I did not say good-bye to Kasara. On my way out of Sad Sam’s Palace, I collapsed from loss of blood. Lee spent the morning driving Kasara and Jennifer to the airport and waiting with them for their plane. I spent the next two days drugged into peaceful oblivion with an IV needle in my arm.
Lee was in the room when I woke up on Sunday afternoon. “You going to stay awake this time?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m awake.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like my back is on fire.” I could hear Lee, and I could see his blurred shape, but my sight remained fuzzy. “How long have I been out?”
“Going on three days,” Lee said.
“Kasara?” I asked, feeling lower and lower by the second.
“She left two days ago,” Lee said. “She wants you to call her. She was really worried about you.”
I tried to sit up, but my blurred vision began to spin. I slumped back on my mattress, aggravating the lacerations on my back. I winced.
“That guy would have killed me,” Lee said.
I thought about it. “He might have. He damn near killed me.”
“He’s damn near killed a lot of people,” Vince said. My vision cleared as we spoke. I could see the features on Vince’s face. I could make out details around the room. There were empty seats all around us, but Lee was sitting on the edge of my bed. We were in a hospital recovery room. There were empty beds on either side of me.
“The announcer said he had two hundred straight victories,” Lee said.
I tried to sit up again. The tears along the small of my back stretched and I gritted my teeth. “I’ve had some time to think about that, too,” I said. “My match might have been the little bastard’s first fight.”
“What are you talking about?” Lee sounded confused.
“Boyd didn’t have any scars on his face,” I said. “I got really close to him in that fight. He had baby skin—no scars, no cuts. Either he’s so fast that in two hundred fights nobody ever hit him, or…”
“You think the announcer was lying?” Lee asked, slipping off the bed. The mattress bounced and I moaned. “Sorry. Want some water?” He picked up a plastic pitcher and poured me a cup.
“I think Adam Boyd is a clone,” I said. “I think several Adam Boyd clones share that two hundred and zero record. Nobody could go two hundred fights in a ring like that without picking up scars.”
“Two hundred wins and one loss,” Lee corrected me. “You killed him last night. Maybe he doesn’t scar. Wayson, having baby skin doesn’t make you a clone. If it did, Jennifer would be a clone. I got really, really close to her and she didn’t have any scars.”
“Jennifer does not have a brantoo.”
“What?”
“Boyd has a brantoo, right here,” I said, pointing at my forearm. “He has the same brantoo the SEALs had on Ronan Minor.”
“No shit,” Lee said. “A midget SEAL clone. Why would they clone a midget?” We both knew the answer. We’d seen Boyd in action. Fast and small and agile, he was the perfect commando.
***
I had come on vacation to sort out my feelings, and that was pretty much all I did for the rest of my stay. I never left the hospital, never visited the beach. Lee wanted to stay with me, but I sent him away. It was my chance to think about undeserved promotions, friends lost in dark caves, and learning I was the last of my kind. My sort of misery did not love company.
I also needed to sort out what it meant to be a Liberator. Sergeant Shannon might have devised a cruel way to flush the Mogats out of their caves, but I doubt he wanted to massacre them. He was tough in drills, but hadn’t I given one of my men two black eyes? And why had I assaulted the man— because he missed some shots? If Shannon had felt the same level of rage I had, he did a brilliant job of controlling it. Of course that could have been his religious side. From what I had seen, Shannon never missed Sunday services.
I continued to whale on Adam Boyd after I knocked him unconscious. Was I trying to kill him or was I just swept along by my own momentum? Maybe Congress was right to ban Liberators. What would a regular clone or a natural-born have done? I turned these thoughts over in my mind. Had Lee known about my maudlin musings, he would have regretted bringing me.
Nothing short of a medically induced coma could have protected me during the excruciating flight back to the fleet. Fortunately for me, we timed our trip around the fleet’s movements. The Kamehameha was near the broadcast network, and our flight time was under ten hours.
My back hurt a little as they wheeled me out of the hospital. It hurt a little more when I climbed into Lee’s rental car. I took some pain medication as we drove, and don’t remember much after that.
By the time we got to Mars, I had run out of medicine. The transport from Mars was a military ship with stiff seats. I felt pinching in my back as I sat. What I did not realize was that that dull ache was actually a very acute pain that was masked by a slight overdose of painkillers.
“How are you feeling?” Lee asked.
“Not bad,” I said. “I think I’m pretty well healed after all.”
