Steven Kent - Rogue Clone

The briefing took hours, but I did not notice. I wondered what strange debt Yoshi Yamashiro thought he owed Bryce Klyber, and why he thought he could pay it off by saving me. I wondered how deep that debt extended. Was it paid off by sparing my life? Would payment include integrating me into the Hinode Navy?

The door to the conference room opened, but I did not look up. I might as well have been back on my cot in the brig. In came Yamashiro and four officers. Yamashiro sat across the table from me. His four officers positioned themselves, two on either side of him. They did not sit at the table but formed a V around him, like samurai guarding their shogun. For the next few minutes, I sat in silence.

“The second war has already begun,” Yamashiro said in a whisper that nonetheless shattered the silence. “A battle has broken out between the Mogats and the Confederate Arms. The Mogats have seized control of most of the fleet.”

“How can you know that?” I asked.

“We took a lesson from you and placed transmitters on every ship,” Yamashiro said.

“You bugged your own ships? But that would mean we were still nearby?”

“We are five million miles from the fleet. You might say we traveled a safe distance to listen.”

“Can’t they detect you?” I asked.

“How would they do that?”

“Radar,” I said. “Radar stations pick up the anomaly when you broadcast in.”

“And transmit the information over the Broadcast Network,” Yamashiro said. “Only the Broadcast Network is no more.”

“And your transmitters have a direct link,” I said.

“Even if the Morgan Atkins Believers detected us, we would be able to broadcast away before they could reach us. But, as you might guess …”

“The Mogats and Confederates have bigger fish to fry.”

“I would say they are distracted at the moment,” Yamashiro said.

“So where does that leave me?” I asked. “Am I now a citizen of Shin Nippon?”

“I am sorry to inform you, Colonel Harris, that my officers and I have discussed this and we do not feel it would be advisable to bring a man of your destructive capacity to our planet.”

“You mean a Liberator?” I asked.

“I mean a killer,” Yamashiro said. “Some of my men watched you kill your jailor. Liberator or natural-born, you are a dangerous man.”

“I’m not the only killer. You and your men are wearing uniforms,” I pointed out.

“We are engineers. We modernized the ships and helped fly them,” Yamashiro said. “The Mogats and the Confederates did all of the fighting. We never wanted to enter a war.”

“So this was just a reprieve,” I said, thinking Yamashiro meant to execute me.

“I do not understand,” Yamashiro said. “We will take you wherever you wish to go as long as it does not endanger our ship.”

“You’re joking,” I said.

Yamashiro looked confused.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked.

“We owe a debt to …”

“Bryce Klyber. Yes, you mentioned that before. But you also showed a Mogat assassin how to kill Klyber by rigging his transport.”

“We had no choice,” Yoshi Yamashiro said. “Admiral Halverson said that we could not have won the war if Klyber commanded the Doctrinaire .”

“I don’t understand how that can be. I served under both Klyber and Admiral Thurston. I saw them square off in a battle simulation. Thurston ran circles around Klyber.

“Why was it so important that Thurston take command? From what I saw, you had something more powerful than the Doctrinaire all along.”

Yamashiro looked back at the officers sitting on either side of him as if looking for permission or perhaps support. Some of them seemed not to be paying attention. The ones who acknowledged his glance nodded.

“Now that the battle has ended, I suppose there is no reason for this to remain a secret. I understand Admiral Halverson loaned you a portable display unit. Is that correct?”

I nodded.

“When the battle started, one of our cruisers remained behind.”

I thought about this and remembered a ship sputtering forward and falling behind the rest. I assumed it had mechanical problems. Then, as the battle progressed, I forgot all about it.

“That was the weapon,” Yamashiro said this with the self-satisfied air of a man who believes that he has satisfactorily explained a great mystery.

“That cruiser destroyed the Doctrinaire? ” I asked, doubting.

Yamashiro looked back at his officers, then decided to give up the goods. “Admiral Klyber was a very aggressive commander. He would send his command ship into battle along side his other ships. Robert Thurston was more of an organizer. With a super-ship like the Doctrinaire , he preferred to shoot enemy ships as his support fleet herded them in his direction.

“Klyber would have flown the Doctrinaire as it was meant to be flown, like a gigantic battleship. Thurston used it like a floating fortress. Do you see now?”

I shook my head, though the pieces were starting to come together.

“Klyber would have flown his ship up and down the battlefield. Thurston remained in one place, destroying every ship that came within range. He remained in one place long enough for us to chart his position and …”

“You broadcasted that cruiser into the center of the Doctrinaire ,” I said. My admiration was immense. “Absolutely brilliant.”

“We placed a nuclear bomb on the bridge of the cruiser.”

“So the cruiser was a drone?” I asked.

“You can’t self-broadcast a drone ship. You might lose control during the broadcast. We could not trust a drone ship, not with so much depending on it. We trained a crew of Morgan Atkins Believers to fly a suicide mission.”

“A kamikaze mission? You trained kamikaze pilots?” The irony was remarkable, but Yamashiro seemed unimpressed. He gazed at me with a stony expression. “You taught a bunch of Mogats how to run their own broadcast computer?” I asked. “Did you give them some engineering tips?”

Yamashiro nodded.

“And they would have passed that information on to their friends,” I said. “You won the war and made yourselves expendable. From here on out, the Mogats will be able to pilot their own ships.”

Yamashiro pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. He drew the smoke in very deeply and held it for several seconds in his lungs. His eyes never flickered. He never blinked. He stared off into the distance as he performed the calculations that now ran through his head. He was stocky and strong, but still an old man. His allies had outmaneuvered him, and he knew it.

Dressed in his suit and red necktie, his black hair brushed back and oiled, Governor Yoshi Yamashiro considered the alliances to which he had sold his soul. Whom did he hate more, the Confederate Arms, the Morgan Atkins Believers, the Unified Authority, or himself?

“We cannot fly you back to Earth,” Yamashiro finally said, after blowing a stream of cigarette smoke. “That entire system is a battle zone. Is there anyplace else you would like to go?”

“Anyplace?” I asked. “Take me to New Columbia.”

I had a lot of reasons why I wanted to return to New Columbia. If I had to be stranded on a planet, being stranded on a planet with a large agricultural base and a small population was attractive. Thanks to the evacuation, New Columbia had far more food than people.

Even before the evacuation, New Columbia had the kind of economy that could survive on its own. In Safe Harbor and other cities, it had both industrial and financial infrastructures. Outside of those cities, it had large farms. The planet had started out as a farming colony. Granted, I had enemies in Safe Harbor. If Jimmy Callahan survived the attack on the Marine base, he would have a score to settle with me. There might be Marines who would consider me a deserter for not staying on base during the attack.