I left my bodysuit and armor for sanitation and put on a pair of freshly minted boxers, then I found the CO’s billet and took a hot shower.
It had been a week since I’d stepped into a shower. As the hot water splashed over my head and rolled down my spine, I felt the stress evaporate out of me.
I stood there, under that stream of nearly boiling water, feeling it dissolve the dirty crust from my skin; and I forgot about time. A few seconds, or a minute, or an hour, it didn’t matter to me. The water washed away my resolve until I felt dizzy and tired.
I soaped and I washed and I shaved, and I stayed under the water as the struggle to stay awake became unbeatable. My head bobbed up and down, my eyes kept closing, and I started to fall asleep on my feet. Without even bothering to dry myself, I stepped out of the shower and stumbled over to my rack. Using everything I had left, I sent Cutter a message, I said, “I’m going to be another hour.”
In the short time that Travis Watson worked as Harris’s assistant, Harris had never given in to fatigue. Now the Liberator needed a nap?
Watson took advantage of the unexpected break. His bodyguards in tow, he went to the crematorium and asked to speak to the officer in charge.
The clone who came out was an overweight, overage senior chief petty officer with whiskers and a lit cigar. He ignored Watson and spoke to the bodyguards, both of whom were also chief petty officers. The senior chief asked the CPOs, “What do you want?”
Watson answered. He said, “The Marines just dropped some bodies off for disposal…”
One of the bodyguards nudged him, and whispered, “Honors. The term is ‘honors.’ Disposal sounds like he’s burning trash.”
“The Marines just brought some bodies here for honors,” Watson said. “I need to have a look at them.”
“Yeah? And who are you?” snarled the senior chief.
Harris had warned Watson about this kind of officer, junior-grade men who treated their departments like their own personal fiefdoms. This particular kingdom was cramped and smelled of death and machine oil.
Watson said, “Admiral Cutter sent me.”
The clone stared at Watson while the words sank in. His expression softened, and he asked, “He sent a civilian to inspect the stiffs? What do you plan to do with ’em?”
“Orders,” said Watson. He gave no further information.
The man stared at Watson for several seconds. His blank expression lingered until he finally said, “Come on back. We
haven’t started the honors yet; just don’t do nothing disrespectful.”
“What state are they in?” Watson asked. Having never worked with dead bodies or been in battle, he did not know what to expect. He hoped they would be neatly wrapped and not too badly disfigured. He got half of what he wanted.
“They’re bagged and tagged,” said the senior chief.
He led Watson into the crematorium, where dozens of body bags lay in a heap. He pointed to the bin filled with bodies and the conveyer belt that would drag the bodies to the incinerator, then he asked, “Doesn’t Admiral Cutter want them flittered?”
“What does that mean?” asked Watson.
“Incinerated and flushed into space,” whispered one of the bodyguards.
“That would not be a good idea,” said Watson. “Like I said, he’s ordered me to examine them.”
“Examine them for what?”
Watson generally liked people, both clone and natural-born; but he did not like this man. He asked, “Do you have anyplace you can store them?”
“We can keep ’em right here if you want.”
“Thanks, but if we don’t get them refrigerated, they’re going to start to decay,” said Watson.
“The bags do that,” said the senior chief petty officer. “The body bags keep ’em on ice.”
Watson took in the information with pretended nonchalance. He nodded, and said, “Send three of the bodies to sick bay. Once the medics are through with them, we’ll send the bodies back for honors.” In the battle of semantics, Watson preferred the term “honors” to “flittering.”
“Yes, sir,” said the senior chief petty officer.
“One last thing,” Watson said as he prepared to leave. “Do we have any way of identifying the individuals in those bags?”
“I told you, they been bagged and tagged. They died with their armor and their tags on, the bags ID ’em.”
“The bags?” asked Watson.
“Hell, yeah. These bags read their IDs and categorize their DNA. You could pull these dead boys out and shuffle them
like playing cards, and the bags would still be able to tell you which is which.”
Watson was impressed.
