“Worry about that later,” I said. The guards were back to missing me by five or six feet, all aiming at the same blank spot on the wall.
“I’m under fire here. How soon can you get the body out?”
“It’s out, sir,” Illych said, as casually as if he were talking about the weather.
He’d killed the pilot, stolen his clothes, and prepared the body to use as a decoy in a minute at most. I was impressed but did not feel like saying so. “Nice of you to let me know,” I said, looking for something to complain about.
“I just placed him a moment ago, sir,” Illych said.
“Who gets to play fox next?” I asked.
“Ready,” one of the SEALs reported.
I pressed the button on the jamming device. Now I had to stay out of sight and hope the Mogats were every bit as dumb as they acted. Somewhere below me, one of the SEALs shut off his stealth kit and entered the corridor behind the Mogats.
I’ve got your man, the Mogat captain radioed. He’s headed for the launch bay.
Springing to the ceiling, where they would be slightly less likely to spot me, I watched the Mogats leave. All the Mogats knew was that I had somehow vanished from their tracking devices. They did not know how to respond. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have known that I had jammed their security system. These idiots simply crawled out from behind their cover, shrugged their shoulders, and started back to their post, apparently convinced that I had found a passage between decks.
Illych was right. These guys should not have been winning the war.
I found an open duct and crawled into the ventilation system. There I waited as Illych and his team carried out their plan. Illych, wearing space gear belonging to the recently deceased Mogat pilot, would crawl back into the cockpit of the Mogat transport. Another SEAL would lead the Mogats to the body of the pilot and initiate a firefight. Though he had orders not to, the SEAL would probably kill a few of the Mogats for the fun of it.
Once the firefight got hot enough, our boy would offer them their pilot dressed in SEAL armor as a target. He would hold the dead pilot up for them to shoot. If they did not blast the decoy in the head, our SEAL would do it himself. All the proprietary technology in SEAL armor was located in the helmet. The SEALs would not allow a working helmet to fall into enemy hands.
As soon as the Mogats managed to kill their already-dead pilot, our SEAL would push the corpse out into the open and slip away unnoticed by all.
These tactics would not have worked had we been fighting a veteran army, but this was the Mogats. With their security sensors jammed, the Mogats would happily assume they had killed the lone intruder on their ship. Even if they continued looking for us, we could listen in on their conversations and avoid them. Sooner or later they would decide they had won the battle and leave.
Once the Mogats left, the only thing I would have to deal with was that I was stranded on a dead battleship in a deep-space graveyard with no way of contacting Earth.
In the same situation, Illych would have said, “No problem.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
“Well, they’re gone,” I said.
We stood on the bridge of the derelict battleship watching the Mogat transports rendezvous with their battleship. Two destroyers loomed in the background like guardian angels. Hundreds of twisted wrecks floated about the scene.
“Do you think they’ll be back, Colonel?” one of the SEALs asked.
“Sooner or later. We should be long gone by then,” I said.
“Do you think Illych will be okay?” the SEAL asked.
“You know him better than I do, but I think he can take care of himself.” I believed that. Master Chief Petty Officer Emerson Illych had proven himself in my book. Now that he was on one of the Mogat battleships, he would lose himself among the crew. What could he do once he reached their base? He seemed resourceful. All of these Boyd clones seemed resourceful.
“What now, sir?” one of the SEALs asked.
I told them about the broadcast engine and sent them out to find any other systems that might be online. I did not think they would find anything, but their helmets would record everything they saw. They might stumble across something without knowing it.
In the meantime, I remained on the bridge. I removed data chips from the navigation computer and searched for maps, charts, and anything else that looked valuable. I found nothing. The bridge had been stripped clean. No surprise.
The strange thing was, as long as the Mogats did not return, we could have lived on that ship for days. There was plenty of food in the galley, though I suppose we would have needed a pressurized and oxygenated chamber in which to eat it. Since our suits had rebreathers that recycled our oxygen, breathing was the least of our concerns. Things might get uncomfortable if anyone needed to take a shit; but I figured these boys could hold it together as long as they had to.
Ten hours passed before the Kamehameha sent a ship out to search for us. Wheels turned slowly in the Unified Authority Navy.
Upon returning to the barracks in Washington, DC, I went to my room and took a long, hot shower. I shaved. I tint-shaded the windows of my quarters, making the room as dark as night, stripped down to my underwear, and climbed into bed. I was tired, but sleep did not come easily. Those same questions echoed again and again in my brain. Why were the Mogats watching a derelict ship? What secrets did it hold? How far away were they when we entered, and how had they heard the alarms? What about that second broadcast engine? Nothing made sense.
Less than an hour after I climbed on my rack, I received a call on the communications console. A car had come to take me to meet Admiral Brocius at Navy headquarters. Considering where I had been and what I had found, I expected a lengthy debriefing.
“So where is your friend hiding?” an angry voice demanded as I climbed into the car. It was that same guy from Naval Intelligence, but no longer dressed disguised as a chauffeur. He wore the dress uniform of a lieutenant commander—two and a half stripes on his shoulder boards and a star.
