“Barry acted properly,” Klyber answered, his voice cold, his emotions still under control.
“The secretaries of the Army and Air Force disagree,” Huang shot back. Shannon and I followed Barry and the MPs out of the conference room. The panels closed behind us, sealing off the conversation.
“Do you think Huang came all the way from Earth for this?” I asked Shannon, as we waited outside the conference room for the third time that day. “He didn’t come all this way just to arrest Barry?”
“No.” Shannon smiled. “He didn’t come out to Scrotum-Crotch just to arrest Barry. That was just a bonus.”
The aide led us in to the conference room for the third time. This time Captain McKay sat with Klyber, and Hurricane Huang was not to be found.
“Sergeant Shannon, this is not your first tour aboard the Kamehameha ?” Klyber asked.
“No, sir,” Shannon answered. “I spent four years on this ship.”
“I see.” With Huang gone, Klyber took on an informal tone. He pointed to two chairs and had us sit down. “My first command was on this ship, more than twenty years ago, and she was already looking old. I thought it was a demotion at the time. I later found out that every secretary of the Navy for the last fifty years served on this ship. All but one—and that one wants to mothball the ship and retire the name.”
With his icy gray eyes and his all-consuming intensity, Admiral Klyber could not hide his disapproval. He smiled, but his eyes still looked tired and angry. “Barring the further arrest of key commanding officers, I think we should discuss your mission.” Klyber looked back to where Gaylan McKay sat. “Are you ready, Captain?”
There was an unmistakable familiarity between McKay and Klyber. They did not act like friends, but I heard the patient tone of a mentor in Klyber’s voice. Captain McKay walked toward the wall with the conference monitors. The room darkened, and the image of a dark green planet appeared on one of the screens. “This is Ronan Minor,” McKay began. “It is a stage three planet.”
“Stage three planets” were seeded planets that were nearly ready for habitation. By the time they reached stage three, they had a detoxified atmosphere, stabilized gravity, and oxygen-producing rain forests. After twenty years at stage three, planets were, according to U.A. scientists, usually considered ready for colonization. Smugglers were not as patient. They often used stage three planets as bases for their operations.
“You may have been wondering why we have been favored by a visit from Admiral Huang,” Klyber interrupted. “Here is your answer.”
The planet disappeared from the screen and was replaced by the image of a man with a neatly trimmed, white beard. “Recognize him, Harris?” McKay asked.
“Crowley,” I said.
“General Amos Crowley,” McKay said. “How about these men?”
The picture switched, and we saw a video of three men holding a friendly conversation in what looked like a private living room. One of the men sat on a plush chair—Crowley. The other two, whom I did not recognize, sat on a sofa. The camera closed in on Crowley, then panned the others. When the camera reached the third man, the image froze, showing a slender man with dark skin and dark eyes.
“This is Warren Atkins.”
“You’ve heard of his famous father,” Klyber said. “Considering recent events on Ezer Kri, we were more than curious when Fleet Intelligence intercepted this video feed. Until now, we had no proof of a link between Atkins and Crowley.”
“How do we know this was shot on Ronan Minor, sir?” Shannon asked.
“Good question,” McKay said. He allowed the video to resume at a slowed speed. As the camera faded back to take in all three men, a window appeared along the right edge of the screen. McKay stopped the feed. He approached the screen and pointed to the window. “At present, the Department of Reclamation has thirty-five seeded planet projects in the Scutum-Crux Arm. Of those, only twelve are at stage three.”
“Admiral Huang came all the way out here to oversee a mission with one-in-twelve odds?” Shannon asked.
“Not likely,” McKay agreed. “Intelligence was able to lift a serial number off that climate generator.”
“Not meaning to show the captain any disrespect, but is there any chance that they meant for us to intercept this file and locate the planet?” Shannon asked.
“You’re asking if this is a trap?” McKay asked. “It may be a trap.”
“Admiral Huang and I have discussed that possibility,” Admiral Klyber said. “Sergeant, I should think that you above all people would recognize the importance of capturing Atkins.”
