The Clone Republic

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Dammit, Shannon!” McKay snapped. “What in God’s name did you do? There’s a lieutenant demanding a firing squad. A firing squad! He claims you assaulted him and threatened to shoot him.”

I could not tell if Shannon had purposely included me in their conversation, so I listened in silence.

“In point of fact, sir, that would not be correct. I threatened to shoot Scooter.”

“What the speck is Scooter?” McKay asked.

“The lieutenant’s recon robot, sir.”

“You threatened to shoot his robot?” McKay asked. There was a tremble in his voice, and I heard other officers laughing in the background. “Threatening Scooter is a serious offense, Sergeant. You may be looking at a long stay in the brig.”

“Not meaning any disrespect, Captain, we need to settle that account later. I believe I have found a way to force the enemy to surrender.”

“I’m listening, Sergeant.” Gaylan McKay had an unnerving ability to read unspoken nuances in any conversation. “What have you got?”

My interLink connection went silent. Shannon might have wanted me to hear him call Captain McKay, but the fine details would be on a “need to know” basis.

For the first time since I repeated the oath, I felt the weight and isolation of my armor. It wasn’t that I cared about the plan. I cared about Shannon. I suddenly realized that Tabor Shannon, master gunnery sergeant and Liberator, was the closest thing I would ever have to family. Suddenly I felt cut off, trapped inside my helmet. I listened to the rhythmic hiss of my breathing. I became aware of claustrophobia causing my nerves to tingle. Strangest of all, I still felt glad to be a Marine fighting on Hubble. “God, what a mess,” I said quietly as I considered my situation—a clone on a toxic planet fighting to protect the government that created him, then outlawed his existence.

“Harris, we’re going in,” Sergeant Shannon said, waking me from my momentary epiphany.

“How many of us?” I asked.

“This time it’s just you and me, Corporal.” Shannon switched to an open frequency. “Lee, you’re in charge. Harris and I are going to do a little spelunking.”

“You might want to leave the rifle stock behind,” Shannon said, as we started for the cave. Not waiting for an explanation, I detached the stock and left it with Lee.

Shannon stepped into the cave and stopped to wait for me. His armor was coated with ash, but his visor was clean. “You should give your visor a quick wipe,” he said. “You might not get a chance to do that later.”

I pulled the swatch of cloth from my belt and wiped the glass carefully. As I entered the cave, I saw the bodies of the men Shannon and Lee had cut down. Two sat slumped against the walls as if resting, the others lay on the ground. One had died clutching his mask. If the gunfire didn’t get you on Hubble, the atmosphere would.

Shannon waited for me to get a few steps closer, then drew his particle-beam pistol and pointed it at the wall. “I want to show you something,” he said, and he fired a bright green bolt into the shiny black rock. The bolt bored into the wall of the cave. Slag and vapor poured out of the hole.

“Recognize it?” Shannon asked me.

“It’s the shit from the trenches,” I said.

“It’s like being in an iceberg,” Shannon said. “Make too much heat, and you will bring the whole damned cliff down.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “The rock melts into vapor?”

“It’s the other way around, the vapor hardens into rock,” Shannon said. “The vapor gets cold and hardens. That’s why the rock looks so shiny; it’s just hardened gas.”

“Now you’re a geologist?” I asked.

“Don’t get smart, asshole,” Shannon said. “Like I said before, I saw shit like this in the Galactic Center War. Since Liberators and Mogats are the only people who were at that little rumble, you can bet they know about it, too.

“Harris, I don’t suppose the good lieutenant uploaded Scooter’s data to you?”

I scanned for beacons, and a thin red line appeared on my visor marking the robot’s path. There was nothing wrong with Scooter’s self-preservation programming. The little robot had explored the caves hidden from danger by traveling in a groove along one of the walls. No wonder the Mogats had walked by the little rodent without seeing it. “Okay, I can read his beacon trail.”

“That’s good. If we get split, you’ll need to find your way out on your own.” Shannon started forward along Scooter’s virtual trail. “You know those machines Scooter passed? Did you recognize them?”

I did not recognize the first machine, though it had looked familiar. I did recognize the second device. “The one on the left was a power generator,” I said. “You planning on turning out the lights?”

“We’re going to do a lot more than that,” Shannon said. “The bigger machine is an oxy-gen.” The term “oxy-gen” was Marine-speak for oxygen genitor.

“I don’t think they know we took out the guys guarding this gate. As long as they didn’t see Scooter, we should be able to slip up to the generators without too much trouble. I brought you along just in case, Harris. You get to run interference for me.”

The ground, the air, and the walls in the cave were all shades of black. I had no sense of depth. Running my elbow against the wall as I walked helped me balance myself, but I constantly felt as if I might bump my head against one of the boulders that bulged from the low ceiling.

The Mogats had it worse than us, though. Not wanting to leave a telltale trail, they did not string lights along the cave. They had to find their way in and out using lanterns and flashlights. If guards came anywhere near us, Shannon and I would see the glare from their lights.

We walked softly, barely lifting our feet and hugging the wall with our backs. Though the darkness in the tunnel meant that we were alone, we kept our pistols drawn.

The path had an almost imperceivable downward slope. It bent and meandered around thick knots in the rock, and continued on its gentle incline, always downward, constantly downward. We moved through one long, straight stretch. When I looked behind me, it looked like the floor and the ceiling had merged. Seeing it left me momentarily dizzy, then I realized that the illusion was caused by my faltering sense of depth.

“Something the matter, Harris?” Shannon grunted.

“I’m fine,” I said.

We would have lost our way in these caverns had it not been for Scooter’s beacons. When I watched the monitor, I had not noticed how many capillaries led from the main path. The path curved around one wall, then another. It split and sometimes seemed to disappear entirely behind sharp bends. More than an hour passed before we rounded a corner and saw the first traces of light. “This is where it gets tricky,” Shannon said. “Scooter was just ahead of us when it ran into the first guards.”

Shannon stopped, and we knelt behind a rock to talk. “This tunnel leads to Mogat-central. Got it? The shaft with the generators is somewhere between us and them. That shaft is only big enough for one of us, Harris, so you’re on watch while I speck with their equipment. Any questions?”

The cave was absolutely silent. Far ahead, I could see an odd-shaped circle of light. Its distorted reflection on the obsidian walls might have extended for hundreds of yards. My heart thudded hard in my chest, but the endorphins had not yet begun to flow.

“Once I’m through screwing with the equipment, I’m going to give you a signal, and you are going to run like your shitter’s on fire. Don’t wait for me. Just run, and I will catch up to you.”

“You’ll be cut off,” I said.

“I’m getting out the same way Scooter did. This side tunnel loops back into the main cavern. I’ll crawl through and catch up with you.”

In the darkness, I could barely make out the shape of Shannon’s green armor. His helmet looked like a shadow cast on those charcoal-colored walls.

“Sergeant?”

“What is it, Harris?”

“Why did you bring me? I’ve got less combat experience than anyone else in the platoon.”

“You can’t possibly consider Ezer Kri combat experience,” he said in a harsh voice. “Harris, that’s all any of them have …skirmishes. You’re a Liberator, Harris. That makes you more dangerous than any of them. Now move out.”

I climbed back to my feet but remained slightly crouched. By that time I had my finger on the trigger. I hated the idea of splitting up with Shannon. I felt like I was abandoning him, like I should go in the tunnel with him.

I passed the shaft with the generators and looked back in time to see Shannon crawling into it. From here on out, I could no longer navigate using Scooter’s beacons. Scooter had gone no farther into the cave. That was the point where the little drone got scared and hid. From here on out, Shannon would be following the path blazed by the robot scout. I was in new territory.

Far ahead, the Mogats had set up some sort of temporary shelter. There would be thousands of them. The men who fried our patrol on Ezer Kri were probably somewhere up ahead. My finger still on the trigger of my particle-beam pistol, I moved on. Would Amos Crowley be there?

“How’s it going?” I called to Shannon over the interLink.

“Where are you?”

I looked around. “In a tunnel on the biggest shit hole planet in the galaxy.”

“There are worse ones,” Shannon said. “Now, where are you precisely, asshole?”

“I’m about forty yards from you. I found a good ridge to hide behind in case…”

“Harris?”

The part of the cave I had entered was about as brightly lit as a night with a full moon. Up ahead of me, I saw two bobbing balls of light that looked no bigger than a fingernail. Using my telescopic lenses, I got a better look—two men were walking in my direction. Both men wore oxygen masks and carried rifles. “Piss-poor excuse for sentries,” I said.

“You see something?”

“Two men,” I said. “They might be the ones who walked past Scooter.”

“Pick them off before they spot you,” Shannon said.

“Not a problem,” I said, sighting the first one with my pistol. I took a deep breath, held it for a moment.

“They turned around.” When I switched back to my telescopic lenses, I saw that they were walking away. From that distance, they were nothing more than gray silhouettes.

“Think they saw you?” Shannon asked.

“Not unless they’re telepathic. How’s it going with the equipment?”

There was no way the two guards could have heard me speaking inside my helmet, nonetheless they turned back in my direction. Shannon was saying something about one of the generators, but I stopped listening.

“They’re coming back,” I said, raising my particle-beam pistol. I kept my aim on the more erect of the two men. My hand as steady as the dead air in the cave, I pulled the trigger. The walls of the cave reflected my pistol’s green flash, and sparks flew when my bolt struck its target. Knowing that I would not miss under such circumstances, I fired at the second man without waiting to see if the first one fell. My shot hit the second man in the chest, but it did not kill him. He flew backward against the wall. The man spun around to run and my second shot hit his oxygen tube. Flames burst from his breathing equipment, then snuffed out the moment the oxygen was gone. The explosion produced a brilliant flash and created a loud bang that echoed through the caves.

“What was that?” Shannon asked.

“The bastard’s oxygen tube flamed,” I said.

“Are you dug in?” Shannon asked.

The flange in the rocks behind which I hid was thick, but only three feet tall. I glanced ahead, then crouched as low as I could behind it. “They’re coming,” I said. I saw torch beams bouncing on a far wall.

“How many?”

“About a million of them,” I said. “Wish I could use a grenade. How much more time do you need?”

A red laser bolt struck the rock in front of me. Sparks flew over the top, and I heard hissing as the laser boiled its way into the stone. Another bolt sliced across the top of my barricade, dumping molten slag and brown vapor over the edge. Remembering the way Amblin’s helmet had slid from his body, I moved as far from the vapor stream as I could. Suddenly I felt the soothing warmth in my blood.

The Mogats weren’t about to let me enjoy it. Shots began raining in my direction. So many shots struck the shelf in front of me that the black obsidian glowed red as laser bolts liquefied and hollowed it.

One of the people shooting at me began targeting the ceiling above my head, and slag and vapor poured out to the floor, just missing my shoulders. I started to peek around the corner of my barricade, and bullets glanced off the rock.

“I’m getting massacred out here!” I said to Shannon.

“It’s tighter than I expected,” Shannon said. “Hold them off!”

