The Clone Betrayal

by Kent, Steven

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Once our official business ended, Thomer returned to his quarters to rest, and our conclave dwindled to three: Warshaw, Franks, and me. As soon as the door closed behind Thomer, the dynamics of the meeting changed. Instead of two admirals and a general, our psychology seemed to revert to enlisted-man status. Differences in branch and pay grade no longer mattered, we were Gary, Lil, and Wayson—three guys serving on the Scrotum-Crotch Fleet.

  Warshaw had an aide bring in some bottles, and the booze poured freely.

  “What is going on with Thomer?” Franks asked. “I can’t figure the guy out. One moment he’s spaced out, the next moment he’s the only guy in the room with a clue what to do.” He poured himself a tall glass of vodka.

  We each had our personal poison of choice. Franks, who apparently preferred flame to flavor, had his bottle of vodka. Warshaw drank whiskey in small shots. I drank beer. They might get drunk, but I wouldn’t. I could have set up a drip line and taken an entire keg intravenously without getting inebriated.

  I did not want Warshaw or Franks to get smashed, but a little lubrication would take the edge off our conversation. Removing the sharp edges would be good.

  “He’s on Fallzoud,” I said.

  Warshaw made a low, whistling noise that sounded like a bomb falling out of the sky. “Fallzoud? That’s some serious shit. Why do you keep him around?”

  “After New Copenhagen, he needed it,” I said, as if it answered the question.

  “I heard New Copenhagen was brutal,” Franks said.

  “You have about thirty thousand New Copenhagen survivors in your fleet,” I said. “Almost all of the clones who transferred in with me fought there.”

  “Are they all on Fallzoud?” Warshaw asked. It was a fair question—a lot of them were.

  “Not all of them, but a bunch. They handed it out like candy in Clonetown. It made us easier to control,” I said.

  “Clonetown? What the hell is Clonetown?” asked Franks.

  Warshaw knew. He said, “That’s what they called the relocation camp.”

  “You had thousands of clones living in a relocation camp called ‘Clonetown’? Why didn’t they all have a death reflex and die? I mean, shit, what does it take to make those speckers realize they’re clones?” Franks, of course, was one of “those speckers”; but he seemed not even to suspect it. Now on his third glass of vodka, he was in no shape to suspect much of anything.

  Warshaw had not touched his drink yet. I needed him to drink before Franks became too drunk to think. Hoping to encourage Warshaw to drink, I uncapped two beers and downed them in quick order.

  Warshaw answered, “It’s just like the orphanages, Franks. Think about it. All those clones packed together, each of them believing they are the only natural-born. It’s the same goddamn thing.”

  I finished another beer. “Thomer knows,” I said.

  Warshaw flicked his thumb across the top of the bottle with so much force that the seal broke, and the cap spun off. I would have brought Warshaw a stein for his whiskey if I thought he’d use it, but he used a specking shot glass, not even a tumbler. He filled the glass and tossed it down, refilled, but waited to drink. The veins and muscles in his neck flexed when he downed his drink.

  “Thomer knows what?” Franks asked. If he lost any more of his edge, we’d have to tuck him in for the night.

  “He knows he’s a clone, asshole,” Warshaw said. He downed another shot.

  I downed another beer.

  “He can’t know that, or he’d be dead,” Franks said.

  “I heard that could happen,” Warshaw said. “I heard there were drugs that would block the reflex. Fallzoud must be one of ’em.”

  “He had a pretty good idea where he came from before he got hooked,” I said. “I’ve known Thomer a long time. He always had his suspicions.”

  “Speck! That’s hard shit. I mean, God, who’d want to be a clone?” Franks said.

  Warshaw stared at him. Even if he’d wanted to inform Franks that he, too, was a clone, Warshaw’s neural programming would not permit him to do it.

  “I’m trying to get him off the Fallzoud,” I said.

  “What happens to him if he quits?” Warshaw asked. “Can he still have the reflex?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “If he were going to have a reflex, he’d probably have had it when he dried out between ludings.”

  “Poor bastard,” Franks said. He drained his glass but made no move to pour a refill.

