by Jason Taylor
“They use keys here?” June whispered, giggling. “That’s so strange.”
“It’s a backwater. They aren’t fully wired for interface access,” Elizabeth replied over her shoulder as she followed the harbormaster up the pier toward land. “It’s kind of annoying, actually.”
The cottage was adorable, a small wood-shingle construction hugging the steep shoreline, a wooden deck hanging off the back, where it was cantilevered over the water.
Matt opened the door for them and led them in, turning on lights and setting the heat with real, physical switches. June walked through the entrance hallway and into a snug living room, pausing at the rear windows to open the shades. The room filled with light, a picture-perfect view of sparkling water, the cliffs on the opposite shore standing tall.
“This is nice,” June said. Not that anyone was listening to her. Suki was in the kitchen looking at knives with a gleam in her eye. Ava was huddled on the couch talking with Elizabeth. Matt was standing over them, wringing his hands looking nervous.
June wandered over to join them. “Can we contact Jill now?”
“I’ve already tried to contact her,” Elizabeth answered. “I put out the call shortly after we arrived. No response yet.”
“Do you think she’ll come?” June asked.
“She disconnected her implant before talking with us, so she can’t easily communicate from a distance. I think she’ll come,” Elizabeth replied.
“That’s good. I’m looking forward to seeing her again,” June said.
“I guess I’m curious to hear what she has to say too,” Ava chimed in. “Now we wait.”
When Elizabeth’s face appeared, Tros nearly jumped out of her skin. She saw others in the room startle too, so she knew she wasn’t the only one witnessing the transmission.
“We received your message from Jill and have decided to accept her offer,” Elizabeth said, her voice artificially magnified, loud and penetrating. “We would like to meet her in person. Alone. I will transmit coordinates shortly after this message. Any betrayal of our trust will be dealt with most severely.” She grinned at the camera, “So don’t get any bright ideas, Tros. I’ll be watching you.” Then her image flickered out, the transmission complete.
“Somebody get Jill,” Tros shouted as the room exploded into noisy activity. She couldn’t believe the clones had taken the bait. It seemed too good to be true. The predictive models had worked!
Twenty minutes later, she was in a side room with Jill and Dr. Bateman, discussing what they knew and how they should proceed.
“Surveillance indicates that all four clones are in Deer Harbor,” Tros said. “We have a lock on their location, but we’ve lost the sub.”
“All four of them? Why would they do that?” Jill asked. “It seems reckless.”
“They are either ignorant of our capabilities, or they are over-confident. Either way, we now have them where we want them. It’s an opportunity we can exploit. Congratulations Dr. Bateman, your predictive neuro-models worked exactly as you said they would.”
Dr. Bateman nodded his head in acknowledgment, “I’m happy to hear it. What will you do next?”
“My analysts have used the data that McNair sent us and determined that the submarine crew will revert back to their original personalities within the next hour. If we can stall for enough time, we should be able take out the clones and secure the sub.” Tros paused. “Jill, I need you to prepare to travel. We don’t know how much Elizabeth can see of our actions, so we need to go through the motions as if we are complying.”
“Ok,” Jill said, standing up. “In the meantime, what will you be doing?”
“I’ve got a cruise missile strike lined up from one of our stealth missile frigates on patrol in the North Pacific. We can take out most of Deer Harbor within the hour.”
Jill looked horrified. “You plan to destroy Deer Harbor? What about all the innocent people there?”
“It’s an unavoidable loss. You know that. Better a few hundred on Orcas Island than a few million in Seattle.”
“How do we know they won’t launch a nuclear strike anyway?” Jill asked.
“With all four of them in Deer Harbor and the Elizabeth copies losing effectiveness on the sub, I think we have a fighting chance of winning this one,” Tros said, standing up. “We don’t have time for additional discussion. You each know what you need to do. Get to it.” She turned her back and left the room.
June had been standing on the back deck for nearly an hour admiring the view when the call came in. A small hard-terminal built into the wall in the living room came alive, flashing, vibrating and chiming until she put her hand on the screen.
“June?” It was Jill, her face grainy and distorted by the low-quality terminal.
“Hi, Jill,” June said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
Ava and Elizabeth gathered behind June. She didn’t know where Suki was. Probably on the beach killing something.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you too,” Jill said.
“Are you coming to meet me? When will you get here?” June asked.
“I’m arranging my travel now. I’ll be leaving soon,” Jill said, glancing away for a moment at something outside the frame of the video.
“That’s good. I’ll make sure you stay safe while we talk,” June reassured her.
“I appreciate that, June. What do you want to talk to me about?” Jill asked.
“I have this idea…” June started.
“Enough of this,” Elizabeth cut in. “You’re wasting time. Get into an air-car and come to us. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me, but your time is running out. Sooner or later Seattle will die.”
June blanched white in the video feed and then Elizabeth cut it off.
“Did you need to be so rude?” June asked.
“We didn’t agree to talk to her across a crappy terminal connection. We agreed to talk to her in person. She either comes, or she doesn’t. It’s been an hour since I sent my transmission to Tros. I’m tired of waiting,” Elizabeth said.
