One of the men in Lee’s honor guard climbed into the Starliner and shouted, “General on deck!”
Freeman shot him. His body slid down the ramp and landed just about where the other three bodies had landed. Lee looked down at the dead man with a bemused expression.
“I don’t remember inviting anyone to come aboard,” I yelled.
Lee smiled, nodded to his guard, and started up the ramp. “Permission to come aboard?” he yelled. He had a sardonic tone.
“You know what, Lee,” I answered, “I think I’ll meet you down there. I could use a little fresh air.”
Ray, pulling the pin from a grenade, sat down in the copilot’s seat. I walked across the cabin and said, “Archie, do you want to come with me?”
He nodded and we headed down the ramp.
The Vince Lee I knew would never have let his hair grow beyond regulation. He was the ideal image of a Marine with his powerful physique. The man was fanatical about bodybuilding, and not just bodybuilding, but old-style weightlifting.
As Archie and I came down the ramp, I saw the new Vince Lee. This man had hair over the tops of his ears. He had the same glassy-eyed look as the Marine who led the raid. He also had the same recently-starved look about his face. His skin was sallow. He had large dark pockets under the eyes. He also had a few days’ stubble on his cheeks.
“Hello, Wayson,” he said with no enthusiasm as I approached. Then his sneer broke and he smiled. “You’re looking good for a dead guy.” He did not reach to shake hands or salute.
“General Lee?” I asked.
“Let’s see. Two years back I heard you died. A couple of weeks ago somebody told me that you made colonel. I also heard you went AWOL. And here you are alive and well, and trespassing on Unified Authority territory out of uniform. Good men died defending this planet.” His eyes narrowed into slits, then he smiled and his face relaxed. “Give me your ship and we’ll forget you were here.”
“You’ll just fly off and pretend you never saw me?” I asked.
“Something like that,” Lee said.
Behind him, Lee’s entourage stood in a single row. They did not stand at attention, and they whispered among themselves. They all had Vince Lee’s face, though none of them had his muscular physique.
A moment passed, both silent and heavy. “What does ‘king of clones’ mean?” Archie asked.
Vince laughed. “You noticed that, did you? I’m glad.” He turned to me. “I wanted to make sure that you saw it, too. Let’s go for a walk, Wayson. How does that sound?”
“You mind if Archie comes along?” I asked. Vince should have known Archie from the first time the Grant visited the planet.
“Just you and me,” Lee said.
“Isn’t that how they used to kill political prisoners? They’d take them out in the woods and shoot them. You still have a transport filled with Marines out there, don’t you?”
“I guess I do,” said Lee.
I turned to look at Archie. “It might be safer if you wait in the ship.”
He nodded.
“Lock it up until I come back,” I said.
“Glad to see that we trust each other, old friend,” Lee said.
“Semper Fi Marine.” I answered.
Lee laughed. At least his guards did not follow us as we went into the woods.
We crossed into the woods. These were not the same woods we had marched through before the great battle, but they had the same tall trees. Scattered rays of light penetrated the canopy of leaves and needles forty feet above us. The woods were dark and shadowy, and the light formed distinct shafts that slanted here and there.
During our march to the valley that Archie Freeman called “Armageddon,” snipers picked off our scouts and officers. I did not forget this as we walked through a dim glade.
“What happened?” Lee asked. “One moment I heard there was a big naval battle near Earth. I heard they sent their entire fleet, but I figured the Doctrinaire would take care of all that. Then the Network went dark.”
“That just about describes the whole fight,” I said. “The Doctrinaire broadcasted in, and the Mogats zapped it. They sent some ships to shoot the Mars broadcast discs, and the Network went dark, just like you said.
“Vince, I was there. Huang sent me to infiltrate their fleet, and they caught me. I was in the brig on Halverson’s command ship.”
“Halverson? Rear Admiral Halverson?”
“He was the one who killed Klyber,” I said. “He defected.”
“Shit,” Lee hissed. “What happens if somebody starts up the Mars broadcast station again? Will the Unified Authority come back to life?”
“You make it sound so easy,” I said. “The Confederates have their whole fleet there, last I heard. That was over five hundred ships.
“I haven’t seen the station, but I’m guessing that they destroyed the discs. That would be a hell of a build job. You’d have to start from scratch.”
“Sounds grim,” Lee said. “Halverson defected? I served under him. I can’t believe he would do that. No wonder they beat us, he and Klyber wrote out the whole playbook together.”
Vince’s sanity seemed to come in and out in waves. He had lucid moments when he acted and sounded like the Corporal Vince Lee with whom I had served. There were also moments when he could not stand still, when his eyes darted in every direction as if we were in a frenzy, and when he cackled loudly at nothing in particular.
This was a lucid moment. We walked together silently as he digested what I had just told him.
“So what does ‘king of clones’ mean?” I asked
“You, of all people, should not have to ask,” Lee said.
“You mean it’s me?” I asked.
“Well, it was you. Now it’s me. Now I am the king of clones.”
The trunks of the trees around us were about fifteen feet in diameter. The leaves overhead were a mixture of green and red. I saw birds and scampering animals in the branches above us.
“You might have been the greatest hero the Corps ever knew,” Lee said. “I mean, the battle on Little Man, and Hubble …and when you killed that SEAL clone in Hawaii. I think that was the best one. The only problem is that except for us, no one ever heard about it.
“You know what was even better than that, Wayson? You remember how you found out you were a clone and it didn’t even phase you? God I envied you! You were the specking perfect Marine. Nothing could kill you, nothing could stop you. Not even the goddamned death reflex.
“Me, I was just another general-issue clone. You were a specking Liberator.”
I stopped.
“Yeah, I know I’m a clone. Everyone on my ship is a clone. It’s the only all-clone crew in the history of Unified Authority.”
“What about the …”
“The death reflex?” Lee interrupted. He did an expert job of steering the conversation. “Interesting thing. Once the Network went dark, the natural-borns began to panic. I don’t know if you knew this, but I always sort of suspected I was a clone.”
“I knew,” I said.
Lee cackled, and I regretted admitting it.
“The officers were in a panic. You remember Captain Pollard? You met him on the way to Ravenwood. Remember, that was the place where you supposedly died?” No sign of sanity remained in Lee’s voice by this time.
“Pollard really lost it. He parked our ship next to that broadcast station and he wanted to just sit there until it switched on again. I told him he was dreaming …that thing wasn’t ever coming back online. We waited, and waited, and waited. Everyone could tell that it wasn’t coming back …at least the clones could.
“Pollard said I became worse every day …”
“Worse?” I asked.
“He used the word unhinged ,” Lee said.
“Because of the waiting?” I asked.