The Clone Republic

by Steven L. Kent

  “I do not believe I have seen that model of recon drone before, sir,” Shannon said in a respectful voice that would certainly curry favor.

  “It’s a prototype. I built it myself,” the man said. I could not see his face clearly through his breathing mask, but the lieutenant’s voice perked up. “Let’s have a look in that cave, shall we.”

  The lieutenant pressed a button on the outside of the case, and a four-inch video monitor flipped out of its lid. When he turned on the monitor, I was amazed by the panoramic scope of Scooter’s vision. The silvery top of the robot was a giant fish-eye lens, offering a 180-degree view. Looking at that screen, I saw the case from which Scooter had emerged, the cliffs, and everything in between. The camera caught everything, and the monitor displayed it in stretched, but accurate, detail. This engineer was both a dork and a brilliant engineer.

  “Impressive little specker,” I said over the interLink for only Shannon to hear.

  “Stow it, Harris,” he replied.

  Issuing the command “Scooter, enter cave” into a small microphone, the tech sent the drone on its way.

  “Audio commands only?” Shannon asked.

  “I programmed Scooter myself. He uses onboard sonar to find the best paths. He has dedicated self-preservation circuits. The only thing a human controller can do is slow him down.”

  Judging by what I saw on the monitor, Scooter used the same basic night-for-day vision technology we used in our visors. He was a stealth drone with no lights or weapons. Skirting around rocks and holes, Scooter sped toward the cave like a giant, silvery beetle. The men in our platoon stopped and watched as it scampered by. When it reached the lip of the cave, it paused. For a moment I thought the little tin can might actually be scared.

  “It’s taking a sonic reading,” the lieutenant said, as if reading my thoughts.

  “Damn,” Shannon said, with respect.

  Pulling a small stylus from his case, the lieutenant said, “Sergeant, take this. If you want a closer look at something on the monitor, tap it with the stylus. That will send a message to Scooter.”

  The monitor turned dark as Scooter hurried into the cave. The little robot had a good eye for stealth. It traveled in cracks and crevices along the side of the wall, well concealed from enemy eyes. That was good for Scooter, but not so helpful for Shannon. Even with enhanced night-for-day photography, Scooter was not showing us what we needed. It was showing us the safest path for creatures that were less than four inches tall. Also, Scooter moved too quickly. A squad patrolling such terrain might creep along at one or two miles per hour, but Scooter covered it at a steady fifteen miles per hour. Images flew across the monitor. Five minutes into its patrol, Scooter stopped and ran another sonar scan.

  “Okay,” the lieutenant said, “the Mogats are at least two miles deep into the caves.”

  “You’ve located a path to them?” Shannon asked.

  “Sergeant, they’re two miles down,” the technician said, sounding shocked and mildly offended. Scooter has scanned for traps, and the entrance comes up clean. He’s also verified their campsite.”

  I turned to look at the cave in time to see Scooter motoring out of the shadows. The lieutenant must have programmed it to think like a puppy when it was not performing a mission. The goddamned little robot detoured into a crowd of Marines milling near the cliffs and ran circles around their feet. When they did not respond, it returned to the lieutenant and parked itself beside his foot.

  “But you did not locate the path to the enemy’s position?” Shannon asked.

  “Scooter could not get to them; they’re too deep in,” the technician said.

  “Does Scooter have a map that leads to their locations?” Shannon asked, his irritation beginning to show.

  “If you mean a map to their doorstep, that is out of the question, Sergeant. I am not going to risk a valuable prototype reconnaissance unit.”

  “I know a safe dark place where we can stick his drone,” Lee muttered over the interLink as he came up beside me.

  “But you’re willing to send in an entire platoon,” Shannon added. “My men . . .”

  “Clones,” the technician corrected.

  Shannon made one last attempt to explain himself. “I am not going to lead my men into that cave blind,”

  he said in a reasonable tone.

