General Alexander Smith, secretary of the Air Force and ranking member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stands in front of an electronic display board holding a laser pointer. Like most of the members of the Joint Chiefs, Smith is in his sixties, a short man with a medium build and graying hair. His mustache covers the entire length of his upper lip.
The display board is an old-fashioned two-dimensional model, strictly low-tech. How he smuggled such an antique into the Dry Docks is beyond me, but there is no way this is Golan equipment. All of the big corporations gave up on 2-D displays long before this facility was built.
The summit takes place around a U-shaped table that is fifty feet long. Only generals and admirals sit at this table. Staffs members sit behind them in chairs set against the wall.
At the moment, General Smith’s 2-D display shows a diagram of the galaxy. Large red circles appear in several areas of the diagram. The general turns and points at them.
“As you know, we have engaged enemy troops in the following locations.” He points to the circles. “The Mogats seem to have set up power bases here …” He points at the lower flank of the outer Cygnus Arm. “Here …” He circles a parallel segment on the Perseus Arm. “And throughout these portions of Scutum-Crux.”
Smaller red splotches appear throughout the map. “The Mogats have free access throughout the galaxy. These are hotspots for spying and illegal activity. The only red zones in the Orion Arm are the planets New Columbia and Olympus Kri.”
Three of the galactic arms turn bright green. “The Cygnus, Perseus, and Scutum-Crux Arms have declared independence and formed the Organization of Confederate Arms. The Norma Arm has also declared independence. From what we can tell, this arm has ejected all Mogat colonists and is not a member of the OCS.
“Only the Orion and Sagittarius Arms have remained loyal; and in all candor, the U.A. government is funding an all-out covert war in Sagittarius that is costing us trillions of dollars. That’s the bad news.”
The colored areas vanish from the display, leaving a white and blue-black map of the stars. “The pink areas represent the territories in which our enemies currently enjoy military superiority.”
All of the men in the room laugh. There are no pink areas.
With the introductions and joking out of the way, General Smith suddenly turns serious. “About three weeks ago, Air Force intelligence intercepted the message, ‘Alterations complete. Will test in NGC three thousand six hundred and twelve.’
“Obviously, we had no way of knowing what the message meant then.”
“NGC,” Klyber calls out, “Norma Galactic Center?”
“Correct,” Smith says with a slight bow. “NGC did indeed refer to the inner curve of the Norma Arm, an unpopulated sector of the galaxy.” He walks to the edge of the dais, his eyes still focused on Admiral Klyber. “Care to venture a guess as to their usage of alterations or three thousand six hundred and twelve ?’” There is nothing confrontational in the way he does this. This is a friendly challenge between two fellow officers.
“It sounds like a date,” Klyber says, shaking his head and sitting back in his seat.
“You missed your calling, Bryce,” says Smith. “You should have been in intelligence. You would have really risen up the ranks.”
This comment gets scattered laughs as Klyber is the highest ranking officer in any branch.
“We do not have any outposts in the central part of the Norma Arm, it’s just too remote. We do, however, have an experimental radar station. This is what that radar readout looked like nine days ago—March 6, 2512.”
The screen turns flat black with concentric rings marking distances from the radar station. Except for the wand effect of the screen refreshing itself, the screen remains still and black for several seconds. When the radar wand finishes its third sweep, a litter of dots appear in one small section of the screen.
The wand sweeps by refreshing the radar reading every thirty seconds and the dots do not move. They stay in place for sixteen complete sweeps of the wand, a total of eight minutes. Eight minutes pass and the next pass of the wand reveals that the dots are gone. They vanished without a trace. The wand sweeps on, but the radar reading remains clear.
“Do we have a more detailed reading, sir?” asks Admiral Brocius. “I’d like to see an analysis of that.”
“This radar reading was taken over a four-million-mile distance. I’m afraid the ship designs and serial numbers were out of focus,” General Smith quips. “The best we could do was dots.”
The patch with the dots reappears, then grows until it fills the entire screen. The dots look like a clutch of glowing eggs laid across a black surface in no particular order.
“There are precisely five hundred and seventy-six dots in this picture,” Smith says. “There were five hundred eighty ships in the Galactic Central Fleet—”
“Admiral Thurston shot down four of the Galactic Central destroyers during the battle at Little Man,” Huang interrupts, standing up as he speaks. Sitting behind Huang, Leonid Johansson nods complacently, as if he has some ownership in that victory.
Once I notice Johansson, I turn my attention to the wall behind Klyber. Halverson is sitting behind Klyber taking careful notes. Beside him sits an officer I do not know …could be the ill-fated Major Burns for all I know. Each officer attending the summit has three aides. The last seat behind Klyber must have been Captain Johansson’s. It now sits empty.
“That would mean that every last ship was up and running,” an Air Force general I do not recognize calls out.
“Why not?” Huang shoots back, still standing, “they’ve had more than forty years to tune them up.”
“Admiral Huang makes a good point,” says Admiral Brocius.
As the inertia of this discussion builds up among the other officers, Admiral Klyber leans back in his chair and mumbles something to Halverson. The way Klyber leans back and the sly smile on his face suggest that he is telling the rear admiral a joke, but the startled look on Halverson’s face is anything but amused.
“Those ships are antiques. They belong in a museum,” the unidentified Air Force general responds.
“I wish I shared your confidence,” General Smith says in a raised voice, trying to arrest control of the floor.
“Come on, Alex …one sighting in two years …Before that it was forty years,” the unidentified Air Force general replies.
The board behind General Smith clears itself and turns into a map of the Scutum-Crux Arm. “There have been eighteen sightings of those ships in the last three days. They appeared here, here, and here …”
“That’s only a few million miles from the Scutum-Crux Fleet,” Huang says in astonishment. “Perhaps they plan to engage Admiral Thurston.”
“Yeah, too bad your boy missed them,” The unidentified Air Force general taunts Huang.
Rear Admiral Robert Thurston, sitting quietly in a corner in the back of the room, says nothing. He is a quiet, deliberate man. He has red spiky hair and the face of a high school student. His short waif ’s physique adds to the illusion that he is a boy just out of secondary school.
“Don,” General Smith says, turning toward his fellow Air Force man, “we have a radar record of three hundred ships appearing within six hundred thousand miles of your base. They come in, reprogram their broadcasting computers, and flash out. One theory is that they are testing our level of preparedness.”
“It looks like those old ships are flying circles around you boys,” says an Army officer. It is easy for him to talk. His forces aren’t expected to guard open space.
“You cannot possibly expect us to patrol every inch of space,” Don says, now sounding defensive.
“We’ve got a bigger problem than that,” says Smith. “Whatever fleet this is, it has an uncanny awareness of our movements.”
The last time I flew into Hawaii, I was a young sergeant in the Marines on leave. I played like a kid, swam in the ocean like a kid, and had a meaningless romance with a girl whom I could only describe as ornamental. Within a month of returning to duty, I landed on Little Man. After seeing the massacre on Little Man, I would never be a boy again. Looking back, I see my stay in Hawaii as the last chapter in my youth.
I did not fly directly from the Dry Docks to Earth. As a Liberator, I was not allowed to enter the Orion Arm and I did not want to take the chance of attracting attention.
Having a self-broadcasting ship allowed me to bypass the broadcast network and Mars security. I broadcasted myself to the “dark side” of the solar system, the spot exactly opposite Mars in its orbit. That left me with nearly one hundred million miles to fly to reach Earth—twenty hours of travel at the Starliner’s top non-atmospheric speed was five million miles per hour.
Even more hours of flying awaited me once I entered Earth’s atmosphere. The Starliner had a top speed of three thousand miles per hour in atmospheric conditions. The Mach 3 speed limit was a convention imposed throughout the Unified Authority.
“Harris, you there?” Ray Freeman’s voice sounded on my mediaLink.
“Yeah. I’m here,” I said. I had been watching the summit and was lost in the politics of it. Hearing Freeman’s voice brought me back to the real world. “Are you in Hawaii yet?”
“Not yet.”
“When you went to Little Man, were you hunting Mogats?” Freeman asked.
“That’s what they told us,” I said. “This about your family?”
“What do you think the Navy will do if they find neo-Baptists there?”
“It’s a valuable planet,” I said. “There aren’t many planets capable of sustaining life without engineering. At the very least they will consider them squatters. How many people are there?”
“About one hundred,” Freeman said.
“That’s tiny. The Navy may not even notice them,” I said.
“They noticed them,” Freeman said. “My father contacted me. He said that they’re sending a carrier to review the situation.”
“Know which one?” I asked.
“The Grant, I think. Does it matter?”
“It might if it’s the Grant. Remember Vince Lee?” Vince was my best friend when I was a Marine. I had not talked with him since going AWOL. “He’s an officer on the Grant.”
“Lee?” Freeman said, not making a connection.
“You tried to kill him once,” I said. “You paid him a few bucks to wear my helmet without telling him there was an assassin looking for me.”
“Yeah,” Freeman said.
“He’s a fair man,” I said. “I’ve met the captain of that ship, too …Pollard. Both good men. They’ll give your father a fair shake. They might tell them to leave, but they won’t be harsh about it. Hell, once they know the colony doesn’t pose a threat, they may choose to ignore it. How long ago did they make contact?”
“A day or two.”
“Well, they won’t get there anytime soon. It takes a long time to travel to Little Man. The nearest broadcast disc is several days away.”
