When I returned to the Navy base, I noticed a difference in the way the sailors responded to me. The evening I arrived, they clamored to meet me and shake my hand. Earlier that morning, as I rushed to meet Nester Smart, they couldn’t wait to shake my hand and wish me luck. After the hearing, these same men took long furtive glances at me, ducking their heads and pretending to stare at the ground when I looked in their direction. They did not seem interested in speaking. When I approached two of my drinking buddies from the night before, they said they had business to attend to and walked away. I went to the barracks to change out of my formals. I did not know how long I would remain in Washington, DC, or where HQ might transfer me. The only thing I knew was that I was no longer assigned to the Kamehameha .
When I checked my mediaLink shades, however, I found three official communiqués for Lieutenant Harris and one letter addressed to Wayson Harris. I read the letter first.
Congratulations, Wayson. You’re a hero! I hear people talking about you at work. Nobody believes me when I tell them that you and I dated in Hawaii.
Speaking of Hawaii, it’s been months, and I have not heard from you. Jennifer says that you are doing well. Vince tells her about you in his letters.
I am sorry that I was not able to say good-bye in Hawaii. I went by the hospital before I left. I think about you a lot. I had a very fun time and hope you did, too.
Please write soon,
Kasara
I did not write to Kasara from the hospital. With all of the excitement about Lector and the invasion of Little Man, I mostly forgot about her. Now that I saw the message from her, my memory came back with a rush of emotion. Funny. I didn’t think she meant much to me, but I felt lonely when I thought about her. Nostalgia? Was it my heart or my testicles?
The first of the official communiqués was my transfer. I had been assigned to serve under Bryce Klyber’s command on a ship called the Doctrinaire . Curiously, the Doctrinaire was not attached to a fleet. I was to report for duty in three days but had no idea where to go.
The idea of serving under Klyber again had great appeal. I had not gotten a chance to thank him for rescuing me in the House. He had slipped out the moment the vote was finished. The second message was from Vince Lee.
Harris,
You are a Liberator! Oh my God, how disgusting!
News travels fast from closed sessions. And they thought your kind were dead, ha-ha!
Hope all is well,
Second Lieutenant Vince Lee
Only an hour had passed since I had left the House. Did he hear about the entire session, or was my being a Liberator the only leak?
The third message came from Aleg Oberland, the teacher who ran the Tactical Simulations Center at the orphanage. It had been nearly two years since my last visit with him. Back then he had told me that my career would be set if I caught Klyber’s eye.
Oberland’s message was shortest of all—“Contact me.” At the end of his message was a command button that said “Direct Reply.” Oberland appeared on the screen. “Wayson,” he said, “are you okay?”
“You heard about it, too?” I asked.
He stared into the screen. “I’m in DC,” Oberland said. “Does a busy Liberator like you have time for lunch?”
We met in a diner near Union Station. Oberland arrived before me. When I stepped through the door, I saw him waving from a booth.
“How are you feeling?” Oberland asked as he climbed out of his booth and shook my hand. He looked tired and worried. He looked into my eyes too long and too thoughtfully. He reminded me of someone visiting a friend with a fatal disease.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Took a bit of a beating in the House, but I guess I should have expected that.”
Oberland continued to stare at me as if he expected me to collapse on the spot. “Ever since Little Man, you’re all anybody ever wants to talk about back at #553. I’ve been following the Kamehameha on the mediaLink. Ezer Kri was big news. So was Hubble!”
A waitress rolled up to our booth. I ordered a sandwich and a salad. Oberland only ordered a salad.
“I just about wrote you off when I found out you were sent to Little Man. You’ve been out to the edge of the galaxy.”
“I just about wrote myself off on Little Man,” I admitted.
“I came in last night,” Oberland said. “What happened in there? I mean, I know you received a unanimous vote of commendation.”
The waitress returned with our food, and we started eating. Picking at his salad, Oberland said, “The reports say there were several Liberators on Little Man.”
