The Clone Redemption (15 page)

Shortly after the
Bolivar
broadcasted into the Orion Arm, Freeman and I met in a small conference room off the bridge. He brought the computer, I brought the codes, and we put in another call to the late Dr. Sweetwater. This time, more than one ghost answered the call.

Arthur Breeze stared at me from the little oblong screen of the communications computer. He sat on what must have been a standard-sized rolling lab stool. Beside him, William Sweetwater sat on an oversized barstool. Their heads were just about even, but Sweetwater's seat came all the way up to Arthur Breeze's ribs. Breeze was that tall and Sweetwater that short.

Bald except for the ring of cotton-fluff fuzz that ran level with his ears, Breeze had thick glasses and teeth so big they belonged in the mouth of a horse. “When William told me about your call, I couldn't believe it,” Breeze said, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Freeman and me. “He said you were on Terraneau when the Avatari attacked.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“We understand Terraneau was a total loss,” said Sweetwater. We'd already told Sweetwater the gory details. Apparently, he wanted us to rehash them for Breeze's benefit. “Did you arrive too late to evacuate the planet?”

I said, “We didn't have the barges. Andropov had no interest in evacuating Terraneau.”

The Unifieds had built a fleet of space barges that could carry 250,000 people at a time. Without those barges, it would take months to evacuate a planet.

“Why would the government leave them to die?” Breeze asked. He looked thunderstruck, his eyebrows riding halfway up his forehead and his mouth hanging slack.

Sweetwater, on the other hand, knew the answer. He sat silent, his hands pressed against his lap. William Sweetwater was both a brilliant scientist and a bureaucrat. He understood the political world.

“The local leadership declared independence when we liberated the planet. Terraneau wasn't part of the Unified Authority,” I said, neglecting to mention that it was not part of the Enlisted Man's Empire, either. I did not know if either scientist knew that the clones had formed their own empire. Breeze certainly didn't.

“What did you think you could accomplish going alone?” Sweetwater asked.

“I tried to get the government to send everyone underground,” I said.

“Terraneau had a sizable population. Were there facilities for that many people?” asked Breeze.

“I don't know. I didn't think it through,” I admitted.

Freeman, sitting beside me, could have jumped in to add his part of the story, but he let me do the talking. As long as I didn't give out unnecessary information, he was content.

I had the distinct feeling that Sweetwater had left Breeze in the dark about Freeman and me. He did not know that we were fugitives. As far as he knew, we were still loyal citizens.

I also got the feeling that Sweetwater did not want us to complete Breeze's education in a single call. He cleared his throat and attempted to steer the conversation by saying, “So counting Olympus Kri and Terraneau,
we've
managed to liberate twenty-four planets so far. Is that correct?” He placed obvious emphasis on the word “we,” suggesting that I might still be part of the Unified Authority.

“Twenty-four planets including Terraneau, that's right,” I said.

“Did any other planets wish to remain independent?” Breeze asked. He sounded painfully naïve. Tall and skinny, his eyes almost buglike behind his thick glasses, he stared into the screen, never questioning a word we said.

I was about to say no when Sweetwater said, “Didn't I hear something about Gobi demanding independence?”

“Gobi?” I asked. Gobi, a backwater planet in the Perseus Arm, had most recently been the headquarters of the Enlisted Man's Fleet.

“Gobi broke from the republic?” Breeze asked, thinking out loud. He ran a hand across his ring of white fluff hair. “That might explain their attitude toward the planet.”

“Whose attitude?” I asked

Breeze turned and stared into the camera, showing a profile that was nearly deformed. “Mr. Andropov's . . . General Hill's . . . The Joint Chiefs' . . . We held a briefing with them a day ago. When I told them that the aliens would attack Gobi by the end of the week, they didn't seem to care.”

“The end of the week?” I asked.

“It will happen within the next three days judging by the Tachyon D levels,” Breeze said.

