“So?”
“Every Liberator I’ve ever known made sergeant,” Lee said.
“Get specked.” I knew he was joking, but he struck the wrong nerve. Though they gave me the field promotion before I left Hubble—that was why McKay took me to the cruiser—the paperwork did not get approved for another month. As with my promotion to corporal, I did not feel that I had earned it.
“Look, Harris, I know you miss Shannon, but you need to lighten up,” Lee said. He spooned the meat out of his grapefruit half, then gobbled down two strips of bacon. “HQ reviewed the record before giving your promotion the go-ahead. You did what you could. Let it go.”
I finished my orange juice and placed the cup on my tray. “I guess so,” I said, in an unconvincing voice.
“Okay, well, I had an idea,” Lee said. “You’ve got more leave stored up than any man on this ship. I’ve got a couple of weeks. Let’s take some R and R.”
“That doesn’t . . .”
Lee put up his hand to stop me. “Look at yourself, Wayson. You’re moping around. You should see yourself around the men. You’re on a hair trigger. If you don’t take some time to relax, I think you’re going to shoot somebody.”
“They just gave me a platoon. Do you think they’d let me take leave?” I asked.
“Harris, if they don’t let you go now, they’re never going to. This is the beginning of Klyber’s war. Things will only get hotter from here. Mogats on other planets are going to rally around their dead.”
“Not Mogats,” I said. “Atkins Separatists. That came straight from HQ. We are no longer to refer to the group formerly known as Mogats by any name other than ‘Separatists’ or ‘Atkins Separatists.’”
Lee was right about the Separatists’ rallying. For a man who never followed the news, Vince Lee had an uncanny ability to read the winds.
“Two weeks,” McKay snapped when I requested a leave of absence. “Two weeks of liberty? You only took command of your platoon a few weeks ago. This is not the time for you to take a holiday, Sergeant.”
We stood in a small booth in the gunnery range. Looking through the soundproof window, I could see Lee drilling the remaining members of the platoon as they fired at holographic targets with live ammunition—bullets and grenades. The M27s and automatic rifles hardly made a sound, but the report of the grenades thundered so loud that it shook the booth.
In preparation for fighting the Separatists, we now shot at animated targets with human faces. The targets in the rifle range bled, screamed, and moved like living soldiers. I peered through the window to watch my men as McKay spoke. A holographic target materialized less than twenty feet from the shooting platform. Vince Lee fired once and missed. His second shot hit the target in its chest. The enemy screamed and vanished.
“You have four new privates on the way,” McKay said, staring at me angrily. “One of them is fresh out of boot. Your new corporal has not even arrived. Who is going to command the platoon with you and Lee out?”
“I understand, sir,” I said.
“When was your last leave?” McKay asked.
“I’ve never taken leave, sir,” I said. “I had a few free days before transferring to the Kamehameha .”
“And nothing since?”
“No, sir.”
McKay sat on the desk at the far end of the room, his legs draped to the floor. “Corporal Lee says that you have . . .” he paused to consider his words, “concerns.”
“Concerns?” I asked.
“You do not feel that you earned your promotion.”
Good old Lee . . . diarrhea of the mouth, constipation of the brain. “The corporal was speaking out of turn, sir. When I have concerns, I am completely able to lodge them myself.”
“I see,” said McKay, sounding a bit too paternal. He looked right into my eyes, not challenging me, but observing. “Lee says that you blame yourself for Sergeant Shannon’s death.”
“I never said that.”
“Do you blame yourself?”
I felt my stomach turn and my palms sweat. I looked out the window and watched one of my men miss five shots before finally hitting a target no more than ten feet away. Sloppy shooting. He wasn’t bothering to aim before firing rounds.
“I should have waited,” I said. “I left him in there. And I gave away our position when I missed that shot.”
“I saw the video feed, Sergeant. You did not miss.”
“I was too loud.”
“You hit a moving target from over a hundred yards in a bad light,” he said, shaking his head. “Look out that window. Do you think anyone else in your platoon would have done better?”
“I should have aimed for a head shot.”
