After Winchester, the Harry Byrd Highway became Highway 50, which connected with Highway 220, which connected to the county route. They stayed on the county route for a couple of hours, eventually turning onto a winding road out to nowhere, but the middle of that nowhere was where they needed to go if they wanted to find Smithsonian Field.
The road took them through a forest.
“What if the SEALs don’t want to be found?” Emily asked. “What if they’re there, and they don’t want visitors?”
“That’s possible,” Freeman admitted. They had reached the gate of Smithsonian Field. An electric fence surrounded the facility. The clones had placed batteries of rocket launchers in the woods. Security cameras lined the roads. Harris saw the Explorers as a security risk.
“The Unified Authority sent the Japanese to destroy the Avatari and the SEALs to protect the Japanese. If the SEALs see us as a threat to the Japanese, they won’t think twice about killing us.”
“But you don’t think they’ll kill us,” said Watson.
Freeman allowed the conversation to fade away as he drove up to the gate. He pulled Howard Tasman’s security badge from his pocket; the badge emitted a security code.
An intercom device hung down from the gate. The man on the other end coughed for several seconds before speaking. After clearing his throat, he said, “State your business.” His voice was reedy and raw.
Freeman said, “Dunkirk, we need an Explorer.”
Freeman had called ahead from Tasman’s office. After authenticating Tasman’s badge transmission, Major Thelonious Dunkirk, the Air Force officer in charge of Smithsonian Field, opened the gate.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
Emily had no idea how much damage the flu did to clones before it killed them, but she decided Major Dunkirk was on the verge of dying. He was older than most of the clones on active service, probably in his late forties. He was skinny and had a lot of white hair.
His nose was red and swollen along the bottom and running so constantly, Dunkirk dabbed at it with a handkerchief every few seconds. His hair was wet with sweat, and beads of perspiration ran down his forehead.
He waited for them alone in his office, coughing, hacking, slumped over his desk. When they walked in, he raised his head from the desk, looked in their direction, and said, “What about Tasman, is he coming?”
Freeman remained by the door. Watson and Emily stepped closer. Emily said, “You’re sick. You need help.”
Dunkirk struggled to sit up straight. He coughed, then he coughed again, and his body stiffened. Freeman realized what would happen before Emily or Watson.
Still in his chair, Dunkirk had a coughing fit, loud, deep coughs that sent him lurching forward as if his seat were trying to buck him off. His mouth hung open even after his coughing stopped. For a moment, it looked like he might vomit, but he didn’t; instead, he fought for oxygen. He started to stand, then he paused and fell back onto his seat. And his head landed on the desk, smacking face-first, then rolling sideways.
Blood poured from his broken nose. His eyes were open, and his mouth hung slack. After a moment, blood started pooling in his ear. A stream of blood dribbled down, crossing his earlobe and dripping onto his collar.
Emily placed a hand over her mouth, but she didn’t scream or cry. She’d seen plenty of death during the relocations to Mars, then Earth. She didn’t like it, and she hadn’t grown used to it, but it no longer shocked her.
Watson asked, “That’s it? That’s how they die?”
Freeman didn’t answer.
He walked to the computer on the other side of the office and read the screen. As he had hoped, the display showed that an Explorer sat prepped and ready on the runway for Howard Tasman. He said, “We need to go.”
We need to go. Watson remembered his bodyguards saying those words or something very similar the day the Unified Authority reprogrammed the clones in the Pentagon. We need to get going, he thought. That’s what survivors say.
Freeman walked out of the office, and Emily followed. Watson spared one final glance at Dunkirk. Another victim, he thought, and though he didn’t want to admit it to himself, his instinct to survive told him that “he’d better go” before he ended up like the clone. He reached down and closed the clone’s eyes, not out of sympathy, but to prove to himself that he wasn’t scared.
A lone Explorer sat on the tarmac, a spoon-shaped, silver-hulled bug with lots of windows and retractable wings.
