by Kent, Steven
None of the hatches on the sixth deck radiated heat, and we found no bodies. What we did locate was the wound that had killed the ship—where the first lasers hit once the shields had given way. I remembered seeing a narrow beam hit the ship on the bow, just below the bridge. Once the lasers pierced the hull, the cabin pressure must have flushed all of the bodies into space.
The seventh deck looked like a battlefield. We passed the frozen bodies of dozens of dead sailors right off the stairwell. I had to kick one out of the way just to enter the hall. The man must have fallen to his knees as he died—at least his body had frozen in that position. The palm of his hand had frozen to the floor. It snapped off just above the wrist when I kicked his body out of the way.
I listened in on my fire team.
Man, this place is a specking morgue.
I hate specking space battles.
At least these guys died fast. I saw a guy take five days to die after he got hit in the gut.
I knew a guy that got burned. The poor bastard hung on for six months.
The way to the bridge was an obstacle course, and we found at least a hundred frozen dead in the various stations around the bridge. Fifteen crewmen lay in a huddle around the weapons section. I found the captain of the ship sprawled out on the floor near the front of the bridge. His skin was a glacier blue, and his eyes were open and frozen.
“Did you see that, sir?” my fire team leader asked me.
I had. It was just a fleeting glimpse, but I had seen a man in soft-shell armor slip through a doorway.
“Thomer, I’ve got a contact. Seventh deck, just off the bridge, I repeat, we have a live one!” I switched to an open frequency. “There’s been a change of plans, boys. There is life aboard this ship, and that means there may be traps. I want everyone to stay where you are until you receive further instructions. Do not engage. I will personally snap every finger off the first sorry speck who fires his gun on this ship.”
I had not gotten a good look at the man. He had flittered across the hall outside the bridge. With my peripheral vision hampered by my helmet, I might not have seen him at all, had he not stumbled over a frozen body and flailed before ducking out of sight.
“What did you see?” Thomer asked on a direct frequency.
“One contact,” I said. “He’s dressed in soft-shell.” All of my men were dressed in combat armor.
In the simulation, the defending team only needed one member to prevent the pirates from capturing the Corvair. If the ship was rigged, it would not matter if the Unified Authority had one man on this ship or a million, we would not be able to take it.
“I hope this isn’t like the specking Corvair,” I told Thomer.
“It isn’t,” he said. “You don’t really die when you pull the pin in a simulation. If they pull the pin on us, they die, too.”
I thought about that. Thomer had a point. Any survivors on this ship were as likely to be engineers from the dry docks as sailors. They might not be willing to go down with their ship.
Looking around the deck, I noted that the bridge looked like something from a nightmare. The computers, the chairs, the stations, all remained in perfect order except for the dead men surrounding them. Death had come in a frozen flash to this part of the ship.
“Have your men reached the Marine compound?” I asked Thomer.
“It’s empty.”
“How empty?” I asked, wanting to make sure we were dealing with a sailor or an engineer, and not a Marine.
“No beds, no racks, no equipment.”
“No Marines,” I said in a hollow voice, a reaction meant more for my ears than Thomer’s. “Got anybody down in Engineering?”
“A couple of teams,” Thomer said.
“Good. Tell them to shut down anything that looks like it still works. Don’t smash things, just break them a little.”
“The gravity generator?” Thomer asked.
“Gravity generators, life-support systems . . . I don’t want power going to any systems.”
“You said he was wearing armor,” Thomer said.
“I think so.”
“So he’s got heat, light, and air,” Thomer pointed out.
“That’s not going to save him next time he needs to take a dump,” I said. “He’ll freeze his ass off.” I thought of a disturbing image—the remains of an engineer who froze to death during the act of defecating.
There might only have been one survivor left on this ship, or there might have been hundreds. It didn’t matter. Confronted with a shoot-out, they would be more likely to pull the proverbial pin than they would be if left alone and facing a slow death in space. People do heroic things in the face of fire; but when the end comes gradually and their bodies betray them and their only enemy is their own natural needs, heroism gives way to the instinct for survival.
When we returned twenty-four hours later, boarding the derelict battleships was no longer a Marine operation. All we needed were some engineers and a chaplain.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Harris, you son of a bitch, I demand you return my ships,” the captain said. Natural-borns had become as interchangeable in my mind as clones. It didn’t matter whether it was Admiral Brocius or General Smith or Captain Pershing, or this guy, Rear Admiral Lower-Half Hugo George, the man from whom I had commandeered our self-broadcasting fleet, they all sang the same angry song.
“Sure, Admiral, I’ll just give you back your three battleships, and we’ll call it even,” I said.
That set him off. “You specking pissant clone!” George, a young admiral at forty-five, rose to his feet. Fire showed in his eyes, which were the exact same mud brown as mine. A vein ran down the center of his forehead. As he shouted, the muscles along the sides of his neck flexed.
Just the two of us sat in the little interrogation room. I did not need guards though I had a couple waiting outside. On his feet and snarling, George stood an inch taller than me, but years in a command chair had left him softened. He had a gut, not a big one, but a gut, nonetheless.
