by Kent, Steven
“Aren’t you hot?” I asked the ensign.
“I’m warm,” he admitted, still sounding haughty. “You get used to it.”
As we entered the lift to go to the bridge, I saw an engineer, a natural-born seaman first class wearing a greasy smock covered with sweat stains. His face was blood-blister red and damp with perspiration. Normally clones did this kind of work.
When the doors closed behind us, the ensign and I stood in silence, each of us pretending not to notice the other. The lift started a slow climb, and a blessed gush of cold air flowed out from the vents. A moment later, the doors opened, and we stepped on to the bridge.
“Well, Captain Harris, I’m glad you decided to come up,” Captain Pershing said as he met us off the lift.
“I appreciate the invitation, sir,” I lied. There’s a big difference between captains in the Navy and captains in every other branch. A Navy captain is the equivalent of a colonel in the other branches. Even with my promotion to captain, Pershing outranked me.
“Tell me, Captain, have you ever been on a bridge during a broadcast?”
“Yes, sir. A few times,” I said.
“On a cruiser?”
“On a fighter carrier,” I said.
“So you’re a virgin.” Pershing grinned. “You’ve never seen a broadcast until you’ve seen one from the bridge of a cruiser.”
“I would think it’s all the same once the shields go up,” I said.
“Cruisers don’t have tint shields, Captain,” Pershing said, as one of his men handed me a pair of thick wraparound goggles with black-tinted glass.
The sailor said, “You’ll want to put these on before we broadcast.”
My helmet had tint shields, but I had left it back on the transport. I would have preferred my helmet over goggles. Hesitating for just a moment, I slung the strap behind my head and let the eyepieces rest on my forehead.
“Right, well, Captain Harris, if you could excuse me for a moment, the captain of the cruiser always directs the broadcast himself.”
Pershing turned and drifted back into place in the center of the bridge. On other ships, bridges looked something like business offices with computer stations located around the deck. On this smaller ship, the bridge was more like a tiny movie theater with a window into space instead of a screen.
“Lieutenant Kim, do you have the coordinates logged into the broadcast computer?” Pershing asked.
“Aye, Captain.”
Turning to his intercom, Pershing asked, “Landing bay, have you secured the outer hatch?”
“Hatch secured, aye.”
Pershing said, “Lieutenant Kim, is the broadcast generator charged?”
“Generator charged, aye.”
“Seal the hatch to the bridge,” Pershing ordered.
“Aye, aye. Bridge hatch is sealed, sir.” I guessed this was to prevent anyone from walking in without goggles.
“Goggle up,” Pershing said to no one in particular. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes. I followed his example. The half-inch-thick rubber rim around the goggles formed a tight seal, blocking my peripheral vision, and the bridge vanished from my view.
Pershing must have stepped beside me because when I next heard his voice it sounded close by. He asked me, “Have you ever been in Washington, DC, during a New Year’s Eve celebration, Captain?” Then he barked out, “Initiate broadcast.”
I had been in Washington for New Year’s Eve, but I was on duty, so I missed his meaning. Then the fireworks began, and I understood.
They called the electric fields created by broadcast engines “anomalies.” I had seen traces of anomalies through the heavily tinted windows of fighter carriers and spaceliners. I knew anomalies were bright, but I had never appreciated how bright.
What happened next I could only describe as chaos. Somewhere ahead of me, a pulsing silver-white circle appeared. I hoped it was outside the viewport, but with the dark goggles over my eyes, I could not be sure. The circle spread in an unsteady jolt, then seemed to explode, sending jagged tendrils in every direction.
Only a physicist could grasp the workings of broadcast technology, but I knew enough to understand that there was enough electricity dancing on the outside of the ship to incinerate the entire crew. The lightning would coat the hull with highly charged particles that could be translated into some kind of wave and transferred instantaneously across the galaxy. Judging by the sheer violence of the anomaly, I suspected that the broadcast equipment on this cruiser had been designed for a larger boat.
