Steven Kent - The Clone Republic

McKay slid off the desk. “You’ve got two weeks, Harris. Don’t waste them.” He returned my salute and left the office shaking his head and muttering the word “orphanage.”

The Scutum-Crux Central Fleet needed rebuilding. We had lost seven thousand men on Hubble. I noticed an eerie emptiness around our section of the ship. I saw vacant racks in squad bay, and the sea-soldier bar always felt empty.

After the nonstop rush of battle, life unwound at an uneven pace aboard the Kamehameha . The first weeks after the battle on Hubble passed so slowly. The two days after McKay granted my leave were a blur.

I put off packing until the morning we left for Earth. I drilled my men harder than ever the day before we left. I tried to combine the late Tabor Shannon’s tirades and Aleg Oberland’s intelligent doggedness in my orders. I think I pushed everybody beyond his limits. When one of my privates missed ten shots on the range, allowing a holographic target of a woman separatist to stroll right up to the stand, I screamed until spit flew from my lips. Shannon would have been proud. I removed the man’s helmet, then I placed it over his head backward and hammered it down with my rifle butt. “Having trouble seeing through your visor?” I yelled.

Nobody laughed at my antics. The squad watched silently. I sent that same private to clean latrines during lunch and invited him to spar with me during hand-to-hand drills later that afternoon. That evening, I spied him practicing on his own in the rifle range. He showed marked improvement despite the two swollen black eyes I had given him earlier in the day.

Then, at 0500 the next morning, I woke from a deep sleep to see Sergeant Elmo Grayson dropping his rucksack beside my bunk. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“What are you doing here?” Grayson answered. “Your ride leaves in less than an hour.”

The blood surged to my head when I sat up too quickly. Still feeling sluggish, I swung my feet out of bed and forced myself up.

“Anything I need to know?” Grayson asked, as I pulled on my shirt.

I thought for a moment. “I’ve been drilling them on their shooting skills. Most of these grunts are pretty sorry shots. Take them to the range a couple of times per day. If they screw up, drill them again…especially the one with the two black eyes.”

“Black eyes?” Grayson asked. “Maybe that’s what messed up his shooting.”

“Actually, they’ve improved his accuracy,” I said. It was true.

Lee came into my office as I threw the last of my clothes in a duffel bag. “They don’t hold shuttles for sergeants, you know,” he said.

“I know,” I answered as I slung on my shoulder strap.

The men sat up in their bunks and watched as we left. No one said anything, but they seemed glad to see me go.

Lee and I raced to the launch bay, arriving as a small line of men started entering the transport. We joined the queue, panting from our run.

Fifteen men, six in civilian clothing, boarded the flight. Lee and I traveled in our Charlie Service greens. My civilian shirt and denim pants waited at the top of my bag.

The entire flight, over sixty thousand light-years, took under an hour. As Captain McKay had said, the Kamehameha happened to be near a disc station. Once we entered the network, we flashed through eight sets of discs, ending up at Mars Station, where we boarded a five-hour flight to Salt Lake City.

The flight from Salt Lake City to the islands would be aboard a civilian airliner. As we disembarked in Salt Lake City, I looked at my ticket. The name of the final destination looked so foreign. “How did you say they pronounce this town?”

“Hon-o-lu-la,” Lee said.

“Hon-o-lu-la? The second ‘U’ sounds like an ‘A’? What the hell kind of name is that?”

From the window of the plane, the ocean around the islands looked like a luminous patchwork of aqua, green, and blue. Parts of the island matched Gaylan McKay’s description— longs strips of beach and gorgeous forests. Other areas looked nothing like I expected. I saw a large city and long stretches that looked parched. A mountain range seemed to dissect the island. Thick rain forests ran along the mountain.

“It’s beautiful,” Lee said.

“Did you know it would look like this?” I asked.

“I heard stories,” he said, staring out a window across the aisle. “Mostly from officers. McKay says Admiral Klyber always comes here on leave.”

As the airplane began its descent, it flew parallel to the shoreline. We rounded a crater. I watched the scrolling landscape as the plane approached the runway.

Lee and I grabbed our bags before the plane touched down. We stayed in our seats with our bags on our laps. Heat, glare, and humid air poured into the cabin when the flight attendant opened the hatch. Squinting against the sunlight, I drew in a deep breath and felt the warmth in my lungs. Moments after leaving the plane, I felt sweat on my forehead.

Like so many places on Earth, Honolulu was a living museum exhibit. The airport was hundreds of years old, with thick concrete pillars and open-air walkways. It reminded me of the Marine base on Gobi. As we walked through the airport, I rolled up my sleeves. My shirt already felt moist under my arms. The heat felt great on my face and neck.

“Are you beginning to thaw?” Lee asked me.

I knew what he meant. Back on the Kamehameha , every room was climate-controlled. So was our armor.

Lee handled all of the logistics on the trip. He arranged our flights, found a place for us to stay, and rented the transportation—a beat-up buggy with a retractable cloth top. I was just along for the ride. “I hope you know where we’re going?” I said as I chucked my bag in the back of the car.

“Don’t sweat it, we have a map,” he said, tapping his finger on the map window in the dashboard. “Besides, who could get lost on a little rock like this?”

We got very lost indeed. The twisting network of highways that ran from the airport led in all directions. None of the signs said “Honolulu.” They had equally odd names like “Waikiki,” “Wahiawa,” and “Kaneohe,” none of which meant anything to either of us.

I didn’t mind being lost. We drove around with the top down, feeling the sun bake our shoulders. We passed beaches and streets lined with people. Over the last few months I had forgotten how to relax, but it was coming back to me.

Lee pulled onto the side of the road to look at his map. We were on the outskirts of an area called “Waikiki.” Tall hotels lined the roads.

“Okay. If we are where I think we are, the beach is over there, just beyond those buildings. We will see it if we go down this street. And we can follow this street to Diamondhead.”

“Look at that,” I said. “It’s a hotel for military personnel.” Just up the street from us was a large hotel with a sign that said “Hale Koa. U.A. Military Temporary Residents.” The building was not as elaborate as some of the towering structures around it, but the grounds were simple and pretty.

“Oh yeah, the Hail Ko. McKay told me about it.”

“Hail Ko? How did they come up with these names?” I joked.

Locating the Hale Koa Hotel gave Lee the bearings he needed to find his way through town. As we drove away, I glanced back at the hotel. It looked beautiful. “Why aren’t we staying there?” I asked.

“McKay suggested this other place,” Lee said. “He sounded pretty sure of himself. I get the feeling he knows his way around Honolulu.”

We drove through Waikiki, passing splendid hotels, streets packed with tourists, and crowded beaches. The road led us past parks and up a hill. There the road twisted back and forth as it followed the jagged coastline. At the top of the hill, we found streets lined with homes. Our pad was down one of those streets.