The Clone Assassin (4 page)

Location: Mazatlán, New Olympian Territories

I had come to conduct a summit, but when it was over, I would stay for the waves. The days were hot. The evenings were dry and comfortable. Steep, brush-covered mountains reached out like arms around this town, and stretched into the ocean.

I woke at 07:00 and jogged four miles to the end of the beach, then I turned and sprinted on the return trip. Now that I had finished my run, I stripped off my shirt and shoes and strode into the water. I didn’t have a mask or fins, so the swim would probably be brief. I planned to swim a few hundred yards out and float for a while. It wouldn’t matter to me if the currents swept me out to sea. Warm water, colorful fish, an acceptable place to die.

Anyplace else, this water might have felt warm, but this ancient shoreline stretched along a desert. As I stepped out, the water rolled up my feet and calves, and the bracing cold made me pause for just a moment before I pushed farther in.

The useless fears began gnawing at me by the time the water reached my thighs. I looked back at the shore and thought about slinking back to the hotel, then I dived in and swam.

My hosts kept careful watch on me. A car filled with policemen had trailed me as I ran; now a pair of boats patrolled the shore as I swam—twenty-five-foot motor cruisers with the words
SHORE PATROL
hand-painted in foot-tall letters along their sides.

Seeing the boats, I stopped to tread water and consider my options, then I stroked out for a chat. As I approached, I yelled, “Gentlemen, I know how to swim.”

“Yes, sir, General Harris. We can see that,” one of the sailors called down to me.

They were all natural-born, almost certainly refugees from Olympus Kri, “Martians.” They wore white uniforms of some sort.

I lowered my feet and started treading water again, my body rising and dropping as foot-tall swells rolled by. “I’m only a hundred yards offshore,” I said. “If I get a cramp, I could swim back one-handed.”

The men on the boat didn’t answer.

I gave them a few seconds, then added, “Go back to the dock.”

“We can’t do that, General.”

“Why not?” I asked.

One of the sailors shrugged, and said, “Orders.”

Another said, “You know, there are sharks in these waters.”

“Sharks?” I asked, now feeling less confident. There had been a time when the thought of sharks didn’t bother me. That time ended about a year ago. Now I needed to muster my confidence to swim in water more than a few feet deep.

“Sure, there are sharks. This is the ocean. They live in the ocean,” said one of the sailors. He had a slight accent.
He’s not from Earth,
I reminded myself. The Enlisted Man’s Empire had ceded this portion of the map to the people of Olympus Kri.

“You ever seen a shark out here?” I asked.

“We haven’t been here very long,” said the sailor.

Checking the surface of the water for fins, I said, “Tell you what. You stay out here, and I’ll swim back to shore.” There were no fins and probably no sharks. I couldn’t be sure, though. The bottom was dark, probably thirty feet down.

I wanted to climb into the boat, but I didn’t want to give in to my fears. How had I become afraid of the sea? Truth be told, I felt especially nervous when I swam at night, even if I was just in a swimming pool. Water made me nervous now, but it never had before. It wasn’t like I had been chased by a shark or almost drowned; I couldn’t think of anything that had caused this newfound fear. It didn’t make sense.

“Would you like a ride into shore?” asked the sailor. They could take me right into the hotel—the architects who designed the hotel had carved a thirty-foot waterway that ended in the covered harbor they called the “Aqua Lobby.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I left my clothes on the beach.”

I spun toward shore and started to stroke. In my mind’s eye, I saw squid with tentacles as wide as telephone poles gliding along the bottom, watching me with basketball-sized eyes. They lazily waved their tentacles in my direction, waiting to wrap them around me and pull me apart.

The squid in my head were so big they could have snapped the shore-patrol boats apart like breadsticks—large enough to pull entire hotels into the sea.

I never spotted a writhing, snakelike tentacle or a shark’s fin. After a minute or two, I saw sand ten feet beneath me, then I swam through the roil and waded onto the shore.

I didn’t need to retrieve my shirt and shoes. A natural-born in a white uniform met me as I came out of the water. He’d gathered them for me.

“So you’re my personal valet?” I asked.

He handed me my gear, and said, “If it pays better than a cop’s salary, count me in.”

“You’d need to call me ‘sir,’” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “Maybe I’ll stick with police work.”

Wet from head to toe, with white sand sticking to my feet and ankles, I pulled my T-shirt over my wet hair.

“Would you like a ride back to the hotel?” the man asked. I saw his car waiting along the street.

“Are there any sharks between here and the hotel?” I asked.

The man looked confused. He said, “No, sir.”

I bent down and slipped on my shoes. “So long as the coast is clear, I think I’ll walk,” I said. The hotel was less than a quarter of a mile up the beach.

