A Murder of Clones: A Retrieval Artist Universe Novel by Rusch Kristine Kathryn

Author:Rusch, Kristine Kathryn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: WMG Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2015-01-12T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-EIGHT

GOMEZ GATHERED THE trusted members of her team around her. Two deputies, Simiaar, and a single researcher. They all looked confused about the reason for the meeting.

She hadn’t told them, any more than she told them why she had opaqued the windows in the conference room of the EAFS Stanley and shut off the recording equipment. She also asked them to shut off all links except those they needed to monitor the ship. She monitored them silently, just to make sure that everyone had followed her request.

She didn’t want any record of this meeting.

She’d been feeling paranoid ever since she left Clone Hell. The research she had done on the trip back to the Stanley had exacerbated that feeling.

It had taken her half a day to make the journey because of the regulations around Clone Hell and the fact that the shuttle simply wasn’t built for speed.

She hadn’t cared. She spent the time reviewing the file she had written about the incident on Epriccom fifteen years ago. In that report, she had focused on the diplomatic side of the incident, on the Frontier issues, and on the Eaufasse. She had given everything else, including Thirds and the clones, relative short shrift.

She didn’t blame herself for that; she had been working on the Frontier after all, and her job was to stop problems, not analyze situations. But in several places in the report, she had highlighted that these clones needed to be investigated in some way. She had even flagged the report for extensive review. She had felt, even then, that something was off about the entire setup.

But the review hadn’t happened, and the report itself got buried in the mass of information filed about the Eaufasse as they continued to apply for acceptance in the Alliance. The report was excerpted, but not attached, to the files that accompanied the injured clones to the hospital. A full copy of the report went with Thirds on his journey into the system, but only because the damn Peyti translator had insisted that something had gone wrong with Thirds’ treatment on Epriccom.

Uzven’s complaint got attached to her report and sent with Thirds. As far as she could tell, that’s as far as the information ever got.

She was researching what she had done fifteen years before because her sessions with TwoZero had completely unnerved her. The information he had given her—if true—should have been a warning to the Alliance.

She had known that he was the second clone of something known as twenty, which she assumed was the twentieth clone of PierLuigi Frémont, but she didn’t know that for certain. He also told her that he knew a clone in that enclave named Sixteen of Two Hundred, a name that just scared her.

Two hundred was the highest second number that he could remember. He believed, but he wasn’t certain, that he was “of Twenty,” a fact that also unnerved her.

He had been in the enclave as long as he could remember. He also had been with

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