Rogue Clone

This quadrant of the galaxy was dark. Communications were transferred through the Broadcast Network and the Doctrinaire was nearly 20,000 light years from the nearest discs.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Whoever leaked the information traveled.”

Klyber sat silent behind his desk and rubbed the thinning hairline around his temple. He seemed deep in thought, then brightened. “I have something for you,” he said as he stood and opened a closet hidden in the wall beside his desk. “A friend sent this to me. He did not know anything about you, of course; but I think you will appreciate this.”

When Klyber turned back toward me, he held a small book with tan leather binding that looked parched and old. The leather had gone stiff with age and drying. The words, Personal Journal of Father David Sanjines , were emblazoned in dark brown letters that stood out against the dust-colored leather.

“A friend in the Vatican sent this to me. Most of it is of no interest. It’s the journal of an archbishop. But there is a small section concerning a mutual acquaintance of ours.”

I looked down at the journal as Admiral Klyber held it out to me.

Klyber said. “I want you to have it.”

I took the old book and it seemed to fall open of its own accord. The pages had a faint red tinge to them that I knew was from clay dust, though it looked more like rust.

The book had a five-inch strip of blue velvet ribbon sewed into its binding for a bookmark. Parts of that ribbon had turned nearly black with age. I noted the date—April 10, 2494—on the open page.

Klyber watched me. “That is the only entry of interest. It goes on for a few pages.” He thought about the book for a few more moments, then shifted his attention. “I would like to revisit your impression of Captain Johansson.”

“You think Johansson is a spy?” I asked, closing the book.

Klyber did not answer. He smirked as he watched me from behind his desk. “Oh, I know he’s a spy, the question is for whom.”

“A spy?” I asked. “Do you think he’s a Mogat?”

“I’m guessing he’s worse,” Klyber said. “I think he works for Admiral Huang.”

Admiral Klyber had a long-standing feud with Che Huang, the secretary of the Navy and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admiral Huang wanted to see himself as the most powerful man in the Navy, but Klyber, with his political connections, was generally recognized as having more clout.

“Huang?” I asked. “That would be bad.” Klyber could legally execute an enemy spy. A spy working for Huang, however, could only be transferred.

Possibly because Klyber headed the Liberator cloning project, Huang had a thing about Liberators. Huang was the officer who had assigned me to Ravenwood. To the best of his knowledge, I had died on that planet, and I wanted him to continue believing me dead.

“We’re a thousand light years from the nearest planet,” I said. “Dump him in space and say he had an accident.”

“It’s too late for that,” Klyber said, putting up a hand to stop me. “Whatever he’s looking for, I assume he has already found it.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s been able to report everything he’s found,” I said.

“Whatever information he was after, he transmitted it the first time we sent him out. The safest thing to do with Johansson right now is to keep him onboard the Doctrinaire . That way we can observe him.”

“Assuming he doesn’t have any friends on board,” I said.

“I hope he does,” Klyber agreed. “We’re keeping an eye on him.

“If he’s Huang’s boy, you’re in for a fight in the Senate. If Huang hears about the Doctrinaire , he’s going to ask for control of the project. He’ll probably put Wonder Boy in command of the ship.”

“Wonder Boy,” a.k.a. Rear Admiral Robert Thurston, was Che Huang’s protege, the brilliant young officer who replaced Klyber as the admiral of the Scutum-Crux Fleet. Bryce Klyber was no slouch when it came to strategy, but Thurston crushed him in a battle simulation.

I did not like Thurston. He had a mile-wide anti-synthetic streak. Thurston saw clones as supplies and nothing else. He used them like any other kind of inventory, something to be expended and reordered.

“I’m meeting with Huang and the Joint Chiefs next week at the Golan Dry Docks for a top secret briefing,” Klyber said, interrupting my thoughts. “I would very much like to return from that conclave alive.”

I spent the night on the Doctrinaire , sleeping in one of the state rooms that Admiral Klyber reserved for visiting dignitaries. My bunk was hard, my room was sparse, and the bathroom was entirely made of stainless steel. I felt at home.

Stripping to my general-issue briefs and top, I took the book Klyber gave me and climbed into my rack. The sheets were coarse and stiff, stretched so tight that you could bounce a coin on them. It felt good to lie down.

Klyber had said that the book had a passage in it about a friend of mine. I opened the journal to the section marked by the thin strip of ribbon. As I looked at the handwritten entry, I realized that Admiral Klyber had been wrong. The man described in this journal was more of a mentor than a friend. The passage was about Tabor Shannon, whom I had met while serving on the Kamehameha, Klyber’s old flagship.

Shannon was a living paradox. He was a Liberator. He’d killed hundreds of enemies in battle, but he also went to Mass. He was the only clone I ever met with a religious streak. His religious feeling made no sense because, as a Liberator, he knew he was a clone and therefore knew God had nothing to do with his creation. Catholic doctrine held that clones had no souls. Almost every church taught that.

Shannon was intelligent, but he remained blindly loyal to the Republic to his last breath. He died in battle, fighting for the nation that had banned his existence. At the time he died I admired him more than anyone I ever knew, but I grew to despise him. He seemed pathologically determined to devote his life to those who cared least about him—the nation that had outlawed his kind and the God who disavowed his existence.

Since leaving the Marines, I had come to question the line that separated devotion and delusion. Granted, I was still working for the same side as always, risking my life for the same Republic that never shed a tear for Tabor Shannon; but I was different. I had gone freelance. I made money for my services. I was also free to leave. If the Confederate Arms offered me a better deal one day, I wanted to believe that I would take it.

Having seen what I had seen, I did not believe in nations or deities. And as for Shannon, who did believe, I could not decide whether he had been a quixotic hero or just a fool. Either way, I had no intention of following in his footsteps.

CHAPTER SIX

From the Journal of Father David Sanjines, archbishop and chief administrator of Saint Germaine:

Entry: Earth Date June 4, 2483

I received an urgent message from spaceport security this morning. When I called to look into the matter, the captain asked me to watch a feed from his security monitor.

They had detained a marine named Tabor Shannon. I only needed a moment to identify the problem. “Is that a Liberator?” I asked the captain. “Haven’t they been banned?”

“Liberators are not allowed in the Orion Arm,” the captain said. “They can travel Cygnus freely. If you want my opinion, I think they should all be executed.”

The ecumenical council of 2410 held that clones did not have souls and therefore did not fit the Catholic definition of human life, but I did not think that made them machines. Church canon dating back to Saint Francis forbade cruelty to animals. Perhaps this Liberator clone had more in common with a mad dog than a man, but he had blood running through his veins, not oil. He was no machine.

The captain told me that he checked with the U.A. Consulate. “We don’t have to let him on our planet. Should I send him away?”