Read The Clone Redemption for Free Online

loyalty. The only planet the Unifieds care about is Earth; you’re out to save what’s left of the galaxy.”
    â€œWhat’s left of the galaxy . . .” Before the first alien invasion, the Unified Authority had 180 colonized planets scattered around the Milky Way. The aliens “sleeved” 178 of them. The Enlisted Man’s Empire, a nation composed of the cloned military that the Unified Authority had ejected, reestablished contact with 23 of those planets before the aliens began incinerating rescued planets.
    Freeman’s entire family had been on the first planet the Avatari, the aliens, incinerated. Having lost everyone he might have ever loved, the galaxy’s best professional killer became a self-appointed savior.
    When dealing with people like Ray Freeman, as if there were anyone else like Freeman, there is no room for ambiguity. I decided to reconfirm his motivation. “As long as we’re saving more lives than the Unifieds, you’re on our side?”
    He nodded.
    â€œGood enough for me,” I said, though inwardly I still had doubts. The clones of the Enlisted Man’s Empire had been bred to save the lives of natural-borns, and the Unified Authority had thanked us for it with one betrayal after another. I felt a need to save the natural-born residents of our planets, but I could not come up with any logical reason to do it.
    Satisfied that I could trust Freeman for now, I turned my attention to the mission at hand. “Cutter, are the traps in position?” I asked over the commandLink.
    Asking that question was my form of fidgeting. Captain Don Cutter was a good officer, not the kind of man who left things undone. Still, we were dealing with an invisible foe, and we would only get one shot at the bastards. It was one of those pivotal moments on which the future hung. If we failed to bag that spy ship, the war would end before it began.
    â€œYes, sir,” said Cutter. He spoke in a whisper.
    Five transports floated within a few hundred yards of the satellite. They were not debris from the graveyard of ships but fully functional birds Cutter had placed himself. One of the transports carried a team of engineers. Freeman and I sat in the kettle of the second. The others sat facing away from the satellite, their rear hatches open, their kettles carefully packed with explosives. When the spy ship lowered her shields, we would use these transports like old-fashioned cannons.
    The bombs were not especially powerful. We needed to cripple the spy ship, not decapitate her. I didn’t care if the crew lived or died; I didn’t owe the bastards. The ship’s computers, on the other hand, they mattered.
    Five million people had just died on Terraneau, and millions more had their necks on the chopping block on other planets. The key to saving them was on those computers. We could not win the war with the aliens; but armed with the right information, we might survive it.
    â€œHow long has it been since you detected the anomaly?” I asked Cutter.
    â€œFifty-two minutes, sir,” he said.
    Fifty-two minutes, I thought. Fifty-two minutes to travel fourteen million miles, either the bastards are taking their time or they’ve figured us out. In conventional travel, U.A. cruisers topped out at a speed of thirty-eight million miles per hour. Traveling the fourteen million miles from the anomaly should have taken less than half an hour.
    â€œMaybe they know we’re here.” I said the words out loud but meant them for myself.
    â€œNot likely,” said Cutter.
    Listening over the interLink, Freeman heard every word we said but did not comment. He lived in a world of absolutes. Either the spy ship was coming, or she was not. He saw no value in second-guessing the situation.
    I looked back at the video screen and saw nothing but empty space. The satellite was so small that it did not even appear on my screen. A little bubble of light represented the area