Three hours later, while Harris still slept, Watson went to sick bay. The ship’s surgeon met him and led him to the back, where the bodies lay in their bags. He said, “I can show you the bodies if you want a look, or we can just talk about the results.”
“Is there anything I need to see?” asked Watson.
The doctor shook his head. “There are fifty-two bodies. Two of the men had broken necks and fractured skulls. I found fragments of shattered armor embedded in their backs. They were reported as having been crushed to death; my findings are consistent with the report.”
“They were crushed?” Watson repeated, making sure he understood.
The surgeon nodded. “That is correct.”
“What about the others?” asked Watson.
“Almost all of them were shot with shotguns at close range. The damage is extensive,” said the doctor. “Something strange, though, the uniformity of the damage. All of these men were shot from the same distance and from the same angle. It’s almost like somebody lined them up and shot them in the face.”
Watson realized that he wasn’t grasping the significance of what the doctor was telling him.
All the same?
he thought.
Same distance…same angle…so what?
He tried to imagine Mars Spaceport, Harris and his men racing through a crowded hall as men with shotguns fired at them. In his mind’s eye, they ran through a narrow spaceport hall, unable to put more distance between themselves and the shotguns because of the wall behind them.
Another scenario came to mind, a firing squad with men tied up and shot from close range. He asked, “Are you saying they were executed?”
The surgeon said, “Most of these men were already dead when they were shot.”
“What?” Watson was appalled.
“These men were already dead. I found traces of propafenone in their blood. Are you familiar with the term, ‘propafenone’?”
Watson shook his head.
“It’s a neurotoxin.”
“You’re saying they were poisoned to death, then shot?” asked Watson. It didn’t make sense.
“They weren’t poisoned, the propafenone was already in their bodies,” said the surgeon. “‘Propafenone poisoning’ is the medical term for the death reflex. Clones die of propafenone poisoning when they find out they are clones. Propafenone is the death hormone.”
Location: The
Churchill
Date: April 13, 2519
Before I did anything else, I needed to settle the score with Don Cutter. I’d ridden him like the enemy during that confab, and he’d never been anything but square with me.
The unnatural act of apologizing had never come easily to me. I lied to myself about the inability to apologize having been programmed into my Liberator DNA.
I dressed in a crisp Charlie service uniform—blue pants, khaki shirt—and left for the bridge. I did not have ribbons and medals decorating my chest, but I had my stars on my collar. Swabbies may be territorial by nature, but they clear out of the way when they see a man with stars.
I spotted armed MPs stationed along the hall as I left the Marine compound, at least two dozen of them, most carrying sidearms and a few with M27s. The MPs eyed me as I left the compound, taking in my every step but making no effort to intercept me. I walked past the MPs and rode a lift to the top deck, where I spotted another team of armed guards.
Cutter had a row of M27-wielding MPs on the bridge as well. As I approached, he glanced at them before turning to greet me. He forced a smile, and said, “Back from the dead? How are you feeling?”
I said, “The day I found out I was a clone, I drank so much Crash that I should have died. My head hurt so much the next morning that I almost shot myself. That was the worst morning of my life…this comes in a close second.”
“What happened on Mars, Harris?”
“Where do I start?” I said. In truth, the mission was mostly a blur. I remembered landing, marching through the spaceport,
and stowing away on the train to the Air Force base. I knew everything that happened after that, but I didn’t actually remember much of it. I knew my men flew to the Air Force base on transports and that I met them as they came down the ramps. Sometime after that, I had that argument with Cutter. I knew that each event took place, but I remembered none of the details. Nothing stood out in my mind until the fight with the Martian Legion. I remembered every detail of that one-sided battle.
I said, “Mars is the worst place I’ve ever been.”
I meant it as an exaggeration, but the words rang true in my head. I once ran a mission on a planet called Hubble. The planet was saturated with a heavy gas that could eat through combat armor. The gas seeped into the armor of any Marine unfortunate enough to step in a hole or trip in a ditch, and it dissolved their flesh. The sergeant who mentored me, a Liberator, died on that planet. He climbed into a crevice and never came out again.
