Read Online The Clone Sedition by Steven L. Kent - Free Book Online
Authors: Steven L. Kent
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crowded hall, the infant would starve.
Walking through that hall, we passed a twenty-foot mountain of trash that touched the ceiling. Flies buzzed around the pile. How flies had migrated to Mars I could not understand. The spaceport must have had equipment for disposing trashinto some kind of landfill, but these people had long since abandoned such civilities as burying their trash.
Most of the people we passed just stared at us. One clever fellow, dressed only in his underwear, stood at attention, saluted, and then farted so loudly that I heard it fifty feet away. A little boy no older than three pointed a toy gun at us, and yelled, “Bang! Bang!”
When I passed within ten feet of an old man lying on a blanket, he asked, “Are you speckers invading the spaceport?” Without waiting for me to answer, he added, “You can have this hole as far as I’m concerned.”
“Do you know who painted that wall?” I asked, pointing to the Legion graffiti.
“Nope. Must have happened when I was taking a shit,” he said.
While my fifteen hundred Marines marched past, I approached a woman with three children and asked her the same question. She ignored me.
My Marines marched with perfect precision down one decrepit corridor and into the next as we made our way to the administrative offices. A woman jumped up from her blanket and threw something at one of my men. Whatever it was, it hit him and splattered across the back of his armor.
We passed a water dispensary. A line of people carrying pots waited for a turn at the water. Lines for food, lines for water, lines to use the bathroom and bathe, no wonder these people were hostile. Living on Mars, these people were no more self-sufficient than newborn infants.
Maybe they were right to hate us; but until we sorted out their civil unrest, they would remain on Mars. In their eyes, the same clone military that had saved them from destruction on their home planet had abandoned them in a dump.
We originally promised them a short layover on Mars. Now, one year later; they were prolonging their incarceration by their actions. The way station had become a quarantine.
We could have turned into one of the spaceport’s bigger and more populated hallways, but I wanted to avoid the masses for as long as possible. Instead, we followed the service hall as it snaked around a line of passenger-boarding areas.
I had a copy of the floor plan in my visor, a rotating three-dimensional map that included photographs of Mars Spaceport back in its halcyon days. Using optical commands, I spun the floor plan and viewed it from all sides, looking for detours; but our options diminished as we marched on.
In order to get to the administrative offices, we would need to enter the grand arcade, a two-mile corridor of stores and restaurants. There would be multiple millions of people in the arcade, maybe even a full five million.
I looked back down the hallway behind us at the people lying on their blankets with their belongings scattered around them. They were dirty, and their blankets were filthy and tattered. They’d spent a year like this, with no more dignity than cattle locked in stalls.
Using the commandLink, I contacted Cutter on the
Churchill
. I said, “Admiral, do you have any spare service blankets.”
He asked, “How many do you need?”
“Seventeen million,” I said.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“Dante Alighieri wouldn’t have survived this,” I said.
“I don’t know Alighieri. Is he Marines or Navy?”
“Neither,” I said. Cutter was a good officer, but his interests did not extend to the classics. “He’s a civilian.”
“So what is the situation?” he asked.
“We had no problem landing,” I said. “The natives aren’t especially friendly, but no incidents. We’ve been avoiding the main areas, but we’re going to need to enter the hub to get to Governor Hughes.”
Mars Spaceport had six passenger wings, one for each of the Milky Way’s spiral arms, all of
Walking through that hall, we passed a twenty-foot mountain of trash that touched the ceiling. Flies buzzed around the pile. How flies had migrated to Mars I could not understand. The spaceport must have had equipment for disposing trashinto some kind of landfill, but these people had long since abandoned such civilities as burying their trash.
Most of the people we passed just stared at us. One clever fellow, dressed only in his underwear, stood at attention, saluted, and then farted so loudly that I heard it fifty feet away. A little boy no older than three pointed a toy gun at us, and yelled, “Bang! Bang!”
When I passed within ten feet of an old man lying on a blanket, he asked, “Are you speckers invading the spaceport?” Without waiting for me to answer, he added, “You can have this hole as far as I’m concerned.”
“Do you know who painted that wall?” I asked, pointing to the Legion graffiti.
“Nope. Must have happened when I was taking a shit,” he said.
While my fifteen hundred Marines marched past, I approached a woman with three children and asked her the same question. She ignored me.
My Marines marched with perfect precision down one decrepit corridor and into the next as we made our way to the administrative offices. A woman jumped up from her blanket and threw something at one of my men. Whatever it was, it hit him and splattered across the back of his armor.
We passed a water dispensary. A line of people carrying pots waited for a turn at the water. Lines for food, lines for water, lines to use the bathroom and bathe, no wonder these people were hostile. Living on Mars, these people were no more self-sufficient than newborn infants.
Maybe they were right to hate us; but until we sorted out their civil unrest, they would remain on Mars. In their eyes, the same clone military that had saved them from destruction on their home planet had abandoned them in a dump.
We originally promised them a short layover on Mars. Now, one year later; they were prolonging their incarceration by their actions. The way station had become a quarantine.
We could have turned into one of the spaceport’s bigger and more populated hallways, but I wanted to avoid the masses for as long as possible. Instead, we followed the service hall as it snaked around a line of passenger-boarding areas.
I had a copy of the floor plan in my visor, a rotating three-dimensional map that included photographs of Mars Spaceport back in its halcyon days. Using optical commands, I spun the floor plan and viewed it from all sides, looking for detours; but our options diminished as we marched on.
In order to get to the administrative offices, we would need to enter the grand arcade, a two-mile corridor of stores and restaurants. There would be multiple millions of people in the arcade, maybe even a full five million.
I looked back down the hallway behind us at the people lying on their blankets with their belongings scattered around them. They were dirty, and their blankets were filthy and tattered. They’d spent a year like this, with no more dignity than cattle locked in stalls.
Using the commandLink, I contacted Cutter on the
Churchill
. I said, “Admiral, do you have any spare service blankets.”
He asked, “How many do you need?”
“Seventeen million,” I said.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“Dante Alighieri wouldn’t have survived this,” I said.
“I don’t know Alighieri. Is he Marines or Navy?”
“Neither,” I said. Cutter was a good officer, but his interests did not extend to the classics. “He’s a civilian.”
“So what is the situation?” he asked.
“We had no problem landing,” I said. “The natives aren’t especially friendly, but no incidents. We’ve been avoiding the main areas, but we’re going to need to enter the hub to get to Governor Hughes.”
Mars Spaceport had six passenger wings, one for each of the Milky Way’s spiral arms, all of
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