Once he’d made his decision, Freeman no longer wasted energy worrying about risks and consequences. The Explorer was over one hundred years old. It had no shields or guns. If they ran into a Unified Authority ship, they’d be helpless. Having already weighed those possibilities, Ray Freeman wasted no more energy worrying about them.
Watson and Emily were not as committed. As Freeman parked the car, Emily asked, “Who’s going to fly that?”
Freeman said, “I will.”
“Have you ever flown one?” she asked.
Freeman didn’t answer. It was answer enough.
“This isn’t a good idea,” said Watson.
Freeman said nothing. He unpacked his gear from the car and started toward the Explorer. Watson caught up to him. He walked beside Freeman, and asked, “What if we run into U.A. ships?”
Freeman asked, “What if we do?” and tossed his gear into the Explorer.
“They’ll shoot us.”
“The Enlisted Man’s Navy is out there now. They won’t be later. If we run into U.A. ships, they’ll probably be busy fighting EMN ships.”
He climbed into the Explorer, then turned, and said, “You don’t have to come with me. It won’t be safe.”
Watson followed him into the ship. Emily waited a moment, then she joined them. Freeman closed the hatch and went to the cockpit while Watson and Emily sat in the main cabin.
Though he had never been in the military, Freeman was a qualified transport pilot who also knew how to operate several civilian crafts. He walked to the cockpit and looked at the controls. There was no mistaking the broadcast lever, a red mushroom-shaped button beside a large gauge labeled, BROADCAST ENERGY LEVEL, its digital readout stating, “100%.”
Aside from the broadcast equipment, the other instrumentation might as well have been borrowed from a transport. It had the same yoke and gauges. Like transports, Explorers used boosters for vertical liftoffs. Unlike transports, Explorers had retractable wings. Looking around the cockpit, Freeman decided that the ship’s computers controlled the wings.
Freeman checked the fuel and saw it was full. He started the boosters. A light flashed, warning him to extend the wings. Freeman tapped the warning light and realized it was an interactive panel when the wings extended.
Freeman flew east and up, quickly leaving the atmosphere behind, rising first through clouds, then through empty atmosphere, and finally emerging in the translucent darkness of space. Somewhere below, Harris and the healthiest of his troops would enter the eastern suburbs looking for Sunny Ferris and seeking to avenge themselves . . . to ease themselves into their graves. Harris’s operation was the dead burying the dead; Freeman saw no place for himself in that equation.
As the Explorer rose from the planet, Freeman saw several EME ships looming like great white whales in the distance. The ships were huge, some a full mile from wingtip to wingtip and shaped like wedges. They would be packed with men, some living, some dead, most dying.
Freeman extended an arm to hit the broadcast button and realized he didn’t want to touch it. Broadcast engines were among the most sophisticated pieces of technology ever created, and these ones were ancient; if something went wrong, every person aboard the Explorer would die in an instant.
For now, the clones still controlled the area around Earth. Freeman wondered if he would see EME ships when he returned. We might, he told himself, but they’ll be filled with Unified Authority sailors. He reminded himself about the inevitable and pressed the broadcast button.
THIRTY-NINE
Location: New Copenhagen
Date: August 21, 2519
When the Avatari came to conquer the galaxy, New Copenhagen was the only planet on which they’d been defeated. When they returned, they incinerated New Copenhagen first. They raised the temperature on the planet to nine thousand degrees and maintained that temperature for eighty-three seconds.
Even from outside the atmosphere, Freeman and his passengers could see that New Copenhagen still had lakes, seas, and oceans. This wasn’t the first time Freeman had visited the planet since its incineration. He’d known what to expect. The only tokens that remained of its forests were ghost trees that rose like spikes from the bare ground. The incineration left no traces of New Copenhagen’s once famous meadowlands and left the cities in ruins.
Freeman tried the Explorer’s communications gear, sending a message indentifying himself and his ship. For all he knew, the Japanese were orbiting the planet, four battleships armed with a superweapon capable of destroying the Unified Authority’s latest ships.
