The Clone Redemption

“You’re basing your plans on a lot of guesswork,” said Jolly. He didn’t like the plan. I could hear it in his voice.

“Educated guesses,” I said. Putting him in charge had been a mistake. I would correct that mistake when I got back. I wasn’t only the highest-ranking Marine, I reminded myself. I was the chief of the Praetorian Guard. Who would I place in charge? I asked myself. I currently had two officers to choose from, Pete Wallace or Curtis Liotta. Either might be better than Jolly, but not by much.

“I’m not inclined to authorize this operation,” said Jolly.

“Really?” I asked, planning out the admiral’s early retirement in my mind.

“You’re taking an unreasonable risk,” said Jolly.

“Admiral, doing nothing would be an unreasonable risk. The aliens are going to attack Gobi in two days. How many people do you expect to evacuate without the barges?”

“That is not the point, General. Civilian casualties are not our only concern.” He paused, looked at his notes, and said, “Once you launch your transports, how long will it take you to board the barges?”

He thinks he’s in charge, I told myself. I can pull the rug out from under this bastard at any time. But I still played along. I did not have time to retire his ass at the moment. I was in the Orion Arm, he was in Perseus, and I could not spare an hour to fly out and find him, so I decided to play nice for now.

“We just went over this, Admiral. I told you it should take no more than three minutes to place teams aboard all twenty-five barges,” I said.

“Three minutes? That seems very optimistic,” said Jolly.

Three minutes was not optimistic; it was utter bullshit, but he didn’t know that. I said, “It’s a realistic estimate, sir. Remember, the clock doesn’t start counting down until we start launching transports. Until then, the Unifieds won’t know we are there. That means we can pull the spy ship right up to their docks.”

I could not tell if Wallace and Liotta agreed with him or realized he was a coward. Maybe they’d known he was a coward from the start. Whatever their reasons, they had become silent.

“Three minutes, is that really possible?” asked Jolly. He was starting to come around.

“Absolutely, sir,” I said, staring into his virtual eyes, willing myself to look as honest and sincere as any Marine in history. “If we catch the Unifieds napping, the entire mission will be over in eight minutes. We’ll be done before their ships arrive on the scene.”

“This is all moot unless your engineers get that stealth cruiser going,” Jolly pointed out.

“Absolutely, Admiral. I wouldn’t dream of running the mission without a working spy ship.” In truth, I had a plan that involved distracting the Unifieds by attacking Earth with one fleet while sending a second fleet to commandeer the barges. I did not think I could get permission for that plan. If it came down to stealing the barges without the spy ship, I’d begin the mission with a visit to Admiral Jolly …then maybe I’d ask his replacement for permission to attack Earth.

Mars got the spy ship running.

While his men began work on the hull and the engines, he sent a message across all thirteen fleets looking for engineers with stealth-generator experience. Three men responded. Before Congress had banished us clones to space, they had worked as technicians in the lab that developed the stealth engines.

We were in business.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Walking through the corridors of the cruiser, I could see that the ship was still a wreck. Not having enough time to replace the ruined sections of the hull, Mars’s engineers had patched the holes as best they could. Plasticized metal scabs marked spots where shrapnel had cut through the walls. Most of the holes were the size of a coin, but a few of the rips were so large you could drive a jeep through them.

Mars’s engineers ignored fixes deemed nonessential to the operation of the ship. As I entered the second deck, I noticed that the lights were out. “You going to fix those?” I asked Mars. The surveillance and recon computers were on this deck. The engineers Mars had sent to hack into the broadcast station would work on this deck as well.

When I pointed this out to him, Mars said, “God be praised, they’ll be wearing soft-shelled armor, sir.”

“Yeah, so?”

“This might be an excellent opportunity for them to acquaint themselves with the lighting array along their visors.”

“What if they decide to remove their helmets?”

“I would recommend against that, sir,” he said. “We haven’t repaired the oxygen generator.”

“That could be a problem,” I said. I’d known the engineers hadn’t run the air yet when Mars said I needed armor to tour the ship, but I’d thought he’d have it up and running by the time we began the mission. “What if someone needs to use the head?” I asked.

“Probably not a good idea, General. We haven’t restored power to the toilets, either.

“You wanted a self-broadcasting spy ship with working stealth engines, sir, not a luxury cruiser. Getting the broadcast and stealth gear running was miracle enough.”

Realizing that the only things holding the ship together were chewing gum and Scott Mars’s faith in God, I decided to cut the inspection short. I knew what I needed to know—that the ship was flying, and she had a working stealth generator. I did not want to know the rest.

I returned to the bridge as Don Cutter prepared for the inaugural broadcast. With the Churchill out of commission, he had nothing better to do than to risk his life helping me.

“Feeling lucky?” he asked, as I entered the bridge. He and his three-man bridge crew wore the soft armor used by technicians and engineers.

“Mars says the ship is fine,” I said.

“With all due respect, sir, that’s bullshit. The engines work and the holes are plugged, but this ship is several miles south of fine.”

“Just get us out there,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” said Cutter. “You should probably use the tint shields in your visor, sir.”

Larger ships such as battleships and carriers did not have viewports at the front of their bridges. They had display screens, which they shut off during broadcasts. Cruisers and frigates had actual honest-to-goodness viewports. If the people in the bridge did not shield their eyes during broadcasts, they’d most likely go blind.

The tint shields in my visor normally came on automatically; but a quick glimpse of the glare from the anomaly could do a great deal of damage if you looked into it before your shields kicked in. Using optical commands, I initiated the shields. The only problem was that in the moments before the broadcast, the shields left me blind.

Then the broadcast began. Even through the blackness of my tint shields, I could see the anomaly, its thick tendrils of electricity wrapping like ivy around the hull of the ship. I should have looked away from the viewport, but I was mesmerized. To me, the anomaly was like a passageway to death, and death fascinated me.

And then I saw nothing. We had completed the broadcast and left the anomaly to fade behind us. I deactivated the tint shields, and there was Mars—the planet—a tawny-colored globe in a solitary orbit. We had broadcasted in only ten thousand miles off the surface of Mars, on the side of the planet facing away from Earth and the sun. Our ship was small and designed to create a diminished anomaly. Unless they were looking for us, or a ship happened to be passing nearby, no one would notice the anomaly. The Unifieds did not know we had stolen their self-broadcasting ship. As far as they knew, we needed a network for pangalactic travel.

Our stealth generator purring like a newborn, we circled Mars. The planet was dark and still below us. It only took a minute to locate the barges. They sat unguarded and alone.

Everything had gone according to plan so far.