The anomaly around the cruiser began at the bow of the ship and wound around the hull like an electric skein. With my goggles on, I saw only lightning, creating the illusion that it might be inside the ship. I felt a stab of fear, then the broadcast ended, and everything went dark.
“You can remove your goggles now, Captain,” Captain Pershing said.
Feeling unsteady, I clamped my trembling fingers on the goggles and pulled them from my eyes.
“Isn’t that something?” Pershing asked. “You never get used to it.” He sounded so damned excited.
“Specking hell,” I whispered, still feeling jitters in my muscles.
I had not meant for anyone to hear this, but Pershing did and laughed. “Harris, perhaps you would join me in my stateroom. It’s going to be a while before the Kamehameha arrives. We might as well get to know each other.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Pipes and cables ran along the ceiling of Captain Pershing’s stateroom. He had a dented metal relic for a desk wedged into a space so small that books falling from his shelves would almost certainly hit him. At least the room was bright. Two high-lumens light fixtures dangled from the ceiling, projecting glare so bright that it made me squint.
Apparently, Pershing believed we would chat like old friends. He pulled a chair up beside his desk for me, then threaded his way through the narrow alley between his deck and the wall. He slid his chair out as far as he could, then ducked beneath a bookshelf and squeezed his legs into the tight gap under his desk. Once safely seated, he said, “I’ll tell you up front, Harris, Fleet Command showed me your orders. Some duty you got there. Play your cards right, and you could end up the most powerful man in the galaxy.”
Having known Pershing for about five minutes, I gave him the politic response to any statement by a superior officer. “Yes, sir.”
“You don’t seem excited about it,” Pershing noted.
“Are we speaking man-to-man, or am I a clone Marine speaking to his superior?”
“The gloves are off,” Pershing said.
“I’ve never traveled on a self-broadcasting cruiser before, but every other self-broadcaster I’ve ridden could go wherever it wanted,” I said. “Is there a problem with your broadcast computer?”
“What’s your point?” Pershing asked.
“We could have broadcast in right beside the Kamehameha ,” I said.
Pershing’s expression hardened into something a little less friendly. “True enough.”
“So Fleet Command asked you to stage this little soiree,” I guessed.
Pershing leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Captain Harris, you’re a bright man. Admiral Brocius warned me you were smart.”
I did not respond. I had to play this interview just right, passing myself off as cautious instead hostile. If I came across as spoiling for a fight, Pershing might report back to Brocius that I was too big a risk. If I played it too polite, he might suspect a hidden agenda.
Pershing waited several seconds for me to speak, then added, “Okay, yes, this conversation may have been authorized on some level. Admiral Brocius is keeping an eye on you. Do you blame him?”
I still said nothing.
“You do realize that they’re giving you command of the largest fleet in the galaxy?”
“The largest fleet in the galaxy,” I repeated. “That’s one way of putting it. Here’s another, they’re sending me to the far end of the galaxy with no way to return.”<
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“Is that really how you see it, Harris?” Pershing asked. “You’ll have three times as many battleships as the Earth Fleet.”
True enough. All of the six galactic arms had three fleets; but in the Scutum-Crux Arm, the Unified Authority combined those fleets into one.
“Are they giving me any self-broadcasting ships . . . you know, for shuttling in supplies?”
Pershing shook his head. “It’s not in the cards.”
“Are they planning on reestablishing a broadcast connection between Terraneau and Earth?”
“No,” Pershing said in a quiet voice, making no attempt to mask his irritation.
“So I’ll have big ships, plenty of guns, and a lot of empty space.”
“There’s always Terraneau,” Pershing pointed out.
“If we can’t break Terraneau away from the aliens, we’re screwed,” I said.
Pershing sat silent for a moment. In former times, before the civil war and the Avatari invasion, the commanding officer of a scow like this cruiser would barely have been considered an officer at all. Some commanders didn’t even think cruisers qualified as capital ships. Pershing had a shabby little office with pipes running along the ceiling and battered furniture, a stateroom fit for an officer with a dead-end career.
