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

pangalactic communications network using ships equipped with tiny broadcast engines to route their signals.
    We might have knocked out the spy ship’s air and lights, but her gravity generator still worked. We were standing, not floating above the floor.
    â€œThis wreck may be beyond repair,” said Freeman.
    I had the same fear. Deployed properly, a ship like this could turn the course of a war. I was just about to tell Lieutenant Mars to send over some engineers when I glimpsed the glow just beyond the next bulkhead.
    â€œThere’s a live one,” I told Freeman, not that he needed the heads-up. Always aware of everything around him, Freeman held his S9 out as he moved to cover.
    In a calm voice, he said, “Shielded armor.” He did not say “damn shielded armor” or “specking shielded armor,” just “shielded armor,” because he seldom wasted time assigning values and judgments.
    The bastard walked right up the hall showing no fear at all. He might have been a Marine or sailor, but he was wearing the shielded combat armor of a Unified Authority Marine, the new shielded armor that the Unified Authority created after expelling us clones from its military. Knowing that we had no weapons that could penetrate his ethereal electromagnetic coat, the cocky son of a bitch walked right up to the hole we had created as an entrance and casually surveyed the area.
    I hid behind a storage locker. Freeman knelt beside a desk.
    The man did not carry a gun. The shielding prevented him from holding external weapons. That did not leave him unarmed. A fléchette-firing tube ran along the top of his right sleeve.
    I needed a better hiding place. If the bastard spotted me, his depleted uranium fléchettes would cut through the locker, through me, and probably through the bulkhead behind me as well. Even a shot through the arm would be fatal since the fléchettes were coated with a neurotoxin.
    â€œGet ready to run,” I told Freeman. “I’m going to hit him with a grenade.” The shrapnel would not penetrate his shielding, but the percussion from the blast would still knock him on his ass.
    Freeman did not respond.
    Scanning the cabin, his right arm out straight and slightly bent at the wrist, the man zeroed in on my hiding spot without seeing me. The bastard probably was a Marine, but a new Marine. It was hard to believe what passed as a Marine in the Unified Authority military.
    In a situation like this, a real Marine would have shot first and checked later. This guy lacked that kind of instinct; but dressed in combat armor and waving a fléchette gun, he was still dangerous. I’d seen armor like his in action. The fléchette gun could fire thirty shots per second. The darts were tiny splinters. He probably had a thousand rounds packed in a pocket on his sleeve.
    I made ready to throw my grenade.
    â€œYou want this ship in one piece?” Freeman asked.
    â€œIf you have a better idea . . .” I started.
    Freeman pulled a thumb-sized device from his ammunition belt and slid it onto the desk.
    Speaking over the interLink, Freeman said, “Look at the floor and don’t look up.” I had just enough time to avert my eyes before his device lit the area so brightly that the floor looked bleached beneath my knee.
    The man in the Marine armor pivoted around and reached out with both hands like a drunk groping down a dark alley. He’d looked into the light before the tint shields had formed on his visors, and it temporarily blinded him. A moment later, the sensors in his visors would detect the lumens from Freeman’s lamp, but by then it would be too late.
    I looked away from the lamp to keep the tint shields from blocking my vision as I followed Freeman around the Marine and down the corridor. Freeman stopped long enough to place another light to shine at the man from the opposite direction. Now the bastard would be blinded until he groped his way