The Clone Empire (32 page)

He didn’t answer, not so much as a shrug. He just looked at me and gave me the standard penetrating glare, his coal black eyes boring into my head. “They want the Orion Arm back. Sooner or later, they’ll come here, too.”

“That doesn’t sound like Brocius,” I said. “We have more ships, more men, and more resources. That puts the odds in our favor, and he never moves unless he has the upper hand.”

I’d had plenty of experience with Admiral Alden Brocius. He was a competent officer, but he was also the kind of officer who refuses to play unless he gets house odds.

“Brocius is out. Brocius, NewCastle, Smith, they’re all gone. The Linear Committee cleaned house two months ago.” The Linear Committee was the executive arm of the Unified Authority government.

Now that was news to bring a smile to my face. I could only come up with one reason for the committee finally giving those bastards the boot—our little rebellion. They were the ones who lit the fuse. They were the ones who came up with the idea of stranding us in nonbroadcasting ships and using us for target practice.

“Have I met any of the new brass?” I asked.

“Hill is still around. He replaced General Smith at the top.”

“Nickel Hill?” I asked. General George Nicholas Hill had run the Air Force effort on New Copenhagen during the alien attack. Not the bravest officer in the military, but a bright guy and a man who spoke his mind. He always struck me as fair.

“All the new leaders served on New Copenhagen,” Freeman said. “That’s the new litmus test. Officers who ducked New Copenhagen get field assignments.”

“The Linear Committee only trusts veterans of New Copenhagen . . . I don’t suppose that means they want to kiss and make up with the clones who actually won the war?” I asked, feeling bitter indeed. The Linear Committee had sat back and watched as Congress placed the thirty thousand clone veterans of New Copenhagen in concentration camps.

Most of the officers who fought on New Copenhagen kept well away from the front line. Us clones . . . we were the front line. They gave the orders, we paid the price. The normal ratio of enlisted men to officers was six to one, but the ratio on New Copenhagen was fifteen to one. The survival rate among clones sent to New Copenhagen was one in seventeen. Out of every seventeen clones sent to fight, sixteen ended up dead. The officer corps had it better. Out of every one hundred officers on New Copenhagen, eighteen were killed, and eighty-two returned home to a hero’s welcome.

A waitress stopped at our table, and I ordered a beer. She looked at Freeman’s drink and said nothing to him. Like that infiltrator I’d spotted, Freeman used his drink for camouflage, not that a seven-foot man can hide behind a single glass of beer. Every person in the bar was aware of Freeman. He was tall, he was dark, and even when he smiled, he was menacing.

“Hill isn’t stupid,” I said. “He’s got to know we have ten times more ships than he does. Even if he takes Olympus Kri, we’ll just take it right back again.”

“You have a hundred times more ships,” Freeman said. “Their self-broadcasting fleet took a real hit on Terraneau.”

“I knew they lost ships,” I said.

“A lot of ships. They had to decommission half the ships that returned home,” Freeman said.

We’d lost a lot of ships, too; but we could better afford to lose them. “If that’s true, it only makes an attack on Olympus Kri more ridiculous. That doesn’t sound like Hill.”

When Freeman did not answer, I asked, “What aren’t you telling me? There is something you aren’t telling me.”

He shook his head.

“Why should I trust you?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he changed the subject. “Have you figured out why the Pentagon sent out those clones?”

“The Double Ys,” I said, hoping the name would irritate Freeman. He had no patience for clever nicknames.

“Is that what you call them?” he asked, obviously unperturbed.

“I don’t know if you heard about their chromosomes, they have an X and two Ys. Apparently that makes them more dangerous. Sending out saboteurs isn’t going to sink our fleet.”

Freeman sat still and placid, but his eyes burned holes in my head as he said, “You still don’t get it. Hill doesn’t want to sink your fleet; he wants to take it back whole.

“You’re looking for war while he’s slipping you rat poison. He figures if he kills off enough of your officers, your enlisted clones will just hand the ships over. He doesn’t care about clones. It’s the ships he’s after.”

