The Clone Redemption

CHAPTER FIVE

Only the captains of the four ships saw the video feed; Admiral Yamashiro would not risk showing it to anyone else.

They met in a conference room on the command deck of the Sakura, Yamashiro’s flagship. First they watched the mission through Illych’s eyes—video feed recorded by the camera in his visor. The master chief petty officer had not known it, but the commandLink broadcasted his entire mission to the transport. Communications transponders on the transport relayed the signal back to the fleet.

The captains saw the bleak landscape and the giant silos. They watched in silence as Illych scraped ice and analyzed it. A timer in the corner of the screen showed that the SEALs had been on the planet for ten minutes and seventeen seconds when the light appeared in the sky.

Yamashiro stood at the front of the room. He said, “Matsuda thinks the aliens detected the infiltration pods the moment they entered the atmosphere.” Matsuda Takashi ran Fleet Intelligence.

“How could they have done that?” asked Captain Yokoi Shigeru. “We cannot track those pods. How would the aliens track them?”

Yamashiro ignored the question, and the video feed resumed with Illych telling his men to take positions. When Humble spun around to fire rounds at the silo, a small window appeared in a corner of the screen. The window showed the scene through the late Chief Petty Officer Humble’s eyes as his bullets exploded against the silo’s icy surface.

“I wish he had tried a laser and a particle beam as well,” said Takeda Gunpei, the only captain with an engineering background.

Captain Miyamoto said, “Good point. You should tell him if you see him.” They all knew that the SEALs did not return; but Miyamoto Genyo was a hard-ass, an old-style Japanese military man who never smiled and had no sympathy for weakness. “You may soon get your chance.”

The feed showed the globe of light with creatures forming inside it and the ion curtain forming across the sky. The transmission ended, but the video feed continued. The screen showed the planet as seen from the stealth transport that launched the pods.

The image on the screen looked like a barren planet partially dipped in white gold.

“The ‘sleeving’ process went quickly,” said Takeda as he watched the shiny skin move across the atmosphere.

A jolt ran across the planet, and the ion curtain dissolved, revealing a partially imploded planet. A flat and fiery dent showed on the otherwise-iron-colored globe. With the planet’s symmetry broken, it looked as though the stress of its own rotation might cause it to come apart. “The kage no yasha detonated their ejector pods,” said Miyamoto, a smile of admiration on his face. “I am glad we gave them a traditional farewell.”

Miyamoto was the captain of the Onoda, a battleship named after a Japanese soldier who fought in the Second World War. At the end of the war, Onoda hid in the jungles of the Philippines for twenty-nine years rather than surrender. Like the man for whom his ship was named, Miyamoto held those who died in battle in high regard.

“So we have destroyed an alien way station on an obscure planet. What have we learned?” asked Yamashiro.

“We know they can detect the pods,” said Takahashi Hironobu, captain of the Sakura. Takahashi was Yamashiro’s son-in-law.

Yamashiro grunted, a sound that might have signaled agreement or disgust. “We have been searching their galaxy for nearly three years. Why has it taken the aliens so long to detect us?”

“They don’t have a navy,” said Captain Yokoi. As the youngest of the ships’ captains, he generally remained quiet during staff meetings, but this time he spoke up. “Maybe they did not view us as a threat because we were in open space.”

“We have entered their solar system. They won’t ignore us anymore,” said Miyamoto.

Though he seldom agreed with the “old man,” Takahashi agreed with Miyamoto this time. He said, “If they detected the SEALs, they must know we are here as well.”

Admiral Yamashiro’s manner remained gruff, even when answering his son-in-law. He said, “That is a possibility. What do you suggest?”

“We must proceed with caution. They may attack at any time,” said Takahashi.

Two of the other captains, Yokoi and Takeda, agreed. Looking around the table, Takahashi could see it in their expressions and their posture. Takeda sat perfectly erect, an excited expression on his face. Captain Yokoi turned toward Takahashi and gave him a furtive nod.

“Cautious, yes, but not timid like frightened mice,” growled Miyamoto. The oldest of the ships’ captains, he often harped about honor and the Japanese way.

Takahashi sighed. Three of the four captains agreed, but democracy did not exist in the Japanese Fleet. Admiral Yamashiro placed more weight on Miyamoto’s opinion than the opinions of any other officer, and Yamashiro’s decisions were the law.

