Steven Kent - The Clone Republic

“Partners?” I repeated, not sure that I wasn’t having a hallucination brought on from nearly twenty glasses of beer. “Go into business? With you?”

Freeman did not respond.

“Leave the Marines?”

“You weren’t supposed to survive Little Man,” Freeman said. “You may not survive next time.”

“Next time?” I asked. I knew I could leave the Marines, but deep inside, I did not want to leave. Even after the massacre at Little Man and everything they put me through in the House of Representatives…even knowing that my kind was extinct and the people I was protecting wanted to end my life, I wanted to stay in the Marines.

“I can’t leave the service. I’m a Liberator, remember? You can’t drive spaceships underwater. I’m doing the thing I was made to do, and I can’t do anything else.” I knew I was lying. I could leave, but something in my programming kept me coming back for more.

Suddenly my mouth went dry. “Goddamn,” I hissed to myself. Back when I was sober, I assured Aleg Oberland that I would not become like Booth Lector because Liberators made their own choices. But, faced with the knowledge that I would die if I remained in the corps, I wanted to stay where I was. My head hurt, and I started to feel sick to my stomach. I rubbed my eyes. When I looked up, Ray Freeman was gone, if he’d ever been there at all.

One sure sign of a high-security military operation is the means of transportation used for bringing in new recruits. I could have taken public transportation to Gobi. Military transports flew in and out of the SC Central Fleet on a daily basis. This transfer was different. On the morning I was supposed to transfer to the Doctrinaire , Admiral Klyber’s new ship, a driver showed up at my door.

“Lieutenant Harris?” the petty officer asked, as I opened my door.

“Can I help you?” It was 0800. I was packed and dressed but had not yet eaten my breakfast.

“I’m your ride,” the petty officer said.

“My ride? I don’t even know where I’m supposed to go; I can’t leave the station yet.”

“You’re transferring to the Doctrinaire, ” the petty officer said. “It’s not like they run a shuttle at the top of every half hour, sir.”

The petty officer loaded my rucksack into the back of his jeep and drove me out to the airfield. A little Johnston R-27 sat ready on the field. The Johnston was the smallest noncombat craft in military employ. It carried a maximum of twelve passengers.

I looked at the little transport. It was raining that morning. Beads of rain ran down the sides and windows. “I hope we are not going very far,” I said.

“We’ll put on a few light-years before nightfall,” the petty officer responded. “That Johnston is self-broadcasting.”

“You’re shitting me,” I said.

“No, sir,” the petty officer said as he grabbed my bags from the back of the jeep.

“You have got to be shitting me,” I said.

A pilot met us on the launchpad and opened the doors to the Johnston. He was a Navy man, a full lieutenant dressed in khakis. He looked at me and smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

The petty officer placed my bags in the Johnston and saluted. “Lieutenant Harris does not believe this bird is self-broadcasting, sir.”

I followed the lieutenant aboard. The Johnston was heavily modified inside. It only had four seats instead of the usual twelve. Used for both military and corporate travel, Johnstons had small galleys for long trips. There were no such amenities on that R-27. Behind the four seats, the rest of the passenger cabin was blocked by a cloth-covered wall.

The Johnston took off like any spaceworthy plane, using discrete jets to lift ten feet off the ground. We left Earth at a standard trajectory, flying at the standard MACH 3 speed. We had the usual quivers as we left the atmosphere.

Moments later, the petty officer shot me a wink as the tint shield darkened the windows. The air inside the cabin began to smell of ozone. Muffled crackling sounds seeped through the barrier at the back of the cabin. There was a bright flash, and suddenly everything was normal again.

“We’re in the Perseus Arm now,” the petty officer said. “Our base is a bit off the beaten trail, so to speak. Without a self-broadcasting ship, it would take you more than a month just to get to the nearest disc station.”

According to Admiral Klyber, not since the United States developed the atomic bomb in the New Mexico town of Los Alamos, had a military project been conducted as covertly as the creation of the Doctrinaire . In many ways, Klyber’s Doctrinaire reminded me of the Manhattan Project.

No one would ever stumble onto Klyber’s shipyard by accident. Located on the outskirts of the Perseus Arm, the facility sat in the middle of the unsettled frontier. Spies could not trace the location because self-broadcasting ships leave no trail. Any research done on this facility stayed on this facility.

At first glance I found the shipyard unimpressive. It was big, but that meant little to me. I still thought that the Doctrinaire was part of a new fleet that Klyber planned to outfit with some new kind of cannon or faster engines—no big deal. As we approached the dry dock, the only thing I could see was the scaffolding.

When we got closer, I realized that Klyber was not building a fleet. All of that scaffolding was built around one colossal ship, a broad, wedge-shaped ship with bat wings. The ship was at least twice as wide as a Perseus-class fighter carrier. “What is that?” I mumbled.

“She’s the biggest bitch in all of the six arms,” the petty officer told me.

The petty officer led me out of the Johnston and told me to wait in the docking bay for further instructions. He left with my rucksack. A moment later, the pilot came by and patted me on the back. “Welcome aboard,” he said, then he, too, disappeared.

I was not alone in the docking bay, however. The area was filled with engineers and workers. Technicians driving speedy carts raced between platforms, welding plates, placing circuits, and lacing wires. The area looked like an office building that had been framed but not finished. Strings of wires and aluminum ribs lined the inner walls. Uncovered lighting fixtures shone from the ceiling. The air ventilation system twisted over my head like a gigantic snake.

“Lieutenant Harris?” A young seaman approached me. He saluted.

I saluted back.

“Admiral Klyber sent me. He is waiting for you on the bridge. This way, sir,” the seaman said.

“How long have you been stationed on this ship?” I asked, as we left the bay.

The seaman considered this question for several moments, long enough for me to wonder if he heard me. “Six months, sir.”

“What do you think of her?”

“The Doctrinaire ?” he asked. “She was made to rule the universe. If we ever leave the galaxy, it will be in a ship like this.”

It took twenty-five minutes to get to the bridge. True enough, the Doctrinaire ’s twin docking bays were in the aft sections of the wings, the farthest points from the bridge; but even so, the walk seemed endless.

“How big is she?” I asked.

“It depends on how you measure her,” the seaman said. “It’s two full miles from one wing tip to the other. That’s the longest measurement. She has twelve decks, not including the bridge.”

If there was an area that wasn’t under construction between the docking bay and the bridge, we sure as hell never passed it. Half of the floor was pulled up in the corridors. Mechanics and engineers popped in and out of the uncovered crawlways like moles. The seaman took no interest in any of their work. He was a clone. All of the enlisted sailors were clones.