  “I’ve done what I can, Sergeant,” the lieutenant said as he bent down to pick up his robot. Shannon grabbed the man by his shoulders, pulled him straight, and then slung him backwards against the hull of the transport. “I don’t agree, sir,” Shannon whispered in a dangerous tone. “I think you can do more. I think you want to do more, because if that is all your useless bug-shit robot can do, I’m going to smash it. Do you understand me?”

  “I’ll have you in the brig for this.” The lieutenant clutched the robot to his chest. His voice trembled as if he was about to cry.

  Shannon picked up his particle beam and pointed it at the robot. “Right now, the safest place for Scooter is in that cave. Do you understand me, sir?”

  The lieutenant’s show of officer anger faded, and behind it we saw the scared technician. “I spent a lot of time programming Scooter,” he pleaded. “If you want to locate hostiles, you can requisition a combat drone. That’s what they are made for.”

  “I’m tired of arguing with you,” Shannon said as he reached for the robot. “If you aren’t going to send that bug into that cave, then it’s useless to me.”

  “You’re insane,” the technician said.

  “Even worse,” Lee said to me only. “He’s a Liberator.”

  “Get specked,” I shot back.

  “Sorry.”

  Staring at Sergeant Shannon, the technician must have realized that he had no options. Shannon was out of control, of course, and there might be a court-martial awaiting him when he returned to the fleet. But for the moment, with no available help, the lieutenant had no choice but to do as he was told. He passed Scooter over to Shannon.

  Taking great care to be gentle, Shannon placed the robot on the ground.

  “Scooter, enter cave,” the lieutenant spoke into the microphone in a pouting voice. He turned to Shannon. “You will have hell to pay.”

  “No doubt,” Shannon mumbled.

  Shannon, Lee, and I bent over the monitor to follow Scooter’s progress. The little robot zipped past our men and into the cave, then resumed its original path. The lieutenant kept his microphone close to his lips, issuing whispered orders. “Proceed at half speed.” “Slower. Slower.” “Stay close to the wall.” “Pause and hide at the first sign of activity.” “Scan for electrical fields.”

  “Can you brighten this transmission?” Shannon asked.

  “The monitor has gamma controls, but you’ll lose screen resolution,” the lieutenant said. He fiddled with the controls, brightening the scene. The gamma controls made a big difference. Suddenly we could see footprints and tire tracks on the ground.

  Fifteen minutes after Scooter entered the cave, the robot started to detect sound waves. They were faint, but the robot registered them as human speech.

  “Okay, Sergeant, here is a voiceprint. I’m bringing my robot back.”

  “Can you give me a visual feed of the men?” Shannon asked.

  Still not looking at Shannon, the technician uttered a few inaudible words. Shannon repeated the question, and the man shook his head.

  “The robot stays down there until I see people.”

  Looking around the cave from our Scooter’s-eye point of view, I began to feel motion sickness. The fish-eye distortion left me dizzy, and I really had no idea what we were looking for.

  “I don’t see any people,” Shannon complained.

  “Sound carries well in caverns; they may still be a half mile farther in,” the tech answered. “This is obviously the right chamber. You’ve located your target. I’m bringing my robot back.”

  “Not until I get my visual confirmation,” Shannon snapped. “I want to know the b
est way to get to the enemy. I want to know how many men they have and how well fortified they have made their position. Most of all, I want to see how close Scooter can get to those Mogats before they start shooting. And, Lieutenant, I really do not give a shit if they hit Scooter. Got it?” Shannon said all of this in a single breath. As soon as the robot heard voices, its self-preservation programming became active. Scooter moved at an unbearably slow pace, hugging closer to the wall than ever. The reduced speed was helpful. Scooter was several miles into the caves, and his path exposed tributaries and side caverns. Its slowing down gave us more time to study the video images.

  Eventually, Scooter turned a corner and neared the spot where the Mogats had dug in. We could not see them, but we could see the dim reflection of distant lights on obsidian walls. The robot continued its slow roll forward, inching ahead like a scared mouse.

  We heard the guards before we saw them. Scooter rounded a huge knob in a wall, and suddenly we heard voices echoing. The image on the monitor turned bright as a man stepped right over Scooter. The robot watched as two men walked away, swinging lanterns.

