The Returning Hero

a row of glass doors separated them from the palace balcony; on the other, a large buffet table had been prepared. Inside the door, a further group of dignitaries from the united colonies were waiting in line to greet the Major personally.

  To everyones shock, Baxter ignored them all, as he instead barged his way past them and made a bee-line for the buffet table. Once there, he began to grab up handfuls of canapés and stuff them into his mouth with all the grace of a ravenous chimp.

  Lorrimer stared in shock as the major continued to greedily, and noisily, fill his face.

  “I am sorry,” Rogers said before anyone had chance to remark, “But the major hasn’t eaten any real solids since he came out of cryo-sleep. I’m afraid his hunger has got the better of him.”

  “I’ll say,” remarked Mason dryly.

  “Cryo-sleep does tend to make one ravenous,” laughed Lorrimer nervously, in an attempt to placate the disgruntled guests.

  “You must be hungry too, Captain,” said Lorrimer turning to Rogers, “there will, of course be a formal dinner and presentation in a couple of hours, but until then, please help yourself… we have a good fifteen minutes, or so, until we are due out on the balcony, where the Major can give his speech.”

  “Ah,” said Rogers, in a manner which suggested she was about to throw a spanner in the works, “I’m not sure that is such a good idea, Chancellor.”

  “Nonsense,” replied Lorrimer, “the crowd are expecting it.”

  “Of course,” said Rogers, “it’s just that the major has been experiencing some numbness in his lips, making his speech a little slurred. You’re right though, the people are expecting it. I dare say that most of them will just think that he has had one too many drinks.”

  Lorrrimer took a moment to consider rogers statement. Having Baxter slur his way through a speech that would be broadcast around the world probably wasn’t a good idea. The last thing that he wanted was for anything to tarnish Baxter’s image or, for that matter, his own.

  “You may have a point,” he said finally, “maybe a speech is not such a good idea after all…unless you could say a few words on his behalf.”

  “It would be my pleasure.” smiled the captain.

  Once Mason had retrieved them both a drink, Lorrimer and Rogers made their way over to one of several chaise lounges that formed a square in the centre of the room. The chancellor sat down silently and sipped his drink, still somewhat perplexed by Baxter’s behaviour. Whilst the after effects of stasis would explain why the major had been so reluctant to speak, other aspects of the major’s behaviour that were downright odd. His movements still seemed uncoordinated…clumsy even. And then there was the weird, vacant grin, which was constantly etched on his face...

  A number of explanations raced through Lorrimer’s mind. Maybe Baxter had received a head wound during the final battle. Or maybe the long campaign that the major had fought had taken a huge toll on him psychologically.

  As the chancellor mulled over the potential causes of Baxter’s strange behaviour, his attention was drawn by a commotion at the buffet table, behind him. He turned to see Baxter standing at the end of the table holding a large silver punch bowl in his hands. To Lorrimer’s astonishment, as well as everyone else’s, Baxter then stuck his face straight into to bowl and noisily started slurping up its contents. Lorrimer looked on in stunned silence as he gradually reached the conclusion that Major Baxter, the man he had idolised for much of his life, was, in actual fact, a complete fool.

  “What the hell is wrong with him?” he said, turning to Rogers, “and don’t give me any baloney about recovering from cryosleep, Captain…I’ve been in deep-space myself, and whilst I did experience a bit of dizziness and nausea for a couple of days, a no point did it make me forget basic, bloody, table manners!”

  “Nothing is wrong with him,” replied Rogers flippantly, “he has always been like this.”

  “But…but Flack Baxter is supposed to be the greatest hero who ever lived…the man who saved humanity…this,” he said pointing at Baxter, “is little more than a gibbering imbecile.”

  His gaze returned to the major, who now appeared to have the empty bowl stuck on his head, and was now trying frantically to free himself. He then turned back to Rogers with an expression of someone who had just been proven correct. Rogers said nothing for a moment, as if she were wrestling with her conscience.

  Finally, she replied in little more than a whisper, “What I am about to tell you is still confidential, so you didn’t hear this from me...understand?”

  Lorrimer nodded earnestly in response.

