     |
TCS Blair; Combat Information
Center
En route to Zeta Orionis System, Sol Sector, ETA: 00:08
The Tingvallir System, Roan Quadrant, Sol Sector
DEC 07 2793/2793.341; 0642 Hours (CST)
Christopher Blair walked off the turbolift and into the expanse of the CIC, stretching and yawning as he tried to wake himself up. He wasn’t sure if his reinstatement in the Armed Forces as a brigadier general by Braddock was still active (on the account of a slight case of getting himself killed against the Steltek) but he had decided to at least try to stick to something resembling a Confed regime. He had given himself three precious hours of sleep, all he could afford if he expected to be awake and aware when they reached their destination.
"Caught some more sleep, eh, old man?" Captain Kincaid asked, turning her command chair around to face him.
"More?" he asked. "Oh."
"I’m sorry." She motioned for Blair to come to the front of the bridge. "You’re just in time, you know."
Walking past the officers working at their consoles, Blair went to her side. "We’re almost there?"
"We’re already forty minutes into the Sol Sector from Enigma. About five minutes from the Zeta Orionis System."
"What exactly should we expect to find at this so-called depot we’re heading toward?"
"Well, before the turn of the twenty-eighth century there was a Confed superbase at an unmarked nav point in the system. Nobody much knew about it then, but it was the HQ of the Black Projects Division, where all the research and development was done. After the Political Ethics Act of 2678 and the Confederation 2700 Initiative any elements of it surviving the Black Lance incident were supposed to have been shut down... but for the last two decades the site has been cordoned off by the current Sol Sector space marshal."
Blair nodded. "Zeta Orionis, is it? If it is Black Ops, they must have moved their base of operations closer to home... after we shut them down at Axius."
"I figure a few inquiries are in order, don’t you?"
"Got that right. I’m assuming there’s some kind of plan...?"
The next couple of minutes were spent staring with mutual patience at the frontal viewports, waiting for the ship to recharge its jump capacitors for the last jump that would take them from the edge of the Wolf 359 System into the Zeta Orionis System.
In a quick mottling of bent stars with a flash of the twisted light of jumpspace, the TCS Blair made its final jump. As the starfield returned to normal, Blair and the assembled bridge staff found themselves looking at a number of capital ships in the distance, in addition to the depot Kincaid had mentioned.
"Report!" the Captain ordered.
"One megacarrier, two carriers, a superbase... and an old Vesuvius-class supercarrier," an officer bellowed back. "No fighters on the MFDs."
"Then there it is," Kincaid pointed out, "The Orionis Superbase. Open a channel to t—"
Not more than ten seconds after the superbase came into view, it fluctuated, wavered, then disappeared from view.
"They cloaked it!" Kincaid shouted, waving a hand in disbelief.
"Confirmed, Captain. The superbase has activated a cloaking device."
Blair thought back to Bishop Station, the station he’d awakened aboard on two separate occasions, yet had mysteriously vanished. It seemed Vell’s suggestion that it might have cloaked was right on the money.
"Open a channel, now!" She angrily stood, facing the frontal viewports.
"This is Captain Kincaid of the TCS Blair. I must ask why you have cloaked."
There was a silence, then a hoarse voice responded, "You have entered a ConFleet Class-Nine restricted area. You have five minutes to leave."
"Restricted... by who?"
"The sector commander."
Kincaid thought on it. "There is some kind of mistake here... you mean to tell me Space Marshal Al—"
"I assure you, there is no mistake—this discussion is over. Your orders are to leave."
"Bu—"
"You have your orders."
"They’ve stopped transmitting," an officer reported.
Kincaid threw herself back in her seat, a look of defeat on her face. She knew her boundaries. "Where was the transmission coming from?" she asked. "The superbase?"
"It was coming from the supercarrier. The TCS Zenith."
"The Zenith?" Kincaid repeated. "That’s Space Marshal Albrecht’s flagship. Somehow that old bastard has been able to cling to that Vesuvius-class relic for over a century now."
"The Sol Sector commander, you mean?" Blair asked.
"CO of any and all Sol Fleet Action." Kincaid nodded. "Damn. I’m sorry, but it looks like I’ve reached the end of my authority. If they’re ordering me to turn back, then I’ve got to turn back."
Blair had an idea. "It’s all right."
"It is?"
"Go ahead and leave." A tight grin came to Blair’s face. "Albrecht can’t order around the Kindred, can he?"
KS Desiccator; Docking
Bay 08
The Zeta Orionis System, Petrov Quadrant, Sol Sector
0709 Hours (CST)
Vell punched the wall intercom panel, activating the P.A. system. "Are we good to go?" he asked.
