The Clone Republic (Clone 1)

by Steven L. Kent

  “And now . . . your returning champion, with a record of two hundred and zero in Sad Sam’s Iron Man competition, Adam Boyd.” The crowd went insane. Three stories of spectators began screaming at the tops of their lungs. Someone in the balconies began clanking a gong. Men stood on tables and whistled. The clamor was deafening.

  Boyd entered the arena, walking a path that led him right past our table. A spotlight shone from the ceiling, and the people around us rose to their feet. Though he passed within five feet of our table, I had to stand to get a good look at him. The man I saw was nothing like I expected.

  I had thought this undefeatable Adam Boyd must be seven feet tall and built out of bricks. Instead, an undersized and thin fellow with a receding hairline strode past. I would have had trouble believing that he was even five feet tall without seeing him measured.

  “Key-riste! That’s the champion?” Lee gasped.

  “They’re putting that little man in with that monster?” Jennifer gasped.

  “The midget is the champion,” Lee said.

  The announcer left the ring, and the fight began. Boyd, whose head barely reached his opponent’s shoulders, moved in warily. He crouched low, held his hands high in front of his head, and circled the floor rather than charging straight ahead.

  Kimo Turner lunged straight in, throwing a massive punch that might have decapitated Boyd had it landed. The punch was slow. Boyd easily dodged it, but Kimo was a cagey fighter. The punch was a ruse. His body pivoted with the massive momentum of the missed punch, and he threw a back kick that should have hit Boyd in the chest or throat.

  It was a smart move that did not work. Boyd had the reflexes of a demon. He dodged, shot in under the kick, and swept Kimo’s other leg. Kimo fell. The crowd cheered.

  Adam Boyd moved in for the kill without a moment’s hesitation. He pounced on Kimo, drilling punches straight down around his eyes and jaw. The entire fight lasted less than one minute.

  “Shit!” howled Vince. “Shit, shit, shit! I’ve never seen anything like that. That guy is a friggin’ killer!”

  I cannot accurately describe how the fight made me feel. It was like a challenge, as though Adam Boyd’s abilities shook my self-confidence. “I think I like Big-Time Wrestling better,” I said.

  The announcer stepped back into the ring. “Ladies and gentleman, your winner, by early knockout, Adam Boyd.” As Boyd and the announcer left the ring, the crowd roared. When they returned five minutes later, the applause became all the noisier.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” the announcer went on, “it appears we have been graced with a visit from the Republic’s finest.” Suddenly a blinding spotlight pointed at our table. I had to squint to see my own hands.

  “Gentlemen, which one of you will represent the Scutum-Crux Fleet against our champion?” the announcer asked.

  I looked over at Lee. In the glaring light, his skin looked white, flat white. He looked as nervous as I felt. We stared at each other for a moment, then Lee started to stand.

  “Vince,” Jennifer said as she reached for his arm.

  “Sit down, Corporal,” I said, pulling rank.

  “Oh, come on, Wayson. Don’t be like that,” Lee said, sitting back in his chair.

  “He said something about our Republic’s finest, and that sure as hell isn’t you, Corporal.” I did not believe that, of course. But that Boyd character was fast and brutal. I’d sparred with Vince on several occasions. He was powerful but slow, and very predictable. He would have made an easy meal for this Adam Boyd fellow.

  “You shouldn’t do this, Wayson,” Jennifer said. “You don’t need to go up there.”

  “Kick his ass, Wayson,” Kasara said. She clapped excitedly, and her face beamed. She loved the attention. I’d never seen her so excited.

  “I think I do need to go,” I said to Jennifer. Looking at her, I felt a pang of jealousy. Lee did not know it, but he had been the luckier one all along.

  The spotlight followed me as I walked toward the ring, blinding me to everything outside its bright circle. I heard people applauding, but they sounded miles away. So did the announcer’s voice. The bright lights above the ring made everything look black and white. The announcer, with his pale skin and black tuxedo, completed the effect.

