Free Rogue clone by Steven L. Kent Page B

off over my head. Clear sheets of bulletproof plastic slid out of the walls creating a bulletproof cell. By the time I realized what had happened, every soldier in the security station had drawn his gun and closed in around me. They stood in a semicircular ring. A few of the officers lowered their guns when they saw that I had no weapon.
    The MP holding my bag stepped to the glass and held up a piece of paper for me to read. It was a computer printout with my picture and bio on it.
    “Lieutenant Harris, we got a tip that you might stop by.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
    My arrest had Che Huang’s fingerprints all over it. The MPs who arrested me had no idea what laws I might have broken. They made no effort to charge me. By now they knew that I was a Liberator; but they could not arrest me for that. It was illegal to manufacture Liberators, and I had clearly not manufactured myself. Liberators were banned from the Orion Arm—Earth’s home arm—but the Golan Dry Docks were located in the Norma Arm. Thinking everything through, I decided that the only crime Huang had on me was being absent without leave.
    Having a relatively clean slate would not get me out of the brig in time to help Klyber. I was vaguely aware of the time and decided that Klyber must have arrived. He would have his regular security detail around him. Unless given misinformation, Klyber would notice my absence. Would he look for me?
    Would he become suspicious and alert his guard? My absence might or might not have been warning enough that Huang might have an ambush in mind.
    I needed to get to Klyber. If Huang was behind this . . .
    The last time I ran into Huang, the bastard didn’t even bother having me arrested. He simply paraded me across Mars Spaceport in handcuffs, transferred me to his cronies in the Scutum-Crux Fleet, and had me placed on Ravenwood to die. As it turned out, Huang and Rear Admiral Thurston used Ravenwood as a testing ground for a new breed of clone they had secretly developed to use as Navy SEALS. Huang sent platoons of armed Marines to guard the outpost, then trained his new breed of SEALS by sending them in to slaughter those Marines.
    What would Huang do this time? If the soldiers who had captured me had allowed me to make a call, I could have sent a message to Freeman, and he could have warned Klyber that a trap had been sprung. I was cut off and helpless, able only to wait and see what would happen. I sat on the edge of my cot and looked around the cell for a way out. I must have been in the cell for a few hours, but I had no idea how many. Escape was out of the question. The air vents along the top of the wall were only three inches wide. I could not even fit my fist in them. Unless I could figure out a method for passing through steel walls and bulletproof glass, I might be stuck in this cell for a long time. Bright light and heat blazed from arc lamps set into the roof of my cell. Cool air blew out of the line of vents just under the seam of the ceiling. Without the cooled air, I would have fried; and without the overbright lights, I would have frozen.
    An officer approached the door of my cell and spoke into the intercom.
    “You’re free to go,” the man said.
    “Free to go?” I asked, both surprised and sardonic. I stood up and walked toward the door. The man outside was a colonel, probably the head of the security station and likely the highest ranking officer assigned to the Dry Docks. Golan was a civilian operation with military security—a lot of military security.
    “I apologize for the misunderstanding, Harris.” The glass slid open. The colonel had two guards with him. All three men were armed. Apparently they did not want to take any chances with the dangerous Liberator clone. “Fleet headquarters sent us a message telling us to be on the lookout for a Lieutenant Wayson Harris who was falsely reported as killed in action.”
    “That sounds like me,” I said as I followed the colonel and his escort out of my cell