Before coming to the Outer Bliss penal colony, I’d looked up George’s record. He’d distinguished himself as a ship’s captain fighting Mogats. His battleship destroyed more de fenseless Mogat battleships than any other ship in the fleet, once we disabled their shields. Apparently, he knew when to attack and when to wait.
“Sit down, Admiral, you’re embarrassing yourself,” I said. I leaned my chair against the wall behind me, bracing my knees against the table, which was bolted to the floor. To get to me, the admiral would either need to jump over the table or run around it. Considering his size and conditioning, I ruled the element of surprise out of the equation.
He stood there fuming, leaning over the table, his hands in fists. Seconds passed, and he said nothing. Finally, he sat down.
What I knew, what he did not know, was that over the last three weeks, Warshaw’s engineers had attempted to install salvaged broadcast engines on several of our battleships. We flat-out lost one ship when we tested it. God knows where it went. Two ships exploded. One ship survived the broadcast, but the electricity from the anomaly fried every wire, switch, and computer on the vessel. The electricity hadn’t done the crew any favors, either.
We also had one mostly successful test. It did not go off without some flaws. The ship’s shields and weapons systems shorted out. One of the engineers monitoring the broadcast engine died when an arc formed between the wrench in his right hand and one of the cylinders.
Minor hiccups on the road to success.
“Release me and my men,” George demanded, in a quiet voice that betrayed the ragged edges of his self-control.
“You mean you haven’t enjoyed your vacation in Outer Bliss?” I asked.
He did not answer.
“I have no interest in holding you here any longer than I need to.”
“Then return my ships,” he demanded.
“Nope.”
“Stealing my ships was an act of war, Harris.”
George took a moment to compose himself, then said, “The pendulum swings both ways. You’ve got the advantage now . . .”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” I said. “When we do finally let you out of here, I was hoping you could deliver a message for me.”
“A message?”
“You know those next-generation battleships they’re building at the Golan Dry Docks? We destroyed three of them.”
“You what?” George asked.
“Read ’em and weep,” I said. “Three of those new battleships against three G.C. Fleet antiques manned by all-clone crews, and we made a clean sweep of it. What do they call those new ships anyway? Around here we call them Asshole-class ships, but I figure you probably have a better name for them.”
“You’re lying. You’re specking lying to me,” George said.
“You know that I am not lying,” I said, though, of course, I was certainly withholding information. I was not about to mention Warshaw’s hot-wiring derelicts. I wanted to see if I could shake old Hugo’s confidence.
Admiral George greeted my comment with silence. Finally, I stood up, and said, “Well, it looks like there’s nothing more to say.” This was my third debriefing of the day, and I wanted it to end as quickly as possible. I had more interesting business to conduct back in Norristown.
I knocked on the door, and the guards opened it.
“Take him away,” I said.
Admiral George left without a word. I think he was as glad to get away from me as I was to see him leave.
Once I shut the door, Warshaw said, “Wayson Harris, you evil sack of pus! You lied to that pathetic asshole. You let him think we took those ships head-on. Now, why would you do that?”
Warshaw’s disembodied voice came from the Kamehameha . He was monitoring my interrogations using the two-way communications gear that the Corps of Engineers had built into the ceiling.
“We’re going to send him home sooner or later. If we convince him the ships are no good, he might scare Brocius and Smith into giving us more time. You know Brocius and his fetish for house odds. If he thinks we beat his ships in a fair fight, he’s going to scrap his plans until he’s sure he’s got the upper hand.”
“I don’t imagine we’ll be sending Admiral George home anytime soon,” Warshaw said.
“Maybe not,” I agreed.
“Think he bit?”
“Maybe. It shut him up,” I said.
“He’s a prick. I’m glad he’s in the brig,” Warshaw said. “Who do you have next?”
“Fahey,” I said, trying to hide my distaste.
“You and Perry face-to-face? I’d pay big money to see that one,” Warshaw said. He could not be here. Every bit as much the engineer as I was the Marine, Warshaw “needed” to oversee every facet of the work with the broadcast equipment. He had not spent much time on the Kamehameha once the broadcast equipment started rolling in.
“I have a case of Earth-brewed that says that one of you will not leave the room alive.” How the hell Warshaw had found a case of Earth-brewed beer was beyond me.
“You’re not sure which one of us?” I asked.
“I can hope, can’t I?” He could also watch. Along with the audio equipment, there was a tiny camera in the ceiling. If Fahey and I got physical, the bastard would show the feed to every officer in the fleet . . . especially in the unlikely event that I lost.
“Save your beer, there isn’t going to be a fight,” I said.
“No, Harris, I want the bet. Tell you what, I’ll give you odds. You put up a twenty against the whole case. What’s that, five-to-one? Ten-to-one? What do you say?”
“Just don’t try to back out,” I warned him.
There was a knock on the door. I barked out an order, “Enter.”
