CHAPTER SEVEN

The rain streamed down in sheets. Sudden gusts of wind slammed into the sides of the armored transport, battering it off course. I always hated ATs, steel-plated boxes designed with more concern about durability than aerodynamics.

We called the cabin area of armored transports the “kettle” because it was metal, potbellied, and had no windows. Inside this kettle, we heard wind rattling the cables that ran between the AT’s tail and its stubby wings. The sounds of wind and rain were our only contact with the outside. I looked up through a hatch in the ceiling and saw the pilot flipping switches and pulling levers to smooth the ride. The walls of the transport groaned as the ship touched down. Then the rear of the ship split open revealing a ramp for us to disembark. We had arrived.

They packed both of Captain McKay’s platoons into one transport—sixty privates, sixteen corporals, and six sergeants. We came wearing armor and carrying minimal field supplies. Larger ships would bring artillery, vehicles, field hospitals, and temporary housing. For the time being, all of our equipment came strapped to our backs. I was not concerned. We had twenty-three hundred field-ready Marines on the ground, fighter craft circling the sky, and the only thing our enemy wanted was permission to speak a foreign language.

Shannon, his M27 braced across his chest as if he expected resistance, charged down the ramp shouting for the platoon to follow. He vanished into the glare of the landing lights. We touched down on a temporary landing strip built by field engineers. Six other ATs landed around us. Above the brightness of the landing lights, I could see the deep black of the night sky.

“Line ’em up!” McKay shouted, his voice thundering over the interLink.

“Get a move on!” Sergeant Shannon yelled. The platoon assembled quickly, forming ranks and standing at attention. Shannon inspected the line, then took his place at the head of the platoon. The rain fell in glassy panes, which splintered in the wind. Huge drops tapped on my helmet and shoulder plates. Out of the side of my eye, I could see steam rising from spots on the racks of landing lights. Nestled in my temperature-controlled bodysuit, I felt warm. The temperature inside my armor was a balmy sixty-eight degrees.

Captain McKay crossed the landing pad to inspect the platoon. Dressed in his Charlie Service uniform, he looked cold and wet. His face was pale, and his shoulders were hunched. “Report, Sergeant?”

“All accounted for, sir!” Shannon said with a smart salute.

I heard the whirr of a wing of Harrier fighters doing a fly-over. Captain Olivera had orchestrated the landing by the numbers. First he scanned the area from the Kamehameha to find an appropriate drop zone. Next, he sent in a team of commandos to secure the area, followed by the field engineers who erected the temporary landing facility. Once the zone was secure and the facility was constructed, fighters were sent to patrol the skies. It all seemed like overkill for Ezer Kri. From what I heard, Governor Yamashiro had even offered to let us use the local spaceport.

McKay pulled a digital map unit from his belt and showed it to Sergeant Shannon. “Secure areas 7-J, 6-J, and 5-J, then set up camp at the perimeter—space W.”

“Aye, sir,” Shannon said, and saluted.

McKay returned the salute and walked off. The loud whine of turbines cut through the air as the transports lifted from the landing pad. More would arrive shortly.

Our drop zone was twenty-two miles outside of Hero’s Fall, a city with nearly 2 million residents that served as everything but the government seat for Ezer Kri. The locals called Hero’s Fall “the old city”

because it was the planet’s first settlement.

“Okay, gentlemen, we have a long night ahead of us,” Shannon shouted over the interLink. “Let’s spread out. Harris and Lee, your fire team can take the flank.”

Marines do things in threes. Platoons have three squads, each of which is composed of three fire teams. Lee, as the senior corporal, was our team leader. I carried an automatic rifle. We had two privates on the fire team—a grenadier named Amblin and a rifleman named Shultz.

As the platoon divided into fire teams and formed a picket, we moved to the rear. We would remain to the right of the formation. When the shooting started, it would be our job to circle around the enemy. The formation worked well for scouting wide areas but would have left us exposed to sniper attacks in a less secure zone. But we were not walking into battle, and as far as I could tell, the only danger on the planet was that the locals wanted to tell us “sayonara” instead of “good-bye.”

Klyber, however, saw our incursion as more of an unofficial occupation than an exercise. He deployed Marines to close the roads around Hero’s Fall. Two thousand men might not be enough of a force to lay siege to a city the size of Hero’s Fall, but we could certainly teach those Godless Japanese speakers a lesson.

As we left the glare of the landing lights, the lenses in our visors switched automatically to night-for-day vision that illuminated the forest in eerie blue-white tones. While the lens enabled us to see clearly at night, it also rendered us color-blind and hampered our depth perception.

“Keep the chatter down, gentlemen,” Shannon said. “Call out only if you see something.”

Shannon led us across the meadow and into the trees. The woods outside of Hero’s Fall were filled with towering pines that reminded me of the grounds around my old orphanage. “Fan out,” Shannon said.

“Keep an eye on your team.”

About forty minutes into our march, we located a paved road that ran through the woods—a highway leading to town. There were no signs of cars. The police had probably closed the highway to assist with our invasion. Shannon divided the platoon into two squads, which he marched on either side of the road.

“Harris, over here,” Shannon called, as we marched.

I trotted to the front of the formation, sloshing through the damp pine needles and kicking up mud. Shannon had left the rest of the platoon and stood on a small ridge surrounded by a particularly dense growth of trees.

“Harris, what do you see in that stand of trees?” he asked, pointing straight ahead with his rifle. The pocket of trees looked unremarkable. I used my heat-vision lens to see if someone was hiding in the brush. Nothing. Magnifying the view made no difference. “Trees,” I said, sounding confused.

“Ever patrol a wooded area?” Shannon asked.

“Only as a cadet,” I said.

“There’s a trapdoor between those trees,” he said. “See it?”

I used every lens in my helmet. “No, Sergeant,” I said, beginning to wonder if he was playing with me.

“Stop looking for it. Listen for it. Use your sonar locator.”

The locator was a device in our visors that emitted an ultrasonic “ping,” then read the way that the ping bounced off objects and surfaces.

Using optical commands, I brought up the locator. A transparent green arc swished across my visor. In its wake, I saw four lines cut into the ground beneath a tree.

“Come here, Harris,” Shannon said. He walked toward the door. As I followed, my sonar locator made a new reading, marking an oblong cavity beneath the ground in translucent green. “Damn,” I whispered.

“I never would have thought about a locator sweep.”

“It’s called a snake shaft,” Shannon said. “You have any idea what it’s used for?”

“No,” I said.

“Neither does anybody else,” Shannon said. “They’re what you might call an anomaly. Let’s go in for a closer look.”

Sergeant Shannon pulled a grenade from his belt and set it for low yield. “Fire in the hole,” he yelled as he tossed it into the trees. The grenade exploded with a muffled thud. When the steam cleared, I saw that he had blown a ten-foot hole in the top of the tunnel. Water poured down it as if it were a drain. I stepped in for a closer look. It was so dark that even with my night-for-day vision, I could not see the bottom. “Who builds these?”

Shannon came over to me. “Mogats, I suppose. Nobody knows for sure. We found them during a battle in the Galactic Eye. That was the first time anybody saw them, I think.”

I looked up from the hole and stared at Sergeant Shannon. Had Shannon let that slip, or was he trying to tell me he was a Liberator?

“They can stretch on for miles, and they’re strong. I’ve seen LG tanks park right on top of one of these snake shafts and not dent the roof.” LG tanks were low-gravity combat tanks—units that ran low to the ground and weighed in at as much as a hundred tons. “We used to dare each other to hide in the shaft while a tank ran over it. Far as I know, no one ever died doing it.”

I stared down into that gaping black maw and watched water pour into it. “Should we check it?” I asked.

“You want to go down in there?” Shannon asked. He did not wait for me to answer. “Me either. I’ll have a tech send a probe through it later. Might be something down there. Sometimes they’re rigged to blow up.

“I want you and Lee to go scout the area for more of them. Make me a map.” With that, Shannon returned to the platoon.

It took several hours to scour the area. Our search turned up eleven more snake shafts. Lee and I caught up with the platoon at Hero’s Fall. I needed sleep, but that was not about to happen. Captain McKay and Sergeant Shannon hailed us. “Harris, Lee . . . Glad you could join us.”

“We just got here, Sergeant,” Lee said.

Across the camp, the platoons had already begun to assemble. I could see ranks forming. “Follow me,”

McKay said as he started toward the camp.

We set up camp in a large meadow just outside of town. By that time, the rain and wind had stopped. A pervasive stillness echoed across the grounds. The sun rose over the trees, and the wet grass sparkled. Three Harriers and a civilian shuttle flew in from the west. The fighters formed a tight wedge and circled low in the air as the shuttle touched down. Once the shuttle landed, the fighters thundered over the city’s edge and vanished behind a line of buildings.

Captain McKay called the two platoons he commanded to attention. When we were in place, the shuttle’s hatch opened. Out stepped Captain Olivera, looking tall, gaunt, and dapper in his Naval whites. Behind Olivera came Vice Admiral Barry, the rather bell-shaped commander of the Scutum-Crux Fleet. Olivera and Barry met with McKay at the bottom of the ramp, and the three of them held a brief conversation. A few moments later, another officer disembarked, one whom I had not expected to see. Wearing a white uniform that seemed tailored to fit his skeletal frame, Admiral Klyber strode off the shuttle with what I would later learn was his distinctive long gait. Klyber stood at least three inches taller than Olivera—the tallest of the other officers. Pudgy little Barry barely came up to Klyber’s neck. Klyber conferred with Barry, asked McKay a question, and the entire party ambled forward.

“Let’s have a look at the ranks, shall we?” Klyber said in a comfortable voice, but he paid little attention to the rows of Marines as he walked by. “Have you encountered any resistance?” Klyber asked.

“No, sir,” McKay replied.

“No one challenged the air wings, either?” Klyber asked.

“No, sir,” said Olivera.

“Have you found evidence of terrorist activity?” Klyber asked.

“One of my platoons sighted a large tunnel just west of town,” McKay answered. “It was over three miles long.”

“A three-mile-long snake shaft?” Klyber asked. “Religious fanatics, mobsters, racial segregationists . . . It’s getting hard to tell the riffraff apart. I understand the Mogats have a large presence on Ezer Kri. Are your men prepared to lay down the law?”

“Yes, sir,” said McKay.

“Then we have little to worry about, Captain,” Klyber said, sweeping his gaze over the ranks. “This seems like a very pleasant planet; let’s hope our stay is uneventful. Admiral Barry, I wish to conclude our tour of Ezer Kri within the month.”

The name of the city appeared as “Hero’s Fall” in our orders and in the mediaLink accounts of our operation, but as usual, we were misinformed. The local signage said “Hiro’s Fall.” Apparently the city was named after Takuhiro Yatagei, “Hiro” for short, the planet administrator who stocked the planet with people of Japanese descent. This was the spot where he and the original colonists landed—in legend talk, they “fell from the sky.”

Searching for “riffraff ” in Hiro’s Fall proved to be problematic. The bureaucratic tangles began the first day. The mayor of Hiro’s Fall complained to Governor Yamashiro, and Yamashiro formally inquired of the Senate if the Unified Authority was declaring “martial law” on Ezer Kri. The historic reference did not go unnoticed.

I wish we had declared Martial Law. I wish we had launched a full-scale invasion. Enemies do not demand their rights when you bully them, citizens do. Several shopkeepers refused to allow us to inspect their businesses. The president of a car manufacturer called his congressman in DC when Captain McKay sent an inspection team to visit his plant. The Hiro’s Fall police department even arrested one of our fire teams for assaulting a local resident. When the police discovered that the victim was a burglar caught in the act, they let the squad go with a warning.

None of this should have mattered, but the more we scratched the surface, the more we found evidence of deeply rooted corruption. An inspection of the port authority logs showed that the local police ignored smugglers. The Senate’s problem might have been with the Japanese population of Ezer Kri, but the problem in this town was a Mogat infestation. The Mogat community had become so deeply rooted in Hiro’s Fall that people referred to one of the western suburbs as the “Mogat district.”

I had read more than a few stories about Mogats since taking Aleg Oberland’s advice about following current events. The Mogats were a religious cult that took its name from Morgan Atkins, a mysterious and charismatic man who vanished about fifty years ago. I did not know anything about Atkins himself, and the only thing I knew about his movement was that it was the first religion created in space. The U.A. government promoted Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These churches had holy sites on Earth, and the government encouraged any activity that strengthened ties between frontier planets and Earth.

Atkins’s beliefs were pangalactic. His preaching stressed independence, stopping just shy of outright rebellion. While the U.A. Constitution called for general freedom of religion, the Senate spun out a litany of obtuse laws designed to discourage Mogat expansion. The laws did not succeed. Protected by the courts, Mogat communes sprang like daisies across the frontier. News stories about the Mogat movement inevitably started with accusations about smuggling and ended with warnings about Mogat proselytizing and predictions that Atkinism would one day be the largest religion in the galaxy. No matter what we found, Barry and Klyber seemed unwilling to do more than patrol the streets. We sent platoons on routine patrols through the Mogat district—an industrial area lined with warehouses and factories. We sent “peacekeeping” missions to monitor spaceports. Klyber wanted to make our presence felt without creating confrontations. His strategy worked. Most of the residents of Hiro’s Fall resented our presence. We made ourselves hard to ignore.

I did not mind patrolling Hiro’s Fall, though it was fairly dull work. The town was not especially picturesque, but you could see the Japanese influence everywhere. A few downtown parks had pagodas with rice paper walls and fluted roofs. The canal running through the center of town was teeming with gold and white koi. Less than 30 percent of Hiro’s Fall was Japanese; but if you were in the right part of town, you might see women dressed in orange-and-red kimonos. My sightseeing ended when the shooting began.

We began sending routine patrols into the Mogat district the night after we landed. These patrols were uneventful. We would hike past warehouses, steel foundries, and gas stations. Workmen stopped and stared at us. There was no way of knowing if these people were Atkins believers, though I suppose most of them were. One thing I noticed during a patrol was that few people in the Mogat district were Japanese.

Seven days after we landed on Ezer Kri, Staff Sergeant Ron Azor led the Twenty-fifth Platoon into the Mogat district for a late-morning patrol. The goal was to follow a random path, marching through alleys and small streets as well as main roads. Azor’s path, however, was reckless. Our combat helmets were designed for standard battlefield situations. They offered good visibility in most situations, but anything above a seventy-degree plane was a blind spot. Whoever planned the attack must have known that.

Azor opened his platoon up for an ambush by marching through a labyrinth of tall buildings and narrow alleyways. A four-story cinder-block building lined their final stretch. Walking beside that building, Azor’s platoon had no hope of spotting the enemy that watched from above. Just as the platoon reached the middle of the block, somebody fired two rockets from the roof of the building. Four men died instantly. Gunmen, hiding behind a ledge, picked off three more men as the platoon dashed across the street for cover.

Desperate to regroup, Azor shot the door off a warehouse. He and his men ducked in and radioed for assistance. Moments later, three rockets slammed into the warehouse. The corrugated steel walls blew apart as did a fuel pump inside the building. No one survived.

