The Clone Redemption (16 page)

“General, sir, may I remind you that you waited until the ship lowered her shields before you fired on her?”

“Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.”

“You do understand, sir, that the damage was not just to the hull? I toured that wreck, you blew the holy sh . . . snot out of it.” Mars must have really been frustrated. He'd started to say, “shit.” He never used profanity, it was not in his vocabulary.

He took a deep breath, then held it for a moment as he composed himself. Then he attempted to reason with me. “General, a stealth generator is a sophisticated piece of equipment. I couldn't make one if I had the cookbook and all the ingredients. If you handed me all the parts and the instructions and gave me a year to put it together, I would not be able to do it.”

“Good thing you only need to repair this one,” I said.

“From what I hear, repairing them is more difficult than building them, sir. It's not like they carried spare parts on the ship. If that generator is damaged, it's going to need replacement boards. We can't just make them, sir. It's not as easy as reloading a rifle.”

The thing about reloading a rifle was Mars's subtle way of reminding me that no matter how many stars I carried on my shoulder boards, I was still a dumb Marine.

“And then there's the broadcast engine. If the broadcast chain is damaged, I mean, General, the Corps of Engineers builds dams and electrical grids. You're talking about one of the most sophisticated . . .”

“Lieutenant, we're wasting time,” I said.

“No, sir. I am not wasting your time. I am trying to save time. I don't want to waste time trying to fix a ship that I can't possibly fix.” Mars and I had worked together in some tight corners. He was an honest man. That was one of the reasons he was still only a lieutenant. The officers who knew when to pucker and where to kiss generally rose through the ranks more quickly.

“The aliens are about to attack Gobi. If we don't evacuate that planet, every man, woman, and child on Gobi is going to burn. They're going to burn just like the people on Terraneau burned.

“I can't evacuate Gobi unless I steal the Unifieds' barges, and in order to steal them, I need a working spy ship,” I said. “I need that cruiser, stealth generator, broadcast engines, and all. Do you understand me?”

Then I said the phrase that officers use to end unpleasant conversations. I said, “You have your orders, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and he saluted. My demands were unfair; but if I played fair, millions of people would die.

 

While Mars worked miracles, I assembled guns and men and ships.

I hoped we would find the barges moored near the Mars Spaceport, sitting empty and completely ignored. More likely we would find them guarded by a skeleton crew, security men who would slow us down at a time when every second wasted would cost lives.

Marines knew how to steal boats. It was in our skill set, but there were better men for the job. I once worked with a team of SEAL clones, little wiry bastards who specialized in stealth. It was in their genetic makeup. The U.A. designed them to vanish into the shadows and kill without making a sound. Clones were tools, after all. “A tool for every job and a job for every tool,” right? We all had our areas of specialty. SEALs and Special Operations clones strolled behind enemy lines and did the dirty work. Marines ran the invasions. Soldiers held down the fort. I wished I had a company of SEALs for this mission; but the last I'd heard, they'd gone with the Japanese Fleet to Bode's Galaxy.

 

I studied a large holographic map of Mars—the planet, not the engineer. The map showed the planet with a blacked-out area representing the spaceport and the military base. Until we ran some sort of reconnaissance mission, we would not know the precise location of the barges or what kind of force guarded them.

When I explained my plan to the three admirals through the confabulator, Jolly drew in a hissing breath, shook his head, and said, “Risky tactics, General, launching a mission with no idea what you might be up against.”

Admiral Wallace, sarcastically referred to as “Warhawk Wallace” on the bridge of the
Bolivar
, took my side. He said, “You know, Admiral, they may damn well let Harris have the barges. We need them to rescue natural-borns.”

“Natural-borns who are loyal to the Enlisted Man's Empire,” said Jolly.

“True, but natural-borns nonetheless,” Wallace said. “It's a specking humanitarian effort.”

“Good point, Pete,” sneered Jolly. “Why don't we just ring up Andropov and ask if we can borrow his barges?”

Wallace said, “I checked the specking orbits. Mars and Earth are approximately eighty million miles apart. Even with their fastest ships, the Unifieds will take three specking hours to respond.”

“They have self-broadcasting ships, Admiral,” I said. “They'll need eight minutes to charge their broadcast engines. If we're not out of there after eight minutes, the shooting starts.”

“General, can you give me a ballpark on how much time you'll need to pull this off?” asked Jolly.

Think like a SEAL,
I told myself.
Think like a SEAL.
But the SEALs I knew would have calculated the mission down to the last millisecond before presenting it to command. Me, I ran calculations off the top of my head. I smiled, and said, “I'm thinking seven minutes and fifty nine seconds.”

“Now how the speck did you come up with that?” asked Wallace.

“Isn't it obvious?” asked Admiral Liotta. “That's one second less than it takes the Unifieds to charge their broadcast engines.”

If Lieutenant Mars managed to get that cruiser operational and had time to repair the landing bays, we could wedge twenty-one transports onto that one tiny ship. That meant that four of our transports would need to return to the cruiser for a second crew of Marines if we planned on capturing all twenty-five barges; and capturing every available barge was an essential part of the plan.

Capturing the barges would be easier than securing them. They did not have gun turrets, security doors, or other measures to keep intruders out. Having figured out that the aliens were coming to Olympus Kri, the Unifieds had slapped the barges together as quickly as they could. Dealing with external security measures did not figure into the equation.

Once we boarded the barges, it was a question of knocking out security inside the barges. Like I said, that was the easy part. Flying the ships out might be a different question entirely.

I said, “The Unifieds won't be expecting us. That should buy us a little time.

“If we broadcast in here,” I said, pointing at the side of Mars that pointed away from Earth, “we can use the planet to hide our anomaly from Earth. Assuming no one is out sightseeing on the far side of Mars, we should go unnoticed.

