The Clone Apocalypse

by Steven L. Kent

  Harris was coughing when Freeman answered the call. Freeman asked, “You sick?”

  Harris said, “I’ve got the flu.”

  Freeman heard this and nodded but said nothing.

  Harris said, “A lot of people have colds these days, pretty much every clone in the Empire.”

  Having just left Walter Reed, Freeman knew more about the flu than Harris did, probably more than Tasman as well. Playing dumb, he asked, “Is the Unified Authority behind it?”

  Harris said, “This version of the flu ends with clones having a death reflex.”

  Freeman asked, “How many clones have died so far?” He knew how many had died up at Reed; at least he knew the tally as it had stood an hour ago. More would have died in the last hour.

  Harris said, “Six.”

  Six, Freeman thought. Harris really didn’t understand what was going on yet. Freeman tried to direct him with an innocent-sounding question. He asked, “Are you sure the Unified Authority is behind it?”

  “Ray, we captured some of their files. The decryption process is going slow, but the stuff we’re getting sounds bad.”

  “How long before your epidemic turns critical?” Freeman asked.

  “There’s no way of knowing. The first victims were on an Explorer we sent to survey Terraneau. She’d been gone six days when we found her. The clones had been dead approximately twenty-four hours. We don’t know when the Unifieds captured the ship or how long they waited before they infected the crew.”

  Freeman saw Harris as trying to save a ship that had already sunk. He understood Harris’s need to rescue his empire, but he wouldn’t buy into it, and he wouldn’t accomplish anything by trying to convince Harris that the clone empire was already done. Instead, he played dumb.

  He asked, “What does the flight record say?”

  “That they broadcasted into Terraneau space. That’s it. It stops after that.”

  “Death in five days, maybe less,” said Freeman. “It all depends how long it took them to catch that Explorer.”

  Harris said, “It’d be easy enough to capture an Explorer. They’re slow. They don’t have armor or shields. They need an hour to recharge their broadcast generators.”

  Freeman said, “Antique technology.”

  “If the Unifieds control Terraneau, they might have spotted the anomaly when she broadcasted in,” Harris answered.

  “Fire a pulse weapon near an Explorer, and you’ll shut her engines down and wreak havoc on the electrical system.”

  Harris said, “Those birds are made out of tissue paper and kite string; you’d have a hard time detonating an EMP near one without destroying it.”

  “The point is that you have dead clones,” Freeman said.

  “Yes, and we don’t have time to develop a vaccine. You do the math; clones are going to start dying tomorrow. We need to capture some high-ranking U.A. officers and see what information they’re holding.”

  “Any officers in particular?”

  Harris said, “Sunny Ferris.”

  Tasman had already told Freeman about Sunny, but Freeman hadn’t mentioned her to Watson or Emily.

  Emily said, “That bitch!”

  Freeman tried to cover by asking in a slightly louder voice, “The girl you were dating?”

  “The spy I was dating,” Harris said.

  Glaring at Emily, Freeman said, “She couldn’t have done it by herself.”

  “No, not by herself.”

  “Do you have any other names? Any other targets?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re just going after her?” asked Freeman.

  “Yeah.”

  “You and the Enlisted Man’s Army are going after your former lover?”

  “Ray, I have their flu. As far as I can tell, every man under my command has been infected. It’s too late to stop it from spreading, and we already know the mortality rate; all of my men are going to die.

  “It could happen tomorrow, maybe we have an extra day. By the end of the week, every clone in the empire is going to die.” As he said this, Harris chuckled. The eerie, out-of-control sound of his laugh scared Emily. She stepped closer to Watson, and he wrapped his arm around her.

  “We’ve lost the war, Ray. The fighting isn’t over, but we lost. What would you do?”

  Freeman said, “Killing her won’t save your empire.”

  “Neither will sitting around waiting to die,” Harris said.

  “It won’t save your men.”

