Rogue clone (11 page)

Leaving the Golan Dry Docks was easier than entering. You did not pass through the posts. No one checked your DNA. Guards checked luggage and passengers for stolen technology, but the officers who attended this summit were allowed to forego that formality. The six soldiers guarding the security gate snapped to attention and saluted Admiral Klyber as he approached. They stayed at attention as he walked past.

“Huang’s got nerve. I’ll give him that much,” Klyber said as we left the security gate. “The other Joint Chiefs don’t know what they are up against with him. They’re simple soldiers. He’s Machiavellian. You get a Machiavelli in the ranks when you’ve been at peace for too long. Without war, officers advance by politics instead of merit.”

We reached the staging area where VIP passengers boarded their ships. Ahead of us, the landing pad stretched out for miles. It was so immense that its floor and ceiling seemed to form their own peculiar horizon.

Klyber’s transport sat on the tarmac just one hundred feet ahead of us. One of Klyber’s pilots milled at the foot of the ramp smoking a cigarette. He tossed the butt on the ground and crushed it out with his shoe as Klyber approached.

Klyber turned to look at me. “You are not interested in a life as a Marine,” he said. “I understand. When you get to the
Doctrinaire
, I’ll make arrangements for an honorable discharge. What you do beyond that is up to you.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “What about you?”

Klyber gave me a terrible, withered smile. “The
Doctrinaire
is going to end this war, Harris, then we can rebuild the Republic. Once we shake the deadwood out, there will be a need for rebuilding. I suppose it will be time for me to enter politics.”

The triumphant words did not match the defeated posture. He looked so old. The only explanation I could imagine was that having finally revealed his plans, Admiral Klyber had become more acutely aware of the challenges ahead.

We had reached the door of the transport. I snapped to attention and saluted Klyber. He returned my salute. I wanted to talk more, but I was not boarding the ship.

“Admiral,” I said with a final nod as I ended my salute.

Klyber smiled. “Good day, Lieutenant Harris.” He turned and walked up the ramp into his transport. I watched him—a tall, emaciated man with a long face and a narrow head. He had twig-like arms and legs like broomsticks; but even in his late sixties he was the picture of dignity walking proud and erect. His starched white uniform hung slack around his skin-and-bones frame, but Bryce Klyber was the quintessential officer.

A sense of relief washed through me as I saw an attendant seal the transport hatch. There had been an assassination attempt, but it was on me. Were they after Klyber and just trying to get me out of the way?

Maybe so. Maybe I scared them away when I chased them out of my room. Golan was on high alert after that.

Unlike my little Johnston, Klyber’s eighty-foot long C-64 Mercury-class transport ship was not designed to fly in an atmosphere with oxygen or gravity. The big ship rolled to the first door of the locks under its own power. This particular ship was big and boxy with a bulging hull that looked unworthy of flight. Even rolling toward the runway, it had a clumsy, overstuffed feel about it. An electroshield door sealed behind the C-64. I could still see the craft through that first door, but it now had an unsteady appearance, as if I was watching it through heat waves. The ship lumbered on through two more electroshield doors, entering the low gravity area.

The tower gave Klyber’s ship immediate clearance—fleet admiral’s privilege, who could out rank him?—and it levitated from the deck on a cloud of steaming air. The ship hung above the deck for a few seconds as it rotated to face the aperture. I watched the ship and thought about receiving an honorable release from the Marines. I had to smile.

As I turned to leave, I saw something that did not make sense. At first I did not even realize what I was seeing. Five or six civilians stood on the far side of the security gate watching ships take off. Aware that something felt wrong, I headed toward them for a better look.

Then I realized what I saw. I knew one of the men, only he was not a civilian. Rear Admiral Tom Halverson, dressed in a suit and tie like an ordinary businessman, stood at the front of the group. I smiled thinking he must have missed the transport. “Miss your ride?” I called out as I walked toward the gate. Halverson turned to look at me. He paused, stared at me for just a moment, then turned and bolted into the service halls behind the security station. “Grab that man!” I yelled at the men guarding the exit. They looked over at me so slowly they reminded me of cows grazing in a field.