I was off duty when Shannon burst into the barracks and announced the attack. Every available man was called in. I threw on my armor and climbed into a truck. As we drove from the camp, I looked into a blue sky filled with feathery clouds, wondering how there could be an attack on such a beautiful day. I asked that question again as the truck dropped us next to the pile of rubble that had once been a thirty-foot-tall warehouse. Twisted fingers of what once was a wall stood in the corners of the lot; everything else had crumbled. We were the third platoon to arrive on the scene. Men in green armor dotted the rubble. Shannon led us to a corner of the ruins, and we began pulling up metal sheets and concrete chunks by hand. I felt the urgency, but I knew that we would not find survivors. No one survives that kind of devastation.

I heard the thudding engines of gunships passing overhead. Long and squat and bulky, three Warthogs floated across the sky. They hardly looked airworthy, but there was something menacing about the deliberate way they scoured the rooftops.

The tension was thick. Had a pedestrian carelessly strolled down the street, we might have shot first and asked questions later. But the streets were empty. Perhaps they had been empty before the ambush as well. I wondered how many people knew that the ambush was coming.

“Dig,” Shannon shouted over the interLink. “Any man who finds a survivor gets a three-day pass.”

We normally would have located the bodies by looking for signals from their helmets, but the heat of the explosion must have destroyed their equipment. There were no signals, so we dug blindly through concrete, iron, and dust. As time went on, hope dwindled, and the rescue effort became less organized. City engineers arrived on the scene with laser arcs that could cut through concrete and iron alike. With their help, we located twelve crushed bodies and the search became even more discouraging. Judging by the way the bodies were laid out, Azor must have told his men to spread out along the outer wall once they entered the warehouse. Perhaps they thought they needed to guard the windows and doors. Sergeant Shannon came to check on me. He cursed softly when I mentioned my theory about the way the bodies were spread. “Fool,” he said, yanking a metal sheet from under concrete so violently that it tore. “Clone idiot! The enemy shoots rockets at you, so what do you do? You don’t hide in a fuel dump. Goddamn it!”

As Shannon spoke, a formation of fighters flew over us. Even though we were wearing helmets and speaking over the interLink, the noise of the fighters drowned out his voice. When they streaked away, I heard Shannon say, “So much for passive force. Klyber is going to make an example of friggin’ Ezer Kri.”

We did not find all of the bodies. In the early evening, as the sun set and a thick layer of clouds filled the sky, Captain Olivera spoke to us on an open interLink. “An entire platoon has perished here,” the captain of the Kamehameha began.

As he spoke, three Harriers cruised low overhead—less than fifty feet off the ground. They rotated in perfect unison and banked as they made a hairpin turn. Perched on two crumbling piles of rock, I watched them. Suddenly the middle fighter in the formation exploded and dropped out of the sky. It landed in a heap of smoke and flames. Looking quickly, I saw a contrail leading from a nearby rooftop. Someone had sneaked up there and fired a missile. The two remaining Harriers broke out of formation.

“Spread out! Take cover!” Shannon yelled.

The Harriers zipped around a building, then charged back to the battle zone. Crouching, with my rifle drawn, I watched the roof from behind the knee-high remains of a concrete wall. No more shots were fired. Whoever hit that Harrier had slipped away after making his point.

CHAPTER EIGHT

What leads men to make such foolish decisions? Admiral Klyber could never have touched the Mogats of Ezer Kri had they lain low. The government did not trust them, but our bylaws protected them. The daily patrols would have continued. We might have raided some buildings. Perhaps they had something to hide, or perhaps their separatist beliefs prevented them from waiting us out. Whatever possessed those Atkins believers to ambush our platoon, they had seriously miscalculated. Fanatics that they were, perhaps the Mogats thought they could take on the entire Scutum-Crux Fleet. But a few rockets and a massacred platoon did not intimidate Bryce Klyber. It irritated him. It showed him that the Ezer Kri government could not be relied upon.

With the Kamehameha at his command, Klyber had more than enough firepower to overwhelm Ezer Kri—a planet with a commerce-based economy and impressive engineering facilities but no standing army. Annihilating Ezer Kri would not have been enough for Klyber. He would have used Ezer Kri to send a message across the territories, and he would have made that message clear enough that every colony in the Republic would understand it.

The day of the massacre, the Kamehameha altered its orbit so that it flew over Hiro’s Fall. As it made its first pass, the ship opened fire, leveling the entire Mogat district. More than fifteen square miles were thoroughly pulverized. Whatever it was that the Mogats wanted to hide, the Kamehameha vaporized it in a flash of red lasers and white flames.

A few hours after the demonstration ended, Captain McKay sent several platoons to the area to inspect the damage and search for survivors. It was all theatrics, of course. The destruction was total; nobody could have survived it.

I did not recognize the scene when I hopped off the truck. The sun had not yet risen, and in the gray-blue light of my day-for-night lenses, the urban Mogat district looked like a desert. Lots that once held buildings now looked like rock gardens. The heat of the lasers had melted anything made of glass and metal. It incinerated wood, paper, and cloth into fine ash.

We strolled around the wreckage for nearly an hour, not even pretending to search for survivors. Klyber sent us so that the citizens of Hiro’s Fall would know that the U.A. Navy assumed responsibility for demolishing the offending district and that the U.A. Navy felt no regret.

“You see anything?” Vince Lee asked, as we walked over a sloping mound of pebbles that might have once been a factory.

Gravel crunched under my armored boot. “This is an improvement. If they planted some trees and built a pond, this could be a park,” I said.

“You’re not far off,” Private Ronson Amblin said, coming up beside us. “That happens a lot. I’ve been on more than one assignment where we sacked an entire town, just blew it to dust. You watch. They’ll build a monument to galactic unity in this very spot.”

“And the bodies?” I asked.

“Bodies?” Amblin asked. “Harris, those lasers were hot enough to melt a truck. Anybody caught here was cremated.”

By this time, the sun had started to rise above the skyline, and just as it cleared the tallest buildings, a motorcade approached. Four policemen on motorcycles led the way followed by four shiny, black limousines, with more motorcycles bringing up the rear. The convoy drove within fifty yards of us and stopped.

Shannon spoke on an open interLink channel. “The local authorities.” I detected disgust in his voice. “Fall in behind the other platoons.”

Moving at a brisk trot, we lined up in two rows behind the other platoon and stood at attention. The doors of the first government car swung open. I had not been able to see into the cars with their heavily tinted windows, but I was not surprised to see Captain McKay, dressed in formal greens, emerge.

“Attention,” Shannon bellowed in our ears, and we all snapped to attention. I did not recognize the next man who climbed out of the car, but the third man out was Alan Smith, the mayor of Hiro’s Fall. A couple of young aides climbed out of the second car and joined Smith. As Smith looked up and down the scene, I saw a set of meaty fingers grip the sides of the car as the rotund form of Vice Admiral Absalom Barry, wearing whites with multiple rows of medals, struggled to his feet. Barry smiled as he looked over the landscape. Happy-looking wrinkles formed around his eyes. He approached the mayor and muttered something in a soft voice. I could not hear what he said, but Smith laughed nervously. He looked pale. As he passed our ranks, he stared down at our feet.

“I think a slight alteration in the town’s name would be appropriate. Naming the town ‘Heroes’ Fall,’

after the fallen Marines seems fitting, don’t you think? And this spot, this destroyed area, would be a fine spot for a monument and park . . . with a statue dedicated to the memory of the fallen. That would go a long way toward showing your loyalty to the Republic,” Barry said in a raspy voice, his pudgy cheeks glowing. “Nothing too fancy. Nothing over a hundred feet, just a simple monument surrounded by U.A. flags . . .” and then they were too far away to hear.

As the others left, Captain McKay remained behind to address the men. “Gentlemen, you have just witnessed the ‘Bryce Klyber Urban Renewal’ program.”

EZER KRI:One of over 100 habitable planets in the Scutum-Crux Arm POPULATION:25 million (8.5 million of Japanese ancestry)

LARGEST CITY:Hiro’s Fall (4.5 million residents)

CENTER OF COMMERCE:Hiro’s Fall

CENTER OF INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY:Hiro’s Fall

GOVERNMENT SEAT:Rising Sun

POPULATION OF RISING SUN:3 million (2.5 million of Japanese ancestry)

Pulverizing the Mogat district changed the social climate for us in Hiro’s Fall. People who once pretended to ignore our presence now feared us. Captain Olivera left three platoons to patrol “Heroes’

Fall,” then stationed the rest of us in other major cities. My platoon was assigned to accompany a diplomatic envoy visiting the capital city, Rising Sun.

We crossed the planet in two ships. Most of the platoon traveled in the kettle of an AT. Vince Lee and I, and four other lucky privates, stood guard on the second ship, a civilian cruiser on loan to the diplomatic corps.

The rest of the men flew in the belly of a flying drum that barely looked fit to fly. They sat on hard benches with crates of supplies and equipment around their feet. The main cabin of the civilian cruiser looked like a living room complete with lamps, couches, and a wet bar. God, I envied those other guys. Wearing greens instead of armor, two privates and I stood guard around the main cabin. We stood like statues, pretending we did not notice as the bartender mixed drinks and the waiter served meals. The pilot flew the mission like a sightseeing tour, hugging close to mountains so that his passengers would enjoy the vistas. That was another difference between the AT and the cruiser—the cruiser had windows. From where I stood, I occasionally saw our Harrier escort through those windows. After the trouble in Hiro’s Fall, we weren’t taking any chances.

Whenever I could, I stole a glimpse outside. The rain around Hiro’s Fall gave way to snow as we traveled north. We flew over snow-glazed forests and frozen lakes, heading east into a brilliant red-sky sunset. The flaming horizon turned black, and we flew beneath a cloudless sky. As we continued on, the pilot lowered the lights in the cabin, and several of the passengers went to sleep. When my detail ended, I went to a small cabin in the back of the cruiser to rest. Vince Lee took my post. As I entered the ready room, I noticed light under the door of an executive berth. I tried to figure out who might be behind that door as I lay on my bunk. Sleep came quickly. Lee woke me a few hours later. “Harris,” he said as he prodded my shoulder, “we’re nearly there.”

I dressed quickly and went to the main cabin. The bureaucrats were all where I’d left them, including one fellow who had camped out on a sofa and snored through half of my watch. Their suits were wrinkled, and a few had messy hair, but they seemed alert. As I moved to the front of the cabin, I looked out a window and saw the first glimpse of dawn—a small swirl of light just beyond dark layers of mountains. And there was Rising Sun, the most glorious city I have ever seen.

Rising Sun sat wedged between a snow-frosted mountain and a mirror-flat lake. Unlike Hiro’s Fall, a city that seemed to embrace the past, Rising Sun was thoroughly modern. The streets were regular and straight. White-gold light blazed out of the buildings that lined those streets, illuminating the sidewalks. As we flew closer, I realized that the outer walls of the buildings were entirely transparent. The sight reminded me of a night sky filled with stars.

As our pilot banked the ship and came around for a landing, I stole one last glance out the window and saw the lake. The cruiser touched down softly and coasted toward a landing terminal. We taxied down the runway, the diplomats straightening their clothes and touching up their hair. They were not interested in the spectacular view, only organizing their briefcases and giving their computer files one final read. When we came to a stop, I peered through the window and saw the armored transport landing a few yards away. Shannon would rush the men off the AT and line them up before our pilot opened the hatch. They were the lucky ones. They traveled in armor. Dressed in our greens, we would freeze our asses in that snowy cold air.

The hatch opened. Carrying my rifle poised across my chest, I led my soldiers down a ramp. We formed a line on each side of the ramp.

At the door of the terminal, a disorganized crowd of Ezer Kri politicians waited for our diplomats to deplane. There might have been as many as fifty of them. I could not tell if it was fear or cold air that made their jaws so tight and their skin so pale.

The first man out of the shuttle was Bryce Klyber, looking tall and gaunt, and wearing the same disingenuous smile that Vice Admiral Barry wore when he toured the Mogat district with the mayor of Hiro’s Fall. Dressed in his admiral’s uniform, Klyber looked severe despite the grin. He must have been cold in that uniform, but he gave no sign of it. He paused beside our ranks, pierced a few of the men with his gray eyes, then turned toward the terminal.

Yoshi Yamashiro, the governor of Ezer Kri, trotted out to meet Klyber. He wore a dark blue trench coat, unbuttoned and untied, over a charcoal-colored suit. Yamashiro was a stocky man with broad shoulders and huge hands. He was thick, not fat. There was no hint of softness in that neck or those shoulders.

Klyber and Yamashiro shook hands. Klyber said something in a soft voice that I could not hear. Catching himself too late so that it would seem more awkward not to finish, Yamashiro bowed. He made several smaller bows as he and Klyber waited for their limousine. Lee and I followed, taking our places in the front seat of that car.

“Admiral Klyber, we are honored by your visit.” I heard Yamashiro’s stiff banter as I sat down. Seeing him up close, I realized that Yoshi Yamashiro was older than I had previously guessed. Viewing the video clips, I took him to be in his forties. Now that I saw him in person, I thought he looked closer to sixty.

“This is a remarkable city,” Klyber said, with a distinctly informal air.

“You are very kind,” Yamashiro said, visibly willing himself not to bow. As Klyber spoke, his diplomatic corps clambered onto a bus. These were the lackeys, the bean counters, the men who would give Ezer Kri a legalistic pounding. Once the lackeys were loaded, the entourage drove through town.

Isn’t that just the way, I thought. Klyber is all smiles and handshakes, but he comes with a fighter carrier and a complement of frigates .

The car drove us to the west side of town, where the capitol building was framed by a backdrop of distant mountains. It looked like a glass pyramid with honey-colored light pouring out of its walls. There, we waited in the car while Shannon and his men lined up outside. Once the reception line was ready, aides opened the car doors, and Yamashiro led us up the walk to the capitol. Lee and I followed, trudging through shallow puddles on the way.

Lee and I were to remain with Admiral Klyber and maintain line-of-sight contact until relieved. As he led the admiral into the capitol, Governor Yamashiro glanced nervously over his shoulder at Lee and me, but his comfort was no concern of mine.

“This building is stunning,” Klyber proclaimed, in a loud voice.

“Good thing it wasn’t in Hiro’s Fall; he would have bombed it,” an aide whispered behind me. I looked back over my shoulder, and the three aides quickly turned down another hall.

“We are quite proud of our architecture,” Yamashiro said.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Klyber said.

“Then this is your first visit to Ezer Kri?”

“Yes,” Klyber admitted. “I thought I had been all over this Arm. I’ve been assigned here for several years now.”

Low-level bureaucrats peered out of office doorways as we walked down the hall. I worried about security even though the Rising Sun police had searched the building earlier that morning and there were guards and X-ray machines at every entrance.

For his part, Klyber focused his attention on Governor Yamashiro, pausing only once as we passed an indoor courtyard with a large pond and some sort of shrine. I saw several works of art around the capitol, but the best piece sat behind the desk just outside the governor’s door. She stood as we approached, and I had a hard time staring straight ahead.

“Admiral Klyber, this is my assistant, Ms. Lyons,” Yamashiro said.

