeager said. “Not in the clear. We haven’t got true line of sight. Give me about two minutes.”

  “Okay,” Onima said.