Rogue clone (28 page)

The Japanese officers made no attempt to fit in with the other sailors that I saw. Most of the men on this battleship wore tan-colored uniforms. The Japanese uniforms were dark blue. Still, Japanese officers spoke English whether talking to other officers or just among themselves. The closer I came to the command deck, the more this ship looked Japanese. Not far from the directory, on the command deck, stood an archway made of two posts topped by two beams. Under the arch was a shrine or display with three long swords stretched across a three-tiered pedestal. Since the officers I saw walk past this shrine did not stop to bow or pray to it, I decided the display had more to do with heritage than religion.

I continued toward the bridge, passing through officer country and the maze of cubicles and offices that occupies the top deck of almost any naval ship. Here I walked with a businesslike stride, acting as if I had an important meeting to attend. On a U.A. Navy ship, someone would have noticed the missing bars. I would have been stopped and questioned. On this ship, few people noticed how I dressed. I turned a corner and saw the entry to the bridge. Taking a deep breath to steel myself, I walked to the door. The bridge was spacious and dark. Teams of sailors gathered around various consoles and workstations.

Everyone in the room was Japanese. In the dimmed light, their royal blue uniforms were black as shadows, even in the low glow from the workstations. Looking around the floor, I estimated that there were at least fifty officers sitting at the various stations.

In the center of the bridge sat a large square table which the captain and his senior officers used to chart courses and consider battle strategies.

There was nothing else to do. I stepped onto the bridge and walked its breadth. The workstations were arranged in concentric circles. Walking quickly without a pause, I recognized each station. The computers in the weapons area, which were unmanned at that moment, had large displays showing the diagram of the battleship with its gun and cannon arrays highlighted. The engineering station had computers showing detailed maps of each deck. I would have loved to have parked myself beside one of those computers to discover its many secrets, but three men sat at that station. The white glow of the readout display flickered on their faces.

Three men sat in front of one elongated screen in the navigation section. Their screen had a map of the galaxy along the top but most of the screen was filled with the local star system. I did not recognize the system. The last area I passed as I lapped the outer circle of the bridge was communications. Voices came from a station for monitoring fleet communications. During battle, this station would be the nerve center for the fleet. Now, after the battle, transmissions between ships went unobserved.

BATTLE GROUP SIX ABLE, THIS IS BATTLESHIP SEVEN ABLE, OVER.

COME IN BATTLESHIP SEVEN ABLE. THIS IS BATTLE SIX ABLE COMMAND.

WE ARE BREAKING FORMATION. DO YOU COPY?

WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM SEVEN ABLE?

This particular station was more cluttered than the worst workstation in the Golan traffic tower. A stack of data pads had toppled, spreading across the desk. Pencils, pens, papers, coffee cups, and other bric-a-brac lay all around those pads. There were four cups of coffee along the edge of that particular desk along with a brick-sized box of audio chips. In the center of this mess was a large ashtray filled to capacity with cigarette ash and butts. The line of drawers along the left side of the station hung partially open. The drawers, like everything else at this station, overflowed with junk. I passed by the station without slowing, completed my lap of the bridge and left. Not far from the bridge, I found a bathroom. A couple of men stood by the urinals; so I entered a stall and waited until they left, then I contacted Freeman.

“Okay,” I spoke quickly, but in a whisper, “this is a battleship. I have no idea where we are. I am going to leave this line open. Tell Huang to have his Intel section listen in.”

Freeman nodded. He did not bother telling me to “be careful” or to “watch my back.” That was not his way. He stared into the console intense and humorless as ever. His eyes reminded me of a double-barreled shotgun as they stared out from that mahogany skull. He was the most dangerous man in the galaxy, and I had absolutely no doubt that I could rely on him. His very being communicated undeniable competence.

Removing the shades, I stepped out of the bathroom stall and returned to the bridge. I took another stroll on the bridge, slowing to glance at the various workstations as I passed them. I wished I could examine the strategic charts. Huang would have paid one billion dollars for the secrets that they held. But I had something even more valuable . . . the fleet itself.

