The Clone Alliance Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  ROGUE CLONE

  “Exciting space battles [and] haunting, quiet moments after war has taken its toll…Military SF fans looking for stories that combine mystery, action, espionage, politics, and some thoughtful doses of humanism in exploring their not entirely human characters would do well to add Steven L. Kent to their reading lists.”

  —SF Reviews.net

  PRAISE FOR

  THE CLONE REPUBLIC

  “A solid debut. Harris is an honest, engaging protagonist and thoughtful narrator, and Kent’s clean, transparent prose fits well with both the main character and the story’s themes…Kent is a skillful storyteller, and the book entertains throughout.”

  —Sci Fi Weekly

  “The first sentence gets you immediately…From there, the action begins fast and furious with dark musings, lavish battle scenes, and complex characterizations…The Clone Republic feature[s] taut writing and a truly imaginative plot full of introspection and philosophizing.”

  —The Village Voice

  “A character-driven epic that understands that the best war stories are really antiwar stories…a smartly conceived adventure.”

  —SF Reviews.net

  Ace Books by Steven L. Kent

  THE CLONE REPUBLIC

  ROGUE CLONE

  THE CLONE ALLIANCE

  THE CLONE ALLIANCE

  STEVEN L. KENT

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THE CLONE ALLIANCE

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2007 by Steven L. Kent.

  Map by Steven J. Kent.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 1-4295-8012-7

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  This book is dedicated to

  Dustin, Rachel, and Dillan,

  mostly because I cannot come up with

  a more appropriate way to thank them.

  Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

  —Barry Goldwater

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART I MODERATION…NO VIRTUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  PART II EXTREMISM…NO VICE

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  I held the grenade in my left hand and fingered the pin with my right. I stood in the shadow-filled belly of a military transport. They called this the kettle. You could cram a hundred Marines into a transport like this, but I was alone…almost alone. Ray Freeman, my partner, lay unconscious on the bench that ran along the wall.

  A tough bird like this transport would survive the grenade. The blast would not do the ship much good, however. The shrapnel would shred cables and piping. The force of the explosion would dent the walls, but the shell would remain intact. The insulation around the fuel tank would protect it from the explosion. The thick bulkheads around the cockpit were made to withstand a lot more than a grenade. Ray and I, on the other hand, would be nothing more than juice splashed along the walls. They would identify us by our DNA and wash us out with a hose.

  If he had been conscious, Ray would have wanted me to pull the pin. He would probably have shot me and pulled the pin himself if he saw me hesitating. That was our agreement. “No going back.” “No slow death.”

  Ray would have put an end to this, no doubt about it. But Ray was a natural-born. I was a military clone. Most of my thoughts were my own, but some of my psyche was hardwired into my brain through neural programming. I always knew about the violence that was programmed into me. They built me to kill. What I never realized was that they also programmed my kind to survive.

  If I pulled the pin, I would die in an instant. I wanted that. If I turned the transport around, I would starve on the long flight back to Little Man. If Ray woke up, he would shoot me. I wouldn’t mind dying, but I didn’t want him to think that I lost my nerve when it came time to pull the pin. I didn’t even need the grenade. If I opened the hatch, we would get sucked out to space. Without protective suits, our bodies would burst. Just press the button…

&nbs
p; But I couldn’t make myself do it. Could not pull the pin, could not press the button. Programming. Sliding doors don’t swing. Mathematical engines don’t spell words. Liberator clones do not kill themselves.

  So I would try to fly this bird back to Little Man and take the slow death instead. I had one week’s worth of food, six week’s worth of travel, and a ship that had been taken well beyond its limits more than a month ago. On the bright side, maybe Ray would wake up and shoot me.

  PART I

  MODERATION…NO VIRTUE

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Earthdate: September 12, A.D. 2512

  Galactic Position: Scutum-Crux Arm

  A book.

  When we left the colony on Little Man, one of the Neo-Baptists gave me a gift. By its shape and size, I could tell it was a book. Since all of the books on the little farming planet were of the religious sort, I did not bother unwrapping the package.

  After pretty much ignoring me for the months that I lived with them, the Neo-Baptists suddenly cared about my salvation. How touching. But why should they care? I was, after all, a clone. As far as they were concerned, I was a living being without a soul.

  Ray Freeman, my partner, and I had come to this planet after the fall of the Unified Authority—the Earth-based empire that populated and controlled the galaxy. These Neo-Baptist colonists were his people. He had grown up among them, then abandoned their fold as a teen. I do not know how religion fit into his psyche, but he now made his living as a mercenary. Killing came easily to Freeman.

  Killing came naturally to me, too. What did not come naturally was living among religious farmers. We spent months trapped on Little Man, then Freeman got an idea that would either get us back into society or kill us. Either option sounded better than life on Little Man. He wanted to adapt a short-range military transport for pangalactic travel. We might as well have tried flapping our arms and flying the one hundred thousand light-years to Earth.

  The colonists gave us a glib, “Thanks for coming,” and handed me a gift wrapped in a swatch of pearl white cotton cloth. They said good-bye and walked off without a backward glance. That was also how Freeman and I left their planet—without a backward glance.

  “Think there’s any chance this can work?” I asked Freeman, as we entered our transport through the “kettle”—the windowless cargo and passenger cabin.

  “Does it matter?” he asked. That was Freeman, always cutting to the heart of the matter. Conversation did not interest him, so he had hit the proverbial nail on the head. It made little difference to either of us whether our plan worked or we blew up in space, so long as we got away from the Neo-Baptists.

