Steven Kent - Rogue Clone

The inside of the kettle was anything but luxurious. The walls, ceiling, and floor were bare, unadorned metal. A line of benches ran along the wall of the cabin offering enough seating for maybe one-quarter of the men on this flight. Safety harnesses hung from the ceiling. In the case of an emergency, men would strap themselves in with these harnesses and hang from the ceiling like butchered cattle in a slaughterhouse freezer. The harnesses became rigid when in use, preventing the men from swinging into each other.

In a transport like this, passengers were nothing more than cargo. There were no windows and no way of knowing what was happening outside of the ship. The launch from New Columbia was smooth enough, but moments after we took off, the pilot signaled us to harness ourselves in.

Batt Wingate and his commando-escort sat somewhere in the front of the kettle. I could not see them. It did not matter. I knew they were inside and besides, there was only one way off this bird. Once we landed, I would slink toward the door so that Wingate would pass me before he left. The mood in the kettle changed as the men fastened themselves in. Now, nobody spoke. Most of the men hung absolutely silent. A few smoked cigarettes and spat their smoldering butts to the floor.

Outside the ship, the gears of war were turning. Swarms of fighters might spot us and attack as we left the atmosphere and entered the blanket of space. A lone fighter could destroy a transport, but it would take multiple missiles. These ships looked and flew like pregnant seagulls, but they had powerful shields and thick armor. This ship could survive a direct hit from a particle beam cannon. If one or two fighters homed in on us, we would likely survive the attack long enough for the Confederates to send help.

I looked at my watch. Just under four minutes had passed since the bombardment began. By my best guess, the GCF ships had been in the area for six minutes and would broadcast out in another two.

A missile slammed into our shields and the transport shuddered. The red lights blinked out for several seconds. In the darkness, men gasped but no one screamed. The atmosphere was tense but not panicked.

Another missile slammed into the shields sending the transport skidding sideways. It was a blow, a force that struck quickly and vanished. A few moments passed and we were struck by a particle beam. The walls of the kettle began vibrating. At first they shook, and then they convulsed in short fast shakes that seemed to tear the metal plates around us.

The lights went out again. This time they stayed out. I heard heavy breathing. The shuddering continued for no more than three seconds, but it seemed like minutes. I heard an occasional whimper, then somebody yelled, “Shake ’em and bake ’em!” It was a dumb joke but it broke the tension. Relieved laughter filled the cabin. A moment later the red lights came back on.

In times of danger, I had the Liberator combat reflex that flooded my blood with a hormone made of adrenaline and endorphins. Everyone else on this ship turned to desperate humor to distract themselves. I did not need it. A warm, comfortable feeling spread through my body, a sense of power and mental clarity. I was not in control of the situation, yet the hormone made me feel as if I were.

Another missile struck the ship and the kettle rattled.

“Knock, knock,” some man yelled. I could not see who.

“Who’s there?” responded nearly every man in the cabin, and the men burst out in hysterics.

Inside joke, I guessed, and not a very good one.

And then the ride was over. There was the loud clank of metal dropping on metal as we lowered into a landing pad inside some GCF ship. The whining growl of straining motors echoed through the kettle as the heavy iron doors slid open and the hangar bay came in view.

I, of course, was still hanging from my harness. When my harness released me, I pushed through the crowd and hid near the door.

Granted, I did not see the space battle as it took place, but I had time to study it at length over the next few days. What I saw was the work of genius.

The first GCF ship to arrive in New Columbian space broadcasted in alone. It was a cruiser, the smallest class of ship in the GCF Fleet. It carried a crew of 130 men and, among other things, a fleet of three transports.

The captain of this ship played an interesting gambit. Instead of broadcasting his ship a few million miles out and risking remote radar detection, he used the Broadcast Network as camouflage. His ship materialized so close to the reception disc that the U.A. radar system recorded the anomaly caused by his ship’s appearance as a hiccup in Broadcast Network radiation. His ship was as black as space, making visual detection unlikely. To use an antiquated phrase, the cruiser flew in under the radar.

If the ship’s arrival near the Broadcast Network had disrupted the Network, the cruiser would have been quickly detected. Some kind of modification in the cruiser’s engine prevented the disruption, and the ship was never spotted.

This cruiser parked itself five hundred miles above Safe Harbor. It launched a single transport and waited.

So, was this lone cruiser picked up by radar? Nobody knows and the equipment that would have recorded the readings was destroyed during the ensuing battle. Somebody knew the space around New Columbia very well. The cruiser stopped in a blind spot—a seam between two different radar systems. There it stayed until the battle was over.

About the time that Colonel Wingate left Fort Clinton, the cruiser radioed the rest of the fleet, and that initiated the attack. Fifteen GCF ships broadcasted into New Columbian space—a slightly larger attack force than the one that sacked Gateway. There would be no missing the anomalies caused by fifteen GCF ships broadcasting in at the same time.

The Air Force responded by sending up all of its F-19 Falcons. The fighter carrier and destroyers guarding the discs also moved into position. Had the GCF ships been of recent design, this might have been an even fight—a fifteen-ship armada comprised of destroyers, cruisers, and battleships against nearly 400 fighters, two destroyers, one fighter carrier, and ground cannon. But the Joint Chiefs were not looking for a fair fight.

Hoping to rout the enemy, the Navy had an additional fleet of ships waiting near a set of broadcast discs. The moment the battle began, the plan was to feed these ships into the Network, and in less than sixty seconds, the U.A. Navy would have twenty more ships in New Columbian space.

But the Navy had to deal with the bottleneck of using a single reception disc. The GCF Fleet had no such restrictions. As the first of the Tomcats bore down from space and the Falcons flared up from the atmosphere, fifty additional GCF ships broadcasted into the battlefield.

The video feed from the battle looked like a misprint. So many anomalies tore into the open blackness that it looked like the fabric of space had begun to boil. Feathery white lines flashed and crisscrossed. Circles of light appeared from which shadowy black forms seemed to glide.

A dozen GCF battleships coasted into place in front of the broadcast disc and formed a line. Other ships parked behind the first waiting for a turn. When the first U.A. carrier emerged from the disc, the GCF ships opened fire as it materialized into space.

The hull of the carrier flashed and ignited. The tip of its wing sheered off and webs of flame danced along its shell. That was the worst of the spectacle, I think. Flames cannot exist in the vacuum of space. Those flames were feeding on oxygen pouring out of the ship.

Only two or maybe three fighters made it out of the launch tube as the carrier staggered forward. An enormous fireball burst out of the tube and dissipated. Two battleships left their place in the firing squad and followed the dying fighter carrier, bombarding her with bright red laser fire. In another minute, the hull cracked and spokes of flames shot through. It looked, for a brief moment, as if the ship had a yellow and orange aura that vanished as quickly as it appeared. Then streams of debris gushed out of those ruptures in place of the flames, and the lifeless ship floated sideways and drifted into space.