Steven Kent - The Clone Empire

The U.A. Navy did not have the same constraints thanks to its fleet of self-broadcasting ships. It was a small fleet, too small to confront us; but the U.A.’s ships could travel anywhere at any time.

My thoughts drifted to the late Admiral Lawrence Thorne. Why would they kill Thorne? Was it revenge for changing loyalties? Maybe Warshaw was right, and the Unifieds were after senior officers. Thorne was a thirty-year man, the most experienced man in our fleet and the only one ever to attend Annapolis; but he had little combat experience. I liked him. He was a capable administrator, but from a strategic point of view, his death was not much of a loss.

They had also killed Lilburn Franks. That was another story. Franks was a clone with an inordinate amount of command experience. He’d seen war firsthand, riding on the bridge of some of the Unifieds’ most decorated warships. He knew tactics, and he didn’t back away from a fight. Warshaw always struck me as a bit of a coward. Franks came across like a man spoiling for a battle. They balanced each other out.

Two dead admirals, the number two and number three men in the fleet. No wonder Warshaw dug a hole for himself on Gobi. Hiding in a backwater desert must have sounded good once his lieutenants started dying; but if the Unifieds did have clones working for them, posting guards and analyzing DNA samples would not do a lick of good.

I tried to consider all of the angles as I turned off the lights in my quarters. I would sleep for an hour, then meet Warshaw for dinner. We had a lot to discuss.

“Hope you don’t mind eating in my office. I eat all my meals here.”

Warshaw had a dining room tucked away in one corner of his office/living complex. The table was large enough to seat a dozen officers. Sitting alone at that table, he looked big and strong and terrified. He had two armed guards posted inside the door to his complex and four more just outside.

A steward waited by the door as well. He watched me sit, gave me a moment to get comfortable, then came to ask what we wanted to drink.

“Just water,” I said.

“Give me a beer,” Warshaw said.

The steward brought us our drinks and left without another word.

“I served on this planet,” I said. “We were stationed in an old sandstone fortress with a swamp for a courtyard. We drank filtered sludge from the swamp.”

“I know the place. It’s out near Morrowtown, right?” Warshaw asked. “I went out to see the ruins.”

I nodded, and asked, “Is that far from here?”

“Other side of the planet,” Warshaw said. He looked so unhappy. He sat slumped in his chair, his arms folded across his lap and his shoulders hunched. “When I first got here, they told me there were these ruins from the original Gobi Station. It’s like a historic site, you know, something for tourists …as if any tourists ever came to this place.

“They treat the place like a museum exhibit. They have guides and tours, and they take you into the living quarters and shit. There’s a plaque that says something about the attack on Gobi being the first shots fired in the Mogat War.”

I had never thought about it that way; but as I considered it, perhaps those were the opening shots of the war.

“I was there during the attack,” I said. “The fort had a regional armory. That’s what the Mogats were after. Crowley led them on that one.” “Crowley” was General Amos Crowley, a U.A. Army officer who defected to the Morgan Atkins Believers.

Warshaw whistled, and said, “Crowley? No wonder the fort got so banged up.”

“I was lucky to get out of there alive,” I said.

“Yeah, well, speaking of being lucky, you got lucky on Terraneau. Every time my Marines run into the Unifieds, we get our nuts flattened.”

As I started to say something about that, the steward came back to take our orders. Since I had no idea what was on the menu, I decided to order whatever Warshaw did. He ordered salmon.

When the steward left, I asked, “They have salmon here?” We were on a planet with no lakes or oceans.

“It’s flown in,” Warshaw said. “So you got any ideas for stopping U.A. Marines that don’t involve demolishing an underground garage?”

“I do: Wait till their batteries run out, then stick it to ’em,” I said, and I explained about the short-life batteries. He laughed. “Good call, Harris. You’ll beat the whole damned Unified Authority Marine Corps as long as they don’t bring spares.”

I laughed politely, then said, “We dug some of them out.”

“You dug them out? That doesn’t sound like you. An act of compassion? That’s something new. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“After they were dead,” I said. “I wanted a better look at their armor. That was how we found out about the batteries.”

Warshaw nodded.

Our fish arrived, sautéed and dusted with almonds. The smell of salmon and onions filled the air. It was the best meal I had eaten in over a year. My plate was large and buried under enough fish and wild rice to last me a week. The meal came with white wine.

Warshaw took a sip of wine, loaded salmon and wild rice onto his fork, then paused to ask, “Did you test the batteries yourself?”

“Do you remember Scott Mars?”

Warshaw toasted Mars with his wine. “Yeah, I know Mars. Good engineer. I heard he went born-again Christian.”

“They call him the ‘born-again clone,’” I said.

“And Mars found out about the batteries?”

“The shielding works off a forty-five-minute battery,” I said. “The battery drains even quicker when anything touches the shields.”

“Mobility versus power,” Warshaw observed. He had more than twenty years in the Navy, all of them spent in engineering. As an enlisted man and a clone, he would never have qualified for engineering school, but he had plenty of practical education. “They can’t make the battery too big or the Marines can’t move.”

Warshaw put down his fork and stretched his arms, moving his bald head from side to side. He had the physique of a buffalo, overstuffed at the chest and shoulders, tiny at the waist. Staring at me, a slight smile on his face, he said, “The Enlisted Man’s Marine Corps needs a Commandant. Of course, now that we know you’re alive, you get the job. From here on out, Harris, you and I are equals.”

“You didn’t believe that back at Terraneau,” I said.

“Things have changed,” Warshaw said. “We need a man like you.”

“Someone to wear a bull’s-eye on his back,” I said.

“I wouldn’t put it in so many words,” Warshaw said.

“How would you put it?”

“How would I put it? I’d put it this way. We’ve got a security problem, General. I want you to find our rats, lead them into some underground rat hole, and bury them for good.”

Warshaw had one lead, one thin lead to help me track down the security breach. That lead came in the form of three dead bodies on a planet called St. Augustine.

Back in my billet, I pulled on a pair of mediaLink shades and read about the planet. It didn’t take long to realize that if I wanted to track down a breach in security, St. Augustine—the rest-and-recreation capital of the Enlisted Man’s Empire—was a promising place to start. If there was a place where our sailors would let down their guard, it was St. Augustine, a planet with beaches, hotels, and very few men.

Several years ago, when the Avatari attacked St. Augustine, the Unified Authority had left the locals to fend for themselves. The people of St. Augustine fought to the figurative last man. Once they ran out of men, the women and children went into hiding, and the aliens simply went away. That was how the Avatari ran things. Once they captured a planet, they left you alone as long as you didn’t disturb their toxic mining operations.