The Clone Empire

“Lyra.”

“Lyra, those aliens weren’t soldiers, they were businessmen,” I said. “They didn’t come looking for a war, and when we gave them one, they went to bother someone else.”

Lyra saw things as they were. I spoke to her the way I would speak to a scared child, but she knew war and death as intimately as I did, and she took no comfort from my reassurance. She let me say my piece, thanked me, then recited the specials of the day. I ordered baked fish and wild rice, hoping it would be as good as the meal I’d eaten with Warshaw.

Looking around the restaurant, I saw only couples. A meal in this place would cost more than most sailors or Marines wanted to pay; but men on leave will sometimes pony up the credits if they think it will change the outcome of their date.

Scrubb’s had a bar near the front, the kind of place that would attract conscripts and officers alike. The bar sat on a slightly raised floor that overlooked the rest of the restaurant. Debbie, the hostess, must have worked the bar as well as the restaurant floor. I saw her walk in, heads turning to follow her, and disappear into the darkness of the bar.

That was when I spotted the phantom. He sat alone at a small table, quietly looking around the floor. He might have been either a Marine or a sailor, a clone to be sure; but dressed in a bright tropical shirt and slacks …the typical serviceman on leave.

Like any other single man drinking alone in a room filled with couples, he looked out of place as he scanned the floor around him. Something did not seem right about him. I could not put my finger on it, but he just came across wrong. Like a tree in a desert or maybe a wolf among sheep, I thought to myself.

The man was not trolling for girls, that much was clear. Time passed as he slowly nursed his beer. A waitress ran her rounds in his part of the bar. When she saw his untouched glass, she approached the table and said something to him. He answered, and she rolled her eyes and walked away.

The man leaned back and rested his arm on the rail that separated the bar from the rest of the restaurant. He casually surveyed the bar, then the eatery. The move looked so relaxed, so subtle. Too relaxed, it felt calculated to put people at ease.

Why would he come here alone? I asked myself; but even as I thought this, I realized that I had come here alone, and just like the phantom, I was looking around the floor and studying the wildlife. Did I make him suspicious? But this guy wasn’t drinking. His beer was a prop.

As he scanned the restaurant, his gaze eventually drifted to my table. I saw him looking in my direction, and he saw me staring back. I expected him to turn away, but he didn’t. His eyes stayed on me as he took in my insignia or possibly counted the stars on my collar. He met my gaze with a look that showed neither fear nor nervousness, then calmly pulled out his wallet and dropped a few bills on the table. Without looking back, he abandoned his money and his half-finished beer.

I started to go after him. I stood, then questioned myself. What did I have? Why would I stop him? He didn’t finish his beer, big specking deal. What did that prove? I only hesitated for a moment, then I went after him; but that moment was enough. By the time I reached the street, the phantom was gone.

I went back into the restaurant wondering if I had made a mistake. As I tried to reason out my suspicions, my fish arrived.

I sat, and I ate, and I rewound the scene and watched it over and over again in my head—a clone comes into the bar. He sits alone. So what?

I took a bite of fish and chased it with a forkload of wild rice. The rice had pepper and butter. The food tasted good, but it was wasted on me. I would have been just as happy eating bad food camouflaged with ketchup. I took another bite of fish and realized one difference me and the phantom—I was eating my fish; he had only been hiding behind his beer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

After my meal, I returned to the police station and found Cabot.

He saw me, growled, “General,” then caught himself and paused.

“Spit it out, Cabot,” I said. For a moment, the little asslicker had shown a bit of backbone.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked. He looked relieved to have said his piece, then he winced as he braced himself for me to respond.

Finding humor in his discomfort, I smiled, and asked, “Did you just say ‘hell’?”

Cabot turned red and stared at the floor.

“Did you just ask me where the hell I went?” I continued, sincerely enjoying his discomfort.

“Sorry, sir,” he said.

“I went out for a quick dinner.”

Cabot looked up from his feet, and said, “You left three hours ago, sir. We have MPs combing the city for you.”

“Good Lord. You’re like an obsessive mother and a nagging wife all rolled into one.” I said this in a chiding tone, not really caring how derisive it sounded. “You called the police because you didn’t know how to find me?”

“General, you were gone three hours. We were just looking at bodies, sir. I have every MP in the city searching for you. The station is on high alert.”

I looked around, and said, “High alert? Cabot, we need to do some serious field training on police procedures down here. I was able to walk in here without anyone even noticing me.”

Cabot pursed his lips as he fought to control his anger. He might have been a hanger-on, but he was also a one-star admiral, the kind of man who normally talks down the chain, not up. When he next opened his mouth, he spoke in an even tone as if the conversation had started anew.

“We’ve received body counts from every precinct on the planet except for one, a town called Sunmark,” he said.

“What’s the count at?” I asked.

“We’re up to 503 bodies found in the last three weeks.”

“That’s a lot bodies,” I said. “Five hundred stiffs, and it never occurred to anyone that there might be an epidemic?”

“General, that’s 503 bodies planetwide on a planet that doesn’t have centralized communications,” Cabot said. He had a point; no one on St. Augustine knew what anyone else was doing.

“Any idea when we’ll hear from the last station?” I asked.

“We haven’t been able to reach them. The town is not very far from here; I sent some men to knock on their door.”

Cabot heard back from his men an hour later. The Sunmark police station was empty. As far as anyone could tell, all our MPs were M.I.A. and probably worse.

The ghost precinct was less than one hundred miles away. By the time I arrived with my entourage to investigate, it was 00:13, a cursed time if such a thing could exist.

Bright light shone through the windows of the precinct building as we pulled up. A few men searched the alley around the building. The inside of the precinct building looked as busy as an anthill, with MPs bustling in every direction.

I did not recognize any of the men beyond their uniforms and the fact that they were clones, but some of them had undoubtedly come as my support staff. At that moment, another piece of the puzzle fell into place for me.

What if somebody killed a member of my staff? I thought to myself. I don’t know them well enough to tell them apart. If someone quietly murdered one of my men and showed up in his place, I wouldn’t notice it.