I could hear the Mogats yelling to each other. Their fire thinned, and I heard somebody running. I rolled to my right along the ground, fired three shots into the bastard without so much as a pause, and ducked behind a tiny ridge along the other wall. I moved just in time. The Mogats had pumped so much laser fire into the rocks on the other side of the tunnel that they glowed.

Reaching my hand around my new cover as far as I could, I fired blindly. They answered with a hail of laser and bullets. The ridge on this side of the cave was too small to protect me. I fired shots into the roof above them and backed up a couple of yards to a larger rock formation.

The Mogats did not see me back away. They continued to fire at the spot that I abandoned. I stole a glance and saw bubbles forming on the back side of the obsidian ridge as the center of the rock boiled red.

“I’m trapped,” I said.

“I’ve got it, Harris. Run!” Shannon ordered.

As I turned to run, the thin light in the cavern flickered out. Light no longer shone from behind the Mogats. They were in total darkness, with only their flashlights and lanterns. Whatever Shannon had done, it doused their electricity. Once again I saw the world without depth through night-for-day lenses. For once I was grateful. I sprinted up the tunnel, laser blasts and bullets blindly spraying the rock walls behind me.

I reached the passage to the generators and saw a beautiful sight. Orange-red light glowed from the opening. It was not the flickering light of a struggling flame; it showed bright, warm, and strong. I got only a brief glimpse of Shannon’s work as I ran past, but it was enough. White-and-blue flames jetted away from the oxy-gen, heating walls farther down the tunnel. Shannon had ignited a fire in the oxy-gen’s piping, turning it into a torch. The flames carved into the obsidian walls. The surface of the rock was already orange and melting, belching thousands of gallons of vile fog.

I could not tell if there was a hunting party behind me. If there was, they weren’t using flashlights—I did not see beams on the wall around me. Somehow I doubted that they were following me. More likely than not, they had run back to camp when Shannon turned out the lights.

Wanting to present the smallest possible target, I crouched as I ran. I sprinted around a bend and chanced one last look back. What I saw made me shutter. A thick tongue of vapor rolled out of the generator tunnel. Given a few hours, the vapor would flood the entire cave system. I had seen the way random laser fire had superheated the rock. The fire from Shannon’s torch was not as hot, but it was broad and steady.

“Harris, are you out of there?” Shannon asked over the interLink.

“That shit’s pouring out of that hole like a waterfall,” I answered.

“Get moving uphill,” Shannon said. “Meet me at the top.”

I had not realized how much space we had covered. The path led on and on, and the slope no longer seemed so gentle now that it was uphill. My calves burned, and my pistol felt heavy in my hands. I found myself fighting for breath, then I thought about the Mogats trapped in the dark with their air supply cut off. “Dead or captured,” I mused. For those speckers, that was one hell of a choice.

I continued up the slope, my run slowing into a jog, then a walk as I bumped my way forward. “Are you getting through that tunnel okay?” I asked Shannon.

“It’s tight,” he said. “But it seems to be getting wider.”

“I wasn’t paying attention when Scooter went through there,” I said.

“Neither was I,” Shannon said.

“I don’t know how you figured this all out,” I said. “They’re not even following me. That vapor cut them off.”

“Hang on a moment,” Shannon said. “I need to concentrate.” That was the last time we spoke. I walked around one final bend and saw the mouth to the cave. When I looked at the interLink menu in my visor, I did not see Shannon’s frequency.

“Sergeant? Sergeant Shannon!” I called again and again. I called on the platoon frequency. I tried an open frequency. I turned around and shouted his name at the top of my lungs.

“Harris, is that you?” Vince Lee asked. “What’s the matter?”

“I think Shannon is dead!” I said, wanting to go back to look for him. But I could not go back. I realized that. The vapor Shannon had unleashed had flooded the chamber behind me. It had probably flooded the tunnel around him as well. I imagined him crawling in the darkness of that narrow pass, struggling to get through a tight squeeze as he noticed the vapor creeping up behind him. Perhaps he was wedged in so tightly that he could not even turn to see the vapor until it had seeped around him. Whatever toxin that vapor held, it corroded its way through the rubber in our body suits, turning armor into a worthless exoskeleton. It ate through flesh and tissue. If I found Shannon, all I would find would be the hard stuff—the armor and bones, Everything else would be melted. God I hated Hubble.

A very comfortable cruiser landed near our platoon, and Captain McKay ordered me aboard. He wanted to introduce me to the colonels and commodores who would take credit for Tabor Shannon’s tactical genius. Dressed in immaculate uniforms, the colonels and commodores showed no interest in me, but they allowed me to watch as they mopped up the battle.

Nearly ten thousand Mogats surrendered, more than enough for Bryce Klyber’s judicial circus. Their quota met, the officers aboard the cruiser sent airborne battle drones into the caves.

The drones looked like little giant pie plates. They were about three feet long and a foot tall. Most of their housing was filled with a broad propeller shaft. They had particle-beam guns mounted on their sides. We called them “RODEs,” but their technical name was Remote Operated Defense Engines.

The officers sent ten RODEs into the cavern. The little beasts hovered about five feet over the vapor, and the officers made a game of seeing who could fly the lowest. One swabbie flew his RODE too low, and the vapor shorted it out. Everybody laughed at him. There was a jolly atmosphere inside the cruiser. I could not think. The atmosphere inside the cruiser was suffocating me. I wanted to find a way to rescue Shannon. Even if he was dead, I wanted to pull his body out. I did not want to leave him stranded in a cave filled with dead Mogats. I asked if I could leave, but Captain McKay told me I had to stay.

Most RODEs are black, but the ones the colonels and commanders used were special. They had shiny gold chassis and bright headlights. They were not made for stealth.

“The angel of death, come to claim her victims,” one of the colonels joked in a loud voice. I saw that he had a microphone. He was broadcasting his voice inside the cave.

Maybe if I got to Shannon quickly…Perhaps he was in the caves, breathing the Mogats’ generated oxygen. I asked McKay a second time if I could leave, and he told me that the officers wanted me to stay.

The officers huddled around tracking consoles, watching the scene inside the cave through their RODEs’ eyes. “Permission to go join my platoon?” I asked McKay.

“Denied,” McKay said, sounding very irritated.

From where I sat, I could see one of the officers steering his RODE. I had a clear view of the monitor that showed him the world as his RODE saw it.

It took less than ten minutes for this officer to steer his RODE past the capillary that led to the generators. Thick fog still chugged out of it like viscous liquid. The RODE’s bright headlight cut through the darkness with a beam that was straight and hard. It shined momentarily on the ridge I used for protection during the shoot-out with the Mogats. The obsidian walls sparkled in the bright beam, but the headlight was not powerful enough to penetrate the thick layer of vapor that blanketed the floor of the cavern. Whatever secrets lay hidden under that gas would remain concealed.

“I found one!” an officer on the other side of the cabin yelled. He got a giddy response from other officers, who wanted hints about how he got there so quickly.

The colonel closest to me had found a grand cavern. His drone flew laps around the outer walls of the cavern like a shark looking for prey. The officer began to search the fog for survivors, and it did not take long until he found his first.

Whatever chemicals made up the vapor were heavier than the atmosphere. The vapor was heavy; it melted flesh and circuitry. What other pleasant surprises could it hold, I wondered.

The RODE edged along the outer walls. It had a near miss as it dodged another RODE, and two officers shouted playful insults at each other.

A few Mogats had died while trying to pull themselves to safety, much the way Private Amblin had died in the trench. The colonel steered his way over to one of them for a closer look. The man’s chest, arms, and head lay flat on a rock shelf in a puddle that looked more like crude oil than blood. The gas had dissolved everything below his chest except his clothing.

The colonel circled the camera around the dead man. Vapor must have splashed against the right side of his face. The left side seemed normal enough, but the skin had dissolved from the right side, revealing patches of muscle and skull. Brown strings, maybe skin or maybe sinew, still dangled between the cheek and jaw. His left eye was gone.

Then the colonel found his first survivor—a man in torn clothes perched on a narrow lip of rock. His back was to the RODE. His arms were wrapped around a pipe for balance.

“We’ll certainly have none of that,” the colonel said in a jovial voice. On the screen I saw a particle-beam gun flash, and the man fell from his perch.

The cruiser erupted with laughter.

“Watch this,” another officer shouted. He, too, had found a survivor—a woman. He steered his RODE toward the woman in a slow hover, then shined its blinding headlight on her face. She screamed and tried to shield her eyes with her forearm, but managed to stay balanced on a narrow rock ledge. The colonel fired a shot at her feet. Trying to back away from the RODE, the woman stumbled and fell. Her face struck the ledge, and she caught herself, but her body had fallen into the pool of vapor that covered the floor. She tried to pull herself up, but the skin on her face and arms was melting.

The officers laughed.

“Captain, may I please return to my men?”

McKay looked around the ship. If the officers had ever known we were there, they had forgotten about us by then. “You are dismissed, Corporal,” he said in a hushed voice.

Forty thousand Mogats landed on Hubble. We captured ten thousand as they fled the caves and another fifteen thousand died when our Harriers hit their ships. The rest died in the caves.

CHAPTER TWENTY

First I was an orphan, then I was a clone, then I was both. Tabor Shannon had not been my father or my brother, but he had been my family. For a brief few weeks I belonged to a tiny and hated fraternity.

So where did all that leave me? I was the last member of a discontinued line of clones fighting to protect the nation that outlawed their existence. All in all, I thought I had it better than Vince Lee and the 2,299 other enlisted Marines on the Kamehameha. I knew I was a clone, and I knew I could live with that knowledge. It now seemed to me that it was impossible that they did not suspect their origins on some level, and they must have lived in fear of the fatal confirmation.

By the time we left Hubble, I had spent more than eighteen months on active duty without asking for leave. The idea sounded foreign when Vince Lee first suggested it.

“Hello, Sergeant Harris,” Vince Lee said as he placed his breakfast tray on the table and sat down beside me. “Sergeant Harris…It almost sounds right. The next step is officer, pal. You could actually do it. Hell. You made sergeant in under two years.”

“I did not ask for the promotion,” I said. That was Lee, obsessed with promotions and success.

Lee smiled. “You were made for it. You’re a Liberator.”

“So?”

“Every Liberator I’ve ever known made sergeant,” Lee said.

“Get specked.” I knew he was joking, but he struck the wrong nerve. Though they gave me the field promotion before I left Hubble—that was why McKay took me to the cruiser— the paperwork did not get approved for another month. As with my promotion to corporal, I did not feel that I had earned it.

“Look, Harris, I know you miss Shannon, but you need to lighten up,” Lee said. He spooned the meat out of his grapefruit half, then gobbled down two strips of bacon. “HQ reviewed the record before giving your promotion the go-ahead. You did what you could. Let it go.”

I finished my orange juice and placed the cup on my tray. “I guess so,” I said, in an unconvincing voice.

“Okay, well, I had an idea,” Lee said. “You’ve got more leave stored up than any man on this ship. I’ve got a couple of weeks. Let’s take some R and R.”

