Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“No,” I said, “I was just looking for a ticket back to Earth.”

“And you tried to modify a transport so you could use it to broadcast?” Yamashiro asked. He stopped walking and turned to face me. “Harris, that would be suicide. You did not have a broadcast computer. Even if you managed to make the engine work, you could not control the broadcast. You would die.”

The two officers walking behind us had been whispering back and forth. Now they stopped and listened closely.

“Yes, I knew that,” I said.

“My engineers tell me that you could not fly a transport through the Broadcast Network, the electrical current would atomize the metal in its hull,” Yamashiro said, sounding scandalized.

“I figured as much,” I said.

“So you chose suicide over the life of a farmer?” Yamashiro looked shocked.

“That just about sums it up.”

Takahashi, the officer to whom Yamashiro had just given that fifty dollars, said something in Japanese. I did not recognize the words, but I would have bet it translated to “speck” or something similar.

“Perhaps I have not overestimated you after all, Harris,” said Yamashiro, a wicked smile creasing his face. He turned back toward the officer behind us. “Takahashi did not believe that a clone such as yourself would have enough initiative to consider suicide. He bet me that you and your friend would not have flown out here if you did not believe you could restart the Broadcast Network.”

Takahashi sneered at me as he handed Yamashiro a wad of bills. “I bet heavily that you would rather die than live as a farmer, Harris.” Yamashiro counted the bills silently, folded them, and placed them in his pocket. He made no attempt to hide his satisfaction.

“Sadly, I will not get to enjoy my winnings. Takahashi is my son-in-law. My daughter will complain to her mother that I have robbed her husband of two hundred dollars, and my wife will make me give the money back.” I glanced back at Takahashi, who positively beamed.

Now that the excitement had ended, Yamashiro started walking again. I followed. The officers behind us followed in stony silence.

“How did they find us?” Freeman sat up in his hospital bed. The only time he would lie flat was when he was unconscious. At all other times, he sat up alert.

“One of Yamashiro’s officers must have seen the movie,” I said.

“The movie?” Freeman asked, his low, rumbling voice betraying not so much as a hint of curiosity.

“ The Battle for Little Man ,” I said. “Someone made a movie about the battle I fought on Little Man. It’s a great movie, unblemished propaganda without so much as a shred of accurate information.”

In the movie, a natural-born version of me takes on ten thousand Mogats nearly single-handedly and saves six Marines. In real life, we were known as the “Little Man Seven,” but there was nothing heroic about our survival.

Of course, Ray Freeman did not go to movies. The Battle for Little Man was a big release that played in holotoriums all across the two arms that remained loyal to the Unified Authority.

Other people might have asked more about the movie. Freeman just shrugged. “Why were they looking for you?” His face had not healed. He had medical patches on his cheeks, forehead, over one eye, and on his neck. The burns left swollen areas that would become scars, but his skin had always been rough. These new scars blended into his face more naturally than the knot of scars on the back of his skull. With his dark brown skin, the back of his head resembled a mahogany burl.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The only thing Yamashiro would tell me was that he wanted to hold a summit.”

“You trust him?” Freeman asked.

“What does it matter?” I asked. “We’re off the transport and back in the war.” Freeman was a mercenary. I was a Marine. Few things mattered more than getting back in the war.

When the war began, the Confederate Arms, the Mogats, and the Japanese were allies and no one quite knew who ran their navy. Yamashiro’s Japanese officers, the men who renovated and commanded the ships, referred to the fleet as the “Hinode Fleet.” Around the Unified Authority, we usually called it the “Separatist Fleet” because “Separatist” was a catchall phrase. Most of the senior officers called it the “Mogat Fleet,” however, because they blamed all of the trouble on the Mogats.

Before the Mogats took control of the ships, or the Japanese renovated them, it was the Galactic Central Fleet, or G.C. Fleet for short. When the fleet launched, it included 200 cruisers, 200 destroyers, and 180 battleships. When it attacked Earth, it was down to 540 ships. The Mogats won that engagement, but the battle took a toll on their fleet.

Over breakfast, Yoshi Yamashiro told me that the “Hinode Fleet” had come out of the battle against the Earth Fleet with 472 ships. To the best of his knowledge, the Confederate Arms managed to hold on to 32 battleships and 25 destroyers when the alliance collapsed.

That left the Mogats with 415 ships. He gave me an hour to discuss this intelligence with Freeman, then called for us to meet with him to discuss his plans.

“The Mogats have declared war on the Confederate Arms,” Yamashiro began. “They have not yet found Shin Nippon, but I believe they plan to attack us as well.”

This was not a summit. If I had to label the conclave, I would have called it a sales meeting. We sat in a small conference room with tweed-lined walls and a ten-foot table. Bright light filled the room. As the meeting began, a pretty girl in a short blue skirt that barely reached the tops of her thighs stepped into the room. She carried a tray with coffee, tea, water, and juice. I took juice. Freeman declined. Yamashiro and his posse drank coffee.

“We do not think it likely that the Mogats will attack any of the existing U.A. fleets. The Mogat fleet is too weak, and the U.A. fleets are too immobile to pose a threat,” Yamashiro said.

Sitting behind Yamashiro, Takahashi and some officer whom I could not identify did their best impressions of ancient samurais. They sat perfectly still, backs erect, hands at their waists. They wore the conservatively cut uniforms of Shin Nippon officers instead of brightly colored kimonos and swords, but they bore intense expressions on their faces and their unflinching gaze took in both Freeman and me.

“We estimate that the Atkins Believers still possess over a hundred battleships. This gives them a tactical advantage over any planet in the galaxy. As we saw in the days before the attack on Earth, ground defenses are not effective against orbital attack.

“The Mogats have proven most unstable. So far, we know that they have attacked seven planets in the Orion Arm, eight planets in the Cygnus Arm, and five planets in the Perseus Arm.” Yamashiro turned to Freeman. “I assume you are also familiar with Mogat tactics.”

Freeman nodded.

“Are you a Marine like Harris?” Yamashiro asked.

“I freelance,” Freeman said.

“Ah, so it is,” Yamashiro said. The two officers behind him exchanged a quick glance. I almost expected one officer to hand a stack of bills to the other.

Yamashiro had timeless features. He might have been fifty years old, he might have been eighty. The skin on his face had dried but not wrinkled beyond the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes.

“Has anyone tried to retaliate?” Freeman asked.

“This is a war of ghosts,” Yamashiro said. “Unified Authority ships cannot retaliate unless they happen to be in orbit around a planet when the Mogat ships arrive. The Confederates cannot afford a fight. Their navy is far too small to engage the Mogat Fleet.”