Steven Kent - The Clone Republic

The walls of the transport shook as we entered the atmosphere. A few minutes later, a light flashed signaling that we had neared the drop zone. As we gathered our gear, Admiral Huang appeared on the overhead monitor. He spoke to the SEALs for a moment, then turned his attention to Shannon and me.

“You have been brought on this mission as a formality. You will do nothing unless so ordered by my men. If you get in the way, I will hold you personally responsible for the failure of this mission.”

“Yes, sir,” Shannon and I intoned, in perfect sync.

Huang turned back to his SEALs. “We need information, not corpses. I want them alive.” With that, Huang saluted, and the signal ended.

Technicians aboard the Kamehameha had launched a surveillance satellite to view Ronan Minor long before our AT launched. They made a significant discovery—one part of the planet was infested with rats. The vermin offered an important confirmation. At that point in the seeded planet cycle, Ronan Minor should only have had plant life. Somebody had landed, and rats had escaped into a world with no predators and plenty of food.

As we left the ship, I noticed how well the SEALs blended into the jungle. The paint on their hands and faces, which looked so ridiculous in the all-metal environment of the armored transport, matched the leaves and shades of the jungle. We had learned about camouflage back at the orphanage, of course, but I had never seen it firsthand. The SEALs filed out in a column, with Shannon and me trailing a few yards behind.

My armor shielded me from the heat. I could see the way the humidity affected the SEALs. Underarm stains began to show through their uniforms within minutes of leaving the kettle. Drops of perspiration rolled down the oil-based paint on their faces.

“Those poor boys look uncomfortable.” Shannon’s voice oozed with mock empathy.

Though the SEALs used a proprietary channel to communicate with their headsets, I located a faint echo of their chatter on the interLink. They did not speak much, and the few crackling words I understood were all business. “I get the feeling that they’re not thinking about the heat,” I said.

When McKay first told us we would have a thirty-mile hike through the jungle, I envisioned one long, hot afternoon. The foliage grew thicker than I had imagined, and the SEALs cut ahead slowly, careful not to make unnecessary noise. Instead of trotting twelve-minute miles, we barely traveled two miles per hour. Since Ronan Minor, a small planet with a fast rotation, had sixteen-hour days, we were going camping, like it or not. We pushed to within four miles of the target zone, then stopped for the night.

When one of the SEALs told us that Shannon and I had drawn guard duty, I wasn’t surprised. With heat vision and night-for-day lenses in our visors, we were the best choice to stand guard, but I could not help feeling snubbed. They were illustrious SEALs, and we were clones. While the rest of the team rested, Shannon and I sat on opposite ends of the camp.

About an hour after I settled into a nook beside a fern-covered tree, Shannon hailed me over the interLink. “See anything, Harris?” he asked, from the opposite end of the camp.

“Rats,” I said. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Using heat vision, I could see the rats’ heat signature through the foliage. They looked like bright red cartoons with even brighter yellow coronas as they scampered back and forth along the ground.

“Do you see anything else?” Shannon asked.

“Negative,” I said. “Am I missing something?”

“Look due west, all the way to the horizon. Keep using your heat vision.”

We were at the top of a low hill, just a swell in the terrain really. The jungle spread in front of me, and I could see above most of the growth. Off in the distance I saw the dark red silhouette of the oxygen generator. Only the tops of its stacks were giving off heat.

“The generator,” I said. “I missed it before.”

“It’s been shut down,” Shannon said. “Stage three seeding—the plant life takes over the oxygen production at this point.”

Thanks to my heat vision, I saw the aura of a rat running in my direction. I could not shoot it, of course. The noise would give us away. If the bastard came any closer, however, I was not above stomping it with my boot.

“Now look north of the generator. See anything?”

I looked but saw nothing. “This isn’t some kind of trick question is it?”

Shannon laughed. “Use your heat vision. Look at the forest about one mile north of the generator.”

“I still…” But I understood what he wanted me to see. Most of the forest looked velvety black through my visor, but there was a perfectly circular patch with a faint purple tinge. You had to look hard to see it, but it was there. “The Mogats?”

“The site’s gone cold,” Shannon said. “My guess is that they’ve been gone for months.”

I stared down at the zone. Little yellow filaments of light dodged in and out. “No people,” I said, “but there are plenty of rats.”

“The happy little bastards have the planet all to themselves,” Shannon said. “Maybe the SEALs will capture one. I would hate to see them go home empty-handed.”

“Do we tell them that the target zone is cold?” I asked.

“Why ruin their night?” Shannon asked.

***

If we found the compound crawling with people, the plan was to radio the Kamehameha for backup. We did not make a contingency plan for finding it overrun by rats.

Night on Ronan Minor lasted nine hours, and the SEALs resumed their march an hour before sunup. Feeling a bit fuzzy-headed, I had a little trouble keeping up with them. Pushing through the unchecked vines and broad-leaved foliage was slow work. The air was thick as steam. Condensation formed outside my visor. I wondered how the SEALs managed to breathe.

The rats were not the only residents of Ronan Minor; the planet had a healthy cockroach population as well. We didn’t run into many of them on the first day, but as we got closer to the Atkins compound, we saw them clinging to tree trunks and flying rather clumsily through the air. Several of them crashed into my helmet and fell to the ground. These were big roaches, maybe three inches long, with copper-colored bodies. I started when one crawled across the front of my visor. Nobody but Shannon noticed, but I had to put up with him laughing at me over the interLink for the next two miles.

We climbed over a rise and found the edge of the target. The entire site lay hidden under layers of camouflage netting.

“Sergeant”—the team leader motioned for Shannon to come—“do you have heat vision?”

“The compound is empty,” Shannon said in a matter-offact voice.

“Son of a— Shit!” the SEAL said.

“You gonna tell him you scanned it last night?” I whispered over the interLink.

“Shut up, Harris,” Shannon hissed.

“Any chance there is somebody hiding inside?” the SEAL asked.

“I doubt it. All of the machinery is turned off. If they had machinery going, I would pick up a heat signature from an engine or a generator.”

By that time the entire team had gathered around Shannon and the SEAL leader. “We’re still going in,” said the SEAL. “Sergeant, you and the corporal wait out here.”

Shannon saluted and slung his rifle over his shoulder. He turned to me, and said, “Let’s just keep out of their way.” We found a shaded spot overlooking the compound and sat and watched as the SEALS crawled face-first, rifles ready, under the edge of the camouflage nets.

I switched to heat vision and watched the SEALs’ orange-and-yellow profiles through the netting. I lost track of them once they entered the buildings.