“That doesn’t …”

Lee put up his hand to stop me. “Look at yourself, Wayson. You’re moping around. You should see yourself around the men. You’re on a hair trigger. If you don’t take some time to relax, I think you’re going to shoot somebody.”

“They just gave me a platoon. Do you think they’d let me take leave?” I asked.

“Harris, if they don’t let you go now, they’re never going to. This is the beginning of Klyber’s war. Things will only get hotter from here. Mogats on other planets are going to rally around their dead.”

“Not Mogats,” I said. “Atkins Separatists. That came straight from HQ. We are no longer to refer to the group formerly known as Mogats by any name other than ‘Separatists’ or ‘Atkins Separatists.’”

Lee was right about the Separatists’ rallying. For a man who never followed the news, Vince Lee had an uncanny ability to read the winds.

***

“Two weeks,” McKay snapped when I requested a leave of absence. “Two weeks of liberty? You only took command of your platoon a few weeks ago. This is not the time for you to take a holiday, Sergeant.”

We stood in a small booth in the gunnery range. Looking through the soundproof window, I could see Lee drilling the remaining members of the platoon as they fired at holographic targets with live ammunition—bullets and grenades. The M27s and automatic rifles hardly made a sound, but the report of the grenades thundered so loud that it shook the booth.

In preparation for fighting the Separatists, we now shot at animated targets with human faces. The targets in the rifle range bled, screamed, and moved like living soldiers. I peered through the window to watch my men as McKay spoke. A holographic target materialized less than twenty feet from the shooting platform. Vince Lee fired once and missed. His second shot hit the target in its chest. The enemy screamed and vanished.

“You have four new privates on the way,” McKay said, staring at me angrily. “One of them is fresh out of boot. Your new corporal has not even arrived. Who is going to command the platoon with you and Lee out?”

“I understand, sir,” I said.

“When was your last leave?” McKay asked.

“I’ve never taken leave, sir,” I said. “I had a few free days before transferring to the Kamehameha.”

“And nothing since?”

“No, sir.”

McKay sat on the desk at the far end of the room, his legs draped to the floor. “Corporal Lee says that you have …” he paused to consider his words, “concerns.”

“Concerns?” I asked.

“You do not feel that you earned your promotion.”

Good old Lee…diarrhea of the mouth, constipation of the brain. “The corporal was speaking out of turn, sir. When I have concerns, I am completely able to lodge them myself.”

“I see,” said McKay, sounding a bit too paternal. He looked right into my eyes, not challenging me, but observing.

“Lee says that you blame yourself for Sergeant Shannon’s

death.”

“I never said that.”

“Do you blame yourself?”

I felt my stomach turn and my palms sweat. I looked out the window and watched one of my men miss five shots before finally hitting a target no more than ten feet away. Sloppy shooting. He wasn’t bothering to aim before firing rounds.

“I should have waited,” I said. “I left him in there. And I gave away our position when I missed that shot.”

“I saw the video feed, Sergeant. You did not miss.”

“I was too loud.”

“You hit a moving target from over a hundred yards in a bad light,” he said, shaking his head. “Look out that window. Do you think anyone else in your platoon would have done better?”

“I should have aimed for a head shot.”

“Do you think that was what killed Shannon? Do you think he died because the man’s oxygen tube exploded?”

I watched another private. Three targets popped up a good sixty feet out from him. He hit all three in short order, never missing a shot. How could identical beings be so different?

I mulled McKay’s question over in my head. Freeman had won the battle on Gobi. I’d just been along for the ride. Shannon had done all the work on Hubble, and I got him killed. I did not say that. I did not want Captain McKay to consider demoting me…maybe court-martialing me.

“Harris, he was dead the moment he touched Lieutenant Williams.”

“Williams?”

“The tech with the robot,” McKay said. “Williams might have been a prick, but he was a superior officer, and a Navy man at that. I might have been able to smooth things over if Shannon roughed another Marine, but Williams wanted blood, and I goddamned don’t blame him.”

I did not say anything.

Outside the command booth, Lee gathered the platoon. I could not hear him, but I could see him yelling at the men. Lee singled out one man and gave him a shove as he stepped into line. The man stumbled.

McKay saw none of that. He continued to look at me, not so much staring, but certainly studying me carefully. I glanced back at him, but just for a moment. He sighed. “I am going to grant your request, Harris. I’ll assign Grayson from the Thirteenth Platoon to cover for you.

“Do you have any idea where you are going?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“I don’t think Lee wants to waste two weeks of leave drifting around Scrotum-Crotch,” McKay said. “We’re going to pass a disc station in two days. I’m going to grant your request, on the condition that you take your leave on Earth.”

“Earth?” I liked the idea. “I could visit the orphanage…”

“God, Harris, talking to you is more depressing than sitting through a funeral. Most of the officers on this ship visit a group of islands. I told Lee about the place.”

McKay slid off the desk. “You’ve got two weeks, Harris. Don’t waste them.” He returned my salute and left the office shaking his head and muttering the word “orphanage.”

The Scutum-Crux Central Fleet needed rebuilding. We had lost seven thousand men on Hubble. I noticed an eerie emptiness around our section of the ship. I saw vacant racks in squad bay, and the sea-soldier bar always felt empty.

After the nonstop rush of battle, life unwound at an uneven pace aboard the Kamehameha. The first weeks after the battle on Hubble passed so slowly. The two days after McKay granted my leave were a blur.

I put off packing until the morning we left for Earth. I drilled my men harder than ever the day before we left. I tried to combine the late Tabor Shannon’s tirades and Aleg Oberland’s intelligent doggedness in my orders. I think I pushed everybody beyond his limits. When one of my privates missed ten shots on the range, allowing a holographic target of a woman separatist to stroll right up to the stand, I screamed until spit flew from my lips. Shannon would have been proud. I removed the man’s helmet, then I placed it over his head backward and hammered it down with my rifle butt. “Having trouble seeing through your visor?” I yelled.

Nobody laughed at my antics. The squad watched silently. I sent that same private to clean latrines during lunch and invited him to spar with me during hand-to-hand drills later that afternoon. That evening, I spied him practicing on his own in the rifle range. He showed marked improvement despite the two swollen black eyes I had given him earlier in the day.

Then, at 0500 the next morning, I woke from a deep sleep to see Sergeant Elmo Grayson dropping his rucksack beside my bunk. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“What are you doing here?” Grayson answered. “Your ride leaves in less than an hour.”

The blood surged to my head when I sat up too quickly. Still feeling sluggish, I swung my feet out of bed and forced myself up.

“Anything I need to know?” Grayson asked, as I pulled on my shirt.

I thought for a moment. “I’ve been drilling them on their shooting skills. Most of these grunts are pretty sorry shots. Take them to the range a couple of times per day. If they screw up, drill them again…especially the one with the two black eyes.”

“Black eyes?” Grayson asked. “Maybe that’s what messed up his shooting.”

“Actually, they’ve improved his accuracy,” I said. It was true.

Lee came into my office as I threw the last of my clothes in a duffel bag. “They don’t hold shuttles for sergeants, you know,” he said.

“I know,” I answered as I slung on my shoulder strap.

The men sat up in their bunks and watched as we left. No one said anything, but they seemed glad to see me go.

Lee and I raced to the launch bay, arriving as a small line of men started entering the transport. We joined the queue, panting from our run.

Fifteen men, six in civilian clothing, boarded the flight. Lee and I traveled in our Charlie Service greens. My civilian shirt and denim pants waited at the top of my bag.

The entire flight, over sixty thousand light-years, took under an hour. As Captain McKay had said, the Kamehameha happened to be near a disc station. Once we entered the network, we flashed through eight sets of discs, ending up at Mars Station, where we boarded a five-hour flight to Salt Lake City.

The flight from Salt Lake City to the islands would be aboard a civilian airliner. As we disembarked in Salt Lake City, I looked at my ticket. The name of the final destination looked so foreign. “How did you say they pronounce this town?”

“Hon-o-lu-la,” Lee said.

“Hon-o-lu-la? The second ‘U’ sounds like an ‘A’? What the hell kind of name is that?”

From the window of the plane, the ocean around the islands looked like a luminous patchwork of aqua, green, and blue. Parts of the island matched Gaylan McKay’s description— longs strips of beach and gorgeous forests. Other areas looked nothing like I expected. I saw a large city and long stretches that looked parched. A mountain range seemed to dissect the island. Thick rain forests ran along the mountain.

“It’s beautiful,” Lee said.

“Did you know it would look like this?” I asked.

“I heard stories,” he said, staring out a window across the aisle. “Mostly from officers. McKay says Admiral Klyber always comes here on leave.”

As the airplane began its descent, it flew parallel to the shoreline. We rounded a crater. I watched the scrolling landscape as the plane approached the runway.

Lee and I grabbed our bags before the plane touched down. We stayed in our seats with our bags on our laps. Heat, glare, and humid air poured into the cabin when the flight attendant opened the hatch. Squinting against the sunlight, I drew in a deep breath and felt the warmth in my lungs. Moments after leaving the plane, I felt sweat on my forehead.

Like so many places on Earth, Honolulu was a living museum exhibit. The airport was hundreds of years old, with thick concrete pillars and open-air walkways. It reminded me of the Marine base on Gobi. As we walked through the airport, I rolled up my sleeves. My shirt already felt moist under my arms. The heat felt great on my face and neck.

“Are you beginning to thaw?” Lee asked me.

I knew what he meant. Back on the Kamehameha, every room was climate-controlled. So was our armor.

Lee handled all of the logistics on the trip. He arranged our flights, found a place for us to stay, and rented the transportation—a beat-up buggy with a retractable cloth top. I was just along for the ride. “I hope you know where we’re going?” I said as I chucked my bag in the back of the car.

“Don’t sweat it, we have a map,” he said, tapping his finger on the map window in the dashboard. “Besides, who could get lost on a little rock like this?”

We got very lost indeed. The twisting network of highways that ran from the airport led in all directions. None of the signs said “Honolulu.” They had equally odd names like “Waikiki,” “Wahiawa,” and “Kaneohe,” none of which meant anything to either of us.

I didn’t mind being lost. We drove around with the top down, feeling the sun bake our shoulders. We passed beaches and streets lined with people. Over the last few months I had forgotten how to relax, but it was coming back to me.

Lee pulled onto the side of the road to look at his map. We were on the outskirts of an area called “Waikiki.” Tall hotels lined the roads.

“Okay. If we are where I think we are, the beach is over there, just beyond those buildings. We will see it if we go down this street. And we can follow this street to Diamondhead.”

“Look at that,” I said. “It’s a hotel for military personnel.” Just up the street from us was a large hotel with a sign that said “Hale Koa. U.A. Military Temporary Residents.” The building was not as elaborate as some of the towering structures around it, but the grounds were simple and pretty.

“Oh yeah, the Hail Ko. McKay told me about it.”

“Hail Ko? How did they come up with these names?” I joked.

Locating the Hale Koa Hotel gave Lee the bearings he needed to find his way through town. As we drove away, I glanced back at the hotel. It looked beautiful. “Why aren’t we staying there?” I asked.

