The Clone Sedition (12 page)

The train slowed as it approached an air lock that led to the base. The outer door slid open, and we rumbled into the tube. The door closed. There was a soft
whoosh
as indigenous gases were flushed away, then the inner door slid open.

I did not know who would greet the train. The train station was brightly lit. I could not afford to be seen. Because I had a clone’s face and stood over six feet tall, any clones who saw me would instantly identify me as a Liberator.

The train rolled slowly as it left the air lock and approached an empty passenger platform.

I recognized the base from the time I had visited it many years ago.

“General?” a voice purred from the remote. I reached down to shut it off, but stopped when I saw who it was.

“Jackson? Where the speck have you been?”

“Right here, sir.”

“I have been trying to contact you,” I said.

“The bastards must have blocked our signal.”

He sounded fine. A security force like Riley’s probably did have “sludging” equipment for blocking interLink signals. Such equipment was not uncommon, but I did not think my regiment’s disappearance could be explained that simply. If they had blocked the signal five minutes ago, why had they stopped blocking it?

I did not have time to ask. The train had rolled up to the platform, and I had to move.

I said, “I need to go,” and signed off.

Places like Mars Air Force Base have discreet security cameras built into their walls and in the ceilings. They have electronic ears that can detect footsteps, breathing, beating hearts; and thermostats that can detect the change in temperature when a body enters a room. There was no question the security system had detected my presence. Whether or not anyone watched the monitors was another story. Maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t. I only knew one way to find out.

I stepped off the train and crossed the platform without bothering to look for cameras. If they had people staring into monitors, they’d already seen me.

The only way from the train tracks to the base was up a steep escalator. I climbed the stairs two at a time as the escalator whisked me up. No one met me at the top.

The base lobby was dimly lit, spacious, and clean. The air was cold, my breath turned to steam; but there were no picnickers, which made this icebox the Garden of Eden in my mind. Moving at a fast creep, I crossed the shiny, black, granite floor. I was not alone.

When I reached the door that led from the lobby to the offices, I heard voices. I stopped, listened, then took a few steps back. I pulled out my communications remote. “Jackson.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Load your men on the transports, double speed.”

“Yes, sir. Are we going back to the
Churchill
?”

“No,” I said. “Come to the Air Force base and tell your men to hit the deck running. I think the locals might put up a fight.”

“Do we get to shoot this time?” he asked.

“This is not a civilian facility, Colonel. You have permission to kill anyone who gets in your way.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” he said with more enthusiasm.

I contacted the
Churchill
and gave orders to “wreck the rails and board any ships seen leaving Mars.” Then I switched off the remote.

There were people in the base, but not very many of them. No one entered the lobby the entire time I was there. The train still sat idle beside the platform.

I left the lobby and entered the work area, expecting to see clones. I thought Riley might have moved his clones out of the filthy spaceport and into the nice clean Air Force base. I suppose that was what I would have done. A moment later I knew I was wrong when I saw a woman walking down a dark hallway.

Seeing the woman, I formed a plan of attack in my head. If Jackson moved his men quickly, and Colonel Curtis Jackson always made his men hustle, it would take them forty minutes to break camp, cross the spaceport, and board the transports. They might get bogged down cutting across the grand arcade, but I doubted it. The locals had quieted quickly when they saw blood the day before, and I did not think they would make another show of defiance.

Twenty minutes to board the transports and five minutes to fly from the spaceport to the base. Flight Control on the
Churchill
would override the base computers and take control of the landing bays.

Riley outnumbered us three to one, but the
Churchill
would send more troops once we established a need. Riley would still outnumber us, but our transports had protective shields; he’d have no way to hurt us until reinforcements arrived, and we lowered those shields. By that time, he’d know he had no place to hide.

I passed through a mess hall. A base this size would have a large mess for enlisted men and a smaller one for officers. I spotted a group of natural-borns sitting around tables chatting and eating. I did not see clones; nor did I see banners with
slogans about Legion. If anything, the mess hall looked regulation.