I would have expected the governor to have a Japanese assistant, but this statuesque woman was cosmopolitan with brown hair that poured over her shoulders and flawless white skin. She had green eyes, and her dark red lipstick stood out against her white skin.

Admiral Klyber paid no attention to her. He walked past Ms. Lyons as if she weren’t there and into the office.

She followed him, shuffling her feet quickly to keep up. She wore a short blue dress that ran halfway down her thighs. “Can I get anything for you, Admiral Klyber?” Ms. Lyons asked. Klyber might not have noticed her, but Lee homed right in. He stole an obvious gander as he snapped to attention and pretended to take in the entire room.

“I am quite fine,” Klyber said, without turning to look at the woman.

“We’re fine for now, Nada,” Yamashiro said.

“Very well,” the woman said.

My first thought when I saw the woman was something along the line of, Yamashiro, you sly dog . But there was intelligence in her voice. I had misjudged.

Yamashiro’s assistant turned to leave the room and stopped in front of me. She looked at me, and said,

“Can I bring you gentlemen anything?”

With some effort, I looked past her and said nothing. When she turned to leave, I felt relieved. Admiral Klyber might not have paid attention to Ms. Nada Lyons on her own, but our little exchange had not escaped him. He stared into my eyes until he was sure that I saw him, then he made the smallest of nods and turned his attention back to Governor Yamashiro.

Yamashiro did not retreat behind his wide wooden desk. Klyber sat in one of the two seats placed in front of the gubernatorial desk, and Yamashiro sat beside him.

“Okay, Admiral Klyber, the gloves are off. What can I do to prove my planet’s loyalty to the Republic?”

Governor Yamashiro asked, sounding stymied. “We have the entire Ezer Kri police force searching for leads. I have authorized the wholesale questioning of anybody affiliated with the Atkins movement . . . a sizable percentage of our population, I might add, and you still have no proof that the Atkins believers were behind the attack.”

“I appreciate your efforts,” Klyber said, still sounding relaxed. “All the same, I think the manhunt will go more smoothly if some of my forces help conduct it.”

“I see,” Yamashiro said, his posture stiffening.

“From what I have observed, Hiro’s Fall was overrun by Mogat sympathizers. I understand that several Mogats held posts in the city government. I am sure you were aware of those problems, Governor Yamashiro.” Klyber folded his hands on his lap.

“I see,” Yamashiro said, looking nervous. “And you hold my office responsible for the attack?”

“Not at all,” said Klyber, still sounding conversational. “But I will hold you personally responsible for any future hostilities, just as the Joint Chiefs will hold me accountable for anything that happens to my men.

“I will insist, Governor, that you remain in the capitol for the next few days. I have assigned one of my platoons to see to your protection.”

“Am I under house arrest, then?” asked Yamashiro.

“Not at all. We are simply going to help you run your planet more efficiently.”

“Then this is undeclared mart—”

“Martial law?” Klyber asked, his smile looking very stiff. “Friends in the Senate warned me about your gift for historical references.”

Klyber leaned forward in his chair, and his voice hardened. His back was to me, but I imagined that his expression had turned stony as well. “This is not martial law, Governor Yamashiro. I’m trying to protect you.”

Admiral Klyber retained five men from our platoon to guard his quarters, then set the rest of us loose on Rising Sun. He gave us full liberty so long as we remained dressed in battle armor. Apparently Klyber wanted to make sure that the locals knew we were there.

We, of course, used the occasion to acquaint ourselves with the bars. Most of the men went out in a herd, but Lee and I got a late start. Lee was fanatic about his sleep. We had liberty, but we did not leave to try the local drinking holes until well past eight, and he insisted on trying the upscale institutions along the waterfront. When I told him that the rest of the platoon was checking out the bars on the west side of town, Lee responded, “Those clones may be satisfied with mere watering holes; we shall look at finer establishments.”

“Asshole,” I said, even though I knew the attitude was a sham.

We took a train to the “Hinode Waterfront Station.” Everywhere we went, I saw signs referring to Hinode. Many of the signs were also marked with those strange squiggling designs that I understood to be the Japanese form of writing. It wasn’t until the next day that I realized that “Hinode” was the Japanese word for “Rising Sun.”

The bars we found were posh and elite, with swank names; some had Japanese lettering in their signs. The late-night dinner crowd strolled the waterfront streets. Men in business suits and women in fine dresses stopped in front of restaurant display cases to look at plasticized versions of the foods.

“This looks pretty expensive,” I told Vince as I looked at a menu. “Yakisoba, whatever that is, costs fifty dollars.”

“Maybe that’s the name of the waitress,” Lee said.

“Pork tonkatsu costs forty-five. If pork tonkatsu is the name of a waitress, I don’t want her.”

“How about over there,” Lee said, pointing to a small, brightly lit eatery.

“That place is too bright for drinks,” I said.

Lee ran across the street for a closer look, and I followed. The place was crowded. People used chopsticks to eat colorful finger foods off small dishes.

We entered, and the crowd became quiet. A man came up to us and spoke in Japanese. We, of course, did not understand a word of it. “Think he speaks English?” I asked Lee over the interLink in our helmets.

“Sure he does,” Lee said. “This is why the Senate does not want them to have their own language.”

After a few moments, I looked at Vince and shrugged my shoulders. The diners became loud again as we turned to leave.

I hated admitting defeat, but the Rising Sun waterfront beat me down. After a frustrating hour, Vince and I caught a taxi to the center of town. We found a likely-looking bar and went inside. The place was nearly empty. Three men sat slumped in their seats at the counter.

“This must be where the clerical help goes,” Vince said.

Two Japanese women waited just inside the door. A hostess came and seated them. When Vince started toward the bar, she turned, and said, “Please wait to be seated.”

After twenty minutes of waiting to be seated, we gave up and left to find another bar. By 2300 Kamehameha time, Vince and I retreated to the west end of town. We were hungry, thirsty, and frustrated. In any other town, the bars would be the only lit buildings by that time of night. Not in Rising Sun. In this town every building’s crystal finish glowed with the same goddamned honey-colored lights. At that point I wanted to stow my armor and walk into the next bar pretending to be a civilian; but if I took off my gear, I was technically AWOL.

As we explored the west end, we started hearing voices and music. We followed the sounds around a corner and found a crowded bar. Staring through the window, I saw several Marines. They had removed their helmets, which sat on the table. When I scanned the helmets, I recognized the names from my platoon.

“This must be the place,” said Lee.

“I hope they have food,” I said. I opened the door, and dozens of Marines turned to greet me. Sitting in the center of this ungodly pack, happily waving a cigar as he spoke, was Master Gunnery Sergeant Tabor Shannon.

One private placed his helmet over his head so he could read our identifiers as we entered. “It’s Lee and Harris,” he said to the others.

“The illustrious honor guard has finally found its way,” Shannon said. “Hello, Lee. Hello, Harris.”

“Sergeant,” I said.

“I’ll get the drinks this time,” Lee said.

“I don’t get it,” I said as I started to sit down. “Are we on duty or off?”

Shannon smiled behind his cigar, then uttered a few curses. “On duty. Klyber is using us as”—he considered for a moment—“as a diplomatic bargaining chip. He wants to show the locals how easy it would be for this visit to turn into a long-term occupation.”

“Drinking sounds like a good occupation to me,” one private said.

“Not occupation as in job, moron!” another private said.

“Oh,” the first one responded.

“That’s the kid that found the bar,” Shannon said, pointing at the private with his cigar. “He’s been soaking up beers for hours.”

“So, are we on our best behavior?” I asked.

Shannon smiled. “In this case, bad is good.” He nodded at the drunk private. “This boy’s going to empty his stomach somewhere, probably right outside that door. Usually that would get him a night in the brig; but tonight, it will go unnoticed. Klyber wants to show the respectable politicos of Rising Sun just how much they don’t want us around. A little puke leaves a lasting impression.”

Shannon leaned forward. “Harris, did you know you have a friend in town.”

“A friend?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Shannon. “It appears that the Japanese are not the only ones keeping their bloodlines pure on this rock.” Shannon turned and gazed toward the far side of the bar. “That guy was asking about you.”

I stood up and looked around the room. At the other end of the building, Ray Freeman sat with an untouched beer. The top of the table was level with the tops of Freeman’s thighs. He looked like an adult sitting on children’s play furniture.

“Know him?” Shannon asked.

“I know him. His name is Ray Freeman. He’s the mercenary I met on Gobi.”

Freeman looked over at me from his table. His eyes had their same dark intensity, but his mouth formed a cheerful smile. The overall effect was unsettling.

“You would not believe how much they charge for a damn beer,” Lee said as he returned with two huge mugs. “For these prices . . .” He saw me staring at Freeman. “Friend of yours?”

“That’s the mercenary that Admiral Brocius sent to Gobi,” I said.

“Looks dangerous,” Lee said. “Are you planning on talking to him?”

“He doesn’t talk much,” I said. “But I am curious about what he might have to say.”

“I’m coming with you,” Lee said.

“Do you think he wants trouble?” Shannon asked.

“If Ray Freeman came looking for trouble, I doubt I would have made it to the bar alive,” I said. “He’s worse than he looks.”

“I don’t know how that could be, Harris,” Lee said. “He looks pretty bad.”

Freeman stood and smiled down at me as Lee and I walked over. “Well, hello, Wayson. Been a long time. How is life in the Corps?” His voice had an overly friendly quality. First Barry, then Klyber, then Freeman. It was my day for seeing painted smiles.

“Is he always this chatty?” Lee asked over the interLink.

“What brings you to Scutum-Crux?” I asked. Freeman sat down and waved to the empty chairs around his table. Lee and I joined him. We must have looked odd, two men in combat armor sitting beside a bald-headed giant.

“I’m here on business,” Freeman said.

“Anybody we know, Mr. . . .” Lee let his voice trail off.

“Sorry,” Freeman said, still sounding friendly. “Call me Ray.”

“Vince Lee.”

“I guess Wayson has told you what I do.”

“Sounds as if you do it well, too, at least if everything Harris says is true.”

“I suspect Corporal Harris has exaggerated the story,” Freeman said.

“He might have,” Lee said. He removed his helmet. “No use letting my beer get warm. You’re not drinking yours?” The head on Freeman’s beer had gone flat.

“Actually, I only bought the beer to help me blend in,” Freeman said.

“I don’t think it’s working,” I said. “So is your target in the bar?”

“No, I came here looking for you. I heard your platoon was stationed in Rising Sun. This seemed like the best place to watch for you.”

“What a coincidence,” I said, not believing a word of it. “Both me and your target came to the same planet.”

I took off my helmet and took a long drag of beer. “Are you still looking for Crowley?”

“I have a score to settle,” Freeman said, “but that is not why I am here. I bumped into another friend of yours from Gobi earlier today. In fact, he’s staying in the hotel across the street.”

“Really?” I said. I took another drink, nearly finishing my beer. “Who is it?” Names and faces passed through my mind.

“I was hoping to surprise the both of you,” Freeman said. “You know what would be funny, you and Vince can trade helmets, and we can surprise the guy. You know, so you don’t have that identifier . . . just in case he’s wearing his helmet.”

Lee and I looked at each other. As far as I knew, the only people in Rising Sun with combat helmets flew in on the Kamehameha . Freeman had some scheme in the works, but I could not think what it might be, and I did not trust him.

“That doesn’t sound like such a good idea,” I said.

“Nothing is going to happen to you, Wayson,” Freeman said, sounding slightly wounded. “It will be fun.”

“Who are we surprising?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t want me to spoil the surprise.”

“I don’t mind trading,” Lee offered.

“Tell you what,” Freeman said. He dug through his wallet and pulled out a bill. “It’s worth twenty bucks to me to have you guys trade helmets.”

“I don’t know about this,” I said. The more Freeman tried to act breezy and conversational, the more ghoulish he sounded. I wanted to warn Lee over the interLink, but he had removed his helmet.

“You still don’t trust me?” Freeman said.

“Twenty dollars?” Lee asked. He gulped down his beer. “What can it hurt?”

“Thanks,” Freeman said, sounding pleased. “I’ll pick up your next round, too.”

“Don’t worry about it, Harris,” Lee said. “I’ll just head back with the rest of the platoon.”

Lee’s hanging back with the platoon sounded good to me. I could not think of any reason why Freeman might want to hurt Lee, but I still did not trust him.

Lee grabbed my helmet, and I took his.

“Look, Wayson, I need to pay the check. Why don’t you head across the street, and I’ll meet you in the hotel lobby.”

I took one last look at Lee, then put on his helmet. “Damn,” I whispered. Whatever he’d eaten for lunch had left a foul-smelling ghost in his rebreather. I got up from the bar and walked toward the door. Shannon and a few other soldiers waved as I left.

The street was completely empty by that time. I checked for cars, then trotted across the street to the hotel.

The outside of the hotel was built out of that same thick crystal—very likely an indigenous mineral of some kind. The lobby, however, was not so elegant. Poorly lit and cheaply decorated, it had metal furniture and a scuffed-up check-in desk. The unshaved clerk at the desk watched me as I entered the lobby, but said nothing.

“Let’s go,” Freeman said as he joined me a few moments later. He no longer smiled or wanted to talk, that was the Freeman I knew.

“So who are we here to see?” I asked.

He did not answer.

“Is it Crowley?” I asked.

“Not Crowley,” Freeman said.

Rather than take the elevator, Freeman ran up the stairs. We entered a dimly lit stairwell and climbed twelve flights. “You’re still charming as ever,” I said, as we reached the top. Freeman pulled his handheld computer from his pocket and looked at it. “Hurry,” he said. “Your pals are getting ready to leave the bar.” He held the monitor so that I could see it. Apparently he had placed a remote camera under his seat. Looking at the monitor, I saw Shannon standing up. Some of the other men were already wearing their helmets and heading for the door.

We entered a red-carpeted hall with numbered doors. Freeman stopped under a hall light. He pulled a pistol from under his chestplate. He walked to room number 624. Pulling a key chip from his pocket, Freeman unlocked the door and let it slide open.

The only light in the room came from the glare of the street outside. We crept along the wall. We had entered a suite. Freeman pointed toward a bedroom door, and I stole forward to peer inside. Looking across the room, I saw the pale moon through the top of a window. Someone was crouching beside that window, spying the street. I could only see his thick silhouette. In this dim light, he did not look human.

“He’s watching the bar door,” I whispered inside my helmet.

Using his right hand, the man brought up a rifle with a barrel-shaped scope. I had used a similar scope in training camp. It was an “intelligent” scope, the kind of computerized aiming device that offers more than simple magnification. “He’s looking for . . .”

Then I understood. I sprang forward. Hearing my approach, the sniper turned around and started to raise his rifle. By that time, I had leaped most of the way across the room. I grabbed the rifle, spun it over my right hand, and stabbed the butt into the assassin’s face. The man made an agonized scream and dropped to the floor.

