Steven Kent - The Clone Redemption

“There has got to be a way to run this mission without the spy cruiser,” Lieutenant Mars said. He sounded indignant as he added, “You blew the ship into Swiss cheese a couple of days ago?”

“You blew the ship to Swiss cheese. You were the one who rigged the cannons,” I pointed out.

“Fine, I blew the ship to Swiss cheese following your orders. It’s still Swiss cheese.”

“We need it, Lieutenant.”

“General, I am a believing man. I believe that Peter walked on water. I believe Moses crossed the Red Sea on dry land. I even believe Jesus fed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and a half dozen fishes. God performed those miracles. If you want your ship resurrected in three days, maybe you should go to Him,” Mars said. He was a born-again Christian, except that he was also a clone, which meant he was never actually born the first time.

“If I ever need a sea split, I’ll ask Him for help,” I said. “In the meantime, I need you to repair the spy ship.”

“You do understand that the loaves, the fishes, the water into wine, the resurrections, Christ performed those miracles, not his disciples?”

“Give it your best shot,” I said.

“We can’t even fly her into dry dock; she’s too banged up. One of her engines came off.”

Maybe he’s getting too comfortable around me, I thought. I stared at Mars’s image on the screen, and said, “I need that spy ship, that very ship, engines and stealth generator running by the end of the day.”

“By the end of the day” meant by 17:00 hours on the Space Travel Clock. That gave Mars less than ten hours.

“General, sir, may I remind you that you waited until the ship lowered her shields before you fired on her?”

“Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.”

“You do understand, sir, that the damage was not just to the hull? I toured that wreck, you blew the holy sh …snot out of it.” Mars must have really been frustrated. He’d started to say, “shit.” He never used profanity, it was not in his vocabulary.

He took a deep breath, then held it for a moment as he composed himself. Then he attempted to reason with me. “General, a stealth generator is a sophisticated piece of equipment. I couldn’t make one if I had the cookbook and all the ingredients. If you handed me all the parts and the instructions and gave me a year to put it together, I would not be able to do it.”

“Good thing you only need to repair this one,” I said.

“From what I hear, repairing them is more difficult than building them, sir. It’s not like they carried spare parts on the ship. If that generator is damaged, it’s going to need replacement boards. We can’t just make them, sir. It’s not as easy as reloading a rifle.”

The thing about reloading a rifle was Mars’s subtle way of reminding me that no matter how many stars I carried on my shoulder boards, I was still a dumb Marine.

“And then there’s the broadcast engine. If the broadcast chain is damaged, I mean, General, the Corps of Engineers builds dams and electrical grids. You’re talking about one of the most sophisticated …”

“Lieutenant, we’re wasting time,” I said.

“No, sir. I am not wasting your time. I am trying to save time. I don’t want to waste time trying to fix a ship that I can’t possibly fix.” Mars and I had worked together in some tight corners. He was an honest man. That was one of the reasons he was still only a lieutenant. The officers who knew when to pucker and where to kiss generally rose through the ranks more quickly.

“The aliens are about to attack Gobi. If we don’t evacuate that planet, every man, woman, and child on Gobi is going to burn. They’re going to burn just like the people on Terraneau burned.

“I can’t evacuate Gobi unless I steal the Unifieds’ barges, and in order to steal them, I need a working spy ship,” I said. “I need that cruiser, stealth generator, broadcast engines, and all. Do you understand me?”

Then I said the phrase that officers use to end unpleasant conversations. I said, “You have your orders, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and he saluted. My demands were unfair; but if I played fair, millions of people would die.

While Mars worked miracles, I assembled guns and men and ships.

I hoped we would find the barges moored near the Mars Spaceport, sitting empty and completely ignored. More likely we would find them guarded by a skeleton crew, security men who would slow us down at a time when every second wasted would cost lives.

Marines knew how to steal boats. It was in our skill set, but there were better men for the job. I once worked with a team of SEAL clones, little wiry bastards who specialized in stealth. It was in their genetic makeup. The U.A. designed them to vanish into the shadows and kill without making a sound. Clones were tools, after all. “A tool for every job and a job for every tool,” right? We all had our areas of specialty. SEALs and Special Operations clones strolled behind enemy lines and did the dirty work. Marines ran the invasions. Soldiers held down the fort. I wished I had a company of SEALs for this mission; but the last I’d heard, they’d gone with the Japanese Fleet to Bode’s Galaxy.

I studied a large holographic map of Mars—the planet, not the engineer. The map showed the planet with a blacked-out area representing the spaceport and the military base. Until we ran some sort of reconnaissance mission, we would not know the precise location of the barges or what kind of force guarded them.

When I explained my plan to the three admirals through the confabulator, Jolly drew in a hissing breath, shook his head, and said, “Risky tactics, General, launching a mission with no idea what you might be up against.”

Admiral Wallace, sarcastically referred to as “Warhawk Wallace” on the bridge of the Bolivar , took my side. He said, “You know, Admiral, they may damn well let Harris have the barges. We need them to rescue natural-borns.”

“Natural-borns who are loyal to the Enlisted Man’s Empire,” said Jolly.

“True, but natural-borns nonetheless,” Wallace said. “It’s a specking humanitarian effort.”

“Good point, Pete,” sneered Jolly. “Why don’t we just ring up Andropov and ask if we can borrow his barges?”

Wallace said, “I checked the specking orbits. Mars and Earth are approximately eighty million miles apart. Even with their fastest ships, the Unifieds will take three specking hours to respond.”

“They have self-broadcasting ships, Admiral,” I said. “They’ll need eight minutes to charge their broadcast engines. If we’re not out of there after eight minutes, the shooting starts.”

“General, can you give me a ballpark on how much time you’ll need to pull this off?” asked Jolly.

Think like a SEAL, I told myself. Think like a SEAL. But the SEALs I knew would have calculated the mission down to the last millisecond before presenting it to command. Me, I ran calculations off the top of my head. I smiled, and said, “I’m thinking seven minutes and fifty nine seconds.”

“Now how the speck did you come up with that?” asked Wallace.

“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Admiral Liotta. “That’s one second less than it takes the Unifieds to charge their broadcast engines.”

If Lieutenant Mars managed to get that cruiser operational and had time to repair the landing bays, we could wedge twenty-one transports onto that one tiny ship. That meant that four of our transports would need to return to the cruiser for a second crew of Marines if we planned on capturing all twenty-five barges; and capturing every available barge was an essential part of the plan.

Capturing the barges would be easier than securing them. They did not have gun turrets, security doors, or other measures to keep intruders out. Having figured out that the aliens were coming to Olympus Kri, the Unifieds had slapped the barges together as quickly as they could. Dealing with external security measures did not figure into the equation.