The Clone Republic Page 6

  Any sympathy I might have felt for Kline disappeared when Godfrey uncovered a stockpile of gas canisters. Hoping to kill the platoon and leave the weapons intact, Crowley had brought three canisters of Noxium gas. Once he’d herded the Marines back into the barracks, he must have planned to fire the canisters into the building.

  Readily available around the territories, Noxium acted like a gas, but it was really a microscopic life-form that was stored and used like lethal gas. It was really a swarm of particle-sized organisms that attacked living tissue. Upon release from a vacuum canister, the creatures would bore into anything that breathed. They were small enough to slip through combat armor and chew through flesh so quickly that it seemed to dissolve in their wake. Terrorists liked Noxium gas because it was cheap, easily stored, and cruel.

  Admiral Brocius never came to Gobi, but he sent an envoy, Captain James Troy. Troy, with a small army, landed three days after the action ended. He sent troops to search Morrowtown, but he personally never left the safety of his ship.

  One at a time, Troy called us all into his ship for ten-minute debriefings. He met with Glan Godfrey first, then detained him as he met with the other survivors. Freeman and I were the last men called in. I walked over to where he was standing, and said, “You’re going to be a hero, Freeman. You saved a platoon.”

  He smiled for a moment. It was the first time I had seen any emotion from him. “It won’t come down like that. All Brocius cares about is that Crowley got away.”

  Godfrey appeared in the door of the ship wearing his faded uniform. He must have lost a lot of weight in his years on Gobi; you could not even see the shapes of his legs in his pants. “Think they’ll leave him in charge?” I asked Freeman.

  “Probably,” Freeman croaked in that low rumbling voice. “After Gobi, life in a military prison would be a promotion.”

  “How about me?” I asked.

  “You’ll be the hero,” Freeman said, with a bitter edge in his voice. “They don’t want to talk about some mercenary saving the day. Harris, you never belonged on this planet in the first place. There are people watching over you.”

  I started to ask what that meant, but Godfrey called us over. He led us into Troy’s flagship. Freeman had not dressed for the occasion. He wore the same ugly jumpsuit. I suspected he would wear those clothes if he were invited to meet with God. As for me, I wore the Charley Service uniform I had worn when I first landed on Gobi. Except for some nicks from the fireworks, I looked precisely as I had when I landed on that godforsaken planet.

  Troy sat behind a large black desk that shone like a mirror. The Cygnus Fleet seal hung on the wall behind him, just above a cluster of flags. He did not stand as we entered, but studied us with indifference.

  “You are the mercenary?” he asked. “Freeman, is it?”

  Freeman nodded.

  “I suppose you expect payment,” Troy said. “As I understand it, you were hired to capture Amos Crowley.”

  Freeman said nothing. His face betrayed no emotion.

  “Sergeant Godfrey says you routed the terrorists,” Troy said. He glared back at Godfrey, who looked quite pale. “I can’t imagine why we would pay you good money for saving this sorry pack. As I understand it, Admiral Brocius offered you twenty-five thousand dollars for capturing Crowley. You may continue your manhunt.”

  Freeman did not say anything.

  By that time, I had a good idea about how Freeman’s mind worked. The captain undoubtedly angered him, but Freeman would never give him the satisfaction of seeing that anger. Troy leaned back in his chair. “You are dismissed, Freeman.”

  Freeman turned and left without a word. Standing at attention, I could not turn to watch him leave. I listened to his heavy boots as he trudged toward the boarding ramp. The room seemed to become cooler once Freeman left.

  Troy turned to me, then pulled a piece of paper from his desk. After studying his notes, he said, “And you are?”

  “PFC Harris, sir,” I said.

  “Harris. I understand that you are the only man on this planet who knows his ass from his knees. Sergeant Godfrey said that you ignored orders that would have resulted in the deaths of every man in the platoon. You are hereby promoted to the rank of corporal. I recommended giving you command of Gobi Station, but Admiral Brocius wants you transferred out.”

  Years later I had the chance to read my record and discovered that my promotion was based on misinformation. Whether he did it on purpose or he just did not know differently, Troy exaggerated my role in the battle. He said that I rushed an enemy gun emplacement, which was true, but he neglected to mention Freeman’s role in the assault.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Unified Authority society was based on two documents—the U.S. Constitution and the third book of Plato’s Republic . Two strata of U.A. society, the ruling class and the citizenry, resembled life in the old United States. The third layer, “the military class,” was taken from Plato’s three-tiered society of rulers, warriors, and citizens.

  The Unified Authority’s government was a synthesis. The U.S. Constitution called for a three-branch representative government with an executive branch, a judicial branch, and a legislative branch. The framers of the U.A. Constitution kept the judicial branch of the former United States intact, swallowing it whole into their government without a single alteration. The political branches, however, were greatly altered. Plato, that ancient sage, considered democracy little more than rule by a mob and blamed it for the death of Socrates, his mentor. That view suited the designers of the United Authority, who, having conquered the rest of the globe, did not relish giving every citizen an equal voice. In the U.A.’s case, thesis and antithesis merged to create a plutocracy.