“Four of us,” I said, around a mouthful of sandwich.
“There was me, Lector . . .”
“Lector?” Oberland asked.
“Booth Lector. He was transferred to the Kamehameha a few weeks before we shipped off to Little Man.”
“I know the name, Wayson,” Oberland said. “I didn’t know he was still alive.”
“He’s not,” I said. “He died on Little Man. So did two other Liberators.”
“Let me guess . . . Clearance Marshall and Tony Saul,” Oberland said. “I finished my career on New Prague. I got there three weeks after the massacre. They cleaned up most of the bodies before I arrived, but I still found fingers and teeth on the ground. The first team on the scene cleared out the big stuff, the bodies.
“The Senate launched a full investigation into why so many civilians were killed. I conducted the Army investigation. We found out what went wrong. It was a platoon of Liberators—Lector’s platoon. They destroyed an entire town, then they destroyed the next town and the town after that. By the time they finished, thirty thousand civilians had died. And it wasn’t like they blew them up with a big bomb, either. I don’t know why Congress outlawed Liberators, but I can tell you why I would. The people they killed on New Prague . . . they slaughtered them one at a time.” Oberland pushed the rest of his salad away on his plate and shook his head. “I try hard not to think about New Prague.”
“Must have been bad,” I said, not knowing what else to say. They didn’t teach us the details of that particular massacre in class. All we’d ever heard about was the number of victims. I wanted to ask how a single platoon managed to kill thirty thousand people in a single day; but looking at Oberland’s grim expression, I decided to change the subject.
I told Oberland about Bill Hawkins producing my helmet. He listened intently, especially when I brought up the video feed.
“Hawkins should be more careful. Klyber is a powerful enemy,” Oberland said. “I imagine he is also a powerful ally. I don’t suppose his appearance in the House was a lucky accident?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I just got transferred to his new ship.”
“That makes sense. Klyber’s involvement with Liberators was never much of a secret. We used to call them ‘Klyber’s brew.’ Of course, we didn’t say that in front of him . . . or them.”
“Admiral Klyber told me that creating Liberators was the only black mark on his career,” I said. “I get the feeling that he sees me as a way to wipe the slate clean.”
“Pulling six men off Little Man was impressive,” Oberland said as he started up his salad again. “Too bad you weren’t able to pull an officer with them.”
“You mean a natural-born,” I said.
“Yes. Saving those clones was quite a feat, but it will take a lot more than saving clones to give Liberators a good name.”
“I suppose,” I said.
“I haven’t heard anything about Klyber taking command of a new ship,” Oberland said.
“My transfer didn’t list a fleet, just a ship called the Doctrinaire .”
“Klyber does not get involved with a project unless it is important,” Oberland said. He looked at his wristwatch then stared out the window. I could tell he felt rushed. He drummed his fingers on table for a moment. “I want to ask you something. I’ve wanted to ask you this since the first time you walked into my simulation lab. Wayson
, you always seemed like a good kid.”
“Are you asking if I am like Lector?” I interrupted.
Considering my question, Oberland checked his watch and looked out the window again. Crowds of people had filed into the station. I had not noticed it before, but Oberland had a small overnight bag beside his seat. “I would never have allowed you in my simulations lab if I’d thought you were like Lector. But you have the same programming and the same genes.”
“See these scars?” I pointed to my eyebrow and down my cheek. “These aren’t from Little Man. I never got so much as a nick on Little Man. These came from Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?” Oberland said, clearly strolling down some old memory lane. I was afraid he would ask if I had gone to Sad Sam’s Palace, but all he said was “I used to go there on leave.”
“I got in a fight with a Navy SEAL. He was short, almost a midget. He came up to here on me,” I said, running my pointer finger along my collarbone. “I’ve never seen anybody move so fast in a fight. And his fingers were like talons. He could have killed me right from the start, but he gave me a chance.” I laughed a short, hollow laugh and paused to relive the fight in my mind. “The little bastard made a mistake, and I got the upper hand. I damn near killed him.
