by Kent, Steven
“What is the meaning of this, clone?” The old man spat out the words as he approached us. Annoyance showed in his eyes. Fear showed in the eyes of the men around him.
Seeing this angry old man’s composure, I felt my nerve slip just a bit. “I am commandeering your ship.”
“Clone, this is treason.” He used the word “clone” twice, and I suspected he would use it again. He wanted to trigger a death reflex, the bastard.
“I’m not going to have a death reflex,” I said, “but if I hear you say that word one more time, I will shoot you on the spot.”
“You son of a bitch,” the old man said. “You’re behind this, aren’t you? You’re that Liberator clone.” I got the feeling that last use of “clone” had just slipped out and did not shoot.
Trying to sound more confident than I felt, I said, “Tell your men to lay down their arms.”
“And then what? You’ve already committed treason, how about murder? How many of my men have you already killed?”
“Admiral, I am running out of patience.”
The admiral told his men to drop their weapons with no more than a nod. Then he said, “You do know they will come for you? You can’t possibly get away with this.”
“They were always going to come for us,” I said. “We were sent here for combat exercises.”
When the admiral heard this, his raised his eyes to my face and took a half step backward. That was the only sign of fear I ever saw from the man. “You’re damn right you were, and you will get everything you have coming to you.”
The admiral surrendered the bridge, and we captured three battleships without taking a single casualty. In the back of my mind, though, I asked myself, What have I done?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Senior Chief Petty Officer Perry Fahey, now wearing full face makeup that included lipstick, rouge, and false eyelashes along with mascara, opened the next staff meeting with, “Captain Harris, I hear congratulations are in order. You managed to hijack three ships filled with unarmed sailors on a peaceful mission without losing a single man. That’s quite an accomplishment. What’s next on your agenda, blowing up a school for girls?”
I wanted to kick the bastard’s chair out from under him, but that was what he wanted as well. He wanted to provoke me into a fight, then claim I was not ready to command. Instead, I smiled, and said, “You said that entire line without stuttering or wetting your pants, Senior Chief. Well done.”
“I, I don’t stutter,” Fahey said.
“Really? You stuttered up a storm at our last meeting,” I said.
It was a childish display on both our parts, but I got what I wanted. I stopped myself from lashing out with my fists.
Warshaw and Franks sat impassive, watching to see what Fahey would do next. I remained silent, waiting for the same.
What Fahey said next let me know that I was not the only person worrying about whether it had been a mistake to start this war. “You got us in a specking war.” He looked at Warshaw and Franks for support, then added, “What are you going to do next, bomb Terraneau?”
Franks laughed.
Maybe they had rehearsed the whole thing. Fahey’s outburst gave Warshaw the opportunity to position himself as an officer-statesmen. Neither laughing nor smiling, he said, “You did assure me that those ships had come to fight.”
“No, Master Chief, I never said any such thing. I said that the Unified Authority plans to use our fleet to practice maneuvers.”
“There weren’t even any Marines on board those ships. It seems clear to me that they did not come to fight,” Warshaw said. He spoke slowly, showing restraint.
Fahey didn’t bother with things like restraint. “They won’t make that mistake again, now, will they?”
I turned to Fahey, and said, “The Earth Fleet has thirty-two battle . . . excuse me, as of two days ago the fleet has twenty-nine self-broadcasting battleships. It has twenty-five self-broadcasting destroyers, and a few self-broadcasting cruisers. How many battleships do we have?”
Warshaw and his crew sat mute.
Hollingsworth leaned forward, and said, “I believe we have ninety battleships, sir.”
“Ninety, you say?” I asked. “Ninety?” I pretended to fumble with a complex mathematical equation. “Why, ninety, that’s more than thirty!”
Thomer chipped in. “I believe it is three times more, sir.”
“Three times, you say?” Then, dropping my momentary befuddlement, I turned to Warshaw, and said, “I don’t expect they’ll make too much of a fuss over those ships.”
“So which is it, Harris? You don’t get it both ways. Are we so much stronger than them that they’re afraid to come after us, or are they planning to use us for target practice?” Franks asked that question. If the son of a bitch analyzed and responded this effectively in battle, he’d make a hell of a captain.
“They’re not ready to attack us just yet,” I said.
“This is why the Navy always commands.” Warshaw pronounced his edict with a regal attitude. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed a hand across his chin. “I suppose we’re both guilty on this one. I should have known better than to listen to you.”
With the Broadcast Network down, the Navy would not be able to verify the fate of those battleships without sending ships out to investigate. In a few hours, the brass would realize that their three battleships were not coming back. They would suspend any flights pending an investigation. Once Intelligence determined that we had commandeered their ships, they would abort the transfer entirely.
For all intents and purposes, I had received my field promotion to general. Warshaw was now an acting admiral, and though our ranks were similar, our authority was not. He commanded the ships. I commanded the Marines, a body of fighting men that he and his sailors considered just another form of cargo.
Warshaw would do whatever he thought he needed to preserve his command. The next time I left the ship, for instance, I might not be allowed back.
I left the conference room and headed for the Marine compound, Thomer and Hollingsworth in tow.
