Steven Kent - The Clone Empire

The small crowd that had gathered around us chuckled …everybody but me.

We adjourned to the assembly room. It reminded me of the capitol building on Earth, only in miniature. The men Doctorow had assembled to help him run his utopian planet were the inquisitors; I was the criminal.

We entered a three-story auditorium in which a lectern and a couple of seats waited on a stage at the bottom of the well. Doctorow led the way down the stairs, bounding each step with energy I would not have expected from a man in his sixties, his excitement unmistakable.

He led me to the stage and asked me to take a seat. Behind us, extending out like a small wall, stood the type of raised bench that judges use in courtrooms. The stand rose a full eight feet above the stage, and Doctorow sat behind it, leaving me alone on display.

The audience quietly assembled along the tiers of the auditorium. Were they Doctorow’s appointees or elected officials? How had so many changes happened so quickly? I’d only been gone a week. Doctorow must have started the ball rolling before I left. Maybe that was why he’d wanted me off his planet so badly.

Hollingsworth sat the meeting out, leaving me to the lions …the bastard.

Once everyone was seated, Doctorow started the meeting by congratulating me on my safe return. He assured me that the “assembled body” had been briefed about the circumstances of my departure and that the meeting was nothing more than a briefing. “We’re simply curious about what you found,” he said, sounding so specking diplomatic. He must have seen himself as cordial, but his demeanor made me think of a rancher giving a steer a friendly pat before leading it to the slaughterhouse.

Instead of letting me speak, Doctorow invited the gallery to ask questions. Not a moment passed before five or six people stood in place, signaling that they wanted the floor. Doctorow called each of them by name.

“General, you left to find your fleet. Did you find it?” asked the first man.

“Yes,” I said.

“Was it destroyed?” the man continued.

“No. I returned on the Salah ad-Din , one of the ships from the fleet.”

Back when the Unified Authority ran the galaxy, every planet had security stations monitoring nearby space. If a ship broadcasted in within a couple of million miles of that planet, the equipment detected the anomaly and tracked the ship. Judging by the nervous twitters filling the room, I got the feeling that the ad-Din had slipped into Terraneau space unnoticed. Doctorow would have that problem fixed. He’d make it a priority.

“The Salah ad-Din , General, isn’t that a fighter carrier?” the man continued.

I nodded.

“Is there any particular reason you chose to return in a fighter carrier, General?” he asked, the first strains of hostility beginning to sound in his voice.

“Are you asking if there was a reason other than its being a ship capable of traveling through space?” I asked.

“I am trying to ascertain why you chose to travel in one of the largest and most aggressive ships in your fleet when you returned to Terraneau. Are you trying to send us a message, General Harris?”

Arguments broke out throughout the gallery.

Doctorow spoke up from behind me. “Please. We are getting ahead of ourselves. Give the general a chance to explain what he found on his mission.

“I apologize for this outburst,” Doctorow said, holding his right hand over his heart to show his sincerity. “Please, tell us about the status of your fleet.”

The well of the auditorium was three stories deep, with rows forming rings around the stage. Only the area directly behind me was blocked off.

I felt no fear facing down these politicians …these nouveau-bureaucrats. That these men and women had promoted themselves to a planetary council meant nothing to me. What did I care about glorified postmen pretending to be governors and heads of states? When I came to Terraneau, these people lived in fear like rabbits cowering in a warren, and now they’d made themselves kings. What a joke.

I no longer gave a damn about getting along with the Right Reverend Colonel Ellery Doctorow, governor of Norristown and apparently emperor of Terraneau, or with the pompous men and women who made up his choir, so I told it to them straight. “The Enlisted Man’s Empire controls twenty-three planets and thirteen fleets. The empire has not attacked Earth, but no one is ruling the possibility out.”

The initial silence that filled the auditorium pushed in on my eardrums like the pressure from a deep-sea dive. Pandemonium replaced silence. Half the representatives stood to ask questions. When Doctorow did not call on them, they started shouting.

“Are you saying the Clone Navy is preparing to attack Earth?” Doctorow asked.

The room went quiet.

Unsure how I could have stated it any more clearly, I said, “No, I did not say that. I simply stated that attacking Earth is an option.”

A woman ran down the stairs shouting, “But you can’t do that! That would be an act of aggression. The clones would be declaring war on their—”

“Let me make this clear to you,” I said, raising my voice so it would be heard above the din. “We did not break off from the Unified Authority, they abandoned us. We owe them nothing. They abandoned their clone military. They abandoned their outworld territories. They discarded their fleets.”

My comments were greeted with a scared silence.

“You say you have twenty-three planets in your empire? Did you conquer them, or did they join willingly?” Doctorow asked, shattering the hush.

He didn’t understand. He was so lost in his vision of a perfect society that he could not comprehend anyone’s rejecting his views. He resented any outside authority, and he instinctively believed that everyone else felt the same way.

“No one held a gun to anyone’s head,” I said, not entirely sure that was the case. I hadn’t asked.

The meeting lapsed into some form of order—even chaos runs out of energy. The wildfire conversations burned out, and I explained the situation as I understood it, leaving out one small detail—that our forces were infested with U.A. assassins.

“Is it still your goal to conquer Earth?” Doctorow asked, his voice solemn and flat.

I turned and looked up at him. From his lofty seat, Doctorow stared down on me, the light forming shadows across his face. The shadows added grim punctuation to his solemn expression.

“I am not the one who would make that decision,” I admitted.

“I’m sure you’re an important man in your empire,” Doctorow persisted, then he dredged up ghosts from a distant conversation, and asked, “Do you want revenge?”

Revenge? I’d spent the last week concerned with survival.

“Conquering Earth makes no sense. Why declare war on the Unified Authority? Why fight a war at all?” Doctorow asked. “The Unified Authority is not your enemy.”

“I would not call them my friends,” I mumbled in a voice that no one else would hear.

“You came in a fighter carrier. Do you plan to force us to join your empire?” Doctorow asked.

“No,” I said. I felt an odd sense of defeat. I had not come expecting a warm welcome, but this mix of fear and hostility caught me off guard. “You’re welcome to join, I suppose,” I said. And there it was, I had reverted back to acting like a guest on Doctorow’s planet.

“We’ll consider your offer, General Harris, but I don’t expect the people of Terraneau will want to join you.”

“No, I suppose not,” I said. I hadn’t really offered them membership. In truth, Terraneau was far more trouble than it was worth.

The auditorium had become so quiet that I could hear people breathing. “My vote will be against any form of treaty,” Doctorow told the auditorium. “I will resign before I sign a treaty with the clones or with the Unified Authority, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that Terraneau remains a neutral planet.”