Ray Freeman entered the bar.
I don’t think anybody knew who he was; they just knew he was dangerous. Dressed in his jumpsuit with its armored breastplate, Freeman looked like he had come in from a war. He stood more than a foot taller than most of the men he passed.
Silence spread across the bar like an infection. Sailors stepped out of his way as he crossed the floor. Freeman walked through the crowd without stopping for a drink. He came to my table. “Hello, Harris,” he said.
“How’d you recognize me without my helmet?” I quipped.
“Liberators aren’t hard to spot,” Freeman said. “At least that’s what they’re saying on the mediaLink.”
“Neither are seven-foot mercenaries,” I said.
Freeman sat down across the table from me.
“The chair isn’t taken,” I said. “Why don’t you join me?”
“You were lucky to get off Little Man alive,” Freeman said.
So much for small talk,I thought. “Thank you for that insight. Next time I get chased by ten thousand angry Mogats, I won’t mistakenly think that I have everything under control.”
With his dark skin and clothes, Freeman looked like a shadow in the dim ambiance of the bar. He smiled and looked around. “You should quit the Marines,” he said. “Why don’t you quit?”
“It’s in my genes,” I responded, pleased with my little joke. Freeman did not laugh, not even a chuckle. “You didn’t come to Washington, DC, just to tell me to quit the Corps?”
By that time the sailors around the bar had forgotten about us. They joked, laughed, and told stories at the tops of their lungs. Freeman, however, made no adjustment to compensate for their rising decibels. He spoke in the same quiet, rumbling voice that he always used. “We could be partners,” he said.
“What did you say?” I asked. “I didn’t understand you. It sounded like you said I should become your partner.”
“We’d do good together.”
I paused to stare at him. Ray Freeman, the perfect killing machine and the coldest man alive, had just asked me to be his partner.
“Partners?” I repeated, not sure that I wasn’t having a hallucination brought on from nearly twenty glasses of beer. “Go into business? With you?”
Freeman did not respond.
“Leave the Marines?”
“You weren’t supposed to survive Little Man,” Freeman said. “You may not survive next time.”
“Next time?” I asked. I knew I could leave the Marines, but deep inside, I did not want to leave. Even after the massacre at Little Man and everything they put me through in the House of Representatives . . . even knowing that my kind was extinct and the people I was protecting wanted to end my life, I wanted to stay in the Marines.
“I can’t leave the service. I’m a Liberator, remember? You can’t drive spaceships underwater. I’m doing the thing I was made to do, and I can’t do anything else.” I knew I was lying. I could leave, but something in my programming kept me coming back for more.
Suddenly my mouth went dry. “Goddamn,” I hissed to myself. Back when I was sober, I assured Aleg Oberland that I would not become like Booth Lector because Liberators made their own choices. But, faced with the knowledge that I would die if I remained in the corps, I wanted to stay where I was. My head hurt, and I started to feel sick to my stomach. I rubbed my eyes. When I looked up, Ray Freeman was gone, if he’d ever been there at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY
One sure sign of a high-security military operation is the means of transportation used for bringing in new recruits. I could have taken public transportation to Gobi. Military transports flew in and out of the SC Central Fleet on a daily basis. This transfer was different. On the morning I was supposed to transfer to the Doctrinaire , Admiral Klyber’s new ship, a driver showed up at my door.
“Lieutenant Harris?” the petty officer asked, as I opened my door.
“Can I help you?” It was 0800. I was packed and dressed but had not yet eaten my breakfast.
“I’m your ride,” the petty officer said.
“My ride? I don’t even know where I’m supposed to go; I can’t leave the station yet.”
“You’re transferring to the Doctrinaire, ” the petty officer said. “It’s not like they run a shuttle at the top of every half hour, sir.”
The petty officer loaded my rucksack into the back of his jeep and drove me out to the airfield. A little Johnston R-27 sat ready on the field. The Johnston was the smallest noncombat craft in military employ. It carried a maximum of twelve passengers.
I looked at the little transport. It was raining that morning. Beads of rain ran down the sides and windows. “I hope we are not going very far,” I said.
“We’ll put on a few light-years before nightfall,” the petty officer responded. “That Johnston is self-broadcasting.”
“You’re shitting me,” I said.
“No, sir,” the petty officer said as he grabbed my bags from the back of the jeep.
“You have got to be shitting me,” I said.
A pilot met us on the launchpad and opened the doors to the Johnston. He was a Navy man, a full lieutenant dressed in khakis. He looked at me and smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
The petty officer placed my bags in the Johnston and saluted. “Lieutenant Harris does not believe this bird is self-broadcasting, sir.”
I followed the lieutenant aboard. The Johnston was heavily modified inside. It only had four seats instead of the usual twelve. Used for both military and corporate travel, Johnstons had small galleys for long trips. There were no such amenities on that R-27. Behind the four seats, the rest of the passenger cabin was blocked by a cloth-covered wall.
The Johnston took off like any spaceworthy plane, using discrete jets to lift ten feet off the ground. We left Earth at a standard trajectory, flying at the standard MACH 3 speed. We had the usual quivers as we left the atmosphere.
