The Clone Redemption

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Thirty-five stealth infiltration pods hovered in space, ten thousand miles away from the Sakura forming a loose blockade around the ship. The technicians controlling the pods kept their field-resonance engines fully charged and on the brink of overcharging. They were like grenades, keys pulled and ready to throw.

Theoretically, the enemy ships only needed to venture within five thousand miles of one of the pods for the trap to work. When your bombs explode with enough force to shatter small planets, marksmanship is not really an issue.

Within an hour of the Sakura drifting into place above New Copenhagen, three ships streaked into view. They glowed a brilliant orange gold in the darkness of space, like fireflies flying in formation. They might have broadcasted in millions of miles away or they might have been lying in wait. Sakura security never detected their anomalies.

Three anomalies appeared behind the first ships, signaling the arrival of three more ships. Another trio of ships appeared on the opposite side of the Sakura.

Watching the nine ships advance, Yamashiro said, “First wave, support wave, third wave to flank, cutting off retreat …Those must be Unified Authority ships, they are using the same tactics they used against the Mogats.

“Who are they at war with? Why attack us?”

“Are they responding to our signal?” asked Takahashi.

“No, sir.”

“Keep trying,” said Takahashi.

Another few seconds passed, and he asked, “They’re still not responding?”

“No, sir.”

“Are they in range of the pods?” asked Takahashi.

“Almost, sir. They’re flying very slowly. They’ve dropped down under one thousand miles per hour.”

“Maybe they want us to escape,” Yamashiro said. He had already begun the transformation from military leader back to statesman.

“Still no response?” asked Takahashi, now getting nervous. Knowing that destroying the ships could start a war between the Unified Authority and New Copenhagen, Takahashi wanted to avoid bloodshed.

“The first three ships are in range of the pods,” said the weapons officer.

“Still no response?” Takahashi asked one last time.

“Captain, we need to …” Yamashiro did not get the chance to finish his sentence.

Takahashi knew his job. He took a deep breath, and said, “Fire the nearest pod.” He spoke in English. It was his bridge now; ceremony and tradition had never interested him. He and his crew spoke Japanese, but they spoke English more fluently.

To the naked eye, it looked like nothing happened. If there was a flash from the explosion, it was so small that nothing showed on the monitors. There was no visible shock wave, no wall of debris. An uninformed observer might have thought that the three glowing ships had simply malfunctioned.

What struck Takahashi was not the destruction of three ships with a single weapon but the completeness of their demise. Torpedoes left holes. Sometimes, they set off chain reactions. Sometimes, small parts of the hull broke off.

That was not what happened to these ships. In the invisible wake of the explosion, the three glowing ships slid sideways like boats caught by a powerful wave. Their bows continued to face toward the Sakura as they skittered to the side and began shedding parts. Their shields disappeared, and the armor fell from their hulls in flakes, revealing skeletons of twisted girders. Because they were in space, and there was nothing to stop them, the U.A. ships continued sliding sideways until the Sakura’s telemetry could no longer track them.

For a moment, the universe seemed to freeze.

This wasn’t a naval battle. It was like crushing an insect, thought Takahashi.

“The other ships are leaving, sir.”

On his tactical display, Takahashi watched six glowing ships disappear into anomalies.

Admiral Yamashiro and Captain Takahashi stood in the control tower of one of the landing bays. Below them, lines of sailors, both men and women, marched onto transports. They wore uniforms and carried duffel bags. They moved slowly onto the transports, heads down, steps short. “It’s like watching prisoners on their way to a firing squad,” said Yamashiro. “They think they are the ones who are going to die.”

Takahashi asked, “Is living easier than dying?”

Yamashiro said, “Your crew would mutiny if they knew what you planned. You, Hironobu, you are the brave one. You know where you are going and what you need to do.”

“My mission will end three minutes after it begins. There’s no need for bravery,” said Takahashi. He did not look at his father-in-law as he said this. He stared away, watching the lines of sailors boarding the transports. Lifeboats, he thought. These men and women will escape my sinking ship.

For the first time in three years, Yamashiro smiled at his son-in-law. Speaking in Japanese, he said, “You cannot convince me that flying a Kamikaze mission over an alien planet is the act of a coward.”

There is much you do not know, thought Takahashi. Takahashi Hironobu, who could not return to his wife on Earth and was about to lose his ship, took comfort in the thought of a quick death.

For the first time in his short life, Senior Chief Jeff Harmer raised his voice as he asked, “Me? Why do I have to go?”

In his five short years of existence—other military clones were raised in orphanages, but the SEALs “crawled out of the tube” with the bodies and minds of twenty-one-year-old men—Corey Oliver had never seen a SEAL show such insubordination.