  “They almost spotted him,” the technician said. “Are you satisfied?”

  “Not really,” said Shannon.

  “Get specked!” the lieutenant shouted. I thought he would recall his robot, but he made no move to pick up his microphone. We watched on the monitor as Scooter continued ahead for another few minutes, until the little robot reached a fork in the path. It paused and hid behind a rock, blocking most of our view on the monitor.

  That time, even Shannon did not complain. Four men walked right next to the camera. One of them almost stepped on Scooter. They did not see the probe. They kept talking as they walked through the passage and disappeared into a tributary. Once they were gone, Scooter’s self-preservation programming went into overdrive, and the little robot scurried in the opposite direction.

  “Wh—” Shannon started to say something and stopped. He bent forward, practically pressing his visor against the monitor. “Can you roll the video signal back?”

  The scene on the monitor ran in reverse.

  “Stop,” Shannon said. He studied the image and traced it with his finger. He scrolled the image forward and backward on the monitor. “Can you analyze this through other lenses?”

  I looked over Shannon’s shoulder and saw what he was looking at. There were two large metal cases; machines of some sort. A series of pipes ran through and around them.

  “I have heat and sound readings,” the tech said.

  The heat reading was immense. The heat signatures showed yellow with a bleached corona. I didn’t know what the Mogats used the machines for, but they were practically on fire.

  “Can you ID this equipment?” Shannon asked.

  The technician shook his head.

  Shannon turned back to the monitor. “Has your robot left virtual beacons?” Shannon asked.

  “Yes.”

  “All the way down?”

  “Yes,” the lieutenant said. “All the way.”

  “Can you upload that information to me on the interLink?” Shannon asked.

  “No problem,” the lieutenant hissed. A moment later, Scooter rushed from the cave and streaked right to the lieutenant, who picked it up and loaded it into its case.

  “That’s a magnificent robot you have, sir. The Navy needs more of them,” Shannon said with a crazed laugh.

  “Harris, I need to contact mobile command. I think we might be off this rock in another few hours.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Dammit, Shannon!” McKay snapped. “What in God’s name did you do? There’s a lieutenant demanding a firing squad. A firing squad! He claims you assaulted him and threatened to shoot him.”

  I could not tell if Shannon had purposely included me in their conversation, so I listened in silence.

  “In point of fact, sir, that would not be correct. I threatened to shoot Scooter.”

  “What the speck is Scooter?” McKay asked.

  “The lieutenant’s recon robot, sir.”

  “You threatened to shoot his robot?” McKay asked. There was a tremble in his voice, and I heard other officers laughing in the background. “Threatening Scooter is a serious offense, Sergeant. You may be looking at a long stay in the brig.”

  “Not meaning any disrespect, Captain, we need to settle that account later. I believe I have found a way to force the enemy to surrender.”

  “I’m listening, Sergeant.” Gaylan McKay had an unnerving ability to read unspoken nuances in any conversation. “What have you got?”

  My interLink connection went silent. Shannon might have wanted me to hear him call Captain McKay, but the fine details would be on a “need to know” basis.

  For the first time since I repeated the oath, I felt the weight and isolation of my armor. It wasn’t that I cared about the plan. I cared about Shannon. I suddenly realized that Tabor Shannon, master gunnery sergeant and Liberator, was the closest thing I would ever have to family. Suddenly I felt cut off, trapped inside my helmet. I listened to the rhythmic hiss of my breathing. I became aware of claustrophobia causing my nerves to tingle. Strangest of all, I still felt glad to be a Marine fighting on Hubble. “God, what a mess,” I said quietly as I considered my situation—a clone on a toxic planet fighting to protect the government that created him, then outlawed his existence.

  “Harris, we’re going in,” Sergeant Shannon said, waking me from my momentary epiphany.

  “How many of us?” I asked.

  “This time it’s just you and me, Corporal.” Shannon switched to an open frequency. “Lee, you’re in charge. Harris and I are going to do a little spelunking.”

