“Really?” the man said. “Sounds like you gave yourself the easy job.”
Some of this footage was undoubtedly taken from the battle records. Watching untold numbers of enemy soldiers charge over the far ridge of the valley, I felt my skin prickle on the back of my neck. I saw the way they poured over the rise like ants swarming out of a hill. They had rust-red armor that sparkled in the sunlight. They shouted in unison. Seeing their advance, the Marines stopped and dug in.
“I didn’t have much to say in the matter. I was a sergeant. They didn’t make me an officer until after the battle.” The filmmakers probably had little choice about this last piece of deception. Portraying me as an enlisted man would lead to questions about whether or not I was a clone. And I was not a general-issue clone. I was something far more dangerous.
The battle raged on. Trapped and hopelessly outnumbered, the U.A. Marines circled their wagons and tried to withstand the advancing horde. Marine riflemen formed a picket line in front of a battery of men with mortars and grenade launchers.
“They make these movies look real,” the man behind me said.
“That is real,” I said. “The part about me is a specking myth, but this part …”
The movie cut to a dogfight in space, a part of the battle I had only seen in the news feeds. Seeing the holographically-enhanced image on the big screen was a dizzying experience. The Separatists sent four battleships to destroy a lone Unified Authority fighter carrier patrolling Little Man.
What the Mogat Separatists did not know was that Rear Admiral Robert Thurston, who commanded the Scutum-Crux Central Fleet, had carriers and destroyers hidden behind a nearby moon. Hundreds of fighters poured out of those hidden carriers and swarmed the Mogat battleships. Three of the battleships exploded in space. The fourth crashed into the valley just as the Mogats polished off the last of the Marines. I watched the destruction from the safety of a nearby ridge, and I remember thinking that it looked like a portrait of Dante’s
The movie recreated the entire scene faithfully except that it had me leading my six survivors into a nearby cave. Having placed me on the front line of the battle, the scriptwriters would not have been able to explain how I sprinted to safety up the side of the canyon.
“Damn, Harris. You escaped in a cave?” the man asked. I heard newfound respect in his voice.
“Something like that,” I said.
The screen cut to a scene showing six of the survivors saluting Hollywood Harris as he boarded a transport to Earth. Those six would attend officer training in Australia. They were the first clones ever to become officers in the Unified Authority Marines. As his transport flew out of the docking bay, a lone bugle played Taps and the screen went black. The words, “
“That’s heart-breaking, Harris,” the man behind me said. “It’s specking heart-breaking. I’ve seen this show a couple of times now, and that part always gets to me. Know what I mean?”
CHAPTER TWO
“Okay, so you weren’t a lieutenant and you didn’t lead the charge on Little Man …yeah, and you didn’t die on Ravenwood? Should I believe the rest of that stuff?” The man who sat behind me in the theater was Jimmy Callahan, a New Columbian thug who hoped he could make a name for himself by playing the local espionage game. Sometimes I missed the mark with first impressions, but I felt relatively confident that Callahan was a punk and a prick. On the plus side, I was pretty sure I could trust him to deliver as promised so long as I was the highest bidder.
Callahan and two buddies had taken me to an outdoor cafe and we took a table on a terrace overlooking a trendy part of town. “You know, Harris, it just goes to show you, you can’t trust anyone anymore. I mean, here’s a movie that’s supposed to make people feel all warm and patriotic; and what do you tell me? It’s a pack of lies. Nothing happened the way they said it did.”
A line of shrubs formed a waist-high wall that ran along the edge of the terrace. Small green birds, no larger than an infant’s fist, darted in and out of its leaves.
Below us, a steady stream of pedestrians flowed across sidewalks lined with clothing stores, banks, and eateries. The workday had just ended. Men in suits and women in dresses waited at intersections, peered in store windows, and eventually ambled into a nearby train station.
Now that I had met him in person, Callahan struck me as a lightweight trying to make a name for himself. He had a menacing presence. I gave him that much. His muscular chest and shoulders filled his T-shirt and his bulging arms stretched the fabric of its sleeves. But Callahan had a soft, manicured, almost pansy-fied face. His cheeks were pudgy and his skin was smooth. He marbled his brown hair with blond streaks.
“From what I hear, you’ve got information on some pretty big fish?” I said, trying to show him respect he had not earned.
“Big fish?” Callahan asked. “Yeah, I suppose you could call them big fish.”
“How do we know we can trust you?” I asked.
“I’m good for it,” Callahan said, and he turned to smile at the two men sitting behind him. They returned his smile. These were his bodyguards, I supposed, though I sensed the relationship went beyond mere protection. These other two were not as big or as strong looking as Callahan and I began to wonder if they were perhaps his younger brothers. Despite the gruff way he treated them, there was some kind of affection hidden in his voice.
“I suppose the reason you’re going to trust me is that I have what you want,” Callahan said, and his cronies chuck-led. “The only reason we’re talking is I got information and you’ve got money. Am I right?”
He paused. He wanted me to appreciate his rich sense of humor. I did not speak or nod. After a moment, he went on.
“An alert guy like me with an unlimited supply of information …I figure you can take a chance on me. As long as your friends in D.C. have a bottomless wallet and I’ve got good information, Harris, it’s the world’s greatest romance.”
Callahan spoke in superlatives. Everything was the “best” or the “most.” He irritated me, but I would put up with him as long as his leads checked out.
A waitress came to our table. “Have you decided what you want?” She turned to me first.
“Got anything in that’s Earth-grown?” Callahan interrupted.
The waitress smiled. Customers typically paid nearly twice as much money for food made with Earth-grown ingredients. Outworld-grown products tasted just as good, but there was a snobbish appeal to buying Earth- grown.
“We received a shipment yesterday,” she said. “The salad bar is entirely Earth-grown tonight. Oh, and we received a shipment of Earth-brewed beers.”
Callahan stopped to think about this. His small, dark eyes sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight. He stroked a finger along his right cheek. “It’s too early for dinner. Tell you what, you fix me a small salad and bring me a bottle of your best Earth brew.”
The waitress moved to one of Callahan’s thugs.
“I’ll take a beer …”
Callahan turned to scowl at the man.
“Tea, please,” he said sounding disappointed. The other thug ordered the same.
She turned to me and smiled. “What would you like?” the waitress asked.
“I’m fine,” I said taking a sip of water.
“All right,” Callahan said, nodding approval. “So are we going to do business today? I hope you didn’t come all this way just to see yourself in the movies. Know what I mean?”
I leaned back in my chair and sipped my water. A stiff evening breeze blew across the terrace knocking menu cards from some of the tables. Across the plaza, the sun started to set behind the skyline. The traffic was tied up in the intersection below us and the street looked like a parking lot.
