Copyright © 2018 C. Scott Frank.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published by C. Scott Frank in the United States of America.
First publishing, 2018.
Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
Front cover image by C. Scott Frank.
Book design by C. Scott Frank.
www.cscottfrank.com
Day 347 - 08:24
“Group fifteen beginning final approach.” Lincoln Harris keyed the comm, sharing the update with the rest of his team. “Stasis seems to be holding. Shuttle looks good.”
“Fifteen, huh?” A sarcastic voice replied over the comm with a chuckle. “Does that mean the next group can drive themselves?”
“Stow it.” Lincoln rolled his eyes. Zachary Gibbs always had something snide to contribute. After a year on this station with the man, it was starting to get old.
Keri Beck walked into the room, pulling her long brown hair into a ponytail. “Oh, very funny.” She made her way across the cramped control center, avoiding the monitors and control systems that filled much of the floorspace. “I’m so glad they chose a comedian for the team. That’s a valuable skill in our line of work.”
The room wasn’t small, but all of the equipment and lack of windows never ceased to make Lincoln uncomfortable. He’d often been told that the Navy was no place for a claustrophobic, and he couldn’t agree more. Just when he thought that life was behind him, he’d found himself in another tin can in space. Figured.
“Hey give me a break, I’m only trying to lighten the mood,” Gibbs replied back on the comm.
“We can celebrate when we’ve licked this thing.” A sharp edge in Lincoln’s voice pierced the air. He needed to rally the troops back to the task at hand. “Let’s not forget what’s happening outside our little slice of heaven.”
“If this is heaven, can I try the other place?”
“I’ll send you there myself if you cannot shut up.” Edward Amin’s accented voice cut in on the comm.
“You’re just mad that I keep beating you in chess,” Gibbs jibed.
“Don’t fool yourself, Gibbs,” Edward shot back. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, fragile as you programmers are.”
“Fragile huh? How about I come over there and show you how fragile—”
“That’s plenty.” Lincoln nodded to Keri. The woman pushed a few buttons on her tablet and the comms went dead, except for Lincoln’s. “Let’s go off-radio until our honored guests arrive. Finish up anything else you need to nail down before they arrive. I’ve set a system alarm for sixty minutes from now. Expect our new visitors to dock in eighty minutes.”
“Should I get the party hats and lay out the welcome mat?” Keri’s voice had a playful lilt. “Damien’s latest research is in, if you want to take a look.”
Lincoln stifled a yawn. “Is there anything I should be excited about?”
“Well, no. Not really.”
Lincoln stood and rolled his wide shoulders. His height didn’t help his claustrophobia; in fact, he often ended the day with a sore neck from hunching his shoulders in the cramped station. His hazel eyes peered through heavy eyelids at the displays around him. “Spare me then, I’m going to hit the gym before our guests arrive.”
Lincoln exited the control room and yawned as he ambled down the narrow, white corridors of the station. He didn’t consider himself athletic, but the low gravity of the space station necessitated a steady exercise routine to maintain bone density and muscle mass. So, the team was all but required to spend a minimum of one hour each day in the small gym. Gibbs had rarely made his workouts. At first, Lincoln pulled rank and ordered the programmer to keep his body active, but after awhile he grew tired of forcing the issue. Gibbs spent most of his free time programming anyway, so Lincoln could at least feel confident that the man was honing his craft.
Lincoln meandered the halls of the large ring that served as their research station and home until the project found the solution that could end the war. The ring was tethered to the surface of Ceres, the largest dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, and positioned perpendicular to the surface. Along his left side, through the large windows, Lincoln studied the craters on the surface of the large body as he walked, the gears in his mind spinning away.
They could end the war, but could they do it in time? And could Lincoln keep all these strong personalities from ripping each other apart? What manifested as joking now might be a festering infection waiting to ruin the team. But there were bigger problems. Issues the rest of the team knew nothing about.
He had told Keri he was heading to the gym, but he had to make one stop first. He ducked through a bulkhead to his right and headed toward the interior of the massive ring, toward his bunk room. Once he made it into his room, he closed the door and turned off his personal communicator.
He sat on the low bed and pulled a small black box from underneath. The top opened into a small screen and revealed a keypad. As soon as he opened it, the device booted up and requested credentials. Lincoln keyed in his codes and the screen went black. He wasn’t concerned; he’d done this a hundred times. The device would connect. And it did.
A man’s face appeared on the screen: sharp features and jet black hair with bright blue eyes. He remained silent and simply stared into the screen with an intensity that would be off-putting if Lincoln wasn’t used to it.
“Group fifteen is en route,” Lincoln said.
“I know, I sent them. Do you think all this happens by accident?”
“We’re getting close. This batch will bring us closer, and Damien—”
“Damien? You mean your old drinking buddy turned doctor? The guy you swore would solve this problem in no time? You’ve been in that tin can for almost a year and so far it’s been nothing but a waste of cash.”
“When you get the best people in so many different fields in one room, it takes a certain… patience to manage all the personalities. Just give me more time,” Lincoln pleaded.