  “Major Flack Baxter,” she began gravely, “was killed on the second day of the defence of Titan.”

  “But that’s impossible,” scoffed the chancellor, “Baxter fought on Mars...and on Trappist-three, I’ve seen news reels…the photographs…And if Baxter is dead, who the hell is this? His twin brother?”

  “In a manner of speaking…yes,” Rogers replied, “one of them, at least.”

  “One of them?”

  “Yes…there’s been thousands over the years.”

  Rogers paused for a moment as she glanced back over at Baxter, once again. The Major, having given up trying to remove the punch-bowl, was now blindly stumbling around the room, bumping into the walls and bashing into the furniture.

  “For God’s sake, Lieutenant” she said called over to Willis, “go and bloody give him a hand, will you.”

  Willis duly obliged, rushing over to the Major and guiding him to his seat. He then went about trying to free the major’s head from its self-imposed incarceration.

  “The original Baxter was the perfect soldier,” Rogers continued, turning back to Lorrimer, “He was strong, smart and fearless, which was exactly the reason he was enlisted into the ‘Operation Russian Doll’.”

  “Russian Doll? The human cloning project?”

  “The very same.”

  “But it was shutdown…banned under colonial law.” protested Lorrimer.

  “Precisely the reason high command kept it under wraps.” Said Rogers, “When the Trappist armada was first detected, we were short of ground troops...woefully short, so High command took the decisions to relax the laws on human cloning. They took our best and brightest soldiers and began to make genetic copies of them. By the time the war had started in earnest, we had over two hundred Flack Baxter’s, as well as thousands of clones of other troops.”

  Rogers paused momentarily, and looked around to confirm that none of the other guest were eavesdropping. Her concern, however, was unfounded, as everyone’s attention was still firmly fixed on Baxter’s antics.

  “But as the war continued, and the casualties mounted,” She continued, “we realised that we still didn’t have enough men. The Baxter clones had been, by far, the most effective, and so the entire programme was concentrated on creating more copies of him...thousands of them. By the time High Command realised that the attack on Titan was a deception, and the main Trappist force was headed to Mars, they began to step-up the Russian Doll programme, dramatically. They created a new generation of Baxters and sent them straight into battle, retaining just enough of them to provide genetic material for the following generation.”

  “They made copies of a copy?” asked Lorrimer.

  “Exactly,” Rogers replied, “They kept repeating the process, again and again, until we had tens of thousands of them in reserve…eleven generations, in total. But after the first few weeks of the defence of Mars, they began to encounter some…problems.”

  “What sort of problems?”

  “Soon after the fourth generation was sent into battle,” continued the captain, “there was a serious decrease in the clones’ combat effectiveness. Then, with each new generation, there appeared to be a steady decline in both intelligence and co-ordination.”

  Rogers paused as she took a sip from her glass, “But by generation eight they were becoming a liability. And generation eleven’s...like this one...can barely find their arse with both hand
s. By the time, we had driven the invaders back to Trappist-three, the Baxters were little more than cannon-fodder. The only strategic purpose they served in the final battles was to act as distractions, so that our A.I. strikes teams stood a better chance.”

  “Christ,” remarked Lorrimer, “that’s awful…how many of them survived?”

  “Barely a dozen,” Rogers replied coldly, “and most of them died just a few days after the war finished.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Shuttle accident” explained Rogers, “as they were leaving Trappist three. Apparently one of the silly buggers got lost on the way to the restroom, and somehow managed to open an airlock. Only five of them survived…then we lost another two after we met up with the fleet.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “It was as we were preparing to put them into cryo-sleep…in the shower block.” said rogers, “as unbelievable as it sounds, one of them died when he mistakenly picked up a large bore plasma pistol instead of a hair dryer, the other choked to death whilst attempting to eat a bar of soap.”

  The captain emptied her glass before continuing, “There’s only three of them left now. We left the other two in cryosleep…for their own protection.”

  Lorrimer said nothing, but shook his head in disbelief.

  “Of course, through all of this, the propaganda machine has been in full flow,” Said Rogers, “crediting all the clones’ heroics to just one man, and creating a legend in