“McKay suggested this other place,” Lee said. “He sounded pretty sure of himself. I get the feeling he knows his way around Honolulu.”

We drove through Waikiki, passing splendid hotels, streets packed with tourists, and crowded beaches. The road led us past parks and up a hill. There the road twisted back and forth as it followed the jagged coastline. At the top of the hill, we found streets lined with homes. Our pad was down one of those streets.

Lee had rented the house sight unseen based on Captain McKay’s recommendation. The place belonged to a retired combat officer who rented it to him for $200 per day. McKay said that that price was cheap, and that was undoubtedly correct. The truth was that everything in Honolulu was cheap; the U.A. government subsidized the economy and encouraged off-duty military men to visit. Rooms at the Hale Koa, for instance, were free to enlisted men.

I half expected to find that Lee had rented a dilapidated hut. When we reached the rough-hewn stone wall that surrounded the house, I thought Lee had the wrong address. The wall was tall and thick and made of perfectly matched lava stones. He typed a code into the computerized lock, and the gate slid open.

“Vince, you got this for two hundred dollars per day?” I asked.

Looking as stunned as I felt, Lee nodded. We stepped into a perfectly manicured courtyard. A pond ran one length of the yard. Reeds grew in the pond, and fish swam near the top of the water, causing ripples on its smooth surface.

A tree with white and yellow flowers stood in the center of the small courtyard. I stepped into its shade, and for the first time since I had landed, I felt a cool breeze. “Lee,” I said, “this is the prettiest place I have ever seen.”

Mynx’s eyes narrowed on its prey and its triangular ears smoothed back against its skull. It kept its gold and black body low to the ground, hiding in the brush as it prepared to pounce. The sinewy muscles in its haunches visibly tightened.

I leaned over and scooped Mynx up with one hand, and the cat purred as I lowered her into my lap. She had claws, this skinny feline, but she did not swipe at me. She stretched and made herself comfortable across my thighs, plucking gently at my pants with her claws. As Mynx curled up to sleep, her intended prey, a butterfly, flitted out of the garden.

“Careful, Wayson, you might get scratched,” Lee warned as he joined me for a beer in the courtyard.

“The note in the kitchen says that Mynx is friendly,” I said, absentmindedly stroking her back. She took a lazy swipe at my hand, but her claws were not extended.

“Don’t say that I didn’t warn you,” Lee said in a singsong voice. He flipped the cap off the old-fashioned bottle. “To many days of absolute boredom.”

I held up my bottle and nodded. Mynx, still lying across my lap, stretched her body and dug her claws into my legs again. I laughed, though it hurt a little.

Warm air, cool shade, cold beer, green plants, and garish flowers—it was paradise. “I don’t imagine that life gets much better than this,” I said.

“It beats the hell out of Hubble,” Lee said.

I saluted that comment with my bottle, though it reminded me of my open wounds. We found beer in the refrigerator. It tasted sweet, but it was weak. I could never have gotten drunk on the stuff.

“Hubble,” I said. “I was just starting to forget about that shit hole.” I rubbed Mynx behind her ears, and she purred.

“I saw you packing,” Lee said. “It looks like most of your clothes are government-issue. Want to do some shopping?” Unlike me, Lee owned plenty of civilian clothes.

“I’d like that,” I said. Sweat had soaked through the long-sleeved shirt I wore on the plane. At the moment, I was lounging with no shirt.

“Either that or you can go around in your armor. That ought to attract some scrub,” Lee said. “Scrub” was the term we used for one-night romances.

I looked down at the nearly sleeping cat on my lap. “Careful, Vince, or I might toss you a Mynx ball.”

In many ways Honolulu was designed to accommodate vacationing military men. The store owners recognized every clone as a potential customer. As we walked past storefronts and street-side vendors, people looked at Vince and launched into sales spiels or tried to attract his attention by yelling, “Hey, soldier!”

“Liberators must have come here a lot in the old days,” Lee commented. “They recognize you.” He never appreciated the tightrope act that the neural programming performed in his head.

We followed heavy foot traffic into an alley marked “International Marketplace.” “Waikiki Bazaar” would have been more appropriate. Once we entered the market we saw stands, carts, and small shops selling toys, tropical drinks, and gaudy clothing with overly bright colors.

Lee led me to a woman selling clothing out of a cart, which she kept shaded under a bright red canopy. The woman was tall…taller than me. She had long, blond hair that fell past her rather butch shoulders. The caked-on makeup around her eyes made her look old. Seeing Vince, she smiled daintily, and said, “Can I help you find something?”

“We’re looking for shirts,” he said.

“Oh, I’ve got shirts,” she said as she batted her eyes.

“We’ll have a look,” Vince said.

The woman watched as I sorted through a bin of T-shirts with pictures of colorful fish. The shirts and shorts on her cart looked like they might fall apart after a single wash. I felt threads break when I picked up a pair of shorts and snapped the waistband.

“Two shirts for ten dollars,” the woman said. “Five for twenty.”

“That’s cheap,” I whispered to Lee. He apparently thought that I wanted help haggling. “Twenty dollars!” he gasped with such awful melodrama that I wanted to laugh. “Twenty dollars for this? C’mon, Harris. No one in his right mind would pay these prices. Every cart on this street is selling the exact same shit.”

Twenty dollars for five shirts sounded good to me, no matter how poor the quality. I didn’t want them to last my career, just two weeks.

The woman gave Lee a wily smile. “Eighteen dollars, but you buy now. If you leave, that price goes away.”

“Is that a good deal?” I asked.

“I only know one way to find out,” Lee said loud enough so that the woman could hear. “Let’s go check some other stands.”

“She said she wouldn’t give us that price again,” I said.

“Look around here, Harris. This place is filled with carts just like this selling clothes just like these.” He spoke in a loud voice, making sure that the woman would hear. Even on vacation, Lee was political.

But Lee was right. The marketplace was crowded with stores selling bright shirts and shorts like the ones I was holding. And there I was, in my long-sleeved shirt and heavy and dark pants, sweating up buckets. Every shopkeeper in the International Marketplace would welcome me.

I decided to risk spoiling the deal. Purposely establishing eye contact with the woman, I tossed the shirts back into the bin and turned to leave.

“Twelve dollars,” she barked angrily. “Twelve dollars for five shirts or three pairs of shorts.”

“What do you think?” Lee asked.

“They’re not great, but they’ll hold up for the next two weeks,” I said.

“You have shit for taste, Marine,” Lee said.

“Get specked,” I said.

“Okay, smart guy,” Lee said. I did not like the mischievous smile that formed on his lips. He walked over to the woman and spoke to her in hushed tones that I could not hear.

“Mmmmm,” she said, bouncing her head in agreement. She turned to me and winked, putting up a finger to ask me to wait for a moment. When she returned, she held five genuinely nice shirts all neatly folded. She handed me the shirts.

“What do you think?” she asked.

I looked down and saw a photograph at the top of the pile. The woman had given me a portrait of herself. In the photo, she had a sly, alluring smile. She wore a bright pink bathing suit that did nothing to hide her masculine shoulders.

“Looks like you found yourself some scrub,” Lee said, choking down a laugh.

I looked at the photograph again and understood. The hips, the shoulders, the makeup…this was a man.

I handed the shirts and the photograph back. “My friend…”

“Leave my store,” the woman said with a very male voice and an impressive air of dignity.

As we walked away from the cart, Lee laughed convulsively. I thought he might collapse on the ground. He clapped his hand on my shoulder and leaned his weight on my back.

“Go speck yourself, asshole,” I said in a quiet voice. Then I thought about it and laughed. “Bastard,” I said.

Lee started to respond, then gave up in another fit of laughter.

Despite Lee’s sense of humor, I bought six shirts, three pairs of pants, and a pair of sandals before leaving the Marketplace. My entire wardrobe cost forty dollars.

At night, the streets of Waikiki took on a Roman Circus air. Rows of glowing red lanterns lined the streets. Strings of white Christmas lights blinked from every tree. Tourists and party-loving locals filled the sidewalks. Bartenders and sober-looking businessmen came to take advantage of them.

Lee walked over to a small tiki hut to purchase a drink. I watched him carefully, purposefully memorizing the look of his clothes. Half the crowd seemed to be made up of vacationing clones, and I was not sure how I would find him if we got separated.

When he returned, Lee had a yellow-and-green fruit that looked like a squat bowling pin. Holding the fruit with both hands, he sipped from a straw that poked out of its stem.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” Lee said. “The fruit is papaya, but I have no idea what they’ve poured inside it.” He took a sip. “It makes you feel like your head is on fire.”

A gang of boys stopped to watch Lee drink from that odd fruit. “What’s their problem?” Lee slurred.

“Probably don’t like drunks,” I said.

“Oh,” said Lee. “Me neither. You wanna try this?”

I did not know what was in Lee’s drink, but I decided it would be safer if only one of us tried it. I led the way up the street, trying to keep Vince from bumping into people. It took a lot of work. A few more sips, and he could barely stand. Whatever else they put inside that drink, some of it must have come from Sagittarian potatoes.

A double-decker bus with a banner that said, “Free Historic Tour,” came rolling up the street. Vince did not look like he could walk much farther, and I thought the night might go easier if I kept him off his feet. I waved, and the bus stopped for us. Our ride took us away from the crowded streets of Waikiki and out toward the airport. We drove past a harbor filled with boats and large ships.

“This is historic Honolulu Harbor,” the bus driver said over an intercom.

“Oh, look at the ships,” Lee said, moments before vomiting. The woman sitting across the aisle from us focused all of her attention straight ahead, completely denying our existence. The young couple in the next seat acknowledged us. Lee’s vomit splashed their feet, and they turned back and glared.

When the bus stopped to let people walk around the harbor, I led Lee away from the tour group. No one seemed sorry to see us go.

We stopped on a bridge and watched swells roll across the top of the moonlit water. The salt air seemed to do Lee good. He took deep breaths and regained some strength, then threw up again over the top of the bridge.

“Pathetic bastard,” I said as I patted him on the back.

This part of town was not nearly as crowded as Waikiki, but a steady trickle of pedestrians moved along the streets. “Are you up for a walk?” I asked Lee.

He did not answer. I took that for a yes.

Most of the buildings along the streets were dark. We passed a bar, and I heard dance music and noisy chatter. The farther we walked from the water, the more people we saw, until we reached a building that looked like an auditorium or maybe a movie theater. The sign over the door said, “Sad Sam’s Palace” in foot-tall letters. Under the sign was a marquee that said, “Big-Time Professional Wrestling.”

Dozens of clones in civilian clothing milled around the entrance. Some sat on benches, others lounged along the walls. Many of them had been on leave for a while and had bronzed tans. A few also had women tucked under their arms.

“Want to watch wrestling?” I asked Lee as I led him toward the door.

“Do we get to sit?” he asked.

“As long as you don’t puke,” I said.

Lee leaned on the pedestal of a bronze statue as I went to buy the tickets. When I returned, he said, “Sad Sam Itchy-nose,” and laughed.

