“Yes, sir,” I said, a sinking feeling beginning in my stomach. Had Grace already been a senator when Congress banned Liberator clones from Earth and the entire Orion Arm? He looked old enough.
“Are you the same Wayson Harris who survived the battle on Little Man?” Grace asked. “Are you one of the Little Man Seven?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“And you testified about that battle before the House of Representatives?” More and more this was sounding like a military tribunal.
“Yes, sir,” I said. The rapidity of Grace’s questions left me nervous.
“You were reported as killed in action at Ravenwood Outpost,” Grace stated.
“That is correct, sir,” I said.
“But you were not killed there?” Grace asked.
Apparently not, I thought. What I said was, “No, sir.”
“According to your military record, you were promoted to the rank of colonel in the Unified Authority Marines by Admiral Che Huang. Is that correct?”
“That is correct, sir,” I said. A massive headache brewed in the back of my skull.
The entire room broke out in loud applause. I turned toward the gallery and saw that every man and woman had risen to their feet. The only person remaining in his seat was Freeman. He managed to camouflage his confusion much better than I did. He sat looking straight ahead toward William Grace, his hands by his side.
“Welcome home, Colonel Harris. It is a distinct pleasure to welcome back a war hero like your.”
“I’m afraid I am confused, sir,” I said. He could not hear me over the applause, so I waited a moment for the gallery to quiet down then repeated myself. “I don’t understand, sir.”
“Not expecting a hero’s welcome?” Grace asked.
“I’m not sure I deserve one,” I said.
Grace laughed. “We know more about you than you might think. After the Mogats defeated the Earth Fleet, we found a video record among the late Admiral Huang’s possessions. The record included conversations you had with Huang about infiltrating the Mogat Fleet.”
“I didn’t know he kept a record of that,” I said.
“For his memoirs,” Grace explained. “Huang saw himself as a man of destiny.”
“I see,” I said.
“We also have received another account of your actions on the enemy ship. We know, for instance, that you were captured while transmitting Mogat battle plans to Huang.”
That was not entirely accurate. While I had managed to infiltrate the enemy flagship, my life as a spy did not last long. The Mogats caught me trying to sneak off of one of their battleships after planting a listening device on the bridge.
“How did you get onto their ship?” somebody called from the gallery.
“Excellent question,” Grace said. “How did you manage that?”
Again the room rang with applause.
I decided it might be prudent to leave some of the gorier details out. “Everybody knew that the Mogats were going to attack New Columbia,” I said. “I flew into Safe Harbor after the planetary authority evacuated the city. When the Mogats arrived, I located one of their commando teams and stowed away aboard their transport.” It sounded so simple and benevolent when I phrased it that way. I did not mention that I snapped a man’s neck and stole his uniform.
More applause. This time the applause was longer and louder than before.
I’d used the term “Mogat” in a less-than-accurate fashion. The majority of the sailors I ran into had come from the member planets of the Confederate Arms Treaty Organizations. The top officers and engineers were all Japanese from Ezer Kri. If I wanted to help establish an alliance between Earth, the Confederates, and the Japanese, however, I needed to downplay the roles that the Japanese and the Confederates had taken in the war. And we did need that alliance.
With their four hundred self-broadcasting ships, the Mogats would win the war rather easily if they fought us individually. If we formed an alliance, we might stand a chance, though I could not see how.
“As I understand it, you warned Admiral Huang that the Mogats planned to attack New Tuscany,” Grace said. “That was how he was able to rout their fleet.”
“I believe that is correct,” I said.
“Why have you returned to Earth, Colonel Harris?” Grace asked. William Grace, they called him “Wild Bill” Grace in the media, was a short, chubby man. He may have been five-foot-three, or maybe even shorter. He weighed a good three hundred pounds. He was bald from his forehead to his crown, with a bushy ring of gray hair running between his ears. He smiled genially, but something in his eyes suggested strength and suspicion.
“Yoshi Yamashiro, the governor of Shin Nippon, sent me,” I said. “He wants to form an alliance with the Unified Authority and the Confederate Arms.”
“Are you working for the Japanese?” Grace asked. The applause had vanished. The auditorium became as quiet as an operating room. Grace’s smile evaporated as he waited for me to answer.
“No, sir. Yamashiro found us stranded in space. He rescued us and brought us here, and he asked me to deliver the message that he wanted to make an alliance,” I said.
Several silent moments passed. It was the loudest sort of silence, with Grace glaring at me and curious onlookers watching to see what Freeman and I would do next.
“What does Governor Yamashiro have in mind?” Grace asked.
“The Mogats declared war on C.A.T.O. and the Japanese,” I said. C.A.T.O. was the Confederate Arms Treaty Organization.
“We were aware of their split,” Grace said.
That surprised me. Without the Broadcast Network, Earth should have been completely cut off. The beginnings of the Mogat-Confederate Arms War might have started near Earth space, but there should have been no way for Unified Authority Intelligence to track the progress of the war.
Then something that I should have noted from the start occurred to me. Admiral Brocius of the Central Cygnus Fleet was sitting in the gallery. He should have been marooned sixty thousand light-years away with the ships of his fleet. How could he have come for this meeting?