The transport struggled slightly as it left Mars’s gravity. My seat shook, and I got my first hint that the medicine was beginning to wear off.
Lee looked at me. “You okay, Harris?”
I took a deep breath. My ribs expanded as I inhaled. It hurt. “I’ll be glad to get back.”
We approached the disc station. The lightning flashed and, of course, the transport shook. The shaking made my back hurt. We ended up passing through seven disc stations to reach the fleet. By that time, the small of my back felt swollen and some of the lacerations had begun to bleed.
As we approached the fleet, I looked out my porthole. “Lee. Lee, look at this. We must have boarded the wrong flight.”
He leaned over me to have a look. “What are you…” Seeing what I meant, Lee stood up and opened the locker above our seats. He pulled out our flight information.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I see the Kamehameha.” The last Expansion-class fighter carrier in operation, the Kamehameha had a distinct profile in space.
As our shuttle glided toward the fleet, I could see four Orion-class star destroyers in the distance and the familiar sight of frigates circling like remora fish. Other ships floated about. I counted at least twenty Athens-class light missile carriers, oblong ships with diamond-shaped bows, hovering along one edge of the fleet. Five Interdictor-class battleships—bat-shaped ships that looked like miniature carriers—led the fleet.
“Looks like Admiral Thurston persuaded Klyber to expand the fleet. It’s about time,” Lee said.
I recognized other kinds of ships, too—ships I had heard about but never actually seen. We passed under a minesweeper—a short, sturdy ship that looked like a flying tunnel. Tiny communications ships buzzed around the fleet. The new ships had no armament at all, only large, retractable antenna arrays that pointed in every direction. Off in the distance, three huge barges sat perfectly still.
“I don’t think Klyber had anything to do with this,” I said.
“You can’t order this kind of hardware without HQ’s permission,” Lee said.
As our transport landed on the Kamehameha, I told Lee about the news story I had seen. When I described seeing Klyber in the Senate, he shook his head. “And leave the fleet to an underaged outworlder?” He smiled. “Klyber wouldn’t do that.”
But we both knew that he had.
Under Bryce Klyber, the fleet ran efficiently. Under Thurston, it ran precisely. Prior to returning from leave of absence, I would have thought running efficiently and operating precisely meant the same thing.
When Lee and I reached the barracks, we saw a training schedule posted on the wall. The schedule had slots for the gunnery range, exercise, obstacle and field training, tactical review, and meals. Nights were generally open. With Admiral Klyber at the helm, sergeants evaluated their own platoons and trained them accordingly. Now that Thurston controlled the fleet, officers attended drills and gave out evaluations.
“Damn,” said Lee. “Somebody is serious about this.”
According to the schedule, the platoon was drilling when we arrived. Looking at that schedule, I felt a cold spot in my stomach. Yes, it addressed important issues like tighter discipline, but I could not ignore the gnawing feeling that officers had wrestled away my authority over my men.
“I wonder what else has changed,” I said, as we went to stow our gear.
“Judging by this schedule, I don’t think you are going to need to worry about marksmanship anymore,” he said.
Maybe it was the emptiness of the barracks or maybe it was the pain in the small of my back. I looked around at the quarters. The beds were made, the lockers were neat. The air in the Kamehameha was dry and cool, and bright lights cast a dull glare in every inch of the room. I thought about the villa we rented in Hawaii. I thought about Kasara, her messy apartment, and the way she looked when I first saw her on the beach. I opened my locker, stowed my clothes, and saw my armor.
As I folded my duffel and placed it in the back of my locker, the clatter of boots cut through the silence. The hatch opened and my men clambered in. I expected to see Sergeant Grayson leading the group, so I was surprised when a man I had never seen before bellowed out orders. The man was a Liberator—First Sergeant Booth Lector.
Liberator clones, like Lector and me, stand just over six feet, three inches tall—four inches taller than later models. Something in Lector’s demeanor made him seem even taller. He seemed to fill the room. He had iron gray hair and a bushy mustache that came down along the corners of his mouth. His face, neck, and hands were covered with small scars, including a bald strip through his right eyebrow. Seeing that particular scar, I became very aware of a similar one I brought home as a souvenir from my fight with Boyd.
Upon seeing me in the office at the back of the barracks, Lector dismissed the men. His mouth curled into a snarl, revealing two missing teeth. The Corps did not waste other prosthetics on enlisted men, but even clones could get their teeth replaced.
