by Kent, Steven
When the lift doors opened several decks down, I found the corridors leading to the docking bay all but deserted. The docking bay itself, however, was another matter.
We had two thousand Marines on the Kamehameha, including support troops who would remain on the ship until we had secured the planet. All two thousand men had crammed into the docking bays. Eight hundred of those men waited in the transports. The others waited on deck for the next flight.
As I made my way to the lead transport, I calculated how many Marines we could land on our first wave. With the exception of the Expansion-class Kamehameha, there would be twenty transports ferrying two thousand Marines from each of our thirty-five fighter carriers—seventy thousand troops. We had ninety battleships with sixteen transports each. That gave us another 144,000 Marines. And we had the men already stationed at Fort Sebastian. That would give us a massive first wave—more than 200,000 men. With a force like that, we could win the battle quickly.
“You do realize that generals don’t lead the troops from the front line?” Thomer asked me, as I jogged up the ramp and into the kettle.
“It’s a field rank,” I said. “Field generals fight along with their troops.”
Unfortunately, I was still wearing my Charlie service uniform and not dressed to lead troops into battle. Without the commandLink equipment in my helmet, I would be all but cut off from my men. I wanted to send someone to grab my armor, but we needed to launch immediately.
Remembering the isolation I felt when I went with Warshaw to the explore the Galactic Fleet, I watched the rear doors of the transport clap shut. The kettle was dark. Had I been wearing my armor, I would have had night-for-day vision available to me.
One hundred Marines had crammed into the kettle. They wore armor—one hundred identical men in one hundred identical suits. Without my armor, I could not tell them apart, which added to my frustration.
I pushed through the men and rushed up the ladder and into the cockpit. Thomer followed.
The pilot met me at the door of the cockpit. We traded salutes. He noted my Charlie service uniform, and said, “I guess I better keep the cabin pressurized.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “Get us down there fast.”
Sitting in the copilot’s chair, counting every second, I looked out through the windshield as the sled dragged us through the atmospheric locks. The last door closed, and we went wheels up.
As we left the cover of the tube, the pilot asked, “What happened?” He sounded nervous.
Ahead of us, the remains of our self-broadcasting fleet looked like the burned-out remnants of an extinguished fire—three jagged, twisted hulls with sections that still glowed orange from fires within.
Standing beside me, Thomer looked hypnotized by the sight. His jaw hung slightly open, and his eyes remained fixed on the destruction. I took this as a good sign. Thomer was clean. With fresh Fallzoud running through his veins, he might not have noticed the destruction.
“What the speck hit them?” Thomer asked. He did not mean for me to answer the question, but I did.
“That, General Thomer, is what happens in a broadcast collision.”
“A collision, sir?” the pilot asked.
“Those ships stayed in one place too long,” I said. “The Mogats came up with the idea. You program an enemy ship’s location into a broadcast computer, then broadcast a ship into it. The U.A. used unmanned explorers. The Mogats used manned ships. That was how they destroyed the Doctrinaire.
“You broadcast in past shields and defenses, and the electricity from the anomaly destroys the target.”
“They broadcasted into the Doctrinaire?” asked the pilot.
“Shit,” said Thomer, “that’s brilliant.” Looking at the wreckage of the three big ships, you could not help but be in awe, they were so thoroughly destroyed.
The attack began moments after we left the Kamehameha. A laser cannon hit us as we veered toward open space. The beam was a yard-wide stream of lustrous, silvery red fire that splashed across our shields but did not break through.
The pilot steered away from the beam. Moments later, a squadron of five Tomcats streaked past us. I did not see them until they shot over the windshield. The fighters turned in a tight formation and disappeared.
“Ours or theirs?” I asked, wondering if we would reach the planet.
“Those are ours,” the pilot said.
“Those aren’t,” Thomer said, pointing to the line of battleships forming between us and the planet.
“How the speck do you like that? We’re right back where we started, eh General?” the pilot asked. Only when he said this did I realize that he was the pilot I’d kidnapped for my joyride around the G.C. Fleet.
“What are those?” Thomer asked, pointing at three of the new U.A. battleships as they approached. The ships looked huge compared to the fighters around them.
“Battle group at three o’clock,” I shouted.
“Hold on!” the pilot answered, moments before three torpedoes struck our transport. They hit in quick succession, one right after another. The transport never faltered, but I smelled the acrid tang of ozone coming from our engines.
“Kamehameha, we’re hit. We’re hit. We need protection,” the pilot yelled into his microphone.
“How bad?” I asked.
“One more like that, and we’re dead,” he said.
A torpedo whizzed past us. I caught a glimpse of the flame from its tail, then it was gone.
A swarm of fighters flashed past us, closing the lane between us and the ships that had fired at us. They darted by us and closed in around one of the new battleships. In the brief moment that I watched the attack, several fighters burst into flames.
Then we broke through the atmosphere and the black of space gave way to light and color. Entering the atmosphere so hard and fast, the transport’s walls rattled as if they would come apart. The sturdy bird did not come apart, however, and we found that we had entered the atmosphere only a few thousand miles from the Outer Bliss relocation camp.
