Normal battleships needed huge generators to power their shields and weapons systems. Self-broadcasting ships required twice the generator capacity of their general-issue counterparts to power their broadcast engines. The engine room we now entered on this ship was twice the size of a basketball gym.
“Colonel, we may have a problem,” Illych said, interrupting my thoughts.
“What is it, Illych?” I asked.
“I just got a call from the guys on the bridge. One of their stealth kits failed.”
“Did the sensors spot them?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” Illych said. “Whether or not someone was watching is another question. They say they switched to a different kit quickly.”
“I better radio the pilot and have him keep an eye out for visitors,” I said. I did so, then went back to exploring the engine room.
The dead men inside the engine room were not dressed in pressure suits or space gear. When the laser sheared through the hull and the vacuum of space replaced their pressurized atmosphere, the blood pressure in their bodies burst through their skins. Blood vessels, veins, eyes, and skin all popped like balloons. The basic shapes of the men sprawled along the floor looked human enough, but it looked like someone had tried to peel their faces from their heads.
Large flaps of skin and tissue hung open from their heads and hands—the only fully exposed parts of their bodies. They wore jumpsuits with long sleeves. They wore boots. Who knew what I might find under their heavy clothes.
Without oxygen to cause soaking, the beads of their blood had penetrated their uniforms like water pouring through a sieve. The face of the man below me floated off his skull, his nose and mouth frozen but still recognizable. His burst eyes remained in their sockets looking like crushed white grapes. His lipless mouth grinned up at me.
During my days as a Marine, I’d seen worse. So, apparently, had Master Chief Petty Officer Emerson Illych. He quietly surveyed the area.
The engine room itself lay in ruins. Some of the equipment must have exploded before the air ran out. I saw scorch marks on the walls, and a few of the bodies bore signs of incineration. Looking around the room, I saw overturned desks and smashed computers. There was not so much as a working console in the entire vast cavern. Even the emergency lights in this morgue were dead.
Across the floor from me was a dormant broadcast engine of enormous proportions. Each of the brass cylinders stood thirty feet high. They were shaped like bullets but were the size of missiles.
“What happened in here?” I asked.
“Colonel, back here,” Illych called.
He headed toward the back of the engine room. As I followed, I saw an odd flickering glow that shone on the walls and furniture. I almost missed the subtle light changes surveying the room through my night-for-day lens. Switching to my standard, tactical lens, I saw the blue-white glow of an electrical arc. It looked as if someone might have been using a spot welder around the corner.
“What do you think of this?” Illych asked me. “How do you think it survived when everything else got blown up?”
Peering slowly around the corner, my pistol drawn, I saw a second broadcast engine. It did not have the thirty-foot-high brass cylinders of the battleship’s main broadcast engine. It was smaller and tucked away at the back of the ship. The eighteen cylinders in this engine were about eight feet tall and connected together by a web of cables as thick as my arms. Across the top of the cylinders, jagged lines of electricity danced from joint to joint.
“That’s not possible,” I said. It did not make sense that something as delicate and power-consuming as a broadcast engine could be up and running when every other system had failed. Also, when it came to broadcast equipment, I had never heard of any ship carrying spares.
I started toward the engine for a closer look, but Illych pulled me back. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “There may be a shield around it.”
I inched slightly closer but did not see the telltale glimmer of an electrical field. Had I had more time, I might have fired a particle beam at the floor beside the engine, but I did not get that chance.
“Colonel, they’re coming!” the pilot sounded frantic.
“Mogats?” I asked.
“Who the speck cares,” the pilot said. “I’ve got to get out of here!”
“Where are they?” I asked.
“They just broadcasted in. I picked up the anomaly.”
“I’m going to need a couple of minutes…”
The pilot interrupted me. “I don’t have minutes! I don’t have seconds!”
“Everybody back to the sled!” I called over an open frequency so that all of the SEALs would hear me. I pushed off against a railing and bounded back toward the companionway.
“Colonel, what is it?” Illych asked, sounding impossibly calm.
“Mogats,” I said. I had already flown half the distance back to the stairs.
“In the ship?” Illych asked. These Special Operations clones were small, but they had muscles like steel cables. He kicked off a wall hard enough to catch up to me.
“Outside,” I said. “The pilot picked them up on radar.”
“What’s happening out there?” I asked the pilot.
“Two ships coming in quick,” the pilot said. “I can’t wait for you. I need…”
“You can’t outrun them,” I said. “Find someplace to hide and play dead.”
“I’ve got to get out of here,” he screamed.
“You can’t…” But the connection was already broken.
I tried hailing the explorer twice more, but knew I would not get through.
“Shit,” I said.
“Sir?” Illych asked.
“We just lost our specking ride,” I said.
On our way to the engine room, Illych and I passed a room with a broad window looking out into space. I headed toward the room and told Illych to tell his SEALs to join us. There was no reason to head for the space sled anymore; our explorer was gone.
“Regroup on my mark,” Illych told his men over an open band. His men responded without comment.
I went to the glass wall and stared out, not knowing what I hoped to find. In the back of my mind, I guess I expected to see the smoldering wreckage of the explorer. It was nowhere to be found, of course. In the seconds that I spoke with the pilot, he might have flown ten thousand miles.
“Do you see anything out there, sir?” Illych asked.
I did. Just for a moment I saw a black shadow that got between our ship and the stars. It moved quickly, and I lost track of it, but it was out there. I imagined that ship, big and unstoppable, knocking the carcasses of dead fighters out of the way with its shields.
“How the speck can they know that we’re here?” I asked.
I voiced the question out loud, but it was mostly directed at me. The signal from the security sensors should not have traveled faster than the speed of light. Could it even have traveled 100 million miles in the few moments we had been on board the ship? Yet the Mogat ships had broadcast in. Broadcasted in! That meant that they had come from a long way away. They would have had to have been close to receive the signal, but they should not have needed to broadcast in if they were close enough to receive it. How far could they go and still hear their burglar alarm?
My mind flashed on the working broadcast engine we’d seen in the engineering section. “There is no way that broadcast engine could have survived. The room is a disaster,” I said out loud, even though I was only thinking to myself.
The other SEALs entered the room.
“The Mogats shot down our ride,” I said in frustration. “They shot down our specking ride.” I was swearing more than usual, possibly because the damned Boyd clones were so specking calm about the whole thing.
