The Clone Empire (43 page)

Warshaw responded by drawing a line in the sand and daring the U.A. minister to cross it.
So you’re going to wait for those people to die?

His bluff was called, and the smirk vanished. Traynor said,
Obviously, we want to save as many lives as possible. The only reason we’re holding these negotiations is to save lives.

There was a moment of silence, then Warshaw said,
I must have misheard you. A moment ago I thought you said you didn’t mind if they all died.

The players might have kept their cool in the conference room, but the men watching the negotiation wore their emotions on their sleeves. The man next to me said, “Specking Traynor. Specking Unified Authority. Specking . . .” His rant lasted more than a minute, and he said “specking” every other word.

Seeing Warshaw put Traynor in his place, McGraw slammed his palm on the table, and yelled, “Right! Damn right!”

Watching the negotiation, it was clear that neither side trusted the other. I thought that was a good sign. Having found himself abandoned in the Scutum-Crux Arm, then used for a target in a military game, Warshaw had little reason to trust the Unifieds.

Maybe the smartest course of action would be to evacuate the people from your planets and leave you and your superior military to handle the aliens,
Traynor suggested.

Excellent idea,
Warshaw said.
Do you think you can fit that many people in your hypothetical underwater cities?

McGraw and several other viewers shouted their approval. On the screen, one of the admirals sitting beside Warshaw gave him an approving nod.

Traynor coughed. He poured himself a glass of water, but still seemed to be choking. His right hand in front of his mouth, he excused himself and asked for a five-minute break.

The tension in the viewing room relaxed as soon as Traynor stepped out of the picture. We watched Warshaw conferring with his admirals. Across the table, Traynor’s secretaries silently reviewed their notes.

While I enjoyed watching the fireworks, I needed to get to Terraneau. I thanked McGraw for the broadcast key and signaled Nobles to get the shuttle ready.

As I stepped out of the viewing room, I saw something that struck me as odd. Walking like a man who is late for a meeting, Martin Traynor stomped past me and continued down the hall. Our shoulders brushed, but he did not look back as he hurried away.

“Where do you think you are going?” I asked in a whisper as I watched him rush past the head. He didn’t even give the door a second glance.

Temporarily shelving my concern for Terraneau, I followed the son of a bitch.

Maybe he heard my steps, maybe he only sensed me behind him, but Traynor picked up speed. His legs pumping quickly, he rounded a corner and headed for the elevators. I jogged to gain ground on him.

By the time I reached the corner, I could see him running to the lifts. He stabbed a button with his forefinger, then held the button down in an impatient bid to speed things up. As I came toward him, one of the elevators opened, and he leaped in. I ran to catch up, but the doors shut before I arrived.

I hit the button, calling for another elevator, trying to sort out the scene as I waited. Traynor fleeing the negotiations made no sense to me. Even if the negotiations fell through, Warshaw would not arrest him, he was an ambassador. Had he forgotten something on his shuttle?
A bomb, maybe?
I thought; but he wasn’t a saboteur. If anything, he struck me as a stiff.

My lift opened. I pressed the button for the bottom deck, the deck with the landing bays. If I ran into Traynor, I would follow him. If I did not see him, I would board my shuttle and ride to Terraneau. I doubted I would see Traynor, though, and I tried to put him out of my mind.

The doors of the elevator slid open, and there he was, walking down the hall. Hearing my lift open, he turned to look back and saw me. Our eyes met for just a moment and I did not like what I saw. In his eyes I saw abject terror, then he looked down and started speed-walking away.

He scampered down the hall, and I followed. I wanted to yell after him, but I had no idea what I should or should not say . . . what I could or could not say. I could not arrest him. If I made the wrong move, the negotiations might collapse.

Traynor looked back, saw me following him, and ran. The rule book went out the window the moment he picked up his pace. If I’d had a gun on me, I might have shot him in the leg just to stop him; but he was short and domesticated, and if it came to a chase, I would overtake him in a couple of seconds. I was gaining on him, then I passed an observation window, stopped, and forgot all about the minister of expansion. In that moment, he became the furthest thing from my mind.

