CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Harris, you’re on guard duty,” Lector said, as I climbed the ladder out of the bunkers.

“Aye,” I answered, fighting back the urge to say more. I watched Lector swagger back to the front of the platoon, then switched interLink frequencies. “Lee, you there?”

“Sure,” Lee said.

“Lector just gave me guard duty.”

“That should be dull,” Lee said. “Yamashiro will be light-years from here by now.”

“If he was ever here,” I said.

“Of course he was here,” Lee said. He clipped his syllables as he spoke, something he did when he felt irritated. I knew better than to argue.

Thick forest covered the foothills ahead of us. Trees with green and orange leaves, so brightly colored they looked like gigantic flowers, blanketed the countryside. “Gather up,” I called to my men, as we started for the forest.

The foothills stretched for miles. Beyond the hills, I could see the vague outline of tall mountains against the horizon. Somewhere between the forested hills and the mountains we would catch our enemy. “Let’s roll,” I said, after organizing my men.

Our course took us through the forest. The trees and boulders would have provided the right kind of cover for guerilla attacks. I scanned the landscape for heat signatures, but the trunks of the trees were ten feet in diameter. The rocks were thick and made of granite. I could not read a heat signature through such barriers. The light played against us, too.

Rays of sunlight filtered in through the trees. Bright, hot, and straight as searchlights, the beams of light looked like pillars growing out of the floor of the forest. And they were hot, as hot as a human body—nearly a hundred degrees. When I looked at one of the rays of light with my heat vision, it showed orange with a yellow corona on my visor, the same signature as an enemy soldier. I pinged for snake shafts and found nothing, but that did little to calm my nerves. Fortunately, our scouts located enemy tracks. Hundreds of people had fled the bunkers, trampling ferns and shrubs as they rushed through the trees. Tracking the escapees posed little challenge, but the wilderness gave us other headaches. The overgrowth slowed our ATVs. Obviously, Harriers and gunships were out of the question. We had to send scouts ahead on foot. Five of our scouts did not return when we broke for camp that evening.

We stopped in a mile-wide clearing that would be easy to guard. At night, Little Man cooled to a comfortable sixtyfive degrees. When I scanned the serrated tree line with heat vision, it seemed to hold no secrets. I saw the orange signatures of forest animals moving around the trees. Every few hours, at uneven intervals, a gunship traveled around the perimeter of the clearing. I sat at my guard post, hidden behind a hastily built lean-to made of logs, clods of grass, and rocks, peering out across the flatlands at the trees. The night sky had so many layers of stars that it shone milky white. I realized that not all of the stars were in our galaxy. We were at the edge of known space. A gunship rumbled over the treetops, its twin tail engines firing blue-white flames. Moonlight glinted on the ship’s dull finish as it circled slowly across my field of vision. Traveling at a mere twenty miles per hour, it moved with the confidence of a shark circling for food. Switching the lens in my visor to heat vision, I watched animals flee as the gunship approached. A stubby bird, built a bit like an owl but with a seven-foot wingspan, launched from the trees and flew toward me. I could not see the color of its plumage with heat vision, and I could not see the bird at all when I switched to standard view. Guard duty left me with plenty of time to roll evidence over in my mind. I did not think we were there to massacre Japanese refugees from Ezer Kri. They would not have had time to build the complicated bunker system on the beach.

The Morgan Atkins Separatists seemed a more likely target. I did not know how the Japanese could have gotten off Ezer Kri. They never could have traveled this far. I did not know what the Mogats would want on a planet like Little Man, but I knew they had transportation. They had their own damn fleet. Still, why would the Mogats colonize a planet that was so far from civilization? As I understood it, the Mogats never populated their own planets. They sent missionaries to colonize planets and attracted converts. But there was nobody to convert in the extreme frontier.

Just like Lee predicted, the night passed slowly.

We found three of our missing scouts early the next morning.

Packing quickly before sunrise, we continued through the woods. The trees in that part of the forest stood hundreds of feet tall. They stood as smooth and straight as ivory posts, with only a few scraggly branches along their lower trunks. Perhaps that was what made the scene so terrible—the almost unnatural symmetry of the primeval woods.

Walking in a broad column, we turned a bend and saw two dwarf trees with thick, low-hanging branches that crisscrossed in an arch. These trees stood no more than forty feet tall, but the spot where their branches met was considerably lower. A wide stream of sunlight filtered in around them, bathing them with brilliant glare and shadows.

Three shadowy figures dangled from the branches like giant possums. A quick scan of the forest floor told us that the bodies were our missing scouts. Each man’s armor and weapon sat in a neat pile beneath his lifeless carcass.

We knew our scouts had died by hanging even before we cut their bodies down. The enemy had captured them, stripped them of their armor, and summarily executed them as war criminals.

“I want those trees destroyed,” a major ordered, as we cut down the bodies. A demolitions man strapped explosives around the trunks. As we left, I heard a grand explosion and turned to watch as the forty-foot trees collapsed into each other.

The enemy had time to leave trackers along the trail, but trackers were ineffective in such rough terrain. They also left mines and a few snipers behind. The mines were useless; we spotted them easily. The snipers, however, used effective hit-and-run tactics as they targeted our officers. We began our march with fifteen majors and three colonels. By nightfall, two of the colonels and six of the majors were dead. When I saw McKay late that afternoon, he was surrounding himself with enlisted men.

“You holding up okay after that all-nighter?” Vince’s voice hummed over the interLink.

“Bet I’m asleep before anyone else tonight,” I said, unable to stifle a yawn. Regrettably, Lee had not contacted me on a direct frequency. “You’d lose that bet,” Lector interrupted.

“You’re on guard duty tonight.”

“Sergeant, you cannot send a man on guard duty two nights in a row,” Lee said.

“Are you running the show now, Lee?” Lector asked. I heard hate in his voice.

“Back off, Vince,” I said.

“Wayson . . .”

“Stay out of this,” I hissed.

On a private channel, Lee said, “I hate specking Liberators.”

So did I.

We reached the edge of the forest in the late afternoon. There we discovered that our air support had been busy.

The still-unidentified squatters had built a town large enough for a few thousand residents just beyond the woods. It had paved roads and prefabricated Quonset-style buildings. If they had put up flags, the place would have looked like a military base.

Our fighters struck during the night, shredding the town. I saw shattered windows, collapsed roofs, and melted walls. What I did not see was bodies.

“Sarge, do you think this was their capital city?” one of my men asked. I did not answer. “Fall in,” I said over the platoon frequency. “Get ready. If we’re going to run into more resistance on this planet, it’s going to start here.”

The town was also a likely place to find out the “squatters’ ” identity. We would find computers in the buildings. Perhaps we would find more. With our guns drawn and ready, we organized into a long, tactical column with riflemen and grenadiers from Lector’s platoon guarding our flanks. We waded toward town. Lee’s squad took point, moving cautiously in a group that included a rifleman, a grenadier, and a man with an automatic rifle. They moved in slowly, pausing by fences and hiding behind overturned cars. With every step it became clearer that the enemy had abandoned the city before our fighters attacked.

Most of the cars lay flipped on their sides, their front ends scorched from missile hits or fuel explosions. Smoke and fire had blackened the windows of several vehicles. I kicked my boot through one car’s windshield in search of bodies but found none.

The first building we passed was a two-story cracker box with only two windows on its fascia. The facade was untouched, but a laser blast had melted a ten-foot chasm in a sidewall. Metal lay melted around the gaping hole like the wax bleeding from a candle. The heat from the laser must have caused an explosion. The windows of the building had burst outward, spraying glass on the street. Though I could not feel the glass through my boots, I heard it splinter as I walked over it. The firefight began with a burst of three shots. Bullets struck the ground as Lee and his rifleman stepped around a derelict car. The bullets missed. Lee and his rifleman dropped back for cover and returned fire. The enemy had taken position in the ruins of a building that might have been a latrine. Pipes wrapped the sides of the small structure, and its walls were thick. The gunmen opened fire. I could see muzzle flashes.

“Harris, report,” Captain McKay ordered.

“We’re under fire, sir,” I said. “It seems like it’s just a few men hidden in a latrine. We should have the situation under control shortly.”

“Pockets of resistance,” McKay said. “They’re trying to slow us down. I’m getting reports of small firefights on every street. Let me know when you have the situation handled.”

“Aye, sir,” I said.

“Lee, how are you doing up there?” I asked, changing frequencies.

“These guys can’t shoot for shit,” Lee said. “Twenty yards away, tops, and . . .” He stopped talking as a long volley of shots ricocheted off the ground around him.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Five distinct reports, single shots from an M27 that cut right through the clatter of machine-gun fire. Lector’s riflemen had flanked the enemy, slipped into the building behind them, and shot them in their hiding holes. One of the riflemen walked to a window and signaled that all was clear. His strategy was a textbook tactical advance.

“Enemy contained,” Lector called in, over the interLink.

I spotted a stairwell that ran below ground on the other side of the street. “Lee, take my position.”

“Where are you going?” he asked as he let his squad walk ahead.

“I see a door that needs opening,” I said as I peeled off from the column with two of my men in tow. We ran across the street and took cover behind a brick wall.

The stairwell looked like it might lead to a bomb shelter or a subway station. It was wide enough for three men to run side by side. One of my men did a run by, peering down the stairs, then rolling out of range. He stood and took a position at the top of the stairs, signaling that the entry was clear. There were no windows in the concrete walls lining the stairs, just a seven-foot iron door with an arched top. I ran down the stairs and hid by the hinged side of the door. One of my men took the other side. As I pulled the door open, he counted to five then swung in, sweeping the scene with the muzzle of his rifle.

“Clear,” he said.

I followed him through the door.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” the third man in my party said as he followed us into the structure. We had entered a tactical command room. File cabinets lined the walls. Several maps lay open on a table in a corner of the room. I checked the maps for traps, then leafed through the stack. The first map showed the names and locations of every military base in the Scutum-Crux Arm. The next map showed a complex system of dots and lines overlaying a map of the galaxy. A sidebar showed an enlarged view of the Sol System. When I saw a red circle surrounding Mars, I realized that it was a map of the broadcast network.

“Don’t touch anything,” I said to my men. It was too rich a trove. It had to be rigged. We would leave it for the experts in Intelligence.

Captain McKay told me to nap while the rest of the men set up camp. I found a shaded corner between a tree and a stone wall. Removing my helmet, I lay on my side in the cool grass and let my mind wander. I thought about that underground map room with its diagram of the broadcast network. There was nothing top secret about the disc locations, but seeing them charted in an enemy bunker made me nervous. Those discs served as the Unified Authority’s nervous system. An attack on them could bring the Republic to its knees.

But why would anybody want to bring the Republic to its knees? The Senate allowed member states tremendous latitude. Breaking up U.A. infrastructure would end the ties of humanity that connected the various territories. Take away the Unified Authority, and the outer worlds would be forced to survive on their own.

In my mind’s eye, I saw myself walking along a long corridor. Imagination turned into fitful dreams as I reached the first door.

Night had fallen by the time Lee woke me for guard duty. He led me to the edge of town and pointed to an overturned truck. “That’s your station for the night,” he said. He slipped me a packet of speed tabs. “I borrowed these from the medic. Don’t use them unless you need them,” he said. I took my position hiding behind a crumpled-up bumper. Though I needed more sleep, I liked the solitary feel of guard duty. It gave me a chance to consider the day and play with ideas in my head. I had been on duty for two hours when Lector came to check on me. “See anything, Harris?”

“No,” I said.

“Keep alert,” he said. He lit a cigarette as he turned to leave.

“I don’t get it,” I said. I was tired and angry. I heard myself speaking foolish words and knew that I would later regret them; but at that moment, I no longer cared. “What the hell did I ever do to you?”

Lector listened to my question without turning to look at me. Then he whirled around. “You were made, Harris. That’s reason enough,” Lector said coldly. “Just the fact that you exist was enough to get Marshall, Saul, and me transferred to this for-shit outfit.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” I said.

“You had everything to do with it,” Lector said. “You think this is a real mission? You think we are going to capture this entire planet with twenty-three hundred Marines? Is that what you think?”

I did not know what to say.

“They’d forgotten about us,” Lector said. “Saul, Marshall, me . . . Nobody in Washington knew that there were any Liberators left. The brass knew about Shannon, but there was nothing anybody could do about him. Klyber kept him nearby, kept a watchful eye on him. Nobody could touch Shannon with Klyber guarding him. As far as everybody knew, Shannon was the last of us.

“Then you came along, Harris—a brand-new Liberator. You weren’t alone, you know. Klyber made five of you. We found the others. Marshall killed one in an orphanage. I killed three of them myself. But Klyber hid you . . . sent you to some godforsaken shit hill where no one would find you. By the time I did locate you, you were already on the Kamehameha .

“I . . .” I started to speak.

“Shut up, Harris. You asked what’s bothering me, now I’m going to tell you. And you, you are going to shut your rat’s ass mouth and listen, or I will shoot you. I will shoot you and say that the goddamn Japanese shot you.”

I believed him and did not say a word. I also slipped my finger over the trigger of my M27.

“The government hated Liberators. Congress wanted us dead. As far as anyone knew, we were all dead. Then you showed up. I heard about that early promotion and wanted to fly out and cap you on that shit hill planet. I would have framed Crowley, but Klyber transferred you before I could get there.

“Next thing I know, you’re running missions for that asshole Huang. Shit! Huang was the reason we were in hiding in the first place. As soon as I heard that you’d met Huang, I knew we were all dead. Once he got a whiff of a Liberator, he would go right back to the Pentagon and track down every last one of us.

“And here we are, trying to take over a planet with twenty-three hundred Marines. This isn’t a mission, Harris, this is a cleansing. This is the last march of the Liberators; and if they need to kill off twenty-three hundred GI clones to finish us, it all works out fine on their balance sheets. Clones are expendable.

“You want to know what I have against you, Harris? You are the death of the Liberators.”

“Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Now watch your post,” Lector spoke in a calm voice that made his anger all the more frightening.

“We’re pushing into that valley tomorrow. Whoever we’re hunting on this goddamned planet, we’ll find them in there.” Having said his piece, Lector turned his back on me and left. He tossed the butt of his cigarette behind him. The tiny, glowing ember bounced and slowly faded. Klyber had made five Liberators? Klyber had me sent to Gobi to protect me? It made sense, I suppose. When I thought of Booth Lector, I felt both sympathy and revulsion.

Tabor Shannon and Booth Lector shared the same neural programming, but it controlled them in different ways. Lector was addicted to violence and self-preservation. He was cruel and brooding. Shannon might have been a white knight, but I saw him as flawed. He lived his entire life on a quixotic mission to protect a society that despised him.

Earlier that evening, I had told myself that the Unified Authority bound mankind together. However, as I thought about it again, I questioned the benefits of being tied to mankind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Having slept for approximately two hours over the last two days, I felt sluggish and dizzy when Vince Lee led me back to camp. The ground seemed to shift under my feet, and I had trouble walking in a straight line. I considered taking the meds Lee had given me, but decided against it. Luding would keep me awake, but it would probably leave me jumpy when I needed a clear head. And I definitely needed a clear head. The officers monitoring our progress from aboard the Kamehameha did not wait for sunrise before sending us into the valley. There was no trace of sunrise along the horizon when we grabbed our rifles and set off.

Walking in squads of five, we left the town and started into the valley. There the terrain came as something of a surprise. I expected grass, trees, and gently sloping hills. What I saw was a glacial canyon with steep, craggy walls. A well-trampled path led along the side of the canyon. The trail was wide enough for a squad or maybe a platoon, but not an entire regiment.

Observing the scene from the rim of the canyon, using my night-for-day lenses, I felt an eerie shutter of déjà vu. It was like returning to Hubble. The thick layer of fog on the canyon floor only added to the illusion.

“At least we won’t need to go looking for the bastards,” Captain McKay said as he moved up beside me.

Switching to heat vision, I saw what he meant. About two miles ahead of us, hundreds, maybe thousands, of orange dots milled around the valley floor.

“Look at them,” I said. “Think that’s what’s left of the Japanese?”

“Obviously not,” McKay said. “Whoever they are, they’re waiting for us. They’re dug in tight, armed, and waiting for us. Remember when I asked you to watch my back? I know you’re beat, Harris, but if you have any Liberator fire left in you, get me out of this alive.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, though I had little hope to offer. If Lector planned on killing friendlies, his first bullet would have my name on it.

Our assault took place in three stages. As the sun rose over the far edge of the canyon, we “assembled.”

Our officers, the few who had survived the previous day’s snipers, surveyed the field and assigned routes to each platoon. From there, as the rising sun melted the fog on the canyon floor, we traveled down the steep walls. That was the next stage of the assault, the “attack point.” Then we fell into formation and made our last preparations.

The terrain was flat and empty. Jeeps, ATVs, and tanks would have been effective at that point, but nobody offered to airlift them in. Admiral Thurston wanted an infantry strike. With our light artillery preparing its positions, we started our advance.

A wide river must have once run across the valley. Its long, smooth, fossilized trail offered excellent placement for men with mortars.

Having left the artillery behind, we divided into two groups. The majority of the men formed a column that would attack the squatters head-on. One lone platoon would be assigned to move along the south side of the canyon and attempt to flank the enemy.

I was not surprised when I heard from Captain McKay. “Harris, your platoon is covering the flank.”

