It wasn’t the gravity that Illych was warning me about. On the other side of the kettle, the heavy metal doors started to slide apart. As their seal broke, the pressure of our oxygenated atmosphere swept unprepared commandos against the rear of the transport like leaves in a hurricane.
It took approximately three seconds for the pressure to right itself. During that time, at least a third of the Mogat commandos were sucked up and flung against the rear of the kettle. I have no idea how many survived the experience.
Then the SEALs stormed up the ramp. Five Navy SEALs, dressed in the same antiquated armor as Mogat commandos, charged up the ramp firing lasers. They charged into the cargo-loading area, killing everyone they saw, then found cover and dug in. More SEALs waited outside the transport doors. The entire shooting match took less than a minute.
“The transport is secure,” I called out over an open frequency.
“That was easy,” Illych responded. “Now for the hard part.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Motherbird, this is Away Team.”
“Did you find anything?” the Mogat communications officer asked.
“The ship’s clean,” Illych said.
“Clean?” the officer asked.
“Not a clone to be found,” Illych said.
“I’ll put you through to the captain.”
A moment later a voice asked, “What is the situation, Away Team?”
“The ship is clean, sir,” Illych said. In the movies, soldiers always push it when they make these calls. They say puns or play with words, giving their enemies clues that go unnoticed. Illych, a SEAL instead of a Hollywood actor, did not play that game. We had an unarmed transport, they had a heavily armed battleship with seemingly impregnable shields. Illych stuck to the script.
“Have you searched the ship?”
“Yes, sir, every deck. I’ve been monitoring the security sensors. They picked up our guys, but that’s it.”
“Somebody set off the alarms,” the Mogat officer said.
“They must have cleared out before we got here.” Illych was a great liar. His voice showed not so much as a note of emotion. His eyes remained on the monitor. Sometimes dishonest people stare too long into your eyes thinking it will prove they are telling the truth. Illych stared just enough.
“Very well. Make one more sweep of the ship and see if our visitors left anything behind, then come on back.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Illych said. He waited for the captain to sign off before turning back to us. “We’re in.”
The SEALs had 121 men on that derelict battleship, but they only used fifteen to capture the transport. The SEALs adjusted to their environment. Having as many men as possible might win battles on an open field; but in the confines of a crowded transport, too many men meant impaired mobility.
We took no prisoners as we captured the transport. From the commandos to the copilot, we made sure that everybody died. The dirty part of reconnaissance work is that it leaves no room for mercy.
After clearing out the bodies, we crammed 116 SEALs into the kettle. The five we could not fit had to wait on the derelict. They got a better deal than the men hiding among the wrecked fighters outside. There are no injuries in a space battle. If anything breaches your armor, you die. It does not matter whether an enemy laser pierces your heart or your foot. If your armor depressurizes, you may freeze or suffocate or burst; but you will certainly die.
We packed the transport so tightly that three of the SEALs had to ride in the cockpit along with Illych and me. We wasted no floor space. Not in the kettle. Not in the cockpit.
As they had before, the SEALs headed into battle in silence. In the cockpit, we stood pressed together, watching the five who could not come with us salute as our transport lifted from the deck.
Illych broke the silence. “Think we can pull this off, Harris?”
“Against these stiffs?” I asked. “What could go wrong?” Even as I said this, I regretted it. It had the ring of other famous last words.
“You’re joking, right?” Illych asked. We both knew we were flying a load of 116 men into a ship with a two- thousand-man crew, not counting commandos.
“Yeah, I’m joking,” I said. That was a lie. Had Illych asked me earlier, I would have said it was not possible to take an entire transport without losing a man. Sometimes it seemed like the Mogats were sleepwalking.
Illych and I never took our gazes from the scene outside the cockpit during the return flight. Between the SEALs and the Marines, we had two thousand men hiding in the wreckage around us. They waited to pounce like camouflaging insects.
Things look smaller in death than they do in life, even battleships. Looking at the derelict battleship with its darkened windows, I did not appreciate its size. The ships of the old Galactic Central Fleet had diamond-shaped hulls with rounded bows. Like all U.A. ships, they were wider than they were long.
Coming around the stern of this live battleship, I saw that we were smaller than the tips of its wings. Our transport was meant to hold one hundred men, one man for every twenty on that ship. We were a flea creeping up on a big dog. If we got in, we might draw blood.
“We’re coming in for a landing,” I called back over the interLink. We had to watch what we said now that we were wearing Mogat armor. The interLink equipment in the old combat armor had limited frequencies. We used a frequency we had never heard the Mogats use, but we had no way of knowing if they listened in on us.
We floated into the launch bay and hovered over the deck as the first of the atmospheric locks sealed behind us. In this fifty-year-old ship, the locks did not have the transparent electrostatic shields you saw on modern ones. The doors were enormous metal blast shields. We flew forward twenty yards, and a second gate closed behind us. Now we were inside the ship’s atmosphere. Illych used the thrusters to guide us down, but he cut them a bit soon, and we landed hard.
“Nice landing,” I said. “Now that you are dispensable again, are you going to join the fun?” Having flown the transport back, Illych was no longer any more important than anyone else to the mission.
“That’s why I came,” he said, and he had that same giddiness that I heard the first time I saw him in combat. He pulled out his laser pistol and held it up for me to see. “You know, I’d give up a week’s pay to use a particle beam instead of a laser on this one.”
“They have lasers, so we use lasers,” I said. “We need to blend in.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know,” Illych said.
“Well, good luck, Illych,” I said.
“Good luck, Harris.”
I left the cockpit and practically slid down the ladder. We stood silent, staring at the rear hatch as the big metal doors slid open. The bright lights of the launch bay shone in from the top, pouring a wedge of glare across the floor.
We had our orders. We would divide up. Fifteen men would remain in the transport, hiding wherever they could and killing any unlucky maintenance men who happened to see them. Another forty men would head to the engine room to shut down the shields. Illych went with that group.
That left sixty-three men to head for the bridge. I went with that squad. We would “clear the bridge” quickly, a polite way of saying we would kill every officer and seal the hatch. If we moved quickly enough and targeted the helm and communications, we could prevent the ship from fleeing the scene or putting out a distress signal.
Having flown return flights with Mogat commandos, I knew that they generally removed their helmets before stepping off their transport. We kept them on. The SEALs were all clones of the Adam Boyd variety. They all looked alike. They were short, bald, and marked with the distinctive bony ridge across their brows. Had we removed our helmets, I would have been the only non–Adam Boyd face in the crowd, and the Mogats knew my kind.
