The Clone Redemption

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Under normal circumstances, the pilot of the first transport was a talkative man. So were the two technicians. But flying a mission they all expected to result in their deaths, they had lost interest in chatting.

From one million miles out, planet A-361-B looked like a very small moon. Each hour brought them two hundred thousand miles closer to their destination, and from their current position, the pilot could see that the planet was the color of platinum rather than the dull white of a moon.

He sat alone in the cockpit. They did not need to spend these hours flying to A-361-B; the S.I.P.s could have traveled to the planet in one-one-hundredth the time. The pilot thought about mentioning that fact to his crew, then decided against it. What if the aliens tracked the S.I.P.s to their transport? This way, maybe they could buy themselves a few additional hours to live.

His orders were to fire the pods from just outside the ion curtain. Yamashiro’s orders made it clear that firing the pods from a million miles away wasn’t an option, however much it was a temptation.

In his heart, though, the pilot knew it didn’t matter. Nothing would penetrate the tachyon shell. It disassembled waves. Sound and light dissolved into it. The S.I.P.s would hit the outer side of the sleeved atmosphere and explode. Maybe the ion curtain would suck the energy out of them, then repulse them.

The few times the pilot peered out of the cockpit, he found his technicians sitting along opposite ends of the same kettle wall. They could have been talking over the interLink, but he doubted they were.

The pilot made no effort to control the flight. He’d switched the computers to autopilot and spent the time slumped in his seat, reviewing his life. He thought about his failures and successes, remembered his parents, relived the pain of his young wife’s death, and wondered what life might have been like had she had lived. He had no children.

From five thousand miles away, planet A-361-B filled the cockpit’s windshield. He realized that he didn’t see the planet, just the “sleeve” that had closed around its atmosphere. From the outside, it looked like a solid layer, like someone had dipped the planet in white gold.

“We’re here,” the pilot told the technicians. “We’re almost in position. Let’s make this quick.”

He did not want to die, though having accepted that his death was imminent, it did not scare him as it had back when he began the flight. Since leaving the Sakura, he had gone through all the steps. Denial and anger came first but ended almost after takeoff. The bargaining stage did not last long because he had some measure of control over his fate. If the pilot turned the transport around, he would survive the mission and live as a coward. A man of duty, he preferred death over a life of shame …and maybe a short life at that. He’d seen what had happened to the Onoda, the Kyoto, and the Yamato.

The pilot did not believe in God, and the idea of an afterlife trapped in the Yasukuni Shrine held no fascination for him. Now, as he spun the transport so that the rear hatch faced the planet, depression and acceptance glided along parallel tracks in his head.

The pilot did not hesitate as he worked the controls. Maybe the aliens could target the oxygen in his armor, or maybe they would target the air in his lungs and sear him from the inside out. It no longer mattered. All that mattered was the mission, and the pilot would give his life and the lives of his technicians to see it through.

He switched off the controls for what he believed would be the very last time and walked out of the cockpit. In the kettle, the technicians had already loaded the S.I.P.s into the launching device but had not yet pulled the device into position. As the pilot watched from the catwalk, one of the techs hit the button to open the hatch.

Here it comes, thought the pilot. He was sure that it would be the moment, and he braced himself. A soft tremor ran through the belly of the transport as the thick iron doors slowly ground into place.

Standing on his perch above the kettle, the pilot could not see the ramp. His curiosity got the better of him, and he slid down the ladder. He had not turned off the gravity inside the transport, just notched it down to about one-third gravity level on Earth.

He touched down lightly on the metal deck, turned, and saw the far end of the ship. The rear hatch framed the view of A-361-B glinting like a giant shining sphere of molten silver. As the pilot watched, the technicians pulled the launching device along a rail that ran down the ramp. The device reached from the floor to the ceiling. It looked like a miniature Ferris wheel, with coffins instead of seats. When it locked into place at the bottom of the ramp, blocking his view of the planet, the pilot went even closer. In the distance, he could see the second transport still drifting into position, its rear hatch open.

From initiation to completion, the firing process took five seconds. Once the launching device was in place, a technician pressed a button, and the device fired the S.I.P.s into space. Knowing there was no point in trying to escape, the crew stood in place and watched.

They could not see the infiltration pods. Powered by field-resonance engines, the pods traveled the five thousand miles to the planet in a fraction of a second. Nothing happened. The S.I.P.s did not explode. The air in their rebreathers did not heat up to thousands of degrees.

They stood there, at the edge of the transport, staring out at the planet, realizing that nothing had or would happen. They would return to the Sakura having failed their mission and survived. The technicians slid the launching device back in place, and the pilot began the long flight back.