“Then he’s out of luck,” I said. “We’ve pretty much cracked our infestation problems.”

“They’re tracking your movements, too,” Freeman said.

“Right, the satellites. You were the one who clued us in about them, remember?” I felt frustrated. This was Ray Freeman, nothing ever slipped his mind, yet here he was, telling me things he had already told me. The pieces did not fit.

“So if it comes to a fight, are you taking sides?” I asked.

“We’re talking,” Freeman said.

“Are you looking for work?” I asked. “If you have an angle on Olympus Kri, name your price.”

Freeman did not answer right away.

I downed my beer and signaled to the waitress for another one. She brought it over.

I watched him closely. Freeman wasn’t in this for the money; he’d made over a billion dollars on New Copenhagen. “What are you looking for?”

“We’re all after the same thing.”

“Yeah, and what’s that?” I asked, not even bothering to hide my irritation. He wasn’t being straight with me, and I was tired of it.

“Survival,” he said. As he said the word, his fingers tightened around his unfinished beer.

I called Warshaw to give him the news.

“The Unified Authority is planning to attack Olympus Kri,” I said. A simple announcement that I hoped would start the gears of war turning.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Warshaw said. “If they ever get around to picking a fight, that’s where they’re going to start it. Everyone knows that.”

“In five days,” I said.

“Five days?”

“The attack is coming in five days?”

“No shit? Who’s your source?” He wasn’t taking me seriously, but I had his attention.

“Ray Freeman, the same guy who warned us about the satellites,” I said. Warshaw had never met Freeman, but he’d certainly heard tales about the man.

“Wasn’t he the bastard who shot you on Terraneau?”

“And told us the U.A. was about to attack,” I pointed out.

“But he was working for them,” Warshaw countered. “He was delivering a message for Admiral Brocius. What if he’s still working for them?”

“He says he isn’t.”

“You believe him?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“He sounds like a real saint, Harris.”

“He was right about the satellites,” I said.

“Maybe he was right. We still haven’t found one. It makes sense that they’re spying on us, but that doesn’t make it true.

“U.A. spy satellites and God . . . you can’t prove either exists, but your questions are answered the moment you accept they’re out there.”

Warshaw had no interest in taking a leap of faith based on Freeman’s word, and I didn’t blame him. The Unified Authority had apparently stopped sending cruisers into our territory, and there was no way we would find those satellites without U.A. cruisers leading us to them.

“I’ve never met this friend of yours. Do you think he knows what he’s talking about?”

“He always knows what he’s talking about. That’s not the problem. It’s not a question of confidence, it’s a question of trust. Freeman’s out for himself. Even when he picks a side, he’s still out for himself. He keeps his cards hidden and plays his angles tight. So far, he hasn’t even told me why he’s helping us.”

“So why trust him?”

“History,” I said. “Until now, he and I always ended up on the same side. He makes a damn good ally.”

“Harris, that doesn’t even sound like you. You’re a brute. You’re a specking Liberator clone. If he’s not telling you what you want, catch the bastard and beat it out of him?”

I laughed. I could not stop myself. “Beat information out of Ray Freeman?” Killing him might not be too much of a problem, not with satellite surveillance and high-altitude air strikes; but trying to interrogate the son of a bitch would be like trying to tackle a bull elephant.

“If you think he’s a spy . . .”

“Not a spy,” I said. The man stood seven feet tall. He was an “African-American,” living in a time when races had been abolished. He was a purebred living among synthetics and mutts. Stealth was not among his long suits. Brutal strength, patience, and cunning intelligence were. He was a mercenary and an assassin, not a spy.

I felt tired. It had been a long day. I wished I could do something about the buzzing in my head, and sleep seemed like the best solution.

Planets had time zones, but outer space did not. The Space Travel Clock (officially Coordinated Universal Time) coincided with a zone that used to be known as Greenwich Mean Time on Earth. To avoid confusion, the Unified Authority had set up an arbitrarily selected twenty-four-hour clock for an endless void with an infinite number of suns but neither sundown nor sunup. St. Augustine, which had a faster rotation than Earth, had twenty-two-hour days. Warshaw and I spoke at the same time every night by his clock, but each of our meetings kept getting later and later by mine.