“Stop him!” I screamed as I pulled my M27.

All five guards pulled their guns. Two ran off after Halverson, but the other three kept their M27s trained on me. Red warning lights flashed from the ceiling for the second time since I had landed on Golan. Soldiers with drawn weapons rushed out of the security booth and surrounded me. I placed my gun on the ground then laced my hands behind my head without being asked.

As the MPs closed in around me, I looked back at the launch area expecting to see Klyber’s ship explode. The C-64 had dragged itself to the airspace just in front of the aperture, and the transport seemed to dangle precariously as it approached that opening. But instead of exploding, it rose steadily higher.

“What is going on, Harris?”

I turned to see the colonel who had sprung me from the brig pushing his way toward me. He looked angry.

“Colonel, there’s a bomb on Klyber’s ship!”

The colonel did not hesitate. “Out of the way,” he yelled. He pulled a discrete communications stem from his collar. “Traffic control, hold Klyber’s ship! I repeat, this is urgent, hold Klyber’s transport!”

The MPs lowered their guns and cleared out of my way. I could not hear what was said, but traffic control apparently got the colonel’s message. “Yeah, that’s right . . . Yes, I’ve got a man out here who says that there is a bomb on board the admiral’s ship. Shit . . . no. . . . don’t bring it down. If we have a bomber around here, he might set it off. Yes. Yes! Look, we’re on our way over. Just have the pilot hang tight.”

And that was what happened. Klyber’s massive transport continued to hover in front of the aperture like a bee waiting to enter a flower. I paused to look at it for just a moment.

“Move it, Harris.” The colonel did not need to ask twice. We headed into the control tower, a tinted glass tower that reached to the ceiling of the landing area. The tower was seventeen stories tall. We entered the elevator and the colonel stabbed the button for the floor he wanted.

“You’d better be right about this, Harris.” He panted as he spoke.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“What did you see?”

“Rear Admiral Halverson,” I said. “He didn’t get on the flight.”

“You set off the alarms because you saw some guy standing around?” The colonel screamed so hard that streamers of spit flew from his lips.

“Rear Admiral Halverson is Klyber’s second-in-command,” I said.

“So he missed the specking flight!” The colonel shook his head. “Oh, I’m specked. I had to trust a goddamned clone.”

“Halverson ran when he saw me. He was . . .”

“You’re a damned Liberator!” the colonel shouted louder than ever. He did this just as the elevator doors opened. Everyone on the floor turned to look at us. “Damned specking right he ran when he saw you. You’re a goddamned Liberator clone. You’re a friggin’ disaster waiting to happen. Anyone in his right mind is going to run when he sees you. I should have run when I saw you. No, I should have had my men shoot you while I had the chance. Oh, I am specked.”

The floor of the control room was dim, lit only by the green and red phosphorous glow of several large radar screens. The air was moist from recirculation and carried a bad combination of scents—mildew and cigarette smoke. Entering this heavily air-conditioned floor felt like being sealed in an old refrigerator. Around the room, men sat beside radar consoles in clusters of three. “How should we handle this?” one of the men at the nearest console called over. The colonel and I went over to join him.

“Traffic control, this is U.A. Transport five-Tango-Zulu. Do you read me?”

“We read you five-Tango-Zulu,” replied one of the controllers.

“What seems to be the hang-up down there?” the pilot asked. This was the same man who picked me up on Mars a few days earlier. I recognized his voice.

“Want me to bring them back?” the controller asked.

The colonel thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Not based on the evidence Lieutenant Harris just gave me.”

“Is there a problem, traffic control?” the pilot squawked over the radio. Through the black tinted windows, I could see Klyber’s transport hanging just below the lip of the aperture. There was very little gravity on that part of the deck, but the C-64 still looked awkward. A long line of ships started to form below the transport.

“Colonel, we have to do something. My queue is cataclysmically specked.”

The colonel walked to the dark glass wall of the tower and stared out for several seconds. “Can you laser scan the transport in midair?” he asked.

“Sure,” the controller said.

“Five-Tango-Zulu, this is traffic control. Prepare for a scan. Do you copy?”

