Rogue Clone

came to Albatross Island were soulless creatures. I saw nothing redeeming in them.”

“‘But if there be no virtue to take away, consequently there can be no vice,’” Shannon said.

I heard this and smiled and took a long sip of sherry. “You’ve read Saint Augustine. Impressive. But you’ve misquoted him. Augustine said, ‘If there be no good to take away.’ He also said, ‘It is impossible that there should be a harmless vice.’”

“He did say that, didn’t he?” the Liberator said cheerfully.

“The Liberators who invaded Albatross Island did a lot of harm. I believe that their existence is a vice,” I said. “It is a vice of the Unified Authority government.”

“I never cared much for Saint Augustine, anyway,” Shannon said. “What about the secular philosophers? Friedrich Nietzsche said that no man has an eternal soul. If he was correct, that would put us all on equal ground. None of us would be alive by the Vatican’s definition.”

“Quoting a philosopher who referred to himself as ‘the anti-Christ’ does not generally lead to a favorable impression in a Catholic colony,” I said. “I suggest you restrict yourself to Saint Augustine while you are on Saint Germaine, Mr. Shannon. Better yet, I suggest you avoid discussion of philosophy entirely. The people on this planet have strong opinions.”

“While I’m on Saint Germaine?” Shannon asked, “Are you allowing me to stay?”

“What is the object of your pilgrimage?” I asked.

“The same as any pilgrim,” the Liberator said. “I seek truth. I want to know who I am and how I fit into the universe.”

“And you believe you can find those answers on our little planet?” I asked.

“I’m curious about Catholicism,” the Liberator said.

“I can tell you where the Catholic Church stands when it comes to you and your place in the universe. The Catholic Church holds that you have no soul and that you are an abomination.”

“And yet I am created in God’s own image.”

“Man was created in God’s image,” I told him.

“And I was created in man’s image,” he said.

I said, “I will allow you to visit our planet, and I hope that the answers you find here will not leave you discomfited.”

I did not let him stay because of his amateurish attempts to grasp philosophy. I let him stay because I believed he was sincere, and that intrigued me. If this man was a Liberator, then he was by nature a killer and a creation without a soul. I knew this to be true, though in his case, I am not certain that I believed it was true.

CHAPTER SEVEN

March 13, 2512 A.D. Location: Golan Dry Docks; Galactic Position: Norma Arm

The Golan Dry Docks were considered one of the “seven man-made wonders of the galaxy.” Other wonders included the Capitol Building in Washington D.C., the outer-galactic scientific observatory on the outer edge of the Orion Arm, the planetary food storage and production facility on Nebraska Kri, the all-faiths military burial facility near the center of the Norma Arm, the Sol science station on the surface of the sun, and, of course, the Broadcast Network.

Funny how the mundane wonders get overlooked. I considered the spaceport on Mars far more wondrous than the Sol science station or the Nebraska Kri food-packing plant. That place was so big that it needed a resort- sized dormitory to house clerks and waiters. Mars Spaceport even had a smaller secondary dormitory that housed the people who ran special stores, theaters, and restaurants for the employees living in the primary dormatory.

My mind wandered when I traveled through space. The light flashing on my radio brought me back to reality. “Starliner A-ten-twenty-thirty-four, this is Dry Docks traffic control, please come in.”

“Traffic control, this is Starliner A-ten-twenty-thirty-four.”

Ahead of me, the Golan Dry Docks looked like a cross between bleached bones and a giant spider web. Eight-mile pillars described the outside of the platform in lilting arches like the ribs of a gigantic skeleton. Between these pillars was a haphazard warren of walls that divided the structure into mooring slips and construction zones. Scaffolding lined the insides of those slips. From out in space, the scaffolds looked like threads instead of twenty- foot-wide metal platforms. The dry docks housed over eight hundred cubic miles of space for building ships.

Golan did not orbit a planet. It was a free-floating space station.

“Starliner pilot, please identify yourself and prepare for security scan.”

This request did not worry me. The Golan Dry Docks were one of the most security-intensive facilities in the galaxy. Knowing that Admiral Klyber had picked me for this assignment, the head of Doctrinaire security crafted my new identity and logged my clearance and flight plans while I was still on New Columbia. He knew where I was headed before I knew, it seemed. Rather than enter the Dry Docks as Corporal Arlind Marsten or Lieutenant Wayson Harris, both of whom had damning skeletons in their closets, I now traveled as Lieutenant Commander Jeff Brocius of the U.A. Navy assigned to the Central Cygnus Fleet.

I flew a Johnston R-56 Starliner, a 20-seat luxury craft on loan to me from the Doctrinaire fleet. The R-56 was generally flown by corporate pilots. Like every other pair of wings on the Doctrinaire , this R-56 had been outfitted with its own broadcast engine.

“Please state your identity.”

“Lieutenant Commander Jeff Brocius, U.A. Navy.”

“Lieutenant Commander Brocius, copy. Are there passengers aboard your flight?”

“No, sir.”

“Thank you, Starliner.”

Traffic Control was acting unusually polite and I had a pretty good idea why. Security gave me the name Brocius because Admiral Alden Brocius, the officer-in-command of the Central Cygnus Fleet, was headed to the Golan Dry Docks for the summit. For all the men in the traffic tower knew, I was the admiral’s son or nephew.

“Starliner R-fifty-six, we are under heightened security at this time. Please switch off all onboard controls. Our traffic computers will guide your ship into port.”

“Aye,” I said.

The traffic tower took control of my ship the moment my hands left the panel. Lights turned on and off as traffic control accessed all of my instrumentation. They might discover that I had unusual equipment on board, but they would not know it was a broadcast engine unless they tracked me from millions of miles away. I had disconnected the power after broadcasting in. Without a generator pouring tera-volts into it, the broadcast engine would look like nothing more than spare parts to their security computers.

My ship slowed to a near standstill as it joined the queue waiting to enter the Phase 2 landing bays. Unlike the rest of the platform, Phase 2 of the Golan platform was totally enclosed.

Seen from this side, the Dry Docks had a sleek teardrop shape. The outer skin of the station had a pattern of shining black squares against a flat white base. As I flew closer, I realized that those black squares were enormous solar energy cells.

This side of the Dry Docks facility had three landing bays, each marked by two half-mile wide circular entrances called “apertures.” All ships entering or exiting the docks would have to pass through those doors. As traffic control led me toward one of those openings, I saw the distinctive silver-red of a security laser and knew someone in the dry docks had X-rayed my ship.

Leaning back in my seat, I took in the sights as my ship dropped into place before one of the apertures. Inside,