“Do you think that was what killed Shannon? Do you think he died because the man’s oxygen tube exploded?”
I watched another private. Three targets popped up a good sixty feet out from him. He hit all three in short order, never missing a shot. How could identical beings be so different?
I mulled McKay’s question over in my head. Freeman had won the battle on Gobi. I’d just been along for the ride. Shannon had done all the work on Hubble, and I got him killed. I did not say that. I did not want Captain McKay to consider demoting me . . . maybe court-martialing me.
“Harris, he was dead the moment he touched Lieutenant Williams.”
“Williams?”
“The tech with the robot,” McKay said. “Williams might have been a prick, but he was a superior officer, and a Navy man at that. I might have been able to smooth things over if Shannon roughed another Marine, but Williams wanted blood, and I goddamned don’t blame him.”
I did not say anything.
Outside the command booth, Lee gathered the platoon. I could not hear him, but I could see him yelling at the men. Lee singled out one man and gave him a shove as he stepped into line. The man stumbled. McKay saw none of that. He continued to look at me, not so much staring, but certainly studying me carefully. I glanced back at him, but just for a moment. He sighed. “I am going to grant your request, Harris. I’ll assign Grayson from the Thirteenth Platoon to cover for you.
“Do you have any idea where you are going?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“I don’t think Lee wants to waste two weeks of leave drifting around Scrotum-Crotch,” McKay said.
“We’re going to pass a disc station in two days. I’m going to grant your request, on the condition that you take your leave on Earth.”
“Earth?” I liked the idea. “I could visit the orphanage . . .”
“God, Harris, talking to you is more depressing than sitting through a funeral. Most of the officers on this ship visit a group of islands. I told Lee about the place.”
McKay slid off the desk. “You’ve got two weeks, Harris. Don’t waste them.” He returned my salute and left the office shaking his head and muttering the word “orphanage.”
The Scutum-Crux Central Fleet needed rebuilding. We had lost seven thousand men on Hubble. I noticed an eerie emptiness around our section of the ship. I saw vacant racks in squad bay, and the sea-soldier bar always felt empty.
After the nonstop rush of battle, life unwound at an uneven pace aboard the Kamehameha . The first weeks after the battle on Hubble passed so slowly. The two days after McKay granted my leave were a blur.
I put off packing until the morning we left for Earth. I drilled my men harder than ever the day before we left. I tried to combine the late Tabor Shannon’s tirades and Aleg Oberland’s intelligent doggedness in my orders. I think I pushed everybody beyond his limits. When one of my privates missed ten shots on the range, allowing a holographic target of a woman separatist to stroll right up to the stand, I screamed until spit flew from my lips. Shannon would have been proud. I removed the man’s helmet, then I placed it over his head backward and hammered it down with my rifle butt. “Having trouble seeing through your visor?” I yelled.
Nobody laughed at my antics. The squad watched silently.
I sent that same private to clean latrines during lunch and invited him to spar with me during hand-to-hand drills later that afternoon. That evening, I spied him practicing on his own in the rifle range. He showed marked improvement despite the two swollen black eyes I had given him earlier in the day.
Then, at 0500 the next morning, I woke from a deep sleep to see Sergeant Elmo Grayson dropping his rucksack beside my bunk. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What are you doing here?” Grayson answered. “Your ride leaves in less than an hour.”
The blood surged to my head when I sat up too quickly. Still feeling sluggish, I swung my feet out of bed and forced myself up.
“Anything I need to know?” Grayson asked, as I pulled on my shirt.
I thought for a moment. “I’ve been drilling them on their shooting skills. Most of these grunts are pretty sorry shots. Take them to the range a couple of times per day. If they screw up, drill them again . . . especially the one with the two black eyes.”
“Black eyes?” Grayson asked. “Maybe that’s what messed up his shooting.”
“Actually, they’ve improved his accuracy,” I said. It was true.
Lee came into my office as I threw the last of my clothes in a duffel bag. “They don’t hold shuttles for sergeants, you know,” he said.