But times had changed. He was the commander of a self-broadcasting naval ship, a scarce commodity indeed. Officer country on this scow may have been dingy, but the men who inhabited it had friends in high places.
“You’ve got yourself a fleet, and I have no doubt you’ll recapture Terraneau, Captain.” Pershing said this with the voice that officers use when they want to signal the end of an interview.
I thought about offering to swap places with Pershing—he could have the gigantic fleet and the strategic planet, and I would take the dilapidated cruiser; but I knew better. I had already pushed him too far and, despite his chatty demeanor, his interest in me was anything but friendly.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Some Pentagon genius must have choked when he saw the logistics. The Navy originally intended to ship the entire population of Clonetown to Scutum-Crux in one mass transfer. Who came up with the idea of trusting thirty thousand trained killing machines to behave themselves as you shipped them out to nowhere?
The plans changed. Instead of shipping us off like Marines, the Pentagon transferred the inmates of Clonetown the way prison guards transfer inmates—with limited contact and in small groups. Granted, they did not place us in shackles, but we were confined to our transports. Pershing’s cruiser served as the prison bus, hauling us in increments of four hundred men at a time.
Captain Pershing’s shuttle service ran in both directions. After dropping us off with the fleet, his orders had him loading up natural-borns and returning them to Earth. The Navy intended to complete the entire transfer four hundred men at a time, but I did not think the sailors out in Scutum-Crux would be happy with this slow-trickle approach. The natural-born officers coming back to Earth had just spent the last four years of their lives running laps around a tiny planet in a nondescript corner of space, they’d be in a rush to head home. The problem was, there were so many of them.
The Kamehameha was an old Expansion-class fighter carrier, making it the smallest of the thirty-six fighter carriers in the SC Fleet. She carried an eight-thousand-man crew, nearly a thousand of whom were natural-borns. She also carried a complement of two thousand Marines, almost two hundred of whom were natural-born officers. It would take Pershing’s cruiser three trips just to bring home the natural-borns on the Kamehameha.
The other carriers would take longer as they were Perseus-class, vessels twice as big as the Kamehameha. While the basic crew of a Perseus-class fighter carrier was only slightly larger than the crew of an Expansion-class ship, Perseus carriers stowed five times as many Marines and twice as many fighters. All fighter pilots were natural-born.
And the carriers only formed the backbone of the Scutum-Crux Fleet. There were 90 battleships, 150 frigates, 120 cruisers, and sundry communications ships, minelayers and minesweepers, and scouts, and more. At four hundred men per trip, it would take Pershing months to ferry all natural-born officers back to Earth. Maybe years.
Sitting in the windowless kettle of the transport, I did not get a view of the cruiser as we left, nor did I catch a glimpse of the Kamehameha as we approached her. I sat in the darkness of the cabin with my men listening to the noise of the landing gear. The rear doors ground open, and the officer on duty came up the ramp.
I told my NCOs to keep their helmets on, then removed my helmet and went to meet the duty officer. I met him on the ramp, saluted, and said, “Requesting permission to come aboard, sir.”
The officer returned my salute, and said, “Permission granted, Captain.” With that simple ceremony, we took up residence in the Scutum-Crux Fleet.
Rear Admiral Lawrence Thorne met me as I came off the transport. He stood with an entourage of no less than seventeen officers. I counted them. You can tell a lot about an officer by the number of remora fish trailing behind him.
One of the men in Thorne’s group had an anchor and two stars on his collar—the insignia of a master chief petty officer. The rest wore eagles, clusters, and bars. These were high-ranking officers. Thorne stood out because he was the only officer with a star. His single star identified him as a lower-half rear admiral.
I could not help but wonder at the Scutum-Crux Fleet’s drop in stature. Years ago, when I arrived as a young corporal, a five-star admiral had command of the fleet. He was replaced by Rear Admiral Robert Thurston, an upper-half rear admiral with two stars. With Thorne in command, the fleet was down to one star. Once I took over, the stars would be replaced by the silver bars of a captain.
