The Clone Redemption

by Steven L. Kent

  Staring straight ahead, Chief Petty Officer Kapeliela said, “Show some respect, the man is trying to honor us.”

  Yamashiro filled each of the ochoko with sake. Speaking in Japanese, he ordered the SEALs to step forward. Before the ceremony began, another Japanese officer had drilled Illych and his men so that they would recognize the commands.

  “This is honoring us? He’s giving us a thimbleful of rice wine and speaking in a language he doesn’t think we understand. How is this an honor?” asked Humble.

  Short and sturdy, Yamashiro stood five-five, making him three inches taller than the diminutive SEAL clones. He had thick arms, a thick neck, a thick chest, and a round gut, all solidly packed together. His senior officers often speculated on whether or not he dyed his coal-colored hair. His eyes were hard and dark, and he barked the order for the twelve SEALs to lift their ochoko. He took the thirteenth cup and drank with them.

  Once the SEALs had drained their sake, Yamashiro seemed to run out of words. He remained solemn as they replaced their ochoko on the table; and then he dismissed them.

  Humble asked, “That’s it? He’s supposed to give us a flag and a sword. We’re supposed to read our death poems.”

  “You wrote a death poem?” asked Illych.

  “I wanted to get into the spirit of the occasion,” said Humble.

  Illych laughed, but Humble’s complaining offended Chief Petty Officer Kapeliela. Had his neural programming allowed him to swear, he would have strung all the profanity in the English language into a single run-on sentence; but he could not do that. The Unified Authority scientists who created the SEAL clones organized their brains so that they did not have vices. The SEALs did not swear, drink, or smoke. Their selfesteem was so low that they did not approach women, not even prostitutes.

  Illych and the SEALs stood at attention as Yamashiro and his officers left the landing bay of the battleship Onoda. Once they were gone, Illych gathered his SEALs beside the transport that would launch them on their mission. The transport would not take them down to the planet; but if everything went well, it would bring them back to the ship.

  Kapeliela and Humble continued their argument. Humble said, “You did know that was a traditional Kamikaze farewell?”

  Kapeliela grunted. “Yeah, I know. Only we’re coming back.”

  “Maybe. We might think we’re coming back, but Yamashiro doesn’t,” said Humble.

  The rear hatch of the transport ground open, and the SEALs shuffled in. As Illych passed, Humble asked, “Master Chief, do you think we’re coming back?” He was not afraid, just curious. The SEALs did not know fear, it was not in their neural programming.

  “As long as the fleet doesn’t leave us behind,” said Illych. Like all of his men, Illych was nothing if not stoic.

  The joking and bickering ended when the hatch closed, and the mission officially began. In action, the SEALs only spoke when they had a real reason.

  Every SEAL had the same basic training in stealth, marksmanship, demolitions, close combat, and reconnaissance skills; but each had a specialized skill as well. During the three years since they had left Earth, the SEALs had picked up new areas of specialization. Some had studied engineering, others chemistry or physics, anything that might help when they infiltrated the enemy.

  The cargo compartment of the transport was known as the “kettle” because its floor, ceiling, and windowless steel walls combined into a curbed interior. In the shadow-filled confines of the kettle, the SEALs became all but invisible. The dark gray of their complexion made them look sickly in light, but they blended in with the shadows in the dimly lit environs of the transport.

  The Japanese called the SEALs kage no yasha. It meant “shadow demon.” The name referenced both their ability to vanish in the darkness and also the inhumanity of their faces. Their noses turned up so sharply they might have been snouts. Each had a thick ridge of bone forming a protruding brow over his tiny dark eyes. They were short and wiry, with entirely bald heads and clawlike fingers that could slice through skin.

  Unlike other synthetics, the SEALs knew that they were clones. They knew they were ugly and were deeply ashamed of it. The Japanese made jokes about their having the faces of bats or dragons or demons. Not wanting to embarrass the Japanese, the SEALs pretended not to understand them; but in their hearts, they agreed.

