The Clone Sedition (38 page)

After two minutes of motionless silence, the assassin swung out from his hiding place, and Freeman fired a single, fatal shot. The sequence occurred in a fraction of a second. Freeman
discarded his rifle, the long-range weapon of an assassin, and pulled his M27. He waited another minute before running up the escalator. He’d killed that assassin, but he did not know if another lurked nearby.

The interior of the Air Force base had an enhanced-gravity field. Weighing in at over three hundred pounds, wearing armor and carrying forty pounds of weapons and ammunition, Freeman was winded by the time he reached the top of the escalator. His heart pounding, his lungs drawing in huge pulls of oxygen, he held his M27 ready as he knelt and searched the dark lobby.

While Freeman climbed the ladder and surveyed the train station, Watson rested his body against the tracks. So much time had passed since his epidural patches had worn off.

The patches had caused his body to generate adrenaline, which made him stronger and more tolerant of pain. When the medicine in the patches ran out, so did his strength. Aware that he might not have the strength to stand up again, Watson dropped to his knees and lowered himself onto his back.

He remained in his isolated corner as his strength gave out, and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

Time passed. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep when Emily woke him up. She shook him once and waited a moment. He’d started to wake when she shook him again.

She had removed her helmet and her armor. “Travis, we need to go,” she said.

Leaning his weight against the wall, Watson worked his way to his feet. His legs wobbled and buckled, and his internal gyroscope whirled as he searched for balance. He did not speak.

Emily said, “Go slow, Travis. There’s no rush.” She put a hand on his shoulder to prevent him from rising too quickly. When he straightened, she slipped a steadying arm around his back and said, “I’m going to take you to the infirmary. I’ll fix you up.”

His mind fogged, Watson did not comprehend the meaning of her words. All he knew was the comfort of her voice.

Leading him like a sleepy child, Emily guided Watson to
the ladder. She placed his hands on the rungs and waited patiently while he pulled himself up. He climbed a few, then stopped to clear his head before climbing the rest of the way.

He looked back, and asked, “Do you know about your grandfather?”

Emily did not answer.

She led him across the platform, then bade him rest before riding the escalator up to the base. Sitting at the end of the platform, he saw men moving back and forth. Watson looked for Freeman but did not see him. A minute passed, then he stepped onto the escalator. As the stairs lifted him, he held on to the rail the way a drowning victim holds on to a life preserver.

They crossed the lobby and entered the base, passing offices and a cafeteria before Emily helped him into an elevator. He slumped against a wall for the two-second ride. When they finally reached the infirmary, Emily had him lie on an unmade bed. She applied a patch to his neck, and he fell asleep.

When he woke, his jaws were aligned but he could not move them.

Location: The
Churchill
Date: May 2, 2519

The call to stations threw the crew of the
Churchill
into an organized frenzy. Sailors sprinted through the halls. Red and amber lights flashed. Officers had to shout to be heard.

As Cutter ran to the chart table, the Klaxons faded.

“Is the transport away?” he asked Captain Hauser.

“Aye, sir.”

“Fighter escort?”

“Launched, sir.”

“Did you warn them about the battleships?”

Hauser deferred that question to his second in command—Lieutenant Frank Nolan, his communications officer.

“Aye, sir. They’re going to land behind the base,” said Nolan.

“Good,” said Cutter. Only after hearing this did he allow himself to breathe. He looked at the holographic image of the space around Mars, noting the
Churchill
’s position before looking for intruders. “Good God, are those Nike-class ships?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. Nike-class battleships, sir,” responded Hauser.

Nike was the last generation of warships built by the Unified Authority. They were smaller than the Perseus-class ships used by the Enlisted Man’s Navy—ships that the Unifieds had abandoned along with their clones. Nike-class ships had nearly impenetrable shields. Some of them carried shield-buster torpedoes that could render EMN ships defenseless with a single hit.

It had been more than a year since the Unified Authority Fleet broadcasted to the Scutum-Crux Arm and vanished into history. No Nike-class ships had been seen since that time.