Freeman and I spoke for a few more minutes, then he signed off. I leaned back in my chair to watch more of the summit. I had ninety-five million miles to go, time was on my side.
“The GC Fleet’s movements show an increasing amount of sophistication,” General Smith says as a new set of circles appear on the screen behind him. “In the radar reading from Central Norma, they appear to have been testing their ability to broadcast. That was the first reading that we took. The ships broadcasted in, they remained perfectly still for eight minutes, and they left. From what we can tell, they remained just long enough to generate the power they needed to broadcast out.”
“Eight minutes between broadcasts?” Klyber asks, unconsciously using a voice that is just loud enough to catch everyone’s attention. “That hardly seems possible.”
“Bryce?” Smith asks. “Did you say something?”
“The broadcast generators on those ships should take fifteen minutes to build up enough energy for a broadcast,” Klyber says. He looks and sounds deeply concerned. Seeing this, I wonder how long it takes the Doctrinaire to charge up and broadcast.
“You will recall the intercepted message—‘alterations complete,’” says General Smith. “We believe they have updated their equipment.”
“What’s the problem, Admiral Klyber?” Huang calls. He is sitting directly across from Klyber; now the two officers face each other. “How long does it take the generators on the
Doctrinaire to power up for a broadcast?”
The floor of the summit goes silent. The atmosphere of that great chamber suddenly becomes a vacuum of sound. Bryce Klyber turns his narrow, bony head toward Che Huang. Klyber is a fleet admiral, the highest-ranking man in the Unified Authority Navy, but Admiral Che Huang is the secretary of the Navy and a member of the Joint Chiefs. Klyber has powerful friends on Capitol Hill. Huang has the backing of the Pentagon. Neither man is about to back down.
“The Doctrinaire ?” General Smith asks. Smith clearly has no clue what Huang is talking about.
“Admiral Klyber has been developing a self-broadcasting fighter carrier,” Huang says in a voice that is both arrogant and bored. “Haven’t heard of it, Alex? Don’t feel bad. It’s Klyber’s little secret. He’s been building it with funding from his pals on the Linear Committee.”
“Is that true?” General Smith asks.
If there is one thing that senior officers do not like, it is being left out of the loop. This feeds into their paranoia and leaves them feeling ambushed. Anger and astonishment show on General Alex Smith’s face. Triumph shows on Huang’s.
“Of course it’s true,” says Huang. “This is Bryce Klyber. He has a long record of calling on friends in high places to skirt regulations. This is the same officer who made the Liberator clones …one of which is in this very facility.”
The room remains silent.
“I’m prepared to discuss the Doctrinaire ,” Klyber says. Then he turns to Huang and adds, “And after that, perhaps we should discuss your furtive cloning projects.”
Che Huang turns stark white, but for only a moment, and then he turns blood red. He slams his fist on the table but says nothing.
“May I take the floor?” Klyber asks. Not until General Smith nods and leaves the dais does the well-cultivated Bryce Klyber leave his place at the table. Klyber is urbane, discreet, and circumspect in his approach. Across the table, Huang is so angry he can barely stay in his chair. He fidgets and his hands are clenched into fists.
Klyber has clearly come to this meeting planning to discuss his top-secret project. He takes a data chip from a case by his seat and places it into a slot in the display board. A schematic of the Doctrinaire appears.
“Gentlemen, let me begin by apologizing for not informing you about this project sooner. You should know that the project was not even discussed within the Senate. National security the way it is at this time, the members of the Linear Committee specifically requested that I wait until a moment like this to discuss the project.
“As this project was paid for using the Linear Committee’s discretionary funds rather than the military budget, it seemed like a fair request.”
When it comes to the merging of military matters and politics, Bryce Klyber has no equal. Huang must already have realized that he picked the wrong venue for this fight. He picks up a data pad and pretends to read notes, his eyes fixed on a spot in the middle of the pad. When Johansson leans forward and whispers something, Admiral Huang’s jaw tightens and he acts as if he does not hear him.
Dressed in civilian clothes, a cap covering my hair, and carrying no visible weapons, I passed through Honolulu Airport without being noticed. This was not like entering the spaceports on Mars or in Salt Lake City where they had large security stations. Flights in and out of airports like the one in Honolulu originate on Earth and never leave the atmosphere. By the time you were on an Earth-bound jet, you were clean. You were clean, that is, unless you flew a rare self-broadcasting craft.
Freeman did not meet me in the airport. Being met by a seven-foot black man with arms like anacondas and tree trunks for legs did not lend itself to inconspicuousness. With nothing but an innocuous overnight bag slung over my shoulder, I strolled through the open air lobby of the private craft terminal and headed for the street. A few minutes later, Freeman swung by in a small rental car and I hopped into the passenger’s seat.
Freeman had selected a convertible. Most people drove these cars so that they could enjoy warm island weather; however, sun worship had nothing to do with Freeman’s decision. He simply did not fit in most cars. He sat scrunched behind the steering wheel, and everything above his nose was higher than the windshield. He looked like an adult trying to squeeze into a child’s go-cart.
“Have you ever been to this island before?” I asked Freeman, trying to ignore the sight of him in that driver’s seat.
He shook his head.
The Unified Authority maintained vacation spots on Earth as a way of reminding citizens on the 180 outworlds which planet was home. Hawaii was a living museum, and the only commerce conducted was tourist-related. Hawaii had a police force, garbage men, and air traffic controllers, but the only reason they were there was to keep the place nice for tourists. There were pineapple and sugarcane farms, but they were productive museum exhibits run by the government. They existed only to show visitors what island life had been like five hundred years before. Their production methods were antiquated and much of the produce was sold as souvenirs.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“There’s a place called Sad Sam’s Palace,” I said.
“The boxing arena you told me about?”
“Boxing, wrestling, professional fighters, amateur challenge. It all depends what night you go,” I said. “The Palace is near Waikiki. Can you find it?”
The March sky was a mixture of sunshine and shadow, and the city was drenched with moist air. Clouds the color of stainless steel gathered around the mountains to our left, choking out sunlight. To the right, the sky over the ocean was nearly clear.
Freeman and I drove along the outskirts of Honolulu. He sat in his seat, cramped behind the wheel, watching the road and quietly scanning every turn and approaching vehicle.
“I came in clean,” Freeman said. To avoid drawing attention to himself on Earth, as if a seven-foot black man could somehow make himself inconspicuous in this homogonous society, he took public transportation in from Mars. With a war brewing and security at an all-time high, he didn’t even bother trying to smuggle a gun in with him. “Any idea where I can find something?”
I thought about that for a moment. “No. Colorful shirts, yes. Alcohol, yes. I know where they sell a fruit drink that will knock you flat.”
“Where do you get the shirts?” Freeman asked.
“The International Marketplace,” I said. “It’s a bazaar for tourists. You want bathing suits, hats made with coconut leaves, candles, or Hawaiian shirts, that’s the spot. Guns …” I didn’t see any.
“Clean wholesome place?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Think you can find it?”
Finding the International Marketplace was no problem. It was in the middle of Waikiki, the heart of the tourist area. It was a wide open lot with trees and carts and buildings with walls made of faux lava rock. The time was just 1700 hours on what looked like a slow day. There was only a sprinkling of tourists around, and the sales people aggressively chased anyone who walked by their stands.
“You looking for sandals, sugar?” a girl called to me as we walked by her store. Not one customer stirred inside the store, just the sales girl and rows of shelves with leather and rubber sandals.
Freeman turned and glared at the woman and she shrank back.
“Didn’t see anything that you wanted?” I asked.
Freeman said nothing.
“Probably a good thing,” I said. “I doubt she had anything your size.”
We passed jewelry, candle, and clothes shops, and Freeman ignored them. Hucksters came to show us shirts and luggage. Freeman pushed past them without looking back. Then we passed a stand selling perfume and Freeman stopped. Beside the stand was a warty little man in shorts and a golf cap. The man had no shirt. His body was skinny but muscled. His stomach muscles showed distinctly, and his chest was flat and carved with sinew.
“Wait here,” Freeman growled. He went to the man and they spoke very quietly.
“Get specked!” the man yelled suddenly. “What kind of a store do you think this is.” He threw his hands in the air. Even reaching all the way up, the man’s fingers barely came level with Freeman’s eyes.
Freeman said something in his soft-thunder voice and the man lowered his hands.
“Go speck yourself!” the man yelled. “Who do you think you are?”
Freeman dug into his pocket and rolled out some dollars. I could not see how many dollars he peeled off, but I saw him place them on the counter. The warty man shook his head. Freeman laid out more. The man shook his head. Freeman peeled off two more bills. When Freeman went to retrieve his cash, the little man placed his hand over it.
Putting the money in the front pocket of his shorts, the warty little man trotted into a service corridor. He returned a few minutes later with a colorful red shirt folded into a neat square. The shirt did indeed look large enough for Freeman to wear.
Without saying a word, Freeman took the shirt and left. When we got back to the car, Freeman unfolded the shirt. Inside it he found a pistol and three clips filled with bullets.
“How did you know he’d have guns?” I asked.
Freeman looked at me in surprise. “Who would buy perfume from an asshole like that?”
“In the interest of time, I will not go into every detail of this ship,” Klyber says. “A complete …”
“Why not give us the complete rundown?” Huang interrupts.