As before, nobody paid any attention to me. I approached the communications area and looked over my shoulder to be sure that no was watching. I never stopped, but I slowed down as I left a little extra mess on the already cluttered workstation. A moment later, I left the command deck and never returned.

I was alone on the command ship of the enemy fleet. I had no idea about the fleet’s position. Escape was out of the question. We must have been light years from the nearest broadcast station. At this point, I had no means of communicating with Freeman or Huang or anyone else who could help me. I could, of course, steal another set of shades; but I did not know how long I would be on this scow, and I could not afford to take any more chances.

My best bet, I decided, was to return to the landing bay, a relatively empty part of the ship. There I would stow away on the next transport that came through. Sooner or later this fleet would attack another target. If I managed to dig in with the right group of commandos, I might have a way out. I returned to the gym. The place was as dead as before. A couple of enlisted men stood in the locker room chatting as they put on their uniforms. Neither man paid much attention as I grabbed shorts and a T-shirt and started undressing. A moment later they left and I went to the lockers. The coveralls were still in the locker where I placed them. Weeks might have passed before somebody discovered them in a forsaken gym like this one. I pulled them from the locker, stepped into the pants legs, and zipped them up. I did not bother with socks before stepping into my foul-smelling boots. If the worst I got out of this brush with the GC Fleet was foot fungus, I would consider myself lucky. Still noticing just how bad the clothes smelled, I started down to the landing bay. The smell was strong and the clothes felt damp against my skin. I did not know how long I would be stuck in these clothes. How had I missed this smell before?

And something else . . . I realized that I was hungry. The last time I had eaten was when I grabbed a sandwich on the Marine base on New Columbia. That seemed like a long time ago until I did the math. It had only been a few hours ago.

I took a lift down one deck. As I made my way down the corridor, I passed an electrician working on a wall panel. He had removed the faceplate from the panel and now probed the circuits with a pen-shaped tool. As I walked by, he stopped to look over at me. Our eyes met for a moment, and I nodded and moved on. The man did not return my greeting, but he continued to watch me. Perhaps I was paranoid. I looked back as I meandered down the hall. The electrician remained where he was, standing on a foot-tall step ladder, probing around that open panel.

Traveling down the next two decks, I passed almost no one. Perhaps a shift had ended and a smaller crew had replaced it. Maybe it was lunchtime and most of the sailors were eating. That last corridor that led to the launch bay was entirely empty. The thud of my boots created an indistinct echo as I walked through that brightly-lit stretch. Everything was going so smoothly, I had no doubt that I would slip off the ship soon.

The next time I saw people was as I drew near the landing bay. Two men walked silently down an intersecting corridor. They wore the khaki uniforms of regular officers rather than the blue uniforms of the Japanese, and they fell in quietly behind me as I continued toward the bay. I expected them to turn into some door or another, but they did not. They continued straight ahead, walking at the same pace as me. I thought about turning into the next door or hall that I passed, but there were no more doors until the ones leading into the bay. I pretended to be unaware of the men. I did not look back and I did not slow down. Neither did the men behind me.

With no other choice, I entered the landing area. A lone transport sat in the middle of the hangar, its hatch hung open. A small crowd stood on the ramp leading into the kettle. I counted three medics and six MPs, and in the center of them, placed on the bare metal ramp like a cadaver on a mortuary slab, lay Derrick Hines, stripped down to his briefs.

The muzzle of a gun jabbed into my back and a voice said, “How do you like that, boys, we have our first prisoner.”

If there was one kind of naval design that did not change with the times, it was brig. I once ran security for the
Doctrinaire
, the most advanced ship ever made. I knew every cell in its brig thoroughly, and they were exactly like the cells in this ancient ship . . . the one in which I was now a prisoner. Both brigs had the same kinds of bars on their walls and the same limp mats on their cots. I did not have the means to measure my floor, but if I did, it would have measured precisely eight feet by twelve feet. I knew that because that was the size of the cells on the
Doctrinaire
.