“Who signed us up for that?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

“Lector recommended you. He’s pretty much running this show. Everybody is afraid of him.”

“Are you coming with us?” I asked.

“No,” McKay said. He wished me luck and signed off.

A pregnant silence filled the canyon as the two-thousand-man column started forward. The squatters began firing long before the column was in range. Only snipers with special rifles would be effective at such a distance. The squatters had a few snipers, of course, but they seemed to be out of commission at the moment.

My platoon started its route just as our artillery units began lobbing mortars. The enemy had the tactical advantage of choosing the field, but our artillery soon battered their positions. I led my men in a fast trot toward the south edge of the canyon. Hidden by a slope in the terrain, we slipped forward undetected. As we closed in, I hid behind some sagebrush and spied on the enemy position.

The main column remained just out of range as the bombardment continued. Shells exploded, sending swirls of silt dust and smoke in the air. Any moment now the shelling would stop, signaling the column to pin the enemy down while we closed in beside them.

Before we could attack, the squatters retreated. They abandoned their position and ran. I watched them from behind a sagebrush blind—thousands of men running toward distant canyon walls. I thought they were running from our mortars, but that wasn’t the case.

Far overhead, another battle was taking place. Robert Thurston, the master tactician, had lied to us about everything. These “squatters” were Mogat Separatists; and while Little Man was not exactly Morgan Atkins’s Mecca, the planet was a Separatist stronghold.

Giving us bad intelligence, Thurston landed our forces by the Mogats’ weakest flank. With minimal air support and the element of surprise, we broke their defenses and chased their unprepared army. But reinforcements would soon arrive. Admiral Thurston, who viewed clones as equipment of no more value than bullets or tank treads, used us as bait to lure the Separatists into a counterattack. As we chased Mogats on the surface of Little Man, four self-broadcasting battleships appeared around the Kamehameha . Thurston barely managed to raise his shields before they opened fire. With the dreadnoughts battering her shields, the Kamehameha headed toward a nearby moon.

The army that joined the Mogats at the far end of the canyon outnumbered us five to one. Their tanks and jeeps were forty years old. They drove antiques, we had the latest equipment; nonetheless their antiques would be very effective against our light infantry.

The Mogat army wore red armor. Red, not camouflaged, no attempt was made to blend in. They poured down the rim of the canyon like fire ants rushing out of an anthill, their armor glinting in the bright sunlight. Our officers were alert. The column quickly collapsed into a defensive perimeter by taking shelter behind the side of the riverbed.

“Holy shit,” Lee screamed. “We’d better get down there.”

“Hold your position, Lee,” I said.

I frantically contacted Captain McKay. “Captain, I’m coming to get you out of there.”

The Mogats were at the bottom of the canyon and coming fast. Poorly aimed shells from their tanks and cannons hit the ground well wide of their mark.

“Do they see your position?” McKay shouted.

“I doubt it,” I said.

“Get your men out of here, Harris.”

From where I lay, about three hundred yards from the action, the battle seemed to take place in miniature. I saw our men hiding in the dirt and the enemy running forward. The enemy looked poorly trained, but that would not matter with their numerical advantage.

The Mogat gunners figured out the range and their shells began pounding the riverbed. I saw a shell hit a group of men, flinging their bodies in different directions. Back behind the brunt, our light artillery returned fire far more effectively, hitting the advancing sea of enemy soldiers time and again. It didn’t matter. There were far too many of them for a few shells to matter.

Squads of fighters and six destroyers raced to the Kamehameha ’s aid. In the distance, the Washington and the Grant, ironically the two ships Thurston used to defeat Bryce Klyber in their simulated battle, remained stationed behind the cover of the distant moon. They had slipped in unnoticed two days before the Kamehameha arrived.

Self-broadcasting is a complex process that takes time and calculation. Thurston’s ships counterattacked swiftly. Before the battleships could broadcast themselves to safety, Thurston’s Tomcats and Phantoms swarmed them. His destroyers arrived moments later, blasting the battleships with cannons that disrupted their shields. The Mogats had enormous ships, but their technology was forty years old, and they did not have engineers who could update it.

The surprise attack succeeded. Two of the battleships exploded before returning fire. The third staged a weak defense, managing to demolish several fighters and dent one destroyer before exploding. The last Mogat battleship turned and ran. The officers commanding the lumbering ship could not have hoped to outrun the fighters. They must have thought they could buy enough time to broadcast to safety. Closing in from the rear, a destroyer fired several shots at the battleship’s aft engine area. The ship’s rear shields failed, and several of its engines exploded just as it entered Little Man’s atmosphere.

The Mogats poured into the valley like a tidal wave. They would not need stealth or weapons to flank our two-thousand-man invasion force—it almost looked as if they planned to trample us. But U.A. Marines do not give up without a fight.

“What do we do?” one of my men asked as I returned.

“McKay ordered me to retreat,” I said.

Hearing that it was an order, my men immediately complied. Without a word, they turned and started back. Then Lee noticed that I did not follow. “Harris, what are you doing?”

“I want to get McKay out of there,” I said. “I promised I would watch his back.”

“Wayson, you have got to be joking,” Lee said. “Take another look. He’s probably dead by now.”

I crawled up for one last look. I doubted that he had died yet, but his time was probably just about up. The Mogats had closed in on our front line and overwhelmed it. On one side of the battle, a group of about fifty men formed a tight knot and charged the enemy head-on. The tactic they took gave them the element of surprise. They broke through the Mogats’ front line and pushed deep into their ranks. It was a gutsy move, but doomed to fail. As they fought their way toward an open field, they took more and more casualties. I did not stay to see if any of them survived the charge. In the center of the battle, the Marines put on one hell of a show. Our riflemen pinned down pockets of enemy Mogat soldiers and our artillerymen lobbed a continuous arc of mortar fire. Despite their efforts, there was no denying the superiority of numbers. By the time I turned to follow my men to safety, it looked like half of our invasion force was dead or wounded.

“Can we go now?” Lee asked, sounding anxious.

I did not want to leave. Whether it was programming or upbringing, my instincts were to fight to the end. I sighed as I climbed to my feet. “Okay, Marines, let’s move quickly!” I shouted, in my best drill sergeant voice. Most of my men were already a hundred yards ahead.

The air still rang with gunfire, but the amount of shooting had slowed considerably. By the time we reached the far end of the valley floor, I only heard the sporadic bursts. We sprinted for the path leading up the far wall. The path twisted, and it left us more exposed than I would have liked, but I thought it would be safer than stumbling up the steep slopes. By then we were several hundred yards from the battlefield. If we could just reach the top of the ridge, without being seen . . . “Stay low, move fast. Any questions?” I said to my men. I led the way, rifle drawn, shoulders hunched, running as fast as I could. If there happened to be a few enemy soldiers at the top of the trail, I thought I might stand a chance of picking them off. My lungs burned and my mouth was dry, but I had shaken off the fatigue I felt earlier that morning. The adrenaline rush of battle had woken me far more effectively than any meds ever could have. The muscles in my legs tingled and my head was clear as I continued up that dusty course at full speed. The path started at a gentle angle, no more than ten degrees. A few yards up, however, it took a steep turn. I felt fire in my calves and growled.

I no longer heard gunshots, but what I heard next was far more frightening: the whine of ATVs. Turning a bend in the path, I paused and saw four trails of dust streaking along the valley floor in our direction.

“Move it! They’re coming!” I shouted to my men. I swung my arms in a circle to tell my men to run faster, and I slapped three men on their backs as they ran past me. “Move it! Move it! Move it!”

The ATVs stopped a few yards from the base of the trail. As the last of my men ran past me, I saw four men climbing off their vehicles. They had rifles slung over their shoulders. “They’ll never catch us,” I said to myself as I turned and sprinted.

I was just catching up to Adrian Smith, one of the new privates who had transferred in while I was in Hawaii. He was a slow runner; I thought that I might need to stay with him to coax him on. That was what I was thinking as the bullet smashed through his helmet, splashing brains and blood against the side of the hill. The sound of the gunshot reverberated moments after Smith fell dead. Ahead, up the trail, three more men fell just the same way. A single shot to the head followed by the delayed report of the rifle. The men at the base of the trail never missed a shot.

“Everybody down!” I yelled. “Snipers!”

They were using our tactics. The snipers pinned us down. Across the valley, hundreds of soldiers were headed in our direction. If we did not get up the ridge quickly, we would never make it up at all.

“Lee, take them up the hill,” I called as I darted behind a rock.

“What are you doing?” Lee said.

“That is an order, Corporal.”

Below me, one of the snipers saw Lee get to his feet. He swung his rifle. As he trained on the target, I shot him with a burst of rapid-fire. All three bullets hit the sniper before he fell. Another sniper returned my fire. The other two picked off several more of my men. I crawled along the ground, steadied my rifle, and rolled to one knee. Two of the snipers fired at me before I could squeeze off a shot. The third hit another of my men. In the background, I saw the Mogat army. They were almost here. Ducking out of their sight, I lobbed a grenade. The blast kicked dust into the air. I rose to have another look, then ducked back down quickly. For some reason, the Mogats had stopped. Many were looking at the sky. Whatever had distracted them was not important enough to stop the snipers from taking shots at me. Three bullets zinged the ledge near my head.

I rolled onto my back, then I saw it—a dark gray triangle dropping quickly through sky. It looked like a capital ship, but capital ships were not designed to fly in atmospheric conditions. Whatever it was, the triangle left a thick white contrail in its wake. The smoke billowed out in tight pearls that spread and congealed into a smooth strand of cloud. At first, the ship fell straight down, then it managed to catch itself.

And, as it flew closer, I noticed that there were dozens of smaller ships buzzing around it. From where I lay, the scene looked like a hive of bees attacking a bear cub as it tried to run away. The valley seemed to shake under the echoing rumble of the big ship’s engines. The ship was dropping lower and lower. The fighters that surrounded the ship continued to pick at it with lasers and rockets.

“Harris, get out of there!” Lee screamed. “That thing is going to crash.”

Flames burst out of the front and rear of the ship as it dropped like a shooting star. A few bullets struck the ledge below me as I jumped to my feet, but I no longer cared. I sprinted as hard as I could, turning corners and skidding but staying on my feet.

The battleship slammed into the far end of the valley sending a shock wave, flames, radiation, and debris. Nearly one mile from the explosion, the shock wave hit me so hard that it tossed me through the air and into the canyon wall. The blast knocked the air out of my lungs, and my head rang with pain. Dazed and barely able to stand, I continued up the path, fighting the urge to lean against the canyon wall for support. I could hear nothing except the sound of my breathing. The audio equipment in my helmet had gone dead. I was panting. My legs were tight. I placed my hands on my thighs and pushed, hoping it would help me run.

Below me, the canyon was consumed with molten fire. Looking down the slope was like staring into Dante’s “Inferno.” The battleship had skidded across the canyon, cutting a deep gash and spewing fiery fuel and radioactive debris in every direction. The very earth around the ship seemed to combust in an explosion of flame, smoke, and steam. I did not see any people in my quick glimpse, but I saw the remains of an upturned tank as it melted in that blazing heat.

Even one mile from the crash site, the heat from the fires would have cooked me alive if it hadn’t been for my armor. For the only time in my career, I felt heat through my body glove. As I reached the top of the trail, Lee and another man grabbed my arms. My legs locked and I started to fall, but they held me up. I could tell that they were trying to speak to me, but I heard nothing through my dead audio equipment.

Lee and the private lowered me to the ground. I fell on my back and stared into the sky. Above me, a U.A. Phantom fighter circled in triumph. An entire regiment had been demolished; but for Robert Thurston, Little Man was a triumph indeed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Growing up in an orphanage, I sometimes imagined that I had parents on another planet looking for me. In my fantasies, my parents kept a room on the off chance that I would someday return. The room would have a crib, a bicycle, and closets filled with toys. Until they found me, my parents would seal that room, entombing its contents. In my mind’s eye, I saw the room as dark and filled with shadows. Dust covered the toys and crib.

Over the years, my childhood dreams were replaced by adult realities, and I forgot about that room until I returned to the Kamehameha with only six of my men. When I entered our vacated barracks, I experienced the very emotions that my imaginary parents would have felt whenever they visited my imaginary room.

Of the twenty-three hundred men sent down to Little Man, only seven survived. There were no wounded. That was the reality, and I kept on realizing it again and again. Lee and I did not speak much when we returned from Little Man. We were not mad at each other, we simply had nothing to say. We returned to our living quarters with five privates in tow and the rows of empty bunks looked like a cemetery. You can shake a jar filled with marbles and never hear a sound. Take all but a few of those marbles out, and those last few will rattle around in the empty space. We rattled around corridors once teeming with Marines. We were the ghosts. Captain Olivera allowed us to remain in our barracks, but he closed down the mess hall, the bar, and the sick bay. That meant we ate with the ship’s crew, which might have been the most haunting part of having survived.

The first time we went to the upper decks for a meal was like stepping onto an alien planet. When the elevator doors opened, we saw sailors walking in every direction. Men talking, some shouting, others rushing past the door—I had forgotten what it felt like to be among the living. I stepped off the lift. Lee followed. The hall fell silent. People slowed down and watched us. Nobody told us to leave. People simply stepped out of our way as we walked to the mess hall. We arrived during the middle of the early dinner rush. Looking through the window, I saw men with trays walking around in search of places to sit. I heard the loud din of hundreds of conversations and remembered when our mess hall was equally loud. The noise evaporated as we entered the doorway. We were the only men wearing Marines’ uniforms. Everyone knew who we were. I heard whispers and felt people staring, but nobody approached us.

I reached for a tray, and somebody handed it to me. “Thank you,” I said. The man did not respond.

The battle on Little Man lit a fire in the public’s imagination. “The New Little Big Horn” said the Unified Authority Broadcasting Company (UABC) headlines. Other famous massacres were also invoked. One reporter called it “a modern-day Pearl Harbor,” an irony that would not have been lost on Yoshi Yamashiro, though I doubt the reporter recognized it.

The Pentagon served up an endless supply of details about the battle, milking it for every drop of public support. A briefing officer held a meeting in which he traced our movements using maps. The public affairs office released photographs of the captured map room. The Joint Chiefs gave the UABC profiles and photographs of the hundred officers who died during the assault. Captain Gaylan McKay, a promising officer in life, became a public figure in death.

The Pentagon did not release information about survivors, but somehow the press got wind of us. We were dubbed, “The Little Man 7.” Probably hoping that the story would go away, the Joint Chiefs acknowledged only that “A fast-thinking sergeant had managed to evacuate six men from the field.”

They did not release my name. I did not care.

Over the next six weeks, as the Pentagon released a litany of tidbits about the Little Man 7, SC

Command ignored us as we rattled around the bowels of the Kamehameha . Once word was out about the survivors, I think the Joint Chiefs hoped that the public’s interest in Little Man would cool, but it continued to grow.

As time went by, Lee returned to his weight training, and I became obsessed with marksmanship. I practiced with automatic rifles, grenade launchers, and sniper rifles, shooting round after round. Lee and I went to the crewmen’s bar almost every night. The sailors seemed used to us by that time. Some invited us to sit with them whenever we showed up. By the time our transfers came, Lee and I had almost forgotten about the animosity between sailors and Marines.

Having spent a month and a half hoping for the public to forget about the Little Man 7, Washington finally embraced us. In his capacity as the secretary of the Navy, Admiral Huang announced plans to bootstrap us to officer status. The thought of promoting a Liberator must have caused him great pain. Lee and the other men were transferred to Officer Training School in Australia. I was called to appear before the House of Representatives in Washington, DC.

The night before Lee and the others left for OTS, we all went to the crewmen’s bar for one last gathering. We found that news of our transfers had spread throughout the ship. As we entered the bar, some sailors called to us to join them.

“Officers,” one of the men said, clapping Lee on the back. “If someone would have told me that I all I had to do was survive a massacre and a crash to become an officer, I’d have done it five years ago.”

Everybody laughed, including me. I didn’t think he was funny, but more than a month had passed. In military terms, my grieving period was over.

“Lee and the others are shipping out tomorrow,” I said.

“Congratulations.” The sailors looked delighted. One of them reached over and shook Lee’s hand. “I’d better do this now,” he joked. “Next time I may have to salute you pricks.”

“When are you leaving, Harris?” another sailor asked.

“Not for a couple of days,” I said.

“I can’t believe they’re shipping all of you out,” the sailor responded.

“What did you expect to happen to them?” another sailor asked. “Olivera needs to make room, doesn’t he?”

“Make room for what?” I asked.

“SEALs,” the sailor said, then he took a long pull of his brew. “Squads of them . . . hundreds of them.”

Lee and I looked at each other. That was the first we had heard about SEALs. Until we received our transfers, we’d both expected to remain on the Kamehameha to train new Marines.

“That’s the scuttlebutt,” another sailor said. “I’m surprised you never heard it.”

“Did you know that Harris is going to Washington?” Lee asked.

“We heard all about the medal,” a sailor said. “Everybody knows it. You’re the pride of the ship.”

“A medal?” I asked.

“You know more about it than we do,” Lee said.

“Harris,” the man said, putting down his drink and staring me right in the eye, “why else would you appear before Congress?”

