by Kent, Steven
I wondered if I had heard him correctly. This was something I had not expected—honesty.
As I sorted this out, Thorne dismissed his entourage. They scattered in every direction like a flock of birds. When two officers lingered, he growled, “Did you need something?”
One man in particular, a captain, looked stunned, even flustered. “But sir, Admiral Brocius said . . .”
Apparently the soon-to-retire Lawrence Thorne did not give a flying speck what Admiral Brocius might or might not have said. “This is a conference for fleet commanders, Captain Stone. The last time I checked, you weren’t on the invite list.”
“But, sir, Admiral . . .”
“I give the orders on this ship,” Thorne said in a voice so sarcastic it did not sound like something that could come from an old man’s mouth. He licked his lips. “And here is a direct order, ‘You are dismissed.’”
Stone took a step, stopped, took another step, and stopped again. Confusion showed on his face. He had orders from a higher authority than this broken-down admiral, but the officer who had issued them was too far away for an appeal.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Stone,” Thorne said, now raising his voice.
Captain Stone turned smartly and strode away; quite the dignified officer. Once he disappeared around a corner, Admiral Thorne said, “Have they told you that rubbish about commanding the most powerful fleet in the galaxy?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Did they tell you the entire arm would be at your command?”
“Something along that line,” I said.
“You do know it’s all bullshit?”
“I had that feeling,” I said.
Thorne laughed. “They tried to sell me the same line. Let me give you the skinny, Harris. Even if everything goes according to plan, you’re still stuck out here a trillion miles from home. You and your men are going to be marooned out here, and nothing is ever going to change that.”
I nodded.
“I bet you think it’s an antisynthetic conspiracy. Do you think they sent you out here because you’re a clone?” Thorne asked. “Somebody told me that you knew you were a Liberator clone and not to worry about the death reflex.” He looked at me, concern showing in his sky-blue eyes.
“I know that I am a clone, sir.”
“You’re a Liberator, right?” He said the term “Liberator” with little emotion. “I’ve gone over your record. Not a bad record. It might even be a great record if they hadn’t flagged you for killing superior officers.
“You’re a Liberator; they should have expected a little fratricide from you. That’s why they discontinued your kind.”
Thorne walked as he spoke, leading me through the halls at a pace so fast that no one could follow us without looking suspicious. “We’re outdated, Captain Harris. I’m old and you’re obsolete. Didn’t they stop making your kind fifty years ago? We’re both marked for extinction.”
The old man chattered nervously. He might have been scared of Liberators, but he might have just been giddy knowing that my arrival meant he could soon go home.
He paused to take a breath or possibly to let me respond. I had nothing to say. When I first saw him, I thought Admiral Thorne was a dried-up relic, a paper-pusher who had been pressed into commanding an inconsequential fleet. I might have been partly right, but there was something more to this man.
“They sold me the same line when I took command of the fleet three years ago. That was right after the aliens sleeved Terraneau. I was fifth in the command chain at the time. Admiral Chen should have taken command, but he had a brother in the Senate. Admiral Long was under him. He had an uncle on the Linear Committee. They both went home. I didn’t have any high-ranking relatives, so they promoted me to admiral and congratulated me for becoming ‘the most powerful man in the galaxy.’
“They had to reach a long way down the chain to find someone they could leave behind,” Thorne said. “That was three years ago.”
I heard what he said, but my attention strayed. Three sailors walked past us down the hall, and I could have sworn that two of them had blue eyelids. It wasn’t a dark pronounced blue, just a light, faint shade that could easily be overlooked.
I watched them walk past, my eyes following them even as they turned a corner and headed away from us.
“Is something the matter?” Thorne asked.
“No, just . . . I saw something I didn’t . . . I’m fine,” I said, feeling confused.
I knew the layout of the Kamehameha well, so I was surprised when Admiral Thorne walked past the bank of elevators that led to the fleet decks. He caught me looking back at the elevator, and asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Aren’t those the elevators to Fleet Command?”
“We’re not going to Fleet Command, Captain.”
“Where are we going?”
“Those men you saw following me when you arrived, they are all fleet officers. They’re waiting for us on the fleet deck so they can give you a proper briefing. I want to take a few minutes to brief you improperly.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I said, feeling a little suspicious.
By this time Thorne had led me across the ship to the second docking bay. Here he stopped, and said, “I want to start by showing you the things I am supposed to show you, then I thought I might show you what that prick Stone did to this ship behind my back. I’ve got something to show you that neither of us is supposed to know about.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A fleet of five transports sat in the darkened hangar. These were obese, ugly ships with immoderately small wings sticking out of the distended bellies of their cabin. The spine that stretched from the cockpit to the tail along the top of the transports looked like it had been thrown on as an afterthought. The transports stood on struts instead of wheels, though they struggled with vertical takeoffs in atmospheric conditions. Lacking even the semblance of aerodynamics and entirely unable to glide, they dropped like bricks when their thrusters cut out; but they were the workhorses of the Unified Authority’s invasion force. Without them, the Army and Marines would have been grounded.
