Rogue Clone

“Not that Boyd.”

The other fighters eyed Ray Freeman nervously, gave me a curious glance at most, and went back to finish dressing.

The air in the room had that sweaty, unpleasant humidity that comes with locker rooms and open showers. The floor was wet and slick. Near the door, a canvas basket on rollers overflowed with wet towels, some of which were streaked with blood.

“What makes you think I’m a Liberator?” I asked. This guy was a natural-born, a muscular man, maybe thirty- five years of age with sun-bronzed skin and bleached-blond hair.

“Boyd said you were,” the fighter said.

“I thought you said I killed him?”

“Not the one you killed, the next one. We had at least three of ’em …” He smiled as if remembering a joke. “At least three. They were clones. Had to be. You off-ed one and two others got busted up pretty bad.

“So you are a Liberator, right?”

I chose to ignore the question. “Is there going to be a Boyd fighting tomorrow?”

“Nah,” said the fighter. “The Boyds stopped coming a couple years ago. They’re gone …left the island.”

“Do you know where they went?” I asked.

“No, but I know where they used to live.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“But what is the point of creating a new strain of clones?” General Kellan asks. “We’ve been using volunteers in special forces for six hundred years.”

“My clones are more effective in battle,” Huang says. “They are more expendable, less concerned about self-preservation, and far more lethal.

“This new strain was developed specifically for commando operations. They are quick, think independently, and are programmed to kill.”

“That sounds an awful lot like Liberator clones,” an officer calls out.

Huang laughs. “Klyber’s Liberators were never in the same league,” he says with a confident laugh. “Klyber’s clumsy attempt at clone-making may have been enough for the Mogats …”

“Is that so?” asks General Smith. “I understand that you lost a squad of ten clones in an operation in Scutum-Crux.”

Klyber sits this battle out, preferring to let his allies ask questions and pose charges. He watches quietly from his seat, smiling as he follows the direction of the conversation.

“They were killed running drills on a planet called Ravenwood,” Huang admits. “Over a four-year period, we ran hundreds of drills and only lost one squad.”

“And how many Marines did you kill off?” the Marine general asks, sounding angry.

“I’d guess in the neighborhood of five to six hundred. Ravenwood was a major success. We sent squads of ten clones against platoons of forty-two Marines, and we only lost once. Most drills ended without the loss of a single commando.

“We also ran tests in a tough-man competition in Hawaii.”

“Sad Sam’s Palace?” asks the Marine.

Huang nods. Hawaii is a popular vacation and retirement spot for high-ranking officers and Sad Sam’s Palace attracts military types like a magnet. “I suspect many of you are familiar with the Palace’s tough-man challenge. If there’s a better testing ground for hand-to-hand combat, I have not found it.

“We had a clone fighting under the name Adam Boyd entered in that competition. He racked up a record of two hundred and fifty wins and one loss.”

“Two hundred wins and one loss?” General Kellan observes. “How do we get our hands on the guy who beat him? That’s who we should be cloning.”

The last time I visited Honolulu I stayed in a vacation home with a courtyard and a well-stocked kitchen. I came with a pal from my platoon, Vince Lee. He was a corporal, I had just been promoted to sergeant. I met a beautiful blonde named Kasara on the beach and we had a fling. She had a friend named Jennifer, so Vince got to share in the fun.

That was a vacation. This time I came on business.

Freeman and I drove out of town after visiting the Palace. We found a wooded area and pulled our car off the road. Then I curled up in the backseat for five hours and he pulled guard duty. Living with combat armor, you learn how to make yourself comfortable in all sorts of situations. Lying in the fetal position, with my knees propped up against my gut, I slept very soundly until 4:00 A.M., when Freeman and I switched places.

Massive as he was, Freeman breathed heavily in his sleep. He took long hard pulls of air, then exhaled in three-second drafts. His breathing sounded like waves rolling in and out of shore.

We were up in the slopes just north of town. I held Freeman’s pistol on my lap, well out of sight in case anyone passed by.

The sun rose at 0800. Sitting behind the wheel, feeling sweaty, with stubble covering my cheeks, I watched the sunrise. I watched the violet sky turn copper colored and then eventually blue. Down below us, the town filled with shadows as the streetlamps faded. Honolulu was a tourist town, but it had its share of traffic. I watched thousands of cars roll into the city in stop-and-go traffic. From my vantage point, they looked like a column of ants.

I did not notice when the current of Freeman’s breathing vanished behind me. The sunrise had just finished, and I watched mynah birds nimbly hopping back and forth on the branches of a nearby tree.

“You ready to go?” Freeman asked as he lay folded on the backseat of the car. It was early in the morning and his voice rumbled more softly than ever. His words came in a thunderous whisper.

“Good morning to you,” I said, knowing that the humor would be wasted on Freeman.

“Give me a moment.” With this, the big man reached across the seat and opened the door by his legs. He stretched his legs out and found the ground with his feet, then he sat up just enough to grab the edges of the open doorway and pull himself out. Once in the open air, he stretched and yawned. The sunlight reflected in a dull streak across his shaved head as he unfurled his long arms and rotated his back. Next, he walked into the woods to relieve himself. When he came back, I handed him his pistol and did the same.

We stopped at a drive-in restaurant and bought a couple of greasy egg sandwiches which we ate as we drove, passing signs with mostly incomprehensible names like Waipahu and eventually Wahiawa. We passed a defunct naval base called “Pearl Harbor.” The base was enormous.

We headed out of town and into the countryside where farmers grew pineapples. The pineapples grew in immaculate rows that made the landscape appear as if someone had raked an enormous comb across it. The pineapples themselves were knee-high clumps with football-shaped fruits in the center, like some sort of alien cactus.

We drove deep into the farming country where sugarcane fields stretched out along the sides of the road. We passed large stretches where only scrub trees grew. Antique railroad tracks ran along the side of the road at one point, and we crossed a steel-framed bridge that spanned a stream. I thought the countryside was beautiful. Freeman seemed not to notice it at all.

We passed Wheeler Air Force base. It was dark and abandoned. We did not stop. A few miles farther, we approached another military complex called Schofield Barracks, a defunct Army base.

Schofield Barracks looked a lot like Wheeler and the defunct Naval base at Pearl Harbor, just an empty campus with sturdy two- and three-story buildings. From the road it looked a good deal larger than Wheeler but not even half the size of the Pearl Harbor facility. There were no immediate signs of life, but there was one difference at Schofield Barracks—the main gate was wide open. A length of chain link fence blocked the main gate of Wheeler and some of the gates around Pearl Harbor were bricked shut.

“You think they’re expecting us?” I asked.

“Looks that way,” Freeman said.