The Clone Republic (Clone 1)

by Steven L. Kent

“You know, Mogat, I think you have some interesting tales to tell. And the best part is, chubby little speckers like you always talk. Always.”

  Niles headed for the door of the interrogation room, then turned back. “I’ll have the police return you to your cell.”

  “He will cooperate,” Admiral Klyber said quietly. “I doubt, however, that he will have any valuable information. Crowley would never trust anything important with such a weakling.”

  I felt as if I had just watched an execution. Klyber showed absolutely no empathy for their prisoner. The physiology monitors lining the walls of the observation room showed that Kline’s heart pace had nearly doubled. His blood pressure rose so high when Niles placed my helmet over his head that a heart attack seemed imminent; yet I, too, felt strangely unsympathetic.

  “I don’t believe there was any particular bounty on Kline,” said Klyber. “Does a reward of three thousand dollars seem adequate?”

  Freeman nodded.

  “Very good. I will see that you are paid by the end of the day, Mr. Freeman. I’m curious, though, why come as far as the Scutum-Crux Arm chasing a small-time criminal with such low prospects?”

  “Little fish sometimes lead you to bigger ones,” Freeman said as he stood to leave.

  “I see,” Klyber said, without standing up. “Well, fine work, Freeman. I hope you find the bigger fish you are looking for.”

  Freeman nodded again and left.

  Admiral Klyber leaned forward and flipped a switch, turning off the sound in the next room. “Your name keeps popping up, Corporal Harris. Why should that be?”

  I knew precisely why my name sounded familiar to Admiral Klyber, but I had no intention of dredging up my record on Gobi. I had other things on my mind, so as soon as Klyber and the Intelligence officer left the police station, I asked one of the guards to take me to Kline’s cell. I found him lying on his cot and staring up at the ceiling, his swollen eye still oozing yellow pas.

  “You should have a doctor look at that,” I said as I entered the cell.

  Kline said nothing. He continued to stare up at the ceiling.

  “I can see you’re busy, and I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I was curious how you survived Freeman’s grenade,” I said.

  “Is that you, Harris?” Kline asked.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Did you watch the interrogation?”

  “You didn’t say anything about how you made it out of the desert with a grenade glued to your hand,” I said.

  Kline snickered and sat up on his cot. While returning the little mutant to his cell, the guards had finally washed the blood from his head, but the entire side of his face was swollen and bruised. He held up his left arm and let the baggy sleeve of his robe fall to reveal the stub. “How do you think I survived?”

  “I’m guessing that the grenade was a dud,” I said.

  “I cut my hand off and left it in the desert, asshole. Well, one of Crowley’s lieutenants cut it off for me,” Kline said. “He found me wandering in the desert. Do you have any idea how much that hurt?” With that, he lay back down on his cot.

  “So you decided to fly to Ezer Kri to shoot me,” I said. “Why me? Why not Freeman? He was the one who glued the grenade to your hand.”

  “I wanted to go after Freeman, but Crowley said to go after you instead,” Kline said without looking in my direction. “He said I’d never get a shot off if I went after Freeman. Freeman is a dog. You are just as bad as he is. You let him do this to me. You’re just another rabid dog.”

  “And you are a terrorist,” I said. “You are an enemy of the Republic.”

  “Everybody is an enemy of the Republic. I don’t know anybody who likes the Republic,” Kline said. “At least nobody who isn’t a clone.”

  From what I could see, Governor Yamashiro sincerely wanted to cooperate. The mediaLink ran local news stories about the Ezer Kri police cracking down on all known Morgan Atkins sympathizers. Work crews began converting the ruins of the Mogat district into a park two days after the Kamehameha bombarded it. With local forces closing in on the ground and Klyber’s ships blockading the planet, no one could leave Ezer Kri. Yamashiro only had twenty-four hours left to turn over the criminals. At that point, I thought he might make it.

  The Chayio was one of fifteen frigates that accompanied the Kamehameha on the mission to Ezer Kri. Small by capital ship standards and designed for battling fighters and smugglers, frigates were approximately six hundred feet long and outfitted with twenty particle-beam cannons. The guns on frigates were perfect for downing the small, fast-moving ships used by pirates and smugglers, but they would not dent the armor on a capital ship.

