“Keep me informed,” Brocius said as he signed off. Freeman placed the photograph of Crowley back in his folder. Then he turned to look at me. “Do you have any civilian clothing?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Dress down; I need you to take me into Morrowtown.”
As we climbed into the truck, I said, “We’ll save a couple of hours if we go in your flier.”
Freeman glared down at me, and said, “We’ll take the truck.”
“Is there a reason I am wearing civilian clothes?”
“Yes,” Freeman said, and he did not speak again for the entire two-hour trip. I tried to distract myself with memories of boot camp, but you cannot ignore a man whose very presence radiates intensity. I could feel him sitting beside me. I suppose he chose the truck to avoid calling attention to himself; but there was no way this black-skinned giant was going to slip into Morrowtown unnoticed. Just thinking about Freeman trying to be inconspicuous made the long ride pass more quickly. The townspeople may have grown accustomed to Marines, but the sight of Freeman sent them running. People hurried out of our way as we walked through the streets. When we got to the gambling house, we found it locked tight. “Do you think anyone is in there?” Freeman asked. It was late in the afternoon, but Guttman usually played well into the evening. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Good enough for me,” Freeman replied. He drew an oversized particle-beam pistol from his belt and aimed it at the door. Without warning, he fired a sparkling green beam at the door, which disappeared behind a cloud of smoke and sparks. Then, lifting a massive boot, he kicked the smoldering remains out of the doorway.
“We could have knocked,” I said.
Freeman did not answer as he disappeared into the smoke.
Kline had struck me as somewhat timid the first time I saw him. On this occasion, he went from timid to terrified. As I stepped through the doorway, I saw him standing beside the liquor bar inside the foyer, the same place he had been standing the time I came with Guttman.
Looking both scared and surprised, Kline stared unblinkingly at the remains of the door, then raised his hands in the air to show that he held no weapons. His gaze shifted in our direction, and he said, “May I help you?”
Freeman walked over to Kline and placed the photograph of Crowley on the bar. “We’re looking for this man.”
Kline looked down at the photograph and studied it for a minute. “He came in a month ago. That was the only time I ever saw him.”
“What do you remember about him?” Freeman asked.
“He played a few hands and left; that’s all I know,” Kline said, trying to sound casual.
“Maybe this will jog your memory,” Freeman said, pulling out his pistol and pressing its muzzle into the fleshy area between Kline’s eyes.
Kline’s eyes crossed as they looked up the barrel, but he remained composed. “I think he came here looking for soldiers. He asked me if any of the Marines from the base were coming and offered me $100
to let him join the game.” Kline’s voice trembled, but only slightly. Considering the size of the pistol pressed against his head and the damage that pistol had done to his door, I thought Kline remained amazingly calm.
“Anything else?” Freeman asked.
“That’s everything,” Kline said.
Never shifting his gaze from Kline’s face, Freeman placed his pistol on the bar. He did so very gently, taking great care not to scratch the finish. Then he reached into a pocket below his chestplate. After fishing around for a moment, he removed a small silver tube.
“Your name is Kline, is that right?”
“Yes,” Kline said, staring at the tube.
“Do you know how to kill ants, Mr. Kline?”
“By stepping on them?” Kline asked.
“Yes, you can kill one ant that way, but I mean a whole hill of ants.”
Kline shook his head.
“You poison one ant with something slow and highly toxic. Kill it too fast, say, by stepping on it or using a fast poison, and all you have is a dead ant. But if you use the right poison, something that works real slow, that ant will infect his entire colony.”
“Is that poison?” Kline asked.
“No, sir,” Freeman said, shaking his head. “Just a little Super Glue.” He pushed one of Kline’s hands down on the bar with the palm up. Kline tried to close his fingers; but when Freeman squeezed his wrist, the hand fell open. “Now you keep that hand right there, right like that, Mr. Kline.”
Freeman pulled the eyedropper out of the tube and squeezed, forcing several drops of clear white liquid to ooze onto Kline’s trembling palm. “See, that didn’t hurt. A little glue won’t hurt you.”