  Standing on the far side of the platform, Adam Boyd watched me calmly. The closer I came, the more things I noticed about him. From the steps along the side of the ring, I saw that his fingers ended in sharp points, almost like claws. That’s going to be a problem, I thought. I also spotted the thick ridge of bone that ran under his eyebrows and into his hair. He was human, no doubt about that, but it was as if someone had engineered him for battle.

  Once I stepped onto the platform, I found myself cut off from the rest of the world. I heard spectators shouting, but it blurred into a dull, indistinct roar. It sounded like waves on the beach. The announcer had already finished speaking and started out of the ring.

  The flimsy shirt and shorts I had on would not slow me down in a fight, but they would offer no protection from Boyd’s clawlike fingers. I looked at his claws, then expanded my glance to include the tightly muscled arms. There was a circular brantoo on his forearm. I only saw it for a moment, but I recognized the sweep of colors. “You’re a SEAL?” I whispered to myself. Then the bell rang and thought turned into instinct.

  Boyd immediately dropped into that cautious stance, his knees flexed and his clawlike fingers pointed right at me. His wide-set dark eyes fixed on my face and shoulders. He circled toward my left, moving so smoothly that he seemed to glide across the canvas.

  My first instinct was to grapple. Growing up, I had studied judo and jujitsu. I’d won the orphanage wrestling title three years in a row. Boyd slipped around the arena so gracefully, however, that I doubted I would ever get close enough to knock him off his feet. Against that speed, my only chance was to keep him at long range, where he could not reach me. I jabbed with my left, keeping my right hand high to protect my eyes and chin.

  Seeming to evaporate into the thick air, Boyd dodged my punch and lashed across my face with an open hand. Sharp fingers cut into my right cheek, just below my eye. Jumping back to get out of his range, I wiped the wound with the back of my hand. A thick layer of blood covered my knuckles.

  That swipe across the cheek might have been a warning. Boyd could have just as easily sliced across my eye or throat. Even then, he paused a couple of feet away, allowing me to check my wound. I doubted he would be polite much longer.

  I needed to rush the bastard after all. Win or lose, I needed to trap him quickly. If the fight wore on, Boyd could weave in and out, bleeding me dry until I could no longer defend myself. I looked into his brown eyes and assumed a boxer’s stance with my fists high, guarding my face.

  Boyd leaped forward with inhuman speed. Flinging himself at me, he suddenly veered to my right. I felt a white-hot pain across my face, but knew better than to check the damage. I had just been scratched above my right eyebrow, across the bridge of my nose, and down to the left side of my mouth. Blood started to pour from the gash on my forehead, stinging my eyes and blurring my vision.

  With no other choice, I dived at Boyd, hoping to catch him off guard. Unsure whether I should keep my arms in front of my face for protection or grab for Boyd’s knees, I kept my arms too low for protection and too close together for a good grab. I should have done one or the other; either would have been somewhat effective. Instead, I left myself open. Boyd swiped his talons across my forehead and pranced out of range.

  Already out of breath, with my right eye swollen and stinging, I became vaguely aware of hooting and catcalls coming from the spectators. They could already see the fight coming to an end. So much blood had flowed across my right eye that I could not see through it. Boyd read the damage. He circled toward my right, working his way toward the hazy blind spot. I knew what he was doing, but I had no way to counter his move.

  Perhaps, seeing the blood flow, Boyd had overestimated the damage he had
caused. Though my right eye was blind, my sense of the ring was not. Hurt but not broken, I threw a blind backhanded fist that caught Boyd on the mouth and cheek. It was a powerful blow that left him temporarily senseless.

  I spun into him, wrapping my arms around his chest. If I could throw him off his feet, I would take away his speed. We stood toe-to-toe, our chests pressed together. I cinched my arms around his and clamped them at the wrists. Our faces were so close we might have been kissing. As I heaved to lift him, I noticed that his skin was smooth, even under his eyes.

  Small and compact, Adam Boyd weighed considerably more than I expected. I squeezed tighter. Straining my back and arms, I pulled him off the ground. I meant to throw him headlong into the cage walls, but he managed to slip his forearms around my back and stabbed those dagger fingers into my skin. I squeezed tighter and smashed my forehead down on the bridge of Boyd’s nose.