“Sergeant Harris,” Lector said in a voice that was surprisingly high and stiff. “May I have a word with you?” He had entered my office, a soundproof cubbyhole of a room with a large window that opened to the rest of the barracks.
Glancing out the window, I saw the men in the platoon gathering around Vince Lee. By the pats on the back and the excited expressions, I could tell they were glad to see him. This new sergeant had clearly worked them hard, and they probably hoped that Lee and I would return things to normal.
Not all of the men came to see Lee, however. Several younger-looking privates quietly stowed their rifles and armor. It was difficult to separate the new faces from the old in an all-clone platoon, but I assumed these were replacements who had arrived while Lee and I were away on leave.
“Sure,” I said, feeling a bit off-balance. As I reached to shut the door, Vince Lee, who had already changed into uniform, stepped into the office. He stood silently in the entrance.
“Perhaps we could find someplace more private to speak,” said Lector. “Why don’t you come with me to the gunnery range.”
Standing behind Lector, where the sergeant would not see him, Lee shook his head. His mouth hung slightly open, and his eyes fixed directly on mine. Vince looked nervous, but he need not have worried. I was not about to go to the range with this man. Lector’s rage was primal and open.
“Look, Sergeant…” I realized that I did not know his name.
“Lector.”
“Sergeant Lector,” I said, “I just got back from two weeks’ leave. Perhaps we can talk later.”
“Excuse me, Harris,” Lee broke in. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I heard that Captain McKay is looking for you.”
“Maybe we can have that conversation when I get back,” I said, glad to excuse myself. Lector gazed at me. There was an angry chill in his expression. He also had an unmistakable air of competence. Talking to Lector, I had the feeling that he was a man who accomplished whatever he set out to do, good or bad. I remembered how angry Shannon was the first time I met him, but Shannon was a cool breeze compared to Lector. Lector’s anger seethed. It felt focused and vicious.
“We’ll speak later,” Lector snarled, turning sharply and leaving the office.
“That was scary,” I said. I thought Lee had made up that story about McKay to help me escape Lector. That was not the case. Captain McKay really was looking for me. Stopping only to put on my cap, I left the barracks.
McKay worked out of a small office in an administrative section, two decks above our barracks. He was a young officer on the fast track. Few majors or colonels had offices so near the top brass.
But a lot had changed in the two weeks that I was away. Stepping off the elevator, I saw a small, wooden plaque on the door. The plaque was new and so was the name— “Lt. Colonel Stephen Kaiser.” Not grasping the concept that McKay could have moved, I stood by the door puzzling the obvious. Kaiser opened the door. “Can I help you, Sergeant?” he asked.
“I was looking for Captain Gaylan McKay, sir,” I said, feeling uncertain of myself.
“McKay?” he asked. “This used to be his office. I think they moved him two decks down.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, with a salute.
Captain McKay had been knocked down. He now worked out of an office near the rifle range, in the Marine compound. “Like this office?” McKay asked as he opened the hatch to let me in. He made no attempt to hide the irritation in his voice.
“You’ve got a lot more space, sir,” I said.
“Yes, it certainly is an improvement space-wise,” McKay agreed, stepping back and allowing me in. “I’ve got more than twice as much floor space as I used to have.” He looked around the room. I could not help but notice his sour expression. He pressed his lips together, and his eyes narrowed. “Couldn’t ask for more space.
“Have a seat, Harris,” McKay said, sitting down behind his desk. He stared hard at my face for a second. “You look like shit.”
Without thinking about what I was doing, I reached up and rubbed the scar over my eyebrow. “I got in a fight, sir.”
“A fight?” McKay said, sitting forward and looking concerned. “I hope I am not going to receive a misconduct report.”
“No chance of that, sir,” I said. “I entered an Iron—”
“You went to Honolulu, didn’t you?” McKay interrupted.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Didn’t anybody warn you about going to Sad Sam’s on Friday night?” McKay laughed. “You’re lucky to be alive, Harris.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
McKay smiled and leaned back in his chair. “One of the good things about being a Marine, Sergeant, is that you cover your scars with a helmet when you are on duty.” He laughed. “I don’t know who did that to your face, but I hope I never run into him.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Do you know why I have been given this spacious new office?” McKay asked.
“No, sir,” I said.
“It’s a demotion,” McKay said. “I’ve been moved down two decks and one million miles from command. I’m not sure if anybody has told you yet, but Admiral Klyber was transferred out.”
