Already unbuttoning my shirt, I stepped into the locker room and did not like what I saw. Somebody had switched off the lights, and the green glow from the emergency exit sign stood out against the darkness. Pale light spilled out from the door of the shower room.
“Did you know that you are a fugitive from the law, Harris?” a familiar voice asked as I closed the door. That voice combined with the dark atmosphere sent a shiver down my spine. “Ever heard of the Elite Conscription Act?”
I had my shirt off and did not pause before unbuckling my belt and starting on my pants. If that voice belonged to the man I thought it belonged to, I preferred the lights off. “Can’t say that I have,” I said.
“It’s brand-new; Congress just enacted it. It gives all four branches of the military the right to call men back to active duty whether they want to go back or not. The Linear Committee signed it into law without the usual fanfare. I guess ‘Wild Bill’ didn’t want people asking questions about why the military needs to recall retired servicemen,” he said.
“Nope,” I said, “never heard of it.”
“The ECA is not the kind of thing that the average citizen needs to know about.”
“I’m an average citizen,” I said. “Maybe I don’t need to know about it.”
“You were an average citizen. As of midnight tonight, you will be a first lieutenant in the U.A. Marines. That means you need to know about it,” Illych said.
Emerson Illych was a military clone. He was not your standard government-issue military clone, the kind that had a death reflex if they found out they were synthetic; but he was not a Liberator, either. He was a Special Operations clone, a limited make minted specifically for the Navy SEALs. His kind could slip in and out of an enemy stronghold without leaving a trace other than the bodies they left in their wake. Illych and I were friendly, having fought in more than one campaign together.
“So now I’m elite?”
“Don’t get too jazzed about it,” Illych said. “All it takes to be ‘elite’ is battle experience and a pulse.”
Considering the last battle I had fought in, the one where the Navy left sixty thousand Marines on a planet to die, I considered myself elite after a fashion. Illych and I stood there in a silent stalemate for a moment.
Under other circumstances I might have turned on the lights, but Illych and his brew looked better in the dark. They were built for stealth work and combat at close quarters. A thick and protective bone ridge ran along the front of their skulls, just under the eyebrows. It gave their faces a Neanderthal aspect.
The first time I came to Sad Sam’s Palace, I was a naïve Marine, and I got suckered into a fight with a SEAL like Illych. The man could have killed me, but he’d slipped up and given me a break, opening the door for me to beat him to death instead. That was four years ago. I’d become less humane over the years.
“When did you SEALs start playing messenger boy?”
By this time I had stripped to my fighting trunks. It was just a question of waiting for the last fight to end so I could head out to defend my title. A moment later there was a knock on the door. “Harris, you ready?” one of the guards asked.
“I volunteered. I even took leave to come here. This is a historic event—your last fight at the Palace,” Illych said.
“Just like that? They pass a new law, and poof, I’m recalled? I thought Mooreland didn’t want me in his Corps.”
“Mooreland isn’t in charge anymore,” Illych said. “He was killed in action on Hubble.”
“Hubble?” I asked. I had fought there once. The Unified Authority did not maintain a settlement on that godforsaken rock.
“Hubble,” Illych said. “The aliens he said didn’t exist killed him and his division.”
“No shit.” I was stunned but not saddened. Mooreland was an asshole. The men who died with him were just clones. I was just a clone, too; but I had had the good sense to get out of the service. I closed my locker and reached for the door. “I’m coming,” I yelled to the guard outside.
“You know, the aliens that you saw …the ones that don’t exist, they’re taking over the galaxy. At least we think it’s them. No one has seen them and lived. No one but you.”
“So it’s begun?” My hand dropped from the door. I stood there in the dark, chilling images flashing through my brain. I saw the Mogat planet, thousands of Marines dying in the dark, and the weird light spreading over the city. I thought of the alien and about the hearing in which Brallier and Mooreland crucified me.
“Harris, you coming?” the guard called from outside.
“It’s more than begun, Harris. It’s in full swing.”
I let those words penetrate me and felt a strange numbness. I had always known the war was coming, and now it was here. These aliens would certainly kill everyone; but from my point of view, they did not seem any more treacherous than the clone-hating officers I had served under. I had resigned myself to the idea that I would die whether I fought or not. The Unified Authority could not stand up to this new threat. If I enlisted, I would die in battle. If I did not enlist, I would die in the civilian onslaught. Given a choice, I had originally decided that I would rather die like a sheep than give my life protecting the people who had betrayed me so many times in the past. But now that the war had become a reality, I had second thoughts.
“Harris?” the guard called from outside the door.
“Coming,” I said.
“Don’t get hurt,” Illych said as I opened the door. “You’re government property now. There are laws against damaging government property.”
CHAPTER TWO
Sanity never counted for much at Sad Sam’s Palace. The fighters I faced seldom scared me as much as the crowds screaming themselves hoarse from the bleachers and balconies lining the cavernous walls. Bright lights blazed down from the ceiling during interludes between fights. Once the announcer began calling the match, the crew doused the main lights and followed the fighters into the ring with spotlights.
While the main lights still cooked, I caught a glimpse around the arena. Friday night fights always attracted a crowd, but this …The audience sat so packed together they seemed to form a carpet. The loud cheering left a ringing in my ears.
Scouting the tables closest to the ring, I saw Marines in Charlie service uniforms. Some wore armbands identifying them as military police.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer began. I mused that neither ladies nor gentlemen would come to see this bloody spectacle.
“…Sad Sam’s Palace welcomes you to our main event.”
Tonight’s sacrifice had already entered the ring. He stood beside the announcer, rolling his shoulders and shaking his head. The guy was short. His muscled arms hung slack by his sides, slightly bent at the elbows like parenthesis marks on either side of his body. He was barrel-chested, with a solid slab for a stomach. The guy looked vaguely familiar; I probably had given him a beating sometime back.
The air in the Palace felt hot, and the atmosphere was electric. As I stepped onto the floor, a man to my right accidentally splashed beer on me. He stood screaming at the tops of his lungs, his voice raw, and he waved his half-gallon-sized paper cup of beer in the air like a baby shaking a rattle. Two security guards walked ahead of me, clearing a path through crowds that had jumped to their feet.
“Our challenger, weighing in at 227 pounds, your Sad Sam’s Iron Man champion of the evening, Thomas Monty!”
I heard screaming and pounding. Men jumped up and down like children pitching a tantrum, but no one could seriously believe this stiff stood a chance. He was just another Christian being fed to the clone lion. The lights suddenly cut out, leaving the entire arena dark except for the blazing lights above the ring and a spotlight that followed me. The floor quieted.