“But…” June started to say.
“Hold on, I’m going to check on something,” Elizabeth interrupted.
Elizabeth closed her eyes for a few moments, concentrating. “We have a problem,” she said, her eyes flashing back open. “They’ve betrayed us.”
“What is it?” June asked.
“I triangulated Jill’s transmission location, and she isn’t in Seattle anymore,” Elizabeth answered. “They moved to Hanford, in Eastern Washington.”
“Does that matter? She can still get to us easily enough,” June said.
“There might be more layers to this. I need to keep digging. My connection isn’t very good so it might take a few minutes.” Elizabeth closed her eyes and concentrated as Ava sank down onto the couch, apparently unconcerned.
While she was waiting for Elizabeth, June closed her eyes and cast her awareness out. In ever-expanding circles, she explored farther and farther away, wondering if she could go as far as Hanford. She wondered if she would be able to see what Jill was doing. Once her perception had reached a couple of hundred miles out, something caught her attention. Something small and fast. Something deadly.
“Elizabeth, you’re right. There is more,” June said, bringing her awareness back into the cottage.
“What is it?” Ava asked, standing up.
“There’s a missile on the way, and it’s moving very fast. I think we only have a couple of minutes.”
“We knew it might end this way,” Elizabeth said, shrugging. “I’ll let Captain Walsh know what we’ve discovered and I’ll transmit everything we’ve experienced since we left the sub.”
“I’ll be on the back deck,” June replied, standing up and walking through the French doors into the last of the evening light.
Tros was gritting her teeth in anticipation, willing for nothing to go wrong. Willing the cruise missile to hit its target, visualizing its super-sonic flight, arrowing s
traight and true toward Deer Harbor.
When it was thirty seconds from impact, the command room quieted, everyone collectively holding their breath, even Jill, still missing her interface and unable to see for herself what was happening.
“Twenty seconds to target,” her operations officer, Murphy, intoned.
Tros was intently watching the imagery from the nose cone of the missile. It was still over open water, a hint of land visible on the horizon.
“Ten seconds.”
The missile flashed over several islands, outlined in white where Pacific swells crashed upon rocky shorelines, before angling up and over the mountainous spine of Vancouver Island. Trees flew by in a blur, the glare of a snowfield flashed past, then the missile was angling down, following the curve of the eastern slope of the mountains toward the Salish Sea.
“Five seconds.”
The buildings of Sidney passed in a blur, followed by the blue water of Haro Strait, a flash of a small island, and then the missile burrowed down into the small cove of Deer Harbor, locked onto the eastern shore where telemetry data indicated the clones were hiding.
Tros briefly saw the hint of a small cottage and then the imagery flashed white as the missile destroyed its target. Satellite video replaced the missile feed, showing a massive fireball and a cloud of impact debris spreading outward.
“Target destroyed,” Murphy said triumphantly, and the room erupted into cheers, everyone hugging each other, dancing and stomping in the overwhelming joy of their success. Tros stood strong and calm in the center of the celebration, while Jill slumped dejectedly nearby, eyes down, tears falling in a steady patter to the floor.
“What a waste,” Jill muttered. “What a goddamned waste.”
Before Tros could make a move to comfort her, Murphy caught her attention.
“Ma’am, I’ve detected a launch,” Murphy said. The words sparked like electricity firing through the room, quieting everyone instantly.
“Where?” Tros responded, ice in her veins.
“Fifty miles off Cape Flattery, Ma’am. Looks like a ballistic booster rocket.”
“The sub?” she asked.
“Yes, Ma’am. Appears to be the case.”
“Any chance of an intercept?”
“Missile defense is scrambling, but the trajectory will be sub-orbital given its proximity to target. Not much chance of knocking it out, I’m afraid.”
Her desperate gamble had failed. The clones were dead, but Seattle would be destroyed. Millions dead. Tens of millions. On her watch. She sank to her knees, hands folded in front of her as if she were praying.
“Confirm the target,” she said, her tone flat and dead, all hope lost.
“A moment Ma’am, it hasn’t transitioned yet,” Murphy said, his voice even and professional.
She waited for what felt like hours, but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.
“Ma’am, the target is Hanford,” Murphy said, his face suddenly white. “They are targeting us.”
Conflicting emotions ran through Tros’s mind.
She’d won. The gamble had paid off. Seattle would live.
Her entire team was going to die.
The bunker they were hiding in could survive many things, but a direct nuclear strike wasn’t one of them. The missile fired from the sub carried twelve warheads, any one of which could kill them all. The combined blast from all twelve would render them into their constituent parts; a cloud of organic particles, nothing more.
Jill stood up and took a few halting steps toward Tros, her fists clenched, tears still streaking her cheeks.
“Is there anything we can do?” Jill asked, shock evident in her quavering voice.
Tros shook her head. She saw the realization hit Jill hard, her pupils dilating in horror as a surge of adrenaline raced through her body.
There was nothing they could do. Nothing but accept their fate with honor.
Tros turned away from Jill. She turned inward. She imagined the child she would never have. The partner she would never grow old with. The future she would never get to see.
