Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“I’m Kelly Thomer. Most folks just call me Thomer,” Thomer said, reaching out to shake Illych’s hand.

“Emerson Illych,” Illych said.

Thomer broke the ice with his easy style. The SEALs fell in around us, trying to start up conversations, then letting the Marines do most of the talking. Just watching them I knew these boys had demons that vexed them. When they stood on friendly soil, the Boyd clones reminded me of lonely children. If any of my Marines paid for another drink that night, I would have been surprised. The SEALs gladly caught the tabs and offered to buy more.

“You the one that went off to that Mogat planet?” Philips asked Illych.

“Illych, this is Philips,” I said.

Illych listened to me and nodded, then turned to Philips. “Mogatopolis.”

“Mogatopolis?” I asked. “Official name?”

“That’s what we’re calling it,” Illych said.

“You couldn’t come up with anything better than Mogatopolis?” Philips asked

“Can you come up with something better?” Illych asked.

Philips thought for a moment. “You could call it Planetary Home of Morgan.”

“That’s better?” Illych asked.

“Planet HomeMo for short,” Philips said.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Illych said. There it was again, the revulsion to vulgarity. The revulsion had to have been programmed into his brain, just like vulgarity was tattooed onto Philips’s supposedly nonexistent soul.

“It beats the hell out of Mogatopolis,” Philips said. He knocked down another beer and excused himself to go “siphon the pond.”

I laughed when Philips said that, but Illych did not even smile. He stood in silence as Philips walked to the bathroom.

“Don’t be so hard on him,” I said.

“He’s a clown,” Illych said. He changed the subject. “Did you look around that battleship?”

“Which one, the wreck or the one we flew back?” I asked.

“Both?”

“Sure. Are we talking about anything in particular?” I asked.

“The engine rooms are completely different,” Illych said. “The one we brought home only has one broadcast engine. Did you notice that?”

“I didn’t look,” I admitted.

“Did you know that we’ve had run-ins with the Mogats in all six arms now?” Illych asked. “They’ve lost a ship in every fight. They’ve lost four in the Orion Arm.”

“They lost a lot more than that around Earth,” I said.

“No,” Illych said, “I mean over the last three weeks.” Illych drank gin, not beer. He took long, slow sips that lasted for seconds. Watching him closely, I had the feeling he was not very interested in his drink.

“Do you know who Yoshi Yamashiro is?” I asked.

“The governor of Shin Nippon,” Illych said.

I had not expected him to know Yamashiro. “He thinks they are purposely scuttling those ships to set up a communications network.”

“Did I miss anything?” Philips asked as he rejoined us.

“We were just talking about Mogat battleships,” I said. I could tell by the way Illych tightened up that he did not want to continue the conversation in front of Philips. They were polar opposites, those two. Illych was quiet, thoughtful, and very calculated. Philips let his whims make his decisions. Illych spoke in a hushed voice and never swore. Philips swore and could not manage a whisper. That they should not trust each other seemed inevitable.

I decided to show Illych what he would never have guessed about Private Mark Philips. “Philips, you were on both Mogat ships.”

“Both ships? You mean the sucker we sank and the one we stole?”

I nodded. “Did you see any differences between them?”

“You mean besides the forty-foot laser gash on the bottom of the dead one?”

“Yeah, besides that,” I said.

“Not outside of the engine room,” Philips said. “But the engine rooms were completely different.” He went on to describe the two broadcast engines and the special shielding around the working engine on the derelict ship.

Illych listened to this and nodded, looking impressed. “I noticed the same things. Do you have any theories about the differences?”

“Any theories? I’m just a specking grunt. Us specking grunts don’t come up with theories, we just pull the damned triggers and shoot our damned guns.”

All admiration evaporated from Illych’s expression.

I was not drunk or hungover after seven glasses of beer, but I needed some sleep. Less than thirty hours ago, I had woken up on a rack in a Mogatopolis armory.

We stayed in a dry-docks dormitory. Most of the Marines had to share their apartments, but I had one to myself. The last time I had stayed here, I’d had a much larger apartment. Of course, the last time I stayed at the Golan Dry Docks, three men tried to beat me to death. When that failed, they tossed a grenade in my room.

My apartment was ten feet wide and ten feet deep with a ten-foot ceiling. It was a perfect cube. My bed was six and a half feet long and three feet wide. There was a closet on one side of the bed and a closet-sized bathroom on the other. I liked the room. It had absolutely no luxuries, but it made me feel secure.

As I settled onto my bed, I saw the flashing light on the wall console warning me that I had a message waiting. I went to the console and punched in my code. The message was from Brocius asking me to call him. I punched in the return code.

“There you are,” Brocius said, as his face appeared on the screen.

“I went out for a drink with my platoon,” I said.

“And you’re still sober?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Glad to hear it, we have things to discuss,” he said. “Come to my quarters.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“And don’t worry about the uniform, Harris, this meeting is off the record.”

When you spend time with high-ranking officers, you quickly learn that there is a difference between being “at ease” and relaxed. When an officer gives the order, “At ease,” you spread your legs and relax your shoulders, but remain alert and erect. You remain that way until the officer says, “Dismissed,” at which time you walk away alert and erect until you are out of sight.

Brocius told me not to worry about my uniform, but that did not mean he wouldn’t notice if I came dressed like a civilian. Above all else, officers want you to show them respect, even when they try to act like your friend. I changed back into my Charlie Service uniform and reported to the admiral’s suite.

Brocius, still wearing the same uniform he had worn to my debriefing five hours earlier, came to the door. “Good of you to come, Sergeant,” he said. He stepped away to allow me in.

The couch in Brocius’s suite would not have fit in my quarters. He had a full-sized bar, a living room, and a pool table. The suite probably came with a bartender, too, but Brocius would have excused the man before discussing sensitive matters. As he led me into the area, I spotted Yoshi Yamashiro sitting on the sofa.

“Hello, Harris,” Yamashiro said as he stood. He wore his traditional dark blue blazer and red necktie. Between the middle finger and forefinger of his left hand, Yamashiro held his traditional half-smoked cigarette.

We shook hands.

“Admiral Brocius has told me about your latest adventures. Perhaps we might have saved you some trouble had we allowed you to commit suicide on your transport ship.” On his ship, Yamashiro showed a strong preference for hot Sake, but he seemed comfortable with the whiskey he now held.

“Suicide?” Brocius asked. “I don’t believe I heard about that.”

“Harris and his friend tried to adapt the broadcast engine from a broadcast station for use on a transport,” Yamashiro said.