The Clone Republic (Clone 1)

by Steven L. Kent

  They saluted and left.

  According to their profiles, Arlind Marsten and Max Gubler were skilled field engineers. With any luck, their journeyman’s knowledge would be enough to get the security, communications, and life-support systems online. Pausing only to pull their tool cases, they scrambled out of the transport.

  “You boys,” I said, pointing to the three privates. “Scout the outer walls, inside and out. I want a damage report.”

  As they started for the hatch, I called after them over the interLink. “Keep an eye open for weapons, armor, debris, anything that might give us a clue about recent battles. Got it?”

  “Sir, yes, sir.” They saluted and left.

  “The rest of you unload this transport. Be quick about it. I want to seal the base by 1500.”

  Moving at a quick jog, the remaining Marines left the transport and crossed the landing pad. In Ravenwood’s dark atmosphere, I noticed that their green armor blended beautifully against the ice and rock. If we were unable to get the energy systems running, if the security system was damaged beyond repair, we might still be able to take the enemy in an open-field ambush.

  I watched my men hustling to unload the supplies. The boys knew the gravity of their situation. They would remain alert and disciplined. We had, I thought, a fighting chance.

  A crackling sound reverberated along the station wall as a flood of bright light ignited around the grounds. In the brightness, I saw the dull sheen of frost on the walls.

  “Lieutenant,” a voice said over the interLink, “energy systems are up and running, sir.”

  “Nicely done, Marsten,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

  “The power generators were in perfect order, sir,” Marsten responded. “Gubler says the security and heating systems were damaged, but not badly. The energy rods are still intact. It’s as if the last platoon powered the station down to prepare for us.”

  “I see. What is the condition of the shield generator?”

  “Shorted out, sir. It’s an easy repair. I think we can have it going in an hour.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “The communications system is a bust, though,” Marsten said. “Whoever attacked the base made sure the occupants could not call for help.” We all had mediaLink shades, but those were not made for battle. Using them left you blind to your surroundings, and a sophisticated enemy could easily jam their signal.

  “Maybe they were making certain that future occupants would not call for help either,” I said. “One last thing. I want you to check for radar. This used to be a fuel depot. It may have radar-tracking capabilities.”

  “Yes, sir,” Marsten replied.

  The area around the base looked clean when we landed. I would send a small patrol out to make certain of it. If the area was clean, and we could get a tracking system running, we might be able to track the enemy’s landing. That was, of course, assuming they flew in. If they broadcast themselves in stolen Galactic Central ships, our radar would give us very little warning.

  “Lieutenant,” a voice came over my interLink.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “We found out how they entered the base. You might want to see this.”

  I looked in the AT’s cargo hold. My men had mostly emptied the compartment, but a few crates of supplies stood piled on a pallet in a far corner. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. How bad is the damage?”

  “There are a lot of holes, but the wall’s still pretty strong. I think we can patch it.”

  As we spoke, a few men carried off the last of the supplies.

  “Lieutenant Harris,” the pilot’s voice spoke over the interLink. “I understand that the cargo hold is empty.”

  “You in a hurry to leave?” I asked.

  “This is my third drop on Ravenwood over the last two months, Lieutenant. As far as I know, the other teams are still here because no one came to pick them up. Yes, goddamn it, I am in a hurry to leave.”

  “Understood,” I said. “Thank you for your help.” I climbed down from the cargo hold and watched as the hatch slid shut.

  “Cleared to leave,” I said as I stepped away from the AT.

  “Godspeed, Lieutenant. With any luck I will pick you and your men up shortly.” There was no mistaking the lack of conviction in the pilot’s voice.

  I did not respond. Its jets melting a newly formed layer of ice, the boxy transport ship lifted slowly off the landing pad. It hovered for a few moments, then rose into the sky. Watching it leave, I felt an odd combination of jealousy and fear.

  “Do you want us to get to work on the wall, sir?” one of the privates asked.

  “Wait up, Private,” I said, as I started around the base for a look at the damage. A thin layer of long-frozen snow covered the ground. My boot broke through its icy crust. I found my scout party examining the back wall—the wall farthest from the launchpad.

  The wall was made of foot-thick concrete blocks coated with a thick plastic and metal polymer for added protection. Using a ramming device, or possibly just a well-placed charge, somebody had made seven holes through a thirty-foot section of wall.

  “Can you fix this?” I asked.

  “It shouldn’t be much of a problem, sir. We have the materials, but, ah . . .”

  “Private?”

  “If the wall didn’t keep the enemy out the first time, I don’t see how patching it will make much of a difference.”

  “Point taken,” I said. “Do what you can here and look for anything that tells us who made these holes and how they made them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We did find these,” the private said, pointing to an unexploded fractal-field grenade—a messy device that overloaded shields by flooding them with radioactive isotopes. A couple of those bangers could certainly have shorted out the generators on this base.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said. The U.A. military stopped using those grenades decades ago, possibly even forty years ago. I picked the grenade up and rolled it in my palm, being careful not to touch the pin.

  “You might want to be careful with that, sir,” the private said.

