The other SEALs entered the room.
“The Mogats shot down our ride,” I said in frustration. “They shot down our specking ride.” I was swearing more than usual, possibly because the damned Boyd clones were so specking calm about the whole thing.
Illych—I knew it was him because my visor displayed his virtual dog tag—walked past me. “We’ve got company,” he said, staring out the viewport.
I turned and looked. Two Mogat transports floated in our direction, their naked steel hulls appearing flat gray in the darkness. I had a particle-beam pistol. We all had particle-beam pistols. That was the general-issue weapon for combat in nonatmosphere situations.
Each of the approaching transports could carry a complement of a hundred Mogat commandos. The way I saw it, we had two options. Our best bet was to hide. Using those stealth kits, we could move undetected by their sensors. The only other option was to attack the Mogats as they stepped off their transports. It would be seven of us against two hundred of them. That gave them the house odds, as Admiral Brocius would have put it.
The SEALs came up with a better option.
“I always heard that you Liberator clones were lucky,” a SEAL named Simmons said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Listen to this,” he patched me into the frequency he was listening to over the interLink. Okay, so we break up into eight groups. The sensors only picked them up for a second. They were in the bridge but that…
“You tapped the Mogats’ communications?” I asked.
“All of their equipment is stuff they stole from us,” Simmons said. “I just did a frequency scan and there they were.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
You cannot change clothes in unpressurized space. If you do, the pressure of your body will cause you to explode. You will end up like the sailors in the engine room, lying dead beneath the frozen splashes of their blood.
As a military clone and a Marine, I only knew one way to engage the enemy—head-on. I knew how to make an enemy die in space. I did not think in terms of vanishing into his ranks. My objective might require me to snipe a guard or infiltrate a building; but in the end, my area of expertise was combat. The SEALs thought in terms of special operations.
Illych had one of his SEALs give me his stealth kit. He teamed that man up with another SEAL and sent them out. He sent his other three SEALs out on their own. They scattered around the ship. The two-man team headed for the bow. One of the lone SEALs returned to the engine room. Another went to the top deck. The last man went midship. When the time came, they would lead the Mogats on a wild-goose chase. They would do it one at a time, jamming and unjamming the security sensors in such a way that there only appeared to be one intruder on the ship. I had no doubt about the SEALs’ ability to pull off this trick.
Using Illych’s stealth kit to neutralize the motion sensors, he and I stole to a corridor that reached all the way across the ship. The corridor ran along the lowest deck. When the laser had hit the belly of this battleship, it carved out huge sections of the floor and walls.
I listened to the Mogats blunder through their maneuvers as we went. One of their teams had a sergeant barking out orders which, from the sound of things, no one understood. The more he screamed, the more confused his men became. Soon he could barely breathe because he had screamed all of the oxygen out of his lungs. I imagined that the inside of his visor was covered in spit. I enjoyed listening to the man.
The Mogats’ other teams operated more efficiently.
The old battleship was two-thirds of a mile wide and just under a half a mile long from bow to stern. We did not tire flying through the corridor; hell, our feet never even touched the deck. At midship, we reached a fifty-foot stretch of corridor below which the entire hull had been sheared away during the battle. All that was left of it was the right-hand wall and ceiling—everything else was wreckage and stars. Seen through the night-for-day lens in my visor, space looked flat and black with a swirl of blue-white specks.
You cannot swim in space. Launch in the wrong direction in open space, and there is no course correction without some sort of rocket. When we reached the break in the corridor, we stopped. The hall ahead of us had a slight bend to it. If I launched ahead and missed the curve, I would fly into space without a prayer of turning myself around. I would fly in a straight line at a constant speed until I ran into a planet or a black hole, or maybe a meteor shower.
I locked the fingers of my right hand unnecessarily tight around the grip of my pistol. I let the fingers of my left hand drag along the edge of the wall to feel around for emergency handholds should I need one. Then I pushed off the wall and over through the missing section of corridor. I drifted slowly, focusing my attention on the floor ahead.
Illych followed.
I heard: Delta Team, check the lower-deck main corridor.
Got it.
That placed one of the Mogat teams on the same deck as Illych and I, probably no less than two walls away. If they came into our hall before we reached the other side of the gap, we would have no place to hide and little chance of defending ourselves.
It didn’t happen that way. The Mogats preferred the safety of corridors with all four walls intact. From listening to their communications, I could tell that the Mogat commandos did not believe anyone had trespassed onto the ship. They thought the alarm was proof of a malfunctioning sensor.
You see anything? a Mogat commander asked one of his group leaders.
Nothing.
All clear here, another volunteered.
I’m thinking malfunction, Captain.
We caught an enemy ship prowling around outside, the captain pointed out.
Maybe he bumped the wreck. Would that set it off?
Don’t be stupid, the captain said. He would have been killed if he crashed into a battleship.
Maybe he barely bumped it.
Shut up, Anson, the captain said. You think you can shake a battleship by nudging it with a little ship like that?
I changed frequencies to speak to Illych. “We’d better show them some bait before they lose interest.”