Tachyon D was the harbinger of disaster. From what we could tell, the Avatari built their technology around the manipulation of tachyons—subatomic particles that moved faster than the speed of light. Before the Avatari invaded the galaxy, scientists considered tachyons a “theoretical probability.”

Once the aliens moved in on us, tachyons moved from “theoretical possibility” to “lethal reality.” With Sweetwater and Breeze spearheading the work, U.A. physicists not only learned how to detect tachyons, but apparently they'd now figured out how to classify them.

“To be honest, the Joint Chiefs haven't shown much interest in any planet since we discovered Tachyon D levels in Earth's atmosphere,” said Breeze.

“You found Tachyon D in Earth's atmosphere?” I asked. I expected the aliens would work their way to Earth, but this was too fast.

“We've found traces of it on every habitable planet,” Sweetwater said. “The gears are definitely in motion.”

We were out of options. We were out of answers, and we were still at war with ourselves.

 

I had given Admiral Steve Jolly command of the Navy, but I kept Sweetwater and Breeze to myself. I did not have much of a choice in the matter. Freeman owned our only portal for reaching the scientists, and he wasn't about to turn the device over to a fool like Jolly.

For what it was worth, I agreed with Freeman. Real or virtual, I felt a deep obligation toward the scientists. I'd served with them on New Copenhagen and seen them die with honor. In the Marine Corps, we took death, debts, and honor seriously.

We took the chain of command seriously, too. Leaving out the source of my information, I notified Admiral Jolly about the pending attack on Gobi.

“How did you come upon this information?” asked Jolly. He was on the
Windsor
, a fighter carrier in the Perseus Arm.

“Stray intel,” I said, hoping it would make the question go away.

“Stray intelligence?” he repeated.

“Yes, sir.”

“What exactly does that mean, Harris?” He gave me a hard look, a surveying look, maybe trying to decide whether or not to trust me.

I said, “It means that I am not willing to divulge my source.” I sat placid, relaxed, returning his inspection with a calm gaze.

A more self-confident officer would have pushed the issue. Jolly simply said, “Your stray intelligence just happens to match my findings. It turns out Gobi was the first planet we took after Terraneau. From what we know, that should make it the aliens' next target.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“You said something about hiding underground on Terraneau. Can we do that on Gobi?”

Fat and old and something of a coward, Admiral Jolly was the quintessential survivor. He'd probably never gone a day without brushing his teeth. The idea of saving lives without risking ships and personnel appealed to officers of his kind.

“Have you ever visited Gobi, Admiral?” I asked.

“Yes, and you were there at the same time,” he said. “I attended Warshaw's summit with Admiral Huxley.” I had not known the late Admiral Huxley. He was one of the victims of the Olympus Kri Massacre.

“I hid in a tunnel under a lake on Terraneau,” I said. “As far as I know, Gobi doesn't have tunnels or lakes.”

Jolly said, “If I am not mistaken, Gobi Station has underground levels.” Gobi Station was the base that the late Admiral Warshaw had used as his Pentagon. “What if we evacuated people to the base?” he asked.

I considered the idea and dismissed it. “We might be able to stash a few hundred people there, but I'm not sure we'd be able to get them out after the attack. Gobi Station is made out of plastic and metal. It's going to melt when things get hot.”

“Melt?”

“The atmospheres of Terraneau and Olympus Kri hit nine thousand degrees. Everything made out of glass, steel, or plastic ended up in a puddle,” I said.

“Nine thousand degrees?” Jolly had some idea about how the aliens operated, but he did not know the specifics. “That doesn't sound possible. Nine thousand degrees ... how do you heat a planet to nine thousand degrees?”

“If we knew how the bastards did it, we'd do it to them,” I said.

Jolly massaged his brow with a pudgy thumb and sausageshaped pointer finger, sitting silently as he considered his options. “How are we supposed to evacuate an entire planet?” he asked.

“Gobi's only the first. We'll need to evacuate all of our planets,” I pointed out. “At least we're starting light. The population of Gobi is less than a million.”

