There were security cameras all along the brig, three of which had views into my cell. Smiling to myself and trying to look away from the cameras, I returned to my cot.
I could have slipped out of my cell and killed Sam in his office. I knew where it was. I visited it on my way to my cell the day I was captured. The problem was that in all likelihood, he would spot me. The security cameras had motion-tracking.
“You and I have a score to settle,” Sam called from the door of my cell. Instead of making me come to him, the Mogat jailor had come to me. Unfortunately, he also had a pistol in his right hand. That presented a problem.
“You going to shoot me?” I asked.
Sam pretended to give this question serious consideration, then beamed. “Yeah. I suppose I am.”
“No trial?” I asked.
Sam stuck his right hand, pistol and all, in through the bars. He aimed the pistol at me. “We have a problem. See, the Japanese think they won the war. They reconfigured the boats, you know. So they think they’re in charge. And the Confederate Arms, they think they won the war because Admiral Halverson came up with the idea of attacking Mars. They think they’re in charge, too.”
At that moment, I still did not know about the Broadcast Network. All I knew was that the
“You didn’t hear? We destroyed the Mars broadcast station,” Sam said. He saw the stunned look on my face. “Didn’t know about that, huh? We turned out the lights on the rest of the galaxy. Now the whole U.A. military is dark and stuck in place.“
It took me a moment to understand what Sam meant. At first I thought he meant that the Network provided power to the rest of the Republic. Then I realized that he meant that there would be no communications. Without the Broadcast Network, the outer fleets would not only be stranded, they would have no idea about what had happened.
“Which brings me back to you. Halverson and the Japanese want to let you go free. Now General Crowley, he knows what’s what. He figures it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, if you know what I mean. He figures, we shoot you now. Then, if Halverson and the Japanese complain, we say something along the lines of, ‘Oops. We didn’t know you’d care.’”
Sam stood just outside the bars at the far end of my cell, lazily pointing the gun in my general direction. His arm and hand were relaxed. I was a fish in a barrel. He probably wanted me to plead or to lunge for his pistol. What he did not expect …
I sprang from the cot; but instead of lunging toward Sam as he must have expected, I vaulted along the floor in the other direction. Probably thinking that I had lost my nerve and was running for cover, he did not bother firing at me.
As I reached the end of the cell, I kicked. The heavy door slid along its track and crushed Sam’s arm which was resting in the bars. He did not realize what had happened until the gun fell from his hand, which remained pinned in place by the bars. He screamed in surprise or pain, or rage, or possibly fear and fell to one knee.
I did not know if anyone was watching on the security monitors, so I moved quickly.
“You son of a …”
“…test tube,” I finished the sentence for him.
Sam pulled his arm from the bars and charged forward. He had to know that he did not stand a chance in this fight. He could not beat me whole. With his wrist broken, he would be an easy mark, and he had to know that I meant to kill him.
As he came toward me, he rose to his feet. I chopped into the side of his neck with the heel of my right hand. Keeping my hand on his shoulder, I guided him face-first into the wall. He stumbled back, yelling as he toppled to the floor. I stomped on his neck and snapped it. Sam lay on the metal grating floor, silent and bloody, with a gash across his forehead and his neck creased at a sixty-degree angle. His left ear rested against his shoulder. His mouth had a frozen sneer that showed most of his teeth.
Alien thoughts ran through my head as I looked at Sam lying on the ground. I felt regret, though not for Sam, per se. I hated the bastard. Had the war gone the other way, I had planned to kill Sam anyway. No, I did not feel bad about killing Sam. For some reason I just felt bad about killing. It was as if life had suddenly become more important to me because I had seen so much of it wasted. I tried to ignore those alien thoughts. I had work to do.
I dragged Sam into the cell and hoisted him on to the cot facedown, then spread my blanket over him.
Yamashiro’s gift was a Japanese naval uniform. I slipped it on quickly. My hour was almost over. He would return for me.
The uniform fit nearly perfectly, though it was a bit wide in the shoulders and gut. Anybody looking closely would see that I was not Japanese long before they would notice the baggy blouse.
I did not know whether I should wait in my cell or hide in the jailor’s office. Yamashiro answered that question for me when he and seven officers strolled into the corridor. Yamashiro wore his customary dark wool suit and tie. He looked at Sam’s lumpy body on my cot, then down at the pistol on the floor. “It appears as if we have interrupted an execution.”
“That was the general plan,” I said.
“Stay close to us,” Yamashiro said.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Another ship.”
All of the officers in Yamashiro’s cadre were tall; three stood an inch or two taller than me. Yamashiro arranged these men in a loose formation around me, then led us out of the brig. We moved at a brisk, businesslike pace, walking like men who had someplace important to go. Confederate sailors in tan uniforms stopped to watch as we passed.
As we got farther from the brig, more Japanese officers turned out to join us. We formed a solemn parade. While the rest of the ship celebrated, the Japanese marched quietly, gaining in number. By the time we reached the landing bay, where three transports awaited, there were easily two hundred officers in our ranks.
While we officers boarded the transports, Yamashiro went to have a word with the Confederate officer running the landing bay. After a brief chat, Yamashiro returned and the transport took off.
The mood on the transport remained solemn. The men did not speak or joke. Most of the men stared at the ground as if ashamed. There was a distinct air of defeat.
“What is going on?” I asked Yamashiro, who sat beside me on the bench lining the outer wall. He stared at me for a moment then spoke. “The officers of the Hinode Fleet are meeting for a victory celebration,” he said. “We will have four battleships to ourselves.”
“Celebration?” I asked. “This looks more like a wake.”
“After a fashion. Like you, we are making our escape. The enemy will have several hundred ships. We will have four. We view this battle as a defeat.”
“You could not have planned all of this since last night,” I said.
Yamashiro shook his head. “We knew where we stood long ago …long before you and I spoke. We have been planning our escape for months.
“One thing did come out of our conversation. I have long felt a debt to Admiral Klyber. Had it not been for him, the Navy would have attacked Ezer Kri. He persuaded the Senate to settle with an occupation. When you tried to warn me, I decided to repay my debt by bringing you along.”
The entire Broadcast Network would have shut down the moment a Hinode battleship fired its lasers into the Mars broadcast station. The discs, mile-wide mirrors with little more than electrical wiring and razor-fine welds to hold them together, shattered instantly. Think of it—the Unified Authority, the largest and most powerful empire in the history of humanity, was held together by electrical wiring and a bit of welding.
Now that the Network was down, all fleets were stuck in the areas they were patrolling. When the Mars discs broke, the entire Broadcast Network shut down. The U.A. Navy ships could fly thirty million miles per hour, but that was still one-sixth the speed of light, and most inhabited planets were located thousands of light years apart from each other. The U.A. Navy had a fleet in the Scutum-Crux Arm that could have defeated the Hinode Fleet, but those ships were 10,000 light years away. Without the Broadcast Network it would take those ships 60,000 years
