The Clone Sedition (34 page)

Freeman “neutralized the threat,” then returned and said it was time to leave.

Freeman separated the people into smaller groups. He was the first to go. Dressed in combat armor that did nothing to hide his size, he left the administration building and vanished into the shadows, where he waited for the next group—Liston, Dempsey, and Sharkey, carrying Howard Tasman on a stretcher, draped in a blanket, as if he were a corpse headed for disposal. With seventeen million people living in squalor, death was common enough in the spaceport that no one would ask questions. Freeman, tracking them from the shadows, would eliminate anyone who did.

After warning Watson not to touch his granddaughter, Gordon Hughes left with his three sons. He wore a hat that covered much of his face.

The Hughes wives and grandchildren left as a group. The women looked grave, the kids excited. They blended into the sea of people and disappeared.

Watson and Emily Hughes were the last to leave. Like Gordon Hughes, Watson wore a large hat that covered his face in shadow. Hughes wore the hat because he was easily recognized. Watson wore it to hide the bruises and cuts on his face.

The various groups took different routes. Watson and Emily would travel through the heart of the grand arcade.

Following Freeman’s instructions, Watson kept an arm around Emily to make sure they were not separated. If they lost each other in the overcrowded spaceport hub, it might take them an hour to find each other again.

Instead of skirting around the crowds, they pushed upstream. Watson normally avoided crowded areas, but Freeman had told them they would be safer surrounded by people. Freeman instructed them to enter the grand arcade, climb the stairs, and cross on the second floor, claiming they would be harder to follow if they left the main floor.

Hunched over Emily the way that he was, Watson did not look especially tall. Standing together in their dirty clothes, passing through the crowd, they blended in just as Freeman had predicted.

People pushed and shoved against Watson. An elbow struck one of his broken ribs, sending a wave of pain through his body, but he had two epidural patches stuck to his neck, and the medicine kept him going.

Emily seldom spoke as they walked. Acting as Watson’s crutch, she carried some of his weight.

Emily whispered, “I’m scared,” but Watson did not hear her. Realizing that her voice had been drowned out, she repeated herself, nearly yelling to be heard above the din. “I’m scared.”

Watson responded by tightening the arm he had around her waist, pulling her into him. He did not speak.

People whirled past them like leaves in a strong wind.

Watson stood straighter so he could see up ahead. In the dim of the simulated evening and with his battered eyes, he had trouble recognizing the arcade’s features. He knew they would soon turn down a hall, but he could not see the hallway. He searched for clones. He searched for Nailor.

Families on blankets lined walls. Watson saw the hall they needed to enter. He saw the stairs that would take them back to the main floor. People camped on the stairs. Kids sat along the walls. A steady stream of people walked up and down the stairs. Watson patted Emily’s shoulder as he led her down a set of stairs. They turned and entered the hall that led away from the arcade.

After the hundred-foot ceiling of the grand arcade, the hall looked small and tight and dark. Its twenty-foot ceiling seemed dangerously low to Watson, as if it might crush them. He knew it was a trick of the shadows, but he could not shake the claustrophobic feeling.

“Shit!” said Emily.

“What?” Watson mumbled through clenched teeth.

“Three clones.”

“Clones? Are they wearing white armor?” he asked, though he knew they had to be dressed in the white armor of Spaceport Security. Harris was a hundred million miles away. The only clones left on Mars were Spaceport Security.

They continued walking forward, pushing through the crowd. Watson tightened his arm around the girl, not wanting to lose her as he accelerated his pace.

Emily needed to jog to keep up with him.

He said, “Don’t run.”

She said, “It’s the only way I can keep up with you.”

Knowing that the door to the train station could not be more than forty or fifty yards away, Watson slowed, and asked her, “Where are they?” He did not want to fight. If it came to a fight, he would be helpless.

“We just walked past them.”

“Did they see us?”

“I don’t know.”

Watson slowed to a stop.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I need to see if they’re following us.” Still hunched over, hoping he was camouflaged by the horde around him, Watson peered over the top of the crowd. Men and women pushed past him. Now that they had slowed, people tried to shove them out of the way.