“Oh, it’s you,” I said as the car pulled away. “Couldn’t find Freeman?”
“I’m not joking around, Harris,” he snapped.
“Don’t you owe me a hundred bucks?” I asked.
“I’m going to give you one last chance to tell us where he is, Harris. After that, I’m hauling you in for a court-martial.”
“Does that mean I’ve been officially recalled to service?” I asked. Looking through the car window, I watched monuments and marble buildings shoot by as we weaved our way through traffic. We had already entered downtown DC.
“You’re not on active duty yet,” the driver said.
“Then you can’t court-martial me,” I said.
“Get specked,” the driver said.
“And you owe me a hundred dollars.”
“Why the speck would I give you anything, Harris? You’re a specking deserter.”
“Did Brocius send you, or are you just here for conversation?” I asked.
The driver did not speak again for several minutes. By the time he did, we were entering the main gate at HQ. This time, sounding more contrite, he said, “Look, Harris, if you know where Freeman is hiding, you might as well tell us. It’s only a matter of time until we find him. Help me out here, and maybe you’ll save us all some trouble.”
“Do you have my money?” I asked.
Still twisted around so he could look at me, the guy stretched out his right leg and dug his wallet out of his pocket. He opened it and fished through a wad of money. “Here,” he said, sneering as I took the bills from him.
“Thanks,” I said, glad to have some money in my pocket for the first time in months. “Let me know if you want to go double or nothing.”
“So?” the driver asked.
I looked at him, purposely donning a confused expression.
“Where is Freeman?”
“How should I know?” I asked.
“I hear you had quite
an adventure,” Brocius said, as an aide let me into his office. A file with my name across the top sat on his desk. He picked it up. Flipping between the pages he said, “Entered enemy-held territory without clearance…boarded an enemy ship…”
“A wreck,” I pointed out. “It was the battleship that we sank. As I understand the aeronautical law, that made it common property.”
Brocius looked up from his report as I spoke, then looked back down giving no sign that he heard me. “Unauthorized reconnaissance operation…engaged the enemy…Your unauthorized side trip cost us a valuable self-broadcasting ship. It cost your pilot his life.
“Oh, here’s my favorite. You impersonated an officer. You led a team of SEALs to believe that you were a colonel in the U.A. Marine Corps.”
“You said you were going to recall me,” I pointed out.
“Not to the rank of colonel.” Brocius almost yelled this.
“I never told anyone I was a colonel.”
“You went in a colonel’s uniform!” Now he was yelling.
“I didn’t have any choice. That was the only uniform I had,” I said. “Hell, except for the clothes I arrived in, those were the only clothes I had.
“Admiral, if you wanted me to go to the Kamehameha dressed like a civilian, you should have said something.” He had me dead to rights, but I had to say something.
“So you misled six highly trained Navy SEALs into believing they were on an authorized mission with a colonel in the Marine Corps. One of those men is still missing in action,” Brocius said, lowering his voice.
He closed the report and stared at me, his face unreadable. “Admiral Brallier is calling for your head.” I did not know the name, but I assumed he was the commander of the Outer Scutum-Crux Fleet.
“Sorry, sir,” I said. But I wasn’t sorry. That was my first taste of combat in months. I had done what I was made to do, engage the enemy. I had felt the hormone in my blood, and it felt good. Even as I stood and apologized, I already had started plans for my next big excursion.
“Did you really send one of those SEALs back with the Mogats?”
“Yes, sir, assuming they didn’t catch him.”
Brocius shook his head. “Damn it, Harris, I don’t know whether to shake your hand or shoot you.”
“Semper fi,” I said.
“You’re not officially back in the Corps,” Brocius said. “As far as the Marines are concerned, you are still absent without leave or killed in action. Either one will land you in the brig.”
“I suppose,” I said. More than ever, I wished I was back on active duty.
“Do yourself a favor. Help us catch your friend, Freeman, and maybe I can get HQ to overlook your little adventure.
“Any idea where we can find him?” Brocius asked.
“Can’t say,” I said.
“Can’t say or won’t say, Harris?” Brocius asked. When I did not answer, he mumbled, “I suspected as much.”
“When are you contacting Yamashiro?” he asked.
“Not for a few more days,” I said.
“How do you plan on doing it?”
I did not answer. Brocius must have known I would not tell him.
“Have your labs downloaded the video record from our helmets?” I asked.
“They are working on it at this moment, Harris. What exactly will they find?”
I told the admiral everything. He listened quietly from the start. When I got to the broadcast engine, he pulled out a pad and began to scribble notes. “A working broadcast engine,” he grunted. “Sounds as if Warren Atkins has found some new technology to stack the cards in their favor.” Warren, Morgan Atkins’s son, presumably ran all Mogat operations.
“When Yamashiro comes, we’ll want to show those records to his engineers,” I said. “Maybe they can figure it all out.” I did not tell Brocius what I really thought. I doubted that the Mogats had come up with any of this on their own. Someone with a good grasp of strategy and technology had helped them.
