“I know,” Deshin said. Strangely enough, he wasn’t thinking about someone looking like Paavo infiltrating his organization. That was years in the future. No one would mistake these young boys for his son.
Besides, he could set up an identification system that would immediately rule out any clone. Not through DNA, but through the old links that Paavo’s biological parents had illegally installed in his brain when he was an infant. The scarred-over links were unique to his boy, and always would be.
Deshin walked around the image. The children had put him off before he had put an actual, beloved face on them. But now that Jakande had shown him clones of Paavo, Deshin knew he couldn’t be part of anything that would result in the death of children who were biologically the same as his son.
He wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
He had softened up.
Once he had been able to live with anything.
“Who do we have in the vicinity?” he asked Jakande.
“I checked before this,” Jakande said. “Otto Koos was nearby. I figured you’d want him to run our part of the op, so I sent him and a team in that direction.”
“Good,” Deshin said.
Koos, Deshin’s former head of security, had redeemed himself by taking care of the person who had sent the clones who had infiltrated Deshin Enterprises, as well as the clones themselves.
Ever since, Deshin had used Koos for secret ops inside the Alliance. Koos was discrete, talented, and ruthless.
“We need a lot of cargo ships,” Deshin said. “This operation has changed.”
“Excuse me?” Jakande frowned, clearly surprised.
“We’re not going to destroy the clone factory,” Deshin said.
“But you said we can’t stop the others,” Jakande said.
“We can’t,” Deshin said. “I also said a bunch of my colleagues would try to steal what they could before the attacks hit.”
“Yeah,” Jakande said. “You said they’d take the DNA.”
“And other valuables,” Deshin said. “But they’re not going to steal what we will.”
Jakande’s frown grew deeper. “The Paavo clones?”
“Too specific for a quick in and out,” Deshin said. Besides, doing that didn’t satisfy the sense of horror he felt at those schools, those dormitories. “We’re going to take every clone we can, starting with the youngest, and working our way to the young adults.”
“And do what with them?” Jakande asked.
“Make them legit,” Deshin said. “We’re going to make them legit.”
FORTY-EIGHT
THE NARROW CORRIDOR’S lights dimmed as Zagrando moved, the opposite from the way the lights in a standard space yacht functioned. In standard Alliance configurations, lights dimmed or went out after people left a corridor, not as they entered it.
He had gotten used to crouching through the low-ceilinged corridors as he went from section to section. His thighs had become a lot stronger than they had been, and his back had become accustomed to the angle.
Just this one change alone would tire his pursuers.
He hoped it would slow them down as well.
He opened a person-sized side panel, and went down one deck. The panels in the corridors were built for bots and for actual living servants because this truly was a luxury yacht, just not one of the yachts for rich Alliance teenagers.
Zagrando made it to the cargo level. He moved quickly. This was one of the most dangerous parts of his trip to the second cockpit, but he absolutely had to do this.
He could feel the time ticking away. Right now, a group had either huddled near the airlock door inside the yacht, or they were already going through the lower deck corridors, searching for him.
He was only two decks up.
His mouth had gone dry.
He slipped into the armory. The armory, like most places on the yacht, was coded to his DNA, and his DNA only. No one could get in, not even if they had copies of his DNA. Even a clone couldn’t open anything, because it would have either shortened telomeres and/or a marker inside its DNA, differentiating that DNA from his.
He loved that about this yacht.
The armory was tiny, little bigger than the average crew cabin on an average human-designed Alliance ship. He opened the tiny weapons bay, and saw all six torpedoes. That wasn’t a lot, but it might be enough to help him escape. He had to touch them as he gave them the command that would let them know that any launch sequence had to come from the second cockpit.
He slipped his middle finger into the groove on each of the six torpedoes, felt them heat in response to his touch, and then he closed the panel.
He half expected to turn around and find someone staring at him, but he hadn’t so far.
He ignored the other weapons. Some were truly terrifying—an actual crossbow and some vicious looking swords—but most were standard Alliance-grade guns. He set all the laser pistols and laser rifles to the ready mode, but left them behind, just as he had in the main cockpit.
Then the yacht sent him a map with heat signatures. Eight invaders so far, all crowded in the corridor near the main entrance.
It wouldn’t take them long to fan out.
He set up this armory to blow, just like he had set up the control panel in the cockpit one deck up. It was to do so after the torpedoes launched.
Not before.
He eased out of the armory, and headed to the cargo bay, half expecting the door to slide open and reveal even more invaders.
But the bay was empty.
It took one minute to set the explosives he had rigged weeks ago near the cargo bay door.
Twelve invaders now, and they had fanned out. He studied the map, saw that if he hurried, he might be able to make it to the second cockpit. He would have to forgo setting the explosives he had placed in the yacht’s galley and entertainment areas.
He slipped into another side panel, went up three decks, emerged—
—to find Ike Jarvis standing directly in front of him, laser pistol pointed right at him.
