Steven Kent - The Clone Empire

“I think I may have seen one of their assassins,” I said.

Cabot perked up. “On St. Augustine?”

“Yes, in Petersborough, after I left the morgue. Remember when I went off on my own?”

“I remember,” he said.

“I walked around for an hour, then I ended up at a restaurant. There was a man in the restaurant …a clone.”

“What makes you think he was the killer?” Cabot asked.

“He was alone in the bar. Everyone else came with friends or dates, but he was there alone, looking around the room like a man on a hunt.”

“Maybe he came looking for a date,” Cabot suggested.

“Yeah, maybe,” I agreed. “But he wasn’t there for the girls.” Considering Cabot’s reputation as a “toe-toucher,” I wondered if that was a sensitive topic. He seemed unfazed, so I went on. “He sat by himself in a corner. He didn’t eat. He didn’t talk to anybody. He ordered a beer, but he didn’t drink it. When he spotted me watching him, he paid his tab and left.”

“What makes you think he was an assassin?” Cabot asked.

“He left when he spotted me.”

“Maybe you scared him.”

“Maybe, but let’s go on the assumption that he is a Unified Authority assassin.”

“Was there anything besides the beer that made you think he was an assassin?” Cabot asked. It was a fair question.

I sighed. I had nothing to go on, just my instincts. “I don’t know.”

Cabot shook his head. “It sounds pretty thin, sir. I mean, what are the odds? The entire Navy uses St. Augustine for R & R. How many bars do you think there are in Petersborough? I bet there are hundreds, maybe even thousands; and here you stepped into the one bar in the entire city where a Unified Authority assassin sits waiting. Do you really think we got that lucky, sir?”

I knew why he added the “sir.” It was like telling someone they look like shit, then finishing up with, “No offense.”

So he’s not all bad, I thought. At least he speaks his mind.

“You thirsty?” I asked. “I brought a bottle of Scotch for the ride.”

Cabot shook his head, and said, “I’ll pass.” Maybe he didn’t like me any more than I liked him. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that my lack of respect for him might be mutual.

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” I said. It was one of those ancient sayings you heard from time to time, though nobody actually knew where it came from anymore. “Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. What if there’s a guy like that in every bar in every city on St. Augustine?”

“I think we would know about something so massive,” Cabot said. “Sooner or later, somebody is going to notice something like that.”

“Maybe somebody did notice,” I said. “Maybe one of the MPs guarding Sunmark got curious, so they killed him; and then they killed off everyone else in the precinct just in case he told someone.

“Maybe that’s what happened. They killed him, then they killed the others, then they dragged their bodies into the jungle and dissolved them with Noxium.”

“It’s a possibility,” Cabot said slowly as he considered the theory. “That would explain who did it and why.”

“But you don’t think that’s what happened?” I asked.

“I don’t have any better explanations, but I’m at a disadvantage here, this is the first time you’ve told me about your mysterious barfly.”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “It doesn’t wash, sir. They couldn’t land that many replacements on the planet without people noticing.”

“There are eighty thousand clones on St. Augustine taking leave at any moment. Who’s going to notice a few hundred infiltrators?” I asked.

“They’d notice if a bunch of clones disappeared …” Cabot began, but he stopped himself.

“We found 550 victims give or take a few. Did anybody notice anything before we started counting bodies?”

We had thirteen fleets filled with clones who had not been ashore for at least two years. For the men on leave, St. Augustine was a bottomless supply of booze, women, and freedom. From the moment they landed to the moment they returned to duty, they left their brains behind.

I had a slightly different view of the planet. I saw St. Augustine as a malignant tumor that had metastasized and was now spreading cancerous poison throughout the Enlisted Man’s Empire.

Cabot and I spoke for another few minutes before I dismissed him. He’d done his job.

An hour later, I had typed up my report and my recommendations, weak as they were. The only answer I could come up with was to be on the lookout for clones in their midtwenties who seemed alienated from the rest of the crew. Maybe we would catch a spy, and maybe he would break under interrogation. Then we would have more.

In the short term, I was placing my investigation on hold. I knew someplace where I could assemble an elite brigade of Marines that I knew had not been infiltrated. The only question in my mind was, “Would they follow me?”

I sailed out of the Scutum-Crux Arm on a wrecked battleship and returned on a yacht …more or less. I rode a frigate to Gobi, then requisitioned the Salah ad-Din , a Perseus-class fighter carrier.

In demographic terms, the ad-Din had the oldest crew of any carrier in the Enlisted Man’s Navy, its youngest sailor being thirty-two years old. Beyond that, having not yet been granted leave, the crew of the Salah ad-Din could not have picked up pests from St. Augustine. If any ship was secure, it was the Salah ad-Din , and she had plenty of space for transporting Marines since the eleven-thousand-man Marine compound on her bottom deck now sat vacant.

There were twenty-two hundred Marines stationed on Terraneau. The ad-Din had room to spare.

I toured the Marine complex as the ad-Din broadcasted out through a station that was specially programmed for a single broadcast to Terraneau. Walking through the barracks, I imagined them filled with men. I went to the firing range, the ghosts of ancient gunfire echoing in my head.

“General Harris?” The voice of Captain Pete Villanueva spoke to me from a squawk box on the wall. I wondered if his voice had sounded from every speaker in the Marine complex or if some onboard system had tracked my movements.

I went to the box. “Harris here.”

“We are in Scutum-Crux space, sir.”

“What is the situation?”

“All clear, sir.”

Several months had passed since the U.A. Navy attacked Terraneau. If the Unifieds were coming back, I figured they would have done it months ago.

“Have you made contact?” I asked.

“We reached Fort Sebastian, the Marines are expecting you, sir.”

“Very well. All I need now is a transport and a pilot,” I said.

“Your staff pilot is ready and waiting for you, sir.”

“My staff pilot?” I asked. He might have meant Nobles, but to the best of my knowledge, Nobles was still on the Kamehameha . Maybe I picked up a tick on St. Augustine, I thought, and the thought made me smile.

“Captain, please send a security detail to the landing bay,” I said. “Have them seal off the bay and wait for me in the hall.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Under no circumstances are they to enter the bay before I arrive,” I said.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

I didn’t need to worry about them arriving before me as the Marine complex was on the same deck as the landing bay. Running through the hall, I arrived in about three minutes. My security detail—six men armed with M27s—arrived a few seconds later. Villanueva ran a tight ship; I was impressed.