Harmer smiled, and said, “No they won’t.”
“What about spy ships?” asked Freeman. “They might have stealth cruisers.”
“Do they have guns and missiles?” asked Harmer.
I answered, “No.”
“Then I’m not worried about them,” said Harmer. “We all have our own objectives. Mine is to protect Shin Nippon. I will advance your objectives by accomplishing mine.”
“How’s that?” asked Watson.
“My men and I came to sink their navy. Once that’s done, the Unified Authority won’t have a navy or an air force. That will leave their army and their Marines.” He turned to face Watson, and said, “You let Harris kill off their army, and they’ll fall apart.”
I asked, “You want to sink their navy first?”
“That’s what we came for, Harris. Once that’s done, I’ll help you with anything you want.”
He made this offer so damned cheerfully, you’d have thought he was offering to help me with gardening instead of assassinations.
“Do you know how you’re going to do it?” I asked.
“I have no idea how we can do it,” he admitted.
I had a few ideas.
Next I tried to offer an olive branch to Watson. I said, “Maybe you can go to Shin Nippon with the SEALs. You’d be safe.”
Watson shook his head, and said, “That’s not the life I had in mind.”
“Well, Travis what the speck did you have in mind?” I asked.
The meeting ended after that. Emily left the room, storming out without saying a word. Watson chased after her. Harmer went to check on his men.
I didn’t think Emily would have gone to hide in the bathroom. She wasn’t the crying type.
I went to my rack, a cot in the supply room. As I lay down, I heard her voice through the wall. She was saying, “. . . a complete waste of time. Maybe we should have stayed on New Copenhagen.”
I wanted to say something, but I knew it would only make things worse. There was nothing I could say, nothing she wanted to hear from my lips, and maybe she was right.
“We had to get him,” said Watson.
“No, Trav, we didn’t. We didn’t need to rescue him. We don’t owe him anything.”
“I do.”
“No you don’t,” said Emily. “He’s useless. All he cares about is getting revenge.”
“Do you blame him?”
“I don’t care about him; I care about us. He’s going to make things worse for us. He’s going to get himself killed, and he’s going to take us with him.”
Then I heard Harmer. He said, “Miss Hughes, have you ever heard about a planet called Ravenwood?”
Emily said, “I’m sorry, we’re having a private conversation here.”
Harmer said, “I’ll only be a moment.”
Emily made a noise that could have been a sigh or a groan.
“Ravenwood was an uninhabitable planet in the Scutum-Crux Arm that the Navy used as a fuel depot, but they also used it as a testing ground. They sent Marines there to defend the planet, then they sent SEALs to kill the Marines.”
“Kill them?” Emily asked. “That’s barbaric.”
“Only one Marine ever survived Ravenwood, and that was Harris. I’ve seen the feed from the exercise. We sent a squad of SEALs—thirteen men; Harris killed every last one of them.”
“So the Unified Authority is barbaric, and Harris is a butcher,” Emily said, sounding unimpressed.
“How does that make him a butcher?” asked Harmer.
“He killed thirteen men.”
“M, those men were trying to kill him,” said Watson.
“And he killed them first,” said Emily. “Travis, we’d have been safer without him.”
CHAPTER
FIFTY
Date: August 28, 2519
Toward the end of the Mogat War, the Unified Authority launched a supership called the Doctrinaire, a fighter carrier that was the biggest, strongest, fastest, best-shielded ship in history. The Mogats destroyed the Doctrinaire in her first big battle. They found an antiquated self-broadcasting rust tub and broadcasted her smack dab into the middle of the Doctrinaire. The resulting wreckage is still floating in space.
The Unified Authority had six self-broadcasting ships that the SEALs wanted demolished, and Smithsonian Field had two thousand self-broadcasting torpedoes capable of doing the job. The fly in the ointment was this, now that the Unifieds had seen us using Explorers, they started paying attention to Smithsonian Field.
“Getting out there will be tough,” said Harmer. Using Freeman’s computers, he’d tapped into the U.A. satellite-security network. “They have a platoon guarding the facility.”
