by MJ Blehart
“Yes,” Samarin confirmed. “In fact, in the entire history of the Bureau, a vote of no confidence has only been called twice. And only one of those times did it end in the executive director’s removal.”
“Is there any substance in what Rand is putting out there?” Onima asked.
“No,” Samarin said. “Frankly, I doubt that anything at all will come of it if the vote is called and a discussion ensues. Tang is an outstanding ED and has been naught but good for the Bureau. They have the respect of the Confederation, too. However...if Rand goes through with this, it may well bring an end to Tang’s tenure in eighteen months when the directors vote again.”
Onima thought about that. “Why would Rand be pushing this, and pushing it now, do you think?”
Samarin shrugged. “There’s no obvious reason on this end. However, it’s beginning to cause a lot of distraction here. Minor bureaucratic matters are being ignored that shouldn’t be. Housekeeping and infrastructure are getting pushed back for opening investigations into matters that, as far as I can tell, don’t exist. Rand is claiming some rather far-fetched issues, and he’s pulled several of the deputy directors into it. I’ve asked around as to why nobody is standing up to him, and the only answers I am getting are noncommittal.”
“Does he have any allies?” Onima asked.
“Yes, but specifics are hard to come by,” Samarin replied. “Among the deputy directors, he does. When it comes to the directors, I am unsure. But he must. As far as I know, directors tend to work independently of one another, which is the only reason I can think of why they are not stepping in to intervene. Admittedly, as a deputy director, I don’t know what they could do, since that’s above my pay grade.”
Onima nodded to the screen. But an idea was forming in her head. “How does the vote of no confidence process work? A call for it is made, but then what happens?”
“Hasn’t been one in almost three hundred years,” Samarin remarked. “But according to the protocols, any one director or three deputy directors can make the call. Then the directorate goes into sequester and meets until the vote is held.”
“The whole directorate?”
“Yes,” Samarin said. “Like you, the marshalate can operate without us at least 80 percent of the time or more. To prevent outside influence, the sequester can only be broken by a Confederation minister or ranking deputy.”
“Rendering the leadership of the Bureau inoperative,” Onima said. “And for how long?”
Samarin frowned. “The first one took a week. The second took two weeks. And yes, before you point this out, I recognize that’s problematic. Part of why it’s not meant to be used lightly.”
Onima didn’t like the implication of that. “Rand could call for the vote of no confidence in the ED and sequester the whole of the directorate for days. Convenient if that tied into the former NECC and NEEA leaders getting their plot rolling. Even though marshals can get involved, without the directorate, we’ll lack direction. Also, getting additional assistance between marshals without the direction of a member of the directorate is beyond problematic.
“Since the Bureau is largely independent, the Confederation likely won’t call for the end of the sequester before it’s too late. Which might be the reason Rand is getting ready to make this move.”
“Based on everything you’ve got, that’s all too plausible,” Samarin agreed. “What’s more, based on how Rand is ramping things up, I suspect we’ve only got about a month, maybe less, before he calls for the vote.”
“Damn,” Onima said. “Everything I have on this conspiracy is merely circumstantial. Nothing would hold up in court, and given our suspicions that Rand is connected to Gray and Chaung, odds are this is all part of their scheme. For all I know, if we go off half-cocked with conjecture to the courts, that’ll be what triggers the whole thing.”
“Unfortunately,” Samarin agreed. “You only have your current resources, Onima. I can’t get you anyone or anything else without risking compromising your investigation. Please be aware that if we go into sequester, there won’t be any communication about it. But if you contact headquarters and can’t get anyone above a marshal, assume that’s where we’re at. And I didn’t tell you that.”
“Yes, sir,” Onima replied.
“Marshal Gwok,” Samarin stated formally, “please be careful. This is all far beyond our usual mandate. But I trust you, and your judgment. Employ whatever means you deem necessary to get solid answers and put a stop to this—before time runs out and the Confederation is taken down. That, I fear, might be only the beginning of whatever the end goal the conspirators have.”
“Good luck to you as well, Deputy Director.”
Samarin nodded to her, and the screen winked out.
Onima leaned back in her seat. She tried hard not to think about the idea that the fate of the whole damned Confederation might rest with her and her team. This was crazy. This sort of thing only happened in fiction. But it was also undeniable what was occurring.
If that was the case, and the fate of the Confederation rested on her investigation, she trusted that if anyone could handle it, she and her team could.
Clearing her head, Onima tapped her comm. “Captain Barr?”
“Marshal Gwok,” he replied.
“Please set course for warp to Terre Ursa.”
16
Lebassier City was crisscrossed by a dozen rivers and streams. It spread over a wide swath of land, and as Terre Ursa’s capital city, it was among the most populous cities in the galaxy.