“I know,” I answered as I slung on my shoulder strap.
The men sat up in their bunks and watched as we left. No one said anything, but they seemed glad to see me go.
Lee and I raced to the launch bay, arriving as a small line of men started entering the transport. We joined the queue, panting from our run.
Fifteen men, six in civilian clothing, boarded the flight. Lee and I traveled in our Charlie Service greens. My civilian shirt and denim pants waited at the top of my bag.
The entire flight, over sixty thousand light-years, took under an hour. As Captain McKay had said, the Kamehameha happened to be near a disc station. Once we entered the network, we flashed through eight sets of discs, ending up at Mars Station, where we boarded a five-hour flight to Salt Lake City. The flight from Salt Lake City to the islands would be aboard a civilian airliner. As we disembarked in Salt Lake City, I looked at my ticket. The name of the final destination looked so foreign. “How did you say they pronounce this town?”
“Hon-o-lu-la,” Lee said.
“Hon-o-lu-la? The second ‘U’ sounds like an ‘A’? What the hell kind of name is that?”
From the window of the plane, the ocean around the islands looked like a luminous patchwork of aqua, green, and blue. Parts of the island matched Gaylan McKay’s description—longs strips of beach and gorgeous forests. Other areas looked nothing like I expected. I saw a large city and long stretches that looked parched. A mountain range seemed to dissect the island. Thick rain forests ran along the mountain.
“It’s beautiful,” Lee said.
“Did you know it would look like this?” I asked.
“I heard stories,” he said, staring out a window across the aisle. “Mostly from officers. McKay says Admiral Klyber always comes here on leave.”
As the airplane began its descent, it flew parallel to the shoreline. We rounded a crater. I watched the scrolling landscape as the plane approached the runway.
Lee and I grabbed our bags before the plane touched down. We stayed in our seats with our bags on our laps. Heat, glare, and humid air poured into the cabin when the flight attendant opened the hatch. Squinting against the sunlight, I drew in a deep breath and felt the warmth in my lungs. Moments after leaving the plane, I felt sweat on my forehead.
Like so many places on Earth, Honolulu was a living museum exhibit. The airport was hundreds of years old, with thick concrete pillars and open-air walkways. It reminded me of the Marine base on Gobi. As we walked through the airport, I rolled up my sleeves. My shirt already felt moist under my arms. The heat felt great on my face and neck.
“Are you beginning to thaw?” Lee asked me.
I knew what he meant. Back on the Kamehameha , every room was climate-controlled. So was our armor.
Lee handled all of the logistics on the trip. He arranged our flights, found a place for us to stay, and rented the transportation—a beat-up buggy with a retractable cloth top. I was just along for the ride. “I hope you know where we’re going?” I said as I chucked my bag in the back of the car.
“Don’t sweat it, we have a map,” he said, tapping his finger on the map window in the dashboard.
“Besides, who could get lost on a little rock like this?”
We got very lost indeed. The twisting network of highways that ran from the airport led in all directions. None of the signs said “Honolulu.” They had equally odd names like “Waikiki,” “Wahiawa,” and
“Kaneohe,” none of which meant anything to either of us.
I didn’t mind being lost. We drove around with the top down, feeling the sun bake our shoulders. We passed beaches and streets lined with people. Over the last few months I had forgotten how to relax, but it was coming back to me.
Lee pulled onto the side of the road to look at his map. We were on the outskirts of an area called
“Waikiki.” Tall hotels lined the roads.
“Okay. If we are where I think we are, the beach is over there, just beyond those buildings. We will see it if we go down this street. And we can follow this street to Diamondhead.”
“Look at that,” I said. “It’s a hotel for military personnel.” Just up the street from us was a large hotel with a sign that said “Hale Koa. U.A. Military Temporary Residents.” The building was not as elaborate as some of the towering structures around it, but the grounds were simple and pretty.
“Oh yeah, the Hail Ko. McKay told me about it.”
“Hail Ko? How did they come up with these names?” I joked.