  “Harris, are you nervous about sweeping those battleships tomorrow?” Warshaw asked. He drained another shot, reloaded, and drained it again.

  “Not really. There aren’t going to be any survivors. You guys blew the hell out of those ships, no one could have survived that.” I thought about the frozen dead I’d seen on other wrecks and tipped my beer in salute.

  Seeing me drink seemed to relax Warshaw. He tossed another shot.

  “If they sealed off some parts of the ship, those areas might have air and pressure,” Warshaw pointed out.

  “What are they going to do about the specking cold?” I asked.

  “What about reinforcements?” Warshaw asked. “What if they sent for help?”

  “How would they call for reinforcements, they’d need a broadcast network.”

  “The Mogats sent messages,” Franks said. “I heard they set up spy stations in every arm.”

  “They did, but they had to build them around their own private broadcast network. They had mini broadcast engines that sent and received messages.”

  “Maybe these ships have mini broadcast engines, too,” Franks said. He slurred his words as he spoke. “You don’t specking know if they have mini broadcast engines on their ships.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted. “But why would they have come in alone if they could have called for help?” I asked. “They would have called for backup.”

  Franks started to reach for his bottle, and paused. “They had newer, better ships,” he said. “Those cocky pricks probably thought they could take us easy.”

  “They probably did,” I agreed.

  Franks nodded. Warshaw tossed back yet another shot of whiskey. If he wasn’t properly lubricated by now, he never would be.

  Deciding to make my move, I said, “You know, you and I are both in the shits,” to Warshaw. “My second-in-command is a Fallzoud sinker, and yours is in the brig.”

  “Fahey? Don’t you worry about his ass. I’ll take care of him,” Warshaw said.

  I heard sharpness in his voice. My bringing up Fahey burned through the whiskey haze. “You told me that no Marine was fit to command a fleet,” I said. “Do you remember that?”

  “Something like that, yeah,” Warshaw agreed.

  “Engineering officers don’t cut it either,” I said. “When was the last time you heard about an engineer making admiral?”

  “You son of a . . .” He jumped to his feet, his fists tight and his arms flexed.

  I put up a hand. “I’m not trying to take over. I don’t believe either one of us is fit for command.”

  Warshaw calmed slightly. His fists opened, and his shoulders relaxed, but he did not sit down. “What are you saying, Harris?”

  “I’m saying we both need to step down,” I said.

  “And get passed over for command?”

  “You think Marines aren’t fit for command because they don’t understand naval operations.”

  “Damn specking right they don’t,” Warshaw said. He dropped back into his seat.

  “You’re right. We don’t. The problem is, engineers don’t know shit about operations, either. What this fleet needs is a bridge officer, not a wrench jockey.”

  “You mean him?” Warshaw asked, his mouth working into a sardonic smile. He nodded toward Franks, who sat passed out in his chair, his back slumped, his face flush against the conference table, saliva forming a pool in front of his opened mouth. He snored softly.

  “You’re joking, right?” Warshaw a
sked.

  Feeling embarrassed, I said, “He’s next in line.”

  Warshaw laughed.

  “Bullshit. I’m next in line, Harris. Admiral Brocius gave me this command.”

  That was how we left it. Warshaw running the fleet, me commanding the Marines, and Franks passed out in his seat.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Technically, I should have brought Hollingsworth on this mission, but I’d already sent him to run Fort Sebastian instead. I should have left Thomer as a liaison with fleet operations, but I thought some action would do him good. I needed to know if I could count on him in battle, and this seemed like a safe testing ground. All we had to do was explore a derelict ship, locate and capture any survivors who wanted rescue, and offer a fatal helping hand to any survivors who wanted to go down with their ship.

  I sat in the cockpit with the pilot as he flew my team out. It was the same clone pilot I had hijacked the last time I came out to the Mogat home world. Back then he was a sailor. Now he’d put in a transfer to become a Marine—as my staff pilot no less. Apparently we’d bonded while dodging U.A. battleships in our unarmed transport.

