Steven Kent - The Clone Empire

The Unified Authority wasn’t going to invade Olympus Kri, but somebody else might, somebody the Unifieds feared …the Avatari.

“The barges you were talking about, they’re U.A. ships, right?” I asked.

Freeman nodded.

“It’s New Copenhagen all over again,” I said, now starting to feel a chill as the reality of what this meant set in.

Freeman shook his head, fixed his eyes on mine, then said in rumbling whisper, “This isn’t New Copenhagen. This is Armageddon.”

Before resurrecting Sweetwater on the two-way, Freeman gave me one last warning. He said, “Sweetwater doesn’t know that he’s dead. Neither does Breeze. It’s got to stay that way. There is no way of knowing how they will react if they find out they are dead.”

The psychology of the virtual soul, I thought. Clones die when they learn they are synthetic. Do virtual people shut down when they find out they exist only on a computer?

“What about the mine on New Copenhagen?” I asked.

Sweetwater came with my platoon as we entered the underground cavern that the Avatari had created. The bottom of that mine was filled with corrosive gas, the fumes of which slowly dissolved the little man’s skin and lungs. He insisted on accompanying us as we delivered the bomb, even though we did not have armor that would fit him. His heroism cost him his life in one long, slow, painful, installment.

“He doesn’t know about it.”

“And Breeze doesn’t know he was torn apart by a giant spider?”

Freeman shook his head. “They think we evacuated them from New Copenhagen. They know you liberated some planets, but they think you did it for the Unified Authority.”

“And I’m supposed to lie to them?” I asked.

“Lives are depending on it,” Freeman said.

“Lives are depending on my lying to a computer?” I asked. If it had really been Sweetwater, instead of a computer program, I wouldn’t have agreed to lie to him. Sweetwater deserved better.

“If you can’t be trusted—” Freeman began.

“What do you care about saving lives? You’ve never cared about anybody.”

He did not answer.

I might have walked away from this meeting; but Olympus Kri belonged to the Enlisted Man’s Empire. If the Avatari annihilated this planet, they would be killing citizens of the Enlisted Man’s Empire, not the Unified Authority.

“You haven’t become some kind of homicidal humanitarian, have you?” I asked.

“Are you ready to talk to Sweetwater?” Freeman asked, ignoring my question.

“Not even remotely,” I said. The cogs were clicking together in my head. I nodded toward the two-way communicator, and asked, “When did they boot up the ghost?”

“When we lost New Copenhagen.”

“Lost New Copenhagen?” I asked. The pieces finally fell into place. “I bet that was right about the same time you showed up on Terraneau.”

Freeman said nothing.

“They sent two clones to kill me …”

“Five clones,” Freeman said. “I hit three of them before you came back from St. Augustine.”

“They sent the clones, then they lost New Copenhagen, so they sent you to keep me alive.”

Freeman sat silent and impassive. He was big and dark and powerful and oddly serene. Here was a man who avoided friendships, who might never have loved anyone, even as a child; but now he exuded a sense of ominous serenity.

“Why attack Olympus Kri?” I asked. It didn’t make sense. Granted, Olympus Kri was the closest colony to New Copenhagen, but astrogeography did not matter to the Avatari. They had the technology to leapfrog entire galaxies when they chose to.

“New Copenhagen was the first planet we liberated from the aliens,” Freeman said. “We liberated Olympus Kri next.”

“No we didn’t. The first planet we liberated was Terraneau,” I said.

Freeman shook his head, and said, “The Inner Orion Fleet landed here while you were still in Bliss.” He meant Fort Bliss, the concentration camp the Unified Authority built as a home away from home for the clones who fought in the battle of New Copenhagen.

“Oh,” I said. Then I mumbled, “That’s not good …not good at all.” If the Avatari were taking planets by the order of their liberation, Terraneau was next in line. And here I learned something about myself. I thought I had washed my hands of Ava Gardner and Ellery Doctorow and the stupid, stupid people who lived on Terraneau; but now, knowing that they might all be killed, I had a change of heart. Fantasizing about them getting what I felt they deserved was one thing; knowing that they all might die was entirely different.

I thought about Ava and wondered if we could possibly evacuate Terraneau before the zero hour.

“You ready to talk to Sweetwater?” Freeman asked.

I nodded. He was a ghost, just one more ghost with which I would have to reckon, one more occupant in a life already overpopulated by the dead.

Peace does not always come with a signed treaty. Sometimes it is foisted upon sworn enemies when they realize they must either work together or perish.

“Do you trust them?” Warshaw asked, when I reported to him about my meeting with Freeman. He was still on the Kamehameha , still orbiting Gobi.

“Who? Freeman, the dead scientist, or the Unified Authority? I think Freeman is telling the truth,” I said. I believed him from the start, I just didn’t trust him. “Sweetwater is—”

“I don’t care about Sweetwater, he’s just a cartoon.”

“I believe Freeman,” I said.

“Yeah? You believed him when he said the U.A. was going to invade us. That turned out to be a lie.”

“He never said it was the Unified Authority. I misread him.”

“It sounds like he was counting on you misreading him,” Warshaw said.

“Probably,” I agreed.

“I don’t see any reason why I should trust Freeman. He’s your pal, not mine,” Warshaw said.

“What if he can prove what he’s saying?” I asked.

“How is he going to do that?”

“I’m flying out to New Copenhagen in an hour,” I said.

“New Copenhagen? That’s off our broadcast grid. How are you going to get there?”

“As a guest of the Unified Authority; they’re sending out an explorer,” I said. Explorers were unarmed research vessels. The first self-broadcasting ships were explorers. The U.A. used them for mapping the galaxy.

“Sounds like a cozy arrangement,” Warshaw said, hinting at all kinds of sins. “They’re just going to send a ship, and you’re just going to specking climb aboard. It sounds like you’re getting in bed with them.”

“We’re running out of time,” I said.

“I did some checking, Harris. There are seventeen million people living on Olympus Kri. Evacuating the planet is not going to be easy,” Warshaw said.

I had witnessed a planetary evacuation once. I saw the chaos and the confusion. Warshaw was right. Those new barges would simplify matters, but some tasks take time. Persuading families to leave their homes, then leave their planet would not be easy. Ferrying seventeen million people out of the atmosphere would take more time.

“Did your friend happen to mention where the aliens are going after Olympus Kri?” Warshaw asked, sounding more than a little suspicious.

“Terraneau.”

Warshaw laughed. “Terraneau? Oh, that’s rich. Serves those assholes right for kicking us off their specking planet.”

I did not appreciate the irony. Warshaw was thinking of Doctorow. I was thinking of Ava. “We need to clear them out,” I said.

Looking like a god in a Greek statue display, Warshaw folded his arms across his barrel chest, fixed me with a cold stare, and said, “We can’t evacuate every specking planet.”