"It’s been transmitted as ordered, Ser Ricaud."
"Excellent."
Blair gave Vell a questioning look. "What exactly did you send those carriers?"
"Oh, just a small gift. You see, my friend, the Desiccator is equipped with a Mark IV Binary Sickness Emission system—hot off the Anarchist’s On-Line Cookbook."
"Binary Sickness Emission? Sounds like some kind of—"
"Computer virus," Vell finished. "With the TCS Blair already gone, that whole trio of Confed carriers should be crippled for a good ten minutes. Maybe more, if they don’t have any kind of signal filter."
"Well, we better get going."
Vell led the way up the ramp of the Confederation shuttle Blair had brought aboard the Desiccator a day ago, the one he’d taken from Bishop Station. After making their way to the cockpit, Blair took the controls and prepared to take the shuttle out.
"Let’s do this."
TCS Zenith; Space Marshal
Albrecht’s Cabin
0719 Hours (CST)
The doors to Space Marshal Albrecht’s day cabin hissed shut behind Blair and Vell.
They immediately saw the sickly-looking Albrecht standing behind his desk, his back turned to both as he peered out the viewports. The two men raised their plasma pistols, stepping down the entryway stairs.
Albrecht turned slightly, taking notice of them, then turning back around to continue staring out the viewports unconcernedly. "I’ve been expecting you two."
"Then you know why we’re here," Blair said.
"You want answers," the broad-shouldered older man that could only be Space Marshal Albrecht replied, his gruff voice monotone. His sharp face was complimented by his high hairline, and the man seemed old beyond his years, his skin sticking to his bones like plastic. "Answers which no longer serve any purpose in being kept secret."
"Let’s get started, then." Vell stepped ahead of Blair. "Who is he?"
"Fair enough." Albrecht made a quarter turn, overlooking Vell to meet Blair’s angry gaze. "The short version is... he’s a clone."
Blair gasped. He had come to this ship ready for anything, but that...
A malicious grin crossed Albrecht’s lips. "Oh, don’t act so surprised. You’re the second clone, as a matter of fact."
Vell pointed his plasma pistol between the man’s eyes. "Start explaining."
"Very well." His grin didn’t falter. "It wasn’t easy, and it took every bit of cutting-edge technology the 28th century has to offer, but we were able to make a clone of the original Christopher Blair with reprogrammable memory. Simple matter, really. Cell samples put on ice from the man’s corpse—DNA fragments collected and reconstructed some time after it was scattered across the Sol System when his Star Runner vessel exploded—coupled with rudimentary cloning technology that’s been steadily evolving since its initial success in as early as 1997. It has gotten to the point where all it takes is a few keystrokes and we can alter the synapse configurations of a developing brain to whatever our bio engineers can dream up. We could have made you believe you were the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler."
Blair winced. "Then the clone of me that awakened six months ago during the Steltek invasion—"
"Was the prototype clone," Albrecht finished. "We altered the tail end of your memory, erasing your... disagreeable memories of faking your death during the Nephilim War, then all the unpleasant business of going mad and becoming the victim of a thinly-veiled Confed assassination plot four years later in 2685."
"That really happened...? I really went insane?"
"You mean to ask, was that you who really came out of hiding in 2684, was it clone, or was it something else?" Albrecht smiled. "Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Some secrets... I’ll take to my grave."
Vell pressed his pistol against Albrecht’s large forehead. "We don’t have time for your mind-fuck games, Ser Albrecht."
Albrecht didn’t seem the least bit intimidated. They were playing ball in his ballpark, his composure made it seem clear. "What I will tell you is that when it came to reconstructing your clones’ memory, all of those memories—whether they were valid memories or not is another matter—they were replaced. Replacing them were memories of a happy retirement, of a wife, kids... a more satisfying, happy ending to a historic career all of us on the Plan agreed."
"Nina..." Blair rasped.
"I assure you, the fabrication we put in your mind about your nonexistent family was only done to assure your mental stability for when you would be called upon us to be awakened. Into your synapses we implanted the belief of this rather feasible story we put together about the late Space Marshal Tolwyn’s Gen-Select nanobots activating in your body, which provided you with a plausible enough reason for why you would be in cryogenic stasis for so long. We hoped this would put your mind further at ease... abate your curiosity for the truth, if only for a little while."
"And in doing so, you convinced me I had slept in cryo-stasis from 2691 to 2793."
