Steven Kent - Rogue Clone

There had been few cars along the street on the night of the attack. Now I found cars parked in the middle of the streets. These cars must have been found, driven dry, and abandoned. Not that I was in any position to condemn car thievery.

Safe Harbor had become a patchwork of prime city and war zones. A few blocks into town, I walked into a neighborhood that had probably survived the Hinode attack only to be sacked and destroyed by gangs. This had been an up-scale residential area with two- and three-story apartment buildings, parks with playgrounds, and hedges along the sidewalks.

Hinode lasers had not done this damage. The streets were intact but there were bullet holes everywhere.

The windows and doors of the apartment buildings were broken in. Some buildings had been gutted by fire. The windows of these buildings were blackened from smoke. Beds, toys, and clothing littered the streets. The people who sacked this neighborhood had taken everything they wanted, then, in an anarchic feeding frenzy, destroyed everything they did not want. I looked at the stuffed animals, the toy cars, the books, and the furniture and thought about the families I passed in Safe Harbor spaceport.

The thieves were like wild dogs, like a goddamned pack of dogs. Soon I would run into them, and my newfound respect for human life would not help me. I began to wonder if I would have the ability to pull the trigger when the moment came.

Without people, cities become uncomfortably quiet. Walking through Safe Harbor, I heard my own breathing and the soft clap of my footsteps. I turned one corner and heard the pop of automatic fire. This happened on the outskirts of the financial district, an area filled with monolithic skyscrapers that seemed to slide out of the sky.

One of the buildings across the street from where I stood had a circular drive lined by four flagpoles. From those poles hung flags representing the Unified Authority, the Orion Arm, New Columbia, and Safe Harbor. A strong wind pushed those flags. They snapped and waved. Holding my M27 before me, my right forefinger over the trigger and my left hand supporting the stock, I paused to look at the flags.

The financial district stretched on for blocks, three square miles of city real estate covered by fifty- and sixty-floor buildings with marble façades and glistening windows. The looters would certainly have come into the financial district; but they could not break these inch-thick windows with simple bricks and they would not waste bullets trying to decorate this part of town. Some of the buildings had protective louvers across their entries. The looters would need to find better tools before they could enter these buildings. They would need lasers or explosives. I wondered just how well armed the looters might be.

I saw snatches of sky between the buildings. It was blue and cloudless, and it glowed. The day would turn hot and humid by midafternoon; but for now, the temperature remained in the high sixties and a cooling breeze rolled through the city.

A few blocks into the financial district, I located the remains of an Army checkpoint. I smelled the destruction long before I saw it. The scents of decay, dust, and fire became stronger. Then I turned a corner and confronted it. The men who erected the barricade had prepared to face looters, not battleships. A few laser blasts had reduced their tanks and armored transports to slag. There was one spot in which a laser had dug a six-foot pit in the middle of the street.

The laser carved a perfectly round pit. The laser melted the road around the pit, heating the tar until it boiled. The tar had cooled days ago, but the acrid smell of melted tar lingered in the air.

The men guarding this checkpoint would have died at their post before deserting. They were government-issue clones, heavily programmed and damned near incapable of abandoning an assignment. A direct hit from those laser cannons could turn an entire platoon to ash, and the heat from a near hit would kill a man, but they would have stayed. If there had been bodies left after the attack, the looters carted them away.

Taking one last look around the destruction, I sighed and continued on. From here on out, I would travel through smaller streets and alleyways. As long as I continued heading north and east, I would end up somewhere near Fort Washington. When Ray Freeman arrived in Safe Harbor, the Marine base was the first place he would have visited.

After another hour, I found my way into a retail district. Going from the deserted financial district into a retail section was like stepping out of a forest and finding yourself in a pasture. As I moved through alleys, working my way around pallets and the layer of trash that carpeted this portion of town, I heard an engine growl.

Moving through the empty streets of Safe Harbor, the hum of an engine sounded as foreign to me as the roar of a dinosaur. This was not a car, I could tell that easily enough. If it was a truck, it was a large truck. If I had to guess, I would have said it was an armored transport from the Marine or Army base. No self-respecting corporation would own such a noisy truck.

I switched from my M27 to my particle beam pistol as I peeked around a corner. Ahead of me I saw a four-way intersection over which hung a blacked-out stoplight. From here on out, I would need to move more cautiously. I was entering enemy territory. This was gangland. Anybody and everybody was the enemy.

Traveling from lot to lot, hiding behind walls and fences whenever I could, I worked my way forward. I tracked down the sound of that truck engine. Soon I heard voices.

“Hey, guys, look at me! I’m a specking Marine.” The man who said this had a low voice that sounded utterly without intelligence.

The buildings in this area, mostly two- and three-story commercial structures with block-length display windows and awning-covered entrances, had been looted and gutted. The glass in the display windows was shattered. In one window, dozens of naked mannequins lay piled on top of each other like logs in a fireplace.

The building directly behind me was a looted diner. The people who broke into the restaurant seemed to have had a certain reverence for it. They did not break the windows or steal the tables and chairs. Except for a missing door, the restaurant looked clean enough to open for business.

Whoever was talking was right around the corner from me when he said, “Careful with that, it’s worth something.”

“This thing? I wouldn’t want to wear it. It’s got clone meat inside it. Clone probably rotted all over it.”

“I’m telling you, that helmet is worth something. That Marine combat armor, that’s good shit.”

“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it,” a third voice said. “I’ll give you five hundred bucks for it.”

I did not recognize the voices. I knelt in a shadow to listen for clues about who these men were.

“Money doesn’t buy jack,” the first man complained.

“Might sometime.”

“Only if the government comes back. If that happens, we’re all screwed.” That was the second speaker, the only one who sounded like he could read.

“I’ll trade you a canned ham for it,” the third man offered.

“A canned ham? No shit?” the man sounded impressed.

Staying low to the ground, I slipped over towards a broken display window. The floor inside the display was covered with sparkling shards of glass. Whatever had been on display inside this window must have been valuable since the looters had picked it clean.

I climbed into the window and found an open door that led into the store itself. This particular shop had sold gourmet foods, not that there was anything left on the shelves. Posters showing kosher this and imported that covered the walls. Banners for cheeses and special brands of coffee hung from the ceiling. Toppled refrigerator display cases, demolished shelves, and cast-away shopping carts littered the floor. The store was huge and dark except for the bright sunlight that shined in through small windows in distinct rays.