Staring out that observation wall, I saw white holes in the blackness of space. The anomalies appeared so far away that their brightness only created spots before my eyes. At first, only five or six appeared, then a dozen followed, then still more. As I watched the scene, Klaxons began to sound.

Hatches opened along the hall, and sailors flooded out, rushing this way and that, headed for their battle stations. I forced my way against the current, fighting to get to the landing bay.

Even as I cut through, something struck the
Kamehameha
, rocking the ship. When a big ship shakes, the people inside it become as insubstantial as snowflakes in a blizzard. The force struck the
Kamehameha
, throwing all of us against the walls and the deck. Barely noticing that I had fallen to my knees, I gathered my balance and tried to press forward to the landing bay.

I was almost there when we took the first real hit. Something had penetrated our defenses and struck the ship. At the far end of the hall, the outer shell of the ship gave way. Lights flashed off and on, men screamed, the force of the suction nearly lifted me off my feet in the split second that our atmosphere bled through the breach, then emergency bulkheads slammed into place, dividing the corridor into airtight sections.

The lights came back online, revealing men strewn on the floor, some bleeding, and some writhing in pain. We would remain trapped between the massive bulkheads until the atmospheric pressure stabilized. This was the naval equivalent of an amputation. Parts of the ship that were too badly damaged were sealed off in order to save the whole.

Bulkheads blocked the hall on either side of me. I could not run to the landing bay or return to the elevators. All I could do was wait and wonder if the hull would crack, and I’d be flushed into space.

The bastards hit us again, and I was helpless. How many men had we lost? What part of the ship would the next laser or torpedo hit? How much damage had we taken? How much more could we sustain? If the ship broke into pieces, would my little section of hull float into space with me sealed inside like a bird in a cage? Like a body in a coffin. How many ships had the Unified Authority sent through the broadcast zone?

What if the attack on Olympus Kri had all been a hoax? I knew it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t, but Andropov had used it as an opportunity to get the upper hand. All that bullshit about the Liberators never losing a battle . . . With the unintended help of the Avatari, Andropov would succeed where his Double Y clones had failed, the bastard.

The lights went off-line again. In the darkness, men screamed and pounded the atmospheric bulkheads with their fists.

Two birds with one stone,
I thought. With our cooperation, Andropov had built a temporary broadcast station by Mars, and now he was using that broadcast station to send battleships and destroyers.

Our broadcast station was programmed to send ships to Mars; they’d just sent their specking barges through it. They could hit us and return home, and there wasn’t a specking thing we could do to stop them. Now that they had their own sending station and a way to broadcast their ships home, we were at their mercy . . . as if the Unified Authority had ever had mercy.

They hit us again. There, in the darkness, I fell as the ship shuddered around me. I listened to the screams, the calls for help, the prayers. I made my way to my feet, and felt my way ahead until I reached the cold smooth surface of the emergency bulkhead. I wondered what I would find on the other side if it ever opened.

Moments passed, then the bulkhead slid open. The lights remained out; so, groping the wall for balance, I pushed forward, tripping over men I could not see in the darkness. The only light shone from panels and signs along the walls.

More shots hit the ship, but these felt like glancing blows. Perhaps the shields were up, perhaps they came from weaker weapons. I knew so little about naval combat. The floor shook. People toppled. Whatever damage was going to be done to the
Kamehameha
might already be done.

Moving ahead slowly, taking faltering steps and reaching out with my to feel my way ahead, I reached the landing bay. The hatch slid open, revealing emergency lights and the glow of fire. Crews hosed down a blaze under the control booth. Across the deck, fountains of sparks shot out of a row of panels.

Lieutenant Nobles waited for me just inside the door. He pulled at my arm, and yelled, “They’re going to let us through, but they can’t protect us once we’re out!”

We ran into the shuttle and started rolling toward the launch tube. The nose of the shuttle veered right and left, as if Nobles were steering like a drunk, he, all the while, shouting into the microphone, “Open the first lock. Open the first lock!”