“This is Ray Freeman. I am piloting an unarmed civilian ship. I am searching for Admiral Yoshi Yamashiro of the Japanese Fleet. I am searching for Master Chief Petty Officer Emerson Illych. I have come on behalf of Captain Wayson Harris of the Unified Authority Marines.” Freeman had almost referred to Harris as a general, then caught himself. Harris had only been a captain when the Japanese were sent to find the aliens.
Though Freeman had met Yamashiro, he’d never met Illych. He’d heard the name from Harris, who’d been a captain at the time that the Japanese Fleet left to find the Avatari.
Watson and Emily walked into the tiny cockpit as the Explorer approached New Copenhagen. He saw the surface, and asked, “What is that?”
Freeman said, “That is New Copenhagen.”
“There is no way anyone lives on that rock,” said Watson. “Mars is more habitable.”
“It has cleaner air than Earth,” Freeman said. He hadn’t actually tested the air quality, but scientists had tested the air quality on a similar planet and discovered it was surprisingly high.
“Do you really think the SEAL clones are down there?” Emily asked.
“If they’re alive, that’s where they are,” said Freeman.
“It’s a big planet,” said Watson. “How do we find them?”
Their ship may have been designed for scientific exploration, with sensors for detecting sources of light, heat, oxygen, radiation, and various chemicals. But Freeman had no idea how to use the equipment, and neither did Watson or Emily.
“Do the computers have a map of the planet?” asked Emily.
“I checked,” said Freeman. “They don’t.”
They approached the planet from outside the atmosphere, traveling slowly enough to observe its rotation and the distant sun as it showed over oceans and continents. The waters were blue, pristine, primordial. The continents were gray where they had once been green, and brown.
Freeman said, “At nine thousand degrees, forests burn like match heads, rocks explode, and sand melts into glass.”
Emily was from Olympus Kri. The Avatari burned her planet a few days after incinerating New Copenhagen. She knew her planet was dead, but she’d never seen what the aliens had done to it.
She watched the scene in shock and horror, her mouth open, her legs weak, her lungs barely taking in air. She spotted twin riverbeds that looked as dry as railroad tracks. “Is this what they did to Olympus Kri?”
Freeman didn’t answer.
She said, “I heard there were people here when this happened.”
In a rare show of emotion, Freeman said, “My mother was here. So were my sister and her son.”
As he spoke, Freeman checked the radar screens for orbiting ships. He searched the horizon as well. He tried the communications console again, identifying himself, invoking Harris’s name, and the names of Illych and Yamashiro. No one answered. He steered the Explorer so that she followed the rotation of the planet, staying ahead of the sun, searching the darkness for the glow of lights, knowing their search would probably prove futile. Even if the crews of all four battleships had landed on the planet, the population would be small.
* * *
They flew along an equatorial path, the line that would take them over the most major cities. They flew north as they approached a coast that Freeman recognized, and they found the ruins of Valhalla, the largest city on the planet.
Freeman piloted the Explorer low over the planet, just a hundred feet above the wreckage. Traveling slowly, shining searchlights beneath them, they hovered over tall buildings that had melted into sandcastles. They passed neighborhoods that looked like dusty checkerboards. As they approached Lake Valhalla, they saw two roads leading into underwater tunnels.
Freeman said, “There could be people down there.”
“Where? Why would they be in those tunnels?” asked Emily.
“Harris and I hid in tunnels like those when the aliens burned Terraneau. The lake water kept the tunnels cool.”
“You were on Terraneau?” Emily asked.
“It was Harris’s idea; he wanted to get the people out.”
“How many did you save?” asked Watson.
“None of the civilian population; they didn’t believe us,” said Freeman. “We saved a corps of clone engineers, but the people didn’t trust Harris. The politicians locked him in jail. We barely got him out in time.”
“And they burned,” said Watson.