  In a nod to tradition, the Unified Authority retained its capital along the eastern seaboard of the former United States. It was the seat of all galactic politics and the home of all three branches of the federal government. It was also the home of the only voters that carried any authority. With it was the concession that progovernment historians might one day call “the great compromise” and the opponents “the beginnings of tyranny.”

  The Senate, clearly the most powerful political body in the Unified Authority, was not composed of members who were elected by popular vote. The House of Representatives, a far less powerful assembly, was. Analysts referred to the two chambers of the legislative branch as “the power and the politics.” “The politics” was the House of Representatives, an odd assembly of legislators who truly represented their constituents back in the frontier worlds. “The power” was the Senate, an august body of lawmakers who had grown up among the population that Plato would have referred to as “the ruling class,” the elite population of Washington, DC. Senators were not elected, they were appointed by the Linear Committee—which was the executive branch of the government. New senators were selected from a pool of well-groomed tenth-generation politicians living in the capital city—men and women who had attended elite schools.

  The executive branch of the government was even more select. Called the “Linear Committee,” this branch was made up of five senior senators. Analysts complained about the exclusive nature of this particular club. Looking back, I would have to agree. Only the Linear Committee could appoint new senators, and the Senate chose the members of the Linear Committee from among its ranks. I once read an article in which an author called the system “Royalty Reborn!” In that same article, she proclaimed,

  “America has finally attained a royal class.” I do not know who that author writes for, but I have never seen her writings again.

  In theory, the Senate ruled the Republic and the House was filled with figureheads. In truth, the House enjoyed so much popular support from the frontier states that a clever congressman could cause havoc. Looking back, I can see why the Senate was so unpopular. The galactic seat was benevolent, so long as the member states did not openly challenge it. The individual planets could govern themselves as they wished, set up whatever sort of econo
mies and industries they wished, and even create their own militias. What they could not do was break ranks from the Union. Any hint of sedition was dealt with harshly. As long as member states were seen as loyal to the capital, they had nothing to fear. Along with the ruling class, Earth was home to the “warrior class.” Washington eyed the growing power of the military with a wary eye; but as the Republic pushed deeper into the galaxy, Congress needed a strong arm to maintain order and protect the territories from external threats. Synthetic soldiers were deemed both more manageable and expendable than natural men, so Congress opted for an army of carefully engineered clones. That lent itself well to Plato’s view of the military as a class of persons who would never know any life other than that of a soldier.

  I think Plato would have approved of neural programming had it existed in his day. Through neural programming, U.A. scientists implanted algorithms into their soldiers’ brains like code on a computer chip. Generals and politicians collaborated on the cloning project, hammering out the perfect specimen—soldiers who respected authority and who were strong, patriotic, and ignorant of their origins. Once Congress and the Joint Chiefs had a mix they liked, they set the oven to mass production, cranking out an average of 1.2 million new fighting men every year. Of course, the soldiers did not come out of the vat fully formed. They needed to be raised, formed in the U.A. military’s own image, and indoctrinated with the belief that God charged man to rule the galaxy.

  Earth became the military-processing center, home to six hundred all-male orphanages, each of which graduated nearly two thousand combat-ready orphans per year. The orphanages were little more than clone incubators, though real orphans, like me, were sometimes brought in from the frontier. We were the flatfoots, the conscripts. No clone or orphan ever reached officer status. The most we could hope for was sergeant. With the exception of some natural-born implants from frontier families, officers came from the ruling class. Children of politicians who did poorly in school or lacked

  “refinement” were shunted off to Officer Training School in Australia, a land that was originally settled as a penal colony. How ironic.

  With three days of liberty before my transfer to the Scutum-Crux Fleet, I decided to visit the only home I’d ever known—Unified Authority Orphanage #553. That may sound dull or sentimental . . . maybe it was. I did not understand the concept of vacationing. They did not explain the concept to us in the orphanage or in basic. So with a few free days and a new promotion, I decided to go home and show the second triangle over my shoulder off to my instructors.

  Located deep in the Olympic Mountains near North America’s northwest coast, #553 sat between evergreen forests and a major waterway known as the Straits of Juan de Fuca. My home was a brick-and-steel campus with a five-acre firing range, a dome-covered parade ground, and a white picket fence. It was there that I spent my youth drilling, playing, and never wondering why my classmates all looked alike.

  An “entrance by permit” sign hung over the main gate of the orphanage. I ran my identity card through a reader and the automatic gate slid open, revealing the long dirt road that led to the school. This was the veil, the hedge that separated the boys from the world. The ancients thought the world was flat, and the boys of #553 thought it ended outside the automatic gate.

  Walking along the road, avoiding puddles, and surveying the woods, I let my mind wander until I reached the campus itself. In the distance, I saw dormitory buildings. Home. The road stopped at the door of the administrative area—a complex of red brick buildings surrounded by a beautiful meadow. Five-and six-year-old kids, all boys and all with the same broad face and brown hair, wrestled on the wet grass. The government maintained orphanages for girls, but they were on frontier planets. Two boys paused to stare at me as I opened the gate. They studied my uniform, noting that I had two stripes on my sleeve, not just the single stripe of a private. “Are you a Marine?” one of the boys asked in an almost worshipful tone. He knew the answer. Clone orphans learn uniforms and insignia in kindergarten.

