“I don’t recommend this, sir,” Captain Mune said.
General Hawthorne and the bionic soldier stood outside the cell where Blanche-Aster’s second clone waited. A vidscreen showed the clone sitting at a table. She was young, with short brunette hair, a thin face and a long, supple body. She wore the brown uniform of a habitat farm-worker. Unlike the Madam Director’s other clone who had been a bodyguard, this one had a fervent manner. She tried to maintain indifference, but her gaze slid about the cell. She seemed nervous. She either twitched fingers, her shoulders or blinked too rapidly.
“This clone is a PHC Outer Planet’s Intelligence operative,” Hawthorne said.
Captain Mune adjusted the controls of the vidscreen. It showed a modified x-ray image of her body. He zoomed to the base of her skull, to a tiny black dot there.
“It’s artificial,” Captain Mune said.
“Did the Madam Director send you the clone’s medical specs?”
Captain Mune nodded. “According to them, the implant was fused in her skull before she spaced out to Neptune. It’s a neural-charged explosive.”
Hawthorne recalled the neural inhibitor Ulrich had once stuck to him.
“Its purpose is what?” Hawthorne asked.
“The specs say the clone can will the device to explode. The Madam Director has gone to great lengths to ensure that no one can turn her clones against her.”
“Has the explosive been tampered with?” Hawthorne asked.
“We haven’t been able to establish that,” Captain Mune said.
“You think it has?”
“It’s my job to be paranoid, sir. I suggest you talk to her via vidscreen.”
“Would the explosive be enough to take out both of us?”
“No, sir.”
“Where is the danger then?”
“She could attack you physically, sir.”
“I am combat-trained,” Hawthorne said.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but you’re an older man.”
“And I am a man and she’s a woman.”
“If the Madam Director is correct concerning the devious nature of the cyborgs, who knows what other surprises have been modified into her.”
“Enhancement drugs?” asked Hawthorne.
“She may also have been trained in special fighting techniques.”
Hawthorne clasped his hands behind his back and scowled at the clone. For months now, he had awaited the cyborgs’ arrival. He desperately needed shock troops superior to the Highborn. The war in South America went against them in a slow and bitter grind of attrition.
Hawthorne unclipped his holster and withdrew his sidearm, a Gauss needler that fired heavy steel needles. It had a rubber-coated grip so it wouldn’t slip and felt good in his hand. He checked the gun, flipped the safety so it was ready for immediate fire and shoved it back into the holster.
“Even an old man can draw a needler,” Hawthorne said.
“Her reflexes may have been enhanced.”
“Paranoia is a good attribute in a bodyguard. For the Supreme Commander of Social Unity it can lead to paralysis. I must weigh the risks versus the benefits, play the odds and then strike boldly if that is called for. Deciding what to do with the cyborgs could be the most critical decision of my life. If she’s been tampered with so she’ll attack me, I want to know that. I suspect the only way to learn the truth is to present myself as a target.”
“If she makes it past your needler and is killing you, sir, do we have permission to gas the chamber?”
Hawthorne nodded curtly. Then he adjusted his holster and strode for the entrance to the cell.
Hawthorne sat across the table from the clone. He shook his head. The clone’s name was Rita Tan. It felt odd, because Rita Tan used the Madam Director’s voice and had many of her mannerisms. What Rita lacked was the Madam Director’s confidence.
Here was a person who had seen too many horrors up close. She acted like a person who believed the world was under imminent doom, and that no one else understood the nature of the peril. Rita Tan blinked much too rapidly. Her head jerked at the oddest moments and she had the annoying habit of smiling too much as if she feared Hawthorne would attack unless she pacified him. Rita Tan put her elbows on the table and leaned forward too far. Her facial skin was stretched and she spoke in a hushed tone.
“He showed me the assembly line, the process.” Rita shuddered. “It removed the skin and incinerated it. The stench was horrible. The saws, the artificial attachments—it removed the brain and put it in a sheathed braincase, and connected a new spinal column.”
“Why did this….”
“Toll Seven,” she whispered.
“Why did Toll Seven show you the assembly line?”
“They calculate their actions using logic parameters. The trouble is I had no idea of their ideal outcome and what weights they put to each action. I found their speech either incomprehensible or frighteningly naive.”
“Did Toll Seven or the others give any indication they planned—”
“I escaped that night,” whispered Rita. “I knew they planned to alter me, to strip away my flesh, my humanity, and implant my brain into a cyborg body. I used sleep enhancers and shot to Earth using full thrust. I had to beat them here. I had to warn my mother. You can stop them, can’t you? You can order their destruction? You have the authority, I hope?”
Hawthorne gave her a small nod.
Rita Tan sat back and sagged in her chair. “Then I’m not too late. Please tell me you have the authority to order the pods blasted out of space. I have to speak—”
“Calm yourself,” Hawthorne said, as below the table he secretly wrapped his hand on the butt of his needler. Rita Tan wanted too much assurance he had the authority.
She blinked rapidly.
“I am the Supreme Commander of Social Unity,” Hawthorne said. “All final authority rests with me. Yes, I will destroy the pods.”
Rita Tan’s head jerked to the left. She gave him a weird smile and she opened her mouth. Then she surged with manic speed, flinging the table at him.
Hawthorne had expected such an obvious tactic. Despite his age and lanky frame, he rolled out of the chair, and kept rolling as he drew the needler. The altered clone was fast, maybe even faster than what Captain Mune had suggested. Rita twitched her head with insect-like rapidity, pivoted even as she lunged the wrong way, and changed direction to fly at him.
The Gauss needler was a deadly weapon against unarmored opponents. It used a magnetic impulse to shoot a heavy steel needle, and it fired a great number of needles in a matter seconds.
Firing from the hip, Hawthorne sprayed needles at Rita Tan. The needler made its signature crackling noise. The first few missed. They smashed against the steel wall behind her and disintegrated, flinging sliver-like shards. From the floor, Hawthorne aimed. Rita Tan screamed wildly, a battle cry meant to frighten her opponent or to increase her chi as she attacked. The needles riddled her torso, ten in less than a second. Twitching in agony, she thudded onto Hawthorne and knocked the needler from his grasp. He shouted as the door swished open.
Hawthorne flung Rita Tan away as Captain Mune charged into the room, his gyroc pistol ready. She flopped onto the floor as Mune snapped off a single shot. Because of the short distance, the rocket-packet in his gyroc round never ignited. The rocket-bullet smashed against the middle of her back, however. With a grunt, she sagged to the floor. She had been rising to attack anew. She twisted her head to glare at Hawthorne. Her lips writhed. Hawthorne groped for his needler. Then the back of her head exploded and rained blood and bone.