While there was a clearly centralized downtown section, featuring tall, impressive skyscrapers, the rest of the city was a hodgepodge of architectural styles, neighborhoods, mixed industrial, commercial, and residential blocks, as well as bridges crossing the various rivers and streams.
At least three of the rivers were never less than a kilometer wide. Still, it seemed unusual that the world’s capital was otherwise landlocked.
Looking at a map, Jace had observed that one or two of the bodies of water reached the ocean, but it was more than twelve hundred kilometers away. Noting that no cities were on the oceans of the world, he realized that had to be for good reason.
High-speed maglev monorail systems ran out of the city toward others on the continent. The next nearest city to Lebassier City was five hundred kilometers away.
Between the capital city and the nearest cities, there was desert in one direction, farmland and lakes in another, rocky terrain where mining operations took place, and a rainforest in the last.
There were also roadways that left the city to traverse the countryside. Small settlements, villages, and even some towns existed between the major cities.
Ergo, you could travel via hovervehicle from Lebassier City to anywhere else if you preferred it to the monorails or flying.
Lebassier City had six separate spaceports. One was strictly for commercial passenger travel, one for only commercial transport. The other four were mixed, and respectively north, south, east, and west—but not in any way equidistant to the city center.
After much debate, Onima had requested that Yael land them at the mixed-use port to the north.
Company Director Kaji Ivanov lived in a mansion in a closed-community compound to the north of the city proper. As a member of Gray and Chuang’s board of directors, he didn’t necessarily work in one of their offices.
However, there was an office in Lebassier City. There was also at least one major warehouse complex in the city that belonged to the company as well.
Dr. Yagnesh Deng lived in a condo in the city proper. It was a retiree complex, which was not a surprise, given that the doctor was over one hundred years old.
Now that the team was on the ground and in the spaceport, they were going over their options, trying to determine how, exactly, to confront both Deng and Ivanov.
“One of the biggest problems we have,” Kara began, “is that there’s no direct connection between these two, apart from Deng being listed as
Ivanov’s personal physician.”
“And Deng has no office,” added Onima, “so we can’t draw them both there.”
“Maybe Teru can check local information,” Kara said. “Perhaps they can check on comm traffic and learn if there is any way to tie Deng to Ivanov that can be exploited to bring them together.”
“But Teru already tried that,” Jace reminded the CBI agents. “They are still looking—but they couldn’t make any connections, remember? Apart from Deng being listed as Ivanov’s personal physician, they have zero known connections. That one alone leads us nowhere.”
“Perhaps contact between Deng and Grey and Chuang,” Onima said, then added, “which, of course, is part of what Teru is working on researching now.”
“Maybe we should have stayed on the Daedalus until we had something concrete to run with,” said Kara.
“This was the right choice,” Onima said. “Boots on the ground.”
“Perhaps we should pay a visit to the local clone slum,” Jace suggested, not for the first time.
Onima was against this idea because she felt it took them out of focus. Kara agreed with Jace that the clones might be a useful source of information.
Though she had not spoken about the content of her conversation with Samarin prior to the Daedalus entering the warp bubble, Jace knew it had unsettled her. Onima was concerned that time was running out, and she was frustrated that she couldn’t just arrest and question either Deng or Ivanov.
“Where is the clone slum?” Onima asked.
“About 240 kilometers east of here,” Jace said. “There’s a battlefield and the remains of a hamlet that was home to miners that was evacuated during the war. All the clones that survived the war on this continent were relocated there.”
“That far from a city?” asked Kara.
Jace had, prior to their arrival, researched exactly this. “Yes. They are within an hour via monorail of the two largest cities on the planet. There are also a half a dozen towns they can reach where they might find work. But according to my research, they’re largely self-sustained and tend to work for the collective good, much like we saw in Emerson City.”
“I know that clones aren’t necessarily restricted from such things,” Kara began, “but they can travel via monorail?”
“Yes,” Jace said. “All the cars have two levels, and clones ride on the bottom with cargo. There are maglevs in motion all day and night along the tracks—and they stop at the clone slums.”
“So, it seems Terre Ursa tolerates clones,” Onima remarked.
Jace chuckled. “No, not really. As far as I can tell, all clones live on this continent and are banned from the rest. I couldn’t confirm it, but from what I learned, if a clone rides the monorail beyond any of the two cities and half-dozen towns between them, they could be tossed off the maglev mid-run.”
Onima drew in a sharp breath. “At three hundred kilometers per hour, that’s a death sentence.”
“But we know they work in Lebassier City,” Jace said. “And we know that wherever there are clones and Gray and Chuang, there tends to be a connection. So....” He left that hanging.
Onima sighed. “You’ve convinced me. Let’s visit the clone slums.”
