A minute passed, and nothing more fell out of the sky. The bodyguards stood, looked around to be sure they were safe, and loaded Tasman back into his wheelchair. The other people stood. Freeman walked to the front of the pack and directed them on.
Watson spotted something the others had missed. A person remained on the ground, a body lying facedown in the sandy soil. Watson could not tell if the person was breathing, not through the armor.
Praying that it was not Emily, he sprinted to the spot. He knelt beside the body and rolled it onto its back. Gordon Hughes stared up at him, his face the color of a ripe plum, his eyes bulging as if he’d been holding his breath. A layer of bile coated the inside of his glass faceplate.
Watson looked into the governor’s visor and nearly vomited himself. He did not know what to do. He had no medical training. Even if he had, he could not open the sealed engineering armor without exposing Hughes to Mars’s carbon-dioxide air.
He looked over his shoulder and saw that the others had not noticed, all but Freeman. In his dark green armor, he stood like a shadow. The angel of death, thought Watson. The harbinger.
Freeman approached slowly. Showing no interest in the body, he tapped a finger on Watson’s visor then pointed back in the direction of the spaceport…of the nearing dust cloud.
Let the dead bury the dead, thought Watson.
The cloud of dust was much closer now. He guessed it was only half a mile behind them. The dust looked like a curtain skirting the desert floor.
Watson understood Freeman’s message. The Spaceport Security clones had some kind of vehicle, and they were gaining ground. Freeman had reduced their numbers with his bomb, but the survivors were closing in.
Freeman unslung his sniper rifle.
Watson followed the angle of the rifle and looked back along the track. At first he saw nothing but tracks and desert, with a backdrop of dust and smoke and matte sky. Then some tiny black shapes along the bottom of the dust cloud came into view. At a distance, they looked like insects, but they were men on buggies—two-man, four-wheel carts formerly used by spaceport maintenance for servicing the train tracks and working around the landing zones.
Watson knew he could not run from this fight. He tightened his grip on his M27 and raised it; but Freeman laid his hand across the barrel and forced it down. He raised his rifle and aimed.
Heard through the hood of the armor, the rifle sounded distant, like Freeman had fired from a hundred feet away. Five hundred yards away, a six-wheeled buggy veered and swerved, then rolled upside down.
Freeman fired again. This time a buggy flipped onto its front end like a racehorse that has lost its front leg. As two Marines climbed out of the wreckage, Freeman shot them.
He fired again. A second passed, and he fired another shot. The first shot had hit the Marine driving the buggy. When the man beside him grabbed the wheel and righted the vehicle, Freeman shot him, too.
Watson wondered how many bullets the big man could carry. Did he have a hundred? Did he have a thousand? Spaceport Security had five thousand Marines.
But Freeman did not intend to kill every clone in Spaceport Security, just the ones on the buggies, the scouts. There were twelve vehicles. They were the advance guard, so to speak, the first ones on the scene.
They were only a couple of hundred yards out now. Freeman reloaded and fired.
Two of the drivers pulled their buggies nose to nose, forming a barricade. Four Marines in combat armor milled around the makeshift barricade. Watching them, Watson had the feeling that they thought they were safe behind their waist-high barrier.
Two of the Marines shot their M27s at Freeman and Watson. The guns were set to automatic fire. Bursts of gunfire echoed across the grounds. Watson had no idea where the bullets went. Except for the muzzle flashes and distant sounds, the gunfire could have been imaginary.
Freeman aimed at one of the Marines and fired. One of the men flew backward, tossing his M27 into the air.
Freeman picked off two of the three remaining Marines. The fourth cowered behind the buggies. He fired one quick burst from his M27, then he stood, tossed the weapon away, and raised his hands in the air.
Freeman pointed at the man with his rifle, then signaled Watson to go after him. He tapped Watson with the muzzle of his rifle, then swung the rifle in a long arc that ended in the direction of the buggies and the dead Marines.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Watson shouted though he knew Freeman would not hear him. He shook his head in an exaggerated motion, making sure to turn the entire hood from one side to the other as he shouted, “No.”
Freeman wrapped a hand the size of a small frying pan around the front of Watson’s faceplate, and shoved him backward. Watson’s feet came up from under him, and he landed on his ass.
As he stood, he saw Freeman walking toward that last Marine. He walked slowly and steadily, like a man fighting against a strong wind. Watson knew that Freeman did not intend to take the man to the base; he did not want prisoners.
He intended to kill the man, maybe with his hands to save a precious rifle round.
Watching Freeman walk toward that last Marine, Watson had to fight back the panic and revulsion. Freeman had wanted him to kill the man when he could have picked him off as easily as he shot the others. They might as well have been stationary targets on a shooting range.
Why did he want me to bother killing this one, when there are more on the way? Watson asked himself. There will be plenty to kill.
“Plenty to kill,” he repeated the words out loud. “Batting practice.”
Like a father teaching his son how to swing a bat before a real game, Watson thought. I have to learn to kill. Freeman wasn’t trying to teach him how to fire a gun, he was trying to acclimate him to the feel of murder. Eliminate the moral dilemmas now, then I can shoot without worrying about my conscience later.