Harmer held his briefing inside Freeman’s computer room. As he spoke, he conjured up Smithsonian Field on his computer screen.
There it was—plain to the eye, the administrative office, the underground bunkers that served as hangars, and trucks for transporting troops. “There are rocket batteries along the road. I understand those batteries were your idea, General Harris.”
“As a matter of fact . . .” I started to say.
Watson interrupted me. He said, “They were.”
“Prudent thinking,” said Harmer.
It was prudent thinking. I had foreseen the danger that a fleet of self-broadcasting ships could pose.
All of the SEALs attended this planning session. Apparently rocket batteries didn’t bother them. Ignoring the roadside defenses, a SEAL named Warsol asked, “Where are their barracks?”
Freeman answered, “There aren’t any barracks on the facility; they send new detachments every eight hours.”
Harmer and Warsol grinned at each other. Harmer said, “The changing of the guard.”
* * *
Using Explorers to torpedo the Unified’s self-broadcasting ships was my idea. How we would get to those ships, that was SEAL strategy. They might have been ugly, but those sons of bitches were geniuses, every mother-specking one of them.
The fear of Freeman and me stealing an Explorer probably didn’t keep Tobias Andropov awake at night. Why should it? As far as he knew, the only thing we could do with them was escape, and where would we go? He didn’t know about New Copenhagen, and we’d sign our own death warrant by flying to Terraneau.
He didn’t know about using self-broadcasting birds like torpedoes. Hell, the only people who knew the truth about the Doctrinaire were Freeman and me and the Japanese, and he didn’t know where to find any of us.
The Unifieds had only assigned a token force to guard Smithsonian Field, just a platoon. Taking the field wouldn’t be a lark, but we’d secure it . . . and then the race would begin.
Those old rust buckets at Smithsonian Field, they needed sixty minutes to recharge their broadcast generators. If we got lucky, the Unifieds might not realize that their guard patrol was missing for twenty minutes. It might take them another ten minutes for their gunships to reach us.
Once the shooting started, we wouldn’t be able to hold out for more than a minute or two. I had thirteen commandos, a retired mercenary, and two uncommitted civilians on my side. The last thing I wanted was a shoot-out.
Harmer figured a way around the problem.
The detail that guarded Smithsonian was stationed at Fort Belvoir, an Army installation halfway between Washington, D.C., and Smithsonian Field. Dressed as the newly demoted Corporal Joseph Conlon, Harmer planned to infiltrate Belvoir and ride to Smithsonian with a fresh platoon. He would enter the field, slip into a hangar, and start six Explorers charging.
The rest of us would ambush the next shift from Belvoir. We would catch them, kill them, and drive their trucks to Smithsonian Field. Harmer would have the Explorers charged and ready, and that would be that.
The problem is that nothing ever goes as easily as that.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-ONE
Corporal Conlon, our official harbinger of death, drove to the front gate of Fort Belvoir as if he owned the
joint. Wearing his linen gloves and prosthetic forehead, and bearing forged orders created by Petty Officer Warsol, Harmer traded salutes with the guards, showed them his orders, and drove onto the base.
Freeman, the SEALs, and I watched from a safe distance, nearly a mile away.
Dressed as Conlon, Harmer drove onto the base at 04:30. The sky was still dark. The changing of the guard occurring at 06:00, Conlon’s detail left for Smithsonian Field at 05:15.
* * *
For the record, Fort Belvoir looked more like a college campus than an Army base, an abandoned campus at that. Surveying the base from a distant hill, I saw buildings that looked like office complexes and buildings that reminded me of libraries and dormitories. Lights blazed all around the gate and guard shack. Belvoir’s streetlights shone like tiny stars.
From our far-off hill, we watched Harmer drive past a semicircular row of five-story admin buildings. By Army-base standards, Belvoir was very deluxe. Most of the Army bases I’d visited were spartan and rough.