“Where the hell did those bitches come from?” Hauser muttered.

Cutter watched the ships on the holographic map. One of the ships was less than five hundred thousand miles out and approaching slowly. The other was still a full million miles away. She appeared only as a dot on the display.

According to telemetry tracking, both ships were traveling at no better than ten thousand miles per hour with a low acceleration factor.

“What are they doing here?” asked Cutter.

“What is their weapon status?” asked Hauser, who was the commanding officer of the
Churchill
. Cutter ran the Navy, but the
Churchill
was Hauser’s ship.

“The first ship’s shields are hot, sir,” an officer called. “We’re picking up erratic energy fluctuations. There’s something wrong with her.”

“What about the second?” asked Cutter.

“Too far to read, sir,” answered one of the weapons officers.

“Have you made contact?” asked Cutter.

“They’re not responding,” said Lieutenant Nolan.

“That bitch has been through the blender,” said Hauser.

“I don’t care if she’s pissing blood,” said Cutter. He started to say, “We can’t go one-on-one with a Nike…” Then he saw the extent of the damage. Burns covered her hull. Entire sections of the battleship were dark.
She’s half dead,
he thought.

Looking at the holographic representation of the ship, Cutter saw the miscolored areas where her hull had been broken and hastily patched. He said, “God, she shouldn’t be moving.”

“Admiral, we have help on the way, sir,” said Lieutenant Nolan. “I just got a message from the
de Gaulle
. She’s twelve million miles out.”

“Oh shit,” said Cutter. He did not explain himself.

“Sir, do we stand our ground?” asked Hauser.

Staring at the display, Cutter muttered “How the hell did those battleships get here?” Then he switched his attention to Hauser, and said, “Those are Nike-class battleships, Captain. Keep one hundred thousand miles between us and those ships at all times.”

“Aye, sir,” said Hauser, and he relayed the orders.

Once he received confirmation, he asked Cutter, “Admiral, do you think they came from Terraneau?”

“I don’t know anyplace else they could have come from,” said Cutter.

“Aye, sir,” said Hauser. Then he added, “They’re as slow as glaciers, sir.”

One of the weapons officers approached the table and waited for permission to speak. He said, “Captain, the first ship is leaking radiation.”

Hauser smiled, and said, “We might be able to sink that bitch with a spit wad!”

“Give me an updated position on the
de Gaulle
,” said Cutter.

“She’s eleven million miles out, sir,” said Lieutenant Nolan. “Should I send her a distress signal?”

Eleven million miles, about twenty minutes away,
Cutter reasoned.
We might be able to play cat and mouse with those limping Nikes; but once the
de Gaulle
arrives, they’ll surround us.

Location: Mars Air Force Base
Date: May 2, 2519

Watson watched the scope that tracked the twelve Tomcats and the transport as they entered the atmosphere. The fighters could have annihilated the security clones if they caught them on open ground; but the pilots headed straight for the Air Force base, a choice that seemed to make no sense.

Moving as quickly as he could, Watson shuffled up the stairs to the observation deck, a loft with chairs and a bar fronting a twenty-foot circular window. Staring into the darkened sky, Watson located the fighters by their vapor plumes, brushstrokes that evaporated quickly.

Why would the fighters come here?
he asked himself.

Cutter must have been monitoring them from the
Churchill
; otherwise, he would not have known to send the transport.
Specking sludging,
he thought.
If only we could reach them.

“Hey, there’s a battleship. Two battleships! Two battleships just entered the area,” said one of the bodyguards, Sharkey or Liston or Dempsey. Watson could no more tell them apart than he could tell clones apart. In his mind, the bodyguards were interchangeable cogs, three burly guys, not particularly bright or brave or motivated. Without being aware of it, he was comparing them to Freeman and Harris.

The fighters and the transport slowed as they flew over the top of the Air Force base. For just a moment, Watson glimpsed the tails of the Tomcats. The transport, her shields glowing a ghostly blue, glided past the building last. They were low to the ground and coming in for a landing.