Locating the Hale Koa Hotel gave Lee the bearings he needed to find his way through town. As we drove away, I glanced back at the hotel. It looked beautiful. “Why aren’t we staying there?” I asked.
“McKay suggested this other place,” Lee said. “He sounded pretty sure of himself. I get the feeling he knows his way around Honolulu.”
We drove through Waikiki, passing splendid hotels, streets packed with tourists, and crowded beaches. The road led us past parks and up a hill. There the road twisted back and forth as it followed the jagged coastline. At the top of the hill, we found streets lined with homes. Our pad was down one of those streets.
Lee had rented the house sight unseen based on Captain McKay’s recommendation. The place belonged to a retired combat officer who rented it to him for $200 per day. McKay said that that price was cheap, and that was undoubtedly correct. The truth was that everything in Honolulu was cheap; the U.A. government subsidized the economy and encouraged off-duty military men to visit. Rooms at the Hale Koa, for instance, were free to enlisted men.
I half expected to find that Lee had rented a dilapidated hut. When we reached the rough-hewn stone wall that surrounded the house, I thought Lee had the wrong address. The wall was tall and thick and made of perfectly matched lava stones. He typed a code into the computerized lock, and the gate slid open.
“Vince, you got this for two hundred dollars per day?” I asked.
Looking as stunned as I felt, Lee nodded. We stepped into a perfectly manicured courtyard. A pond ran one length of the yard. Reeds grew in the pond, and fish swam near the top of the water, causing ripples on its smooth surface.
A tree with white and yellow flowers stood in the center of the small courtyard. I stepped into its shade, and for the first time since I had landed, I felt a cool breeze. “Lee,” I said, “this is the prettiest place I have ever seen.”
Mynx’s eyes narrowed on its prey and its triangular ears smoothed back against its skull. It kept its gold and black body low to the ground, hiding in the brush as it prepared to pounce. The sinewy muscles in its haunches visibly tightened.
I leaned over and scooped Mynx up with one hand, and the cat
purred as I lowered her into my lap. She had claws, this skinny feline, but she did not swipe at me. She stretched and made herself comfortable across my thighs, plucking gently at my pants with her claws. As Mynx curled up to sleep, her intended prey, a butterfly, flitted out of the garden.
“Careful, Wayson, you might get scratched,” Lee warned as he joined me for a beer in the courtyard.
“The note in the kitchen says that Mynx is friendly,” I said, absentmindedly stroking her back. She took a lazy swipe at my hand, but her claws were not extended.
“Don’t say that I didn’t warn you,” Lee said in a singsong voice. He flipped the cap off the old-fashioned bottle. “To many days of absolute boredom.”
I held up my bottle and nodded. Mynx, still lying across my lap, stretched her body and dug her claws into my legs again. I laughed, though it hurt a little.
Warm air, cool shade, cold beer, green plants, and garish flowers—it was paradise. “I don’t imagine that life gets much better than this,” I said.
“It beats the hell out of Hubble,” Lee said.
I saluted that comment with my bottle, though it reminded me of my open wounds. We found beer in the refrigerator. It tasted sweet, but it was weak. I could never have gotten drunk on the stuff.
“Hubble,” I said. “I was just starting to forget about that shit hole.” I rubbed Mynx behind her ears, and she purred.
“I saw you packing,” Lee said. “It looks like most of your clothes are government-issue. Want to do some shopping?” Unlike me, Lee owned plenty of civilian clothes.
“I’d like that,” I said. Sweat had soaked through the long-sleeved shirt I wore on the plane. At the moment, I was lounging with no shirt.
“Either that or you can go around in your armor. That ought to attract some scrub,” Lee said. “Scrub”
was the term we used for one-night romances.
I looked down at the nearly sleeping cat on my lap. “Careful, Vince, or I might toss you a Mynx ball.”
In many ways Honolulu was designed to accommodate vacationing military men. The store owners recognized every clone as a potential customer. As we walked past storefronts and street-side vendors, people looked at Vince and launched into sales spiels or tried to attract his attention by yelling, “Hey, soldier!”
The Clone Republic Page 24