“I didn’t send you over there for group therapy. I put you on this because I like you. And I think you have what it takes. At least, I thought you did.” The man on the screen leaned back in his chair and scrutinized something off-screen. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“You weren’t. We can do this.”
“You had better. They’re knocking on our doorstep, Lincoln. Clones are pushing farther in every day, and our people are dying. People that matter are dying. Every delay you have puts more blood on your hands.” The man stood and buttoned his black blazer. He reached out and adjusted the camera to his face as he bent low. “I’ve given you the money. I’ve given you a station. I’ve given you all the clones you could ask for. The Frequency Program needs to start holding up their end of the deal.” Black Suit punched a key below the camera and Lincoln’s screen went black.
For a long moment, Lincoln simply stared at the black screen. He hated the man in the black suit. Trying to blame this whole war on Lincoln. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.
He finally stood and threw the black box under his bed. He didn’t care if he broke it. He and his team would make this happen. They could turn the tide of this war. He needed to blow off some steam, he figured he had better hit the gym after all. He stormed out of his room and down the hall toward the weight room with a new sense of resolve in his step.
Day 347 - 09:38
Lincoln crashed into his chair in the control room. He was still frustrated, but an intense worko
ut and a cold shower had served to take the edge off. “Edward, how do we look?”
“We’re looking good,” the reply came from Receiving. “Hearse coming in at ten meters per second. Five. One meter per second now. Fifteen meters and closing.”
Lincoln grimaced at the callsign. Hearse was what Gibbs had dubbed the incoming shuttles, and it was in poor taste, but Lincoln had to choose his battles. The team had a grim job description, and there were worse ways to introduce a lighter atmosphere.
“Ten meters now,” Edward came back on the comm.
“Wait a second,” Lincoln replied. “I’m showing something weird here. They’re rotating slightly on the Z. They’re out of sync from the coupler.”
“Five meters. Are you sure?”
“Yes. Son of a—at that—” Lincoln keyed the comm to the shuttle. “Shuttle, this is Ceres, back up, now!”
He was too late.
As soon as Lincoln pulled his finger off the comm, he felt the vibration. The impact was slow and nonviolent, but could still wreak havoc on the airlock. The shuttle had missed the angle and was now grinding at the connectors, threatening to shear the aluminum-alloy from the stress.
“Lock that down!” Lincoln shouted through his personal comm as he ran down the long hall toward the west airlock as fast as he could in the low gravity. “They’re going to stress the connection. If a weld bursts, the decompression could sever our connection to the surface, and we’d get to have a nice long chat about what went wrong on the way down.”
“It can’t be that bad, right?” Edward’s tinny voice came through Lincoln’s earpiece. “The tether is rated for what, eight, maybe nine G’s? Those nano-carbons can take some force.”
“We’re talking closer to thirty G’s, Ed. Think car crash. Remember those?”
An expletive barked in Lincoln’s ear, immediately followed by the station alarm. Lincoln turned a corner and nearly ran into Damien Fuller, his friend and the team’s neurologist, in front of the airlock control room.
“Damien, we have to seal off that airlock. If they—”
“Got it.” Damien rushed to the control panel. Lincoln moved to the closest window to look out at the shuttle as it continued its slow roll against the side of the station. He reached for his comm and hailed the shuttle’s frequency.
“Shuttle, you’ve been quiet over there, care to fill us in?” Lincoln waited. No response.
“Alright Lincoln, I’ve closed this bugger off. Now what?” Damien asked from the console.
“We’ll need to slowly vent the room. The shuttle is unresponsive; I don’t think they’re stopping.” He moved over to the console and entered a few commands. “That should do it.” He keyed his comm. “Gibbs, the shuttle isn’t responding to the comms, can you tell if they’re having technical problems?”
“Nah, I don’t think so, boss. Everything looks good. What should we do?”
“Can you remote in? I think we can slave their guidance to our computer and have it navigate to the east airlock and dock safely.”
“Yea, that shouldn’t take more than a minute or two, hang on.”
The communicator went silent. After a few minutes, Damien and Lincoln watched as the shuttle reversed from the station and slowly orbited overhead toward the other airlock.
“Damien, come with me to the other airlock please. Let’s go see what on Earth is going on.”
He and Damien made it around to the other side of the station as the shuttle locked into the airlock. Just what he needed. Black Suit would tear him a new one when he found out.
Lincoln entered a few commands into the console, and a panel next to the entrance opened, revealing a pair of sidearms. He took one and checked the granpack: full. He racked the slide, priming the barrage of micro-projectiles and held it out to the doctor.
Damien’s face was incredulous. “Surely not? Are you mental?” He pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “I’m not taking that. You know I’m a pacifist.”
“Tell that to whoever, or whatever comes out of that shuttle,” Lincoln said sardonically. He didn’t want another one of his friend’s humanitarian speeches. Not now.
Damien held his ground. “Besides, we’ll punch a hole right out to space with that thing.”
“You know that’s not how these work.” Lincoln glared at his friend. “But whatever. At least stay out of the way. Gibbs?”