Thirty feet ahead of him, Freeman approached that final Marine. Watson followed, walking at first, then sprinting. Freeman glanced back and waited for him.
They stood together in silence, almost as if Freeman could read the resolve in Watson’s posture. Watson stalked past Freeman.
You wanted to kill me. You came here to kill me. If I surrendered, you would have killed me. You would kill me. You would kill Emily. Harris would have killed you, Watson told himself.
He tried to ignore a louder voice in his head screaming, I don’t want to do this. He’s alive. He’s a man, a human.
The Marine stood with his hands in the air.
He’s not a man; he’s an insect, Watson told himself. The combat armor was hard and dark, like the shell of a beetle. It had no face, just a shiny glass plate.
Not a man, a bug. He would kill me. He came to kill me. More are coming.
The man was nameless and faceless.
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this!
Eight yards away. Watson imagined it was Franklin Nailor hidden inside the armor and fired his M27.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FOUR
Location: Washington, D.C.
Date: May 2, 2519
Naval Intelligence had no information about Sunny Ferris. The clone military services did not maintain records about private citizens unless they posed a threat. Ferris, apparently, did not pose a threat.
Alexander Cross Associates, the law firm that employed her, was another story. The founder, Norman Alexander, had been a successful lobbyist during the days of the Unified Authority. He’d represented a consortium of military contractors. His clients manufactured the latest-generation tanks, guns, and armor. Those were the weapons the Unifieds kept hidden until after they evicted their clones.
Cross himself had served as a captain in the Navy. He’d served under Admiral Che Huang, an antisynthetic prick of an officer. Huang was long dead, may his natural-born soul rest in natural-born Hell. I had nothing to do with his death, not that I would have hesitated, given an opportunity to kill the bastard.
Intell
igence found Sunny Ferris’s birth and school records, some tax files, all useless. She was twenty-eight years old. She lived outside of Washington, D.C., in a ritzy suburb. She was not married. I found myself pondering that factoid time and again.
I wanted to call her. I had no reason and every reason to call.
Something was wrong with me. The phobia of swimming and the ability to pull the pin on that grenade proved it. Somebody had screwed with my programming. Somehow, somewhere, someone had gone into my head and rearranged the furniture. I had a pretty good idea about where it happened—Mars. Who and how were coming into focus as well.
I thought about downing a case of beers and visiting a Pentagon psychiatrist, but why bother? Cutter had people shadowing my car and listening to my calls, he probably had mikes and cameras in my billet and my office. And what would he do with the data he gathered—he’d send it to a shrink. Why bother visiting a psychiatrist when my commanding officer was already having me psychoanalyzed?
Anything that can be programmed can be reprogrammed. Freeman’s words repeated in my head again and again, though it never seemed to be his voice that said them. I had been reprogrammed. Never in my life had I wanted anything more than I now wanted to get my hands on the people who performed that little piece of magic.
I wanted to talk to somebody…anybody. Okay, I wanted to talk to Sunny, but that wasn’t going to happen. I wanted to speak to someone who knew me well, somebody who could tell me if and how I had changed. The list of candidates was short—Don Cutter and Travis Watson were the only names that came to mind.
I hadn’t known Cutter all that long, but I respected him. Calling him was out of the question. He was a four-star and I was technically retired. He’d take my call and let me talk, but he wouldn’t be interested unless I could give him something of strategic value.
Then there was Watson. The boy had jumped ship on me. He’d joined Cutter’s staff while I was on Mars. I felt jilted, which meant I really liked the kid. He was smart; but he was wise, too. Wise was better than smart.
I punched up Watson’s line on my communications console and let it ring as I glanced over Sunny’s data once more. She had grown up on the West Coast of North America and never traveled off Earth. She went to school at Harvard, the Unified Authority’s oldest college. Twenty-eight years old. Not married.
I dialed up the Navy office.
Not married.
“Office of the Navy,” the man said. He was probably a petty officer.
“I’m looking for Travis Watson,” I said.
“I can put you through to his office, General,” said the receptionist.
“Do you know if he’s in?” I asked.
“He isn’t. It’s been a few days.”
A few days. Watson was out. He was traveling. He liked visiting cities, seeing the nightlife, trying new brands of scrub. “Is he on vacation?” I asked.
“No, sir. Admiral Cutter called him up to the Churchill.”
“The Churchill,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
I found this news funny because Watson did not like space travel, and now, as a Navy man, he was off to space. Then a thought finally struck me. Cutter was on the Churchill, and the Churchill was orbiting Mars. Something must be happening on Mars.
I thought about Arthur Hooper, the bastard I shot up in Hawaii. I thought about the scientists who had tried to analyze the chemicals in his flask. The civilians could breathe it but the clone passed out. No, he didn’t just pass out. He winked out and he didn’t know that he had winked out when he woke up. It was like restarting a computer.
“He passed out, but he didn’t know he’d passed out,” I said to myself. Woke up in a haze but it never occurred to him he’d been out, I thought; only this time I wasn’t thinking about the scientist. Programmed…reprogrammed.
