Rogue Clone

by Steven L. Kent

The Japanese came from Ezer Kri, a planet with several prestigious schools of engineering. The Japanese must have provided the engineering talent needed to update the GC Fleet. To Yamashiro and the refugees of Ezer Kri, this was Hinode Fleet.

  The Confederate Arms, with their billions of citizens, and the Mogats, with their millions of members, were willing to tolerate Yamashiro for now. I could hear it in Amos Crowley’s voice. He did not like seeing Yamashiro in this room, did not trust Yamashiro to be alone with me.

  Crowley’s loyalties were obvious enough. He joined the Mogats movement and deserted the U.A. Army in 2507, three years before the Confederate Arms declared independence and formed their own government. Clearly he had no connection with the Japanese. As a Mogat, Crowley would want me dead.

  Fortunately for me, Amos Crowley was also a military man, the kind of man who understands the importance of good intelligence. He knew everything he needed to know about the Unified Authority military complex. Hell, he helped build it. What he did not know was how much I knew about his plans and how much of that knowledge I might have communicated to my superiors.

  Staring down at me, his urbane smile as bright as ever, Crowley said, “Governor, Colonel Harris and I have some matters to discuss.”

  “There are the articles . . .” Yamashiro began.

  “Articles of agreement stipulating the humane treatment of prisoners,” Crowley said, sounding bored. “Yoshi, I assure you that Colonel Harris will receive humane treatment. Now, if you would excuse us, my interrogation team should be arriving.”

  Yamashiro listened to this and appeared to consider his options. Lying down on the table, I felt like I was watching two dinosaurs battle above me. Yoshi Yamashiro, the short, solid man with the powerful build, was the herbivore—the Stegosaurus fighting for its life. Crowley, ever the carnivore, was the Tyrannosaurus rex.

  “I will speak with you again,” Yamashiro said to me. He nodded to Crowley and left.

  Crowley looked away from me to watch Yamashiro leave. When he looked down again, he had an expression that reminded me of a wolf staring at a wounded lamb. “I’ll give you one chance. How did you know about the attack on Tuscany?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. There was no reason to tell Crowley the truth at this point. He would not have believed me. He would have tortured me to confirm what I said and to make certain I told him everything. I did not want to be tortured. More than anything I had ever wanted in my life, I did not want to be tortured.

  “How did you warn the Navy about the attack?”

  “I did not know about the attack,” I repeated. I was sticking to the truth in case they were monitoring me for physical responses. I knew how I warned the Navy, but I had not known about the attack.

  Crowley pursed his lips. “I see,” he said. He reached a hand along the side of the table and I heard a snap as he flipped a switch. There were several video monitors around the table, just at the edge of the light. One down toward my feet showed body readings. Multi-colored lines ran across the screen displaying my pulse, my heartbeat, my stress level, and my brain activity. A score in the top right corner of the screen showed a computer-calculated projection of the veracity of everything I said based on those body readings.

  “It would be pointless to lie, Harris. You know that.” He paused, waited a moment for me to study my readings on the video screen, then repeated his questions. “How did you know about the attack? How did you send your message?”

  “I did not know about the attack,” I said.

  “I suppose it is possible that some U.A. admiral got lucky and happened to station fifty ships around Tuscany,” Crowley said in a confiding voice, “but the monitor reading your vital signs does not seem to believe you.”

  My pulse and heartbeat remained steady, but the lines showing my stress level and brain activity had turned into saw blades.

  “I think there are things that you are not telling me, Harris. I’m not good at interrogation. We have other people who specialize in it. I’m betting that you will be a lot more helpful once they have a word with you.”

