The Clone Republic (Clone 1)

by Steven L. Kent

  “They’ve let that slide quite a bit over the years. Politicians have replaced tradition with political expedience. The citizens in the territories complained that they did not have all of the opportunities given to Earth-born children, so Congress used the military for a social experiment. They integrated and enrolled some out-born cadets,” Klyber said, not even trying to mask the disdain in his voice.

  “As you know, Huang saw fit to replace Admiral Barry. Our new fleet commander will be Rear Admiral Robert Thurston, an outworlder born and raised in the Orion Arm. If an out-born can command a fleet . . .” Klyber looked at me and smiled.

  Life on the Kamehameha settled into a schedule of drills and drinking. Something was brewing out there beyond the horizon, but nobody knew any details.

  Two weeks after we left Ronan Minor, the Kamehameha rendezvoused with the rest of the Central SC Fleet in orbit around Terraneau. Two days later, the Inner SC Fleet joined our orbit.

  Down on Terraneau, officers from both the Inner and Central SC Fleets attended meetings as Admiral Klyber created a new command structure. As bits of information trickled in, talk around the platoon was enthusiastic.

  Most of the sea-soldiers I spoke with liked the idea of merging with the Inner SC Fleet. The combined fleet would have over a hundred thousand fighting Marines, a force that we believed capable of wiping out any threat.

  None of the Marines seemed to care that a new fleet commander had replaced Admiral Absalom Barry. The name Robert Thurston meant nothing; and besides, he was Navy, we were Marines. As long as his boats brought us to the fight on time, we’d do the rest.

  That indifference changed on the day that Thurston boarded the Kamehameha. Admiral Klyber took him on a tour of the ship. The last stop on the tour was our deck. A party of officers dressed in whites passed by our barracks, and we all caught a brief glimpse of the little troll.

  Robert Thurston looked younger than most of the privates in my platoon. He had thick red hair and pimples; honest to God, pimples all over his face. He cut his hair to regulation length, but it stood in spiky clumps under his cap. I was most taken by his size. Thurston was five-foot-five at best, with a slender, almost effeminate build. Needless to say, talk at the bar was wilder than ever that evening.

  “You see that kid? He’s barely out of diapers,” one clone shouted as he entered the bar.

  “What do you think of Thurston?” Lee asked me as I found the platoon’s watering spot for the night.

  “I wonder if he drinks milk or Scotch,” a private from the platoon joked.

  “So he looks a bit green,” I said as I downed half my beer.

  “Yeah, he looks a little green,” Lee agreed. “I’d hate to find myself nuked just because somebody’s congressman-daddy pushed his boy up the ranks.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” I said. “From what I hear, Thurston earned his way up the ranks.”

  “Is that a fact?” Shannon asked, nosing his way into our crowd.

  “That is a fact,” I said.

  Shannon, who knew damned well that I had met with Admiral Klyber the day before, considered my words. “That’s good news,” he said as he saluted me with his glass. “Did you all hear that? Harris heard that Thurston pulls his own weight, and Harris has good sources.” Lowering his voice, Shannon added, “The boy must have one hell of a record.”

  “And there’s something else,” I said, moving toward Shannon so that no one else would hear me. “He’s out-born.”

  I expected Shannon to spit out his beer, but he didn’t. He stood frozen for a moment, then swallowed. “No shit?” he said. “Born off Earth? That little speck-sucker must really know his stuff.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Kamehameha sat listless, while the frigates and fighters that surrounded her remained in constant motion. Nearly a dozen frigates orbited her hull, circling it in odd patterns. They would keep the flagship safe from fighter attacks. Of course, any fighter carrier, even an ancient one like the Kamehameha, had strong shields and powerful cannons.

  The Inner and Central Scutum-Crux Fleets hovered along opposite hemispheres of Terraneau. For a moment, the two fleets looked like mirror reflections of each other; then the Central Fleet pulled back from the planet and arrayed itself in battle formation with six carriers launching fighters and six carriers in reserve. Harriers and Tomcats poured out of six carriers at the front of the formation like angry hornets defending their nest. The Harriers moved so quickly that they could not be tracked with the human eye.