“Signal all transports to head to Norristown,” I told the pilot. I thought for a moment, and added, “And tell them to lay off the radio as much as possible, in case the Unifieds are listening in.” They’d have no trouble eavesdropping on our transmission; the equipment in our transports was of U.A. design.
“Should we leave some men to help guard Outer Bliss?” Thomer asked.
“Tell the guards at Outer Bliss to surrender at the first sign of trouble,” I said.
“Surrender?” Thomer asked.
“We may be guests there ourselves by this time tomorrow,” I said.
“Do you think they know about Outer Bliss?” asked Thomer.
“Know about it? They’ve been in contact with Fahey all along. He’s a U.A. spy,” I said.
“That son of a bitch,” Thomer muttered as he raised the guards at Outer Bliss and gave them my orders. They accepted the order without argument.
When he got off the radio, Thomer asked, “What about the people in Norristown? Will they help us?”
“I wouldn’t count on them,” I said, thinking about Sarah Doctorow and her warning that she and her friends would choose the Unified Authority if it came down to a fight. I did not doubt the bitch. “The best we can hope for is that they will stay out of it.”
“Should I land at the airfield?” the pilot asked.
“No, head for the center of town.” We had launched with nothing but our rifles, but I knew where we could upgrade our equipment.
“Contact Fort Sebastian,” I told Thomer. “Tell Hollingsworth to mobilize his men and meet us at the armory.”
Had I suited up, I could have made the calls and monitored the progress myself. Now, I had to depend on Thomer and hope he did not have some sort of Fallzoud-flashback.
The flight seemed interminable. I looked out the windshield and saw an endless sea that stretched to the horizon in every direction. The sun set behind us. I did not see other trans
ports, but we’d had to scatter to make it through the U.A. blockade. We would regroup once we reached town.
“How do you know Fahey is a spy?” Thomer asked.
I told him everything. I told him about Fahey’s affairs. I told him about Brocius appointing him to my chain of command and about Freeman. Thomer listened carefully. When I finished, he did not say a word; but I saw a new intensity in his eyes. The story had gotten through. For the first time since he began his Fallzoud addiction, I saw hate in Kelly Thomer’s eyes.
“How long before we reach Norristown?” I asked the pilot.
“Two hours, maybe ninety minutes if we’re lucky,” said the pilot.
Forty-five minutes passed, and Thomer reported that the Unifieds had landed outside Outer Bliss.
“Remind them to surrender,” I said.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Thomer said. “They’ve already handed over their weapons to their prisoners. The Unifieds are airlifting the natural-borns back to their fleet.”
I checked the time. If we got lucky, we might reach Norristown in an hour, I told myself as I counted off the seconds in my head.
“General, I’m receiving a message for you from Fleet Command,” the pilot said. He switched on the cockpit speaker.
“Harris?” Warshaw was on the other end of the line.
I leaned in toward the radio, and asked, “What’s the situation up there?”
“I’ll tell you what the specking situation is. We’re getting our asses stomped, that’s the situation. Harris, they’re grinding us up. We’ve lost two carriers.”
“We’re on our way to Norristown,” I said. “I’m not sure how many transports got through, but . . .”
“Seventeen transports broke through,” Warshaw said.
“Seventeen?” I asked. I heard the number seventeen, but my mind didn’t accept it. He must have meant the number of transports we had lost. “How many transports did they hit?”
Warshaw’s long pause before answering me gave me a chill. “They shot down fifty-six transports before we were able to recall them. Their fighters got in the lane.”
“Fifty-six transports?” I asked, not believing what I’d heard.
“They destroyed fifty-six transports.”
The news splashed through me like a shot to the gut. I braced my arm on the panel above the radio and rested my forehead against the back of my forearm.
One moment everything seemed hopeless, then I remembered that our fleet still outnumbered theirs ten-to-one. Even with two fighter carriers down, we still had over thirty carriers. It was just a matter of time until our fleet overwhelmed theirs; the numbers were too far in our favor. “How long do we need to hold out until you can send more transports?”
“You’re not listening, Harris. There aren’t going to be any more transports. We’re fighting for our specking lives up here, and we are losing.”
Outside the cockpit, the sky had turned dark. Stars sparkled in the darkness, but there was no moon to break up the blackness around us. The ocean below us seemed to drop out and fade into a shadow.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“No sign of them yet,” Hollingsworth told Thomer for the fourth time. We would meet up with Hollingsworth at the garage under the government buildings—the one the local militia had converted into an armory. Hollingsworth and his men were already there. I had Thomer check in with him every fifteen minutes in case the Unifieds got there before we did.
Hollingsworth gave Thomer the same response every time: “No sign of them yet.”
We also received constant reports from the fleet. They weren’t pretty. The U.A. had a new class of fighters that outmaneuvered our Tomcats and Phantoms. We’d lost badly when our fighters engaged one of their squadrons; then Thorne wedged several frigates into the lanes and turned the fight around.
“We can’t get past their specking shields,” Warshaw said, when I called in.
I would have told Thorne to cut us loose and run, but he had nowhere to go. The new ships were quicker and self-broadcasting. They were killing us in a fair fight, and we had no chance of outrunning them.