Lee’s shuttle left at 0900 the next morning. I went down to the hangar and saw him and the other survivors off. On my way back to the barracks, I paused beside the storage closet that had once served as an office for Captain Gaylan McKay. Moving on, I passed the mess hall, which sat dark and empty. Not much farther along, I saw the sea-soldier bar. As I neared the barracks, I heard people talking up ahead.

“They mostly use light arms,” one of the men said, “automatic rifles, grenades, explosives. That’s about it. We can probably reduce the floor space in the shooting range.”

“They’re not going to blow shit up on board ship, are they?”

“I don’t know. They have to practice somewhere.”

Four engineers stood in the open door of the training ground. They paused to look at me as I turned the corner. I had seen one of them in the crewmen’s bar on several occasions. He smiled. “Sergeant Harris, I thought you were flying to Washington, DC.”

“I leave in two days,” I said. “You’re reconfiguring the training area?”

“Getting it ready for the SEALs. Huang ordered the entire deck redesigned. It will take months to finish everything.” The engineer I knew stepped away from the others and lowered his tone before speaking again. “I’ve never seen SEALs before, but I hear they’re practically midgets. That’s the rumor.”

As a guest of the House of Representatives, I expected to travel in style. When I reached the hangar, I found the standard-issue military transport—huge, noisy, and built to carry sixty highly uncomfortable passengers. The Kamehameha was still orbiting Little Man; we were nine miserable days from the nearest broadcast discs.

Feeling dejected, I trudged up the ramp to the transport. I remembered that Admiral Klyber had modified the cabin of one of the ships to look like a living room with couches and a bar. All I found on my flight were sixty high-backed chairs. After stowing my bags in a locker, I settled into the seat that would be my home for the next nine days. As I waited for takeoff, someone slid into the seat next to mine.

“Sergeant Harris, I presume,” a man with a high and officious voice said.

“I am,” I said, without turning to look. I knew that a voice like that could only belong to a bureaucrat, the kind of person who would turn the coming trip from misery to torture.

“I am Nester Smart, Sergeant,” the man said in his high-pitched snappy voice. “I have been assigned to accompany you to Washington.”

“All the way to Washington?” I asked.

“They’re not going to jettison me in space, Harris,” he said.

Nester Smart? Nester Smart? I had heard that name before. I turned and recognized the face. “Aren’t you the governor of Ezer Kri?”

“I was the interim governor,” he said. “A new governor has been elected. I was just there as a troubleshooter.”

“I see,” I said, thinking to myself that I knew a little something about shooting trouble.

“We have ten days, Sergeant,” Smart said. “It isn’t nearly enough time, but we will have to make do. You’ve got a lot to learn before we can present you to the House.”

Hearing Smart, I felt exhaustion sweep across my brain. He planned to snipe and lecture me the entire trip, spitting information at me as if giving orders.

The shuttle lifted off the launchpad. Watching the Kamehameha shrink into space, I knew Smart was right. I was an enlisted Marine. What did I know about politics? I took a long look at the various ships flying between the Kamehameha and Little Man, then sat back and turned to Smart. Now that I had become resigned to him, I took a real look at the man and realized that he was several inches taller than I. An athletic-looking man with squared shoulders and a rugged jaw, he looked more like a soldier than a pencil pusher.

“Now that I have your attention, perhaps we can discuss your visit to the capital,” he said, a smirk on his lips. “You may not be aware of it, but several congressmen protested our actions on Little Man. There’s been a lot of infighting between the House and the Senate lately.”

“Do you mean things like Congress passing a bill to cut military spending?”

“You’ve heard about that?”

“And the Senate calling for more orphanages?”

“Bravo,” Smart said, clapping his hands in nearly silent applause. “A soldier who reads the news. What will they come up with next?”

“I’m a Marine,” I said.

“Yes, I know that,” said Smart.

“I’m not a soldier. Do you call Navy personnel soldiers?”

“They’re sailors,” said Smart.

“And I am a Marine.”

Smart smiled, but his eyes narrowed, and he looked me over carefully. “A Marine who follows the news,” he said, the muscles in his jaw visibly clenched.

“Yes, well, unfortunately, we Marines can’t spend our entire lives shooting people and breaking things.” I looked back out the window and saw nothing but stars.

“You’ll find that I do not have much of a sense of humor, Sergeant. I don’t make jokes during the best of times, and this is not my idea of the best of times. To be honest with you, I don’t approve of Marines speaking on Capitol Hill.”

“Whose idea was it?” I asked.

“You’re considered a hero, Sergeant Harris. Everybody loves a hero, especially in politics, but not everybody loves you. There are congressmen who will try to twist your testimony to further their own political agendas.”

“The congressman from Ezer Kri?” I asked.

“James Smith? He’s the least of your worries. The last representative from Ezer Kri disappeared with Yamashiro. Smith is an appointee,” Smart said. “If you run into trouble, it’s going to come from somebody like Gordon Hughes.”

“From Olympus Kri?” I asked.

“Very good,” Smart said. “The representative from Olympus Kri. He will not take you head-on. You’re one of the Little Man 7. Picking a fight with you would not be politic. He might try to make the invasion look like the first hostile action in an undeclared war. The question is how he can make Little Man look illegal without openly attacking you.”

So I’m still a pawn? I said to myself. A hero who would shortly be among the first clones ever made an officer, and I was still a pawn . . . story of my life. I felt trapped. “Will you be there when I go before the House?”

“Harris, I’m not letting you out of my sight until you leave Washington. That is a promise.”

Suddenly traveling with Smart did not seem so bad.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Do you know your way around Washington, DC?” Nester Smart asked. The way I pressed my face against the window to see every last detail should have answered his question. The capital of the Unified Authority lay spread under a clear afternoon sky. With its rows of gleaming white marble buildings, the city simply looked perfect. This was the city I saw in the news and read about in books. “I’ve never been here before.”

Our transport began its approach, flying low over a row of skyscrapers. I saw people standing on balconies.

Off in the distance, I saw the Capitol, an immense marble building with a three-hundred-foot dome of white marble. Two miles wide and nearly three miles deep, the Capitol was the largest building on the face of the Earth. It rose twenty stories into the air, and I had no idea how deep its basements ran.

“The Capitol,” I said.

“Good, Harris. You know your landmarks,” Smart said, with a smirk.

The architect who designed the Capitol had had an eye for symbolism. If you stretched its corridors into one long line, that line would have been twenty-four thousand miles long, the circumference of the Earth. The building had 192 entrances—one for each of the Earth nations that became part of the Unified Authority. The building had 768 elevators, one for every signer of the original U.A. constitution. There were dozens of subtle touches like that. When I was growing up, every schoolboy learned the Capitol’s numerology.

I also saw the White House, a historic museum that once housed the presidents of the United States. The scholars who framed the Unified Authority replaced the executive branch with the Linear Committee. If the rumors were true, the Linear Committee sometimes conducted business in an oval-shaped office inside the White House.

A highly manicured mall with gleaming walkways and marble fountains stretched between the White House and the Capitol. Thousands of people—tourists, bureaucrats, and politicians—walked that mall. From our transport, they looked like dust mites swirling in a shaft of light.

“I can barely wait to get out and explore the city,” I said, both anxious to see the capital of the known universe and to get away from Nester Smart.

“You are going to spend a quiet evening locked away in Navy housing,” Smart said. “We cannot afford for you to show up tomorrow with a hangover.”

Our transport began its vertical descent to a landing pad. Smart slipped out of his chair and pulled his jacket off a hanger. He smoothed it with a sharp tug on the lapels. Reaching for the inside breast pocket of the coat, he pulled a business card out and wrote a note on the back of it. After giving it a quick read, he handed it to me.

“There is a driver waiting outside. He will take you to the Navy base. Show this card to the guard at the gate. Also, your promotion is now official. Befitting your war-hero status, you are now a lieutenant in the Unified Authority Marines.

“You will find your new wardrobe in the apartment. I suppose congratulations are in order, Lieutenant Harris.”

The White House had guest rooms, but I was not invited to stay in those hallowed halls. Those rooms were reserved for visiting politicians and power brokers, the kinds of people who made their living by sending clones to war. Spending the night in the barracks suited me fine. The guards outside the Navy base were not clones. The one who inspected my identification had blond hair and green eyes. He looked over my ID, then read Smart’s note. “You’re one of the Little Man 7, right?” he asked. “I hear that you’re speaking in the House of Representatives tomorrow. Congress doesn’t usually send visitors out here.”

“Yeah, lucky me.”

“Officers’ country is straight ahead,” the guard said. “You can’t miss it.

“Captain Baxter, our base commander, left a message for you. He wants to meet with you. You’ll want to shower and change your uniform before presenting yourself. Baxter’s a stickler on uniforms.”

My driver dropped me at the barracks door. Carrying my rucksack over my shoulder, I found my room. The lock was programmed to recognize my ID card. I swiped my card through a slot, and the door slid open. It was the first time I had ever stayed in a room with a locking door. I considered that for a moment.

I had spent my life sharing barracks with dozens of other men. I heard them snore, and they heard me. We dressed in front of each other, showered together, stowed our belongings in lockers. With the exception of my two weeks of leave in Hawaii, the “squad bay” life was the only life I knew. Now I stepped into a room with a single bed. The room had a closet, a dresser, and a bathroom. Smiling and feeling slightly ashamed, I placed my ruck down, walked around the room turning on a lamp here, dragging my finger across the desk there, and allowing water to run from a faucet. I took a shower and shaved. Nine days of travel had left my blouse badly wrinkled; but it was an enlisted man’s blouse. In the closet, I found a uniform with the small gold bar of a second lieutenant on the shoulder. I dressed as an officer and left to meet the base commander.

“May I help you?” a civilian secretary asked.

I told her that I was a guest.

“Lieutenant Harris, of course,” she said. “Please wait here.” Watching me as she stepped away from her desk, she almost tripped over one of the legs of her chair. She turned and sped into a small doorway, emerging a moment later with several officers. That kind of reception would have made me nervous except that the officers seemed so happy to meet me.

“Lieutenant Harris?” a captain in dress whites asked.

“Sir,” I said, saluting.

The entire company broke into huge, toothy smiles. “A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant,” the captain said, saluting first, then reaching across the counter and shaking my hand. “I’m Geoffrey Baxter.” The other officers also reached across and shook my hand.

“Do you have a moment? Are you meeting with anyone this evening?”

“No,” I said.

“What?” gasped another captain. “No reception? They’re not putting you up in a stateroom?

Outrageous! These politicians treat the military like dogs.”

Baxter led me into a large office, and we sat in a row of chairs. As the receptionist brought us drinks, the officers crowded around me, and more officers strayed into the room. “I’m not sure that I understand. Were you expecting me?”

“Expecting you? We’ve been waiting for you,” Baxter said. “Harris, you’re famous around here.” He looked to the other officers, who all nodded in agreement. “Your photograph is all over the mediaLink.”

“My photograph?” I asked. “How about my men?”

“They’re clones, aren’t they? Everybody knows what they look like,” an officer with a thick red mustache commented.

“Have you had dinner yet?” Baxter asked.

“I was going to ask for directions to the officers’ mess,” I said.

“No mess hall food for you. Not tonight,” another officer said. “Not for you.”

“I know you’ve just arrived, but are you up to a night out?” Baxter asked. I smiled.

“I know a good sports bar,” the officer with the mustache said. The idea of a place with loads of booze and marginal food appealed to all of us.

Fourteen of us piled into three cars and headed toward the heart of DC. The Capitol, an imposing sight during the day, was even more impressive at night. Bright lights illuminated its massive white walls, casting long and dramatic shadows onto its towering dome. Just behind the Capitol, the white cube of the Pentagon glowed. The Pentagon, which had been rebuilt into a perfect cube, retained its traditional name in a nod to history. Seeing the buildings from the freeway, I could not appreciate their grand size.

So many buildings and streetlights burned through the night that the sky over Washington, DC, glimmered a pale blue-white. The glow of the city could be seen from miles away. I could not see stars when I looked up, but I saw radiant neon in every direction, spinning signs, video-display billboards, bars and restaurants with facades so bright that I could shut my eyes and see the luminance through closed eyelids. I had never imagined such a place. Dance clubs, restaurants, bars, casinos, sports dens, theaters—the attractions never endled.

And the city itself seemed alive. The sidewalks were filled. Late-night crowds bustled across breezeways between buildings. We arrived at the sports bar at 1930 hours and found it so crowded that we could not get seated before 2030, did not start dinner until nearly 2130, and chased down dinner with several rounds of drinks.

The officers I was with held up at the bar better than the clones from my late platoon. Most clones got drunk on beer and avoided harder liquor, but Baxter and his band of natural-borns kept downing shots long after their speech slurred. One major drank until his legs became numb. We had to carry him to his car.

We did not get home until long after midnight. I did not get to bed until well after 0200. I’m not making excuses, but I am explaining why I did not arrive at the House of Representatives in satisfactory condition. Sleep-addled and mildly buzzed from a long night of drinking, I found myself leaning against the wall of the elevator for support as I rode up to meet Nester Smart. The doors slid open, and the angry former interim governor of Ezer Kri snarled, “What the hell happened to you?” Dressed for bureaucratic battle, Smart wore a dark blue suit and a bright red necktie. With his massive shoulders and square frame, Smart looked elegant. But there was nothing elegant about the twisted expression on his face.

“I’m just a little tired,” I said. “I had a late night out with some officers from the base.”

“Imbecile,” he said, with chilling enunciation. “You are supposed to appear before the House in two hours, and you look like you just fell out of bed.”

“You mind keeping your voice down?” I asked as I stepped off the lift. Rubbing my forehead, I reminded myself that I was in Smart’s arena. He knew the traps and the pitfalls here. Smart led me down “Liberty Boulevard,” a wide hallway with royal blue carpeting and a mural of seventeenth-century battle scenes painted onto a rounded ceiling. Shafts of sunlight lanced down from those windows. The air was cool, but the sunlight pouring in through the windows was warm.

“This is an amazing city,” I said. “It must be old hat for you.”

“You never get used to it, Harris,” Smart said. “That’s the intoxicating thing about life in Washington, you never get used to it.”

As we turned off to a less spectacular corridor, Smart pointed to a two-paneled door. “Do you know what that is?” Smart asked.

I shook my head.

“That, Harris, is the lion’s den. That is the chamber. Behind those doors are one thousand twenty-six congressmen. Some of them want to make you a hero. Some of them will use you to attack the military. None of them, Lieutenant, are your friends. The first rule of survival in Washington, DC, is that you have no friends. You may have allies, but you do not have friends.”

“That’s bleak,” I said. “I think I prefer military combat.”

“This is the only battlefield that matters, Lieutenant,” Smart said. “Nothing you do out there matters. Everything permanent is done in this building.”

Death is pretty permanent, I thought. I walked over to a window and peered out over the mall. It was raining outside. Twenty floors below me, I saw people with umbrellas and raincoats walking quickly to get out of the rain. Preparing to appear before the House, I felt the same pleasant rush of endorphins and adrenaline that coursed through my veins during combat. I had some idea of what to expect. Smart spent the flight from Scutum-Crux telling me horror stories, and I had every reason to believe the pompous bastard.

“Remember, Harris, these people are looking for ammunition. Answer questions as briefly as possible. You have no friends in the House of Representatives. If a congressman is friendly, it’s only because he wants to look good for the voters back home.”

The door to the chamber opened and three pages came to meet us. They were mere kids—college age .

. . my age and possibly a few years older, but raised rich and inexperienced. They had never seen death and probably never would.

“Governor Smart,” one of the pages said. “Did you accomplish what you wanted on Ezer Kri?” Taken on face value, that seemed like a warm greeting. The words sounded interested, and the boy asking them looked friendly, but Smart must have noticed a barb in his voice. Smart nodded curtly but did not speak.

“And you must be Lieutenant Harris,” the page said as he turned toward me. He reached to shake my hand but only took my fingers in the limpest of grips. “Good of you to come, Lieutenant. Why don’t you gentlemen follow me?” He turned to lead us into the House.

“Tommy Guileman,” Smart whispered into my ear. “He’s Gordon Hughes’s top aide.”

If Smart and I had been allowed to wear combat helmets in the House of Representatives, we could have communicated over the interLink. Smart could have told me all about Guileman. He could have identified every member of the House as an ally or an enemy. Since we did not have the benefit of helmets on the floor, I needed to watch Nester Smart and study his expressions for clues. The House of Representative chambers looked something like a church. The floor was divided into two wide sections. As the pages led us down the center aisle, several representatives patted me on the back or reached out to shake my hand.

At the far end of the floor I saw a dais. On it were two desks, one for Gordon Hughes, Speaker of the House, and one for Arnold Lund, the leader of the Loyal Opposition. I took my place at a pulpit between them and thought of Jesus Christ being crucified between two thieves. Below me, the House spread out in a vast sea of desks, politicians, and bureaucrats. Fortunately, I was not alone. Nester Smart hovered right beside me.

I had seen the chamber in hundreds of mediaLink stories, but that did not prepare me for the experience of entering it. A bundle of thirty microphones poked toward my face from the top of the podium. One clump had been bound together like a bouquet of flowers. Across the floor, three rows of mediaLink cameras lined the far wall. They reminded me of rifles in a firing squad. Later that day, I would find out that I had been speaking in a closed session. The cameras sat idle, and most of the microphones were not hot.

My wild ride was about to begin. “Members of the House of Representatives, it is my pleasure to present Lieutenant Wayson Harris of the Unified Authority Marine Corps. As you know, Lieutenant Harris is a survivor of the battle at Little Man.”