  He stepped out of the room leaving me alone to think about what might happen to me. They would torture me. They would use every old and new technology at their disposal to make me suffer. The old forms of torture had not been forgotten. They were brutal and barbaric. The new forms were surgically precise, left little damage, and were incredibly effective. And I was going to go through this for what? To protect the nation I hated? To get paid by Huang? To get revenge on the men who killed Klyber? More likely, I would allow myself to be tortured because of neural programming. I was designed not to back down . . . and because, despite it all, I wanted to protect the Republic, earn my bounty from Huang, and kill the men who killed Klyber. But above all, I was going to be tortured because my programming would not let me help the enemy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The chemical compound in the syringe was not lethal, but the medical technician let me know that having electricity-conducting toxins flowing through my veins was not good for my health. “Taken in large quantities,” he said, “it might cause cancer.” He did not smile as he said this, though he must have known that a long bout with cancer was the least of my worries. He also told me that the toxins would dissolve in my blood. Two or three injections, he said, should not cause permanent damage; and in his experience, no one had required more than two sessions with this particular compound.

  After giving me the injection, the technician left the room and I was alone. My fingers tingled and my palms were covered with sweat. Lying alone in the darkness wearing nothing but my briefs, I noticed the air getting colder and wondered if that chill was in the room or in me. I had time to think about how I could twist information. I practiced lies and half-truths in my head and watched the way the monitor reacted as I convoluted facts.

  I did not know if anyone had ever tortured or even interrogated a Liberator clone. I did not know what kind of strength the hormone—the adrenaline and endorphins— would offer. It would certainly keep my thoughts clear, but that might make the pain more acute.

  At the moment, I saw no reason to suffer for the Unified Authority, the pan-galactic republic that created me. Yes, I had been made and raised by that government, but I had also been banned by it. The Senate passed laws to outlaw my existence. Che Huang sent me out to do his bidding, but he was no friend. The patriotic stirrings that I once felt for the Republic had been nothing but a misconception.

  I looked around as best I could. Everything within that cone of blinding light shining over my table was bleached white by its brightness. Everything beyond the edge of the light was nearly invisible to me, shadows at most. Time moved slowly. I thought about the orphanage in which I grew up. I had a mentor at the orphanage—Aleg Oberland. He was the man who convinced me to follow current events. He kept in touch with me after I left the orphanage. He sent me two or three letters per year over the mediaLink.

  I thought about Vince Lee, my old friend from my days in the Marines. Vince and I went on leave together. We were in the same platoon and we survived the slaughter on Little Man together. He was still an officer in the Scutum-Crux Fleet.

  How long would they leave me alone to think? Was this part of the process—letting the fear of torture weaken my resolve? Maybe they just wanted to wait until their chemicals spread through every cell of my body, running through my veins like a mouse in a maze. I made the mistake of staring straight up, and the light above my head shined into my eyes. When I looked away, orange and black dots filled my vision. And the room around me was filled with absolute silence.

  Time continued to pass. I watched the heart, stress, and pulse lines on the monitor. Minutes done were minutes gone. I thought about the people I knew, the clones and officers in my past platoons. I did not care for the Unified Authority, nor did I feel that I owed it anything, but there were individuals who had mattered at one time or another. There was Sergeant Tabor Shannon, a Liberator. He and I got drunk together
the night I learned that I was a clone. During the battle at Hubble, he and I went into a cave filled with Mogats. He never came out.

  There was Captain Gaylan McKay, a natural-born who showed no prejudice against clones, not even Liberators. He died on Little Man. McKay’s last act was ordering me to leave him behind. How could I ever look these men in the eye . . . even in my dreams? These men died defending the Republic. They believed in it to the last.

  What about Klyber? I imagined him standing over the table and regarding me coldly with his stern face and pale gray eyes.

  “How are we doing?” The man who came in was tall, thin, bald, and wore glasses. He looked absolutely ordinary. If I passed him in a crowd, I would not notice him.

  My heart, stress, and pulse lines jumped. My stress reading, which had nearly flat-lined, now looked like a mountain range. I tried to roll from side to side and break free from the restraints.

  Something had to happen. Someone would save me. Perhaps Yamashiro would come back. Maybe Navy intelligence had discovered the Hinode Fleet’s location. Maybe . . . Maybe Ray Freeman would come. Any moment, he could pound through that door carrying his massive particle beam gun.