  “Board your caskets,” Illych told his men.

  The caskets were “stealth infiltration pods” or “S.I.P.s,” coffin-sized people-fliers designed to evade all known forms of detection. Six feet long and three feet wide, S.I.P.s could travel millions of miles in an hour. They scanned for radar, sonar, and laser detection and camouflaged their own footprint. They did not have guns or steering controls. SEALs did not pilot their caskets, they went along for the ride. Trapped in tubes so tight they could do no more than breathe, the SEALs did not become claustrophobic. It was not in their programming.

  Seemingly designed to make passengers uncomfortable, the cargo pit of the S.I.P. lacked so much as a shred of padding, had no lights, and no communications gear. The S.I.P. was designed for ten-minute flights and nothing longer. Natural-borns could not tolerate even ten minutes in an S.I.P., but it never occurred to Illych and his SEALs that their S.I.P.s were uncomfortable.

  The launching device at the back of the transport did not simply release the pods into space; it fired them like a high-powered rifle using supermagnetism. Once launched, the pod controlled the flight itself, using a field-resonance engine that operated as silently as a gentle breeze and as untrackably as one particular raindrop in a storm.

  Field-resonance engines offered one other advantage. In theory, overcharging the engine of an S.I.P. triggered a reactive explosion that would measure in the millions of megatons. These were more than bombs; they were planet colliders.

  A team of technicians opened the pods and the SEALs climbed into their caskets without hesitation. Once the technicians closed the pod doors, dry gel oozed in around the SEALs to protect them against the stresses of extreme acceleration and deceleration.

  Working as quickly as they could, technicians dressed in soft-shelled armor lifted the S.I.P.s into place. The launching device had a revolving carriage with chambers for twelve caskets that the techs loaded like bullets.

  The transport had been specially equipped with a stealth generator. Sitting only five hundred thousand miles outside the planet’s atmosphere, cloaked by the generator, the little ship was invisible, even to the Japanese Fleet. The pilot purged the air from the kettle, then he shut off the engines and all of the lights as he opened the rear hatch. This was the mission’s most vulnerable moment. With the hatch open, and the S.I.P.s in place, the stealth generator could no longer hide the transport.

  Per special orders given them by Admiral Yamashiro, the sailors raised a hand in salute and shouted BANZAI as the device fired each pod into space.

  The SEALs did not hear their cheers. InterLink transmissions did not penetrate the walls of their pods. For the duration of their flight, the SEALs heard nothing more than the sound of their own breathing as they streaked through space. Barely larger than old-fashioned space suits, the pods carried their cargo a half million miles in a matter of seconds.

  In the history of mankind, no human had ever traveled so far in such a small vessel. Tasked with saving humanity, the SEALs went to space with equipment that Congress had previously labeled “too expensive to be practical.” Concerns about practicality vanished when it came to saving the human race.

  It cost approximately eighty million dollars to build a stealth infiltration pod. The SEALs had brought five thousand of them to Bode’s Galaxy.

  The pods traveled from the transport to the planet at top speed and did not slow until they pierced the atmosphere, leaving no more traces of their entry than needles slicing steam. Invisible to radar, sonar, and visual contact, the pods continued their computer-controlled deceleration until they touched down at the preappointed target as gently as autumn leaves
landing in a grassy field.

  All twelve pods landed within a forty-foot radius, their cargo bay doors opened, and the SEALs emerged. This was the first time man had set foot on a planet outside the Milky Way, a benchmark that meant nothing to Emerson Illych and his men. They had not come to explore. They had come to destroy.

  Illych and his team knew what to expect. This planet was known as “A-361-F,” as it was the sixth planet from the star labeled “A-361.” A-361-F had an unbreathable atmosphere—a toxic cocktail of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane. Because it was so far from the sun, a foot-thick layer of poisonous frost covered its surface. Had they not been wearing atmosphere-adjusting combat armor, the SEALs would have frozen to death before they got a chance to die of asphyxiation.

