Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“Bryce Klyber had a room like this in his house, too. I think he actually liked his.” Bryce Klyber, my mentor, had been the highest-ranking officer in the U.A. Navy until his untimely death. I was sure that he did have a room like this one in his house, and I was just as sure that he often retired there to meditate.

Brocius led me upstairs. The staircase ended in an enormous parlor. When he turned on the lights, I saw mirrored walls, old-fashioned neon signs, and bulbs that blinked on and off. He had two rows of antique slot machines, the oldest of which took coins instead of credits. Some even had mechanical wheels with symbols instead of computer screens.

In one corner of the room was a twenty-foot display that looked like a track for horse racing. It had six tin horses on a mural that depicted a straightaway. There was a betting counter beside the game with six stools. It was impressive.

“What do you think?” Brocius asked.

“I like it,” I said. It beat the hell out of the naval museum downstairs.

“It all works. Even the horse-racing game,” Brocius said.

That was not an invitation to come back and play. He probably held enormous parties for his fellow alumni from Annapolis—officers, natural-borns. Clones and enlisted men need not apply.

“Some of these machines are over five hundred years old,” Brocius said. He pointed to three pinball machines against a far wall. “Those machines are American twentieth century.”

They looked shiny and new, with flashing lights hidden behind gaudy glass marquees. There was a kind of practical whimsy about these old toys. Many of them captured the way their ancient owners envisioned the future—all chrome and flashing lights. The people who designed them had it all wrong, of course, but I liked the look of the future as they saw it.

We had “Budge” pinball machines in the game room at our orphanage, holographic machines that let you use a pre-designed course or create your own table. Everything from the ball to the bumpers looked solid and real, but it was all laser projection. One of Brocius’s pinball tables had a volcano made of plastic and winking lights to simulate lava. With Budge machines, you could have an erupting volcano that spit molten lava, or, if you wanted to play like the ancients, a holographic version of a toy volcano made of plastic and lights.

Growing up, I never saw anyone select antique-looking elements. We all wanted volcanoes and roller coasters that looked real, and monsters that breathed air and spit fire. If ever I got my hands on one of those machines again, I decided I would go with all antique elements.

“This room is a gambling man’s dream,” I said. “You must be quite a player.”

“You’ve got me all wrong, Harris. I don’t gamble, I win,” Brocius said.

“The gamblers are the people who put money in my machines. Once in a while they walk off with more than they brought, usually they leave empty-handed. Me, I always walk away with more than I started with. I’m the house.” He leaned toward me as if to confide a secret. “I get better odds.”

He shut off the lights and led me back down the stairs, back to his stodgy museum of maritime history.

We ate in a large dining room on a hardwood table that could have served twenty people. A petty officer in a dress uniform served us our meal. The man looked so serious as he handed us our plates, you would have thought Brocius had threatened him with a court-martial.

“Did you know that the Mogats routed one of the fleets in the Perseus Arm?” Brocius asked. This was the first time he’d spoken since we sat at the table. It was one hell of a conversation starter, especially as I had been laboring under the impression that the Mogat ships could not stand up to the modern U.A. Navy.

“One of our fleets?” I echoed, lamely.

“Fortunately for us, they only sent a few ships. Our ships didn’t put up much of a fight.

“Some Outer Perseus ships overtook five Mogat ships as they broadcasted in an area they were patrolling. That’s it, just five ships. Good thing. If there had been more of them, we might have lost the whole damned fleet.

“The Outer Perseus Fleet is Adam Porter’s outfit, mind you. Porter served on one of my ships a couple of years before he got his star. He’s no atom-splitter, that one. He never had much of a mind for strategy.”

“You called it a rout. How bad was it?” I asked.

Our waiter returned with eggs Benedict, hash browns, toast, and wedges of cantaloupe. He placed the plates with the eggs Benedict in front of us, then placed the rest of the food in the center. He poured us coffee and orange juice. I half expected him to put down his tray and start reciting poetry, he was taking so long. I wanted to know what happened, and Brocius did not seem willing to speak with anyone else in the room.

Finally, the petty officer left the room.

“Porter went after them with a fighter carrier, five battleships, ten frigates…”

“Beat by five Mogat ships?” I asked. That sounded bad.

“Porter’s fleet has the oldest ships in the galaxy,” Brocius said. I briefly considered reminding Brocius that the ships in the Mogat fleet were older than our oldest active ships but decided against it.

“We’re talking about the Perseus Arm, Harris. Nothing much happens out there. Before the war broke out, Congress wanted to shut the Outer Perseus Fleet down.”

“What kind of ships did the Mogats bring to the fight?” I asked.

“Five battleships,” Brocius said. “We’ve built our strategy around the idea that ship-per-ship we can beat the Mogats any time. Now we have to rethink that. By the time they were done, Porter lost a fighter carrier and three battleships. The Mogats didn’t even bother with his frigates.”

“What did they lose?” I asked.

“We don’t know how much damage Porter did to the ships that got away, but he only sank one of their battleships.” Brocius took a long drink of coffee, but his eyes remained fixed on me.

I cut a triangle from my eggs Benedict. This was not the kind of breakfast I normally ate. I preferred my eggs scrambled and my bacon straight instead of with hollandaise sauce. The muffin on the bottom of this stack was still crunchy. This was too rich a breakfast for my taste, but I did not say so. I cut more, watched the yolk spill out across my plate, then took another bite of the slimy thing.

“Like it?” Brocius asked.

“It’s good,” I chose to be politic. “Earth-grown?”

“That’s all you can get with the Broadcast Network down,” he said. “Do you have any idea how much it would cost to ship in eggs and bread from the territories?”

I should have figured that.

“Porter is still in command of the fleet for now, but his career is specked. There’s no room in the U.A. Navy for officers who let their fleet get chased by five ships,” Brocius said.

“So the Mogats sank a few of his ships…then what? They wouldn’t just let him leave,” I said.

“That is precisely what they did,” Brocius said. More than anything else, he sounded disgusted.

“Why the speck would they do that?” I asked. It didn’t make sense. Having defeated an enemy with superior numbers, why let him flee and regroup? I thought about this for a few seconds. “Have there been any other engagements?”

“No,” Brocius said.

“Before they merged with the Confederate Arms and Halverson took over, the Mogats never seemed very bright,” I said.

“Did you know Halverson’s been promoted to fleet admiral? Our fleet admiral?” Brocius asked, obvious distaste dripping from his voice.

Admiral Tom Halverson, who led the attack on the Earth Fleet, joined the Confederate Arms while they were allied with the Atkins Believers. He left the Unified Authority as a rear admiral, received a few additional stars, and emerged as the head of the combined Mogat-Confederate Arms Navy. The notion that Halverson could return and take command of our fleet clawed at my stomach.