own weight. The process would have been easier and quieter in soft-shell armor. I could barely move my limbs in the tight space, and that formerly weightless door now weighed over a hundred pounds.
If I ran into a guard or a maintenance worker, I could easily kill him; but I had learned from experience that the Mogats kept count of their crewmen. They were a religious people and they kept careful tabs on all of the sheep in the herd.
The kettle was dark and the rear doors were closed when I emerged from the compartment. I knew I was alone. At that moment I realized the stupid mistake I had made. My only access to the interLink was built into my helmet, but I could not walk around this Mogat ship wearing the combat armor of a Unified Authority Marine. I would need the Link, though; so even if I left my armor hidden on the transport, I had no choice about taking my helmet. I considered hiding in the transport until I was sure we had broadcasted into Mogat space, then trying to slip out; but down here in this compartment, I would not know when we broadcasted into Mogat space.
“Master Sergeant?” It was Evans.
“What is it?”
“You’re reading me?”
“Then your plan worked,” Evans said, sounding excited.
“We’ve already broadcasted?” I asked.
“The last Mogat ships just broadcasted out.”
“Thanks for the update,” I said, trying to sound calm.
“Nice going,” Evans said.
In the early days of the war, I received promotions for doing a lot less than this. Locating the Mogat home world could be the key to the war. With any luck, I would find their galactic coordinates and take an informal inventory of their military strength. Wars were won and lost on that kind of information.
But I did not have time to celebrate just yet. I still had to get out of the transport and on to the Mogat home world unnoticed. I had to gather information. I had to transmit the information back to Earth. I had to survive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The kettle was dark and the hatch was sealed when I emerged from my lair. No one remained on board, not even the pilot. Sitting on the floor with my legs dangling into the crawl space, I removed my armor and stripped down to my tank top and skivvies. I’d brought a change of clothes for the occasion—a pair of unmarked fatigues that I borrowed from a mechanic on board the
Taking one last look through the night-for-day lens in my helmet, I located the controls for the rear hatch and opened the kettle. As the thick metal doors slowly rolled apart, revealing a bustling launch bay, I stowed my helmet in the latrine. Armor that had helped me slip past a dozen guards deserved better than a stay in a Mogat shitting booth, but I had no choice.
Teams of mechanics stood around the opened engine compartment of a nearby transport. A pack of commandos entertained several onlookers telling stories about how they had routed “those U.A. bargers,” using their guns as props as they spoke.
None of this could have happened without Philips. If I survived this, I planned to petition for him to be restored to the rank of corporal. I thought I could talk Brocius into approving the request, but I had no idea how to keep Philips from getting himself busted back down to private without retiring him or throwing him in the brig.
Before I could do anything for Philips, there was the little matter of surviving the trip. I thought, just for a moment, of Samson captured and put on display in a Philistine temple. Samson asked God to give him the strength to destroy that temple, committing suicide in the act. Me, I had no desire to go down with these particular Philistines. I would pull a fast exit before I sent in the coordinates. The Unified Authority made a vengeful god indeed.
“You. What are you doing there?” An engineer walking by the base of the transport saw me standing in the darkened kettle.
“Tertiary system back up,” I said, trying to come up with a lie no one would investigate. “The pilot asked me to have a look at it.”
“No, shit,” the man said. I pretended to laugh because the man looked so specking pleased with his pun.
“I wish,” I said. “There’s a mountain of it. Where are the septic removal kits?”
The man grimaced and pointed to a row of doors.
“I know it’s in the supplies, but which door?” I asked. “I mostly just mop and polish.”
“Third door. Have fun,” he said.
“You ever clean up a crapper that overflowed in zero gravity?” I asked. “That’s not my idea of fun.”
The guy grunted a laugh and walked away. If he asked any of the commandos about the toilet, my goose was fried; but I doubted he would.
The storage room turned out to be a gold mine. The septic removal kit came in a twenty-four-inch tin cylinder that could easily hold my helmet. I also found a laundry cart filled with grimy janitorial crew smocks. A guy in a dirty smock carrying a “septic cylinder”—there is no better camouflage.
So I stepped into janitorial rags. The cloth smelled bad and felt wet against my skin. The pile I stole it from was headed for a washing. So much the better. I took a septic kit and headed back to the transport. Locked in the booth-sized latrine, I emptied out the kit—a large cylinder for waste and chemicals for cleaning. I flushed the chemicals down the crapper. Then I loaded my helmet into the cylinder and sealed it. In a real tertiary situation, I would compress the refuse and discharge it into the cylinder. For good measure, I fished some slime from the septic system and smeared it around the top of the cylinder. Both my hand and that cylinder reeked fiercely. When I left the transport, I felt confident that no one would bother me. I looked bad, smelled worse, and had a big slimy septic cylinder in my hands. No one would approach me unless he had a good reason.
By the time I came down the ramp, the last of the Mogat commandos had already left the launch bay. They would go back to their barracks. They would shower and change. Their commanders would give them the remainder of the day to rest as a reward for winning the skirmish. They deserved it. They’d taught Philips’s stiffies a thing or two. They would go off to whatever served as a bar on the ship, get drunk, and tell evermore- exaggerated stories about the deadly firefight they had won.
As for me, I needed information. I needed to know where I was and if I was near the Mogat home base. Knowing how to find the Mogats would be valuable enough. That information alone could turn the tide of the war, if we could reach them. The galaxy was one hundred thousand light-years across. The Unified Authority had eighteen fleets; but without the Broadcast Network, they could only patrol one-one-thousandth of 1 percent of galaxy.
The Mogats, with their self-broadcasting fleet, could go anywhere. Their base could be a single light-year from Earth in any direction, and without some facility to broadcast its ships, the U.A. Navy would never reach it.
On the plus side, I thought that I might have an ally nearby. True, nearly a month had passed since the SEALs and I distracted the Mogats while Illych boarded their transport, but I thought I might find him somewhere lurking around their base. The problem was that I had no idea how to contact him.
Leaving the launch bay I entered a main corridor of the ship. A group of sailors loitered near the door doing, as far as I could tell, absolutely nothing. They might have been off duty, but they were still in uniform and standing in one of the most highly trafficked areas of any ship. It did not surprise me to see that the Mogats ran a relaxed ship. They were, after all, civilians in sailor uniforms. In a real navy, men go to rec rooms and canteens during their off-duty hours. If they are tired they remain in their barracks.
The dawdling oafs paid little attention to me as I walked by. They showed no signs of suspicion. One man sneered at me. He probably resented my dragging a septic cylinder down his clean corridor. On the most part, the only interest I elicited in the men I passed was interest in seeing me leave.
