The Clone Redemption

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“The information we are going to discuss is classified,” Yamashiro grunted the words. He had received the information twenty-four hours ago but postponed the briefing until he had time to compose his thoughts.

Yamashiro did not hold the briefing in the conference room just off the bridge, the place he normally conducted business. The conference room was secure, but secure was not secure enough, not when the discussion involved the destruction of the Sakura and her crew. He held the briefing in the small office attached to his billet.

Starting the moment the briefing ended, he would never again allow himself to speak kindly in public. When asked questions, he would grunt single-word answers. When he wanted work done, he would bark his commands. He could reveal no weakness and no indecision. Kindness and civility could be mistaken for weakness, so he would keep his eyes hard and his expression flat.

Yamashiro presided over the briefing, but it was Lieutenant Tatsu Hara’s show. As the intelligence officer who ran the computer simulations, Hara supplied the critical information.

Though every person on the Sakura knew Hara, Yamashiro began the meeting by introducing him, then he sat down.

Tatsu Hara was young, and tall, and skinny, a man in his early twenties with the moon-shaped face of a sixteen-year-old. His hair was regulation length, short at the back and off the ears; but his inch-long locks had been pressed into tight curls and bleached brown and blond. He lived on the edge of regulations, brantoos—a tattooing process that involved burning the skin, then tinting the scar—of lotus flowers, Kanji characters, women, and demons covered his arms and neck. He wore dark glasses and, as he stood, paused one second to remove them before opening his mouth, then placed the shades in the pocket of his blouse. The man was an officer but also a gangster. The brantoos, the hair, and the shades were the tokens of the Yakuza.

Hara ran the Pachinko parlors and the bars aboard the ship, but he performed his MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) well. He was a gifted computer tech; and his side operations contributed to crew morale. Had he been asked what he thought of Lieutenant Tatsu Hara, Yamashiro would have described him as an asset to the mission.

Lieutenant Hara briefly explained his responsibilities as a computer-simulations specialist in intelligence, then spent a few minutes explaining the simulations process. Commander Suzuki, who had been a lawyer before the Mogat Wars, thought the man talked like an expert witness in a court case.

Hara carried an antiquated clipboard computer. His computer established a wireless connection with the computer in the Intelligence division. Without giving any explanation, Hara ran the video feed of a battleship, probably the Kyoto, imploding. The holographic image appeared in the space above Yamashiro’s desk, cropped tight to display every detail of the destruction.

“Lieutenant, we’ve all seen this feed,” said Takahashi.

“Maybe you have not seen this particular simulation, sir,” said Hara. Traditional in his mannerisms, Hara did not want to contradict a superior officer. Yamashiro and Takahashi understood him perfectly. As he had just used it, the word “maybe” was for decoration. What he really meant was, This is a simulation, not the video feed you have seen.

Hara slowed the feed so that the attack occurred over a period of nearly two minutes. As the initial hit began, the hull of the ship expanded ever so slightly. Hara pressed a button on his computer, and the outer hull of the ship faded, revealing its inner workings. “I only finished running this simulation an hour ago.”

Believing that he had been shown up by a subordinate officer, Takahashi turned red around the ears.

The SEAL sat unmoved. As far as Hara could tell, the SEAL paid no attention to anything and anyone in the room as he focused all of his attention on the computer simulation.

The simulation showed the destruction inside the ship. Screens and panels exploded, tables and cabinets and engines caught fire, floors and bulkheads melted. Before the entire cataclysm could erupt, however, the outer skin of the ship turned to liquid, smothering everything inside it.

“This is a simulation of what happens to a battleship when the air inside it heats up to ten thousand degrees,” said Hara. He tapped the screen of his clipboard computer. This time the simulation of the inside of the ship appeared side by side with the feed of the outside of the ship. In the simulated ship, the air glowed red to signal the beginning of the attack.

“You can see that the details match up,” said Hara. He froze the display, pointed to several areas, and said, “If you look here, the heat causes the air and metal inside the ship to expand.”

“What about the crew?” asked Yamashiro. “Were they alive at this point?”

“I did not include the effects on humans in this simulation,” said Hara.

“What is your best guess, Lieutenant?”

“Maybe they did not live this long. They probably died in less than a second,” said Hara. Then he followed by apologetically adding, “This is just a guess.”

Yamashiro nodded, then he muttered something mostly to himself, but he said it loud enough for everyone to hear. He said, “Death comes quickly in Bode’s Galaxy.”

Hara paused, waiting for Yamashiro to tell him to continue. When the admiral did not say anything, he waited a few seconds and continued on his own. He finished the demonstration, showing how the ship first expanded from the heat, then air escaped through her melting walls without the cold of space lowering the heat inside her hull. With her frame melting, the battleship quickly collapsed in on herself and became a bubbling liquid cloud before being cooled by the vacuum of space.

