Steven Kent - The Clone Redemption

“Looks like these guys need all the advice they can get,” I said.

“We don’t have enough time to get everyone off the planet,” Freeman agreed.

“Yeah, I know. I think it’s time I relieved the officer in charge,” I said. “I hear he’s at the spaceport.”

“You mean Liotta?” asked Freeman.

“That’s the man,” I said.

“He’s left the planet,” said Freeman.

“Know where he went?”

Freeman said, “I can find him for you.”

I smiled, and said, “Ray Freeman, welcome to the Praetorian Guard.”

When we returned to the spaceport, I noticed things that had eluded my attention when I first arrived. I asked the commanding officer to take me on a tour. He pointed out the crates and pallets along the runways. I saw trucks loaded with supplies waiting by the hangars.

Five hangars, each the size of a college auditorium, stood in a row behind the airfield. The doors of the first four hangars hung open, revealing stacks of supplies that seemed to overflow from within their walls. I asked one of my guides about the fifth hangar.

He answered, “That’s the crematorium, sir.”

“The crematorium?” I asked.

“A civilian came through …a big man. He was a black man, bald and built like a mountain. He had orders identifying him as a civilian advisor.”

One thing about Freeman, he always left a lasting impression.

“He took a jeep into town. When he came back, he had a busful of prisoners,” said the officer. “He identified most of them as gangsters, but a few of them were fleet officers as well.

“He said he caught the gangsters bribing their way onto a transport.”

“And the officers?” I asked.

“They accepted the bribes.”

Freeman had probably spotted some civilian driving a truck up to a transport and gone in to investigate. He’d come to Bangalore hoping to save lives, but Ray Freeman did not mind killing people who got in the way of salvation.

“He left the prisoners in the bus and parked the bus in the hangar. That’s why we call it the crematorium. He left them there to burn.”

I looked at the hangar and smiled. A private crematorium for gangsters and crooked officers …it had a certain ring to it.

I got the feeling Admiral Liotta suspected me of having something to do with Admiral Jolly’s untimely demise. Liotta conducted his business via the confabulator, holding daily summits and refusing to grant me a face-to-face interview. I did not understand the Navy way. In the Marines, we treated our subordinates like missiles, we told them what to do and launched them in the right direction, knowing that destruction would follow. In the Navy, the officers seemed so damn political.

Once again finding myself in a war room, speaking through a confabulator, I missed the halcyon days of summits with Gary Warshaw. Back when he ruled the Enlisted Man’s Empire, he held summits in which all the top brass met behind closed doors.

At least I was not alone in the conference room. Captain Morris Dempsey, the officer Liotta placed in charge of evacuating Bangalore sat to my left. Captain Jim Holman, the redheaded clone, sat to my right. Dempsey looked stressed. Holman looked like a man who didn’t have a care in the world.

“What is the status of the evacuation?” asked Liotta.

Dempsey said, “It’s in progress, sir.” Then he quietly muttered, “Whatever happened to briefing and debriefing, and leaving me to do my job in between?”

“Is it running according to schedule?”

Dempsey fielded the question. He said, “We fell behind schedule at the start, sir, but things are looking up now.”

Holman, who was pretending to take notes, lazily wrote “Bullshit” on his notepad.

“Glad to hear it,” said Admiral Liotta. He sounded enthusiastic about the news. By that time, I had come to realize that Liotta was both a coward and entirely inept.

Admiral Wallace seemed surprised by the report. Using Liotta’s undermining tactics, he asked, “Will you be able to rescue the entire population?”

“Yes, sir, Admiral,” said Dempsey.

“Really,” said Wallace. “Every man, woman, and child?”

“Yes, sir. We almost certainly will.”

His expression serious and intent, Holman made obscene gestures with his hand under the table. Since he managed to keep his shoulders steady, the admirals had no clue. Dempsey saw it, though. His eyes turned to daggers.

“Well done, Dempsey,” said Liotta, giving Wallace a crooked smile.

“How about supplies?” asked Wallace.

Momentarily distracted by Holman, Dempsey could not prevent his insecurity peeking from behind the façade. “I …I need to get back to you on that one, Admiral. I’m not certain where we stand, sir,” he said.

Under the table, Holman’s hand stopped in midmotion and returned meekly to his lap.

Liotta sighed, and asked, “So are you telling me, Captain, that we are evacuating millions of people but we will not have food to feed them? Is that what you are telling me? Why the hell should we evacuate them? If they’re going to die either way, we might as well leave them to burn on Bangalore, Captain. That way they will die faster.” As Liotta’s rant built into a scream, a ton of blood must have pumped into his head. His face turned the bright red of oxygenated blood. It looked like he had a fever.

I had the feeling that Liotta did not feel as concerned about the supplies as he pretended. Wallace had just shown him up, and that affected Liotta deeply. He shouted, “Start pulling supplies, Dempsey. Do not leave Bangalore with an ounce less than one million tons of supplies. That is an order.”

Dempsey said, “Sir, zero hour is at 08:00.” That was three hours away.

“Son of a bitch,” muttered Liotta. He wasn’t calling the captain a son of a bitch, he was referring to the situation. “Then you had better come up with something fast. Don’t even try leaving that planet without the supplies, or I’ll leave your ass there to burn.”

It was a pathetic threat made by a cowardly leader. Even with the supplies waiting in the hangars, we lacked the manpower and space needed to load one million tons of supplies onto transports in a three-hour stretch.

Dempsey took a moment to compose his thoughts. He breathed in deeply, held it, exhaled. His shoulders hunched, and his back drooped. He said, “Yes, sir. I will do my best, sir.”

Holman had returned to taking notes. He wrote “Pucker Up Slut” on his notepad.

“Don’t do your best,” said Liotta. “I’ve already seen your best. Your best is what got us into this situation.” He sounded so smug, so sanctimonious. The admiral had dumped a nearly impossible task on a useless lackey; and now that the lackey showed he was not up to the job, Liotta wanted to dodge any blame.

I decided to take some of the heat off Dempsey’s shoulders. I asked, “Admiral, what is happening with the rest of our fleet?”

“Nothing important,” said Liotta.

“That’s funny, I heard the Unifieds attacked our ships in the Cygnus and Perseus Arms,” I said. “Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds important.”

On Holman’s pad I saw:

Hair Ass Wall Ass Curt AssHe tilted the notepad for me to see, stifling a smile. Next time I attended one of these meetings, I’d make him leave the notepad outside.

“We kicked their asses,” said Wallace.

Still playing with his notepad, Holman wrote “Truth” and “Bullshit,” with a little box beside each choice. He placed a check mark under “Bullshit.”

“Is that so?” I asked. “I heard the Unifieds kicked our asses.”

“Specking lies,” said Wallace.