Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“Worry about that later,” I said. The guards were back to missing me by five or six feet, all aiming at the same blank spot on the wall.

“I’m under fire here. How soon can you get the body out?”

“It’s out, sir,” Illych said, as casually as if he were talking about the weather.

He’d killed the pilot, stolen his clothes, and prepared the body to use as a decoy in a minute at most. I was impressed but did not feel like saying so. “Nice of you to let me know,” I said, looking for something to complain about.

“I just placed him a moment ago, sir,” Illych said.

“Who gets to play fox next?” I asked.

“Ready,” one of the SEALs reported.

I pressed the button on the jamming device. Now I had to stay out of sight and hope the Mogats were every bit as dumb as they acted. Somewhere below me, one of the SEALs shut off his stealth kit and entered the corridor behind the Mogats.

I’ve got your man, the Mogat captain radioed. He’s headed for the launch bay.

Springing to the ceiling, where they would be slightly less likely to spot me, I watched the Mogats leave. All the Mogats knew was that I had somehow vanished from their tracking devices. They did not know how to respond. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have known that I had jammed their security system. These idiots simply crawled out from behind their cover, shrugged their shoulders, and started back to their post, apparently convinced that I had found a passage between decks.

Illych was right. These guys should not have been winning the war.

I found an open duct and crawled into the ventilation system. There I waited as Illych and his team carried out their plan. Illych, wearing space gear belonging to the recently deceased Mogat pilot, would crawl back into the cockpit of the Mogat transport. Another SEAL would lead the Mogats to the body of the pilot and initiate a firefight. Though he had orders not to, the SEAL would probably kill a few of the Mogats for the fun of it.

Once the firefight got hot enough, our boy would offer them their pilot dressed in SEAL armor as a target. He would hold the dead pilot up for them to shoot. If they did not blast the decoy in the head, our SEAL would do it himself. All the proprietary technology in SEAL armor was located in the helmet. The SEALs would not allow a working helmet to fall into enemy hands.

As soon as the Mogats managed to kill their already-dead pilot, our SEAL would push the corpse out into the open and slip away unnoticed by all.

These tactics would not have worked had we been fighting a veteran army, but this was the Mogats. With their security sensors jammed, the Mogats would happily assume they had killed the lone intruder on their ship. Even if they continued looking for us, we could listen in on their conversations and avoid them. Sooner or later they would decide they had won the battle and leave.

Once the Mogats left, the only thing I would have to deal with was that I was stranded on a dead battleship in a deep-space graveyard with no way of contacting Earth.

In the same situation, Illych would have said, “No problem.”

“Well, they’re gone,” I said.

We stood on the bridge of the derelict battleship watching the Mogat transports rendezvous with their battleship. Two destroyers loomed in the background like guardian angels. Hundreds of twisted wrecks floated about the scene.

“Do you think they’ll be back, Colonel?” one of the SEALs asked.

“Sooner or later. We should be long gone by then,” I said.

“Do you think Illych will be okay?” the SEAL asked.

“You know him better than I do, but I think he can take care of himself.” I believed that. Master Chief Petty Officer Emerson Illych had proven himself in my book. Now that he was on one of the Mogat battleships, he would lose himself among the crew. What could he do once he reached their base? He seemed resourceful. All of these Boyd clones seemed resourceful.

“What now, sir?” one of the SEALs asked.

I told them about the broadcast engine and sent them out to find any other systems that might be online. I did not think they would find anything, but their helmets would record everything they saw. They might stumble across something without knowing it.

In the meantime, I remained on the bridge. I removed data chips from the navigation computer and searched for maps, charts, and anything else that looked valuable. I found nothing. The bridge had been stripped clean. No surprise.

The strange thing was, as long as the Mogats did not return, we could have lived on that ship for days. There was plenty of food in the galley, though I suppose we would have needed a pressurized and oxygenated chamber in which to eat it. Since our suits had rebreathers that recycled our oxygen, breathing was the least of our concerns. Things might get uncomfortable if anyone needed to take a shit; but I figured these boys could hold it together as long as they had to.

Ten hours passed before the Kamehameha sent a ship out to search for us. Wheels turned slowly in the Unified Authority Navy.

Upon returning to the barracks in Washington, DC, I went to my room and took a long, hot shower. I shaved. I tint-shaded the windows of my quarters, making the room as dark as night, stripped down to my underwear, and climbed into bed. I was tired, but sleep did not come easily. Those same questions echoed again and again in my brain. Why were the Mogats watching a derelict ship? What secrets did it hold? How far away were they when we entered, and how had they heard the alarms? What about that second broadcast engine? Nothing made sense.

Less than an hour after I climbed on my rack, I received a call on the communications console. A car had come to take me to meet Admiral Brocius at Navy headquarters. Considering where I had been and what I had found, I expected a lengthy debriefing.

“So where is your friend hiding?” an angry voice demanded as I climbed into the car. It was that same guy from Naval Intelligence, but no longer dressed disguised as a chauffeur. He wore the dress uniform of a lieutenant commander—two and a half stripes on his shoulder boards and a star.

“Oh, it’s you,” I said as the car pulled away. “Couldn’t find Freeman?”

“I’m not joking around, Harris,” he snapped.

“Don’t you owe me a hundred bucks?” I asked.

“I’m going to give you one last chance to tell us where he is, Harris. After that, I’m hauling you in for a court-martial.”

“Does that mean I’ve been officially recalled to service?” I asked. Looking through the car window, I watched monuments and marble buildings shoot by as we weaved our way through traffic. We had already entered downtown DC.

“You’re not on active duty yet,” the driver said.

“Then you can’t court-martial me,” I said.

“Get specked,” the driver said.

“And you owe me a hundred dollars.”

“Why the speck would I give you anything, Harris? You’re a specking deserter.”

“Did Brocius send you, or are you just here for conversation?” I asked.

The driver did not speak again for several minutes. By the time he did, we were entering the main gate at HQ. This time, sounding more contrite, he said, “Look, Harris, if you know where Freeman is hiding, you might as well tell us. It’s only a matter of time until we find him. Help me out here, and maybe you’ll save us all some trouble.”

“Do you have my money?” I asked.

Still twisted around so he could look at me, the guy stretched out his right leg and dug his wallet out of his pocket. He opened it and fished through a wad of money. “Here,” he said, sneering as I took the bills from him.