“If everything goes right, and they don't spot the anomaly . . .” I paused, superstitiously believing that I had just jinxed myself. “If everything went right . . .” Everything never went right. “Assuming they don't spot the anomaly, we should be able to approach the barges without being seen.” I traced a line around the planet.

“They'll pick up your cruiser when you launch your transports,” said Jolly. “You can't launch without lowering shields, and the transports won't be cloaked.”

He was right, and I admitted as much. I said, “Yeah, but by then it should be too late. If we maneuver the spy ship in close enough, we should have crews aboard every barge in three minutes.”

As long as the Unifieds did not catch us broadcasting in, we'd be able to slide right up to the barges.

Jolly held up a pudgy hand to stop me. He said, “General, even if you reach the barges, how will you get them out without a broadcast station?”

Our broadcast network extended only to the planets we controlled. It was the remnant of the old Unified Authority Broadcast Network, the pangalactic superhighway that had once linked Earth to all of its 180 colonies. Back in those days, the satellite broadcast station orbiting Mars was the linchpin of the Network. The Mogats destroyed it during the civil war, cutting Earth off from its colonies.

“The Unifieds launched a temporary broadcast station for evacuation. That was how they got the barges to Olympus Kri,” I said.

“And you think they will let you use it to steal their barges, do you?” asked Admiral Jolly. He had a point.

“I think we can commandeer it along with the barges.”

“You'll just hack into their security system, no problem.” Sarcasm oozed from his voice.

“Something like that,” I said. “Look, Admiral, the Unifieds aren't expecting us to enter their space. They're not going to have extensive security guarding that satellite.”

It was like breaking into a bank. There might be several layers of security, but they're all outside the safe. Once you get past the front entrance, the counters, and the door of the safe, you're in . . . right?

So much of my plan was based on guesswork, but we did not have much of a choice. If we'd had another week, we'd have had time to repair the spy ship and locate the barges. We'd have been able to breach their computer systems, too. In another week, the Avatari would incinerate two more planets. Millions of people would die. That did not seem to matter to the Unifieds. After evacuating Olympus Kri, they seemed to have decided that the only survival that mattered was their own.

“You're basing your plans on a lot of guesswork,” said Jolly. He didn't like the plan. I could hear it in his voice.

“Educated guesses,” I said. Putting him in charge had been a mistake. I would correct that mistake when I got back. I wasn't only the highest-ranking Marine, I reminded myself. I was the chief of the Praetorian Guard.
Who would I place in charge?
I asked myself. I currently had two officers to choose from, Pete Wallace or Curtis Liotta. Either might be better than Jolly, but not by much.

“I'm not inclined to authorize this operation,” said Jolly.

“Really?” I asked, planning out the admiral's early retirement in my mind.

“You're taking an unreasonable risk,” said Jolly.

“Admiral, doing nothing would be an unreasonable risk. The aliens are going to attack Gobi in two days. How many people do you expect to evacuate without the barges?”

“That is not the point, General. Civilian casualties are not our only concern.” He paused, looked at his notes, and said, “Once you launch your transports, how long will it take you to board the barges?”

He thinks he's in charge,
I told myself.
I can pull the rug out from under this bastard at any time.
But I still played along. I did not have time to retire his ass at the moment. I was in the Orion Arm, he was in Perseus, and I could not spare an hour to fly out and find him, so I decided to play nice for now.

“We just went over this, Admiral. I told you it should take no more than three minutes to place teams aboard all twenty-five barges,” I said.

“Three minutes? That seems very optimistic,” said Jolly.

Three minutes was not optimistic; it was utter bullshit, but he didn't know that. I said, “It's a realistic estimate, sir. Remember, the clock doesn't start counting down until we start launching transports. Until then, the Unifieds won't know we are there. That means we can pull the spy ship right up to their docks.”

I could not tell if Wallace and Liotta agreed with him or realized he was a coward. Maybe they'd known he was a coward from the start. Whatever their reasons, they had become silent.

“Three minutes, is that really possible?” asked Jolly. He was starting to come around.

“Absolutely, sir,” I said, staring into his virtual eyes, willing myself to look as honest and sincere as any Marine in history. “If we catch the Unifieds napping, the entire mission will be over in eight minutes. We'll be done before their ships arrive on the scene.”

“This is all moot unless your engineers get that stealth cruiser going,” Jolly pointed out.

“Absolutely, Admiral. I wouldn't dream of running the mission without a working spy ship.” In truth, I had a plan that involved distracting the Unifieds by attacking Earth with one fleet while sending a second fleet to commandeer the barges. I did not think I could get permission for that plan. If it came down to stealing the barges without the spy ship, I'd begin the mission with a visit to Admiral Jolly ... then maybe I'd ask his replacement for permission to attack Earth.

 

Mars got the spy ship running.

While his men began work on the hull and the engines, he sent a message across all thirteen fleets looking for engineers with stealth-generator experience. Three men responded. Before Congress had banished us clones to space, they had worked as technicians in the lab that developed the stealth engines.

We were in business.

Walking through the corridors of the cruiser, I could see that the ship was still a wreck. Not having enough time to replace the ruined sections of the hull, Mars's engineers had patched the holes as best they could. Plasticized metal scabs marked spots where shrapnel had cut through the walls. Most of the holes were the size of a coin, but a few of the rips were so large you could drive a jeep through them.

Mars's engineers ignored fixes deemed nonessential to the operation of the ship. As I entered the second deck, I noticed that the lights were out. “You going to fix those?” I asked Mars. The surveillance and recon computers were on this deck. The engineers Mars had sent to hack into the broadcast station would work on this deck as well.