Clone #04 - The Clone Elite by Steven L. Kent

Author:Steven L. Kent [Kent, Steven L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, Science Fiction, Fiction, General, War & Military, Cloning
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 2008-10-27T13:00:00+00:00

“Then they don’t build one on every planet.” He grunted as he worked his way up the groove. He was breathing heavily. The man weighed over three hundred pounds; mountain climbing did not come easily for him.

“So it’s a fifty-fifty chance,” I said. Something about Freeman’s obsessive silence made me more chatty, like I was trying to get on his nerves.

Freeman did not answer. A minute later, he reached the top of the cord and pulled himself up to the ledge. I was not there to offer him a hand. I had walked a few feet into the cave to have a look around.

“You see a gravity chute?” Freeman asked.

“Not exactly,” I said. What I saw was a wide corridor carved out of solid rock. The entrance was so large, I thought I could run six lanes of traffic through it.

Ray Freeman had made a rare mistake when he said that the aliens had not had enough time to dig a gravity chute. He had underestimated them. Judging by this digging, they could have bored right through the center of New Copenhagen and popped up in the Hotel Valhalla pool had they wished.

Not that Freeman commented on the immense excavation when he saw it. He simply gazed down one side of the corridor, then the other, and said nothing. He knelt, unloaded his gear, and brought out the S.C.O.O.T.E.R.

“Ever used one of these?” Freeman asked.

“I’ve seen one in action,” I said, “on Hubble.”

Freeman placed the S.C.O.O.T.E.R. on the ground, then opened the top of the case to access the control panel. The panel included a four-inch screen with touch controls. They had improved the robot’s design. Freeman could give it voice commands using the interLink.

“Right or left?” Freeman asked me. The tunnel branched out in both directions.

“Doesn’t look like it matters,” I said.

A moment later the little robot rumbled off to the left, faltering over divots and skirting around large rocks, its sensors sweeping the area for signs of danger. I think I would have preferred the S.C.O.O.T.E.R. to have more balls and less brains. It found a rut along the wall of the cavern in which it could both travel and hide. The rut was just big enough for the robot, but it was useless for Freeman and me.

The ambient light inside the tunnel was just as bright as it was outside. I got the feeling that the glowing tachyons of the ion curtain had found their way into the mountains.

“This could take a while,” I said. “The S.C.O.O.T.E.R. I saw on Hubble was better at survival than reconnaissance.”

Wanting to kill time, I picked up the trackers and began placing them. I did not get very far, however. Within a few minutes, the S.C.O.O.T.E.R. found the Avatari. But they weren’t the Avatari we expected.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Freeman sat fiddling with the S.C.O.O.T.E.R.’s controls as I lugged three trackers up the hall to the right. About twenty yards in, I started passing arterial hallways that led down into the heart of the mountain.

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