Rogue clone (17 page)

At first there is silence as the officers assimilate this information. Then applause erupts. General
Smith is the first to clap his hands, and the Air Force officers soon join in. Admiral Brocius stands
up from his chair and applauds. He slaps his hands together so hard that the noise echoes. A
moment later, Rear Admiral Thurston joins him, an appreciative smile on his youthful face. A
general from the Marines stands silently and salutes. The applause lasts for several minutes.

“What about armament?” Thurston asks, his enthusiasm evident.

The board behind Klyber shifts to an exterior schematic of the ship. Klyber picks up an
old-fashioned wooden pointer instead of the laser pointer that General Smith had used earlier.

“She has two massive forward cannons for bombarding stationary targets such as cities and
military bases. These cannons are both laser-and particle-beam enabled.” This is friendly talk,
like friends telling each other about a new car over a round of drinks.
Klyber slides the pointer along the outer edge of the wing. “The ship has three hundred particle
beam turrets along with twenty missile stations and fifteen torpedo stations. And, as I mentioned a
moment ago, she has a compliment of two hundred and eighty Tomcat fighters. Should the enemy
attempt to attack her, the
Doctrinaire
could annihilate the entire GC Fleet.

“Oh, and Thurston, you’ll appreciate this . . . Look at the shield antennas.” Klyber watches
expectantly. “This is an entirely new technology.”

There are rings around the antenna at the ends of the wings. Other U.A. ships do not have rings
connecting their antennas. Their shields are flat panes broadcast from pole-like antennas.

“We’ve developed a cylindrical shield,” Klyber says with the air of a father boasting about his
son. “Those rings project a seamless shield that covers the entire ship.”

“And the Mogats haven’t got a clue,” General Smith marvels.

“Perhaps,” Klyber says in a voice that carries across the room, “but I am concerned about that.
We paid for the ship with Linear Committee funds so that we could slip under the radar, but . .

.”—Klyber turns toward Admiral Huang—“apparently we didn’t go undetected.”

Suddenly, everyone in the room becomes silent. Huang looks at the other officers, hoping for
support. Rear Admiral Thurston, Huang’s closest ally, is too busy lusting over the schematics to
see that Huang needs help.

“Yes,” says General Smith, “it does appear that you had a breach of security.” Smith takes the
dais and formality creeps back into the session. The officers return to their seats.
Smith calls the meeting back to order. He turns toward Huang. “Admiral, while we are on the
subject of secret operations . . .”

Bryce Klyber’s combination of political and military acumen now comes to bear. It becomes
obvious that he has briefed General Smith about Huang’s Adam Boyd cloning project. Klyber
used himself as a decoy, and now that Huang has fired all his guns, Smith flanks and attacks.

“General,” Huang interrupts. “My intelligence unit located the construction of a large project in
deep space. Our radar showed repeated broadcasts in the Perseus Arm. We had no idea that this
was Admiral Klyber’s operation when we began investigating . . .”

But General Smith puts up a hand to stop him. Smith is smiling. He has no interest in beating the
Doctrinaire
horse any further. Everyone on the floor has now heard about the ship and shown their
approval. The smile on Smith’s face is one of supreme satisfaction. He is the gambler who has no
need to bluff. He is the only man at the table with all four aces in his hand.

“Admiral Huang, general accounting found an anomaly in your books. Apparently, your branch
has had a six billion dollar increase in spending on toilet paper and uniforms.” Smith’s smile turns
wicked as he says, “We all hope the lack of one of these items has not led to a need for the other.”

Huang does his best to look confused, but he is no actor. Instead of dropping his jaw, he clenches
it. He glares at General Smith. “I have a staff that goes through the books and reports to . . .”

“But a six billion dollar expenditure, surely that would not go unnoticed,” Smith observes.

“Perhaps our inventory was . . .”

“When my staff looked into it, we discovered that your procurement team placed no additional
orders for either toilet paper or uniforms, Admiral. What we found was that a mothballed Military
base was reactivated on Earth.” Alex Smith picks up his data pad.
Huang says nothing. He stares back at Smith defiantly.

