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  Chapter 3: The Falcon Republic

  “I can’t go out in public wearing this,” said Cassandra, her muffled voice coming through the connecting door between their cabins.

  “It’s normal clothing for women on Raetia,” said March, closing his suitcase. He had changed to casual clothing for men on Raetia, which consisted of black cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and a brown jacket of fake leather with gold stripes down the sleeve. The jacket was loose enough to conceal a shoulder holster, but at the moment he had neither a holster nor a pistol of any kind, which irritated him.

  “It’s embarrassing,” said Cassandra. “It shows way too much.”

  “Not by the standards of the Falcon Republic,” said March.

  “I look like a prostitute.”

  “By the standards of Calaskar, yes,” said March. “But by the standards of the Falcon Republic, it’s an acceptable and unremarkable outfit. Which is where we’re going. And if we don’t head for the airlock and get in line for customs, it’s going to look suspicious.”

  “You’re right,” said Cassandra. “Just…don’t laugh. Or stare.”

  She opened the connecting door and stepped into the cabin. She wore a low-cut red T-shirt that showed enough of her stomach that March noted she was starting to develop visible abdominal muscles and a short-sleeved black jacket that only came to the bottom of her ribs. A snug gray skirt came to the middle of her thighs, and beneath that, she wore skin-tight black leggings and ankle boots. By both Calaskaran and Oradrean standards, it showed too much skin.

  By Raetian standards, it was slightly on the conservative side.

  Though on a Kezredite world like Al-Khazmar, March supposed, both Calaskaran and Raetian standards of dress would have gotten Cassandra stoned to death as a prostitute.

  “I look ridiculous,” said Cassandra.

  “You look fine,” said March. In truth, he thought she looked quite good, but best not to complicate the mission further by telling her that. “You won’t look out of place in Northgate City, and that’s the point.”

  Cassandra sighed and tapped her phone, and her suitcase rolled to her. “At least you get long sleeves.”

  “Cybernetic arm,” said March.

  “Oh. Good point.”

  “Ready?” said March.

  Cassandra nodded, her nervousness plain, and March led the way from the cabin and into the corridor, their suitcases rolling after them. He found himself missing Adelaide as they walked, and not just for the usual reasons. Adelaide’s self-confidence sometimes bled over into arrogance (which was why her flustered reaction to her brother had caught March off guard), and she had something of a vain streak. The flip side of that coin was that she would have worn Cassandra’s outfit with total confidence, and she would have made it look good. Cassandra looked good, but she also looked walked with her arms wrapped tight around her chest and her shoulders tensed.

  Still, March would not have wanted to take Adelaide to Raetia. Nor did he want to take Cassandra there.

  “Try to relax,” said March. “You look nervous.”

  “I am nervous. I’m dressed like a prostitute, and I’m about to go through customs.”

  “You look like you’re trying to smuggle something illegal through customs.”

  Cassandra raised an eyebrow. “Where would I hide anything in this outfit?”

  March raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh.” Cassandra blinked. “Oh. Yuck. People really do that?”

  “Yes,” said March. “It’s amazing what you can fit inside the human body that’s not supposed to be there.” Cassandra’s face scrunched up in disgust. “But you’re not doing that. You’re Dr. Cassandra Yarrow, and you’re visiting the University of Raetia on a research trip. Since you’re off Calaskar, you’ve decided to try the local standards of dress for a day or two.”

  “If you say so,” said Cassandra.

  “I do,” said March. “Relax. If you go through customs looking like you want to scream, one of the agents will probably explain all the places you can smuggle things using the human body.”

  “That does not make me feel better,” said Cassandra, but she laughed, and some of her tension disappeared.

  They joined the crowd of passengers leaving the Majesty and walked through the airlock onto Raetia Station. The customs concourse on Raetia Station looked Calaskaran, though that only made sense given that Raetia had started as a Calaskaran colony fifteen hundred years ago. The customs concourse was a long, high corridor, with twenty-four booths manned by young men and women in the black uniforms of the Falcons. Four more men in black uniforms watched the crowds, plasma rifles ready in their hands.