  The military shuttle became the instrument of our passive suicide—a short-range ship made to fly distances of twenty thousand or thirty thousand miles at a maximum speed of two hundred thousand miles per hour. We were going to crank up the speed, preferably to a respectable ten million miles per hour, as we flew it to a satellite approximately four billion miles from this planet.

  In the unlikely event that we made it to that satellite, we would start the next phase in our suicide. We would attempt to adapt specialized equipment used for transferring ships across the galaxy to work on our transport. Imagine taking a submarine and gluing wings and a rocket engine to its chassis. Your submarine might have wings and a rocket engine, but it would not work in space. That just about summed up what we wanted to do with our transport. Even if we outfitted it with a broadcast engine, that would not mean we could use it to broadcast.

  I had no interest in opening the gift that the Neo-Baptists gave me when I first boarded the transport; but traveling with Ray Freeman left me lonelier than traveling alone. I knew I would need some sort of distraction even before I entered the cockpit and watched him silently working the controls.

  Freeman ignited the engines, and we took off in an arc. Haze gave way to blue and soon blackness as we left the atmosphere, then Little Man was gone.

  The first thing we needed to do was pick up speed. Transports routinely traveled at two hundred thousand miles per hour. Commanders used transports like this to ferry Marines and soldiers from battleships to planets during invasions. The ship had incredibly powerful shields but no weapons. As far as amenities went, the only padding in the entire transport was on the pilot’s seat.

  It took us less than a minute to fly from the surface of Little Man to outside the atmosphere, and I already felt lonely sitting beside Freeman. I left the cockpit and climbed into the all-steel kettle. It was a dimly lit cavern with steel walls, a steel ceiling, and a steel floor. There I sat down on the wooden bench that ran along the wall and unwrapped the book. The cotton cloth square slid back revealing an all-black cover made of leather. I was looking at the unmarked back cover of the book, but I recognized the Bible even before I turned it over and saw the gold letters.

  A hundred years back, every major church signed the Religious Accordance of 2391, a document that stated that clones were created of man, not God, and therefore did not have souls. Not having to worry about favorable placement in the afterlife, I had abandoned religion altogether. I counted myself among the true nonbelievers, and I knew I would have to be pretty damned desperate before I would crack this book.

  “Harris,” Ray’s voice called to me from the intercom station in the wall.

  I left the Bible on the bench and went to the station. “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “I’m going to have a look at the engine and play with the fuel,” Freeman said. “Think you can keep an eye on the controls?”

  “I’ve never flown one of these birds,” I said.

  “You won’t be flying,” Freeman said. “I just need you to tell me the speed.”

  “On my way,” I said.

  I climbed the ladder and stepped into the cockpit. Freeman left without saying a word. Four hundred hours, I thought to myself. That seemed like a long, long time. Then I realized, it would only be four hundred hours if we could coax the ship into flying fifty times faster than it was meant to fly. Otherwise, we might have a twenty-thousand-hour flight ahead of us. The good news was, I would not need to last twenty thousand hours. I would starve to death first.

  I sat in the pilot’s seat and watched the little red-lighted display. Ray had us cruising along at two hundred thousand miles per hour. The ship started to sputter. I don’t know what Ray did to the engines, but the transport shook and convulsed, then slowed down. We had dropped to below one hundred thousand when he did something new, and the speed started to build.

  “How fast are we going?” Freeman called over the intercom.

  “What did you do?” I asked. “We’re at five hundred thousand and climbing.” Gravity in space is based on acceleration. At this rate we could have shut off our gravity generator and gotten on fine.

  “We’re up to a million,” I called. I felt elated. My time stuck in the transport with Ray had just been cut from twenty thousand hours to four thousand. We’d still starve to death at this speed, but we’d die closer to the broadcast station.

  “We’re up to two million.” A minute later I reported three million miles per hour. Unfortunately the speed topped out at four million miles per hour. That meant one thousand hours, a six-week trip with four weeks’ worth of food.

  Once he got the transport flying at a couple million miles per hour, Freeman spent most of his time toying with the electrical system and trying to figure out how he could splice parts from a broadcast station into the systems on the transport. We seldom spoke to each other. To keep from losing my mind, I started reading the Bible that the Neo-Baptists had given me. I originally decided that I would not read the book. I got desperate and read it several times. The Baptists would have been proud.

  I did not like the New Testament. It made no sense. The idea that an all-powerful being sent his son to die for people who did not listen to him had no logic to it.

  The Old Testament resonated better. I read it four times and had a religious awakening
after a fashion. As long as I accepted God as a metaphor for government, the Old Testament of the Bible made perfect sense. God took a small nation and made it a big nation by saving citizens who followed his laws. Some of the kosher laws struck me as extreme, but every government has its peculiarities.

  When Freeman worked in the cargo bay, I took that Bible up to the cockpit and read. When Freeman lingered in the cockpit, I read in the gloom of the kettle. I kept out of his way unless he called me.

  If you ever wondered what it would feel like to be sealed in a can, try traveling in the kettle of a military transport. Except for the netting in the cargo area and the wooden bench around the walls, everything in a kettle is bare metal. No windows. No padded seats. No carpeting. The walls are metal, as are the floor and ceiling. Even the toilet is made of metal.

  Before starting my fifth trip through the Old Testament, I called up to the cockpit and asked Freeman how much farther to the broadcast station.

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  There was no use pushing him, so I opened to Genesis.

  And the hours rolled on.