“It sounds like a trap,” Warshaw said.

“Maybe, but we’d still better get more ships out there,” I said. “I don’t see that we have any other choice.”

“What about the Double Ys?” he asked.

“We take care of them first. We can close that chapter today if we need to. All the pieces are in place.” Before leaving for St. Augustine, I had put Hollingsworth in charge of the project. Reconfigured posts were set up on every ship and in every fort. We could recall the armor in the morning and spring our trap in the afternoon.

“Hollingsworth says everything is ready. All he has to do is pull the trigger.” Warshaw knew Hollingsworth, they’d served on the same ship.

“Then pull the trigger,” he said. “The sooner we close that door, the better.”

“That still leaves Olympus Kri,” I said. This conversation was not going as I had hoped.

“I’m not sending more ships,” Warshaw said.

“What if the Unifieds have figured out a way to knock out our broadcast stations?” I asked.

“Not very likely,” Warshaw said, but he didn’t sound confident. Without a broadcast network lacing it together, the Enlisted Man’s Empire would come apart.

“Probably not,” I agreed. “I’m just thinking out loud.”

But my comment had the desired effect. Still nervous, Warshaw said, “I could send a few more ships . . . just in case.”

“I’m going to take the
ad-Din
out there,” I said. “I want to get as many Marines on the ground there as possible.”

We were coming down to zero hour for the infiltrators. Hollingsworth began the day by sending out a fleetwide order recalling all combat armor. Until we sent out new orders, any man caught in armor would be detained, questioned, and ultimately have his chromosomes scanned.

With the cogs quickly falling in place, Freeman and I met at Fort Greeley, the local Marine base, for breakfast. Wanting to stay alert, I ate light that morning, a boiled egg, a cup of coffee, and toast. Freeman ate relatively light as well, four eggs, a whole damn pig’s worth of bacon, two cups of juice, no coffee, no toast.

“How did you get to St. Augustine?” I asked.

“I flew here,” he said.

“Another one-way ticket?” He could not have flown in on a stolen Bandit; the broadcast computers on those ships were set for Earth.

He shook his head. “I caught a ride in your broadcast network.”

Ships with onboard broadcast equipment blew up when they entered our network. If Freeman was telling the truth, he would have had to have come from one of our planets. I had a good idea which one it was.

“How is the weather in Odessa?” I asked. Odessa was the capital city of Olympus Kri.

Freeman favored me with a half smile, and said, “It depends how you feel about rain.”

“It beats the hell out of living in a desert,” I countered. I thought about the summer I’d spent in that concentration camp in the Texas badlands.

“I thought you liked the sun,” Freeman said.

I liked St. Augustine, with its coastal cities and languid days. I liked waking up to tropical mornings and going to sleep on balmy nights. I had no trouble forgetting time and seasons in places like this. Before the Avatari invasion, I’d spent a year living like a civilian in the Hawaiian Islands on Earth.

“Does Olympus Kri have the same seasons as Earth?” I asked.

“More or less,” Freeman said. “It rains hard in Odessa during the winter.”

I looked at the calendar on the wall and saw that the Earthdate was November 12.

In the time we were talking, Freeman methodically cleared his tray, occasionally gulping down an egg in a single bite.

“I’m not sure I can get any more ships to Olympus Kri,” I said. “Warshaw wants proof.”

Freeman nodded, and said, “Tell him to get used to having twenty-two planets in his empire.”

“We have a fleet circling the planet. We’ll outnumber them. Even if they send everything they have, we’ll still outnumber them.”

“You have sixty-eight ships in the area,” Freeman said.

“You know the size of our fleet?”

Freeman said nothing.

Sixty-eight ships, that was just a small fraction of what we’d had at Terraneau when the Unifieds came knocking. The Unified Authority attacked Terraneau with eighty-five ships and sent the four-hundred-ship Scutum-Crux Fleet running for cover.

“And you do not think that’s enough to protect the planet?” I asked.