  Admiral Klyber, commander of the Central Fleet, attacked first. A wave of his Tomcats, fighters made for nonatmospheric conditions with particularly powerful missiles and particle-beam cannons, vanished from radar. When they reappeared, they were approaching the al-Sadat, the flagship fighter carrier of the Inner SC Fleet.

  I watched the virtual representation of the battle in real time on a three-dimensional holographic display. Floating in midair, the display looked like a glowing green grid with models of ships. Five meters long and three meters deep, it was large enough to show every detail of the battle.

  “Man, that’s fierce,” Lee whispered to me.

  “Shhh,” I hissed. Everyone else in the room was silent.

  Klyber’s attack made perfect sense. The al-Sadat sat isolated from the other capital ships in the Inner SC Fleet. The nearest frigates were hundreds of miles away and headed in the wrong direction—toward what would likely become the front line of the battle. Klyber’s fighters skirted that line, flanking Robert Thurston’s formation and attacking an unguarded pocket near the rear. It would take a couple of minutes for Thurston’s closest carrier to arrive on the scene.

  Thurston commanded his forces from a simulated bridge in one corner of the auditorium. I had a good view of him from my seat.

  “Shields,” Thurston said, in a voice that seemed far too calm considering the situation.

  “Should we take evasive action, sir?” a crewman asked.

  “That will not be necessary,” Thurston said as he paced the deck.

  “Shall I signal for frigate support?” the crewman asked.

  Admiral Thurston did not have the tactical advantage of watching the battle on a three-dimensional display. From my omniscient seat, I could see every aspect of the battle. I knew that Klyber had already launched a second wave of fighters. Thurston, with nothing more than a battle map that displayed in-ship radar readings, could not know what a forceful assault Admiral Klyber had planned.

  “He’s sunk. Klyber’s going to end this fast,” Lee whispered.

  “Shhhhh!” I hissed. A few of the people sitting near us gave Lee and me some chilly glares.

  On the other side of the room, where the officers sat, a loud cheer erupted. They wanted blood. “Bet the boy never saw anything like this at the Academy,” one overexcited officer blurted in a voice that carried. With that, the officers became silent.

  I glanced back at the 3-D display to see what all the cheering was about, but I was more interested in watching Admiral Thurston. He looked too young to command a ship. With his spiky, rust red hair and pimples, he looked like a teenage boy pretending to stand at the helm.

  “A very aggressive attack,” Thurston said, cocking a single eyebrow. “Either he intends to win early or he wishes to back us into a . . .”

  I looked back at the full-battle display in the center of the auditorium. Klyber’s fighters were closing in on the al-Sadat . Thurston showed amazing patience for a man whose ship was about to be attacked by 140 armed fighters. Warning lights flared along the ceiling and floor of the mock bridge. The sirens near the helm console blared so loudly that they choked my thoughts.

  I doubted Thurston’s grasp of the situation. Just behind that initial wave of fighters, half of the Central SC Fleet was in position for the second wave of the attack. Klyber had an unfair advantage—the Kamehameha, a thirteenth fighter carrier. She might have been old and small by carrier standards, but the Kamehameha still
bore a complement of sixty fighter craft.

  “Send the Washington and the Grant to sector 14-L. Tell them to launch fighters on my orders and power up shields on my mark,” Thurston said as he studied his battle map.

  “Sir, we are undefended,” the crewman said.

  “Prepare our pilots,” Thurston said in a voice that made the order sound like a compromise, “but do not give the order to launch.”

  “Enemy fighters’ ETA is less than one minute,” another crewman yelled.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Lee asked.

  “Tell the captains of the Washington and the Grant to launch fighters . . . now!” Thurston’s voice was emphatic. He looked so much like a boy in puberty that I expected his voice to crack, but he remained very much in control.

  Two events happened simultaneously. Klyber’s fighters arrived and commenced a meaningless attack. His Tomcats buzzed around the hull of the al-Sadat, but their pilots seemed uncommitted. Instead of firing missiles, they seemed more interested in flying defensive patterns. As they circled, the gun batteries lining the hull of the al-Sadat flashed green.

