shop had been murdered.
Some of the planes had been on the planet for weeks. There was no telling what had become of the clones who had piloted them or how much damage they had done.
By the time I arrived on St. Augustine, the Easter egg hunt had ended. I hadn’t come looking for planes.
I went to Scrubb’s, the restaurant where I had spotted an infiltrator clone my first night on St. Augustine. Having no other means for contacting Freeman, I had suggested this restaurant as a place where we could meet. I told him I would come here every Thursday night.
I spotted Freeman the moment I entered.
He sat at a two-man table, looking as out of place as an adult at a child’s tea party. His knees arched above the top of the table, and his feet poked out the other side. Had he tried to wedge himself into a booth, he would not have fit.
Freeman spotted me but made no move to invite me over. He sat quietly, pretending to look the other way while watching me in his peripheral vision.
Piano music wafted on the air in the bar, weaving its rhythm through soft conversations. The floor was busier than the last time I had come, heavily packed with sailors and Marines in civilian clothing.
“There are a lot of clones in here. Are you sure they’re all friendly?” I asked as I sat down.
“One of them wasn’t,” Freeman said.
“Where’d you leave the corpse?” I asked.
“In a bin out back,” Freeman said.
“Was he much of a problem?”
Freeman’s gaze floated past me and across the floor. He gave his head the slightest shake. “No. Not much of a problem.”
I wondered how he identified the clone; no one had told him about Double Y chromosomes. He probably went by his gut instincts. If I had to choose between chromosome scans and Freeman’s gut instinct, I’d go with the latter. I had that much confidence in him.
I wanted to tell Freeman about chromosome scans and how we would soon take care of the infiltrators, but I kept quiet. I only trusted him so far. He was a mercenary. In the end, he was loyal only to himself.
“They’re going to invade Olympus Kri,” Freeman said. Had anyone else said this, I would not have taken it seriously; but Freeman did not suffer small talk or gossip.
“You’re behind on the news,” I said. “They’re already on the planet. We found a couple of hundred Bandits hidden—”
“I’m not talking about clones,” Freeman said.
“When?” I asked, surprised that the Unified Authority would launch a full-scale invasion on an E.M.E. target.
“Five days.”
“Are you sure about that?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, not so much as a shrug. He just looked at me and gave me the standard penetrating glare, his coal black eyes boring into my head. “They want the Orion Arm back. Sooner or later, they’ll come here, too.”
“That doesn’t sound like Brocius,” I said. “We have more ships, more men, and more resources. That puts the odds in our favor, and he never moves unless he has the upper hand.”
I’d had plenty of experience with Admiral Alden Brocius. He was a competent officer, but he was also the kind of officer who refuses to play unless he gets house odds.
“Brocius is out. Brocius, NewCastle, Smith, they’re all gone. The Linear Committee cleaned house two months ago.” The Linear Committee was the executive arm of the Unified Authority government.
Now that was news to bring a smile to my face. I could only come up with one reason for the committee finally giving those bastards the boot—our little rebellion. They were the ones who lit the fuse. They were the ones who came up with the idea of stranding us in nonbroadcasting ships and using us for target practice.
“Have I met any of the new brass?” I asked.
“Hill is still around. He replaced General Smith at the top.”
“Nickel Hill?” I asked. General George Nicholas Hill had run the Air Force effort on New Copenhagen during the alien attack. Not the bravest officer in the military, but a bright guy and a man who spoke his mind. He always struck me as fair.
“All the new leaders served on New Copenhagen,” Freeman said. “That’s the new litmus test. Officers who ducked New Copenhagen get field assignments.”
“The Linear Committee only trusts veterans of New Copenhagen …I don’t suppose that means they want to kiss and make up with the clones who actually won the war?” I asked, feeling bitter indeed. The Linear Committee had sat back and watched as Congress placed the thirty thousand clone veterans of New Copenhagen in concentration camps.
Most of the officers who fought on New Copenhagen kept well away from the front line. Us clones …we were the front line. They gave the orders, we paid the price. The normal ratio of enlisted men to officers was six to one, but the ratio on New Copenhagen was fifteen to one. The survival rate among clones sent to New Copenhagen was one in seventeen. Out of every seventeen clones sent to fight, sixteen ended up dead. The officer corps had it better. Out of every one hundred officers on New Copenhagen, eighteen were killed, and eighty-two returned home to a hero’s welcome.
A waitress stopped at our table, and I ordered a beer. She looked at Freeman’s drink and said nothing to him. Like that infiltrator I’d spotted, Freeman used his drink for camouflage, not that a seven-foot man can hide behind a single glass of beer. Every person in the bar was aware of Freeman. He was tall, he was dark, and even when he smiled, he was menacing.
“Hill isn’t stupid,” I said. “He’s got to know we have ten times more ships than he does. Even if he takes Olympus Kri, we’ll just take it right back again.”
“You have a hundred times more ships,” Freeman said. “Their self-broadcasting fleet took a real hit on Terraneau.”
“I knew they lost ships,” I said.
“A lot of ships. They had to decommission half the ships that returned home,” Freeman said.
We’d lost a lot of ships, too; but we could better afford to lose them. “If that’s true, it only makes an attack on Olympus Kri more ridiculous. That doesn’t sound like Hill.”
When Freeman did not answer, I asked, “What aren’t you telling me? There is something you aren’t telling me.”
He shook his head.
“Why should I trust you?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he changed the subject. “Have you figured out why the Pentagon sent out those clones?”
“The Double Ys,” I said, hoping the name would irritate Freeman. He had no patience for clever nicknames.
“Is that what you call them?” he asked, obviously unperturbed.
“I don’t know if you heard about their chromosomes, they have an X and two Ys. Apparently that makes them more dangerous. Sending out saboteurs isn’t going to sink our fleet.”
Freeman sat still and placid, but his eyes burned holes in my head as he said, “You still don’t get it. Hill doesn’t want to sink your fleet; he wants to take it back whole.
“You’re looking for war while he’s slipping you rat poison. He figures if he kills off enough of your officers, your enlisted clones will just hand the ships over. He doesn’t care about clones. It’s the ships he’s after.”
“Then he’s out of luck,” I said. “We’ve pretty much cracked our infestation problems.”
“They’re tracking your movements, too,” Freeman said.
“Right, the satellites. You were the one who clued us in about them, remember?” I felt frustrated. This was Ray Freeman, nothing ever slipped his mind, yet here he was, telling me things he had already told me. The pieces did not fit.
“So if it comes to a fight, are you taking sides?” I asked.
“We’re talking,” Freeman said.