Hara said, “We experimented with dozens of variables. This simulation came the closest to what we saw during the attack on the Kyoto. It’s not a perfect match, but it comes close.”

Takahashi said, “Your simulation does not explain what they used to attack the ships.”

“No, sir. We don’t know how they delivered the heat to the ship,” said Hara.

“Oh, so, that is still unknown,” said Takahashi.

“Yes, sir,” said Hara.

Hara noted the way that the SEAL continued to study the frozen image of the destroyed ship. The SEAL did not join in the discussion.

SEALs made Hara nervous. He tried to ignore the clone, but his eyes kept trailing back toward him.

Hara was not the only Yakuza on the ship. He had fifteen men in his organization. There had been more. Three had stolen drugs from the infirmary and tried to sell them. One had beaten a female sailor. All four men had disappeared. Hara believed that the SEALs killed them.

Hiding a body on a ship might be hard, but you could always dump it into space. When he looked into the cold, dark eyes of the SEAL, eyes hidden in shadows under that bony ridge of brow, Hara saw the eyes of a man for whom murder came easily.

Hara tapped the screen of his computer, and a new image appeared above the desk—the image of a wasted city.

“Is this a simulation?” asked Takahashi.

“No, Captain. This is a video feed from a satellite,” said Hara. “This is what we found when we arrived at New Copenhagen.”

The image showed burned buildings and streets lined with buildings that had been both charred and smashed. It showed a burned forest in which the remaining trees looked like giant pins stood on end. The feed showed a desert in which the sand had melted to glass. Hara explained some of the details.

The SEAL finally spoke. He asked, “Lieutenant, are you saying that the aliens attacked the ships and the planet with the same weapon?”

Hara answered in an indifferent tone. After all, killer clone or human, the SEAL was still an enlisted man. He said, “That seems rather obvious, Master Chief.”

Hara called the SEAL by rank to remind him of his place. Deep in his heart, he hated the SEAL. In Japanese society, the Yakuza and the police enjoyed a mostly peaceful coexistence. The SEALs were not Japanese, and Hara resented their intrusion.

“How is that possible?” asked Yamashiro.

Now that he was dealing with authority, Hara took a mental step back. He said, “Sir, we have no idea what kind of weapon they have used, but it generates a lot of heat within an atmosphere. I used my computer to simulate the destruction on New Copenhagen, and it is in keeping with what happened to our ships.”

“Show us the simulation, Lieutenant,” said Yamashiro.

Hara shook his head, and said, “I apologize, sir, but I did not create an animated model.”

“What does that mean?” asked Yamashiro.

“The simulation predicted what might happen to a planet if you raised its temperature to ten thousand degrees without generating a visual display,” said Hara.

“What would happen?” asked Yamashiro. He seemed to become more intense by the second.

“You would incinerate plants; melt streets; melt anything made of plastic, steel, or glass; evaporate streams.” He ran the video feed of New Copenhagen, then stopped it on an image of a broken skyscraper.

“This building is broken down to its base. It appears to have been crushed. In my computer simulation, the high temperatures caused the planet’s atmosphere to rise like a hot-air balloon. Buildings that survived the heat were smashed when the temperature returned to normal, and the atmosphere fell back into place.”

“Would it be possible for someone to survive on that planet?” Yamashiro asked in Japanese.

“Survive?” Hara sounded incredulous. “Admiral, these temperatures …”

“No. Not during the attack, now. If we placed people on New Copenhagen, would they survive?” Yamashiro asked the question in Japanese, glancing over at the SEAL, who did not appear to be listening.

“There are no plants to generate oxygen. I’m not sure if you could plant crops in this soil. The temperatures may have burned the nutrients out of the soil. That’s just a guess.

“You probably would not have to worry about germs,” Hara said, thinking to himself that as far as he could tell, the planet had been sterilized. He added, “This is not my area of expertise, sir.”

Continuing to speak in Japanese, Yamashiro said, “Yes. Yes. I know. Lieutenant, we no longer have the luxury of sticking to our specialties. I would not be the admiral of a one-ship fleet if we did.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hara.

“In your opinion, Lieutenant, could a colony survive on that planet?”

Hara thought for several seconds. He ran a hand along his jaw, closed his eyes, muttered to himself, then shook his head. “I don’t know, sir.”

“What about a breathable atmosphere?” asked Yamashiro.

“I have no way of knowing, sir.”

His frustration showing, Yamashiro growled, “What would be your best guess?”

“Sir, your opinion would be as good as mine.”

“What do you know?” asked Yamashiro.

Hara said, “The radiation levels on the planet are manageable. My simulation predicted no rise in radiation.”

Yamashiro nodded, and said, “From what you are not telling me, it appears that a colony might stand a chance of survival.”

“Yes, sir. It might.”