“Any theories? I’m just a specking grunt. Us specking grunts don’t come up with theories, we just pull the damned triggers and shoot our damned guns.”
All admiration evaporated from Illych’s expression.
CHAPTER FORTY
I was not drunk or hungover after seven glasses of beer, but I needed some sleep. Less than thirty hours ago, I had woken up on a rack in a Mogatopolis armory.
We stayed in a dry-docks dormitory. Most of the Marines had to share their apartments, but I had one to myself. The last time I had stayed here, I’d had a much larger apartment. Of course, the last time I stayed at the Golan Dry Docks, three men tried to beat me to death. When that failed, they tossed a grenade in my room.
My apartment was ten feet wide and ten feet deep with a ten-foot ceiling. It was a perfect cube. My bed was six and a half feet long and three feet wide. There was a closet on one side of the bed and a closet-sized bathroom on the other. I liked the room. It had absolutely no luxuries, but it made me feel secure.
As I settled onto my bed, I saw the flashing light on the wall console warning me that I had a message waiting. I went to the console and punched in my code. The message was from Brocius asking me to call him. I punched in the return code.
“There you are,” Brocius said, as his face appeared on the screen.
“I went out for a drink with my platoon,” I said.
“And you’re still sober?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Glad to hear it, we have things to discuss,” he said. “Come to my quarters.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“And don’t worry about the uniform, Harris, this meeting is off the record.”
When you spend time with high-ranking officers, you quickly learn that there is a difference between being “at ease” and relaxed. When an officer gives the order, “At ease,” you spread your legs and relax your shoulders, but remain alert and erect. You remain that way until the officer says, “Dismissed,” at which time you walk away alert and erect until you are out of sight.
Brocius told me not to worry about my uniform, but that did not mean he wouldn’t notice if I came dressed like a civilian. Above all else, officers want you to show them respect, even when they try to act like your friend. I changed back into my Charlie Service uniform and reported to the admiral’s suite.
Brocius, still wearing the same uniform he had worn to my debriefing five hours earlier, came to the door. “Good of you to come, Sergeant,” he said. He stepped away to allow me in.
The couch in Brocius’s suite would not have fit in my quarters. He had a full-sized bar, a living room, and a pool table. The suite probably came with a bartender, too, but Brocius would have excused the man before discussing sensitive matters. As he led me into the area, I spotted Yoshi Yamashiro sitting on the sofa.
“Hello, Harris,” Yamashiro said as he stood. He wore his traditional dark blue blazer and red necktie. Between the middle finger and forefinger of his left hand, Yamashiro held his traditional half-smoked cigarette.
We shook hands.
“Admiral Brocius has told me about your latest adventures. Perhaps we might have saved you some trouble had we allowed you to commit suicide on your transport ship.” On his ship, Yamashiro showed a strong preference for hot Sake, but he seemed comfortable with the whiskey he now held.
“Suicide?” Brocius asked. “I don’t believe I heard about that.”
“Harris and his friend tried to adapt the broadcast engine from a broadcast station for use on a transport,” Yamashiro said.
“On a transport? That would never work. You would not have had enough power,” Brocius said.
“Ah.” Yamashiro nodded. “Maybe even if you generated enough power, the metal hull of a transport would not be well suited for the electrical discharge.” It was a cultural thing. What he meant was,
“Really?” Brocius asked. “I have long wondered why our engineers have never retrofitted transports for broadcast. Now I guess I know.” He pointed to the furniture. “Have a seat. Harris, I know you’re probably well lubed after a night with the boys, but can I fix you a drink?”
Yamashiro’s whiskey on the rocks looked good, but I decided to play it politic. “No thank you, sir,” I said. Had it just been Yamashiro and I, I would have been on my third drink by this time.
We took our seats.
“I’m betting that Admiral Brallier is giving his boys a briefing as we speak. I apologize for not getting to you sooner, Harris. You deserve to be in the loop.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“We’ve compared the video record you took on the derelict to what we’ve found on the captured ship. Any guesses on the differences between the two ships?”
“The second broadcast engine,” I said.
“You’re halfway there, Harris,” Brocius said. “They changed the entire engine room. They also changed the shields.”
“The ship you brought back has changed very little since my engineers renovated it two years ago,” Yamashiro said. “The broadcast engine is untouched.”
“From what we can tell, the Mogats placed components for two additional shield systems on the battleship Porter sank. One of the shields came with its own generator. It was designed to protect the secondary broadcast engine. As you probably noticed, both the shield and the broadcast engine are still running.
“The Mogats stripped out the ship’s original shield system and replaced it with something new.
“Whatever they have, it’s powerful. Porter hit that battleship with lasers, particle beams, and torpedoes before it went down. We’ve gone over that battle from every angle. Until the fatal shot, nothing came close to penetrating its shields.”
Brocius sat silently for a moment. He sipped his Scotch and considered what to say next. Finally, he placed his drink on an end table, and said, “You know what our engineers are saying? They think the damn shields eat energy. No kidding. They absorb energy out of lasers and particle beams and use it to recharge their batteries. Hell, they think that shield can even strip the kinetic energy out of explosions.
“Of course, that’s all conjecture. We won’t know anything until we see one of the shields on this ship up and running.”
“What about the shields on the battleship—”
“The one you captured?” Brocius interrupted. “We found the shield system but not the shield generator.”
“Maybe they used the generator from the original shield system,” I suggested.
“We do not think that is the case,” Yamashiro said. He finished his whiskey and went to the bar to fix another.
“While we were dissecting their ship, we found a signal receiver hooked into the weapons systems. This is all theory, of course, but it looks like the Mogats are broadcasting the shields as some kind of signal to their ships. The problem is, the only way to test that theory is to fly the ship into Mogat territory,” Brocius said. “I suppose we could take the ship back to where we found it.”
“Maybe not just there,” Yamashiro called from behind the bar. “My engineers estimate that there will be a hundred-million-mile radius in which you can receive that signal.
“You remember when I told you that I thought the Mogats wanted to create a broadcast network? I thought they would use it for communications. After seeing this shield system, I have changed my mind. Now I believe they are using their network to broadcast their shield signal.” He filled his tumbler four fingers full and rejoined us.
“What happens if we shut the signal down?” I asked.
“The Mogats have disabled the original shields on their ships,” Yamashiro said, a wicked smile on his lips. He took a deep drag from his cigarette, then blew the smoke out through his nostrils. “If they lose their shield signal, they will be completely unprotected. I would enjoy seeing that battle.”