  “Private, this banger is forty years old. If it wasn’t stable, it would have blown years ago.” Just the same, I carefully replaced the grenade on the ground.

  “While you’re patching the walls, I want you to check the grounds for radiation. Let me know if the soil is hot, would you?”

  “Yes, sir,” the private said.

  “I’ll send some men out to guard you,” I said. I did that for his comfort, not his safety. Whoever had attacked Ravenwood didn’t care if we fixed the walls and started the shield generators. That much was obvious.

  Everything I had done up to that point made perfect sense. In fact, it was obvious. If you inherited a base that had been ransacked, you fixed the holes and restored the security systems. The previous platoon would have taken the same precautions.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The war began on November 8, 2510. Hoping to find a response from Admiral Klyber, I went into the command office and slipped on my mediaLink shades.

  NORMA ARM SECEDES FROM THE REPUBLIC

  November 8, Washington, DC— Announcing that they had formed a new organization called the Norma Arm Treaty Organization, 27 of the 30 colonized planets in the Norma Arm declared independence from the Unified Authority.

  Other territories may follow suit. There are reports that the Cygnus Arm has a similar treaty organization.

  “Shit,” I gasped. An entire arm of the galaxy had declared independence. If the Cygnus Arm followed, would Scutum-Crux be far behind?

  I did not tell my men about the secessions. Knowing that a civil war had begun would hurt their morale and possibly weaken their resolve. In the new state of affairs, they would need to fight more than ever. With entire galactic arms declaring independence, the Navy would not waste time worrying about an all-clone platoon on an ice cube like Ravenwood. We were on our own.

  While I read the news i
n my office, my men scoured the base for bodies and signs of fighting. We found them everywhere. Bullets had gouged and scratched many of the walls. Somebody had fired a particle beam in the building, too. We found places where beam blasts had exploded parts of the walls.

  “Sir, I think you should see this,” one of my men called.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Squad bay,” the man said, “in the hub.”

  Viewed from the top, Ravenwood Station looked like a square with an X connecting its four corners. The center of that X, the “hub,” included the barracks, the rec room, the galley, and the latrine.

  I found three of my privates in squad bay. One of them had noticed a dark stain on the floor. They had pushed the bunks out of the way for a better look and found that most of the bare, concrete floor was discolored.

  “I don’t think it’s blood,” I said. “Blood washes off clean.”

  “It almost looks like an oil stain,” a private said.

  “Whatever this shit was, sir, there was a lot of it,” the first private said. “Most of the floor is stained.”

  “So did it evaporate?” I asked.

  “No, sir. Somebody mopped up afterward.”

  “What?” I asked.

  The private pushed a bunk out of his way and opened a service closet. Inside the closet were a coiled steam hose and some maps. The heads of these mops were thick and heavily stained towels that were stiff and purple.

  “There are more stains, sir,” another private said. The group took me on a tour of the base, pointing out crescent-shaped stains where past residents had most likely died.

  From what I could tell, the unfortunate platoon before us made a stand in the barracks. Everywhere we went, we found scratches and gashes in the wall. The boys before us had not worried about conserving ammunition. They obviously had something more on their minds.

  We stripped the sheets from the bunks and found that most of the mattresses had a black stain running along one edge. Many had flash burns, and a few even had bullet holes. The last platoon had thrown their bunks on their sides and used them as barricades during the firefight.

  As we examined the bunks, a corporal noticed something strange about the damage in the walls. Most of the shots were between three and five feet up, with only a rare shot having hit any higher. Marines, who are trained to shoot to kill, will normally aim at their enemies’ chests and heads.

  I went to the operations area, the northern corner of the fortress. The rest of Ravenwood Station had plastic-coated white walls and bright lights. Operations had black walls and no windows. The only light in the area came from the security screens and computer monitors. Lights blinked on and off on the banks of computers lining the walls.

  It was there that I found Marsten and Gubler hacking into the station’s many computer systems. Despite the cold, they had removed their helmets and gloves.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

  “We’ve got the climate controls working. It’s getting warmer,” Gubler said. “We’re already up twenty degrees.” He pointed to a monitor that showed the base temperature at just under forty degrees. I looked at Gubler and saw that his face was pale; his lips had turned slightly blue.

  “Yeah, warmer,” I said. “How is it going with the radar system?”

  “Up and running,” Marsten said. “I may have already found something, too.”

  He went to a terminal and typed in some commands, bringing up a radar screen. “Now this may only have been an echo from something detected a long time ago; but as the system came online, I picked up a ship at the edge of our range. It was only there for a moment.”

  “So another ship might be in the area?” I asked. “Is it possible that the ship detected your scan and flew out of range?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure why it would do that,” Marsten said. “It was one of ours, a fighter carrier. Have a look.”

  Marsten typed some commands, and the screen fuzzed for a moment. The time mark in the corner showed “11/8/2510: 1437.” The screen froze.

  “There,” Marsten said, pointing to the very top of the screen. Outlined in green and white was the bat-winged shape of a U.A.N. fighter carrier.