Illych radioed the order.
Captain, I’ve got ’em! I’ve got ’em, some idiot Mogat radioed a moment later.
Illych led the way as we continued across the ship. The camouflage device in his helmet turned his armor the same pale gray color as the walls. Through the night-for-day lens in my visor, both he and the walls looked nearly white. Because of the poor depth perception the lens gave me, he was all but invisible.
“Do you have any idea how much of the ship is wired for motion?” I asked.
“Every inch of it from what I can tell,” Illych said.
“Good thing your boy looked for sensor fields,” I said.
Illych did not respond. I suppose that kind of precaution came as second nature when you worked in SpecOps.
Near the front of the ship, we crossed a major corridor that ran from one wing of the ship to the other. This hall was so wide you could drive two tanks side by side across it. Illych traveled along the ceiling. I hung low, an inch above the floor. We saw no signs of damage. Here the ship looked dormant, not derelict. I saw no debris, though I did see dead sailors when I peered into the hatches.
“How did they get into the launch bay?” I asked. “There shouldn’t be any power in the doors.”
“Maybe the atmospheric locks were open,” Illych suggested.
“Illych,” I said, “your ship is under attack, and you’re going to send out unarmed transports?”
“Maybe the locks opened when the battleship blew up,” Illych suggested.
“Yeah, sure, and all Mogat ships carry pint-sized broadcast engines along as a spare.” I tried to sound sarcastic, but I had trouble whispering in a sardonic tone. “When the Mogats sacrificed this ship, they had something up their sleeves.”
We moved ahead. I continued to listen to the Mogats, leaving Illych to figure out our course.
>
“Stop,” I hissed, just in time.
We lost them again, one of the Mogats said. No, wait, there they are. They’re near the engine room.
These guys are fast.
Get down there, the captain bellowed. Don’t let them anywhere near that broadcast engine.
“You hear that,” Illych radioed over an open frequency for the rest of us to hear. “Stay away from the engine room. Lead them back to midship.”
Up ahead, a squad of soldiers crossed the hall. They had not adjusted to the lack of gravity and tried to move along the floor as if in a ship with gravity and an atmosphere. We slid gracefully above the deck; they waddled and bounced with every step.
There were eight men, all carrying lasers in one hand and searchlights in the other. Had they shined their lights in our direction, they could easily have spotted us; but not a one of them even paused to make certain the path was clear before crossing. They simply cut across the hall and continued walking in their square formation without looking back. Had I wanted to, I could have ambushed the lot of them just for sport.
“Pathetic,” Illych said. “Didn’t anyone ever teach them to look both ways before crossing? We should have picked them off, just on principle. What do these Mogats teach their boys in basic, knitting?”
He turned toward me. “I cannot believe they are winning this war!”
Illych yelled this so loud that I jumped and half expected the Mogats to hear him. The Mogats would not hear him, I reminded myself, not wearing combat helmets in nonatmospheric conditions. I had been whispering, but I wore combat armor so often that I sometimes forgot it was on. He seldom worked in his armor.
“Are you always this chatty on stealth missions?” I asked.
“Is that a rhetorical question, sir?” Illych asked. Now that the action had begun, I sensed a mildly giddy tone in his voice and wondered if the Special Operations clones had some form of combat reflex.
Illych and I remained perfectly still as we waited to make sure that the Mogats did not have a fire team bringing up the rear. They did not, so we turned down the hall and headed in the direction from which they had come.
This part of the ship had significant internal damage. We passed shattered bulkheads and an occasional corpse. Thanks to their torches, we spotted the next squad of Mogats the moment they entered the area. They passed without looking as we dodged into the first open hatch.
“They’re like robots,” I said. “They didn’t even shine a light into the room.”
“They know the room is empty,” Illych said. “Their motion sensors aren’t picking anything up, so they know that no one is down here.”
“Because you’re jamming the sensors,” I said.
“But they don’t know I’m jamming their sensors. All they know is that their alarm system says the coast is clear.”
When I considered that point, that their alarm system told them the coast was clear, I realized that the Mogats had made an easy mistake. I did not like to admit it, but I might have made the same mistake, though I would have remained more alert. I filed the lesson away as we started down that hall again.
Looking down the various arteries that we passed, I spotted distant lights as the Mogat squads and fire teams made their way through the ship.
“They’re getting too close,” I said to Illych.
“I’ll take care of it,” Illych said. He contacted the team in the bridge and had them set off some sensors. Moments later, the Mogats turned and headed toward the bow of the ship.
“It’s all too easy,” I said. “They’re idiots.”
By this time we had nearly reached the main launch bay. Crossing that last empty stretch of corridor, we peered in. Two transports sat on the launch-bay deck. Lights shone in the nearest transport’s cockpit. Using a telescopic lens, I could see the shape of a pilot’s head though the glass. I pointed him out to Illych.
“I see him,” Illych said.
Three guards stood talking at the base of the transport. I could easily have killed them, but our plans would have failed if I had. In order for our plan to work, we needed the guards to give the all clear.