“Yea, boss, what’s up?”
“Open her up. Let’s see what kinds of presents they sent us.”
“You got it.”
Lincoln tensed as the airlock lights flicked to green and the aperture began to open. A dull thump came from the darkness on the other side of the portal as it slid open. Out of the gloom, a man in a navy jumpsuit plodded toward Lincoln and Damien. Lincoln steadied himself and raised his pistol, tightening his grip. He felt a hand on his own as Damien pushed the weapon down. Lincoln primed himself to rebuke him, but Damien was already running toward the shuttle door.
Lincoln started to call after the doctor, but cut himself short. Dark purple blood stained the man's jumpsuit, and a pilot's insignia marked his shoulder. Lincoln swore, holstered his weapon, and followed Damien up the ramp as the injured pilot fell hard onto the metal floor.
Lincoln thumbed his communicator. “Keri, get down here. And bring a stretcher.”
Day 347 - 11:42
“How do the rest of the specimens look?” Gibbs asked.
“Specimens? Bloody cripes mate, they’re people,” Damien Fuller replied sharply. He steeled himself for yet another battle with Gibbs. The two had butted heads over nearly everything since the project started. “What’s your interest, anyway? You’re a programmer. You don’t spend any time with them.”
“Whatever you say, doc.” Gibbs waved a hand dismissively.
“All subjects look good. We can start our next round tomorrow,” Emily Shepherd interjected with a soothing tone. She tucked her blonde hair behind her ear and tapped a few buttons on her datapad.
Damien sighed as he scanned his teammates scattered around the mess hall, debriefing from the drama of the morning. They’d experienced mishaps before, but nothing quite like this. He picked at his ration pack in a daze, like much of the other team members. Except Zachary Gibbs. The man always had something to go on about.
He’d had grown tired of this room over the last year. Windows. It needed windows, he decided. Not that the view would be great: an endless expanse punctuated by prickles of distant fire. He hated the idea of living in a box in space, at the whimsy of a few parts waiting to break down. He preferred natural things, not the cold sterility of manufacturing. After being out on this station for so long, he had almost forgotten what it was like to feel the sun’s warmth or breathe fresh air.
“Okay, so what exactly happened in there, again?” Gibbs changed the subject, eyeing Damien.
Damien set his teeth. He and Gibbs had never gotten along, but in a team this size, one could hardly expect everyone to be fast friends. Granted, even slow friends looked out of the question at this point, but they would have to make it work. Damien secretly wished Lincoln would find a different programmer for the team. If Gibbs kept antagonizing Damien, it wouldn’t be a secret for much longer. He opened his mouth to lay into the man, but Lincoln answered first.
“Best we can figure, one of the clones broke out of stasis and—”
“Specimens,” Gibbs cut Lincoln off. The bulbous man smirked at Damien, which set his blood on fire. Edward chuckled a little but Lincoln simply continued, annoyed.
“One of the clones broke out of stasis and tried to take over the shuttle as they were making their final approach. In the fight, their communications were damaged: they could receive but they couldn’t send.”
“And how do we know our little friend in the infirmary isn’t an echo?” Gibbs asked. Damien frowned at the term, one more in a long list of dehumanizing nicknames that Gibbs loved to use. “I mean, how can we be sure that he won’t try the same thing with us
when he wakes up?”
Damien couldn’t help but groan every time Gibbs opened his mouth to speak. The man had little social decorum and even less general morality, as far as Damien was concerned. For the past year, he had been tolerating the programmer, but his patience was wearing thin. He had joined the team partially as a favor to Lincoln, but mainly because he was excited about the prospect of working hands-on with clones.
There were so many questions about clones, from the biological and medical side to be sure, but also from the humanist standpoint. What were these mysterious human copies, and how did they fit into the natural order? The short answer, of course, was that they didn’t. Since mankind had been attacked by the Sardaan, many had questions about the nature of the clones.
The aliens had attacked humans nearly eight years ago, when Damien was finishing grad school. He couldn’t believe what had happened. Aliens? That seemed too far outside the rational. But when the news broke that the aliens were using clones—human clones—as soldiers, Damien couldn’t sate his intrigue. After the discovery that all clones had implants and were programmed to believe they were natural humans, clone rights activist groups emerged in full force.
Damien sympathized with the efforts. He didn’t want to believe that the clones didn’t matter. Whether natural-born or created, they were biologically human, and that was enough for him. Besides, the clones believed that what they were doing was right. They needed help, not extermination.
So, when Lincoln began putting together a team, Damien knew he wanted to be a part of it. He had hoped the team would be like-minded humanists like himself, but he was glad he hadn’t held his breath. He looked at the man standing across from him and couldn’t help but feel repulsed by the bigotry.
“For one, most clones don’t even know that they’re clones. Even if he is a clone, he wouldn’t care about being here, because he’d think he’s one of us. Second, the pilot isn’t going anywhere any time soon. His trachea is half crushed, he has internal bleeding throughout his abdomen, and at least three broken ribs.” Damien smiled grimly. “The man took a beating, that’s for sure.”
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