  I nodded.

  “Whoa!” Both boys sighed.

  I walked past them and entered the administration building. Nothing had changed at UAO #553 in the six months since my graduation. The windows sparkled, the walkways shone, the endless parade of slugs still clung to the walls. Groundskeepers squished them, poisoned them, and powdered them with salt; but still they came back, clinging to the brick like six-inch scars.

  I walked past the administrative offices, down a hall past several instructional buildings, and past the cafeteria. None of those buildings interested me. I did not miss my math teachers or the counselors who held me hostage when I misbehaved. After passing the administrative building, I stepped onto the walkway that led past obstacle courses. Rifles crackled in the distance. A squad of students dressed in red athletic shorts and blue T-shirts ran across my path. Judging by their size, the boys may have been in their freshman year—fourteen years old and dying to leave the orphanage and begin boot camp. In another few years, they would report to the military induction center in Salt Lake City, where life really began.

  Across a sloping hill, a squad of seniors entered the obstacle course. I knew their age because only seniors ran the course wearing combat armor. They needed it. I watched them scale walls, belly-crawl under electrical wiring, and fly across gullies using jetpacks. A line of instructors fired M27s with rubber bullets at the boys as they drilled. Armor or no armor, the bullets left inch-wide bruises wherever they hit. They would knock you senseless if they hit your helmet.

  As I watched, an instructor shot down one of his boys. The kid’s arms fell limp, and his jetpack cut off as he flopped to the ground like a wet towel. The instructors ignored him and started firing at other students. The boy would survive, but he would have a ringing in his ears for the rest of the day. Like every other kid at UAO #553, I had been nailed dozens of times.

  After watching two more boys get shot down, I continued toward the Tactical Training Building. Located at the far end of the campus, the TT building looked like a two-story warehouse or possibly an aircraft hangar. The building had no windows, just double-wide steel doors. Some teachers called it “the shed.”

  You could not survive #553 without a mentor. Mine was Aleg Oberland—the man in charge of the Tactical Training simulations. Most cadets preferred the strapping sadists who ran the obstacle course—former enlisted men with frontline experience, battle scars, medals, and colorful stories. Oberland was the only retired officer on the teaching staff. He fought in historic campaigns—the kinds of wars that historians argue over, but he never talked about his time on the line. He was six inches shorter than the other teachers and twenty years older. He had white hair that he kept in a thinning flattop. Most people thought of him as old and sullen, but they did not see what I did. What Oberland showed us was magic.

  Oberland drilled juniors and seniors with holographic combat situations. His labs looked empty when you entered; but the moment you put on your combat visor, you would find yourself in a vivid and three-dimensional battle in a desert or on an enemy ship. Lasers in our visors projected the scenery into our eyes, painting it on our retinas, and Oberland had simulations of everything from territorial invasions to ship-to-ship combat. He even had programs simulating attacks on Washington, DC. As I entered the dark front hall of the TT building I smelled the moldy air-conditioning, and my head filled with memories of the fear and rumors the building had inspired. Students were not allowed to enter the TT building until they turned ten, and even then, they only attended lectures on the top floor. We heard stories about what happened in the basement, but they were all false. Only students in their last two years at the orphanage could enter simulations labs, and they were not allowed to talk about it. A spiral stairwell in the back of the building ran from the basement to the second floor. I squeezed down the stairs, brushing by dozens of students who stopped to admire my uniform. The stairs ended just outside Oberland’s classroom. Glad to be back, I opened
the door and went in. Class must have ended just as I arrived. A crowd of students came up the steps and passed me while a few stragglers milled around their seats. Oberland stood on a dais at the bottom of the theater shuffling papers as I approached. He turned toward me as I came down the stairs. First he looked at my uniform, then he looked at my face. He squinted, and a flicker of recognition crossed his eyes, and his normal frown melted into a smile. “Harris?”

  “Hello, Mr. Oberland,” I said.

  Oberland’s gaze kept slipping toward my sleeve. “You’re a corporal?” He looked up toward the ceiling as he did the math in his head. “You’ve only been gone for six months.”

  “A bit less than that,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

  “I just finished my last class for the day,” Oberland said as he gathered his books and notes. “And I like long stories. Maybe we can talk about it over dinner.”

  “In the teachers’ mess?” I asked.

  “Unless you know someplace else.” He stole another glance at my stripes as if to check if they were real.

  “What are you doing here?”

  We started up the stairs. The last boys in the class ran past us. Oberland scowled at them.

  “You haven’t changed much,” I said.

  “I learned an important lesson in the Army, Wayson,” Oberland said, in his usual gruff voice. “Just because people smile at you doesn’t mean that they like you.” He looked back down the hall. “I didn’t come to #553 to make friends.”

  I thought about Amos Crowley. He had made friendly banter even as he rigged Guttman’s gun to explode. “I know what you mean.”