That said, I’m not sure which rattled the lieutenant more, my bringing up Admiral Brocius or my threatening his life. Either way, the good lieutenant decided to park his bird and leave the meter running.
He sidled the explorer right below the sunken Mogat battleship and brought it to a stop. Then it was our turn. We exited the ship in groups of ten, each of us shepherding crates and equipment toward that huge hole in the bottom of the Mogat ship. Nearly a month had passed since I came here with the SEALs. The memories were still fresh in my mind.
The first team on the spot fastened hooks onto the hull and started building a long scaffold that would stretch all the way across the breach. The next crew brought more scaffolding. By the time the third group arrived, enough of the scaffolding had been set to create a staging area. We were preparing to put on quite a show.
Our show props included scaffolds, a complete laser welding rig, crates for storing samples of the ship’s armor plating, and several changes of clothes. We unloaded our props and built the scaffolds in double time. Even though my threats had made our pilot more agreeable, we could tell he was spooked and unreliable.
“That’s the last of the cargo,” I told the pilot, as three of my men ferried over a set of crates on a sled. “Go hide your ship in the debris.” He could not leave yet, but he could park a safe distance away and watch if the Mogats came and massacred us.
The lieutenant did not say anything. The explorer’s engines started, and the ship drifted away, but the pilot did not say a word. We continued building.
First we attached base rods to the bottom of the battleship using a bonding glue that worked better than welding in the coldness of space. Once the rods were in place, we erected the rest of the scaffold using pins and sockets. The work went slowly.
It took us two hours to set up the scaffolding along the battered bottom side of that battleship. That is a long time to spend undefended in enemy space, but we needed it to make our show believable. We had to convince the Mogats that we were naval engineers, come to study the damage to this battleship. As things worked out, we did run one test on the armor plating.
Once the scaffolding was fastened in place, I had two of my men remove a plate from the hull. The plate was a flat square about eight feet along its edges. Had there been gravity, it would have weighed a couple of hundred pounds. In a gravity situation, its bulk would have crushed the thin rods of the scaffolding.
One of my men shoved the plate into space. As it slowly glided away, I drew my particle-beam pistol and fired. The plate absorbed the bright green beam. I thought I saw it quiver slightly, but I might have imagined that. My beam was too small to destroy it, but I wanted to test the integrity of the plating.
In truth, I did not need to test the plating. Looking straight up, I had plenty of evidence about what happens when laser cannons hit an unshielded hull. Rows of plates melt into slag, leaving foot-long stalactites in their wake.
“The stage is in place, Master Sergeant,” Sergeant Evans reported.
The “stage” was impressive. The scaffolding crisscrossed the breach on the bottom of the hull like stitches closing a knife wound. From a distance it might look like stitches. Some of the men built a launch area. If we had been engineers instead of jarheads, we could have spacewalked out to examine the shield antennae.
We spent the next hour removing entire rows of armor plates, some battered and some untouched. We rigged test stations and communications arrays. This was all for show, just a set decoration for the Mogats to shoot at. Once they arrived, our setup scaffolding would prove absolutely indefensible and clearly the work of engineers who had no concept of battle tactics.
“You know what, Sutherland, you’d make a good engineer,” I said as I traversed the scaffold.
“Thank you,” he said.
“That was an insult,” I said.
“Then go speck yourself,” Sutherland said.
Taking one last look up and down the length of our work, I asked Sutherland if he had everything he would need for the mission. He held up his satchel. “I’m good for a day,” he said. That was an exaggeration. In the discomfort of space, he would not be able to eat or shit. Our armor did have a hydration wire to protect us from the dry air our rebreathers produced, and our undergarments included a vacuum tube and bottle for urine. If everything went according to plan, however, Sutherland might not have much of a stay on that wretched battleship.
The stealth kits I had requisitioned for this mission were not the sleek three-inch remotes used by the SEALs. Central Cygnus Fleet did not carry those. Our general-issue kits were ten inches long and shaped like the bottom half of a combat boot. Our stealth kit had meters for measuring sensor fields. They even had a handy-dandy little device that left virtual beacons so you could mark your trail.
When I was in boot camp, I used to like cunning, space-saving devices that combined knives, cooking utensils, and communications equipment in one convenient handle. After a battle or two, I learned to despise them. I wanted my gun to shoot, my knife to stab, and everything else to perform the task God meant it to do. I did not like fishing through handles to find the right blade. The only exception was my combat helmet. God went above and beyond the call of duty when he created Marine combat armor. I loved each and every lens in my visor, and I liked the way my helmet protected my head, too.
My helmet had lenses that let me see in the dark, scan areas for heat, and zoom in on objects. It also had a sonar device that did double duty measuring distances and locating hollow areas. The lenses in my visor also contained a chip that recorded everything I saw and an interLink terminal that let me communicate with everybody or anybody in my platoon. In my religion, with the government as God, combat armor was divine.
Using the oversized stealth device to jam the Mogats’ security sensors, Sutherland made his way to the engine room. There he would set up camp and wait. I watched him pull his way into the belly of that battleship, an insignificant speck moving through layers of metal, plastic, and wiring that really did look like a wound.
“Lieutenant, are you there?” I hailed the explorer.
“Sergeant?” The pilot tried to control his voice, but I heard desperation in it. “Are you finished?”
“We’re dividing up now. Most of the platoon is ready to leave whenever you are, sir,” I said.
“What about the rest?” the pilot asked.
“You get to leave us here,” I said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that you are going to miss the big show.” I added, “Come back in five hours. We’ll need you to pick up whatever is left.”
The explorer lit up and drifted in our direction. Old as it was, the little ship had a bright, sleek look. If this had been a transport, it would have been bulky and bulged around its center. Civilian-designed vessels like this explorer had style. The explorer had a brightly colored fuselage, dramatic hull lighting, and an all-glass cockpit that bulged like a bubble. It would never hold up under fire, but it was not meant for war.
The explorer pulled right up to the scaffold at a speed so slow you would have thought someone was pushing it.
“Master Sergeant, are you sure you don’t need more hands?” one of my men asked. “I wouldn’t mind staying back.”
“I can stay,” another Marine volunteered.
“Better to have too many men than too few,” a third man offered.
“You have your orders,” I said, barely acknowledging the offer. Master gunnery sergeants do not thank people often. Soldiers can be as polite as they want; Marine sergeants do not say “please” or “thank you” to their men.
The dome at the rear of the explorer opened. When we’d arrived a few hours earlier, we had four sled-loads of men and equipment. Now thirty-one men would return. Watching the last load of men disappear into the explorer ship, it occurred to me that this was not a Marine operation. It was a bloody SEAL op being run by an overly ambitious Marine.
“You going to be okay out here?” the pilot asked over the interLink. It was a hollow inquiry. He did not ask this until he had sealed up his ship and started away.
I wanted to ask if he was offering to stay, but I played it politic. “We’re good, sir,” I said. “See you in five hours.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
