Read Online The Clone Sedition by Steven L. Kent - Free Book Online Page B

garden, a series of ramps, falls, and pools that now sat as dry as the Martian landscape outside. Unlit signs, some shattered but many still whole, identified stores that had long since been emptied of merchandise and furniture. Inside, in their shadowy reaches, people stood and stared out at us. They looked like ghosts.
    The people on the upper decks began hurling trash at us. It fell like enormous balls of hail. Articles of clothing, shoes, burning shreds of paper, bits of carpet, a grating from a ceiling vent, and more rained down, mostly missing us. Ceilingtiles, so light they seemed to glide on air currents, tumbled through the air and shattered a few yards ahead of us.
    For a moment, and just a moment, I turned on my external microphones. I heard such a cacophony that I could not interpret a word of anything that anybody yelled.
    The people seemed to sense that we had not come to fight. Small bits of debris rained down on our heads, but the bigger stuff crashed and splattered fifty feet ahead of us.
    Then it happened. Something about the size of a motorcycle cascaded down from one of the upper floors and hit three of my men. Whatever those people had thrown, it crushed two of my men and grazed a third before hitting the ground and disintegrating into a cloud of dust.
    The two dead Marines lay ruptured on the floor, the exoskeletons of their armor broken to pieces and their legs and arms stretched out so that they looked like man-sized insects that had been crushed. Blood pooled onto the floor around them.
    That stopped our parade. Jackson told the men to halt and guard their flanks while a medic checked the bodies. We didn’t really need the medic, the cracked helmets told the tale well enough. He ran a scanner over the bodies and pronounced both men dead, then he went to see after the injured man, who was struggling to remove his chest plate.
    The parade wasn’t the only thing halted at that moment. The fusillade of debris dried up. So did the shouting.
    “What do we do now?” asked Jackson.
    By this time, I was in the throes of a full-fledged combat reflex, lying to myself that I cared about these people, that they deserved mercy, and that I did not want to kill them all.
    “We walk,” I said, ignoring the way the hormone-tinged blood running through my head screamed for violence.
    “They killed two of my men. They don’t get away with killing my men.”
    “Yeah?” I asked. “And what exactly are you going to do about it, Colonel? What the speck do you suggest we do?”
    “We find the people responsible and make an example.”
    “How are you going to find them?” I asked in a silky, serpentine voice.
    People flooded into the already packed atrium, gawkershoping we would put on a show, protestors looking to show their anger, and a small battalion of men in suits. The gawkers and protesters kept their distance. The men in suits walked toward us.
    Like any standoff, this one seemed to generate electricity. As many as a million pairs of eyes stared at us, waiting for us to make a move. If we stayed in the center of the atrium, they could stone us to death with their debris. If we opened fire, there was no telling how many people we would kill.
    The combat reflex distorted my thoughts. I wanted revenge. I wanted violence. I wanted to increase the amount of the hormone in my blood, and the only way to do it was to attack, to kill.
Think!
I told myself.
Stay focused.
    The men in suits pushed through the crowd. I did not recognize any of them, but I knew who they were. They would be the politicians.
Hughes must have sent them,
I told myself.
Just hold on. Have these men take you to Hughes.
    “General, are you going to let them get away with killing Marines?” Jackson asked.
    “The men who dropped that…whatever the hell it was, are long gone, Colonel,” I said. The words came out slowly now. I had to force myself to speak calmly. “They’re long gone, and I can just about guarantee you that you won’t