The Romans manned their legions by filling them with conquered soldiers; why shouldn’t the Unifieds do the same? And then they would . . . What would they do? Would they hide under the sea in watertight cities while aliens charbroiled the galaxy? They would not need clones for that. Now that they had a broadcast network, if they managed to capture the network, they could send us out to find the Avatari. We’d be the second wave. They would send us out the same way they sent out the Boyd Clones and the Japanese Fleet; only the Japanese Fleet had self-broadcasting ships. They could return from the mission; we would be stuck wherever they sent us.
“The aliens were real, right?” Nobles asked. “The attack on Olympus Kri was real.” He needed assurance. He knew the attack was real; but at times like this, are you ever sure about anything?
“It was real,” I said.
“Then why?”
I thought I finally understood. Andropov wanted to send out a second wave. After winning the battle for New Copenhagen, the Unified Authority sent out the Japanese Fleet, but that was only four ships, four lowly self-broadcasting battleships. The brass hedged their bets by manning them with a special line of SEAL clones instead of Marines, but still only had four ships tracking an alien signal across an entire galaxy.
If they managed to ingest the Enlisted Man’s Navy, the Unifieds would gain thirteen fleets, over one hundred fighter carriers, hundreds of battleships, millions of clones. And they could broadcast their
disposable
new fleet into space to search for the alien world, never to return. Kill the chain of command, orphan the ships and the crews . . . it finally made sense. Maybe Andropov even wanted to send a token Liberator out on the mission to bring it luck; after all, the Clone Empire had gone undefeated in open war. Bastard.
I left the cockpit and went to my little stateroom, where I spent the rest of the flight in silence, brooding over how much I hated my creators.
Nobles alerted me when we neared the planet. We entered an atmosphere with clouds instead of smoke. We crossed over snowcapped mountains and frost-dusted forests that would soon be burned to ash. I took in the beauty, knowing that nothing could be done to protect it. No weapon existed that could defend this planet, and humanity had no bargaining chip that could turn the attackers away. The most I could hope for was to save a few people.
Ava.
Far ahead of us, Norristown shimmered in the afternoon sun, a city healed from most of its wounds. The wreckage had been cleared, and an extensive patchwork of parks and open markets now filled the void.
We received a message from the spaceport asking us to identify ourselves. When Nobles answered that we were an unarmed envoy from the Enlisted Man’s Fleet, the control tower cleared us to land.
Judging by the lines of military trucks and police cars waiting along the runway as we began our approach, I got the feeling that the locals did not want guests.
“I don’t think they’re happy to see us,” Nobles said.
If understatement were a form of humor, Christian Nobles would have been the funniest man alive.
Police cars closed in behind us as we rolled forward down the runway, moving toward the line of armored trucks and the militiamen with guns. Doctorow did not want Marines on his planet, but that did not stop him from using his militia. Judging by the tanks and transports, he’d helped himself to the weapons we left behind.
We rolled to within twenty feet of the trucks and stopped. The shuttle’s struts compressed, and the fuselage dropped. Men with anxious, angry faces and government-issue M27s stared in at us.
With Nobles following behind me, I opened the shuttle door. Guns pointed directly at us. I could see that much through the glare, but I stopped and had to place a hand over my eyes to block the sun. Somebody yelled for us to step out, so I held my hands above my head and stepped out into the sunlight. Men with guns intercepted me as I stepped to the ground. Dozens of militiamen formed a circle around me. One of them shoved me from behind to get me clear of the shuttle, but most of the militiamen looked scared. They had the numbers and the guns; but I got the feeling that they were more scared of me than I was of them.
For a split second, we all stood there in silence in the cool evening breeze, then a militiaman asked, “Are you carrying weapons?”
I said, “Not on me.”
Nobles shook his head.
A captain in the militia stepped up to me, gave me an embarrassed grin, and asked, “Do you mind if we search your ship?”
Nice of him to ask,
I thought. I told him, “We came empty-handed, but feel free.”
