“You seen anybody?” one of the SEALs asked all of us over an open interLink frequency. “I expected dead sailors floating around.”
“Think they evacuated the ship?” Illych asked me.
“Don’t count on it,” I said. “Anybody in this area would have gotten flushed out.” I had seen big ships explode. Once something pierces the hull, the pressure of the ship’s atmosphere flushes bodies, furniture, and other debris out of the gap until the pressure equalizes.
“So you think we’ll find bodies?” Illych asked.
“Sure we will, over a thousand of them if this battleship had a full crew. You and your boys aren’t squeamish?” I asked. I knew they were not, but I could hardly pass as a credible officer if I did not take a cheap shot every now and then.
After landing the sled on the first solid stretch of floor I found, I told the SEALs to divide up.
“What did you have in mind, sir?” Illych asked.
I sent five of the SEALs to the bridge to examine the navigation computer and whatever charts they could find. There was no need to tell them what to do if they found live enemies. These clones had tactics hardwired into their brains. They knew what to do in these situations as instinctively as they knew what to do in a latrine.
“Why don’t you come with me to the engineering section?” I asked Illych. The smart display in my visor read the SEALs’ virtual dog tags, allowing me to tell them apart. I’d had enough trouble telling them apart before they put on their identical armor.
Illych saluted and followed.
Before leaving the
What we saw on this trip was almost as important as what we stole. We had video-recording devices in our helmets. Anything we saw would be stored on a chip. I wanted to explore as much of the ship as possible so that I could create a video record to show Yoshi Yamashiro and his engineers. The Japanese renovated these old ships when they partnered with the Mogats.
I suspected that something had changed since the Separatist alliance fell apart. When the Mogat Fleet attacked Earth, Unified Authority ships had more than enough firepower to sink its ships one-on-one. Now a handful of Mogat ships had routed the Outer Perseus Fleet. What changed?
“What’s in engineering?” Illych asked me as we pulled our way across the deck. With no gravity to hold us down, it was easier to float than walk. We sprang from bulkheads and pulled ourselves along walls.
“The broadcast engine, for openers,” I said.
In truth, I think I had already started to piece some things together. I was a Marine, not a sailor; but I had seen some big space battles. I had a good idea of what happened to ships in those battles, and I had never seen a gash like the one on the belly of this ship.
Illych must have noticed it, too. “Do you have any idea what could have cut through a ship like that?” he asked as he peered down the well of the gash and into space.
“It had to be a laser,” I said. “Did you see the damage on the outside of the ship? The plating around the edges melted. Particle beams blow things apart; lasers cook their way through.”
“But this?” he asked. “It must have been some kind of new laser.”
“From what Admiral Brocius told me, the Outer Perseus Fleet doesn’t have anything new, just hand-me- downs,” I replied. “If you had some miracle laser, would you waste it out here?”
Illych said nothing. He might have nodded in agreement, but that gesture would have been lost inside his helmet. Trying to communicate by nodding or shaking your head was a rookie mistake made by people who had not acclimated to armor. When it came to combat armor, Illych came across as a rookie.
We headed down a corridor. Through the night-for-day lens in my visor, I saw the hallway ahead of us in blue-white and black. It was as smooth and as featureless as a sheath for a sword. The walls, ceiling, and floor were entirely untouched. There had probably been people in this area of the ship when the laser breached the hull. There may once have been bodies, chairs, and equipment around the hall, but all of that would have been flushed out along with the oxygen. The corridor ahead of us was chillingly immaculate.
“If they just had a run-of-the-mill laser, how did they make that hole?” Illych asked.
“Simple,” I said. “Someone on board this ship must have shut down the shields.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Illych and I floated through the ship like superheroes flying through an abandoned city, stomachs down flying parallel to the floor. We passed hatches, some opened and some closed. Nowhere did we see any signs of life.
“Why would somebody lower the shields?” Illych asked. “That would be suicide.”
“I’m only guessing here,” I said. “I think one of their officers committed suicide and took the ship with him. This would not be the first time the Mogats sent a crew on a kamikaze mission.”
When they attacked the Earth Fleet, the Mogats destroyed the Unified Authority’s most powerful ship by broadcasting a cruiser into it. That was classified information. Illych could not have known about it.
“You believe that the entire crew of this ship willingly committed suicide?” Illych asked. He sounded skeptical. “That would have been hundreds of men.”
“You wouldn’t need a kamikaze crew,” I said, “just one man. Once the guy controlling the shields turns off the power, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the crew believes.”
“But they were winning the battle when this ship went down. They could have had the whole damned fleet on a platter.”
“Yeah,” I said, wondering why the Mogats would purposely lose a battle. A saboteur, maybe. But that did not fit. U.A. Intelligence had not penetrated the Mogat military. For some reason the Mogats had apparently sacrificed the ship and the battle.
We came to a companionway that ran between decks. Peering through a window, I looked into the shaft. “There might be air in here,” I said. Air in the shaft would present a hazard. The pressure from that air would send everything flying out at us the moment we cracked the hatch.
“May I have a try, sir?” Illych asked. I had already come to like working with Adam Boyd clones, these synthetic men created specifically for special operations. They moved carefully and deliberately. They observed their environment and took sure steps.
I pushed away from the hatch.
Illych replaced his particle-beam pistol in his belt and pulled out a tiny laser torch. It was a tool, not a weapon, though you could certainly use it to burn through an enemy in a pinch. Illych aimed his laser at the hatch and bored a pinprick hole. First the red dot appeared, then the beam intensified. The material of the door bubbled and melted away. Had there been oxygen in the stairwell, it would have leaked through the hole. Nothing happened.
“Looks like it’s safe, sir,” Illych said.
“Can you remove the hatch?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” Illych said. He slowly traced across the hinges. A minute later, he gave the hatch a tug, and it drifted out of our way.
Kicking off the walls, we dropped down the open companionway to a lower deck. Haphazard webs of icy black beads shimmered inside the shaft. With a light push, I shattered my way through them, not wanting to see what awaited me on the other side. The webs were frozen blood. Below me, looking more like deformed marble statues than human beings, were the bodies of three dead sailors. I passed over them and entered the vast cavern of the engine room.
