Date: August 24, 2519
Tasman slipped the noose over his head. He aimed his chair toward the far edge of the desk. First he’d betrayed humanity, then he’d betrayed synthetic humanity. He had no one left to betray except himself.
EPILOGUE
Date: December 8, 2519
Freeman should have killed me the way he’d killed Naens; instead, he’d filled the tunnels with reprogramming chemicals. They didn’t reprogram me, but they did put me out. Once I was out, he and Kasara dragged me back through the tunnels. They loaded me into an airplane and flew me back to the Territories.
Now I was under Brandon Pugh’s protection. I was also under his influence. Until my body strained out the adrenaline and testosterone circulating in my blood, they planned to keep me luded and happy. Anything to keep me from producing more adrenaline and testosterone.
Three months had passed. They still kept me strapped in my bed, but my dosage was down.
“What are you going to do if I start having another combat reflex?” I asked Freeman when he came in carrying my lunch. I wasn’t in a hospital. This wasn’t a medical operation. If anything, I was a hostage in a rehab clinic.
He handed my drink to a nurse. They kept me on a liquid diet, mostly because my hands were chained to the rails on the sides of my bed.
“Same thing I’d do to any rabid dog,” said Freeman.
“Shoot me?” I asked.
“Shoot you, drown you, poison you . . . permanent solution.”
As far as I knew, this was my first lucid day in over three months. I looked around my bedroom. It was a big room. The sun shone in through a rowboat-shaped window. The walls looked like they were made out of plaster or cement. The air was dry. I thought I heard the ocean from a distance. It might have been the ocean, but it could have been dizziness deep inside my head.
I had a needle in my arm. It led to a drip bag that undoubtedly contained Pugh’s illicit pharmaceuticals, but it must have held the liquids that kept me hydrated as well.
“Why didn’t you shoot me?” I asked. “That would have been your standard MO.”
Freeman’s expression revealed nothing. He said, “I didn’t want to shoot you.”
“Why did you shoot Naens? He wasn’t the problem. He was helping me.”
“I didn’t want to shoot him. I didn’t have much of a choice. Stopping you was hard enough. I wouldn’t have been able to stop both of you.”
“Blowing up the city was my idea,” I said. “I don’t know how he felt about it.”
Freeman said nothing.
Bright sunlight shone in through the window. I wished I could climb out of bed and feel it on my skin.
“You should have shot me. It would have made more sense. Naens wasn’t wearing shielded armor.”
“I had to shoot one of you. I chose him.”
The nurse must have been a Martian, a New Olympian, a refugee from Olympus Kri. So many labels, so many locations, I thought. The Unified Authority once included 180 planets. How did they ever keep all of that information straight?
Freeman said, “When the Avatari returned to burn the galaxy, you saved billions of people, Harris. You deserved to live.”
“Even if I wanted to kill millions of innocent civilians?” I asked. I wasn’t sure that I believed they were innocent. No. I didn’t believe they were innocent. I believed that clones had been sent to save them, all of them, and that they had turned their backs on their rescuers. The general citizenry of Earth might not have been guilty of the cleansing, but they were complicit.
I still considered them guilty, but I no longer wanted to kill them. I no longer wanted revenge. Pugh’s happy juice must have been good. It was doing its job.
Freeman said, “That was the combat reflex, Harris. That wasn’t you.”
I didn’t agree with him. Then again, I didn’t feel like killing anyone. I felt like basking in the warm, warm sun. I felt like swimming in the cool ocean water. I wanted to be hot. I wanted to be cold.
“How long can we stay here?” I asked.
“How long do you want to stay here?” Freeman answered.
“Won’t the Unifieds catch up to us?” I had a vague recollection of being in a hospital and Brandon Pugh selling me out. I also remembered hearing he had done that to help me. I was on drugs. I remembered actions more than details.
Freeman said, “The Unified Authority believes you are on another planet. They’re not coming after you; they think you’re already gone.”
“Why do they think that?” I asked.
“Because they tracked an old Explorer ship broadcasting to New Copenhagen.”
“Was I on it?” I asked. Maybe this wasn’t the territories. Maybe it was New Copenhagen. Maybe these drugs didn’t come from Pugh. Maybe they’d come from the Japanese.
“Travis Watson and Emily Hughes were on it,” said Freeman.
“Travis can’t fly a spaceship,” I said.
“I was on it as well,” said Freeman. “And then I brought it back.”
“Travis and Emily stayed on New Copenhagen?” I asked.
“They felt safer there.”
“So we can stay here, or we can go to New Copenhagen,” I said; but that wasn’t really the trip I had in mind. Freeman had a self-broadcasting ship. The entire universe was open to us, and I knew about a planet where clones still lived. They’d been reprogrammed, but they were synthetic . . . men of my DNA.
Maybe I couldn’t free them. Then again, maybe I could. The Unifieds had labs on Terraneau, and the general population was loyal to the Enlisted Man’s Empire.
Besides, I was too young to retire.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In 2007, I wrote The Clone Elite, fully convinced that would be the last book in this series. In my author’s note, I thanked my readers for sticking with me and I all but told Wayson Harris good-bye. Now, seven years and six books later, I believe that I am finally putting my Liberator clone to bed.
Let me tell you, I have a lot of people to thank. First and foremost, I have the readers who have stayed with me through the Mogat uprising, the Avatari War, the rise of the Enlisted Man’s Army, and the return of the Unified Authority. Ten books! Thank you for staying with me.
I want to thank Anne at Ace, who has been kind and long-suffering—I don’t think I am a prima donna, but I’m not always good about turning books in right on time. Anne is patient. Anne is sweet. Anne is encouraging. Thank you, Anne.
Anne also had to lay down the hammer on this one. I somehow thought I had another month to turn this one in when Anne sent me an e-mail letting me know it was late. I begged for time and mercy—three weeks’ worth of time to be precise—and she gave me everything she could: a week.
So let me tell you about Christy Petrie, the woman who often pulls me out of the fire. (Yes, “Petrie” as in Ryan Petrie, the mobster Freeman assassinated in Assassin. I kill all of my friends in my books. That’s how they know I love them.)
With one week to edit, I called Christy and asked if she would mind donating her entire week to me. For the next seven days, I proofed all day and all night, then sent the results to Christy, who proofed all night and all day and got them back to me within hours. She did this for an entire week.
As of this writing, it is 3:36 P.M. on April 28, the day this book is due to the publisher. Christy is correcting the last chapter and the epilogue, then I will go over her edits and turn the book in.
Christy, not only are you an amazing editor, you are an amazing friend. Thank you!
I also want to thank my agent, Richard Curtis. Richard has shepherded my career as I have transformed from a journalist covering video games to a novelist. Like Anne, I also consider him a friend.
Some of you may have been lucky enough to listen to my stories come alive at the hands of GraphicAudio. The company has produced audio dramas based on my books; I admit, they have breathed new life into these stories for me. After I spend three months writing a book and then additional months rewrit
ing the book and then read it again to make changes and then to approve the changes and then to inspect the final layout, I tend to get a bit burned-out.
Ken Jackson and Anji Cornette at GraphicAudio have found a solution for my Harris fatigue; they produce these amazing audio dramas that bring my stories to life all over again. With Jackson as both the voice of Harris and the director, and Elliot Dash playing the role of Ray Freeman, my stories have taken on a new vitality.
I once believed that narrated audiobooks were great and radio plays were an anachronism. I no longer feel that way.
Okay, this already sounds like an Oscars speech. I apologize.
Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll try my future projects as well. Submarines anyone?
Steven L. Kent
April 28, 2014
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