The people paid no attention to me as I walked by and I pretended to ignore them as well. I listened to their conversation as I passed, but they did not say anything important.

After leaving the mess hall, I entered the next set of doors and found myself in a large auditorium/briefing hall. The place was empty, huge, and dark as the inside of a coffin. I left, moved on down the hall, and entered the base’s nerve center.

This area of the building bristled with life. Computers whirred. People gathered in clusters and spoke in whispered tones. Diagrams and maps hung on the walls. Holographic images wavered in the air. All of the people I saw were civilians, natural-born, some of them women.

I stepped into an empty cubicle. A woman followed me. She said, “We’ve been watching you since you entered the train station.”

I turned, and met her gaze.

She said, “You’re a tall one. You must be Wayson Harris.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

She smiled and said, “We were going to come to you, but you were kind enough to save us the trouble.”

There was a scent in the air, a sharp chemical scent that was unpleasant and familiar. I knew I had smelled it recently, but I couldn’t remember when or where. I caught a whiff of it, then everything stopped. I did not become dizzy. I did not spin and fall to the ground. I did not have time to do any of these things. The universe had already ended.

“You can’t lose a specking regiment of Marines. You might as well say you misplaced gawddamned Mars. What’s the matter with you?” I asked. No, “asked” is too subdued. I snarled. I growled. I cannot remember ever in my life feeling such intense anger. “They’re here. They’re in the Air Force base right now. I ordered them to come, and they came.”

“How did they get there?” Cutter asked.

“What the speck do you mean, ‘How did they get here’?” Everything about the man irritated me. I hated the way he stared back at me through the screen. I hated the confused look on his face.

“I mean, Harris, how did that regiment of Marines travel from the spaceport to the base? They didn’t fly to the base. We’ve been watching the spaceport. None of the transports have launched. They couldn’t have taken the train; you told us to shoot out the rails.”

“Either your crew is asleep at the wheel, or your ship is broken, Admiral,” I said. I kept my voice even, hoping to hide just how much I hated the bastard. “They flew here. They boarded fifteen transports, and they flew here. How the speck do you miss fifteen transports? They’re big. They’re slow. They probably radioed in for clearance before they left the spaceport. Check your damn records.

“You know what? Don’t check your records. The transports are here, my men are here, I don’t give a shit what your specking records say, Cutter. I watched Jackson walk down the ramp. If your records say something else, then you’ve got bigger problems than a few missed transports.”

“Maybe,” said Cutter. He outranked me, but I was the one who gave him his stars. I was starting to wonder if he deserved them, the incompetent bastard.

Everything about him irritated me. I didn’t like his idiot expression or the way his face looked like the face of every other sailor in the Enlisted Man’s Navy. If he’d been here in the flesh, I might have hurt him. When I got a shot at him, I might even allow myself to kill the son of a bitch just for the fun of it.

I took a deep breath and held it.
Stand down,
I told myself.
He’s just another clone in a Navy of clones, it’s not his fault.

“Listen, Cutter, we’ve infiltrated Martian Legion headquarters. Okay? I’m closing in on the objective. I’ve almost finished what I came here to do. You got that? Am I getting through to you?”

“Yes, you are,” he said. He was losing his temper, which meant nothing to me.
Freeloading son of a bitch,
I thought.
Let’s see you climb off your specking ship and face the enemy.

“We’ve almost got this operation complete, and the last thing we need is for you to get in the way, so pack up your specking space patrol and get the hell out of here. Do you understand? Do you read me?”

He looked so angry that I thought he might lose control. That would have made two of us. For a moment I thought he might try to pull rank on me; and then we would have a real problem.

“We’ll clear out,” he said.

“Good move,” I said.

“Do you want me to leave Watson?”

“Why the speck would I want him around?” I asked. And then I said something that made no sense. I did not know how the words had entered my mind or what they meant. I said, “Give him a message for me, would you. Tell that bastard anything that’s programmed can be reprogrammed. You tell him that. You tell him that for me.”