“As I was saying,” Klyber continues, a trace of a smile showing in his expression, “a complete set of plans has been forwarded to each of you. As the Linear Committee has not gone public with this project, your discretion is requested.” He is laying an obvious trap, knowing full well that Huang will not be able to control his arrogance long enough to avoid it.
“I would, however, like to go over a few of the finer points of the ship. The Doctrinaire has twelve decks and a bridge. She measures a full two miles from wingtip to wingtip.
“The Doctrinaire has four launch tubes, each of which is loaded with a complete squadron of seventy Tomcat fighters for deep space combat. She also has …”
Leaning back in his chair with a bored expression that demonstrates that he has heard all of this information before, Huang says, “Two-thirds of the ship is taken up by the engines.”
Klyber smiles. “Quite right, Admiral Huang. With a ship of this size, power generation is a major concern. Especially for a ship that is self-broadcasting.”
The response to that is so enthusiastic you might have thought Klyber has announced that God himself has enlisted in the Marines. One dozen small conversations open up across the room. Several officers turn back to whisper to their aides while others begin speaking among themselves in louder voices.
“Admiral Klyber, you have not yet told us the regeneration time needed to power your broadcast engine,” Huang calls out in a voice that cuts through the din, a sneer across his face.
“I believe we just learned that the Mogats have reoutfitted their broadcast engines so that they can charge and broadcast every eight minutes. How long will it take your colossus to charge its broadcast engine, Admiral Klyber?”
Klyber nods to acknowledge the question. “Fair question. Our best intelligence showed that the ships in the Galactic Central Fleet required fifteen minutes per broadcast. We set a higher standard, of course …”
“How long?” Huang asks.
“The broadcast engines in the Doctrinaire require ten minutes,” Klyber admits, but he does not seem unhappy to admit this. In fact, his smile only broadens. Either he is bluffing or he has an ace up his sleeve that neither Che Huang nor Leonid Johansson know about.
“Ten minutes?” Huang asks.
“That is correct.”
Stepping away from his chair, Huang repeats, “Ten minutes.” He moves around the table and approaches the dais. “So, assuming you manage to fly this juggernaut to the battle before the GCF ships depart, they will simply be able to broadcast off before you can recharge your engines and follow them.”
Klyber pauses to consider this. The look of confidence on his face does not fade. “Well, of course, you realize that we have no way of tracking a self-broadcasting ship? We’d have no way of knowing where the GCF ships had broadcast themselves.”
Huang’s expression turns to fury. “We’re all quite aware of that, Admiral Klyber. My point is simple. If the GC Fleet appears …oh, for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll say they appear near Olympus Kri. And let’s say you have a three-minute response time. It seems unlikely, but let’s say you manage to get your colossus ship there in three minutes. Your ship will have five minutes to engage the enemy before they fly off to another target, very likely their primary target, while you sit around charging up the Doctrinaire’s broadcast engine.
“Brilliant plan, Admiral,” Huang snickers. “You’ve created a trillion-dollar boondoggle.” He stands triumphant, his arms folded across his chest, his head high, and his eyes staring angrily at Klyber.
“That is a concern,” General Smith says. Several of the officers around the table nod in agreement.
It is at this moment that Klyber drops a bomb that even Johansson does not expect. “Admiral Huang, you’ll note that I said ‘broadcast engines.’ The Doctrinaire does, in fact, have two such units, each working independent of the other.
“One engine recharges while the other one broadcasts. The Doctrinaire can self-broadcast every five minutes. Admiral Huang, we never believed that the Separatists would be so foolish as to commit their entire fleet into a single battle. The Doctrinaire was built around the notion that they would stage their battles with decoys and feigned attacks along several fronts.”
At first there is silence as the officers assimilate this information. Then applause erupts. General Smith is the first to clap his hands, and the Air Force officers soon join in. Admiral Brocius stands up from his chair and applauds. He slaps his hands together so hard that the noise echoes. A moment later, Rear Admiral Thurston joins him, an appreciative smile on his youthful face. A general from the Marines stands silently and salutes. The applause lasts for several minutes.
“What about armament?” Thurston asks, his enthusiasm evident.
The board behind Klyber shifts to an exterior schematic of the ship. Klyber picks up an old-fashioned wooden pointer instead of the laser pointer that General Smith had used earlier. “She has two massive forward cannons for bombarding stationary targets such as cities and military bases. These cannons are both laser- and particle-beam enabled.” This is friendly talk, like friends telling each other about a new car over a round of drinks.
Klyber slides the pointer along the outer edge of the wing. “The ship has three hundred particle beam turrets along with twenty missile stations and fifteen torpedo stations. And, as I mentioned a moment ago, she has a compliment of two hundred and eighty Tomcat fighters. Should the enemy attempt to attack her, the Doctrinaire could annihilate the entire GC Fleet.
“Oh, and Thurston, you’ll appreciate this …Look at the shield antennas.” Klyber watches expectantly. “This is an entirely new technology.”
There are rings around the antenna at the ends of the wings. Other U.A. ships do not have rings connecting their antennas. Their shields are flat panes broadcast from pole-like antennas.
“We’ve developed a cylindrical shield,” Klyber says with the air of a father boasting about his son. “Those rings project a seamless shield that covers the entire ship.”
“And the Mogats haven’t got a clue,” General Smith marvels.
“Perhaps,” Klyber says in a voice that carries across the room, “but I am concerned about that. We paid for the ship with Linear Committee funds so that we could slip under the radar, but …”—Klyber turns toward Admiral Huang—“apparently we didn’t go undetected.”
Suddenly, everyone in the room becomes silent. Huang looks at the other officers, hoping for support. Rear Admiral Thurston, Huang’s closest ally, is too busy lusting over the schematics to see that Huang needs help.
“Yes,” says General Smith, “it does appear that you had a breach of security.” Smith takes the dais and formality creeps back into the session. The officers return to their seats.
Smith calls the meeting back to order. He turns toward Huang. “Admiral, while we are on the subject of secret operations …”
Bryce Klyber’s combination of political and military acumen now comes to bear. It becomes obvious that he has briefed General Smith about Huang’s Adam Boyd cloning project. Klyber used himself as a decoy, and now that Huang has fired all his guns, Smith flanks and attacks.
“General,” Huang interrupts. “My intelligence unit located the construction of a large project in deep space. Our radar showed repeated broadcasts in the Perseus Arm. We had no idea that this was Admiral Klyber’s operation when we began investigating …”
But General Smith puts up a hand to stop him. Smith is smiling. He has no interest in beating the Doctrinaire horse any further. Everyone on the floor has now heard about the ship and shown their approval. The smile on Smith’s face is one of supreme satisfaction. He is the gambler who has no need to bluff. He is the only man at the table with all four aces in his hand.
“Admiral Huang, general accounting found an anomaly in your books. Apparently, your branch has had a six billion dollar increase in spending on toilet paper and uniforms.” Smith’s smile turns wicked as he says, “We all hope the lack of one of these items has not led to a need for the other.”
Huang does his best to look confused, but he is no actor. Instead of dropping his jaw, he clenches it. He glares at General Smith. “I have a staff that goes through the books and reports to …”
“But a six billion dollar expenditure, surely that would not go unnoticed,” Smith observes.
“Perhaps our inventory was …”
“When my staff looked into it, we discovered that your procurement team placed no additional orders for either toilet paper or uniforms, Admiral. What we found was that a mothballed Military base was reactivated on Earth.” Alex Smith picks up his data pad.
Huang says nothing. He stares back at Smith defiantly.
“I understand that you have a cloning plant on the island of Oahu. Is that correct?” Smith asks.
Huang shows no sign of fear or remorse. “That is correct, General. The Navy is experimenting with a new set of genes to improve our SEAL operations. I was unaware of any regulations stating that the Navy had to clear its research projects with members of other branches.”
A video feed of an Adam Boyd in a firefight appears on the display board. It is a brief five-second loop that repeats itself again and again. I recognize the image. It is from the battle on Ravenwood—the one in which I supposedly died. The footage was taken from cameras placed in the helmet I wore during the battle on Ravenwood. Ray Freeman placed my helmet by the body of a different marine before lifting me off the planet.
Across the room, Admiral Thurston looks particularly interested in this discussion. Huang’s newly cloned SEALs operate off of Thurston’s command ship.
“When were you planning on telling us about this new project?” asks General John Kellan, the thirty-nine-year-old secretary of the Army. There is a centuries-old tradition of jealousy that runs between the SEALs and Kellan’s Rangers.
We headed for Sad Sam’s at 2100 hours. It was Thursday night during a slow season for tourists, and the city seemed deserted. We found a drive-in restaurant just up the street from the Palace and ordered hamburgers, then ate in the car.
Except for the streetlamps and an occasional car, the only lights on the entire street came from the façade of the Palace. The marquee was studded with old-fashioned bulbs that winked on and off, casting their warm manila glare. Foot-tall letters announced the name, Sad Sam’s Palace. Below that, the event for the night—“Ultimate Fighting Competition: Mixed Martial Arts”—showed over a glowing ivory panel.
The Palace was the modern world’s answer to the Roman coliseum. Instead of Christians and lions, it featured professional wrestlers, boxers, and mixed martial artists. It had an open challenge on Friday nights. If you were a military clone, and you happened to be in the audience during the Open Challenge, an announcer called you down to fight. The standing champion of that Open Challenge was a fighter named Adam Boyd, obviously one of Huang’s clones.
