Steven Kent - The Clone Redemption

Believing that he had been shown up by a subordinate officer, Takahashi turned red around the ears.

The SEAL sat unmoved. As far as Hara could tell, the SEAL paid no attention to anything and anyone in the room as he focused all of his attention on the computer simulation.

The simulation showed the destruction inside the ship. Screens and panels exploded, tables and cabinets and engines caught fire, floors and bulkheads melted. Before the entire cataclysm could erupt, however, the outer skin of the ship turned to liquid, smothering everything inside it.

“This is a simulation of what happens to a battleship when the air inside it heats up to ten thousand degrees,” said Hara. He tapped the screen of his clipboard computer. This time the simulation of the inside of the ship appeared side by side with the feed of the outside of the ship. In the simulated ship, the air glowed red to signal the beginning of the attack.

“You can see that the details match up,” said Hara. He froze the display, pointed to several areas, and said, “If you look here, the heat causes the air and metal inside the ship to expand.”

“What about the crew?” asked Yamashiro. “Were they alive at this point?”

“I did not include the effects on humans in this simulation,” said Hara.

“What is your best guess, Lieutenant?”

“Maybe they did not live this long. They probably died in less than a second,” said Hara. Then he followed by apologetically adding, “This is just a guess.”

Yamashiro nodded, then he muttered something mostly to himself, but he said it loud enough for everyone to hear. He said, “Death comes quickly in Bode’s Galaxy.”

Hara paused, waiting for Yamashiro to tell him to continue. When the admiral did not say anything, he waited a few seconds and continued on his own. He finished the demonstration, showing how the ship first expanded from the heat, then air escaped through her melting walls without the cold of space lowering the heat inside her hull. With her frame melting, the battleship quickly collapsed in on herself and became a bubbling liquid cloud before being cooled by the vacuum of space.

Hara said, “We experimented with dozens of variables. This simulation came the closest to what we saw during the attack on the Kyoto . It’s not a perfect match, but it comes close.”

Takahashi said, “Your simulation does not explain what they used to attack the ships.”

“No, sir. We don’t know how they delivered the heat to the ship,” said Hara.

“Oh, so, that is still unknown,” said Takahashi.

“Yes, sir,” said Hara.

Hara noted the way that the SEAL continued to study the frozen image of the destroyed ship. The SEAL did not join in the discussion.

SEALs made Hara nervous. He tried to ignore the clone, but his eyes kept trailing back toward him.

Hara was not the only Yakuza on the ship. He had fifteen men in his organization. There had been more. Three had stolen drugs from the infirmary and tried to sell them. One had beaten a female sailor. All four men had disappeared. Hara believed that the SEALs killed them.

Hiding a body on a ship might be hard, but you could always dump it into space. When he looked into the cold, dark eyes of the SEAL, eyes hidden in shadows under that bony ridge of brow, Hara saw the eyes of a man for whom murder came easily.

Hara tapped the screen of his computer, and a new image appeared above the desk—the image of a wasted city.

“Is this a simulation?” asked Takahashi.

“No, Captain. This is a video feed from a satellite,” said Hara. “This is what we found when we arrived at New Copenhagen.”

The image showed burned buildings and streets lined with buildings that had been both charred and smashed. It showed a burned forest in which the remaining trees looked like giant pins stood on end. The feed showed a desert in which the sand had melted to glass. Hara explained some of the details.

The SEAL finally spoke. He asked, “Lieutenant, are you saying that the aliens attacked the ships and the planet with the same weapon?”

Hara answered in an indifferent tone. After all, killer clone or human, the SEAL was still an enlisted man. He said, “That seems rather obvious, Master Chief.”

Hara called the SEAL by rank to remind him of his place. Deep in his heart, he hated the SEAL. In Japanese society, the Yakuza and the police enjoyed a mostly peaceful coexistence. The SEALs were not Japanese, and Hara resented their intrusion.

“How is that possible?” asked Yamashiro.

Now that he was dealing with authority, Hara took a mental step back. He said, “Sir, we have no idea what kind of weapon they have used, but it generates a lot of heat within an atmosphere. I used my computer to simulate the destruction on New Copenhagen, and it is in keeping with what happened to our ships.”

“Show us the simulation, Lieutenant,” said Yamashiro.

Hara shook his head, and said, “I apologize, sir, but I did not create an animated model.”

“What does that mean?” asked Yamashiro.

“The simulation predicted what might happen to a planet if you raised its temperature to ten thousand degrees without generating a visual display,” said Hara.

“What would happen?” asked Yamashiro. He seemed to become more intense by the second.

“You would incinerate plants; melt streets; melt anything made of plastic, steel, or glass; evaporate streams.” He ran the video feed of New Copenhagen, then stopped it on an image of a broken skyscraper.

“This building is broken down to its base. It appears to have been crushed. In my computer simulation, the high temperatures caused the planet’s atmosphere to rise like a hot-air balloon. Buildings that survived the heat were smashed when the temperature returned to normal, and the atmosphere fell back into place.”

“Would it be possible for someone to survive on that planet?” Yamashiro asked in Japanese.

“Survive?” Hara sounded incredulous. “Admiral, these temperatures …”

“No. Not during the attack, now. If we placed people on New Copenhagen, would they survive?” Yamashiro asked the question in Japanese, glancing over at the SEAL, who did not appear to be listening.

“There are no plants to generate oxygen. I’m not sure if you could plant crops in this soil. The temperatures may have burned the nutrients out of the soil. That’s just a guess.

“You probably would not have to worry about germs,” Hara said, thinking to himself that as far as he could tell, the planet had been sterilized. He added, “This is not my area of expertise, sir.”

Continuing to speak in Japanese, Yamashiro said, “Yes. Yes. I know. Lieutenant, we no longer have the luxury of sticking to our specialties. I would not be the admiral of a one-ship fleet if we did.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hara.

“In your opinion, Lieutenant, could a colony survive on that planet?”

Hara thought for several seconds. He ran a hand along his jaw, closed his eyes, muttered to himself, then shook his head. “I don’t know, sir.”

“What about a breathable atmosphere?” asked Yamashiro.

“I have no way of knowing, sir.”

His frustration showing, Yamashiro growled, “What would be your best guess?”

“Sir, your opinion would be as good as mine.”

“What do you know?” asked Yamashiro.

Hara said, “The radiation levels on the planet are manageable. My simulation predicted no rise in radiation.”

Yamashiro nodded, and said, “From what you are not telling me, it appears that a colony might stand a chance of survival.”

“Yes, sir. It might.”

Life on the Sakura was divided into three shifts. Most of the crew worked eight-hour shifts; they had eight hours to eat, drink, clean their billets, and relax; and they had eight hours to sleep.