Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“They do have Amos Crowley,” I said. Crowley was a highly decorated general who had defected to the Atkins Believers.

“Yes, but maybe General Crowley is involved in land strategies more than naval.” In non-Yamashiro terms, this translated to, He’s with the Army, asshole. Yamashiro took a deep drag and held it in his lungs. A fine curl of smoke escaped his lips.

“So where did the Mogats get the shields?” I asked. “Why couldn’t we hurt their ships?”

“In my opinion, they must have a new ally,” Yamashiro said.

“A renegade from the Confederate Arms?” I asked. “Maybe they have an ally in the Perseus Arm.”

“Maybe not a Confederate planet,” Yamashiro said. “If any of the Confederate planets had such technology, we would have used it when we attacked Earth.”

“Whoever it is, they have to be in the Perseus Arm. The Mogats had to have had their fleet somewhere nearby to know we had boarded their ship,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Yamashiro said.

“Maybe not?” I asked.

“My engineers and I have spent a great deal of time discussing possible uses for this second broadcast engine. We all agree that the Mogats protected that engine even as they sacrificed their ship.”

“What did you come up with?” I asked.

“This is just a theory,” Yamashiro said. “Some of my men believe that they are using that ship as a broadcast station. If they place enough stations around the galaxy, they can create a network,” Yamashiro said.

I thought about that. “But they don’t need a broadcast network. They have a self-broadcasting fleet.” After a moment’s more consideration, I said, “You said that engine was too small to send a big ship.”

“Perhaps they do not want the network for transportation. Maybe they will use their network for communications. The engine you saw was running continuously, just like the engines in a network. It could send and receive signals anywhere in the galaxy.”

“The Mogats,” I said, shaking my head. “Who can understand those lousy speckers?”

“Is that a Bible?” Colonel Grayson’s face was full of mirth as he asked this. He looked about ready to burst into uncontrollable laughter.

“Yes, sir, it is,” I said. I had just stowed my two rucksacks in the locker and started back to my seat.

“You afraid of broadcasting, son?” the colonel asked.

I knew a bit about Grayson. He was a recent promotion. Until this year, he’d commanded a boot camp. When the Mogats destroyed the orphanages, the Unified Authority Marine Corps ran out of recruits, and the boot camps closed. Men like Grayson, who’d spent their careers bullying clones, had to move to the field.

Grayson was an older man, probably in his late forties. Some of the stubble along the freshly shaved sides of his head had turned white.

“Do you always travel with a Bible?” he asked.

“No, sir,” I said. “I just brought…”

“The way I always heard it, you clones don’t believe in God. That right, son? You’re that Liberator clone. You’re the clone that knows he’s a clone.”

I knew what was happening. This was my comeuppance. Grayson probably knew my background better than I knew his. Grayson knew that I had once held the rank of colonel, and he wanted to make sure I knew my place. I was no longer an officer, and I had never been a natural-born. Boot-camp officers. You can take them out of the camps but you can’t take the camps out of them. So what if you were once a colonel, Grayson was telling me. I still have clusters on my shoulder boards.

“I can’t speak for all Liberators…”

“Sure you can, boy. You’re all that’s left of them.” There was a gleam in the colonel’s brown eyes. He enjoyed this shit, but he would not take it much further. On some level he had to know that I had Admiral Brocius watching my back. Unless he wanted to spend the rest of his career commanding an abandoned boot camp, Grayson would know when to quit.

“You planning on reading that Bible or just holding on to it?” Grayson asked.

“Reading it, sir.”

“You must be a fast reader, son. We’ll be parked on the Obama in another five minutes.” He gave up on bullying and asked an interested question. “When was the last time you took a transfer?”

“It’s been a few years,” I said.

“Yeah? I’ll bet it took a few hours for you to reach your post last time you had a transfer. Am I right, Sergeant?”

“Days, sir. My last transfer was to a ship patrolling the outer edge of the Scutum-Crux Arm.” That was not exactly my last transfer, but I did not think Grayson was looking for specifics.

“That was the old Marine Corps, son. This here is the new Marines. We don’t have a Broadcast Network anymore, so we deliver you right to your new assignment.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. I didn’t mind the “sirs” and salutes. I could put up with officers and egos.

Colonel Grayson started to leave, then turned back to look at me. “Do you really read the Bible, son?” he asked. “I don’t suppose you could tell me the name of King David’s son?”

“Who do you mean, Solomon or Absalom?” I asked. There were more, but those were the only two I could name offhand.

“Who is Absalom?” the colonel asked.

“He was one of David’s sons. He rebelled against David and tried to take over the kingdom.”

The colonel turned and walked into the passenger cabin. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered to himself. “Had a son who tried to take over the kingdom…son of a bitch.”

I took my seat. A few minutes later we flew out of Earth’s atmosphere. In the old days we would have spent up to five hours flying to the Mars broadcast station, depending on where Earth and Mars were in their orbits, and many more hours flying from the last broadcast station to the fleet. Transferring in a self-broadcasting ship took mere seconds. We cleared Earth’s atmosphere and tint shields formed over our portholes. An instant later, we were approaching the Central Cygnus Fleet.

As I returned to my locker to stow my Bible and grab my sack, Colonel Grayson came up to me again. “So do you believe in God, son?” he asked.

“I’m a true believer,” I confessed. If God was a metaphor for government, then my enlistment in the Marines made me some kind of cleric. During my days as a colonel, I might have qualified as a high priest.

“You know what, Harris? You’re nothing like I expected,” Grayson said. “Admiral Brocius called me in the other day and told me to let you do whatever you wanted with your platoon. What do you want to do with it?”

“I haven’t reviewed my men,” I said.

“They’re good men. I run a tight operation.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, knowing full well that Marine colonels have little to do with the readiness of platoons. There were too many layers between the colonels and their grunts.

“Sounds like you and Admiral Brocius are great pals,” Grayson continued. “Having an admiral watching your back, now that’s a pretty good trick for a sergeant in the Marines.” His expression became more serious, and the old smile vanished. “You just remember, Liberator or plain old government-issue grunt, war hero or fresh recruit, it’s all the same under my command. And you are most definitely under my command, Master Gunnery Sergeant Wayson Harris. Screw with me, and I will bury you deep before your admiral can help you. Do you read me, Marine?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. It was a warning, and a fair one.