Yael remained with the Minotaur at the spaceport in case they needed her to come get them. Jace, Onima, and Kara took the hovercar and made their way east toward the clone slums.
Getting out of the city proper was easy. As they drove across the countryside, the roadway they were following was also followed by the maglev monorail.
There were six tracks, total, with two levels and three tracks per level. Jace presumed three tracks ran in each direction. Switching stations were located in each of the cities to shift the trains between tracks as needs be.
Jace sat in the back of the hovercar watching the scenery go by while Onima drove. The trio were much less talkative than normal as they traveled across the countryside.
As they neared the clone slum, Kara asked, “Jace, do you know if this hamlet has a name?”
“The hamlet was called QXM-burg. It was named for QXM Interplanetary Mining, which is who employed all its residents. The clones call it Pao-hui-burg.”
“Pulling no punches with that one,” said Kara.
Pào huī, in ancient Earth Chinese, meant “cannon fodder.”
“Truth is truth,” Jace said. “As this whole conspiracy has shown me—not that I didn’t know this before—everyone lost track of why they were even fighting a war once both sides had clones doing all the work. Sure, we were built for the war...but afterwards? Abandoned, tossed aside, and expected to just go about our own business howsoever we might.”
“Has there ever been a study on clone suicide?” asked Onima.
Jace chuckled. “Not a thing. Clones don’t kill themselves. I suspect that may have been part of the programming that went into us, too. Despite other motivational inhibitions, we’re still motivated to keep surviving. And so we do.”
“I’m starting to see why whole-human cloning was banned after the war,” Onima said. “Hell, even my governor, despite baseline tolerance, has felt you didn’t need to remain part of my team. But I’m glad I learned otherwise.”
“I can’t deny life has been far more interesting since I started traveling with you,” Jace said.
“What will you do if and when we bring this investigation to a conclusion?” asked Kara.
Jace had given that some thought more than once. “It’s not like I can get a job working for the CBI, so I guess I either return to Copy Slum on Raven or choose another. Thus far, while I liked what I saw of the clones in Emerson City, I am not sure I could live like that.”
The truth was, after being part of Onima’s team and the investigation, Jace was having a hard time pondering returning to the life he had lived before. He would go on surviving, whatever form that took. But after the time he’d spent living among non-clones—shown respect like any other person and having people he called friends—the menial subsistence of clone life would be dull in comparison.
“I did pull you far out of your element,” Onima said. “But I’m always glad I did. We’ll see what we can do when we finish this investigation.”
“That is,” Kara added, “if we don’t fail, and the conspiracy manages to overthrow the AECC.”
The clone slum, Pao-hui-burg, was obvious. Off the road, there were a growing number of burned-out tanks, mechs, and various troop carriers and transports. The buildings that made up the former hamlet were patched together with metals and other materials clearly salvaged from the former battlefield.
As Onima pulled into Pao-hui-burg, Jace could see that the clone slum stretched out from the hamlet and into the former battlefield. Much like Copy Slum on Raven, there were apparent homes within burned-out tanks, wrecked transports, and troop carriers, in addition to the haphazardly repaired buildings of the former community.
There was a central park area that was not simply a garden, and Onima chose to park there.
It was mid-afternoon now, and Jace noted that there was quite a mix of clones. He saw all four infantry clones: Rojas, Dahl, Tushabe, and Wang. He also saw both the heavy infantry clones of the NEEA, Lavrinenko and Pool; a Zang cavalry clone of the NEEA; and at least four other clones he didn’t recognize.
The trio climbed out of the hovercar, and about a dozen clones began to walk toward them.
“Do you realize where you are?” asked a Wang clone.
“Yes,” replied Onima. “This is Pao-hui-burg.”
“Yes,” said a Dahl clone. “And you are not clones.”
“I am,” said Jace, stepping between the CBI operatives and the clones.
“A Rojas,” the Dahl clone commented.
“I’m Jace Rojas. And this is Marshal Onima Gwok and Deputy Marshal Kara Martinez of the CBI.”
Onima and Kara displayed their digital warrant cards.
“I’m a special consultant to the Bureau currently,” Jace went on, “and we’re here as
part of an ongoing investigation.”
“You mean the non-existent rebellion?” said one of the clones Jace was unfamiliar with.
“What?” asked Kara.
“No,” Jace replied. “That’s not what we’re here about at all. But it sounds like it’s something we might care to familiarize ourselves with.”
The Wang clone who’d first spoken gestured toward the hovercar. “You can’t round up very many of us in that thing.”
“I think we need to clarify a thing or two right from the start,” Onima said. “We are not here to arrest, round up, or interrogate anyone. We have no knowledge of local government actions toward the residents of this burg. This investigation is about a much broader situation involving clones.”