"Catching on, Mr. Blair. You understand now, don’t you?" Albrecht stifled a grin. "With the threat of the seemingly unstoppable Steltek invasion looming over the galaxy, Confed Intell had to think of something fast. The higher-ups, most of which surviving members of the old, forgotten Belisarius Group, gave the Black Projects Division a ring and gave us the greenlight to play our trump card, the card that represented the dead living legend we had the power to give life again that united those within our unnamed circle from the beginning."
"Blair," Vell answered in his stead.
"Yes. Or rather, the clone of his we had tediously grown that we could awaken at a moment’s notice if need be. Hell, we even pulled old Geoff Tolwyn’s Genetic Enhancement program out of mothballs just for the occasion. We added a few enhancements to his physical makeup and nervous system, chiefly reflex time, automatically familiarizing his body’s instincts with the technology of 2793 even if he did not consciously realize it." Albrecht chuckled smugly. "Blair’s Pilgrim blood from a Ms. Soulsong on his maternal side only adds to his unique genetic perfection."
Blair clenched and unclenched his fists, taking in everything Albrecht was telling him. Had he not only been cloned, but now genetically engineered—little different than the homicidally crazed pilot Seether he’d once fought?
"Then you sent him out to stop the invasion," Vell spoke.
"Exactly. History seemed to reflect that Blair is quite the perfect weapon when it comes to winning intergalactic wars, you realize. A kind of interstellar insurance policy on the part of Confed. Good for morale, if nothing else."
Vell sneered at the man. "You cloned him for your own agenda, you tinkered with his body, you manipulated his mind, lied to him, then sent him out to die...?"
"Don’t mince words—we grew him in a lab. Twice. He’s our creation."
Vell’s finger twitched within his pistol’s trigger guard. "To do with as you please? I don’t think so, bucko."
Albrecht sniffled a bit, rearing his composure back to what was evidently his most authoritative. "Not anymore, of course. Oh, please don’t take us for monsters... trust that you don’t know the half of what I’ve been a part of and have pledged my loyalty to this past century and never will, for I would far sooner die without a second thought for it than reveal it to the likes of you or anyone not part of the circle. And Mr. Blair shouldn’t feel so alone in the ordeal we’ve put him through... I myself am a clone, voluntarily so upon my first, naturally-occurring death. You see, my dedication to my people, my circle, is so great that I am willing to challenge—and defy—the Reaper himself just to make sure I see it all through personally from beginning... to end." The Space Marshal smiled mock-pleasantly. "I’m doing you two gentlemen a favor by even speaking of this matter, even if you’ve made it unavoidable. Call it pity if that word pleases you most, but do know that I only tell you the things you want to know that aren’t compromising the larger scheme of things I serve in the vision of—nothing more."
"Whatever, but if what you’re saying is true... damn it, I remember everything the last clone remembered..." murmured Blair. "I-I remember fighting the Steltek mothership... right up until I pressed the Nuke’em’s trigger. How is this, if all you did was clone the original Blair again? Wouldn’t my memory stop at 2691 again?"
"It was a simple matter to imbue the clone you are with what happened from the time of your awakening to your sacrifice above the mothership. Your memory may be a little patchy from that, as we could only piece it together from what was publicly known and recorded over subspace from your various comm conversations. We know you saw Admiral Braddock on Sol Station; we know you were assigned the TCS Blair; we know you flew a Excalibur 3500 fighter; we know of your cooperative effort with Vell Ricaud II and Melissa Kathryn Banks; and we know of your final assault on the Steltek mothership. Most conversations were recorded over one media or another. We’re a creative bunch—only a few minute, insignificant details were left out, we’re sure."
"But I remember it so well..."
"A testament to our skill, but more likely that your mind has already filled in the blanks with what it thinks it remembers to make sense of it. But other than that, what can I say? The wonders of modern technology have little in the way of bounds."
"But me..." Blair said, "... the second clone of Christopher Blair... why was I created? For what reason? The Steltek invasion is over, everything’s back to normal. Isn’t it?"
"That’s the question, isn’t it?" Albrecht’s smile grew wider. "Let’s just say we were made an offer the technological value the likes of which we couldn’t refuse. The only cost of which being you, Blair. They saw you in action six months ago, they knew of your historic past a century ago—they want you."
"Then this time I was created as... as some kind of offering? Sacrificial lamb...?"
"Of a sort, perhaps, but please don’t take offense. If you understood the scientific data we will be receiving in return for turning you over you’d realize it was an opportunity we couldn’t deny ourselves."
"But, damn it, who’s giving you all this data? Who wants me?"
Neither Blair or Vell could possibly have anticipated the answer the Space Marshal gave them.