“What?” I asked.

“This is Sad Sam Itchy-nose,” he said pointing to the sign.

I looked at the plaque. It said, “Sad Sam Ichinose, 1908–1993.” “He must have been a famous wrestler,” I said. “Are you okay now?” I asked. “Are you going to puke?”

Lee shook his head, but he looked awfully pale.

On closer inspection, Sad Sam’s Palace reminded me of an oversized bar. The building was old, with chipped walls and no windows. We entered the lobby and found ourselves in a crowd waiting for the doors to open.

“What’s wrong with him?” a clone in a bright shirt asked as we came through the door.

“He bought a fruit drink that didn’t agree with him,” I said.

“Hey, I did that my first night. They fill that specker with Sagittarian Crash. I’ll never do that again,” he said cheerfully.

“Is this wrestling good?” I asked.

“Best show in town,” the clone said. “Just don’t come on Friday night.”

“What happens on Friday?” I asked.

“That’s open challenge night,” he said. I had no idea what that meant; but the doors swung open as he spoke, and the crowd pushed inside.

“We should get a beer,” Lee said, as we passed the concession stand. He swayed where he stood. His jaw was slack, and slobber rolled over his bottom lip.

“You’ve had enough,” I said. I wondered if I should take him home.

Thick red carpeting covered every inch of Sad Sam’s Palace. Inside the second door, we entered a large, square theater with bleachers along its walls and a balcony. I estimated that a thousand spectators had come for the show— and the building was half-empty.

There was a small boxing ring surrounded by tables. The only lights in the room hung over the ring, but the glare made the room bright enough for everybody.

An usher asked for my ticket at the door. When I showed her, she smiled and led us to bleachers about a hundred feet from the ring.

“Think we could be any farther from the action?” Lee asked.

“Lee,” I hissed, “these are good seats.”

He squinted at me. “My head hurts,” he said.

A man in an old-fashioned black-and-white tuxedo entered the ring carrying a microphone. “Laaaaaadies and gentlemeeeeen, Sad Sam’s Palace is proud to present, Big-Time Wrestling.”

The crowd roared. Lee covered his ears and moaned.

“For our first match, weighing in at two hundred sixty-five pounds…Crusher Kohler.” A fat man with bleached blond hair, yellow tights, and no shirt strode to the ring, growling at people who booed his arrival.

“Weighing in at two hundred thirty-seven pounds, Tommy Tugboat.” In came a man with balding black hair, dark eyes, and black swim trunks. The crowd cheered for this one.

Crusher? Tugboat? God, what kinds of names are those? I asked myself. I might have asked Lee, but he sat slumped forward with his head hanging.

We had mandatory judo and wrestling at the orphanage. I knew what wrestling looked like, and it looked nothing like this. For openers, this fight was in a boxing ring, not on a mat. Tugboat and Crusher ran face-first into the ropes then bounced backward as if the ropes around the ring were made of elastic.

The crowd roared.

Tugboat smashed Kohler across the mouth, and the guy staggered like a drunkard. Another punch, and Kohler fell to his knees. Remaining on his knees, he put up his hands and begged for mercy.

The crowd roared.

“They’re faking it,” I said. “They must be.”

By the time it was over, both Tugboat and Kohler had stumbled around as if half-dead, only to suddenly recover. Tugboat once lifted the flabby Kohler over his head, no small feat, then dropped him face first to the mat. After both men had been so pulverized that they should have been dead, the match ended with a simple pin.

The crowd loved it.

There were three more fights. Each took about fifteen minutes. Each had men who looked to be near death, then came back to health and performed Herculean feats of strength. I did not believe a moment of it, but it was fun to watch.

When the last fight ended, the audience filed out quickly. Lee, however, still lay sprawled on the bleachers massaging the sides of his head.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Honolulu was a city on an island called Oahu, which was part of the Hawaiian Islands, which was a state of the former United States on the planet Earth. Perhaps I should have known all of that. I studied geography in the orphanage; but consider, the galaxy had six arms. Each of which had thirty member planets. There were one hundred eighty member planets in the Republic.

Before serving aboard the Kamehameha, I had never heard of Ezer Kri or Ronan Minor. Hell, I had never heard of the Templar System before landing on Hubble.

My education was lacking in more than geography. The retired officers running the orphanage had left the term “transvestite” out of my education. They also neglected to mention professional wrestling.

Our small villa had a common kitchen, dining room, and den. It had two bungalows for bedrooms. Lee remained in his room late into the morning. Still hungover from that fruit drink concoction, Lee slept until 1000. I could hear him snoring as I drank a cup of coffee in the courtyard.

I fixed myself a small breakfast of fruit and fish and went back to the courtyard to eat it. Mynx came over and joined me. She curled up in my lap and made herself comfortable. As I scooped meat out of pineapple, the sneaky cat filched my fish and ran off with it. The slice was nearly as big as her head, but that did not stop her.

“Hey!” I yelled, for all the good it did me. Mynx hopped off the table, my fish hanging from her mouth, and paused to look at me. If I’d had my pistol, I might have shot that cat. Instead, I watched her leave with her tail sticking straight up in the air. I laughed and enjoyed a moment of complete relaxation.

That moment ended when I put on my media shades and searched for stories. A coalition from the House of Representatives was calling for the Linear Committee to reduce the military budget. “We have an unprecedented stockpile of weapons,” said Speaker of the House Gordon Hughes, who represented Olympus Kri, a thriving colony a few hundred light-years from Earth in the Orion Arm. “We have more than twenty million clones on active duty, and the government keeps churning out nearly one and a half million more every year. The cost of supporting this build-up will pull our entire economy down.”

Gordon Hughes of Olympus Kri appeared on the news quite often in those days. He wanted lower taxes, less military, greater territorial autonomy. He questioned the need of a U.A. Naval base on Olympus Kri and asked for a direct disc link with trading partners in the Sagittarius and Perseus Arms. In the House, Hughes was widely praised for his bold initiatives. In the Senate, they talked about the million-member march that the Atkins Separatists made to his planet’s capital.

In a small sidebar, I read that the congressman from Ezer Kri challenged Hughes’s ideas. No surprise there. Ever since the invasion, Ezer Kri had supported the Linear Committee on every issue. Had the Linear Committee called for a ban on oxygen, the honorable congressman from Ezer Kri would have supported it.

In another story out of Washington, DC, the Senate unanimously approved a bill calling for two hundred new orphanages. Open war between the House and Senate was nothing new. The Senate would naturally spin the request to sound like an attempt to help homeless children, but that would not fool anybody. The Speaker of the House called for fewer orphanages and the Senate unanimously thumbed its nose at him. Isn’t that how it goes? As a product of the New Order orphanage system, and a military clone, I shared the Senate’s view on the issue. So did somebody else.

I looked at the visual feed that accompanied the story. As the Senate leader announced that the vote had been unanimous, the camera swept the gallery to show senators and onlookers giving a standing ovation. The camera panned the VIP box. Most of the men in the picture wore civilian clothing; but there was a tall, skeletal man dressed in Navy whites. I stopped the feed. The picture was blurred, but the face was unmistakable. “What are you doing in DC?” I asked out loud. “I thought you were on the Kamehameha.”

Klyber could have flown to DC quickly enough. Had he flown in for an important vote, or was there something else going on, I wondered.

“I don’t feel so good,” said Lee as he slid open the glass door of his bungalow. He did not look so good either. He stood in the doorway rubbing his head. His dark hair stood up in spikes, and he had huge sallow bags under badly bloodshot eyes.

“You cannot possibly feel as bad as you look,” I said.

“I don’t remember much. Did I do anything stupid last night?” Lee walked to his chair, then stood and stared at it as if deciding whether he was physically capable of sitting. He turned and dropped into the chair.

“Whatever you drank…”

“That fruit thing!” Lee interrupted. “I remember. That goddamn fruit thing.” He groaned and rubbed his head.

“You got sick on a bus,” I said.

“I don’t remember a bus,” Lee said.

“We went to wrestling matches,” I said. “There was this place called Sad Sam’s Palace, where they have fake wrestling matches in a boxing ring.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Lee said. He spent most of the morning moping around the house, trying to get his head straight. He seldom drank anything stronger than beer. Now I knew why.

By early afternoon, Lee became restless and wanted to drive into town. Neither of us had eaten lunch, and the idea of ordering a burger sounded good. The sun was up and hot, and I wanted to walk, but Lee insisted on driving.

The ocean glistened as we drove down to Waikiki. Lee wanted to put the top up and use the air-conditioning, but I vetoed him on that one. I wanted the heat of the sun on my head, and I liked the warmth, though I could have done without the humid air.

We left the car by a beach park and started to walk the last few blocks into town, but I heard the roar of the waves. “Let’s check out the beach,” I said.

“How about after lunch?” Lee asked.

“It’s right over there,” I said. I turned and started for the beach without waiting for Lee to answer. He followed, muttering words to himself that did not sound happy.

I took off my shoes when I reached the beach; the hot sand burned the soles of my feet. That part of the beach was almost empty. Sprinting past sunbathers, I wrapped my shoes and wallet into my shirt and dropped the wad in an empty spot, and trotted into the water.

The water was cold, but my body adjusted quickly. I loped forward through the shallows until the water was up to my waist, then I dived in. Lee followed me as far as the water’s edge, but his willingness to continue vanished the moment he felt the water. He walked back to my shirt and shoes and sat down beside the pile.

The water was clear and bitter to the taste. The salt burned my eyes when I dived down for a look, but I kept my eyes open. There were fish all around me. I swam up for air, then dived to the bottom for a closer view. I saw small, silver fish and bright yellow fish that were about the size of my hand. A gentle current swept me farther out, and when I dived again, I could no longer reach the bottom.

The fish knew no fear. Thousands of red, green, blue, and yellow fish huddled together in a lazy cloud that barely parted when I swam too close. Even when I grabbed at them, they sped out of my reach but did not swim away. I stayed down too long and my lungs burned when I swam to the surface and gulped for air.

Back on the beach, Lee stood on the shore and waved at me. The current had pulled me a few hundred feet from shore. I needed to get back.

I took a deep breath and dived for another look at the fish. What I saw was far more exciting. A white silhouette passed sleekly along the ocean floor deep below me. At first I did not realize what I was looking at, but only for a moment. It was a very trim woman with short blond hair trailing behind her in a silky web. This woman had long tanned legs and she cut through the water with otterlike grace. She wore swim fins and a diver’s mask, and with a kick from her perfectly toned thighs, she sprang forward over the coral reef.

The woman’s face mask must have had an air supply because she held her breath for a very long time. In the time that she admired the coral shelf, I had come up for air twice and was about to swim up a third time. I would never have caught up to her had she swum away. Fortunately, she turned, looked at me, and came up with me. She broke through the surface just a few feet from me. She pulled off her mask and smiled. “And they said there was nothing dangerous in these waters.”

We finished the preliminaries that quickly.