“We need to move. We can’t stay here. We need to get to the train,” Emily said.

“We’ll never make it…if…they…” He saw them, three clones wading into the crowd, walking toward him and Emily. After seeing the catatonic state of the clones in the barracks, Watson expected them to move like robots. These men were fast and alert.

“Damn, they saw us,” he said. He tightened his arm around Emily, and said, “Just stay with me.”

Emily would not have been able to keep up with him if he ran, but Watson kept a protective arm around her. He walked quickly, ignoring the pain that his patches could only partially hide. He held his left arm out like a battering ram and shoved people out of the way. People complained, a few tried to push back, but mostly they cleared out of his path.

Ignoring the urge to look back, Watson moved on. Soon they would start down the stairs that led to the train station, and he told himself that he would rest once they arrived.

His heart pounded. He struggled for breath. His ear was close enough to Emily’s mouth to hear her wheezing, drawing in short shallow breaths.

“We’re almost there…almost there,” he told her.

She did not answer.

Behind them, one of the clones fired three shots. The bullets ricocheted off the walls. People screamed, but the clones did not seem to care.

People dived to the ground and covered their heads with their hands.

“You, stop!” yelled one of the clones.

Still surrounded by a throng, Watson continued to force his way toward the train station. He could hear Emily beside him, sobbing and gasping, terrified, but still staying with him.

The clones fired more shots. Screams of panic. Screams of pain. Somebody yelled, “He’s been shot!”

Some of the people remained on the ground, whimpering in fear. Some jumped to their feet and ran for safety. Some stampeded in the same direction as Watson and Emily, toward the forbidden train station.

The clones fired into the crowd. Watson heard the thud of
bullets striking flesh. Five feet from Emily, a man yelped and collapsed. A woman screamed, grabbed her injured arm. She kept running as blood squirted from between her fingers.

Still holding Emily, Watson veered to his right, causing her to lose her footing. He pinned her body to his. Carrying her as she struggled to balance herself, he winced at the pain in his ribs. Still cradling Emily, he dived into a line of picnickers.

A woman tried to help Emily to her feet. A man punched Watson, hitting him in the thigh, then the back.

Watson rose to his full height. His reactions were automatic. He pulled Emily to him and mule-kicked the man in the head at the same time. Emily tucked herself under his shoulder. The man grunted and fell on his back.

The clones continued shouting and firing their weapons, but they hadn’t seen Watson dive into the picnickers. They fired at the herd. Watson pressed Emily against the wall, concealing her behind his mass. He wrapped his arms around her and hung his head over her as he listened to the sounds of the terrorized people.

He heard the people run by. Moments later he heard the clatter of armored boots as they passed. When he looked for the door that led down to the trains, he saw that it was only ten yards away.

Watson turned toward the door and started running. Ten yards away. Eight yards away. Three bullets struck the wall in front of him. Full of terror, he dug his fingers into Emily’s waist, then spun like a dancer performing a pirouette. He lifted her off her feet, then heaved her through the opening marked
SERVICE PERSONNEL ONLY
. She ran, spun, and flew all at once, crashing to the tiles away from the gunfire.

A bullet cut across Watson’s back, tearing his clothes and creasing his skin. A bullet skimmed the top of his arm, singeing his shoulder, cutting a shallow groove.

Watson could feel the blood and the burn on his ear and shoulder, but the epidural patches prevented the pain from becoming an issue. He dived for the doorway, saw that Emily had already started down the long narrow set of stairs, and sprinted to join her.

Below them was the train station, as bright and empty as the promise of living happily ever after. Fifty feet of stairs
stood between them and the white-tiled platforms. Watson ran as fast as he could, his calves burning, his thighs numb, his lungs trying to wring breathable oxygen out of stale air, his jaw clenched because the pain from every bounce of his jaw brought tears to his eyes.

He knew that there would be no place to hide if the clones caught him on the stairs. They would shoot him in the back.

