Steven Kent - The Clone Redemption

“What if Solomon is like Terraneau?” asked Freeman. “What if they won’t listen to us?”

“Terraneau was a neutral planet. Solomon is part of the Enlisted Man’s Empire,” I said. “There was no reasoning with Doctorow; he saw us as an enemy.” Doctorow was the late Right Reverend Colonel Ellery Doctorow, a pacifist dictator who had defected from the Unified Authority Army and declared himself president of Terraneau.

“Would you have believed a clone and a mercenary if they told you to evacuate your planet?” Freeman asked.

I shrugged my shoulders, and said, “We’ll do what we can.”

Freeman said, “It’s in God’s hands after that.” He wasn’t being flip. If there was a gene that gave people their sense of humor, Ray Freeman did not have it. His father had been a Neo-Baptist minister; and more and more, Ray’s religious roots were finding their way back into his thinking.

“Yeah, God’s hands,” I said. Ray could take his place among the specking saints if he chose. I did not want any part of it.

“You don’t believe in God,” Freeman said. “You used to.”

“I used to believe that God was a metaphor for government,” I said. “Now I’m a heretic. I don’t believe in governments.”

“And God?” asked Freeman.

“If there’s a God, why did He create the Avatari? Why is He letting them kill entire populations?”

Freeman didn’t answer.

“I find it pretty specking hard to believe that there’s a God out there who loves everybody, but He sends them to Hell if they don’t believe in Him,” I said.

“Maybe He doesn’t send them to Hell,” Freeman said. “Maybe He’s just like us, running from one planet to the next, trying to save as many people as He can from a disaster that’s already occurred.”

“How about clones?” I asked. “Do you think He tries to save clones?”

According to every major religion, clones did not have souls and therefore had no place in Heaven.

We were on a spaceship manned by clones, flying through enemy territory on a mission to save natural-borns. According to religious authority, the people who wanted to sink us had souls, and so did the people we wanted to save; but we were the saviors here, and, according to every major religion, we were soulless.

“I don’t believe in souls,” said Freeman.

“You don’t believe in souls?” I asked.

“I don’t know if there is a life after this one; but if there is, I think that everyone gets a part of it. You’re a walking, breathing man, Harris. That makes you just like everybody else.”

But Freeman was wrong, I wasn’t like everybody else. I was sterile. All clones were sterile. I might walk and breathe, but much of my thinking was the direct result of neural programming that my designers had hardwired into my brain.

“So is God the reason you’re here?” I asked. “Is God the reason you’re risking your life?”

Freeman shook his head but said nothing. The man was a sphinx.

The wreckage of the E.M.N. ships floated still and silent above Solomon’s radiant atmosphere. Seeing the dark outlines of our ruined ships, I wondered how much the people on the planet understood. So close to the atmosphere, the space battle would have been visible through civilian telescopes and traffic radars. Some of the explosions might have been visible to the naked eye.

Could the people have known that the battle signaled their planet’s demise? Did they know that the bad guys had won and that the darkened carcasses above their planet were ships that had come to protect them?

“Ah, damn, they got our ships,” Holman said, as we approached the wreckage.

“Mystery solved,” I said.

I sat on the bridge, an invited guest of Captain Holman. Freeman waited for me on the transport, two decks below. Once we knew the coast was clear, I would join Freeman, and we’d fly down to the planet.

Holman had his crew on full alert. Our shields were up, our stealth generator was on, and the first round of torpedoes was loaded into the tubes.

We slowed to a near crawl as we circled the remains of the ships. I had grown numb to this morbid form of sightseeing. I no longer thought about the people who had died on the ships or the terror of their last moments. We cruised by slowly like mourners passing an open casket, and we stared in silence.

The first wreck we passed was a frigate, a small ship designed to block fighter attacks. I identified the frigate by her size. The Unified Authority’s killer torpedoes had smashed every other recognizable feature from the hull. The mothshaped frame had exploded into three separate sections still connected by a few shreds of metal. The nose of the ship was a jagged twist. No light shone from its remains, not even the flicker of electricity.

“These ships came from the Perseus Outer Fleet,” Holman said. He stood trancelike, staring at the scene. “I served in that fleet.”

Behind the frigate, the other ships assigned to the patrol looked equally demolished. They showed in silhouette only, dark and dead, silent forms floating over the sunlit sphere of Solomon.

“Captain Holman, I’ve located two U.A. battleships,” called one of the bridge officers.

“We should introduce ourselves,” said Holman.

Naval battles. As the ship goes, so does every man aboard her. During ground battles, Marines can conceal themselves or fight their way out of danger. One Marine can turn the course of an entire battle. It doesn’t work that way on a ship. I had my share of phobias—nukes and naval battles were at the top of my list.

“You okay, General Harris? You look a little pale,” said Holman.

I didn’t answer. Better to let him wonder if I was nervous than to let him hear it in my voice.

Moving slowly, we came around, circling the wreckage so that we were between the dead ships and the planet. We were so small. As we passed the ruins of a battleship, I realized that there was more than enough room for us to park on one of her busted wings.

A few moments passed, then I spotted them, two small shapes glowing like phosphorescent sea creatures as they came around the planet. It was always possible that they had spotted us. Our ship was a spy ship and had the finest stealth technology that the Unifieds had developed, but it used Unified Authority technology. Could they really have been so stupid as to create stealth generators without also developing a technology for seeing through the cloak?

The U.A. ships showed no signs of detecting us. They held their ground as we approached them.

“Captain, there’s a third ship about eighty thousand miles away, halfway around the planet.”

“Good to know,” said Holman.

Holman turned to me, his face beaming as he asked, “General, do you care which ship we sink first?”

“It’s your show,” I said. Like shooting fish in a barrel, I thought. With the stealth generator hiding us from detection, they would not be able to find us or protect themselves. Perhaps they would even think the first ship had suffered a malfunction. It would never occur to the arrogant bastards that a crew of lowly clones would use their ship and their torpedoes against them.

If we hit the second ship before they realized that an enemy had attacked, the third ship would try to flee the scene. Our spy ship was small, invisible, and fast, a predatory bird with a deadly strike. If we moved quickly, we might even hit the third ship before she engaged her broadcast engine.

“Fire blue pill ,” Holman said.

“Blue torpedo away.”

“Fire red pill ,” said Holman, spacing the torpedoes no more than three seconds apart.

“Red torpedo away, sir.”