Kasara swam to shore with me. As we waded out of the water, I saw Lee. Still sitting by my shirt and shoes, his expression was a mixture of jealousy and hate. He picked up my shirt and trotted out to meet us.

I turned to Kasara. “I want you to meet Vince,” I said.

Kasara smiled at Vince. She had a slightly mischievous smile—the big, unabashed smile of a child. I looked at her smile and her blue eyes and knew that my leave had unalterably changed.

She was about six inches shorter than I—about five-footten. She wore a bright red bikini that contrasted sharply against her tanned skin. She had a flat stomach with just a hint of visible ribs and muscular definition. I had to concentrate to keep from staring.

“Vince, this is…”

“Kasara,” she said in a soft voice.

“You don’t happen to have a roommate?” Lee asked.

“As a matter of fact…” Kasara laughed. She looked embarrassed. “I’d better get back to her.”

“What are you doing tonight?” I asked.

“What do you want me to do tonight?” she asked.

Clearly she was used to more experienced players than me. I pulled my shirt over my head and shoulders. “We just got here last night. Maybe you and your friend could show us the better spots.”

“Show you around?” Kasara said with a grin. “That sounds fun.” She pointed up toward the street. “See that two-story building over there?”

We were on the outskirts of Waikiki, well away from the luxurious towers and glossy hotels. The two- and three-story buildings that lined the far side of the street were wedged together like books on a crowded shelf. “Which one do you mean?” I asked.

She moved even closer until our bodies touched. In a moment, I would need to dive back into the cold water. Wrapping one hand around my waist, she pulled me so that I could see exactly where she was pointing. “You see that pink two-story building?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling my legs go numb. I felt the side of her breast rub against my arm.

“Think you can meet us there at seven o’clock?” she asked, her voice sounding husky.

“Seven it is,” I said.

“Don’t be late,” Kasara said, releasing me. I could barely stand. She, on the other hand, walked away down the beach as if nothing had happened.

“Not bad, Harris,” Lee said. “I hope her roommate looks that good.”

The sun set as we arrived at Kasara’s hotel, but the sky remained bright for another two hours. The warm night air, so pleasant compared to the burdensome humidity of the day, was filled with the smell of the ocean.

Kasara stayed in a rattrap hotel with pink adobe walls and stubby, Moorish archways. The manager had plastered the walls of the lobby with advertisements for car rentals and island tours. “How much do you think they charge per night?” I asked Lee.

Lee was not listening. “Wayson,” he said excitedly, “if the roommate is as good-looking as Kasara, I’ll really owe you, pal.”

Kasara and her roommate came gliding down the steps into the lobby. Kasara wore a short, white dress that stopped at the very tops of her thighs. Jennifer, her roommate, wore a green sundress. Kasara was the prettier of the two, but Jennifer was not off by much. I liked her dark brown hair and green eyes. So did Lee. He and Jennifer matched up well and started chatting almost immediately.

“You look beautiful,” I said to Kasara.

“Thank you,” Kasara purred, and gave me that young girl smile. As we turned to leave, she moved very close to me, and I felt an urge to put my arm around her waist. She rubbed up against me, and my hand seemed to slide around her of its own accord. She looked at me and beamed.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Let’s walk around,” Kasara said. By that time, the street vendors had rolled their carts out along the sidewalk. A couple with two young boys was looking at a cart covered with toys. Vince and Jennifer paused in front of that cart, and he bought her a surfer doll. They seemed happy.

“I could get you one of those,” I offered.

“You’ve got to be kidding, Harris,” she said. From then on, I let Kasara do most of the talking. She told me about her job. She worked as a cocktail waitress on Olympus Kri. When I asked her what she thought about the row in Congress, she did not know what I meant. I asked her if she voted for Gordon Hughes, but she did not know the name.

She was just a girl who worked in a bar saving up tips for an annual vacation on Earth. She hated her job. She had a boyfriend back home, but did not like him much, either. We quickly established that she did not care about politics, professional sports, or novels. Movies and dancing, on the other hand, she talked about endlessly.

Kasara did not ask many questions, not even which branch Lee and I served in. I suppose she already knew my basic story. She might not have known if I was in the Army or the Navy, but she knew I was military and probably guessed that I grew up in an orphanage.

A little way down the road, I saw a familiar stand surrounded by flaming torches. “Hey, Vince,” I called back. “This is where you bought that papaya thing last night.” A crowd had already lined up around the stand.

“I want to try one,” Kasara said, sounding excited.

“It practically killed Vince,” I said. “He was still getting over it when we went to the beach this afternoon.”

“Did you try it?” Kasara asked.

“I think it’s mostly Sagittarian Crash,” I said.

“Wayson, I work in a bar, remember? I can handle it. It’s for tourists, probably half fruit syrup and ice cream. Let’s get one.”

I gave in and Kasara smiled and nuzzled her head against my shoulder. It reminded me a bit of Mynx, purring on my lap as she grabbed the fish from my breakfast. But Kasara was exactly the right height to fit against my chest, and I felt the warmth of her body. “Do too much of that, and we may have to make it an early night,” I warned her.

She flushed. “Don’t be too sure of yourself, Harris,” she said, with a sheepish smile.

I wasn’t. My heart was beating so hard, I expected my Liberator glands to start filling my blood with endorphins and adrenaline like they did in battle.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Lee gasped as we approached the fruit stand. “That thing wiped me out last night.”

“We’re going to split one,” I said.

“It’s your funeral, Harris,” said Vince. “Jennifer and I are going to walk around a bit. Maybe we will run into you again later.” Jennifer gave Kasara a friendly peck on the cheek, then Lee and Jennifer vanished into the crowd.

“How many?” the man running the cart barked as we approached.

“One,” I said, then seeing Kasara’s disappointed expression, I corrected myself. “Two.”

“Four dollars,” the man said, holding out his hand.

I paid.

Crash loses a bit of its bite when diluted with sugar. The fruit juice and ice cream might have made this drink sweet, but I still felt the nearly toxic alcohol in my blood. Kasara worked away at her drink slowly, taking little sips and talking cheerfully. The more she sipped, the more she rubbed against me as we walked. I would have proposed going back for seconds, but I was afraid it would kill her.

“This is so good,” she said. “We make these at the bar, but it’s not the same without fresh papaya.”

By that time the sky had gone completely dark. Tourists of all descriptions now filled the streets. “Are you hungry?” I asked.

Kasara laughed. “Are you kidding? I just drank enough for two meals.” As we walked toward the beach, we passed a bin with an open fire. Kasara tossed her half-finished fruit into the flames, and we both jumped when we heard the explosion.

“You want to sit and talk?” I asked.

“Talk?” she asked suspiciously, though I doubt she would have minded if I proved her suspicions correct.

We walked across the beach and sat down near the water. Waves rolled in stopping just short of where we sat. A cold breeze came in off the ocean. Leaning back on my elbows, I looked into a sky brimming with stars. Somewhere out there was the Kamehameha.

She placed her hand on my thigh and I knew that I did not know what was ahead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I looked over at Kasara sleeping beside me and did not know what to do. I wanted more of what we had done last night, but I also wanted to get away from her. It might have been unknown territory for me, but it was certainly nothing new for her. I did not know if I had embarrassed myself.

She slept so soundly, and she looked like an angel as she slept. Her hair, straight and golden, was spread across the pillow. With her eyes shut and a slight smile playing on her lips, she looked sweet…almost innocent. She barely stirred, and I did not want to wake her.

I climbed out of bed and looked around my room. I would not describe myself as a naturally neat person, but as a military orphan and a Marine, I had been forced to maintain orderly quarters. From childhood up to the moment I set foot on Gobi, I had been subjected to weekly and sometimes daily inspections. If my bed was not made just right, if I did not fold my clothing properly in my locker, if the floor around my rack was not spotless, I was virtually assured KP duty or time cleaning the latrine. Kasara, apparently, did not have the same discipline.

Her dress was tossed over a chair in the corner of the room. Her shoes and socks were in two separate piles. Her bra hung from the top of my dresser. We had taken off our clothes pretty quickly the night before, but how had she managed to scatter everything like that? I thought about picking up after her, then decided against it.

Knowing that I might later regret the decision, I pulled my media shades off my dresser and went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Sitting down and taking a sip, I booted up my shades and scanned the pangalactic headlines. Klyber’s judicial sideshow had begun. The ten thousand Mogat Separatists we captured on Hubble were now appearing in court on Ezer Kri.

The story included a quote from Nester Smart, the provisional governor of Ezer Kri. I was not aware that there had been a change. The story did not mention anything about Governor Yamashiro. There were several lengthy video segments from the courtroom floor. Every feed showed the same thing—male prisoners sitting in groups of four to ten at a time, remaining absolutely stone-faced as judges read the accusations.

I watched two of the feeds. I found it hard to concentrate; thoughts of the previous night kept clouding my mind. What I really wanted to do was wake Kasara and see what might happen, but I thought I should let her sleep for another few minutes.

I viewed one last clip. Just another judge reading the exact same four charges—sedition, assault against officers of the Unified Authority military, premeditated murder, willfully obstructing the law …The camera panned around the court to show the jury. And then it dawned on me. Not one member of the jury had black hair. Nobody had Asian eyes. No one in the previous video feeds had Japanese features, either.

I found a sidebar showing man-on-the-street interviews conducted in downtown Rising Sun. The streets looked empty, and the few people who gave interviews looked cosmopolitan.

The first time I read about Ezer Kri, the article said that the planet had nearly 12.6 million people of Japanese descent. The population of Rising Sun was over 80 percent Japanese. It would have taken one hell of an airlift operation to slip that many people off the planet. Later I searched for the latest demographic statistics from Ezer Kri. I found an article that was only one month old. There was no mention of a Japanese population.

“Damn, Wayson. You’re reading the news,” Vince Lee said

in disgust.

“They’ve started the trials on Ezer Kri,” I said.

“You need to get your head out of those shades,” Lee said. “Kasara and Jennifer came as a package deal, and I am not going to let you speck this up.”

Lee had a point. Bright sunlight shone through my kitchen windows. The curtains fluttered in a gentle breeze. I sipped my coffee and discovered that it had gone cold.

“You and Jennifer had a good time last night?” I asked.

“We did,” he said. “From the sound of things, you and Kasara did okay. I promised Jennifer that we’d all drive around the island. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said. I went to wake Kasara up. She and I had breakfast about forty minutes later.

We drove east, following the coast. The highway wound around bays and mountains, through small towns and wide-open countryside. Vince drove and Jennifer sat beside him. Kasara and I sat in the back. She nuzzled against me and occasionally stroked her hand over my thighs. She did not say much. She seemed wistful.

The coastal road led along the outside of dormant volcanoes. One side of the street was barren, the other side dropped straight down to the ocean, a fathomless mosaic of blues and greens. Kasara leaned forward and spoke to Jennifer. “Let’s stop.”

Jennifer put her hand to Lee’s ear and relayed the request. He pulled into a scenic parking area overlooking the ocean, and we went to have a look.