I removed my helmet and went to the window. Raising the rifle, I looked down at the street through the scope. Most of the men from the platoon stood outside the door of the bar. The intelligent scope had an auto-action switch set to fire. The scope read the identifier signals from our helmets. The scope would locate a preset target, and the rifle would shoot automatically. In the center of the pack, Corporal Vincent Lee was clearly identified as Corporal Wayson Harris—me. The scope made a soft humming noise as it automatically homed in on my helmet.

“You owe me twenty bucks, Harris,” Freeman said as he switched on the lights. Lying dazed on the floor, the sniper moaned. One of his eyes was already starting to swell from the impact of the rifle, and blood flowed from the bridge of his nose. He reached up to touch his wounded face, and I noticed that his arm ended in a stub.

“Well, hello, Kline,” I said.

CHAPTER NINE

Ray Freeman trusted the Rising Sun police enough to let them put Kline in a holding cell, but he insisted on watching that cell until military police signed for the prisoner. Freeman’s wait would have been none of my business except that Captain McKay ordered me to remain with Kline until the MPs arrived as well. So the station captain placed a couple of chairs near Kline’s cell and told us to make ourselves at home. For me, making myself “at home” meant removing my helmet. Freeman made himself at home by pulling out a twelve-inch knife that he had somehow slipped past station security and cleaning his fingernails. The knife looked deceptively small in Freeman’s large hands.

Admiral Klyber arrived with an intelligence officer as the first traces of sunrise shone through the wire-enforced windows. I jumped out of my chair and saluted, but Freeman remained seated. A slight smile played across Klyber’s lips as he regarded us. He returned my salute, and said the perfunctory, “At ease, Corporal.”

I was technically out of uniform. Looking down at my helmet, and feeling guilty, I said, “Sorry, sir.”

“Not at all, Corporal. As I understand it, you caught the prisoner while you were off duty.” Klyber then turned to face Ray Freeman. “I understand you were instrumental as well.”

Freeman said nothing.

“Sir,” I said, not wanting to contradict the senior-most officer in this part of the galaxy, but determined to set the record straight.

Klyber interrupted me. “This is Lieutenant Niles, from Naval Intelligence.”

I saluted.

He saluted back. “That’s your bubble?” he asked, pointing to my helmet.

“Yes, sir,” I said. Bubble , short for bubblehead, was Navy slang for Marines. And it was indeed mine. Lee and I had traded back after we caught Kline.

“Would you mind if I borrowed it? It could prove useful during my interrogation.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He took the helmet and excused himself.

“Why don’t you stay for the interrogation,” Klyber said, as Niles walked away. Freeman and I followed the admiral into a small dark room in which four chairs overlooked a bank of medical monitors and a large window. As we sat, a light came on at the other side of that window. Two policemen led Kline into the interrogation room and sat him on a small metal chair.

I must have been far too rough on Kline. No one had bothered to clean the dried blood from where I’d struck his face with the butt of the rifle. His left eye was swollen shut and purple. It looked wet and badly infected.

Niles entered the room carrying a large canvas bag in one hand and my helmet in the other. The policemen tried to cuff Kline’s arms behind the back of his chair, eventually closing one manacle around his left wrist and the other around his right elbow. As they did this, Niles arranged several objects on a small table near the door. The policemen prepared to leave, but Niles intercepted them and whispered something. Niles smiled as they left the room, then he turned to Kline, and said, “You make a pathetic assassin.”

“This is all a misunderstanding. An assassin?” Kline said. With his thick tongue, the S’s in “assassin” had a harsh sound—“azz-azin.” “I came here for a vacation. I thought I might do some hunting on Lake Pride.”

“And this is your rifle?” Niles held up Kline’s rifle and peered through its scope.

“It’s for hunting,” Kline said.

“You sound like quite the sportsman, Mr. Kline.” Niles was terse but not unfriendly. He placed the gun back on the table, then walked over to Kline, who shifted his weight on the small metal chair. “Is it Kline or Mr. Kline?”

“Kline.”

“I am asking if Kline is your first or last name.”

“Only one name, I am afraid.” Kline sounded distressed.

“Oh,” Niles said. “So you are an Atkins Separatist. As far as I know, only two kinds of people go by a single name—Morgan Atkins Separatists and professional musicians. If your right hand is any indication, I assume you are not a musician.”

“The term is ‘believer,’ not ‘separatist,’” Kline said in a sullen voice.

“My mistake,” Niles said.

“Tell you what, Kline. Let’s try an experiment. Let’s pretend that I am you, and you are . . . Let’s say that you are a corporal in the Marines. We’ll pretend that you are Corporal Wayson Harris, for instance. Are you with me so far?”

Kline shrugged. “I don’t understand the purpose of this?”

“Maybe this will help,” Niles said, lifting my helmet from the table.

“This is Corporal Harris’s helmet.” Niles stuffed it down over Kline’s head. Short and round, Kline was not made for combat armor. The circumference of his skull was slightly too large; but with some force, Niles managed to slam the helmet in place. Kline screamed as the lip of my helmet raked down across his wounded eye.

“Looks like a good fit,” Niles said.

Kline slumped forward in his chair, hyperventilating. Only the restraints around his arms kept him from falling to the floor. “What are you doing?” he moaned.

“My experiment,” the Intelligence officer said, sounding slightly offended. “You remember, we’re conducting an experiment?

“On the arrest report, it says that the scope on your rifle reads a frequency reserved for military use. That makes this scope contraband, and smuggling contraband between planets is a federal offense. And it gets worse. The report says that the auto-switch on this scope was set to go off when it located a specific signal. Now, why would the scope on a hunting rifle be set to read identifier signals in the first place? I’m sure this is all a colossal mistake.”

Kline said nothing.

“According to the police, that specific signal would be the identifying code broadcast by Corporal Harris’s helmet . . . the helmet you are wearing at this very moment. That would mean you came to Lake Pride hunting Corporal Harris.

“Me, I don’t believe that a law-abiding fellow like you came to Rising Sun hunting another human being. So here is my experiment.”

Niles picked up the rifle and walked behind Kline’s chair. “First, I will load this rifle.” He drew back the bolt. Deliberately fumbling the bullet so that it clanged against the barrel of the rifle several times, he slid it into the chamber and locked the bolt back in place.

“Now let’s see what happens when I hit to auto-switch and point the gun at that helmet you are wearing.”

“Don’t!” Kline shouted.

“A problem with my theory?”

“You’re going to kill me!” Kline’s voice bounced and fluttered. He was crying inside the helmet. Without a word, the Intelligence officer removed the bullet from the rifle and pocketed it. He placed the rifle back on the table, then wrenched the helmet off Kline’s head. The prisoner whimpered and sat with his chin tucked into his flabby neck.

“You know, Mogat, I think you have some interesting tales to tell. And the best part is, chubby little speckers like you always talk. Always.”

Niles headed for the door of the interrogation room, then turned back. “I’ll have the police return you to your cell.”

“He will cooperate,” Admiral Klyber said quietly. “I doubt, however, that he will have any valuable information. Crowley would never trust anything important with such a weakling.”

I felt as if I had just watched an execution. Klyber showed absolutely no empathy for their prisoner. The physiology monitors lining the walls of the observation room showed that Kline’s heart pace had nearly doubled. His blood pressure rose so high when Niles placed my helmet over his head that a heart attack seemed imminent; yet I, too, felt strangely unsympathetic.

“I don’t believe there was any particular bounty on Kline,” said Klyber. “Does a reward of three thousand dollars seem adequate?”

Freeman nodded.

“Very good. I will see that you are paid by the end of the day, Mr. Freeman. I’m curious, though, why come as far as the Scutum-Crux Arm chasing a small-time criminal with such low prospects?”

“Little fish sometimes lead you to bigger ones,” Freeman said as he stood to leave.

“I see,” Klyber said, without standing up. “Well, fine work, Freeman. I hope you find the bigger fish you are looking for.”

Freeman nodded again and left.

Admiral Klyber leaned forward and flipped a switch, turning off the sound in the next room. “Your name keeps popping up, Corporal Harris. Why should that be?”

I knew precisely why my name sounded familiar to Admiral Klyber, but I had no intention of dredging up my record on Gobi. I had other things on my mind, so as soon as Klyber and the Intelligence officer left the police station, I asked one of the guards to take me to Kline’s cell. I found him lying on his cot and staring up at the ceiling, his swollen eye still oozing yellow pas.

“You should have a doctor look at that,” I said as I entered the cell. Kline said nothing. He continued to stare up at the ceiling.

“I can see you’re busy, and I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I was curious how you survived Freeman’s grenade,” I said.

“Is that you, Harris?” Kline asked.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Did you watch the interrogation?”

“You didn’t say anything about how you made it out of the desert with a grenade glued to your hand,” I said.

Kline snickered and sat up on his cot. While returning the little mutant to his cell, the guards had finally washed the blood from his head, but the entire side of his face was swollen and bruised. He held up his left arm and let the baggy sleeve of his robe fall to reveal the stub. “How do you think I survived?”

“I’m guessing that the grenade was a dud,” I said.

“I cut my hand off and left it in the desert, asshole. Well, one of Crowley’s lieutenants cut it off for me,”

Kline said. “He found me wandering in the desert. Do you have any idea how much that hurt?” With that, he lay back down on his cot.

“So you decided to fly to Ezer Kri to shoot me,” I said. “Why me? Why not Freeman? He was the one who glued the grenade to your hand.”

“I wanted to go after Freeman, but Crowley said to go after you instead,” Kline said without looking in my direction. “He said I’d never get a shot off if I went after Freeman. Freeman is a dog. You are just as bad as he is. You let him do this to me. You’re just another rabid dog.”

“And you are a terrorist,” I said. “You are an enemy of the Republic.”

“Everybody is an enemy of the Republic. I don’t know anybody who likes the Republic,” Kline said. “At least nobody who isn’t a clone.”

From what I could see, Governor Yamashiro sincerely wanted to cooperate. The mediaLink ran local news stories about the Ezer Kri police cracking down on all known Morgan Atkins sympathizers. Work crews began converting the ruins of the Mogat district into a park two days after the Kamehameha bombarded it. With local forces closing in on the ground and Klyber’s ships blockading the planet, no one could leave Ezer Kri. Yamashiro only had twenty-four hours left to turn over the criminals. At that point, I thought he might make it.

The Chayio was one of fifteen frigates that accompanied the Kamehameha on the mission to Ezer Kri. Small by capital ship standards and designed for battling fighters and smugglers, frigates were approximately six hundred feet long and outfitted with twenty particle-beam cannons. The guns on frigates were perfect for downing the small, fast-moving ships used by pirates and smugglers, but they would not dent the armor on a capital ship.

They fit well with Admiral Klyber’s philosophy. Since the Unified Authority was the only entity with a navy in the entire galaxy, he wanted the Scutum-Crux Fleets outfitted for conflicts with smugglers and terrorists. After all, nobody but the U.A. Navy had the capacity to build anything even near the size of a battleship.

By spreading his frigates over the most populated areas on Ezer Kri, Klyber formed a blockade that could stop ships from leaving the planet. It was a good strategy. A single frigate would have enough guns to shoot down any ship parked in this solar system. On the off chance that a frigate did run into that unforeseen enemy, the three nearest frigates could converge on the scene in less than one minute. In theory, our net was impregnable and our ships unstoppable. But in practice, our net had frayed along the edges.

The Chayio , for instance, guarded the space over a small island chain, fairly boring duty. The captain of the ship was not even on the bridge when the storm hit; his first lieutenant had the helm. The young lieutenant walked around the deck talking casually with other officers. Watching the video record that was found in the remains of the ship two days after the attack, I got the feeling that he did not take his duties seriously.

“Sir, I’m picking up increased energy signatures on the planet,” one of the communications officers called out. “It looks like a fleet of small ships.”

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” the lieutenant said, breaking away from another conversation. He walked toward the scanning station too slowly. Clearly he thought the sighting was a nuisance.

“My reading just spiked,” the communications officer said. “More ships are flaring up, sir.”

“What?” The lieutenant sounded baffled. He leaned over the communications officer’s shoulder for a better look; and then it happened.

There was a brilliant flash of blue-white light and two dreadnought destroyers appeared in front of the Chayio . At that point, our display screen divided in two. A small window in the corner of the screen showed the bridge of the Chayio, while the rest of the screen showed the scene as captured by a communications satellite orbiting Ezer Kri.

I had never seen ships of that make before. They bore the familiar sharp lines and forward shield arrays of U.A. Navy ships, but the hull design and size were completely foreign. The ships were several times larger than the Chayio . They had globelike bridges studded with cannons and firing bays. Their coloring was darker than charcoal—so dark that they seemed to blend into space itself.

“Forward shields, now!” the lieutenant shouted, demonstrating surprisingly quick reflexes. The dreadnoughts hung silently in space for a moment. During that moment, the lieutenant at the helm of the Chayio called for his captain and sent a distress signal to all nearby ships. Neither the captain nor the nearby ships arrived in time.

One of the dreadnoughts fired into the frigate’s shields.

“Do not return fire. Channel all power to the shields,” the lieutenant ordered. He must have planned to keep a wall between his ship and the dreadnoughts until help arrived. His plan should have worked. With all of its power poured into the forward shield, the Chayio might have survived the battering for several minutes as it waited for help from the Kamehameha .

There was a blue-white flash behind the Chayio , and another destroyer materialized behind the frigate. This third ship took only a moment to stabilize before firing two torpedoes. With all power to its forward shields, the rear of the Chayio was unprotected. The little frigate exploded into a fireball that was quickly extinguished in the vacuum of space.

As I watched the frigate explode, I noticed streaks of light in the background. A swarm of smaller ships evacuated Ezer Kri and disappeared into space as the battle occurred. Seeing the video feed, I knew that the fleeing ships would belong to the Mogats. Who else could they belong to? What other population needed to flee en masse? But I always thought of the Mogats as a bunch of crank religionists. Where the hell had they gotten a fleet of small ships? Another question: How had they gotten their hands on destroyers? As a Marine, my biggest question was, “Where are they going to next?” Wherever they went, I wanted to greet them.

CHAPTER TEN

Though he would never have confided his feelings to his corporals, Sergeant Tabor Shannon must have sensed the upcoming war. Other platoon leaders let their men relax between patrols; Shannon had us dress in full combat armor and drill. He sent us on ten-mile hikes in the muddy forests north of Rising Sun. Three days after the attack on the Chayio, he took us for a predawn drill up the sheer wall of a nearby mountain. I could see the shape of the full moon in the clouded winter sky. Its distorted silhouette showed through the clouds like a smudge on a photograph.

Shannon dropped ropes from the top of the cliff; the rest of the platoon scaled up the face of the mountain to meet him. When we reached the top, he smiled and sent us rappelling back down. Our combat gear protected us from the cold, but nothing stopped the muscle burn in our arms and backs. If there had ever been a layer of dirt covering the face of these cliffs, it had long since washed away. This face was rock and ice with a few stray ferns growing in its crags. As I dropped down the edge of the precipice, my boots clattered on the wet stone face.

“Move it! Move it! Move it!” Shannon shouted down at us.

My right foot slipped against the wet rock, and I struggled to find good footing. Like me, most of the troopers had trouble finding secure footing on the way back down. We did not practice rappelling on board ship. The last time I had done so was in the orphanage. We had jetpacks, why would we need to rappel?

