Rogue clone (45 page)

“They won’t,” Ray said. “They need the ship whole or they would have mowed us down last night.”

By this time, Freeman had replaced the pins in both of his grenades. We only needed to maintain the illusion of live grenades.

“They need the Starliner,” I said. “You and your congregation may want to stay here for the rest of your life, but they don’t. The only reason they haven’t attacked so far is this ship. Do you really want to hand over our only bargaining chip?”

Archie sighed. “So what do we do?” His spirit had finally broken. His shoulders slumped and his head hung. When he looked up, he had the face of a tired old man. “We can’t fight them.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Ray and I got four of them already. That only leaves two thousand four hundred and ninety-six to go.”

Archie did not notice the humor. Neither did Ray. No surprise there. Ray gave me a cold glare, then said, “Let’s see what their commanding officer has to say. Then we can talk about next steps.”

Outside the ship, the first morning light began to break. The congregation did not waste daylight. We were close to a river. Three young men, Caleb among them, went to fetch water. A team of men resumed clearing a field they had begun the day before. Others worked on the temporary housing.

“You know the commanding officer . . . this General Lee?” Archie asked. “Is he a reasonable man?”

“Lee was my best friend when I was in the Corps,” I said.

“Are you still on good terms with him?”

“The last time I saw Vince, we were on fine terms,” I said. “He thought I died in action a few days later, so he probably considers me absent without leave and a traitor to the Marine Corps.”

“That’s bad news,” Archie said.

“Vince doesn’t think much of your son, either,” I said looking over at Ray. He must have known what was coming, but he did not so much as blink. “The last time they met, Ray paid Vince twenty dollars to put on my combat armor.”

“I don’t understand,” Archie said.

“Ray told him he wanted to play a joke on a mutual friend by having me wear somebody else’s combat armor. Only it wasn’t a friend, it was an assassin. There was a man hoping to shoot me. Ray used Vince as a decoy while we snuck into a building and caught the bastard.”

Archie took in these words, then brightened. “But you didn’t step out of the ship when those Marines were here, Raymond. He won’t know you are part of this.”

Freeman pointed to the cola-colored skin on the back of his hand. “He’ll figure it out.”

Most of the day passed and we still had not seen Vince Lee. He may have thought that making us wait would give him a psychological advantage. That was what I thought he had in mind until I saw Lee in person.

His invasion force had come in the dead of night. It was early evening when Lee’s transport first appeared in the sky. By that time, many of the congregation had given up on him. The women toiled in an already-cleared field with hoes. Men cut down trees with saws and axes. Ray’s mother, a woman in her late fifties with long pearly hair, taught the children math, reading, and religion by the dregs of the bonfire. I was in the cockpit mulling over my options and feeling guilty about relaxing while everyone else toiled. When I glanced over at the navigational computer, I spotted the transport.

“He’s coming,” I called to Ray. “One ship, headed straight for us.”

“Think he’ll be reasonable?” Freeman asked, preparing the grenade and stashing a few pistols around the back of the cabin.

“Archie would love Vince Lee,” I said. “Lee was the most anti-synthetic clone I ever met. I think he suspected he was a clone. He protected himself from the death reflex by hating other clones.”

“Any chance we could just say, ‘Lee, you’re a clone,’ and kill him off?” Freeman asked.

“Maybe we could start a chain reaction?” I said, only half joking. This idea might have had a shot at working. If we could convince enough of Vince’s Marines that they were clones, maybe we could start a mass death reflex. If one clone believed, maybe they all would. The glands in their brains would secrete their deadly hormone, and the whole crew might die. Maybe we did have a weapon, if enough of them were watching.

One minute later, a silver-gray speck appeared in the blue, cloudless sky. For a moment it looked like an apparition, perhaps the sun reflecting off of a cloud. The transport continued to drop. When we first saw it, the ship may have been twenty miles up and far off in the icy blue horizon. It dropped out of the sky and flew over the forest, and then seemed to float over the camp. All work stopped. The men and women dropped what they were doing and gathered in a group.

I ran down the hatch and gathered Marianne and Caleb. “Wait on the ship,” I said. “You’ll be safer there.”