I had seen enough from the car and didn’t need to look much longer. Vince and Jennifer didn’t care about much of anything. She held his arm and smiled. They talked happily. Kasara held my arm, too; but her thoughts were elsewhere.

Soon she would return home. She dreaded the idea. She was a girl who lived for one week out of every year—the week she spent on vacation.

Kasara stared down at the waves as they dashed against the black rock walls of the cliff. Wind blew her silky hair across her face. She did not smile, and her eyes seemed far away.

“The view is beautiful,” I said, mostly because I was tired of looking at it and hoped to wake her from her trance.

“I could watch this all day,” she muttered.

God help us, I thought, but I did not say anything. There was no peace in her face. The girlish smile that had so lured me had vanished. Without it, she was more beautiful than ever.

“Do you think there are fish down there? Wouldn’t the waves kill them?” she asked.

“I don’t know anything about oceans,” I said, “but those currents look strong.”

“We have an ocean on Olympus Kri,” she said, prying her eyes from the view. She looked at me and smiled. It was not the same smile I had seen the day before.

“Does it look like this?” I asked.

“I’ve only seen pictures,” she said. “I’ve never gone out to the coast.”

She tightened her grip around my biceps. “You’ve probably seen all kinds of oceans.”

“I’ve only been to four planets so far,” I said. “One was a desert and one was toxic.”

“Poor Wayson,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve seen some amazing places. So exciting to spend your life on a ship traveling around different worlds.” As she spoke, her thoughts drifted, and her smile became more pure. She reached an arm around my waist and we kissed.

“Seen enough?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

We turned toward the car. Vince and Jennifer were already there, watching us and talking.

“Hey,” I said. “Vince, did you see that sign?”

The sign behind the car said “Scenic Area.” Above the words was the silhouette of a man in a cape wearing a primitive war helmet with a fin along the top. It was the insignia of our ship.

“What’s that doing here?” Lee asked.

Once we were alert to it, we spotted Kamehameha everywhere. He was on scenic signs and the sides of buses. There was a caricature of him on our map. Lee drove us to the spot on the way home. There, immortalized in an cast-iron statue with gold leaf, was King Kamehameha: “Conqueror of the Islands.”

“No wonder all of those officers vacation here,” Lee said. “The ship was named after a Hawaiian king.”

The statue stood ten feet tall and stood upon a pedestal that added another five feet. I read the plaque at the base of the statue. Kamehameha had been a warrior king who paddled from island to island by canoe and conquered villages with spears and clubs. He was also a statesman. Once he finished conquering his island kingdom, he set up treaties with France, England, and the United States of America that played great nations against each other and ensured his primitive kingdom’s survival.

This told me something about Bryce Klyber, too. The aristocratic admiral had selected our antiquated Expansion-class fighter carrier as his flagship because he liked the name. He liked the idea of the statesman warrior. He saw himself as both a statesman and a warrior, and he believed that his statesmanship ultimately differentiated him from the likes of Admiral Huang.

When we dropped Kasara and Jennifer off at their hotel in the midafternoon, Lee looked at me, and said, “Shit, now I’m stuck with you.” He was joking, but the feeling was mutual.

We moped around the villa until 1700, then headed down the hill. The sun had not even begun to set. The last of the tourists still lingered on the beach, lying on the sand or wading in the shallows. In another hour the sun would go down, and even they would leave. Younger, trendier tourists would commandeer the streets once night fell.

We could not find anyplace to park, so Lee drove around the block while I went to find Kasara and Jennifer. As I entered the lobby, I realized that I did not know their floor or room number. I did not even know Kasara’s last name.

“You’re late,” Kasara called from the second-story balcony. She was not much of an actress. She tried to sound angry, but she did a poor job of it.

I looked up. Kasara, wearing a sundress with an orange-and-red flower print, leaned over the rail of the balcony. Another Waikiki special, I thought. Her dress matched my shirt. “I’m half an hour early.”

“Come on up,” she said.

I skipped up the steps. Kasara’s apartment bore a striking resemblance to my room earlier that morning—her clothes were everywhere. She had two pair of dress shoes, tennis shoes, and slippers scattered around the outside of her closet. Her clothes were on the bed and furniture. A bra hung from the knob on the bathroom door.

And there was more. I saw two sinks through the open bathroom door. One was littered with cosmetics, brushes, and toothpaste. The other was neat, with a simple toiletry bag leaning against its mirror. That must have been Jennifer’s.

“You should have come earlier. We’ve been sitting around waiting for you,” Kasara said, brushing some clothes from a chair as she retrieved her purse. She fixed those sparkling blue eyes on me, and I became oblivious to the clutter as well.

As we started to leave, Kasara loped off to the bathroom and closed the door. Thinking that was very sudden, I turned to Jennifer. “Is she okay?”

“You don’t expect her to leave without touching up her hair?” Jennifer asked.

“But it was perfect,” I said.

Jennifer shook her head. “Wayson, that girl spends two hours every morning doing exercises, touching up her hair, and putting on her makeup. Then she spends another thirty minutes making sure it’s perfect before she leaves the hotel. But try to get her to clean up the room…”

It was Kasara and Jennifer’s last night in Hawaii. Lee and I wanted to make a big deal of it. In many ways, it would turn out to be the last night of my vacation, too.

Kasara wanted to go shopping for trinkets. Jennifer and Lee wanted to get out of Waikiki. Both ideas sounded good. We drove to the Honolulu Harbor. There we found a mall that would be far less crowded.

Kasara went on a spending spree. In one store, she found hats with “I LOVE HAWAII” stitched across their bills in rainbow colors. She bought five of them “for the other gals at work.” She also bought a case of locally made chocolates in the next store and canned oysters with cultured pearls in another. As we left, she saw a photo booth. Without even saying a word, she turned to me and rested her head on my shoulder, batting her eyelashes and pretending as if she was pleading for permission.

“What?” I asked.

She nodded toward the booth and grinned.

“Isn’t that a bit dangerous? What will your boyfriend say?”

“I didn’t tell you?” Kasara said. “We broke up.”

“When did that happen?” I asked.

Kasara shrugged and smiled. She grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the booth.

“They broke up?” Vince asked Jennifer while we were still in earshot.

“They will when she gets home.”

The thought of Kasara breaking up with her boyfriend left me both excited and scared. I ran my hands over my hair, trying to push it in place for the picture. Kasara slid onto the bench inside the booth and pulled me next to her. The people who designed the booth had kids or singles in mind. Even when I pushed in and squeezed against Kasara as best I could, my right shoulder still hung out of the door. We looked into a small mirror as lights around the booth flashed on and off.

Kasara let her hand slide up my thigh. I tried to ignore the jolt running through my body and look relaxed. “I didn’t think nice girls did things like that,” I teased as I stepped out of the booth.

“Nice girls don’t,” Kasara agreed. “Working girls on their last night of vacation do all kinds of things.”

“What kinds of things?” I asked.

“You’ll see.” She stepped closer to me and stared deep into my eyes.

“I have to ask…” I said. “Your boyfriend…That wasn’t because of me, was it?”

“You’re so self-centered,” she said, laughing. “You had nothing to do with it.” I felt relieved. I also felt disappointed.

Something happened between Vince and Jennifer during the short time that Kasara and I spent in the photo booth. Perhaps Jennifer told Vince that she wanted to stay in touch with him, and he said he had other plans. Perhaps it was the other way around. They held hands for the rest of the evening, but I heard lags in their conversation and moments passed when they seemed reluctant to look at each other.

When we passed a stand selling the Crash and fruit drink, Kasara pointed. Jennifer, Lee, and I groaned. Pretending to ignore us, Kasara looked at the people waiting, and chirped, “Oh well, the line is too long, anyway.”

“We haven’t had dinner yet,” said Jennifer.

Jennifer was the more sensible of the two. She did not flirt the way Kasara did, and she spoke less frivolously. Fun and flirtatious as Kasara was, I wondered what would have happened had Lee first met Kasara on the beach and I dated Jennifer.

We strayed into a courtyard in which people sold various kinds of foods from large, wooden carts. One cart had skewers of fruits, fish, chicken, and beef cooked over a charcoal grill. Kasara and I bought meat sticks and munched them while sitting on a bench overlooking the docks as Vince and Jennifer walked off to look for more options. We looked at ships and watched the sunlight vanish in the horizon.

“What’s it like on Olympus Kri?” I asked.

“It’s not like this,” Kasara said. “The night sky is kind of like the day sky, only darker. We’re pretty far from our sun, so it’s cold and gray. I mean, it’s not like we never see the sun. It’s like a shiny patch in the clouds.” She sighed. “We don’t have a moon.”

After our meal, we continued along the waterfront. I noticed that the sidewalks became more crowded. Men and boys were bustling up the street in droves. Then I saw the

distant lights. “Sad Sam’s Palace,” I said.

“Sad Sam’s,” Kasara said. “I’ve heard about that place.”

“We were here two nights ago,” Lee said. “Didn’t you say the fights were all fake?”

“You were there, too, weren’t you?” Jennifer asked.

“He went,” I said. “He just doesn’t remember anything.”

“I was drunk,” Lee said. “That was the night I had the fruit drink.”

Faked wrestling matches did not seem like something Kasara or Jennifer would enjoy, but they surprised me. “Can we go?” Kasara asked.

“You want to see the fights?” I asked.

I meant to ask Jennifer, but Kasara intercepted the question. “I’ve always wondered about this place.”

“Are you up for this, too?” Lee asked Jennifer.

“Sure.”

Lee and I shot each other amused smiles.

As we started toward the door, an old, white-haired man in a tank top called to us. He might have been a long-retired soldier. He had tattoos on his back and shoulders that looked ridiculous against his wrinkled skin. “Hey, you, you don’t want to go in there.” He had the gravelly voice of an old drill sergeant.

“We’ve been here before,” said Lee, though he certainly had no memory of that last visit. I went to pay for the tickets, or I would have heard what the man said next. Unfortunately, I did not hear it until several days later. The man said, “You want to stay clear of the Palace on Friday.”

Had I heard that, I might have thought twice about going inside. I might have noticed that as far as I could see, Lee and I were the only clones in the crowd. By the time I returned with our tickets, Lee had already told the man to mind his own business.

An usher led us to our seats. Coming late as we had, I expected to sit on the first or second balcony. Instead, the usher led us to the first floor. Threading his way around tables filled with screaming fight fans, he found an empty table just one row from the ring.

The venue had changed. Instead of ropes, ten-foot walls made of chain-link fencing now surrounded the ring. The fighters had changed, too. Instead of flabby men in colorful tights, the ring now held two large and muscular men.

“Are you sure they’re faking this?” Lee asked. “It looks real.”

One man grabbed the other by the hair and rammed his fist into the man’s face several times. Blood sprayed. The fight ended a moment later when two medics carried the loser out on a stretcher.

“It wasn’t like this last time,” I said. “It was all headlocks and bouncing off the ropes.”

A waitress came by our table between bouts and we asked her about it. “You came on Wednesday,” she guessed. “That was Big-Time Wrestling night. Tonight is an Iron Man competition.”

“What’s that?” Jennifer asked.