“Too long! Too slow!” Shannon shouted.

“I’d like to see you do this,” I said under my breath.

Shannon’s cord dropped just to my right. I looked up in time to see him jump over the edge of the cliff. Taking long, narrow bounces, the sergeant plunged down the cord so quickly that it looked like a free fall.

“I could do that,” I said to myself. “I just don’t feel like showing off.” I took a quick look over my shoulder. The lake filled the horizon. Craning my neck to look out, I could see the waterfront. In the daylight, the buildings looked like ice sculptures. I took a deep breath and prepared to drop faster. As I exhaled that breath, a bullet struck the cliff, shooting sparks and rock fragments that bounced against the visor of my helmet.

I blinked, though my visor protected me. Reflexes. At that same moment, I opened my fingers and let the cord whip across my armor-covered palms, dropping me into a loosely controlled free fall. As I reached the trees below, I tightened my grip to slow myself. I let go of the rope and dropped the last few feet into the mud. Standing a few yards away, Sergeant Shannon stood muttering to himself under his breath and firing live rounds at the cliff. He had removed his helmet. His face was spattered with dirt. The mud, combined with his all-tooth smile and wide, excited eyes, gave him a crazed look.

“You call that climbing?” Shannon yelled. “Move it, you dipshit maggots,” he bawled with a string of accompanying cusses. “I did not bring you here to go sightseeing!” He fired his rifle, and two of the men crashed down to the mud.

“I’ll bet that’s Lee,” Shannon muttered as he stared up at the cliff. “Hey, Lee, have a nice fall.” With the butt of his rifle tucked under his arm, Shannon squeezed off two shots that severed the cords just above one of the man’s hands. The man plummeted, bouncing off the face of the cliff before igniting his jetpack and lowering to the ground safely. Seeing what happened, the rest of the men rappelled down the cliff more quickly.

“Jeeezus sakes Christ!” Shannon yelled, looking over his panting platoon. “I could have picked off the whole friggin’ lot of you. The whole damn lot. I thought I came to drill Marines, not take old ladies sightseeing. Hell, I could have cooked me a barbecue and called your next o’kin before I started shooting. Next time, I’m loading rubber bullets and bagging me some maggots. You sisters better wear your safety loops tight. Next time I’m shooting rubbers.

“And, ladies, when I say ‘next time,’ I mean after lunch.”

All of us “ladies” groaned.

Lunch was no treat. It rained. We gathered around the truck and opened our MREs. No heated food to soften our bellies that day, just the standard mushy vegetables and prefabricated stew. Despite the vacuum packaging, everything tasted stale.

A white government car pulled up beside us as we ate. A pasty-faced bureaucrat in a shiny gray suit climbed out of the car. He had perfectly coiffed hair. With his clothes and grooming, the man looked completely out of place among the trees. He scanned the platoon, picked out Sergeant Shannon, and joined us.

“Can I help you?” Sergeant Shannon asked, with a wolfish grin.

“Sergeant Shannon?” the man asked.

“I’m Shannon.”

The man held out an envelope with an SC Central Fleet seal. Handing his rations to another soldier, Shannon took the communiqué and opened it. “Harris,” he called.

I walked over. “Sergeant?”

“Looks like you get to skip our next hike,” Shannon said. “SC Command wants you to deliver your prisoner to the Kamehameha .” He handed me the communiqué. I scanned it quickly and saw that I was supposed to get cleaned up and dress in my greens.

I rode back to camp in that posh government car. No hard wooden seats in that ride. When we got back to camp, my bureaucratic escort gave me ten minutes to dress and shower. “We’re on a tight schedule,”

he told me. “You need to report to the Kamehameha by three.”

The Rising Sun police met us at the landing pad and turned Kline over to me in cuffs and manacles. I signed for him and walked him onto the transport. We had the kettle to ourselves, just Kline and me, alone, sitting near the back of the ship. His injured eye looked more infected than ever. The skin around it had turned purple, and yellow pus seeped out from under the closed eyelid. He stared at me for a moment, then asked, “Harris?”

“Yes,” I said.

We both sat silently as the ramp closed and the AT took off. Not wanting to look at that ruined face, I stared straight ahead at the metal wall of the kettle and let my thoughts wander. Would there be war?

“They’re going to execute me,” Kline said, his calm voice cutting through my thoughts.

“I suspect they will get around to it, sooner or later,” I said.

“No,” Kline corrected me. “They are going to execute me tonight. They will hold a tribunal. I won’t even get a trial. You are delivering me to be executed.”

“You cannot possibly expect me to feel sorry for you. You came to Ezer Kri to shoot me.” I shook my head. “You should have stayed on Gobi. No one cared about you there.”

Despite what I said, I did feel sorry for Kline. In the time that I had known him, he had led a band of terrorists to kill my platoon and attempted to “azzazzinate” me. My universe would be safer once he was gone, but there was something pathetic about this inept, one-handed fool.

“You soldiers are all alike,” he said, probably not seeing the irony in his statement.

“I’m not a soldier,” I said. “I am a Marine.”

Kline shook his head but said nothing.

“I’m curious, Kline. Did Crowley put you up to this?” I asked.

“Did you read my final confession?” Kline asked.

They had interrogated Kline thoroughly over the last few days, but I had not seen the reports. “No,” I said.

“It was my idea,” Kline said. “I wanted to kill you. Crowley tried to talk me out of it.”

“Did he?” I asked. “Did he tell you I was on Ezer Kri?” We must have been approaching the Kamehameha ; I could feel the transport rumble as the engines slowed.

“He told me where to find you,” Kline said, sounding a bit defiant.

“Did he arrange your trip?”

“Not himself. One of his lieutenants.”

“And he gave you the rifle and the scope?”

“Yes.”

“And he preset the scope to read my helmet signal?”

“Yes.”

For the first time since takeoff, I turned and looked directly at Kline. “And you think it was your idea?

He played you.”

In the background, jets hissed as our ride glided up into the primary docking bay. The ship touched down on its landing gear, and the soft hum of the engines went silent. The rear of the ship opened, and a security detail of four MPs stomped up the ramp.

“Corporal Harris?” One of Admiral Klyber’s aides followed the MPs. “Corporal Harris, we’re on a very tight schedule.”

“Is this the prisoner?” one of the MPs asked.

I looked around the cabin, pretending to search for a third passenger. There are only two of us, I thought. I’m wearing a uniform, and he’s wearing cuffs . “This is the prisoner,” I said as I gave the guard Kline’s papers. The MPs formed a square around Kline and led him away.

“Corporal Harris,” the aide said in a nervous voice. He was a lieutenant, and I was just a corporal; but I was Klyber’s guest. This aide did not dare pull rank.

“Sorry, sir,” I said.

“They are waiting for you on the Command deck.”

“Yes,” I said, my thoughts following Kline.

The lieutenant led me down the same corridor that Vince Lee and I had explored on our first night on the Kamehameha . Vince was considerably better company. This man strode in silence, staring coldly at sailors moving around the deck. At least nobody turned me back for being a Marine. A voice in the back of my head said that I was far out of my depth as we approached the admin area. That was the holy of holies on most ships, officer country, but we were headed for far more hallowed halls than mere officer country. At the far end of admin were the six elevators that led to the Scutum-Crux Command deck. The lieutenant approached one of these elevators and rolled the thumb, pointer, and middle finger of his right hand against a scanner pad. The elevator call button lit up.

“Ever been back here before, Corporal?”

“No, sir.”

The elevator door slid open, and we stepped in. I stood silent, watching numbers flash on a bar over the door, my mouth dry and my throat parched.

We stepped onto the twelfth floor. Staff members from every branch sat at desks. An Air Force major stood in front of a large glass map moving symbols. A colonel from the Army walked past us and ducked into a small office. No one seemed to notice us.

At first glance, SC Command looked very similar to the admin area at the base of the elevator, except that here you saw men in Air Force blue and Army green. The lieutenant led me past the cubicles and lesser offices, and the surroundings became much less familiar. Even the ceiling was higher on this part of the deck. We entered a large waiting room. The naval officer/receptionist glared at me. “Is this Corporal Harris?”

“In the flesh,” the lieutenant answered.

“He is in conference,” the receptionist said, “but he said for you to go in.”

“In conference?” I asked.

“That means we need to keep absolutely quiet,” the lieutenant whispered. We approached a convex wall with a double-paneled door. As the panels slid open, I heard Admiral Klyber speaking. The officer put up a hand, signaling me to stay outside as he peered into the circular room. A moment later, he turned back and signaled for me to follow.

Admiral Klyber and Vice Admiral Barry sat along the edge of a semicircular table facing a wall with several screens. I recognized the faces on the screens from stories I had seen in the news. Admiral Che Huang, the secretary of the Navy, a member of the Joint Chiefs, spoke on one screen. Generals from the Army and Air Force, also members of the Joint Chiefs, showed on other screens, along with a member of the Linear Committee.

“You said Ezer Kri would not pose a problem, Barry,” Huang said in an angry voice. His image glared down at Admiral Barry, his lips pulling back into a sneer.

“The planet has no standing military and no registered capital ships,” Barry said. Clearly shaken, the vice admiral wheezed and snorted as he spoke. Beads of sweat formed on his mostly bald scalp. “Those ships could not possibly have come from Ezer Kri.”

“I quite agree,” said Klyber. “Admiral Barry had no reason to anticipate the attack on the Chayio .” He leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers, and spoke in a calming voice like a mediator who had come to settle a squabble among friends. “As I read this, it appears that the reality of the Atkins threat is finally showing itself. Admiral Barry was only briefed about hostilities with the Yamashiro government.”

“Atkins?” asked the member of the Linear Committee.

“We’ve all seen the record; those destroyers broadcast themselves to the scene,” Klyber said. “Did you look at the design of those ships?”

“I’d need clearer pictures,” the Committee member said. “I saw your notes; but after all of these years, I can’t believe it.”

“Fair enough,” Admiral Klyber said. “But we do agree that those ships are of an obsolete U.A. design and manufacture? I am sure we agree that this was not an extragalactic attack.”

The faces in the television screen nodded in agreement.

“We know that the Mogat population vanished after the attack on our platoon,” Klyber continued. “A number of ships launched during the attack on the Chayio . Intelligence traced that launch to an uninhabited island. It seems safe to assume that the separatists massed on that island as they planned their escape.”

“I am aware of that, Admiral,” Huang hissed. “If those ships came from the GC Fleet, they would be hopelessly outdated.”

“Not necessarily,” Klyber said. “The Kamehameha was commissioned before we began exploring the Galactic Eye. They may have updated their ships just as we reoutfitted this one.” He shot a furtive grin at Vice Admiral Barry, who fidgeted nervously and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

“So how do we proceed, assuming those ships were from the GC Fleet?” asked the member of the Linear Committee.

“There were hundreds of ships in that fleet,” Klyber pointed out.

“Even if they reoutfitted it, I don’t think the GC Fleet would be much of a threat,” Huang said. “Not against a modern navy.

“The GC Fleet was a one-dimensional fleet designed for invasions, not ship-to-ship combat. It did not have frigates or carriers. It will be helpless against fighters.” No one seemed interested in Huang’s opinion, however.

“Perhaps we’d better double the patrols guarding the broadcast system,” said the general from the Air Force.

“Would there be any way to track the fleet’s movements?” asked the Committee member. Klyber shook his head. “Once we get a psychological profile of whoever is commanding the fleet, we may be able to predict his steps. For now, the best we can do is to go on alert.”

The Army general sighed. “It’s the enemy that you can’t see . . .”

“Do you think Crowley is behind this?” asked the Committee member.

“I’ve put a great deal of thought into this,” Klyber said. “Crowley has a mind for tactics, but he has no skill for coalition building. He is no politician. If a civil war is brewing, Crowley will need allies . . . political allies.”

The Army general smiled. “Thank God Morgan Atkins is dead.”

“Atkins?” asked Admiral Barry.

“Is he?” Klyber said. “I don’t know how we can rule Atkins out of the picture.”

“My God, he would have to be a hundred years old,” Barry said.

“I never call them dead until I see a tag on their feet,” said Huang, who clearly enjoyed needling Barry on every topic.

“With the right ambassador, Crowley won’t have any trouble finding plenty of support in the House of Representatives,” said Klyber. “We will need to observe how the politics play themselves out in the House. Crowley’s allies will expose themselves sooner or later.”

“If he’s tied in with Atkins, he’ll have lieutenants on every planet,” the member of the Linear Committee observed.

“We must choose our next step wisely,” Huang said. It seemed like he was trying to regain control of the conversation by reviewing what everyone else said. “If you are right, Admiral Klyber, we have no way of knowing where or when Crowley will strike.”

“What do we do about Ezer Kri?” Barry asked.

“We should make an example of Ezer Kri,” said Huang, the faces in the monitors nodding their agreement. “Blast the planet until nothing is left. We cannot show any weakness in this situation.”

Admiral Klyber leaned forward, placed his hands palms down on the table and took a deep breath. “If that is the consensus.”

Huang made a weary sigh. “You have other ideas, Admiral Klyber?”

“The Mogat Separatists have already abandoned the planet, and the rest of the population seems sufficiently loyal to the Unified Authority. Governor Yamashiro is a smart politician; he knows he’s in a fix.”

“We cannot afford to appear weak,” Huang said. “If we let Ezer Kri get away with attacking a U.A. ship, other planets will follow.”

“Of course,” Klyber said. “But we have already agreed that the attacking ships did not launch from Ezer Kri. Destroy the planet now, and you will only kill innocents. What kind of lesson is that?”

“And your suggestion?” asked the Committee member.

“Once we have captured the people responsible for the attacks, we return them to Ezer Kri for public trial and execution on their own home planet.”

“We’ll look like fools if they get off,” said Huang.

“Rest assured,” Klyber said, “these terrorists will be found guilty. We will see to it.”

“Found guilty on their home planet; I like it,” said the Committee member.

“Absalom Barry is a capable officer,” Admiral Klyber said, as we walked back across the empty lobby toward his office. “He lacks vision, but he runs an efficient fleet. When I was transferred to Scutum-Crux, I put in a request for him.”

I had not asked about Barry. I never asked one superior officer about another; such inquiries inevitably came back to haunt you.

We entered a short hall that led to Klyber’s office—a surprisingly small room with a shielded-glass wall overlooking the rear of the Kamehameha . The galaxy seemed to start just behind the admiral’s desk. While trying to speak with him, I constantly found myself distracted by the view of Ezer Kri or a passing frigate. His desk faced away from that observation wall, and, disciplined as he was, I doubted that the admiral turned back to look out often.

“Please, sit down,” Klyber said. As he spoke, he picked up a folder that was on his desk. He studied it for a moment, then looked at me. “Our work on Ezer Kri is just about finished. I’ll be glad to leave.”

I said nothing.

“Corporal Harris, we’re going to take on an important visitor over the next few days. The secretary of the Navy will be joining us. He has a mission he would like to conduct. In order for Huang’s mission to succeed, we will need to draw upon your particular abilities.”