I lay on my cot staring up at the charcoal-gray ceiling. For a change of scenery, I sometimes turned to look at the charcoal-gray walls. These cells were the ultimate in ease when it came to housekeeping. You simply pulled the mattress out and sprayed everything down with a steam hose. The floor was a grating that led to a drain.

Mercifully, they had stripped me down to my briefs before throwing me in the cell. Those coveralls reeked. From what I could tell, the late Derrick Hines hadn’t washed them for weeks. I might have been a bit cold in this cell, but at least I could breathe.

Had the brig been darker, I might have slept. The lights in the hall were too bright. I think I knew why Liberators got addicted to violence, we became morose when we just laid around. I thought about the diary from Saint Germaine in which that priest and Tabor Shannon argued about whether or not Liberators had souls. I bought into both arguments and decided that perhaps we had worthless souls. I thought about Freeman. Had he arrived in Safe Harbor yet? I wondered about his family on Little Man. What would the Navy do?

Forced to guess how long I had been in this cell, I might have said three hours. It could have been longer. It could have been shorter. With no sun coming up and no events by which to gauge time, my internal clock was all but useless.

Footsteps echoed down the hall as the men came to look in my cell. My jailors looked in on me through the bars. Both men wore khaki uniforms. One was a tall man with blond hair, the other had dark brown locks.

“Hello, Harris,” the blond man said.

I glanced in their direction. I remained flat on my back on the cot. I wanted to test them. I was their first prisoner. Would they know how to treat me and how to control me, or would they make mistakes? If they were naïve enough, I could end up in charge even though I was the one behind the bars.

“Comfortable, Harris?” the blond man asked.

“Hope you didn’t go to too much trouble getting my name,” I said.“ I would have told you if you had asked.”

“Really? I always heard that Liberator clones were tougher than that,” the blond man said. “You knew you were a clone, right? I mean, I would hate for you to have one of those death reflex things and keel over right here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

“So you’re a Liberator. I always thought your kind would be bigger. I mean, aren’t you guys the planet exterminators?”

I looked toward the man. “You must be a Mogat,” I said in as dismissive a voice as I could muster.

“The term is Morgan Atkins Believer. I suggest you remember that, Harris, or your stay here could become real unpleasant.” The humor never left his face, but his voice turned serious. Now that I stopped to look, I saw that this was not a man to take lightly. He had a broad and powerful build. His bull neck was almost as wide as his jaw, making it look like he had a pointed head. The muscles in his shoulders bulged, but this was not the beautiful physique of a bodybuilder. This man had padding around his gut.

“Learn anything else?” I asked.

The second man outside my cell, a short chubby man with the brown hair, stepped forward with a data pad and answered. “Harris, Wayson, Colonel, Unified Authority Marines. Raised: U.A. Orphanage #

five hundred fifty-three. Year of Manufacture: 2490. Clone Class: Liberator.

“How does a clone, especially a Liberator Clone, achieve the rank of colonel?” the dark-haired man asked.

“You want to know how I became a colonel?” I asked.

“I want to know why you exist at all,” the man said. “How did you find your way on this ship?”

“Do you want the full story or the abbreviated version?” With this I sat up.

“Let’s stick with the short one for now,” the man with the data pad said.

“I caught a ride on your transport when it left New Columbia.”

The blond-haired man, clearly my jailor, smiled and gave me a vigorous nod. “Know what Harris, I believe you. An honest clone, no less.”

“May I ask a question?”

“Go ahead,” the man with the data pad said. The jailor scowled at him.

“Is this ship part of the Hinode Fleet, or part of the Confederate Navy, or part of the Galactic Central Fleet?”

“None of your business,” the man with the blond hair said.

“Confederate Navy,” the man with the dark hair said. The bigger man, the jailor, scowled at him.

“It depends who you ask, I suppose,” the blond man continued to glare down at him.

“So what is the Hinode Fleet?”

“Another name for the same bunch of ships,” the smaller man said.

“Do you have more than one fleet?” I asked.