They convened in a small room, the ten senior chiefs sitting in a single row of chairs, all looking exactly alike. Each man was short, five feet and two inches tall, with a charcoalcolored tint to his skin and a bald head. We really do look like shadow demons, thought Oliver.

“Are you refusing to follow a direct command?” he asked. Just two weeks earlier, he had been a senior chief petty officer as well. Now he was a master chief, the commander of the SEALs, but he was no older or more experienced than the ten remaining senior chiefs. He had not performed his duties better than they had. In his mind, the selection process had been arbitrary, not by merit.

Looking sorry for his outburst, Harmer lowered his eyes, and said, “No, Master Chief.” Judging by his posture, he might even have called the master chief, “sir,” but that would not have been appropriate. The SEALs were enlisted men, they did not refer to each other as, “sir.”

“It’s just, Master Chief …Why are you assigning me this duty?” asked Harmer.

Oliver smiled, but he did not respond in a soft voice. “What is your MOS, Senior Chief?” he asked.

“Special Reconnaissance,” Harmer said, sounding like a child caught in a lie.

“And your training included?” asked Oliver.

“Survival tactics.”

“And?”

“Geographical assessment.”

“And?”

“And assault planning and damage assessment.”

“You have an appropriate skill set, so you go,” Oliver said. “You and a company of SEALs will work as survival specialists, policemen, and drill sergeants. Once a sustainable living situation is achieved, you will train the colonists in defensive tactics.”

“Nursemaids,” said Harmer.

“Protectors,” said Oliver, his voice every bit as grim as the words he said. “You will report to your transport in thirty minutes, Harmer. Go prep your men.”

Harmer nodded. He did not salute. Enlisted men did not salute each other. He rose to his feet and walked out of the room without saying a word.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Oliver, “if any of you are having second thoughts about returning to A-361-B, Harmer will switch places with you. Any takers?” Oliver looked over the nine remaining senior chiefs. “No one?”

No one raised a hand. No one spoke. They sat in their chairs, staring up at Oliver, the ugliest men the master chief had ever seen.

Do you want to die? Oliver silently asked his men in his head. Do I? He could not answer for his men; but for himself, the answer was, “No.” He had no desire to die, nor did life as a colonist appeal to him. If everything went right, if the crops grew, and they found enough oxygen and water, Harmer and his men would serve as policemen and soldiers until they were too old to matter; then they would go on for years, eating food meant for reproducing humans, outcasts, weak and alone among a tribe of people who cared for them only because they felt indebted. The thought made Oliver cringe.

He could not imagine a worse fate. In truth, Corey Oliver, a man with no ambitions, hated command. For some reason the fates had not only condemned him to replace Illych but to order men to their deaths.

“Captain Takahashi tells me he can fly this ship with 120 men,” said Oliver. Warren started to ask a question, and Oliver put up a hand to stop him. He added, “That’s just what it takes to keep this ship flying. It takes an additional two hundred men to keep things running in a battle situation. That’s 320 trained sailors.

“For this mission, he’s got a thousand sailors and us. Admiral Yamashiro is taking most of the bridge crew with him to New Copenhagen. We’re taking the old and the sick sailors with us.”

“Are any women coming with us?” asked Senior Chief Billings.

Oliver stopped speaking, glared at the man, and asked, “What’s the matter, Billings? You hoping for a first fling before you die?”

The other clones laughed.

“No. No women. No young men, either. The average age on this boat just jumped from twenty-nine to thirty-six,” said Oliver.

“Are you factoring us in those statistics?” asked Senior Chief Warren.

Was this part of their programming? Oliver wondered. Some of Illych’s Kamikaze team had acted the same way before they left on their mission. They made jokes as they boarded the transport. Even normally somber SEALs kidded each other before their final missions.

Not all of them, though. Oliver remembered that Illych did not join in the banter. Just as Oliver now felt the weight of command, Illych must have felt it at the end. His men were going to die, and Illych would have felt the weight of their lives on his shoulders, just as it was Oliver’s turn to feel that weight.

Oliver smiled, looked at his notepad, and said, “I factored you animals in as twenty-six-year-olds. Factoring you in as five-year-olds, the average age drops to twenty-five.”

He looked around the room, meeting his men’s eyes and searching their faces for fear, and Oliver realized they could relax only if he relaxed with them. They would go. They would fight, and they would die, and they would never complain; but he saw that he could give them strength if he would just relax and joke with them. He said, “You should have seen what happened to the average IQ on the ship when I factored you animals in. We cut it in half.”

The senior chiefs laughed, their morale restored.