The Clone Redemption (20 page)

Morrowtown was a two- and three-story burg composed of sandstone-colored buildings. Its streets were dirty and empty; the capital had faded into a ghost town.

Admiral Jolly flew in from the Perseus Arm to accompany me during my inspection. He must have mistaken me for a real officer. He saluted.

“We have three hours until things start heating up,” I told Jolly. My information came from Freeman, who had remained on the
Bolivar
. He and I had just finished chatting with the late Arthur Breeze. “We need everyone off the planet by 18:00.”

“Where did you get that information?” asked Jolly.

“Anonymous tip,” I said.

“You want to share your source?” asked Jolly.

“No, Admiral, I don't,” I said.

Before I left Gobi, I would relieve Jolly of command. He was weak and pondering, the kind of commander you indulge during good times but cannot afford during bad. One way or another, he had to go.

“I told Holman not to leave until he packs every iota of food and medical supplies on the planet,” Jolly said.

“He's got three hours,” I said.

“That sounds suspiciously like an order,” said Jolly.

“Not at all, Admiral. I'm not the one calling the shots. In three hours, the atmosphere will ignite, and everything on the planet will burn. The food will burn. The men looking for the food will burn. The Avatari are the ones controlling the clock.”

Jolly nodded, then eyed me carefully. He still looked angry. I pretended not to notice.

Using an old farm truck commandeered by his men, Admiral Jolly and I began our inspection. The truck's engine growled so loudly I thought it might give birth. The suspension bounced like it was made of trampoline springs. Jolly and I sat in the back. A master chief petty officer played chauffeur. With the dirty deed I had in mind, I would have preferred a loyal Marine for a driver.

We passed dozens of abandoned vehicles parked along the streets. People had left their hopes and possessions behind. I couldn't judge their hopes, but their possessions had been pretty meager.

I noticed something interesting. The doors of the houses were closed, and many people left their cars parked and locked as if the occupants expected to return home to them. As we passed one building, a dog watched us from behind a window.

I saw sailors and Marines entering buildings and loading supplies on to trucks. When we drove past grocery stores, restaurants, and offices, we found lines of men carrying out supplies by the crate. Driving by a hospital, we passed pallets loaded with cartons marked MEDICAL SUPPLIES.

We drove around a corner and I saw something so out of place that I shouted “Stop!” When the master chief hit the brakes, I climbed out to take a closer look.

It was a double-long freight truck, a real blue whale compared to the small, antiquated vehicles you normally saw in Morrowtown. The truck had jackknifed, its enormous cargo trailer had slid out of control and crashed into the side of a building. As I walked around the front of the cab, I saw that the hood had crumpled during the collision. A steady stream of smoke rose from the engine.

“What happened here?” Jolly asked as he came up beside me, the master chief petty officer following behind him.

The streets seemed empty around us. Dry wind whistled through the buildings, and the sound of a flag's flapping echoed on the breeze.

Looking over the scene, I wondered how recently the attack had occurred. A string of bullet holes decorated the driver's side door.

I had a particle-beam pistol tucked in my belt. It wasn't much of a weapon at long range, but at least I came armed. Admiral Jolly, who had come empty-handed, saw the bullet holes and turned a ghostly white.

“We need to get MPs out here,” he said. He sounded out of breath, probably from fear. The watery folds of his second and third chins wobbled as he spoke, and sweat poured over his forehead and cheeks.

“Shh,” I said.

“We need help,” he said.

A dead sailor lay sprawled on the hood of the truck. He was covered with blood. He'd been shot in the head, and that had no doubt killed him; but he'd also flown through the windshield. Shards of glass poked through his cheeks and his hair and his eyes.

By the way the driver sat slumped against the steering wheel, I could tell that he had not had time to reach for his gun, assuming he had one. One of his hands was still on the wheel.

“Damn,” I said. We were evacuating one of our own planets, and we still lost men.

Jolly looked over my shoulder, and asked, “Do you think they're dead?”