Kline sighed with relief.
“Now this, this could hurt you.” Freeman pulled something that looked like a lime from his pocket and pressed it into Kline’s freshly glued hand.
Kline was no soldier, but he recognized the grenade the moment he saw it. “What are you doing?”
Freeman closed Kline’s fingers around the grenade and held them shut as he quietly counted to sixty. When he released Kline’s fingers, he wiggled the grenade to make sure the glue held fast. Then he pulled the pin from the grenade. “Ever seen one of these?”
Kline was speechless.
“This is a grenade. A high-yield grenade will take out a full city block. This here is a low-yield grenade. Small ones like this aren’t nearly so bad. It might only destroy a couple of buildings.”
“I see,” Kline said, his composure gone.
“I made this one just for situations like this,” Freeman continued. “This grenade senses body heat. As long as there are no temperature fluctuations, you’ll be perfectly safe. You might want to use your other hand when you grab ice out of that freezer over there. Freezing air would set it off for sure. Don’t pry the grenade from your palm. A change in temperature like that’ll set it off, too. You wouldn’t want to hit it with a hammer or drill into it, either.”
“I see,” said Kline.
“See that hole where I took the pin? If anything goes in that hole except this exact pin, that grenade will explode. Don’t stick anything in that hole. You understand?”
“Yes,” Kline stuttered.
“You might lose some skin when I pry the grenade out of your hand.”
“When?” Kline asked.
“Think you can remember all that?” Freeman asked, ignoring the question.
“When will you take it?” Kline responded.
“The grenade is set to explode in forty-eight hours,” Freeman said. “If I don’t see you before then, I guess you can keep it.”
Kline’s generally nonplussed facade melted, and his lips pulled back into a grimace. “But . . . but how will I find you? Why are you doing this?”
“We’ll call this an incentive, Mr. Kline. I think you know more information than you are telling me,”
Freeman said.
Kline looked at me for help, but only for a moment. “How will I find you?”
“I’ll be at the Marine base, Mr. Kline. You come down and visit me if you remember something. But don’t wait too long. Don’t show up in forty-seven hours and fifty-nine minutes because I won’t want to talk to you.” With that, Freeman packed up his picture of Crowley and his gigantic pistol. He screwed the cover back on the tube and started for the door. I followed.
“What makes you so sure he’s hiding something?” I asked, as we stepped out onto the empty street. Freeman did not answer. Having reverted to his silent self, he walked to the next building. “Stop here,”
he said, ignoring my question.
The air was hot and dry. Since I was not wearing my climate-controlled bodysuit, the early evening felt like an oven. The sun started to set, and the sky above Morrowtown filled with crimson-and-orange clouds. The buildings, mostly two-and three-story sandstone structures, took on a particularly gloomy look in the dying daylight. Lights shone in some nearby windows. Freeman’s khaki-colored clot
hes looked gray in the growing darkness.
“How do you know Kline is hiding something?” I asked again.
“I’m not sure he is,” Freeman said. “I want to track him if he leaves town.”
“In case he goes to warn Crowley?” I asked.
Freeman did not answer.
“So that wasn’t a grenade? It was just a tracking device?” Suddenly Freeman seemed almost human. I laughed, remembering Kline’s terrified expression.
“No, that was a homemade grenade. I placed a radioactive tracking filament inside the glue.”
I did not see the point in gluing a grenade to Kline’s hand. I believed him when he said that he did not know anything.
Despite his lack of social skills, Freeman knew how to read people. Moments after we left the bar, Kline popped his head out of the door. He spotted us and jogged over, carefully cradling his left hand, the one with the grenade, as if he were holding an infant.
“You won’t leave Gobi?” Kline asked.
“Do you remember something?” I asked.
“No,” he said, shaking his head but never taking his eyes off Freeman.
“I’ll be at the base,” Freeman said in his rumbling voice.
Freeman turned and walked toward the truck. I followed. “Do you think he is a spy of some sort?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t trust him,” Freeman said.