“He went to save the people? He’s a hero,” said Emily. “I knew he killed people; I didn’t know he ever tried to save people.”
Freeman asked, “Do you know why I sided with the clones instead of the Unified Authority? I went with Harris because he wanted to evacuate the planets. Andropov didn’t care.”
“I never heard any of this,” said Emily.
“He got the New Olympians off Mars,” said Watson. “The rest of his generals wanted to leave you there. Harris was the only one who wanted to bring them to Earth.”
“Hey, over there!” said Emily. “Look, there are lights in that building!”
Off in the distance, light shone in a lone skyscraper that stood tall but canted beside the lake. The lower floors glowed, the upper floors remained dark.
Watson said, “There can’t possibly be anyone living in there. It wouldn’t be safe.”
Hovering slowly, Freeman approached the building. Thinking maybe they had found Freeman’s SEALs, Watson and Emily became excited. Knowing what the SEALs were capable of doing, Freeman didn’t share their enthusiasm. A single rocket would destroy their ship.
He slowed the Explorer and brought her lower, fifty feet off the ground to show his peaceful intentions. Freeman thought about the U.A. ships that the SEALS had destroyed with their “superweapon.” He wondered if those ships had come in firing weapons or if the SEALs had destroyed them simply because they had strayed into the wrong part of space.
Calculating odds and consequences came as naturally as breathing for Freeman, as did dismissing fears about the things he couldn’t control. He needed the SEALs; what happened next was out of his control.
The building was easily a hundred stories tall. It must have been a marble-and-glass showpiece when the heat went up, but the glass had melted, and the marble had charred to slag.
“What happened to all the other buildings?” Emily asked, seeing the mounds of rubble that marked huge buildings that had once filled entire city blocks.
Freeman knew the answer; he’d seen computer models of what happened. He said, “When you heat the planet, the atmosphere rises from the surface. Once the heat stops, the atmosphere comes crashing down and crushes anything that’s left.”
Emily didn’t say anything, but horror showed on her face.
Watson asked, “What about the people?”
“Cremated,” said Freeman. “When we came out of the tunnels on Terraneau, the air was full of ash. It wasn’t just bur
ned bodies; it was trees and rubber and anything that burned. Everything burned, then the atmosphere crashed down on the ash and flushed it into the sky.”
Emily said nothing. Watson said, “Speck, an entire planet.”
Some of the glass remained on the building. It had melted and dribbled down the side like wax running down a candle—rippled and covered in dust. It didn’t reflect the Explorer’s searchlight.
Freeman landed in a lot not far from the building.
Watson asked, “Do we know there’s breathable air out there?”
“I checked,” said Freeman
“How can there be any oxygen?” asked Emily. “There aren’t any plants.”
“There aren’t any plants on the surface,” Freeman said. “There’s algae and seaweed in the oceans and lakes.” He tried the radio again, stating his name and that he wanted to speak with Yoshi Yamashiro and Emerson Illych.
No response.
“Do you think there are people in that building?” Watson asked, staring out the cockpit and up at the partially melted tower. “I mean, maybe it’s just an old generator that comes on every night.”
He made a good point. If the generator were a few floors down in an underground parking facility or possibly some kind of basement, it would have been safe from the heat.
He pressed a button, causing the broadcast generators to start gathering energy, and climbed out of his seat.
“Oh hell,” said Watson, pointing out the windshield. People gathered at the foot of the building. Some wore uniforms, some dressed like civilians. Even in the dull light, he could see that some of the people were men and others were women, and that the men were holding guns. Sounding nervous, he said, “Well, now we know there’s intelligent life.”
Freeman said, “Those aren’t the ones you need to be afraid of.”
“No?” asked Watson.
Freeman said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”
“There are a lot of things you haven’t told us,” said Emily.
Freeman said, “If the SEALs are here and they’re alive, it’s because they located the Avatari home world and destroyed it.”
The Clone Apocalypse Page 24