FORTY-NINE
JAKANDE CLEARLY DIDN’T understand what Deshin intended to do with the clones once he had them. Deshin already had a plan. It would take a lot of setup on his part, but he didn’t have to do it until he got the clones away from Hétique—and that would be a trick in and of itself.
“We can’t kidnap hundreds of children,” Jakande said.
“We’re not,” Deshin said. “We’re stealing hundreds of slow-grow clones.”
“Still,” Jakande said. “That’s a major operation and it’ll take planning, and even if we succeed, what’ll we do with them?”
All good questions. Deshin hadn’t had much time to think about this, but one reason he had become head of Deshin Enterprises was because he could think so well on his feet.
“There are a couple of places we can take them,” he said. “I’ll worry about that for the moment. But we need to execute this plan fast.”
“What plan?” Jakande asked. “I don’t see a plan.”
He actually sounded panicked.
“I’ll work with Koos,” Deshin said. “He’s been around a long time. He can remember when we’ve done similar operations—”
“Sir, I don’t think you’re thinking this through,” Jakande said, then went gray as he realized exactly how critical he sounded. “I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” Deshin said.
“I don’t think so, sir.” Jakande spoke fast as if he wanted to get the thought out before he made another verbal error. “These are children, which means that if they’re under ten, they’ll need supervision, and if they’re under five, they’ll need a lot of supervision. You’ll have mercenaries do that?”
Deshin looked at Jakande over the images. Another good point, and one Deshin hadn’t completely realized. Especially with the infants.
“I guess we take caretakers out of the schools and dormitories as well as the children,” Deshin said. “We’ll figure out w
hat to do with the adults later.”
“Sir—”
“Just find me Koos,” Deshin said. “I’ll talk to him. We did something similar in the past. If I remind him about it, he’ll know what to do.”
Jakande shook his head slightly. “If this doesn’t work—”
“I’ll know we tried,” Deshin said.
Jakande stared at him, as if he wasn’t sure who Deshin actually was any longer. “Do you want to talk to him here?”
“No,” Deshin said. “I’ll go to my office in the conference center.”
“The others might track your communications,” Jakande said.
“That’s all right,” Deshin said. “They expect me to go in early. They’ll be doing the same thing. We just have a different target. Go. I’ll join you in a minute.”
Jakande snapped his fingers together and the image vanished. Then he opened the door to the entertainment room and let himself out. After a moment, the apartment let Deshin know that Jakande was gone.
Deshin sank into one of the nearby chairs. Children. Whom he probably couldn’t rescue.
But he would try.
Timing would be everything. He would need to get those children onto those cargo ships just as the attack forces showed up. The ships would have to leave before the bombs hit, so that no one would associate his cargo vessels with the attacks.
Then he frowned. He would need more ships, waiting nearby. He would have to dump the initial ships.
And he would have to participate in the attacks as well, maybe even lead them, just to keep the timing under his own control.
He cursed again. It had seemed like such a good idea a short time ago. Go in, attack the clone factory wherever it was, get some revenge.
He had learned at the beginning of his career that revenge was often one of the most costly things a man could indulge in.
Apparently, the lesson hadn’t taken.
But it would now.
FIFTY
“YOU’RE DONE, INIKO.” Jarvis’s voice was deep and growly, the sign of an enhancement gone wrong.
Zagrando’s heart pounded. They were in a narrow corridor, neither of them standing upright. Zagrando had just come out of the armory after setting everything to blow.
What worried him was this: Jarvis hadn’t shown up on Zagrando’s internal map. No heat signature, nothing, not even now. For a moment, Zagrando wondered if Jarvis had accessed his links, and the man pointing a laser pistol at him was just a hologram.
Zagrando had to act as if Jarvis were real.
Because if he was, then Zagrando had another problem.
How many other invaders had already arrived and weren’t visible on his scans?
Zagrando tried not to let how unnerved he was show on his face. The training, which had hurt, was coming in useful now. If he acted calm, he would be considered calm.
He slid a finger behind him, commanding the panel to close.
It did, just as Jarvis shot at him—low, like Zagrando expected. Jarvis shot to wound, but not kill.
The shot missed, and Zagrando backed up, out of Jarvis’s line of sight, heart pounding, but glad for the confirmation:
Jarvis needed to find that money before he killed Zagrando.
Zagrando could use that.
He could still see the edge of Jarvis’s shoe, but didn’t know how long that would last.
Zagrando shut off all contact with the space yacht after sending a shadow signal up one more level. As the hookup with the yacht winked out, Jarvis remained. If the shot hadn’t convinced Zagrando that Jarvis was real, then the fact that Jarvis hadn’t disappeared with the links did.
Still, Zagrando didn’t like severing the contact. He couldn’t figure out where invaders were without the yacht, but if he stayed hooked up to the yacht, then someone might track him through the yacht’s systems.
Then Zagrando pulled out one of the pistols he carried, set it on high, and hoped to hell he wouldn’t have to use it.
He backed away, moving as quietly as he could until he reached the next access panel. He went down two decks, squeezing through a space that he barely fit in.