There might have been muggers waiting in the roadside bushes, but New Olympians didn’t scare me as much as sharks. Take away the ocean with its hidden monsters, and my only phobias involved nuclear bombs and battles on naval ships. I considered my fear of nukes as I trotted along the beach toward the hotel. As far as I was concerned, having a healthy fear of nuclear bombs was a sign of intelligence.

 • • • 

By the time I stepped into the shower, I had run over eight miles, swum in the ocean, and done enough sit-ups to make my abs feel like they were folding. I turned up the heat until the water scalded my skin, turning the air in the bathroom into steam.

The New Olympians had placed me in a hotel suite befitting a bureaucrat, not an officer. I had a king-sized bed and guest rooms, a wet bar, a balcony overlooking the ocean, a media center, a fireplace, a dining area, and a hot tub. I’d lived quite comfortably in billets that were smaller than this bathroom. Truth be told, I preferred them.

At some point, living in luxury made me uncomfortable. I preferred the guest rooms to the master bedroom, never touched the wet bar, and went out to the balcony only to exercise. The hot showers, on the other hand, were the one luxury I enjoyed immensely.

The bioengineering geniuses behind the military cloning program saw no need for their progeny to grow beards. I might not have been a standard-issue clone, but the gene pool from which I emerged fed from the same trough. I could practically think my whiskers into nonexistence, but practically nonexistent didn’t cut it for this Marine. I took a razor into the shower.

Pummeled by a steady stream of 108-degree water, I felt the sting vanish from my muscles while clouds of steam filled my thoughts. The familiar drowsy sensation turned my brains to mush. I used the soap stream to create lather, which I spread across my throat, cheeks, and chin, and then I shaved.

My shoulders relaxed. The muscles in my neck went soft. I braced my arm against the wall under the main showerhead and rested my forehead against my forearm.

How did I feel at that moment? How did I feel? I felt satisfied. I thought about stepping out of the shower and beginning my day, then I banished the thought.

I hadn’t traveled to the New Olympian Territories on vacation, but the business I had come for would wait.
What would happen if I simply disappeared?
I asked myself. Would the summit go on without me?

Satisfied. Indulged. Placated. Satiated.
I fantasized about staying in the shower for another hour, then drying off and walking away from everything. I could live a feral life in the desert and grow a wispy beard. The Enlisted Man’s Empire didn’t need me. I was the only clone left of my class, but I had a million distant cousins, all of them loyal to the empire. I was
satiated
. I was wasted and lazy, the energy in my body all burned out. My lethargy might have disgusted me had I not felt so damned relaxed.

My arm pressed against the shower wall, the hot water streaming down my head, back, and shoulders, my muscles a soggy mess. That was the position I was in when the assassins entered my hotel room.

I didn’t feel a rush of cold air as they slipped into the steamy bathroom or hear their footsteps.

Had the first assailant used his gun, he could have killed me without a fight. With the condensation on the shower glass and steam in the air, I had no idea he was there at first. But then he stalked closer, close enough for me to catch the movement of his blurry silhouette in my peripheral vision.

The only reason I spotted the bastard was because he’d come dressed in the all-black uniform of a hotel bellboy, which stood out in my brightly lit, marble-lined bathroom. He was a shadow in a room full of white.

I remained in place, my forehead pressed into the back of my arm. If he’d pulled his gun, there would have been nothing I could do, not at this point. He stood too far away.

Still pretending not to see the man, I fiddled with the dial, heating the water from scalding to boiling, then I made a show of reaching for my razor and knocking it to the floor. As I bent over to retrieve it, I pushed a hand against the shower door, which swung open fast and hard, hitting a towel rack along the wall and shattering. Sharp gems of glass sprayed across the marble tile floor.

Even before the door hit the rack, I grabbed the assailant by his shirt and traded my balance for his. I used his high center of balance to pull myself to my feet and my low center to topple him to the ground. I added my weight to his as he smashed his head into the wall of the shower, then I spun him on his back so that the steaming water poured on his face, burning his eyes and filling his mouth and nose so that he could barely breathe.

He produced a pistol from wherever he’d been hiding it, but I batted it away. It clattered to the floor.

I drove my right fist into his face, a short-stroke blow, my hand traveling no more than four inches, but hitting hard enough to drive the back of his head into the marble floor. I pressed my left arm across his throat, hit him a second time when he started to struggle, and the bastard went limp.

I didn’t have time to find out if he was dead or unconscious because his friend came running into the bathroom at that moment. Maybe he saw my bare ass sticking out of the shower, because he wasn’t watching where he stepped and slipped as he ran over the broken glass.

Still on my knees, I spun, lashed out with my right leg, and caught the dumb speck’s kneecap, sending him into a spontaneous collapse that ended with his forehead striking the corner of the toilet. Like his unconscious pal, this assailant decided to keep his gun concealed until it was too late. I spotted the handle protruding from his waistline holster, and that was when the third assassin appeared.

