Gene Drifters: The Clone Soldier Chronicles-Book III (4 page)

“But seriously Roxie, be careful and have Rose double-watch
your back. Those pirates could get worse, and Leo Songtain does have that huge
bounty on you.”

“Don’t worry, Eldridge, I’ll always watch her back. On
another note, I suspect due to smell and texture that Dorian will confirm clone
soldier status of the meat, I mean hand. Inform him to use polymer redax. It
will give a quicker result,” Rose said. She was better at the organics than
either Roxanne or Eldridge, having passed the final exam to highest levels in
MolBiol.

So, why does that surprise you? Not all dogs are dumb.

“Thanks Rose, I know you’ll take care of Roxanne. But, if
the #3ers is hiring clone soldiers, then we’ve all got an issue. You don’t mess
with clone soldiers. I hear tell a group got away from the cull patrols and hid
in Hong Kong a while back, until they got enough of them to do some real
damage. They really tore up the place. I don’t know who’s behind this whole
thing, but we gotta be careful. Normals just gotta stick together.” Eldridge
was concerned. He had just Roxanne, his only baby girl, and he knew what unmodified
clone soldiers were capable of. They were non-stop killing machines in highly
enhanced human form.

“I have some idea who’s behind this whole thing, Daddy. Tell
Dorian to plant a vid on one, Leo Songtain; OH WOWJOY!

                                                                               
4

“OH…OH…OH…OH…WOWJOY!”

Leo Songtain was lying naked on his back, in his
emperor-sized posture-saver bed, his hand around his dong, in solo-climax mode…
almost. He was staring up at a bounty poster of Roxanne Smoot, tacked to the
ceiling of his massive, glass-walled penthouse overlooking the Hong Kong harbor.
His bot-com had already chimed four times, but he’d be god-damned if he was
going to shut down at mid-act. He continued. The chime persisted in playing
Bolero
.
He glanced over. It was that bot-com.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

At those times, Leo did not wax eloquent. He rolled over,
and slammed the com with his sweaty, heavily jewel-studded, beautifully
manicured, way too small for a guy, hand.

“What! This better be critical!” he huffed, in a voice much
lower than his usual tone.

The individual at the other com-port, over one thousand
seven hundred miles away, was not sure he’d reached his boss, so he pushed vid
and saw the problem. He’d interrupted the CEO of Stemworm, Inc. at mid-concert.
He immediately offed the vid, hoping the boss had not noticed. Leo noticed.

“Sir, we’ve found the target in Tokyo leaving the Lazarus
Molecular Physicoplasmon Building at the University. Should we apprehend, or
follow?”

Leo rubbed his dark almond-shaped eyes, and ran a hand
through his thick straight black hair. He was one of those smallish Eurasianocaucs,
from some weird and now extinct gene pool. That happened a lot after the
pandemic, right pre-WME. Most only guessed at their genetic make-up, or had it
sequenced if they could afford it. He got up and wrapped his five foot tall frame
into his diminutive snow leopard robe. Yes, he knew he’d done his part to help the
species become extinct. But what the hell, what was wealth for? And you could
clone them now anyway. Leo walked on soft-gel encased, totally unblemished feet
to his robo-bar to help himself to a chilled Fueblaster. He would make the
insubordinate asshole wait.

“No, do not apprehend. Follow at a distance, and do not, I
repeat,
do not
allow yourself to be seen. Report back to me as soon as
the target has any visitors.” Leo punched his bot-com to off, without allowing
his security man in Tokyo to respond. If he got it wrong he’d be fired, Hong
Kong style.

Leo Songtain, the CEO of Stemworm, Inc., and possibly the
richest WME managerial class in Hong Kong, had everything and nothing. At
present, he was thinking about how he had nothing; it was a half-empty sort of
day. He downed the Fueblaster, knowing it was
her
favorite drink, and
walked to the glass wall of his six thousand nine hundred square foot, all
white, inner penthouse suite on the 12
^th
floor of the Opus. He owned
and inhabited the entire building, of course. But today that did not suffice to
lift his gloom.

