Steven Kent: The Clone Empire

Takahashi opened the message and read it.

“Well, it appears we are about to receive some important guests,” he told Illych. “Admiral Yamashiro is coming.”

And so they waited for the other officers to arrive.

Yokoi Shigeru, captain of the Kyoto , arrived first, looking pale and stiff, and sickly. He handled hangovers about as well as he handled being drunk. He managed to croak out a question, “Why are you holding a meeting at 06:30?”

“You’re going to need to ask Admiral Yamashiro,” Takahashi said.

“Oh,” said the freshly sobered Yokoi.

He did not even notice Master Chief Illych until after he sat down. He dropped into a chair, looked over, and started. “Master Chief, I am so sorry. I did not notice you when I came in.”

Illych smiled and said nothing.

The three of them sat in silence for several minutes. Finally, Yokoi returned to his rant from the night before. He leaned toward the SEAL clone, and said, “It’s been three years, Master Chief, do you ever worry that we will not find the aliens?”

“No, sir,” Illych said. It was part of the SEAL persona. They never initiated conversations with outsiders. When outsiders asked them questions, they kept their answers brief.

“You never feel discouraged?” Yokoi asked.

“No, sir,” said Illych.

Yokoi turned to Takahashi and spoke in Japanese. He asked, “Do you think they like women?”

Takahashi responded in Japanese, “With a face like his, perhaps he likes bats.”

Illych sat content, staring straight ahead and ignoring the conversation. He sat with his legs crossed, his talonlike fingers clasped over one of his knees.

“Maybe the Unified Authority has a program for cloning blind prostitutes,” Yokoi said.

Both officers laughed.

Austere old Miyamoto Genyo was the next officer to arrive. He stepped in the door, and the joking came to an end.

Miyamoto was the captain of the Onoda . When asked to christen his ship, Miyamoto named it after the final hero of the Second World War—Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who spent twenty-nine years hiding in a jungle because he refused to believe that Japan had surrendered. He would have remained in hiding until he died, but the government sent his former commanding officer into the jungle to tell him to go home.

Around the fleet, many people believed that the story would have been different had it been Miyamoto Genyo hiding in that jungle. Miyamoto would have hidden for twenty-nine years, just like Onoda; but when the retired commanding officer came to tell him the war was over, Miyamoto would have shot him for treason.

Last to arrive at the meeting were Takeda Gumpei, captain of the Yamato , and Admiral Yamashiro himself. They arrived together, talking like old friends. The hard-drinking, life-loving Takeda was Admiral Yamashiro’s favorite, and the other captains loathed him for it.

Admiral Yamashiro only gave these briefings when he had particularly bad news. For the last three years, all of the news had been bad.

Bode’s Galaxy had millions if not billions of solar systems. The fleet was prepared to search each system for the aliens. Every time they traveled to a new solar system, they discovered it was dark, “dark” meaning the sun had been expanded and killed. “Dark” meaning one of the planets in the solar system had been mined by the aliens and that there was no life left on that planet.

“We have located a new solar system,” Yamashiro began. “It has a living sun.

“Gentlemen, our invasion is about to begin.”

Penning my author’s notes is one of my favorite parts of the book-writing process because it gives me a chance to create a snapshot of my work. Snapshots are interesting anomalies. They do not explain the past or give a hint of what lies ahead; they simply describe the moment. Look at a photograph of John F. Kennedy stepping off the plane in Dallas, and you see a young, handsome politician with a promising future. There is nothing to indicate that tragedy looms ahead.

Today is Thursday, March 25, 2010. I have just completed the first round of revisions of The Clone Empire . You, looking backward in time, are holding the book that from my perspective must still undergo another round of revisions.

I finished my rewrite at 7:23 P.M. and plan to go to sleep early this evening as I will begin work on a young-adult novel early tomorrow morning. I am also nearly halfway through the first draft of The Clone Redemption , book seven in the Wayson Harris saga.

And there is more good news. Chris and Ed, two of my closest friends, are getting married in a few days. I am traveling to attend their wedding. Two days after I come home from the wedding, I will fly to Hawaii to teach at a college. I will return home in June, just in time for my daughter’s high-school graduation.

Needless to say, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen so much excitement around the Kent household.

So, a few words about the writing of The Clone Empire , the novel I am just now putting to bed.

It is fitting that the first Double Y clone to speak in this book bears the name Kit Lewis, because in a very real way, the Double Y clones were his idea. The real Kit Lewis is one of the regulars on my Sad Sam’s Palace website. As I was writing The Clone Betrayal , he wrote in to ask if perhaps the reason Wayson Harris was so tough was because the scientists who created Liberators used two Y chromosomes instead of an X and a Y.

The idea had never occurred to me, but I liked it. And so, as my way of saying thank you, I had Harris beat Kit’s literary effigy to mush, then I had Ray Freeman shoot him in the head, then I had him frozen, stripped, and autopsied.

Thanks, Kit. No good deed goes unpunished, eh.

I have other people I need to thank as well. As always, the lovely and talented Anne at Ace made all the difference with this book. When I first submitted The Clone Empire , I wrote the epilogue from the point of view of Captain Hironobu Takahashi. All of my test readers loved the concept once I explained it to them; but that was only after they asked, “Why is Harris going by the name Takahashi?”

Since the rest of the book was told from Wayson’s perspective, switching heads created confusion. Anne found a solution, of course. Tell the epilogue from the third-person perspective. Duh!

The lovely and talented Rachel Johnson also helped with this novel. She always does; and, as always, I appreciate her help.

As of this snapshot, this will be the penultimate installment in the Harris saga. I am eternally grateful to the kind folks at Ace Books for publishing my novels; and I am equally grateful to you for reading them.