“Sir?” I said, sounding foolish.

Klyber took a deep breath and leaned forward on his desk, his gray eyes staring straight into mine. “You grew up in an orphanage, Corporal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did they tell you about the cloning process?”

Just hearing an admiral mention the word “clone” left me dizzy. I knew he had not brought me there for a casual chat. I felt a prickling sensation on my back and arms. Clenching the arms of my chair, I felt nervous, genuinely nervous.

“The teachers never discussed cloning,” I said. “I heard rumors; we talked about it when the teachers weren’t around.”

Without releasing me from that intense stare, Klyber leaned back in his chair again. He picked up a pen in his right hand and tapped it against the palm of his left. “Tell me about the rumors.”

I pried my eyes from his for a moment and stared out through the viewport behind him. I could see Ezer Kri, a blue-and-green globe with patches of clouds. I could see a frigate off in the distance. Far off in space, I could see the star that was the system’s sun. “They never know they are clones,” I said, fighting to take control of my emotions. I was not a clone. I had nothing to fear. “They can’t see it. Two clones can stand side by side looking into the same mirror and not see that they look alike.” I knew that—I saw it every day.

Klyber’s mouth formed an amused smile. “Yes, the infamous identity programming—clones don’t know that they are clones. Have you also heard rumors about their dying if they learn the truth?”

“I’ve heard that,” I said.

“They weren’t thinking about the works of Plato when they came up with the death reflex, but a similar idea is found in The Republic . Plato did not want mobility between his classes. I think he was most concerned about ordinary citizens trying to become warriors or rulers. Are you familiar with that?”

We had studied Plato when I was growing up in the orphanage, but I could not think at that moment. I shook my head.

“No? Plato said that if people challenged their station, you were supposed to tell them that they were made yesterday, and all that they knew was just a dream. Sounds ridiculous. It sounds a bit like the death reflex. Plato thought you could control the masses by stripping them of all that they knew with a little lie . .

. Plato’s lie.

“The Senate wanted something a little stranger. If clones saw through the lie, the Senate wanted them dead. Putting guns in the hands of a synthetic army scared them. They wanted to make sure they could shut the synthetics down if they ever saw through the lie. I was against it. A mere scrap of neural programming seems like thin protection against a danger that could potentially wipe out our entire defense. The Senate debated it in an open session.

“The hardliners won out, of course. The majority argued that renegade clones would be the greatest threat to the Republic, and they had a point. They said that once the clones realized they were not human, there would be no reason for them not to rise up. Fear of the warrior class goes all the way back to Plato, himself.

“What else do you know about clones, Corporal Harris?”

His questions were torture. “How do they die?” I asked. I could not remember my mouth ever feeling so dry.

“What kills them?” Admiral Klyber gave me a benevolent smile. “A hormone is released into their bloodstream. It stops their hearts. It’s supposed to be fast and painless.

“Do you know why Congress is afraid of its own cloned soldiers?” Klyber asked. The humor left his smile, and his gaze bored into me.

“No, sir. I don’t.” By then I felt more than dizzy; my stomach had turned. Arguments took place in my head as I considered the evidence that proved my humanity, then shot it down with questions about clone programming. I never knew my parents. Did that make me a clone?

“No, not because of a mutiny . . . because of me,” Klyber said.

“When I was a young lieutenant, I oversaw the creation of a special generation of cloned soldiers. It was done during the troubled times, Corporal Harris. Our first explorations into the central region of the galaxy ended in disaster. A fleet of explorer ships simply vanished, and everyone feared the worst. That was the only time I can ever remember when the politicians stopped talking about expansion and colonizing the galaxy.”

The words “central region” seeped through my whirling thoughts. I focused on them, considered them.

“Were you stationed with the GC Fleet, sir?” I asked.

“No,” Klyber said, putting up a hand to stop me. “I was safe on Earth, a recent graduate from Annapolis, with a promising career and some highly placed friends. My father was on the Linear Committee, Harris. I had guardian angels who kept me safe and put me on the fast track. I was assigned to oversee a special project. It was important that Congress not get wind of the project, or the Senate would have canned it. My father knew about the project, of course, but he was the only member of the Linear Committee who did.

“Morgan Atkins was the senior member of the Linear Committee at the time. The entire Republic worshipped him. Did you know that Atkins was on the Committee?”

So confused that I did not even understand Admiral Klyber’s question, I shook my head.

“Atkins was big on manifest destiny. ‘Humanity can never be safe until it conquers every inch of known space,’” Klyber said, lowering his voice in what I assumed was a parody of Atkins. “No one challenged Atkins. He single-handedly ran the Republic.

“The Galactic Central Fleet was Atkins’s idea. He wanted a fleet that was so powerful that all enemies would fall; and when Atkins called for action, by God, people jumped. The problem was that Atkins’s fleet had to be self-broadcasting. We usually sent self-broadcasting explorer ships to set up discs; but with explorer ships disappearing, he wanted a self-broadcasting fleet.”

Klyber rubbed his eyes. “God, what a nightmare. The Galactic Central Fleet was just like they say—bigger and more powerful than any fleet ever assembled. Just building the broadcasting engines cost trillions of dollars. In the end, each ship cost five times what normal ships cost.

“It took three years to build the fleet. Three years, and all of that time the military was on high alert looking for any signs of an invasion.”

Klyber stopped speaking for just a moment. His gaze seemed far away, but his eyes stayed focused on mine. “We tested for every contingency. The explorer ships could have been destroyed by some kind of broadcast malfunction, so we bounced the GC Fleet back and forth across the Orion Arm until no one knew where it was without daily updates.

“Once we were sure of the broadcast engines, we sent the fleet to explore the inner curve of the Norma Arm . . . the center of the galaxy. The ships flew near Jupiter. They initiated the self-broadcast, then they were gone. It was just like the explorer ships; we simply never heard from them again.” Klyber sat up.

“Atkins accompanied the fleet. It was his pet project.”

“I don’t understand, sir.” I said. “Atkins went with the GC Fleet?”

“My father never trusted Atkins,” said Klyber. “He had me assigned to research a new class of clones around the same time Atkins proposed his grand fleet. Congress never knew what I was doing. Atkins never knew. It was strictly a military operation.”

“Liberators,” I said.

“Liberators,” Klyber agreed. “You’ve probably heard rumors about Liberators having animal genes . . . We experimented with genes from animals, but it didn’t work. Liberator clones were not very different than earlier clones except that they were smarter and far more aggressive. We gave them a certain cunning. We made them ruthless. They needed to be ruthless. We thought we were sending them to fight an unknown enemy from the galactic core—something not human. Do you understand?”

Klyber did not pause for me to answer.

“One of the scientists came up with the idea of ideas . . .” Klyber smiled for just a moment, then the smile vanished. “Hormones. Classical conditioning. We mixed endorphins in their adrenal glands. The mixture only comes out in battle. A drug that would make the clones addicted to war. Only a scientist could come up with an idea like that, Harris. It never occurred to us military types.

“You need to understand, these clones were our last hope, and we had no idea what was out there. We were sending them into hostile space. Whatever was out there had annihilated our most massive fleet.”

“An alien race?” I asked.

“No. No aliens, just a crazy bastard politician. It turned out that Morgan Atkins was behind the whole thing. He wanted to build a new republic, with no allegiance to Earth. He was the ultimate expansionist, pushing the idea that Earth was just another planet and not the seat of man. It sounded good. It sounded poetic and freedom-loving, but anyone with an ounce of intelligence could see that his views would lead to chaos.

“Even back then, Atkins had fanatical followers. We later found out that Atkins planted men on every ship in the Galactic Central Fleet. They put poison gas in the air vents and commandeered the fleet as soon as it arrived in the inner curve. Of course we didn’t know that back on Earth. All we knew was that Atkins and his fleet were gone. We found out the truth after the Liberators arrived; but by that time, Atkins had a base, a hierarchy, and the strongest fleet in the galaxy. He didn’t know about my clones, so he wasn’t prepared.

“We sent a hundred thousand Liberators in explorer ships. Atkins’s land forces never stood a chance. Atkins and most of his men got away in their self-broadcasting fleet. That was the last anybody saw of those ships. At least it was until now.”

“I never heard any of this in school.”

“Of course not,” Klyber snapped. “This was the most classified secret in U.A. history. It was so damned classified that we backed ourselves into a corner. When communes of Atkins followers began springing up around the frontier, we couldn’t arrest them. There would have been too many questions.”

My head still spinning, I tried to understand where Admiral Klyber was taking me. That war ended forty years ago. An image came to my mind. “The sergeant over my platoon . . . Is he a Liberator?”

“Master Sergeant Tabor Shannon was in that invasion,” Klyber said. “It wasn’t really a war, not even much of a battle. Atkins’s men had no idea what they were fighting.”

Admiral Klyber took a deep breath, stood up from behind his desk, and turned to look out that viewport wall. “Do you have any other questions, Corporal?” he asked. Then, without waiting for me to respond, he turned, and added, “You’re not an orphan, Harris, you are a Liberator. A freshly minted Liberator.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Learning about my creation did not kill me. Identity-programming and the death reflex were components of modern cloning. I was a throwback, an early-production model that somehow found its way back on to the assembly line for a limited run.

“Do you understand what I am telling you?” Admiral Klyber asked me.

A few moments before, I had been wrestling to gain control of my thoughts. Suddenly I could think with absolute clarity. I felt neither sad nor confused. I nodded.

“You are a Liberator, and knowing it will not kill you.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Perhaps we should stop for the evening.” From behind his desk, Klyber stared at me suspiciously, the way I would expect a parent to examine a child who should be hurt but claims to be fine.

“I’m okay, sir,” I said.

“All the same, Corporal, we have accomplished enough for one evening.” Klyber stood up from his desk, and the meeting was over.

“It never occurred to us that we were anything but clones,” Sergeant Shannon said as he choked back his first sip of Sagittarian Crash, easily the worst-tasting drink you could find in any civilized—or uncivilized—bar. They called the stuff “Crash,” but it was really vodka made from potatoes grown in toxic soil. Congress once outlawed the stuff; but as it was the only export from an otherwise worthless colony, the lobbyists won out.

Shannon and I picked Crash for one reason—we wanted to get drunk. Crash left you numb after a few thick sips. “Damn, I hate this stuff,” Shannon said, frowning at his glass.

“You ever wonder about . . .”

Shannon stopped me. “Knowing you are a clone means never having to wonder. You don’t wonder about God—he’s your commanding officer. Good and evil are automatic. Orders are good because they come from God. I even know where I’m going after I die.” He smiled a somewhat bitter smile. “The great test tube in the sky.”

“Isn’t that blasphemous?” I asked.

“Blasphemous?” Shannon’s revelry evaporated upon my using that word. “I’ll be specked! I suppose it is.”

“I thought you were the churchgoer?” I said. “You’re the only one in the platoon who goes to services, and you’re the one Marine I would think was the least likely to attend religious services.”

“Least likely?” Shannon said, looking confused.

“You’re the only Marine on this ship who specking well knows he’s a clone. Clones don’t have souls . . . Remember, man may be able to create synthetic men, but only God can give them souls. Isn’t that what the peace-and-joy crowd is preaching these days?”

“If you are anything like me, and you are exactly like me, you don’t really give two shits about what peace and joyers are preaching.”

“I still don’t feel like going to church,” I said. “Do you believe that stuff?”

“Yeah,” Shannon said, “I just don’t know where I fit into it.”

It was only seven o’clock. Most of the men were at the mess hall eating dinner. When Shannon saw me returning to the barracks, he had suggested that we drink our meal instead. Except for the laugh lines around his eyes and his old man’s hair, Shannon looked like a man in his midtwenties in the dim light of the bar. “How old are you?” I asked. Shannon grinned. “There’s old and then there’s old. After the GC Fleet, the boys on Capitol Hill decided that they wanted kinder, gentler clones, so they opened up orphanages and raised them like pups. Now they have eighteen years to teach you good manners.

“Back in my day, you came out of the tube as a twenty-year-old. I got my first gray hairs as a ten-year-old or a thirty-year-old, depending on how you look at it. Nothing else has changed. I’ve seen my physical charts—nothing’s changed.”

“Are you the last Liberator?” I asked.

“I’d say you are,” Shannon said. “I’ve heard rumors about Liberators in the Inner SC Fleet, but you’re the first one I’ve seen. Klyber is partial to us. If there were other Liberators around, I think he’d be the one to have them.

“What I don’t understand is where you came from. Why make another Liberator after forty years? They didn’t make you by accident.”

“An experiment?” I suggested.

“Maybe Klyber ordered you up special,” Shannon said. “If it was him, he did it without telling the politicos. They hate Liberators on Capitol Hill. Whoever started you on Gobi was trying to protect you. Somebody wanted to keep you a secret as long as possible, but that went down the shitter the moment you were at a card game with Amos Crowley.”

Shannon held up his drink and stared through the glass. He swished it around. “Watch this.”

Shannon took a deep breath, then drained his glass. He shivered, and for a moment he slumped in his chair. Then he looked at the bartender, gave him an evil smile, and turned his glass upside down.

“Goddamn!” the bartender said.

“Another one,” Shannon said.

“Another one will kill you,” the bartender said.

“You try it,” Shannon said to me. “One good thing about Liberators, we don’t get shit-faced.”

I looked at my glass. In the dim light, Crash looked like murky seawater. “Drink it in one shot?” I asked.

“Kid, he’s trying to kill you,” the bartender warned.

Closing my fingers around the glass, I brought it up to my lips and paused.

“Don’t do it, kid,” the bartender warned. “You’ll pickle your brain.”

Sergeant Shannon watched me, his eyes never leaving mine. Heaving a sigh, I put the glass in front of my mouth and tipped it. The syrupy drink spilled over my bottom lip and onto my tongue, leaving a numbing tingle everywhere it touched. I swallowed quickly.

“Whoa!” I said. First my throat felt painfully frozen, then my lungs burned, and finally I felt a flash of nausea; but all of those sensations went away quickly. I looked at the bartender, smiled, and turned my glass over.

“You want another one, too?” the barkeep asked.

“No,” I said. “I really don’t.”

“Give him another,” Shannon said. Sergeant Shannon fixed the bartender with a most chilling smile. He did not glare, did not snarl, did not do anything overtly menacing, but the bartender understood the unspoken message. He looked at both of us, shook his head, then took our glasses. When he returned, he handed us our drinks. “I’ll tell the infirmary to send a doctor.”

I took my drink. “To the great test tube in the sky?”

“You kidding? They’ll melt us down and reuse us just like any other equipment.” Shannon picked up his glass. “You think you can handle it?”

I laughed. “I’m drinking it, aren’t I?” I said, and I emptied the glass in one slug. Fighting the chill and nausea, I tried to sit straight on my seat and lost my balance. I almost fell but somehow managed to catch myself.

Shannon, watching me with some amusement, said, “Rookie,” and drank his shot.

“You going for thirds?” the bartender asked.

“No!” Shannon and I answered in unison.

