The Clone Empire (2 page)

With forty self-sustaining colonies across the galaxy, Earth becomes the political center of a new republic. The eastern seaboard of the former United States develops into an ever-growing capital city populated by the political class, families appointed to run the government in perpetuity.

Earth also becomes home to the military class. After some experimentation, the Unified Authority adopts an all-clone conscription model to fulfill its growing need for soldiers. Clone farms euphemistically known as “orphanages” are established around Earth. These orphanages produce more than a million cloned recruits per year.

The military does not commission clone officers. The officer corps is drafted from the ruling class. When the children of politicians are drummed out of school or deemed unsuitable for politics, they are sent to officer-candidate school in Australia.

On October 29, 2452, a date later known as “the new Black Tuesday,” a fleet of scientific exploration ships vanishes in the “galactic eye” region of the Norma Arm.

Fearing an alien attack, the U.A. Senate calls for the creation of the Galactic Central Fleet, a self-broadcasting armada. Work on the Galactic Central Fleet is completed in 2455. The newly christened fleet travels to the Inner Curve, where it vanishes as well.

Having authorized the development of a top secret line of cloned soldiers called “Liberators,” the Linear Committee—the executive branch of the U.A. government—approves sending an invasion force into the Galactic Eye to attack all hostile threats. The Liberators discover a human colony led by Morgan Atkins, a powerful senator who disappeared with the Galactic Central Fleet. The Liberators overthrow the colony, but Atkins and many of his followers escape in G.C. Fleet ships.

Over the next fifty years, a religious cult known as the Morgan Atkins Believers—“Mogats”—spreads across the 180 colonized planets, preaching independence from the Unified Authority government.

Spurred on by the growing Morgan Atkins movement, four of the six galactic arms declare independence from Unified Authority governance in 2510. Two years later, on March 28, the combined forces of the Confederate Arms Treaty Organization and the Morgan Atkins Believers defeat the Earth Fleet and destroy the Broadcast Network, effectively cutting the Earth government off from its loyal colonies and Navy.

Believing they have crippled the Unified Authority, the Mogats turn on their Confederate Arms allies and attempt to take control of the renovated G.C. Fleet. The Confederates escape with fifty self-broadcasting ships and join forces with the Unified Authority, leaving the Mogats with a fleet of over four hundred self-broadcasting ships, the most powerful attack force in the galaxy.

The Unified Authority and the Confederate Arms end the war by attacking the Mogat home world, leaving no survivors on the planet.

In 2514, an alien force enters the outer region of the Scutum-Crux Arm, conquering U.A. colonies. As they attack, the aliens wrap their “ion curtain” around the outer atmosphere of the planet, creating a barrier cutting off escape and communications.

In a matter of two years, the aliens spread throughout the galaxy, occupying only planets deemed habitable by U.A. scientists. The Unified Authority loses 178 of its 180 populated planets before making a final stand on New Copenhagen.

During this battle, U.A. scientists unravel the secrets of the aliens’ tachyon-based technology, enabling U.A. Marines to win the war. In the aftermath of the invasion, the Unified Authority sends the four self-broadcasting ships of the Japanese Fleet along with twelve thousand Navy SEAL clones to locate and destroy the Avatari home world.

When the Unified Authority Congress holds hearings investigating the war, military leaders blame their losses on lack of discipline in the enlisted ranks. Synthetic conscription is abolished, and all remaining clones are transferred to man the outer fleets—fleets that were stranded in deep space when the Mogats destroyed the Broadcast Network. The Navy plans to use these fleets as live targets in a series of war games designed to test newer and more powerful ships.

“You can’t possibly be serious about attacking Earth.”

“Why not?” I asked.

The rising sun might have been a molten copper penny and the sky around it made of gold. The financial district of Norristown no longer bristled with business. War had turned the city into a wasteland. Only three skyscrapers remained in what once had been the most significant financial district on this side of the galaxy. Surrounded by debris and desolation, the buildings looked like gigantic gravestones.

