The Clone Assassin (37 page)

I hadn’t heard about Mantas, but seeing as the boats called “Turtles” were round, slow-moving tin cans, I had a pretty good idea about what a Manta might be.

We tailed the Turtle for two hours. It meandered at a painfully slow ten miles per hour, heading east toward the Territories while rising to within fifteen feet of the surface. When I went outside and peered over the edge of the APC, I could see it clearly though I couldn’t tell if it looked more like an island or an enormous fish.

After two hours spent chasing the ponderous sub, I became bored, so I had a gunship put an end to the chase. The crew fired a couple of RPGs off her bow. The grenades exploded, and the Turtle stopped moving. It just hung there, the world’s biggest dead fish in the world’s largest vat of formaldehyde. All the while, the communications officer on the APC transmitted the message, “Surrender . . . Surrender . . . Surrender.”

At that moment, everything seemed so promising. We had no idea what had become of the scientist Howard Tasman, but I thought he might still be alive. I thought we could capture the converts and store them someplace safe until Tasman returned, then he could figure out the riddle to unprogram these clones so that their loyalties returned to the Enlisted Man’s Empire.

The Turtle remained where it had stopped. Other ships rise and descend at odd angles, but not this boat. She remained flat the entire time she slowly ascended from the abyss.

I returned to the bridge and asked the communications officer if the clones had responded. He shook his head.

I stood over him as the communications officer repeated the message, “Surrender . . . Surrender . . . Surrender.”

The Turtle rose again, and the apex of her shell cleared the surface of the water and waves rolled over it. There she floated, like a reef, just under the waves, like a kraken or a whale or some mythical leviathan, the silver hump breaking the surface of the water during the troughs between waves. She hovered at that depth for several minutes, then she rose another few feet like a sandbar in a spectacularly low tide. Waves crashed into her mound and dissolved into foam. The wet skin of the boat sparkled under the sun.

Thinking that the clones meant to surrender, I had the communications officer broadcast a new message. He said, “Attention Unified Authority vessel, according to the Enlisted Man’s Empire Articles of Surrender, we are hereby authorized to commandeer your ship.”

We didn’t have submarines, but we did have divers and watertight combat armor. Men in dark armor dived from the edges of the APC, plunging into the royal blue water. They looked no bigger than minnows as they approached the gigantic silver dish that was the Turtle, placing charges around the submersible to prevent her from submerging again. If the Turtle tried to dive, those charges would blow holes in her shell.

We lowered a ramp from the APC to the roof of the Turtle. A company of armed Marines stormed down the ramp. From a distance, they must have looked no more significant than ants crawling over an egg. As the divers performed their acts of sabotage and the Marines crowded onto the shell, the Turtle sat still and helpless.

I looked over at Hauser, and asked, “Is she sending distress signals?”

He shook his head, and said, “Silent as a lamb.”

There was a tense moment. When the gunship signaled the crew of the Turtle to open hatches, the ship vibrated wildly—she practically convulsed. She shuddered for a moment, causing a few Marines to lose their footing, but she didn’t sink or swim. She stayed where she had breached, a robotic island.

I asked, “Can we open her without breaking her apart?”

“Sure we can,” said Hauser. “It may take a few minutes. If your men have laser torches, tell them to cut the main hatch. My engineers tell me they can fix it.”

“What’s happening with the other Turtles?” I asked. Looking at the tactical display, I saw that many had surfaced.

“They seem to be giving up,” said Hauser.

“It could be a trap,” I said. Those boats almost certainly used nuclear reactors to power their engines. For all we knew, the clones could have rigged the reactors to explode.

I thought about Curtis Jackson, the highest ranking of the converted clones. I’d once considered him among my most promising officers. He’d been tough and resourceful, the kind of Marine who would sacrifice himself and a few volunteers in exchange for destroying an enemy company. Now I had to worry about his sacrificing himself to kill my men.

“Harris, check out the display! Here come the Mantas,” said Hauser.

The tactical display had changed its focus so that it now showed an area that spanned hundreds of miles. The Turtles now showed as discs about the size of the head of a nail. The Mantas, which were one-tenth the size of the Turtles, looked like glowing fleas.

I watched them emerge from their underwater nest and scatter. From this angle, I wouldn’t have attempted to count the little submarines, but I didn’t need to. The tactical display tallied every torpedo, Turtle, and Manta. If a pod of whales swam by, it might have counted them as well.

Seeing the Mantas scatter, I asked, “Do we have enough torpedoes and gunships to catch all of them?”

Hauser laughed me to scorn, and said, “Harris, the fastest Manta is doing sixty-two knots. I could requisition an additional squad of gunboats from Fort Irwin, have them stop for chow in Los Angeles, and still nab those Mantas.

