Steven Kent - The Clone Redemption

“Now bring us around.”

Holman was a good officer, a careful officer. Firing the torpedoes would give away our position. By giving the order to “bring us around,” he was telling his helmsman to find a new place for us to hide.

We attacked that first ship from a few hundred miles out. It took the torpedoes a couple of seconds to cover the distance.

The moments passed slowly. Every man on the bridge stared at the viewport. My breath had caught in my throat.

The first torpedo struck, splashing a wave of electricity that arced along the shields—a gush of blue-white light flashed and vanished along the glowing golden sheen of the enemy ship’s shields. But the shields remained along the U.A. ship like a translucent skin.

Three seconds later, the red torpedo struck—a brilliant light that popped and vanished leaving the ship untouched.

“Fire another blue,” Holman barked.

“Aye, aye. Torpedo away.”

“Fire another after that. Helm, steer us below the target.”

The silence. The tension. The moment. I had no idea what was happening in the cargo hold/torpedo room; but on the bridge, the only people not sitting in stone silence were the officer steering the ship and Holman, who was telling him where to go.

I traced the small blue dots on the tactical display, then turned to the viewport in time to see the torpedoes hit their mark one right after another. The first pill struck, creating a flash that splashed across the shield. Before the first flash disappeared, the second torpedo renewed it. This time the blinding bright light engulfed the entire ship. Then the third torpedo struck. The torpedoes were powerful, no doubt; but so were the new shields on those ships. The torpedoes did damage, but they weren’t battering their shields as thoroughly as they had battered ours.

The tint shields spread, leaving the viewport as dark as a mirror in a room with no light, its shiny surface reflecting light from the bridge, but the viewport itself was opaque.

Holman shouted to his helmsman, “Hard about. Put us on top of them.”

Our torpedoes might or might not have destroyed the U.A. ship; either way she wasn’t moving. We could no longer see the scene on the viewport, the tint shields were too thick. The circle marking that ship on the tactical display remained as still as an island.

Our attack must have caught the other two ships unawares. All three ships remained perfectly still for half a minute then the navigator shouted, “Captain, two of the ships are approaching fast.”

While the ship we had hit remained listless, her mates circled the area, randomly firing lasers into pockets of space as they groped in the darkness to find us.

“What do you know; they can’t see through their own stealth technology,” Holman said.

“Did you think they might be able to?” I asked.

“They still might. They might also have a code that shuts down our generator.”

“To prevent someone from turning their own technology against them,” I suggested.

“Exactly right,” Holman said. “Right now, they’re looking for a needle in a haystack and hoping they’ll get lucky.”

“But they won’t?” I asked. Naval battles made me nervous. Sitting on a tiny ship hiding from two enormous ships had me on the verge of panic.

“They’d need to get very lucky. We’re a moving target, and we’re invisible. We’ll be safe as long as we don’t do anything that gives away our position.”

“What would give away our position?” I asked.

Holman met my gaze, paused, and said, “Launching a transport would give us away.” Then he turned from me, and said into his communications console, “Fire a red at the crippled ship.”

“Torpedo away, sir.”

“Fire another one.” Speaking in a cold calm voice, he said, “Fire another.”

“Aye, aye.”

“Helm, down and away.”

The tactical showed the U.A. battleships as shapes, not ships. The circles representing the live ships had been moving like the hands of a clock, circumscribing a circular pattern, firing lasers while sniffing for targets. Once we launched the torpedoes, both ships streaked in our direction.

The dot representing our ship scurried to safety as the first of our red torpedoes struck the target ship, then the second.

Moments passed, and the tint shields evaporated from the viewport. At first, I could not tell what I was looking at. The helmsman clapped his hands, and said, “Hell yeah!” Then everyone on the bridge cheered. The final torpedoes had penetrated the crippled ship’s shields.

The Unified Authority battleship sat battered and lifeless but not destroyed. She would not fly anytime soon. We would need to fire another torpedo to deal the fatal blow, but her shields were down. She had twists and cracks along her dagger-shaped hull. Lights still blazed throughout the ship, but the new torpedoes had ruptured the hull, not broken it.

Holman looked at me, and said, “We could finish her.”

“She looks done,” I said, not sure if the instinct that led me to say this had more to do with mercy or self-preservation. “After this point, it’s not combat, it’s murder.”

“That’s what they did to our ships,” Holman said.

“Yeah. They’re murderers.”

He turned to his helmsman, and said, “Power up the broadcast engine. We’re going home.”

“What about Solomon?” I asked.

“General, there are still two more battleships out there. They’re on high alert. They will destroy us and the transport if we try to launch.”

He was right. So were Liotta and Wallace. They’d been right all along. Seven million people would die on Solomon. We could not evacuate the planet. If we tried to warn the people, there’d be riots and chaos. Warning the people to go underground might save lives but not many. Most of the lucky few who found shelter underground would be sealed in once the heat melted the ground above them.

“We need to send a warning,” I said, though in my heart I had already abandoned the mission.

“Those U.A. ships can trace our signals,” said Holman.

I tried to convince myself that it was for the best. We could never have saved more than a small fraction of the population. By leaving them in ignorance, we would allow the people of Solomon to live their last few hours in peace.

They would not know they’d been incinerated until God told them what had happened. It wasn’t a bad way to go, I suppose; but I didn’t feel good about letting it happen.

On the surface, Freeman appeared to take the news about leaving Solomon with cold indifference. I told him about the Unified Authority ships and the battle, and he listened in silence. His expression remained impassive, as slack as a death mask. His eyes, though. His eyes bored through me.

If you could see into a man’s soul through his eyes, I thought I glimpsed the fires of Hell deep within Freeman. His skin was dark as wet stone. His head was bald and scarred. He’d abandoned a religious home for a life of battlefields and gunfights; now death followed him like a shadow as he returned to his roots.

“I asked Holman about warning them,” I said.

“The Unifieds would track the signal,” Freeman answered, speaking mechanically. “Even if they got the message, we wouldn’t save many people,” he said, parroting Curtis Liotta’s words. He paused, stared straight ahead the way blind men stare straight ahead, then he said, “Dust to dust.”

We stood together in the kettle of the transport, a large metal cavern with steel-girder ribs along its iron walls. Freeman wore his custom-made battle armor with his helmet off. I had come in my Charlie service uniform.