“I understand that you have a cloning plant on the island of Oahu. Is that correct?” Smith asks.
Huang shows no sign of fear or remorse. “That is correct, General. The Navy is experimenting
with a new set of genes to improve our SEAL operations. I was unaware of any regulations
stating that the Navy had to clear its research projects with members of other branches.”

A video feed of an Adam Boyd in a firefight appears on the display board. It is a brief five-second
loop that repeats itself again and again. I recognize the image. It is from the battle on
Ravenwood—the one in which I supposedly died. The footage was taken from cameras placed in
the helmet I wore during the battle on Ravenwood. Ray Freeman placed my helmet by the body of
a different marine before lifting me off the planet.

Across the room, Admiral Thurston looks particularly interested in this discussion. Huang’s newly
cloned SEALs operate off of Thurston’s command ship.

“When were you planning on telling us about this new project?” asks General John Kellan, the
thirty-nine-year-old secretary of the Army. There is a centuries-old tradition of jealousy that runs
between the SEALs and Kellan’s Rangers.

We headed for Sad Sam’s at 2100 hours. It was Thursday night during a slow season for tourists, and the city seemed deserted. We found a drive-in restaurant just up the street from the Palace and ordered hamburgers, then ate in the car.

Except for the streetlamps and an occasional car, the only lights on the entire street came from the façade of the Palace. The marquee was studded with old-fashioned bulbs that winked on and off, casting their warm manila glare. Foot-tall letters announced the name, Sad Sam’s Palace. Below that, the event for the night—“Ultimate Fighting Competition: Mixed Martial Arts”—showed over a glowing ivory panel. The Palace was the modern world’s answer to the Roman coliseum. Instead of Christians and lions, it featured professional wrestlers, boxers, and mixed martial artists. It had an open challenge on Friday nights. If you were a military clone, and you happened to be in the audience during the Open Challenge, an announcer called you down to fight. The standing champion of that Open Challenge was a fighter named Adam Boyd, obviously one of Huang’s clones.

“You got that scar here?” Freeman asked.

The scar ran through the eyebrow over my left eye. Three smaller scars formed parallel stripes across my left cheek, just under the eye socket.

“This is the place,” I said.

I got the scars fighting an Adam Boyd clone. I beat him, had certainly put him in the hospital, but not before he dug into my face and back with his talonlike fingers, giving me lacerations that went all the way to the bone.

Freeman finished his burger and drink in what looked like a single motion, then sat without saying a word. As I finished my burger, the front doors opened and a mob flowed out. “Fights must be over,” I said, crumpling the wrapper and throwing it in the bag. “That’s our cue.” I climbed out of the car. The crowd thinned as we made our way across the empty street. Most of the people had walked in from the waterfront where the buses ran. Now they walked back, their excited chatter filling the street. An usher in a white shirt and black vest approached me as I came through the door. He must have seen Freeman, too, but he did not dare approach that giant of a man. “Show’s over,” he said.

“My friend dropped his wallet somewhere around his seat,” I said.

The man looked at Freeman, nodded, and stepped out of my way. If I had said it was my wallet, he would likely have told me to “come back tomorrow.”

We walked through the dark hall toward the auditorium, the usher following from a safe distance. Bright arc lights blazed in the center of the auditorium, their true white glare shining bright. A wall of bleachers surrounded the outer edges of the floor. These bleachers curved up, ending just below the first of two balconies. On busy nights during the tourist season, Sad Sam’s Palace must have played host to five thousand people per night. Now the floor was empty except for janitors sweeping food, cups, and wrappers from the floor. Under the lights, a small crew disassembled the steel cage and octagonal ring they used for mixed martial arts. Friday night was Open Challenge night. That show would take place on a raised platform with glass walls.

Freeman and I walked across the floor and headed for the tunnel to the dressing rooms. I paused for a moment to look at the ring, then pushed the door open.