  Those four men, March noted, had identical features.

  The women staffing the customs booths also shared identical features, as did the male customs officers.

  “Are those...” started Cassandra.

  “Yeah,” said March. “Cloned soldiers. Don’t make a big deal about it. Let me do most of the talking.”

  Cassandra nodded, and they got into line before one of the customs booths. The customs official was a pleasant-faced young woman in her early twenties, with bright blond hair and blue eyes and the sort of lovely features that only came from genetic augmentation. She asked March and Cassandra their business and reason for visiting Raetia, and March answered the questions, with Cassandra filling in when necessary. The customs officer scanned their passports, checked something on her screen, and offered a brilliant smile to them.

  “Welcome to the Falcon Republic,” she said. “You are cleared to visit Northgate City, and the next shuttle to the Northgate spaceport departs from airlock nineteen in thirty minutes.”

  “Thanks,” said March, and he and Cassandra passed the booth and headed through the docking corridor of Raetia Station. Groups of travelers filled the wide corridor, heading towards various airlocks. Airlocks lined both walls, where shuttles docked to take passengers to Raetia’s various spaceports. March spotted airlock nineteen three hundred meters further down the corridor. It didn’t look like many travelers were heading to Northgate City.

  A flicker of color caught March’s eye.

  “Cassandra,” he said in a low voice, stepping out of the flow of traffic. “Look.”

  She frowned, and then her eyes went wide.

  A holographic billboard filled the wall between two of the airlocks. It showed a tableau of about sixty men and women in black Falcon uniforms forming a heroic pose against a backdrop of the planet of Raetia and a fleet of capital starships. DEFENDING AND SERVING YOU, the billboard read, DEFENDING AND SERVING THE REPUBLIC. JOIN THE FALCONS TODAY! Below that was a list of the nearest recruitment stations.

  “Are those…” said Cassandra. “They are, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” said March. “Those are the fifty-eight templates the Falcons currently use for producing their cloned soldiers. When the Falcons find an exceptional soldier, they’ll take his DNA and do an entanglement scan of his brainwaves. Then they’ll start growing copies of him in their cloning laboratories, and they’ll use a neural writer to copy the portions of the entanglement scan dealing with skills into the growing brain, along with a standard training package. Three months later, the clone comes out of the vat as an adult, with the skills and knowledge of a veteran soldier.”

  “So they’re slaves?” said Cassandra, her disgust plain as they started down the docking corridor once more.

  “Yes,” said March. “For the first eight years, anyway. After eight years, their term of service is up, and they’re free citizens of the Republic. Some of the clones go back into the military and become officers, and others join civilian life. By then they’ve developed their own personalities, so some of them prefer the military and others want to pursue different careers.”

  “And the clones…allow this?” said Cassandra. “They don’t rebel? There must be millions of them.”

  “There are,” said March, “and they’re programmed with loyalty to the Falcon Republic. Als
o,” he snorted, “they think they’re better than us. They call naturally-born human breeders.” He shrugged. “But not maliciously. Most of the Falcon Republic clones I’ve met are extremely good-natured. They’re psychologically robust. Think how many psychological problems come from childhood trauma – abuse or getting bullied or whatever. The clones don’t have that. And why bother to rebel? Half the general and flag officers of the Falcons are clones. They don’t need to rebel. They already rule the Falcon Republic. The clones run the government, and they let the breeders live off Basic Income and drink and use drugs and hire prostitutes and start businesses.”

  “Weird place,” said Cassandra.

  “It is,” said March. “Some of the richest businesses in human space are based on Raetia, and their medical technology is better than anyone else’s.” He shrugged. “And you can just as easily get stabbed to death in the street for your wallet.”

  “Which is why you’re here, I guess,” said Cassandra.

  March only grunted.