I could understand the bitterness in Captain McKay’s voice. Captain Gaylan McKay might have only commanded a couple of platoons; but under Klyber, he’d had access. He oversaw the color guard and had high-profile assignments. He attended briefings with generals and admirals. With Klyber no longer there to protect him, the officers that McKay had bypassed would make him pay dearly.
“Has Admiral Thurston taken command of all three Scutum-Crux Fleets?” I asked.
McKay laughed, and the full weight of his bitterness showed. “No. I’m not sure Klyber would have relinquished command to the boy. Admiral Huang is overseeing Scutum-Crux in the interim.”
“Huang?”
“So far he’s been running the Scutum-Crux Arm from DC.” McKay seemed to take comfort from my shock. “Thank God for small miracles. I get the feeling Huang wanted this post all along. He and Thurston march in perfect lockstep. I think old Che Huang wanted Barry out and Thurston in before he took over. Now that he has what he wants, all we can do is sit back and see what he does with it.”
“When did Admiral Klyber leave?” I asked.
“He was gone before we landed on Hubble,” McKay said. “I did not hear about the change until a week ago. It’s a different fleet now. Did you see the new ships when you flew in?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I never thought I would see battleships in the Central Fleet.”
“Yes,” said McKay. “And minesweepers, and communications ships. You don’t gin ships out of thin air. Huang and Thurston must have had them ready before Klyber transferred out.
“We got another present from Huang—new men. We’re back up to two thousand three hundred sea-soldiers on board the Kamehameha.”
“That’s a step in the right—”
“And we have three new platoon sergeants. They’re Liberators,” McKay said.
“I met one,” I said, “Sergeant Lector.”
“That would be First Sergeant Booth Lector,” McKay said, rubbing the sides of his head as he spoke. “That one is
a piece of work. He’s probably the worst of them.”
“The worst?” I asked.
“He took your platoon from Grayson a few days after you left. He came in the same day we got the new drill schedule. I don’t suppose you’ve seen it.”
“I saw it,” I said.
“The drill schedule came down from Thurston’s office. Admiral Thurston is an officer who never leaves anything to chance.”
“Where did he find three Liberators?” I asked.
“Where did Admiral Thurston find the ships?” McKay asked, stepping out from behind his desk. He walked over to his shelves and looked at a model of the Kamehameha. “Where did he get the new ships? Where did he get the new officers? Harris, Thurston does whatever Huang wants, and Huang gives Thurston anything he needs. The bastards have an unholy alliance.”
Turning back toward me, he added, “You need to watch your back around these Liberators, especially Lector. He’s just plain nasty. Two of your men have ended up in sick bay after hand-to-hand combat training, and it turns out that both were sparring with him.”
“How bad?” I asked.
“One had a dislocated shoulder. The other had a broken wrist. They both came in with concussions. Frankly, neither of them looked nearly as bad as you do.”
McKay walked around his desk, then sat on the edge of it. “I’m afraid that I’m not going to be much help to you. Under the restructuring, I’ve been assigned to other duties besides your platoon.”
“Understood, sir,” I said.
“I’ve had a look at Lector’s files,” McKay said. “I’m surprised he hasn’t been executed. Do you know anything about New Prague?”
I thought for a moment. The teachers at U.A. Orphanage #553 seldom talked about military crimes, but New Prague was too big to ignore. “That was the massacre, the one in which an entire colony was wiped out.”
“Albatross Island?” McKay asked.
“The prison planet,” I said.
“Did you ever hear about the uprising?”
“Every prisoner was killed,” I said. “Even the guards were killed.”
“Dallas Prime? Volga? Electra?”
“All massacres where U.A. forces lost control of their troops,” I said. “Officers ended up in jail for those battles.”
“Those were the first battles after the victory in the Galactic Central War. Those were the battles that convinced Congress to outlaw Liberators. Lector fought in every one of them. So did Marshall and Saul.”
“Are Marshall and Saul the other Liberators?” I asked.
“Yes. Tony Marshall and Clearance Saul.
“I don’t know where Thurston found three Liberators. It’s almost like he collects certain kinds of soldiers. He’s big on SEALs and Liberators.”
“SEALs, sir?”
McKay returned to his seat. “Just before I got moved down hear, I heard that Admiral Thurston put in for ten full squads of SEALs. The way things are going, I think Huang has to be behind all of this, and that can’t be good for either of us. I get the feeling that Admiral Thurston wants the remnants of Klyber’s old fleet swept under the rug, if you know what I mean.”