“Do you know how many ships we'd need to transport a million civilians?”

“Four,” I said.

“You're planning on stealing the Unifieds' barges,” Jolly said. He sounded impressed.

“The word ‘stealing' has such a negative connotation,” I said. “Let's just say I plan on commandeering the barges. We'll give them back once the emergency passes.”

“Do you even know where the barges are moored?” Jolly asked.

“Last I heard, they were orbiting Mars.”

“It sounds like you have it all worked out, General. Is that just bluster, or do you really believe you can hijack those barges?”

I laughed. “Oh, I'll get them. The Unifieds aren't going to shoot at us once we board the barges. They need those scows as much as we do.”

“Then what?” asked Jolly.

That question took me by surprise. I asked, “Then what ... what?”

“If I understand what you are saying, you and a small team of operatives plan to sneak behind enemy lines and board twenty-five ships that are not self-broadcasting and have no defenses. Your only protection is that the Unifieds probably won't risk shooting at the ships, but you're still trapped in Unified Authority space,” Jolly pointed out. “General, you haven't thought this through.”

“The Unifieds have a temporary broadcast station orbiting Mars. They used it to broadcast the barges to Olympus Kri.”

“Are you sure it's still there?” asked Liotta.

“Yes,” I said. In truth, I had no idea.

“And you believe it is still operational?” asked Jolly.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you can access it? Please tell me that you are not simply planning to sail into a broadcast station without knowing where it will send you.”

Actually, I was, but I had an answer. “I have engineers who can hack into the satellite's computers.”

It was true, too. I'd asked Lieutenant Mars if he had any way of hijacking a U.A. broadcast satellite. He smiled, and said, “Sure. No problem. It's a U.A. installation; my guys know how to get past their security codes. We can even make it play ‘Nearer My God to Thee' on its sound system.”

I laughed, and said, “I'm not up on my hymns.”

Admiral Jolly cleared his throat, and his drooping jowls wobbled. He said, “Assuming you are able to locate the barges and assuming you are able to spirit them away to Gobi, what are you planning to do with the refugees you rescue?”

“Evacuate them,” I said.

“And where are you going to put them?” Not looking so jolly, the admiral growled as he asked this question and squinted at me. Multiple chins bounced below his jaw.

“Oh,” I said. “I hadn't thought about that.”

That was a moment when salvation came from an unexpected source. Admiral Liotta said, “We have facilities on Providence Kri. There's empty housing. Hell, we have entire cities that are sitting empty.”

“Yes,” I said. “We can ferry them to Providence Kri.”

“There has got to be a way to run this mission without the spy cruiser,” Lieutenant Mars said. He sounded indignant as he added, “You blew the ship into Swiss cheese a couple of days ago?”

“You blew the ship to Swiss cheese. You were the one who rigged the cannons,” I pointed out.

“Fine, I blew the ship to Swiss cheese following your orders. It's still Swiss cheese.”

“We need it, Lieutenant.”

“General, I am a believing man. I believe that Peter walked on water. I believe Moses crossed the Red Sea on dry land. I even believe Jesus fed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and a half dozen fishes. God performed those miracles. If you want your ship resurrected in three days, maybe you should go to Him,” Mars said. He was a born-again Christian, except that he was also a clone, which meant he was never actually born the first time.

“If I ever need a sea split, I'll ask Him for help,” I said. “In the meantime, I need you to repair the spy ship.”

“You do understand that the loaves, the fishes, the water into wine, the resurrections, Christ performed those miracles, not his disciples?”

“Give it your best shot,” I said.

“We can't even fly her into dry dock; she's too banged up. One of her engines came off.”

Maybe he's getting too comfortable around me,
I thought. I stared at Mars's image on the screen, and said, “I need that spy ship, that very ship, engines and stealth generator running by the end of the day.”

“By the end of the day” meant by 17:00 hours on the Space Travel Clock. That gave Mars less than ten hours.