Like his pals, this one came dressed like the hotel help, black jacket with gold stripes on the sleeves, dark pants with a velvet stripe down the leg. Not until I spotted the third fellow did I realize that I’d been dealing with clones. Unlike his brothers in arms, this one came with his pistol drawn and his finger on the trigger.

Had I held on to the first guy’s pistol instead of knocking it halfway across the bathroom, I could have shot the bastard. Now all I had was an unconscious stiff with a gash across his forehead. I lifted him to his feet and held him like a shield, placing him between me and the clone with the gun. As the third guy waved his pistol looking for a shot, I ran across the glass, tossed the stiff in his direction as if it were a medicine ball, and lunged.

Shards of glass carved deep slits in my feet, but I ignored the pain. I needed to get at this guy before he regained his balance. I needed to swarm him, to knock away his gun.

A long shard of glass embedded itself along my arch, digging deeper and deeper into my foot with every step. I tried to dart, but my lacerated feet slowed me down, and then the bastard fired his gun. I lurched forward, left foot down, right foot curled and in the air. We collided, my weight and momentum driving him back toward the wall. Already weak, I slammed my elbow into his jaw, brought my knee into his groin, and butted my skull into his nose. He had wounded me though I didn’t yet know how badly.

My thoughts turned opaque. I needed to finish this bastard before I blacked out, so I drove the upper ridge of my forearm under his jaw and pressed my weight into it as I slowly went slack, one final thought still echoing in my brain—
If there’s a fourth guy, I’m dead.

PART II

Location: Mazatlán, New Olympian Territories
Date: July 17, 2519

“Where do you think you’re going?” the policeman asked as he blocked the entrance into the hotel room.

Just over six feet tall, the policeman considered himself imposing. The man he stopped stood six-foot-five, nearly four inches taller, but something about him suggested he wouldn’t put up a fight. He looked like someone who could be pushed around, the human version of a giant whale—big and strong but harmless.

The man said, “The Navy Office sent me.” He held out his traveling workspace so that the policeman could see his ID.

Reading the big man as more bureaucratic than belligerent, the cop became more aggressive. He barked, “Put away the tablet, sir.”

“What? I was just going to . . .”

“I don’t care what you have on your tablet. My orders are to keep people out of this room.”

Looking confused, the big man lowered the computer and took a step backward. Despite his size and his athletic build, the man had no fight in him. “I was trying to show you my identification. I’m here from the Pentagon. I have official orders. I . . .”

The cop cut him off. He said, “Sir, your orders don’t mean a rat’s right testicle to me.” As the big man turned to leave, the cop smirked, and told himself,
Damn straight, I’m in charge.

The stranger gave it one last try. He said, “I have clearance . . .”

“Then take it up with the police chief. I’ll let you in when Chief Story gives me a call. Until then, get your ass out of here.”

That was when the second man stepped into view. This one was taller, easily seven feet tall, bald, and covered with muscle. The man’s skin was the color of coffee and his eyes were black and spaced far apart. He glared down at the policeman, his expression impassive and yet menacing. He didn’t speak a word.

Seeing the tall, dark man, the policeman knew the situation had changed and dropped his hand to the butt on his pistol. He started to call for backup.

The first intruder said, “The officer says we haven’t been cleared. He wants us to go back to the police station.”

Without speaking a word, the big man locked a hand the side of a catcher’s mitt around the policeman’s collar. With the ease of a chess player sliding a pawn into place, he pulled the policeman five inches forward, slammed him back against a wall, then gently lowered his unconscious form to the floor.

“Why did you do that?” asked Travis Watson.

Ray Freeman didn’t answer. He stepped into the hotel room. Two more policemen stood just inside the entryway, their civilian pistols raised.

Freeman said, “The Pentagon sent us,” and the policemen obediently lowered their guns.

One of the policemen asked, “I don’t suppose you have some form of identification?”

Watson said, “I tried to show it to the fellow out there, but he wasn’t interested.” He held up his traveling workspace, waited while the policemen studied it, then asked, “Am I allowed . . . ?”

“Watson,” one of the policemen said as he holstered his gun. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“I tried. That guy out there . . .”

“Him? That’s Garrett. They should have warned you about him. He’s an asshole.”

The second cop looked through the open door, spotted the body spread out on the rug, and said, “Maybe they should have warned Garrett about you guys.”

Watson said, “This is Ray Freeman.”

“Yeah, they said you guys were coming,” said the second cop.

“Mind if we have a look around?” asked Freeman, his voice hinting that he didn’t much care how they felt.

The policemen stepped aside.