The standoff continued as three men in soft-shelled engineering armor carrying an array of detection equipment entered the shuttle. A couple of minutes ticked away as we waited for them to conclude the obvious, that two men traveling in an unarmed shuttle did not pose much of a threat.
There was no point in trying to explain why we had come, not to these men. They were just the foot soldiers. I needed to take my story to the top. I needed to explain everything to the president himself. No one under Doctorow would have the authority to react even if they believed me. In the meantime, every second wasted here on the runway felt like a crime. Had the planet already seen temperature fluctuations? Maybe we would be cooked as we stood on the airfield waiting for locals to search our unarmed ship.
“Any weapons?” the militia leader asked.
I turned and saw one of the men waving the go-pack I had taken to Olympus Kri. He held up the pack, and said, “He’s got combat armor, a couple of grenade launchers, a particle-beam pistol, and a cannon.”
“Was that a particle-beam cannon?” asked the captain. He turned back to me, and said, “I thought you said you came unarmed?”
“I forgot they were there,” I said.
“Anything else you forgot, Harris?” the captain asked. I did not recognize him, but apparently he recognized me. I had spent a lot of time on this planet and made a lot of enemies.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
They did not place us in handcuffs. They led me and Nobles into the back of an armored truck along with a dozen guards, and they drove to town. Jeeps and trucks followed behind us.
Our escort delivered us to a police station, where a platoon of militiamen led us down two flights of stairs and into a basement. The militiamen hauled Nobles away. I watched them lead him down a hall with a sinking feeling.
I ended up locked in an interrogation room, and there I sat and waited. A team of armed guards stood outside the door. I would not have known they were there except that they looked in on me every few minutes. For all I knew, an entire firing squad waited for me just outside that door.
I sat alone in that little room with its soundproofed walls and wondered what happened to all of the big talk about utopian ideals. In Ellery Doctorow’s new order, the terms “police,” “military,” and “militia” seemed nearly interchangeable. From my perspective,
liberated
Norristown operated like any other police state.
Precious time slipped irretrievably away as I sat alone in that room.
I tried to piece together how much time passed between the attacks on New Copenhagen and Olympus Kri. Had it been a week? Five days? It was possible that nobody knew. The only video Sweetwater had of the attack on New Copenhagen was of the aftermath. The planet might have been a scorched wreck for a week before anyone noticed.
Only a day had passed since I left Olympus Kri. Time might have been running out, but I did not think we had reached the midnight hour just yet.
The door opened. “Okay, Harris, so why did you come back?” the man asked as he stepped into the interrogation room. He was a natural-born, of course, a tall man with a slender build, his black hair combed back and oiled.
He could have been a hard-living twenty-year-old or a well-preserved quadragenarian. He had a trace of stubble across his cheeks, chin, and throat, and he projected confidence with his cold gaze. I looked at him, sized him up as someone of minimal importance, and dismissed him all in an instant.
How long would it take the Avatari to reach Terraneau?
I wondered.
A week?
I had time, but I wanted to be out of this jail and off the planet I when they came. I was in a basement, but it wasn’t very deep. If the attack occurred while I was down here, my cell would turn into a crematorium.
“I asked you a question,” he said, demanding my attention. He had the demeanor of a gangster; but, of course, now he was an idealist working for Ellery Doctorow. Gangster, militant, pacifist; chameleons like this guy presented themselves as true believers in any cause that kept them in power.
I glared back at him and said nothing.
“I asked you why you came back to Terraneau,” he said.
“A mission of mercy,” I said. “I came to save you.”
“To save us from what?”
“From an invasion,” I said. “Look, I’m sure you’re a very big man around here; but I need to see Doctorow.” That was my best attempt at being polite. I had no idea how I might act on my next approach.
“Maybe he’s already listening,” the man said. He pointed to a little glass window built into the wall. The window was a square inch of bulletproof glass with a tiny surveillance camera peering out behind it. “Tell me what you got, and maybe we’ll both hear it at the same time.”
