Steven Kent - The Clone Alliance

“I find it strange that the storage was empty and not destroyed,” Yamashiro said.

“What do you mean?” Brocius asked.

“How did a ship with an unused navigation computer find its way out of their docks?” Yamashiro asked.

“Who says it was unused?” Brocius asked.

“Then perhaps they erased the data from the unit during battle,” Yamashiro said. “Maybe that is why the ship was destroyed, the crew was so busy erasing information from the computer that they forgot to defend the ship.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brocius said.

“Ah, so I see. Maybe the crew had time to purge their navigation computer while a massive laser cut through their bow,” Yamashiro suggested.

“No one worries about computer maintenance during battle,” Brocius said.

“I agree,” Yamashiro said.

Brocius thought about this but said nothing. He was a career officer; politicians and diplomats infuriated him. He wanted to finish the meeting and leave as soon as he could. “As I understand it, you wanted to question Sergeant Harris about the video record?”

“My engineers have some questions,” Yamashiro said with a gesture somewhere between a nod of the head and a bow. He looked over and spoke quietly to one of the engineers in Japanese. The man took a remote from the table. He sat down, pressed a few buttons, and the lights went out.

On a wall screen, our approach to the derelict battleship played out in slow motion. Judging by the angle, this segment had to have come from my helmet. I was in the front of the sled and was ten inches taller than everyone else. The record had been edited so that it never showed the Boyd clones.

“Sergeant, were you able to see this damage up close?” the engineer asked. “You flew your vehicle through this breach in the hull?”

“Sure,” I said. “That should be in the record. We entered the ship through that breach.”

“Ah.” He grunted the word, affecting great surprise. “That was not in the record we received.”

Brocius fidgeted. “We edited the record slightly for security purposes.”

“We flew our craft through that breach. It was a ten-man sled…a very small craft.”

“But the hole was big enough for you to fly through?” the engineer asked.

Yamashiro’s engineers traded a few excited words. “I know you are not an engineer,” Yamashiro’s second engineer prefaced, “but could you tell if this damage was made by a single shot?”

“One swipe,” I said with absolute surety.

The feed on the screen froze displaying a straight-in view of the gash. I could see up three decks. I stood up and walked to the screen. The scene it displayed was dark except for the spotlights that the Special Operations clones used. “Can you make the picture brighter?” I asked.

Using gamma controls, the engineer bleached the picture on the screen. I studied the screen and realized that the unnatural lighting made details even harder to find. “Oh yes, this was a single shot,” I said.

“Do you want to know what I really think?” I asked. “I think that someone on the bridge lowered the shields.”

Admiral Brocius laughed. “Someone lowered the shields in a battle situation? That’s absurd.”

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” I asked.

“Go ahead, Sergeant,” Brocius said. His reference to my rank was meant to remind me of the limitations to my latitude.

“I think they meant to leave that battleship behind,” I said.

“You think they purposely sacrificed a battleship? Why would they do something like that?” Brocius asked.

“I must agree with Harris’s appraisal,” Yamashiro said. “When lasers hit ships with shields, they create small areas of damage as the shields fail. This ship should have several scorched areas along its hull from attacks penetrating its shields. Instead, there is this one large hole.”

“The Doctrinaire had lasers that would hit one side of a ship and shoot right out the other, shields or no shields,” Brocius argued.

“Maybe that was a particle-beam weapon prepared especially for the Doctrinaire ,” Yamashiro said. When you made a mistake, Yamashiro never came right out and told you you were wrong. Instead, he would say, “Maybe this…” then give the correct information without challenging the speaker.

In this case, he could well have told Brocius that he was making an ass of himself. The Doctrinaire was an ubership that the Navy had hoped would win the war. It had one-of-a-kind shields and weapons designed to sink entire fleets.

“Is your navy testing ships with the same experimental particle-beam weapons as the Doctrinaire in the Perseus Arm?” Yamashiro asked.

The room went silent. “Not likely,” Brocius admitted, clearly glad to back away from the discussion.

“This damage was done by a laser,” one of the engineers said. “As you can see along the edges of the gash, the armored plating has melted from heat.”

Brocius focused on the screen and did not speak. I could tell that he was a man who hated to be proven wrong; it must have felt too much like losing.

One of the engineers asked Yamashiro a question in Japanese. Once Yamashiro nodded approval, the man walked over to the screen. He turned to Admiral Brocius. “Admiral, the nature of the particle beam is that it strikes a fixed target and disrupts it. Maybe it is more like a shotgun than a knife.

“This breach is long and relatively straight. The laser that did this cut through the hull like a knife.”

“I am quite aware of the differences between a laser beam and a particle beam,” Brocius said. “You still haven’t answered the bigger question. Why would the Mogats scuttle a perfectly good battleship?”

Brocius paused for a moment to think. Revelation showed in his expression when he spoke again. “Better than good. You’re telling me that the only reason we managed to sink it was that they dropped their shields, right? That would mean that we don’t have any weapons that can get through their shields.”

“I saw the topside of that ship,” I said. “It was unmarked. Either that ship spent the entire battle floating over Porter’s head, or its shields blocked everything Porter fired.”

After this, the room went silent again. Finally, Brocius broke the silence with an officious question. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” said one of the engineers. “From what we can tell of the record, there were two broadcast engines on that battleship. There was a small engine still working. Is that correct?”

“That is what I saw,” I said.

“Ah, very curious,” the engineer said.

“Maybe the large one broke down a long time ago,” Brocius said. “Maybe that ship had always operated with a spare.”

“Maybe so,” Yamashiro agreed. He sat nodding, a solemn expression on his face. “We need more information. My engineers have told me that judging by its size, this smaller engine would not be able to generate enough of a field to broadcast a full-sized battleship.”

“Interesting theory. Is there anything else?” Brocius asked. When no one said anything, he left the room.

Several questions hung in the air.

“If we can’t wear down their shields, our ships won’t stand a chance,” I said quietly. “Did they have anything like this when you were on their side?”

Now that Brocius had left the room, Yamashiro finally produced a pack of cigarettes. He lit one. I could tell he had wanted that smoke all meeting long. “Harris, we never saw the Mogats produce any sort of military technology. They are a population of converts.

“From what we saw, they lacked the resources to manufacture this smaller broadcast engine. In my experience, there are few engineers or soldiers among them.”