  The newly destroyed U.A. battleships did not resemble the wrecks around them. It wasn’t just the difference in their shape and color. The Mogat ships were not just sunk, they were annihilated. Some had imploded hulls. Several decks had been entirely sheared away from one Mogat destroyer. The U.A. ships had gone dark, but they looked like they could be repaired.

  “I like the look of this ship a lot better now that it’s dead,” the pilot said as we approached one of the wrecks. He and I had played a serious game of tag with this ship not all that long ago.

  “Let’s just hope it stays dead,” I said.

  Light still shone through cracks in the battleship’s hull. The batteries backing their emergency lighting might hold out for months. Flames, fed by oxygen leaking out of improperly sealed cabins, flickered deep in the recesses of the ships. Their unsteady glow reminded me of candles.

  “I feel like I’m sneaking up on a sleeping bear,” the pilot joked.

  “A dead bear,” I said. I hoped it was dead.

  “You better hope it’s dead, sir,” the pilot said. He acted like we were old friends. I didn’t mind. More than anything else, I felt embarrassed for what I had done to the guy. I had done what I felt I had to do, but I still felt bad about pistol-whipping him.

  Without its shields, the battleship had the same beige and gray colors as the ships in the Scutum-Crux Fleet. Its skin had laser burns and trenches along its outer hull, the scars of war. The white glare of sparks flashed in some of the crevices. Most of the ship was dark. The sparks and flames added up to little more than a scattering of bright scales.

  We moved in slowly, our runner lights blazing on the hull. Toward the bow of the ship, about a hundred yards back, we found the hatch to the docking bay and sent a team of technicians armed with laser torches.

  The process went slowly. The pilot opened the kettle doors. A couple of minutes later five techs drifted into view. They spent fifteen minutes evaluating the situation, then finally got to work. The laser-resistant outer wall of the ship cut slowly, but it did cut.

  “Do we have our shields up?” I asked the pilot.

  “Do we need them up?”

  “Luck specks the unprepared,” I said.

  Outside, our techs stripped away the outer skin of the hatch, revealing a panel filled with rods and hydraulics. Once the shield covering was gone, the work went quickly. A few more cuts, and the outer hatch fell away from the ship.

  “Looks like we’re in, sir.”

  The techs went ahead of us to clear the atmospheric locks. A few minutes later, we entered the runway at a crawl. Our runner lights revealed the signs of battle. The deck was cracked. Sixty feet ahead of us, the doors of the next lock hung askew. Beyond the broken hatch, a lightning-colored bouquet flashed over the top of a shorted-out electrical panel.

  “Looks like you’re on your own from here, sir,” the pilot said.

  “Looks that way,” I agreed.

  “Okay, Thomer, lead them out,” I said over the interLink.

  “Everybody out. Hit the deck and fall in!” Thomer yelled. The men obeyed. As I left the cockpit, I saw the last of the men floating down the ramp. Off-loading and forming ranks took longer in zero gravity.

  Not showing any traces of Fallzoud confusion, Thomer took charge. He sounded more like a sergeant than a general. That was good. In my experience, generals did not bring much to the battlefield.

  I looked over the ranks. The hundred armor-wearing Marines were a sight for sore eyes. They did not wear jetpacks. Unlike the motivators used by Navy techs, our jetpacks gave off flames. In the wrong environment, those flames could trigger an explosion.

  “Listen up,” I said. “The fleet sent us here to look for survivors. It’s probably a waste of time, but that is why we are here. Search each deck for heat signatures. If you find something, report back before going in to investigate. I repeat, if you find somebody with a pulse and a face, call for backup.”

  I should have given them a more detailed briefing, but I did not think it would be necessary. Instead, I said my short piece and let Thomer divide up the company. He sent them out in fire teams, four-man units that made a lot more sense in other situations. Fire teams were supposed to include a rifleman, an automatic rifleman, a grenadier, and a team leader. In this situation, everyone carried a particle-beam pistol.