That night, before going to sleep, I slipped on my mediaLink shades and found an eight-thousand-word philosophical essay about the Platonic justifications for building the death reflex into clones. I barely finished the first page before I realized that the booby-trapping of clone brains meant nothing to me. Klyber’s engineers had placed different glands in my head, and I no longer cared about what might or might not have been placed in other clones’ brains. Closing the article, I noticed that there was a two-hundred-word synopsis.

Plato understood that the warrior class would envy the ruling class and that the ruling class would fear the warrior class. He sought to keep the classes in place with the most childish of lies:

Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received from us, an appearance only; in reality, during all that time they were being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured; when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their country being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the earth and their own brothers.

— The Republic

Book 3, Page 16

According to this article, Plato’s deceit is made true in that the modern-day warrior class is of synthetic origin. Further, the death reflex is shown as analogous to erasing an individual’s belief in his personal history and therefore his identity.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Captain McKay appointed me to a seven-member color guard, and I spent the next few days holding a Marine Corps flag as Bryce Klyber and Absalom Barry welcomed an endless stream of diplomats and politicians. The Senate sent a legal team to overhaul the Ezer Kri court system, and we lined up to meet them. The Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a team of detectives to hunt down any remaining Mogat sympathizers, and we lined up to meet them. Two members of the Linear Committee flew out with an army of reporters, and we lined up to meet them, too.

Every few hours, a group of VIPs arrived, and McKay sent us to hold up our colors. After five days of round-the-clock flag holding, I began to sleepwalk through the arrivals. I no longer cared who stepped down the ramp. At least, I thought I stopped caring.

The night we left Ezer Kri, McKay summoned the color guard to his office. I got the message late and was the last to arrive. When I pressed the intercom button by his door, he squawked, “Harris?”

“Sir?”

The door opened. “As I was saying, this is the big one. You have a problem, sailor?”

One of the sailors in the guard looked nervously to the other men for support. “We just received two members from the Linear Committee.”

“Speck me with a hose!” McKay yowled. “Committee members aren’t brass. They can’t send your ass to the brig, boy. They don’t even notice you. Hell, I could show up with my pants off and a flag dangling from my dick, and the only thing those committee members would notice was that the goddamned flagpole looks awfully long. If you so much as fart on this one, you’re specked for life.”

With that he dismissed the others and kept me behind. “Do you have any idea who our guest is this time?” he asked.

“No, sir,” I said.

“Admiral Che Huang from the Joint Chiefs. Are you familiar with him?”

I nodded, feeling a new knot in the pit of my gut.

“I’m going to be straight with you, Harris. I tried to get you pulled from this duty, but Admiral Klyber wants you on it. You had a conversation with Admiral Klyber a few nights ago?” McKay’s nearly clean-shaven scalp gleamed in the bright lights, but his brow formed a shadow over his eyes giving his face a skull-like appearance.

“Huang does not like clones, any clones.”

I had heard that Huang was antisynthetic. “Especially Liberators?” I guessed.

“As far as he knows, you’re extinct.” McKay stood up and put on his hat.

“Thanks for the warning,” I said.

“Don’t mention it, Harris,” McKay said as he started for the door. He turned back. “Klyber likes you. He’s a powerful man, and he knows what he’s doing; but just the same, don’t draw any attention to yourself.”

Klyber, Barry, and Olivera waited by the landing bay for Admiral Huang’s arrival. I noticed nothing unusual about Admiral Klyber or Captain Olivera, but Admiral Barry looked like a man headed for a firing squad. His face was pale, and beads of sweat shone on his forehead and scalp. He mopped that sweat with darting dabs, then crammed his handkerchief back in his blouse. Klyber looked at him and said something that I could not hear.

A red carpet ran the length of the floor, ending at the hatch through which Admiral Huang would arrive. My color guard stood at the other end of the carpet, holding flags representing the Army, the Marines, the Navy, the Air Force, the Unified Authority, the Scutum-Crux Arm, and the Central SC Fleet. We stood as still and intent as our human legs would allow us. The officer of the deck did not need to signal us to attention, we were already there.

A light over the hatch turned green, and the door slid open. Nearly one full minute passed before Admiral Che Huang of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stepped into sight.

Huang appeared to be in his midfifties. He stood around six feet tall, with square shoulders and a narrow waist. He had his cap tucked under his left arm. I could see white streaks through Huang’s thinning, brown hair. There was something about his neatly tailored uniform, or the tilt of his head, or the way he narrowed his eyes as he looked around the landing area, that suggested both breeding and contempt.

“Admiral Huang,” Admiral Klyber said as he led Barry and Olivera to the hatch. “I trust you had a pleasant trip.”

Huang stopped and stared down at the group of officers who had come to greet him. A thin smile played across his lips. “Admiral Klyber,” he said in a stiff voice. The two men shook hands. “Have you read my messages?”

“Admiral Barry and I have discussed them at length,” Klyber said. “I think you will be pleased with the plans we have made.”

“Splendid. I wish to get under way as soon as possible,” Huang said as he stepped away from the hatch. He looked around the hangar and his gaze seemed to lock on the color guard.

“We can start straightaway,” Klyber said with an easy air. Beside him, Vice Admiral Barry managed a tight smile, but the stiffness in his shoulders was unmistakable. All of the blood left his face. As the officers turned to leave the bay, Absalom Barry drifted back and walked several paces behind everybody else.

“At ease,” Captain McKay said, after the brass disappeared.

I was surprised to find Sergeant Shannon and Vince Lee talking when I returned to the barracks. They got on together professionally; but on a social basis, they did not have much use for each other. I had come to realize that Vince, possibly the first real friend I had ever had, was an antisynthetic clone. I never stopped to think about why he befriended me so quickly after we transferred to the Kamehameha

. Now that I did think about it, I decided he liked me because I did not look like every other enlisted man, no matter how subtle the difference. Later, however, I suspected that he had a special dislike for Liberators. That was why he had turned quiet around me when Shannon first landed. First he had thought I was natural-born, then, when he saw Shannon, he realized that I was not just a clone, I was a Liberator. The reason Vince and I were friends was because of a grandfather clause. He and I had already struck up a friendship when Shannon arrived. I suppose that having already struck up a friendship with me and not having any natural-borns to turn to, Lee decided I was okay. For his part, Shannon simply considered Lee an “asshole of the highest order.” Shannon called him a

“synth-hating clone” and said that his quirks were bad for morale . . . pretty idealistic talk from the platoon sergeant who swept into the Kamehameha with all of the tact of a typhoon. In this I think he was wrong about Lee. I think it was the reverse. For all of his bluster about bootstrapping his way into a commission and going into politics, I think Vince suspected the truth. I think he wanted to convince himself that he was not a clone and adopted an antisynthetic attitude as a shield because he believed it would protect him. As he well knew, confirmation about his clone origins would trigger the death reflex.

“I hear Admiral Huang is on board,” Sergeant Shannon called out to me as I entered his office. “Was that who arrived on your last color detail?”

“In the flesh,” I said.

“Goddamn,” Shannon said. “Did anybody bother to mention what he is doing here?”

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“Lee, you’re going to be in charge of the platoon for the next few days,” Shannon said. “Scrotum-Crotch Command has transferred Corporal Harris and me to a special detail for an unspecified period. Harris, why in God’s name is high command asking for us?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

“Which is it?” Shannon asked. “You don’t know, or you’re not sure?”

“Do you know why Admiral Huang is here?” Lee asked.

“Unless SC Command is pulling one sergeant and one corporal from every platoon, I’m guessing that this has something to do with our being Liberators,” Shannon said.

“You know you’re a Liberator?” Lee asked me in a loud voice that echoed across the office.

“I should have figured it out on my own when he arrived,” I said, nodding toward Shannon. “He’s the first Marine I’ve seen who was my height and shape. Admiral Klyber must have thought I was an idiot for not finding it out on my own.”

“Klyber?” Lee asked.

“He told me I was a Liberator.”

“And you didn’t die when you found out?” Lee asked.

“Holy Jeeeezus, Lee! He’s standing in front of you, isn’t he! What I want to know is why the hell an admiral is wasting time telling a corporal anything.”

“They didn’t build the death reflex into Liberators,” I said.

“Harris,” Lee said, “we need to talk.”

“It’s going to have to wait,” Shannon said. “We’re expected at Fleet Command.” He paused and considered things. “I can’t see anything good coming out of a visit with Admiral Huang,” he said in a hushed voice, almost a whisper.

“I get the feeling that Klyber is looking out for us,” I said.

“That’s how I read it,” Shannon agreed.

“Can Klyber protect you from the Joint Chiefs?” Lee sounded concerned. “I mean, Huang is as high as they go in the military.”

“If the intel I hear about Klyber is true, his strings go a lot higher than military connections,” Shannon said. He turned to me. “Pack up. We’re supposed to report to the Command deck within the hour.”

“This lift doesn’t seem secure, does it?” Sergeant Shannon asked, as we entered the elevator to the SC

Command deck. “I used to wonder why there were no guards.” He pointed to narrow rows of vents lining the ceiling and floor. “You know what those are for?”

“Oxygen?” I guessed.

“Noxium gas,” Shannon corrected me. “Last time I was assigned to the Kamehameha a disgruntled swabbie tried to make an unscheduled visit to Command, and I got to clean up afterward. He’d only been dead for a couple of minutes when we got here, but that was long enough. His arms and legs turned to jelly and squished through our fingers when we tried to lift him. We ended up washing him out with a steam hose.”

The door to the lift opened, and I was glad to step out. We entered the large, unfinished lobby, and one of Klyber’s aides led us to the conference room. The curved panels of the entryway slid open, and the aide motioned us in.

Admiral Huang, Vice Admiral Barry, and Admiral Klyber sat equidistant from each other around the round conference table. Huang turned to glance at us as we entered the conference room. He paused, and his quick glance lengthened into an angry stare. “The Senate has outlawed your bastard clones, Admiral Klyber.”

“The Senate outlawed the creation of new Liberators,” Klyber corrected. “Nothing was said about Liberators that already existed. Sergeant Shannon has served with distinction under my command since the Galactic Central War.”

“The other one looks new,” Huang snapped.

“He has distinguished himself in combat,” Klyber said. “He has been a model Marine.”

Huang’s eyes hardened as he focused on me. I could feel the weight of his stare and sensed the heat of his anger. “These are the men you have selected?”

“Sergeant Shannon, perhaps you and Corporal Harris can give us a moment?” Admiral Klyber said. Shannon led me out of the conference room. We stood just outside the door, waiting for Klyber to summon our return. “That Huang is a prick,” I said after a moment.

“Whatever he is here for, Klyber wants us involved, and Huang wants us out,” Shannon said. The panels slid open, and the aide who had originally brought us to the room led us back in. “Sergeant, a squad of military police will arrive on deck momentarily. Please see that they escort Vice Admiral Barry to his quarters and detain him there,” Huang said. As he spoke, I saw Absalom Barry gasping for air. His jaw hung slack, his eyes stared vacantly ahead, and he looked as if he might have a heart attack on the spot.

Huang sneered. “I think I may have finally found a good use for your clones, Klyber; they’ll make good jailers.” The room remained utterly silent until four MPs arrived. “Rabid clones and a half ton fleet commander . . . it’s quite a fleet you’ve got here.”

The MPs—Navy, not Marines—had their orders when they arrived. They surrounded Barry, who slowly rose to his feet and followed them out of the conference room, his egg-shaped head bobbing as he walked.

“That was wasteful,” Klyber said. “Barry may not have . . .”

“We needlessly lost a frigate and an entire platoon,” Huang interrupted. “The Joint Chiefs have ordered a board of inquiry. Until Barry’s court-martial is complete, I suggest that you steer clear of him, Admiral Klyber.”

“Barry acted properly,” Klyber answered, his voice cold, his emotions still under control.

“The secretaries of the Army and Air Force disagree,” Huang shot back. Shannon and I followed Barry and the MPs out of the conference room. The panels closed behind us, sealing off the conversation.

“Do you think Huang came all the way from Earth for this?” I asked Shannon, as we waited outside the conference room for the third time that day. “He didn’t come all this way just to arrest Barry?”

“No.” Shannon smiled. “He didn’t come out to Scrotum-Crotch just to arrest Barry. That was just a bonus.”

The aide led us in to the conference room for the third time. This time Captain McKay sat with Klyber, and Hurricane Huang was not to be found.

“Sergeant Shannon, this is not your first tour aboard the Kamehameha ?” Klyber asked.

“No, sir,” Shannon answered. “I spent four years on this ship.”

“I see.” With Huang gone, Klyber took on an informal tone. He pointed to two chairs and had us sit down. “My first command was on this ship, more than twenty years ago, and she was already looking old. I thought it was a demotion at the time. I later found out that every secretary of the Navy for the last fifty years served on this ship. All but one—and that one wants to mothball the ship and retire the name.”

With his icy gray eyes and his all-consuming intensity, Admiral Klyber could not hide his disapproval. He smiled, but his eyes still looked tired and angry. “Barring the further arrest of key commanding officers, I think we should discuss your mission.” Klyber looked back to where Gaylan McKay sat. “Are you ready, Captain?”

There was an unmistakable familiarity between McKay and Klyber. They did not act like friends, but I heard the patient tone of a mentor in Klyber’s voice. Captain McKay walked toward the wall with the conference monitors. The room darkened, and the image of a dark green planet appeared on one of the screens. “This is Ronan Minor,” McKay began. “It is a stage three planet.”

“Stage three planets” were seeded planets that were nearly ready for habitation. By the time they reached stage three, they had a detoxified atmosphere, stabilized gravity, and oxygen-producing rain forests. After twenty years at stage three, planets were, according to U.A. scientists, usually considered ready for colonization. Smugglers were not as patient. They often used stage three planets as bases for their operations.

“You may have been wondering why we have been favored by a visit from Admiral Huang,” Klyber interrupted. “Here is your answer.”

The planet disappeared from the screen and was replaced by the image of a man with a neatly trimmed, white beard. “Recognize him, Harris?” McKay asked.

“Crowley,” I said.

“General Amos Crowley,” McKay said. “How about these men?”

The picture switched, and we saw a video of three men holding a friendly conversation in what looked like a private living room. One of the men sat on a plush chair—Crowley. The other two, whom I did not recognize, sat on a sofa. The camera closed in on Crowley, then panned the others. When the camera reached the third man, the image froze, showing a slender man with dark skin and dark eyes.

“This is Warren Atkins.”

“You’ve heard of his famous father,” Klyber said. “Considering recent events on Ezer Kri, we were more than curious when Fleet Intelligence intercepted this video feed. Until now, we had no proof of a link between Atkins and Crowley.”

“How do we know this was shot on Ronan Minor, sir?” Shannon asked.

“Good question,” McKay said. He allowed the video to resume at a slowed speed. As the camera faded back to take in all three men, a window appeared along the right edge of the screen. McKay stopped the feed. He approached the screen and pointed to the window. “At present, the Department of Reclamation has thirty-five seeded planet projects in the Scutum-Crux Arm. Of those, only twelve are at stage three.”

“Admiral Huang came all the way out here to oversee a mission with one-in-twelve odds?” Shannon asked.