Freeman and I did not speak to each other during the drive back to base, but the silence did not bother me this time. He sat very still, his eyes forming sharp slits as he surveyed the moonlit landscape. Perhaps I was slow. We were nearly back to Gobi Station before I realized that Freeman was looking for enemies. For all we knew, Crowley had an entire army on the planet, and he could easily ambush us on our way back to the fort. A lone soldier and a mercenary would not stand much of a chance in an ambush, but Freeman, well armed and always watchful, would not go down so easily. If we drove past any enemies that night, they did not make a move. Except for the hollow cry of distant lizards scurrying along some far-off dune, I never saw any signs of life. Gobi Station might have been the grandest building on the entire planet. Several times larger than any building in Morrowtown, the outpost had huge sandstone walls lined with columns and arches. A domed roof covered each corner of the structure. The first settlers on Gobi were probably Moslem—Gobi Station had a Moorish look about it. The outpost’s sturdy walls and thick ramparts made for a good fortress. The yellow light of our poorly powered lanterns poured out from the outpost’s arches and reflected on the gold-leafed domes. As we drove toward the motor pool, I felt warm relief in the pit of my stomach. We parked the truck, and I returned to my cell to sleep. Freeman headed toward Gutterwash Godfrey’s office. I suppose he wanted to report to Vice Admiral Brocius. Taj Guttman met me at the door of the barracks. At night, he wore a long, white robe that he cinched with a belt around his gelatinous stomach. The belt looked equatorial. “What happened in town?”
“Not much,” I said, pulling off my shirt. I walked into my cell hoping to get away from Guttman. He followed. Trying to ignore him, I dropped my pants.
“Did you find Crowley?”
“No, but Freeman made quite an impression on Kline. That Freeman is a real prick. He glued a grenade to Kline’s hand.”
“He what?” Guttman sounded shocked. He made a whistling noise. “So do you think I’m going to get in trouble?”
“I don’t think Freeman cares about you. I don’t think he cares about anybody. Just stay out of his way. You’ll be okay unless he decides to shoot you.”
CHAPTER THREE
Kline had a secret, and Freeman must have figured it out. Working with subtle clues that escaped my attention, Freeman pieced that secret together and shared it only with Admiral Brocius, leaving the rest of us unprepared.
Looking back, I should have seen it coming. A stockpile of military-grade weapons in a tiny garrison would be too easy a prize for a struggling army of traitors to ignore. Judging by Guttman and the other men who went into town, Crowley would expect little resistance if he attacked Gobi Station. Who knew how long he had had our base under surveillance. He had probably known our numbers, might even have been watching when Ray Freeman landed. Freeman’s arrival probably worked like a catalyst, spurring Crowley to act sooner than he had intended.
Freeman knew that someone like General Crowley would not come to a backwater planet like Gobi for no reason. If Crowley was here and weapons were here, Crowley undoubtedly wanted the weapons. Freeman didn’t share this useful information, however, because he had come on a bounty-hunting expedition and wanted to capture Crowley. If he had warned us, we would have prepared for the attack and Crowley would have seen us mounting guns and sending out patrols. He might have tried to flee the planet, and Freeman did not want that. Freeman had sized up the situation and decided to offer up my platoon as bait.
Crowley made his move the following morning. It started with a single explosion that shattered the silence and shook the desert like cracking thunder. The explosion came from the north side of the base, rattling the outpost’s massive walls.
I jumped from my bed and looked out a window in time to see the last remnants of an enormous fireball dissolving into the sunrise. The bomb had demolished Ray Freeman’s ship, cutting off our only escape route and destroying our only hope of air support.
Silence followed.
For the next ten seconds, the Gobi desert returned to its peaceful self. A burned red sunrise filled the horizon as the echo of the explosion rolled across the desert. I felt the last of the evening breeze through my window as I turned to throw on my armor. It took me less than thirty seconds to slip on my armor and helmet. I snapped the rifle stock on my M27 and exited my cell. Rickman came running from his cell and the others followed, including Taj Guttman, with his helmet stuck to the top of his head like a hat. Their armor still worked. The smart-lenses in my visor registered signals transmitted by the other Marines’ armor. When I looked at Rickman, Sarris, and Guttman, a computer in my helmet picked up signals from their armor and displayed their names and ranks in red letters. I heard several of the men asking questions over the interLink.