  Boyd was strong and fast, but he was not immune to pain. I had butted my forehead on the soft landing of his nose and felt the fleshy structure buckle under the force. When I saw Boyd’s face again, his nose was purple and twisted so badly that one nostril pointed down and the other up. Blood gushed from both sides.

  He did not give up. Digging his sharp fingers into my skin like corkscrews, he clawed into my back. His nails slit my skin and pressed into my ribs. He scratched deeper, twisting his fingers into the wounds. The pain and frustration made me scream.

  I was losing blood and the pain sent white-hot flashes through my body. My head spun, but my thoughts remained focused. I reeled my head back and slammed my forehead back down against Boyd’s badly crushed nose. His fingers loosened from my back. He was probably already unconscious, might even have been dead, but I did not wait to find out. I flipped the little bastard into the chain-link wall around the ring, smashing his face into it as hard as I could. His body slumped against the hard wire, and I dug my knee into his spine. He fell to the mat. Planting my knee across his throat, I threw three hard rights, battering the remains of his nose and left eye. A puddle of dark blood formed under his head.

  My final punches were entirely wasted. Boyd did not move. He did not flinch or twitch. If an air bubble had not formed in the blood under his flattened nostrils, I would have thought I’d killed him.

  Sighing heavily and taking no pride in what I had just done, I stood up. By that time the announcer stood in the ring. “Mary, mother of Joseph,” he muttered, “I thought Boyd was going to kill you.”

  I started to say, “Looks like it was the other way around,” but my knees buckled, and I swooned to the mat. The announcer quickly grabbed my hand and raised it. I heard the mob shouting hysterically outside the ring. Lights came on all over the arena, and I saw men hanging from the balconies. Lee ran into the ring and placed an arm under my shoulder.

  “Vince,” I said, unable to say any more.

  “Wayson, that was amazing. Unbelievable! I’ve never seen anybody fight like that. No shit, Harris, you were friggin’ amazing!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I did not say good-bye to Kasara. On my way out of Sad Sam’s Palace, I collapsed from loss of blood. Lee spent the morning driving Kasara and Jennifer to the airport and waiting with them for their plane. I spent the next two days drugged into peaceful oblivion with an IV needle in my arm.

  Lee was in the room when I woke up on Sunday afternoon. “You going to stay awake this time?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m awake.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like my back is on fire.” I could hear Lee, and I could see his blurred shape, but my sight remained fuzzy. “How long have I been out?”

  “Going on three days,” Lee said.

  “Kasara?” I asked, feeling lower and lower by the second.

  “She left two days ago,” Lee said. “She wants you to call her. She was really worried about you.”

  I tried to sit up, but my blurred vision began to spin. I slumped back on my mattress, aggravating the lacerations on my back. I winced.

  “That guy would have killed me,” Lee said.

  I thought about it. “He might have. He damn near killed me.”

  “He’s damn near killed a lot of people,” Vince said. My vision cleared as we spoke. I could see the features on Vince’s face. I could make out details around the room. There were empty seats all around us, but Lee was sitting on the edge of my bed. We were in a hospital recovery room. There were empty beds on either side of me.

  “The announcer said he had two hundred straight victories,” Lee said.

  I tried to sit up again. The tears along the small of my back stretched and I gritted my teeth. “I’ve had some time to think about that, too,” I said. “My match might have been the little bastard’s first fight.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lee sounded confused.

  “Boyd didn’t have any scars on his face,” I said. “I got really close to him in that fight. He had baby skin—no scars, no cuts. Either he’s so fast that in two hundred fights nobody ever hit him, or . . .”

  “You think the announcer was lying?” Lee asked, slipping off the bed. The mattress bounced and I moaned. “Sorry. Want some water?” He picked up a plastic pitcher and poured me a cup.

  “I think Adam Boyd is a clone,” I said. “I think several Adam Boyd clones share that two hundred and zero record. Nobody could go two hundred fights in a ring like that without picking up scars.”