  At the exact same moment, a much more important event took place on a distant part of the map. The Washington and the Grant launched fighters as two of Klyber’s carriers and a complement of frigates entered the sector.

  “Order the fighters in sector 14-L to attack the enemy carriers,” Thurston said. “Have the Harriers concentrate their fire on their shield stations. The Tomcats can pick off any fighters they manage to launch.”

  “Yes, sir,” the crewman said, a new note of excitement evident in his voice.

  “Instruct the captains of the Washington and the Grant to attack the frigate escort. We can’t allow those frigates to sneak up on our fighters.”

  “Yes, sir,” the crewman responded.

  Unlike the al-Sadat, which had its shields up, the carriers from the Central SC Fleet had lowered their shields so that they could launch their fighters. Thurston’s Harriers fired missiles at the shield antennae on those carriers, quickly obliterating their best defense.

  I watched as the tiny fighters moved in on the carriers like a swarm of ants. Their missiles would do little good against shielded carriers, but Thurston had timed the attack precisely right. Red lights appeared along the edges of the Central Fleet ships showing that their shield stations were destroyed. Having destroyed the shield antennae, Thurston’s fighters suddenly became a serious threat.

  Not far away, Admiral Klyber’s frigates were completely mismatched against Thurston’s carriers. In less than two minutes, the Washington destroyed five Central Fleet frigates and the Grant annihilated three more. Any frigates that survived this attack would limp away from the fight. Somehow Robert Thurston had peered into Klyber’s mind and uncovered a weakness. The bulk of the Central Fleet’s frigates fled back toward the protection of the fleet; but the Inner Fleet’s Harriers and Tomcats continued to pummel the carriers, cutting off any hope of escape.

  “How did he do that?” Lee asked.

  Nobody shhhhed Lee that time. We all wondered the same thing.

  Thurston began pouring out a steady stream of commands. “Have the Grant send out bombers,” Thurston said. “We need to finish those carriers before the rest of their fleet can regroup.”

  “Hail the nearest frigate,” Thurston said. “Tell the captain that we require assistance.”

  “Only one?” the communications officer asked.

  “One will suffice,” Thurston said.

  Until that moment, I had not noticed the toll that the al-Sadat ’s cannons had taken on the Inner Fleet’s fighters. They began their assault with 140 Harriers; now fewer than 50 of those fighters remained. As I tried to count the fighters, two large flashes lit up a far corner of the map. Thurston’s bombers made short work of the trapped carriers.

  “Excellent,” Thurston said. I still expected his voice to crack. It didn’t. “Recall the attack wings to the Washington and the Grant .”

  Thurston’s fighters broke off their attack as Klyber’s ships stuttered back to their end of the field. “They’re running!” the communications officer yelled, no longer trying to conceal his excitement. “They’re leaving their fighter escort stranded!”

  “It would seem so,” Admiral Thurston said.

  I stopped to consider the tides of this battle. The Central Fleet had begun the fight with thirteen fighter carriers, sixtyfive frigates, and nine hundred fighter craft. The fleet still had eleven carriers. According to the scorecard at the base of the holographic display, Thurston had destroyed more than three hundred of Klyber’s fighters.

  The war was won. I waited for Thurston to send his ships in for a final assault, but he sat silently watching his battle map.

  “Admiral, the Central Fleet is preparing to evacuate,” a deck officer said.

  “Yes, it is,” Thurston said.

  “Shall we attack?”

  “No. Let them go.”

  A stunned silence filled the auditorium. Moments later, a door near Thurston’s mock helm slid open, and Admiral Klyber, flanked by several aides, stormed in. “You allowed my fleet to escape, Admiral Thurston?”

  “Yes, sir,” Thurston said.

  “Explain yourself,” Klyber demanded.

  Robert Thurston sighed. “In its current configuration, the Inner SC Fleet is designed to win battles, Admiral, not wars.”

  “You had my fleet at your mercy,” Klyber snapped. “You should have finished us.”