They ain't happy,
I thought; but what I said was, “The question is how long they've been dead.”

Like Admiral Jolly, our driver had come unarmed. It wouldn't have mattered if he had brought a gun; the looters shot him before he could have used it. One moment he was standing behind Jolly, staring up into the eyes of the dead sailor hanging through the broken windshield, the next moment his head exploded and blood gushed from his shoulders and chest. The first shot hit him in the head, splattering his skull and brains onto the truck. The next two shots hit him in the back, leaving exit wounds wide enough for me to stick my hand through.

With Jolly crowding me the way he was, I hadn't noticed a door opening across the street. Five men had emerged. They spotted us, and opened fire. I pushed the admiral out of my way, dived to the ground, and returned fire.

Jolly stood screaming, his hands waving in the air, and the pack instinctively knew he posed no danger. Three of them toted boxes, while two carried guns; but as the shooting began, the three with the boxes tossed the goods aside and produced M27s. Military-issue M27s, the kind that could only be obtained by spilling blood.

Bullets flew wide and high, but nothing came close to hitting me. These boys had big guns and lots of bullets, but they could not shoot for shit when they had to worry about targets shooting back at them. Their bullets hit the back of the truck and the wall of the building behind me. I don't know if they spotted Admiral Jolly as he crab-walked to a Dumpster.

Not worrying about ammunition, the looters advanced toward me, ripping the cab of the truck apart with their bullets long after I had dropped flat on the ground.

Aiming my pistol between the truck's two front tires, I hit the first man in the leg. The glittering green beam struck his shin, blowing it apart. The shreds of the man's dark pants caught on fire as meat, blood, bone, and muscle exploded into a fine mist in the air.

He tried to step on the leg and fell, then he started shrieking as he rolled on the ground. I could have shot the bastard to put him out of his misery, but I didn't. I was in full combat reflex, and my thoughts followed the cold logic of the battlefield. The man no longer posed a threat, and his suffering meant nothing to me.

These men liked shooting unarmed sailors and men they caught unawares, but they weren't prepared for me to return fire. As they stood gaping at their injured friend, I rolled out from under the truck and shot one in the face.

Being shot with a particle beam is nothing like being shot with a bullet. There is no kick, no force of physics that sends you flying backward as the slug tears a tunnel through your body. The ray from a particle-beam pistol hits with no more force than the beam from a flashlight.

The man I had shot dropped where he stood, his hands twitching as his head, neck, and collar evaporated into a blood-colored fog.

One of the remaining looters tried to hold his ground, pointing his gun in my general vicinity and spraying unaimed bullets into a wall. The other two cut and ran.

I nailed the shooter first, hitting him in the right shoulder. He screamed and fell down thrashing, an inch of arm bone poking out of shredded flesh. I hit the first of the two runners in the ass as he dashed up the street. If he'd had another second, he would have reached a corner to hide; but the particle beam blew his legs from under him. He fell face-first to the ground. I left him there, knowing he'd bleed to death in another minute.

The last of the looters ran like a gazelle, his long legs pumping as he screamed and pleaded. Still not looking back, he pitched his rifle over his shoulder and continued running and screaming.

Me, I had turned into a mass of instincts, reflexes, and anger. The Liberator gland had flooded my body with enough adrenaline and testosterone to bring back the dead. I could have picked this last guy off, but ripping him apart with my bare hands seemed like a more satisfactory solution.

Unlike this poor bastard's M27, my tiny particle-beam pistol had not slowed me as I ran. I was in better shape than him, too. He had a head start; but he also had a gut, and I gained ground on him quickly.

Pumping his legs and arms as fast as he could, he risked a quick look back over his shoulder and saw me coming. He tried to run faster, but he had nothing in reserve. He stumbled, righted himself, and lost more ground as we tore across empty streets.

