The Clone Sedition

by Steven L. Kent

  Still holding Emily, Watson veered to his right, causing her to lose her footing. He pinned her body to his. Carrying her as she struggled to balance herself, he winced at the pain in his ribs. Still cradling Emily, he dived into a line of picnickers.

  A woman tried to help Emily to her feet. A man punched Watson, hitting him in the thigh, then the back.

  Watson rose to his full height. His reactions were automatic. He pulled Emily to him and mule-kicked the man in the head at the same time. Emily tucked herself under his shoulder. The man grunted and fell on his back.

  The clones continued shouting and firing their weapons, but they hadn’t seen Watson dive into the picnickers. They fired at the herd. Watson pressed Emily against the wall, concealing her behind his mass. He wrapped his arms around her and hung his head over her as he listened to the sounds of the terrorized people.

  He heard the people run by. Moments later he heard the clatter of armored boots as they passed. When he looked for the door that led down to the trains, he saw that it was only ten yards away.

  Watson turned toward the door and started running. Ten yards away. Eight yards away. Three bullets struck the wall in front of him. Full of terror, he dug his fingers into Emily’s waist, then spun like a dancer performing a pirouette. He lifted her off her feet, then heaved her through the opening marked SERVICE PERSONNEL ONLY. She ran, spun, and flew all at once, crashing to the tiles away from the gunfire.

  A bullet cut across Watson’s back, tearing his clothes and creasing his skin. A bullet skimmed the top of his arm, singeing his shoulder, cutting a shallow groove.

  Watson could feel the blood and the burn on his ear and shoulder, but the epidural patches prevented the pain from becoming an issue. He dived for the doorway, saw that Emily had already started down the long narrow set of stairs, and sprinted to join her.

  Below them was the train station, as bright and empty as the promise of living happily ever after. Fifty feet of stairs stood between them and the white-tiled platforms. Watson ran as fast as he could, his calves burning, his thighs numb, his lungs trying to wring breathable oxygen out of stale air, his jaw clenched because the pain from every bounce of his jaw brought tears to his eyes.

  He knew that there would be no place to hide if the clones caught him on the stairs. They would shoot him in the back.

  He heard a jangle of noise and kept running. He heard shouts. A shot was fired. Out of the corner of his eye, Watson saw two white enamel suits fall through the air. The third followed a moment later.

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and saw clones lying dead on the ground, little beads of blood rolling down the slick surface of their combat armor. Their armor shattered by the three-story fall, they lay in a quickly spreading puddle of blood.

  Afraid of what he might see, Watson turned to look up the stairs and saw Freeman, dressed in green armor, sprinting toward the platforms. He held the three dead clones’ M27s as if they were toys, and he yelled in a low, rumbling voice that was both fierce and calm, “Get on the train.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-ONE

  The entire caravan squeezed into the first train car, the people taking up less than one-third of the space while the gear Freeman had packed filled the rest. The people sat in groups, their stifling silence nearly palpable.

  Freeman, wearing his armor but not his helmet, sat with Gordon Hughes. The old man’s face had gone a pale, nearly bloodless white. He kept an eye on his three sons, who sat with their wives and children. Tasman sat with his bodyguards around him. Emily, the oldest of the Hughes grandchildren, sat with Watson in a distant corner of the car.

  As the train pulled away from the platform, Watson examined Freeman’s gear. He saw a motorized wheelchair with low-slung wheels that almost looked like tank treads, which Freeman had obviously brought for the bedridden Tasman.

  Freeman had stacked his rifle and particle-beam cannon with the guns. Including the weapons Freeman had taken from the clones he’d killed in the train station, they had six M27s. They’d only had three when they left the administration building.

  Watson craned his neck for a view of Hughes. The old man’s skin was pale, and his eyes were dark and hooded. He met Watson’s gaze and glared back at him. Watson leaned over to Emily, and whispered, “You should go sit with your family.”

  “I want to stay with you,” she said.