“Find Atkins, and you find the GC Fleet,” Shannon agreed.
“Something like that,” Klyber said, looking not at us but at the picture of Warren Atkins on the monitor.
“The Navy has improved its ship designs since launching the Galactic Central Fleet. Atkins beat a frigate with three dreadnoughts, hardly something to crow about. Had he run into a battleship or a carrier, the outcome would have been different.”
I did not want to say anything, but I was not sure that I agreed. The attack on the Chayio had been smart and well executed. Somebody had analyzed our blockade and found a weakness.
“Are we sending a platoon to Ronan Minor, sir?” Shannon asked.
“Huang isn’t taking any chances on this one,” McKay said. “He brought a team of SEALs.”
Shannon’s lips broke into a sardonic grin. He looked from side to side as if hoping to see if the rest of us had caught the hidden punch line of a bad joke.
“Is something funny, Sergeant?” McKay asked.
“I know what our sergeant is thinking,” Klyber said. “You are correct, Sergeant Shannon, but it cannot be helped.
“For now I suggest that you go get some rest. We’ll be in position around Ronan Minor in five hours. Your transport leaves at 0500.”
“Okay, what did I miss?” I asked, as we rode the elevator down.
Shannon smiled that same sardonic smile. “Huang has SEALs. Why do you think he asked Admiral Klyber for a couple of Marines?”
I thought about this for a moment. “I have no idea,” I said, shaking my head.
“He’s covering his ass,” Shannon said. “If we run into an enemy army, he can say we led them into a trap. If Crowley and Atkins get away, he’ll report that we specked the goddamned mission. And that, Corporal Harris, is why they call out the shit-kicking Marines.”
There was something of the poet in Sergeant Shannon.
If Crowley and Atkins were down there, they did not have radar. Radar was a luxury fugitives could not afford. The Navy could detect a radar field from thousands of miles away. Having radar would have warned them we were coming, but it would also have confirmed for us that they were there. Huang’s orders directed us to land a full day’s hike from Atkins’s camp so that no one would see us coming. We would drop in the morning, cut our way through the jungle, and surprise the enemy at dusk. I liked the plan’s simplicity, but I was nervous about working with SEALs. Having only been on active duty for one year, I had never seen SEALs in action. All I knew about them was that they were not clones, nor were they, unlike the other officers, the errant sons of Earth-based politicians. SEALs were volunteers. Adventurous young men from around the galaxy applied to join. Only the absolute best were admitted into SEAL training school, and less than half of those who entered the school graduated.
The SEALs were already aboard the AT when Sergeant Shannon and I walked up the ramp into the kettle. This was the first time I had ever gone out with a team composed of all natural-born soldiers, and I was curious to get a look at them. Most of them were on the short side—between five-foot-six and five-foot-ten—with taut builds, clean-shaven heads, and alert eyes. As we boarded, they became quiet and watched us warily.
The SEALs traveled light. We had a twenty-mile hike from the drop site to the target zone. If we got bogged down in the jungle, Huang wanted us to stop for the night rather than travel blind. Shannon and I had
brought packs. The only supplies the SEALs carried were what they could wear on their belts. The rear of the kettle closed as our pilot prepared to take off. Hearing the hiss of the lifts, I placed my helmet on the bench beside me and rested my elbow on it. Shannon, who sat across the floor from me, continued to wear his.
As we rumbled out of the landing bay of the Kamehameha , the SEALs began talking quietly among themselves. They had clearly worked together before and spoke nostalgically about planets they had raided. I could not see into Shannon’s helmet, but I got the feeling he enjoyed listening to them. There had only been one real war in the last hundred years, and Tabor Shannon was the only man on our mission who was old enough to have fought in it.
One of the SEALs pulled a cigar from his vest pocket. As he lit it, I noticed a round insignia brantooed on his forearm. In the quick glimpse that I got, I saw the whirlpool pattern of the Milky Way with each of its arms stained a different color.