“You want to hear something strange? I think he was a clone.”
Oberland shook his head. “SEALs are natural-born.”
“That’s the way of things, isn’t it? Replace the valuable with the expendable. Get rid of the natural-borns with their relatives and their political pratfalls and exchange them for clones. You can tailor clones to fit your needs.”
“I suppose that was what Klyber did when he made Liberators,” Oberland said, in a tired voice.
“The best Marine I ever met was a Liberator, a sergeant named Tabor Shannon. He and I got drunk together the night that I found out I was a clone. You know what he told me? He said that being a clone meant that you never wondered about right and wrong. He said that we were man-made, and our commanding officer was our god and creator. That sounds bad when I think about massacres like New Prague, but this guy was nothing like Lector. I think Liberators make their own choices, just like everybody else.”
“Wayson, I’m already late for my transport,” Oberland said as he stepped out of the booth.
“I’m glad you came,” I said. “It’s nice seeing a friendly face.”
I stood up and shook Oberland’s hand. He grabbed his overnight bag and trotted out the door, pausing for only a moment to look back at me. Oberland, a small, trim man with messy white hair, blended into the transport station crowd and vanished. I wished that I could go with him and return to the orphanage.
“Good-bye, old friend,” I whispered to myself.
It turned out to be my day for meeting old friends.
I did not feel like returning to base and sitting around, ignored by Baxter and the other sailors, so I went to a nearby bar and found a small table in a dark corner where I thought no one would notice me. It was a nice place, more lavish than the sea-soldiers’ drinking hole on the Kamehameha . The place had dim red lights that gave the beige walls a dark, cozy feel. During the quiet hours of the late afternoon, the bartender struck up conversations with the customers seated around the bar as he poured drinks. I felt at home. The Earth-grown brew flowed freely enough there, and nobody looked like a politician. Everything seemed right in the universe except that I could not seem to get even remotely drunk. Then off-duty sailors started rolling into the bar. The first stray dogs showed around 1700 hours. By 1900, gabbing, happy swabbies filled the place. A few stragglers hovered around the counter swilling down drinks as fast as they could order them while dozens more crowded around tables swapping jokes and smacking each other on the arms. Sitting morosely in my quiet little corner, drinking my tenth or possibly fifteenth beer, I thought how much I hated this city.
Ray Freeman entered the bar.
I don’t think anybody knew who he was; they just knew he was dangerous. Dressed in his jumpsuit with its armored breastplate, Freeman looked like he had come in from a war. He stood more than a foot taller than most of the men he passed.
Silence spread across the bar like an infection. Sailors stepped out of his way as he crossed the floor. Freeman walked through the crowd without stopping for a drink. He came to my table. “Hello, Harris,”
he said.
“How’d you recognize me without my helmet?” I quipped.
“Liberators aren’t hard to spot,” Freeman said. “At least that’s what they’re saying on the mediaLink.”
“Neither are seven-foot mercenaries,” I said.
Freeman sat down across the table from me.
“The chair isn’t taken,” I said. “Why don’t you join me?”
“You were lucky to get off Little Man alive,” Freeman said.
So much for small talk, I thought. “Thank you for that insight. Next time I get chased by ten thousand angry Mogats, I won’t mistakenly think that I have everything under control.”
With his dark skin and clothes, Freeman looked like a shadow in the dim ambiance of the bar. He smiled and looked around. “You should quit the Marines,” he said. “Why don’t you quit?”
“It’s in my genes,” I responded, pleased with my little joke. Freeman did not laugh, not even a chuckle.
“You didn’t come to Washington, DC, just to tell me to quit the Corps?”
By that time the sailors around the bar had forgotten about us. They joked, laughed, and told stories at the tops of their lungs. Freeman, however, made no adjustment to compensate for their rising decibels. He spoke in the same quiet, rumbling voice that he always used. “We could be partners,” he said.