  “Two hundred wins and one loss,” Lee corrected me. “You killed him last night. Maybe he doesn’t scar. Wayson, having baby skin doesn’t make you a clone. If it did, Jennifer would be a clone. I got really, really close to her and she didn’t have any scars.”

  “Jennifer does not have a brantoo.”

  “What?”

  “Boyd has a brantoo, right here,” I said, pointing at my forearm. “He has the same brantoo the SEALs had on Ronan Minor.”

  “No shit,” Lee said. “A midget SEAL clone. Why would they clone a midget?” We both knew the answer. We’d seen Boyd in action. Fast and small and agile, he was the perfect commando.

  I had come on vacation to sort out my feelings, and that was pretty much all I did for the rest of my stay. I never left the hospital, never visited the beach. Lee wanted to stay with me, but I sent him away. It was my chance to think about undeserved promotions, friends lost in dark caves, and learning I was the last of my kind. My sort of misery did not love company.

  I also needed to sort out what it meant to be a Liberator. Sergeant Shannon might have devised a cruel way to flush the Mogats out of their caves, but I doubt he wanted to massacre them. He was tough in drills, but hadn’t I given one of my men two black eyes? And why had I assaulted the man—because he missed some shots? If Shannon had felt the same level of rage I had, he did a brilliant job of controlling it. Of course that could have been his religious side. From what I had seen, Shannon never missed Sunday services.

  I continued to whale on Adam Boyd after I knocked him unconscious. Was I trying to kill him or was I just swept along by my own momentum? Maybe Congress was right to ban Liberators. What would a regular clone or a natural-born have done? I turned these thoughts over in my mind. Had Lee known about my maudlin musings, he would have regretted bringing me.

  Nothing short of a medically induced coma could have protected me during the excruciating flight back to the fleet. Fortunately for me, we timed our trip around the fleet’s movements. The Kamehameha was near the broadcast network, and our flight time was under ten hours.

  My back hurt a little as they wheeled me out of the hospital. It hurt a little more when I climbed into Lee’s rental car. I took some pain medication as we drove, and don’t remember much after that.

  By the time we got to Mars, I had run out of medicine. The transport from Mars was a military ship with stiff seats. I felt pinching in my back as I sat. What I did not realize was that that dull ache was actually a very acute pain that was masked by a slight overdose of painkillers.r />
  “How are you feeling?” Lee asked.

  “Not bad,” I said. “I think I’m pretty well healed after all.”

  The transport struggled slightly as it left Mars’s gravity. My seat shook, and I got my first hint that the medicine was beginning to wear off.

  Lee looked at me. “You okay, Harris?”

  I took a deep breath. My ribs expanded as I inhaled. It hurt. “I’ll be glad to get back.”

  We approached the disc station. The lightning flashed and, of course, the transport shook. The shaking made my back hurt. We ended up passing through seven disc stations to reach the fleet. By that time, the small of my back felt swollen and some of the lacerations had begun to bleed.

  As we approached the fleet, I looked out my porthole. “Lee. Lee, look at this. We must have boarded the wrong flight.”

  He leaned over me to have a look. “What are you . . .” Seeing what I meant, Lee stood up and opened the locker above our seats. He pulled out our flight information.

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “I see the Kamehameha .” The last Expansion-class fighter carrier in operation, the Kamehameha had a distinct profile in space.

  As our shuttle glided toward the fleet, I could see four Orion-class star destroyers in the distance and the familiar sight of frigates circling like remora fish. Other ships floated about. I counted at least twenty Athens-class light missile carriers, oblong ships with diamond-shaped bows, hovering along one edge of the fleet. Five Interdictor-class battleships—bat-shaped ships that looked like miniature carriers—led the fleet.

  “Looks like Admiral Thurston persuaded Klyber to expand the fleet. It’s about time,” Lee said.

  I recognized other kinds of ships, too—ships I had heard about but never actually seen. We passed under a minesweeper—a short, sturdy ship that looked like a flying tunnel. Tiny communications ships buzzed around the fleet. The new ships had no armament at all, only large, retractable antenna arrays that pointed in every direction. Off in the distance, three huge barges sat perfectly still.