And lately, he’d even had to be careful how he worded his
commands to his subordinates. His Industrial Espionage Prevention Team did not
have PhDs, and Leo noticed a certain lack of literary flair among the new
recruits. Their job only required an MA degree, and not with English
Composition as a prerequisite. Thus, they were required to wear special goggles
that translated and defined the big words for them.

He’d been absolutely enraged by the latest pirate attack at
bubble-stop #3. They had almost damaged his most precious possession. Well
okay, he knew he hardly possessed Roxanne Smoot, but he could at least imagine
it. His orders had been quite explicit; grab her, kill that stupid mongrel dog
co-pilot of hers, for his own safety, and bring her to him
posthaste
.
How could they misunderstand that order? He’d only just found out his teams’
jabber-goggles misinterpreted and thought he’d said,
potash
. The device
translated that to mean quite dead. He’d have to remember to use smaller words…or
get the device upgrade.

Perhaps with this latest business development, it might be
unnecessary to pay high voucher pirate wages to conduct an economically unsound
kidnapping attempt in the Trans-Pacific tunnel. After all, he had haul loads to
ship, just like all the CEOs, and the worker efficiency protocol to uphold. His
specially synthesized facial transplant
Stem-wads
®, from an intensely
guarded and secret formula, went at premium gold vouchers on the Blacks or even
the Regulation Economic Market, the REM. He had to maintain the shipping lines
to and from his labs to the R&R at Lanai. The rulers got older, the need
for eternal youth got greater, and Leo’s revenue got bigger.

But Leo had those nightmares. Okay, so he’d cut corners, did
human trials too soon. The evidence was neatly tucked away in those back levels
of bubble-stop #5.

He’d gone to a shrink about the nightmares.

There was one especially awful nightmare about bubble-stop #5.
He was running for his life through the sewer tunnels, chased by a mob. It was
horrible; there were poor people after him, the neuro-impaired, and even zompires,
those zombie-vampire types from the early flash freeze prison equipment; they
didn’t wake up in such great shape. But, worst of all were the
UN
….. No!
He couldn’t even say it! Even the shrink didn’t want to hear that awful word. You
could catch something awful just by saying that word. The Roxanne bounty poster
was his shrink’s suggestion; something to ease his tension if he woke after an
especially bad dream.

“This is an impressive opportunity, sir.”

Leo jumped slightly as his legal counselor appeared in the outer
chambers near the hallway to his inner penthouse rooms. He didn’t make enough
noise. Leo thought snakes always did that. But his snake was the best legal
advisor for sale in the business.

“The next time chime me before you enter my place. How would
I distinguish you from an intruder, Max? The laser system could have activated.
You would have made a mess on my mink carpet.”

Leo put down what remained of his Fueblaster and walked the
hall to his desk, a wall-length, solid Koa wood masterpiece. He had obtained it
at auction from a pathetic mid-level business man who’d invested too many
vouchers in top-road transit, and spent too much time placating his workers.
What an idiot! Any half-brained business man knew up-top travel was off after
that last ocean rise. Not only was it too damn hot up top, but the ocean had
covered many of the ground hover tracks; and as for the workers, if they
weren’t efficient enough, use robots! That was worker efficiency protocol
number one. Leo’s own place, the Opus, was totally operated by robotics; it was
much more efficient than humans. Except for his security team, of course, he
had the best all human team in that regard. No one wanted robot security; they
were too much like those terrible clone soldiers from that last era of
uncontrolled science.

“I am sorry, Mr. Songtain. But I do have a security code
access, so I assumed entry to your outer rooms was approved,” Max mumbled as he
opened his files.

The legal snake was not really sorry; their kind was never
sorry for anything they did. Off a poor welf, or buy futures in retired worker self-elimination
units; it was all the same to them, as long as the client was happy.

“What do you have for me today, Max? I noticed trades are
lower for food futures. Is there a problem?” Leo sat at his desk to go over the
daily trades. He always double checked the stocks with Max each morning, in
case either of them had missed an opportunity for wealth enhancement. You could
never have enough; that was the motto of Stemworm, Inc., his solely owned baby.
Of course, he owned many other businesses, but this one was his first, the one
that had gotten him rich enough to make the Hong Kong Economy Board.

