The Clone Alliance

Takahashi looked at Freeman, and I did not like what I saw in his eyes. Maybe I imagined the whole thing, or maybe I saw something hidden in the flat expression on his face. Something about the way Takahashi smiled at Yamashiro suggested to me that he looked upon Freeman and me as expendable assets.

“Shin Nippon is prepared to form an alliance with the Unified Authority and the Confederate Arms,” Yamashiro said. “None of our armies can defeat the Mogats alone. When the Mogats discover Shin Nippon, their fleets will defeat us. They will roll over us like a wave crushing a sand castle on a beach.”

From his delivery, I had the feeling that the analogy of the wave and the sand castle was neither spontaneous nor original to Yamashiro. He was rehearsing the pitch he would use to sell his idea on Earth.

“The Confederate Navy is also too small to oppose the Mogats, and their land forces are useless against an orbital attack. Only the Unified Authority has enough ships to fight the Mogats, but their ships do not have self- broadcasting capability.”

“The U.A. Navy is useless,” I agreed. “They’re beached without the Broadcast Network.”

“Exactly,” Yamashiro agreed. “It is exactly so.”

“If you’re talking about restoring the Broadcast Network, it can’t work,” I said, putting down my juice and finally noticing the charts on the back wall. “We’d never be able to defend it. The Mogats would be able to shoot it down anytime they wanted.”

There were several charts along the wall. One of them showed a schematic diagram of a broadcast station.

“I agree with you, Harris, we would not be able to defend the Broadcast Network even if we could repair it,” Yamashiro said. “For now, I simply propose an alliance, nothing more.”

“How do we play into this?” Freeman asked.

Yamashiro’s expression turned to surprise. “I should have thought that was obvious. We need to send somebody to Earth to propose our alliance.”

“You want us as ambassadors?” I asked, trying to suppress my sardonic smile.

“You mean you’re using us as guinea pigs,” Freeman said. “You want to see if we can land on Earth without getting shot.”

“Yes,” agreed Yamashiro. “You are perfect for the job.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Kampai. It means, ‘dry glass.’”

“Dry glass?” I asked.

“Yes, ‘dry glass,’” Yamashiro said. As he generally did, Yamashiro conducted himself in a subdued fashion as we entered the officers’ club. He spoke softly, wore a veiled expression, and did not look me in the eye.

We had come to celebrate the sale. Yamashiro had sold Freeman and me the concept of going to Earth. Now it was time to mark the occasion with booze.

Enlisted men are the same in every army. They like to get drunk. They drink to steel themselves before heading into combat. They drink to celebrate when they return home. On long stretches between combat missions, they drink to ward off boredom. In the unpredictable days before a campaign, they drink to calm their nerves. Had he been a Marine instead of a philosopher, Rene Descartes might have said, “I drink, therefore I am.” That is the empiricism of the enlisted man.

In the Unified Authority Marines, officers held to a different standard. They drank, though not as publicly as their enlisted underlings. The officers I knew might enjoy a strong libation before or after combat; but, unlike the privates and sergeants below them, they did not necessarily drink until they became drunk. Such was the culture of the Unified Authority Marines.

The officers in the Shin Nippon Navy, on the other hand, started their off-duty hours with the stated goal of getting drunk. Yamashiro, Takahashi, and six other officers led Freeman and me into the officers’ club telling us that they would not take us to dinner until we were too drunk to know what we were eating.

We sat on mats beside a table that only came up to our knees. I had seen bars like this on Ezer Kri, the planet these men had once called home. This was their idea of a traditional pub. The time I entered a bar like this on Ezer Kri, the matron pretended she could not understand me unless I spoke Japanese. On that occasion, I ended up in a bar with normal waist-high tables and chairs.

Sitting around the table, all of Yamashiro’s officers became equals. Hideo Takahashi sat shoulder to shoulder with Yamashiro himself, and the two men spoke freely. It no longer mattered that Yamashiro was the chief administrator of Shin Nippon or that he was Takahashi’s father-in-law. Takahashi no longer played the samurai, and Yamashiro no longer played the shogun.

A pretty waitress in a silk kimono came in and placed four ceramic bottles on our table, then she handed out lacquered cups. She had long black hair combed back into an elaborate bun.

“You have women on your battleship,” I said, remembering my surprise at seeing the secretary earlier that morning.

“How very observant you are,” Takahashi said. “I am glad you are so alert.”

“Women on a battleship, that’s unusual,” I said. “Don’t you worry about…”

One of the officers poured cups of Sake and passed them along the table. We all took one.

“Do you know Sake?” Yamashiro asked me.

“I’ve heard of it,” I said. “Some of the guys in my platoon tried it when we were on Ezer Kri.”

“But you did not try it?” Yamashiro asked.

I shook my head.

“Kampai!” yelled one of the officers. Everyone tossed the Sake into their mouths and, as far as I could tell, swallowed without tasting. They threw it so fast that it practically sailed over their tongues and down their throats.

I drank the contents from my cup. It was warm.

Freeman held his cup but never drank.

The officers refilled their cups quickly and drained them with another shout of “Kampai.” I followed suit. Ray did not.

“I don’t worry about the women on my ship, especially this one,” Yamashiro said as he watched the waitress enter the room. She brought four more bottles of Sake.

Yamashiro was already on his third or fourth cup. His posture had relaxed, and he spoke less guardedly. Beaming with pride, he added, “I have had her a few times myself.”

“Why isn’t your friend drinking?” Takahashi asked me. English was the first language on Ezer Kri, but these officers conversed just as comfortably in Japanese. They pronounced English properly, but sometimes they strung their words together in ways that might have been influenced by speaking Japanese.

Takahashi turned to Freeman. “Don’t you like Sake?”

“I don’t drink,” Freeman said.

Takahashi looked at me, confusion showing on his face. “How can that be?”

“I’ve had most of the girls in the administrative area,” Yamashiro boasted. He was now on his fifth or six cup. I was still on my third, not that it would have mattered. Whether by accident or by design, Liberator clones had a nearly superhuman tolerance for alcohol. “God made us that way,” I mumbled to myself. God, of course, was the government.

“Kampai!” Another round of Sake disappeared from the table. That pretty waitress returned every five or six minutes with more bottles. Judging by Yamashiro’s responses to her, each time she returned, she became more beautiful.

“How can you not drink?” Takahashi demanded of Freeman. “Everybody must drink. You cannot live if you do not drink.”

When we first entered the club, some of the officers around the table spoke in Japanese. Now they all spoke in English, and they did not seem to care if I overheard their conversations.

“If the Mogat fleet is anywhere near Earth, the clone and the black man are as good as dead.”