Steven Kent - The Clone Republic

I saluted.

He saluted back. “That’s your bubble?” he asked, pointing to my helmet.

“Yes, sir,” I said. Bubble , short for bubblehead, was Navy slang for Marines. And it was indeed mine. Lee and I had traded back after we caught Kline.

“Would you mind if I borrowed it? It could prove useful during my interrogation.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He took the helmet and excused himself.

“Why don’t you stay for the interrogation,” Klyber said, as Niles walked away. Freeman and I followed the admiral into a small dark room in which four chairs overlooked a bank of medical monitors and a large window. As we sat, a light came on at the other side of that window. Two policemen led Kline into the interrogation room and sat him on a small metal chair.

I must have been far too rough on Kline. No one had bothered to clean the dried blood from where I’d struck his face with the butt of the rifle. His left eye was swollen shut and purple. It looked wet and badly infected.

Niles entered the room carrying a large canvas bag in one hand and my helmet in the other. The policemen tried to cuff Kline’s arms behind the back of his chair, eventually closing one manacle around his left wrist and the other around his right elbow. As they did this, Niles arranged several objects on a small table near the door. The policemen prepared to leave, but Niles intercepted them and whispered something. Niles smiled as they left the room, then he turned to Kline, and said, “You make a pathetic assassin.”

“This is all a misunderstanding. An assassin?” Kline said. With his thick tongue, the S’s in “assassin” had a harsh sound—“azz-azin.” “I came here for a vacation. I thought I might do some hunting on Lake Pride.”

“And this is your rifle?” Niles held up Kline’s rifle and peered through its scope.

“It’s for hunting,” Kline said.

“You sound like quite the sportsman, Mr. Kline.” Niles was terse but not unfriendly. He placed the gun back on the table, then walked over to Kline, who shifted his weight on the small metal chair. “Is it Kline or Mr. Kline?”

“Kline.”

“I am asking if Kline is your first or last name.”

“Only one name, I am afraid.” Kline sounded distressed.

“Oh,” Niles said. “So you are an Atkins Separatist. As far as I know, only two kinds of people go by a single name— Morgan Atkins Separatists and professional musicians. If your right hand is any indication, I assume you are not a musician.”

“The term is ‘believer,’ not ‘separatist,’ ” Kline said in a sullen voice.

“My mistake,” Niles said.

“Tell you what, Kline. Let’s try an experiment. Let’s pretend that I am you, and you are…Let’s say that you are a corporal in the Marines. We’ll pretend that you are Corporal Wayson Harris, for instance. Are you with me so far?”

Kline shrugged. “I don’t understand the purpose of this?”

“Maybe this will help,” Niles said, lifting my helmet from the table.

“This is Corporal Harris’s helmet.” Niles stuffed it down over Kline’s head. Short and round, Kline was not made for combat armor. The circumference of his skull was slightly too large; but with some force, Niles managed to slam the helmet in place. Kline screamed as the lip of my helmet raked down across his wounded eye.

“Looks like a good fit,” Niles said.

Kline slumped forward in his chair, hyperventilating. Only the restraints around his arms kept him from falling to the floor. “What are you doing?” he moaned.

“My experiment,” the Intelligence officer said, sounding slightly offended. “You remember, we’re conducting an experiment?

“On the arrest report, it says that the scope on your rifle reads a frequency reserved for military use. That makes this scope contraband, and smuggling contraband between planets is a federal offense. And it gets worse. The report says that the auto-switch on this scope was set to go off when it located a specific signal. Now, why would the scope on a hunting rifle be set to read identifier signals in the first place? I’m sure this is all a colossal mistake.”

Kline said nothing.

“According to the police, that specific signal would be the identifying code broadcast by Corporal Harris’s helmet…the helmet you are wearing at this very moment. That would mean you came to Lake Pride hunting Corporal Harris.

“Me, I don’t believe that a law-abiding fellow like you came to Rising Sun hunting another human being. So here is my experiment.”

Niles picked up the rifle and walked behind Kline’s chair. “First, I will load this rifle.” He drew back the bolt. Deliberately fumbling the bullet so that it clanged against the barrel of the rifle several times, he slid it into the chamber and locked the bolt back in place.

“Now let’s see what happens when I hit to auto-switch and point the gun at that helmet you are wearing.”

“Don’t!” Kline shouted.

“A problem with my theory?”

“You’re going to kill me!” Kline’s voice bounced and fluttered. He was crying inside the helmet.

Without a word, the Intelligence officer removed the bullet from the rifle and pocketed it. He placed the rifle back on the table, then wrenched the helmet off Kline’s head. The prisoner whimpered and sat with his chin tucked into his flabby neck.

“You know, Mogat, I think you have some interesting tales to tell. And the best part is, chubby little speckers like you always talk. Always.”

Niles headed for the door of the interrogation room, then turned back. “I’ll have the police return you to your cell.”

“He will cooperate,” Admiral Klyber said quietly. “I doubt, however, that he will have any valuable information. Crowley would never trust anything important with such a weakling.”

I felt as if I had just watched an execution. Klyber showed absolutely no empathy for their prisoner. The physiology monitors lining the walls of the observation room showed that Kline’s heart pace had nearly doubled. His blood pressure rose so high when Niles placed my helmet over his head that a heart attack seemed imminent; yet I, too, felt strangely unsympathetic.

“I don’t believe there was any particular bounty on Kline,” said Klyber. “Does a reward of three thousand dollars seem adequate?”

Freeman nodded.

“Very good. I will see that you are paid by the end of the day, Mr. Freeman. I’m curious, though, why come as far as the Scutum-Crux Arm chasing a small-time criminal with such low prospects?”

“Little fish sometimes lead you to bigger ones,” Freeman said as he stood to leave.

“I see,” Klyber said, without standing up. “Well, fine work, Freeman. I hope you find the bigger fish you are looking for.”

Freeman nodded again and left.

Admiral Klyber leaned forward and flipped a switch, turning off the sound in the next room. “Your name keeps popping up, Corporal Harris. Why should that be?”

I knew precisely why my name sounded familiar to Admiral Klyber, but I had no intention of dredging up my record on Gobi. I had other things on my mind, so as soon as Klyber and the Intelligence officer left the police station, I asked one of the guards to take me to Kline’s cell. I found him lying on his cot and staring up at the ceiling, his swollen eye still oozing yellow pas.

“You should have a doctor look at that,” I said as I entered the cell.

Kline said nothing. He continued to stare up at the ceiling.

“I can see you’re busy, and I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I was curious how you survived Freeman’s grenade,” I said.

“Is that you, Harris?” Kline asked.

“It’s me,” I said.