The Clone Apocalypse (26 page)

THE TERRORISTS

FORTY-EIGHT

Date: August 27, 2519

The power went out, turning my incapacitation cage into nothing more than a table. One moment I lay there with my muscles holding me stiff, the next, my arms, legs, neck, and stomach muscles went limp.

Damn that felt good.

Usually, they warned me before cutting the juice. A tray of food might slide in through the slot at the bottom of my door, then Conlon’s voice would speak to me over the intercom saying something like, “Harris, you’ve got half an hour to eat and take care of your business.”

Conlon . . . was he on my side?
Freeman said you’d do something stupid.

I didn’t know what to make of Conlon. The little man strutted around the prison like a king in a palace. The other guards feared the little priss, Lord knows why. Even Reid, the warden, seemed afraid of him.

Now that the current was off, I sat up on the cage like a patient waiting on a doctor’s table. I looked around my cell, wondering if someone had cut the power and why. The lights remained on in the hall; only my cell had gone dark.

Somebody retracted the bolt from my cell door. It was a soft sound, not much louder than a coin landing on concrete, but in my ears, it sounded as loud as a gunshot.

I hopped from the table. Having enough strength to hop from the table was new. Maybe my strength had returned, maybe my cell door’s opening had cleared the way for a rush of adrenaline.

The hall was empty. Had I not used the thermal pack to kill Sunny, I might have had a weapon to aid in my escape.

Maybe this was a trap; it was almost certainly a trap. Reid or Conlon or maybe a low-level jailer might be waiting outside my door with a gun or a Taser, hoping I’d step outside my cell, prepared to beat me or lynch me as I “tried to escape.” This could well have been my punishment for killing Sunny. Maybe Tobias Andropov had authorized it.

The hall was empty. I pulled the door open. This was the first time I’d actually touched the door. It was heavy, maybe two or three hundred pounds of steel and bulletproof glass, but it glided as smoothly as a balloon in an air current.

Someone had left a change of clothes outside my door. Slacks, shoes, socks, a belt, and a casual shirt sat neatly folded. I tore off my prison clothes and dressed myself quickly. It didn’t matter much to me if this was an escape or a trap; I wouldn’t have minded either.

If I escaped, I would go on a rampage, killing Unified Authority leaders until one of their bullets finally found me. If I died . . . I died. I’d fantasized about killing myself a time or two. That was the one place where Andropov and I agreed—neither of us saw me as fit to live.

I hoped my rescuers had placed a weapon in the clothing. They hadn’t.

“You coming?” a man called from down the hall. Apparently, he didn’t worry about the Unifieds overhearing him. He didn’t whisper, but his voice was soft. I didn’t have the strength to run. I crossed the hall as quickly as I could, passing three guards whose throats had been slit.

Conlon met me as I came around the corner. He held a pistol in his right hand.

His right hand . . . He had removed his glove. His fingers were sharp as talons at the ends. With his glove off, I saw the true color of his skin; it was gray, as if he had been sprinkled with coal dust.

“Got an extra pistol?” I asked.

“You won’t need it,” said Conlon. Only he wasn’t Conlon.

He didn’t run, but he walked with purpose, and I fell in behind him. We took the stairs down into the lobby and followed a service hall past the kitchen and into the motor pool, where a windowless government delivery van waited, its engine idling. Conlon slid the door open, and I climbed in.

Four SEALs sat crouched in the back of the van. Looking through the gap between the front seats, I saw that Emily Hughes was driving. She waited until she heard the door slide shut, and we pulled away.

Across the van, the SEAL I had come to know as Major Conlon removed his prosthetic forehead. He was even uglier without it, not that I complained. He was a SEAL. I had fought side by side with these vicious little bastards, and I respected them more than any other class of servicemen.

The gray tint of Conlon’s skin gave him a cadaverous complexion. The bone ridge above his eyes made him look like an ape.

Having grown up in an orphanage for general-issue clones, I had learned to tell them apart. I didn’t know the SEALs as well. I asked, “Is Illych with you?”

Emerson Illych was a SEAL I had known well. He and I had run a couple of operations together.

The man kneeling beside me said, “Illych died.”

“Killing aliens?” I asked. The last I had heard, every last SEAL clone had been sent to track the Avatari.

The SEAL nodded.