  “If we pressed the attack, we would have joined you in a battle of attrition—my twelve carriers against your eleven,” Thurston said. “If we went in for the kill, I would have lost ships unnecessarily.”

  Klyber smiled. “Sensible decision, Admiral. How would you reconfigure the fleet?” Klyber sounded interested, but there was something dangerous about the way he stared at Thurston. Sharp teeth hid behind his smile.

  “Fighters and frigates are excellent ships for repelling enemy attacks,” Thurston said. “Having neutralized one-third of your fighters, I would need battleships and destroyers to finish your fleet.”

  The simulation took place in the largest briefing room on the Kamehameha , an auditorium capable of seating three thousand people that was only used for important occasions. A more-than-capacity crowd had packed in. Once the seats were filled, lines of people squeezed in along the walls. We had come for theater-in-the-round.

  Klyber asked several more questions. When he finished, Thurston’s three-man crew stood up from behind their computer consoles and applauded. Klyber and his aides clapped as well. Soon the theater erupted in applause.

  Our new fleet commander nodded to his crew and walked briskly from the stage. He strode out of the auditorium without so much as a sideward glance. The applause, however, continued.

  If his legend was to be believed, Klyber had never lost a combat simulation, not even as a freshman cadet. Of course, good records have a way of becoming unblemished when there is little chance of verification. Whether or not he was truly undefeated, prior to that match, Bryce Klyber was generally considered unbeatable in simulated space battles.

  Over the next three weeks, the seemingly tireless Robert Thurston visited all twenty-five carriers in the Scutum-Crux Fleet. He took on all but one of the captains in simulated battles. (Captain Dickey Friggs of the St. Ignatius complained of fatigue and said he was in no condition for a fight.) The simulations always ended quickly and decisively, with Thurston on top.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Admiral Klyber’s campaign to legitimize Robert Thurston succeeded in every corner of the fleet except one. Walking toward Bryce Klyber’s office on what would turn out to be my last visit, I saw signs of open disdain toward the new fleet commander.

  Everywhere else in the fleet they called him Admiral Thurston; but on the command deck, he was “Bobby, boy genius” or sometimes simply “the boy.” In the time that I spent waiting to meet Admiral Klyber, I heard jokes about “the boy’s” voice
changing, his testicles dropping during battle, and a pretty good one-liner about him offering spiked milk and cookies to his officers so that they would let him stay up past his bedtime.

  Sitting in the waiting room, I listened to the bits of humor in silence. What kind of jokes did they tell about clones? And another question—If Thurston hadn’t wowed these people with his strategic skills, what would impress them?

  The door to Admiral Klyber’s office slid open, and he entered the doorway. “Corporal Harris,” he said.

  As I followed Klyber into his office, I heard an aide whisper, “The admiral’s pet clone.” It took real effort to pretend I had not heard it.

  “Your mercenary friend is making quite a name for himself,” Klyber said, as we crossed his office. “Freeman is walking a very fine line. He does a lot of piecework in this arm. According to the local authorities, some of his clients are worse than the hoodlums he brings in.”

  Klyber sat down behind his desk. I looked over his shoulder for a moment and stared out the viewport behind him. The Kamehameha had entered an odd phase of its orbit. I could not see Terraneau, just the blanket of space and an occasional frigate.

  “Sit down, Corporal,” Klyber said, pointing toward one of the chairs before his desk. As I took my seat, he asked, “What do you think of Rear Admiral Thurston?”

  “He knows his way around a combat simulation,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen the like,” Klyber agreed. “I hear there is a rumor going around that I let Thurston win. I would never stage a loss, not even to improve fleet morale. I don’t see how my losing could possibly boost morale.”

  “No, sir,” I said. I had not heard that rumor, and I doubted that anybody outside SC Command had. Rumors like that only existed among ass-kissing officers vying for a promotion. As far as I could tell, Thurston’s victories had gone a long way toward improving ship morale.

  Once the topic shifted to Thurston, Klyber spoke in short bursts. He leaned over his desk as he spoke, then sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the armrests of his chair when I answered his questions.