Hooper wasn’t a New Olympian, I reminded myself. He was a former officer of the Unified Authority with no connection to Mars or Olympus Kri. Which begged an interesting question: Why had Sunny come to defend him?
Mars and the Unifieds. My thoughts channeled to Mars. Everything seemed to point back to Mars. I remembered the shoot-out. I remembered the riot. I knew what else had happened, but I did not remember it. I knew the time and date that Jackson and the rest of my regiment flew from the spaceport to the base, but I had no mental image of meeting them in the landing bay. I had no image of them marching off their transports.
Hoping to find out if the other members of the regiment remembered Mars the way I did, I turned to my communications console and dialed Curtis Jackson’s office. Nobody answered. I called the regimental headquarters in Camp Lejeune; no one answered the telephone. I called Second Division headquarters. Nothing.
I tried calling Jackson directly on his personal communications device. He did not answer. My next telephone call was to the Swansboro police.
When I reached Cutter, he began by saying, “Harris, I’m very busy…”
I interrupted him. I said, “What is the Churchill’s location.”
“We’re orbiting Mars.”
I asked, “Where is Travis Watson.”
“That is classified information, General,” he said, suddenly sounding bureaucratic.
“Is he on Mars?” I asked.
“That is none of your business.”
I doubted that. Any mission that would take Watson to Mars would have had a lot to do with me. I asked, “How many ships do you have with you?”
“What are you getting at?” Cutter started to sound concerned. We had worked together during the invasion of Earth, and he knew my triggers. He asked, “What do you have?”
I said, “Tarawa is missing.” I did not worry about using the nickname with Don Cutter. He may have been a Navy man, but he knew his Marine Corps lore.
“Second Division? What do you mean Second Division is missing?”
“They are supposed to be in Lejeune,” I said.
In a placating voice, he said, “Harris, they don’t report to you anymore. You might want to remember that you’ve been relieved of command.”
I said, “Did you close Camp Lejeune?”
“Why would I close Lejeune?” he asked. Lejeune was the second largest Marine base in the empire.
“You tell me, Admiral,” I said. “Lejeune is empty. There aren’t even any sentries guarding the gates.”
“No one?” he asked.
“Not a living soul on base,” I said. “I had the Swansboro police send a car. They said the base was empty and the gates were open.”
Cutter went silent for a moment, then he said, “Harris, that’s not just Tarawa, that’s the entire Second Division. You’re talking about twenty thousand men.”
“They left in a hurry,” I said. “Would you like to know where I think they are going? I think Second Division is headed to Mars.”
Cutter said, “General, you are back on active duty. Get your ass out here. Bring whatever you need.”
If I was right, and Second Division had been compromised, twenty thousand Marines were headed to Mars. They’d need a ship, of course. I called the Office of the Navy and discovered that the EMN de Gaulle, a fighter carrier, had left for Mars two hours earlier.
If a fighter carrier with twenty thousand combat-hardened Marines was headed to Mars, Cutter would need a lot more asses than mine.
There were two questions I always asked myself at the start of operations. The first question was obvious, every officer asked it: “What men and material will I need to succeed?” The second question sounded similar, but there was a world of difference. That question was: “What men and material do I have available?”
The first was a question of tactics. The second, logistics.
I had dozens of ships and millions of fighting men to send to Mars, but they would arrive too late to save Cutter and Watson. If I was right, they would arrive too late to save the New Olympians as well.
I called Navy headquarters and ordered the Lancet and the Christy to Mars, know
ing that they would not arrive until long after their mission had already failed. They faced a four-hour flight to Mars, and the de Gaulle had a two-hour head start on them.
Then I had a grand idea. The only problem was, it would only work if a junior officer had ignored my orders.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FIVE
“This is Major Dunkirk.” Good thing he announced his name and rank, I hadn’t bothered committing either to memory. The only thing I remembered about him was that he was the officer over Smithsonian Field, and that he had argued with me when I ordered him to dismantle the self-broadcasting fleet.
I said, “Dunkirk, this is General Wayson Harris.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“I came out to inspect the airfield a few weeks ago.”
“Yes, sir. I remember, sir.”
“And I gave you orders to destroy the explorer fleet. Have you carried out my orders?”
Bracing himself for the explosion that would surely follow, he took a deep breath, and said, “No, sir.”
“No?” I asked.
He must have misinterpreted my excitement as anger. He said, “No, sir. It is my understanding, sir, that you have been relieved of command. I cannot carry out those orders until they are confirmed by an officer on active duty.”
I said, “Major, I have been reinstated.”
Silence.
I said, “Listen to me, and listen to me carefully. I want those birds gassed up and ready to fly. I want their broadcast generators charged and their broadcast engines humming. They’re going wheels up as soon as I get my men together.”
At first he did not respond. Then he said, “Sir, I will need authorization from Admiral…”
“Believe me, Dunkirk, Naval HQ will be on the horn with you rapid, quick, and pronto. In the meantime, I want those birds juiced.”
“Sir, even if I receive the authorization…Sir, those ships are over one hundred years old. They might not fly.”
“They better fly,” I said. “The future of the Enlisted Man’s Empire will be riding on those wings.”
The Clone Sedition Page 28