“You got that scar here?” Freeman asked.
The scar ran through the eyebrow over my left eye. Three smaller scars formed parallel stripes across my left cheek, just under the eye socket.
“This is the place,” I said.
I got the scars fighting an Adam Boyd clone. I beat him, had certainly put him in the hospital, but not before he dug into my face and back with his talonlike fingers, giving me lacerations that went all the way to the bone.
Freeman finished his burger and drink in what looked like a single motion, then sat without saying a word. As I finished my burger, the front doors opened and a mob flowed out. “Fights must be over,” I said, crumpling the wrapper and throwing it in the bag. “That’s our cue.” I climbed out of the car.
The crowd thinned as we made our way across the empty street. Most of the people had walked in from the waterfront where the buses ran. Now they walked back, their excited chatter filling the street.
An usher in a white shirt and black vest approached me as I came through the door. He must have seen Freeman, too, but he did not dare approach that giant of a man. “Show’s over,” he said.
“My friend dropped his wallet somewhere around his seat,” I said.
The man looked at Freeman, nodded, and stepped out of my way. If I had said it was my wallet, he would likely have told me to “come back tomorrow.”
We walked through the dark hall toward the auditorium, the usher following from a safe distance. Bright arc lights blazed in the center of the auditorium, their true white glare shining bright.
A wall of bleachers surrounded the outer edges of the floor. These bleachers curved up, ending just below the first of two balconies. On busy nights during the tourist season, Sad Sam’s Palace must have played host to five thousand people per night. Now the floor was empty except for janitors sweeping food, cups, and wrappers from the floor. Under the lights, a small crew disassembled the steel cage and octagonal ring they used for mixed martial arts. Friday night was Open Challenge night. That show would take place on a raised platform with glass walls.
Freeman and I walked across the floor and headed for the tunnel to the dressing rooms. I paused for a moment to look at the ring, then pushed the door open.
“Where are you going?” the usher yelled. I did not bother answering. The answer was obvious.
The metal doors opened to a brightly-lit hallway with a concrete floor and cinderblock walls. Some of the fluorescent lights that ran the length of the hall had gone dark, occasionally flashing on and off in a Morse code pattern. Our footsteps echoed, and the steel door slamming behind us sounded like a volcanic eruption.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Freeman asked.
“I’ve never been back here,” I said. That was not quite true. As I understand it, paramedics carried me back here on a stretcher after my fight, but I was only semiconscious during that ride.
Halfway down the hall, we found a pair of emerald-green double doors. With the usher and three security guards storming down the hall yelling at us, I tried the door. It was unlocked, so I let myself in. Freeman remained outside to deal with the security guards.
The men inside the locker room seemed not to care that I had entered. A man with a towel wrapped around his waist strode past me without so much as a sideways glance. His hair was wet. He had a square chest and muscular arms, all of which was covered with welts and bruises. He sported a superb shiner over his right eye.
Another man, sitting stark naked on a wooden bench in front of a row of lockers, watched me. “I know you,” he said, rubbing his chin.
“Not likely,” I said.
The security guards had caught up to Freeman. It should have been a four-against-one battle; but from the sound of things, Freeman took out the first guard so quickly that it really was more accurately described as three-against-one. I heard, “Hey, you’re not …” Then there was the thunderous sound of something slamming against the outside of the door, followed by a moment of absolute silence.
“Shit. I’m calling the …” The door muffled the shouting.
Then the door flew open. In ran the usher, stumbling over the body of the fallen security guard. “There’s a giant black man out there!”
“That’s nothing,” said the naked man as he stood and stepped into his briefs. “There’s a Liberator clone in here.”
The usher looked at me, and the blood drained from his face. He did not say another word.
“You’re the one who killed that Adam Boyd guy,” the man said as he pulled up his pants. By this time several other fighters came to investigate. Outside, the commotion ended quickly. I heard a click, which I assumed was the last security guard’s head hitting the concrete, then Freeman stepped through the door looking as nonplussed as if he had come from a grocery store.
The usher was willing to share a locker room with me, but Freeman was another story. Freeman had barely come through the door when the usher bolted to the safety of the bathroom stalls.
“Everything moving along in here?” Freeman asked.
“Just fine,” I said. I turned back to the fighter. “You say he died?”
“Yeah, I helped drag his ass from the ring. That boy was dead. You caved in the front of his skull.”
I thought I might have killed him. In truth, I felt no regret about it. “I heard he went on to win another fifty fights,” I said.
“Not that Boyd.”
The other fighters eyed Ray Freeman nervously, gave me a curious glance at most, and went back to finish dressing.
The air in the room had that sweaty, unpleasant humidity that comes with locker rooms and open showers. The floor was wet and slick. Near the door, a canvas basket on rollers overflowed with wet towels, some of which were streaked with blood.
“What makes you think I’m a Liberator?” I asked. This guy was a natural-born, a muscular man, maybe thirty-five years of age with sun-bronzed skin and bleached-blond hair.
“Boyd said you were,” the fighter said.
“I thought you said I killed him?”
“Not the one you killed, the next one. We had at least three of ’em …” He smiled as if remembering a joke. “At least three. They were clones. Had to be. You off-ed one and two others got busted up pretty bad.
“So you are a Liberator, right?”
I chose to ignore the question. “Is there going to be a Boyd fighting tomorrow?”
“Nah,” said the fighter. “The Boyds stopped coming a couple years ago. They’re gone …left the island.”
“Do you know where they went?” I asked.
“No, but I know where they used to live.”
“But what is the point of creating a new strain of clones?” General Kellan asks. “We’ve been using volunteers in special forces for six hundred years.”
“My clones are more effective in battle,” Huang says. “They are more expendable, less concerned about self-preservation, and far more lethal.
“This new strain was developed specifically for commando operations. They are quick, think independently, and are programmed to kill.”
“That sounds an awful lot like Liberator clones,” an officer calls out.
Huang laughs. “Klyber’s Liberators were never in the same league,” he says with a confident laugh. “Klyber’s clumsy attempt at clone-making may have been enough for the Mogats …”
“Is that so?” asks General Smith. “I understand that you lost a squad of ten clones in an operation in Scutum-Crux.”
Klyber sits this battle out, preferring to let his allies ask questions and pose charges. He watches quietly from his seat, smiling as he follows the direction of the conversation.
“They were killed running drills on a planet called Ravenwood,” Huang admits. “Over a four-year period, we ran hundreds of drills and only lost one squad.”
“And how many Marines did you kill off?” the Marine general asks, sounding angry.
“I’d guess in the neighborhood of five to six hundred. Ravenwood was a major success. We sent squads of ten clones against platoons of forty-two Marines, and we only lost once. Most drills ended without the loss of a single commando.
“We also ran tests in a tough-man competition in Hawaii.”
“Sad Sam’s Palace?” asks the Marine.
Huang nods. Hawaii is a popular vacation and retirement spot for high-ranking officers and Sad Sam’s Palace attracts military types like a magnet. “I suspect many of you are familiar with the Palace’s tough-man challenge. If there’s a better testing ground for hand-to-hand combat, I have not found it.
“We had a clone fighting under the name Adam Boyd entered in that competition. He racked up a record of two hundred and fifty wins and one loss.”
“Two hundred wins and one loss?” General Kellan observes. “How do we get our hands on the guy who beat him? That’s who we should be cloning.”
The last time I visited Honolulu I stayed in a vacation home with a courtyard and a well-stocked kitchen. I came with a pal from my platoon, Vince Lee. He was a corporal, I had just been promoted to sergeant. I met a beautiful blonde named Kasara on the beach and we had a fling. She had a friend named Jennifer, so Vince got to share in the fun.
That was a vacation. This time I came on business.
Freeman and I drove out of town after visiting the Palace. We found a wooded area and pulled our car off the road. Then I curled up in the backseat for five hours and he pulled guard duty. Living with combat armor, you learn how to make yourself comfortable in all sorts of situations. Lying in the fetal position, with my knees propped up against my gut, I slept very soundly until 4:00 A.M., when Freeman and I switched places.
Massive as he was, Freeman breathed heavily in his sleep. He took long hard pulls of air, then exhaled in three-second drafts. His breathing sounded like waves rolling in and out of shore.
We were up in the slopes just north of town. I held Freeman’s pistol on my lap, well out of sight in case anyone passed by.
The sun rose at 0800. Sitting behind the wheel, feeling sweaty, with stubble covering my cheeks, I watched the sunrise. I watched the violet sky turn copper colored and then eventually blue. Down below us, the town filled with shadows as the streetlamps faded. Honolulu was a tourist town, but it had its share of traffic. I watched thousands of cars roll into the city in stop-and-go traffic. From my vantage point, they looked like a column of ants.
I did not notice when the current of Freeman’s breathing vanished behind me. The sunrise had just finished, and I watched mynah birds nimbly hopping back and forth on the branches of a nearby tree.
“You ready to go?” Freeman asked as he lay folded on the backseat of the car. It was early in the morning and his voice rumbled more softly than ever. His words came in a thunderous whisper.
“Good morning to you,” I said, knowing that the humor would be wasted on Freeman.
