Rogue Clone

to guide us into place in one of those docking bays.

“Well, Corporal Marsten, it’s been a pleasure flying you on Doctrinaire Spacelines. Fly with us again sometime,” the pilot said as he climbed from his seat. He gave me a sloppy, mock-salute. This was not an unfriendly gesture—he knew that I was AWOL.

I left the ship and walked to a nearby locker room. I pulled a key from my pocket and looked for the matching cubicle. Once I found it, I stowed my civilian clothes and dressed in the charley service uniform of a U.A. Marines corporal. For all appearances, I was just another enlisted clone on active duty.

The trip from the landing bay to the bridge was lengthy and fast. The Doctrinaire had twelve decks, plus a bridge and an observation deck. The ship had nearly twenty square miles of deck space. Just getting from the landing bay to the central elevator bank required a ride on the recently installed tram. Officers might spend their careers on this ship without visiting the bridge or the engineering decks.

I lived on this ship two years ago. Back then everything but the shell of the ship was still under construction. Last time I traveled this path, the corridors were covered with scaffolding. Welders used to work in these halls around the clock, the white glare from their torches shining up and down the halls like a continuous flash of lightning. Back when I was assigned to the Doctrinaire , the ship housed more builders than crew. You might pass ten construction workers walking down a hall and not see a single sailor.

A lot had changed. The cylindrical corridors I entered on this occasion had smooth shining walls. Bright light shined down from inlaid ceiling fixtures and polished chrome address plates adorned most doors.

The Doctrinaire had several banks of elevators, but only the central bank reached the bridge. As I entered one of these elevators, a security computer scanned and identified me. The doors closed behind me. Moments later they opened on to the bridge of the Doctrinaire —a sweeping deck manned by dozens of officers.

Three officers came in my direction. The man on the right was a captain—a heady rank in the U.A. Navy. He was young, stout, and very attentive. He looked like the kind of aggressive officer who runs a tight ship and accomplishes his mission at any cost. The man on the left was a rear admiral. He had a single star in his collar. He was an older officer whose casual smile and soft eyes gave the impression of patience.

The man in the center was Fleet Admiral Bryce Klyber, possibly the most powerful man in the entire Republic. Klyber was an accomplished Naval officer. He rose through the ranks by answering every challenge. With the exception of Bryce Klyber, no one had worn the fifth star of a fleet admiral for forty years.

Klyber was one of the last active officers who had fought in the Galactic Central War—the last full-blown war. Klyber, of course, won that war when he unveiled his battalion of top-secret Liberator clones.

“Marsten,” Klyber said, and eyebrow cocked to show his surprise at seeing me. “I thought I left orders for you to meet me in my quarters. Just as well. Corporal, this is Rear Admiral Halverson and Captain Johansson.”

I saluted.

They saluted back.

Klyber looked over at the rear admiral. “Admiral Halverson, have you met Corporal Marsten?”

Something about Captain Johansson caught my attention. He was tall and skinny with a shaved head and squinting dark eyes. He did not even bother looking at me as he saluted. He seemed to want to ignore me, not in the “you’re not worth my time” way that many officers greeted clones, but in a way that seemed far more contemptuous.

“Corporal, I don’t believe we’ve met,” the older officer said. “Rear Admiral Halverson.” He looked to be in his late fifties, an officer nearing retirement. Halverson looked like a youngster beside old man Klyber, however, a painfully skinny man who looked like he could have been one of the slaves forced into building the Pyramids of Egypt.

“Marsten here is retired from active duty,” Klyber said. “I, um, reactivate him on occasion. He’s got a knack for security.”

Klyber was tall. I was six feet three inches tall and he had me by an inch or two. On the other hand, he may well have weighed less than 150 pounds. Klyber stood perfectly erect, his rigid posture and skinny body made him look like he was made out of the outer limbs of an old oak tree. He had icy blue eyes that looked as focused and intense as sapphire lasers.

He turned to the two senior officers. “Perhaps we can take this up again later this evening. I have some business to take care of with the corporal.”

Halverson and Johansson saluted and walked off to continue their discussion.

“What do you think, Harris?” Klyber asked, looking around the bridge.

“She looks ready to run,” I said, noting the brightly lit navigational panels.

“More or less,” Klyber said. “It’s not the equipment that worries me. I worry more about the men at her helm. You get a limited selection of officers with top-secret projects. My crew was chosen for security clearance, not battle experience. If I wanted a ship full of military police and intelligence officers, this would be the ideal crew.”

“You worked with Halverson in Scutum-Crux,” I pointed out.

“Tom Halverson does what he can. I like Halverson,” Klyber said. He looked around to make sure that no one was within earshot of us and lowered his voice. “What did you think of Johansson?”

“Not especially friendly,” I said. “He doesn’t make a great first impression.”

Klyber smiled and took one last look around the bridge. “Let’s head down to my quarters.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

We entered the elevator.

“What happened on New Columbia?” Klyber asked.

“Mogat terrorists happened,” I said. The elevator doors slid closed and I felt the slightest vibration as we dropped three decks and sixty feet. The doors opened.

“Anyone I have heard of?” Klyber asked.

“William Patel,” I said.

“Billy the Butcher? Are you sure it was him?”

“I saw him myself, sir,” I said. We entered the corridor that led to officer country. “Callahan, the informant you sent me to meet, fingered him. Callahan thought he could earn himself some credibility and a nice reward by handing him over to us.”

Officers walked past us in groups of two and three. They all stopped to salute as Klyber walked by. Klyber returned their salutes without breaking stride.

“Patel was wise to him?”

“Have you met Callahan? He figured he could pinch both sides of the loaf. He sold Patel supplies and us information. It takes a subtle hand to play both sides off like that. Subtlety is not one of Callahan’s stronger suits.”

We entered the admiral’s suite which included his quarters, a large office, and his war room. “So you don’t think the bombs were meant for you?”

“Not a chance,” I said.

“What tipped you off to the bombs?” Klyber asked.

“We were sitting on this balcony overlooking the street and out comes Patel, practically right on cue. He’s too far away to nab, but somehow he knows where we are sitting and he looks up at us. I mean, he’s a hundred yards away and he looks right at us.

“I didn’t trust Callahan. He struck me as a punk …a small brain with a big mouth. So when Patel looks right at us, I figure he knows exactly what Callahan is up to. The only question I had was if we could make it out in time.

“The big question is, who tipped Patel off?”

Klyber listened to this, his blue-fire eyes seeming to X-ray my thoughts as I spoke. “Do you have any theories?”

“Somebody on your staff,” I said.

“Interesting that you would say that. Of course, you realize that parked as we are so far from the Broadcast Network, we don’t have communications with the outside world. In order to get a message to Patel, our spy would need to travel …broadcast to another location.

“Given that, do you still think the leak came from here?”