Moments later, the petty officer shot me a wink as the tint shield darkened the windows. The air inside the cabin began to smell of ozone. Muffled crackling sounds seeped through the barrier at the back of the cabin. There was a bright flash, and suddenly everything was normal again.
“We’re in the Perseus Arm now,” the petty officer said. “Our base is a bit off the beaten trail, so to speak. Without a self-broadcasting ship, it would take you more than a month just to get to the nearest disc station.”
According to Admiral Klyber, not since the United States developed the atomic bomb in the New Mexico town of Los Alamos, had a military project been conducted as covertly as the creation of the Doctrinaire . In many ways, Klyber’s Doctrinaire reminded me of the Manhattan Project.
No one would ever stumble onto Klyber’s shipyard by accident. Located on the outskirts of the Perseus Arm, the facility sat in the middle of the unsettled frontier. Spies could not trace the location because self-broadcasting ships leave no trail. Any research done on this facility stayed on this facility.
At first glance I found the shipyard unimpressive. It was big, but that meant little to me. I still thought that the Doctrinaire was part of a new fleet that Klyber planned to outfit with some new kind of cannon or faster engines—no big deal. As we approached the dry dock, the only thing I could see was the scaffolding.
When we got closer, I realized that Klyber was not building a fleet. All of that scaffolding was built around one colossal ship, a broad, wedge-shaped ship with bat wings. The ship was at least twice as wide as a Perseus-class fighter carrier. “What is that?” I mumbled.
“She’s the biggest bitch in all of the six arms,” the petty officer told me.
The petty officer led me out of the Johnston and told me to wait in the docking bay for further instructions. He left with my rucksack. A moment later, the pilot came by and patted me on the back. “Welcome aboard,” he said, then he, too, disappeared.
I was not alone in the docking bay, however. The area was filled with engineers and workers. Technici
ans driving speedy carts raced between platforms, welding plates, placing circuits, and lacing wires. The area looked like an office building that had been framed but not finished. Strings of wires and aluminum ribs lined the inner walls. Uncovered lighting fixtures shone from the ceiling. The air ventilation system twisted over my head like a gigantic snake.
“Lieutenant Harris?” A young seaman approached me. He saluted.
I saluted back.
“Admiral Klyber sent me. He is waiting for you on the bridge. This way, sir,” the seaman said.
“How long have you been stationed on this ship?” I asked, as we left the bay.
The seaman considered this question for several moments, long enough for me to wonder if he heard me. “Six months, sir.”
“What do you think of her?”
“The Doctrinaire ?” he asked. “She was made to rule the universe. If we ever leave the galaxy, it will be in a ship like this.”
It took twenty-five minutes to get to the bridge. True enough, the Doctrinaire ’s twin docking bays were in the aft sections of the wings, the farthest points from the bridge; but even so, the walk seemed endless.
“How big is she?” I asked.
“It depends on how you measure her,” the seaman said. “It’s two full miles from one wing tip to the other. That’s the longest measurement. She has twelve decks, not including the bridge.”
If there was an area that wasn’t under construction between the docking bay and the bridge, we sure as hell never passed it. Half of the floor was pulled up in the corridors. Mechanics and engineers popped in and out of the uncovered crawlways like moles. The seaman took no interest in any of their work. He was a clone. All of the enlisted sailors were clones.
We took flights of stairs between decks because the elevators did not have power yet. The only lighting in one stretch of the ship came from strings of emergency bulbs along the floor. The engineers had not yet installed generators in that area, the seaman told me.
When we finally arrived on the bridge, I saw Klyber standing over two field engineers as they installed components in a weapons station. I read his restlessness in the way he micromanaged these poor engineers, going so far as to complain about the “inefficient” way they laid their tools out.
“Permission to come aboard, sir?” I called from the hatch.
The engineers, who were lying on their backs like mechanics working under a car, watched nervously from beneath the weapons station. Klyber, who stood in his familiar, rigid pose—hands clasped behind his back, legs spread slightly wider than his shoulders—spun to face me. His cold, gray eyes warmed quickly, but he still looked tired.
“Lieutenant Harris,” he said. “Permission granted.”
I saluted.
“That will be all, seaman.” Klyber dismissed the man who had escorted me.
“Perhaps, Lieutenant, you would like a tour of the ship.”
“I would love a tour of the ship, sir,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like her.”
Klyber smiled, pleased to have his work appreciated. “I am rather excited about her,” he said, sounding both proud and humble.
Having never visited the bridge of a capital ship, I had no point of comparison for the bridge of the Doctrinaire . When completed, the bridge would look more like an office complex than anything else. Rows of desks and computers stretched from wall to wall. I saw nothing even remotely resembling a joystick or a steering wheel.
Klyber led me out of the bridge. “The biggest difficulty in creating a ship of this size is finding a source of power. We needed dual cold-fusion reactors just to power the electrical systems.”
“What about the engines?” I asked.