Here is how I contacted Yoshi Yamashiro. On the appointed night, I went to Dulles Spaceport, boarded the transport, and sent out a kind of signal known as a virtual beacon. All very-low-tech mundane stuff. Sending a virtual beacon was the military equivalent of passing notes in school.
The beacon contained three words: “red light, go.”
Let the clowns in Intelligence try to decipher the message. In this case, the medium was the message. Yamashiro and I agreed that it would not matter what message the beacon carried. What mattered was that I sent out the beacon at all. When the communications officer on the Sakura located a beacon on that frequency, no matter what it said, he would tell Yamashiro to send an envoy to Washington, DC.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
I did not hear about Yamashiro landing in Washington, DC, until four days after he arrived. Gordon Hughes, “Wild Bill” Grace, and an honor guard met his transport as it landed. What an entrance for a man who until recently was considered an enemy of the republic. Soldiers with flags, an honor guard with guns, and the two most powerful men in the galaxy all waited for Yamashiro at the bottom of the ramp as he stepped out of the transport.
A few months earlier those same soldiers and weapons would have stood in a firing squad had Yamashiro shown his face. Apparently returning to the scene of the crime with four self-broadcasting battleships covered up a multitude of sins in the political game of “What have you done for me lately?”
That was a ceremony to which I received no invitation. Lowly sergeants did not, as a rule, attend diplomatic functions. Whether Brocius or somebody else made the decision, I was recalled to active service as a master gunnery sergeant. That meant that my men would likely call me “Master Guns.” I hated that nickname. A few smart-asses might call me “Master Blaster.”
Fortunes of war.
When I asked Admiral Brocius about the rank, he gazed at me and asked in a voice drenched with boredom, “Not high enough for you?” He spoke with the sort of menacing civility that officers often pull when they wish to put enlisted men in their place. Every admiral I had ever met could use that voice; I suppose they learned it at the academy.
“Last time I checked, I was a colonel. That’s one hell of a demotion,” I said.
“Welcome back,” Brocius said with a grin that dared me to challenge him. Then, as a consolation, he said, “Look, Harris, there are no other clone officers in the…”
“What about the Little Man Seven?” I asked. I did not normally interrupt admirals in midsentence, but six other clones who survived the battle on Little Man had been bootstrapped. I cared about them. They came from my platoon.
“Yes, I thought you might ask that, so I hedged my bets. Dealer’s odds, right, Harris?” Brocius pulled a sheet of paper from his drawer and scanned it.
“Four of your pals died when the Mogat Fleet attacked Earth. Three of them were on the Doctrinaire. One was on a frigate called the McDermott.
“One of your pals died during routine exercises in the Norma Arm.
“Now here’s the interesting one. Lieutenant Vincent Lee was assigned to the Grant. The Scutum-Crux Fleet sent that carrier to investigate reports of squatters on Little Man. The Grant set out just before the Mogats downed the Broadcast Network. Fleet Command originally presumed that the ship was trapped in space, but we have never been able to locate her.
“No one knows what became of the Grant.”
I knew what became of Vince Lee and the Grant, but I knew better than to offer that information.
“The truth be told, Harris, it doesn’t matter what rank we give you. Every officer around you is going to know that you are the one calling the shots when it comes to you and your platoon.
“What I need is for you to keep doing what you have been doing. You got a man into Mogat space. Now I want you to find some way for us to get a whole platoon there. You got me, Harris? I want to turn this whole war around so that the chips start to fall in our favor.”
In truth, I didn�
��t mind being bucked down to sergeant. I actually felt more comfortable around enlisted men than officers. As a boy growing up in U.A. Orphanage #553, my highest aspiration in life had been to make sergeant.
I offered token resistance, then accepted my new life among the conscripts. I remained on the Navy base outside Washington, DC, until further orders arrived, my career entering a two-week period of almost-cryogenic stasis. I had no duties and no assignments.
I spent a lot of time lying around and watching current events on my mediaLink shades. Time wasted. Without the Broadcast Network, the only galactic information the analysts could find came stripped down, prepackaged, and fully spun from the government. The general population had no idea about the attack on the Outer Perseus Fleet. The only events the public heard about were ones that occurred on Earth.
Most political news came in the form of feel-good stories about the Unified Authority restoring its natural glory. “Troop readiness is at an all-time high,” “Wild Bill” Grace said in a State of the Republic address. Members of the Linear Committee met with key senators to discuss opening several new orphanages. Construction could start any day, but it never did. A new shipyard was under construction orbiting Earth. The global stock exchange rebounded nicely after a lackluster week. The Seattle Mariners, the oldest and winningest sports organization in the galaxy, looked like a shoo-in to win its fifth straight Galactic Series. There was no news from space and no hint that Washington, DC, was in contact with the fleets of its former enemies.
I switched off the mediaLink shades that had come with my room and pulled out a disposable pair I’d purchased with my hundred-dollar winnings. The disposables came with a temporary account that I set up under the name Arlind Marsten—an alias I used during my two years away from the Marines. This would not stop Naval Intelligence or any other organization from tapping into my calls, but it might lull them into thinking I was trying to get around them. Using an optical command, I punched in the code that I wanted to call.
The Clone Alliance Page 13