While new techniques in clone creation and retransplantation have made the process cheaper and more efficient today than ever before, the inherent unreliability of non-capsule cloning and the still-extravagant cost involved for prospective clients effectively prohibits the vast majority of planetside inhabitants from considering it an option. Additionally, moral and religious objections to the work done in the field have surfaced to some extent in every society where its products have become available. Derogatorily known as “Doomies” by those who don’t share their beliefs, these objectors, sometimes numbering among them major political and religious figureheads, have nonetheless exerted a considerable amount of influence on the way cloning is perceived by the general populace. Protests and riots over the issue, while rare, have taken place on numerous worlds since commercial cloning began, and while the cloning companies’ ceaseless marketing has yielded significantly greater public acceptance in the past few years, a number of people still feel strongly that the whole field represents a denial of humanity’s spirituality and should be abandoned for “safer” scientific pursuits.

Despite the advances made in cloning tech, in almost every single environment retransplantation of the mind at time of death is still risky ground. The crucial element in the process relies on a brain-scan snapshot being taken at the precise time of death and transmitted to the waiting clone, and so the transneural burning scanner required to do so needs to be mounted somewhere close to the person at all times. Since the snapshot itself causes massive physical damage to the gray matter, there can be no margin of error; it needs to be done at the exact time of death. In planetary vehicles, the cloning companies have experimented with mounting the transneural scanner in a variety of locations, but the almost limitless potentiality of planet-bound environments has proved time and again that it just isn’t safe – snapshots either go off due to false stimuli, leaving healthy clients in a vegetative state, or fail to go off due to circumstances unforeseen by the safeguard mechanism, leaving clients dead with no chance of retransplantation.

In the capsule, however, things are different. All the equipment needs to do is detect a breach in the pod, because – as every cadet has hammered into his head from the moment he starts training – pod breach, without exception, spells doom for the person inside. Therefore, the instant the egg begins to crack, two things happen: the wire-cap on the pilot’s head injects an instantly lethal nanotoxin into his bloodstream and the scanner sends its piercing light into his skull. Scarce seconds later, he begins the muddy climb towards consciousness in a new body, light years away.