Steven Kent - The Clone Empire

Sounding more like a college professor than a boot-strapped engineer, Mars said, “Nuclear bombs come in all sizes, don’t they? I suspect it would be the equivalent of a very small nuclear device.”

That was bullshit, of course. Mars had no idea what he was talking about.

The pilot addressed me on an open interLink channel that Mars and Hollingsworth would hear as well. “General, the air and heat are online,” he said. “You can remove your helmet.”

I thanked him and removed my lid. Mars and Hollingsworth followed.

A dark emotion seemed to come over Hollingsworth. The excitement left his face. He sat in the shadows, quiet and sullen. Finally, he said, “I don’t see how this changes anything. We know how they got away, but we can’t go after them. I mean, what are we going to do, put a message in a bottle and toss it through the zone?”

“Not a message in a bottle,” I said. “I’m going to fly a ship into the hot zone.”

They greeted this statement with the kind of silence generally reserved for people discussing suicide. Hollingsworth broke the silence. “You’re joking, right?” he asked, though he must have known I meant what I had said. “Unless you have a ship we don’t know about, the only thing you have that flies is a transport.”

“He’s right,” Mars said. “Only an idiot would enter a broadcast zone in a transport.”

I wished he hadn’t added that last line. Ray Freeman, my old business partner, and I once tried to modify a transport to self-broadcast. Freeman got electrocuted, and we ended up stranded in space.

I held up my hands, palms out, and said, “No working ships up my sleeves, but there’s a whole fleet out there.”

Hollingsworth shot me an incredulous look, and asked, “You mean the wrecks?”

“One man’s wreckage may well be another man’s pangalactic barge,” I said.

Hollingsworth laughed, and said, “You’re going to ride a wreck into a broadcast zone? That’s suicide.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” I asked.

He thought it over and shook his head, then admitted, “No, sir, I don’t.”

Still sounding enthusiastic, Mars offered, “I’ll work out the details.”

It took Mars and his engineers more than a month to work out the kinks. That meant that a month had passed since the night I promised Ava I would take her with me when I left Terraneau. I meant what I said when I made the promise; but now that I knew the gory details, I needed to renege.

In truth, I was not sure she cared either way. An indefinable coldness had entered our relationship. We did not argue, but the passion was gone. We ate meals together and we had sex, but we didn’t talk much. In her past life, she’d lived with generals and movie stars and billionaires. Was this how she ended relationships, by allowing them to dry up and blow away?

I did not want that to happen with us. Maybe the passion was gone, but she had become an important part of my world. I did not feel passionately about my right hand, but I could not imagine living without it.

I arrived at Ava’s house just after sunset; the last fibers of sunlight streaked across the sky, making the clouds look like the embers of a dying fire. Above the clouds, the sky dithered from paper white to a blue so dark it qualified as black. Her house was in the Norristown foothills, overlooking the city in all of its stages of repair. In the dark world below, streetlights shimmered like tracer fire. Cars crowded onto newly opened streets. From her backyard, it looked like Norristown had more cars than people.

On this evening, I came bearing an offering for my Hollywood goddess—beer rescued from a derelict ship. She would have preferred wine, but the only way to get wine would have been through Ellery Doctorow, and sacrifice has its limits.

I didn’t believe in fortune-telling, but I sensed negative energy in the air. I had the same feeling I got playing blackjack when I had twelve on the table and knew the next card off the deck would be worth ten.

I went to the front door and knocked. Ava opened the door. She looked beautiful. Her hair, which she frequently wore in an organized tangle of locks and tresses, hung down over her back. She wore a red dress that left her shoulders bare and showed just the right preview of cleavage.

“Hi, there,” she said as she let me in. Her gaze met mine for half a second, but I thought I saw sadness in her eyes.

“I come bearing gifts,” I said, brandishing the beers. “They’re even cold.”

She smiled, and said, “You know how to make a girl feel special,” but her voice sounded distracted, and her eyes did not quite hold with mine.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, feeling nervous.

Ava sighed. She thought for a moment, then finally said, “We’d better eat while the food is hot and your beers are cold.”

Her home was small but stylish. The dining table was about the right size for an end table. She had spread a white linen cloth across the top and wedged a candle between our plates. Her china was bone white, her utensils were silver and gleamed in the candlelight.

As we reached the table, she excused herself to get glasses for the beers. I waited for her to return before sitting down. I pulled her chair out for her, though I was not sure she wanted me to. There was something in the air, something cold and distancing.

Ava handed me a glass, and said, “There’s a rumor going around about you leaving Terraneau.”

“Really? Who’s spreading it?” I asked, trying to outmaneuver the truth. “I hope you’re not listening to Sarah.”

“I didn’t hear it from Sarah. I heard about it from Julie Neberker.”

“Who is that?” I asked. I had never heard the name.

“She lives a few doors down,” Ava said.

“Is she dating one of my Marines?” I asked, trying to figure out if she might have access to anything more than gossip.

“No.”

“You can’t take anything she says very seriously, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“She heard about it from Rachel Johnson. Rachel heard Sarah and Ellery joking about you leaving at a bridge party,” Ava said.

I always knew Sarah Doctorow had a big mouth. By that time, I had confided the information about the broadcast zone to Doctorow.

“I see,” I said. “Did they happen to give any specifics?”

“No. All she knew was that you found a working broadcast station.”

“I see.”

“Are you going after the missing ships?” Ava asked.

“I think so,” I said.

I expected her to ask if I planned to take her with me, but she surprised me. Instead of asking about going with me, she said, “Julie says they’re not going to let you back on Terraneau once you leave.”

“Who’s not going to let me back on?”

She thought about that, and said, “Ellery, I guess.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “He’d need an air force to stop me. All he has is a civilian militia armed with popguns.”

She studied my face, her olivine green eyes boring into me and seeing through my bluster. Did I see hurt in her eyes or anger? Maybe I was fooling myself, and all that was there was indifference. “I don’t think it’s just Ellery. I think Hollingsworth is with him. “

“Hollingsworth?” I asked. I did not know what to say. I knew he didn’t like me, but he was a Marine. Marines did not turn on each other. I sat motionless, my head reeling. Our meal sat before us ignored—her food and my beers.

“Wayson, if you come back, they might shoot you down,” she said.

“Not likely.” I shook my head. Hollingsworth was a good Marine. He wouldn’t do that, it was not in his programming. “Not Hollingsworth. He might ignore me, but he wouldn’t shoot at me.”