He heard a jangle of noise and kept running. He heard shouts. A shot was fired. Out of the corner of his eye, Watson saw two white enamel suits fall through the air. The third followed a moment later.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and saw clones lying dead on the ground, little beads of blood rolling down the slick surface of their combat armor. Their armor shattered by the three-story fall, they lay in a quickly spreading puddle of blood.

Afraid of what he might see, Watson turned to look up the stairs and saw Freeman, dressed in green armor, sprinting toward the platforms. He held the three dead clones’ M27s as if they were toys, and he yelled in a low, rumbling voice that was both fierce and calm, “Get on the train.”

The entire caravan squeezed into the first train car, the people taking up less than one-third of the space while the gear Freeman had packed filled the rest. The people sat in groups, their stifling silence nearly palpable.

Freeman, wearing his armor but not his helmet, sat with Gordon Hughes. The old man’s face had gone a pale, nearly bloodless white. He kept an eye on his three sons, who sat with their wives and children. Tasman sat with his bodyguards around him. Emily, the oldest of the Hughes grandchildren, sat with Watson in a distant corner of the car.

As the train pulled away from the platform, Watson examined Freeman’s gear. He saw a motorized wheelchair with low-slung wheels that almost looked like tank treads, which Freeman had obviously brought for the bedridden Tasman.

Freeman had stacked his rifle and particle-beam cannon with the guns. Including the weapons Freeman had taken from the clones he’d killed in the train station, they had six M27s. They’d only had three when they left the administration building.

Watson craned his neck for a view of Hughes. The old man’s skin was pale, and his eyes were dark and hooded. He met Watson’s gaze and glared back at him. Watson leaned over to Emily, and whispered, “You should go sit with your family.”

“I want to stay with you,” she said.

Watson could not read Emily’s mood, but he was not interested in
playing
anymore. His entire life, he had never been in need; and now that he was nearly helpless, she cared for him. He did not know if what he felt for her was dependence or love. He thought it might be both.

She stayed with him and took care of him, and he hoped she had attached herself to him. He did not know if he would want
his freedom once he no longer needed her, but he suspected he wouldn’t. He said, “We’ll have lots of time together.”

She smiled, kissed him on the cheek, and went to sit with her parents.

Watching Emily walk away, Watson felt more lonely than he had ever felt in his life. He would have liked to have gone with her, but he knew he would not be welcomed. He noticed that everyone, even Freeman and Tasman, had someone sitting with them, everybody but him.

Back on Earth, Watson preferred to be on his own during daylight hours. Now though, with the pain and the danger, he felt vulnerable. He felt hollow. Just as the realization that he was utterly alone began to weigh on Watson, Freeman came to join him.

Watson said, “Thank you for saving us.”

Freeman did not answer.

Hughes walked over, bent down to speak to Freeman, and whispered a question so that Watson would not hear him.

As Freeman turned to answer, Watson stared at the massive nest of scars on the back of Freeman’s shaved head. He could not pull his attention away from it. It looked like Freeman’s skin was laced with flesh-colored centipedes. Ray Freeman, the mercenary giant, the man who had killed Morgan Atkins and shot Wayson Harris…even he could be injured.

The train slid through the tunnels under Mars Spaceport, traveling silently along a single raised rail.

Staring out the windows, Watson saw doors and arches and platforms. He asked, “We’re not out of danger yet, are we? They’re going to come after us.”

Freeman shook his head. He said, “Not by train.”

“Admiral Cutter destroyed the other tracks,” said Watson. “You’ll disable this car when we reach the base.”

“Not the car, the train station,” said Freeman.

“The station in the Air Force base?” asked Watson, not sure why that would stop the clones from following them.

Freeman did not answer.

Watson thought about it and realized he meant the station in the spaceport, not the base.

They reached the far end of the spaceport and entered the atmospheric locks. Heavy doors slid open to admit the train,
then slid closed behind it. One set of doors, then another, then a third, and they launched into the desert. The world outside the train was sandy and strewn with rocks and rock shelves. Rust-covered plains stretched as far as the eye could see. It blended into a mauve-colored sky.