“The Mogats have the upper hand. They control more than four hundred ships.”
I supposed that Brocius might have been on Earth when the Mogats attacked Earth; but with the Republic on high alert and a mobile enemy, he would most likely have stayed with his fleet.
“The Japanese escaped with four battleships. Is that correct, Colonel?” Grace asked.
“Yes, sir, four ships,” I said.
Maybe Yamashiro had set us up. Maybe he knew what kind of reception awaited him on Earth. But why go to all of the trouble of finding me only to throw me to the wolves?
It wasn’t only Admiral Brocius. As I looked into the gallery, I started noticing other officers. Having served under Brocius, I spotted him before I saw the others; but they were there. I saw a commander whom I remembered from my days with the Scutum-Crux Fleet.
I did not have time for associating names, faces, and fleet locations. How did they know that I broadcasted the information about New Tuscany to Admiral Huang? Arrogant and antisynthetic, Huang would never have admitted that I gave him the information.
“How did you know the Japanese had four ships, sir?” I asked Grace. It did not make sense. The Mogats, the Japanese, and the Confederate Arms would all have that information, but how could they know it on Earth?
“We know a great deal about the battle between the Atkins Believers and the Confederate Arms,” Grace said. “The Unified Authority is not as stranded as you might think, Colonel Harris.”
CHAPTER
TEN
When strangers flew an enemy ship into a city that was recently attacked, the government appointed organizations to watch over them. Whether it was Central Intelligence, or Republic Security, or Naval Intelligence, some agency had the job of watching us discreetly, and they did a fine job of it, too. Freeman and I knew someone was watching us, but we did not feel like prisoners.
When that first meeting ended, a government driver picked us up. He did not come in one of those long limousines that are so often used for VIPs, nor did he come in a troop carrier. He drove a sensible black sedan. As we stepped into the car, the driver introduced himself simply as, “The guy they pay for taking you wherever you want to go,” then drove us to the Washington Navy barracks, where we each had rooms in temporary housing meant for visiting officers.
By standards of a luxury hotel, our quarters had a certain spartan quality about them. By military standards, they were the Taj Mahal. Our rooms included a single bed, a three-by-three closet in which I found a freshly pressed uniform for a colonel in the Unified Authority Marines, a dresser, and a bathroom. Having grown up in a military orphanage and graduated to the Marines, I found these accommodations the utmost in comfort. Anything bigger would have left me feeling out of place.
The agency in charge of us did not post guards outside our doors, though they probably had people watching us from nearby buildings. The base commander gave Freeman and me our own electronic identity cards for use as keys to get in and out of the facilities. By all appearances, we could come and go as we pleased. My room must have been wired for sound and video, but I did not bother to check. Having nothing to hide, I had no reason to look for surveillance devices. They could watch me to their hearts’ content, I didn’t mind.
Freeman undoubtedly did check his room for microphones and cameras. He left nothing to chance.
He and I ate a very quiet dinner that first evening in the officers’ mess, then returned to our rooms. The next morning, we met at 0700 and had breakfast.
“It’s like they never had a war,” I told Freeman as I ate my eggs and bacon.
He neither answered nor nodded. Freeman must have believed they were watching us. Fiercely independent, he did not tolerate intrusions as calmly as I.
At 0900, our unnamed driver showed up at the barracks and took us into town. He drove the same black sedan or possibly a reasonable facsimile. I did not know or care. Freeman, I suspected, both knew and cared. I was a Marine. He was a mercenary.
The more I saw of Washington, DC, the more confused I became. It was not the city under siege that I had imagined. The streets showed no telltale signs of battle. I saw no burned buildings on vacant lots. More importantly, Washington, DC, society still seemed intact. Men in suits and women in dresses walked the sidewalks looking as if they had important meetings to attend. Traffic flowed smoothly. When we passed through a residential area, I saw young children playing on the streets.
Freeman took all these sights in as well as he sat silently beside me. He did not lean forward or turn his head to stare out the car window. He never tipped his hand by showing interest in anything around him. Even so, few details ever slipped past him.
I had noticed something about Ray that morning. He seemed liked a caged animal, coiled tight and ready to lash out or escape. I could not read him as we drove through DC.
In the distance, I saw the Capitol, a twenty-story building topped off with a three-hundred-foot marble dome. It was the largest building on the face of the earth, with twenty-four thousand miles of corridors. We did not drive to the Capitol, however. Nor did the driver pull into the Pentagon, a monolithic cube that, despite the geometric significance of its name, had only four sides.
Instead, our driver took us into the heart of Washington, DC, where the real deals were crafted. Skyscrapers filled with law offices and banking operations lined the road. Our driver passed the ostentatious thirty-and forty-story structures, then pulled into a five-story affair. Civilian guards met us as we entered the underground garage. They directed us down five floors. We left the sedan in a dimly lit level on which there were no other cars. As we approached the elevator into the building, armed soldiers asked us for our identification. We showed them our cards, and the driver gave them his orders.
