Steven Kent - The Clone Redemption

All three of the admirals shook their heads.

“No one?”

I asked, “Have any of you heard back from your commanding officers?” They gave the same response. That didn’t surprise me. All of our top brass had been at Olympus Kri when the Unifieds caught us flat-footed.

Looking around the table, I noted how the three admirals looked similar but with unique features. They were all clones, all five-foot-ten, with brown hair and brown eyes. Two of them looked to be in their early thirties, the other in his fifties. He had rims of white hair around his ears. He was also fat as a whale.

I took a deep breath and launched into the bad news. “The Unifieds attacked our ships after we evacuated Olympus Kri. As far as I know, the Churchill is the only ship that escaped.”

“What about the Kamehameha ? Do you think she survived?” asked Rear Admiral Steven Jolly. The Kamehameha was the flagship of the Enlisted Man’s Fleet, Warshaw’s ship.

I’d never met Jolly in person, but I’d heard stories about him. By reputation, he was a man of unlimited ambition who suffered from depression and self-doubt. Nobody respected Admiral Jolly, not even Jolly himself.

I shook my head, and said, “I was on the Kamehameha when the attack started.”

“Did you see her go down?” asked Jolly.

Cutter leaned forward, cleared his throat, and said in a loud whisper, “The Kamehameha was the first ship they destroyed.”

“What about Admiral Cloward? He was on the Clinton ?”

“I didn’t see the Clinton go down,” said Cutter. “Admiral Warshaw ordered every ship to the broadcast zone. The Churchill was the closest ship to the zone, and we barely made it through. The last ship I saw was the Salah ad-Din . She was right behind us, but the Unifieds were closing in on her.”

I said, “If the Kamehameha went down, all of your commanding officers went with her. They were with Warshaw on the Kamehameha when the attack began.”

“What were they doing on the Kamehameha ?” asked Rear Admiral Curtis Liotta.

“They were negotiating reunification with the Unifieds. The U.A. sent an ambassador.”

“Did Andropov attend?” asked Jolly.

“Martin Traynor came in his place,” I said.

“Traynor? Who the hell is he?” asked Liotta. I knew Liotta by reputation, too. He was a weasel. According to Cutter, people called Liotta “Curtis the Snake” behind his back.

Liotta was an outspoken critic of everyone and everything that did not suit him. He openly criticized other officers’ tactics and battle strategies despite having risen to the rank of rear admiral (lower half) without ever seeing combat.

“The only thing I know about Traynor is that the Linear Committee sent him,” said Cutter. “I think he’s secretary of galactic expansion or some odd thing.”

“And they sacrificed him?” asked Jolly.

Looking around the room, I watched the admirals to see how they would react to the news. Admiral Liotta looked shocked and scornful. Admiral Peter “Pete” Wallace of the Sagittarius Central Fleet looked angry enough to gouge somebody’s eyes out. Only Steven Jolly, the old man, hid his emotions. He sat still and slumped in his chair, staring down at the table, his face unreadable.

“He left the ship a few moments before the attack,” I said.

“The hell you say,” said Cutter. “No one made it off the Kamehameha .”

“I did,” I said. “I saw Traynor leaving the summit and followed him to a landing bay. That’s the only reason I made it off the ship, I was already near my shuttle when the attack began.”

If I ever saw Traynor again, I’d have to thank him for saving my life. I’d thank him, then I would shove a grenade so far up his ass his doctor would mistake it for a hemorrhoid.

The silence in the room was so heavy it felt like it was made of bricks. Wallace, the youngest of the one-stars, broke that silence when he said, “It’s time we annihilated those speckers once and for all.”

Wallace looked fit, but he had a disfigured face. Long, striping scars covered his forehead and cheeks and neck, making his head look like a misshapen map. He might have seen action or he might have been in a fire. I would not have trusted the surgeon who performed Wallace’s skin grafts to wrap a Christmas present.

“We can’t attack Earth,” Jolly said, dismissing the comment as if it had been made by a child.

“Why the hell not?” demanded Wallace.

“Because it’s Earth,” said Jolly.

Hearing Jolly speak, I was struck by how much these men did not know. They might have known that the aliens had returned to New Copenhagen and Olympus Kri, but they did not know about Terraneau. From what I could tell, their superiors had not informed them that the aliens would attack every one of our planets or that they would eventually attack Earth.

“Are you saying that because Earth is the gawddamnedspecking home of humanity, we have to let those Unified bastards get away with an ambush?” asked Wallace, venom oozing from his voice. “Bullshit, Jolly! That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

“We cooperated with them, and they ambushed us,” said Cutter. “That can’t go unanswered. If we let them get away with it …” He was making one of those vague, fill-in-theblank-type threats, and he let the sentence go unfinished.

“I don’t get it,” said Admiral Liotta of the Cygnus Central Fleet. “How did they catch us with our pants down? I mean, what was going on?”

“The specking bastards set us up,” said Wallace.

“Looks that way,” Liotta agreed.

Jolly turned to me, and the room went silent as he asked, “What about Olympus Kri? The reason we went there in the first place was to evacuate the planet before the aliens attacked it. Was the whole thing a trick?”

Jolly was a fat, old clone with pockets of flesh sagging from his jowls. The skin hanging down his chin and jawline reminded me of an overstuffed hammock.

“It must have been,” said Liotta.

“The aliens attacked Olympus Kri,” I said. “They have attacked three planets so far: New Copenhagen, Olympus Kri, and Terraneau.”

“How the hell do we know that’s not more Unified Authority bullshit?” asked Wallace.

“I was on Olympus Kri when they attacked. I was on Terraneau as well. The Unifieds don’t have anything powerful enough to do what the aliens did to those planets. We’d be having this discussion in the afterlife if they did.”

The officers considered my words. Finally, Admiral Jolly asked, “What’s the matter with them? Wasn’t the alien attack enough?”

“Nothing will be enough for them,” said Wallace. “The bastards came under a flag of truce.”

I had come to this meeting hoping to find a worthy successor for Warshaw, but the prospects were dim. Jolly was next in line. He had more self-control than the other two, but he came across as weak. I asked myself if I really wanted to place the Enlisted Man’s Navy in that man’s trembling hands.

Liotta asked, “Were you able to evacuate Terraneau?”

“No,” I said.

Admiral Wallace said, “I heard they wanted to join the specking Unifieds. It sounds to me like those assholes got what they deserved.”

I stared into the holographic window, but I did not focus on anyone in particular, taking in the entire scene instead of the details.

None of those officers was fit for command. Steven Jolly was weak. James Liotta was a bullshit artist. Pete Wallace was a big-talking kid. They were the rightful heirs to the throne; and if I did not choose one of them, the mutiny that would follow might spread across the fleet.