  They fit well with Admiral Klyber’s philosophy. Since the Unified Authority was the only entity with a navy in the entire galaxy, he wanted the Scutum-Crux Fleets outfitted for conflicts with smugglers and terrorists. After all, nobody but the U.A. Navy had the capacity to build anything even near the size of a battleship.

  By spreading his frigates over the most populated areas on Ezer Kri, Klyber formed a blockade that could stop ships from leaving the planet. It was a good strategy. A single frigate would have enough guns to shoot down any ship parked in this solar system. On the off chance that a frigate did run into that unforeseen enemy, the three nearest frigates could converge on the scene in less than one minute. In theory, our net was impregnable and our ships unstoppable. But in practice, our net had frayed along the edges.

  The Chayio , for instance, guarded the space over a small island chain, fairly boring duty. The captain of the ship was not even on the bridge when the storm hit; his first lieutenant had the helm.

  The young lieutenant walked around the deck talking casually with other officers. Watching the video record that was found in the remains of the ship two days after the attack, I got the feeling that he did not take his duties seriously.

  “Sir, I’m picking up increased energy signatures on the planet,” one of the communications officers called out. “It looks like a fleet of small ships.”

  “Let’s see what you’ve got,” the lieutenant said, breaking away from another conversation. He walked toward the scanning station too slowly. Clearly he thought the sighting was a nuisance.

  “My reading just spiked,” the communications officer said. “More ships are flaring up, sir.”

  “What?” The lieutenant sounded baffled. He leaned over the communications officer’s shoulder for a better look; and then it happened.

  There was a brilliant flash of blue-white light and two dreadnought destroyers appeared in front of the Chayio . At that point, our display screen divided in two. A small window in the corner of the screen showed the bridge of the Chayio, while the rest of the screen showed the scene as captured by a communications satellite orbiting Ezer Kri.

  I had never seen ships of that make before. They bore the familiar sharp lines and forward shield arrays of U.A. Navy ships, but the hull design and size were completely foreign. The ships were several times larger than the Chayio . They had globelike bridges studded with cannons and firing bays. Their coloring was darker than charcoal—so dark that they seemed to blend into space itself.

  “Forward shields, now!” the lieutenant shouted, demonstrating surprisingly quick reflexes.

  The dreadnoughts hung silently in space for a moment. During that moment, the lieutenant at the helm of the Chayio called for his captain and sent a distress signal to all nearby ships. Neither the captain nor the nearby ships arrived in time.

  One of the dreadnoughts fired into the frigate’s shields.

  “Do not return fire. Channel all power to the shields,” the lieutenant ordered. He must have planned to keep a wall between his ship and the dreadnoughts until help arrived. His plan should have worked. With all of its power poured into the forward shield, the Chayio might have survived the battering for several minutes as it waited for help from the Kamehameha .

  There was a blue-white flash behind the Chayio , an
d another destroyer materialized behind the frigate. This third ship took only a moment to stabilize before firing two torpedoes. With all power to its forward shields, the rear of the Chayio was unprotected. The little frigate exploded into a fireball that was quickly extinguished in the vacuum of space.

  As I watched the frigate explode, I noticed streaks of light in the background. A swarm of smaller ships evacuated Ezer Kri and disappeared into space as the battle occurred.

  Seeing the video feed, I knew that the fleeing ships would belong to the Mogats. Who else could they belong to? What other population needed to flee en masse? But I always thought of the Mogats as a bunch of crank religionists. Where the hell had they gotten a fleet of small ships? Another question: How had they gotten their hands on destroyers? As a Marine, my biggest question was, “Where are they going to next?” Wherever they went, I wanted to greet them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Though he would never have confided his feelings to his corporals, Sergeant Tabor Shannon must have sensed the upcoming war. Other platoon leaders let their men relax between patrols; Shannon had us dress in full combat armor and drill. He sent us on ten-mile hikes in the muddy forests north of Rising Sun. Three days after the attack on the Chayio, he took us for a predawn drill up the sheer wall of a nearby mountain. I could see the shape of the full moon in the clouded winter sky. Its distorted silhouette showed through the clouds like a smudge on a photograph.