The door opened and in came Perry Fahey, recently demoted back to senior chief petty officer; only now he was more of a “pretty” officer than a petty officer. He had on the customary eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, rouge, and false eyelashes. He had let his hair grow beyond regulation. It was only touching his ears, but that was long by Navy standards.
Watching the polite way the guards led Fahey into the room, I knew I had to arrange for my men to R & R someplace with women and soon. The MP who led Fahey into the room held the door and smiled at him. The MP bringing up the rear patted Fahey on the back. He did not shove him through the door, he did not give him a warning blow to the kidneys to show him what would happen if he misbehaved, he reached out and gave him a supportive pat on the shoulder. I watched this and knew whose side they would be on if Fahey and I came to blows.
I pointed to the chair on the other side of the table, and they led him to it.
“Why don’t you guys stay here for this one?” I said.
Maybe it was just my imagination, but I could have sworn I heard the word “speck” hiss out of the ceiling.
I had a good reason for having them stay. With them standing over Fahey, I could see if they reached for their pistols. If I sent them outside, they might well come into the room with their pistols drawn.
“Hello, Senior Chief. It looks like you are making the most of your stay here,” I began.
“Get specked, Harris,” Fahey said.
“Well, it certainly looks as if you have done just that,” I said, looking from Fahey to the two sailors/MPs guarding him. They both looked away from me.
“I’m trying to decide what to do with you,” I said. “I suppose I could leave you here till you rot, but I’m leaning toward other options—send your ass back to Earth or have you shot.”
“Put me back on active duty,” Fahey said. He could not possibly have expected me to put him back on active duty. He had to be pumping me for information. I decided to play along and see where he took me. “Do you expect to come back as a senior chief petty officer?” I asked.
“As an admiral,” he said. He sat there motionless, his eyes fixed on mine. He did not blink, did not look from side to side. His eyes were narrow and angry, and the smile on his face was angry and derisive.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Think about it, Harris. Who do you have that can run a fighter carrier. Who do you have commanding the Washington ?”
“Tom Hampton comes to mind. He’s a good man.”
Hampton was Fahey’s second-in-command. In truth, I did not trust him any more than I trusted Fahey.
“Hampton? You have got to be kidding me! Hampton can’t fly a ship. The guy doesn’t know his ass end from his hockey stick.”
“I don’t suppose you have personal experience on that matter?” I asked.
“Get specked, asshole,” Fahey growled.
“I thought you and Hampton were buddies.”
“Oh, I have a lot of friends, Harris. Believe me, I have friends.”
“I believe you. In fact, that is precisely why I came today. I’ve been looking over your record, Senior Chief. It says that you’re only twenty-six years old. Is that right?”
“What about it?”
“That’s awfully young to have made senior chief. You’re five years younger than any other senior chief in the fleet. Did you know that?”
Fahey smiled and shook his head.
“Impressive,” I said.
“Like I said, I have friends,” Fahey said.
“Whom do you mean? Who are your friends? What about Warshaw? Are you and Warshaw friends?” I asked.
“Sure we are,” he said.
“You were only promoted to senior chief just three weeks before I arrived. That makes you the least senior man of your pay grade in the fleet.”
“So?” Fahey sneered. “I’m good at what I do.”
I shot a glance at a guard, and said, “I bet you are.”
The guard flushed, but he did not reach for his pistol.
“Once you were promoted to senior chief, who placed you on my command staff? Who placed you so high in the chain of command? Was it Warshaw?” I asked.
“Forget it, Harris. You don’t know what you are talking about,” Fahey said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “So I suppose we’re done here.” We weren’t done, but I wanted to see how Fahey would react.
“I can help you,” Fahey said, showing me a downright friendly smile.
“How can you help me?” I asked.
He leaned across the table and spoke quietly, as if confiding a secret to me in a crowded room. “Warshaw promoted me.”
“Were you lovers?” I asked.
“Lovers?” Fahey asked. “What we did had nothing to do with love. I touched my toes for him, if that’s what you mean.”
“You piece of shit!” The nearly animal scream echoed from the ceiling, changing the mood in the room from tense to explosive.
“Warshaw?” Fahey sat up, searching around the room for the big man.
“You lying piece of shit! Harris, shoot that specking liar. No, don’t shoot him! I want to come down there and kill him myself!”
A mischievous grin spread across Fahey’s lips. “Sorry, Gary, I kept it quiet as long as I could.”
Until that moment, I had planned on executing Fahey; but now I felt sympathy for the bastard. I said, “That’s a very serious accusation, Senior Chief.”
“Harris, you can’t possibly believe that bullshit,” Warshaw said.
If the guards had ever planned on making a move, they no longer would, not now that they knew the room was under observation. I looked at them, and said, “Take Senior Chief Fahey back to his cell.”
They hesitated for a moment, and I rose from my chair. If they made a move, I wanted to be ready. But one of them helped Fahey to his feet, and the other walked around the table and opened the door. As he left the room, Fahey turned to me and spat out the words, “Specking son of a bitch Liberator clone.”