“Okay, Sergeant Hollingsworth, why in hell was Fahey in full drag? The bitch was wearing everything but a dress and wig,” I said.
“Why are you asking me?” Hollingsworth protested.
“You said you knew him. You said he’s a good man.”
“That doesn’t specking make me his fashion consultant.”
“Okay, fine. Why do you think he came to the meeting like that?” I asked.
“It seems pretty obvious.”
“It does?” I asked.
“You confiscated makeup from the bitches on this ship. He came in kabuki face to show that he isn’t scared of you. It seems pretty obvious.”
“Yeah, I should have known it was something like that,” I admitted. Now that he pointed it out, it did seem obvious.
“Do you want to go get drunk?” Thomer asked.
“Not today,” I said. I needed to stay sober and think about my next move.
“How about you?” Thomer asked Hollingsworth.
“Sounds good,” Hollingsworth said.
“You don’t mind if we get drunk?” Hollingsworth asked me.
I laughed and told them to enjoy their last minutes as enlisted men. By the time they returned from the bar, they would be a brigadier general and a full-bird colonel.
So I returned to my billet to relax. I took off my shoes and stripped out of my uniform. An hour-long nap sounded good, then maybe a meal. First things first, though; I needed rest. After turning off the lights, I climbed into my rack, then groped along the table beside my bed until I found the pair of mediaLink shades that I had checked out from the commis sary. The shades let me tap into the ship’s media center. Since returning from Terraneau, I had been reading the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche.
I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they
know it or not.
Poison-mixers? “That shows what you know,” I muttered to the Nietzsche in my head.
The soft ring of my communications console broke into my thoughts. When I answered, Warshaw asked me to come to the bridge.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re either a prophet, Harris, or you’ve gotten us all killed,” he said.
“More U.A. ships?” I asked as I climbed out of bed.
“A lot of them.”
“How many is a lot?” I asked.
“Twenty battleships.”
I had my blouse buttoned and my pants up. Stepping into my shoes, I said, “That’s half their fleet.”
“There’s no backing out now, Harris,” Warshaw said. “I hope you were right about everything.”
It took me five minutes to get from my billet to the bridge. Warshaw and one of his top NCOs, Senior Chief Hank Bishop, met me at the lift when I arrived. Well, he had been a senior chief. Now that we had broken relations with Washington, Bishop was the captain of the Kamehameha.
Warshaw had not yet ordered the call to quarters, but the bridge was on full alert. Technicians ran system checks and radar sweeps. Amber lights flashed on several computer consoles.
Warshaw led me to a large table in the center of the bridge. On the table, a holographic display showed our fleet and the intruders as quarter-inch three-dimensional models on a green-and-black grid. Our ships filled the center of the grid. The U.A. ships moved along the edge of the display.
“Why haven’t you sounded the alarms?” I asked.
“If we sound general quarters, they’ll hear it,” Bishop said. “The fleetCom system notifies all U.A. ships in the area when one ship sounds general quarters.”
“What’s so bad about that?” I asked.
“That’s not how we do things in the Navy,” Warshaw said. “We don’t go off half-cocked.”
I wanted to tell Warshaw to get specked, but I controlled myself. “I don’t see what’s wrong with telling them we’re ready for a fight. They came here looking for a fight; we should let them know that we’re willing to give it to them.”
“They will take it as a sign of guilt . . . like we have something to hide,” Warshaw said. He turned and faced me, fury flashing in his eyes. “Why the hell do I bother even trying to explain these things to a Marine?”
“Because you need me as much as I need you.”
“For now,” Warshaw said, calming slightly. “Here is the situation, Harris. They sent two unarmed research vessels to look for their ships. The only contact we have had was with those first ships. They asked us if we knew what happened to their battleships. We told them that we haven’t seen them.
“Apparently they don’t believe us,” Warshaw said pointing to the display.
I shook my head. “Twenty self-broadcasting ships. If we could take them . . .”
“We can’t,” Warshaw said. “If we make a move, they’ll broadcast out.”
I expected a show of force. As the staff meeting ended, I had said as much, but I had not expected twenty ships. That was half their fleet. Even with twenty ships, they would not have any leverage. Not on our turf. They might make some hollow demands, but we would say, “No,” and their self-broadcasting fleet would return to Earth with its tail between its legs . . . figuratively speaking. Sending so many ships had been a mistake, it made them look weak.
On the holographic display, the ships meandered around empty space. They could have been looking for debris or maybe the radioactive signature of a broadcast engine.
“What would you do if you were in their shoes?” Bishop asked me. “What if an enemy stole three of your tanks?”
“They don’t have a hound’s breath of a chance against us, not with only twenty battleships,” I pointed out.
“Obviously. That is why they haven’t engaged us,” Warshaw said. He pointed to the display. “They’re staying well out of firing range.”
“But they are in an offensive formation,” Bishop added.
Warshaw shook his head. “It’s aggressive, but not offensive,” he said. “They’re still far enough apart to break and run if we attack.”
Bishop looked more closely, thought it over, and agreed.
“Where are the ships we commandeered?” I asked.