With that, the members of the House rose to their feet and applauded. It was a heady moment, both intimidating and thrilling.

“Do you have prepared remarks?” the Speaker asked.

“No, sir,” I said.

“Quite understandable,” the Speaker said in a jaunty voice. “Perhaps we should open this session to the floor. I am sure many members have questions for you.”

Hearing that, I felt my stomach sink.

“If there are no objections, I would like to open with a few questions,” the leader of the Loyal Opposition said.

“The chair recognizes Representative Arnold Lund,” Hughes said. Smart smiled. Apparently the meeting had started in friendly territory.

Above me, the minority leader sat on an elevated portion of the dais behind a wooden wall. I had to look almost straight up to see his face.

“Lieutenant, members of the House, as you know, the Republic has entered dark times in which separatist factions have challenged our government.”

Nester Smart moved toward me and leaned close enough to whisper in my ear. “He’s on our side,”

Smart whispered. “He is signaling us and his allies how to play this. He will try to shield you if the questions get hostile.”

“As we all know,” Lund continued, “a landing force was sent to Little Man for peaceful purposes. More than two thousand Marines were brutally butchered . . .”

“I am certain that history will show that these men died bravely . . .” The leader of the Loyal Opposition showed no signs of slowing as his speech passed the seven-minute mark.

“Were it possible, we should erect a statue for every victim of that holocaust.” Lund waxed on and on about the innocence of our twenty-three hundred-man, highly armed landing party and the brutality of the Mogat response. He talked about the unprovoked attack on the Kamehameha and the good fortune that other ships happened to be nearby.

“Goddamn windbag” Smart whispered angrily.

“Lieutenant Wayson Harris is one of only seven men who survived that unprovoked attack,” the congressman went on. “Fellow representatives, I would personally like to thank Lieutenant Harris for his valor.”

Loud applause rang throughout the chamber, echoing fiercely around us. The shooting match was about to begin. Behind me, Hughes banged his gavel and called for order. “The floor now recognizes the junior representative from Olympus Kri.”

An old woman with crinkled salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a tight bun stood. She pushed her wire-frame spectacles up the bridge of her nose and spoke in overtly sweet tones. “Olympus Kri celebrates your safe return from Little Man, Lieutenant Harris. I am sure the battle must have been a very grueling experience. What can you tell us about the nature of the incursion on Little Man?”

“The nature?” I asked.

“What was the reason you went down to Little Man?” the congresswoman asked. She leaned forward on her desk to take weight off her feet.

“Remember, you are an ignorant foot soldier,” Smart whispered in my ear.

“Why did I go to Little Man, ma’am?” I repeated. “We went because that was where the transport dropped us off.”

The soft hum of laughter echoed through the chamber.

The congresswoman managed a weak response. “I see. Well, Lieutenant, as I understand it, there were twenty-three hundred Marines on Little Man. That sounds like quite an invasion.”

With that she stopped speaking. Perhaps she expected me to respond, but I had nothing to say. She hadn’t asked me a question. An awkward silence swelled.

“Is it?” the congresswoman finally asked.

“Excuse me?” I asked. I looked over at Smart and saw an approving smile.

“Why did you invade Little Man?” she asked.

“I was not involved in the planning of this mission, ma’am.”

“Twenty-three hundred units?” she persisted. “What reason were you given for sending so many men to the planet?”

“Ma’am, I was a sergeant. Nobody gives sergeants reasons. They just tell us what to do.”

“I see,” she said.

Nester Smart leaned over to whisper something to me, but the congresswoman stopped him. “Did you have something to add, Mr. Smart?” she asked.

“I was just advising Lieutenant Harris about the kind of information you might be looking for,” Smart said.

“From your vast store of battlefield experience, Mr. Smart?” the congresswoman quipped. There was a burst of laughter on the floor. Smart turned red but said nothing.

“Lieutenant, I am merely trying to determine why so many Marines were sent to the surface of Little Man. I am not asking for an official explanation. You are a soldier in the Unified Authority Marine Corps. Surely you have some understanding about how things are done.”

“It’s not unusual for ships to send their complement of Marines to a planet, ma’am,” I said.

“Two thousand men?” she questioned. “That sounds more like an occupying force.”

“Ma’am, twenty-three hundred men with light arms is a tiny force. We keep more men than that on most friendly planets.”

“I see,” said the congresswoman. “Lieutenant Harris, I thank you for your service to the Republic.” With that, she returned to her desk.

I recognized the next senator’s face from countless mediaLink stories. Tall, with dark skin and a beard that looked like a chocolate smudge around his mouth, this was Congressman Bill Hawkins who represented a group of small planets in the Sagittarius Arm. Except for the telltale white streaks that tinged his hair, Hawkins looked like an athletic thirty-year-old. I’d read somewhere that he was actually in his fifties.

“Lieutenant Harris, I salute you for your service to our fine Republic,” he said. He spoke slowly and in a clear, strong voice. Earth-born and raised, Hawkins had been a fighter pilot—his was the voice of one veteran speaking to another. He placed a foot on his seat and leaned forward. As he went on, however, his demeanor transformed into that of a politician.

“Lieutenant, perhaps I can assist my esteemed colleague from Olympus Kri,” he began. Around the chamber, many representatives began muttering protests.

“Perhaps my esteemed colleague has not noticed that the lieutenant has already answered her questions,”

said Opposition Leader Lund.

“Certain questions remained unanswered,” Hawkins said, turning his attention on Lund.

“This is supposed to be a presentation, not a board of inquiry,” a congressman shouted from the floor.

“Order. Order!” Hughes said, banging his gavel. “Representative Hawkins has the floor.”

“And I do congratulate the lieutenant,” Hawkins said, looking over my head toward Representative Gordon Hughes. “Well done, Lieutenant Harris. But, in light of new information, certain questions must be answered.”

“What information is that?” Nester Smart broke in.

“Oh yes, Nester Smart, good of you to escort the lieutenant,” Hawkins said with a smirk. “After surviving a brutal battle on Little Man, it would be a shame if this fine Marine was lost in a dangerous place like the House of Representatives.”

Laughter and angry shouts erupted around the chamber.

“Order,” Congressman Hughes called. His booming voice stung my ears. “What new information have you acquired, Senator Hawkins?”

Hawkins reached down and pulled a combat helmet out from beneath his desk. “Do you recognize this, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“That is a combat helmet,” I said.

“Your combat helmet, Lieutenant. One of my aides retrieved it from a repair shop on the Kamehameha . It appears that its audio sensors failed during the battle.” Hawkins held the helmet so that everyone on the floor could see it. “We downloaded the data recorded in the memory chip of this helmet. The data shows that you acted most heroically, Lieutenant Harris.”

“Thank you, Senator,” I answered quietly. I knew something bad was coming, but I had no idea what it might be. My mind started racing through the entire mission. Would Hawkins accuse me of cowardice for abandoning Captain McKay? Would he call me a traitor for leading my men out of the canyon?

“Your mission, however, was about more than squatters,” Hawkins said. “Congressman Hughes, with your permission I would like to show the chamber some excerpts from Lieutenant Harris’s record.”

“This is unacceptable!” blared the minority leader. “Mr. Speaker, this is a blind-side attack.”

Hawkins’s aides jumped to their feet and shouted in protest.

“Ironic,” Hawkins said, putting up an open hand to silence his delegation. “That is the exact accusation I have against the men who planned the invasion of Little Man. We can view this record in a special committee if that is what my esteemed colleague wishes, but a committee investigation would require the testimony of all of the men who survived this attack. We would need them to verify that the records have not been altered.

“Today, we have the benefit of Lieutenant Harris’s expertise. I think we should view his record while he is here and able to comment on it. If you like, Mr. Speaker, we can put it up to a vote.”

Looking around the chamber, I could see that the majority of the people in attendance wanted to know what Hawkins had up his sleeve. Though I could not make out specific conversations, the tenor of the talk around the chamber seemed excited.

Hughes seemed to sense the excitement. “There is no need to hold a vote,” he said. “I will allow you to show your information.”

A large screen dropped from the ceiling behind the dais. By the faint glow that filled the chamber, I could tell that smaller monitors lit up on the representatives’ desks.

“Do you recognize this scene, Lieutenant?” Hawkins asked.

“Yes,” I said. I turned to Nester Smart for help, but he looked completely dumbstruck. “I was on guard duty the night before the battle.”

The ghost of First Sergeant Booth Lector came walking through the undergrowth.

“So the battle was the very next morning?” Hawkins asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

The video feed continued.

“What the hell did I ever do to you?” I asked from the screen.

“You were made, Harris. That’s reason enough. Just the fact that you exist was enough to get me transferred to this for-shit outfit,” said the ghost of Booth Lector. The video feed paused.

“Who is this man?” Hawkins asked.

“Master Sergeant Booth Lector,” I said.

“I know that, Lieutenant. I can read his identifier on the screen. I am asking about his relationship with you. What did he mean when he said that he was transferred because you exist?”

As I struggled to come up with a safe answer, Hawkins said, “Why don’t you think about that question as we watch more of this video feed?”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“You had everything to do with it. You think this is a real mission? You think we are going to capture this entire planet with twenty-three hundred Marines? Is that what you think?

“They’d forgotten about us. Saul, Marshall, me . . . Nobody in Washington knew that there were any Liberators left. The brass knew about Shannon, but there was nothing anybody could do about him. Klyber kept him nearby, kept a watchful eye on him. Nobody could touch Shannon with Klyber guarding him. As far as everybody knew, Shannon was the last of us.

“Then you came along, Harris— a brand-new Liberator.

“You weren’t alone, you know. Klyber made five of you. We found the others. Marshall killed one in an orphanage. I killed three of them myself. But Klyber hid you . . . sent you to some godforsaken shit hill where no one would find you. By the time I did locate you, you were already on the Kamehameha.”

“I . . .”

“Shut up, Harris. You asked what’s bothering me, now I’m going to tell you. And you, you are going to shut your rat’s ass mouth and listen or I will shoot you. I will shoot you and say that the goddamn Japanese shot you.

“The government hated Liberators. Congress wanted us dead. As far as anyone knew, we were all dead. Then you showed up. I heard about that early promotion and wanted to fly out and cap you on that shit hill planet. I would have framed Crowley, but Klyber transferred you before I could get there.

“Next thing I know, you’re running missions for that asshole Huang. You stupid shit! Huang was the reason we were in hiding in the first place. As soon as I heard that you met Huang, I knew we were all dead. Once he got a whiff of a Liberator, he would go right back to the Pentagon and find every last one of us.

“And here we are, trying to take over a planet with twenty-three hundred Marines. This isn’t a mission, Harris, this is a cleansing. This is the last march of the Liberators, and if they need to kill off twenty-three hundred GI clones to finish us, it all works out fine on their balance sheets. They’re expendable.

“You want to know what I have against you, Harris? You are the death of the Liberators.”

“I was a young boy during the days of the Galactic Central War, Lieutenant. I toured the devastation of both New Prague and Dallas Prime shortly after graduating OTS. Lieutenant Harris, I have seen the destruction that Liberators do. Are you a Liberator?” Hawkins asked. I looked over at Nester Smart for advice. His eyes wide and scared, his face completely drained of blood, he took three steps back from me.

“Perhaps you have forgotten the mission of this body, Congressman.” The voice was cold, direct, and final. I recognized it at once, but turned to check. Admiral Bryce Klyber stood alone at the far end of the floor. He stood stiff and erect, his legs spread slightly wider than his shoulders and his hands clasped behind his back.

Turning to look at Klyber, Bill Hawkins fell silent. Everyone on the floor became silent. I could sense their fear.

“The mission of this body is to represent the people. When representatives take it upon themselves to exceed their mission, they endanger the institution itself,” Klyber said.

“And now, Congressman Hughes, if there are no more questions”—Klyber looked all around the floor, warning off anyone with the nerve to challenge him—“I suggest you propose a motion to recognize Lieutenant Harris’s gallant service and dismiss him.”

“I quite agree,” said Lund, the leader of the Loyal Opposition. With Admiral Klyber watching, Hughes took an open vote.

Across the floor, Bill Hawkins’s delegation exited the chamber. Ten minutes later, when Hughes tallied the vote, he noted that Hawkins abstained. The rest of the House, even the representatives from Olympus Kri, voted for my commendation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I later found out that some of Nester Smart’s allies closed the session to the media. They did not know what Hughes and his camp had planned, but they did not trust the honorable congressman from Olympus Kri. Closing the session, however, did not prevent leaks.

When I returned to the Navy base, I noticed a difference in the way the sailors responded to me. The evening I arrived, they clamored to meet me and shake my hand. Earlier that morning, as I rushed to meet Nester Smart, they couldn’t wait to shake my hand and wish me luck. After the hearing, these same men took long furtive glances at me, ducking their heads and pretending to stare at the ground when I looked in their direction. They did not seem interested in speaking. When I approached two of my drinking buddies from the night before, they said they had business to attend to and walked away. I went to the barracks to change out of my formals. I did not know how long I would remain in Washington, DC, or where HQ might transfer me. The only thing I knew was that I was no longer assigned to the Kamehameha .

When I checked my mediaLink shades, however, I found three official communiqués for Lieutenant Harris and one letter addressed to Wayson Harris. I read the letter first.

Congratulations, Wayson. You’re a hero! I hear people talking about you at work. Nobody believes me when I tell them that you and I dated in Hawaii.

Speaking of Hawaii, it’s been months, and I have not heard from you. Jennifer says that you are doing well. Vince tells her about you in his letters.

I am sorry that I was not able to say good-bye in Hawaii. I went by the hospital before I left. I think about you a lot. I had a very fun time and hope you did, too.

Please write soon,

Kasara

I did not write to Kasara from the hospital. With all of the excitement about Lector and the invasion of Little Man, I mostly forgot about her. Now that I saw the message from her, my memory came back with a rush of emotion. Funny. I didn’t think she meant much to me, but I felt lonely when I thought about her. Nostalgia? Was it my heart or my testicles?

The first of the official communiqués was my transfer. I had been assigned to serve under Bryce Klyber’s command on a ship called the Doctrinaire . Curiously, the Doctrinaire was not attached to a fleet. I was to report for duty in three days but had no idea where to go.

The idea of serving under Klyber again had great appeal. I had not gotten a chance to thank him for rescuing me in the House. He had slipped out the moment the vote was finished. The second message was from Vince Lee.

Harris,

You are a Liberator! Oh my God, how disgusting!

News travels fast from closed sessions. And they thought your kind were dead, ha-ha!

Hope all is well,

Second Lieutenant Vince Lee

Only an hour had passed since I had left the House. Did he hear about the entire session, or was my being a Liberator the only leak?

The third message came from Aleg Oberland, the teacher who ran the Tactical Simulations Center at the orphanage. It had been nearly two years since my last visit with him. Back then he had told me that my career would be set if I caught Klyber’s eye.

Oberland’s message was shortest of all—“Contact me.” At the end of his message was a command button that said “Direct Reply.” Oberland appeared on the screen. “Wayson,” he said, “are you okay?”

“You heard about it, too?” I asked.

He stared into the screen. “I’m in DC,” Oberland said. “Does a busy Liberator like you have time for lunch?”

We met in a diner near Union Station. Oberland arrived before me. When I stepped through the door, I saw him waving from a booth.

“How are you feeling?” Oberland asked as he climbed out of his booth and shook my hand. He looked tired and worried. He looked into my eyes too long and too thoughtfully. He reminded me of someone visiting a friend with a fatal disease.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Took a bit of a beating in the House, but I guess I should have expected that.”

Oberland continued to stare at me as if he expected me to collapse on the spot. “Ever since Little Man, you’re all anybody ever wants to talk about back at #553. I’ve been following the Kamehameha on the mediaLink. Ezer Kri was big news. So was Hubble!”

A waitress rolled up to our booth. I ordered a sandwich and a salad. Oberland only ordered a salad.

“I just about wrote you off when I found out you were sent to Little Man. You’ve been out to the edge of the galaxy.”

“I just about wrote myself off on Little Man,” I admitted.

“I came in last night,” Oberland said. “What happened in there? I mean, I know you received a unanimous vote of commendation.”

The waitress returned with our food, and we started eating. Picking at his salad, Oberland said, “The reports say there were several Liberators on Little Man.”

“Four of us,” I said, around a mouthful of sandwich.

“There was me, Lector . . .”

“Lector?” Oberland asked.

“Booth Lector. He was transferred to the Kamehameha a few weeks before we shipped off to Little Man.”

“I know the name, Wayson,” Oberland said. “I didn’t know he was still alive.”

“He’s not,” I said. “He died on Little Man. So did two other Liberators.”

“Let me guess . . . Clearance Marshall and Tony Saul,” Oberland said. “I finished my career on New Prague. I got there three weeks after the massacre. They cleaned up most of the bodies before I arrived, but I still found fingers and teeth on the ground. The first team on the scene cleared out the big stuff, the bodies.

“The Senate launched a full investigation into why so many civilians were killed. I conducted the Army investigation. We found out what went wrong. It was a platoon of Liberators—Lector’s platoon. They destroyed an entire town, then they destroyed the next town and the town after that. By the time they finished, thirty thousand civilians had died. And it wasn’t like they blew them up with a big bomb, either. I don’t know why Congress outlawed Liberators, but I can tell you why I would. The people they killed on New Prague . . . they slaughtered them one at a time.” Oberland pushed the rest of his salad away on his plate and shook his head. “I try hard not to think about New Prague.”