Before he opened the access panel on that level, he sent out a silent prayer to all the gods he had never believed in, hoping against hope this would work.
He pushed the control, and the panel slid open.
No one waited for him in the corridor.
He scurried along, touching nothing, pistol in front of him, feeling blind without his links, lonely without a partner, and just a little worried that he had missed something important.
FIFTY-ONE
ODGEREL’S OFFICE HAD no desk. It had no furniture, not as most people would define it. She had large, multicolored pillows on the floor, several rugs covering the tile, and some thick mats for stretching. Four decorative screens divided the room into sections.
Her favorite screen reproduced the famous Qing Dynasty painting, “One Hundred Horses.” She loved the piece, not only because its browns, greens, and blacks pleased her, but because of what it symbolized. The artist, Lang Shining, had been born in Italy, but his work became beloved by Chinese emperors. To her, the screen represented the hope that if humans could blend their cultures long ago, then humans and aliens could do so now—with the human becoming dominant, of course. Like the Chinese were dominant in this painting.
The other screens were also reproductions of famous old works, and all of them had a message—at least to her. The screen closest was a version of Emperor Taizong Receiving the Tibetan Envoy from the early years of the Tang dynasty, Peach Festival of the Queen Mother of the West from the Ming Dynasty, and The Jade Rabbit Explores from the early 21st century. Of all of them, she liked the moonscape the least, but her eye went to it now, looking past the moon rover to the grayish surface of the Moon itself.
Back then, who would have known that the exploration would lead to such a vast and complicated civilization, one with so many moving parts even she could not understand it?
Odgerel sat cross-legged before The Jade Rabbit Explores, the large, pale pink pillow soft beneath her legs. She needed to unite the various Division and Department heads without making any of them feel threatened. She decided she would start with her old friend, Gāo Yǎ Dé. He headed the Earth Alliance Military Division Human Coordination Department Intelligence Service, and she could trust him to speak frankly to her.
She waved her right hand, activating the screen hidden in the center of the Jade Rabbit rover.
A brief, yellow-coded image appeared on her screen. It was the usual warning screen, one that prevented outsiders from entering the secure divisions in the Earth Alliance government.
Any contact initiated by her or someone with the codes to her screens in this single room would immediately bypass those screens.
After a moment, Gāo appeared. He had put on weight since she had last seen him, making his already-round face seem moon-shaped. He had an ill-advised mustache that accented how pale his once-brown skin had become. His eyes, dark and inquisitive, remained the same.
“Odgerel,” he said, with unfeigned pleasure. He bowed enough that she could see the top of his head before he continued. “I have missed you.”
“And I, you, Yǎ Dé,” she said. “It has been too many years.”
“And too many light-years,” he said, with the boyish smile she remembered. “I have a staff meeting in progress. I assume I must dismiss them?”
“Only for a moment,” she said, and then she waited. She did like this part of her job: the fact that others—no matter how highly ranked—catered to her.
His face disappeared, and an Earth Alliance Military logo replaced it. She waited while he dismissed his staff, using those moments to make sure her breathing was regular and her heart rate remained even.
Then Gāo’s face filled the screen once more. Behind him, she could see the edges of a starscape. He had changed locations, perhaps to a room with a view of space.
“Now,” he said warmly, �
��how may I help you, Odgerel?”
She let her hands rest on her knees. “You have, of course, heard of the latest attacks on the Moon.”
“Yes.” His eyes glittered. From his tone, she could tell he thought the attacks had nothing to do with him.
“I am hearing disturbing chatter, and I must consider it.” She paused, making certain he knew that she was choosing her words carefully. “I am hearing that these attacks are not criminally based, as we first thought, but are aimed at something larger.”
“What could be larger than destroying cities on the Moon?” Gāo asked.
She waited. She did not want to insult him. He needed to come to his own conclusions. Then he would own the ideas.
“No one would attack the Alliance,” Gāo said. “No one has the military power to attack us. Everyone who has tried has failed. We’ve never encountered a larger military in the known universe.”
She waited and watched. He frowned, as he thought about this.
“You think the attack is coming from within?” he asked.
“I am sure, Yǎ Dé, that you have kept a close eye on dissidents,” she said.
“Dissidents, yes,” he said. “We follow all sorts of dissidents. Generally, they dislike their own governments, not the Earth Alliance. The Intelligence Service’s Joint Unit follows those that seem to span species, and—”
“I’m aware of the structure,” she said softly. She didn’t need him to explain the sections that most divisions in the Earth Alliance had. Each alien species had its own wing of not just the military intelligence service, but also of the military prisons and, oh so many others. Just like each division had its own overall human overseer. She had to meet with her compatriots three times a year, generally off-Earth, which annoyed her greatly.
“I’m sorry,” Gāo said. “Of course, you’re familiar. I’m so used to explaining the intricacies to subordinates.”
Sure he was. She kept the disbelief off her face. She had a sense that he had started to make those little unnecessary speeches that some people in command resorted to. They often believed their subordinates were ignorant, rather than trusting them.
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