  The man stood over me. His skin looked paper white in the bright overhead light. The thick lenses of his glasses magnified the size of his eyes. He reached into the breast pocket of his white lab coat and produced a long glass tube. This he opened, showing me its contents. The tube was a quiver for three-inch needles. The man selected one. “This will not hurt,” he said.

  Yamashiro or Freeman, I thought. They were my best bets. Surely Yamashiro knew that the Morgan Atkins Separatists would betray him. He would have to know that the Confederate Arms would not look upon the Japanese as equals.

  Smiling kindly, as if to reassure me, the man stabbed the first needle deep into my right bicep. I flinched, but the restraints prevented me from moving my arm.

  “Don’t move,” the man said, pressing the needle deeper into the muscle. “You would not want to break the needle. Then we might have to dig it out.” His head ticked up and down as he counted to twenty. When he finished counting, he pulled the needle from my arm, wiped the blood off with a cloth, and examined it under the light. “Good. Good.”

  “The needle turns green if the compound has dispersed properly,” the man said. He held the needle over my face so I could see it; but of course, the light engulfed it and I could not see anything.

  “You’re in excellent shape, Colonel Harris. Sometimes the compound bunches up, especially when a patient has bad circulation. With you, it’s spread through your upper extremities perfectly.”

  He placed the needle on the table beside me. I twisted my neck and managed to get a look at it. The shaft of that needle had turned jade green. I imagined myself sticking that needle into the man’s eye, stabbing it into the eye and pushing it all the way through until it jabbed into his brain.

  The man held the tube so that I could see it. He wanted me to know what he was doing. I could tell this by the slow way he selected the next needle and held it up for me. “Now let’s be sure that the compound is spreading through your lower extremities,” he said cheerfully.

  “Get specked,” I sneered.

  “Don’t take this personally, Colonel Harris. I’m just doing my job. Besides, this is nothing. This is just a small pin-prick. Don’t get worked up. In a minute it will all be over; and I assure you, you will forget all about the pin test.” With that, he stabbed the needle deep into the calf of my right leg. This was not like an injection where the medic presses the point against your skin, then neatly slides the needle into place. This man jabbed his needle in as if it were an ice pick. I winced, but the straps held my leg still. The man repeated everything, counting to twenty, pulling and cleaning the needle, and then showing me the results.

  “Excellent. Now, let’s just be sure the compound has dispersed properly throughout.” He selected another needle, then paused. “This one may hurt. I assure you, you will forget about it soon enough.” And he plunged that third needle into my stomach.

  The pain was brilliant and clear, a flash of silver lightning that shot from my stomach to my brain. I grimaced as he counted to twenty. I took short, panting breaths, feeling the stitch that the needle created between my stomach muscles.

  “Get specked,” I hissed between gritted teeth. “Get specked you goddamned son of . . .”

  He clicked his tongue at me. “There is nothing personal about this,” he said.

  “Oh, yes, there is,” I sighed as he pulled the bloody needle out of my gut. The muscles in my neck relaxed and my head clunked back against the metal surface of the table.

  “You won’t believe this, but we created this compound for humane purposes. It lets us communicate pain to your brain without inflicting physical damage,” the man said. “What you will feel is a very amplified version of the damage your body is taking.”

  “Get specked,” I repeated. The hormone had not yet kicked in. I was weak and tired and scared. Would it be Freeman who came for me, or would it be Yamashiro? I would not be tortured.

  “I will give you a brief demonstration of pain. Then, perhaps, we can discuss the information I am looking for before we proceed much further.”

  It would be Freeman. If I could smuggle myself aboard a transport, so could he. He was seven feet tall and black-skinned, which might make him easy to spot, but he would find a way in and kill this bastard.

  The man held up a harness that reminded me of a bit for a horse. He showed it to me. “Colonel, I suggest that you take this voluntarily. If you don’t wear this, you may bite your tongue, and that would not be good for either of us.”