Hubble should have scared me more than Mars, but it didn’t. Some deep-seated fear of Mars Spaceport now clouded my subconscious, carrying with it evil connotations.
“I owe you an apology. I was way out of line when I…”
Cutter brushed my apology aside, and said, “That’s water under the bridge. You found yourself surrounded by a hostile enemy, and you lost men.”
I lost men,
I repeated to myself. It took me a moment to remember how many I had lost. At the time I contacted Cutter, only two men had died. Fifty more were about to die, but I would not have known that during my conversation with Cutter.
Everything that had happened on Mars blurred together.
Cutter’s tone became very serious as he asked, “What happened down there, Harris? I know about the riot and the shoot-out; you already reported those events. I want details.”
“What kind of details?” I asked.
Maybe he could tell I hadn’t fully regained my strength. He prompted me, saying, “You met with Hughes on Thursday.”
“Yeah. Right. We landed in the spaceport and marched across one of the outer wings. There were people everywhere.”
My thoughts came out sounding disjointed. Images seemed to form out of mist in my head.
I said, “We entered the grand arcade, and the people started yelling and throwing things at us. That’s where we lost two men. They were tossing shit at us from the upper floors.”
“You reported in right after that,” said Cutter.
“Did I?” I asked. Now that he mentioned it, I remembered calling in. We had just set up shop in the food court.
To an admiral like Cutter, two men killed in action wasn’t much of a loss. He had 63 fighter carriers, each manned by thousands of clones. He had 193 battleships, each manned by two thousand sailors. Losing one of those ships would count as a loss.
“What happened with Hughes?” Cutter asked.
“I told you about it. We talked right after I saw him,” I said.
Cutter was not himself. Generally, he was an opinionated man, a big talker, the kind of man who likes the sound of his own voice. Not this time. He said, “What do you think now that you’ve had time?”
“I think Hughes would have been better off if we’d left him on Olympus Kri.”
“He’d be ash,” said Cutter.
“He’d have been remembered as a hero.”
“Do you think he feels the same way?” asked Cutter. “You’ve never cared what people thought about you.”
There was a barb buried in that statement.
I said, “Hughes is useless. I heard the locals laughing at him. He’s worse than useless. He’s a joke.”
Cutter looked confused. He said, “I thought you said you wanted him involved in the relocation efforts.”
“I do.”
“But he’s a joke?”
“He’s also a skilled administrator. We can appoint him as an interim governor over the New Olympians.”
“Maybe so. What happened after you left Hughes’s office?”
We were still on the bridge of the
Churchill
, which looked a lot like I imagined the executive offices of an insurance company would look. There were computer workstations, cubicles,
and desks. There was nothing that even remotely looked like a flight yoke or a steering wheel. The pilots and navigators typed commands on keyboards. The weapons area had a large, glowing table with holographic displays that looked like architectural designs.
Sailors in uniforms walked the area, speaking in hushed library tones. Messages appeared on Cutter’s communications console. He ignored them. An aide came with orders for him to sign.
“We set up a bivouac in a food court.”
“Was it empty?”
“No, we had to flush the locals. They tried to attack a few hours later.” I thought about what I had said and amended it. “They pumped chlorine gas into the air vents. It wasn’t much of a problem. I mean, chlorine gas doesn’t penetrate combat armor.
“I had civilian clothing under my armor, so I stripped down and followed a couple of their men to the base.”
“The Air Force base?”
“Yes.”
“And that was when you radioed me,” said Cutter.
“Yeah, I told you to destroy the tracks…which you did not do.”
“We destroyed them.”
“There were three sets of tracks. Your pilots got two of them. The Martian Legion used the third. I guess that was a good thing. They came after us in the Air Force base. Thanks to that track, we didn’t need to go hunting in the spaceport. It worked out.”
Cutter’s tone turned icy as he said, “We destroyed the tracks.”
“Then somebody must have fixed them,” I said. “The Martian Legion came to the base by train.”
“I would have spotted their repair crew if you didn’t tell me to clear out,” Cutter said. “Why did you want us out of the area?”