the hormone in my rapidly chilling veins.
“My God,” I said. This was how the Liberators became what they were. This was why my kind were outlawed. I went to the communications console and sent a signal to Command. There would be repercussions from this killing. The man was in my room, he had booze in his blood and his gun in his hands, but he was a natural-born and I …I was a Liberator.
“Harris, shouldn’t you be getting ready?” Captain Everley asked as he answered the call.
“You might want to send somebody to collect my company commander,” I said. “We had a bit of a run- in.”
“Should I send a doctor?”
“No, but a priest might be good.”
“Oh, shit,” Everley said. “What have you done, Harris? I better call General Glade.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“I heard about Lieutenant Moffat,” Major Burton said, as I climbed into the jeep. He had suited up in combat armor, not the white armor we’d worn out in the open but the standard-issue dark stuff—the stuff we would wear as we entered the Avatari dig, the same armor I now wore. “Let’s go,” he said to the driver. A caravan of four trucks followed behind us.
“Think there’s going to be an inquest?” I asked. I felt curious but not concerned.
“I’m not entirely sure there’s going to be anyone alive to hold one,” Burton answered. “Even if there is an inquest, I think you will come off clean. There were two men outside your room when he smashed the door in. They said they heard him yelling at you and you telling him to go home.”
“Did they?” I asked. “Did they happen to mention why they didn’t call for an MP?”
“Yes, they did,” Burton said. “When they heard Moffat fall, they thought he had passed out.”
Had I been thinking, I might not have said what I said next. “The bastard did me a favor when he came to my quarters; he saved me the trouble of looking for him.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Burton said. “Lieutenant, you went a long way toward proving that the killing was not premeditated when you reported it right away; don’t spoil it now.”
“So there could still be trouble?” I asked.
“We have an impossible mission, and everyone agrees that you are the best man to lead it. If we make it out alive, I don’t think anyone is going to ask about last night.”
“What if we don’t make it out?” I asked.
Burton smiled. “If you don’t make it out, will you really give a shit what anyone thinks about you?”
That last comment might have been meant to make me feel better, but it didn’t. No one gave a shit about me; I was a clone. We spent most of the drive in silence.
During that silence, Major Burton’s entire demeanor changed. When he next spoke, he looked pale. “I’m scared, Harris. I’m so specking scared I think I’m going to be sick.”
I wanted to give him the same advice a drill sergeant once gave me: “If you have a choice, wet yourself.” We had a hose inside our armor that gathered urine. When you vomited, you inevitably left sawdust-colored stains on your chest plate.
I did not say that, however. Instead, I said, “You don’t need to come with us, sir. An extra pair of hands won’t make much of a difference.” He didn’t need to tell me how scared he felt, I could see it in his face and posture. Natural-born or not, he was a Marine at heart, and he would not back out. I felt a strange sympathy for the man. He had always been decent.
“Do you think we’re going to survive this?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s a one-way ticket.”
“And you’re okay with that?” Burton asked.
“I’d rather take a one-way trip than wait around to be slaughtered.”
Burton swallowed. He nodded but said nothing.
As we approached the landing strip, I saw trucks and jeeps parked around the buildings. All the top brass came to see us off. Now that the end was so near, the new competition among the generals was to see which one could portray himself as being more a man of the people. General Newcastle, who had previously preferred a limousine, had came in a staff-driven jeep, probably the first jeep he had ridden in years. General Haight drove himself in a simple town car. General Glade rode in the back of the troop carrier with the men from one of my platoons.
Burton and I waited in the jeep while he collected himself, the color slowly returning to his face.
Thomer approached us. He gave me a sharp salute, then asked, “Want me to get the gear loaded, sir?” He had a new energy to his step. I could not be sure, but I suspected that Thomer’s new enthusiasm had something to do with the late Lieutenant Moffat.
“Load it,” I said.
He saluted and left.
“You okay?” I asked Burton.
He drew in a long, deep breath, looked up, and met my eyes. “You know what, Harris, you’re better than any of them.” He looked at the generals standing in their little cult, then back at me, and said, “You’re tougher and smarter than all of them put together. Harris, you’re the real Marine.”
“Wear your helmet until you get into the transport,” I said. “No one will be able to tell you were scared.”
“Lieutenant Harris. Lieutenant Harris, thank God we caught you.” William Sweetwater waddled to the front of the pack of generals as they came toward the jeep. He was so out of breath from outrunning those old men that he bent over to huff and puff after calling my name. Sweat pasted his long black hair to his pudgy face. “Harris, we’re coming with you.”
Now there was an irony—Major Terry Burton, a professional Marine, had just told me that the thought of heading into the Avatari caves left him so scared he wanted to puke; now here stood William Sweetwater, all of four-foot-eight and out of breath from outrunning generals, demanding in on the mission.
“You want to go into the caves?” I asked. I looked over at General Glade, the man who had once called Sweetwater a coward. Our eyes locked for a moment, then he looked away.
“There’s a lot more to this than just blowing up a bomb down there,” Sweetwater said. Blowing up a bomb was, of course, exactly what I expected to do. “There are going to be tests. We’re going to need to calibrate the explosion. We’re not trying to blow up Avatari, we’re building a magnet for attracting tachyon particles. We need to—”
“Does this have to do with Dr. Breeze?” I asked.
Sweetwater knew exactly what I meant. I was suggesting that he was trying to go because his friend had died. I was suggesting he was unneeded baggage, and the dwarf scientist knew it. He froze like a thief caught in a spotlight, turned to face me head-on, and growled, “You’re goddamned specking right this has to do with Arthur.”
“Breeze is dead,” I said. “You’re not going to change that.”
“We are aware of that,” Sweetwater said in a cold voice. “That does not negate the fact that you will need someone to run final tests on the gas and calibrate the explosion for maximum effect.”
“And you are the only man for the job?” I asked.
“The best man for the job,” he said. He fumbled in his jacket and pulled out a very-small-caliber automatic pistol. “We also know how to use one of these,” he said.
Still sitting beside me in the jeep, Major Burton could not stop himself from laughing as he looked at the little man holding the little pistol. “A tiny gun like that won’t do you much good against the Mudders,” Burton said.
“You’d need armor,” I said. “The air is toxic.”
“We are aware of that, we authorized your first visit and analyzed the results,” said Sweetwater. He opened the little canvas bag that hung from his shoulder and dug out a rebreather and a pair of goggles that were wide enough to fit over his glasses.
“I’m not sure what that gas is going to do to your skin,” I said. I was anxious to get moving. We were wasting