It occurred to me that we were flying unprotected, too. The U.A. Fleet didn’t need to send fighters into the atmosphere to destroy us. Their battleships could target us from space, but that did not seem to fit in with their plans.
Then the other shoe dropped. “Harris . . . ? Harris, do you read me?” It was Warshaw. He sounded frantic as he said five words I did not want to hear. “You are on your own.”
Seconds later, we all saw the first flash. It was only a pinprick of light, brighter but no larger than the stars in the night sky. It winked enough to catch my attention and vanished.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered after the first flash. “Did you see that?”
Thomer had caught it. The pilot had missed it.
More flashes followed—a rapid series of second-long flashes all in the same spot. It looked like someone was flashing Morse code with a tiny light.
“What was that?” the pilot asked. I think he knew.
“Death,” I said.
Unable to believe that a force as powerful as the Scutum-Crux Fleet could be defeated, the pilot tried to raise the Kamehameha. There was no response.
“Should we tell them?” Thomer asked, looking back toward the kettle.
“No,” I said. Why discourage the men? They had a fight ahead of them either way. Better to send them in believing they have a chance.
The explosions continued for another thirty minutes. Watching the quick bursts of light and knowing each meant the deaths of hundreds of clones tortured me, then something worse happened. The explosions stopped, and I knew that the battle had ended. The peaceful sky meant that hundreds of thousands of clones were gone.
We did not speak to each other for the rest of the flight to Norristown. When he was not calling Hollingsworth, Thomer sat silently, staring out into the moonless night. We sat tensely—three men way out on a limb and waiting for the branch to break.
We would make our last stand in the ruins of Norristown, the city so many men had died to protect. As we flew over the southern edge of the city, we passed two- and three-story buildings that stuck out of the ground like giant grave markers in a cemetery gone to seed. Ground swellings below us marked the spots where buildings had collapsed. In my mind, each hill became a mass grave.
In the middle of this, the government building complex was a steel-and-glass anomaly. Its walls and walkways still intact, the government complex was a modern Camelot overlooking a decimated fiefdom. Hollingsworth had already mapped the grounds for tactical use. Following his instructions, we arranged our seventeen transports in strategic spots as we landed.
The transports weren’t much to look at, but then the military had its own school of landscaping—FOCPIG. Military men love their acronyms. In this case, FOCPIG stood for Fire, Observed, Concealed, Protected, Integrated, non-Geometric; in short, it is the process of preparing a field for battle. In the FOCPIG school of landscaping, aesthetics mattered less than utility. Placed strategically, those transports would create nearly impenetrable obstacles that the Unifieds would need to run around.
Judging by the first wave of transports the Unifieds had sent, they’d come light. Until they sent a second wave, they would not have tanks or gunships, just men, guns, and a handful of light-armor vehicles. That would play into our preparations. According to the feng shui of FOCPIG, our job was to route them so that we could have every advantage. Using transports as barriers, we would steer the enemy between the outstretched arms of the government center—a natural gauntlet. Once they entered, we would have the high-ground advantage.
Thomer and Hollingsworth remained with me as I surveyed the grounds. Their underlings swapped in and out as they gave orders. After a few minutes, Hollingsworth went down to the garage for an inspection.
By now, I had armor of my own, brand-new equipment that Hollingsworth’s men snagged out of the armory. The
armor was stiff, and none of my preferences had been programmed into it, but it was better than isolation. When I got the chance, assuming I lived to get the chance, I would calibrate the ocular controls in the visor to read my particular eye movements. I could live with the glitches, the armor came with a commandLink, and that meant I could communicate with the men unassisted.
We walked along the roof of one of the wings of the building—“snipers’ row.” Hollingsworth and Thomer knew the drill. You placed snipers where they would have a good view of anyone passing by, then you waited. Often, you had to sit patiently letting viable targets march past in exchange for a clean shot at the men at the top of the food chain. Shoot the peons in the front, and you warn the bastards in the back that they’re walking into a trap. Sniping is a game of patience.
Not that we were going to take anybody by surprise. There was only one way into the armory, and we marked that path by placing our transports along it. If they wanted us, the U.A. invaders would need to walk our gauntlet. I wondered what they would do once they entered it.
In the predawn hours of an otherwise calm summer night, we moved along the top of the building. Locked up in my combat armor, I did not worry about the breeze or rain. My bodysuit kept me cool and dry.
The grounds around the government center must have been beautiful at one time. I saw shattered concrete beds that must once have been a network of ponds. A border of waist-high grass grew around the complex. A soft breeze combed through the grass.
“They’re coming, General,” Hollingsworth called up from the garage. He must have had some kind of mobile radar set up.
“Do you have a count?” I looked out toward the horizon and saw only the wide, open expanse over the broken city. Off in the distance, the three remaining skyscrapers that Doctorow used for dormitories, glittered.
“Thirty ships coming in from the south,” Hollingsworth said.
I had been looking east, but I now turned south, the direction from which we had just come. There were hills to the south. Even as I watched, dots appeared in the horizon. They looked no more significant than the sparks in the darkness.