Steven Kent - The Clone Redemption

Jolly shook his head, laughed, and said, “You can’t do this,” so I shot him with the M27. When I reported his death, I’d say that the looter had done it. This wasn’t the first time I had killed a superior officer; and, judging by the men lined up to replace Steven Jolly, it wouldn’t be the last time, either.

As the last of our transports left the planet, I received a message from Captain James Holman inviting me to the Bolivar ’s observation deck.

I had never met Holman in person, but I liked the way he evacuated Gobi. As I had already rifled through one-third of my top leadership prospects, I made a mental note to watch Holman as a possible alternative once I ran out of one-stars.

I went to the observation deck, and there was Holman, who might have been the oddest-looking clone in history. When I first saw him, I even mistook him for a natural-born.

Holman dyed his hair. Older clones were known to dye their hair blond; but Holman, a man in his early thirties, had dyed his hair a coppery version of fire-engine red. He also had a beard. I had seen clones with whiskers, but a beard …Like his hair, the beard was that same unnatural color of red.

It was a short beard, trimmed to follow the curve of his jaw. He shaved the beard so that it fell short of his lower lip. The top of his beard followed the curve of his lips to create a well-trimmed look.

“Hello,” said Holman in a deep, throaty voice that did not sound clonelike. He had been sitting, watching the planet through a viewport, but he stood and saluted as I entered the deck.

I returned the salute, and said, “You put together a good operation.”

“Not good enough,” he said. “I understand there were looters.”

“You can bring a horse to water,” I said.

“But they shot Admiral Jolly. This is a blow to the Enlisted Man’s Empire.”

I gave him a sly smile, and said, “Not as much a blow as you might think. I understand he planned to retire right after the evacuation.”

“He never told me,” said Holman. He sounded suspicious.

“Yes, well, Admiral Jolly kept his plans pretty quiet.”

With that, we sat and we waited. Death arrived on Gobi six hours late. This had happened before. The virtual ghost of Arthur Breeze tended to err on the safe side with his predictions.

At 03:17 S.T.C. time, the Avatari ignited the Tachyon D particles they had pumped into the atmosphere, and the temperature instantaneously spiked to nine thousand degrees.

Unable to see the destruction through the viewport, Holman and I switched to a computer display. The first thing we saw was the destruction of Gobi Station. Several of the smaller structures around the base exploded. The base itself, a tall spindlelike building armed with cannons and radars and landing pads, seemed untouched by the heat for twenty seconds. Laser cannons exploded, launchpads melted, but the base remained erect.

The heat continued for precisely eighty-three seconds. During that time, the sand around Gobi Station turned orange and melted into a shallow ocean of glass. Outcroppings of rock exploded.

The superheating of the planet caused the atmosphere to rise in its own convection. As it rose, the atmospheric pressure lifted with it, and Gobi Station burst like a balloon. The inner framework remained, but the outer walls blew off the building, leaving the inner structure to wilt in the extreme heat.

When the eighty-three-second attack ended, the atmosphere cooled and fell back into place, crushing the remains of Gobi Station into a twisted pile of girders.

I thought about the looter I had allowed to escape. He’d probably died in the first second of the attack. One moment he’d have been looking at whatever swag he’d accumulated, and the next moment, he was dust.

At least he’d died happy, after all; he’d outwitted a dumb Marine.

The Japanese Fleet had begun its mission in 2514, right after the aliens were turned back on New Copenhagen. At the time they embarked, it looked like the war for the Milky Way had ended and the Unified Authority had won.

Yamashiro Yoshi recognized the decrepit state of the Unified Authority and saw it as dangerous. The Unified Authority was an empire in collapse. One more attack, be it from renegades like the Morgan Atkins Believers or aliens, and the empire would fall—it was teetering that close to the edge; but an empire teetering on the brink of extinction is also an empire on alert. Fearing that the U.A. Navy might start shooting before the crew of the Sakura could identify themselves, Yamashiro decided it would be safer to begin the journey to Earth by stopping by its nearest populated neighbor—New Copenhagen. He would go to the secondary planet first, identify himself and his ship, then continue on to Earth.

The Sakura broadcasted in ten million miles off New Copenhagen. The moment the ship cleared the anomaly, Captain Takahashi ordered his engineers to start recharging the broadcast generator …a preventive measure.

Takahashi, Yamashiro, and Commander Suzuki Hideki stood around the map table staring into a three-dimensional holographic map looking for signs of ships patrolling the area. They saw no movement, but their radar found several wrecks orbiting the planet. They tried to signal the planet but received no response.

“Perhaps they have abandoned the planet,” suggested Commander Suzuki.

Yamashiro grunted his agreement. “Maybe so,” he said. “As I understand it, the cities were destroyed during the war with the aliens.”

“Should we proceed to Earth?” asked Takahashi.

“No,” said Yamashiro. “Send down a transport. There may yet be people on this planet.”

“If there are people on New Copenhagen, then they are hiding. We’ve tried to signal them on every frequency, military and civilian,” said Takahashi. “They should have a robot transponder on this planet at the very least.”

“New Copenhagen was the Unified Authority’s final colony. The Linear Committee would not abandon its final colony without a fight,” said Yamashiro. “If they have abandoned the planet, I want to know why.” And then he said the words he wished did not need saying, “We may be defending a people who are already extinct.”

He gave his son-in-law a sympathetic gaze as he said this, but Takahashi looked away. She is my daughter as well as your wife. Your children are my grandchildren. We would share in the loss, he thought.

“Admiral, do you think the aliens have attacked Earth?” asked Suzuki. The conversation did not weigh as heavily on the commander as it did on Yamashiro and Takahashi. He was a bachelor.

Takahashi answered. “It’s been three years since we have had contact with Earth. Any one of a million fates may have befallen it during our absence. History may have left us behind. Perhaps the known laws of time do not apply in Bode’s Galaxy. By our clock, we have been absent for three years, but one thousand centuries may have passed on Earth.”

“Do you really think that is possible?” asked Suzuki.

“Possible? Anything is possible,” said Yamashiro. Then he spoke in a hollow whisper as he added, “Perhaps we only saw the first wave of a more massive assault before we set off for their galaxy.”

Time passed as the Sakura approached New Copenhagen. The mood on the bridge remained grim. “Admiral, do you want to send SEALs to search the planet?” asked Suzuki.

“Our transports will cover more territory from the sky,” said Yamashiro.