Rogue Clone

I nodded.

“When the battle started, one of our cruisers remained behind.”

I thought about this and remembered a ship sputtering forward and falling behind the rest. I assumed it had mechanical problems. Then, as the battle progressed, I forgot all about it.

“That was the weapon,” Yamashiro said this with the self-satisfied air of a man who believes that he has satisfactorily explained a great mystery.

“That cruiser destroyed the Doctrinaire? ” I asked, doubting.

Yamashiro looked back at his officers, then decided to give up the goods. “Admiral Klyber was a very aggressive commander. He would send his command ship into battle along side his other ships. Robert Thurston was more of an organizer. With a super-ship like the Doctrinaire , he preferred to shoot enemy ships as his support fleet herded them in his direction.

“Klyber would have flown the Doctrinaire as it was meant to be flown, like a gigantic battleship. Thurston used it like a floating fortress. Do you see now?”

I shook my head, though the pieces were starting to come together.

“Klyber would have flown his ship up and down the battlefield. Thurston remained in one place, destroying every ship that came within range. He remained in one place long enough for us to chart his position and …”

“You broadcasted that cruiser into the center of the Doctrinaire ,” I said. My admiration was immense. “Absolutely brilliant.”

“We placed a nuclear bomb on the bridge of the cruiser.”

“So the cruiser was a drone?” I asked.

“You can’t self-broadcast a drone ship. You might lose control during the broadcast. We could not trust a drone ship, not with so much depending on it. We trained a crew of Morgan Atkins Believers to fly a suicide mission.”

“A kamikaze mission? You trained kamikaze pilots?” The irony was remarkable, but Yamashiro seemed unimpressed. He gazed at me with a stony expression. “You taught a bunch of Mogats how to run their own broadcast computer?” I asked. “Did you give them some engineering tips?”

Yamashiro nodded.

“And they would have passed that information on to their friends,” I said. “You won the war and made yourselves expendable. From here on out, the Mogats will be able to pilot their own ships.”

Yamashiro pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. He drew the smoke in very deeply and held it for several seconds in his lungs. His eyes never flickered. He never blinked. He stared off into the distance as he performed the calculations that now ran through his head. He was stocky and strong, but still an old man. His allies had outmaneuvered him, and he knew it.

Dressed in his suit and red necktie, his black hair brushed back and oiled, Governor Yoshi Yamashiro considered the alliances to which he had sold his soul. Whom did he hate more, the Confederate Arms, the Morgan Atkins Believers, the Unified Authority, or himself?

“We cannot fly you back to Earth,” Yamashiro finally said, after blowing a stream of cigarette smoke. “That entire system is a battle zone. Is there anyplace else you would like to go?”

“Anyplace?” I asked. “Take me to New Columbia.”

CHAPTER FORTY

I had a lot of reasons why I wanted to return to New Columbia. If I had to be stranded on a planet, being stranded on a planet with a large agricultural base and a small population was attractive. Thanks to the evacuation, New Columbia had far more food than people.

Even before the evacuation, New Columbia had the kind of economy that could survive on its own. In Safe Harbor and other cities, it had both industrial and financial infrastructures. Outside of those cities, it had large farms. The planet had started out as a farming colony. Granted, I had enemies in Safe Harbor. If Jimmy Callahan survived the attack on the Marine base, he would have a score to settle with me. There might be Marines who would consider me a deserter for not staying on base during the attack.

But I also had my reasons for wanting to go to New Columbia. The first was Ray Freeman. The last time I spoke with Freeman, he was headed to that very planet to meet with me. While he and I were not exactly friends, we were partners. I felt as connected to him as I did to any man in the galaxy. Since the Mogats destroyed the Doctrinaire , I had begun to place more importance on people.

My other reason for wanting to go to New Columbia was my plane, the self-broadcasting Starliner I had borrowed from the Doctrinaire . The ship was mine now, free and clear. With the destruction of that great ship, no one even knew that Johnston Aerodynamics had ever built a self-broadcasting Starliner. Once I had the Starliner, I would no longer be stranded on New Columbia …assuming it survived the attack.

From the bridge of the Hinode battleship, a deck officer took a satellite scan of Safe Harbor and reported to Governor Yamashiro. “The city was evacuated before the attack,” he said. “It still appears mostly empty. The primary targets were all destroyed. I did locate a tank and some armored personnel carriers moving in the city limits. I also recorded a firefight.”

“Artillary?” Yamashiro asked.

“Small weapons,” the officer reported.

“Are you certain this is where you want to go?” Yamashiro asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

He turned to his deck officer. “Can we send a transport safely?”

“From what I can tell, there are no people around Safe Harbor spaceport.”

“You think it’s safe to land there?” Yamashiro asked.

“I doubt anyone would even see us flying in. The spaceport is several miles out of town. Even if they pick up the transport on the way down, we should be able to lift off again well before anyone comes within twenty miles of us.”

“How does the airport look?” I asked.

“Undamaged,” said the officer. “I don’t think any looters have made it out there yet. It’s pretty far from town and the roads were destroyed.”

“What about the Marine base?” I asked.

“Destroyed.”

“The Army base?” I asked.

The officer shook his head. “All primary targets were destroyed.”

Maybe Callahan was dead, I thought. Even as I thought this, a voice deep in my head scoffed at the idea.

Yoshi Yamashiro suggested that I wear old Galactic Central Fleet work fatigues rather than the uniform of a Hinode officer. Actually, he told me to change into the fatigues, but he made it sound like a suggestion by saying, “Maybe you would present less of a target by wearing fatigues.”

I knew better than to argue the point.

Yamashiro and his senior officers walked me to the landing bay and escorted me on to the transport. Yamashiro bowed and his officers saluted as I walked up the ramp. I turned and returned the salute.

The kettle was large and gloomy, big enough to hold one hundred men and entirely empty except for me. I looked around the poorly-lit cabin, taking in the metal walls and shadowy compartments.

There was a box on one of the benches. The card on the box had my name on it. As the thruster rockets lifted the ship off the deck, I sat down and opened that box. Inside it, I found an M27 complete with a detachable rifle stock. I found a particle beam pistol. I also found a combat knife with an eighteen-inch serrated blade and a blood gutter that looked remarkably similar to the knife that the Hollywood version of me carried in the movie, The Battle for Little Man . The knife that I had once thought no self-respecting Marine would carry, I now connected to my belt. In the quagmire of Safe Harbor, that knife might indeed come in handy. The box also held an ammo belt. Under the belt I found five spare clips for my M27 and a half-dozen golf ball-sized