 • • • 

The New Olympians hadn’t yet formed their own local government. Gordon Hughes, their governor on Mars, had died a few months before the transfer to Earth began. The Enlisted Man’s Empire appointed an interim governor, a lawyer named Jim Evans, to oversee the creation of a permanent government, but the New Olympians considered Evans a stopgap, not a governor.

Every town the New Olympians settled had established its own constabulary. The policeman in charge in Mazatlán was a man named Mark Story. He had come to the crime scene and already left.

Watson pointed to a stain and asked a nearby tech, “Whose blood is that? Is that Harris’s?”

The tech looked at a palm-sized computer, tapped the screen, and said, “We don’t have positive identification.”

“Do you think it’s his?” asked Watson.

“It came from a clone,” said the tech.

“So it’s his,” Watson said.

“Could be,” said the tech. “Could have come from any one of them.”

“Any one of whom?” asked Watson.

Freeman did not waste time listening to the conversation. He meandered toward the bathroom, pausing to stare at the silhouette marking the location of a body just outside the bathroom door. The police called the silhouettes, “negs,” short for negative image body models—three-dimensional holographic shadows that detectives used to mark both the locations and positions of corpses among other things.

The blood was still on the wall. A cleaning crew would clean the walls. By that time, the police would create negs showing the shape and depth of every drop and splatter on the walls and floor.

In his mind’s eye, Freeman stretched out the body and measured it.
Less than six feet,
he thought.
Probably five-ten.

He stopped a tech, and asked, “Were you here when they bagged him?”

“Bagged ’em myself.”

“Was he a military clone?”

“All of them were,” said the tech.

“How many were there?” asked Freeman.

“Three.”

The tech looked at the neg on the floor, a shadow of a body, legs stretched, back curled, torso propped against the wall. He asked, “How’d you know?”

Freeman let a second pass before he answered, “Just a hunch.” Normally he wouldn’t have answered at all, but he suspected he’d have more questions and wanted to keep the techs friendly.

He walked into the bathroom and saw two more negs—one stretched out across the floor, one lying with its head in the shower and its feet on the marble floor. These two were laid out flat, more or less.

Freeman went to the water faucet. He asked, “Have you dusted for fingerprints?”

“Guess what we found,” said the tech.

“Fingerprints from clones,” said Freeman. “May I?” He pointed at the faucet.

“Yeah, we’re done. Help yourself.”

Freeman poured himself a glass of water, drank it dry, then set the glass beside the sink. He asked, “Were all three bodies general military clones?”

“None of them were Liberators, if that is what you are asking,” said the tech.

“How about the blood?” asked Freeman.

“It’s all clone blood.”

“Can you tell Liberator blood from standard clone blood?”

“Not without lab equipment,” the tech answered. “The DNA is almost identical. Somebody is going to need to analyze it right down to the nucleotides, and we don’t have that kind of equipment.”

“Have you checked the blood for adrenal levels?” asked Freeman.

“Why would we do that?” asked the tech.

“Harris is a Liberator. If these guys attacked him, his combat reflex would have activated.”

“Adrenaline and testosterone,” the tech said, sounding impressed. “Easier to test for testosterone. From what I hear, Liberator testosterone levels are off the charts.”

With Freeman following behind him, the tech scanned the walls, the bathroom floor, and the carpets. He knelt beside the neg lying in the shower and took more data. He took his equipment into the brightly lit dining area and read the results.

“There’s plenty of adrenaline in this sample,” said the tech. “This one’s from the shower. The man in the shower was beaten to death; his jaw, nose, and neck were all broken. That probably accounts for the adrenaline level. His testosterone levels are fairly standard.

“At first glance, I’d say this blood came from the clone in the shower.”

Freeman said nothing.

The tech played with his computer. He said, “This reading is from the bathroom floor. It’s got fragments of glass in it.”

Freeman had noticed the shattered shower door and assembled the sequence of events in his head. He imagined Harris showering as the assassins entered. Maybe he’d hit the first one with the shower door, then pulled him into the shower and killed him.

The second one, the one on the bathroom floor, Harris would have had to cross the broken glass to attack him.
The blood from the floor is Harris’s,
Freeman decided.
It has to be Harris’s.

The tech looked at the computer readout and smiled. He said, “You know, I never really believed in Liberators. I knew about the Mogat Wars and all, but I always thought Liberator Clones were a myth. I mean, clone soldiers with glands that flood their blood with hormones during combat . . . how about unicorns and griffins?

“This blood came from a Liberator.” He shook his head. “There’s enough adrenaline to give a guy a heart attack. This bleeder had five times the testosterone level of a normal man.”

He looked up at Freeman, and said, “Whoever bled this shit might be more comfortable dead than alive. Do you have any idea what he’d be going through if he was alive?”