  “Get specked,” I said again. I could not think of anything else to say.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. Then he held up a five-inch chrome-plated wand. It looked like a fancy pen. There were no wires hanging out of it and no lights built into it. It was just a plain, silvery shaft. He held it a few inches away from my face, giving me an opportunity to take a good look at it.

  “Generally we like to start out light, maybe a couple of hundred volts, but since you’re a Liberator, I think that would be a waste of time.” With this he ran the wand over the left side of my chest, along my ribs, and down to my naval. For an instant I felt nothing but the smooth warm surface of the wand on my skin. That pleasant sensation might have lasted one tenth of a second. Then the pain shot through me.

  The pain was like a blaring noise that engulfs everything else around it. My thoughts turned into a silver-white flash, possibly a visualization of the electrical jolt splashing out of my blood and into my nervous system. Every muscle in my body contracted. I would have arched my back, but the straps across my pelvis and shoulders held me in place. Somehow I managed to arch the area of my spine that was between the restraints.

  My hands balled into fists and my shoulders tensed and bunched. My jaw clenched so tightly that my teeth should have shattered. Had my tongue slipped between my teeth, I would have sheered it off.

  Then, as suddenly as it started, the pain disappeared and my body dropped to the table. I lay there on that cold metal, my back no more rigid than a wet rag. And, for the first time since I had been brought into this room, I felt the hormone flowing through my body. It had probably been released during that jolt as the shock of the electricity overwhelmed my brain.

  “My, you Liberators are tough,” the man said. “Normally my patients start to sob about now.” The man looked down at me. “Still, you did mess yourself. That’s something.”

  It was true. During the jolt, my body had let go of all the waste it was holding. Far from sobbing, however, I would have broken this man’s neck if not for the restraints. My thoughts and head were clear. My desires were violent, and this time I knew my bloodlust was not just a response to the endorphins flowing through my veins.

  I chanced a glance at the biofeedback monitor and saw something interesting. My readings had flat-lined again. Calmed by the hormone,
my brain activity and stress level were normal. My heart was beating a bit fast and I found that I could speed up my pulse by fighting against the restraints—isometric exercise.

  “In the old days, they used to kill people with the voltage you just experienced,” the man said. “Did you know that? You just experienced twenty seconds of two thousand volts. Well, actually, it was ten volts . . . the wand only has a ten-volt charge, but your neural receptors believed they were taking a two thousand-volt shock. That was the voltage they used to use in electric chairs. They would electrocute the condemned for thirty seconds at two thousand volts to make them pass out, then they would drop the voltage and finish the job.

  “Now you know how those old outlaws felt just before they died. The only difference is that this won’t kill you. This won’t fry your brain or damage your vital organs, so we can keep you riding the lightning for a much longer time. The only thing we have to worry about is having a fear-induced heart attack. Judging by your readings, Colonel Harris, I don’t think that will be a problem.

  “So, think you could hang on to your sanity through a ten-minute jolt?”

  I wanted to tell this asshole to go speck himself, but I did not want to show that I was in control of myself. More than that, I did not want to make him angry.

  “You know, the first time I tried this procedure I killed the man. The guy died . . . my fault entirely. I had him on a table just like this one, only it had electric restraints.

  “It was just a little shock, just a disabling shock. It shouldn’t have hurt the guy at all, but, you know, with the compound increasing the voltage . . . Anyway, the restraints had a two hundred-volt charge, so he got the equivalent of forty thousand volts nonstop. His heart burst.

  “I don’t know if that would happen to you. This is such an excellent opportunity. I never imagined I could ever work with a clone of your make. You have no idea what an amazing specimen you are, and to think, they can mass-produce you.”

  I was not sure how to act, so I lay in place shaking my head and moaning softly. I acted as if all of the strength had left my body. In truth, a lot of it had. I did not have enough strength to make a fist or fight against the restraints.