  “You might want to leave the rifle stock behind,” Shannon said, as we started for the cave. Not waiting for an explanation, I detached the stock and left it with Lee.

  Shannon stepped into the cave and stopped to wait for me. His armor was coated with ash, but his visor was clean. “You should give your visor a quick wipe,” he said. “You might not get a chance to do that later.”

  I pulled the swatch of cloth from my belt and wiped the glass carefully. As I entered the cave, I saw the bodies of the men Shannon and Lee had cut down. Two sat slumped against the walls as if resting, the others lay on the ground. One had died clutching his mask. If the gunfire didn’t get you on Hubble, the atmosphere would.

  Shannon waited for me to get a few steps closer, then drew his particle-beam pistol and pointed it at the wall. “I want to show you something,” he said, and he fired a bright green bolt into the shiny black rock. The bolt bored into the wall of the cave. Slag and vapor poured out of the hole.

  “Recognize it?” Shannon asked me.

  “It’s the shit from the trenches,” I said.

  “It’s like being in an iceberg,” Shannon said. “Make too much heat, and you will bring the whole damned cliff down.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “The rock melts into vapor?”

  “It’s the other way around, the vapor hardens into rock,” Shannon said. “The vapor gets cold and hardens. That’s why the rock looks so shiny; it’s just hardened gas.”

  “Now you’re a geologist?” I asked.

  “Don’t get smart, asshole,” Shannon said. “Like I said before, I saw shit like this in the Galactic Center War. Since Liberators and Mogats are the only people who were at that little rumble, you can bet they know about it, too.

  “Harris, I don’t suppose the good lieutenant uploaded Scooter’s data to you?”

  I scanned for beacons, and a thin red line appeared on my visor marking the robot’s path. There was nothing wrong with Scooter’s self-preservation programming. The little robot had explored the caves hidden from danger by traveling in a groove along one of the walls. No wonder the Mogats had walked by the little rodent without seeing it. “Okay, I can read his beacon trail.”

  “That’s good. If we get split, you’ll need to find your way out on your own.” Shannon starte
d forward along Scooter’s virtual trail. “You know those machines Scooter passed? Did you recognize them?”

  I did not recognize the first machine, though it had looked familiar. I did recognize the second device.

  “The one on the left was a power generator,” I said. “You planning on turning out the lights?”

  “We’re going to do a lot more than that,” Shannon said. “The bigger machine is an oxy-gen.” The term

  “oxy-gen” was Marine-speak for oxygen genitor.

  “I don’t think they know we took out the guys guarding this gate. As long as they didn’t see Scooter, we should be able to slip up to the generators without too much trouble. I brought you along just in case, Harris. You get to run interference for me.”

  The ground, the air, and the walls in the cave were all shades of black. I had no sense of depth. Running my elbow against the wall as I walked helped me balance myself, but I constantly felt as if I might bump my head against one of the boulders that bulged from the low ceiling. The Mogats had it worse than us, though. Not wanting to leave a telltale trail, they did not string lights along the cave. They had to find their way in and out using lanterns and flashlights. If guards came anywhere near us, Shannon and I would see the glare from their lights. We walked softly, barely lifting our feet and hugging the wall with our backs. Though the darkness in the tunnel meant that we were alone, we kept our pistols drawn.

  The path had an almost imperceivable downward slope. It bent and meandered around thick knots in the rock, and continued on its gentle incline, always downward, constantly downward. We moved through one long, straight stretch. When I looked behind me, it looked like the floor and the ceiling had merged. Seeing it left me momentarily dizzy, then I realized that the illusion was caused by my faltering sense of depth.

  “Something the matter, Harris?” Shannon grunted.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  We would have lost our way in these caverns had it not been for Scooter’s beacons. When I watched the monitor, I had not noticed how many capillaries led from the main path. The path curved around one wall, then another. It split and sometimes seemed to disappear entirely behind sharp bends. More than an hour passed before we rounded a corner and saw the first traces of light. “This is where it gets tricky,”