“What did you say?” I asked. “I didn’t understand you. It sounded like you said I should become your partner.”
“We’d do good together.”
I paused to stare at him. Ray Freeman, the perfect killing machine and the coldest man alive, had just asked me to be his partner.
“Partners?” I repeated, not sure that I wasn’t having a hallucination brought on from nearly twenty glasses of beer. “Go into business? With you?”
Freeman did not respond.
“Leave the Marines?”
“You weren’t supposed to survive Little Man,” Freeman said. “You may not survive next time.”
“Next time?” I asked. I knew I could leave the Marines, but deep inside, I did not want to leave. Even after the massacre at Little Man and everything they put me through in the House of Representatives . . . even knowing that my kind was extinct and the people I was protecting wanted to end my life, I wanted to stay in the Marines.
“I can’t leave the service. I’m a Liberator, remember? You can’t drive spaceships underwater. I’m doing the thing I was made to do, and I can’t do anything else.” I knew I was lying. I could leave, but something in my programming kept me coming back for more.
Suddenly my mouth went dry. “Goddamn,” I hissed to myself. Back when I was sober, I assured Aleg Oberland that I would not become like Booth Lector because Liberators made their own choices. But, faced with the knowledge that I would die if I remained in the corps, I wanted to stay where I was. My head hurt, and I started to feel sick to my stomach. I rubbed my eyes. When I looked up, Ray Freeman was gone, if he’d ever been there at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY
One sure sign of a high-security military operation is the means of transportation used for bringing in new recruits. I could have taken public transportation to Gobi. Military transports flew in and out of the SC
Central Fleet on a daily basis. This transfer was different. On the morning I was supposed to transfer to the Doctrinaire , Admiral Klyber’s new ship, a driver showed up at my door.
“Lieutenant Harris?” the petty officer asked, as I opened my door.
“Can I help you?” It was 0800. I was packed and dressed but had not yet eaten my breakfast.
“I’m your ride,” the petty officer said.
“My ride? I don’t even know where I’m supposed to go; I can’t leave the station yet.”
“You’re transferring to the Doctrinaire, ” the petty officer said. “It’s not like they run a shuttle at the top of every half hour, sir.”
The petty officer loaded my rucksack into the back of his jeep and drove me out to the airfield. A little Johnston R-27 sat ready on the field. The Johnston was the smallest noncombat craft in military employ. It carried a maximum of twelve passengers.
I looked at the little transport. It was raining that morning. Beads of rain ran down the sides and windows. “I hope we are not going very far,” I said.
“We’ll put on a few light-years before nightfall,” the petty officer responded. “That Johnston is self-broadcasting.”
“You’re shitting me,” I said.
“No, sir,” the petty officer said as he grabbed my bags from the back of the jeep.
“You have got to be shitting me,” I said.
A pilot met us on the launchpad and opened the doors to the Johnston. He was a Navy man, a full lieutenant dressed in khakis. He looked at me and smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
The petty officer placed my bags in the Johnston and saluted. “Lieutenant Harris does not believe this bird is self-broadcasting, sir.”
I followed the lieutenant aboard. The Johnston was heavily modified inside. It only had four seats instead of the usual twelve. Used for both military and corporate travel, Johnstons had small galleys for long trips. There were no such amenities on that R-27. Behind the four seats, the rest of the passenger cabin was blocked by a cloth-covered wall.
The Johnston took off like any spaceworthy plane, using discrete jets to lift ten feet off the ground. We left Earth at a standard trajectory, flying at the standard MACH 3 speed. We had the usual quivers as we left the atmosphere.
Moments later, the petty officer shot me a wink as the tint shield darkened the windows. The air inside the cabin began to smell of ozone. Muffled crackling sounds seeped through the barrier at the back of the cabin. There was a bright flash, and suddenly everything was normal again.
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