Colonel Philo Hollingsworth and I stood on a hill overlooking the ruins of what once had been the government center for an entire galactic arm . . . the Scutum-Crux Arm. His laugh was bitter and derisive. Hate resonated in that laugh.

“You are eighty thousand light-years from Earth, you only have twenty-two hundred Marines under your command, and every last specking one of them blames you for starting the war in the first place. No, let’s just be honest, they hate you.”

“My engineers don’t hate me,” I said. I had a thousand-man corps of naval engineers on the planet along with my Marines.

“Don’t tell me you think they like you,” Hollingsworth said.

“I didn’t mean they liked me. I just wanted to keep our census accurate,” I said.

Hollingsworth went back to counting the reasons I could not attack Earth. “You don’t even have any ships left in your fleet. Face it, Harris, the war is over. You lost.”

I saw no reason to argue the facts: the distance to Earth; the number of men I had under my command; how much they despised me.

“I might have some ships left,” I said.

Hollingsworth rolled his eyes and said nothing. In the two months since the Earth Fleet had attacked Terraneau, there had been no word from our fleet. Dozens of broken ships floated in the space outside our atmosphere, but they only accounted for a portion of the missing four hundred ships that once made up the Scutum-Crux Fleet.

Morning light spread slowly over the city as the cranes moved into place. Today, they would excavate the misshapen mound that had once been the Treasury building.

Three cranes struggled as they pulled slabs and columns from the wreckage, the ground below them visibly shifting under the stress. The arm of one of the cranes bent and shook like a rod bringing in a big fish.

Keeping an eye on that crane, I walked over to Lieutenant Scott Mars, my chief engineer, and asked, “Are you sure your cranes can handle that much weight?” I had to shout for him to hear me above the din of his equipment.

Mars shrugged, and answered, “It’s fine, sir.”

“That column isn’t too heavy?” I asked.

He gave me a sardonic smile, and said, “Look, General, you worry about the tanks, and I’ll take care of the cranes and bulldozers.”

He did not come across as hostile, but that did not mean he respected me. Since landing on Terraneau, Scott Mars had adopted an evangelical lifestyle. He testified about being “born again,” a claim that the rest of us did not take seriously. He was a clone, just like the rest of us. He could not be born again because he wasn’t really born the first time.

Mars was universally perky and ready to please, and we got used to him saying “praise this” and “praise that.” Everybody liked Mars. The hallelujah chorus was just part of having him around.

I was glad to have a friend, even if he wasn’t so much a friend as a nonhostile acquaintance. In his version of the gospel, smiling at people drew him closer to God. What was the harm in that?

One of the cranes struggled to pull a thirty-foot section of wall out of the ground. The wreckage looked heavier than the crane, but that did not seem to make a difference. After a short fight, the wall broke free, and the crane pulled it out like a fisherman reeling in a trophy bass.

Seeing that Lieutenant Mars had everything under control, I returned to Hollingsworth to restart our conversation. “There are fifteen fighter carriers floating up there. What happened to the other twenty-one?” The Scutum-Crux Fleet had had thirty-six fighter carriers when the Earth Fleet attacked. Searching with telescopes and radars, we had located twelve of our carriers. We located three more when we started searching the area with transports.

“Even if they got away, they wouldn’t have gotten very far,” Hollingsworth said. “Not with those new U.A. ships chasing after them.”

He was right. The ships that the Unified Authority sent were stronger, faster, and better shielded than our ships.

Hollingsworth continued his assault. “Just for the sake of argument, let’s say you have twenty-one carriers waiting for you. What are you going to do with them? The Unifieds smashed us when we had thirty-six carriers. They’ll just smash us again.”

“They didn’t smash us down here,” I said. It was a weak argument, but it was true. “We beat their Marines.”