  This particular ship was the second of the U.A. battleships to stumble into Warshaw’s shooting gallery. It had taken the least damage. With the third battleship fighting its way out of our trap, Warshaw’s techs had shifted their fire over to that ship the moment this one went dark. What had looked like a quiet death from the outside, however, didn’t seem so gentle now that I had entered the ship.

  We threaded through the broken, second lock and found the third lock fully open. By the time we reached that final lock, we were walking along the deck. I had already noticed this when Thomer hailed me to say, “General, the gravity generator is still online.”

  Wondering what other equipment might still be up and running, I answered, “Tell your men to stay alert.” If the gravity generator had survived the fight, the environmental systems might have also survived; and if there was heat and air, there might well be survivors.

  Listening in on the commandLink, I heard one Marine say, “We had a battle simulation just like this back at the orphanage.”

  “Damn, I remember that sim,” a second man said. “That’s the one where you have to defend the ship or blow the sucker up.”

  “Keep it quiet,” Thomer ordered.

  I knew that simulation as well. The holographic simulation took place on a disabled freighter. One team played as sailors and the other as pirates. The pirates were the aggressors, sent to capture the ship; and they had every possible advantage. They had better guns. They did not have to worry about laws or regulations. They even had more men on their team. The simulation was set up so that they outnumbered the sailors three to one.

  But the sailors always won.

  Since blowing up the freighter kept it out of enemy hands, all the sailors had to do was set the reactor to overload. It wasn’t fair, but it was realistic. I thought this and realized that from the U.A. point of view, this operation had the same zero-sum solution. If the U.A. Navy found itself unable to salvage this ship, they would demolish it before allowing us to capture it.

  “Thomer, tell the men to look for anything that looks like it could explode.”

  “Like on the Corvair?” Thomer asked.

  Corvair? I thought. The name sounded so damn familiar. It only took a moment for me to place it. Corvair was the name of the ship in the simulation. “That is precisely what I am talking about.”

  Thomer issued the order, then spoke to me again. “I hated that simulation. I always ended up a pirate. We never won.”

  Because of the darkness, our combat visors
defaulted to night-for-day lenses, but we would also need to use heat vision in order to search for survivors. It would not be hard to locate heat on this busted scow, the ambient temperature had dropped to absolute zero.

  I switched to heat vision and saw that the men in front of me radiated red with an orange halo against the cobalt world around them. Normally men in combat armor did not give off a heat signature. They did in space.

  The fire teams spread out quickly. Eight teams headed toward the lower decks, where we would have found Engineering and the Marines on other ships. Who knew what they would find with this new design.

  I commandeered a team, telling them to follow me as I headed toward the bow of the ship. I entered a hall and quickly located a stairwell that would take us to any deck. The stairs were wide enough for five men to climb abreast.

  Two flights up, I paused to check the lay of the land, switching to heat vision as I looked down a hallway lined with sealed hatches. Four of the hatches showed dark orange. There was heat behind those doors. A fifth hatch had not been sealed. Blades of yellow and red danced outside that doorway. I switched to my tactical lens and watched the flames. Whether it was oxygen or some other gas, something leaking from that room was fueling the fire.

  I marked the rooms with a virtual beacon, which I sent to Thomer. “I have some interesting prospects up here,” I said.

  “I’ll send a team by,” Thomer said.

  The correct response would have been, “I’ll send a team by, sir,” but I overlooked it. Worrying about being addressed as “sir” may sound petty, but it isn’t. The Marine Corps was built on discipline. Without that discipline, we were just another gang of soldiers.

  I wished there was some surefire way to dry Thomer out without killing him.

  I led my fire team up two more flights and surveyed the next deck. It looked exactly like the same scene one deck down, sans the flames. Almost all of the doors radiated heat, but the hall itself was as cold as space.

  A man had died in this hall. He lay on the floor. Seen through night-for-day lenses, the dead sailor’s hands were the color of snow. Coin-sized speckles of blood had formed on the ground around his head. Frozen blood showed in the gash along the back of his head. If I’d stomped a boot down hard enough on the man, he would have shattered like a porcelain figurine. His bones were the least rigid part of his body, now that the veins and capillaries had frozen solid.