“Over here.” Warshaw sounded distracted as he pointed to the center of the display. He’d parked the commandeered ships in the center of the fleet. As he showed me the location, something struck me. Normally testy, the master chief was now showing a surprising amount of patience.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” I asked.
Warshaw and Bishop traded a silent glance, then Warshaw gave me an embarrassed grin. “You were right about the Navy building a new class of ships. Our engineers found these.” He pressed a button, and the holographic image of a ship replaced the tactical map on the table.
“Is this a battleship?” I asked quietly as I inspected the design. The three-dimensional image showed a long and slender hull. For the last hundred years, U.A. capital ships had been moth-shaped wedges. This boat was shaped like a knife.
“We found plans for an entire fleet,” Warshaw said.
As Warshaw said this, a sailor came and saluted.
“What is it, Brown?” Bishop asked.
“Sir, the battleships have changed course. They’re coming toward us, sir.”
“Sound general quarters,” Warshaw shouted.
Bishop struck a button on the table and Klaxons began. Warning lights were already flashing when I came onto the bridge; now the ambient lighting faded, and the glow of blinking amber flashed across the bridge.
Bishop fiddled with a dial on the table, and the tactical view of the ships reappeared, only more magnified.
“Scramble the fighters,” Warshaw ordered.
Bishop repeated the order.
“Scrambling fighters, aye,” an officer yelled.
“Send out all three carrier groups,” Warshaw yelled.
I might have only been a lowly Marine, but I recognized overkill when I heard it. Warshaw was sending thirty-five fighter carriers to intercept twenty battleships.
“How many ships are incoming?” the fleetCom asked.
Across the bridge, communications officers relayed orders as loudly as they could against the distant blare of the Klaxons.
“Keep your fighters in close,” Warshaw told Bishop.
Watching Warshaw, I thought he looked like a schoolboy spouting information he had memorized but did not understand. He’d spent his career as a deckhand, never expecting that he might one day become an officer. There was no strategy in his attack; he was simply throwing every ship in his fleet at the enemy.
But strategy would not make a difference in this near battle. Bright flashes appeared on the 3-D display. The enemy battleships broadcast to safety before coming close enough for us to shoot at them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Earthdate: December 12, A.D. 2516
Location: Golan Dry Docks
Galactic Position: Norma Arm
We needed the three U.A. battleships for several reasons. We needed ships with broadcast engines if we ever wanted to travel beyond Terraneau. Commandeering Pershing’s self-broadcasting cruiser would have given us broadcast-travel capabilities, but it was a runt of a ship, and we needed cargo space for what I had in mind.
We also needed ships with the location of the Mogat home world stored on their broadcast computers because none of us had the slightest specking idea how to find the place. The Unified Authority Navy sent all of its self-broadcasting battleships to fight in the final battle against the Morgan Atkins Believers. Before a ship can self-broadcast to any location, coordinates must be programmed into its broadcast computer.
The computers on the battleships we captured yielded unexpected treasures. Along with the location of the Mogat home world, we found external diagrams of the new ships and a tentative launch schedule. Over the next three years, the Uni
fied Authority planned to swap out its old fleet for an all-new one. From what we could tell, the new ships would be slightly smaller than earlier models. Our engineers were unable to decipher the weapons.
Hoping to glean a little more information about the new fleet, we decided to take a detour as we flew out to the Mogat home world.
Lilburn Franks—formerly a senior chief petty officer in the U.A. Navy but now an upper-half rear admiral in the Enlisted Man’s Fleet—suggested we swing by the Golan Dry Docks on our way to the Mogat Fleet.
The dry docks sat in an otherwise-unpopulated corner of Norma, the smallest and innermost of the galactic arms. Long noted as the Unified Authority’s most advanced shipyard, the Golan facility measured eight miles from top to bottom and included hundreds of cubic miles of construction space. If the Navy had new ships under construction, the Golan Dry Docks was where it would build them.
We broadcasted our newly confiscated three-ship fleet out to that remote corner of Norma. There were no planets within a light-year of the dry docks, just acres of star-riddled darkness.
I sat in an observatory just off the bridge with Warshaw and Franks—a high-powered conclave. With our field ranks in effect, I now had the rank of lieutenant general. Thanks to his visit with Brocius, Warshaw was an admiral. Franks was a rear admiral. We wore uniforms befitting our new status. Franks and I fit our uniforms perfectly. Warshaw’s blouse strained around the bulging contours of his chest, shoulders, neck, and arms.
Warshaw sat ramrod straight in his chair, looking massive and muscular. When he was sure Warshaw was not around, the late Sergeant Herrington sometimes referred to him as the “Careless Hairless” because he shaved his head, eyebrows and all.
Beside him sat Franks, a man with an aggressive streak. Franks leaned forward in his chair, excitedly scanning the scene through the panoramic viewport. We had broadcasted in thirty-five million miles from the dry docks, far enough away that their sensors would not spot the anomaly of our entrance—far enough away to give our broadcast generator time to recharge in case the U.A. had ships patrolling the area. The enormous generator that built up the energy for us to broadcast required eight minutes to recharge.