Anyway, Harmer didn’t stop at the large and dark office complex; he drove to a brick pillbox not far from the motor pool and disappeared into the building. Twenty minutes passed, then lights switched on around the motor pool, and two trucks lined up. Not long after that, a jeep arrived, then a column of men boarded the trucks. If everything had gone according to plan, our boy Conlon left with the trucks.
The time had come to hurry up and wait.
Our ride would leave for Smithsonian Field sometime around 13:00.
* * *
There is a bay near Fort Belvoir. The maps call it a bay, but it’s really a swamp. I never saw any fish in the bay, but I saw clouds of mosquitoes swarming around it. There were woods and wetlands and small towns. For the most part, we remained in the swamps and the woods, hiding.
The SEALs had survival training and liked the wilds. They explored, slipping in and out of the trees and tracing the streams. They walked into glades and vanished into the shadows. They drilled.
Freeman and I, we sat and watched them, feeling lazy and old. Freeman zeroed his scope, but he didn’t shoot. I rested more than anything else. I was a Marine, and Marines learn how to rest whenever the opportunity presents itself. I closed my eyes and tracked the sun through my eyelids. I breathed the air, taking in its mossy stench and loving it. I listened to the rhythm of the water lapping against rocks and logs.
I wondered if perhaps I had beat that flu. My strength hadn’t returned, but I didn’t cough, not even once. I was anxious for the fight to begin. I imagined rolling into Smithsonian Field, an M27 in my hand. The guards were Marines in my mind; they wore combat armor. They had helmets instead of faces.
I imagined shooting them. I felt good. The air was fresh. The sun dissolved the aches in my limbs and shoulders.
I thought about my men, my empire, my enemies. My daydreams were pretty similar to the hallucinations I had after landing the plane in the New Olympian Territories. I saw many of the same people, but this time they didn’t speak to me.
Should I hit Andropov in the Linear Committee Building? I asked myself. The LCB had become a U.A. stronghold. I’d send shock waves through the entire republic if I brought the building down on top of him.
At 11:00, we moved north and east, tracking a creek that ran through the forest and led to the highway. The SEALs trotted along the rock-lined creek like hounds on the scent; Freeman and I could barely keep up with them.
We reached a shady bend where the roadway dipped and tall trees grew. The trees wouldn’t hide us from satellite surveillance, but they offered camouflage. There we waited, our heartbeats racing every time we heard a vehicle approaching. Freeman, perched on the high limb of a tree, aimed his rifle when he heard engines or wheels. The rest of us hid along the road. The first vehicle to pass was a jeep. Another jeep passed by about twenty minutes later.
This was a narrow stretch of road—a hairpin turn that would cause drivers to show caution. A row of sturdy trees lined the road, offering good concealment.
I noticed something as I crouched there in waiting—my body still hurt. A dull and ignorable ache had spread across my body, to my shoulders and head in particular. I wasn’t coughing, but I supposed my cold hadn’t completely gone away. I felt tired but alive, and the sun still felt good on my back.
At 13:23, we heard the growl of big engines. It wouldn’t be a jeep this time. Something big was coming around that bend. I rested my finger across the trigger of my M27. Beside me, the SEALs crouched like runners at their starting blocks. With their odd gray skin, they looked like three-dimensional shadows. Determined to do as little damage to the trucks as possible, they opted to use combat knives instead of guns.
We had to be fast. We had to be fast enough to prevent anyone watching the convoy via satellite from becoming suspicious.
The engines grew louder. Birds heard the noise and flew from the trees. Ahead of us, the road sat mostly in shadow, with beams of light shining solid and straight through holes in the canopy of leaves above our heads.
Two trucks. Two personnel carriers. There were twelve of us; each of those trucks would carry anywhere between twenty and thirty soldiers. What if we made a mistake? I asked myself. What if those aren’t soldiers? What if they’re Marines in shielded armor?
The first of the trucks appeared at the curve, an army green dragon with a grill at the end of its snout. One of the SEALs flipped a switch, sludging the airwaves in every direction. Freeman fired a single shot that drilled through the supposedly bulletproof windshield and splattered the driver’s brains against the back of the cab. The truck continued forward, its front end veering off the road and into foliage and soft ground. The rear of the truck blocked the road, forcing the personnel carrier in the rear to come to a stop.