As far as the Unified Authority was concerned, the battle had been nothing more than a war game, but not all of the game went as expected. They sent three thousand Marines in shielded armor to attack my five thousand men in old-fashioned unshielded armor. We had the numbers, they had the impenetrable armor that rendered our bullets and particle beams useless. We won by way of a battlefield miracle.

Of course, what one side labels a miracle, the other sees as murder.

“You dropped a building on them,” Hollingsworth said. “You buried them. Next time, they won’t be so quick to chase you into an underground garage.”

Below us, two of the cranes worked in tandem to hoist a long stretch of outer wall from the ruins of that underground garage. With cables pulling at it from two different directions, the concrete crumbled like a giant cracker, and the cranes fished out nothing but shreds.

“It doesn’t look stable,” Hollingsworth said.

“You better be grateful for that. We buried three thousand Unified Authority Marines down there; if it were stable, they might have dug themselves out,” I said.

Mars jogged over to join us. “We’ve dug an entrance, sir,” he said, his fingers covering the microphone on his headset. “I’ve got a team ready. Is there anything you want to tell them before I send them in?”

I shook my head.

Down along the wreckage, five men in soft-shelled armor ventured into the gap that the cranes had opened.

“If you don’t mind my asking, sir, do we really need to do this?” Mars asked, his new born-again values leaving him uncomfortable about excavating graves.

“I want a better look at their armor,” I said.

“We’re pulling them out to look at their armor?”

“You worry about the engineering, I’ll worry about the ethics,” I said.

“The general wants to examine their armor for weaknesses,” Hollingsworth volunteered.

“Why does he care about that?” asked Mars

“He wants to know how to get through their armor before his return engagement,” Hollingsworth answered. He and Mars carried on their conversation around me as if I weren’t there.

“Are they coming back?” Mars asked.

“Nope; Harris wants to invade Earth,” Hollingsworth said.

For a moment, Mars looked stunned, then he laughed. “You’re joking, right?”

I started to say something, but Lieutenant Mars’s expression suddenly shifted. Something he’d heard over his headset caught his attention. He took a step toward the wreckage, then turned to me, and said, “They’ve got one, sir.”

“Are they certain it’s one of theirs?” I asked. We had lost nearly as many men as the Unified Authority in that battle. Most of ours were killed on the top level of the underground garage. Most of theirs were killed on the lower levels. They found this stiff so quickly, I thought it might be one of ours.

“It’s a U.A. Marine,” Mars confirmed.

“Are his shields still up?” I asked. Six weeks had passed since we brought the garage down on the bastards; the power in their suits should have gone out long ago.

“No, sir. The suit’s gone dark.”

“Is the armor in one piece?” I asked.

Mars relayed the question, then told me, “Good as new.”

Of course it was good as new. What’s a little thing like a twenty-thousand-ton avalanche to a suit of shielded armor?
I asked myself. “Let’s have a look at it.”

A few minutes later, two engineers came out of the ground, carrying the dead Marine. They brought the body over so I could examine it. Without the glowing skin of its shields, the dead man’s armor looked very much like the combat armor my men wore. It was made of the same dark green alloy. Quarter-inch ridges traced seams along the shoulders, sleeves, legs, and sides of the helmet. The shielding must have been transmitted from those ridges.

Looking down at the body, I felt no regret for killing this man. The war was of their making, not mine. I was only twenty-eight years old, but I’d spent the last ten years of my life running from one battlefield to the next. Any compassion I had ever felt for the dead had long since burned out of me.

“The visor’s cracked,” I told Mars.

A hairline break ran vertically across the glass face of the visor. The crack was thin and shallow, so minor you might not even be able to trace it with a sharpened pencil.

“Where?” Mars asked as he bent down for a closer look. “That? That’s not a crack, it’s a scratch.”

“I told you, perfect condition,” I said.

“As long as the visor works—”

“You have your orders,” I said.

“We’re getting four more sets,” he argued.

“Five more suits,” I corrected him. If I’d left it at four, he might have taken it as tacit permission to keep this suit. “And those five suits had better be perfect, or I’ll send them back.”