For the last decade, capsuleers have clearly been the most powerful and influential class of augmented beings in New Eden. Now they are joinedGÇöpossibly challenged, perhaps aided and abettedGÇöby a new class of clone: a highly augmented foot soldier, equipped with state-of-the-art technology and capable of feats that make normal soldiers pale in comparison.

One of the old empires developed these supersoldiers for its own ends, but swiftly became alarmed by unstable aspects of their nature and tried to suppress this potentially dangerous new class. The other empires followed suit, but their attempts failed. The clone soldiers are thought to have enjoyed the aid of unknown outside forces, but due to their incredibly efficiency in combat, this is not necessarily the case. After repelling the empires in hundreds of thunderous clashes, these supersoldiers established enclaves and corporations of mercenary clone fighters. Inevitably, many of them joined forces with capsuleer factions, corporations, and alliances, thus cementing their foothold of New Eden.

Some wonder at the nature of the clone mercenaries, and many make the natural assumption that they are much like the capsuleers. This is entirely wrong. Where the capsuleers use a form of cloning and personality transfer that approaches perfection in its suitability for the vast expanses of space, the immortal soldiers use a technology that we might describe as almost parochial were it not so clearly advanced and carrying with it obvious situational advantages. A capsuleer killed out of her capsule might die permanently, and if not, she will lose much time in the gap between her backupGÇÖs creation and her new cloning. A mercenary clone fears no such hiatus or loss, so long as he is within transmission range of a clone reanimation unit (CRU) or a mobile command center (MCC).

On the other hand, the mercenary clone is limited by considerations of transmission range. It has been established that the personality-transfer technology does not use quantum entanglement. A supersoldier who is accidentally abandoned on a planet for five years is in dire circumstances, because the life span of a mercenary cloneGÇÖs body is apparently no longer than that. He will die and lose five years of his life. Still, he will return, because his core personality data is held in the cast databanks of his corporationGÇÖs infrastructure. He may even have been assumed killed in action and reanimated into a new clone the day after being marooned, a rather undesirable eventuality that would end up essentially creating a second copy of the individual soldiers.

The important point to realize about the immortal soldiers and the capsuleers is that they are very different beings indeed. They may both be infomorphs of a kind, but those kinds are distinct. The capsuleers re-create themselves in full or at least as close as possible, every time they clone. Every scrap of neural data, every linkage in the structure of their brains, is transferred and reproduced anew. They crave the authenticity of the experience; any fleeting breaks in their consciousnesses are generally dismissed as unimportant.

The mercenary is different entirely. His brain structure has been altered to serve the needs of the cloning technology. His entire personality and essential being is shifted out of that brainGÇöwhich has been rearranged heavily to act as a hybrid of primal being and highly efficient control systemGÇöand into an entirely digital existence within the neuro-interface socket (NIS) at the back of the neck. The information stored in this personality stack is everything that makes him who he is as a clone trooper. Everything else has long since been abandoned.

When the mercenary is killed, his NIS has only to transmit the new data that is not stored back at the CRU and MCC banks. In effect, it is a kind of personality data difference file. A powerful burst transmission suffices to update the core stacks. The range of this transmission is debated, but it is certainly no more than orbital, roughly speakingGÇöa far, far cry from the theoretically unlimited range of capsuleer quantum entanglement. The radically different nature and scope of personality transmission for the capsuleer and the mercenary should at once be noted. There is no sense in which a capsuleer can seamlessly transfer to a mercenary clone, or vice versa. The very act would immediately make the receiving vessel into a different person. It would, as the technologies presently operate, be an inevitable forking of personality into two distinct beings. The recent union of the capsuleer and the clone soldier has sent shock waves through the old empiresGÇÖ political establishment. These millennia-old power structures, which have ruled the star cluster since time immemorial, are gradually realizing that despite the wisdom and respect it bestows, venerable age also carries with it stagnation and decay.

GǪ By proving themselves on the battlefield, and in subsequent evaluation during the investigations into the Luminaire carnage, this new breed of mercenary, by sheer numbers and power alone, effectively forced the CONCORD AssemblyGÇÖs hand into ratifying them as a legal entity with the Directive Enforcement DepartmentGÇÖs Mercenary Informorph Act, released on May 14, YC 115. This legislation ushered n a new era for the cloned mercenary, and indeed for New Eden, causing the widespread legalized construction of mercenary enclaves and the revision of the CONCORD Emergency Militia War Powers Act to include the ability for cloned mercenaries to fight as independents on behalf of the sovereign militias. Coupled with this, the Mercenary Infomorph Act also gifted a status similar to that of the capsuleer to the cloned mercenaries, effectively billing them as independent political entities in their own right.