Steven Kent - Rogue Clone

During the time I was being interrogated, I caught a lucky break. The Confederate Arms sent ten ships to Odessa, a wealthy planet in the Sagittarius Arm that supported the Revolution. They did not intend to attack the planet, this was a blockade-running mission.

A flotilla of U.A. Navy destroyers and fighter carriers met them as they emerged. The Confederate ships tried to escape without engaging the Sagittarius Fleet. The U.A. ships followed. Two Hinode battleships were destroyed. The others fled until they could broadcast to safety.

Since I was deep in the bowels of the ship, stripped to my briefs and strapped to an interrogation table when the battle occurred, Crowley must have decided that I had nothing to do with it. The Confederate Arms said there was a leak in the chain of command and blamed the Mogats. The Mogats said that the Japanese should have been better prepared for the battle. I personally wanted all sides to blame Tom Halverson. With any luck, they might even shoot the bastard and me with the same firing squad.

The door down the hall opened. Someone walked toward my cell, his hard-soled shoes clanked against the metal grid floor. I did not bother climbing from my cot. At any moment, I thought, Sam would step into view. If he came close enough, I would kill him. I would snap his neck. I was marked to die anyway, and dying sooner might mean avoiding another torture session. So I lay on my cot facing the far wall of my cell, curled into a ball and acting defeated.

The steps stopped at the edge of my cell. “I have a gift for you, Colonel Harris,” Yamashiro said. “This is a gentleman’s gift. No one else needs to know that I gave it to you.”

For one wild moment I thought he had smuggled a gun into the brig. I spun over on my cot so that I faced him. Yamashiro stood right in front of my cell leaning forward into the bars. He held on to the bars with his right hand, and reached toward me with his left. That hand was cupped around something, my “gentleman’s gift.”

I sat up and stared through the bars at the man. Our eyes met for a moment, then he nodded down toward the gift he had offered me. I stood and approached.

“You’re not supposed to stand so close to the bars,” I said. “It’s dangerous. A prisoner could grab your arm and pin you against the bars.”

“I’m not worried about it,” Yamashiro said. As I drew closer and looked at his offered hand, I noticed the calloused skin along the edge of it. A short and powerful build, sandpaper hands—these were the signs of training in judo or jujitsu.

Yamashiro turned his hand so that the palm faced up. His fingers still curled over the gift hiding it. As I approached, the fingers spread revealing their secret. I saw nuggets of glass and wadded up wires that looked like they were made of gold. Yamashiro smiled. “It was a fine magic trick.”

Seconds passed as I stared at that hand filled with sparkling gems of broken glass, my heart sinking in my chest. Then I realized that the pulverized mediaLink shades he held had gold frames. The ones I left on the bridge had cheap black plastic frames. “A young ensign found them in a communications station on the bridge.”

“Then you have more than one spy on your hands,” I said. “I’ve never seen those before.”

Yamashiro’s smile spread. “No? The shades you left had black frames. These were the best I could do on short notice.” He closed his fist again and pulled his hand back through the bars.

“Where are the real ones?” I asked.

“Right where you left them,” Yamashiro said. “I thought they might be more valuable just as you left them. Having unseen ears can be a powerful tool.”

I worried about Halverson setting a trap by giving faux orders in range of those shades. I imagined intelligence relaying those orders to Huang and Huang sending the Doctrinaire into an ambush. What kind of trap could stop a ship like that? Then I remembered that Yamashiro had called this a “gentleman’s gift.” Why had he come and why had he not told Crowley about my little trick?

“Who did your ensign tell about the shades?” I asked.

“He told his commanding officer, who told his commanding officer,” Yamashiro said, an infectious, mischievous grin spreading across his face.

“And it went all the way to the top?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Yamashiro.

“But Admiral Halverson did not hear about it?” I asked.

“He is with the Confederate Arms Fleet,” Yamashiro said, as if those few words explained everything. “The ensign was an officer in the Hinode Fleet. The information came to me.”

“And you don’t share intelligence between fleets?” I asked.

“Sadly, no. Like you, we also suspect that our allies in the Confederate Arms may not be reliable.”

“I see,” I said. “In my opinion, the Mogats aren’t much better. You know how they got these ships in the first place?”

Without waiting for a response, I answered my own question. “They gassed the original crew.”

“So you would not trust them?” Yamashiro asked.

“If I were you, you mean? I would trust the Arms before I would trust the Mogats,” I said. “You know who you should have trusted? You should have trusted Klyber. Klyber did not want to invade your planet. He tried to keep the Senate off your back as much as possible.”

Yamashiro’s smile did not fade, but his eyes seemed to harden and his expression became more serious. “I admired Admiral Klyber but I did not trust the Senate.”

I stared straight into Yamashiro’s eyes. “The Mogats would not have known how to rig Klyber’s ship like that.”

For a long moment, Yamashiro returned my glare, looking me in the eyes. Then he looked down at the floor and shook his head. “Klyber was an honorable man. I did not want him killed.”

“But you showed them how to do it,” I said.

“Yes,” said Yamashiro, still looking down. He produced a package of cigarettes and lit one. “A Hinode engineer figured out how to sabotage the generators and taught some of their engineers.”

“Did you know what they would do with it?”

“Yes.”

I laughed. It was an angry laugh. “Is it irony or karma? Now that they know how to sabotage broadcast engines, what makes you think that they won’t do it to you?”

“The Believers could barely fly these ships when they helped us escape Ezer Kri,” Yamashiro said. “They had no idea how to maintain or repair them. We renovated the fleet. Our engineers did all of it.”

“The Mogats learn quickly,” I said, “so watch your back. Once they know enough, they won’t need you or your fleet officers. As I recall, you’re a student of history. Right now, your officers are playing the role of Poland to the Confederate Arms’s Soviet Union and the Mogats’ Nazi Germany.”

Yamashiro took a drag on his cigarette, stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. Clearly his history was civil, not military.

“The Nazis and the Soviets had a shaky alliance. It ended the moment they both invaded Poland to try and get a better shot at each other. Once your war with the Unified Authority is done, you’d better have an exit plan.”

Yamashiro thought to himself as he listened. He took one last long drag from his cigarette and exhaled the smoke through his nostrils in dual streams. His smile had vanished and he wore a serious and thoughtful expression. “One way or another, the war ends tomorrow. We’re attacking Earth,” he said.

Time never moved so slowly for me as it did after Yoshi Yamashiro’s visit. I was locked in the brig of a ship that was about to go to battle against the most powerful navy in history. This was the command ship. If the Doctrinaire located this ship, it would undoubtedly destroy it. With those big cannons, one shot could finish the job.