Steven Kent - The Clone Republic

If there had ever been a layer of dirt covering the face of these cliffs, it had long since washed away. This face was rock and ice with a few stray ferns growing in its crags. As I dropped down the edge of the precipice, my boots clattered on the wet stone face.

“Move it! Move it! Move it!” Shannon shouted down at us.

My right foot slipped against the wet rock, and I struggled to find good footing. Like me, most of the troopers had trouble finding secure footing on the way back down. We did not practice rappelling on board ship. The last time I had done so was in the orphanage. We had jetpacks, why would we need to rappel?

“Too long! Too slow!” Shannon shouted.

“I’d like to see you do this,” I said under my breath.

Shannon’s cord dropped just to my right. I looked up in time to see him jump over the edge of the cliff. Taking long, narrow bounces, the sergeant plunged down the cord so quickly that it looked like a free fall.

“I could do that,” I said to myself. “I just don’t feel like showing off.” I took a quick look over my shoulder. The lake filled the horizon. Craning my neck to look out, I could see the waterfront. In the daylight, the buildings looked like ice sculptures. I took a deep breath and prepared to drop faster. As I exhaled that breath, a bullet struck the cliff, shooting sparks and rock fragments that bounced against the visor of my helmet.

I blinked, though my visor protected me. Reflexes. At that same moment, I opened my fingers and let the cord whip across my armor-covered palms, dropping me into a loosely controlled free fall. As I reached the trees below, I tightened my grip to slow myself. I let go of the rope and dropped the last few feet into the mud. Standing a few yards away, Sergeant Shannon stood muttering to himself under his breath and firing live rounds at the cliff. He had removed his helmet. His face was spattered with dirt. The mud, combined with his all-tooth smile and wide, excited eyes, gave him a crazed look.

“You call that climbing?” Shannon yelled. “Move it, you dipshit maggots,” he bawled with a string of accompanying cusses. “I did not bring you here to go sightseeing!” He fired his rifle, and two of the men crashed down to the mud.

“I’ll bet that’s Lee,” Shannon muttered as he stared up at the cliff. “Hey, Lee, have a nice fall.” With the butt of his rifle tucked under his arm, Shannon squeezed off two shots that severed the cords just above one of the man’s hands. The man plummeted, bouncing off the face of the cliff before igniting his jetpack and lowering to the ground safely. Seeing what happened, the rest of the men rappelled down the cliff more quickly.

“Jeeezus sakes Christ!” Shannon yelled, looking over his panting platoon. “I could have picked off the whole friggin’ lot of you. The whole damn lot. I thought I came to drill Marines, not take old ladies sightseeing. Hell, I could have cooked me a barbecue and called your next o’kin before I started shooting. Next time, I’m loading rubber bullets and bagging me some maggots. You sisters better wear your safety loops tight. Next time I’m shooting rubbers.

“And, ladies, when I say ‘next time,’ I mean after lunch.”

All of us “ladies” groaned.

Lunch was no treat. It rained. We gathered around the truck and opened our MREs. No heated food to soften our bellies that day, just the standard mushy vegetables and prefabricated stew. Despite the vacuum packaging, everything tasted stale.

A white government car pulled up beside us as we ate. A pasty-faced bureaucrat in a shiny gray suit climbed out of the car. He had perfectly coiffed hair. With his clothes and grooming, the man looked completely out of place among the trees. He scanned the platoon, picked out Sergeant Shannon, and joined us.

“Can I help you?” Sergeant Shannon asked, with a wolfish grin.

“Sergeant Shannon?” the man asked.

“I’m Shannon.”

The man held out an envelope with an SC Central Fleet seal. Handing his rations to another soldier, Shannon took the communiqué and opened it. “Harris,” he called.

I walked over. “Sergeant?”

“Looks like you get to skip our next hike,” Shannon said. “SC Command wants you to deliver your prisoner to the Kamehameha .” He handed me the communiqué. I scanned it quickly and saw that I was supposed to get cleaned up and dress in my greens.

I rode back to camp in that posh government car. No hard wooden seats in that ride. When we got back to camp, my bureaucratic escort gave me ten minutes to dress and shower.

“We’re on a tight schedule,” he told me. “You need to report to the Kamehameha by three.”

The Rising Sun police met us at the landing pad and turned Kline over to me in cuffs and manacles. I signed for him and walked him onto the transport. We had the kettle to ourselves, just Kline and me, alone, sitting near the back of the ship. His injured eye looked more infected than ever. The skin around it had turned purple, and yellow pus seeped out from under the closed eyelid.

He stared at me for a moment, then asked, “Harris?”

“Yes,” I said.

We both sat silently as the ramp closed and the AT took off. Not wanting to look at that ruined face, I stared straight ahead at the metal wall of the kettle and let my thoughts wander. Would there be war?

“They’re going to execute me,” Kline said, his calm voice cutting through my thoughts.

“I suspect they will get around to it, sooner or later,” I said.

“No,” Kline corrected me. “They are going to execute me tonight. They will hold a tribunal. I won’t even get a trial. You are delivering me to be executed.”

“You cannot possibly expect me to feel sorry for you. You came to Ezer Kri to shoot me.” I shook my head. “You should have stayed on Gobi. No one cared about you there.”

Despite what I said, I did feel sorry for Kline. In the time that I had known him, he had led a band of terrorists to kill my platoon and attempted to “azzazzinate” me. My universe would be safer once he was gone, but there was something pathetic about this inept, one-handed fool.

“You soldiers are all alike,” he said, probably not seeing the irony in his statement.

“I’m not a soldier,” I said. “I am a Marine.”

Kline shook his head but said nothing.

“I’m curious, Kline. Did Crowley put you up to this?” I asked.

“Did you read my final confession?” Kline asked.

They had interrogated Kline thoroughly over the last few days, but I had not seen the reports. “No,” I said.

“It was my idea,” Kline said. “I wanted to kill you. Crowley tried to talk me out of it.”

“Did he?” I asked. “Did he tell you I was on Ezer Kri?” We must have been approaching the Kamehameha ; I could feel the transport rumble as the engines slowed.

“He told me where to find you,” Kline said, sounding a bit defiant.

“Did he arrange your trip?”

“Not himself. One of his lieutenants.”

“And he gave you the rifle and the scope?”

“Yes.”

“And he preset the scope to read my helmet signal?”

“Yes.”

For the first time since takeoff, I turned and looked directly at Kline. “And you think it was your idea? He played you.”

In the background, jets hissed as our ride glided up into the primary docking bay. The ship touched down on its landing gear, and the soft hum of the engines went silent. The rear of the ship opened, and a security detail of four MPs stomped up the ramp.

“Corporal Harris?” One of Admiral Klyber’s aides followed the MPs. “Corporal Harris, we’re on a very tight schedule.”

“Is this the prisoner?” one of the MPs asked.