The Clone Alliance Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

I held the grenade in my left hand and fingered the pin with my right. I stood in the shadow-filled belly of a military transport. They called this the kettle. You could cram 100 Marines into a transport like this, but I was alone… almost alone. Ray Freeman, my partner, lay unconscious on the bench that ran along the wall.

A tough bird like this transport would survive the grenade. The blast would not do the ship much good, however. The shrapnel would shred cables and piping. The force of the explosion would dent the walls, but the shell would remain intact. The insulation around the fuel tank would protect it from the explosion. The thick bulkheads around the cockpit were made to withstand a lot more than a grenade. Ray and I, on the other hand, would be nothing more than juice splashed along the walls. They would identify us by our DNA and wash us out with a hose.

If he were conscious, Ray would want me to pull the pin. He would probably shoot me and pull the pin himself if he saw me hesitating. That was our agreement. “No going back.” “No slow death.” I would have given anything to be able to pull that pin.

Ray would have put an end to this, no doubt about it. But Ray was a natural-born. I was a military clone. Most of my thoughts were my own, but some of my psyche was hardwired into my brain through neural programming. I always knew about the violence that was programmed into me. They built me to kill. What I never realized was that they also programmed my kind to survive.

If I pulled the pin, I would die in an instant. I wanted that. If I turned the transport around, I would starve on the long flight back to Little Man. If Ray woke up, he would shoot me. I wouldn’t mind dying, but I didn’t want him to think that I lost my nerve when it came time to pull the pin. I didn’t even need the grenade. If I opened the hatch, we would get sucked out to space. Without protective suits our bodies would burst. Just press the button…

But I couldn’t make myself do it. Could not pull the pin, could not press the button. Programming. Sliding doors don’t swing. Mathematical engines don’t spell words. Liberator clones do not kill themselves.

So I would try to fly this bird back to Little Man and take the slow death instead. I had one week’s worth of food, six week’s worth of travel, and a ship that had been taken well beyond its limits more than a month ago. On the bright side, maybe Ray would wake up and shoot me.