  Illych thought the planet looked a lot like Earth’s moon might have looked had it been frozen under ice. Nothing had color. The ground was gray. The sky was black. The SEALs had landed during the period that passed for day, but the sun was four billion miles away, and day on A-361-F looked a lot like night.

  The SEALs did not waste time chatting about the dreary surroundings. They quietly checked to make sure they had not left gear in their pods and began their mission.

  In the hours before the mission began, remote surveillance technicians had used satellite drones to map the planet. Designed for military use, the satellites were not equipped to take air samples from space. They tested for radiation, located nonnatural structures, recorded ground movement, and searched for possible targets. On this planet, the satellites found only one point of interest, an abandoned building complex.

  Looking at the satellite reports, Yamashiro’s intelligence officers said that complex was “inactive,” possibly an abandoned fort or a fueling station for space travelers. They had no way of knowing if it belonged to the Avatari, the aliens who had created such havoc upon the Milky Way. The author of the report did speculate that the enormous cylindrical structures along one face of the complex might be storage silos, suggesting that the facility might have been used as a fuel refinery.

  The land around the complex was completely flat, no hills or craters. A labyrinth of tunnels and trenches might have been hiding beneath the foot-thick frost; but if so, it was invisible to the recon satellites. To Illych’s eyes, the plain had no notable features except for the buildings.

  Illych did not bother telling his men what to do, they already knew their assigned duties. The SEALs had trained together since the day of their manufacture, twelve years earlier. They knew their objectives and performed their duties.

  The SEALs divided into three four-man reconnaissance teams. Illych led his team toward the complex itself. If the buildings had had walls, doors, or windows, the master chief and his men would have searched from outside, looking for guards or security equipment. No doors, no walls, no roof. More than anything else, the place was a tangle of pipes and chambers. Inch-thick frost had formed on the structure, creating gray camouflage over the jet-black metallic surfaces below.

  The building stood no more than fifty feet tall, built on an open-faced foundation. Using the thermal lenses in his visor, Illych scanned the area for heat signatures. He found nothing. Either the structure was out of use, or the material flowing through the pipes was of a type that could not be frozen.

  Illych and his team looked for signs of the Avatari. They searched the platform for doors and compartments, using the sonar and X-ray equipment in their helmets; then they used the enhanced handheld equipment that they had brought with them. The pipes and chambers were hollow, the foundation and the ground around it were solid.

  One of the SEALs shined a laser on pipes and panels to test for vibrations and found nothing. Petty Officer Andrew Call aimed a torch at a patch of frost from a pipe that was so big around he could have stood in it. The gray layer turned to steam under the heat and quickly evaporated.

  Speaking on an open frequency, Call asked Illych, “Do you want me to cut the pipe open?” He did not refer to the master chief as “sir.” By design, none of the cloned SEALs were officers.

  “Didn’t you say the pipe is empty?” Illych asked.

  “As far as I can tell.”

  “What’s the point in cutting it open?”

  “It will give us a chance to see what it’s made of,” said Call. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It X-rays easily, but I can’t find wires or circuits, none of the components you expect to find inside a machine. Whatever passes for power around here, it’s not electricity-based.”

  Illych considered this. “Hold off,” he said. “For now, let’s just figure out what we’re dealing with.”

  Illych stood at the edge of the foundation, tracing the shapes of the pipes that formed the structure. The building had an organic, random feeling. Like vines in jungle, the pipes weaved in and out in a haphazard braid. So much frost covered the pipes that they looked like an ice sculpture, but only a thin layer of powdery frost had formed on the foundation. Looking for footprints in that powder, Illych thought that centuries might have passed since the aliens had last visited the facility.

  Using optical commands, he raised the volume of the sound sensors in his helmet so that he could better monitor the ambient sounds. He heard only the mouselike whisper of the wind and the footsteps of his men. The planet had a thin atmosphere, and much of it was frozen.

  The master chief went to an N-shaped stand of pipes and tapped it with his finger. He could see the structure of the pipes deep inside a dirty frozen layer. Using a knife, he scraped the skin of the ice, letting the peelings fall into an analysis kit.