“Must have been bad,” I said, not knowing what else to say. They didn’t teach us the details of that particular massacre in class. All we’d ever heard about was the number of victims. I wanted to ask how a single platoon managed to kill thirty thousand people in a single day; but looking at Oberland’s grim expression, I decided to change the subject.

I told Oberland about Bill Hawkins producing my helmet. He listened intently, especially when I brought up the video feed.

“Hawkins should be more careful. Klyber is a powerful enemy,” Oberland said. “I imagine he is also a powerful ally. I don’t suppose his appearance in the House was a lucky accident?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I just got transferred to his new ship.”

“That makes sense. Klyber’s involvement with Liberators was never much of a secret. We used to call them ‘Klyber’s brew.’ Of course, we didn’t say that in front of him . . . or them.”

“Admiral Klyber told me that creating Liberators was the only black mark on his career,” I said. “I get the feeling that he sees me as a way to wipe the slate clean.”

“Pulling six men off Little Man was impressive,” Oberland said as he started up his salad again. “Too bad you weren’t able to pull an officer with them.”

“You mean a natural-born,” I said.

“Yes. Saving those clones was quite a feat, but it will take a lot more than saving clones to give Liberators a good name.”

“I suppose,” I said.

“I haven’t heard anything about Klyber taking command of a new ship,” Oberland said.

“My transfer didn’t list a fleet, just a ship called the Doctrinaire .”

“Klyber does not get involved with a project unless it is important,” Oberland said. He looked at his wristwatch then stared out the window. I could tell he felt rushed. He drummed his fingers on table for a moment. “I want to ask you something. I’ve wanted to ask you this since the first time you walked into my simulation lab. Wayson, you always seemed like a good kid.”

“Are you asking if I am like Lector?” I interrupted.

Considering my question, Oberland checked his watch and looked out the window again. Crowds of people had filed into the station. I had not noticed it before, but Oberland had a small overnight bag beside his seat. “I would never have allowed you in my simulations lab if I’d thought you were like Lector. But you have the same programming and the same genes.”

“See these scars?” I pointed to my eyebrow and down my cheek. “These aren’t from Little Man. I never got so much as a nick on Little Man. These came from Hawaii.”

“Hawaii?” Oberland said, clearly strolling down some old memory lane. I was afraid he would ask if I had gone to Sad Sam’s Palace, but all he said was “I used to go there on leave.”

“I got in a fight with a Navy SEAL. He was short, almost a midget. He came up to here on me,” I said, running my pointer finger along my collarbone. “I’ve never seen anybody move so fast in a fight. And his fingers were like talons. He could have killed me right from the start, but he gave me a chance.” I laughed a short, hollow laugh and paused to relive the fight in my mind. “The little bastard made a mistake, and I got the upper hand. I damn near killed him.

“You want to hear something strange? I think he was a clone.”

Oberland shook his head. “SEALs are natural-born.”

“That’s the way of things, isn’t it? Replace the valuable with the expendable. Get rid of the natural-borns with their relatives and their political pratfalls and exchange them for clones. You can tailor clones to fit your needs.”

“I suppose that was what Klyber did when he made Liberators,” Oberland said, in a tired voice.

“The best Marine I ever met was a Liberator, a sergeant named Tabor Shannon. He and I got drunk together the night that I found out I was a clone. You know what he told me? He said that being a clone meant that you never wondered about right and wrong. He said that we were man-made, and our commanding officer was our god and creator. That sounds bad when I think about massacres like New Prague, but this guy was nothing like Lector. I think Liberators make their own choices, just like everybody else.”

“Wayson, I’m already late for my transport,” Oberland said as he stepped out of the booth.

“I’m glad you came,” I said. “It’s nice seeing a friendly face.”

I stood up and shook Oberland’s hand. He grabbed his overnight bag and trotted out the door, pausing for only a moment to look back at me. Oberland, a small, trim man with messy white hair, blended into the transport station crowd and vanished. I wished that I could go with him and return to the orphanage.

“Good-bye, old friend,” I whispered to myself.

It turned out to be my day for meeting old friends.

I did not feel like returning to base and sitting around, ignored by Baxter and the other sailors, so I went to a nearby bar and found a small table in a dark corner where I thought no one would notice me. It was a nice place, more lavish than the sea-soldiers’ drinking hole on the Kamehameha . The place had dim red lights that gave the beige walls a dark, cozy feel. During the quiet hours of the late afternoon, the bartender struck up conversations with the customers seated around the bar as he poured drinks. I felt at home. The Earth-grown brew flowed freely enough there, and nobody looked like a politician. Everything seemed right in the universe except that I could not seem to get even remotely drunk. Then off-duty sailors started rolling into the bar. The first stray dogs showed around 1700 hours. By 1900, gabbing, happy swabbies filled the place. A few stragglers hovered around the counter swilling down drinks as fast as they could order them while dozens more crowded around tables swapping jokes and smacking each other on the arms. Sitting morosely in my quiet little corner, drinking my tenth or possibly fifteenth beer, I thought how much I hated this city.

Ray Freeman entered the bar.

I don’t think anybody knew who he was; they just knew he was dangerous. Dressed in his jumpsuit with its armored breastplate, Freeman looked like he had come in from a war. He stood more than a foot taller than most of the men he passed.

Silence spread across the bar like an infection. Sailors stepped out of his way as he crossed the floor. Freeman walked through the crowd without stopping for a drink. He came to my table. “Hello, Harris,”

he said.

“How’d you recognize me without my helmet?” I quipped.

“Liberators aren’t hard to spot,” Freeman said. “At least that’s what they’re saying on the mediaLink.”

“Neither are seven-foot mercenaries,” I said.

Freeman sat down across the table from me.

“The chair isn’t taken,” I said. “Why don’t you join me?”

“You were lucky to get off Little Man alive,” Freeman said.

So much for small talk, I thought. “Thank you for that insight. Next time I get chased by ten thousand angry Mogats, I won’t mistakenly think that I have everything under control.”

With his dark skin and clothes, Freeman looked like a shadow in the dim ambiance of the bar. He smiled and looked around. “You should quit the Marines,” he said. “Why don’t you quit?”

“It’s in my genes,” I responded, pleased with my little joke. Freeman did not laugh, not even a chuckle.

“You didn’t come to Washington, DC, just to tell me to quit the Corps?”

By that time the sailors around the bar had forgotten about us. They joked, laughed, and told stories at the tops of their lungs. Freeman, however, made no adjustment to compensate for their rising decibels. He spoke in the same quiet, rumbling voice that he always used. “We could be partners,” he said.

“What did you say?” I asked. “I didn’t understand you. It sounded like you said I should become your partner.”

“We’d do good together.”

I paused to stare at him. Ray Freeman, the perfect killing machine and the coldest man alive, had just asked me to be his partner.

“Partners?” I repeated, not sure that I wasn’t having a hallucination brought on from nearly twenty glasses of beer. “Go into business? With you?”

Freeman did not respond.

“Leave the Marines?”

“You weren’t supposed to survive Little Man,” Freeman said. “You may not survive next time.”

“Next time?” I asked. I knew I could leave the Marines, but deep inside, I did not want to leave. Even after the massacre at Little Man and everything they put me through in the House of Representatives . . . even knowing that my kind was extinct and the people I was protecting wanted to end my life, I wanted to stay in the Marines.

“I can’t leave the service. I’m a Liberator, remember? You can’t drive spaceships underwater. I’m doing the thing I was made to do, and I can’t do anything else.” I knew I was lying. I could leave, but something in my programming kept me coming back for more.

Suddenly my mouth went dry. “Goddamn,” I hissed to myself. Back when I was sober, I assured Aleg Oberland that I would not become like Booth Lector because Liberators made their own choices. But, faced with the knowledge that I would die if I remained in the corps, I wanted to stay where I was. My head hurt, and I started to feel sick to my stomach. I rubbed my eyes. When I looked up, Ray Freeman was gone, if he’d ever been there at all.

CHAPTER THIRTY

One sure sign of a high-security military operation is the means of transportation used for bringing in new recruits. I could have taken public transportation to Gobi. Military transports flew in and out of the SC

Central Fleet on a daily basis. This transfer was different. On the morning I was supposed to transfer to the Doctrinaire , Admiral Klyber’s new ship, a driver showed up at my door.

“Lieutenant Harris?” the petty officer asked, as I opened my door.

“Can I help you?” It was 0800. I was packed and dressed but had not yet eaten my breakfast.

“I’m your ride,” the petty officer said.

“My ride? I don’t even know where I’m supposed to go; I can’t leave the station yet.”

“You’re transferring to the Doctrinaire, ” the petty officer said. “It’s not like they run a shuttle at the top of every half hour, sir.”

The petty officer loaded my rucksack into the back of his jeep and drove me out to the airfield. A little Johnston R-27 sat ready on the field. The Johnston was the smallest noncombat craft in military employ. It carried a maximum of twelve passengers.

I looked at the little transport. It was raining that morning. Beads of rain ran down the sides and windows. “I hope we are not going very far,” I said.

“We’ll put on a few light-years before nightfall,” the petty officer responded. “That Johnston is self-broadcasting.”

“You’re shitting me,” I said.

“No, sir,” the petty officer said as he grabbed my bags from the back of the jeep.

“You have got to be shitting me,” I said.

A pilot met us on the launchpad and opened the doors to the Johnston. He was a Navy man, a full lieutenant dressed in khakis. He looked at me and smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

The petty officer placed my bags in the Johnston and saluted. “Lieutenant Harris does not believe this bird is self-broadcasting, sir.”

I followed the lieutenant aboard. The Johnston was heavily modified inside. It only had four seats instead of the usual twelve. Used for both military and corporate travel, Johnstons had small galleys for long trips. There were no such amenities on that R-27. Behind the four seats, the rest of the passenger cabin was blocked by a cloth-covered wall.

The Johnston took off like any spaceworthy plane, using discrete jets to lift ten feet off the ground. We left Earth at a standard trajectory, flying at the standard MACH 3 speed. We had the usual quivers as we left the atmosphere.

Moments later, the petty officer shot me a wink as the tint shield darkened the windows. The air inside the cabin began to smell of ozone. Muffled crackling sounds seeped through the barrier at the back of the cabin. There was a bright flash, and suddenly everything was normal again.

“We’re in the Perseus Arm now,” the petty officer said. “Our base is a bit off the beaten trail, so to speak. Without a self-broadcasting ship, it would take you more than a month just to get to the nearest disc station.”

According to Admiral Klyber, not since the United States developed the atomic bomb in the New Mexico town of Los Alamos, had a military project been conducted as covertly as the creation of the Doctrinaire . In many ways, Klyber’s Doctrinaire reminded me of the Manhattan Project. No one would ever stumble onto Klyber’s shipyard by accident. Located on the outskirts of the Perseus Arm, the facility sat in the middle of the unsettled frontier. Spies could not trace the location because self-broadcasting ships leave no trail. Any research done on this facility stayed on this facility. At first glance I found the shipyard unimpressive. It was big, but that meant little to me. I still thought that the Doctrinaire was part of a new fleet that Klyber planned to outfit with some new kind of cannon or faster engines—no big deal. As we approached the dry dock, the only thing I could see was the scaffolding.

When we got closer, I realized that Klyber was not building a fleet. All of that scaffolding was built around one colossal ship, a broad, wedge-shaped ship with bat wings. The ship was at least twice as wide as a Perseus-class fighter carrier. “What is that?” I mumbled.

“She’s the biggest bitch in all of the six arms,” the petty officer told me.

The petty officer led me out of the Johnston and told me to wait in the docking bay for further instructions. He left with my rucksack. A moment later, the pilot came by and patted me on the back.

“Welcome aboard,” he said, then he, too, disappeared.

I was not alone in the docking bay, however. The area was filled with engineers and workers. Technicians driving speedy carts raced between platforms, welding plates, placing circuits, and lacing wires. The area looked like an office building that had been framed but not finished. Strings of wires and aluminum ribs lined the inner walls. Uncovered lighting fixtures shone from the ceiling. The air ventilation system twisted over my head like a gigantic snake.

“Lieutenant Harris?” A young seaman approached me. He saluted.

I saluted back.

“Admiral Klyber sent me. He is waiting for you on the bridge. This way, sir,” the seaman said.

“How long have you been stationed on this ship?” I asked, as we left the bay. The seaman considered this question for several moments, long enough for me to wonder if he heard me.

“Six months, sir.”

“What do you think of her?”

“The Doctrinaire ?” he asked. “She was made to rule the universe. If we ever leave the galaxy, it will be in a ship like this.”

It took twenty-five minutes to get to the bridge. True enough, the Doctrinaire ’s twin docking bays were in the aft sections of the wings, the farthest points from the bridge; but even so, the walk seemed endless.

“How big is she?” I asked.

“It depends on how you measure her,” the seaman said. “It’s two full miles from one wing tip to the other. That’s the longest measurement. She has twelve decks, not including the bridge.”

If there was an area that wasn’t under construction between the docking bay and the bridge, we sure as hell never passed it. Half of the floor was pulled up in the corridors. Mechanics and engineers popped in and out of the uncovered crawlways like moles. The seaman took no interest in any of their work. He was a clone. All of the enlisted sailors were clones.

We took flights of stairs between decks because the elevators did not have power yet. The only lighting in one stretch of the ship came from strings of emergency bulbs along the floor. The engineers had not yet installed generators in that area, the seaman told me.

When we finally arrived on the bridge, I saw Klyber standing over two field engineers as they installed components in a weapons station. I read his restlessness in the way he micromanaged these poor engineers, going so far as to complain about the “inefficient” way they laid their tools out.

“Permission to come aboard, sir?” I called from the hatch.

The engineers, who were lying on their backs like mechanics working under a car, watched nervously from beneath the weapons station. Klyber, who stood in his familiar, rigid pose—hands clasped behind his back, legs spread slightly wider than his shoulders—spun to face me. His cold, gray eyes warmed quickly, but he still looked tired.

“Lieutenant Harris,” he said. “Permission granted.”

I saluted.

“That will be all, seaman.” Klyber dismissed the man who had escorted me.

“Perhaps, Lieutenant, you would like a tour of the ship.”

“I would love a tour of the ship, sir,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like her.”

Klyber smiled, pleased to have his work appreciated. “I am rather excited about her,” he said, sounding both proud and humble.

Having never visited the bridge of a capital ship, I had no point of comparison for the bridge of the Doctrinaire . When completed, the bridge would look more like an office complex than anything else. Rows of desks and computers stretched from wall to wall. I saw nothing even remotely resembling a joystick or a steering wheel.

Klyber led me out of the bridge. “The biggest difficulty in creating a ship of this size is finding a source of power. We needed dual cold-fusion reactors just to power the electrical systems.”

“What about the engines?” I asked.

Klyber laughed. “That is another story entirely. That’s not a function of size, it’s a function of capacity and efficiency. We talked about making engines that were five times larger than the RAMZA engines used on Perseus-class carriers, but they’re too inefficient. We have ended up allocating two-thirds of the ship to carry fuel.”

“Is this a one-ship fleet?” I asked.

“Quite the contrary,” Klyber said as he led me up a flight of stairs. “I will require a massive fleet of support ships to keep this juggernaut rolling.”

We entered a glass-enclosed dome that Klyber identified as the observation deck. The outer skin of the tiny deck was one continuous window. I could see every corner of the ship from there. Engineers and builders in noncombat space suits stood on the scaffolding on the other side of the glass. I watched three men in weighted suits pulling a wagon along the top of the fuselage. Standing on the observation deck, I felt like I could see forever.

“I think I would be scared to come up here during a battle,” I said. Klyber heard this and smiled. “There’s not a safer spot on this ship. These walls are made out of a plastic polymer. Not even a particle beam can hurt them. And beyond that . . .” Klyber pointed to two massive rings that encircled the ends of the wings on either side of the wedge-shaped hull. From a distance, the rings would make the Doctrinaire look like she was riding on bicycle tires. The Kamehameha had shield projector rods—posts that stood no more than twenty feet tall and less than one foot in diameter. The rods projected flat force fields that could filter out large amounts of particle-beam and laser fire. The field fried enemy missiles.

“You have rings instead of rods?” I said. “Will they project your shields in any direction?”

“In every direction,” Klyber said, with the knowing smile of someone who is about to reveal a secret.

“It’s a new technology, Harris; the rings produce a curved shield that stretches all the way around the ship. No Achilles’ heel gaps between shield screens.”

“That is amazing, sir,” I whispered.

Klyber probably did not hear me; he had already started down the stairs. We traveled down eight decks, staying in the center of the ship. The last flight of stairs ended in a glass booth overlooking a dark tunnel that stretched from the stem to the stern.

Hundreds of feet away, I could see balls of sparks where welders worked along the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. I pressed against the window and squinted. Off in the distance, I thought I saw pinpricks of light. “What is this place?” I asked.

“Flight control,” Klyber said. “Each tunnel will have its own squad of fighters.”

“Each tunnel?” I asked.

“There are four tunnels,” Klyber said.

Other fighter carriers used a single flight deck for transports and fighters. This ship had two docking bays and four tunnels. As I considered this, Klyber continued the tour.

