Steven Kent - The Clone Republic

“Morgan Atkins was the senior member of the Linear Committee at the time. The entire Republic worshipped him. Did you know that Atkins was on the Committee?”

So confused that I did not even understand Admiral Klyber’s question, I shook my head.

“Atkins was big on manifest destiny. ‘Humanity can never be safe until it conquers every inch of known space,’ ” Klyber said, lowering his voice in what I assumed was a parody of Atkins. “No one challenged Atkins. He single-handedly ran the Republic.

“The Galactic Central Fleet was Atkins’s idea. He wanted a fleet that was so powerful that all enemies would fall; and when Atkins called for action, by God, people jumped. The problem was that Atkins’s fleet had to be self-broadcasting. We usually sent self-broadcasting explorer ships to set up discs; but with explorer ships disappearing, he wanted a self-broadcasting fleet.”

Klyber rubbed his eyes. “God, what a nightmare. The Galactic Central Fleet was just like they say—bigger and more powerful than any fleet ever assembled. Just building the broadcasting engines cost trillions of dollars. In the end, each ship cost five times what normal ships cost.

“It took three years to build the fleet. Three years, and all of that time the military was on high alert looking for any signs of an invasion.”

Klyber stopped speaking for just a moment. His gaze seemed far away, but his eyes stayed focused on mine. “We tested for every contingency. The explorer ships could have been destroyed by some kind of broadcast malfunction, so we bounced the GC Fleet back and forth across the Orion Arm until no one knew where it was without daily updates.

“Once we were sure of the broadcast engines, we sent the fleet to explore the inner curve of the Norma Arm…the center of the galaxy. The ships flew near Jupiter. They initiated the self-broadcast, then they were gone. It was just like the explorer ships; we simply never heard from them again.” Klyber sat up. “Atkins accompanied the fleet. It was his pet project.”

“I don’t understand, sir.” I said. “Atkins went with the GC Fleet?”

“My father never trusted Atkins,” said Klyber. “He had me assigned to research a new class of clones around the same time Atkins proposed his grand fleet. Congress never knew what I was doing. Atkins never knew. It was strictly a military operation.”

“Liberators,” I said.

“Liberators,” Klyber agreed. “You’ve probably heard rumors about Liberators having animal genes …We experimented with genes from animals, but it didn’t work. Liberator clones were not very different than earlier clones except that they were smarter and far more aggressive. We gave them a certain cunning. We made them ruthless. They needed to be ruthless. We thought we were sending them to fight an unknown enemy from the galactic core—something not human. Do you understand?”

Klyber did not pause for me to answer.

“One of the scientists came up with the idea of ideas…” Klyber smiled for just a moment, then the smile vanished. “Hormones. Classical conditioning. We mixed endorphins in their adrenal glands. The mixture only comes out in battle. A drug that would make the clones addicted to war. Only a scientist could come up with an idea like that, Harris. It never occurred to us military types.

“You need to understand, these clones were our last hope, and we had no idea what was out there. We were sending them into hostile space. Whatever was out there had annihi

lated our most massive fleet.”

“An alien race?” I asked.

“No. No aliens, just a crazy bastard politician. It turned out that Morgan Atkins was behind the whole thing. He wanted to build a new republic, with no allegiance to Earth. He was the ultimate expansionist, pushing the idea that Earth was just another planet and not the seat of man. It sounded good. It sounded poetic and freedom-loving, but anyone with an ounce of intelligence could see that his views would lead to chaos.

“Even back then, Atkins had fanatical followers. We later found out that Atkins planted men on every ship in the Galactic Central Fleet. They put poison gas in the air vents and commandeered the fleet as soon as it arrived in the inner curve. Of course we didn’t know that back on Earth. All we knew was that Atkins and his fleet were gone. We found out the truth after the Liberators arrived; but by that time, Atkins had a base, a hierarchy, and the strongest fleet in the galaxy. He didn’t know about my clones, so he wasn’t prepared.

“We sent a hundred thousand Liberators in explorer ships. Atkins’s land forces never stood a chance. Atkins and most of his men got away in their self-broadcasting fleet. That was the last anybody saw of those ships. At least it was until now.”

“I never heard any of this in school.”

“Of course not,” Klyber snapped. “This was the most classified secret in U.A. history. It was so damned classified that we backed ourselves into a corner. When communes of Atkins followers began springing up around the frontier, we couldn’t arrest them. There would have been too many questions.”

My head still spinning, I tried to understand where Admiral Klyber was taking me. That war ended forty years ago. An image came to my mind. “The sergeant over my platoon…Is he a Liberator?”

“Master Sergeant Tabor Shannon was in that invasion,” Klyber said. “It wasn’t really a war, not even much of a battle. Atkins’s men had no idea what they were fighting.”

Admiral Klyber took a deep breath, stood up from behind his desk, and turned to look out that viewport wall. “Do you have any other questions, Corporal?” he asked. Then, without waiting for me to respond, he turned, and added, “You’re not an orphan, Harris, you are a Liberator. A freshly minted Liberator.”

Learning about my creation did not kill me. Identity-programming and the death reflex were components of modern cloning. I was a throwback, an early-production model that somehow found its way back on to the assembly line for a limited run.

“Do you understand what I am telling you?” Admiral Klyber asked me.

A few moments before, I had been wrestling to gain control of my thoughts. Suddenly I could think with absolute clarity. I felt neither sad nor confused. I nodded.

“You are a Liberator, and knowing it will not kill you.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Perhaps we should stop for the evening.” From behind his desk, Klyber stared at me suspiciously, the way I would expect a parent to examine a child who should be hurt but claims to be fine.

“I’m okay, sir,” I said.

“All the same, Corporal, we have accomplished enough for one evening.” Klyber stood up from his desk, and the meeting was over.

***

“It never occurred to us that we were anything but clones,” Sergeant Shannon said as he choked back his first sip of Sagittarian Crash, easily the worst-tasting drink you could find in any civilized—or uncivilized—bar. They called the stuff “Crash,” but it was really vodka made from potatoes grown in toxic soil. Congress once outlawed the stuff; but as it was the only export from an otherwise worthless colony, the lobbyists won out.

Shannon and I picked Crash for one reason—we wanted to get drunk. Crash left you numb after a few thick sips. “Damn, I hate this stuff,” Shannon said, frowning at his glass.

“You ever wonder about …”

Shannon stopped me. “Knowing you are a clone means never having to wonder. You don’t wonder about God—he’s your commanding officer. Good and evil are automatic. Orders are good because they come from God. I even know where I’m going after I die.” He smiled a somewhat bitter smile. “The great test tube in the sky.”