“Want me to kill him?” I asked. “That’s what it’s going to take to shut him down.”
This was new territory for Sad Sam’s Palace. In the past, Iron Man championships were won or lost by knockout. Seconds passed with Monty still curled on the ground, too drugged to tap out and too injured to continue the fight. Finally, the walls of the cage rose in the air, and the referee ended it.
The ref swaggered into the ring with the bravado of a sailor on leave. When he looked down at Monty, no sympathy showed on his face. Then he looked over at me. “Damn, with all the shit this guy took, I thought he would get you,” he said as he raised my hand.
So ended my last fight at Sad Sam’s Palace. I gave Monty’s broken leg one last kick for good measure before climbing out of the ring and heading to the locker room.
CHAPTER THREE
I picked up an entourage as I stepped from the ring. MPs, both from the Navy and the Marines, fell in behind me. These boys came prepared, pistols in their belts, nightsticks in their hand. I had barely stepped to the floor when the first two fell in behind me. A few feet later, I picked up two more. By the time I reached the service hall that led to the locker room, I had my own little platoon.
I paused to look at Leanne, Bethany, whatever her name was …She sat at the table watching me. Our eyes met. I knew our eyes were the only part of our anatomy that would meet from here on out.
Other fighters and several Palace workers milled around the hall as I headed toward the locker room. They cleared out of the way as I stalked past. It might have been the line of MPs traveling behind me, but no one ever patted me on the back or told me congratulations under normal circumstances, either. It’s the nature of the beast—most people don’t feel sentimental about clones who beat people up for a living.
I opened the door to the locker room and found that someone had switched on the lights. My entourage did not follow me inside, nor did they leave me to my own devices. A Marine major flanked by two more MPs stood in the center of the locker room waiting for me.
“Wayson Harris, by the articles of U.A. Senate resolution 2514-353, otherwise known as the Elite Conscription Act, you have been called back to active duty in the Unified Authority Marine Corps.” By the stilted way in which the major delivered this line, I could tell that he had committed it to memory.
Without saying a word, I pulled off my trunks and walked over to the bathroom. I stripped off my cup and placed it on the stand behind the sink, then strode over to a urinal. I had three prefight beers to tap, but it still took a few seconds to get started. We stood in silence, me tensing and relaxing to squeeze whatever I could out of my bladder, the major angrily watching me piss. His polished demeanor disappeared. “Lieutenant, I am talking to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“You will show me the proper respect, Lieutenant,” the major said. “You are speaking to a superior …”
By this time I had cleared the blockage, and the old hose ran full flow. If I let go to salute, the waterworks would have flown out of control.
“I may have been out of the loop too long,” I said, “but last I heard, I’m still a civilian and we don’t have superiors.” I gave myself a last shake and stepped away from the urinal, making a point of not washing my hands. I did grab my protective cup off the sink and toss it into a waste can, adding, “Guess I won’t need that anymore.”
I went to my locker and pulled out my clothes. Given the chance, the major might have had his MPs teach me a lesson about showing respect to officers, but that would not happen here. Somebody a lot more important than this major wanted me back in the Marines.
“You planning on giving me trouble, hotshot?” the major asked.
“Not me,” I said. And I didn’t. I stepped into my underwear and pants. I pulled on my shirt and followed the major out as meek as a lamb.
As we stepped out of the locker room, I heard the plink of hard-soled shoes running up the hall. I turned just in time to see my date.
“Wayson, what’s going on?”
“I’ve been drafted,” I said.
“Move it, Harris. You’ve got a plane to catch,” the major said. He started to walk away. My entourage waited for me to follow him. With a hesitant sigh, I started up the hall.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
I stopped to look back at her. There she stood, with her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, her perfect skin, and her slender figure. “Leanne,” I said, “I have no idea.”
“My name is Christina,” she said.
“No shit?” was the last thing I said to her as one of the MPs gave me a shove. I did not expect to come back. If the aliens I saw on that Mogat planet were headed toward Earth, I wouldn’t find her alive even if I did return.
“Move it, Romeo,” an MP said as he gave me a careful prod with his stick.
“Get specked,” I said, stopping to stare the guy down. He glared back, looking like he would have gladly dropped down one rank just to take a shot at me. I probably looked like I wanted him to try.
“Don’t worry about him; he’s an asshole,” another MP said, nodding toward the first. That broke the ice. We left Sad Sam’s.
Three jeeps waited along the road that ran behind the Palace.
The major stood impatiently beside one of them. “He’s an asshole, too,” the MP muttered as we approached.
“He’s an officer,” I said. “They’re all assholes.”
“They’re making you a lieutenant,” the MP said. He led me to the first jeep, then watched from the sidewalk to make sure I climbed in.
“You haven’t been paying attention,” I said. “I’m an asshole, too.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Until recent events upended our society, the Broadcast Network was the superhighway that laced the republic together. Even flying at the speed of light, and the Navy’s fastest ships did not travel at the speed of light, it would take a hundred thousand years to fly from one end of the galaxy to the other.
Broadcasting technology solved that problem. You could “broadcast” a spaceship to any spot in the galaxy instantaneously. The process involved coating the ship in highly charged particles, translating the ship and everything on it into a transmittable form, then sending it to the target location. The Broadcast Network, which was little more than a string of interlinked satellites, not only facilitated galactic travel, it also transmitted communications instantaneously. With the Network in place, man and messages could travel from the Orion Arm to the Norma Arm in less time than it would take to drive a car around the city block.
That ended two years ago, during the Civil War. A religious group called the Morgan Atkins Believers, better known as the Mogats, wanted to break up the Republic. They damn near accomplished it, too, by destroying the Mars broadcast station—the satellite closest to Earth. By knocking out the keystone broadcast station, the Mogats cut Earth off from the rest of the Republic. With the Mars station down, the other stations lost their power supply and the galaxy “went dark.”
Once the war with the Mogats ended, I had expected to hear about the government reopening the Broadcast Network or at least beginning work on a new station around Mars. If that work ever began, the news never got out. They could not have built one in secret; broadcast stations are built around mile-wide mirrors that act like focusing lenses.
I expected the major to drive me to Honolulu Airport—a civilian facility used mostly for servicing atmospheric