I still had not recognized the immense size of the project when Klyber brought me to the high point of his tour. We walked to the bottom deck of the ship and entered the biggest chamber of all. The area was completely dark as we entered. Klyber tapped a panel beside the door and lights in the ceiling slowly flickered on. Like the tunnels, the chamber stretched the length of the ship. The ceiling was thirty feet high and the floor was at least a hundred feet wide. Every inch of space was filled by an enormous machine surrounded by cat-walks riddled with walkways.

“What is this?” I said.

“This is the key to our success, Lieutenant Harris. The Doctrinaire is self-broadcasting. Once we locate the GC Fleet, we will be able to track it, chase it, and ultimately destroy it.”

Admiral Klyber had an agenda. He wanted to bring his two creations together. He wanted to make the galaxy safe for the Unified Authority, and he wanted his Liberator and his supership to lead the charge. In his sixties, Klyber could see retirement approaching, and he wanted to leave a historic legacy. As for me, I liked serving under Klyber. His paternal feelings toward Liberators gave me access I would never have had under other officers.

I spent one month on the Doctrinaire serving as the chief of security. Everyone in that section of the galaxy had a high security clearance. Except for cargo and parts that were brought in by our own pilots, no ships—friendly or otherwise—came within light-years of our position. During my tenure as the head of security, I presided over an empty brig. (The only occupants were engineers who drank too much and became disorderly.) I requisitioned supplies. I also nearly forgot what it was like to be a rifleman in the U.A. Marines. Without knowing it, Klyber had domesticated me. I no longer remembered the electric tingle of adrenaline coursing through my veins or endorphins-induced clarity of thought. I was becoming an administrator. Police work did not agree with me; I was made for the battlefield.

Restless as I had become, I began looking for excuses to leave the ship. I accompanied engineers on requisition trips. When new personnel reported for duty, I insisted on briefing them. Klyber warned me that it was risky for me to leave the Doctrinaire . I should have listened to him.

Two new recruits waited for us at the galactic port on Mars. I went to brief the new officers, glad for an excuse to escape from the security station.

I sat in the copilot’s seat of the Johnston R-27 as we self-broadcast from the Doctrinaire to the Norma Arm. From there, we traveled through the broadcast network. It was a new security precaution. Spies and reporters might become curious if they heard about a self-broadcasting ship appearing on Mars radar. Passing through the network only added ten minutes to the trip, though you might have thought it added hours to hear the pilots bitch about it.

Mars Port was in a geodesic dome used by commercial and military ships. As we landed, I looked at the rows of fighters standing at the ready.

“I’m going to refuel while you find the new recruits,” the pilot told me.

“Sounds fair,” I said. Crouching so that I would not hit my head on the low ceiling of the R-27, I left the cockpit and climbed out through the cabin door. The port on Mars was an ancient structure. There was a stately quality to its thick, concrete block walls and heavy building materials, but the recycled air always smelled moldy.

The U.A. never colonized Mars. The only people who lived there were merchants. A huge duty-free trade had sprung up around the spaceport—the busiest galactic port in the Republic. Selling duty-free Earth-made products proved so lucrative that retailers rented land from the Port Authority and built dormitories. Stepping into the Mars Port waiting area was like entering the universe’s gaudiest shopping mall.

Many of the stores had flashing marquees and hand-lettered signs in their windows: “EARTH-MADE

CIGARS,

$300/box!” and “SOUR MASH WHISKEY—100% EARTH-MADE INGREDIENTS.” Travelers flowed in and out of the stores. Since Mars technically had no residents, everybody on the planet qualified for duty-free status.

I pushed through the crowd, ignoring the stores and the restaurants. Over the speaker system, I heard a woman’s voice announce the arrival of a commercial flight, but I paid no attention. Our new officers would meet me in the USO.

The USO was empty except for a man refilling the soda bar. I was early—the trip in had taken less time than the pilot expected. I took a seat in the waiting room, amid the homey sofas and high-backed chairs. Isn’t that just how it goes in the Marine Corps, I thought. You spend 95 percent of your life sitting around bored and the other 5 percent fighting for your life.

I was very tired and wanted to nap, but I fought the urge. My mind drifted. I thought about the security plans for the Doctrinaire, but those thoughts strayed into a daydream about how that great ship might perform in battle. In my mind, I saw the Doctrinaire flashing into existence near the GC Fleet, brushing destroyers aside as it concentrated its firepower on the GC battleships. I saw four squadrons of fighters spitting out of the tunnels and swarming enemy ships. God, it would be beautiful.

“Hello, Lieutenant Harris.”

The voice sounded familiar and toxic. Admiral Che Huang, smiling so broadly that it must have hurt his face, sat in the seat beside mine. Behind him stood four MPs. “Surprised to see me?

“It was awfully nice of Klyber to send you. The way he’s been hiding you, I had almost given up. Today must be my lucky day.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

In light of his feelings about Liberators, I expected Huang either to toss me in the Mars Port military brig or possibly shoot me and dump my body in deep space. Instead, he transferred me someplace where he could keep an eye on me—the Scutum-Crux Fleet.

Whether by coincidence or by design, the UAN Ulysses S. Grant happened to be patrolling less than one thousand miles from a disc station. Traveling from Mars to the deck of the Grant took less than ten minutes.

My new tour of duty started on a positive note. Second Lieutenant Vincent M. Lee met me as I stepped from the transport. He was made to wear the gold bar on his shoulder—well, maybe not made for it; but with his bodybuilder’s physique, he looked like the ideal of how an officer should look.

“Wayson,” he said in a whisper, rushing up to me and shaking my hand. “I half expected to hear that you were killed in a freak accident on the way here.”

“How did you know I was coming?” I asked.

“It’s all over the chain of command. Captain Pollard heard that another of the Little Man 7 was coming aboard and sent word down the line.”

That didn’t sound bad. It sounded like I had caught a break, like Huang possibly wanted to separate me from Klyber but didn’t care much what happened to me beyond that. “You heard how I got this transfer?”

“Jeeezuz, Harris! Huang himself?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The little specker looked like he was going to wet his pants he was so jazzed with himself. But if the worst he has planned is sending me here, maybe he’s not so bad.”

Having said that, I noticed a tense reaction in Lee’s expression. His eyes darted back and forth, and his lips drew tight. “Harris, Captain Pollard wants to meet with you to discuss your orders. Maybe we can talk after that.”

“That doesn’t sound so good,” I said.

“It isn’t,” Lee said. He led me down a long corridor toward the elevator to the Command deck. “I had to trade favors just to meet your transport. Huang wanted a team of MPs to escort you from the transport directly to the brig.”

“You’re taking me to the brig?” I had never visited the brig of a Perseus-class carrier. But I doubted it would be near the Command deck. The area we were passing through was pure officer country, all brass and plaques. Naval officers walked around us, some pausing to catch a quick glimpse of me.

“I’m taking you to Pollard’s office. He was one of Klyber’s protégés. He’s doing what he can for you, but it’s not much.”

“You have enemies in high places, Lieutenant,” said Jasper Pollard, captain of the Grant . “From what I can tell, Admiral Huang personally arranged this transfer.”

“I’m not surprised, sir,” I said.

“I would not assign a rabid dog to Ravenwood Station, Lieutenant.”

“Where, sir?” I asked.

“Ravenwood. Have you been briefed?”

“No, sir,” I said.

He shook his head, pursing his lips as if he had bitten into something sour. “Pathetic. How can they send an officer into action without a proper briefing? Under other circumstances . . .” Pollard walked to a shelf and selected two small tumblers. Using silver tongs, he placed three cubes of ice in each tumbler. “You drink gin?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He splashed three fingers of gin over the ice. “I know about Little Man, of course. You must be one hell of an officer.

“I have also heard about your hearing before the House.” He handed me a tumbler. “Leave it to those assholes to turn a medal ceremony into an inquisition.”

Pollard downed his gin and jiggled his glass so that the ice spun. “Considering your record, you’re probably a good choice for Ravenwood. You’ve got as good a chance of survival as anybody. Then again, I hate wasting a perfectly good officer on an assignment like that.” He shot me a wicked smile.

“Even a Liberator.”

Sitting behind his desk with his hands on his lap, Captain Jasper Pollard looked too young to command a fighter carrier. With smooth skin and no visible gray strands in his brown coif, the captain looked like a man in his early thirties, though I am sure he was closer to fifty. “Let me tell you about Ravenwood. We’ve lost a lot of men on that speck of ice.”

“Sounds bad, sir.”

“We’ve kept a lid on the story. As far as I am concerned, if Morgan Atkins wants that planet, we should give it to him. We should pay him to take it. That goddamn planet is of no value, industrially or strategically. Apparently the big boys in the Pentagon have an itch about giving in, so they keep throwing men down that rathole.”

He walked to his desk and sat down. “Ravenwood is on the inner third of Scutum-Crux, near the area where Scutum-Crux and Sagittarius merge. We never colonized it. It’s too far from a sun. The goddamn rock is half ice, but it has an oxygen atmosphere.

“Anyway, the Navy set up a refueling depot on Ravenwood. It wasn’t much—a small base, fuel, food, ammunition, emergency supplies. They stationed a hundred men there. It was one of those assignments. Get caught screwing some admiral’s daughter and you might get sent to Ravenwood.”

Or Gobi, I thought.

“The base went dark four weeks ago.” Pollard raised his hands, palms up, to show confusion. “They did not send a distress call. For all we knew, they just blew up their communications equipment.

“So Thurston sent us to investigate. We found the base empty.”

“It was empty?” I asked.

“Someone attacked it,” Pollard said. “Someone broke through the outer wall. There was a fight. We found bullet casings and burns on the walls. What we did not find was bodies.

“Thurston ordered me to leave a unit behind to guard the place while he investigated. That unit disappeared the next day.”

“How many men, sir?” I asked.

“A platoon,” Pollard said in a hollow voice. At that moment he looked ancient and cold. “We don’t know if they are dead. We never found bodies. We have recovered equipment and a few dog tags.”

“This sounds like a ghost story,” I said.

“It just might be that,” Pollard said. “I’ll tell you what I think happened, and maybe you’ll wish it were ghosts. I think the Mogats are in Central Sagittarius. I think Ravenwood Station has a good view of their base. I can’t prove it, but that is what I think.”

We sat silently as a few moments ticked by. “How big a squad am I taking on this assignment?” I asked.

“You have a handpicked platoon. Good men. I’m sorry to lose them.” He slid a thick personnel file across the desk. “Here’s your mission profile. You have a few hours before you leave. I can loan you an office if you want to meet your men.”

“Thank you, sir, but I think I’d rather place some calls.”

“Huang sent a memo instructing me to make interLink and mediaLink facilities available for you. Admiral Klyber is your guardian angel, right? I think he wants you to contact Klyber. This is Huang’s way of thumbing his nose at him. Now that you are in Scutum-Crux territory, there’s not much Klyber can do.

“I’ll give you that office. You’re free to use the communications as you like.”

The truth was that I was embarrassed to run to Klyber for help. I was supposed to be the head of security, and I’d let myself get abducted. God, I hated Huang. How long had that bastard been waiting for a chance to nab me? Probably since Ronan Minor. Admiral Che Huang, the secretary of the Navy, had spent more than one year looking for some way to cap me, a lowly grunt. I should have been flattered.

With three hours before my shuttle left for Ravenwood, and Lee waiting outside the office, I picked up the mediaLink shades and toyed with the idea of writing a letter to Kasara. I wasn’t really interested in her, but who else could I write to? So I tried to write to her and found myself struggling with every word. After less than five minutes, I deleted the letter and went out to grab a drink with Vince.

“How’s the sea-sailor’s bar on this boat?” I asked.

“Not as good as the one on the Kamehameha, ” Lee said. “But it’s got plenty of booze.”

It was early afternoon; we had no trouble finding a table to ourselves. We sat in a corner and did not talk for almost a minute. “How is Jennifer?” I finally asked.

“She’s good,” Lee said. “We’ve traded a couple of letters since Hawaii, but I get the feeling she’s moving on.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.

“You know Kasara is getting married next week, right?” Lee asked. He read my expression and knew the answer.

“I heard from her the day you went to the House,” he said. Your speech was big news. She actually called me to ask if you were all right. I think she still has a thing for you; but you’re off being a Marine, and her old guy is right there on her planet.”

“And her fiancé was okay with her calling you to ask about me?” I asked.

“I doubt he knew. I get the feeling there are a lot of things he doesn’t know, like the fact that his soon-to-be bride did more than get a suntan in Hawaii. Jennifer wrote me about it. She came home talking about breaking things off. That lasted about one month. Then she never heard from you. Next thing you know, Kasara is announcing she is about to get married.”

“So we’ve both been dumped,” I observed.

“Well, I never thought of Jennifer as marriage material . . . but damn fine scrub.” He laughed.

“To damn fine scrub,” I said, and we clinked our beers. And then we both became quiet again. This time the silence lasted longer.

“Harris, I don’t know if anybody can survive in a trap like Ravenwood; but if anybody can, it’s you. I wanted you to know that. I know you thought Shannon was the perfect Marine, but you’re even better.”

I did not know what to say. I looked at him and smiled, but inside I felt incredibly alone. “What about you, Vince? You made it. You were the first orphan to make lieutenant. Wasn’t that the first step toward a life in politics?”

He shook his head. “Now that I’m here, I think I like it. I like life among the natural-born. I think I’m a career Marine from here on out.”

Still the same guy, I thought. If any clone ever suspected his synthetic origins, it was Lee. And if ever a clone spent every waking minute trying to deny that suspicion, it was him again. And now he had landed himself in a position that truly did mark him as a natural-born . . . even if he was synthetic.

“A career man, eh?” I said. “You’ll do one hell of a job.”

I felt a sinking feeling as the doors of the kettle crept closed, blocking any hope of escaping back onto the Grant . The men in my all-clone platoon did not speak much as our transport took off. Two diligent Marines field stripped and cleaned their M27s. Most sat quietly staring into space. One fellow even managed to fall asleep. We had a five-hour ride ahead of us. I envied him. A few minutes into the flight, I went to visit the cockpit. There were two officers flying the ship—a pilot and a navigator. “Could you turn down the lights in the kettle?” I asked. “I want these boys rested.”

It was very dim in the cockpit. The only light was the low glow from the instrumentation. A soft blue-green halo glowed over the small navigational chart near the pilot. Many of the energy and communications displays glowed white and red. “Want them all the way off?” the pilot asked.

“Can you give me ten percent luminance?” I asked.

“No problem, Lieutenant,” said the pilot.

“Thank you. Oh, one other thing,” I said as I turned to leave. “Could you call me before we land? I was hoping to get a look at the planet as we approach.”

“No problem,” the captain replied as he turned back to his control panel. I closed the door behind me and returned to my seat. The pilot had dimmed the cabin lights so much that I could barely see in front of me. Dressed in green armor that appeared black in the dim light, my men looked like they were carved out of stone. A few conversations still smoldered around the cabin. Men spoke in whispers, hoping not to disturb comrades sleeping around them. I dropped into my seat and thought about Hawaii and swimming in clear tropical waters. My eyelids fluttered, and my thoughts lazily floated into dreams, becoming more vivid and colorful. I felt myself floating in balmy currents, slowly rising and sinking in gently changing tides. I could see shapes moving just beyond my reach. As I concentrated on those shapes, I realized that I saw the bodies of men tied to the floor of the sea.

“Lieutenant.”

A hand gently nudged my shoulder. I blinked as the dimly lit cabin came into focus. The navigator stood over me, speaking in a soft voice. “We’re just coming up on Ravenwood now.”

“Okay,” I said as I stretched. My mouth was dry and filled with a bad taste. The stale air in the transport cabin had left my nose congested. I also had the dozen or so assorted aches and stiffnesses that come with sitting up while sleeping.

I entered the cockpit and got a quick glimpse of a gray-and-blue planet. I saw no hint of green on the planet’s surface, just the black and gray of stone surrounded by the iron blue of frozen seas.

“Welcome to paradise,” the pilot said.

“So that’s what paradise looks like,” I said.

“What did you expect?” the navigator asked.

“I’ve got a lock on the landing site beacon,” the navigator said. “You’d better get back to your seat. We’ve got to prepare to land.”

“There’s an empty seat,” I said, pointing to the copilot’s chair. “Mind if I stay for the landing?”

“Suit yourself,” the pilot said.

I peered out the cockpit door and noted that the lights had come back on in the cabin. Almost everyone would have woken up.

We were flying over a wide expanse of prairie. There were scabs of yellow-brown grass on the ground, but most of what I saw was a rock floor with patches of ice. Above the dismal prairie was a sky choked with clouds. In the distance, enormous mountains jutted out of the plains like great daggers that pierced the swollen sky. We did not travel as far as those distant cliffs. Our little fort sat by itself on a flat plateau. Its gleaming white walls looked insignificant, surrounded by thousands of miles of rock and ice. As the transport approached, I was very pleased to see that Ravenwood Station was made of sturdy concrete and steel, and not just a prefabricated Quonset hut. Small, with thick ramparts and bulky architecture, Ravenwood Station was built to withstand a war. To my great relief, I noticed shield projector rods on its outer walls. If we could get the generators running, we would be able to seal the base off from all but the most violent of attacks. Considering the story Captain Pollard had told me, I doubted that the generators would work.