  Watson could not read Emily’s mood, but he was not interested in playing anymore. His entire life, he had never been in need; and now that he was nearly helpless, she cared for him. He did not know if what he felt for her was dependence or love. He thought it might be both.

  She stayed with him and took care of him, and he hoped she had attached herself to him. He did not know if he would want his freedom once he no longer needed her, but he suspected he wouldn’t. He said, “We’ll have lots of time together.”

  She smiled, kissed him on the cheek, and went to sit with her parents.

  Watching Emily walk away, Watson felt more lonely than he had ever felt in his life. He would have liked to have gone with her, but he knew he would not be welcomed. He noticed that everyone, even Freeman and Tasman, had someone sitting with them, everybody but him.

  Back on Earth, Watson preferred to be on his own during daylight hours. Now though, with the pain and the danger, he felt vulnerable. He felt hollow. Just as the realization that he was utterly alone began to weigh on Watson, Freeman came to join him.

  Watson said, “Thank you for saving us.”

  Freeman did not answer.

  Hughes walked over, bent down to speak to Freeman, and whispered a question so that Watson would not hear him.

  As Freeman turned to answer, Watson stared at the massive nest of scars on the back of Freeman’s shaved head. He could not pull his attention away from it. It looked like Freeman’s skin was laced with flesh-colored centipedes. Ray Freeman, the mercenary giant, the man who had killed Morgan Atkins and shot Wayson Harris…even he could be injured.

  The train slid through the tunnels under Mars Spaceport, traveling silently along a single raised rail.

  Staring out the windows, Watson saw doors and arches and platforms. He asked, “We’re not out of danger yet, are we? They’re going to come after us.”

  Freeman shook his head. He said, “Not by train.”

  “Admiral Cutter destroyed the other tracks,” said Watson. “You’ll disable this car when we reach the base.”

  “Not the car, the train station,” said Freeman.

  “The station in the Air Force base?” asked Watson, not sure why that would stop the clones from following them.

  Freeman did not answer.

  Watson thought about it and realized he meant the station in the spaceport, not the base.

  They reached the far end of the spaceport and entered the atmospheric locks. Heavy doors slid open to admit the train, then slid closed behind it. One set of doors, then another, then a third, and they launched into the desert. The world outside the train was sandy and strewn with rocks and rock shelves. Rust-covered plains stretched as far as the eye could see. It blended into a mauve-colored sky.

  Watson looked back and saw the dome of the spaceport shrinking into the horizon. He was no astronomer, but even grade school kids knew that you did not need to travel far on Mars before objects vanished into the horizon, not nearly as far as you would have traveled on Earth because Mars was a smaller planet. Seeing the spaceport disappear, Watson breathed a sigh of relief. He wanted to put as much distance as he could between himself and Franklin Nailor.

  He asked, “If you destroy the station, won’t that stop the train?”

  Freeman did not answer.

  Watson pieced the puzzle together. The train was a convenience, but Freeman had found armor. They could travel on the surface. By destroying the train station, Freeman might kill the security clones. He might even get Nailor.

  It made sense. Freeman had to rig the train station because the computers that could retrieve
the train back from the Air Force base could also be used to stop the train as it sped away.

  Watson had noticed that the gear Freeman had loaded included rubberized armor—engineering suits with oxygen for breathing. He turned to Freeman, and said, “It looks like we have a walk ahead of us.”

  Freeman did not answer. It was answer enough.

  Five minutes later, when the lights went out, and the train came to an abrupt stop, Watson knew that Spaceport Security had entered the train station. He did not know how big a bomb Freeman would use, but he hoped it was big enough to kill Nailor.

  Along with lights and motion, the electricity powered the train’s enhanced-gravity field. Martian gravity being about one-third of the gravity on Earth, objects did not float in the air on Mars, but they weighed less than Watson expected.