  “A carrier. Did you identify it?” I asked.

  “No, sir. It moved out of range too quickly.” Marsten stood in front of the scanning station, the glare from the screen reflected in a bright smear on his armor.

  “Did you get any information?” I asked.

  Marsten’s forehead became very smooth as his eyes narrowed, and he considered my question. “I’ll see what we can take from the radar reading.”

  I walked beside him and looked over his shoulder as he typed more information into the computer. A glowing red grid showed on the screen. He brought up the radar frame with the ghost ship, then isolated the ship. Numbers flashed on the computer screen as he plumbed the image for information. “You’ll be able to see it more clearly if you take off the helmet,” Marsten said.

  “I need to stay on the interLink,” I responded.

  Marsten nodded. “This is the beginning of the scan. The ship was pretty far away.” Strange numbers appeared on the screen. Leaning in for a better look, Marsten traced his finger along the screen. His finger looked green in the glare.

  “That can’t be right,” Marsten said as he looked up from the screen. He turned to face me. “This may sound odd. It’s probably a misread, but this ship is only twenty-two hundred feet wide. I mean, it’s either a very large battleship or maybe an old Expansion-class fighter carrier.”

  This information should have come as a surprise, but it didn’t. I felt a familiar chill run through me. “How far back in time can you go on radar record?”

  “You want to know what the other platoons saw?” Marsten asked. “I can do that.” He sounded both pleased and excited.

  We had no information about the hundred-man Navy detachment that disappeared on Ravenwood. One moment they were there, and everything was fine. A week later they did not report in. Nothing is known about what happened during that week.

  We knew more about the missing platoon. It disappeared within five hours of landing on Ravenwood. The commanding officer had checked in with Pollard every hour on the hour. Captain Pollard sent a rescue ship two hours after the final transmission. The ship took three hours to arrive, and by the time it did, the base was empty.

  After a thorough search, Marsten found another slight echo that suggested inconclusively that an Expansion-class fighter carrier did indeed pass within radar range of Ravenwood Station sometime after the platoon arrived.

  “Does that ship mean anything, sir?” Marsten asked.

  “It might,” I said.

  “Do you think it’s from the GC Fleet?”

  I shook my head. “No. That fleet did not have any carriers.”

  “I’ll keep on this,” Marsten said.

  “Okay,” I answered, “I’m going to have another look around. Let me know if you find anything else.”

  All of the evidence pointed in the same direction, but I did not like where it was pointing. For one thing, if I was reading it right, our chances of survival were nil.

  The one part of Ravenwood Station I had not yet visited was the vehicle pool. I called for a squad to meet me there.

  “Lieutenant,” Marsten said.

  “What have you got?” I asked.

  “The radar was running during the first attack. An Expansion-class carrier was in the area around the time of the attack. In fact, it was flying over the area when the radar was shut down.”

  “Was it the Kamehameha ?” I asked.

  “How did you know?” Marsten asked.

  “Just an ugly hunch,” I said. “You’ve done good work. Any chance you can search the security records? I need to know everything that happened in this base.”

  “Gubler already tried,” Marsten said, now starting to sound slightly nervous. “The records were erased.”

  “Okay, you’ve done great
. Thanks.” I signed off.

  Twelve of my men met me inside the motor pool, and we searched. If Ravenwood Station ever had tanks or ATVs, they were now gone. Except for tools, fuel tanks, and a lot of trash, the room was empty.

  The floor and walls were bare concrete. We searched methodically, piling debris in the center of the room behind us. I found a few spent M27 cartridges and a line of icy footprints. Somebody had come in here with wet feet. Unfortunately, I had no way of telling the age of the footprints.

  When it came to important discoveries, one of my corporals won the prize. “I’ve found a body!” he yelled over the open frequency. Everybody stopped what they were doing and went to have a look. The doors to the motor pool opened as more Marines came for a look.

  “Where is it?” I asked as I looked at the far wall.

  “He’s buried in that corner, sir,” the corporal said. He pointed toward the far corner of the room. Any lights that might have been in that section of the pool had either stopped working or been shot out. I switched on the night-for-day lens in my visor as I moved in for a closer look, but I need not have bothered. The corner was empty except for a pile of cans and rags; but growing out of those rags was the name, “Private Thadius Gearhart.”

  “Search it,” I ordered, not knowing what we might find. The pile of trash was about a foot deep—too shallow to conceal a body. “The rest of you, get back to work.”

  As the others filed out of the motor pool, the corporal called out, “I found him. At least I have what’s left of him.”

  The corporal held the broken front section of a combat helmet between his pinched fingers. The section included most of the frame around the visor and a jagged swath of the portion around the left ear. A few shards of glass remained in the visor.

  Gearhart had been most likely shot in the face. The bullet would have entered through the visor, flattening on impact, and blown out the back of his head and helmet. If we examined the area more carefully, I suspected we would find bits of broken plastic along with skull and brain among the rags, cans, and trash.

  The corporal swung the scrap of helmet as if he planned to throw it in the trash. “Stop,” I said.