“Give me a moment.” With this, the big man reached across the seat and opened the door by his legs. He stretched his legs out and found the ground with his feet, then he sat up just enough to grab the edges of the open doorway and pull himself out. Once in the open air, he stretched and yawned. The sunlight reflected in a dull streak across his shaved head as he unfurled his long arms and rotated his back. Next, he walked into the woods to relieve himself. When he came back, I handed him his pistol and did the same.
We stopped at a drive-in restaurant and bought a couple of greasy egg sandwiches which we ate as we drove, passing signs with mostly incomprehensible names like Waipahu and eventually Wahiawa. We passed a defunct naval base called “Pearl Harbor.” The base was enormous.
We headed out of town and into the countryside where farmers grew pineapples. The pineapples grew in immaculate rows that made the landscape appear as if someone had raked an enormous comb across it. The pineapples themselves were knee-high clumps with football-shaped fruits in the center, like some sort of alien cactus.
We drove deep into the farming country where sugarcane fields stretched out along the sides of the road. We passed large stretches where only scrub trees grew. Antique railroad tracks ran along the side of the road at one point, and we crossed a steel-framed bridge that spanned a stream. I thought the countryside was beautiful. Freeman seemed not to notice it at all.
We passed Wheeler Air Force base. It was dark and abandoned. We did not stop. A few miles farther, we approached another military complex called Schofield Barracks, a defunct Army base.
Schofield Barracks looked a lot like Wheeler and the defunct Naval base at Pearl Harbor, just an empty campus with sturdy two- and three-story buildings. From the road it looked a good deal larger than Wheeler but not even half the size of the Pearl Harbor facility. There were no immediate signs of life, but there was one difference at Schofield Barracks—the main gate was wide open. A length of chain link fence blocked the main gate of Wheeler and some of the gates around Pearl Harbor were bricked shut.
“You think they’re expecting us?” I asked.
“Looks that way,” Freeman said.
We originally planned to drive by the base a few times before going in. I did not know about Freeman, but I felt a strong desire to avoid stumbling into a hive filled with Adam Boyd clones.
Seeing the gates left open did not deter Ray Freeman. He was not the type of man who looked for trouble, but he did not back down from it. He turned into the entryway.
Finding our way across the base was easy enough. Most of the roads were overgrown with weeds, but one artery was trimmed and neat. The sidewalks in this part of the base gleamed in the sunlight and the asphalt on the streets was not cracked. We passed a courtyard in which the weeds had only started to grow wild. The grass was knee-high and the trees wanted trimming. We found a parking lot in which the stalls were clearly painted, and Freeman parked.
“We’re supposed to go there,” Freeman said, pointing straight ahead. The building was three stories tall. Its architecture was a cross between twentieth century American military and sixteenth century Spanish, combining rounded arches and thick stucco walls. The sun was behind this building and its verandas were buried in shadow. Had there been lights on in the building, we would have seen them. The lights were off but the front doors of the building hung wide open.
“An open invitation,” I said, embarrassed by my own flat humor. Strangely enough, Freeman cracked a small smile at that lame joke. Freeman was a bright and dangerous man with absolutely no sense of humor. Perhaps jokes had to be obvious for him to appreciate them.
I had no gun, but Freeman had his pistol. He carried it in the open now, holding it in his right arm which hung almost limp at his side. He seemed so relaxed.
We walked straight toward the building and right in the door. Leaving the sunshine and entering this shadowy realm was like falling into a deep cave. Even after Freeman found a light switch and turned on the lights, the darkness in this building seemed almost palpable.
Most of the furniture had been removed from this hallway. There were no chairs. A large reception desk wrapped around one doorway. Bulletin boards lined one of the walls. One of these bulletin boards was covered with rows of eight by ten photographs, and the light from the windows reflected on their glossy finish. Beside the bulletin board sat a communications console.
We approached. Five rows of five photographs—twenty-five pictures in all—stretched across the bulletin board. Each of them was a picture of me. There were pictures of me entering Klyber’s C-64 transport right after the evacuation team brought it back into the hangar at the Dry Docks. There was a picture of me climbing out of my Starliner in Honolulu. There was one picture of me in the International Marketplace and two of me and Freeman outside of Sad Sam’s Palace—one of us entering and one of us leaving.
The last row of pictures had been taken this very morning. One showed me pissing outside the car. Another showed me taking a big bite out of my breakfast sandwich. The most recent photograph showed me opening the gate to the barracks. The picture was no more than five minutes old. Whoever placed these pictures had time to print this last photo and escape unnoticed between the time that I opened the gate and the moment we walked in the door. I had been under surveillance and never even knew it.
“I think they are sending you a message,” Freeman said.
The message was obvious. The photographer could just as easily have used a rifle with a sniper scope as a camera with a telephoto lens. I reached over and switched on the communications console. Che Huang’s face appeared on the screen.
“Are you always this slow, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“Hello, Huang,” I said. I was supposed to salute him at this point. Instead, I folded my arms and stared into the screen. “What do you want?”
I tried to sound calm, but my heart was pounding so hard I could hear it pulsing. Liberators were known for their primal instincts. Though I was still in control, I could feel the rage building inside me.
“I did not kill Klyber,” Huang said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Not by yourself,” I said. “You had one of your SEAL clones do it for you. I have the video feed from the Dry Docks security. You had a clone on the maintenance team that cleaned Klyber’s transport.”
“I did send a SEAL to visit Klyber’s transport,” Huang admitted. “He installed listening and video devices throughout the ship.”
“I didn’t hear anything about bugs on the transport,“ I said.
“Golan security didn’t look for surveillance equipment. Why don’t you have your friends back at the Dry Docks sweep the main cabin and the late admiral’s room for bugs?”
I did not respond.
“Think about it Harris, why would I kill Klyber?” Huang asked.
“Let’s see …petty jealousy, old rivalries, just for the fun of it, to take control of the Doctrinaire …”
“I already had control of the Doctrinaire ,” Huang said. “I took it away from Klyber during the summit.”
“I saw the summit. You didn’t have anything,” I said.
“You have been busy,” Huang said. “Perhaps you weren’t watching the feed closely. By the time the summit ended, I had command of the Doctrinaire and Klyber had nothing but the fleet.”
“Commanding the fleet isn’t being in control?” I asked.
“Once the battle begins, the ship’s captain makes the decisions. When historians discuss great battles, they won’t bother mentioning the fleet. Klyber knew it. I suppose you saw the old fool sulking once I got my suggestion past Smith and the rest of them. He did not say a word for the rest of the meeting. He just sat there, stewing. I got everything I wanted.
“History will remember me as the secretary of Navy who won the war. I’ll place Robert Thurston over the ship. He’ll be the commander who won the key battle. And Klyber …Klyber would have been a footnote. He would have been the man who brought up the rear.
“Harris, if you don’t believe anything else I tell you, believe this—I got what I wanted.”
Huang generally seemed on the verge of a tirade. Not this time. Now he explained himself with gloating patience. I thought about what he said. When the meeting ended, I met Klyber at the door. He looked tired and old and withdrawn. He talked about the members of the Joint Chiefs being too young to understand war, and he said that the fight would not be as easy as they thought.
“Why come to me?” I asked.
“I want your help,” Huang said.
“Help you?” I laughed. “Why should I help you?” Across the hall, Ray Freeman stood as still as a statue, watching Huang. His face showed no emotion. His eyes never left the screen.
“We both want the same thing, Harris. We want to kill the people who killed Klyber. Now that I have the Doctrinaire, I won’t be safe until they are dead.
“You can clear my name while you’re at it. You are not the only one who thinks I sabotaged Klyber’s transport. Once Smith and the other Joint Chiefs see the video feed with that SEAL entering the ship….” He shook his head.
“I saw your SEAL in the feed. I saw your spy, too,” I said.
“My spy?” Huang asked, sounding frustrated. The ragged edges of his personality began to show.
“What about Halverson? He was in the landing bay, too.”
“Halverson?” Huang repeated.
I did not like or trust Huang, but I had never known him to lie. He was a storm-the-front-gates type of enemy. He did not smile at people he disliked. If he wanted you dead, he let you know it. Except for his political maneuvering on the floor of the summit, I had never seen anything resembling subtlety from the man.
“Wasn’t Rear Admiral Halverson working for you?” I asked.
“Halverson?” Huang asked. “I wouldn’t work with an idiot like Tom Halverson. He was Klyber’s man.”
“He was your spy on the Doctrinaire ,” I said.
“Johansson was my spy,” Huang said. “I should have thought that was obvious. He sat with my staff during the summit. He flew back to D.C. with me. Leonid Johansson was my eyes on the project.”
“So what was Halverson doing by the hangar?” I asked.
“I’ve seen the security feed,” Huang said. “Halverson isn’t on it.”
“Perhaps you weren’t watching the feed closely,” I said, using Huang’s words against him to get under his skin. “When the janitors left the hangar, they passed Admiral Halverson. He was there having a smoke. He watched your boy come in, then followed him away from the hangar.”
“Halverson? He may have been there, but he wasn’t working for me,” Huang said. “It sounds to me as if you’ve got your first clue, Sherlock. What you need now is to follow up on it.”
This is the moment when Che Huang demonstrates his prowess in the dark arts of politics. It should be obvious that he is a political creature—an officer with no actual combat experience who has risen to the Joint Chiefs. Now that he has weathered the counter-attack about his clones, Huang draws back his fangs and sinks them into Admiral Klyber.