  They boarded the passenger shuttle. Most major powers did not allow starships to land on their planets, requiring ships to dock at orbital space stations and their crews to take shuttles down to the surface. March had been in shuttles like this hundreds of times. It was basically a two-level passenger bus with a fusion drive, ion thrusters, and antigravs bolted to the outside. March and Cassandra took their seats.

  Ten minutes later the shuttle left Raetia Station, and twenty minutes later, they landed on the planet. March led Cassandra through the crowds of Northgate City Spaceport and into the night air towards a cab stand.

  “Dear God,” said Cassandra as she got her first look at Northgate City proper.

  It was 22:00 local time, and it had been a cloudy day, so they hadn’t gotten a good look at Northgate City as they descended. Now they could see it clearly. Dozens of arcologies, massive, dense residential towers that rose nearly a mile high and a half mile wide, stood in the distance. The huge towers glowed with lights and thousands of billboards advertising every product and service conceivable covering their surfaces. At least half the ads, March guessed, involved nudity or were for prostitution services. Smaller industrial buildings ringed the arcologies, and March saw the glow of traffic lights weaving their way through the buildings.

  “Crowded, isn’t it?” said March, glancing around. Most of the departing passengers headed for cars waiting by the curb. “Come on, let’s find a cab stand.”

  Cassandra nodded, and they walked a block and came to a plastic shelter around a small computer terminal. March entered their destination into the terminal, and the machine chimed and promised that an autocab would arrive within five minutes.

  “Where exactly are we going?” said Cassandra, trying to pull her jacket tighter. It wasn’t a cold night, but it was damp and chill, and her tight-fitting clothes would not provide much in the way of warmth.

  “To meet one of Elizabeth Winter’s Delta Operatives,” said March. “Man named Eighty. Runs a pawn shop, apparently.”

  Cassandra frowned. “Eighty?”

  “My guess is he’s a clone veteran,” said March. He saw the lights of an approaching autocab in the gloom. “They choose their own names once they enter civilian life, and their choices are sometimes odd.”

  The autocab came to a stop outside the stand. It was an unimpressive-looking vehicle with six seats and a cheerful computerized voice. March and Cassandra got into the autocab, and he input their destination, paying extra for an express ride without stopping for any other passengers. The autocab rolled into the night, the electric motor whirring. The automated screens in the cab came to life, displaying a collection of ads. During the twelve-minute ride, March saw ads for augmented opiates, cocaine, female prostitutes, male prostitutes, cheeseburgers, a popular local video drama about heroic Falcon marines, phone screen repair, and, for some reason, car insurance.

  “I’m suddenly missing the University of Calaskar more and more,” said Cassandra. A queasy expression came over her face. Given that most of the ads used naked actors, March could understand her discomfort. Advertising was not so explicit on Oradrea, and definitely not on Calaskar.

  At last, the autocab came to a stop, and March took a dubious look through the windows. It had taken them to one of the neighborhoods that sprawled at the base of the arcologies like mushrooms growing around the roots of a tree. On Raetia, the richer you were, the higher you lived in the arcologies. Those who lived on the ground at the base of the huge glittering towers tended to be the poorest, and these neighborhoods were the most dangerous. Slavery was illegal in the Falcon Republic (the clone soldiers notwithstanding), but human traffickers and even sometimes fronts for Kezredite slavers operated out of the slums of Northgate City.

  The neighborhood where Mr. Eighty operated his pawnshop looked particularly dubious. On either side of the street, March saw bars, brothels, and drug dens, all of them advertising an astonishing array of stimulants, narcotics, and various other vices. There were pedestrians on the sidewalks, even this late at night, a mixture of young men and prostitutes.

  “Jack,” said Cassandra. “This doesn’t seem like a good neighborhood.”

  “It’s not,” said March. He spotted a pawnshop several doors down. It seemed to occupy the lowest floor of a four-story building, and March recalled that Mr. Eighty owned the entire building. Evidently, pawnbroking was a lucrative business. “Stay close to me, and don’t respond if anyone shouts at you.”

