The "click" of connection wasn't a sound. It was a sensory explosion.
Tom gasped, the air rushing into two pairs of lungs simultaneously. A wave of vertigo slammed into him, violent and disorienting. He squeezed his eyes shut—but he could still see.
He saw himself.
From the perspective of the original body, he looked down at the clone shivering on the wet metal bed. From the perspective of the clone, he looked up at the original Tom, whose face was pale and bearded.
The sensation was nauseating. It was like trying to watch two different television channels at the exact same time, superimposed over one another.
He felt the bite of the recycled air on the clone's naked, wet skin, while simultaneously feeling the warmth of the uniform on his original body.
"Stand up," Tom commanded.
Both bodies lurched forward. The clone's knees buckled, and the original Tom stumbled back, his equilibrium shattered by the dual input.
Focus, he told himself. You are the hive.
He forced his minds to compartmentalize. Original Tom focused on the left hand; Clone Tom focused on the right.
He reached out. The movements were jerky at first, like a toddler learning to walk, but the synaptic pathways adjusted with terrifying speed. Within minutes, the clone stood steady.
Tom tossed a wrench from his belt into the air.
The clone snatched it out of the air without looking, a reflex action driven by a single, shared thought.
It wasn't a hallucination. It was a doubling of processing power. Memory, calculation, motor control—it was all online, running in parallel.
Not only that, Tom noticed he was able to switch is consciousness between two bodies.
But the euphoria of the breakthrough lasted less than an hour. It died the moment Tom walked both bodies back to the command console and looked at the logistics data.
"Oxygen. Water. Biomass," Tom muttered.
The clone stood silently behind him, reading the same screen, processing the same math.
The numbers were catastrophic.
Creating the clone had cost six months of rations. Maintaining two bodies would burn through the remaining supplies twice as fast. The ship's original 15-year survival window had just crashed to 7.5 years.
He looked out the viewport.
Below them, Loshen Star loomed—a massive, hostile sphere. From this altitude, he could see the surface clearly now: a vacuum landscape frozen at -251°C, covered in dark red tholins and vast deposits of frozen blue oxygen.
It wasn't just a dead rock. It was a fuel depot.
The original Tom tapped the glass. "The resources are down there. The energy to run the ship, the materials to fix it."
"But two people can't mine a planet."
They needed a workforce. Not just one helper, but a team. Engineers, miners, heavy lifters.
Tom turned back to the Biological Cultivation Room. He looked at the small, experimental tanks designed for tissue samples and small animals. They were useless for his new purpose.
"We need to scale up," Tom said. "We need to cannibalize everything."
The demolition began immediately.
There was no need for verbal communication. They moved through the laboratory in a seamless, eerie dance.
As the original Tom loosened the bolts on a small cultivation unit, the clone was already there to catch the heavy glass panel before it fell. When the clone needed the plasma cutter, original Tom slid it across the floor into his hand without breaking his own workflow.
They stripped the room to its bones.
Using the study database, they absorbed the engineering schematics for the tanks in half the time it would have taken a single man. They cut apart the small livestock tanks, welding the alloys together to create monstrosities—large, industrial-sized vats capable of holding fully grown men.
It was grueling work. But as they welded the frame for the fourth tank, a cold realization settled over his mind.
Tom stopped working. He walked over to the inventory console and punched in a new simulation.
Current Population: 2.
Target Population: 12 (10 new clones).
Projected Resource Depletion: 1 Year.
If he filled these tanks, he wouldn't have 7.5 years. He would have one year.
He was betting everything. If he birthed this workforce and they failed to establish a base on the surface within twelve months, they would all starve together.
It was a "Death Ground" strategy, cutting off his own retreat to force a victory.
"One year," Tom said, wiping grease from his face. "To conquer a planet or die."
Tom looked at the five empty, gaping tanks they had just built. He didn't hesitate. He initiated the sequence.
Biomass flowed. The tanks hummed.
Five new bodies. Six months to harvest.
Tom slumped against the bulkhead, exhaustion hitting both bodies simultaneously. He looked toward the airlock, where the EVA suits hung.
A sudden, terrifying thought pierced his mind, colder than the vacuum outside.
He had built the bodies. He had calculated the food.
"Wait," Tom whispered, his eyes locking onto the three dusty spacesuits hanging in the locker. "There are only three spares."
He looked at the five gestation tanks bubbling with new life.
"We have twelve people," Tom said, his voice rising in panic. "And we only have four suits."
He had created a workforce, but they couldn't leave the ship.