Steven Kent - Rogue Clone

“I saw your SEAL in the feed. I saw your spy, too,” I said.

“My spy?” Huang asked, sounding frustrated. The ragged edges of his personality began to show.

“What about Halverson? He was in the landing bay, too.”

“Halverson?” Huang repeated.

I did not like or trust Huang, but I had never known him to lie. He was a storm-the-front-gates type of enemy. He did not smile at people he disliked. If he wanted you dead, he let you know it. Except for his political maneuvering on the floor of the summit, I had never seen anything resembling subtlety from the man.

“Wasn’t Rear Admiral Halverson working for you?” I asked.

“Halverson?” Huang asked. “I wouldn’t work with an idiot like Tom Halverson. He was Klyber’s man.”

“He was your spy on the Doctrinaire ,” I said.

“Johansson was my spy,” Huang said. “I should have thought that was obvious. He sat with my staff during the summit. He flew back to D.C. with me. Leonid Johansson was my eyes on the project.”

“So what was Halverson doing by the hangar?” I asked.

“I’ve seen the security feed,” Huang said. “Halverson isn’t on it.”

“Perhaps you weren’t watching the feed closely,” I said, using Huang’s words against him to get under his skin. “When the janitors left the hangar, they passed Admiral Halverson. He was there having a smoke. He watched your boy come in, then followed him away from the hangar.”

“Halverson? He may have been there, but he wasn’t working for me,” Huang said. “It sounds to me as if you’ve got your first clue, Sherlock. What you need now is to follow up on it.”

This is the moment when Che Huang demonstrates his prowess in the dark arts of politics. It should be obvious that he is a political creature—an officer with no actual combat experience who has risen to the Joint Chiefs. Now that he has weathered the counter-attack about his clones, Huang draws back his fangs and sinks them into Admiral Klyber.

“ Admiral Klyber, powerful as this super ship of yours is, do you really think it can handle more than five hundred enemy ships?” Huang asks this question in an uncharacteristically reasonable tone.

“ No, of course not,” says Klyber. “We’ll need support ships, and the optimum situation is to engage no more than ten or twenty dreadnoughts per battle.”

“ I really must congratulate you. You have created a fine weapon. I honestly believe that this ship will be the weapon that wins the war.”

Klyber only nods to acknowledge this compliment. His eyes remain coldly fixed on Huang. He does not trust the man.

“ How would a fleet be able to support this ship? You haven’t talked the Linear Committee into funding a self-broadcasting fleet, have you?”

Appreciative laughter rings through the room.

“ I have assembled a ready-alert fleet that will remain near the Broadcast Network. It’s a small fleet now, but we’ll find more ships for it. The fleet will have flash access to the broadcast computer on board the Doctrinaire . Anytime she self-broadcasts, her travel information will be relayed to the ships in the fleet.”

“ But will they be able to get to her in time to assist?” General Smith asks.

“ The ready-alert ships can override the Network. They can enter the discs and override the system to broadcast them directly to the Doctrinaire .”

At this point, I notice that both of the seats behind Klyber are empty. Admiral Halverson has gone somewhere. I check summit clock and note the time. It is three in the afternoon according to Washington, D.C., time, which is the clock used by the Dry Docks for the duration of the summit. Suddenly it occurs to me where Halverson has gone, and I feel a chill. He is at the hangar observing Huang’s clone as he plants the cable on Klyber’s transport.

“ Brilliant,” Huang cheerily admits. “Absolutely brilliant. Of course, you’ll need a skilled administrator to handle the logistics.” Perhaps he means Leonid Johansson, but that does not seem likely. Johansson is barely paying attention to the proceedings at this point. He is leaning in his chair causally looking toward the back of the room. He is, in fact, looking at baby-faced Robert Thurston—the man who replaced Klyber as commander of the Scutum-Crux Fleet. Thurston’s brilliant battle tactics are legendary.

“ Strategy and logistics,” Huang continues. “They seem to be the keys. A great battle strategist at the helm of the Doctrinaire and the right logistical support to make sure that the ship does not fail.”

“ What is your point?” General Smith asks.

“ It seems to me that the fleet admiral’s skills are wasted commanding a lone ship, even a great ship such as the Doctrinaire ,” Huang begins. I recognize that he is trying to take command of the Doctrinaire away from Klyber and I feel as if I have been slapped across the face. I cannot even imagine the thoughts going through Klyber’s head. “You are the highest ranking officer in the Unified Authority Navy. Your command should not be limited to one lone boat. You should be in command of a fleet.”

“ I will not relinquish control of the Doctrinaire .”

“ Of course not,” Huang says. “This is your project. The Doctrinaire is your ship. I am simply suggesting that you should command the entire fleet as well as the ship itself. If the Doctrinaire is part of a fleet, you should have the highest authority in that fleet.”

“ Avoid all tangles in the chain of command,” General Kellan, the 39-year-old secretary of the Army, adds. “I can’t speak for you Annapolis graduates, but that was one of the first things we learned at West Point.”

“ Of course you would use the Doctrinaire as your command ship,” Huang adds as slick as any salesman trying to close a deal. “She is your ship. The Doctrinaire will always be your ship.”

Like all of the senior officers in that room, I see nothing wrong with Huang’s suggestion, except that I do not trust the man who has made it. Klyber, on the other hand, looks beaten. He is the only officer at the table without an entourage, and he now looks small and lonely sitting at the table by himself. He looks to General Smith for support, but Smith does not seem to have a problem with Huang’s suggestion. In fact, one minute later, Smith agrees with it.

The remainder of the meeting is unspectacular. Neither Che Huang nor Bryce Klyber speak again. And when the meeting adjourns, Klyber is the first officer to reach the door of the conference room. He meets me at the door looking old and depressed.

The carrot that Bryce Klyber dangled in front of me, Che Huang delivered: an honorable discharge. With just a word from Huang, I was Lieutenant Wayson Harris, Unified Authority Marines retired. My permanent record did not even contain the word, “Liberator,” not that I doubted Huang’s intention to add it back the moment I caught up to Halverson.

“What are you going to do next?” Freeman asked me as we left Schofield Barracks.

“I need to pick up Halverson’s trail,” I said. “Whoever put the cables on Bryce Klyber’s ship was working with Halverson. That means Halverson was spying for the Separatists or the Confederate Arms.”

“It looks that way,” Freeman agreed.

“Last place I saw him was in the Golan Dry Docks. I figure that’s the place to start.”

Freeman dropped me off at Honolulu Airport, then went to return his rental car. I did not trust Huang. I would never trust him, but I thought this might be a good time to see if he had kept his word. Instead of going out to the field with the private planes, I passed through the tighter security at the commercial terminal where they had DNA-scanning posts for outgoing passengers.