  Shannon dropped ropes from the top of the cliff; the rest of the platoon scaled up the face of the mountain to meet him. When we reached the top, he smiled and sent us rappelling back down. Our combat gear protected us from the cold, but nothing stopped the muscle burn in our arms and backs.

  If there had ever been a layer of dirt covering the face of these cliffs, it had long since washed away. This face was rock and ice with a few stray ferns growing in its crags. As I dropped down the edge of the precipice, my boots clattered on the wet stone face.

  “Move it! Move it! Move it!” Shannon shouted down at us.

  My right foot slipped against the wet rock, and I struggled to find good footing. Like me, most of the troopers had trouble finding secure footing on the way back down. We did not practice rappelling on board ship. The last time I had done so was in the orphanage. We had jetpacks, why would we need to rappel?

  “Too long! Too slow!” Shannon shouted.

  “I’d like to see you do this,” I said under my breath.

  Shannon’s cord dropped just to my right. I looked up in time to see him jump over the edge of the cliff. Taking long, narrow bounces, the sergeant plunged down the cord so quickly that it looked like a free fall.

  “I could do that,” I said to myself. “I just don’t feel like showing off.” I took a quick look over my shoulder. The lake filled the horizon. Craning my neck to look out, I could see the waterfront. In the daylight, the buildings looked like ice sculptures. I took a deep breath and prepared to drop faster. As I exhaled that breath, a bullet struck the cliff, shooting sparks and rock fragments that bounced against the visor of my helmet.

  I blinked, though my visor protected me. Reflexes. At that same moment, I opened my fingers and let the cord whip across my armor-covered palms, dropping me into a loosely controlled free fall. As I reached the trees below, I tightened my grip to slow myself. I let go of the rope and dropped the last few feet into the mud. Standing a few yards away, Sergeant Shannon stood muttering to himself under his breath and firing live rounds at the cliff. He had removed his helmet. His face was spattered with dirt. The mud, combined with his all-tooth smile and wide, excited eyes, gave him a crazed look.

  “You call that climbing?” Shannon yelled. “Move it, you dipshit maggots,” he bawled with a string of accompanying cusses. “I did not bring you here to go sightseeing!” He fired his rifle, and two of the men crashed down to the mud.

  “I’ll bet that’s Lee,” Shannon muttered as he stared up at the cliff. “Hey, Lee, have a nice fall.” With the butt of his rifle tucked under his arm, Shannon squeezed off two shots that severed the cords just above one of the man’s hands. The man plummeted, bouncing off the face of the cliff before igniting his jetpack and lowering to the ground safely. Seeing what happened, the rest of the men rappelled down the cliff more quickly.

  “Jeeezus sakes Christ!” Shannon yelled, looking over his panting platoon. “I could have picked off the whole friggin’ lot of you. The whole damn lot. I thought I came to drill Marines, not take old ladies sightseeing. Hell, I could have cooked me a barbecue and called your next o’kin before I started shooting. Next time, I’m loading rubber bullets and bagging me some maggots. You sisters better wear your safety loops tight. Next time I’m shooting rubbers.

  “And, ladies, when I say ‘next time,’ I mean after lunch.”

  All of us “ladies” groaned.

  Lunch was no treat. It rained. We gathered around the truck and opened our MREs. No heated food to soften our bellies that day, just the standard mushy vegetables and prefabricated stew. Despite the vacuum packaging, everything tasted stale.

  A white government car pulled up beside us as we ate. A pasty-faced bureaucrat in a shiny gray suit climbed out of the car. He had perfectly coiffed hair. With his clothes and grooming, the man looked completely out of place among the trees. He scanned the platoon, picked out Sergeant Shannon, and joined us.

  “Can I help you?” Sergeant Shannon asked, with a wolfish grin.

  “Sergeant Shannon?” the man asked.

  “I’m Shannon.”