“What the hell was that?” Rickman shouted above the noise. Before I could tell Rickman about seeing the fireball, Sergeant Godfrey leaped down the stairs to join us.
“Everybody up top. Cover the entrances,” Godfrey yelled. He carried a particle-beam pistol in his hand and used it to point up the stairs. I could hear men hyperventilating as they ran up and realized that I was about to go to battle with men who no longer had soldiering in their blood. As we reached the top of the barracks, a rocket struck just outside the arched entrance. A cloud of dust and smoke filled the open-air hallway leading to the main gate.
“I see them,” one man shouted, firing wildly through an outer window. I looked over his shoulder, but did not see anything. Even when I scanned the area using the heat-vision lens in my visor, I saw nothing, though the smoke and flames from the explosion almost certainly distorted my view.
Switching back to standard combat vision, I peered through the thinning dust cloud. A ring of small fires still burned around the ten-meter-wide hole that the rocket had left in our walkway. Constructed of massive sandstone blocks, the outpost could withstand gunfire, but not rocket attacks. Looking at the jagged remains of the hall and hearing the chaotic chatter of the Marines around me, I did not feel scared or confused. I felt soothed. That must sound odd. It was the same feeling I have when I eat a favorite food or hear a familiar song. The world seemed to slow down, and my thoughts became clearer. It felt good. Everything around me was chaos, but I felt happy. It had never happened to me during the simulations back at the orphanage or during basic. If that was how it felt to be in a real combat situation, I didn’t mind it.
“Sarris, Mervin, Phillips. Secure the main hall.” Godfrey shouted orders over the interLink. Without so much as a moment’s hesitation, three Marines pulled their pistols and charged down that sha
ttered hallway. Automatic fire struck Sarris as he left the cover of the barracks. The first shot banked off the back of his shoulder plates, spitting chips of armor. Two more shots struck his head, shattering his helmet and spraying blood and brains in the air. He twisted and fell to the ground. Mervin and Phillips ran past him and sprinted through a volley of bullets and laser fire.
“Harris, go with them,” Godfrey yelled.
Clones like Sarris reacted to orders by reflex, but I needed a moment. “Move out!” Godfrey shouted again, as I reached the door. I leaped over Sarris, landed on a layer of grit and debris, and slid, almost falling over. Bullets ricocheted off the walls around me. Clutching my gun close to my chest, I ran toward the crumbling ledge where the rocket had blasted through the walkway. A few feet ahead of me, Mervin lay on the ground beside the shredded wall. He had been shot in the head and part of his helmet and visor littered the ground around him. I saw the singed skin and one brown eye, crazy with fear, staring at me.
“Harris, what are you doing?” Godfrey snapped. “What are you waiting for?”
“Mervin’s alive,” I said.
Rockets had destroyed the promenade around Mervin. I could not get to him without exposing myself. Judging by the way they hit Sarris and Mervin, Crowley had a dead-eye-dick sniper out there. I dropped to my stomach and pulled myself forward.
“Forget Mervin,” Godfrey screamed. “I want that side of the base secured. Do you understand me?”
“I can get him out of here,” I said.
Someone shot at me. A slug passed just over my back and tore into the wall behind. Rubble showered my head and shoulders.
“I gave you an order,” Godfrey yelled.
Just then, I heard a hissing sound that I recognized at once. Rolling to one side, I hid behind a pile of rubble as a rocket slammed into the remains of the walkway about thirty feet ahead of me. My visor instantly polarized, shielding my eyes from the blinding flash.
Already weakened from the first blast, the breezeway collapsed. My armor protected me from shrapnel and flying fragments of sandstone as I fell amidst the rubble. I landed on my stomach, crushing the air out of my lungs.
The Clone Republic Page 4
