Steven Kent - The Clone Empire

The MPs at the bottom of the ramp signaled for one of us to pass through the posts. Nobles went first, not hesitating for even a moment. I followed a step behind. The perceivably moist breath of the sprayer blasted me on one side, and the receiver drew in the raw information. The entire process took less time than it took me to walk between the posts, and the results came up almost instantaneously.

Behind us, teams of docking-bay techs rushed to inspect our transport. I turned in time to see them scurrying up the ramp. As I watched the techs, a sailor in a captain’s uniform came up beside me. He had the confident smile of an old friend who knows he will be recognized. He was, of course, a clone on a ship filled with clones. Though he did not know it, he had the exact same face as everyone around him. Fortunately, he did not wear the same uniform. I did know the man, but I would not have been able to distinguish him from any other clone had I not recognized the captain’s insignia on his uniform. I saluted, and said, “Permission to come aboard?”

“Permission granted,” he said, returning my salute.

“Are we near a front?” I asked.

Bishop shook his head. “Not out here in Cygnus. The only fighting in the Cygnus Arm is infighting.”

“So what’s with all the security?” I asked. “I half expected your MPs to check my body cavities.”

“We are at war, you know,” Bishop said, a nonanswer designed to brush off the question.

“This isn’t wartime security,” I said. “Wartime security is a fighter escort and armed guards at the door.”

He took a deep breath, held it for just a moment, then exhaled. “It’s not the war that’s got us worried. The war is going well, everything else is falling apart.”

Four Marines followed from a few feet back as Bishop led me out of the landing bay. The rest of the platoon hung back with Nobles as he secured the transport.

The Kamehameha was a warship with a complement of fighters and Marines, but it was also the mobile administrative headquarters of the Enlisted Man’s Fleet. Fleet headquarters was spread across an upper deck of the ship. At least, it used to be there. We did not take the lift to the fleet deck. Instead, Bishop led me to the bridge.

“We’re not going to Fleet Command?” I asked.

“Not now, no,” Bishop said.

“Is Warshaw up there?” I asked.

Bishop stopped walking and turned to face me. I saw deep-seated suspicion in the way he examined my face. “Why are you in such a rush to see Warshaw?” he asked.

Oh, there were so many good responses, both politic answers and flaming. Warshaw was the only officer in my pay grade in the fleet; I wanted to congratulate him for saving the fleet, but I also wanted to poke him in the nose for leaving me stranded on Terraneau. Instead, I said, “I get the feeling I’m still being screened.”

“Something like that,” Bishop admitted.

I didn’t know him all that well; we’d only been on the same ship for a few months before the Earth Fleet attacked. We occupied different worlds—he was Navy, I was a Marine. We’d gotten along, but the standard prejudices applied. Sailors thought of Marines as cargo.

“I’m not a spy,” I said. “You don’t really think the Unified Authority captured me, trapped me in a battleship, and sent me through that broadcast zone.”

“General, I don’t know what to think. You’re not even supposed to be alive.”

“I walked through the posts. What did your computers tell you?”

“You’ve got the DNA of a Liberator Clone. We’ve verified that.”

That was my genetic fingerprint. That was as specific as the computers could get with clones. They could tell one natural-born from the next by their DNA; but since clones were cut from the same helix, genetic fingerprinting only went so far. The security station could identify our make and our age and catalog any major or recent illnesses.

“That should narrow the field,” I said. “How many Liberators do you know?”

Bishop did not answer my question.

We went up to the bridge deck, but we did not enter the bridge. With his MPs still tailing us, Bishop led me into an off-bridge conference room. Wanting to believe Warshaw would join us, I took a seat at the table. The room was empty, except for a table, chairs, and a media/communications display.

We sat in silence for a moment, then I asked, “What am I missing here?”

“What do you mean?” Bishop asked, playing the role of the obtuse ship’s captain.

“You say the war is going well,” I said.

“I believe I said it was going better than we could have hoped for.”

“Okay, but you’re hiding like a mouse in a hole. What’s with the siege mentality?” I asked.

I waited several seconds for him to answer. To this point, I had not yet become angry, but my tension level was rising.

“What happened on Terraneau?” he asked.

“Is that an official question?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Who else is listening in on our conversation?”

“No one,” he said, shaking his head.

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

Before the big attack, the Corps of Engineers set up a prison called Outer Bliss on Terraneau. They rigged a mike and a camera in the prison’s interrogation room that were so small, trained experts would need equipment to locate them. When I interrogated prisoners in Outer Bliss, Warshaw listened in on the conversations from the Kamehameha . I suspected he would listen in on this conversation as well.

“What happened on Terraneau?” Bishop repeated.

“Do you mean before or after you guys ditched the party?” I asked.

“What happened on the planet?” he asked. “How did you get out alive?”

“The Unified Authority landed three thousand Marines; I had five thousand men. The cocky bastards didn’t even bother landing more men after you left. That’s how sure they were that they would win.”

“You faced their Marines, and you survived?” Bishop asked, ignoring the obvious evidence that we were having a conversation, not a séance.

“Something like that,” I said.

“Was there anything unusual about their troops?” Bishop asked. Now he was probing.

“Do you mean the shielded armor?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Tell me about it.” The son of a bitch was testing me.

“They had shielded armor,” I said. “What do you want to know? Their armor was just like ours except that it projected a shield. Even the palms of their hands were shielded; they couldn’t carry guns. They fired fléchettes from tubes that ran along their arms inside their armor. Sound familiar?” I placed my right hand on the table, palm up, and showed him pea-sized scars in my wrist and forearm. The fléchettes had passed through my arm and armor with the ease of a sewing needle poking through a cotton sheet.

“You were shot?” he asked.

“Five times,” I said.

“You’re lucky to be alive.”

“I wouldn’t have the pleasure of sitting through this interrogation if I had died,” I said. “And Warshaw wouldn’t be listening in on us,” I added, hoping to get Warshaw’s goat and flush him out of hiding.

“Just answer the specking questions, okay, hotshot?” said the voice that came out of the ceiling. Admiral Gary Warshaw had the same voice box as every other clone, but he had his own way of talking.

Bishop winced. I smiled.

“They’re using poison on their fléchettes now,” Warshaw said. “They hit you, you die.”

“That’s how it went on Terraneau, too. They killed everyone they hit,” I said.

“Everyone but you,” Bishop pointed out.

“Genetics. I’m a Liberator. I had the mother of all combat reflexes. The doctor said there was so much adrenaline and testosterone in my blood that I should have died of a heart attack.”