The Clone Elite

“Bullshit,” Philips said. “I’m the one who slept with his ugly-ass wife. This is my specking court-martial.”

“Go kill a Mudder,” I said. He did not listen. He and his platoon trailed after me, my unwanted entourage.

Behind us, another building fell. It may have been the fifth or the fiftieth—I had lost count.

I accelerated to a jog, skirted around a park bench, then kicked a trash can out of my way. Trash sprayed through the air. A wine bottle hit the ground and spun in a circle. I was almost to the street, Philips and his platoon just a few feet behind me. Across the street, I saw dozens of officers huddling around a makeshift bunker. They were the second echelon. They would watch how the enemy attacked the men on point, then send reinforcements. Technically speaking, Moffat was on the front line; but for those of us on point, he looked to be a million miles away.

I was too enraged to hate the man. Hate takes thought, and my brain was strictly on survival mode—breathe, walk, kill: things I could do without thinking. Nothing mattered to me except killing Moffat and the testosterone- laced adrenaline running through my veins.

Moffat stood at the front of the pack. I saw his virtual tag—Name: Warren Moffat, Rank: Second Lieutenant, Serial Number: 61752248013. He stood in the open, staring straight at me, his arms crossed before his chest.

“Arrest that man,” Moffat said over an open frequency that every Marine in Valhalla would hear.

The first Marine to reach me was Major Brad Warren, a good man from the command staff. He came slowly, his pistol held low but drawn. He clearly did not want to arrest me.

“Lieutenant,” he said, starting to raise his weapon toward my chest. I grabbed his hand, twisted the gun back against the top of his wrist, and flipped him out of my way. Another Marine reached for me. I slapped my palm into his right shoulder while kicking the inseam of his knee. He spun and fell.

Suddenly a dozen guns pointed at me. Marines standing so close I could reach them with my elbows pointed guns into my chest. Marines standing a few feet away pointed guns at my head. I grabbed one of the Marines by the top of his chest plate, but staggered when the butt of another Marine’s pistol slammed into the unprotected area between my helmet and shoulder plate.

By this time, my combat reflex had all but obliterated my thoughts. Feeling nothing but anger and a desire to kill whoever had just struck me, I threw the Marine I had grabbed to the ground and spun to see who had hit me.

“For God’s sake, Harris, stop!” Philips shouted.

As I started to come to my senses, the hammer struck. I felt the blow, knew it had knocked my helmet from my head; but that was all I knew as I fell face-first to the street.

Since the U.A. Marines did not have a base on New Copenhagen before the war, they did not have a brig of their own. As he prepared for the Avatari invasion, General Glade commandeered a downtown police station to use as a holding pen for grunts who got drunk or caused problems. When I woke up, I found myself a guest of that facility.

I was alone, lying on the floor in a jail cell. After weeks spent cursing the twenty-four-hours-per-day illumination of the ion curtain, I now found myself in near blackness. The only light came from two “EXIT” signs a long way from my cell.

The dim lighting was a good thing because my head felt like someone had used it for a soccer ball. This was worse than a hangover. When I reached back and felt the spot where my skull and neck came together, the goose-egg-sized welt was wet to the touch.

I reached out and felt a cot just a few feet from where I lay on the cold floor. Using that cot like a crutch, I pulled myself up. Blood rushed to my head, so I sat and tried to get my bearings. I took a personal inventory. My name was Wayson Harris, I was a lieutenant in the Unified Authority Marines, and we were stationed on New Copenhagen where some mother-specking aliens were going to annihilate our army and bake the survivors. Good, I thought to myself, no brain damage. Would I bake in this very cell?

I did not have my helmet. The MPs must have confiscated it as they dragged me down here. I did not have a gun or a knife or even my combat boots. Had Moffat brought me down himself, he probably would have shot me. Had he come with the MPs that dropped me off, he would have left a knife or a rope, something I could use to commit suicide so that he would not need to come back and kill me himself. He sure as hell did not want me getting out of here alive. Fortunately, the MPs must have brought me down here, and they would have done everything by the book.

My brain felt like an open wound. Circles of white light popped behind my eyes as I lifted myself off the cot and stood. I listened for the sounds of battle and heard nothing. But that did not mean anything—from what I could tell, I was in the basement of the police station. A few minutes later an explosion gave the building a quick shake, and I knew the war was still on. So be it; there was nothing I could do. I climbed onto the rack and lay there. If the Avatari reached this building, they might cave it in. I’d be crushed like a bug, but that might be better than starving to death. If we lost the battle, I might just be down here as the planet fried. I should have shot Moffat—at least then I would have gone down with something to smile about.

The tremors continued. They were not constant, and I never got the feeling that the police station would come crumbling down on me, but every few minutes I felt another undeniably unnatural vibration.

I must have been down in that cell for hours, the twelve-hour muscle relaxant I took for my shoulder wore off. That gave me some perspective about how long I had been down there. It also hurt like hell. I tried to sleep but could not get over the anger. I thought about Moffat and dreamed up a hundred different ways to kill the son of bitch. I lay there in the semidarkness, staring up from my rack, when I realized that I did not care if the Avatari collapsed the building on top of me. Let them, I said to myself.

Lost in my thoughts, I did not notice when the vibrations stopped outside the station. They might have faded, or they might have stopped abruptly. At some point I realized that I had no idea when the vibrations had ceased.

No one came for me. Time ticked by slowly. At least I thought it passed slowly. Without a clock, I had no way to judge. Maybe there’s no one left to come for me, I thought. Maybe they are all dead. I liked that idea; it meant I had outlived Moffat and Glade and Newcastle and the whole clone-hating cabal. I did not mind the idea of dying in this cell. Starving to death did not sound appealing, but I did not mind the idea of dying alone.

Time continued to drag on. I fell asleep. When I woke, I searched around the cell until I found the toilet that sat in the corner. I took a piss. I found the sink while I was on the head and washed my hands. I cupped my hands and took a drink. The water tasted rusty. The sink was small and shallow, but I thought it might be big enough for me to submerge my face and drown myself. The problem was, I would never be able to kill myself. The neural programming in Liberators did not allow us to commit suicide.

Shredding the mattress and using the material to hang myself seemed like the best option as I considered ways to shorten my stay in the jailbird hotel. If I didn’t mind hanging naked, I could use the sheer material in my bodysuit to tie a noose. I could drag my rack against the bars of the cell, then tie one pant leg around my neck and the other around the bars. My neck would snap as I rolled from the rack. I knew from experience that necks snapped easily when you gave them the right sort of force. I knew I could not bring myself to do it, but it felt good to think of ways I could end this.

Feeling like I might just be able to pull it off, I slid my cot against the bars, and there I sat. This was not the first time I had contemplated suicide to avoid a slow death. The last time I found myself in a similar situation, I discovered that I could not go against the things that were hardwired in my head. So I kicked up my feet and lay back on my bed and waited to see what would happen next. Time passed, then I heard someone open a door.

I did not worry about a visit from the Avatari; they would not bother hunting stragglers. What did they care about stray humans running around the city?

It could have been Moffat, come to fix me once and for all. I hoped it was. I would try to goad him close to the cell, then I would tear out his throat. We could die down here together. I liked that idea. Then again, I was feeling drowsy and possibly a little deranged.

“Harris? You in here?” I recognized the voice. Major Terry Burton came in with an entourage of officers and MPs. The low glow of the “EXIT” signs reflected on their combat armor. They came to my cell and looked at me through the bars. “Comfortable?” Burton asked.