He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “It doesn’t wash, sir. They couldn’t land that many replacements on the planet without people noticing.”
“There are eighty thousand clones on St. Augustine taking leave at any moment. Who’s going to notice a few hundred infiltrators?” I asked.
“They’d notice if a bunch of clones disappeared …” Cabot began, but he stopped himself.
“We found 550 victims give or take a few. Did anybody notice anything before we started counting bodies?”
We had thirteen fleets filled with clones who had not been ashore for at least two years. For the men on leave, St. Augustine was a bottomless supply of booze, women, and freedom. From the moment they landed to the moment they returned to duty, they left their brains behind.
I had a slightly different view of the planet. I saw St. Augustine as a malignant tumor that had metastasized and was now spreading cancerous poison throughout the Enlisted Man’s Empire.
Cabot and I spoke for another few minutes before I dismissed him. He’d done his job.
An hour later, I had typed up my report and my recommendations, weak as they were. The only answer I could come up with was to be on the lookout for clones in their midtwenties who seemed alienated from the rest of the crew. Maybe we would catch a spy, and maybe he would break under interrogation. Then we would have more.
In the short term, I was placing my investigation on hold. I knew someplace where I could assemble an elite brigade of Marines that I knew had not been infiltrated. The only question in my mind was, “Would they follow me?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I sailed out of the Scutum-Crux Arm on a wrecked battleship and returned on a yacht …more or less. I rode a frigate to Gobi, then requisitioned the
In demographic terms, the
There were twenty-two hundred Marines stationed on Terraneau. The
I toured the Marine complex as the
“General Harris?” The voice of Captain Pete Villanueva spoke to me from a squawk box on the wall. I wondered if his voice had sounded from every speaker in the Marine complex or if some onboard system had tracked my movements.
I went to the box. “Harris here.”
“We are in Scutum-Crux space, sir.”
“What is the situation?”
“All clear, sir.”
Several months had passed since the U.A. Navy attacked Terraneau. If the Unifieds were coming back, I figured they would have done it months ago.
“Have you made contact?” I asked.
“We reached Fort Sebastian, the Marines are expecting you, sir.”
“Very well. All I need now is a transport and a pilot,” I said.
“Your staff pilot is ready and waiting for you, sir.”
“My staff pilot?” I asked. He might have meant Nobles, but to the best of my knowledge, Nobles was still on the
“Captain, please send a security detail to the landing bay,” I said. “Have them seal off the bay and wait for me in the hall.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Under no circumstances are they to enter the bay before I arrive,” I said.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
I didn’t need to worry about them arriving before me as the Marine complex was on the same deck as the landing bay. Running through the hall, I arrived in about three minutes. My security detail—six men armed with M27s—arrived a few seconds later. Villanueva ran a tight ship; I was impressed.
“There’s a transport waiting for takeoff,” I told the men. “The man piloting that transport may be a Unified Authority assassin.”
If these men had been SEALs instead of MPs, I would have sent them in first. I’d seen SEALs at work; they could slip into a hangar, sneak onto a transport, and knock out the pilot more smoothly than most men could zip their pants.
MPs had a different calling. They arrested drunken sailors and escorted troublemakers to the brig. “I’m going in first. I want you to come in fifteen seconds after me. If there’s an enemy in there, I want to take him alive,” I said.
They answered with nods and sirs.
“Fifteen seconds, then you come in with your fingers off your triggers. I don’t want you shooting me in the back,” I said.
Months had passed since the last time I’d seen combat. During that time, I had not so much as fired a gun at a range; so as I entered the landing bay, it came as no surprise that I felt a nervous rush of adrenaline. I had not slipped into a combat reflex, but it wasn’t far off.
I stepped through the hatch, took three steps forward, and heard the familiar greeting.
“General Harris.” Sergeant Nobles waved and greeted me like an old friend. Then he remembered himself, stiffened, and gave me a proper salute.
“Nobles?” He fit the profile of the U.A. assassins—a clone in his twenties. He was neither heavy nor thin, neither muscular nor frail. Put him in any platoon, and he would blend in.
I had burst through the hatch and run toward the transport, then I slowed to the speed of a drill sergeant inspecting his platoon. A few seconds passed and the hatch opened again and six M27-carrying MPs charged in behind me and ground to a stop. I did not even need to look back to know they had confused expressions on their faces.
They had come in locked and loaded, expecting a fight. Instead, they got a dawdling general and an unarmed man standing at attention.
I ignored them and returned Nobles’s salute.
“Are we bringing an escort, sir?” he asked. The guy was so positive, so innocent. Six armed MPs had just stormed the transport, and it never occurred to him that he was under suspicion.
I said no and dismissed the MPs.
Thus began one of the more dismal missions of my career.
* * *
I did not expect Philo Hollingsworth to greet me with open arms, but I thought he would be interested in what I had to say. As things currently stood, he commanded a tiny base on a backwater world that was cut off from the rest of the universe.
