The Clone Redemption

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The two lead transports carried infiltration pods but no SEALs to fly them. On this mission, they would use the S.I.P.s as weapons instead of transports. On this mission, the S.I.P.s were both the message and the messenger.

Two technicians rode in the kettle of each of the transports. The technicians did not need to open the pods to program them. They prepared the pods using special computer stations. Though the techs had never programmed pods to overcharge and self-destruct, they had been trained in the operation of field-resonance engines. They jacked computer lines into the pods and typed in instructions.

Now that the pods would be used as torpedoes, the techs loaded the S.I.P.s into the launching device with new reverence. Once they had the pods in place, they returned to their programming stations. The displays on the computers glowed like neon signs in the darkness of the kettle, their low glow showing on the wall in a twist of white and red and green.

Young and tired of exploring Bode’s Galaxy, the technicians normally complained and commiserated as they worked. They criticized officers and gossiped about shipboard romances. On this day, though, with high-ranking officers listening in from nearby battleships, the technicians only spoke to report their progress.

The field-resonance engines required two minutes and twenty-seven seconds to build an explosive overcharge. That left the techs and the transport pilot with a chilling two minutes and twenty-three seconds in which they would sit with the S.I.P.s as they morphed into bombs.

Admiral Yamashiro ordered the attack, and Miyamoto Genyo, captain of the Onoda, coordinated it. Sitting on the bridge of his battleship, grim-faced, his eyes dark as flints, his lips pressed so tightly together they formed a single flesh-colored line, his shoulders tight, he watched the satellite feeds, ready to pull the plug on the operation if something went wrong.

“Flight path programmed,” reported a technician on the transport preparing to attack the moon known as A-361-D/ Satellite 1.

“Flight path programmed,” reported a tech on the transport preparing to attack the moon known as A-361-D/Satellite 2.

Miyamoto gave the order that everyone anticipated and feared. Speaking in Japanese, he said, “Charge the infiltration pods.”

Time seemed to freeze at that moment. For Miyamoto, who had never put much thought into the length of two minutes, the next one hundred and forty-seven seconds felt like a lifetime. From the bridge of his ship, he watched the larger moon, studying the curve of its surface, and he wondered what mysteries it held.

Miyamoto looked at the timer and saw that only twelve seconds had passed.

No one spoke. The sailors manning the bridge of the Onoda remained silent. If the technicians in the transports had spoken, Miyamoto would have heard. He had a commandLink connection with the pilots of the transports as well.

Twenty seconds had passed.

Miyamoto watched an unenhanced view of the moon through a viewport. Seen from hundreds of thousands of miles away, its surface had no more features than a rubber ball.

Twenty-seven seconds had passed.

Miyamoto turned to his satellite feeds, his expression unflinching. Through the satellite’s mobile eye, he could count the pea-sized pebbles around the target. He could see the “deck” and the land around it. The satellite allowed him to zoom in close enough to study a grain of sand or pan his view out so far that he could peer down on an entire hemisphere.

He thought about Bushido, the Samurai code of conduct. The old captain organized his life around his own personal Bushido, letting it bind his thoughts as rigidly as any Christian monk had ever embraced the Ten Commandments. Even before the war, back when he lived on Ezer Kri with his wife, Miyamoto tried to live the detached life of the Samurai code. When he visited his children and their children, he had made himself gruff and distant and showed no more emotion than a stone in a river.

He knew that his sailors considered him cold and indifferent. He also knew about the Kabuki mask in the officer’s lounge, the face of a scowling demon that his officers jokingly referred to as Miyamoto-san.

The code was the stuff of legends and stories, a tradition so old that nobody knew how rigidly the ancients had lived it. Miyamoto’s New Japan was built upon such legends. And now, with the future of that New Japan hanging in the balance, Miyamoto Genyo was glad for the code.

When the timer showed that one minute and five seconds had passed, Miyamoto ordered the transport pilots to purge the air from the kettles and open the rear hatches. He gave the order in Japanese.

The pilots responded immediately.

This was the pivotal moment. By opening their hatches, the transports would nullify the stealth envelope that kept them hidden. If the aliens were watching, they would detect the transports, and they might attack.

Seconds ticked by slowly. One minute and five seconds became one-fifteen, and then one-thirty-five.

Takeda grimaced, and told the technicians, “Prepare to launch.”

He looked at the moon through the viewport, a silver coin in a velvet space. He looked at its image in the satellite feed and saw a desert pitted by craters and marked with a deck as flat as a dance floor.

One minute and fifty-two seconds. Fifty-three. Fifty-four. Fifty-five.

Miyamoto clenched his hands into fists and hid his fists by his sides so that no one saw him trembling. He felt the weight of humanity upon him, but his eyes remained fixed as he said, “Ute!,” the word that translated to the English command “Fire!”

Able to hold twelve stealth infiltration pods at a time, the launching device worked like the cylinder of a revolver. It fired its first pod, rotated twenty degrees, and fired the next one, then the next all in under a second.

Flying at top speed, without a human payload, the S.I.P.s could reach the planet in less than five seconds. Passengers slowed the pods down—not because of the added weight but because they were fragile. When the pods accelerated at top speed, the gravitational force inside the compartment was more than the human body could withstand. Possessing so much power that they seemed to bend the laws of physics, the S.I.P.s could decelerate so quickly that the force would turn human passengers inside out.

Moments after they left the transports, the S.I.P.s accelerated to ten million miles per hour. They dropped to the speed of sound as they reached their targets. One of the S.I.P.s reached its target. Two did not.