“Unless those clones have added self-broadcasting submarines to their fleet, General, we’ll catch them.”

His confidence was irritating but infectious. All I could say was, “Very well.”

 • • • 

Still sounding melancholy, Ritz said, “General, the men on the Turtle have opened the hatch.”

“We should go have a look,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

He looked so specking dour, and my anger flared. I shouted, “Damn it, man; what is the matter with you?”

He just stood there looking silent and brittle . . . Hunter Ritz looking “brittle” seemed about as plausible Mount Everest looking small. Ritz was a wild man, as irreverent an officer as any who had ever honored the Corps. He was the man who ran head-on at gunships and never sat still in briefings. No superior officer ever received proper respect from the bastard, and death didn’t faze him; now, here he stood, in a freshly pressed uniform and calling me “General” and “sir.”

In a quiet voice he said, “We’re not going to bring them in alive, sir.”

“We already have,” I said.

He said, “I fought side by side with some of those men on Terraneau, and Earth, and Mars.”

So that explained the freshly pressed uniform. He had dressed for a funeral.

I said, “Ritz, they’ve already come to the surface. That pretty well qualifies as an unconditional surrender.”

He didn’t respond.

I shook my head, and said, “Suit yourself.” He remained on the bridge while I went to help capture the “
Repromen
.” Ritz’s term, not mine.

 • • • 

I jogged out to the boarding area, where most of my Marines still waited by the gangplank. As I approached, they snapped to attention and saluted. I returned their salutes as I brushed past them and hopped the foot-high gap between the end of the plank and the roof of the Turtle.

Dressed in my armor and bodysuit, I had no idea if the wind felt boiling hot or freezing cold. I couldn’t smell the salt air or feel the sun on my shoulders. My armored boots slid as they clattered onto the Turtle’s rounded shell, and I struggled for a moment to catch my balance.

The Marines who had gathered around the hatch watched me in silence. I think they feared me more than the converts inside the boat. Well, they didn’t fear me so much as my rank. Generals are trouble. They’re like Greek statues come to life, like gods with hearts made of marble who send men to their deaths. Generals and gods seldom notice men for their good deeds and readily punish them for their bad.

Standing on that curved, metallic shoal, preparing to enter the hatch, I noticed something inside me—I was scared. I was petrified. First, I noticed how fast my heart was pumping, then I realized that I wasn’t scared of anything inside the Turtle. If anything, that hatch looked like an exit from my fears.

It was the water. The great aqua plain stretched to the horizon in every direction, flat and deep and beautiful, like a floor made of polished sapphire. The Turtle had long stopped vibrating; I might have collapsed if it so much as quivered. But it sat solid as a mountain beneath my feet.

This was fear, not just an anxious moment. It festered in my gut. Trying to hide it, I straightened my back, threw my chest out, and kept my chin level. I strode toward the hatch, asking the Marines around me, “What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?”

My M27 out and ready, I felt my blood pressure drop and my heart slow as I entered the enclosed, shadowy depths . . . and saw the first dead body. Death and darkness welcomed me in.

 • • • 

Every last man on the boat had died. Some lay on the floor. The dead pilots sat at the controls.

They were all clones, and from the blood welling up in the ears of the men not wearing helmets, they all appeared to have died from a mass death reflex. I had no idea what the death reflex did inside their brains, but it was brutal.

I walked through the corridors that circled the cavernous cargo hold in the center. Dead Marines lay everywhere. Some held guns. Some lay empty-handed.

As I approached the bridge, I heard the automatic broadcast from our APC still droning on. It said, “Surrender . . . surrender . . . surrender.”

The pilots, there were three, sat up nearly straight, strapped in their seats, their heads hanging as if in shame.
They must have surrendered,
I thought. They brought their boat to the surface. Maybe a conflict in their programming would not let them surrender. Or maybe they could surrender, but not to other clones.

One way or another, they had surrendered themselves to death.

Location: The EMN
Churchill
, orbiting Earth
Date: August 12, 2519

“Just what exactly happened down there?” Hauser demanded. “General Harris, you assured me that we were going to capture clones.”

Watching Hauser’s anger fascinated me. He wouldn’t allow himself to swear or pound the table and barely raised his voice, but he was castigating me nonetheless. Back in boot camp, angry drill sergeants screamed at me, threatened me, prognosticated that any girl I ever slept with would be syphilitic, and called my nonexistent mother a whore. Had they dressed me down this gently, I might have mistaken it for praise.

“You were going to capture them. You were supposed to bring them in alive. This wasn’t a battle. This was . . . this was Masada.”