  He checked the reading, saw nothing of importance, and scraped deeper. The kit checked for radiation, chemicals, and age. The content of the ice remained the same; but as Illych gouged deeper into the frozen sheath, the age changed. The readings struck Illych as odd, but he did not question the results.

  “Do you think this belongs to the same aliens that invaded us?” asked Kapeliela.

  “I’m sure of it,” said Illych.

  “This place is weird. I never seen anything like it,” said Kapeliela.

  “It looks like a refinery,” said Illych.

  Kapeliela agreed. “Yeah, an abandoned refinery. That makes sense, but it’s been out of service for a long, long time.”

  Chief Petty Officer Humble joined the conversation. “So what? It’s a refinery?”

  Illych asked, “What kind of ships did the aliens fly when they attacked our planets?”

  “They didn’t have . . .”

  “You don’t need remote fuel depots once you stop flying ships,” Illych said.

  Beside the building, a row of twenty-seven identical cylindrical structures rose out of the ground. They stood 970 feet tall. They had the same hyperbolic shape as the cooling towers of nuclear power facilities only turned upside down. The structures were wider at the top than at the base.

  While Illych and his men surveyed the building, Chief Petty Officer Humble’s team studied the towers. Using equipment in his helmet, Humble measured the nearest tower—223 feet wide at the base and 352 feet wide at the top.

  “You got anything?” Illych asked Humble.

  “Yeah. It’s like these things are made of eggshells,” Humble said. “Once you get through all the ice, the walls are a twentieth of an inch thick. I’m surprised they don’t collapse under the weight of the ice.”

  “Can you see inside it?” Illych asked.

  “Yeah, they X-ray right up. They’re empty and hollow all the way down.”

  “All the way down?” Illych asked.

  “If you think this thing is tall, you should see how far down it goes.”

  “How far?”

  “Over a mile.”

  “Do you think it’s a silo?” Illych asked.

  “That’s my best guess; but it’s empty.”

  Kapeliela waited for Illych to run out of questions, then asked one of his own. “Do we know if these pipes are made of the same stuff?”

  �
��They aren’t as thin as eggshells,” Illych said. “It looks like this place was abandoned a long, long time ago. Some of the ice on these pipes is over a hundred thousand years old.”

  That was when Illych saw the light. All of the SEALs saw it. A dull sun shone in the distance; but far brighter light now shone directly above them. Having been briefed about the invasion of their own galaxy, the SEALs knew what that light meant. The aliens had arrived.

  “Looks like the home team knows we’re here,” said Illych. A few yards away, Call left his X-ray camera beside a pipe and pulled out his gun. Three of the SEALs carried pistols, six carried M27s, three carried sniper rifles. All of their weapons were loaded with custom-made rounds, bullets designed to explode like miniature grenades.

  “Okay, we’ve trained for this,” Illych told his men.

  Light so bright it almost looked solid shone on the other side of the building. The SEALs knew what to expect: First came the light, then the aliens that traveled inside it.

  Illych told his men, “Take your positions. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” He did not believe they would.

  Illych held no delusions about being rescued. No one would come to the planet to save them. If his men had any hope of survival, they would need to make it out on their own.

  Believing that he and his men would not survive the next five minutes, Illych decided to die on his own terms. The only thing that mattered now was reporting what little they had learned before the aliens “sleeved” the planet. The light in the sky, dubbed by scientists as an “ion curtain,” would quickly enclose the planet, ending all transmissions. Once it spread over the platform, the SEALs would be cut off.

  With his team running beside him, Illych relayed findings to the fleet as he dashed from pipes to cylinders to pillars. He kept his M27 out and ready though he still had not yet seen the enemy.

  “The atmosphere is toxic, mostly nitrogen and carbon monoxide. The building appears to be a refinery. We think it is out of use but cannot be sure. It’s covered with ice. The ice on the pipes is a hundred thousand years old. I checked the samples myself.”