If he wanted to, Leo thought he could strangle the Trans-Pacific
tunnel hauling route, and force Roxanne and Eldridge into welfdom, that horror
zone life where only the poor welfs lived, on the fringes of current WME
strata. Then maybe she would come to him. But, he’d nixed that plan. She’d just
disappear someplace, like that one time right after they both finished graduate
school. Leo sighed every time he thought of those times. He would give everything
he owned to be back there at that time, with Roxanne Smoot, if only for a
minute. It was too bad his latest foray into time-travel research had failed.
But he’d keep trying. Max interrupted his thoughts.

“Mr. Songtain sir, the food futures have taken a slight
down-turn. You know we have not been able to deliver enough water pods to the
wheat field zones near Kansas City. They are mid-century into a one hundred
year drought and the rivers and aquifers are down by ninety percent; some are
already brackish. This will make food futures rather volatile as a secure
investment in the foreseeable future. I’ve moved them to the higher-risk category.”
Max Peabody settled his ample butt into a chair, and uploaded the vids to the
large 3D unit so they could both crunch the numbers. He ran one pimpled hand
over the com control and another through his scant, oily, dark hair.

“Yes, I see what you mean. Didn’t they switch to dry-farm
recombs ten years ago? What’s the issue with insufficient water pod delivery?”
Leo glanced at his palm-timer to see if he’d missed his favorite vid-show, an
old-fashioned sappy romance. He’d never tell anyone he watched it. It would
damage the image, and CEO image-speak was crucial to corporate control. It was
an established science, with a full PhD program at Harvard, very highly touted,
right up there with their Worker-Management PhD degree program at the famous Human
Resources International Research Institute.

“The consumables managers have had some issues with food
terrorists, sir. It will be dealt with. But in the meantime, I’d suggest moving
some assets into organs. I know you have a corner on that here in Hong Kong. But
the labs in Pyongyang have some real innovation in neural cells, designed to
enhance worker productivity. I suggest a buy of seven, perhaps eight billion vouchers
worth of stock. It would diversify.” Leo agreed.

Max removed the databot, getting ready to exit. He could
tell when he’d gotten close to Leo’s attention span limits. He knew Leo was
preoccupied with some other venture capital thing that involved some newly
discovered group of clone soldiers. He only hoped Mr. Songtain, his major
client, did not get himself flash frozen in a WME prison cell for purchase of
illegal clones. To buffer possible losses in food futures, Max had been busy
acquiring a hugely wealthy new client interested in legal clone soldier
acquisitions, as casino security, and as a hedge. They were having lunch with
the client’s rep today, he and Leo.

Leo had been contacted over his personal bot-com, by an old
friend of a friend from law school,
that
law school. He’d known the guy
since they were kids, playing on the same lacrosse team back at
that
prep school. If his friend recommended
his
friend, then he’d meet with
him, or rather, with his assistant. That was always the way he did business
now; it was safer, made industrial espionage less likely. Leo knew a choir of
other CEOs who’d sell their first born for his
Stem-wads
® protocol. It
was more closely guarded than the coke recipe. And it made him more money. And
more money could mean he could maybe entice Roxanne to come to him? Well who
knows, he was still only twenty-seven, so anything was possible.

Leo’s meeting with the assistant of the friend’s friend was
a bit disconcerting. He’d been expecting a male, but when he arrived at the
Hotel Songtain (
Yes well, why not name it after yourself
?) and looked
around the room, the only other occupant was a small, rather dark-skinned woman
who looked to be in her mid-thirties, and maybe half native American, which
would have been impossible because he’d thought they were all dead. She told
him her name was Elizabeth Turner, and that she was half Indian, not the
American version, but the one from the next continent over. She was nice, very
intelligent, and had a great body, muscular, lean, in shape, not much taller
than he was, which was very unusual, nice actually. Leo could tell she worked out.

“Mr. Songtain, it’s so wonderful to finally meet you. Robert
(
his friend from prep
school
) told me so much about you. He
especially regaled me with some real bashers on your after lacrosse parties
with Oldfields. Personally, I never attended a prep school. My parents
preferred direct tutors then shipped me off to Oxford. It was a great
education, in field agribusiness managerial techniques, but that part of the
planet is still pretty wet. It rained almost daily in the UK zone.”