I was breathing hard but not panting as I came up on him. His wheezing breaths sounded painful, and his hair and neck were covered with sweat. So were mine. We were on Gobi, the galaxy's biggest desert. Still running, I reached out, grabbed the bastard by the collar, and pulled back as hard as I could. His feet went forward, his head fell back, and he landed square on his ass.

“Don't shoot! Please, for God's sake, don't shoot!”

Fat old Admiral Jolly came waddling out of his hiding hole issuing orders as if I were a private. “Kill that man!” he yelled. “Shoot him.”

Still holding the looter by the back of his collar, I twisted his neck so that he rolled on his stomach with his face pressed into the ground. “Any last words?” I asked.

“I didn't do it. I didn't shoot at you. It wasn't me! It was Todd. The whole thing was Todd's idea.” I had a knee in his back, and I crushed his face into the street. His words sounded muffled.

“Kill him!” Jolly shouted.

“Todd's idea ... Todd's idea. Oh God, don't shoot me. I didn't know he was going to kill anybody,” the guy sobbed.

“Look, we got all kinds of stuff.” The stupid bastard wanted to bribe me. He told me that he had already found millions of dollars' worth of stuff, and that he would find more.

I was too busy calculating the odds to listen.

“I promise I'll give you half of everything ... no all of it. All of it! I'm good for it.”

In my mind, looters were the lowest of the bottom-feeders, lower even than natural-born officers. I believed in the policy of shooting looters on sight. The policy made sense. In this case, though, I made an exception.

My instinct, of course, was to kill, but giving in to that instinct would have been dangerous. I was in combat-reflex mode. The more violent I became, the more hormone ran through my veins.

“Sounds like you've got the golden goose,” I said.

I took some of my weight off the guy's back; and, still whimpering, he placed his hands over his head to protect himself.

“Maybe I should let you go,” I said.

“We can be partners. Don't shoot me.” His whining gave me a headache.

“How do I know you aren't going to keep it all?” I asked.

“I'll bring it. I promise. We can split it fifty-fifty!”

So now we were back to fifty-fifty,
I thought. “I don't trust you,” I said, pressing his face into the ground.

“I swear! I swear!”

Jolly shouted, “Kill him, Harris. That's an order.” He hadn't figured me out yet. He would in a moment.

“Don't kill me. Please don't kill me.”

“How do I know I can trust you?” I repeated.

“Ask anyone. I'm honest. I'm good for it.”

“I'd ask your friends, but they're all dead. Everyone else is gone,” I growled. Good thing the looter could not see the smile on my face. I was playing with him and having fun.

I gave his face one last shove into the street, then I stood and let him up. I said, “We meet right here day after tomorrow. If you're not here with enough swag to fill a transport, you're a dead man. You hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah! You're going to be a rich man!” he said.

“I can still shoot you. Tomorrow, next week ... You got that?”

“You won't be sorry. You won't. You're going to be rich.”

“Get out of here,” I said.

The bastard tried to shake my hand. If he'd been the one with the gun, he would have shot me in the back and not thought twice about it. But I had the gun, so he assured me that I was going to be a wealthy man, then he walked five paces away and sprinted around a corner.

“Why did you let him go?” asked Admiral Jolly.

“Didn't you hear? He's going to make me rich,” I said.

“You're never going to see him again,” said Jolly.

“Damn straight I'm not going to see him again. Why the speck do you think we evacuated this planet? In three hours, this city is going to be dust, and that bastard is going to be dust along with it,” I said. I caught a brief glimpse of the looter scurrying away like a rodent. That summed him up, just another rodent.

Jolly was indignant. He screamed, “I told you to kill him. I ordered you to kill him! You disobeyed a direct order.” His face flushed with anger, he waved his hands like he wanted to fly. He became even more flustered when I ignored his rant and walked past him.

“Yeah,” I said as I knelt and picked up the M27 to examine it. “We need to talk about that. Admiral, I am relieving you of command.”

“You're what?” asked Jolly.

“I'm relieving you of command. These are dire times, Admiral, and you're not fit for command.”