  “Maybe they’ll go to their graves more easily. They made us, then they abandoned us, then they selected us for target practice. You say I’m doing this because I have a vendetta, and you’re right. Do you know why the Unified Authority created a clone army instead of an army of robots—simple economics. Even with food, housing, and education, clones are cheaper and more expendable than robots. They made us because it costs less to manufacture humans than machines.

  “Yes, I’m mad, and I want to make them pay. I’m not going to scorch the earth I leave behind, but I want to burn the people who are taking it from me.”

  Freeman said, “You’re on your own, Harris,” and ended the call.

  As Freeman placed his phone back in his pocket, Emily shouted, “That bitch! That bitch! I knew there was something wrong about her.”

  In an apologetic tone, Watson said, “Emily and Sunny never got along.”

  A satisfied smile on his face, Tasman said, “Harris is a Marine. He won’t allow himself to go down without a fight, even if the fight won’t amount to anything.

  “It’s like you said, Freeman; he’s a drowning man. You’ll all drown if you try to save him.”

  “What if they find an antidote?” asked Watson. He stood at an east-facing window, staring out over the city. He saw plush districts and ruined buildings. Late afternoon, the sun had migrated west, but the day hadn’t ended.

  Tasman answered, sounding irritable. He said, “It’s the flu. You’ve had the flu before. Did your doctor give you an antidote? Antidotes are for poisons, Watson. This is a virus; there’s nothing anyone can do.”

  Emily stood, and said, “That bitch.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Harris,” said Tasman.

  “I understand him,” said Emily.

  Watson asked, “Does Harris know it’s over?”

  Emily answered. She said, “He’s got to know on some level.”

  “But he’s still going after Sunny,” said Watson.

  “He has to do something,” said Tasman.

  “It’s like he said, ‘His men will go to their graves more easily,’” said Emily.

  “When the Unifieds take control of the government, they will come after us. The clones won’t save us this time. We’re on our own,” said Freeman.

  “Won’t they go after Harris first?” asked Watson.

  “They’ll be looking for all of us,” said Emily. “Howard, they’ll come after you, too.”

  “I’ve already been on the lam,” said Tasman. “I’m done with it.”

  Watson said, “They might not care about Emily. She hasn’t done anything.”

  “Trav, I’m guilty by association,” said Emily. “As far as they’re concerned, I’m Mrs. Travis Watson; that makes me as guilty as you.”

  “But Harris isn’t just going after Sunny; he’s taking all his men,” said Watson. “Maybe he’ll beat them.”

  “He’ll beat the Unifieds in Maryland,” said Freeman.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Watson.

  “It means that Maryland is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Emily. “Trav, they probably have a whole navy waiting somewhere out there in space. They’re going to wait for the clones to die, then they’ll land.”

  “There’s no way Harris is going to stop them, not in one night,” said Tasman. “And once the clones start dying . . .”

  “They’re already dying,” said Watson. “The morgue at Walter Reed is overflowing with dead clones.”

  “I
t’s overflowing with dead clones?” asked Tasman. “That’s even faster than I expected.”

  Emily walked over to Watson and took his hand; he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  “What do we do?” asked Watson.

  Freeman said, “We’ll never be safe, not as long as the Unified Authority is in power. The only way we’re going to survive is if we have Harris on our side.”

  Tasman smiled, and said, “I don’t know, Freeman; you’re a talented killer.”

  “I’m a mercenary. I specialize in tactics.”

  “Then we can’t let him go tonight,” said Emily. “We have to stop him.”

  “He’ll survive tonight. That’s just combat; it’s his specialty,” said Freeman. “It’s the flu that worries me. Harris doesn’t like to hide. He’s going to want to die fighting.”

  “So he’s screwed, and we’re screwed,” said Watson.

  “Maybe,” said Freeman.

  “Maybe?” asked Watson.

  “There may be someplace we can go to get help,” said Freeman.