“He’s not watching,” I said. I knew assholes like this guy. They’d do anything to increase their sphere of influence, the unscrupulous specks. The problem is, by the time this fool figured out that he was in over his head, it might be too late. “He’s not watching, and this situation is out of your pay grade.”
“What makes you so sure?” the man asked.
I ignored the question and delivered the punch line. “The aliens have attacked Olympus Kri and New Copenhagen. They’ll come here next.”
“Aliens?” He looked back over his shoulder, giving the camera a nervous glance.
“Are you lying to me, Harris?” the man asked.
I did not answer.
“Are they the same aliens as before?” He did not sound like he believed me. He sounded like he was humoring me, allowing me a chance to pitch my shit, so to speak.
“Yes,” I said, though, come to think of it, that was only an assumption. We didn’t really know if the Avatari were behind the last attacks.
“Think you can beat them?” he asked.
“Beat them?” I repeated, stunned that I had not anticipated such an obvious question. “I just want to outrun them.”
Silence. I was not sure if my message was getting through. I watched him cycle through several emotions—suspicion, doubt, fear, then more suspicion. When he finally spoke, he asked, “Why would they come here?”
“Look, we really don’t have a lot of time,” I said.
“Then start answering my questions,” the man demanded.
“They’re taking back planets,” I said, stating the obvious.
Apparently, that was enough for him. He moved to the next question. “Got any proof?”
I knew that question was coming; and the answer was no. Without virtual Sweetwater and his video feed of the destruction, I had nothing to show. Because I had not prepared for one obvious question, every last person on Terraneau might die, and that included me.
“Maybe I should leave,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t have any proof,” I said. “The mission’s a bust, and I might as well head home.”
The man laughed. “An act like this doesn’t get you in with Doctorow.”
“You’re right,” I said, throwing up my hands. “You are exactly right. The problem is, I don’t have anything more to give you. I shouldn’t have bothered you, I’ll just leave.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“So I’m a prisoner,” I said.
Looking exasperated, the interrogator sat and stared at me, slowly shaking his head. After a few seconds, he said, “We’re all friends here. I’m trying to help you.”
“So why do you need the guards?”
“What?”
“Why do you need armed guards if you are trying to help me?”
“You’re a dangerous man, Harris. We all know that.”
“Look, you’re out of your depth,” I said.
I did not mean to offend the bastard, but obviously I had. He yelled at me, but I didn’t listen. He ranted, and spit flew from his lips. If I had been an average prisoner, he might have turned off the camera and had his guards beat me; but I was a prisoner who came with an implicit threat. For all he knew, I had an armada circling the planet.
Not knowing what else to do, the man simply stormed out, and my interrogation room once again became a prison cell. Time passed slowly. I sat in my metal chair and glared up at the camera in the ceiling, occasionally giving it a one-finger salute.
At some point I climbed out of the chair and stretched out on the table. Since there was nothing else to do, I caught up on my sleep.
The sound of the door woke me from my nap, but I remained on my back on the table, my fingers laced together over my chest. My shoulders and neck felt stiff.
“You’re awfully calm for a harbinger bringing tidings to a doomed planet,” Doctorow said.
Like the revitalized city in which he lived, Ellery Doctorow had a new face. Gone were the long hair and beard, replaced by a square-cut coif in which the white hairs had been dyed coal black. He wore a navy blue suit, tailored to make his shoulders look wide and his waist look small. He’d been dressed in a suit the last time I saw him as well. Gone were the days of fatigues and ponytails.
Doctorow entered the interrogation room alone. He might have had a dozen bodyguards outside the door, but he entered the interrogation room alone.
“Have a seat, and I will tell you about the end of the world,” I said.
The comment earned me an enigmatic smirk.
As I climbed off the table and returned to my seat, Doctorow pulled a chair close. He sat there, stroking his chin while staring at me, apparently deep in thought. Finally, he said, “You say you’re here because the aliens attacked two other planets.”