  The man held out an envelope with an SC Central Fleet seal. Handing his rations to another soldier, Shannon took the communiqué and opened it. “Harris,” he called.

  I walked over. “Sergeant?”

  “Looks like you get to skip our next hike,” Shannon said. “SC Command wants you to deliver your prisoner to the Kamehameha .” He handed me the communiqué. I scanned it quickly and saw that I was supposed to get cleaned up and dress in my greens.

  I rode back to camp in that posh government car. No hard wooden seats in that ride. When we got back to camp, my bureaucratic escort gave me ten minutes to dress and shower. “We’re on a tight schedule,” he told me. “You need to report to the Kamehameha by three.”

  The Rising Sun police met us at the landing pad and turned Kline over to me in cuffs and manacles. I signed for him and walked him onto the transport. We had the kettle to ourselves, just Kline and me, alone, sitting near the back of the ship. His injured eye looked more infected than ever. The skin around it had turned purple, and yellow pus seeped out from under the closed eyelid.

  He stared at me for a moment, then asked, “Harris?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  We both sat silently as the ramp closed and the AT took off. Not wanting to look at that ruined face, I stared straight ahead at the metal wall of the kettle and let my thoughts wander. Would there be war?

  “They’re going to execute me,” Kline said, his calm voice cutting through my thoughts.

  “I suspect they will get around to it, sooner or later,” I said.

  “No,” Kline corrected me. “They are going to execute me tonight. They will hold a tribunal. I won’t even get a trial. You are delivering me to be executed.”

  “You cannot possibly expect me to feel sorry for you. You came to Ezer Kri to shoot me.” I shook my head. “You should have stayed on Gobi. No one cared about you there.”

  Despite what I said, I did feel sorry for Kline. In the time that I had known him, he had led a band of terrorists to kill my platoon and attempted to “azzazzinate” me. My universe would be safer once he was gone, but there was something pathetic about this inept, one-handed fool.

  “You soldiers are all alike,” he said, probably not seeing the irony in his statement.

  “I’m not a soldier,” I said. “I am a Marine.”

  Kline shook his head but said nothing.

  “I’m curious, Kline. Did Crowley put you up to this?” I asked.

 
“Did you read my final confession?” Kline asked.

  They had interrogated Kline thoroughly over the last few days, but I had not seen the reports. “No,” I said.

  “It was my idea,” Kline said. “I wanted to kill you. Crowley tried to talk me out of it.”

  “Did he?” I asked. “Did he tell you I was on Ezer Kri?” We must have been approaching the Kamehameha ; I could feel the transport rumble as the engines slowed.

  “He told me where to find you,” Kline said, sounding a bit defiant.

  “Did he arrange your trip?”

  “Not himself. One of his lieutenants.”

  “And he gave you the rifle and the scope?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he preset the scope to read my helmet signal?”

  “Yes.”

  For the first time since takeoff, I turned and looked directly at Kline. “And you think it was your idea? He played you.”

  In the background, jets hissed as our ride glided up into the primary docking bay. The ship touched down on its landing gear, and the soft hum of the engines went silent. The rear of the ship opened, and a security detail of four MPs stomped up the ramp.

  “Corporal Harris?” One of Admiral Klyber’s aides followed the MPs. “Corporal Harris, we’re on a very tight schedule.”

  “Is this the prisoner?” one of the MPs asked.

  I looked around the cabin, pretending to search for a third passenger. There are only two of us, I thought. I’m wearing a uniform, and he’s wearing cuffs . “This is the prisoner,” I said as I gave the guard Kline’s papers. The MPs formed a square around Kline and led him away.

  “Corporal Harris,” the aide said in a nervous voice. He was a lieutenant, and I was just a corporal; but I was Klyber’s guest. This aide did not dare pull rank.

  “Sorry, sir,” I said.

  “They are waiting for you on the Command deck.”

  “Yes,” I said, my thoughts following Kline.

  The lieutenant led me down the same corridor that Vince Lee and I had explored on our first night on the Kamehameha . Vince was considerably better company. This man strode in silence, staring coldly at sailors moving around the deck. At least nobody turned me back for being a Marine.