The Clone Redemption

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

We searched the space lanes and found only a few U.A. ships. The Unifieds had six Perseus-class ships in the area. These were older ships, the same make as our ships. They didn’t pose any threat at all.

The Unifieds might have had spy ships watching us; but just as Andropov had said, their fleet had gone.

I sat in a conference room with Cutter. We had an audio link to all the top officers in the fleet. Cutter repeated everything I had told him, then said, “I’m open to suggestions.”

Several officers mumbled indistinct answers, but no one spoke up.

Cutter looked at me and shook his head. “It’s hard to know what to do when you don’t know what you’re up against.”

We were just off the bridge of the Alexander, a recently refurbished ship that still seemed only partially ready for battle. The engines worked fine. As far as I could tell, the shields worked right. Maybe it was just my nerves.

“If he has some kind of superweapon, why doesn’t he fire it?” asked one of the disembodied voices.

“Could be short-range,” said another.

“Or proximity-based,” said another. “They could have laid mines. If he salted the space lanes, he’ll need to keep his ships out of the area.”

“He knows we’re not going anywhere,” I said, “not unless he hands over the keys to the Mars broadcast station.”

Cutter interrupted me. “The station is gone. There’s no trace of it.”

“They must have destroyed it,” I said.

“I don’t think so. There would still be wreckage unless they towed it away,” said Cutter.

“So we’re stuck here,” I muttered. “What are they doing?”

Cutter said, “You know, he could be bluffing. It’s always possible that we caught the bastard with his pants down, and he’s trying to stall the attack until his fleet returns.”

“If it returns,” I said.

Several people asked, “What?”

“Holman stole the shield-buster torpedoes from the ships we destroyed when we took the barges,” I said. “Andropov thinks we have them. The bastard’s in for a surprise if he sends his fleet to Terraneau. Holman’s still got them.”

“Holman’s battleships are carrying shield-busters?” asked Cutter.

I said, “Not his battleships, his fighters,” and I told him about my meeting with Mars. I went over it quickly, leaving out the shit about Mars praying for our salvation.

Cutter listened carefully and smiled. “Brilliant strategy. He’s letting the Unifieds go after the nest when they should be chasing the hornets.”

“He still only has three carriers,” said one of the ships’ captains.

“That’s why it works,” Cutter said in a voice so bright you would have thought we’d already won the war. “The Unifieds will go after the carriers first. They’ll home right in on them. Once they do, Holman will slip his fighters right past them. He’s going to hit the bastards in the gut, and they won’t know where it came from.”

“They’ll figure it out before he finishes off their ships,” I said.

“Those fighters are going to give Holman the element of surprise, and they’ll be hard to track. The Unifieds won’t know which fighters have shield-busters and which ones have lasers,” said Cutter. “One thing about Holman—he always thought ahead of the curve.”

“That doesn’t help us,” said one of the captains.

I disagreed. Every ship Holman sank in the Scutum-Crux Arm was another ship that would not return to Earth. If he sank enough of them, we might be able to take the Sol System uncontested …except that still left the question about Andropov’s superweapon.

Cutter sat silent while the voices on the communications console debated scenarios and outcomes. I sensed uncertainty as I listened to them.

One officer suggested we approach slowly and prepare to retreat. Another wanted to send two battleships to probe their defenses, then regroup. It sounded intelligent.

Cutter responded quickly, interrupting the man. He said, “No. We go in hard and fast, and present a moving target. Whatever they have, it’s got to be a surface-to-space weapon. They might have cannons, but it’s probably rockets. It’s almost sure to be rockets …a lot of rockets. That’s why they haven’t rebuilt their Navy, they’ve been allocating their resources to a rocket defense. We need to go in fast, land our Marines, and get the speck out of there.”

That ended the debate.

Cutter finished by saying, “God help us if I called this wrong.”

Lieutenant Mars couldn’t have said it better.

I told Freeman about the meeting, and he said, “Missiles, not rockets.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“They recently built three high-security missile bases around Washington, D.C.”

“There must be more,” I said.

“Just those three.”

“Why would they build all of them in Washington?” I asked.

Freeman glared at me. “This is the Unified Authority.”

“Yeah. The whole damned planet belongs to the Unified Authority,” I said.

“Where are you planning to attack?” asked Freeman.

“The capital,” I said.

He was right. They were right. It did not matter where else we attacked, the war would be decided on the eastern seaboard of the former United States. In their minds, no other target was worth invading. It was the only target in my mind as well. The Unified Authority would remain in place so long as Washington, D.C., remained.

“Damn it,” I said.

Freeman watched me silently.

“How dangerous?” I asked.

“They’re big bases. They have millions of missiles,” he said.

“So we’re screwed,” I said.

“I can shut them down.”

He was a skilled saboteur. I asked, “Do you have a way to hack into their system?”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t even try; the security is too solid.”

“Do you know how to break into the bases?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I thought he’d probably come up with something elegant, some imaginative loophole. I was wrong. He said, “I bought warehouses near each of the missile bases and filled them with bombs.”

I had to laugh. “You said you weren’t sure which side you were going to take,” I pointed out.

Freeman looked down at me, blinked once, and asked, “Do you want me to tell you about the bombs I set up next to your bases?”