  “You better dress quickly, there isn’t much air in this car,” Watson told Emily as he stepped into the lower half of the armor, squeezing his shoes into the foot compartments. He reminded himself that this was not the same kind of armor that Harris wore when he went to battle; this was the equipment of engineers and window washers. Instead of hardened plates and a bodysuit, this was a unitard with a faceplate and a sealed hood. A ring of small lights circled the transparent faceplate.

  Watson pulled the suit up to his waist and cinched the ties that held it in place, then he turned to Emily to help her into her suit. He pulled it from her hands and held the back open as she stepped into the pants.

  “Don’t be scared,” he said. “They’ll never catch up to us.”

  She paused, stared at him, and said, “Aren’t you scared?”

  “Specking terrified,” he admitted. He smiled at her as he pulled the armor up so that she could thrust her arms into the sleeves.

  Once she had finished dressing, he finished as well. It was not an easy fit; he had to bend his legs and hunch his back to get the unitard over his shoulders. His ribs still hurt from the beating. The pain from his jaw, which still hung broken, now cut through the haze from his patches.

  Before sealing himself in, Watson peeled the old patches from his neck and placed a single new one in their place. He’d have liked to use two or maybe three, for the long walk to the Air Force base; but this was his last.

  The one-size-fits-all armor was a tight fit for Watson. It would not have fit Freeman, but he had his combat armor. He strapped a rifle on one shoulder and the oversized particle-beam cannon over the other. Crisscrossing bandoliers hung across his chest plate.

  On the other side of the car, two of the bodyguards helped Howard Tasman dress. Once he was ready, one of them rolled the old man and his wheelchair out of the train while the other two stood outside and received him.

  On a heart monitor on the back of Tasman’s wheelchair, bars of light flashed, showing the rhythm and strength of his heart. Watson did not know if the old man had a weak heart, but Freeman clearly wanted to keep an eye on it.

  Once Tasman and his guards were out of the way, Hughes came next, followed by his progeny.

  The microphones inside their helmets might or might not have worked; but with Spaceport Security sludging, there would be no communications. Freeman pointed along the side of the tracks that led to the Air Force base, and the convoy started to move. First Tasman and his bodyguards began walking, following by the Hugheses.

  With everyone wearing armor, Watson could not tell the Hugheses apart. He could not tell Emily from Gordon from the three sons. He wondered if that was how the clones felt, unable to tell one from another without memorizing fine details.

  The bodyguards performed their job well. As long as Tasman’s motorized wheelchair scooted him at a quick enough pace, they seemed to ignore him. When the wheels became bogged in sand or rubble, they picked him up and carried him like pallbearers hauling a casket.

  Tasman, a cantankerous old fossil under the best of circumstances, waved his arms in the air every time the bodyguards touched his chair. At first Watson thought he was thanking them, then he realized the old bastard was pitching a fit.

  Freeman grabbed Watson by the shoulder. As the others walked away, he handed Watson one of the M27s.

  Watson took the gun and started to sling it over his shoulder, but Freeman stopped him. He held his own M27 by the forestock and trigger. Watson nodded and held his gun the same way.

  Watson looked down the rails toward the Air Force base. He saw the people walking far ahead, shrinking into the distance. He looked back toward the spaceport, which had long ago vanished below the horizon.

  How far have we gone? he asked himself. How far do we have to go?

  During his briefing, he’d been told that the two facilities were ten miles apart. Maybe three miles left, he told himself. Maybe three miles. Three miles in low gravity on rough terrain in the wrong-sized space suit was a long walk.

  How will they travel if they don’t have the train? Watson asked himself. He hoped they had to travel by foot. Maybe those were the only choices on Mars, by train or by foot.

  Holding his gun the way Freeman showed him, Watson started to leave, but Freeman stopped him again. He signaled for Watson to follow as he returned to the train. Without climbing back into the car, he reached into a doorway and pried open a crate that lay on the floor.

  There was a control panel in the crate. Freeman flipped a switch on the panel, and a circle of red diodes blinked once in response. They blinked, then a second passed, and they blinked again.