Masada . . . Masada.
I ran the name through my memory several times before I pieced it together—Romans versus Jews. The Jews had a fortress on top of a butte, inaccessible and impossible to attack. When the Romans finally broke through the walls, they found only dead Jews. The Jews picked suicide over capture.

I started to mention that dying from a mass death reflex hardly qualified as suicide, but Perry MacAvoy spoke up in my defense. Unwilling to leave Washington, D.C., he joined us via confabulator.

He said, “From what you told me, General Harris never said we’d capture anybody. He said we’d capture equipment and an underwater city. We got their city; we got their subs, and we didn’t lose a single man. As far as I can tell, only God could have run this operation any smoother.

“What were you hoping for, Tommy? Were you hoping the sea would part, and the converts would march out on dry land?

“I wish the natural-born assholes the Unifieds have out here would die from a death reflex. I’d give my last working nut for a little divine intervention of that sort. Shit, we shoot these bastards, we stab these bastards, we blow their testicles to kingdom come, and the only thing we get outta their damn ears are brains and earwax.”

We’d already heard the news from the capital. The Unified Authority showed no sign of weakening despite heavy losses. We had more equipment, tanks, gunships, fighters, etc., but they had dug in tight as ticks. They hit us from the buildings we wanted to keep whole with an endless supply of rockets and traveled below streets we could not afford to demolish.

Even worse, public sentiment had shifted in their direction. We were a military empire, conquerors of a home planet that didn’t welcome our return. Now that the Unifieds had returned, the indigenous population’s attitude toward us had gone from strong dislike to hate.

Hauser asked, “Do we even know what caused the reflex?”

I shook my head. “Howard Tasman might be able to explain it.”

I wished I had some way to ask him. He was gone. Travis Watson was gone. Sunny was gone. I had failed them all.

MacAvoy took a stab at it. He guessed, “Maybe the Unifieds programmed them to die.”

“Why would they do that?” asked Hauser.

“To stop us from programming them back the way they were.”

“That wasn’t a battle,” Hauser said in a soft voice that resonated with regret. “That was an extermination.”

“We didn’t exterminate anyone,” said MacAvoy. “Harris didn’t even fire a specking shot.”

I didn’t respond. We’d fired off a couple of rockets to get their attention, nothing more.

His voice still softer and sadder, Hauser said, “I served a tour with Curtis Jackson. He served on
Bhutto
. That was my first command.”

I had served with Jackson as well. He commanded the regiment I took to Mars on an ill-fated operation. The Unifieds captured us. I was brainwashed; they were reprogrammed. Now they were dead. Hell, to us they’d been worse than dead since we left Mars. They’d been a ticking time bomb waiting to explode, but in the end, they’d imploded instead.

“I’ll tell you what. If you’re scared that there are clones holed up in Gendamwortha, let me put you at ease,” said MacAvoy. “They’re all natural-born down there. They are all enemy soldiers, and not a one of them is going to have a death reflex.”

The name of the Cousteau city MacAvoy referred to was Gendenwitha, but he didn’t worry about pronouncing it correctly.

Hauser ignored the general. Looking at me, he asked, “It’s entirely possible Nailor has left Gendenwitha?”

Gendenwitha sat halfway between the United States and Europe. Apparently enamored of local mythologies, the French named Gendenwitha after an Iroquois woman who, according to legend, had been transformed into the morning star. I had looked it up.

The story of Gendenwitha reminded me of Ava, which made me think of Sunny. I felt a familiar wave of guilt. Did I feel guilty for cheating on Sunny or for abandoning Ava?

“Have you received any intel indicating he is somewhere else?” I asked.

“We haven’t heard anything,” said Hauser.

“Then he’s still there,” I said.

There were only two Cousteau cities in the Atlantic Ocean. Gendenwitha was fifteen hundred miles from Washington. Anansi, the next closest site, was four thousand miles away in an oceanic black hole called the Romanche Trench.

I really hoped Nailor was in Gendenwitha.

“What if it turns up empty?” asked Hauser. “What if the Unifieds have moved everyone they have to Washington, D.C.? What if they moved their troops to the Territories?”

“I’ve got plenty of prisoners. You’re welcome to interrogate them till your nuts fall out,” MacAvoy offered.

“You’ll still get your intel,” I said. Hauser and I had come to an agreement. He’d agreed to help me get to Gendenwitha if I did some simple reconnaissance while I was down there.

We were about to destroy all of the underwater cities in one big sweep. Admiral Hauser wanted to make sure we searched one of them for its secrets before we buried it at sea.

I said, “You’re not after Nailor; he’s my problem. I’ll still deliver your package either way.”

Hauser thought about this and smiled. He said, “Fair enough.”