“A sniper? Philips, snipers are guys who sneak around with rifles waiting for someone to shoot. Freeman doesn’t wait.”
“No shit? A specking corpse factory,” Philips said. He sounded impressed.
“Just keep out of his way.”
Freeman had his helmet on. Since he was not a Marine, and his armor was of civilian make, he could not legally access the frequencies we used on the interLink. “Freeman, you on?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Did you and Admiral Brocius discuss any other work he might have for you after you’ve collected on Crowley?”
“No,” Freeman said.
“You do know that civilians are not allowed to listen in on communications on this frequency?” I asked. Then, without waiting for Freeman to answer, I added, “If you listen in on my communications, we won’t need to waste time updating each other.”
Freeman did not respond.
We touched down on our base ship. We would step off of our transport, tucked away in the launch bay. Once all of the transports checked in, the battleships would broadcast to a spot 100 million miles from Mogatopolis, where no one would detect the electrical anomaly. Then we would fly the four-hour trip into Mogat space under the cloak of the new stealth engines.
Once every last destroyer and battleship was in place, we would launch our transports. There was no way to cloak or protect our transports, so we would scramble down to the planet as quickly as possible.
Standing there, in the dim and anxious atmosphere, I comforted myself by looking for things that would make me feel safe. I did not come up with much.
I thought about the Mogats…the Believers. They might know we were coming. They had to know that we hijacked their battleship and that we now knew how to find them, but they would think we had no way of striking them. Since they did not know about our alliance with the Confederate Arms and the Japanese, they would not know that we had access to a self-broadcasting fleet. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the alliance was both our best-kept secret and our greatest strength. Even the men in my platoon did not realize we were riding in a Confederate Arms ship.
Time passed slowly now. We could not hear what happened outside our sealed world. Had our host ship already broadcasted itself? Were we nearing enemy space? What if the Mogats spotted us? We could die in a flash, never knowing the battle had already begun.
Then, after hours of sitting, we received our warning. Lights flashed in the cabin as our pilot prepared to launch.
The invasion had begun.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“Sergeant Harris, do you want to come up to the cockpit?” the pilot asked.
“On my way,” I said.
I looked up at Freeman. “I have to go to the cockpit,” I said. He continued checking his gear.
“Where are you going?” Private Philips asked, as I started toward the ladder.
“The pilot wants to see me,” I said. I thought for a moment, then radioed back to the pilot. “Can I bring one of my men?”
“We have room for a fourth.” That might not have applied if I tried to bring Freeman.
“Philips, you want to come?”
“Sure,” he said.
I had a reason for taking Philips. He might have been old and irreverent, but he was a leader. When the bullets started flying, and bombs started to burst, the guys in the platoon would forget all about who wore stripes and who wore clusters. Despite his antics around the barracks, Philips kept his head under fire. During an extended campaign, the rest of the platoon would look up to a Marine like him.
We climbed the ladder and removed our helmets before entering the cockpit.
The inside of the cockpit was dark except for the light from the dials and gauges. We had a pilot and a copilot for the flight. Both men wore combat gear without helmets. The pilot looked back, and said, “Which one of you is Harris?”
“Me, sir,” I said. He was a lieutenant.
The transport had just entered the planet’s atmosphere. Below us, an endless plain stretched ahead. Special gear under our transport shined a blinding light down on the landscape.
“I hear you’ve been down here before,” the pilot said.
“Once,” I said.
“Think you can find one of those gravity chutes?” the pilot asked.
“I might recognize one if we passed close to it,” I said.
“Good enough,” the pilot said. “They sent an explorer yesterday to scout the place. The pilot mapped a path for us, but I want you up here just in case.”
I nodded. “The gate we entered was in the mountains,” I said.
“Oh, man, that’s one shitty-looking planet,” Philips said.
“We’re not landing on this part. The place we’re going has air,” I said.
There was a radar scope beside the pilot’s seat. My gaze strayed toward it, and I froze. If I read that display correctly, hundreds of ships had gathered behind us. Then I realized they were other transports. “Those are all ours, right?” I asked.
“Every last one of them,” the pilot said. “Believe me, you’ll hear alarms if the Mogats show.”
“Transport pilots, this is Fleet Command. Be advised that enemy ships are approaching. We are going to evacuate orbit in twenty seconds. Repeat, we will evacuate in twenty seconds.”
“Now that’s just specking great,” the pilot said.
Below our ship, the plains ended at the foot of a tall, sheer mountain range. The peaks looked like they were made of obsidian. They were as black as deepest, darkest space and reflected the transport lights with all the clarity of mirrors.
“There’s your entrance,” I said, pointing toward a particularly tall and jagged peak ahead and to the left. The entrance itself was not lit, and the mountain looked like a shadow against a night sky, but blue-and-white marker lights flashed on its face.
“We’re going there?” Philips asked. He did not sound scared, he sounded incredulous.
“That’s just the doorway,” I said. Having not been admitted to the briefing, Philips had no idea what to expect.
“You know we’ll drop straight down like a rock if the Mogats cut power to that gravity chute?” the pilot said.
“Let’s hope they don’t,” I said. Could they cut the power to a gravity chute? They knew we were coming. If they could cut the power, they would.
We slowed to a crawl and dropped several hundred feet until we pulled parallel with the mountain. Then we hovered toward the entrance at a very slow speed. Our searchlight shone all the way across the entrance. It looked like a giant tunnel. A short way in, the floor suddenly disappeared.
“So that’s a gravity chute?” the pilot asked.
“That’s a gravity chute,” I agreed.
“Do you remember how your ship approached it?” the pilot asked.
“We flew in. I think I felt the engines cut…”
“I was afraid you would say that,” the pilot said.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Everything else was automatic. The pilot came into the cabin and stood around talking to passengers.”
