In a world with no clones, a transport loaded with one hundred identical men would raise suspicion. So might a hundred commandos pouring out of a transport wearing their helmets. We had no other options. We rushed off the transport and walked quickly across the deck of the launch bay. One sailor stopped to watch us. He waved in our direction. Not knowing what else to do, I waved back but kept with the pack.
“Everything okay?” a crewman asked as we hustled past.
No one answered. He stood and watched us, but did nothing. Then we were out the door and down the hall.
We marched toward the central corridor of the ship. The smaller squad broke off and headed toward the engine room at the back of the ship. My squad turned toward the front. We knew in advance that the elevators were too small to hold sixty-three men; so we divided up and took separate paths. By the time I reached the last bank of elevators, there were only six men with me.
We moved through the hall in absolute silence. We did not draw our guns. We did not remove our helmets. Some of the crew stopped and stared at us, but no one approached us. Their ship was in enemy territory, and they were on alert. The brass had wisely not withdrawn the call to general quarters, so the entire crew was engaged.
The seven of us took the elevator at the front of the ship. I did not like traveling in an elevator. It was a bottleneck. Once the doors sealed, we would be helpless prisoners until they reopened. We waited for our elevator, watching sailors running past. Two sailors came to wait with us. We did not speak with them. If they headed to the bridge, we would kill them in a few minutes. We were a hundred men capturing a ship with over two thousand able-bodied crewmen. We would have no time for prisoners.
I stepped into the elevator and stared straight ahead when the door opened. The SEALs crowded around me, leaving an unreasonable amount of room for the two sailors. They congregated on the other side of the car, quietly whispering to each other. Two floors up, they left us without so much as a sideward glance. We continued to the top deck.
I decided to risk a communication. “Illych, you in place?”
“We’re just waiting for the signal. What’s taking so long?”
“We had farther to go,” I said.
I was not in charge. This was a SEAL operation, with regular Navy and Marine support.
Leaving the elevator, I led my little band to the main corridor. When I looked back over my shoulder, I saw the rest of the team catching up with us. They pushed through the halls quickly. Sailors stepped out of their way.
“Launch Bay Squad, are you in position?” the SEAL commanding the mission asked.
“Locked and loaded.”
“Blue Team, are you in position?” Blue Team was the one sent to capture the engine room and shut down the shields.
“In position.”
“Gold Team, everyone in position?”
This time I answered, too. “In position.”
The six SEALs and I led the way into the bridge. We stepped through the hatch, drew our laser pistols, and began firing. I dropped to one knee and targeted the two sentries standing guard across the deck. I hit the first man before he could even reach for his pistol and the second man as his fingers closed around its grip. The men wore no armor, so my laser cut through them like a javelin. Their blouses caught fire around the wounds. When they fell, I saw the burns on the wall. The laser had shot right through them.
More SEALs jammed in through the door.
The bridge looked more like an office than the control room of a ship. It had computer stations instead of steering wheels. Navigators plotted its course on a computer screen. Beside that station, three men slumped dead in their seats. In the next station, the communications officers lay dead as well. They had been our primary targets as we entered the bridge.
A door on the far side of the bridge opened. The man in the doorway reacted quickly. He swung back into his room, sealing the doors behind him. Alarms went off. Amber and blood-colored lights flashed everywhere.
“Engine room report?” the mission leader called over the interLink.
“We have control. The weapons are down. The shields should be down any minute,” Illych said.
“Step it up. They know we’re on board,” the mission leader said.
“What happened up there?” Illych asked.
“We got spotted. The situation is under control. Now get the shields down. If we don’t see the cavalry soon, we’re in for a beating.”
“You okay, Harris?” Illych asked on a band that the mission leader would not hear.
One of the SEALs used a torch to short-circuit the door to the room off the bridge. He pulled his pistol and stepped in. I saw the red glow of the laser flash across the walls as the SEAL fired two shots into the man at point-blank range.
“We’re pinned down! We’re pinned down!” The call came from the squad guarding the launch bay.
“What is your status?” the mission leader asked.
“We are trapped in the transport.”
“Do you have control of the target area?”
No answer.
“Launch Bay Squad, do you have control of the target area?”
“Grenade! Grenade!” was the last we heard from the squad in the launch bay.
Then someone in the corridor tried to open the hatch and enter the bridge. He had cracked the door less than an inch when one of the SEALs fired through and ended the problem.
“Seal the hatch!” our team yelled. That seemed like a good idea.
“It’s going to get hot up here,” I told Illych. I was not complaining.
“Wait a moment. Just a…Okay, the shields are down,” the Blue Team leader called in.
“We’ve lost Launch Bay Squad. Gold Team, break into squads. Gold 1, hold the bridge. Gold 2, retake the launch bay.” I was in Gold 2, the emergency squad. We were the ones who would catch the shit face-first.
There were forty of us in Gold 2, almost twice as many men as in Gold 1, with good reason. All Gold 1 had to do was hold on to the bridge. The forty of us would have to run the gauntlet. We were going to have to go back down the elevators, if we made it that far. Before we worried about the elevators, we needed to fight our way out of the bridge. And if we failed…At that moment, two thousand men were floating in space outside the ship. They were armed, and they had combat gear, but they would be sitting ducks in a shoot-out with men on a ship. Hell, until we got the launch-bay door open, those men out there were doing little more than waiting to die.
“Harris, are you Gold 1 or Gold 2?” Illych called over.
“Two,” I said.
“You’re in for a fight.”
“Against these stiffs?” I asked, purposely echoing my famous last words from the cockpit. “They didn’t give us any trouble when we took the bridge.”
“I think they’ve figured out what we’re doing,” Illych said. “They’re all over the halls out there. Good thing they have to come to us. Man, I would hate to be the one squeezing through a narrow hatch to get in.”
“Thanks,” I said, knowing that in order to retake the launch bay, Gold 2 would run through the corridor and hatches.
“Oh, you guys will make it through, no problem,” Illych said. “I meant I would hate to be a Mogat squeezing through those halls.”
“Gold 2, stage.”
At the order to stage ourselves, we drew our guns and approached the hatch. SEALs from Gold 1 opened the door for us. Two Gold 2 men leaped through the door firing lasers, hoping to clear a path for the rest of us. The Mogats shot them with so many lasers that they seemed to dissolve into the air. The door slid shut, cutting through the bloody puddle.