“Admiral Klyber, powerful as this super ship of yours is, do you really think it can handle more than five hundred enemy ships?” Huang asks this question in an uncharacteristically reasonable tone.
“No, of course not,” says Klyber. “We’ll need support ships, and the optimum situation is to engage no more than ten or twenty dreadnoughts per battle.”
“I really must congratulate you. You have created a fine weapon. I honestly believe that this ship will be the weapon that wins the war.”
Klyber only nods to acknowledge this compliment. His eyes remain coldly fixed on Huang. He does not trust the man.
“How would a fleet be able to support this ship? You haven’t talked the Linear Committee into funding a self-broadcasting fleet, have you?”
Appreciative laughter rings through the room.
“I have assembled a ready-alert fleet that will remain near the Broadcast Network. It’s a small fleet now, but we’ll find more ships for it. The fleet will have flash access to the broadcast computer on board the Doctrinaire . Anytime she self-broadcasts, her travel information will be relayed to the ships in the fleet.”
“But will they be able to get to her in time to assist?” General Smith asks.
“The ready-alert ships can override the Network. They can enter the discs and override the system to broadcast them directly to the Doctrinaire .”
At this point, I notice that both of the seats behind Klyber are empty. Admiral Halverson has gone somewhere. I check summit clock and note the time. It is three in the afternoon according to Washington, D.C., time, which is the clock used by the Dry Docks for the duration of the summit. Suddenly it occurs to me where Halverson has gone, and I feel a chill. He is at the hangar observing Huang’s clone as he plants the cable on Klyber’s transport.
“Brilliant,” Huang cheerily admits. “Absolutely brilliant. Of course, you’ll need a skilled administrator to handle the logistics.” Perhaps he means Leonid Johansson, but that does not seem likely. Johansson is barely paying attention to the proceedings at this point. He is leaning in his chair causally looking toward the back of the room. He is, in fact, looking at baby-faced Robert Thurston—the man who replaced Klyber as commander of the Scutum-Crux Fleet. Thurston’s brilliant battle tactics are legendary.
“Strategy and logistics,” Huang continues. “They seem to be the keys. A great battle strategist at the helm of the Doctrinaire and the right logistical support to make sure that the ship does not fail.”
“What is your point?” General Smith asks.
“It seems to me that the fleet admiral’s skills are wasted commanding a lone ship, even a great ship such as the Doctrinaire ,” Huang begins. I recognize that he is trying to take command of the Doctrinaire away from Klyber and I feel as if I have been slapped across the face. I cannot even imagine the thoughts going through Klyber’s head. “You are the highest ranking officer in the Unified Authority Navy. Your command should not be limited to one lone boat. You should be in command of a fleet.”
“I will not relinquish control of the Doctrinaire .”
“Of course not,” Huang says. “This is your project. The Doctrinaire is your ship. I am simply suggesting that you should command the entire fleet as well as the ship itself. If the Doctrinaire is part of a fleet, you should have the highest authority in that fleet.”
“Avoid all tangles in the chain of command,” General Kellan, the 39-year-old secretary of the Army, adds. “I can’t speak for you Annapolis graduates, but that was one of the first things we learned at West Point.”
“Of course you would use the Doctrinaire as your command ship,” Huang adds as slick as any salesman trying to close a deal. “She is your ship. The Doctrinaire will always be your ship.”
Like all of the senior officers in that room, I see nothing wrong with Huang’s suggestion, except that I do not trust the man who has made it. Klyber, on the other hand, looks beaten. He is the only officer at the table without an entourage, and he now looks small and lonely sitting at the table by himself. He looks to General Smith for support, but Smith does not seem to have a problem with Huang’s suggestion. In fact, one minute later, Smith agrees with it.
The remainder of the meeting is unspectacular. Neither Che Huang nor Bryce Klyber speak again. And when the meeting adjourns, Klyber is the first officer to reach the door of the conference room. He meets me at the door looking old and depressed.
The carrot that Bryce Klyber dangled in front of me, Che Huang delivered: an honorable discharge. With just a word from Huang, I was Lieutenant Wayson Harris, Unified Authority Marines retired. My permanent record did not even contain the word, “Liberator,” not that I doubted Huang’s intention to add it back the moment I caught up to Halverson.
“What are you going to do next?” Freeman asked me as we left Schofield Barracks.
“I need to pick up Halverson’s trail,” I said. “Whoever put the cables on Bryce Klyber’s ship was working with Halverson. That means Halverson was spying for the Separatists or the Confederate Arms.”
“It looks that way,” Freeman agreed.
“Last place I saw him was in the Golan Dry Docks. I figure that’s the place to start.”
Freeman dropped me off at Honolulu Airport, then went to return his rental car. I did not trust Huang. I would never trust him, but I thought this might be a good time to see if he had kept his word. Instead of going out to the field with the private planes, I passed through the tighter security at the commercial terminal where they had DNA-scanning posts for outgoing passengers.
The last time I had passed through one of these stations was just two days earlier, and I had been spotted as Wayson Harris the Liberator. This time I had no idea how the computer would label me. I might be an AWOL Marine or a Liberator or a dead Marine. As I approached the posts, I heard the quick blast of air as it wafted across the man ahead of me. I looked at the armed guards inside the station and wondered if testing my identity so soon was a mistake.
The guard on the other side of the posts, a civilian in an outfit designed to look like an old fashion police uniform, motioned me forward. As I stepped forward, I considered everything that would happen in the next three seconds. One of the jams would hit me with a burst of air. The other jam would inhale the air and any debris it shook loose. A bank of computers would scan my DNA. If the computer warned the guards that I was a Liberator in the Orion Arm …as I thought about it, being recognized here would be more dangerous than being recognized in the Golan Dry Docks. Here, in the Orion Arm, where Liberators were illegal, being spotted might be fatal. I was betting my life that Admiral Che Huang was a man of his word. What was wrong with me?
The guard, a grubby man whose shirt barely fit over his jostling beer belly, hardly noticed me as I stepped between the posts. He had a pistol. There was no bulletproof glass around this security station, but I noticed a dozen armed guards around the area.
A warm and humid breeze blew through the open-air lobby of the terminal. Most people stepped right through the posts, but I stood my ground waiting to see what would happen.
The security guard looked at me curiously. “You okay?” he asked.
I looked around the station, other people were watching me curiously as well. No one reached for their guns. “Yes,” I said. “I’m more than okay. I’m street-legal.”
The man gave me a suspicious look, but what could he do? His high-tech security equipment had searched both me and my identity.
I walked across the terminal and followed signs to the private pilots/corporate jets terminal. Nobody stopped me when I asked for my plane, and I left Hawaii without incident. I was for all intents and purposes, a free man.
This time I would use the Broadcast Network. I saw no point in advertising that I still had my hands on a self-broadcasting transport. If Huang knew I had a self-broadcasting ship from the Doctrinaire , he would demand its return and possibly keep the ship for himself. After all, the good will that now existed between us only went so far.
I put in a call to Colonel McAvoy, the head of security at the Golan Dry Docks as I started the long trip to Mars. I asked him if he had searched Klyber’s C-64 for listening devices. He said, “No,” but said that he would and that he would get back to me shortly. The Unified Authority’s only fleet admiral had died on his watch. McAvoy’s career would be as good as over unless he caught the murderer. Ten minutes after we hung up, Colonel McAvoy called back to say that he had located a wide array of spying devices.
“That clears Adam Boyd,” I said.
“Spying devices clear the guy?” McAvoy asked.
“I talked with Huang,” I said. “Boyd was Huang’s man, and Huang admits having Boyd plant the devices. Why bother planting mikes and cameras on the ship if you plan to kill the passengers?”
“Spying as an alibi for murder,” the colonel observed. “That’s a new one.”
“I need whatever information you can get me on the rest of the maintenance team,” I said. “And get me anything you can on Admiral Halverson. I need to know where he went when he left the Dry Docks, and I need to know if he went alone.”
One of the niceties of crossing such highly trafficked airspace as the lanes between Earth and Mars was that you did not need to pilot your own ship. With thousands of ships traveling at millions of miles per hour in a relatively small pocket, collisions would be inevitable without computers seizing control of every spacecraft. Pilots who refused to relinquish control were given mere moments to turn around before squadrons were scrambled from Mars Station to shoot them down.
Now that I was a legitimate citizen, I chose the conservative route. I logged my travel plans into the Mars traffic control computer and allowed it to schedule my route through the Broadcast Network. From here on out, I would not need to touch a flight stick or turn a knob until the Network spilled me out a few minutes from the Dry Docks.
I leaned back in my chair and stared out the window at the endless blackness of outer space. Stars winked in the distance. Out here I could see the colors of the planets. Jupiter, a dust-colored marble with horizontal stripes, loomed off to the right. Mars, not really red but tan with a rust-colored patina, floated in the darkness dead ahead.
I looked back at the dimly lit cabin behind me. The passenger seating was no more comfortable than my pilot’s chair, but I liked the idea of leaving the cockpit. Taking my mediaLink shades, I slipped into the first chair behind the cockpit and reclined it as far back as it would go.