The AT touched down on a small pad just outside the walls of the station. Looking out the cockpit, I watched as our landing jets vaporized the thin sheet of ice that covered the cement. The ice turned into steam that rose along the hull of the ship. Moments later, two small streams of condensation raced down the windshield and froze in place.

“I’ve transmitted your security clearance code,” the navigator said. “Your men can enter the base.” I nodded, then turned back to the window in time to see the two doors made of seven-inch-thick metal slide apart.

The fortress was completely dark inside, but that was of little concern with our night-for-day vision. I worried more about the condition of the outer walls than generators and power supplies. I went to the bulkhead and called, “Marsten and Gubler.” Two corporals came to the front of the kettle.

“Leave your rucks. I need you to have a look around the base to see what works and what is broken.”

They saluted and left.

According to their profiles, Arlind Marsten and Max Gubler were skilled field engineers. With any luck, their journeyman’s knowledge would be enough to get the security, communications, and life-support systems online. Pausing only to pull their tool cases, they scrambled out of the transport.

“You boys,” I said, pointing to the three privates. “Scout the outer walls, inside and out. I want a damage report.”

As they started for the hatch, I called after them over the interLink. “Keep an eye open for weapons, armor, debris, anything that might give us a clue about recent battles. Got it?”

“Sir, yes, sir.” They saluted and left.

“The rest of you unload this transport. Be quick about it. I want to seal the base by 1500.”

Moving at a quick jog, the remaining Marines left the transport and crossed the landing pad. In Ravenwood’s dark atmosphere, I noticed that their green armor blended beautifully against the ice and rock. If we were unable to get the energy systems running, if the security system was damaged beyond repair, we might still be able to take the enemy in an open-field ambush. I watched my men hustling to unload the supplies. The boys knew the gravity of their situation. They would remain alert and disciplined. We had, I thought, a fighting chance. A crackling sound reverberated along the station wall as a flood of bright light ignited around the grounds. In the brightness, I saw the dull sheen of frost on the walls.

“Lieutenant,” a voice said over the interLink, “energy systems are up and running, sir.”

“Nicely done, Marsten,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

“The power generators were in perfect order, sir,” Marsten responded. “Gubler says the security and heating systems were damaged, but not badly. The energy rods are still intact. It’s as if the last platoon powered the station down to prepare for us.”

“I see. What is the condition of the shield generator?”

“Shorted out, sir. It’s an easy repair. I think we can have it going in an hour.”

“Really?” I asked.

“The communications system is a bust, though,” Marsten said. “Whoever attacked the base made sure the occupants could not call for help.” We all had mediaLink shades, but those were not made for battle. Using them left you blind to your surroundings, and a sophisticated enemy could easily jam their signal.

“Maybe they were making certain that future occupants would not call for help either,” I said. “One last thing. I want you to check for radar. This used to be a fuel depot. It may have radar-tracking capabilities.”

“Yes, sir,” Marsten replied.

The area around the base looked clean when we landed. I would send a small patrol out to make certain of it. If the area was clean, and we could get a tracking system running, we might be able to track the enemy’s landing. That was, of course, assuming they flew in. If they broadcast themselves in stolen Galactic Central ships, our radar would give us very little warning.

“Lieutenant,” a voice came over my interLink.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We found out how they entered the base. You might want to see this.”

I looked in the AT’s cargo hold. My men had mostly emptied the compartment, but a few crates of supplies stood piled on a pallet in a far corner. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. How bad is the damage?”

“There are a lot of holes, but the wall’s still pretty strong. I think we can patch it.”

As we spoke, a few men carried off the last of the supplies.

“Lieutenant Harris,” the pilot’s voice spoke over the interLink. “I understand that the cargo hold is empty.”

“You in a hurry to leave?” I asked.

“This is my third drop on Ravenwood over the last two months, Lieutenant. As far as I know, the other teams are still here because no one came to pick them up. Yes, goddamn it, I am in a hurry to leave.”

“Understood,” I said. “Thank you for your help.” I climbed down from the cargo hold and watched as the hatch slid shut.

“Cleared to leave,” I said as I stepped away from the AT.

“Godspeed, Lieutenant. With any luck I will pick you and your men up shortly.” There was no mistaking the lack of conviction in the pilot’s voice.

I did not respond. Its jets melting a newly formed layer of ice, the boxy transport ship lifted slowly off the landing pad. It hovered for a few moments, then rose into the sky. Watching it leave, I felt an odd combination of jealousy and fear.

“Do you want us to get to work on the wall, sir?” one of the privates asked.

“Wait up, Private,” I said, as I started around the base for a look at the damage. A thin layer of long-frozen snow covered the ground. My boot broke through its icy crust. I found my scout party examining the back wall—the wall farthest from the launchpad.

The wall was made of foot-thick concrete blocks coated with a thick plastic and metal polymer for added protection. Using a ramming device, or possibly just a well-placed charge, somebody had made seven holes through a thirty-foot section of wall.

“Can you fix this?” I asked.

“It shouldn’t be much of a problem, sir. We have the materials, but, ah . . .”

“Private?”

“If the wall didn’t keep the enemy out the first time, I don’t see how patching it will make much of a difference.”

“Point taken,” I said. “Do what you can here and look for anything that tells us who made these holes and how they made them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We did find these,” the private said, pointing to an unexploded fractal-field grenade—a messy device that overloaded shields by flooding them with radioactive isotopes. A couple of those bangers could certainly have shorted out the generators on this base.

“Son of a bitch,” I said. The U.A. military stopped using those grenades decades ago, possibly even forty years ago. I picked the grenade up and rolled it in my palm, being careful not to touch the pin.

“You might want to be careful with that, sir,” the private said.

“Private, this banger is forty years old. If it wasn’t stable, it would have blown years ago.” Just the same, I carefully replaced the grenade on the ground.

“While you’re patching the walls, I want you to check the grounds for radiation. Let me know if the soil is hot, would you?”

“Yes, sir,” the private said.

“I’ll send some men out to guard you,” I said. I did that for his comfort, not his safety. Whoever had attacked Ravenwood didn’t care if we fixed the walls and started the shield generators. That much was obvious.

Everything I had done up to that point made perfect sense. In fact, it was obvious. If you inherited a base that had been ransacked, you fixed the holes and restored the security systems. The previous platoon would have taken the same precautions.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The war began on November 8, 2510. Hoping to find a response from Admiral Klyber, I went into the command office and slipped on my mediaLink shades.

NORMA ARM SECEDES FROM THE REPUBLIC

November 8, Washington, DC— Announcing that they had formed a new organization called the Norma Arm Treaty Organization, 27 of the 30 colonized planets in the Norma Arm declared independence from the Unified Authority.

Other territories may follow suit. There are reports that the Cygnus Arm has a similar treaty organization.

“Shit,” I gasped. An entire arm of the galaxy had declared independence. If the Cygnus Arm followed, would Scutum-Crux be far behind?

I did not tell my men about the secessions. Knowing that a civil war had begun would hurt their morale and possibly weaken their resolve. In the new state of affairs, they would need to fight more than ever. With entire galactic arms declaring independence, the Navy would not waste time worrying about an all-clone platoon on an ice cube like Ravenwood. We were on our own.

While I read the news in my office, my men scoured the base for bodies and signs of fighting. We found them everywhere. Bullets had gouged and scratched many of the walls. Somebody had fired a particle beam in the building, too. We found places where beam blasts had exploded parts of the walls.

“Sir, I think you should see this,” one of my men called.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Squad bay,” the man said, “in the hub.”

Viewed from the top, Ravenwood Station looked like a square with an X connecting its four corners. The center of that X, the “hub,” included the barracks, the rec room, the galley, and the latrine. I found three of my privates in squad bay. One of them had noticed a dark stain on the floor. They had pushed the bunks out of the way for a better look and found that most of the bare, concrete floor was discolored.

“I don’t think it’s blood,” I said. “Blood washes off clean.”

“It almost looks like an oil stain,” a private said.

“Whatever this shit was, sir, there was a lot of it,” the first private said. “Most of the floor is stained.”

“So did it evaporate?” I asked.

“No, sir. Somebody mopped up afterward.”

“What?” I asked.

The private pushed a bunk out of his way and opened a service closet. Inside the closet were a coiled steam hose and some maps. The heads of these mops were thick and heavily stained towels that were stiff and purple.

“There are more stains, sir,” another private said. The group took me on a tour of the base, pointing out crescent-shaped stains where past residents had most likely died.

From what I could tell, the unfortunate platoon before us made a stand in the barracks. Everywhere we went, we found scratches and gashes in the wall. The boys before us had not worried about conserving ammunition. They obviously had something more on their minds.

We stripped the sheets from the bunks and found that most of the mattresses had a black stain running along one edge. Many had flash burns, and a few even had bullet holes. The last platoon had thrown their bunks on their sides and used them as barricades during the firefight. As we examined the bunks, a corporal noticed something strange about the damage in the walls. Most of the shots were between three and five feet up, with only a rare shot having hit any higher. Marines, who are trained to shoot to kill, will normally aim at their enemies’ chests and heads.

I went to the operations area, the northern corner of the fortress. The rest of Ravenwood Station had plastic-coated white walls and bright lights. Operations had black walls and no windows. The only light in the area came from the security screens and computer monitors. Lights blinked on and off on the banks of computers lining the walls.

It was there that I found Marsten and Gubler hacking into the station’s many computer systems. Despite the cold, they had removed their helmets and gloves.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

“We’ve got the climate controls working. It’s getting warmer,” Gubler said. “We’re already up twenty degrees.” He pointed to a monitor that showed the base temperature at just under forty degrees. I looked at Gubler and saw that his face was pale; his lips had turned slightly blue.

“Yeah, warmer,” I said. “How is it going with the radar system?”

“Up and running,” Marsten said. “I may have already found something, too.”

He went to a terminal and typed in some commands, bringing up a radar screen. “Now this may only have been an echo from something detected a long time ago; but as the system came online, I picked up a ship at the edge of our range. It was only there for a moment.”

“So another ship might be in the area?” I asked. “Is it possible that the ship detected your scan and flew out of range?” I asked.

“I’m not sure why it would do that,” Marsten said. “It was one of ours, a fighter carrier. Have a look.”

Marsten typed some commands, and the screen fuzzed for a moment. The time mark in the corner showed “11/8/2510: 1437.” The screen froze.

“There,” Marsten said, pointing to the very top of the screen. Outlined in green and white was the bat-winged shape of a U.A.N. fighter carrier.

“A carrier. Did you identify it?” I asked.

“No, sir. It moved out of range too quickly.” Marsten stood in front of the scanning station, the glare from the screen reflected in a bright smear on his armor.

“Did you get any information?” I asked.

Marsten’s forehead became very smooth as his eyes narrowed, and he considered my question. “I’ll see what we can take from the radar reading.”

I walked beside him and looked over his shoulder as he typed more information into the computer. A glowing red grid showed on the screen. He brought up the radar frame with the ghost ship, then isolated the ship. Numbers flashed on the computer screen as he plumbed the image for information. “You’ll be able to see it more clearly if you take off the helmet,” Marsten said.

“I need to stay on the interLink,” I responded.

Marsten nodded. “This is the beginning of the scan. The ship was pretty far away.” Strange numbers appeared on the screen. Leaning in for a better look, Marsten traced his finger along the screen. His finger looked green in the glare.

“That can’t be right,” Marsten said as he looked up from the screen. He turned to face me. “This may sound odd. It’s probably a misread, but this ship is only twenty-two hundred feet wide. I mean, it’s either a very large battleship or maybe an old Expansion-class fighter carrier.”

This information should have come as a surprise, but it didn’t. I felt a familiar chill run through me. “How far back in time can you go on radar record?”

“You want to know what the other platoons saw?” Marsten asked. “I can do that.” He sounded both pleased and excited.

We had no information about the hundred-man Navy detachment that disappeared on Ravenwood. One moment they were there, and everything was fine. A week later they did not report in. Nothing is known about what happened during that week.

We knew more about the missing platoon. It disappeared within five hours of landing on Ravenwood. The commanding officer had checked in with Pollard every hour on the hour. Captain Pollard sent a rescue ship two hours after the final transmission. The ship took three hours to arrive, and by the time it did, the base was empty.

After a thorough search, Marsten found another slight echo that suggested inconclusively that an Expansion-class fighter carrier did indeed pass within radar range of Ravenwood Station sometime after the platoon arrived.

“Does that ship mean anything, sir?” Marsten asked.

“It might,” I said.

“Do you think it’s from the GC Fleet?”

I shook my head. “No. That fleet did not have any carriers.”

“I’ll keep on this,” Marsten said.

“Okay,” I answered, “I’m going to have another look around. Let me know if you find anything else.”

All of the evidence pointed in the same direction, but I did not like where it was pointing. For one thing, if I was reading it right, our chances of survival were nil.

The one part of Ravenwood Station I had not yet visited was the vehicle pool. I called for a squad to meet me there.

“Lieutenant,” Marsten said.

“What have you got?” I asked.

“The radar was running during the first attack. An Expansion-class carrier was in the area around the time of the attack. In fact, it was flying over the area when the radar was shut down.”

“Was it the Kamehameha ?” I asked.

“How did you know?” Marsten asked.

“Just an ugly hunch,” I said. “You’ve done good work. Any chance you can search the security records?

I need to know everything that happened in this base.”

“Gubler already tried,” Marsten said, now starting to sound slightly nervous. “The records were erased.”

“Okay, you’ve done great. Thanks.” I signed off.

Twelve of my men met me inside the motor pool, and we searched. If Ravenwood Station ever had tanks or ATVs, they were now gone. Except for tools, fuel tanks, and a lot of trash, the room was empty.

The floor and walls were bare concrete. We searched methodically, piling debris in the center of the room behind us. I found a few spent M27 cartridges and a line of icy footprints. Somebody had come in here with wet feet. Unfortunately, I had no way of telling the age of the footprints. When it came to important discoveries, one of my corporals won the prize. “I’ve found a body!” he yelled over the open frequency. Everybody stopped what they were doing and went to have a look. The doors to the motor pool opened as more Marines came for a look.

“Where is it?” I asked as I looked at the far wall.

“He’s buried in that corner, sir,” the corporal said. He pointed toward the far corner of the room. Any lights that might have been in that section of the pool had either stopped working or been shot out. I switched on the night-for-day lens in my visor as I moved in for a closer look, but I need not have bothered. The corner was empty except for a pile of cans and rags; but growing out of those rags was the name, “Private Thadius Gearhart.”

“Search it,” I ordered, not knowing what we might find. The pile of trash was about a foot deep—too shallow to conceal a body. “The rest of you, get back to work.”

As the others filed out of the motor pool, the corporal called out, “I found him. At least I have what’s left of him.”

The corporal held the broken front section of a combat helmet between his pinched fingers. The section included most of the frame around the visor and a jagged swath of the portion around the left ear. A few shards of glass remained in the visor.

Gearhart had been most likely shot in the face. The bullet would have entered through the visor, flattening on impact, and blown out the back of his head and helmet. If we examined the area more carefully, I suspected we would find bits of broken plastic along with skull and brain among the rags, cans, and trash.

The corporal swung the scrap of helmet as if he planned to throw it in the trash. “Stop,” I said.

“Do you want this, sir?” the man asked.

“Take it to Marsten,” I said. “Tell him that it’s still transmitting an identifier signal and ask him if he can access the data chip.”

Though Marsten was surely a gifted hacker, I had little hope that he would extract information from that data chip, assuming it was even in there. Combat helmets were complex pieces of equipment with optical movement readers, multiple lenses, interLink wiring, and more. It seemed like too much to hope for the read-and-relay data chip to be in that small section. Luck, for once, was on our side. We did not find anything else of significance in the motor pool. As I left to return to the hub, I saw two of my men praying. “You do that,” I whispered. “Why not.” A few minutes later, Marsten contacted me.

“Lieutenant Harris, I think we got it rigged.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Rigged” was a good choice of words. Marsten had strung a full dozen wires into a small socket along the left edge of the visor. Gubler connected that rat’s nest of wires into the back of a computer.

“The chip was damaged to begin with, and this is not the way these chips were meant to be read,”

Marsten said, by way of apology, as he turned on a computer monitor. “We won’t get much, but we should get something.”

Rather than a streaming video feed, we got a single image on the screen. It could only have been the last thing Gearhart saw as the bullet struck him. Jagged lines marked the screen where his visor had already shattered.

Gearhart must have been guarding the motor pool when the enemy arrived. The image on the screen showed three men climbing through holes they had bored—the holes my men were currently sealing back up.

I could see two of the men’s faces. The third, likely the man who killed Gearhart, was hidden behind a rifle scope. One of the other men held a pistol in one hand as he pulled himself forward with the other. His clawlike fingers were wrapped over the edge of the hole.

“They all have the same face. Are they clones?” Gubler asked as he stared into the screen.

“Adam Boyd,” I said.

“You know him?” Marsten asked.