  * * *

  Tasman’s security clearance allowed him to rove freely through the EME’s computers. Harris had granted him that access without realizing that he could use it to search EME databases as well as decipher the information on the encryption bandit.

  Tasman never considered exploiting that clearance, but Freeman took advantage of it. He used the computers to access a top secret communication between Harris and Tobias Andropov on December 2, 2518, the day that the clones invaded Washington, D.C.

  Though the video feed had been recorded from Andropov’s point of view, both Harris and Andropov appeared on it. The screen showed Harris sitting by himself in a conference room, but appearances could be deceiving. Freeman had been there as well. He’d made a point of staying out of the camera’s range.

  Andropov appeared to be alone in his office. Freeman wondered if he’d had somebody hidden with him as well.

  The feed was recorded moments before the Enlisted Man’s Navy advanced on Earth. Harris and Freeman had just placed the call to a couple of U.A. scientists who had been supplying him with information. They were surprised when Andropov answered the call.

  “Hello, Harris. Has your invasion begun?” asked Andropov.

  He sat behind an oak desk in the office Harris now used, smirking into the camera.

  Seeing Andropov, Harris mouthed the word, “speck,” caught himself, and quipped, “I must have the wrong number.”

  Freeman forwarded ahead through the feed, looking for one particular comment.

  Harris said, “Bullshit.”

  Andropov shrugged his shoulders, and answered, “Think what you want.”

  Freeman advanced the feed still further.

  Andropov shook his head. “You still don’t understand. Harris, it doesn’t matter how many ships you send here; they’re as good as dead.

  “You gave us a scare with that device that you used off New Copenhagen; but it won’t work this time, not unless you plan on destroying the planet.” He paused to smirk.

  Looking surprised, Harris repeated the name, “New Copenhagen.”

  When Andropov mentioned the clones using some kind of weapon near New Copenhagen, Harris and Freeman had both written it off as a mistake. They had used a superweapon of sorts—shield-busting torpedoes that had been developed by the Unifieds for demolishing EMN ships. Harris and an admiral named Holman had fired the torpedoes at U.A. ships patrolling a planet named Solomon. New Copenhagen was in a completely different arm of the galaxy, tens of thousands of light-years away from Solomon.

  During the original conversation, Freeman had thought that Andropov had accidentally said New Copenhagen when he meant Solomon. Now he wasn’t so sure. He scrolled back and watched the clip again.

  A confident, angry Andropov smirked, and said, “You gave us a scare with that device that you used off New Copenhagen; but it won’t work this time, not unless you plan on destroying the planet.”

  Freeman had gone back over that conversation several times in his mind.

  “You gave us a scare with that device that you used off New Copenhagen . . .”

  Freeman had been at the battle of Solomon. He’d seen Holman hit the U.A. ships with torpedo after torpedo. The stolen torpedoes had been powerful, but it took several shots to destroy the U.A.’s new ships. In the end, Harris and Holman had been forced to retreat.

  But those torpedoes weren’t the most powerful weapon ever created by the Unifieds. There’d been other weapons, better weapons, weapons that were too expensive, too powerful to deploy. The Linear Committee had created just a few of them at a critical time, a time when practical considerations no longer mattered.

  Freeman played the clip one final time.

  “. . . that device that you used off New Copenhagen . . .”

  The weapons themselves would be useless. If they were what Freeman suspected, they were meant for destroying planets, but the men who used them, they could win the war. If he had the right weapons in mind, and the men who commanded them were on New Copenhagen . . . Each of those men was worth an entire division.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  They could all sense it, that this was the quiet before the storm. Before the hour ended, Harris would enter the eastern suburbs looking for an antidote that the Unified Authority had never developed. If he got the opportunity, he’d execute his girlfriend.

  The Enlisted Man’s Navy still controlled the solar system. The Enlisted Man’s Air Force still patrolled the skies unchallenged. The Unified Authority remained on the run, for now.

  The fragile balance of power was about to break.

