The Clone Empire

“I thought you came here first,” Doctorow said.

“I wasn’t involved. Olympus Kri was already in the works before they transferred me here.”

Doctorow nodded to show that he accepted the explanation. “So we’re the third planet in line …if their advance is chronological.” He spoke in a flat tone that would veil both belief and skepticism equally. He sat very still, his hands on his lap, his eyes meeting mine.

“Did you come here to organize an army?” he asked.

I shook my head. “An evacuation.”

“An evacuation?”

“There’s no point even trying to fight,” I said, and I told him what had happened on Olympus Kri. I explained about the destruction and how Freeman and I had hidden in an underground power station during the attack.

Doctorow listened to my story, his face a mask hiding whatever emotion he felt. When I finished, he summed it up by stating, “So you propose we evacuate the planet.”

“We’d need to contact Andropov and—”

“Andropov? Are you here in concert with the Unified Authority?” he asked, sounding suspicious. “I thought you were at war with them.”

“They declared war on us,” I said.

“You stole their ships,” Doctorow said.

“They sent us out here for target practice. This is ancient history; we don’t have time …”

“Absurd. Everything you have said is preposterous,” Doctorow said.

“I see, then your only other choice is to take your people underground.”

“I will need some time to think it over,” Doctorow said. Though he tried to hide it, I could tell that he had already made up his mind. “Do you have any evidence to prove what you are saying?”

“No,” I said.

“So I have to trust you. I have to take your word on blind faith?”

“That just about sums it up.” I had never lied to him, at least no times that I could think of on the spot.

He responded with an elegant laugh. “Walk by faith,” he said, a vestige from the religious life he had abandoned. “Here’s my theory. I think New Copenhagen and Olympus Kri are just fine. The Unified Authority may have taken those planets away from you, but I suspect the people are safe.

“What happened, Harris? Did the Earth Fleet crush you again?”

I had told him the truth, and he called me a liar. Maybe the truth was on both his side and mine. The Earth Fleet had indeed just served us a bloody defeat. Had any of our ships survived the attack at Olympus Kri?

“You’ve got it wrong,” I said, though perhaps he didn’t.

“You want us to evacuate our cities and send everyone underground,” Doctorow continued. “Wasn’t that how you won the last one; you invited the U.A. Marines into an underground garage, then you buried them?”

“Bullshit,” I said.

I expected Doctorow to tell me to watch my language; but now that the Right Reverend was president, bad language no longer seemed to concern him. “Interesting strategy you have there, Harris, persuade your enemies to go underground and bury them—”

“You’re not listening,” I said.

“Then you start the invasion while we’re digging ourselves out.”

“Invasion? What kind of invasion? I came in an unarmed shuttle.”

“We know about the other ship,” Doctorow said. “We picked up the anomaly when your fighter carrier broadcasted in. We’ve been tracking it for the last hour.”

So the ad-Din made it out, I thought. That ship might have been the only reason I was still breathing. Doctorow was scared of her, and that made him scared of me.

“I’m trying to save lives,” I said.

“By flying a warship into neutral territory?” Doctorow glared at me, and added, “I’m not afraid of you, Harris. I’m not afraid of you or your clones or your ships.”

He delivered the lines well, but I could tell that I frightened him. I could see it in his forced expression. I could hear it in his voice.

“I’m not the one you should be scared of,” I said.

That ended the meeting. He stood up and left the room without saying another word.

I did not want to die in this police station. I did not want to die saving this worthless planet. I imagined what would happen to this room when the heat hit nine grand, how the glass would melt, and the walls would turn a glowing orange.

Looking at the camera, I let my thoughts drift, rewinding my interview with Doctorow. I replayed my story and his response. What I hated most about his explanation was that it sounded more plausible than mine. How ironic, his fabrication sounded more reasonable than the truth.

On this planet, I was the boogeyman, and I would die because no one trusted me, even when I told the truth. Doctorow had his ideal society, all right. He’d created a fleeting utopia; and now that he’d built it, his citizens would burn.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Nobles and I spent the night in an underground cell, a small cage about ten feet long and ten feet wide with bunk beds, a sink, and a little chrome toilet that rose out of the floor like a tree stump. I’d stayed as a guest in worse accommodations. I’d stayed as a prisoner in better.

An ever-present camera, sitting like a bird on a perch, watched over us from outside our cell. I had no idea who was on the other side of the camera, but the winking red diode on its base told me it was live.

I lay on the top bunk, and Nobles took the bottom. We seldom spoke if ever. He never told me his thoughts. I had Ava on my mind. I needed to find her. I needed to get out of this prison. Thinking of that, I asked myself, How many prisoners fried in their cages on New Copenhagen? And that reminded me of the Double Y clones we left on Olympus Kri.

Time continued to pass slowly by.

The hall was empty but brightly lit. Lying on my bunk, I covered my eyes with my right forearm and tried to sleep. The light did not keep me awake, but my thoughts did. For that reason, I was awake when the visitor arrived.

He appeared in the corridor that ran along the outside of the cells. As he reached our cage, the door slid open.

The visitor was a clone with no unique scars to distinguish him, but I recognized him just the same. It was the way he carried himself, I think. Maybe it was his cheerful expression. “Mars, what are you doing here?” I asked, remembering that he had chosen to stay on Terraneau.

“I came to help,” he said. He stopped just outside the door and watched me, possibly made nervous by my hostile tone.

“I thought you were a loyal citizen of Terraneau,” I said. Not sure if I should trust a man who had chosen Doctorow and his utopia over the Enlisted Man’s Empire, I decided to rake Mars over the coals. If he took it too easily, I’d know he was a spy.

Still standing outside my cell, Mars said, “Half the planet would come if you asked them now. Anyone who’s got any sense is more scared of Doctorow than they ever were of you.”

I heard him, but thought I must have misunderstood. Something was wrong with a world in which a retired priest scared people more than a Liberator clone.

“Don’t you like living in a utopian society?” I asked.

“Don’t know; I haven’t seen any utopias lately,” Mars said. “Once you left, Doctorow decided that his society could only work if everybody participated, so he armed his militia and moved them into Fort Sebastian. That’s when things got bad.

“When people disagree with his government, Doctorow sees it as a threat to his perfect world. The man keeps lists of agitators. Many of them have disappeared.”