“Where are you going?” the usher yelled. I did not bother answering. The answer was obvious. The metal doors opened to a brightly-lit hallway with a concrete floor and cinderblock walls. Some of the fluorescent lights that ran the length of the hall had gone dark, occasionally flashing on and off in a Morse code pattern. Our footsteps echoed, and the steel door slamming behind us sounded like a volcanic eruption.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Freeman asked.

“I’ve never been back here,” I said. That was not quite true. As I understand it, paramedics carried me back here on a stretcher after my fight, but I was only semiconscious during that ride. Halfway down the hall, we found a pair of emerald-green double doors. With the usher and three security guards storming down the hall yelling at us, I tried the door. It was unlocked, so I let myself in. Freeman remained outside to deal with the security guards.

The men inside the locker room seemed not to care that I had entered. A man with a towel wrapped around his waist strode past me without so much as a sideways glance. His hair was wet. He had a square chest and muscular arms, all of which was covered with welts and bruises. He sported a superb shiner over his right eye.

Another man, sitting stark naked on a wooden bench in front of a row of lockers, watched me. “I know you,” he said, rubbing his chin.

“Not likely,” I said.

The security guards had caught up to Freeman. It should have been a four-against-one battle; but from the sound of things, Freeman took out the first guard so quickly that it really was more accurately described as three-against-one. I heard, “Hey, you’re not . . .” Then there was the thunderous sound of something slamming against the outside of the door, followed by a moment of absolute silence.

“Shit. I’m calling the . . .” The door muffled the shouting.

Then the door flew open. In ran the usher, stumbling over the body of the fallen security guard. “There’s a giant black man out there!”

“That’s nothing,” said the naked man as he stood and stepped into his briefs. “There’s a Liberator clone in here.”

The usher looked at me, and the blood drained from his face. He did not say another word.

“You’re the one who killed that Adam Boyd guy,” the man said as he pulled up his pants. By this time several other fighters came to investigate. Outside, the commotion ended quickly. I heard a click, which I assumed was the last security guard’s head hitting the concrete, then Freeman stepped through the door looking as nonplussed as if he had come from a grocery store.

The usher was willing to share a locker room with me, but Freeman was another story. Freeman had barely come through the door when the usher bolted to the safety of the bathroom stalls.

“Everything moving along in here?” Freeman asked.

“Just fine,” I said. I turned back to the fighter. “You say he died?”

“Yeah, I helped drag his ass from the ring. That boy was dead. You caved in the front of his skull.”

I thought I might have killed him. In truth, I felt no regret about it. “I heard he went on to win another fifty fights,” I said.

“Not that Boyd.”

The other fighters eyed Ray Freeman nervously, gave me a curious glance at most, and went back to finish dressing.

The air in the room had that sweaty, unpleasant humidity that comes with locker rooms and open showers. The floor was wet and slick. Near the door, a canvas basket on rollers overflowed with wet towels, some of which were streaked with blood.

“What makes you think I’m a Liberator?” I asked. This guy was a natural-born, a muscular man, maybe thirty-five years of age with sun-bronzed skin and bleached-blond hair.

“Boyd said you were,” the fighter said.

“I thought you said I killed him?”

“Not the one you killed, the next one. We had at least three of ’em . . .” He smiled as if remembering a joke. “At least three. They were clones. Had to be. You off-ed one and two others got busted up pretty bad.

“So you are a Liberator, right?”

I chose to ignore the question. “Is there going to be a Boyd fighting tomorrow?”

“Nah,” said the fighter. “The Boyds stopped coming a couple years ago. They’re gone . . . left the island.”

“Do you know where they went?” I asked.

“No, but I know where they used to live.”

“But what is the point of creating a new strain of clones?” General Kellan asks. “We’ve been
using volunteers in special forces for six hundred years.”

“My clones are more effective in battle,” Huang says. “They are more expendable, less concerned
about self-preservation, and far more lethal.