only gear I found was fifty-year-old U.A. equipment and inventory that the Confederate Arms provided during their brief alliance with the Mogats.
In the back of the warehouse I found crates of bric-a-brac that the Mogats had all but discarded. On one shelf I found a crate of old military Bibles. This surprised me. The Mogats must not have known what the crate contained. Their culture had no room for Earth religions. They believed in self-determination and independence from Earth. They also had their own holy writ—
The Bibles I found were small enough to fit in your pocket, with green leather covers and tissue-paper pages. This particular Bible included the entire New Testament and selected readings from the Old Testament.
I did not like the New Testament; it confused me. My theory that God was a metaphor for government worked well with the Old Testament. When God directed the Israelites to massacre enemies, pay taxes, and build temples, their civilization worked. No matter how hard I tried to wrestle with the god of the New Testament, I could never understand him. In my experience, no self-respecting government would forgive those who trespassed against it.
When Illych saw me reading a Bible, he asked about it. “What book is that?” he asked. He might have thought I was reading a Space Bible. We were enlisted men, and only officers were allowed to read that book.
“The Bible,” I said.
“You’re not supposed to read the Space Bible,” Illych said.
“Not the Space Bible, the Christian Bible,” I said.
“You read the Bible? You can’t possibly believe that stuff.”
“Sure I do,” I said, and I told him my theory about how God was really just the government. He listened quietly then said, “If God is the government, would that make clones his chosen people?”
“That is precisely how I see it,” I said.
“I like that,” Illych said. He was my first convert. I felt like quite the evangelist.
Admiral Brocius checked in every few days to update me on different events. Yamashiro signed an alliance with the Unified Authority and the Confederate Arms. He sent engineers to the remote Golan Dry Docks facility, the most advanced aerotechnology program in Unified Authority space. I had always imagined that the people in the dry docks were marooned after Mogats-Confederate Arm forces destroyed the Broadcast Network; but, in fact, maintaining the dry docks had been a top priority. Explorer ships bearing food and medical supplies had visited the dry docks within twenty-four hours of the battle.
Brocius updated me on the Naval Intelligence hunt for Ray Freeman. “It’s like the man is a damned ghost,” Brocius said once.
“He’ll turn himself in when he’s ready, sir,” I said.
“Do you know where he is?”
I did not answer. We had been through this before.
“He assaulted an Intelligence officer,” Brocius said. “I could have you arrested for aiding and abetting.”
“Why don’t you send some men out to arrest me?” I asked.
“You’re on your way home,” Brocius said. I could hear mirth in his voice. “We can arrest you once you’re back.”
Changing the subject, I asked, “What about the House of Representatives?”
“What about it?” Brocius asked.
“With the alliance…”
He interrupted me. “The Confederate Arms is an ally, not a member. Hughes says his planets have no interest in rejoining the union. We have a military alliance, and not a very strong one at that.”
“What about him?” Brocius asked.
“Is he just an ally?” I asked.
“We’ve offered to take him back. So has Hughes. Nobody knows where his base planet is located. If he’s based in Orion or Sagittarius, I suppose he’ll sign with us.
“Something you should know. We had another scrape with the Mogat Navy this week. This time it was in the Orion Arm.”
“Mogats in the Orion Arm?” I asked.
“The inner curve of the Orion Arm, yes. You want to guess how it went?”
“There were three or four of them,” I guessed.
“Six, this time,” Brocius corrected me.
“And we destroyed one of their ships?”
“Right you are. Five of their ships went completely undamaged. The one that we managed to hit, we damn near sliced in half.
“The other Mogats ran away,” Brocius said.
“Is the wreck near any place of value?”
“Olympus Kri,” Brocius said.
“That’s Gordon Hughes’s home planet,” I said.
“Yes, that occurred to us, as well.”
With just a few minutes to go before we left the armory, I could not find Illych anywhere. I checked the different supply rooms. I checked our on-site living quarters. Finally, I found him out by the Jeeps. I arrived in time to see him placing bombs inside the various cars. He used card-deck-sized bombs, which he placed under the chassis of trucks and Jeeps. One bomb should have been enough to demolish the entire depot. Illych said he had already placed fifty, and he must have had another thirty ready to go in a box.
“That’s a lot of bombs,” I said.
“It should get the job done.” He was on his back lying under a Jeep. He placed a bomb near a fuel tank.
“What if something goes wrong?” I asked.
“Goes wrong?” Illych parroted.
“Oh, I don’t know. There are all kinds of things that could go wrong. What if the Mogats don’t send our battleship out to the Perseus Arm?”
“What about it?” Illych said. He stopped working and looked up at me from beneath the chassis.
“We’ll end up right back here,” I said.
“We’ll come back somewhere,” Illych said. “We won’t come back here. I’m blowing up the place.”
“But if you don’t blow the place up, we could come back,” I said.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Illych said. “They already suspect us.”
“Who suspects us?” I asked.
“Army Intelligence. They sent a couple of guys to investigate this morning.”
“I didn’t know about that,” I said.
“I didn’t want to worry you,” Illych said. He finished placing the bomb and crawled out from under the Jeep. “I took care of it.”
“So we’re okay?”
“For now,” Illych said.
He wasn’t telling me something. “You killed them?” Considering Illych’s homicidal leanings, it seemed like a safe bet.
“They’re in that Jeep. With any luck, whoever investigates the explosion will mistake them for us and say that we accidentally blew ourselves up.”
“You don’t honestly believe that will happen.”
“No,” Illych agreed, “but we should be safe on a Mogat battleship. It won’t matter.” He carried a stack of three bombs and wired them to the electric eye that guarded the front door.
“You ready to leave, sir?” he asked.
“I’m a master sergeant,” I said. “We’re the same rank.”
By this time Illych had done just about everything he could to disguise me. He requisitioned green dye for my eyes. He shaved my head and bleached my eyebrows. He tried to stain my skin; but my cheeks and forehead