Admiral Thorne and his parade of officers greeted me as I stepped from the ramp. With all those younger officers trailing behind him, Thorne looked like a broken old man. My first impression of him was not good.
I saluted the admiral, and he returned my salute.
“You must be Captain Harris,” he said. “Welcome aboard, Captain.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“Warshaw, see to Captain Harris’s gear.” Thorne called over his shoulder, not looking back when the one noncom in the entourage acknowledged the order. “Your men are in good hands, Captain. In the meantime, why don’t I get you up to speed with your new fleet.”
I turned to look at Warshaw. He was a master chief petty officer, the ranking enlisted man in the Scutum-Crux Fleet. He gave me a smart salute.
He was, of course, a clone, but he stood out because he looked short for a clone. He was as tall as any clone of his make, of course; but he was more squat. He had broad, bulging shoulders and a neck like a bull’s—the earmarks of a dedicated bodybuilder. The forms of his biceps and triceps filled his sleeves.
Warshaw barked rapid-fire orders to his men. Watching the master chief, I got the feeling that he pretty much ran the show on this ship.
“Perhaps we should begin your tour, Captain,” Thorne said to me, interrupting my thoughts.
The docking bay of the Kamehameha was brightly lit, every bit as immaculate as I remembered it, and large enough to hold twenty-five transports. Pershing might have been able to fit half of his cruiser in this docking bay, and the other half in the second docking bay on the other side of the ship.
As we crossed the deck, Thorne said, “Your crew is as competent as any crew that has ever flown this fleet. We spent the last year training them.
“There is an all-clone crew manning the bridge at this very moment. There are enlisted-man crews flying every ship in the fleet. At this point, my officers are acting in an advisory role.”
“Is that so?” I asked, unable to come up with a more interested response.
“You have a full complement of fighter pilots, all clones, all noncommissioned officers. It’s a shame we didn’t experiment with clone pilots earlier, this fleet has never run so smoothly,” the admiral said in a lou
d voice, sounding like a salesman with a hearing problem. After a moment I realized that he was speaking as much for the benefit of the remora fish entourage as for mine.
He stopped and handed me a folder. “This is your new chain of command. You’ll want to meet with your staff as soon as possible. There are a million things that can go wrong transferring command of a fleet, and I want this transfer to go as smoothly as possible.”
“You sound anxious to get home,” I said in as friendly a voice as I could. I did not want the admiral to know just how bitter I felt.
Thorne was an old man with a wrinkled face and alert blue eyes. He heard my comment and detected the disrespect hidden underneath my words. His smile did not falter, but his eyes narrowed. “Captain, I have officers who would kill to get home. Some of those boys thought they might never see home again. You bet they want to get home.”
Since I had presumably been stationed here for the remainder of my life, I felt less than sympathetic. I took the folder without opening it.
Thorne turned and continued down the hall. He looked to be in his sixties. His hair had gone all white and thinned around the corners. Instead of a beard, he had powdery stubble on his cheeks and chin. Tall but bent by age, he had a stooped back, though his scrawny shoulders were as straight across as lumber.
Admiral Thorne’s entourage followed behind as we left the hangar and entered a corridor that led all the way across the ship. “You once served on this ship, did you not?” Thorne asked.
“I did, sir,” I said.
“Was that under Admiral Klyber? I was assigned to the Scutum-Crux Inner Fleet when Klyber combined the fleets,” Thorne said.
I was on the Kamehameha when Klyber combined the fleets and said so. Then, in an attempt to show polite interest, I asked, “Have you been reassigned to the Earth Fleet?” I knew the Navy would not bother assigning a fossil like Admiral Thorne to another fleet, his career was over.
To his credit, Admiral Thorne did not take well to flattery. “The new Navy has almost as much room for overage officers as it has for clones. They’re putting us both out to pasture.” Then he lowered his voice to a croak, and said, “The difference between my new assignment and yours is that the Pentagon does not see me as a threat.”