I thought about the scars around my forehead and right eye. “We’ve met.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Two years earlier, when I first reported to Gobi Station, I dreamed only of serving the Republic. My greatest ambition was the life of a Marine, but only twenty-four months later I no longer gave a damn about the Earth, the Unified Authority, or the Marines. Programming or no, I was done with all of it. To me, the Unified Authority was people like Robert Thurston, who considered clones expendable. He was no more antisynthetic than he was antibullets. Both were supplies that could easily be replaced and should be used to strategic advantage. On Little Man, he sent twenty-three hundred loyal Marines to their deaths without a backward glance. And Ravenwood . . . Ravenwood wasn’t a fuel depot, it was a training ground. Admiral Huang was using Marines as live targets to train his new breed of SEAL clones how to kill. I doubted that Huang knew that I had beat the shit out of one of his clones at Sad Sam’s Palace, but I hoped that he did.

If only I could have peeked. One quick look at the old security tapes and I might have understood the SEALs’ tactics. Screw superior numbers and the home field advantage, I wanted to know what methods the Boyd clones used, what weapons they carried, and what made those deep purple stains on the floors. But they had made sure that I could not peek. No one cared if it was a matter of life and death for my platoon; the important thing was that the SEALs have their training exercises. Peeking at past performances would be breaking the rules of their game.

If the SEALs stuck to their past schedule, they would attack within five hours of our entering the base. We spent three hours patching walls that the SEALs could easily breach, repairing systems the SEALs had twice destroyed, and gathering specks of evidence of past SEAL victories. That was how the past platoons had played it, too. I needed to start developing new ways to play the game. The key, I thought, was not getting herded into a group.

The stains on the ground might not have been blood, but they represented death. Looking at the evidence, I reconstructed the last assault. The Boyd clones had circled the outer halls, killing off the stragglers and herding the rest of the platoon into squad bay.

There, with the last Marines using bunks for cover, the SEALs finished the battle. They massacred the platoon. They had done something awful, but I had no idea what it might have been. In the waning minutes before the fight, I came up with an idea that might give us a small advantage.

“Marsten,” I called over the interLink, “kill the lights and close off the vents.”

“Do you want me to shut off the heat?” Marsten asked.

“No, bump the heat as far as it will go. Just close the vents.”

“The vents are in the ceiling, sir. It’s going to get cold in here.”

“That’s what I want, Marsten. I want this base cold and dark. Do you have that?”

“Yes, sir,” Marsten said in an unsure voice.

“I’m on my way to the control room. I’ll explain when I get there,” I said. Next, I spoke over the platoon-wide frequency. “This is Harris,” I barked. “I have given the order to power down the lights and turn off the vents. I want everybody to switch to heat vision. I repeat, do not use night-for-day vision, use heat vision.”

An eerie, almost liquid, darkness flooded the halls as the lights went out. For the first few seconds, I did not see anything other than the heat signatures of the men around me. Their armor muffled their colors; instead of orange with a yellow corona, they were brown and red. Groping blindly, I found my way to a wall, then felt my way to the door.

“Begging the lieutenant’s, pardon, sir, but I can’t see a specking thing,” someone complained over the interLink. “Can I switch to night-for-day?”

“No!” I shouted. “We’re running out of time, and we cannot do what the last platoon did.”

“And the lieutenant believes that fighting blind will help?” another man asked.

“You can bet the last platoon leader did not try that,” another man quipped.

“Take a look at the ceiling, asshole,” I said.

By that time, a faint orange glow appeared along the ceiling and the tops of the walls. It wasn’t bright, but the air in the ventilation shafts was only getting hotter. Soon the heat signature from the shafts would give us a clear outline of every room. We could tell the shapes of the rooms and where we stood in them. We would see each other. We would have marginal lighting, and the Boyd clones would be entirely blind.

“Son of a bitch,” one of the men said. “What is that?”

“Marsten is flooding the air shafts with superheated air,” I said.

Looking through heat vision, the hall in front of me was long and black with no walls or floor but a flat, tan ceiling. I could see junctions where it intersected with other halls.

“Okay, everybody, take your positions,” I said as I continued to the control room. “Get ready. Our guests should stumble in soon, Marines. I believe we have a debt to square with them.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” they barked. I was using tactics I had learned from the officer who sent us to die on Little Man, and I felt angry at myself for doing it.

As I approached the entrance to operations, I saw the light chocolate-colored heat signatures from the ten men I had posted by the door. Some of them were kneeling with pistols drawn. I also saw their identifier labels and made a point of calling each man by name. They saluted me as I approached. I returned their salutes. “Are you ready, Marines?” I asked. They were.

“Sir, do you think this will work?” Gubler asked, when I entered the control room. I meant to say that I did not know, but that I thought our heat vision would give us a slight advantage. I meant to tell him that I had once gone on a mission with a team of SEALs, and that they had gotten themselves blown up while exiting an empty campsite. I did not have the chance to say any of that, however. The attack started.

It began with a systems blackout in operations. Someone, somewhere, had managed to power down our systems, shields and all. The big screens around the operations room winked once and went dark.

“This is it, boys,” I said over the interLink. “The attack has begun. Stay calm. Remember, with lights out and the heat on, you will see the enemy before he can see you. Now hold your positions.”

I had placed men in every corner of the building, with the idea that they could call each other for help as needed. In the next moment, the SEALs turned that decision into a death sentence. A soft hum began ringing in my ears. “They’re jamming the interLink!” I yelled at Marsten. He did not hear me. He stood three feet from me, and he did not hear my voice through my helmet. I watched him tap his helmet over the right ear.

What a choice they left me, my vision or my sight. I snapped off my helmet and motioned for Marsten and Gubler to do the same. With our helmets off we were now completely blind.

“They jammed the interLink,” Gubler or Marsten said. In the darkness, I could not tell which one spoke. I heard panic in his voice.

“Pretty specking smart!” I yelled, not realizing that with their helmets off, both men could hear me perfectly well.

“The comms console is down,” Marsten or Gubler added. “What do we do?”

“We do the same as everybody else,” I said. “We hold our positions. You defend this room, shoot every SEAL bastard that touches that door.” Since the power was off, taking that room would be a low priority for the SEALs. Marsten and Gubler had worked hard and pulled off miracles, but they were not combat grunts. Perhaps I could keep them alive by hiding them in the useless room.

“Where are you going?” one of them asked.

“I’m going to the motor pool. That’s where they will enter the building,” I said as I put on my helmet. It seemed, at that moment, that perhaps we had caught a lucky break. The power was off on the computers, but the ventilation system was still getting hotter. The ceiling above me looked dark orange through my heat vision.

Before leaving the room, I looked at Marsten and Gubler and tapped my visor. I meant to signal, “stay alert,” but they thought I wanted them to remove their helmets.

I broke the seal on my helmet and yelled, “Stay alert!”

“Oh,” one of them said.

“Goddamn useless techno-humpers,” I said as I left the room. I had my helmet on. They did not hear me.

I’d posted eight men in every corner of the building, with an additional seven men inside the motor pool. Those seven men were our first line of defense. I went to join them. I wanted to sprint down the corridor and through the living area. Made dizzy by my limited vision, the most I could bring myself to do was a fast jog.

I had not run far before I felt the first signs of fatigue. Perhaps the month I had served on the Doctrinaire doing administrative work had taken a fatal toll. Adrenaline shot through my veins, but I still felt weak. My heart pumped crazy hard, and my labored breathing sounded like the wheezing of a man who had run a marathon. I slowed to a stealthy walk as I reached the end of the hall, but I already knew I was too late.

The chocolate-colored cameos of men in combat armor lay on the floor before me. Three of the men lay in fetal positions, curled around their pistols. They had died near the door to the motor pool. When I looked in the door, I saw that the entire floor was covered with multiple layers of green. The bottom layer was the coldest and darkest. It did not move. Above it was a light-colored fog that swirled and undulated. The scene looked like lime-colored mist rising out of emerald-colored water. Inside that dark green, I saw several splashes of purple. I had no idea what it was, but I did not enter the room. Something in that malevolent green color warned me away.

“Damn,” I growled. “Damn!” My voice whirled around in my helmet.

Another body lay facedown in the hall beyond the motor pool. He must have been shot down while trying to run for help.

Seeing that, I did sprint. Running as fast as I could, I came to the storage area in the west corner of the base. I saw muzzle flashes as I approached. They appeared white in my visor. I also saw three Boyd clones hiding behind a wall. Their signature looked orange with a yellow corona. They had something dark on their heads, probably night-for-day goggles. One of them pulled a canister from his belt. The bastards did not hear me coming, and I shot each of them in the head. Their dwarf bodies flopped to the floor, oozing blood that registered bright red in my heat vision. Removing my helmet, I waved it around the corner so that my men would see my identifier. Then I stepped out with hands in the air.

“Lieutenant Harris?” one of the men asked. Without my helmet, I could not see a thing. I stumbled on a Boyd clone.

“How many did we lose?” I asked.

“At least seven,” someone answered.

I nodded. I had already lost a good part of my platoon. “Marsten and Gubler are in the control room. If you can get to them, that will be the best place to fight.”

“Are you coming, sir?” the voice asked.

“I’m going to see what I can do out here,” I said.

“Aye, sir,” the man said. I put on my helmet and saw him doing the same. Three brown silhouettes cut across the hub and ran to the control room. I hoped they would not run into any SEALs. My battle instincts started to kick in. I could feel the adrenaline and endorphins, and my head cleared. The westernmost corner of the base was the machine room. I held my pistol ready and trotted forward. The door of the machine room slid open, and I saw a flood of colors. The vents in the ceiling showed orange. The furnace generating the heat looked yellow. There I found more of that green mist. It seemed fresher this time; very little had darkened and settled on the floor. Whatever that green shit was, I wanted nothing to do with it.

The door on the far side of the machine room was open. Three Boyds stood right outside the door—short, slender orange silhouettes with yellow coronas. I could see the clawlike fingers. I capped the first two as the third one turned to face me. He was too late. I shot him in the shoulder as he spun. His momentum tripped him. As he fell, he tumbled into the green goo. His screams were so loud that I heard him through my helmet.

His heat seemed to charge the mist as he fell into it. It swirled around him, and purple liquid oozed from his body. It was not blood. The blood of the other two Boyds registered red in my heat vision. The liquid was purple and viscous. It seemed to seep from his body and did not spread on the floor. Elite SEALs, the Republic’s most deadly killing machines . . . They had to have been Huang’s idea. How many trained killers would Huang send to annihilate a platoon of Marines? He would probably send a single squad against our three—thirteen of his men against our forty-two. Arrogant bastard. I had no way of knowing how many enemy SEALs my men might have capped as they entered the motor pool. The battle might already be over, though I doubted it.

I needed to return to the control room. It all made sense. The herding tactic, the strange stains on the concrete floor and the mattresses—they were using Noxium gas—the gas that Crowley tried to use on us in Gobi. It was heavier than air. That was why the ducts that dispensed the gas on the elevators leading to the Kamehameha ’s Command deck were built into the ceiling. The gas would form a fog along the ground—a fog that registered light green as it chilled and dissipated in the environment. Hiding in the control room, using computer equipment barricades for protection, my men would be easy targets for a Noxium gas pellet.

I leaped over bodies as I ran toward the control room. If they had not jammed the interLink, I could call to my men and warn them. Ours was a battle against the senses—the SEALs left us deaf, we left them blind.

I rounded a corner and slid to a stop. On the ground before me lay the three men I had rescued outside of the storage area. They were dead, probably shot, but a thin green mist swirled like a swarm of flies near their bodies. The SEALs were dissolving the evidence.

The gas had not spread far. I knew that I should have backtracked around the motor pool, but I needed to get to the last of my men. I needed to warn Gubler and Marsten. Taking a meaningless deep breath that would offer me no protection, I edged my way around the walls of the room, never taking my eyes off the slowly melting bodies.

The panels on the far side of the hub slid open as I approached. The three Boyds standing on the other side of the door proved a lot more alert than the ones outside the machine room. I barely had a moment to drop to one knee before bullets struck the wall above my shoulder. I returned fire, hitting one of the three SEALs in the chest. I continued firing, but missed the other men as I hid behind the open door. The Boyds had night-for-day goggles. I should have known that they would. As I prepared to spring out, I heard the muffled clink of something metal against the concrete floor. I was lucky to have heard it through my helmet. A few feet in front of me, a green cloud started to spread across the ground. I had a brief moment to react. Jumping to my feet, I lunged over the canister and into the open hall, shooting as I flew through the air. I hit one of the Boyds. But I landed hard, crashing face-first into a wall. Dazed, I rose on one knee, spun, and fired several more shots.

My head and shoulders stung and white flashes filled my eyes as I struggled to slide away from the door—away from the gas. I could see the jade-colored cloud rising in the darkness. Beyond it, I saw something that looked like a long, purple carpet across the floor of the corridor to the control room. Something struck hard against the side of my helmet, knocking it off my head. I toppled to my elbows, barely conscious at all. I felt around the floor for my pistol but could not find it.

“You failed, Lieutenant,” a high-pitched voice purred. “Your team is dead.”

“Get specked,” I said. Without my helmet I was completely blind, and there was a spreading cloud of Noxium gas somewhere nearby.

Out of the darkness, something grabbed the back of my armor and pulled me to my feet. The Boyd slammed me backward against the wall. I hit hard and fell back to the floor. I moaned and tried to crawl to my feet. The Boyd slashed his sharp fingers across my face, gouging deeply into my cheeks. He kicked me, and I slid across the floor toward the barracks . . . toward the gas. I started to sit up, but he knelt, his weight on my chest, and swiped another claw across my face. He pulled me to my feet, then shoved me backward.

My armor did not clatter when I landed. I landed on one of the SEALs I had shot a few moments earlier. Patting the ground behind me, I felt an arm and traced it. My hand reached the dead man’s forearm as I felt myself being lifted. I felt my attacker slice his claws across my face a third time, and I fell to the floor. I landed on the dead Boyd’s arm, and there it was. I felt the bulge of a pistol under my back when I landed. Barely able to breathe through my badly ripped mouth, with blood pouring down my face, I turned on my side and grabbed the gun.

I felt weight on my shoulder. The Boyd stepped down on me, pressing his foot into my throat and allowing the sharp toe of his boot to dig into my jaw. I hoped he could see clearly as I raised the pistol and fired three shots up the side of his leg.

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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THE CLONE REPUBLIC

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PRINTING HISTORY

Ace edition / April 2006

Copyright © 2006 by Steven L. Kent.

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I would like to dedicate this work to

Professor Ned Williams,

because he taught a bear to dance.

BLOOD IN THE SAND

Two of Crowley’s soldiers had seen the drone coming and shielded their eyes at the last moment. They had sprung from their hiding place and chased Ray Freeman as he ran toward his ship. Taking less than a second to aim, I hit one of them in the shoulder from over a hundred yards away. He spun and fell. His friend skidded to a stop and turned to look for me. I fired a shot, hitting him in the face. Freeman’s ship must not have been hidden very far away. Moments after he disappeared over the edge of the canyon, a small spaceworthy flier that looked like a cross between a bomber and transport rose into the air. Unlike the barge that Freeman had used as a decoy, the ship was immaculate, with rows of dull white armor lining its bulky, oblong hull. Gun and missile arrays studded its wings . . . At first I thought Freeman had abandoned the base, but then he doubled back toward the barracks. I could see some of the guns along the wings glinting as I ran to view the fight. There was no hurry, however. Crowley’s men were not prepared to fight a ship like this one. The Gatling guns flashed. Some of the guerillas managed to escape, but there was no escape, not from Freeman.

Map by Steven J. Kent, adapted from a public domain NASA diagram

“You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the lie which you were going to tell.”

“True, I replied, but there is more coming; I have only told you half.”

—Plato

The Republic, Book 3

INTRODUCTION

A.D. 2510

Location: Ravenwood Outpost; Planet: Ravenwood;

Galactic Location: Scutum-Crux Arm

“You picked a hell of a place to die, Marine,” I told myself.

This planet had no economic value, no strategic value, and no scientific worth. The outpost, with its naked concrete walls, was just a primitive fort on a barren planet surrounded by plains and ice. Every Marine in every platoon that came to defend this spot ended up missing in action—a polite way of saying they were dead . . . gone to the halls of Montezuma. Semper fi, Marine. As I walked through the halls of this shit hole, every boy stopped to salute me. “Ready at your post, Marine?” I would ask, pretending that it mattered.

“Sir, yes, sir!” they would shout, still naïve enough to believe that enthusiasm counted for something. And I would grunt lines like, “Carry on, Marine,” and salute, then move on knowing that nothing any of us did mattered. These boys were dead. Fresh out of basic, loyal to their last breath, and served up to die. I could not save them any more than I could save myself. In a couple of days, a patrol would come looking for survivors and find the base abandoned. The Corps would list us as missing in action, some officer would say, “Damn, not another platoon,” and send the next forty-two men to replace us. Legend had it that space monsters prowled the surface of Ravenwood. Most of my boys believed it was space aliens attacking the fort. Facing their deaths, these boys turned back the clock to the days when authors wrote books about alien invasions. But those authors were wrong. Once we entered space we discovered that we were almost alone in the galaxy. The only thing man had to fear was man himself. Up ahead, a couple of my boys knelt in the shadow of a doorway and prayed. “You do that,” I mumbled. “You pray. Why not?” Once the guns are loaded and the troops in place, God and chance are all you have left .

Even as I thought this, I realized that I didn’t care what became of these boys. In fact, I did not care whether or not I made it off this planet alive. I had the urge to survive, but that was just instinct. It was because of the lie. Plato’s lie seems innocent, but it leaves you alienated from everything. Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CONCLUSION