Read Online The Clone Redemption by Steven L. Kent - Free Book Online

though he spoke softly, his voice had a thunderlike rumble. The voice and the eyes were intimidating, but not as intimidating as the implicit threat of his enormous arms and chest.
    Freeman sat silent for a moment, then he said, “You’re going to need Sweetwater and Breeze if you’re planning to evacuate planets.”
    â€œI’m not giving you our broadcast codes,” I said.
    Freeman’s expression did not change. He did not smile or snarl or do anything threatening. He simply spoke in a quiet voice as he asked, “Are you saying that the Enlisted Man’s Empire is going to abandon its planets and citizens?”
    Oh, shit, I thought. With that simple question, he had served notice. If the Enlisted Man’s Empire was no more committed to saving lives than the Unified Authority, his loyalties might shift.
    I could have shot him, of course. We were on the Churchill , an E.M.N. fighter carrier. I had thousands of sailors and Marines at my disposal. Even the mighty Ray Freeman would not escape if I sounded the alarm ... maybe. I did not want him as an enemy, and he made a powerful ally.
    I weighed all of the possibilities in my mind, then I smiled, and said, “We won’t have much of an empire if we let everybody die.”
    The compromise was obvious. Freeman probably expected it from the start. He said, “The computer stays with me. When we need to contact Sweetwater, I control the computer, and you control the broadcast access.”
    I was the commanding officer of the largest navy in the galaxy, and he was nothing more than a mercenary, but he had just proposed an equal partnership. I thought about it for a second, and said, “I can live with that.”
    Â 
    Freeman and I sat side by side in a conference room on the Churchill . Freeman’s little communications computer, now jacked into the ship’s communications network, sat on the table between us.
    Freeman toyed with the links going to his computer, and asked, “What time is it?”
    I looked over at the wall and saw what Freeman already knew. “01:00 STC,” I said. STC was short for “Space Travel Clock,” the twenty-four-hour clock used for synchronized space travel.
    â€œThey’re asleep,” he said.
    As nothing more than sophisticated computer animations, Sweetwater and Breeze should have been able to work around the clock; but they had been programmed to eat, sleep, and shit. They didn’t know they were dead. No longer needing sleep might tip them off to their virtual state; and if they learned they were virtual, no one could predict how they might react. They might go into a depression or refuse to work.
    If some virtual lab assistant answered our call, he’d undoubtedly warn the Unifieds that we had broken into their system. “Maybe we should wait until 10:00,” I said. “We wouldn’t want to disturb them.”
    Freeman, being Freeman, did not note the irony in the situation, and said, “They’ll be in the lab by 07:00.”
    I nodded. “Not much we can do until then,” I said, meaning there was not much for Freeman to do. I, on the other hand, had a hundred hours’ worth of work to fit into the next six hours.
    As Freeman took his communications device and left the conference room, I called Captain Cutter and asked him to join me.
    I did not know Cutter well, and I needed to find ways to distinguish him from other clones. He was a standard-issue U.A. military clone. He stood five feet ten inches tall, had brown hair cut to regulation length, and brown eyes. Every clone of his make, which included every last sailor on the ship, fit Cutter’s description.
    The Unifieds did not consider clones to be human. Since standard-issue clones like Cutter were programmed to think they were natural-born, they tended to be a little antisynthetic as well. When clones like Cutter found out the truth, all hell would break loose. A gland built