Steven Kent - The Clone Redemption

With eight hours to go before I left for Earth, I flew to Hightower—a city left desolate after the first Avatari invasion, now densely populated with refugees from other planets and the clone servicemen who rescued them. Ava was there, somewhere.

In the past, I could always find her. She was a celebrity, a movie star, and always the prettiest woman in town. Men learned where she lived for the same reason that true believers memorize the locations of religious shrines. Before the Avatari had reduced the planet to ashes, Ava-fascination had spread like a virus on Terraneau. Ask any woman in Norristown if she’d ever seen Ava, and she would tell you where Ava lived, her place of employment, and the latest gossip.

I flew down to Providence Kri, believing I would find a similar situation in Hightower. As I left the spaceport, I asked a civilian security guard if he knew where I could find Ava Gardner. An older man with salt-and-pepper hair and sixty pounds of extra gut, the guard grinned at me, said, “In my dreams,” and walked away.

The spaceport was all but abandoned. Military transports flew in and out of the city, but Holman had not yet begun the evacuation. I walked long, empty halls, brightly lit and large enough to accommodate thousands of people at a time. In another few hours, refugees would fill the halls beyond capacity. I’d seen too many evacuations over the last few years. Given a choice between a battlefield or a mass evacuation, I would take the battlefield every time.

When I reached the terminal lobby, I saw that work had already begun to stage the evacuation. Marines in Charlie service uniforms, complete with MP armbands, were lining up guardrails and assembling checkpoints and help stations. They saw my uniform and snapped to attention. A major, a clone well into his fifties, stepped out to meet me.

“General, sir, no one notified us that you were coming,” he said as he saluted.

I returned the salute, and said, “Yes, I’m a bit surprised myself.”

“Are you here to oversee our preparation?”

“No, Major, I’m here looking for Ava Gardner.”

He must have mistaken the comment for sarcasm. He turned pale and stiffened. Sputtering, he said, “Um, I …sir.”

“At ease, Major,” I said. I began to feel annoyed. I hated unearned shows of respect. Having stars on my collar did not make me a better man. Steven Jolly and Curtis Liotta both had stars, and they died buffoons.

“Yes, sir,” he said, though he remained rigid.

Behind him, the other Marines still stood at attention, watching us carefully and not sure what to do.

“This is not an inspection, so just relax,” I said. “Get your men back to work.” Knowing the scene that lay ahead, I gave in to a sympathetic impulse, and said, “And, Major, I am here looking for an old friend.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, but still he stood there, a sputtering old waxwork, an old man whose career should probably have ended many years ago.

“Is there something else?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Did you want a car, sir? I can arrange for a car.”

“Good thought,” I said. “A car would be helpful.” The major’s version of a car would come complete with a driver, hopefully someone who knew his way around town.

“Sir, if you can give me your friend’s name, I’ll run it through the computer,” he added nervously.

“Ava Gardner,” I said. “Her name is Ava Gardner.”

“Like the actress?” he asked.

I smiled, and said, “Like the actress.”

He doesn’t know she’s here, I thought. Back in Norristown, every man, woman, and child in town knew about Ava. Granted, Hightower had a transient population, the city had sat empty until we populated it with refugees; but this clone didn’t even know Ava was on the planet.

“Yes, sir. Give me a moment, sir, I’ll get you an address and arrange for a vehicle.” He saluted, I saluted, and he trotted off, leaving me in a lobby filled with Marines still standing at attention.

“As you were,” I growled at the men. They went back to work.

The military is filled with ass-wipe officers who try to link themselves to higher brass at every opportunity. If this major was of that persuasion, he would return with some lame excuse why he should escort me. I started to suspect that the doddering old boy would do just that, and I felt my temper rising. When he returned, he saluted, told me the car was waiting outside the terminal, and returned to work with his troops.

“What’s your name?” I called back to him.

“Perry, sir. Major Andrew Perry. Is there a problem?”

“No, Perry. No problem,” I said.

“What year did you attend the Academy?” I knew he had not attended Annapolis, but that was not the point. He was a clone, and not a Liberator. I did not want to kill the old boy, and asking him about orphanages might cause him to figure out he was synthetic. It could trigger a death reflex.

“I didn’t attend the Academy, sir. I grew up in an orphanage and got field-promoted when we started the empire.”

“In an orphanage?” I repeated. “I grew up in UAO 553,” I said. UAO stood for Unified Authority Orphanage. There had been hundreds of orphanages, clone farms churning out young conscripts whose highest aspiration was to become a sergeant.

“Three-O-Nine, sir,” he said; but his focus was not on me; he kept stealing glances at his men. He did not want to gab, he wanted to work.

I saluted, grunted “Carry on,” and walked to the street. Perry, I thought. With a last name, a rank, and an orphanage number, I should be able to track him down. I planned to take most of the E.M.N.’s Marines with me to Earth in a few hours, but I would leave Perry behind. Holman would need the old boy more than I would—a man who cared about mission more than career. Traveling with Holman, the major might even survive.

As for me, I did not expect to survive the day. That our ships would destroy the Earth Fleet, I had no doubt. We’d take casualties, but we’d control the solar system. We would come with more fighter carriers than the Unified Authority had ships. They’d hurt us; but based on size alone, our fleet would smother theirs.

Once we landed on Earth, though …We would outnumber them on Earth just like we did in space; but on Earth the numbers would not matter. “Specking shielded armor,” I muttered quietly enough that I hoped no one would notice.

“General,” the driver said as he snapped to attention. He was a Marine sergeant who looked to be about my age, a man reaching thirty. He opened the door of the sedan, and I climbed in.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked as he sat behind the wheel.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and off we went. Perry, I reminded myself. Orphanage 309.

I’d found the abandoned neighborhoods on Bangalore and Gobi depressing. As we drove through Hightower, I saw something worse. We drove past parks and playgrounds filled with people. We passed kids playing football in a street.

The evacuation would begin in two hours; but for now, these people were happy, naïve, and enjoying life. They were already refugees, I reminded myself. They had only been in Hightower for a couple of weeks at most. Here they lived in an overcrowded city with parks and buildings. In another few hours, they would be herded like sheep and taken to a planet with charred soil and ash in the air. Some would fall into deep depressions that would last for the rest of their lives. Some of these people would commit suicide, and others would starve. The survivors would fantasize about dying under blue skies and being buried in green fields. Would any of them ever really live again?

I imagined a park on Solomon with families playing and young couples kissing and old couples holding hands. In my mind’s eye, I saw the sky turn the orange-red color of live coals. I imagined the trees and grass bursting into flames; but I could not bring myself to see what happened to the people. Try as I might, I could no longer see them.