I expected an armed security man to follow us into the elevator, but the building security system had something far more dangerous. As our driver held his orders under a scanner which automatically chose our floor, I noted the vent opening in the chrome bezel along the ceiling. I had seen an elevator ventilation duct like that before. Should an intruder be caught in this car, deadly gas would pour out of that opening.
Four security men with holsters and pistols met us when the elevator doors slid open. They accompanied a young woman who identified herself as William Grace’s secretary. “Mr. Freeman, Colonel Harris, if you would please follow me,” she said.
Our driver left us in her custody. “This is as far as I go,” he said. The man did not even attempt to hide his government identity at this point. He wore his shades indoors like every spook I had ever known. He did not button his black suit coat, but rather allowed it to swing open, showing just a hint of his holster and pistol. He caught a glimpse of me eyeing the pistol and smiled. The guy thought of himself as a big specking deal.
The halls were dark and decorated in a timeless style. Dark wood panels lined the walls. Brass-and-crystal light fixtures hung from the ceiling. When the men of the Roman Senate plunged their knives into Julius Caesar, I am convinced they did it in a room with brass fixtures and cherrywood-paneled walls.
The secretary led Freeman and me into a large conference room, and I froze in midstride. “Wild Bill” Grace and Gordon Hughes stood to greet me. Grace, the senior member of the Linear Committee, I had expected to see. Hughes, the Chairman of the Confederate Arms Treaty Organization, I had not.
Hughes had once been the speaker in the U.A. House of Representatives. He abandoned the Republic at the beginning of the war and became the most powerful politician in the Confederate Arms. Now he and Grace stood, casually chatting like old friends.
Grace and Hughes came to the door to shake hands with Freeman and me. They seemed entirely at ease with each other, as if the war had never taken place.
“Colonel Harris, this is a distinct pleasure,” Hughes said, reaching out to shake my hand. He and I had met once before, shortly after the battle on Little Man. Back then, as a Marine, I had been summoned to testify about the battle in Congress. On that occasion, I had entered the chambers as a heroic survivor of a battle and left in derision. As we shook hands, I think Hughes sensed both my anger and my confusion.
“You’re surprised to see me here,” Hughes said.
“Hell, yes,” I said.
That response earned a knowing laugh from both politicians. “Quite understandable,” Hughes said.
“We have a lot to discuss,” Grace, clearly the man presiding, said in a businesslike tone. “Perhaps we should get started.”
It was a small meeting—ten people sitting around a conference table discussing the future of the galaxy. Gordon Hughes came with a female secretary and two plainclothes men. William Grace brought General Smith from the U.A. Air Force and two aides. The only other people in the room were Freeman and me and a couple of guards.
“I might as well begin by explaining what you are doing here,” Grace said, looking over at Hughes. He turned toward Freeman and me. “Colonel Harris, the Mogat attack on the Mars broadcast discs shut down the Broadcast Network, but that does not mean it shut down all pangalactic travel.”
“The scientific fleet,” I said, suddenly realizing the obvious. The Unified Authority built its first fleet of self-broadcasting scientific ships decades before it began work on the Broadcast Network. I felt embarrassed for not figuring that out sooner.
“The scientific fleet,” Grace agreed. “We have nearly two thousand self-broadcasting ships on Earth and in the field. They may not be combat-ready, but they are able to travel.
“You are not the only one who forgot about our civilian fleet. From what we can tell, the Mogats seem to have entirely forgotten about our civil ships as well.”
“We certainly overlooked them,” Gordon Hughes added.
“Using our exploration ships, we have been able to locate all eighteen of our Navy fleets. Sending supplies out is not as convenie
nt as it used to be, but we have managed to reestablish supply lines.”
I felt like an adult man learning addition for the first time in front of people who had mastered quantum notations. I should have remembered the scientific fleet. Here I had thought that the Mogats left Earth isolated and helpless when in reality galactic communications could still be achieved.
“Gordon, here, was the one who told us what you did to help fight the Mogats,” Grace added. “Once we discovered your identity, the chairman told us all about your exploits on that Mogat ship.”
“Yoshi isn’t the only one who realizes that we need an alliance,” Hughes said. “The Mogats launched an attack on us within hours of the invasion.” He meant the invasion of Earth.
Judging by the way Gordon Hughes and William Grace spoke, Confederate Arms’ participation in the attack on the Earth Fleet was still a sensitive topic. Grace referred to the enemy fleet as the “Mogat Fleet,” avoiding any mention of Confederate Arms involvement. For his part, Hughes seemed just as anxious to pretend the Mogats had launched the attacks on their own. Hughes and Grace acted like old friends, just a couple of businessmen planning their next big merger.
“We sent an ambassador to Earth to ask if we could sign an accord with the Unified Authority ending our hostilities,” Hughes said. He smiled. “That’s not quite as dramatic as sending back a war hero bearing an olive branch and a flag of truce, but Yoshi and I had the same goal in mind.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Yamashiro and his four-boat Shin Nippon Navy gave Freeman and me one week to enter Washington, DC, locate whoever was in charge—if anyone was in charge, and propose an alliance. At the end of one week, he would fly past Earth and scan for our signal. If he received the wrong signal, or there was no signal at all, he would fly past and never return. He did not offer to search for us. We were not from his clan.
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