With the SEALs in charge, breaking out of prison went smoothly. Had I planned the escape, it would have required RPGs, gunships, and a company of Marines. Had Freeman planned it, entire sections of the building would have been destroyed. I specialized in combat; Freeman relied on mercenary tactics. Versed in espionage and guerilla tactics, the SEALs entered quietly, killed the warden, the surgeon, and every single guard, then left the building unnoticed.

FORTY-NINE

Freeman’s Fortress—a bunker hidden beneath a warehouse registered to a corporation that never belonged to Ray Freeman in the first place. Life went on above us, independent of our presence, unaware of us. If Unified Authority Intelligence tracked signals sent from Ray’s computers, they would raid the building above us and find nothing, not even our door.

Freeman’s underground nest wasn’t huge, but it included housing, equipment, and food.

What he didn’t have was men.

Neither did I.

Without a large supply of men, the most we could hope to accomplish was revenge, which sounded great to me, but Travis Watson and Emily Hughes wanted more.

We all sat at the same table, Freeman, Watson, Emily Hughes, and me. Master Chief Petty Officer Jeff Harmer was the only SEAL at the table; the others could have come, but they entrusted Harmer to look out for their interests.

Emily asked, “What’s our endgame?”

I’d heard the term “endgame” before, but I didn’t know what it meant. I’d spent my entire life speaking military-ese. “Endgame” didn’t fit in my lexicon.

I asked, “What do you mean?”

Freeman translated the term for her. He said, “What are your objectives.”

“I want to kill Andropov,” I said. Murdering the man who killed my entire species seemed like a reasonable objective.

“Then what?” asked Emily.

“Then he’ll be dead,” I said.

“What are you going to do once he’s dead?” asked Watson.

“Oh, sorry. Once I’m done killing Andropov, I want to start killing senators and generals.” It seemed like a logical progression.

“So that’s it? You want to kill people?” asked Emily.

“A lot of people,” I said hoping to clarify my point.

She turned to Freeman, and said, “He’s going to make things worse.”

Why is she even here?
I wondered. She wasn’t a combatant. Okay, yes, she drove the van when the SEALs broke me out of jail. Who else did we have? The SEALs looked like specking space aliens, I had a face like a general-issue clone, Watson was a former president, and Freeman was a seven-foot black man. When it came to being inconspicuous, Emily was the only one of us who could walk down the street without attracting attention.

Freeman’s nest didn’t have a lot of rooms. We met in the “armory,” which contained less gear than I’d expected. Oh, he had rockets and rifles and demolition gear, but all of his vehicles were of the civilian persuasion. Sedans blended in well, but they don’t have armor or radar displays.

We were on the Virginia side of the Potomac, which meant that we’d need to cross bridges and risk surveillance cameras every time we entered the capital. Having a vehicle with radar and sludging equipment would have made my travel plans more viable.

“What were you hoping for?” I asked.

Watson, the statesman in our cabal, fielded the question. He said, “I’d prefer for Emily and myself to come through this alive,” his frustration coming through loud and clear. I hadn’t even been out for a day, and he was already frustrated with me.

“Alive?” I asked.

“I’m a fugitive, Harris. I’m a criminal because I worked for you.”

“You applied for the job,” I pointed out. “I didn’t recruit you.”

“I was right out of law school. I applied for a job in a government office, and I ended up as your assistant.”

“You also served a brief term as the interim president of the Enlisted Man’s Empire,” I said.

“And now I’m a traitor and criminal, Harris. If they catch me, they will kill me. I didn’t apply for that.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“I want you to fix it.”

He was hoping for a messiah, but he got a Liberator clone instead. Raw deal.

Freeman and Harmer remained silent through this. Unlike Emily, who looked both furious and ready to cry, they seemed to find the conversation entertaining.

“Do you have anything to add?” I asked them.

Freeman said nothing. Harmer said, “Personally, I like your plan. It’s very straightforward.”

I said, “Travis, I’m sorry, but I don’t know any way to make things right for you.”

“And?” Watson prompted.

I thought about the question. “. . . and maybe the problem will fix itself if we can kill the men who caused it.”

“That’s you, Wayson! You’re the one who caused it,” said Emily.

What does she want from me?
I wondered. I said, “Emily, I didn’t start this war. I was a loyal U.A. Marine.”

Harmer said, “It’s true, I’ll swear it on a five-foot stack of Bibles; the first time I met Harris, he was a U.A. Marine.”

