Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

When that first meeting ended, a government driver picked us up. He did not come in one of those long limousines that are so often used for VIPs, nor did he come in a troop carrier. He drove a sensible black sedan. As we stepped into the car, the driver introduced himself simply as, “The guy they pay for taking you wherever you want to go,” then drove us to the Washington Navy barracks, where we each had rooms in temporary housing meant for visiting officers.

By standards of a luxury hotel, our quarters had a certain spartan quality about them. By military standards, they were the Taj Mahal. Our rooms included a single bed, a three-by-three closet in which I found a freshly pressed uniform for a colonel in the Unified Authority Marines, a dresser, and a bathroom. Having grown up in a military orphanage and graduated to the Marines, I found these accommodations the utmost in comfort. Anything bigger would have left me feeling out of place.

The agency in charge of us did not post guards outside our doors, though they probably had people watching us from nearby buildings. The base commander gave Freeman and me our own electronic identity cards for use as keys to get in and out of the facilities. By all appearances, we could come and go as we pleased. My room must have been wired for sound and video, but I did not bother to check. Having nothing to hide, I had no reason to look for surveillance devices. They could watch me to their hearts’ content, I didn’t mind.

Freeman undoubtedly did check his room for microphones and cameras. He left nothing to chance.

He and I ate a very quiet dinner that first evening in the officers’ mess, then returned to our rooms. The next morning, we met at 0700 and had breakfast.

“It’s like they never had a war,” I told Freeman as I ate my eggs and bacon.

He neither answered nor nodded. Freeman must have believed they were watching us. Fiercely independent, he did not tolerate intrusions as calmly as I.

At 0900, our unnamed driver showed up at the barracks and took us into town. He drove the same black sedan or possibly a reasonable facsimile. I did not know or care. Freeman, I suspected, both knew and cared. I was a Marine. He was a mercenary.

The more I saw of Washington, DC, the more confused I became. It was not the city under siege that I had imagined. The streets showed no telltale signs of battle. I saw no burned buildings on vacant lots. More importantly, Washington, DC, society still seemed intact. Men in suits and women in dresses walked the sidewalks looking as if they had important meetings to attend. Traffic flowed smoothly. When we passed through a residential area, I saw young children playing on the streets.

Freeman took all these sights in as well as he sat silently beside me. He did not lean forward or turn his head to stare out the car window. He never tipped his hand by showing interest in anything around him. Even so, few details ever slipped past him.

I had noticed something about Ray that morning. He seemed liked a caged animal, coiled tight and ready to lash out or escape. I could not read him as we drove through DC.

In the distance, I saw the Capitol, a twenty-story building topped off with a three-hundred-foot marble dome. It was the largest building on the face of the earth, with twenty-four thousand miles of corridors. We did not drive to the Capitol, however. Nor did the driver pull into the Pentagon, a monolithic cube that, despite the geometric significance of its name, had only four sides.

Instead, our driver took us into the heart of Washington, DC, where the real deals were crafted. Skyscrapers filled with law offices and banking operations lined the road. Our driver passed the ostentatious thirty-and forty-story structures, then pulled into a five-story affair. Civilian guards met us as we entered the underground garage. They directed us down five floors. We left the sedan in a dimly lit level on which there were no other cars. As we approached the elevator into the building, armed soldiers asked us for our identification. We showed them our cards, and the driver gave them his orders.

I expected an armed security man to follow us into the elevator, but the building security system had something far more dangerous. As our driver held his orders under a scanner which automatically chose our floor, I noted the vent opening in the chrome bezel along the ceiling. I had seen an elevator ventilation duct like that before. Should an intruder be caught in this car, deadly gas would pour out of that opening.

Four security men with holsters and pistols met us when the elevator doors slid open. They accompanied a young woman who identified herself as William Grace’s secretary. “Mr. Freeman, Colonel Harris, if you would please follow me,” she said.

Our driver left us in her custody. “This is as far as I go,” he said. The man did not even attempt to hide his government identity at this point. He wore his shades indoors like every spook I had ever known. He did not button his black suit coat, but rather allowed it to swing open, showing just a hint of his holster and pistol. He caught a glimpse of me eyeing the pistol and smiled. The guy thought of himself as a big specking deal.

The halls were dark and decorated in a timeless style. Dark wood panels lined the walls. Brass-and-crystal light fixtures hung from the ceiling. When the men of the Roman Senate plunged their knives into Julius Caesar, I am convinced they did it in a room with brass fixtures and cherrywood-paneled walls.

The secretary led Freeman and me into a large conference room, and I froze in midstride. “Wild Bill” Grace and Gordon Hughes stood to greet me. Grace, the senior member of the Linear Committee, I had expected to see. Hughes, the Chairman of the Confederate Arms Treaty Organization, I had not.

Hughes had once been the speaker in the U.A. House of Representatives. He abandoned the Republic at the beginning of the war and became the most powerful politician in the Confederate Arms. Now he and Grace stood, casually chatting like old friends.

Grace and Hughes came to the door to shake hands with Freeman and me. They seemed entirely at ease with each other, as if the war had never taken place.

“Colonel Harris, this is a distinct pleasure,” Hughes said, reaching out to shake my hand. He and I had met once before, shortly after the battle on Little Man. Back then, as a Marine, I had been summoned to testify about the battle in Congress. On that occasion, I had entered the chambers as a heroic survivor of a battle and left in derision. As we shook hands, I think Hughes sensed both my anger and my confusion.

“You’re surprised to see me here,” Hughes said.

“Hell, yes,” I said.

That response earned a knowing laugh from both politicians. “Quite understandable,” Hughes said.

“We have a lot to discuss,” Grace, clearly the man presiding, said in a businesslike tone. “Perhaps we should get started.”

It was a small meeting—ten people sitting around a conference table discussing the future of the galaxy. Gordon Hughes came with a female secretary and two plainclothes men. William Grace brought General Smith from the U.A. Air Force and two aides. The only other people in the room were Freeman and me and a couple of guards.

“I might as well begin by explaining what you are doing here,” Grace said, looking over at Hughes. He turned toward Freeman and me. “Colonel Harris, the Mogat attack on the Mars broadcast discs shut down the Broadcast Network, but that does not mean it shut down all pangalactic travel.”

“The scientific fleet,” I said, suddenly realizing the obvious. The Unified Authority built its first fleet of self-broadcasting scientific ships decades before it began work on the Broadcast Network. I felt embarrassed for not figuring that out sooner.