Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“What’s in engineering?” Illych asked me as we pulled our way across the deck. With no gravity to hold us down, it was easier to float than walk. We sprang from bulkheads and pulled ourselves along walls.

“The broadcast engine, for openers,” I said.

In truth, I think I had already started to piece some things together. I was a Marine, not a sailor; but I had seen some big space battles. I had a good idea of what happened to ships in those battles, and I had never seen a gash like the one on the belly of this ship.

Illych must have noticed it, too. “Do you have any idea what could have cut through a ship like that?” he asked as he peered down the well of the gash and into space.

“It had to be a laser,” I said. “Did you see the damage on the outside of the ship? The plating around the edges melted. Particle beams blow things apart; lasers cook their way through.”

“But this?” he asked. “It must have been some kind of new laser.”

“From what Admiral Brocius told me, the Outer Perseus Fleet doesn’t have anything new, just hand-me-downs,” I replied. “If you had some miracle laser, would you waste it out here?”

Illych said nothing. He might have nodded in agreement, but that gesture would have been lost inside his helmet. Trying to communicate by nodding or shaking your head was a rookie mistake made by people who had not acclimated to armor. When it came to combat armor, Illych came across as a rookie.

We headed down a corridor. Through the night-for-day lens in my visor, I saw the hallway ahead of us in blue-white and black. It was as smooth and as featureless as a sheath for a sword. The walls, ceiling, and floor were entirely untouched. There had probably been people in this area of the ship when the laser breached the hull. There may once have been bodies, chairs, and equipment around the hall, but all of that would have been flushed out along with the oxygen. The corridor ahead of us was chillingly immaculate.

“If they just had a run-of-the-mill laser, how did they make that hole?” Illych asked.

“Simple,” I said. “Someone on board this ship must have shut down the shields.”

Illych and I floated through the ship like superheroes flying through an abandoned city, stomachs down flying parallel to the floor. We passed hatches, some opened and some closed. Nowhere did we see any signs of life.

“Why would somebody lower the shields?” Illych asked. “That would be suicide.”

“I’m only guessing here,” I said. “I think one of their officers committed suicide and took the ship with him. This would not be the first time the Mogats sent a crew on a kamikaze mission.”

When they attacked the Earth Fleet, the Mogats destroyed the Unified Authority’s most powerful ship by broadcasting a cruiser into it. That was classified information. Illych could not have known about it.

“You believe that the entire crew of this ship willingly committed suicide?” Illych asked. He sounded skeptical. “That would have been hundreds of men.”

“You wouldn’t need a kamikaze crew,” I said, “just one man. Once the guy controlling the shields turns off the power, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the crew believes.”

“But they were winning the battle when this ship went down. They could have had the whole damned fleet on a platter.”

“Yeah,” I said, wondering why the Mogats would purposely lose a battle. A saboteur, maybe. But that did not fit. U.A. Intelligence had not penetrated the Mogat military. For some reason the Mogats had apparently sacrificed the ship and the battle.

We came to a companionway that ran between decks. Peering through a window, I looked into the shaft. “There might be air in here,” I said. Air in the shaft would present a hazard. The pressure from that air would send everything flying out at us the moment we cracked the hatch.

“May I have a try, sir?” Illych asked. I had already come to like working with Adam Boyd clones, these synthetic men created specifically for special operations. They moved carefully and deliberately. They observed their environment and took sure steps.

I pushed away from the hatch.

Illych replaced his particle-beam pistol in his belt and pulled out a tiny laser torch. It was a tool, not a weapon, though you could certainly use it to burn through an enemy in a pinch. Illych aimed his laser at the hatch and bored a pinprick hole. First the red dot appeared, then the beam intensified. The material of the door bubbled and melted away. Had there been oxygen in the stairwell, it would have leaked through the hole. Nothing happened.

“Looks like it’s safe, sir,” Illych said.

“Can you remove the hatch?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” Illych said. He slowly traced across the hinges. A minute later, he gave the hatch a tug, and it drifted out of our way.

Kicking off the walls, we dropped down the open companionway to a lower deck. Haphazard webs of icy black beads shimmered inside the shaft. With a light push, I shattered my way through them, not wanting to see what awaited me on the other side. The webs were frozen blood. Below me, looking more like deformed marble statues than human beings, were the bodies of three dead sailors. I passed over them and entered the vast cavern of the engine room.

Normal battleships needed huge generators to power their shields and weapons systems. Self-broadcasting ships required twice the generator capacity of their general-issue counterparts to power their broadcast engines. The engine room we now entered on this ship was twice the size of a basketball gym.

“Colonel, we may have a problem,” Illych said, interrupting my thoughts.

“What is it, Illych?” I asked.

“I just got a call from the guys on the bridge. One of their stealth kits failed.”

“Did the sensors spot them?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” Illych said. “Whether or not someone was watching is another question. They say they switched to a different kit quickly.”

“I better radio the pilot and have him keep an eye out for visitors,” I said. I did so, then went back to exploring the engine room.

The dead men inside the engine room were not dressed in pressure suits or space gear. When the laser sheared through the hull and the vacuum of space replaced their pressurized atmosphere, the blood pressure in their bodies burst through their skins. Blood vessels, veins, eyes, and skin all popped like balloons. The basic shapes of the men sprawled along the floor looked human enough, but it looked like someone had tried to peel their faces from their heads.

Large flaps of skin and tissue hung open from their heads and hands—the only fully exposed parts of their bodies. They wore jumpsuits with long sleeves. They wore boots. Who knew what I might find under their heavy clothes.

Without oxygen to cause soaking, the beads of their blood had penetrated their uniforms like water pouring through a sieve. The face of the man below me floated off his skull, his nose and mouth frozen but still recognizable. His burst eyes remained in their sockets looking like crushed white grapes. His lipless mouth grinned up at me.

During my days as a Marine, I’d seen worse. So, apparently, had Master Chief Petty Officer Emerson Illych. He quietly surveyed the area.

The engine room itself lay in ruins. Some of the equipment must have exploded before the air ran out. I saw scorch marks on the walls, and a few of the bodies bore signs of incineration. Looking around the room, I saw overturned desks and smashed computers. There was not so much as a working console in the entire vast cavern. Even the emergency lights in this morgue were dead.

Across the floor from me was a dormant broadcast engine of enormous proportions. Each of the brass cylinders stood thirty feet high. They were shaped like bullets but were the size of missiles.