The brantoo process involved melting a pattern into the skin, then staining the burn with alcohol-based dyes. I knew plenty of Marines with tattoos. Some of the more rugged veterans around the Kamehameha had brantoos, but they were small, maybe the size of a coin, and single-colored. To make these brantoos, these SEALs would have suffered through the tinting process six or seven times. I wanted to ask the SEAL if he was awake when he got the brantoo, but I already knew the answer. The SEAL looked at me. “See something interesting?” he said, in a way that was neither aggressive nor friendly.
“I noticed your brantoo,” I said.
With a slight laugh, he rolled back his sleeve and showed me his arm. “We all have one.”
I looked more closely. The insignia showed the Milky Way with red, yellow, blue, green, orange, and black arms. A banner over the galaxy said “NAVY SEALS.” A banner under the galaxy said “THE
FINAL SOLUTION.”
Shannon removed his helmet, and said, “Let’s test out your interLink.”
I put my helmet on.
“They’re not so tough,” Shannon said over the interLink. “Don’t let that brantoo shit fool you.”
“It has six tints,” I said.
“Keep focused, Harris.”
“Six,” I said.
“Harris, do you know why Admiral Huang got so angry when he saw us?” Shannon interrupted.
“Years of constipation?” I asked.
“He wanted Marines he could push around . . . grunts he could intimidate. He thought Klyber would give him a couple of normal jarheads. Instead, he got us.”
“You think so?” I asked.
“Take my word for it, Harris. We’re the scariest friggin’ weapon in the Unified Authority arsenal.”
I glanced at the SEAL who had shown me his brantoo. Nothing bound him to me, not even humanity. He was natural, I was synthetic. It might have been psychosomatic; but ever since my conversation with Klyber, I felt more and more disconnected from everyone around me. Was this untethering the reason the Linear Committee resorted to Plato’s lie?
The SEALs passed small pots of green and black face paint among themselves. Dipping their fingers in the pots, they drew stripes and patterns over their faces until they covered all of their skin. The walls of the transport shook as we entered the atmosphere. A few minutes later, a light flashed signaling that we had neared the drop zone. As we gathered our gear, Admiral Huang appeared on the overhead monitor. He spoke to the SEALs for a moment, then turned his attention to Shannon and me.
“You have been brought on this mission as a formality. You will do nothing unless so ordered by my men. If you get in the way, I will hold you personally responsible for the failure of this mission.”
“Yes, sir,” Shannon and I intoned, in perfect sync.
Huang turned back to his SEALs. “We need information, not corpses. I want them alive.” With that, Huang saluted, and the signal ended.
Technicians aboard the Kamehameha had launched a surveillance satellite to view Ronan Minor long before our AT launched. They made a significant discovery—one part of the planet was infested with rats. The vermin offered an important confirmation. At that point in the seeded planet cycle, Ronan Minor should only have had plant life. Somebody had landed, and rats had escaped into a world with no predators and plenty of food.
As we left the ship, I noticed how well the SEALs blended into the jungle. The paint on their hands and faces, which looked so ridiculous in the all-metal environment of the armored transport, matched the leaves and shades of the jungle. We had learned about camouflage back at the orphanage, of course, but I had never seen it firsthand. The SEALs filed out in a column, with Shannon and me trailing a few yards behind.
My armor shielded me from the heat. I could see the way the humidity affected the SEALs. Underarm stains began to show through their uniforms within minutes of leaving the kettle. Drops of perspiration rolled down the oil-based paint on their faces.