  Cassandra nodded, and again March felt a wave of irritation. Not at her, though. She was holding up well. Nevertheless, field work was not her area of expertise. Censor should have left her back in the lab at Calaskar, working on the next generation of the Eclipse device. Not sending her to a slum on Raetia, filled with dangers she would not be able to spot and anticipate.

  Well, that was why March was here.

  They climbed out of the cab, and March got their luggage out of the back. The autocab rolled away at once. March looked around, started to draw breath to tell Cassandra to carry her bags rather than let them roll after her, and fell silent.

  Something was wrong.

  The people on the streets were hurrying away. They vanished into the bars and drug dens or poured away down the alleys. At the same time, March heard a faint whining hum, a hum that was getting louder and louder.

  An electric motor? No, several electric motors, all at once. March looked to the right just in time to see six scooters come up the street at about fifty kilometers an hour. The men riding the scooters were in their late teens or early twenties and wore hooded sweatshirts, track pants, and bandanas pulled over their faces. They also carried weapons – baseball bats, lengths of pipe, and one of them had a long chain he whirled over his head like a lasso.

  And they were converging on March and Cassandra.

  Street thieves. It was common on Raetia for criminal gangs to attack travelers and make off with their possessions, especially off-world travelers, and the preferred method of escape for those gangs were mopeds or scooters.

  “Get in the doorway!” said March, pointing. “Now! We’re about to be attacked!”

  Cassandra hurried to obey, jumping into a nearby doorway and dragging their bags with her, and March stepped into the street, assessing his targets.

  The gang whooped and turned towards him. Five of the scooters began to circle him, while the man with the chain rolled towards him, spinning the weapon over his head. Probably the plan was to knock March off his feet with the chain, beat him into unconsciousness, and then rob him and Cassandra. Or maybe they would take Cassandra for some private fun in a secluded place.

  The man with the chain whooped again and sent his weapon whistling towards March’s head.

  He snapped up his left arm, caught the chain in his cybernetic grip, and yanked.

  The thug hadn’t been expecting that. March yanked hard enough that the thug jerked to the left and lost his balance. His scooter went flying away, and the man’s head bounc
ed off the street with a loud crack.

  Before the other thugs reacted, March whirled, whipping the chain around. The remaining five men were still circling him, and the lash of his new chain caught another thug around the left arm. March yanked again, ripping the thug from his scooter and sending him to the ground. His weapon, a wooden baseball bat, bounced away, and March caught the bat and dropped the chain.

  The other four thugs shouted in rage, spun their scooters around, and charged at him, pipes and bats raised. March took a quick look at them, noted that none of them had any guns, whether kinetic or plasma-based. Likely the penalties for robbery without a gun were more lenient than those committed while equipped with a firearm.

  The four scooters shot towards him, and March dodged, whipping the bat around as he did. The blow caught a thug in the chest, and the man flew backward off his scooter accompanied by the sound of snapping bone. His vehicle crashed into another, sending its rider to the ground. The remaining two thugs on their scooters had to slam on their brakes and swerve, and March jumped towards them and punched. His left fist slammed into a man’s face, and blood and teeth flew from the impact. The thug hit the street, his scooter tumbling away.

  The remaining thug looked at March, his eyes going wide, and drove off as fast as his scooter’s motor would allow.

  Wise of him, given what March had to do next.

  March looked at the five others. He hadn’t killed anyone, which was good. Best not to leave any corpses behind so soon in this mission. Still, they had all seen him. These men were probably part of a larger criminal gang. Best to make sure they did not return to take vengeance.

  He walked towards the nearest thug.

  “What the hell, man?” screamed the thug, trying to stand and failing. “What the hell, man? We didn’t do nothing. We were just fooling, we…”

  “Yes,” said March, and he reached down and broke the thug’s right hand, bending the fingers back until the bones snapped like twigs.

  The man’s screams rose an octave or so, and March methodically broke the right hands of the other four men, and then returned to Cassandra. She stared at him with wide, shocked eyes.