“You do know how to fly one of these birds?” I asked.
“Fly a transport? Colonel, I picked that up in basic,” Illych assured me.
“This one is fifty years old,” I said.
“No problem.”
“But what do you do once you touch down on their ship?” I asked.
“I catch a ride to their base,” Illych said.
“They may have to broadcast there. Then what? You won’t be able to tell us where you are.”
“This is recon,” Illych said. “Never underestimate the value of having a trained saboteur in your enemy’s base.”
I had to admire him. The clone had nerve.
The launch bay gaped into space, as depressurized as the rest of the ship. The locks and blast doors might have been blasted open as the Outer Perseus Fleet sank this ship, but my guess was that the same person that lowered the shields opened the locks.
Why did the Mogats care about a wrecked ship? How had they known we were here? Why had they gone to all of the trouble of installing a second broadcast engine and protecting it during the attack? The same questions flashed again and again in my mind.
Those thoughts running through my head, I hid beside the door and aimed my pistol at the men guarding the nearest transport. I could have picked them off so easily. I could have hit the first two Mogats and finished the job so quickly that the third man would not have had time to notice his two buddies explode before he died as well.
But that was not the plan.
“Do you know how to use this?” Illych asked, showing me the handy little remote he had used to jam the motion sensors.
I pulled out my remote. It was the size of a deck of cards. Light emitted from one of those buttons. “As long as this light is on, the sensors are off,” I said, pointing at the lit button.
“Close enough,” Illych said.
“Then I’m good,” I said. “Good luck, Illych.”
“Thank you, sir,” Illych said. He crouched in the hatch and waited until the guards looked the other way, then he entered the landing area and sprang up the side of the wall, reaching the forty-foot ceiling in mere seconds.
The rear of the nearest kettle sat wide open—an easy target. With their obsolete design, the guards’ helmets offered limited peripheral vision. Their helmets were what Unified Authority Marines had worn fifty years ago. I knelt in the shadows and watched as Illych glided along the ceiling, then dropped onto the roof of the transport.
“How does it look from there?” he asked.
“Free for the taking,” I said.
I stood and took a deep breath. I could feel the soothing warmth of the adrenaline and endorphins mixture filtering into my veins. I was out of practice. I should never have had a combat reflex watching somebody else in action. Now, after all that time I spent living among the farmers, the reflex started prematurely.
“My turn to play fox,” I called out over the interLink, warning the SEALs to lie low. I pressed the lit button on my stealth kit, shutting off the jamming device. The sensors discovered me instantly. Inside the launch bay, all three guards drew their guns. Though they did not see me, alarms inside their helmets told them I was just outside the hatch.
They’re inside the launch bay! the Mogat captain shouted.
Just outside it! a guard called back.
We got ’em!
The guards came tromping toward me, firing blind in my direction. Silver-red lasers streaked past me and seared the wall of the corridor. I pushed hard against a bulkhead and launched myself full speed down the hall. Laser fire followed me, striking walls and floors moments behind me.
Under normal circumstances, I would not have worried about three untrained idiots shooting lasers in my direction. Judging by the spread of their shots, they would not hit me unless they were aiming at somebody else. But this was different. Under
normal circumstances I could fire back. This time I could only run away.
I continued just ahead of them, feeling no panic. The combat hormone flowed through me, keeping my mind keen. I pushed off walls, turning right and left down whatever small arteries looked clear. I found a ladder shaft leading between two decks and shot up to the next deck. The Mogats came ambling after me, leaving their transports completely unguarded. Once I reached the top of the ladder, I had to slow down to keep from losing them.
I turned one corner, then the next. Moving at this speed with little depth perception, I slid past several junctions too fast to change direction. Lasers struck the walls above and below me. The Mogats were closing in.
Nearing the end of a corridor, I managed to push off a wall and bounce into a long foyer. It was an ugly, abrupt change in direction that I made by kicking off one wall and slamming headfirst into another, before rolling sideways into the entryway. The maneuver sent a shock down my shoulders and back.
“Illych, report,” I said.
“I’m in,” Illych said.
“You have the pilot?”
“Sure.”
When I peered out the hatch, I saw the Mogats ducking for cover at the other end of the corridor. One of them shined a light in my direction, pointing it above my head. It was comical. These boys were so poorly trained. The commando stuck his head way out to get a good look, then fired blindly down the hall, missing me by several yards.
“You took out the pilot?” I asked.
“Done,” Illych said.
The idiot fired again. This time he was less than three feet off. For the first time, I started to worry about them spotting me.
“Have you traded clothes?” I asked. The plan was for Illych to kill the transport pilot, then change places with him. Illych would dress the pilot in his Special Operations armor and dress himself in the pilot’s flight gear. He would do so in the pressurized cockpit, the only place on the entire battleship in which we could now control the environment.
“It’s not a very good fit. Their pilot had a few inches on me. I’m not sure which looks worse, him crammed into my armor or me in his flight gear.”
The Clone Alliance Page 12