CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The three of us, Ray, Archie, and I, met alone in the Starliner. Either Ray or I had to remain in the ship at all times. With their satellites and observation equipment, the crew of that battleship could watch us closely, and they might yet have commandoes or snipers around our camp. As long as one of us remained on the ship, grenade in hand, they could not gas, rush, or shoot us.
“We were better off before you came,” Archie yelled in his booming baritone. He stood a couple of inches taller than me, and despite his age, there was a menacing quality to his angry stare. His eyes were as dark as shotgun barrels, and when he frowned, the wrinkles formed concentric Vs on his forehead.
It was still night outside, but now no one slept. The congregation sat around a bonfire. I could see them through the window. The fire glowed bright and warm. Its sparks rose into the sky.
Archie paced back and forth in the aisle as he thought and spoke. “I should have known better than to trust professional killers. I should have known you would start a war.”
Maybe he was right. With the exceptions of Ray and myself, no one had fired a shot, but that would undoubtedly change.
“All they want is your ship,” Archie said. “I say you give it to them.”
I wanted to remind Archie that I was not a member of his congregation, but I fought back the urge. I also wanted to tell him that this wasn’t just a question of me giving up my ride to help build his clone-hating kingdom of Christ. Before I could do that, Ray told him what I should have been thinking.
“You think they’ll take the ship and leave?” Ray asked.
Archie did not answer for a moment. “There’s no reason for them to stay,” he said, watching the members of his congregation through one of the windows. “There’s no reason for them not to leave once we give them what they want.”
“How many people do you think they have up there on their carrier?” Ray asked.
Archie shook his head. “Couple hundred?”
“Have you ever seen a carrier?” Ray snorted. He turned to me. “Harris, how big is the crew on a U.A. carrier?”
“Full crew? Twenty-five hundred,” I said.
“A couple thousand,” Ray repeated. “And how many people do you think could fit on this little ship?”
“A dozen, maybe two,” Archie said.
“How long do you think it would take those Marines to fly a couple thousand men to whereever they want to go? Five months? Six months? That’s assuming the broadcast engine holds up under the strain of extended use. What if it breaks? You saw that Marine. Do you think he would be able to repair it?” Ray spoke in actual paragraphs. I was used to him speaking in single syllables and an occasional sentence.
“Some of those Marines are going to have to stay here for a long time. When half of them are gone, they won’t even have enough of a crew to man their ship. Sooner or later they are going to need to leave it. Do you think they’re going to make good neighbors? Do you think they’re planning on sharing this planet or taking it?”
“I bet they are planning to share,” I said. “Who’s going to plant the crops and grow the food? Those clones are programmed for combat, not farming.” I remembered that clone quipping, “Maybe he wanted to poke a few women,” and hoped Archie remembered it, too.
“So after six months of servitude, we would be free. Our lives for six months as slaves; that sounds like a fair trade,” Archie kept on arguing, but he sounded desperate.
“You think they’ll behave themselves for the six months?” I asked. “They’re clones. They’re the ones with the guns. You can bet that the commanding officers will be the first to go, so the enlisted men will be in control. They’re sterile, not impotent.”
“Harris means that there are going to be rapes,” Freeman said.
“Copulate, not populate,” I said in a glib tone. “It’s a Marine Corps motto.”
That got through to Archie. He heard this and froze, wringing his hands as he thought. “And you think you can get them to leave without giving up your ship?” Archie asked. “They may just decide that if they can’t have your ship, neither should anybody else. They may decide to simply kill us all.”
“They won’t,” Ray said. “They need the ship whole or they would have mowed us down last night.”
By this time, Freeman had replaced the pins in both of his grenades. We only needed to maintain the illusion of live grenades.
“They need the Starliner,” I said. “You and your congregation may want to stay here for the rest of your life, but they don’t. The only reason they haven’t attacked so far is this ship. Do you really want to hand over our only bargaining chip?”
Archie sighed. “So what do we do?” His spirit had finally broken. His shoulders slumped and his head hung. When he looked up, he had the face of a tired old man. “We can’t fight them.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Ray and I got four of them already. That only leaves two thousand four hundred and ninety-six to go.”
Archie did not notice the humor. Neither did Ray. No surprise there.
Ray gave me a cold glare, then said, “Let’s see what their commanding officer has to say. Then we can talk about next steps.”
Outside the ship, the first morning light began to break. The congregation did not waste daylight. We were close to a river. Three young men, Caleb among them, went to fetch water. A team of men resumed clearing a field they had begun the day before. Others worked on the temporary housing.
“You know the commanding officer …this General Lee?” Archie asked. “Is he a reasonable man?”
“Lee was my best friend when I was in the Corps,” I said.
“Are you still on good terms with him?”
“The last time I saw Vince, we were on fine terms,” I said. “He thought I died in action a few days later, so he probably considers me absent without leave and a traitor to the Marine Corps.”
“That’s bad news,” Archie said.
“Vince doesn’t think much of your son, either,” I said looking over at Ray. He must have known what was coming, but he did not so much as blink. “The last time they met, Ray paid Vince twenty dollars to put on my combat armor.”
“I don’t understand,” Archie said.
“Ray told him he wanted to play a joke on a mutual friend by having me wear somebody else’s combat armor. Only it wasn’t a friend, it was an assassin. There was a man hoping to shoot me. Ray used Vince as a decoy while we snuck into a building and caught the bastard.”
Archie took in these words, then brightened. “But you didn’t step out of the ship when those Marines were here, Raymond. He won’t know you are part of this.”
Freeman pointed to the cola-colored skin on the back of his hand. “He’ll figure it out.”
Most of the day passed and we still had not seen Vince Lee. He may have thought that making us wait would give him a psychological advantage. That was what I thought he had in mind until I saw Lee in person.
His invasion force had come in the dead of night. It was early evening when Lee’s transport first appeared in the sky. By that time, many of the congregation had given up on him. The women toiled in an already-cleared field with hoes. Men cut down trees with saws and axes. Ray’s mother, a woman in her late fifties with long pearly hair, taught the children math, reading, and religion by the dregs of the bonfire.
I was in the cockpit mulling over my options and feeling guilty about relaxing while everyone else toiled. When I glanced over at the navigational computer, I spotted the transport.
“He’s coming,” I called to Ray. “One ship, headed straight for us.”
“Think he’ll be reasonable?” Freeman asked, preparing the grenade and stashing a few pistols around the back of the cabin.
“Archie would love Vince Lee,” I said. “Lee was the most anti-synthetic clone I ever met. I think he suspected he was a clone. He protected himself from the death reflex by hating other clones.”
“Any chance we could just say, ‘Lee, you’re a clone,’ and kill him off?” Freeman asked.
“Maybe we could start a chain reaction?” I said, only half joking. This idea might have had a shot at working. If