Admiral Thorne led me to the first bird in the line and pointed between the struts. “This is the one with the torpedo tube,” he said.
I bent down but still could not see the modification, so I dropped to my knees. A cylinder the size and shape of an Army boot hung from the bottom of the ship. It looked almost as if someone had welded a boot to the chassis.
“That’s it?” I asked, amazed that such a small barrel could house a nuclear-tipped torpedo. I remained on my knees, staring into that tube. Deep inside it, I could see the rounded point of a red-tipped cone.
“Armed and ready,” Thorne said. He coughed a dry, wheezing sort of cough. It was an old man’s cough, not one caused by congested lungs or something in his throat.
I fired off a nuclear device once. The sight was dazzling and mesmerizing and horrible. Heat, or radiation, or maybe it was just force, rose from the center of the explosion like an electric sheet. I remember thinking that with some skill, you could protect yourself from a bullet or a knife; but with a nuke, there was nothing you could do. It would kill you, then incinerate your body no matter how you tried to protect yourself. The realization that I would once again be dealing with a weapon designed to destroy areas instead of people left me nervous.
“Per your request, the other transports are not armed. You have one armed transport, and that transport is armed with one torpedo. If the shot fails, you’re going to need to return to the ship for another torpedo, Captain. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want us to place tubes on the other transports.”
“If we need another one, we can come back easily enough,” I said. “It’s not like we have to work around a window of time.”
I was making up excuses. The truth was that nuclear weapons scared me. We would need one nuclear-tipped torpedo to get through the ion curtain; and once we made it through the curtain,
I did not want any superfluous warheads distracting me.
“No, there isn’t. Not for you,” Thorne said. “How long do you think you will need to capture the planet?”
What would happen once we landed on Terraneau was anybody’s guess. A few weeks had passed since Admiral Thorne received the message from the survivors. Apparently he had not heard anything since. He told me this along with his belief—that we would find ourselves on a ghost planet once we landed. I did not like that prospect, but I could think of a worse scenario—finding the atmosphere saturated with the gas the aliens used in their mining. The gas was so corrosive that it would dissolve our transports around us as soon as we punched our way through the curtain.
“Is the big package ready as well?” I asked.
“It’s on board, Captain. So is the other equipment you requested,” Thorne said. “Did you want to inspect it?”
“No,” I said. The big package was a fifty-megaton bomb. If Thorne said it was ready and aboard the ship, that was good enough for me.
“Excellent. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the Engine Room,” Thorne said.
I asked, “What’s in the Engine Room?” giving Thorne an opening he could not resist. “The ship’s engine,” he said. Then he added, “Admiral Brocius authorized Captain Stone to make a modification without telling me, Captain. I became aware of it quite by accident last week, and I thought you might find it interesting.”
What Thorne showed me next opened my eyes. I had not told anyone my plans, not even Thomer or Ava, but the brass suspected me just the same. Somebody had hobbled this ship.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I spent hours touring the ship and discussing the fleet with Admiral Thorne. After that, I went to my billet to rest. A pile of combat armor belonging to Corporal Mike Rooney sat in the corner of the room. Rooney herself, now in Ava attire, sat cleaned and dressed in the booth-sized head across the room.
One thing about Ava; she kept her wits about her. Sitting in that tight bathroom could not have been comfortable, but it would give her some level of concealment if someone stepped into the room other than me. “How do you like the ship?” I asked.
“It beats the hell out of Clonetown, Honey.”
“We had more space back at Fort Bliss,” I pointed out.
“I had to pee in a bucket,” she said. “I like the cool air.”
“Glad you’re satisfied,” I said.
“Satisfied? Aren’t you some kind of important officer. Why did they stick you in such a tiny apartment?” She stood up and examined herself in the mirror over my sink until she found a smudge on her forehead. Then she ran the water to wet a tissue and dabbed at the spot.
Ava may not have risked a shower just yet, but she had clearly preened. She had hand-tousled her hair and washed her face and arms.
Confined to my shed, she had not gotten any sun in weeks and her skin had gone milky white. A permanent film of sweat and dust had formed on her body. Having had some time to clean herself, she now looked clean and pale.
“These are not my permanent quarters,” I said. “Once I assume command of the fleet, I get a deck to myself.”
“A deck to ourselves? That sounds absolutely marvelous,” Ava said as she continued inspecting herself in the mirror. This was the first chance she’d had to fix herself since General Smith had dumped her off at Fort Bliss, and she could not tear herself away from the mirror. “When do we move in?”
“It’s not going to be that easy. Before we can move in, Admiral Thorne needs to move out.”
“Who is Admiral Thorne?”
“He’s the fleet commander.”
“I thought you were the fleet commander?”
“He’s the outgoing fleet commander.”
“So when does he check out?” Ava asked.
Ava stood there in the bathroom, the cleanest I had seen her since I met her at the New Year’s Eve party. She had to know what I wanted, but she gave no sign of reading me. I took a step toward the bathroom, and she finally looked away from the mirror. Her green eyes locked in on mine, and I saw something both playful and stern in her expression.
“Don’t you think it might be a little tight in here for two?” she asked.