Watson glared at Harmer, and said, “Wayson, I am a fugitive. The Unified Authority is looking for me. They want to put me in jail,” Watson said, enunciating every syllable as if speaking to an idiot or a child.

I shrugged my shoulders, and said, “Maybe Pugh can hide you.” Freeman had already told me about Pugh’s role in my arrest by this time.

“Look,” I said, hoping to bring them back to the reality of our situation, “there is no way we can beat them. They have a navy and an army.” According to Freeman, they didn’t have an air force. Apparently, as his last great act of defiance, General Strait disabled every fighter, cargo jet, rocket, and missile under his command. He even erased all of the computers.

Now came the part that cut deep. I said, “The general population won’t help us; they never got behind us.” The bastards. I asked myself,
How many clones died protecting natural-born lives?
I knew the answer, too.
All of them.

“I’m sorry, Travis. That’s all I have.”

Watson and Emily went silent. I couldn’t tell if they accepted my apology or blamed me for everything. Maybe they didn’t know themselves.

Harmer broke the silence. He said, “I have some good news; the Unified Authority doesn’t have much of a navy—six ships.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I hacked into their computer system.”

“You what?” asked Watson. “They’re going to track your signal.”

Harmer smiled, and said, “No they won’t.”

“What about spy ships?” asked Freeman. “They might have stealth cruisers.”

“Do they have guns and missiles?” asked Harmer.

I answered, “No.”

“Then I’m not worried about them,” said Harmer. “We all have our own objectives. Mine is to protect Shin Nippon. I will advance your objectives by accomplishing mine.”

“How’s that?” asked Watson.

“My men and I came to sink their navy. Once that’s done, the Unified Authority won’t have a navy or an air force. That will leave their army and their Marines.” He turned to face Watson, and said, “You let Harris kill off their army, and they’ll fall apart.”

I asked, “You want to sink their navy first?”

“That’s what we came for, Harris. Once that’s done, I’ll help you with anything you want.”

He made this offer so damned cheerfully, you’d have thought he was offering to help me with gardening instead of assassinations.

“Do you know how you’re going to do it?” I asked.

“I have no idea how we can do it,” he admitted.

I had a few ideas.

Next I tried to offer an olive branch to Watson. I said, “Maybe you can go to Shin Nippon with the SEALs. You’d be safe.”

Watson shook his head, and said, “That’s not the life I had in mind.”

“Well, Travis what the speck did you have in mind?” I asked.

The meeting ended after that. Emily left the room, storming out without saying a word. Watson chased after her. Harmer went to check on his men.

I didn’t think Emily would have gone to hide in the bathroom. She wasn’t the crying type.

I went to my rack, a cot in the supply room. As I lay down, I heard her voice through the wall. She was saying, “. . . a complete waste of time. Maybe we should have stayed on New Copenhagen.”

I wanted to say something, but I knew it would only make things worse. There was nothing I could say, nothing she wanted to hear from my lips, and maybe she was right.

“We had to get him,” said Watson.

“No, Trav, we didn’t. We didn’t need to rescue him. We don’t owe him anything.”

“I do.”

“No you don’t,” said Emily. “He’s useless. All he cares about is getting revenge.”

“Do you blame him?”

“I don’t care about him; I care about us. He’s going to make things worse for us. He’s going to get himself killed, and he’s going to take us with him.”

Then I heard Harmer. He said, “Miss Hughes, have you ever heard about a planet called Ravenwood?”

Emily said, “I’m sorry, we’re having a private conversation here.”

Harmer said, “I’ll only be a moment.”

Emily made a noise that could have been a sigh or a groan.

“Ravenwood was an uninhabitable planet in the Scutum-Crux Arm that the Navy used as a fuel depot, but they also used it as a testing ground. They sent Marines there to defend the planet, then they sent SEALs to kill the Marines.”

“Kill them?” Emily asked. “That’s barbaric.”

“Only one Marine ever survived Ravenwood, and that was Harris. I’ve seen the feed from the exercise. We sent a squad of SEALs—thirteen men; Harris killed every last one of them.”

“So the Unified Authority is barbaric, and Harris is a butcher,” Emily said, sounding unimpressed.

“How does that make him a butcher?” asked Harmer.

“He killed thirteen men.”

“M, those men were trying to kill him,” said Watson.

“And he killed them first,” said Emily. “Travis, we’d have been safer without him.”