The waitress smiled. “Open challenge, honey. Anything goes.”

“Ladies and gentleman, we have your winner by knockout, Kimo Turner.” The announcer raised Turner’s arm and polite applause rose from the crowd. Considering Turner’s impressive size and the vicious way he fought, I found the lack of enthusiasm surprising.

“Which branch are you boys in?” the waitress asked when she returned with our drinks. All of us ordered beer except Kasara, who ordered something fruity with layers of blue liquor and white smoothie.

“Marines,” Lee answered.

“Where you in from?” the waitress asked.

“Scrotum…” Lee corrected himself. “The Scutum-Crux Fleet.”

“You’re a long way from home,” she commented as she took the money for the drinks.

“Keep the change,” Lee said. He was feeling generous. I was, too. It was a magical evening. We could feel the electricity in the air. In another twenty-four hours we would send the girls home, but not until we had made a complete night of it.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the next preliminary match, please welcome once again, Kimo Turner.” The audience applauded more readily that time. People shouted encouragement to the big man as he returned to the ring. Turner had a strong, rounded physique with bulging chest muscles, mountainous shoulders, and thick arms. I looked from him to Lee, a dedicated bodybuilder. Lee’s arms and shoulders were more defined, but Turner looked far more powerful.

“And now…your returning champion, with a record of two hundred and zero in Sad Sam’s Iron Man competition, Adam Boyd.” The crowd went insane. Three stories of spectators began screaming at the tops of their lungs. Someone in the balconies began clanking a gong. Men stood on tables and whistled. The clamor was deafening.

Boyd entered the arena, walking a path that led him right past our table. A spotlight shone from the ceiling, and the people around us rose to their feet. Though he passed within five feet of our table, I had to stand to get a good look at him. The man I saw was nothing like I expected.

I had thought this undefeatable Adam Boyd must be seven feet tall and built out of bricks. Instead, an undersized and thin fellow with a receding hairline strode past. I would have had trouble believing that he was even five feet tall without seeing him measured.

“Key-riste! That’s the champion?” Lee gasped.

“They’re putting that little man in with that monster?” Jennifer gasped.

“The midget is the champion,” Lee said.

The announcer left the ring, and the fight began. Boyd, whose head barely reached his opponent’s shoulders, moved in warily. He crouched low, held his hands high in front of his head, and circled the floor rather than charging straight ahead.

Kimo Turner lunged straight in, throwing a massive punch that might have decapitated Boyd had it landed. The punch was slow. Boyd easily dodged it, but Kimo was a cagey fighter. The punch was a ruse. His body pivoted with the massive momentum of the missed punch, and he threw a back kick that should have hit Boyd in the chest or throat.

It was a smart move that did not work. Boyd had the reflexes of a demon. He dodged, shot in under the kick, and swept Kimo’s other leg. Kimo fell. The crowd cheered.

Adam Boyd moved in for the kill without a moment’s hesitation. He pounced on Kimo, drilling punches straight down around his eyes and jaw. The entire fight lasted less than one minute.

“Shit!” howled Vince. “Shit, shit, shit! I’ve never seen anything like that. That guy is a friggin’ killer!”

I cannot accurately describe how the fight made me feel. It was like a challenge, as though Adam Boyd’s abilities shook my self-confidence. “I think I like Big-Time Wrestling better,” I said.

The announcer stepped back into the ring. “Ladies and gentleman, your winner, by early knockout, Adam Boyd.” As Boyd and the announcer left the ring, the crowd roared. When they returned five minutes later, the applause became all the noisier.

“Ladies and gentleman,” the announcer went on, “it appears we have been graced with a visit from the Republic’s finest.” Suddenly a blinding spotlight pointed at our table. I had to squint to see my own hands.

“Gentlemen, which one of you will represent the Scutum-Crux Fleet against our champion?” the announcer asked.

I looked over at Lee. In the glaring light, his skin looked white, flat white. He looked as nervous as I felt. We stared at each other for a moment, then Lee started to stand.

“Vince,” Jennifer said as she reached for his arm.

“Sit down, Corporal,” I said, pulling rank.

“Oh, come on, Wayson. Don’t be like that,” Lee said, sitting back in his chair.

“He said something about our Republic’s finest, and that sure as hell isn’t you, Corporal.” I did not believe that, of course. But that Boyd character was fast and brutal. I’d sparred with Vince on several occasions. He was powerful but slow, and very predictable. He would have made an easy meal for this Adam Boyd fellow.

“You shouldn’t do this, Wayson,” Jennifer said. “You don’t need to go up there.”

“Kick his ass, Wayson,” Kasara said. She clapped excitedly, and her face beamed. She loved the attention. I’d never seen her so excited.

“I think I do need to go,” I said to Jennifer. Looking at her, I felt a pang of jealousy. Lee did not know it, but he had been the luckier one all along.

The spotlight followed me as I walked toward the ring, blinding me to everything outside its bright circle. I heard people applauding, but they sounded miles away. So did the announcer’s voice. The bright lights above the ring made everything look black and white. The announcer, with his pale skin and black tuxedo, completed the effect.

Standing on the far side of the platform, Adam Boyd watched me calmly. The closer I came, the more things I noticed about him. From the steps along the side of the ring, I saw that his fingers ended in sharp points, almost like claws. That’s going to be a problem, I thought. I also spotted the thick ridge of bone that ran under his eyebrows and into his hair. He was human, no doubt about that, but it was as if someone had engineered him for battle.

Once I stepped onto the platform, I found myself cut off from the rest of the world. I heard spectators shouting, but it blurred into a dull, indistinct roar. It sounded like waves on the beach. The announcer had already finished speaking and started out of the ring.

The flimsy shirt and shorts I had on would not slow me down in a fight, but they would offer no protection from Boyd’s clawlike fingers. I looked at his claws, then expanded my glance to include the tightly muscled arms. There was a circular brantoo on his forearm. I only saw it for a moment, but I recognized the sweep of colors. “You’re a SEAL?” I whispered to myself. Then the bell rang and thought turned into instinct.

Boyd immediately dropped into that cautious stance, his knees flexed and his clawlike fingers pointed right at me. His wide-set dark eyes fixed on my face and shoulders. He circled toward my left, moving so smoothly that he seemed to glide across the canvas.

My first instinct was to grapple. Growing up, I had studied judo and jujitsu. I’d won the orphanage wrestling title three years in a row. Boyd slipped around the arena so gracefully, however, that I doubted I would ever get close enough to knock him off his feet. Against that speed, my only chance was to keep him at long range, where he could not reach me. I jabbed with my left, keeping my right hand high to protect my eyes and chin.

Seeming to evaporate into the thick air, Boyd dodged my punch and lashed across my face with an open hand. Sharp fingers cut into my right cheek, just below my eye. Jumping back to get out of his range, I wiped the wound with the back of my hand. A thick layer of blood covered my knuckles.

That swipe across the cheek might have been a warning. Boyd could have just as easily sliced across my eye or throat. Even then, he paused a couple of feet away, allowing me to check my wound. I doubted he would be polite much longer.

I needed to rush the bastard after all. Win or lose, I needed to trap him quickly. If the fight wore on, Boyd could weave in and out, bleeding me dry until I could no longer defend myself. I looked into his brown eyes and assumed a boxer’s stance with my fists high, guarding my face.

Boyd leaped forward with inhuman speed. Flinging himself at me, he suddenly veered to my right. I felt a white-hot pain across my face, but knew better than to check the damage. I had just been scratched above my right eyebrow, across the bridge of my nose, and down to the left side of my mouth. Blood started to pour from the gash on my forehead, stinging my eyes and blurring my vision.

With no other choice, I dived at Boyd, hoping to catch him off guard. Unsure whether I should keep my arms in front of my face for protection or grab for Boyd’s knees, I kept my arms too low for protection and too close together for a good grab. I should have done one or the other; either would have been somewhat effective. Instead, I left myself open. Boyd swiped his talons across my forehead and pranced out of range.

Already out of breath, with my right eye swollen and stinging, I became vaguely aware of hooting and catcalls coming from the spectators. They could already see the fight coming to an end. So much blood had flowed across my right eye that I could not see through it. Boyd read the damage. He circled toward my right, working his way toward the hazy blind spot. I knew what he was doing, but I had no way to counter his move.

Perhaps, seeing the blood flow, Boyd had overestimated the damage he had caused. Though my right eye was blind, my sense of the ring was not. Hurt but not broken, I threw a blind backhanded fist that caught Boyd on the mouth and cheek. It was a powerful blow that left him temporarily senseless.

I spun into him, wrapping my arms around his chest. If I could throw him off his feet, I would take away his speed. We stood toe-to-toe, our chests pressed together. I cinched my arms around his and clamped them at the wrists. Our faces were so close we might have been kissing. As I heaved to lift him, I noticed that his skin was smooth, even under his eyes.

Small and compact, Adam Boyd weighed considerably more than I expected. I squeezed tighter. Straining my back and arms, I pulled him off the ground. I meant to throw him headlong into the cage walls, but he managed to slip his forearms around my back and stabbed those dagger fingers into my skin. I squeezed tighter and smashed my forehead down on the bridge of Boyd’s nose.

Boyd was strong and fast, but he was not immune to pain. I had butted my forehead on the soft landing of his nose and felt the fleshy structure buckle under the force. When I saw Boyd’s face again, his nose was purple and twisted so badly that one nostril pointed down and the other up. Blood gushed from both sides.

He did not give up. Digging his sharp fingers into my skin like corkscrews, he clawed into my back. His nails slit my skin and pressed into my ribs. He scratched deeper, twisting his fingers into the wounds. The pain and frustration made me scream.

I was losing blood and the pain sent white-hot flashes through my body. My head spun, but my thoughts remained focused. I reeled my head back and slammed my forehead back down against Boyd’s badly crushed nose. His fingers loosened from my back. He was probably already unconscious, might even have been dead, but I did not wait to find out. I flipped the little bastard into the chain-link wall around the ring, smashing his face into it as hard as I could. His body slumped against the hard wire, and I dug my knee into his spine. He fell to the mat. Planting my knee across his throat, I threw three hard rights, battering the remains of his nose and left eye. A puddle of dark blood formed under his head.

My final punches were entirely wasted. Boyd did not move. He did not flinch or twitch. If an air bubble had not formed in the blood under his flattened nostrils, I would have thought I’d killed him.

Sighing heavily and taking no pride in what I had just done, I stood up. By that time the announcer stood in the ring. “Mary, mother of Joseph,” he muttered, “I thought Boyd was going to kill you.”

I started to say, “Looks like it was the other way around,” but my knees buckled, and I swooned to the mat. The announcer quickly grabbed my hand and raised it. I heard the mob shouting hysterically outside the ring. Lights came on all over the arena, and I saw men hanging from the balconies. Lee ran into the ring and placed an arm under my shoulder.

“Vince,” I said, unable to say any more.

“Wayson, that was amazing. Unbelievable! I’ve never seen anybody fight like that. No shit, Harris, you were friggin’amazing!”