“Not likely,” McKay agreed. “Intelligence was able to lift a serial number off that climate generator.”

“Not meaning to show the captain any disrespect, but is there any chance that they meant for us to intercept this file and locate the planet?” Shannon asked.

“You’re asking if this is a trap?” McKay asked. “It may be a trap.”

“Admiral Huang and I have discussed that possibility,” Admiral Klyber said. “Sergeant, I should think that you above all people would recognize the importance of capturing Atkins.”

“Find Atkins, and you find the GC Fleet,” Shannon agreed.

“Something like that,” Klyber said, looking not at us but at the picture of Warren Atkins on the monitor.

“The Navy has improved its ship designs since launching the Galactic Central Fleet. Atkins beat a frigate with three dreadnoughts, hardly something to crow about. Had he run into a battleship or a carrier, the outcome would have been different.”

I did not want to say anything, but I was not sure that I agreed. The attack on the Chayio had been smart and well executed. Somebody had analyzed our blockade and found a weakness.

“Are we sending a platoon to Ronan Minor, sir?” Shannon asked.

“Huang isn’t taking any chances on this one,” McKay said. “He brought a team of SEALs.”

Shannon’s lips broke into a sardonic grin. He looked from side to side as if hoping to see if the rest of us had caught the hidden punch line of a bad joke.

“Is something funny, Sergeant?” McKay asked.

“I know what our sergeant is thinking,” Klyber said. “You are correct, Sergeant Shannon, but it cannot be helped.

“For now I suggest that you go get some rest. We’ll be in position around Ronan Minor in five hours. Your transport leaves at 0500.”

“Okay, what did I miss?” I asked, as we rode the elevator down.

Shannon smiled that same sardonic smile. “Huang has SEALs. Why do you think he asked Admiral Klyber for a couple of Marines?”

I thought about this for a moment. “I have no idea,” I said, shaking my head.

“He’s covering his ass,” Shannon said. “If we run into an enemy army, he can say we led them into a trap. If Crowley and Atkins get away, he’ll report that we specked the goddamned mission. And that, Corporal Harris, is why they call out the shit-kicking Marines.”

There was something of the poet in Sergeant Shannon.

If Crowley and Atkins were down there, they did not have radar. Radar was a luxury fugitives could not afford. The Navy could detect a radar field from thousands of miles away. Having radar would have warned them we were coming, but it would also have confirmed for us that they were there. Huang’s orders directed us to land a full day’s hike from Atkins’s camp so that no one would see us coming. We would drop in the morning, cut our way through the jungle, and surprise the enemy at dusk. I liked the plan’s simplicity, but I was nervous about working with SEALs. Having only been on active duty for one year, I had never seen SEALs in action. All I knew about them was that they were not clones, nor were they, unlike the other officers, the errant sons of Earth-based politicians. SEALs were volunteers. Adventurous young men from around the galaxy applied to join. Only the absolute best were admitted into SEAL training school, and less than half of those who entered the school graduated.

The SEALs were already aboard the AT when Sergeant Shannon and I walked up the ramp into the kettle. This was the first time I had ever gone out with a team composed of all natural-born soldiers, and I was curious to get a look at them. Most of them were on the short side—between five-foot-six and five-foot-ten—with taut builds, clean-shaven heads, and alert eyes. As we boarded, they became quiet and watched us warily.

The SEALs traveled light. We had a twenty-mile hike from the drop site to the target zone. If we got bogged down in the jungle, Huang wanted us to stop for the night rather than travel blind. Shannon and I had brought packs. The only supplies the SEALs carried were what they could wear on their belts. The rear of the kettle closed as our pilot prepared to take off. Hearing the hiss of the lifts, I placed my helmet on the bench beside me and rested my elbow on it. Shannon, who sat across the floor from me, continued to wear his.

As we rumbled out of the landing bay of the Kamehameha , the SEALs began talking quietly among themselves. They had clearly worked together before and spoke nostalgically about planets they had raided. I could not see into Shannon’s helmet, but I got the feeling he enjoyed listening to them. There had only been one real war in the last hundred years, and Tabor Shannon was the only man on our mission who was old enough to have fought in it.

One of the SEALs pulled a cigar from his vest pocket. As he lit it, I noticed a round insignia brantooed on his forearm. In the quick glimpse that I got, I saw the whirlpool pattern of the Milky Way with each of its arms stained a different color.

The brantoo process involved melting a pattern into the skin, then staining the burn with alcohol-based dyes. I knew plenty of Marines with tattoos. Some of the more rugged veterans around the Kamehameha had brantoos, but they were small, maybe the size of a coin, and single-colored. To make these brantoos, these SEALs would have suffered through the tinting process six or seven times. I wanted to ask the SEAL if he was awake when he got the brantoo, but I already knew the answer. The SEAL looked at me. “See something interesting?” he said, in a way that was neither aggressive nor friendly.

“I noticed your brantoo,” I said.

With a slight laugh, he rolled back his sleeve and showed me his arm. “We all have one.”

I looked more closely. The insignia showed the Milky Way with red, yellow, blue, green, orange, and black arms. A banner over the galaxy said “NAVY SEALS.” A banner under the galaxy said “THE

FINAL SOLUTION.”

Shannon removed his helmet, and said, “Let’s test out your interLink.”

I put my helmet on.

“They’re not so tough,” Shannon said over the interLink. “Don’t let that brantoo shit fool you.”

“It has six tints,” I said.

“Keep focused, Harris.”

“Six,” I said.

“Harris, do you know why Admiral Huang got so angry when he saw us?” Shannon interrupted.

“Years of constipation?” I asked.

“He wanted Marines he could push around . . . grunts he could intimidate. He thought Klyber would give him a couple of normal jarheads. Instead, he got us.”

“You think so?” I asked.

“Take my word for it, Harris. We’re the scariest friggin’ weapon in the Unified Authority arsenal.”

I glanced at the SEAL who had shown me his brantoo. Nothing bound him to me, not even humanity. He was natural, I was synthetic. It might have been psychosomatic; but ever since my conversation with Klyber, I felt more and more disconnected from everyone around me. Was this untethering the reason the Linear Committee resorted to Plato’s lie?

The SEALs passed small pots of green and black face paint among themselves. Dipping their fingers in the pots, they drew stripes and patterns over their faces until they covered all of their skin. The walls of the transport shook as we entered the atmosphere. A few minutes later, a light flashed signaling that we had neared the drop zone. As we gathered our gear, Admiral Huang appeared on the overhead monitor. He spoke to the SEALs for a moment, then turned his attention to Shannon and me.

“You have been brought on this mission as a formality. You will do nothing unless so ordered by my men. If you get in the way, I will hold you personally responsible for the failure of this mission.”

“Yes, sir,” Shannon and I intoned, in perfect sync.

Huang turned back to his SEALs. “We need information, not corpses. I want them alive.” With that, Huang saluted, and the signal ended.

Technicians aboard the Kamehameha had launched a surveillance satellite to view Ronan Minor long before our AT launched. They made a significant discovery—one part of the planet was infested with rats. The vermin offered an important confirmation. At that point in the seeded planet cycle, Ronan Minor should only have had plant life. Somebody had landed, and rats had escaped into a world with no predators and plenty of food.

As we left the ship, I noticed how well the SEALs blended into the jungle. The paint on their hands and faces, which looked so ridiculous in the all-metal environment of the armored transport, matched the leaves and shades of the jungle. We had learned about camouflage back at the orphanage, of course, but I had never seen it firsthand. The SEALs filed out in a column, with Shannon and me trailing a few yards behind.

My armor shielded me from the heat. I could see the way the humidity affected the SEALs. Underarm stains began to show through their uniforms within minutes of leaving the kettle. Drops of perspiration rolled down the oil-based paint on their faces.

“Those poor boys look uncomfortable.” Shannon’s voice oozed with mock empathy. Though the SEALs used a proprietary channel to communicate with their headsets, I located a faint echo of their chatter on the interLink. They did not speak much, and the few crackling words I understood were all business. “I get the feeling that they’re not thinking about the heat,” I said. When McKay first told us we would have a thirty-mile hike through the jungle, I envisioned one long, hot afternoon. The foliage grew thicker than I had imagined, and the SEALs cut ahead slowly, careful not to make unnecessary noise. Instead of trotting twelve-minute miles, we barely traveled two miles per hour. Since Ronan Minor, a small planet with a fast rotation, had sixteen-hour days, we were going camping, like it or not. We pushed to within four miles of the target zone, then stopped for the night. When one of the SEALs told us that Shannon and I had drawn guard duty, I wasn’t surprised. With heat vision and night-for-day lenses in our visors, we were the best choice to stand guard, but I could not help feeling snubbed. They were illustrious SEALs, and we were clones. While the rest of the team rested, Shannon and I sat on opposite ends of the camp.

About an hour after I settled into a nook beside a fern-covered tree, Shannon hailed me over the interLink. “See anything, Harris?” he asked, from the opposite end of the camp.

“Rats,” I said. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Using heat vision, I could see the rats’ heat signature through the foliage. They looked like bright red cartoons with even brighter yellow coronas as they scampered back and forth along the ground.

“Do you see anything else?” Shannon asked.

“Negative,” I said. “Am I missing something?”

“Look due west, all the way to the horizon. Keep using your heat vision.”

We were at the top of a low hill, just a swell in the terrain really. The jungle spread in front of me, and I could see above most of the growth. Off in the distance I saw the dark red silhouette of the oxygen generator. Only the tops of its stacks were giving off heat.

“The generator,” I said. “I missed it before.”

“It’s been shut down,” Shannon said. “Stage three seeding—the plant life takes over the oxygen production at this point.”

Thanks to my heat vision, I saw the aura of a rat running in my direction. I could not shoot it, of course. The noise would give us away. If the bastard came any closer, however, I was not above stomping it with my boot.

“Now look north of the generator. See anything?”

I looked but saw nothing. “This isn’t some kind of trick question is it?”

Shannon laughed. “Use your heat vision. Look at the forest about one mile north of the generator.”

“I still . . .” But I understood what he wanted me to see. Most of the forest looked velvety black through my visor, but there was a perfectly circular patch with a faint purple tinge. You had to look hard to see it, but it was there. “The Mogats?”

“The site’s gone cold,” Shannon said. “My guess is that they’ve been gone for months.”

I stared down at the zone. Little yellow filaments of light dodged in and out. “No people,” I said, “but there are plenty of rats.”

“The happy little bastards have the planet all to themselves,” Shannon said. “Maybe the SEALs will capture one. I would hate to see them go home empty-handed.”

“Do we tell them that the target zone is cold?” I asked.

“Why ruin their night?” Shannon asked.

If we found the compound crawling with people, the plan was to radio the Kamehameha for backup. We did not make a contingency plan for finding it overrun by rats.

Night on Ronan Minor lasted nine hours, and the SEALs resumed their march an hour before sunup. Feeling a bit fuzzy-headed, I had a little trouble keeping up with them. Pushing through the unchecked vines and broad-leaved foliage was slow work. The air was thick as steam. Condensation formed outside my visor. I wondered how the SEALs managed to breathe.

The rats were not the only residents of Ronan Minor; the planet had a healthy cockroach population as well. We didn’t run into many of them on the first day, but as we got closer to the Atkins compound, we saw them clinging to tree trunks and flying rather clumsily through the air. Several of them crashed into my helmet and fell to the ground. These were big roaches, maybe three inches long, with copper-colored bodies. I started when one crawled across the front of my visor. Nobody but Shannon noticed, but I had to put up with him laughing at me over the interLink for the next two miles.

We climbed over a rise and found the edge of the target. The entire site lay hidden under layers of camouflage netting.

“Sergeant”—the team leader motioned for Shannon to come—“do you have heat vision?”

“The compound is empty,” Shannon said in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Son of a—Shit!” the SEAL said.

“You gonna tell him you scanned it last night?” I whispered over the interLink.

“Shut up, Harris,” Shannon hissed.

“Any chance there is somebody hiding inside?” the SEAL asked.

“I doubt it. All of the machinery is turned off. If they had machinery going, I would pick up a heat signature from an engine or a generator.”

By that time the entire team had gathered around Shannon and the SEAL leader. “We’re still going in,”

said the SEAL. “Sergeant, you and the corporal wait out here.”

Shannon saluted and slung his rifle over his shoulder. He turned to me, and said, “Let’s just keep out of their way.” We found a shaded spot overlooking the compound and sat and watched as the SEALS

crawled face-first, rifles ready, under the edge of the camouflage nets. I switched to heat vision and watched the SEALs’ orange-and-yellow profiles through the netting. I lost track of them once they entered the buildings.

“Think they’ll find anything?” I asked.

“Like what?” Shannon asked.

I did not have an answer. I continued to scan the compound with my heat-vision lens. Every so often I spied a SEAL dashing between buildings, but those glimpses were rare. “They’re amazing,” I said to myself, forgetting that Sergeant Shannon would hear me.

“Snap out of it, Harris,” Shannon said. “They’re no big deal. The only thing they have done is storm an abandoned compound, and you’re already specking your armor. You watch, they’re going to come up empty-handed, and Huang will blame us.”

The SEALs spent hours searching the compound, giving me hours to consider Shannon’s prediction. Roaches swarmed the plants around me, and I distracted myself by crunching some of them with the heel of my boot. The sun began to set in the distance, and the roaches became notably more aggressive. One marched right up to where Shannon was sitting, then tumbled onto its back when it tried to crawl over the top of his leg. He looked over and crushed it with his fist.

“So who is the dominant species,” I joked, “the rats or the roaches?”

“The goddamned Mogats,” Shannon answered. “They were the only speckers with enough sense to get off this rock.”

Up ahead, I saw movement in the camouflage covering and switched to heat vision in time to see the first of the SEALs rolling out from under the edge of the net. Ten more were nearby.

“Look who’s back,” Shannon said a split second before the explosion. I just had time to take in the irony in his voice, then the very air around us seemed to turn white, activating the polarizing lenses in my visor. The explosion cut through the jungle in a wave. Its concussion knocked me flat on my back, but I quickly climbed back to my feet.

“GODDAMN!” Shannon yelled as he sprinted toward the clearing. I ran after him, rifle at the ready for no particular reason.

“Harris, find the ones who made it out. I’m going under the net to look for survivors.”

There was no net, not where we were standing. Shreds of flaming camouflage netting floated down from the sky for as far as I could see. I saw Shannon running into the heart of the flames, dropping down a waist-high crater.

One of the SEALs lay with his back wrapped around the trunk of a tree at an impossible angle. I threw my helmet off and ran over to him. He was already dead.

Another SEAL lay on his stomach a few feet away. As I ran to him, I saw a streamer of flaming camouflage float over his shoulder. Brushing it away, I turned the man on his back. He was alive, but barely. A shard of metal the size of my hand was buried in his throat. Blood poured out of the wound. He would die in a moment no matter what I did for him. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to yell, “What happened here? What the hell did you do?”

Shannon was wasting his time looking for survivors. Not even the rats and the roaches would have survived that explosion. The only survivors were the Mogats. “They were the only speckers with enough sense to get off this rock.”