  Freeman drove. Too tall to fit comfortably in the back, Watson sat in the passenger seat. Nobody worried about the Unified Authority tracking them on this errand. For the time being, the Unifieds had their hands full.

  Freeman observed the different ways Watson and Emily handled stress. She became silent, not sullen but watchful. He prattled, looking for anything to bolster his confidence.

  “Where are we going?” he asked Freeman.

  Emily heard the question and slid forward so she could listen more easily.

  “Smithsonian Field,” said Freeman.

  “Smithsonian Field? Where they keep the Explorers?” Watson asked. “Why are we going there?”

  Watching the video feed, Freeman had decided a path for himself. He didn’t know if Watson and Emily would choose to go with him. He said, “That’s the only place I know that has self-broadcasting ships.”

  “Are we running away?” asked Emily.

  Freeman said, “We’re looking for allies.”

  It was six o’clock, and the city was quiet. Night had not yet begun, but the day had ended. Office buildings had shut for the night; restaurants had become busy. Watson spotted a fighter streaking across the sky at the edge of town. They had seen a convoy of personnel carriers parked and waiting in the distance. Other than those brief glimpses, they saw no sign of military activity.

  Freeman told Watson and Emily what he knew and what he believed. He said, “After the first invasion, the Unified Authority sent a small fleet of ships to find the Avatari home world.”

  The term “Avatari” was not commonly used. Emily Hughes knew it because her father had been a senator from a planet that the Avatari had invaded. Watson had heard Harris use the term; otherwise, he wouldn’t have known it.

  Freeman drove east, crossing the Potomac on the Key Memorial Bridge, then taking the Curtis Parkway east and north, branching off to the Dulles Access Road, then switching onto the Harry Byrd Highway and driving deep into the Virginia countryside.

  As the light drained from the sky, and the night sky became as dark as black velvet, Freeman told them about the Japanese population on Ezer Kri, holdouts who had ignored the Unified Authority’s attempts to abolish races. Finding themselves at odds with the U.A. Senate, the Japanese ultimately allied themselves with the wrong side during the galact
ic civil war. Working with the Morgan Atkins Believers and the Confederate Arms Treaty Organization, the Japanese renovated an enormous fleet of antiquated self-broadcasting warships—the Galactic Central Fleet. When the alliance fell apart, the Japanese escaped in four ships as the Mogats and the Confederates fought for control of the fleet.

  After explaining the existence of the Japanese Fleet, Freeman described its final mission. As punishment for having sided with the Mogats, the Unified Authority sent the Japanese Fleet on a top secret mission to locate and destroy the Avatari home world.

  Watson said, “Attack the aliens, the ones who destroyed all of our planets? It would have been a suicide mission. There’s no way they could have beaten the aliens.”

  “It’s been two years since the Avatari have destroyed a planet,” said Freeman.

  “Did the Japanese ever return?” asked Emily.

  “I’m beginning to think that they did,” said Freeman. “I think they came back, but not to Earth.”

  “It doesn’t matter if they came back; we’ll need more than four ships to take on the Unifieds,” said Watson.

  Freeman said, “The ships don’t interest me. I’m curious about some of the men who were on them.”

  “The Japanese?” asked Watson. “What’s so special about the Japanese?”

  “The SEALs,” said Freeman. “During the Mogat War, a U.A. admiral named Che Huang created special clones to serve as Navy SEALs.”

  “But if they’re clones, won’t they catch that flu?” said Emily.

  “Not if they have different DNA,” said Watson. “Even if they do catch it; it won’t kill them unless they have death glands.”

  “They have different DNA,” said Freeman. “They’ll be as immune as we are.

  “Those SEALs were skilled at demolitions, assassinations, and reconnaissance. They would have been able to get you out of Walter Reed without being seen.”

  “They sound like terrorists,” said Emily.

  Freeman said, “They’re only terrorists when they’re fighting against you. They’re commandos when they’re on your side.”

  “Is that what we are now? Are we terrorists?” asked Watson.