“We need to divide the fleet. If our ships travel as a pack, an attack on one ship could destroy us all,” said Takahashi. He looked at Yokoi and Takeda for support, but they did not meet his gaze. Takeda, an older man with white hair along his temples, stared down at the table. Yokoi now stared up at Yamashiro, ignoring the rest of the room.

“Lone ships lose battles that fleets might win,” said Miyamoto.

Yamashiro grunted his approval. He did not smile, though.

You used to smile, Takahashi thought. Back in the days before the aliens and the Mogats, you used to smile. Yamashiro Yoshi had been a politician back then, before he appointed himself admiral of the fleet.

Having spent the last three years searching Bode’s Galaxy, the Japanese sailors had no way of knowing that the Avatari had returned to the Milky Way. The last outdated intelligence they heard was that the Unified Authority had won the battle for New Copenhagen, and the aliens had left the galaxy. They did not know that the Avatari had returned and incinerated New Copenhagen and Olympus Kri. They did not know that the Unified Authority had abandoned its military clones and that the clones declared a civil war.

“Now that we have destroyed A-361-F, the next closest planet is A-361-D,” said Yamashiro.

“What about A-361-E?” asked Yokoi.

The name of the solar system was Bode Galaxy A-361. A-361-F, the planet Illych and his SEALs destroyed, was the outermost planet in the system. A-361-E was the next planet in terms of distance from the center of the solar system.

“It’s on the opposite end of the solar system,” said Yamashiro.

“Admiral, why bother with the outer planets at all? We should bypass the outer planets and attack the planets closest to the star,” said Takeda. “The aliens will be on the planet that is the same distance from this star as Earth is from the sun.”

“That’s quite a gamble,” said Admiral Yamashiro. “Why should we take such a risk?”

“When the aliens entered the Milky Way, they only attacked the planets we ourselves would inhabit.”

Miyamoto leaned forward so he could face Takeda. The old warhorse and the officer with the background in engineering, they were opposites and adversaries at every meeting. Takeda was slender, dapper, a man in his fifties with an interest in science. Miyamoto, who trained in the traditional arts of Judo and Iaido, was squat and powerful. His uniform barely fit over his massive shoulders, chest, and neck.

Miyamoto said, “The Avatari are miners, Takeda-san. They do not populate the planets, they conquer, they mine. Though a man would want to collect the content of a gold mine, he would not necessarily want to live in it.

“If we proceed to an inner planet, and they have bases on A-361-E or A-361-D, we could find ourselves attacked from every side.”

“All the more reason to split up the fleet,” said Takahashi. “If we send one ship to each planet, we can search the solar system in a single day.”

Miyamoto clapped his hands, and said, “An excellent idea. We send one battleship to each of the remaining planets; and when one of them does not return, we will know where the aliens are hiding.”

As the meeting ended, Yamashiro cornered Takeda Gunpei, the only one of the captains with a background in engineering. He fixed Takeda with a businesslike glare, and the two men sat silently as the other officers filed out of the room.

“When that pod exploded, was it as powerful as a nuclear bomb?” asked Yamashiro. He claimed no understanding of science or engineering. His background was in politics.

Before joining the Japanese Fleet, Takeda, who was nearly as old as the admiral, had worked as a professor of space travel and engineering. Now he slipped comfortably back into the role of the teacher. He smiled, and said, “It all depends on the size of the bomb. Judging by the damage, I would estimate that the explosion from the field-resonance engine was forty or fifty times more powerful than any nuclear explosion on record; but that is just a guess.”

Though he tried to hide it, Yamashiro could not hide his shock. Both fear and anger showed in his normally unreadable expression. “We have five thousand of those vehicles aboard our ships.”

Takeda smiled, and said, “There’s no reason to worry about the pods, sir. They pose no more threat to your ships than the torpedoes in the armory, maybe even less of a threat.”

“Twelve of them destroyed an entire planet,” said Yamashiro.

“The energy they produced destroyed the planet. The pods themselves are nothing more than a generator and a battery. When the battery is overcharged, it explodes. Without the charge, the battery is of little consequence.”

“Perhaps we should store them in our transports,” Yamashiro said.

Calm as ever, Takeda pointed out that the Fleet did not have enough transports to carry five thousand S.I.P.s.

Yamashiro took in the information and nodded, all the while toying with the idea of dumping excess pods in space.