Marianne nodded. She looked more unhappy than scared. Her forehead was creased with lines, her lips were tight, and her eyes had pleading intensity. Without saying a word, she nodded and turned to the Starliner. Her hands remained on Caleb’s shoulders. She kept her hands on him as they ran to the ship. I rushed through the crowd and found Archie and his wife standing near the fire pit. “You’d better come with me,” I said. He followed without a word.

Transports were large, clumsy birds, with bloated bellies designed for carrying soldiers. They had powerful shields, thick armor, and nearly indestructible engines, but no guns. The transport landed in a field in which some women had been planting seeds. First the thruster engines fired to soften the landing. They emitted fiery-hot plumes that baked the soil as the transport rotated in midair so that its ass end pointed toward the camp.

The plumes from the engines dusted over two hoes that were left in the field, lighting their handles on fire. Then the ship settled on its heavy iron skids, packing dirt beneath it. The ship must have weighed thirty tons. Seeing her work ruined, one woman buried her face in her husband’s shoulder and cried. By the time the ship landed, I had returned to the Starliner. I sent Archie and his wife, Marianne, and Caleb into the very back of the passenger cabin. Turning the other way, I joined Ray in the cockpit to watch.

The rear hatch of the transport opened with a mechanical yawn that reminded me of my past. Out came eight Marines in blood-red combat armor. Government-issue combat armor came in one color: camouflage green. The red armor made no sense. They must have painted it red, but why? Then I remembered the Mogats during the battle for Little Man. They had worn red armor. Lee was emulating the superior forces.

Someone had stenciled THE KING OF CLONES in gold letters above the ramp that led out of the kettle.

I watched this from inside the cockpit with Ray Freeman. “Guess he figured out he’s a clone,” I said.

“You ever get tired of being wrong?” Freeman asked.

The eight men in the red combat gear formed lines on either side of the ramp, their M27s held tight across their chests. Next came the entourage, twenty men in officer uniforms who formed a line at the base of the ramp. As far as I knew, only seven clones had ever been bootstrapped to officer status, and only one of them served in the Scutum-Crux Fleet. But here they were, twenty men with the exact same face, skin, and hair, standing in a perfect row, all dressed as officers. This ceremonial offloading had a familiar ring. I thought about it for a moment and remembered the way Klyber and his entourage disembarked the time that Lee and I accompanied them as their honor guard. Last came Vince Lee, dressed in a general’s uniform. He could not have been a general, of course. He stood at the top of the ramp, his bottom lip pursed, his eyes squinting, and surveyed the lines of men before him. Then, walking in a slow, magisterial gait, Lee proceeded down the ramp. It had to be a joke, but I was too afraid to laugh.

The men and women around the camp looked too stunned to speak. One man fell to his knees as if praying, but his eyes were wide open. His wife stood beside him, trying to pull him to his feet. The man ignored her.

One of the men in Lee’s honor guard climbed into the Starliner and shouted, “General on deck!”

Freeman shot him. His body slid down the ramp and landed just about where the other three bodies had landed. Lee looked down at the dead man with a bemused expression.

“I don’t remember inviting anyone to come aboard,” I yelled.

Lee smiled, nodded to his guard, and started up the ramp. “Permission to come aboard?” he yelled. He had a sardonic tone.

“You know what, Lee,” I answered, “I think I’ll meet you down there. I could use a little fresh air.”

Ray, pulling the pin from a grenade, sat down in the copilot’s seat. I walked across the cabin and said,

“Archie, do you want to come with me?”

He nodded and we headed down the ramp.

The Vince Lee I knew would never have let his hair grow beyond regulation. He was the ideal image of a Marine with his powerful physique. The man was fanatical about bodybuilding, and not just bodybuilding, but old-style weightlifting.

As Archie and I came down the ramp, I saw the new Vince Lee. This man had hair over the tops of his ears. He had the same glassy-eyed look as the Marine who led the raid. He also had the same recently-starved look about his face. His skin was sallow. He had large dark pockets under the eyes. He also had a few days’ stubble on his cheeks.

“Hello, Wayson,” he said with no enthusiasm as I approached. Then his sneer broke and he smiled.

“You’re looking good for a dead guy.” He did not reach to shake hands or salute.

“General Lee?” I asked.