My head felt like someone was pounding an inch-thick spike through my skull, as though someone had stabbed a dagger into my brain, and the bastard was using it to pry the lobes apart.

“What was that?” Cutter asked. “What was your message?”

“Not my message, asshole. Tell him Ray Freeman said that.”

I said those words, and the world went dark.

I remembered the conversation I had with Don Cutter, but the memory seemed far away, like a dream; and, like a remembered dream, it felt surreal and unlikely. I could not recall how the conversation began or how it ended. What mostly came back was the emotion I felt, the anger and the frustration. Try as I might, I could not remember what he might have said to make me so furious.

As I tried to work that out, it occurred to me that I did not know where I was. Well, I was in a bed. Not a bed, a cot, a thin mattress stretched over a metal rack.

The moment I woke up, I knew I was alone in a cell. I knew prison cells when I saw them. I’d spent time in a few. I recognized the featureless metal walls and the bright light that shone down from the ceiling.

Wondering if I had been beaten or drugged, I sat up. My body responded, and I felt no pain. Pain. Pain? I remembered pain so sharp it felt like my head would split open as I spoke with Cutter. Was it a dream?

I never experienced pain in my dreams. If I’d felt that much pain in a dream, it would have woken me.

I knew who I was—Wayson Harris. I knew what I was—a Liberator, a Marine.

I stood and walked the eight feet from my rack to the door.

This was a civilian prison, which meant it was a lot more comfortable than a brig. I had a modicum of privacy. The cell had a door and walls instead of bars or an electrical-containment field, but there must have been cameras in the cell. I could not see the people watching me, but they could see me as clearly as if the walls were made of glass.

The cell was designed for isolation and had no windows. Isolation was the universal solvent of torture techniques. A
slow process of mental erosion that leaves the physical intact, isolation will wear anybody down given sufficient time to do its work.

The room had a cot, a toilet, a sink, and bright light shining from the ceiling. I stared into that light until spots danced in my vision, then I looked away and rubbed my eyes. Several minutes passed before the spots went away.

Half-expecting an electric charge, I touched the door. There was no current, but the door was locked. I knew it would be, but I had to try it.

I wondered who had captured me, and just as quickly I knew. I was on Mars. I had taken the train from the spaceport to the Air Force base. And then what? My memory ended when the train reached the platform.

How much did these people know about me? Did they know I was a Liberator? Did they care?

Frustration welled in my brain. Trying to distract myself, I searched the walls for cameras, knowing that I might as well search for microscopic germs. The walls were completely smooth and cool to the touch, and dark gray in color. I ran my hands over the walls, feeling for bumps and seams, possibly pin-sized holes for cameras and microphones. I found nothing.

The door had some sort of rubberized airtight seal, but it was not an air lock—at least it wasn’t any kind of air lock I had seen before. I thought I might be able to rip the rubber from the doorway, but that would not buy me freedom.

Kneeling on the ground, I located discreet vents running along the walls. The air in the cell must have flowed through those vents. A fine, sturdy microfiber mesh lined those air ducts. I tried to push it in with my finger, but it did not give, and I would have needed a blade as fine as a scalpel to cut through it.

I looked at the toilet and knew I could break it. If I had shoes, I could mule-kick it until the chrome pipes gave way.
Chrome pipes on the fixtures and a ceramic sink…definitely not a brig,
I thought. I did not have shoes. My feet were bare and cold.

The sink looked breakable, but I saw no point in destroying it. Even if I shattered it, all I would get for my trouble would be an armed guard and possibly handcuffs. I might even get myself drugged.

Drugged?

This was a civilian holding cell, which meant I was no longer on the Air Force base. When had they returned me to the spaceport, and how? They couldn’t have used the train unless…What if Cutter didn’t destroy the tracks between the spaceport and the base? As his name crossed my mind, I remembered thinking he was “incompetent,” but I did not know why. It seemed like that was part of that dream.