The Clone Republic

by Steven L. Kent

  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 , and 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. A voice in the back of my head said that I was far out of my depth as we approached the admin area. That was the holy of holies on most ships, officer country, but we were headed for far more hallowed halls than mere officer country. At the far end of admin were the six elevators that led to the Scutum-Crux Command deck. The lieutenant approached one of these elevators and rolled the thumb, pointer, and middle finger of his right hand against a scanner pad. The elevator call button lit up.

  “Ever been back here before, Corporal?”

  “No, sir.”

  The elevator door slid open, and we stepped in. I stood silent, watching numbers flash on a bar over the door, my mouth dry and my throat parched.

  We stepped onto the twelfth floor. Staff members from every branch sat at desks. An Air Force major stood in front of a large glass map moving symbols. A colonel from the Army walked past us and ducked into a small office. No one seemed to notice us.

  At first glance, SC Command looked very similar to the admin area at the base of the elevator, except that here you saw men in Air Force blue and Army green. The lieutenant led me past the cubicles and lesser offices, and the surroundings became much less familiar. Even the ceiling was higher on this part of the deck. We entered a large waiting room. The naval officer/receptionist glared at me. “Is this Corporal Harris?”

  “In the flesh,” the lieutenant answered.

  “He is in conference,” the receptionist said, “but he said for you to go in.”

  “In conference?” I asked.

  “That means we need to keep absolutely quiet,” the lieutenant whispered. We approached a convex wall with a double-paneled door. As the panels slid open, I heard Admiral Klyber speaking. The officer put up a hand, signaling me to stay outside as he peered into the circular room. A moment later, he turned back and signaled for me to follow.

  Admiral Klyber and Vice Admiral Barry sat along the edge of a semicircular table facing a wall with several screens. I recognized the faces on the screens from stories I had seen in the news. Admiral Che Huang, the secretary of the Navy, a member of the Joint Chiefs, spoke on one screen. Generals from the Army and Air Force, also members of the Joint Chiefs, showed on other screens, along with a member of the Linear Committee.

  “You said Ezer Kri would not pose a problem, Barry,” Huang said in an angry voice. His image glared down at Admiral Barry, his lips pulling back into a sneer.

  “The planet has no standing military and no registered capital ships,” Barry said. Clearly shaken, the vice admiral wheezed and snorted as he spoke. Beads of sweat formed on his mostly bald scalp. “Those ships could not possibly have come from Ezer Kri.”

  “I quite agree,” said Klyber. “Admiral Barry had no reason to anticipate the attack on the Chayio .” He leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers, and spoke in a calming voice like a mediator who had come to settle a squabble among friends. “As I read this, it appears that the reality of the Atkins threat is finally showing itself. Admiral Barry was only briefed about hostilities with the Yamashiro government.”

  “Atkins?” asked the member of the Linear Committee.

  “We’ve all seen the record; those destroyers broadcast themselves to the scene,” Klyber said. “Did you look at the design of those ships?”

  “I’d need clear
er pictures,” the Committee member said. “I saw your notes; but after all of these years, I can’t believe it.”

  “Fair enough,” Admiral Klyber said. “But we do agree that those ships are of an obsolete U.A. design and manufacture? I am sure we agree that this was not an extragalactic attack.”

  The faces in the television screen nodded in agreement.

  “We know that the Mogat population vanished after the attack on our platoon,” Klyber continued. “A number of ships launched during the attack on the Chayio . Intelligence traced that launch to an uninhabited island. It seems safe to assume that the separatists massed on that island as they planned their escape.”

  “I am aware of that, Admiral,” Huang hissed. “If those ships came from the GC Fleet, they would be hopelessly outdated.”

  “Not necessarily,” Klyber said. “The Kamehameha was commissioned before we began exploring the Galactic Eye. They may have updated their ships just as we reoutfitted this one.” He shot a furtive grin at Vice Admiral Barry, who fidgeted nervously and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “So how do we proceed, assuming those ships were from the GC Fleet?” asked the member of the Linear Committee.

  “There were hundreds of ships in that fleet,” Klyber pointed out.

  “Even if they reoutfitted it, I don’t think the GC Fleet would be much of a threat,” Huang said. “Not against a modern navy.

  “The GC Fleet was a one-dimensional fleet designed for invasions, not ship-to-ship combat. It did not have frigates or carriers. It will be helpless against fighters.” No one seemed interested in Huang’s opinion, however.

  “Perhaps we’d better double the patrols guarding the broadcast system,” said the general from the Air Force.

  “Would there be any way to track the fleet’s movements?” asked the Committee member. Klyber shook his head. “Once we get a psychological profile of whoever is commanding the fleet, we may be able to predict his steps. For now, the best we can do is to go on alert.”