“Let’s see. Two years back I heard you died. A couple of weeks ago somebody told me that you made colonel. I also heard you went AWOL. And here you are alive and well, and trespassing on Unified Authority territory out of uniform. Good men died defending this planet.” His eyes narrowed into slits, then he smiled and his face relaxed. “Give me your ship and we’ll forget you were here.”

“You’ll just fly off and pretend you never saw me?” I asked.

“Something like that,” Lee said.

Behind him, Lee’s entourage stood in a single row. They did not stand at attention, and they whispered among themselves. They all had Vince Lee’s face, though none of them had his muscular physique. A moment passed, both silent and heavy. “What does ‘king of clones’ mean?” Archie asked. Vince laughed. “You noticed that, did you? I’m glad.” He turned to me. “I wanted to make sure that you saw it, too. Let’s go for a walk, Wayson. How does that sound?”

“You mind if Archie comes along?” I asked. Vince should have known Archie from the first time the
Grant
visited the planet.

“Just you and me,” Lee said.

“Isn’t that how they used to kill political prisoners? They’d take them out in the woods and shoot them. You still have a transport filled with Marines out there, don’t you?”

“I guess I do,” said Lee.

I turned to look at Archie. “It might be safer if you wait in the ship.”

He nodded.

“Lock it up until I come back,” I said.

“Glad to see that we trust each other, old friend,” Lee said.

“Semper Fi Marine.” I answered.

Lee laughed. At least his guards did not follow us as we went into the woods.

We crossed into the woods. These were not the same woods we had marched through before the great battle, but they had the same tall trees. Scattered rays of light penetrated the canopy of leaves and needles forty feet above us. The woods were dark and shadowy, and the light formed distinct shafts that slanted here and there.

During our march to the valley that Archie Freeman called “Armageddon,” snipers picked off our scouts and officers. I did not forget this as we walked through a dim glade.

“What happened?” Lee asked. “One moment I heard there was a big naval battle near Earth. I heard they sent their entire fleet, but I figured the
Doctrinaire
would take care of all that. Then the Network went dark.”

“That just about describes the whole fight,” I said. “The
Doctrinaire
broadcasted in, and the Mogats zapped it. They sent some ships to shoot the Mars broadcast discs, and the Network went dark, just like you said.

“Vince, I was there. Huang sent me to infiltrate their fleet, and they caught me. I was in the brig on Halverson’s command ship.”

“Halverson? Rear Admiral Halverson?”

“He was the one who killed Klyber,” I said. “He defected.”

“Shit,” Lee hissed. “What happens if somebody starts up the Mars broadcast station again? Will the Unified Authority come back to life?”

“You make it sound so easy,” I said. “The Confederates have their whole fleet there, last I heard. That was over five hundred ships.

“I haven’t seen the station, but I’m guessing that they destroyed the discs. That would be a hell of a build job. You’d have to start from scratch.”

“Sounds grim,” Lee said. “Halverson defected? I served under him. I can’t believe he would do that. No wonder they beat us, he and Klyber wrote out the whole playbook together.”

Vince’s sanity seemed to come in and out in waves. He had lucid moments when he acted and sounded like the Corporal Vince Lee with whom I had served. There were also moments when he could not stand still, when his eyes darted in every direction as if we were in a frenzy, and when he cackled loudly at nothing in particular.

This was a lucid moment. We walked together silently as he digested what I had just told him.

“So what does ‘king of clones’ mean?” I asked

“You, of all people, should not have to ask,” Lee said.

“You mean it’s me?” I asked.

“Well, it was you. Now it’s me. Now I am the king of clones.”

The trunks of the trees around us were about fifteen feet in diameter. The leaves overhead were a mixture of green and red. I saw birds and scampering animals in the branches above us.

“You might have been the greatest hero the Corps ever knew,” Lee said. “I mean, the battle on Little Man, and Hubble . . . and when you killed that SEAL clone in Hawaii. I think that was the best one. The only problem is that except for us, no one ever heard about it.

“You know what was even better than that, Wayson? You remember how you found out you were a clone and it didn’t even phase you? God I envied you! You were the specking perfect Marine. Nothing could kill you, nothing could stop you. Not even the goddamned death reflex.