I could hear commotion over the radio. Several seconds passed before we got an answer. “You’re cleared. God help you.”

The first of the atmospheric locks slowly ground open just far enough for us to fit through and began closing even before we cleared it. The men controlling the flight deck were not taking any chances. They handled the second and third atmospheric gates the same way, just giving us enough room to pass and closing it quickly behind us.

A wave of relief washed over me as we launched. I had not really believed we would make it off the ship; but there we were, trading the tight confines of the launch tube for the endless expanse of space.

Huge fighter carriers loomed before us. Fighters sped around us, ignoring us, approaching us and ducking away. Tiny fireballs erupted from the side of the
Kamehameha
. They flared out of the ship and evaporated into nothing. The ship’s shields were down and the antennae that projected those shields were destroyed. It was only a matter of time until the ship went dark; large portions already had.

Beside the
Kamehameha
hung the
ad-Din
, looking stronger, but still wounded. Villanueva had sent all of her fighters to circle the ship. They formed a protective screen around the big carrier, but what did it matter?

Using the radio, I hailed the
Salah ad-Din
. I identified myself and asked for Captain Villanueva, but I only got as far as one of his lieutenants.

“General, where are you?” he asked. “We can try to—”

“I’m on a shuttle. If you scan, you’ll find us. We’re headed to the broadcast zone,” I said.

“Now listen, I have a broadcast key aboard the shuttle. I am about to broadcast to Terraneau. Tell Villanueva to try and enter the zone. The Unifieds won’t follow you; they’ll think it’s a trap.”

“Aye, aye.”

“Pass the message. Tell any ship that can to follow us.”

“Aye, sir.”

I signed off, knowing that if any ship’s captain could possibly break free, it was probably Villanueva. Maybe we would salvage a few ships.

Glancing back at the damaged fighter carriers, six of them—one representing each of the six galactic arms—I saw immediately that the outlook was bleak. Layers of U.A. ships had clustered around the E.M.N. fighter carriers. The Unifieds had sent old ships and new ones as well. It looked like the entire Earth Fleet had joined in on the attack. Seeing four battleships advance on the
Kamehameha
, I realized that this was not so much a battle as it was a lynching.

I took one last glance at that proud old ship, then I opened the front cover of the book and found the forty-two-digit code for Terraneau. The new generation ships that the Unifieds had sent had broadcast engines, they would be able to return to Earth. Most of the ships involved in this ambush were older ships, however. They were not self-broadcasting. The plan was to send them back to the Sol System using our broadcast station, which was currently set for Mars. By programming a new code into the key, I would strand some of those Earth ships in Olympus Kri space. Their only escape would be to follow me to Terraneau; but, fearing a trap, they would be slow to come after me.

“They’re not going to make it out of there, are they?” Nobles asked, as we emerged from the anomaly.

“Some of them might,” I said. “If Villanueva reaches the broadcast zone, he’s home free. The Unifieds won’t follow him.”

Nobles changed the subject. “Why did they attack us?” The words came out in a groan. He looked miserable, somewhere between tears and insanity. A wild look of fear and anger showed in his brown eyes, and his lips quivered as he spoke. “Why the hell did they attack us?”

I looked out into the calm corner of space we had just entered. Stars shone around us. Terraneau, a planet with lakes and rivers and oceans, sparkled like a rare gem.

“They attacked because they can’t afford an open war,” I said in a quiet, subdued voice, the voice of defeat.

Nobles turned to me. His eyes tightened, and he asked, “What?” in a hardened angry voice.

“We showed them how to rebuild their empire. The planets, the broadcast network, the Navy . . . they want to take it all back in one piece,” I said.

The clone assassins failed, so they lured Gary Warshaw and his top admirals into a negotiation, then they massacred the whole lot of them. Now they want to round the rest of the clones up like sheep,
I thought.
They will round us up like sheep, and send us out like slaves . . . like eunuchs, the guardians of the republic that massacred their empire.