I sat on the edge of my cot, my legs dangling over the side. “So you really plan to attack Earth today?” I asked. “Doesn’t that seem a bit …suicidal? The
“I’m counting on it,” Halverson said with a bright air. “I should hope that the Unified Authority’s most powerful ship will come to protect its capital world. Believe it or not, Harris, we sped up our plans because of you.
“Ever since you arrived, we seem to have lost the element of surprise. So now, thanks to you, we have very little choice but to finish the war.”
“May I?” I asked, looking first at the remote display, then at Sam.
Halverson nodded. I stepped off the cot and walked over to the door of the cell. Kneeling rather than bending over, so that I could keep an eye on Sam, I reached through the bars and picked up the display.
The thing weighed no more than a pound. The visor itself was made of cheap, hollow plastic. The outside of the display was convex. The inside had two eyepieces surrounded by spongy padding. A black cable hung between the back of the visor and a U-shaped control pad.
“The display is monochrome, I’m afraid. It’s red against black. Old technology, but it’s the best I could find.”
“I can’t watch from the bridge?” I asked.
“Harris, I don’t know how you tipped Huang off, but resourceful as you’ve proven yourself to be, I wouldn’t trust you anywhere near the bridge.”
“So you think you can win?” I asked. “You have what …roughly six hundred ships? Didn’t the Galactic Central Fleet have about six hundred ships? That was before Thurston blasted four of them at Little Man.”
“Some of the fleet is too old or too badly maintained to fight.” Halverson continued to smile. “And they’ve shot down seventeen more of our ships since you came aboard, Harris. We’re down to five hundred and forty. Well, five hundred and thirty-nine.”
“Did you hear what Huang said about a fleet with no fighters?” I asked.
“That it’s like a boxer without a jab? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The man is a politician, not a sailor. He puts on a good show.”
“Not as good a show as Thurston, though,” I said. “You were crazy to kill Klyber. Did you really think you could stop the
“Harris, Bryce Klyber was a personal friend, but this is war. I hated killing Bryce, but I need Thurston in his place.”
“Thurston is a better strategist than Klyber ever was,” I said. “You were there when Klyber tried to match him in a simulation.” Days after Thurston replaced Admiral Absalom Barry as the commander of the Inner Scutum-Crux Fleet, Admiral Klyber challenged him to a simulated battle. Thurston read Klyber’s opening move and predicted his every step, forcing him into submission.
“Klyber was more dangerous for our purposes,” Halverson said. “I’ve served under both officers. Thurston’s style is tailor-made for us.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “Robert Thurston is the best commander in the U.A. Navy.”
“Under most circumstances,” Halverson said, his smile as unfailing as ever.
“But you didn’t need to kill Klyber,” I said. “Huang took the ship away from him at the summit. He gave Thurston the
Halverson’s smile faltered. “They moved Klyber to the support fleet,” Halverson echoed, and the pride and bravado vanished from his voice. “I learned about the transfer after the cable was set, but by the time I heard about it, it was already too late …too late.” He stood silently staring at me, then turned to leave. “Enjoy the show, Harris,” he called over his shoulder.
He and Sam left the brig; and once again, I was alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I had heard about strategic displays like the one Tom Halverson gave me. Sailors used to call them “red worlds.” This was not the obsolete strategic views replaced by the 3-D holographic displays used in modern ships. This was a portable display that officers could take into engineering or battle stations.
The visor was about three inches thick. Inside its housing was a laser that could draw objects in brilliant detail. The only problem was that it could only draw them in one color—red. My eyes never did adjust to that red- and-black display.
I switched on the power and pressed my face into a soft foam ring that ran along the inside of the visor. A little sign appeared instructing me to adjust the eyepieces to the shape of my face. Using two knobs built into the top of the visor, I adjusted the display until the words in that sign seemed to float out in space.
The display showed a satellite view of Earth. I could see the side of the planet facing the sun. In the display, the lasers drew clouds and land in red. The ocean was black and hollow. The edge of the moon was barely visible in the right corner of the display. In the lower corner, a digital clock counted backward. The clock read 00:05:37.
When the clock reached 00:01:00, I heard a muffled commotion outside my cell as the ship was called to general quarters. The call to battle stations lasted the full minute. The sound must have been thunderous throughout the ship. In the brig, where thick iron walls muted most of the sound, I soon forgot about the call to general quarters and did not notice when it ended.
The visor blanked out. It went dead for just a moment then winked back to life, and I knew that we had just broadcasted into Earth space. In the red-and-black panorama, the fabric of space around the moon seemed to shatter as 540 self-broadcasting ships appeared just behind the moon. Seen in red and black, the charcoal gray Hinode ships were not visible on this display but a label along the bottom of the screen said 540 ships.
A more modern display would have offered me optical menus. I might have found a way to view the Hinode ships using heat or motion-tracking sensors. On this old relic, the most I could do was zoom in and zoom out.
Turning my attention to Earth, I saw hundreds of ships rising from all points on the globe and forming a blockade. The
I zoomed out to see a wider perspective. From this angle, the U.A. ships looked no more significant than specks of dust in a sandstorm. As I closed my perspective, the U.A. ships took on shape and detail. My camera was still far enough out to see from Canada to the Brazilian coast. From here, the Earth ships looked like a swatch of broken glass. Panning in so close that I could make out the Rocky Mountains, I studied the Earth Fleet’s formation.
I watched as an endless stream of fighter jets sprayed out of carrier flight tubes. Even this close in, the fighters were nothing more than motes as they flew into formation and moved to the front of the fleet.
Fumbling blindly with the little control pad as I watched the Earth fleet fly into formation, I accidentally pressed a button that altered my view. Earth was still formed of solid land and hollow oceans, and the open space around the moon was still black, but now objects appeared in that space.
The Hinode ships were now more marked than displayed. They were still grouped around the moon, some 240,000 miles away. The two fleets would only need a minute to cross the 200,000 miles between the Earth and moon.
Pressing another button changed my battle perspective so that I could now get a closer look at the Hinode ships. Fine vector lines traced the edges of the ships. There were only three kinds of ships in the Hinode Fleet— cruisers, destroyers, and battleships. These ships were big. They would make easy targets.
When I switched back to the Earth Fleet, I did not like what I saw. The fleet could have used Klyber at the helm. It looked untried and unready for battle …or, perhaps, simply unready for this battle. Whoever was in command of the Fleet had placed the frigates near the front of the formation, just behind the fighters—a textbook formation for a different battle. The U.A. did not need frigates, a class of ship designed specifically to combat fighters for this battle. The Hinode Fleet had capital ships and no fighters. I saw this and realized Che Huang had
