The Clone Redemption

CHAPTER TWENTY

Stealing the barges went smoothly. Getting away did not.

As I entered the cockpit, I heard our pilot say, “What the hell do you mean they’re off-line? No one shuts their reactors down.”

The nuclear reactors were made to run without interruption. The only time you shut onboard reactors down was for engine maintenance or to retire the ship. With the Avatari making their way across the galaxy, the Unified Authority could not retire the barges.

The answer came from a squawk box. “It’s not the reactors. We can’t engage the engines.”

“Why would they take their engines off-line?” asked the pilot, now sounding nervous.

“Maybe it’s a security measure,” the engineer said over the squawk box.

The pilot turned to me, and said, “We’ve got a problem, sir. The engines aren’t responding.”

I wanted to ask the bastard what he expected me to do about it, but I kept my mouth shut.

Like the rest of the ship, the cockpit was crude—not much more than a two-man booth with windows instead of walls. This bird did not have a wheel or a stick, just large touch screens for the pilot and navigator.

“There must be a security code. See if you can override it.” the pilot shouted into the console.

“How the speck am I supposed to do that?”

I had to remind myself that these were not real officers. They were enlisted men who had received minimal training when they were bootstrapped to officer country.

“Find the docking computer and disengage it,” the pilot shouted.

“If this specker has a docking computer, it’s going to be in the cockpit.”

“He’s probably right,” said the navigator.

The pilot played with his computer, then mumbled, “Specking hell. I found it.”

Now that he knew what to do, the pilot mumbled, “Disengaging docking buoys,” the floor trembled, and the barge hummed to life.

Then we pulled away from the buoy, and the barge went completely dark. There wasn’t any warning. One moment we were moving, and the next moment, the lights went out and the power shut off.

“What the speck just happened?” the pilot asked. I was not sure if he spoke to himself, to me, or to his engineers.

A moment later, the mission coordinator sent a message from the spy ship informing me that the power had died on all twenty-five barges. I stepped to the window of the cockpit and looked out at the row of darkened ships beside us.

Off in the distance, five anomalies appeared like small explosions—the Unifieds had broadcasted ships in to intercept us. They were tens of thousands of miles away, but the term “thousands of miles” loses its meaning when discussing ships capable of traveling thirty-nine million miles in an hour.

Using the commandLink in my visor, I told the mission coordinator, “We have a serious problem here. Have your engineers hacked into the broadcast station?”

That was the beauty of having a spy ship in your fleet. Somewhere out there, a team of engineers sat on an invisible cruiser as they broke into Unified Authority transportation computers.

Figuring that the security signal stopping our barges must be coming from the broadcast station, I said, “The Unifieds must have remote access to our controls.”

“I am aware of the situation,” said the coordinating officer. He sounded so damned cool. What did he care about the approaching ships? He was safe in an invisible ship.

“Are you also aware that half the damned U.A. Navy just broadcasted in to stop us?” I wasn’t scared. Hell, I was in the middle of a combat reflex; fear would have felt good at the moment. Frustration, on the other hand …

“They won’t attack, General. The Unifieds need those barges.” The bastard threw my arguments for launching this mission back in my face.

I looked out the cockpit and into space. The U.A. ships had already closed the gap and were hovering less than a hundred miles away. I could not see the ships themselves, just the goldcolored glow of their shields. The Unified Authority had placed their ships between us and the broadcast station. We were trapped.

“They have us cornered,” I told the officer.

“I have the situation under control,” he said.

Outside our barge, the Unified Authority continued to close in on us. Now I could see the shapes of their ships. They were long and narrow, shaped like daggers. They slowly inched toward us, circling the area like sharks smelling blood, evaluating the situation.

Our barges sat defenseless. We sat defenseless. They would not attack us with their cannons and fighters, but we weren’t going anywhere with our engines down and our power off.

“You better do something,” I said.

“Not yet,” he said.

“What the speck are you waiting for?” I asked, the beginnings of desperation sounding in my voice as I watched the U.A. ships wade toward us. I felt helpless. I felt vulnerable; but I did not feel afraid. I did not like the idea of being shot, but I feared failure more than dying. Pathetic as it sounds, I only cared about completing my specking mission.

“General, you do realize that the Unifieds may be listening in on our conversation,” the officer said.

The Unifieds had sent five ships to stop us, five capital ships. I could see them clearly. I could see the sharp tips of their bows and the flares from their engines. Only a few miles away, they drifted toward us, circling in for the kill. One of the ships lowered its shields and a line of transports drifted out from each of its landing bays.

The same lack of precautions that had enabled us to enter this barge would now work against us. In another five minutes, those transports would attach themselves to our barge.

The coordinating officer’s next comment came over the interLink on a frequency that every man on the mission would hear. He said, “Engage tint shields.” I obeyed, but I did not understand.

“Shit,” said my pilot, as he pointed out into space. He was not looking at the advancing Unified Authority transports or the battleships.

Behind the battleships, the Mars broadcast station flared into overdrive, its power glowing as bright as a star. It was closer to the Unified ships than I had imagined and moving in fast with threads of lightning flashing across its dish.

I did not know how they accomplished it, but somehow our hackers had freed the station from its orbit and sent it flying in our direction. In another moment, its anomaly would destroy the Unified Authority’s self-broadcasting ships. Ships with built-in broadcast engines need to avoid broadcast stations because exposure to an externally generated anomaly overloads their broadcast generators. The anomaly destroyed the U.A. transports as well.

And then the juice from the broadcast station engulfed the barges. I saw the lightning through my tint shields, jagged, dancing slabs of white fire that wrapped around the cockpit, then vanished. When I lowered my tint shields and looked out into space, we were orbiting Gobi.

Moments later, the spy ship materialized. I leaned against the cockpit wall and let out my breath. Using my commandLink, I asked, “Did we get any of their ships?”

Admiral Jolly answered. He said, “We got all of them, General.” He sounded ecstatic. “We destroyed two self-broadcasting destroyers and three self-broadcasting battleships.”

Jolly paused for a breath or maybe to let me get in a word. When I did not say anything, he added, “I don’t know how many battleships they have left, but I bet they don’t have any to spare.”

We did not have any reliable intelligence about the U.A. Fleet, but it had to be small. The Enlisted Man’s Navy had taken a big chunk out of their Navy when they fought us at Terraneau at the start of our rebellion, and they’d not had a chance to rebuild.

“No,” I agreed. “Sooner or later, they’re going to run out of ships.”