Two battleships.
The words echoed back and forth in Watson’s head.
Battleships. Why would Cutter call in more
ships, a single fighter carrier could…unless the battleships aren’t his.

He could not make sense of it. As far as Watson knew, the enemy was reprogrammed clones and whatever remained from the Martian Legion.

The fighters and the transport parked on the massive airstrip behind the base. Dempsey went to open the rear air lock for them, but the pilots remained in their ships. With a hostile force advancing on the base, they could not leave their ships. With enemy battleships looming outside the atmosphere, they could not stay in the air.

Location: Smithsonian Field
Date: May 2, 2519

My driver slowed to a stop as we approached the last gate. The guards at the gate wore combat armor. If we’d come yesterday, we’d have found them in service uniforms breathing fresh air; but the rules had changed over the last twenty-four hours. Thanks to reprogramming, reality no longer meant what it used to mean.

Three armed guards accompanied Major Dunkirk as he walked out to my jeep and saluted. I had no doubt that the missiles in the battery beyond the fence were trained on me at that moment.

I said, “We’re in a hurry, Major,” and I nodded toward the line of thirty-five trucks on parade behind my vehicle.

“May I see your orders, sir?” he asked. He did indeed need to see my orders. Until Cutter returned to Earth and officially acknowledged my commission, I would hold no more authority than any other retiree. As far as Dunkirk was concerned, the stars on my collar were only for show.

I handed him my papers.

He took them and scanned them, not reading the words but checking the authorizations. What I was about to do was bending the rules to say the least. If I was a traitor, my actions might put the entire empire at risk.

In this case, the authorization did not come in the form of a signature. The paper contained “notary dots,” microscopic computer chips sealed in the paper, which had been activated by Don Cutter’s staff. I could write my own orders, and I could forge Cutter’s signature, but only the admiral could activate the dots.

The dots were invisible to the naked eye. Dunkirk scanned them using the equipment in the visor of his Marine combat armor. The spots were filled with codes, notes, and an activation date. Hell, each dot held enough data storage for the complete works of Shakespeare.

Once I was fully reinstated, my office would be able to use notary dots as well. That was one of the useful technologies we inherited from the Unifieds when we took Washington, D.C., away from them.

So were the antiques I had come to commandeer.

Apparently Major Dunkirk liked what he saw when he scanned my orders. The gate opened. He saluted and stepped out of the way.

The explorers were already out of their hangar—207 spacecraft, each unarmed and unshielded. These birds had been built for scientific research and serenity. They were slow, they were delicate, they were ancient; but they had working broadcast engines. That made them indispensable.

“No disrespect, General, but are you sure this is a good idea?” Colonel Hunter Ritz asked me over the interLink. Ritz, my new second in command, was a “loose cannon” in whom I had complete confidence. Had I not returned to active duty, he stood to inherit the entire Corps, but commanding the Marines was not one of his ambitions.

“I’m sure that it is a bad idea,” I said. “I don’t see any other options.”

Ritz said, “Let the speckers have Mars, then blow their asses off their legs when they try to come home…sir. That gives us a home-field advantage.”

The afternoon had ended, and the first signs of evening showed on the horizon. I said, “Stow it, Colonel. You have your orders.”

“Yes, sir. Aye, sir,” he said.

Ritz was the devil I knew. He liked to argue. He liked goading men who outranked him, even generals. He pushed “asking for instruction” to the brink of insubordination, and he was so lazy between missions that he’d been written up for dereliction of duty; but he was energetic, inventive, and fearless in battle. His commanding officers loathed him, and his men swore he was the fourth member of the Trinity.

“Permission to ask one final question, sir?” Ritz asked.

“What is it, Colonel?”

“Are we doing this for one man, General?”

Am I placing three thousand fighting Marines in harm’s way just to rescue one man?
I asked myself. The answer was probably, “Yes.” Ritz had asked the wrong question. He should have asked me if we were doing this for Howard Tasman, the father of neural programming, or Ray Freeman, the mercenary who had pulled my ass out of the fire on more than one occasion, or Travis Watson. Even I would not have known the answer to that question.