The Clone Empire

“Are you looking for work?” I asked. “If you have an angle on Olympus Kri, name your price.”

Freeman did not answer right away.

I downed my beer and signaled to the waitress for another one. She brought it over.

I watched him closely. Freeman wasn’t in this for the money; he’d made over a billion dollars on New Copenhagen. “What are you looking for?”

“We’re all after the same thing.”

“Yeah, and what’s that?” I asked, not even bothering to hide my irritation. He wasn’t being straight with me, and I was tired of it.

“Survival,” he said. As he said the word, his fingers tightened around his unfinished beer.

CHAPTER FORTY

I called Warshaw to give him the news.

“The Unified Authority is planning to attack Olympus Kri,” I said. A simple announcement that I hoped would start the gears of war turning.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Warshaw said. “If they ever get around to picking a fight, that’s where they’re going to start it. Everyone knows that.”

“In five days,” I said.

“Five days?”

“The attack is coming in five days?”

“No shit? Who’s your source?” He wasn’t taking me seriously, but I had his attention.

“Ray Freeman, the same guy who warned us about the satellites,” I said. Warshaw had never met Freeman, but he’d certainly heard tales about the man.

“Wasn’t he the bastard who shot you on Terraneau?”

“And told us the U.A. was about to attack,” I pointed out.

“But he was working for them,” Warshaw countered. “He was delivering a message for Admiral Brocius. What if he’s still working for them?”

“He says he isn’t.”

“You believe him?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“He sounds like a real saint, Harris.”

“He was right about the satellites,” I said.

“Maybe he was right. We still haven’t found one. It makes sense that they’re spying on us, but that doesn’t make it true.

“U.A. spy satellites and God …you can’t prove either exists, but your questions are answered the moment you accept they’re out there.”

Warshaw had no interest in taking a leap of faith based on Freeman’s word, and I didn’t blame him. The Unified Authority had apparently stopped sending cruisers into our territory, and there was no way we would find those satellites without U.A. cruisers leading us to them.

“I’ve never met this friend of yours. Do you think he knows what he’s talking about?”

“He always knows what he’s talking about. That’s not the problem. It’s not a question of confidence, it’s a question of trust. Freeman’s out for himself. Even when he picks a side, he’s still out for himself. He keeps his cards hidden and plays his angles tight. So far, he hasn’t even told me why he’s helping us.”

“So why trust him?”

“History,” I said. “Until now, he and I always ended up on the same side. He makes a damn good ally.”

“Harris, that doesn’t even sound like you. You’re a brute. You’re a specking Liberator clone. If he’s not telling you what you want, catch the bastard and beat it out of him?”

I laughed. I could not stop myself. “Beat information out of Ray Freeman?” Killing him might not be too much of a problem, not with satellite surveillance and high-altitude air strikes; but trying to interrogate the son of a bitch would be like trying to tackle a bull elephant.

“If you think he’s a spy …”

“Not a spy,” I said. The man stood seven feet tall. He was an “African-American,” living in a time when races had been abolished. He was a purebred living among synthetics and mutts. Stealth was not among his long suits. Brutal strength, patience, and cunning intelligence were. He was a mercenary and an assassin, not a spy.

I felt tired. It had been a long day. I wished I could do something about the buzzing in my head, and sleep seemed like the best solution.

Planets had time zones, but outer space did not. The Space Travel Clock (officially Coordinated Universal Time) coincided with a zone that used to be known as Greenwich Mean Time on Earth. To avoid confusion, the Unified Authority had set up an arbitrarily selected twenty-four-hour clock for an endless void with an infinite number of suns but neither sundown nor sunup. St. Augustine, which had a faster rotation than Earth, had twenty-two-hour days. Warshaw and I spoke at the same time every night by his clock, but each of our meetings kept getting later and later by mine.

“It sounds like a trap,” Warshaw said.

“Maybe, but we’d still better get more ships out there,” I said. “I don’t see that we have any other choice.”

“What about the Double Ys?” he asked.

“We take care of them first. We can close that chapter today if we need to. All the pieces are in place.” Before leaving for St. Augustine, I had put Hollingsworth in charge of the project. Reconfigured posts were set up on every ship and in every fort. We could recall the armor in the morning and spring our trap in the afternoon.

“Hollingsworth says everything is ready. All he has to do is pull the trigger.” Warshaw knew Hollingsworth, they’d served on the same ship.

“Then pull the trigger,” he said. “The sooner we close that door, the better.”

“That still leaves Olympus Kri,” I said. This conversation was not going as I had hoped.

“I’m not sending more ships,” Warshaw said.

“What if the Unifieds have figured out a way to knock out our broadcast stations?” I asked.

“Not very likely,” Warshaw said, but he didn’t sound confident. Without a broadcast network lacing it together, the Enlisted Man’s Empire would come apart.

“Probably not,” I agreed. “I’m just thinking out loud.”

But my comment had the desired effect. Still nervous, Warshaw said, “I could send a few more ships …just in case.”

“I’m going to take the ad-Din out there,” I said. “I want to get as many Marines on the ground there as possible.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

We were coming down to zero hour for the infiltrators. Hollingsworth began the day by sending out a fleetwide order recalling all combat armor. Until we sent out new orders, any man caught in armor would be detained, questioned, and ultimately have his chromosomes scanned.

With the cogs quickly falling in place, Freeman and I met at Fort Greeley, the local Marine base, for breakfast. Wanting to stay alert, I ate light that morning, a boiled egg, a cup of coffee, and toast. Freeman ate relatively light as well, four eggs, a whole damn pig’s worth of bacon, two cups of juice, no coffee, no toast.

“How did you get to St. Augustine?” I asked.

“I flew here,” he said.

“Another one-way ticket?” He could not have flown in on a stolen Bandit; the broadcast computers on those ships were set for Earth.