The top story of the day was Bryce Klyber’s funeral. Several sites, both civilian and military, showed the service in its entirety. The faces of the guests taking up the front two rows of Arlington Chapel were remarkably similar to to those sitting around the table at the summit. Smith and the other Joint Chiefs were there along with their aides. In enlisted man lingo, “There were so many stars and bars in that funeral you would have sworn you were touring a flag factory.”
Huang was there. I expected him to have a secret grin or at least the smug sneer with which he customarily greeted the world, but he did not. Huang stared straight ahead at the glossy black casket that lay on the stand. He did not look arrogant or satisfied. If anything, he looked worried.
“Hello, Judas,” I said when I saw Captain Leonid Johansson was there as well. Captain was a much higher rank in the Navy than it was in the Marines. But even as a Navy captain, Johansson looked like a piker in this setting. The chapel was filled with admirals, generals, and famous politicians. The Joint Chiefs and members of the Linear Committee sat on the front pew. I looked for people who might be Klyber’s family and saw no one. After the service, as I filtered through ancillary stories, I learned that Klyber had never married. He’d outlived his siblings. Except for the Navy, he was alone.
In the grand tradition of Washington D.C. funerals, this service droned on and on. I wondered if I would reach Mars before it ended. First there was some dreary organ music. Then a Protestant minister stood up to speak. The man gave a thirty-minute sermon over the dead body of a devout atheist. I imagined Klyber’s ghost rising from the coffin to say, “Listen to this rubbish, not over my dead body.”
After the sermon came the eulogies. I thought military men kept their speeches short, but General Alexander Smith of the U.A.A.F. went on for forty-five frigging minutes. Next came two of Klyber’s pals in politics. I expected them to drone on and they did not disappoint.
A small red emergency beacon flickered on and off at the bottom of my vision. By flicking my eyes at the flashing symbol, I brought up the call.
“Harris, are you seeing this?” Freeman asked.
“Seeing what?” I asked, though I really wanted to say, “Ray, nice to hear from you. Yes, the flight has been good so far. And how are you?”
“Gateway Outpost is under attack,” said Freeman.
I knew Gateway. It was a habitable planet in the area where the Orion and Sagittarius arms met. The space around Gateway was a high-security zone even though Sagittarius and Orion were the only arms that remained fully loyal to Earth.
Both the Central Sagittarius Fleet and the Inner Orion Fleet patrolled that area. As I considered this, I realized it could take days or weeks before ships would arrive to help Gateway. The Inner Orion Fleet patrolled a channel that was 10,000 light years deep. The Central Sagittarius Fleet covered an area that was more than 30,000 light years. Getting to a planet like Gateway would only take a couple of minutes if either fleet happened to be near the Broadcast Network. It could take weeks if they were in deep space.
Without saying a word, I switched to the Galactic News Service. The GNS was an organ of the Unified Authority internal structure and a propaganda machine, but it offered the most up-to-the-moment information. GNS reporters traveled everywhere, including planets that had declared independence from the Republic.
The picture before my eyes was one of grand destruction. The legend on the screen said, “New Gibraltar” in light blue letters that seemed to glow over the pitch-black sky. New Gibraltar was the capital city of Gateway. Gateway Outpost, the local Marine base, was on the outskirts of the city.
In the center of the picture, a dying Marine base crumbled before my eyes. Its three green particle beam cannons fired into the air lighting up the midnight sky. On a major base like this Gateway Outpost, there should have been a hundred cannons. No buildings remained on the streets around the fort. Flames danced on the shattered remains of what might have been hotels and business centers. The fort itself, a five- or six-story affair, was shrouded in darkness. Sections of the outer wall had fallen.
A red beam, as wide around as a highway tunnel, flashed down from the sky. It seared one corner of the fort. Cement exploded into smoke and flames and another cannon went dead as more of the wall tumbled to the ground.
“When did this happen?” I asked.
As if hearing my question, a tickertape image along the bottom of the screen appeared. “Live Feed.”
“The attack started a couple minutes ago,” said Freeman.
There was movement on the street near the base of the fort. Twenty men, maybe as many as thirty, skirted around the remains of blasted buildings and wrecked vehicles. They were on foot, running quickly, and hiding behind cover. “The scouts have arrived,” I said.
“It has to be a demolition team,” Freeman said. “There aren’t enough of them for anything else.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“The Pentagon won’t speculate until after the battle,” Freeman said. “I’m guessing they’re Mogats. Amos Crowley is probably someplace nearby coordinating the attack.”
Freeman and Crowley had history, and Freeman wanted to settle that score. He wished he was in New Gibraltar, I could hear it in his voice. Freeman may have considered himself a mercenary, but he mostly collected bounties. Crowley was the prize he wanted most.
The majority of the Marines in the base must have been dead or wounded. However many were left, they did not put up much of a fight as the commandos closed in. Somebody managed to mount a machine-gun nest on the wall and a perforated line of tracer fire rained down into the street. A commando fired a shoulder-mounted rocket at the nest. The rocket streaked through the air leaving a trail of glare and smoke. Dust clouds exploded out of the wall where the machine gun had been. The tracer fire stopped.
The commandoes divided into teams that now stormed ruins of the fort. They sprinted the last yards to the base, dodging around holes and debris and overturned cars in the near darkness of the night.
I viewed all of this knowing that I was connected to these events and yet somehow I felt detached. What did I care if the Republic fell? The only people I ever considered friends were in the Unified Authority military—Bryce Klyber and Vince Lee, my old buddy from the Marines. Klyber was dead, of course, and I had not heard from Vince in years. Last I heard, he was an officer in the Scutum-Crux Fleet.
Using an optical command, I brought up an “On the Spot” audio analysis.
“Enemy ships continue to batter the city of New Gibraltar from outside Gateway’s atmosphere while enemy troops now storm the Marine facility. Reports suggest that there may be as many as ten battleships attacking the city.
“In recent months, Gateway has functioned as the central base of operations for several raids into the Perseus Arm. This attack may be retaliation for …
“We have a report that several ships from the Sagittarius Fleet have broadcasted into the Gateway System and should arrive shortly.”
On the screen, the commandoes turned to retreat. They backed away from the fort and headed toward a single transport under the cover of a bullet and rockets barrage. The last of the commandos boarded and the shooting stopped. In the distance, the firefly glow of armored transport rockets vanished into space.
“The Moga …
“Watch the fort,” Freeman interrupted me.
The Mogats had placed High Yield radiation bombs around the walls of fort. These bombs burst, flooding the streets with a dazzling blue-white display that seemed to burn into my eyes. The effect of having my shades go stark white then black was like being blinded. For a moment I sat in that plush cabin thinking my shades had died, then I realized that the site I had been watching was no longer in operation.
Normally a wing of three Air Force F-19 Falcons guarded the Mars broadcast discs. As my Starliner approached on this visit, however, I saw two squads of five fighters circling the area.
“Starliner A-ten-twenty-thirty-four, be advised that Mars Station is on high alert. Do you copy?”
“Aye,” I said. “I copy.”
“Due to heightened security, disc traffic is slow. We are requesting that pilots return home unless they have urgent business. Please await instructions while I access your travel file.”
Considering the attack on Gateway and the importance of the Mars broadcast discs, I thought that ten F-19s was pretty skimpy protection. The Army base on Mars had some pretty hefty cannons, but after seeing the destruction of Gateway Outpost, ground cannons no longer seemed like an effective deterrent. I joined the queue of ships waiting to approach the broadcast discs. The line was at least twenty miles long. Hovering above the line, like a trio of vultures, were three fighter carriers.
Mars did not have a fleet of its own. These ships had to be on loan from the Earth fleet. Since capital ships travel a maximum speed of thirty million miles per hour, the trip from Earth to Mars would be anywhere from three to five hours depending on where each planet was in its orbit. Even a five-hour trip seemed short compared to the twenty hours it had just taken me in my Starliner.
“My records show that you are traveling to the Golan Dry Docks. Is this correct, Starliner A-ten-twenty-thirty-four?” the traffic controller asked. “The Golan facility is a maximum security facility. What is the purpose of your travel?”
“I am working for the Joint Chiefs,” I said.
There was a short pause. “Starliner A-ten-twenty-thirty-four, you have been cleared for immediate broadcast. We have dispatched an escort to take you to the front of the line, sir. Please follow your escort.”
In times of emergency, the military ran the Broadcast Network. The man on the other end must have been Air Force.
As I approached the broadcast discs, the tint shields came on and I could no longer see out the windows of my ship. The tint shields had to be thick to protect my eyes from the blinding glare that poured out of the discs when they discharged their electrical currents. Sitting in my pilot’s chair, I watched the slow approach of the two Falcons on my radar. In another moment, the radar would go blind and I would see the glare of lightning so bright that it penetrated the tinting across the Starliner.
In the last moments before my radar went out, three fighters glided alongside my ship. My Starliner must have looked like such a relic compared to those ships. The F-19, designed for space and atmospheric combat, was probably the sleekest fighter in the U.A. arsenal. It had an elongated fuselage that looked like a cross between a stiletto and a dart. Its wings were razor thin but strong enough to handle atmospheric maneuvers. These jets would outpace any fighter in space and fly circles around any attacker that tried to touch down in an atmosphere like Earth’s. The F-19 was the pride of the Air Force.
“Hello, Starliner A-ten-twenty-thirty-four,” one of the fighter pilots said. “Why don’t you follow us, sir?”
This, of course, was fighter pilot humor. The Mars flight computers had complete control over my cockpit. I could not even shut down the power to my engines without asking permission.