  Freeman closed the crate; and then he closed the train doors.

  A bomb, Watson thought. Not a bomb…a trap. If they opened the train, they would set off the bomb; and, of course, they would open the train, they had no choice but to examine the train. Watson wondered how many of them the bomb would kill. He hoped Nailor was among them.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-TWO

  About a half mile from the train, the bodyguards stopped while Tasman puttered on. They stood in a group, and others soon joined them. When Freeman and Watson reached the spot, they stopped as well.

  This was the area where Cutter’s fighter pilots had destroyed the rails. The ground where the tracks had been was burned black with yard-deep holes. Two of the three rails, sturdy metal pipe about two feet in diameter, had become an ambiguous wad that looked like melted candle wax.

  As Watson walked along the third rail, he saw where it, too, had been destroyed, its melted remains lying in blackened soil. A new rail had been grafted over the expanse. Watson knelt and touched his gloved fingers into the soil. He reached forward and patted his hand against the ground. He stood and ran the same hand across one of the newly restored rails. So Cutter did destroy all of them, he thought.

  Freeman stood over Watson, no doubt spotting the same things that he saw. He stuck his forefinger in the air and twirled it to catch people’s attention, then he pointed ahead, signaling the convoy to move on.

  Tasman was the first to move. The bodyguards followed, having to jog a few steps to catch the old man. The Hugheses followed. Watson and Freeman brought up the rear.

  Soon after they passed the break in the rails, Mars Air Force base appeared in the distance. It stood out like a mountain range against the flat plains around it. The building was close enough that Watson could see details in its architecture.

  The “soft-shelled” armor Watson wore weighed about thirty pounds on Earth. On Mars, with its weak gravity, the armor weighed less than ten pounds. Heavy enough. In the beginning, the walk felt like an adventure; but fighting the weight and stiffness of the armor, the convoy crossed less than three miles in the first hour.

  Tasman’s wheelchair, with its tiny wheels, moved easily across the terrain; but it teetered in slag and sank in sand. Some of the teens had held broad-jumping competitions in the beginning; but an hour into the hike, their energy had drained.

  As long as the people kept ahead of him and did not stray from the tracks, Freeman ignored them. When a boy meandered away from the rails, Freeman picked the kid up and carried him b
ack to the fold by his arm.

  Since their radios did not work, the people found other forms of communication. As Freeman walked away, the kid spun around and flipped the bird.

  Tasman and his bodyguards continued to lead the way.

  Watson looked back along the track. Seeing a cloud of dust rising to the sky in the distance, he tapped Freeman on the shoulder and pointed back along the rail.

  Freeman looked and nodded.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-THREE

  They were less than a mile from the base when an explosion shook the ground and hurled bits of train in every direction. It was the flash that caught Watson’s attention. He looked up in time to see a silvery shape tumbling through the air. He yelled, “Heads-up,” but no one could hear him, so he ran ahead and tackled people to the ground.

  Debris started to fall from the sky. Some people saw the bits of metal and plastic and just stood there. Tasman slithered out of his seat and curled into a ball on the ground. Age and disappointment had not dimmed the old man’s will to survive.

  A metal sheet fluttered like a butterfly with a ten-foot wingspan over their heads. Watson heard its warbling song through his hood. Shards of glass whistled past. Most of the dangers flew high overhead. Because of the limited Martian gravity and atmospheric resistance, they flew much farther than they would have on Earth.

  Just as Watson determined that the “metal butterfly” must have been part of the roof of the train, a twenty-foot section bench dropped from the sky and stabbed upright into the dirt ahead.

  Thank God for slow learners, Watson thought. Maybe it was Nailor, maybe it was Riley, or maybe it was just some of the foot soldiers; but Freeman had been able to trick one or more of them twice, once with a bomb in the train station and once with a bomb on the train. Natural selection, he thought. When they reached the base, he would congratulate Freeman for being an agent of Darwinism. Then he thought about Freeman and his cold glare and his humorless ways and changed his mind.