“Not if we get real close,” I said.
“That doesn’t sound very comfortable,” she said.
“Then come on out, there’s plenty of space out here,” I said.
She shook her head, and said, “I think I like it better in here.”
“Any way you want it.” I started toward her.
“By myself,” she added.
“So why did you get all cleaned up like that?” I asked.
Ava smiled an indulgent, amused smile. “Honey, that’s the difference between girls and Marines. I cleaned up because I wanted to be clean, not because I wanted to have sex.”
“Oh,” I said. After that, I went to my rack and reviewed the orders Admiral Thorne had given me. I spent two hours reading and rereading them; and then, ready or not, it was time to start briefing my men.
Our first staff meeting did not go as I had expected.
We held the meeting in a staff room near the bridge. In the future, once Admiral Thorne and his corps of natural-born officers returned to Earth, I would conduct staff meetings on the fleet deck.
For this first meeting, I only brought two of my men, Thomer and Herrington. Thomer, who must have luded up a few hours earlier, paid little attention to the surroundings as he entered the room. He walked straight to the conference table and sat down without even scanning his surroundings.
Not Herrington. An enlisted man who had limited contact with the upper ranks, he’d never seen how the commissioned tenth lived. He stepped through the door, stopped, took in the size of the room, then spun one of the leather chairs. He whistled. “Some digs,” he said. “Do we get to play in here whenever we want?”
Hearing this, Thomer glanced around the room. He squinted his eyes, and his forehead wrinkled, giving him a confused expression; but he still made no comment.
Taking the chair at the head of the table, the captain’s chair, I brought out the orders Admiral Thorne had given me, along with a small audio chip I had found inside the folder. I set the folder down on the table, then placed the chip in the media reader near my seat.
“Who’s coming to this meeting?” Thomer asked, the glazed expression fading from his eyes.
“Ships’ captains and fleet officers,” I said.
“Officers?” Thomer asked. “I thought all of the natural-borns were going home.”
“They aren’t officers yet, but they will be once the Thorne administration leaves. There’s a new round of promotions coming up. How does Brigadier General Kelly Thomer sound to you?” I said as I fished the promotions list from my folder and handed it to Thomer.
“You’re joking, right?” Herrington asked, both looking and sounding as if he was fighting the urge to laugh. “Thomer, a general? I have enough trouble getting used to you as a captain.”
Thomer took the list and slowly read it. Thomer had become a study in clinical depression. Over the last two years, he had lost enough weight to go from skinny to skeletal. He had the haunted look of a man who has seen too many friends die on the battlefield. Before New Copenhagen, Thomer’s biggest problem was excessive worrying over small details. Now I wondered if he cared about anything.
“I’m a brigadier general?” Thomer asked. He looked me in the eye and could tell I was not joking. “How is that possible?”
Having been raised in an orphanage, Thomer had already reached the highest rank he could have hoped to attain—master gunnery sergeant. Now, out of the blue, the Marines had advanced him twelve pay grades.
Herrington moved behind Thomer so he could read over his shoulder. After thirty-two years serving in the Marine Corps as an enlisted man, Sergeant Lewis Herrington would shortly find himself holding the rank of full-bird colonel. He took the news of the promotion with his usual stoic good hum
or. He said what he always said when he heard good news, “You have got to be shitting me!” After a second glance, Herrington added, “A field rank promotion from sergeant to colonel, there’s one for the books.”
“You can’t run a fleet with master sergeants and petty officers at the helm,” I said.
According to these new orders, I was both fleet commander and “Scutum-Crux Arm administrator,” a position that sounded more political than military. I held the field rank of lieutenant general in the Marines. In my experience, only naval officers commanded fleets; but my rank made me the highest-ranking officer in the Scutum-Crux Arm.
At least I would be the highest-ranking officer in the Scutum-Crux Arm once the natural-born officers went home. Until Admiral Thorne and his crew left, I would remain a captain. If and when Washington sent natural-born officers to inspect the fleet, my rank would automatically revert to captain.
Thomer finished reading the orders over and handed them to me. “I can’t be commandant of the Marines,” he said in that quiet voice. “I think that I might be a clone.”
“Something’s wrong with my hearing. I could have sworn he just said he thinks he’s a clone,” Herrington gasped. “Aren’t you supposed to have one of those death reflexes now? Aren’t you going to keel over?”
“Thomer, we have to get you off that Fallzoud shit,” Herrington added, staring at Thomer as if he had horns sprouting from his ass.
“You might want to hold off on that, Sergeant,” I said. “Fallzoud may be the only thing keeping this Marine alive.”
Just then a chime rang, warning us that the other members of our conclave were outside the door. “Keep a lid on the promotions for now,” I said as I placed the orders back in the folder and went to let them in. Herrington nodded, but his eyes remained on Thomer, who sat as placid as ever.
I took one last look at Thomer to make sure he was ready for the meeting. He sat bolt upright, his hands lying flat on the table before him. I might have mistaken him for a mannequin except that he was breathing. Hoping for the best, I pressed a button, and the conference room door slid open.