“Don’t you save scans for incoming?” the pilot asked.

I didn’t realize they had scanners by the outbound aperture, but they did. A silver-red beam locked on to the hull of the C-64. It moved up and down the Mercury-class transport.

“Find anything?” the colonel asked.

“Clean, sir,” the traffic controller said.

The colonel glared at me.

“You see any unidentified ships in the area?” I asked, desperation starting to sink in. The controller ran his finger over the radar screen, tracing a line above the information the scan found.

“All clear. Look for yourself.”

The markings on his radar monitors could have been written in Sanskrit as far as I could tell. The notations they used to identify the ships used symbols and numbers, not letters.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“Control, should I land this bird?” the pilot asked. Irritation showed in his voice.

“What do you think?” the head controller asked the colonel. Still staring into the monitor, the controller pointed at it, drawing invisible circles around different areas on the screen.

“What do the markings mean?” I asked.

“These red triangles are Air Force. They’re guarding our air space. These blue boxes are civilian ships. These green ones are government, strictly non-combat . . . surveyors, that kind of shit.”

The colonel took a long breath, gave me another angry glare, and said, “Send them on their way.”

“No problem,” said the controller. “Five-Tango-Zulu, this is traffic control. Sorry about the tie-up. We had a false alarm.”

“Are we cleared to leave?” the pilot asked.

“You are clear for takeoff.” The controller looked back at me and smiled. I heard nerdy enthusiasm in his voice as he said, “Klyber’s transport is self-broadcasting. You don’t see self-broadcasters often. Now comes the cool part.”

The controller pointed at a blue square with symbols that meant absolutely nothing to me. “See that?

That’s Five-Tango-Zulu. That’s the Admiral’s transport. He’ll fly a few minutes out, and then poof. The ship vanishes off the screen so quickly that the computers don’t know what to do about it. The screen goes blank because the system resets. If you ever wanted to see a computer wet itself, watch this. Weirdest damn thing you ever saw.”

“Hurting for entertainment,” I muttered to myself as I turned to gaze out the window. The colonel still stood in front of the window. Now that he cleared the transport to leave, he wanted to make sure he made the right call. Once the big transport departed safely, he would deal with me. I took another look at the radar screen and tried to make sense of the rainbow of symbols. The low glow of the screen seemed to dissolve into the overall darkness of the room. I walked over to the window in time to see the tail of Klyber’s C-64 escaping into the black void beyond the aperture. Strobe lights along the wing and tail of the transport flashed white, then yellow, then red.

“Huang or no Huang, Harris, you’re up shit creek this time,” the colonel said in a soft voice. “You know that, don’t you?”

I did not answer.

He turned to look at me. “We’ll just wait until your friend Klyber’s transport is away, then you and I can settle up.”

For a moment I wished they had found a bomb on the transport, then I remembered Rear Admiral Halverson. Surely they would catch the admiral . . . but what would that prove? “Shit creek,” the colonel repeated under his breath. Watching Klyber’s ship grow smaller and smaller as it drifted into space, I realized just how far up that creek I had traveled.

“That’s it,” the colonel said. “They’re gone. Now let’s you and me go over to the brig and have a discussion. How does that sound?”

It did not sound good. The colonel started toward the elevator and I turned to follow.

“Wait,” the controller said as the colonel walked past the radar console. “You’re going to miss the show.”

The colonel paused to see what he was talking about.

The controller pointed into the radar screen to show us Klyber’s ship. Blocking the low glow of the screen, his hand looked like a swollen shadow. “See, he’s already ten miles out. He’s going to want to get at least one thousand miles away before he broadcasts. That will put him here,” the controller said pointing to a ring about four inches away from the circle that represented the Dry Docks.

“Now you see these?” the controller went on. “These are the local broadcast discs.” He pointed at two orange rectangles. “The transport has to be at least one thousand miles away from them. Self-broadcasting too close to the network really mucks with the discs, see, so the transport has to go in the other direction.”

The colonel nodded impatiently. It didn’t interest me, either. I found that I wanted to get to security and get on with whatever the colonel had planned. Without saying a word, the colonel turned and started to leave.