Klyber laughed. “That is another story entirely. That’s not a function of size, it’s a function of capacity and efficiency. We talked about making engines that were five times larger than the RAMZA engines used on Perseus-class carriers, but they’re too inefficient. We have ended up allocating two-thirds of the ship to carry fuel.”
“Is this a one-ship fleet?” I asked.
“Quite the contrary,” Klyber said as he led me up a flight of stairs. “I will require a massive fleet of support ships to keep this juggernaut rolling.”
We entered a glass-enclosed dome that Klyber identified as the observation deck. The outer skin of the tiny deck was one continuous window. I could see every corner of the ship from there. Engineers and builders in noncombat space suits stood on the scaffolding on the other side of the glass. I
watched three men in weighted suits pulling a wagon along the top of the fuselage. Standing on the observation deck, I felt like I could see forever.
“I think I would be scared to come up here during a battle,” I said.
Klyber heard this and smiled. “There’s not a safer spot on this ship. These walls are made out of a plastic polymer. Not even a particle beam can hurt them. And beyond that . . .” Klyber pointed to two massive rings that encircled the ends of the wings on either side of the wedge-shaped hull. From a distance, the rings would make the Doctrinaire look like she was riding on bicycle tires.
The Kamehameha had shield projector rods—posts that stood no more than twenty feet tall and less than one foot in diameter. The rods projected flat force fields that could filter out large amounts of particle-beam and laser fire. The field fried enemy missiles.
“You have rings instead of rods?” I said. “Will they project your shields in any direction?”
“In every direction,” Klyber said, with the knowing smile of someone who is about to reveal a secret.
“It’s a new technology, Harris; the rings produce a curved shield that stretches all the way around the ship. No Achilles’ heel gaps between shield screens.”
“That is amazing, sir,” I whispered.
Klyber probably did not hear me; he had already started down the stairs. We traveled down eight decks, staying in the center of the ship. The last flight of stairs ended in a glass booth overlooking a dark tunnel that stretched from the stem to the stern.
Hundreds of feet away, I could see balls of sparks where welders worked along the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. I pressed against the window and squinted. Off in the distance, I thought I saw pinpricks of light. “What is this place?” I asked.
“Flight control,” Klyber said. “Each tunnel will have its own squad of fighters.”
“Each tunnel?” I asked.
“There are four tunnels,” Klyber said.
Other fighter carriers used a single flight deck for transports and fighters. This ship had two docking bays and four tunnels. As I considered this, Klyber continued the tour.
I still had not recognized the immense size of the project when Klyber brought me to the high point of his tour. We walked to the bottom deck of the ship and entered the biggest chamber of all.
The area was completely dark as we entered. Klyber tapped a panel beside the door and lights in the ceiling slowly flickered on. Like the tunnels, the chamber stretched the length of the ship. The ceiling was thirty feet high and the floor was at least a hundred feet wide. Every inch of space was filled by an enormous machine surrounded by cat-walks riddled with walkways.
“What is this?” I said.
“This is the key to our success, Lieutenant Harris. The Doctrinaire is self-broadcasting. Once we locate the GC Fleet, we will be able to track it, chase it, and ultimately destroy it.”
Admiral Klyber had an agenda. He wanted to bring his two creations together. He wanted to make the galaxy safe for the Unified Authority, and he wanted his Liberator and his supership to lead the charge. In his sixties, Klyber could see retirement approaching, and he wanted to leave a historic legacy.
As for me, I liked serving under Klyber. His paternal feelings toward Liberators gave me access I would never have had under other officers.
I spent one month on the Doctrinaire serving as the chief of security. Everyone in that section of the galaxy had a high security clearance. Except for ca
rgo and parts that were brought in by our own pilots, no ships—friendly or otherwise—came within light-years of our position.
During my tenure as the head of security, I presided over an empty brig. (The only occupants were engineers who drank too much and became disorderly.) I requisitioned supplies. I also nearly forgot what it was like to be a rifleman in the U.A. Marines. Without knowing it, Klyber had domesticated me. I no longer remembered the electric tingle of adrenaline coursing through my veins or endorphins-induced clarity of thought. I was becoming an administrator. Police work did not agree with me; I was made for the battlefield.
Restless as I had become, I began looking for excuses to leave the ship. I accompanied engineers on requisition trips. When new personnel reported for duty, I insisted on briefing them. Klyber warned me that it was risky for me to leave the Doctrinaire . I should have listened to him.
Two new recruits waited for us at the galactic port on Mars. I went to brief the new officers, glad for an excuse to escape from the security station.
I sat in the copilot’s seat of the Johnston R-27 as we self-broadcast from the Doctrinaire to the Norma Arm. From there, we traveled through the broadcast network. It was a new security precaution. Spies and reporters might become curious if they heard about a self-broadcasting ship appearing on Mars radar. Passing through the network only added ten minutes to the trip, though you might have thought it added hours to hear the pilots bitch about it.
Mars Port was in a geodesic dome used by commercial and military ships. As we landed, I looked at the rows of fighters standing at the ready.
“I’m going to refuel while you find the new recruits,” the pilot told me.
The Clone Republic (Clone 1) Page 36