I saw the SEALs leap from their hiding places and dart behind the trucks, but I lost track of them as I ran to the second truck, threw open the door on the passenger’s side. The man riding shotgun was so focused on the stalled truck ahead, he barely glanced in my direction as I opened his door. I fired two shots into his body, grabbed him by the blouse, and slung his corpse to the road. The driver saw me, gave me a Huh? reaction, and went for his gun. It would have been easier to shoot him, but I didn’t want to spend the next hour sitting on a bloody seat; I grabbed his hand and snapped his wrist, used the injured hand to pull him across the cab, and launched him out onto the side of the street; then I shot him.
While I tossed the bodies of the driver and passenger into the brush where no one would find them, Freeman dropped down from his bough. He pulled the bodies from the first truck and climbed into the cab.
Taking the trucks took no more than ten seconds.
I didn’t bother checking on the SEALs; they would come out of this fine. It wouldn’t have mattered if the Unifieds had ten soldiers or ten thousand waiting in each of the carriers, at close range, the SEALs would annihilate them.
Freeman backed his truck onto the road and drove on as if nothing had happened. I followed, surveying the damage around me as I drove. When I shot the passenger, my bullet passed through the roof of the truck. I could see the hole, but the guards at Smithsonian wouldn’t see it. Freeman, on the other hand, had a mess on his hands. He had a shattered windshield and blood all over the back of his cab. The guards at Smithsonian Field wouldn’t need to look too closely to see that.
I flashed my headlights. He must have figured out what I wanted because he drifted along the side of the road, letting me pull ahead of him.
“You back in business?” I asked, using the radio console in the dashboard to make sure it worked. I wasn’t as concerned about Freeman as I was about sludging. Momentary lapses in communications are common; communications dark spots, on the other hand, are a sure sign of trouble.
“I took the turn a little too wide,” Freeman said, on the off chance that someone was listening.
So far so good, I thought. We had the trucks, we were back on the road, and the SEALs had turned off thei
r sludging device.
I didn’t think anyone was listening. As far as the Unifieds were concerned, this should have been a routine guard change at an unimportant site.
We had a forty-minute drive ahead of us. If I’d been in the back of the truck, I would have spent the time listening in on my men or possibly sleeping.
The ache I had felt before had vanished. I felt good, like I’d never had the flu. I must be having combat reflex, I thought. That would be good . . . but I’d always known when I was having a reflex in the past. I wondered why I couldn’t tell now.
I let my mind wander as I drove. How long ago was it? I asked myself. Was it five days ago that I landed in the Territories too tired and dehydrated to climb out of that Johnston Meadowlark? Five days ago, maybe six? When did I kill Sunny? I knew when MacAvoy died—that had just been four days earlier. And ten days ago, the Enlisted Man’s Empire seemed to hold an unbeatable hand. Now you could fit the entire empire in the back of two trucks.
No, I thought. Not in two trucks. The SEALs didn’t belong to the EME; they came to protect the Japanese. Watson and Emily were civilians. I didn’t even know if I trusted them. Travis maybe, I told myself. I had already decided that Emily wasn’t on my side.
What about Freeman? I asked myself.
He might have been on my side, but Ray Freeman was never really on anyone’s side but his own. He was a mercenary; you had to pay him for his loyalty.
I was feeling better though, stronger. My head had cleared.
Freeman and the SEALs broke you out of that prison, I reminded myself. They didn’t need to do that.
I thought about that. Freeman qualified as an ally at the very least. Then I remembered Harmer telling Emily about Ravenwood. I had killed thirteen of his brother SEALs. Did he tell her that to make her feel safe or to scare her?
We entered that final winding road that led to Smithsonian Field.
Harmer’s reasons don’t matter, not on this op, I reminded myself. This one was for him. Maybe I was placing my faith in the devil, but I decided I could trust Harmer for the time being.
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