When the first strike hit, it was like a hammer blow directly to the bunker. Everyone was thrown to the ground, emergency lights flickering as the walls and floor buckled. Chunks of concrete fell from the ceiling, balls of plasma cracked through the air, electricity discharging in erratic arcs.
Tros had a moment to realize that the warhead must have missed. Otherwise, she wouldn’t still be alive. She could hear screaming, her throat was torn and raw.
Then the next one hit and the bunker collapsed around them. Superheated air rushed in from the blast above, concrete melting in its path, every life extinguished in an instant. The complex molecules that had once made up their bodies mingled freely in a hot stew of gasses and liquids.
And the blows kept coming, nuclear explosions raining down until nothing was left but slowly cooling glass stretching for miles in every direction from the epicenter that had once been Hanford. The Columbia River boiled in heat and radiation, an eerie glow illuminating the now flat, featureless countryside. Above it all, an enormous mushroom cloud composed of finely ground particulate, debris, and fire spread its wings, up and up to the very limits of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Chapter 34
June stood on deck, watching herself get into the RIB. She looked so little. It was funny, when she had been in that little girl body, it hadn’t occurred to her how much more powerful it might feel to be an adult. Physically looking down on someone gave a sense of mastery all out of proportion to reality. She saw the other version of herself smile and wave, then Suki gunned the motor, and they roared off toward Deer Harbor. She waved back. This was fun!
After Ava had agreed to the meeting with Jill, Elizabeth had explained to them how dangerous it was. Then she explained why it didn’t matter. They chose four of the female sailors and transferred a perfect copy of their original minds into these new ones. It wasn’t an overlay like Elizabeth had done before. This time she wiped the sailors’ minds completely clean and replaced them with a copy from each of the clones. From June’s perspective, she felt exactly like herself, only bigger. Stronger too. It was nice.
She followed the rest of the crew into the conning tower and down the ladder into the sub. It was time for the sub to dive and hide once more. Before she closed the outer hatch, she checked behind her for the other clones. Oh yeah, they had gone ahead of her in their new bodies. This was going to take some getting used to.
June leaned back against the conning tower ladder, her favorite spot in the command compartment. She let her mind drift while the captain dove to a depth of 500 feet and set course for Cape Flattery, where they would await word from their original bodies. That was weird too. She hoped they would all get along once they were reunited. She wasn’t too worried about it. She couldn’t imagine it coming down to a fight. She had all the advantages now, and her original was just as likely to want peace as she was.
It was several hours later, after they had returned to their launch location and depth, that she felt a strange mental jolt. It was the oddest thing she’d ever experienced. One minute she was half-dozing, her mind wandering below her in the Pacific waters, the next she was subjected to an intense stream of memories and vibrant images. Suddenly she remembered arriving in Deer Harbor. She remembered entering a small cottage on the edge of the cove. She could recall contacting Jill and talking with her on an ancient hard-terminal. Then she was aware of the fact that a missile was on its way and she was going to die. She had a vivid recollection of walking onto the back deck to enjoy the ocean view, and then she remembered nothing more.
“Elizabeth?” she asked.
“Yes,” Elizabeth responded from where she was standing next to the captain.
“Was it you who made that happen?”
“The memory transfer? It was my original who did it. That was our plan in case something went wrong. I figured the odds were pretty good that we wouldn’t make it out of Deer Ha
rbor alive. After you and Ava decided we should meet Jill, I implemented a contingency plan.”
“I’m glad you did. My original may have died, but I didn’t lose a single thing. Well, nothing except for that little body,” June said, contemplatively.
“You can get that body back if you want. We have the DNA. We could create a new clone to copy you into.”
“That’s ok. I like this one better,” June said, admiring her long arms and legs. She liked that her hair was still brown and her skin was too. It felt familiar since it was so similar to her previous coloring.
“Me too,” Elizabeth said grinning. Elizabeth was blonde now and strikingly beautiful, with high cheekbones and slanting blue eyes like a cat.
Suki must be especially pleased, June thought. She had gotten a powerful new body, bulging with muscles and virtual tattoos. She still had black hair though, shoulder-length and cut straight across her forehead.
While they were talking, June saw Captain Walsh visibly stiffen. He turned to Elizabeth. “I just received a message from Elizabeth. The original I mean.”
“Yes, I know,” Elizabeth said.
“She has asked me to launch a missile targeting Hanford. She says that’s where Tros and her team are.”
“Yes, I know that too. What are you waiting for?” she asked impatiently.
“The originals then… They are all dead?” he stammered.
Elizabeth stared at him, tapping her toe impatiently.
“I should launch the nuclear missile, then?” he asked, sweat rolling down his face.
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes.
The captain was swinging his head back and forth, agitated and confused. “I don’t know… I … who …”
Elizabeth sighed and touched him lightly on the forearm. He shook for a moment and then became calm.
“Sorry, Elizabeth. I’m not sure what came over me,” he said, his posture straightening. “Confirm targets please.”
“Single missile launch. All twelve warheads targeting the Hanford Site, serial impacts,” Elizabeth answered.