The Clone Redemption

miles away, its surface had no more features than a rubber ball.

Twenty-seven seconds had passed.

Miyamoto turned to his satellite feeds, his expression unflinching. Through the satellite’s mobile eye, he could count the pea-sized pebbles around the target. He could see the “deck” and the land around it. The satellite allowed him to zoom in close enough to study a grain of sand or pan his view out so far that he could peer down on an entire hemisphere.

He thought about Bushido, the Samurai code of conduct. The old captain organized his life around his own personal Bushido, letting it bind his thoughts as rigidly as any Christian monk had ever embraced the Ten Commandments. Even before the war, back when he lived on Ezer Kri with his wife, Miyamoto tried to live the detached life of the Samurai code. When he visited his children and their children, he had made himself gruff and distant and showed no more emotion than a stone in a river.

He knew that his sailors considered him cold and indifferent. He also knew about the Kabuki mask in the officer’s lounge, the face of a scowling demon that his officers jokingly referred to as Miyamoto-san.

The code was the stuff of legends and stories, a tradition so old that nobody knew how rigidly the ancients had lived it. Miyamoto’s New Japan was built upon such legends. And now, with the future of that New Japan hanging in the balance, Miyamoto Genyo was glad for the code.

When the timer showed that one minute and five seconds had passed, Miyamoto ordered the transport pilots to purge the air from the kettles and open the rear hatches. He gave the order in Japanese.

The pilots responded immediately.

This was the pivotal moment. By opening their hatches, the transports would nullify the stealth envelope that kept them hidden. If the aliens were watching, they would detect the transports, and they might attack.

Seconds ticked by slowly. One minute and five seconds became one-fifteen, and then one-thirty-five.

Takeda grimaced, and told the technicians, “Prepare to launch.”

He looked at the moon through the viewport, a silver coin in a velvet space. He looked at its image in the satellite feed and saw a desert pitted by craters and marked with a deck as flat as a dance floor.

One minute and fifty-two seconds. Fifty-three. Fifty-four. Fifty-five.

Miyamoto clenched his hands into fists and hid his fists by his sides so that no one saw him trembling. He felt the weight of humanity upon him, but his eyes remained fixed as he said, “Ute! ,” the word that translated to the English command “Fire!”

Able to hold twelve stealth infiltration pods at a time, the launching device worked like the cylinder of a revolver. It fired its first pod, rotated twenty degrees, and fired the next one, then the next all in under a second.

Flying at top speed, without a human payload, the S.I.P.s could reach the planet in less than five seconds. Passengers slowed the pods down—not because of the added weight but because they were fragile. When the pods accelerated at top speed, the gravitational force inside the compartment was more than the human body could withstand. Possessing so much power that they seemed to bend the laws of physics, the S.I.P.s could decelerate so quickly that the force would turn human passengers inside out.

Moments after they left the transports, the S.I.P.s accelerated to ten million miles per hour. They dropped to the speed of sound as they reached their targets. One of the S.I.P.s reached its target. Two did not.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Captain Takahashi, standing by the viewport and watching the larger of the moons, only knew that the mission had begun because Yamashiro told him. There were no explosions or bursts of laser to signal the beginning of the attack. Still staring out into space, waiting to see what would happen to the moons, he heard his father-in-law’s sharp gasp.

He turned in time to see Yamashiro yelling into the communications console. “Return to the Sakura.” He spoke in English. Yamashiro generally spoke in Japanese when addressing junior officers, but he gave this order in English.

The pilot on the other end of the communication asked, “What about survivors?”

Yamashiro stood partway out of his chair as he shouted, “Return immediately!” He took a breath, and added, “There are no survivors.”

Takahashi wanted to know what had happened, but he knew better than to interrupt the admiral. Still listening for clues, he looked out through the viewport and searched in time to see the smaller of the moons fall apart. First, it blurred into a smudge, as if fog had formed on the viewport. An envelope of fog, or dust, or maybe gas formed around it. Whatever rose off A-361-D/Satellite 2, it was the same color as the moon itself and translucent. It did not spread. It remained tight around the moon and became thicker and thicker, a stifling, suffocating cloud. Focusing on the words “no survivors,” Takahashi wondered if somehow one of the transports had collided with the moon. But Satellite 2 had come undone, and that suggested more than a transport mishap. The core that held the moon together broke and dissolved before his eyes.

Feeling a sense of elation, Takahashi looked at the larger moon, hoping to see similar destruction. Nothing had changed on Satellite 1.

“No! Do not return to the Sakura,” Yamashiro said, countermanding his first orders. Takahashi heard something in Yamashiro’s voice he had never heard before. He heard fear. Clearly struggling to keep from shouting, he growled, “Rendezvous with the other transport but do not return to this ship until you are given further orders.”

Then, obviously speaking to the bridge, he barked the fatal order, “Prepare to broadcast!”

“Admiral, are you leaving us in space?” asked a voice over the console. Takahashi knew the man was a transport pilot.

“We will return for you,” Yamashiro told the transport pilots. “We are broadcasting out of the solar system. We will contact you when …” But he clearly did not know how to finish the sentence.

“Yes, sir.” The voice that came from the console speaker bore the uncertain tone of a terrified child.

Yamashiro turned his attention to the bridge. “Broadcast status?” he barked, waited less than a second for a response, then repeated the question in a more emphatic tone. “What is our broadcast status? We need to broadcast now!”

“Admiral, the generator is not yet charged.”

Yamashiro stared at the screens, glanced toward the viewport, looking right through Takahashi, then back at the screens. “Broadcast us the moment it’s ready!”

“What is our destination, sir?” asked Commander Suzuki, Takahashi’s second-in-command.

“Out of the solar system! Anywhere outside of this solar system!”

One of the transport pilots asked, “Admiral, where do you want us to rendezvous?”

“Get as far from A-361-D as you can …as far from every planet as you can. Get as far as you can from those planets, and keep flying farther away. We’ll find you. When we return, we’ll find you.”

Takahashi stood behind Admiral Yamashiro, staring over his shoulder. He looked into the various screens and saw nothing. All but one of the displays showed nothing but open space.

“Why are we broadcasting out of the solar system?” he asked.

If Yamashiro heard the question, he did not acknowledge it. He sat hunched over the monitors as if searching for secrets in the empty screens.

“Admiral, why are we leaving the solar system?” Takahashi repeated.

Yamashiro still showed no sign of hearing him.

Suzuki’s voice came over the console. “Admiral, the engines are …”

“Take us out of this solar system.” Yamashiro yelled the words.

“What is our destination, sir?”

“Out. Anywhere out of this system!” He sounded desperate. He sounded frantic. Takahashi thought he sounded crazed as well.