“Those poor boys look uncomfortable.” Shannon’s voice oozed with mock empathy. Though the SEALs used a proprietary channel to communicate with their headsets, I located a faint echo of their chatter on the interLink. They did not speak much, and the few crackling words I understood were all business. “I get the feeling that they’re not thinking about the heat,” I said. When McKay first told us we would have a thirty-mile hike through the jungle, I envisioned one long, hot afternoon. The foliage grew thicker than I had imagined, and the SEALs cut ahead slowly, careful not to make unnecessary noise. Instead of trotting twelve-minute miles, we barely traveled two miles per hour. Since Ronan Minor, a small planet with a fast rotation, had sixteen-hour days, we were going camping, like it or not. We pushed to within four miles of the target zone, then stopped for the night. When one of the SEALs told us that Shannon and I had drawn guard duty, I wasn’t surprised. With heat vision and night-for-day lenses in our visors, we were the best choice to stand guard, but I could not help feeling snubbed. They were illustrious SEALs, and we were clones. While the rest of the team rested, Shannon and I sat on opposite ends of the camp.
About an hour after I settled into a nook beside a fern-covered tree, Shannon hailed me over the interLink. “See anything, Harris?” he asked, from the opposite end of the camp.
“Rats,” I said. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Using heat vision, I could see the rats’ heat signature through the foliage. They looked like bright red cartoons with even brighter yellow coronas as they scampered back and forth along the ground.
“Do you see anything else?” Shannon asked.
“Negative,” I said. “Am I missing something?”
“Look due west, all the way to the horizon. Keep using your heat vision.”
We were at the top of a low hill, just a swell in the terrain really. The jungle spread in front of me, and I could see above most of the growth. Off in the distance I saw the dark red silhouette of the oxygen generator. Only the tops of its stacks were giving off heat.
“The generator,” I said. “I missed it before.”
“It’s been shut down,” Shannon said. “Stage three seeding—the plant life takes over the oxygen production at this point.”
Thanks to my heat vision, I saw the aura of a rat running in my direction. I could not shoot it, of course. The noise would give us away. If the bastard came any closer, however, I was not above stomping it with my boot.
“Now look north of the generator. See anything?”
I looked but saw nothing. “This isn’t some kind of trick question is it?”
Shannon laughed. “Use your heat vision. Look at the forest about one mile north of the generator.”
“I still . . .” But I understood what he wanted me to see. Most of the forest looked velvety black through my visor, but there was a perfectly circular patch with a faint purple tinge. You had to look hard to see it, but it was there. “The Mogats?”
“The site’s gone cold,” Shannon said. “My guess is that they’ve been gone for months.”
I stared down at the zon
e. Little yellow filaments of light dodged in and out. “No people,” I said, “but there are plenty of rats.”
“The happy little bastards have the planet all to themselves,” Shannon said. “Maybe the SEALs will capture one. I would hate to see them go home empty-handed.”
“Do we tell them that the target zone is cold?” I asked.
“Why ruin their night?” Shannon asked.
If we found the compound crawling with people, the plan was to radio the Kamehameha for backup. We did not make a contingency plan for finding it overrun by rats.
Night on Ronan Minor lasted nine hours, and the SEALs resumed their march an hour before sunup. Feeling a bit fuzzy-headed, I had a little trouble keeping up with them. Pushing through the unchecked vines and broad-leaved foliage was slow work. The air was thick as steam. Condensation formed outside my visor. I wondered how the SEALs managed to breathe.
The rats were not the only residents of Ronan Minor; the planet had a healthy cockroach population as well. We didn’t run into many of them on the first day, but as we got closer to the Atkins compound, we saw them clinging to tree trunks and flying rather clumsily through the air. Several of them crashed into my helmet and fell to the ground. These were big roaches, maybe three inches long, with copper-colored bodies. I started when one crawled across the front of my visor. Nobody but Shannon noticed, but I had to put up with him laughing at me over the interLink for the next two miles.
We climbed over a rise and found the edge of the target. The entire site lay hidden under layers of camouflage netting.
“Sergeant”—the team leader motioned for Shannon to come—“do you have heat vision?”
“The compound is empty,” Shannon said in a matter-of-fact voice.
“Son of a—Shit!” the SEAL said.
“You gonna tell him you scanned it last night?” I whispered over the interLink.
The Clone Republic Page 17