A squadron of Tomcats circled the Golan Dry Docks and the nearby disc station. Two battleships were moored nearby. Golan was indeed on high alert. After identifying me and scanning my plane, traffic control brought me in through a partially sealed aperture and armed guards walked me to the security station.
The last time I passed through the posts at this security station, I was identified as Lieutenant Wayson Harris, “Marine on the lam.” This time I was a retired Marine and I was coming to visit the head of Golan security, Colonel Clarence McAvoy.
I handed my papers to the guard and walked toward the post. The Dry Docks’ high alert had brought out the brass. An Army major sat with civilians and enlisted men on the other side of the bulletproof glass. The light on the inside of the booth was bright. After the gloom of the hangar, it made me squint. This, I suspect, was intentional: it’s hard to shoot accurately when your eyes have not adjusted.
“Step forward,” said the guard on the other side of the posts. For all I knew, this was the guy who pulled the gun on me the last time I passed through. He was Army. He wore combat greens, and his M27 was strapped to his belt like a side arm.
I stepped forward.
The corporal snapped to attention. “Welcome to the Dry Docks, Colonel,” he said in a loud enough voice for the people behind the glass to hear. I looked over and saw that even the major now saluted me. I returned the salute and moved on.
“Colonel McAvoy is expecting you, sir. He left word that he wanted to drive you to your meeting personally.”
“Very well,” I said, still trying to figure out how I could have suddenly become a colonel.
McAvoy pulled up in his little base cart—an electrical scooter with a top speed of fifteen miles per hour. “Colonel Harris?” he asked in a voice drenched with mirth. “You’ve gone through the ranks more quickly than any soldier I have known. Weren’t you a Lieutenant last time I saw you?”
“I retired after that,” I said.
We shook hands. “Well, come on Colonel,” McAvoy said. “I thought I should roll out the red carpet for you, just in case.”
“In case of what?” I asked as I climbed into the cart.
“In case you’re on the Joint Chiefs next time I see you.” He started the cart and rolled into the service hall. “Your pal, Huang, called for you. He told me to have you call him the moment you landed.
“You heard about Gateway, right?”
I nodded.
“Bastards,” McAvoy said.
“Colonel?” I asked.
“Welcome back, Harris. You’ve been recalled to active service, and as a colonel. I never thought I would see a clone make colonel, but desperate times call for desperate measures.” Huang looked more tired than he had at the funeral. Dark bags had formed under his dark brown eyes. No trace of that cocky smile showed on his face.
“And the reason for this?”
“Clearance, Harris. Only officers with the rank of colonel or higher are cleared to view the information I’m going to show you. Don’t worry about the commission, I don’t want to leave you in the Corps any longer than I need to.”
Still an anti-synthetic prick, I thought to myself, but I was glad the change was not permanent.
“I don’t suppose you can guess how long the siege on Gateway Outpost lasted?” Huang asked.
I took a moment to think about this. “I watched the feed,” I said. “It was fast.”
“Real fast,” Huang agreed. “No guesses?”
“No,” I said.
“Eight minutes,” he said, a disapproving expression on his face. “Almost to the second.”
“I must be missing something,” I said as I tried to figure out why he mentioned this.
“Shit, Harris! You’re supposed to be bright.” Huang no longer looked tired or disappointed. Now he looked disgusted. His eyes closed to slits. He put a hand to his temple, brushing aside the short brown hair.
I thought quickly. What was so important about eight minutes? It showed a certain level of efficiency. Whoever planned the attack had done a superb job combing out the logistics.
“Eight minutes, Harris. Eight, specking minutes. Eight minutes, the amount of time it takes GCF ships to power-up and self-broadcast. You couldn’t figure that out on your own? Judas in heaven, what did Klyber see in you?”
I wanted to tell Huang to speck himself, but I agreed with him. I should have seen it. I said nothing.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the video feed of the ground attack,” Huang said. “You haven’t seen this.”
Satellite video showing the surface of Gateway appeared in my mediaLink shades. The full name of the planet was Gateway Kri—the term kri designating that the planet had a terraformed atmosphere. In truth, the planet looked a lot like Earth with icy poles, large oceans, and green continents.
The screen flashed as lightning danced across the scene. I saw the four battleships from the Galactic Central Fleet only as silhouettes against the glowing surface of the planet. Their hulls looked black as coal. They were shadows. Had the satellite not been orbiting above them, they would have been invisible against the backdrop of space. From this perspective, the ships looked like giant sharks circling their territory.
The ships had a deformed diamond shape. They were long, not wide, with blunted corners at their bow and stern. They dove down to the edge of the atmosphere and green dots flashed on the surface as the Marines down below fired cannons at them.
“Concentrated firepower, the mark of a well-trained commander,” Huang said. “All of their laser fire hit within a five-block radius. Whoever led this assault knew his tactics.”
In the bottom corner of the screen, a small window showed the Gateway outpost. Laser blasts rained down on the fort and the streets surrounding it. As the attack began, the cannons along the walls of the fort flashed like strobe lights. That cannon fire slowed as hit after hit tore into the walls of the fort.
“Now this is interesting,” Huang said. “The GCF ships appeared one minute ago to the second. In that minute, the Marine base has focused all of its weapons on the capital ships …standard procedure.”
The screen froze. What I saw was one flame. It looked no more significant than a firefly as it penetrated the atmosphere.
“That is the transport. It will take that transport precisely one minute to land.”
The little flame seemed to shrink to nothing as the transport raced down to the planet. In the small window on my screen, New Gibraltar wilted quickly. The invading ground force stormed the fort, then ran off. At six minutes, to the second, the bombs went off creating a bubble of white light that seemed to grow like a blister out of the side of the planet. The flash was clearly visible from space.
At seven minutes the transport rejoined the battleships. One minute later, the entire invasion force was gone.
“They call themselves the Hinode Fleet,” Huang said.
“Hinode?” I asked. I had heard the name Hinode before, on Ezer Kri, the planet with the large population of Japanese descent. That was what the locals called their capital city. The real name of the city was Rising Sun, or Hinode in Japanese.
“The Japanese population on Ezer Kri called their capital city Hinode. Do you think there is a connection?” I asked.
“I don’t want to guess,” Huang said. “That’s your job.”
“My job?” I asked.
“Yes, Colonel, your job. It came with the commission.”
“What about finding the guy …?”
“The Republic is under attack. We knew about the Mogat instigators and the Confederate Arms. We knew about the GC Fleet. You get to figure out why GCF ships are using a Japanese name.”
“Doing a little scouting before you take them on in the Doctrinaire ?” I asked.
“Yes,” Huang said as if answering a challenge. He took a moment to gather his thoughts before speaking in a calmer voice. “You get me movements and capabilities on that fleet. You get me a profile on the officers commanding those ships. You help me win this war.”
“And the guy who killed Klyber?”
“Harris, once that fleet is destroyed, you can do whatever you want to Halverson. Get me what I want, and I will make you a very rich, very retired Liberator clone.”
“I’ll need help.”
“You want men?”
“One,” I said. “I have a partner.”
“Freeman,” Huang said. “I’ve heard about him.”
“He’s going to need access to whatever information you give me. And he won’t help me if it means he has to enlist.”
“Do what you need to do. Tell who you need to tell. Spend whatever money you need. I’m giving you a blank check.”
“Okay,” I said. I did not like the idea of working for Huang, but we both wanted the same thing at this moment. He wanted a clean shot at the Hinode Fleet. I wanted the men who killed Klyber. Both of us wanted Halverson.
“Do you know where to start?” Huang asked. I could see him beginning to relax. The plane of his shoulders softened. “Where will you start?”
“New Columbia.”
“Why New Columbia?” Huang asked.
“Because Jimmy Callahan is a two-bit know-nothing, and Billy the Butcher Patel tried to kill him,” I said, only just beginning to put the pieces together.
“What are you talking about?” Huang asked.
“There’s a two-bit thug on New Columbia who thought he was a big fish,” I said. “He sold supplies to the Mogats or the Confederates and thought he was a player. He tried to sell out Patel and nearly got himself killed. Remember the Safe Harbor bombing? Callahan was the one they were going after.
“I figured they wanted to make an example out of Callahan, but now I have another idea.”
“What does this have to do with Klyber?” Huang asked impatiently.
“I never stopped to figure out how they knew about Callahan…. Klyber was the one who sent me to meet with him. If Klyber knew about it, Halverson must have known as well. Halverson must have known something else, too, like where Callahan was getting his supplies.”
“Did Patel get him?” Huang asked.
“I locked him up in the local Marine base brig for safekeeping,” I said.
“You think he knows something?” Huang asked.
“He’s too small-time and too stupid to have set up a deal with the Confederates himself. Somebody with bigger ambitions must have used him as a middleman. I need to sweat the name out of him.”
“You’d better get there quickly,” Huang said. “Intelligence says the Confederates are going after New Columbia next. We’re already evacuating the planet.”
Huang thought for a moment. “I told you you’ve got a blank check on this. You can spend whatever you need. I’ll send you whatever equipment you need. And one more thing. I don’t think I need to tell you this, Harris—but just in case …feel free to kill anyone that gets in your way.”
And they say that clones have no souls , I thought to myself. I wondered if they would have allowed Huang on a Catholic colony like Saint Germaine.