rolling than all of the other engineers combined.
Moving no faster than ten miles per hour, we drifted into that dark hatchway, our runner lights illuminating small swatches along the runway and walls. This part of the ship was in immaculate condition—the walls, pipes, panels, doors, ceiling fixtures, and other furnishings all in perfect trim.
The runway was designed to accommodate transports, but it was wide enough for larger ships. Part of the design included an artificial-gravity field in which ships entering this passage were supposed to land. The field had not been restored. Instead of riding the sled system through the locks, Nobles had to fly the transport through that needle’s eye.
“Marine 1, the outer hatch is sealed,” Mars informed us.
Spuler said nothing. He probably had some smart remark about restoring a foreskin or something along that line, but Mars had warned him off.
We slowly drifted past the first of the atmospheric shields, a massive iron door that weighed multiple tons. Behind it, in a discrete recess, a tiny red light winked on and off. I was glad to see it. It meant that while the rest of the ship was dormant, the engineers had restored power to the atmospheric locks.
Nobles pointed to a glowing lever on his flight stick. “Looks like we’ll be able to open the doors from in here,” he said, sounding relieved. I knew how he felt. Everything had gone according to plan so far.
We floated in past all three of the locks and settled onto the landing-bay deck. In the glare of our runner lights, I saw that Mars and his engineers had cleared as much debris as they could from the area.
I looked around the empty landing bay outside the window, a world so dark and silent it might have been at the bottom of a sea. Abandoned. Lifeless. How many people had died in this chamber? A crew of three thousand men had died defending this ship. That much I knew. Some had been flushed out to space. Undoubtedly, others were still aboard, floating statues that had once been sailors and Marines.
The Corps of Engineers had equipped the skids of our transport with special magnetic clamps to hold us in place during our upcoming collision. The magnets came on and locked us into place once we landed.
“COE 1, we are in place, repeat, we are in place,” Nobles radioed, as our bird touched the deck.
I hated the sound of those words. They meant we were sealed into this orbiting tomb. They meant I could not turn back. Anxiety built in my gut. I wanted to tell Nobles that this was all a mistake. We needed to go back. Without my combat reflex to calm me, I had to deal with unadulterated fear.
“Copy that, Marine 1,” Mars said.
And then, on a direct line that Nobles would not hear, Lieutenant Mars said, “General Harris, a lot of your men will be glad to see you go.”
“So I hear,” I said. Now it was Mars’s turn to tell me what he thought of me. Why not give me an earful? He wasn’t likely to see me again. I always thought the “born-again clone” liked me, but maybe he simply had a better poker face than Hollingsworth or Doctorow.
“Serving with you has been an honor, sir. I hope your mission goes as planned, and you return soon,” he said, leaving me stunned. He signed off before I could respond.
Once again I found myself alone with my thoughts, trying to adjust to the alien feeling of unbridled fear. Flying always bothered me, even when I had a reliable combat reflex. It made me feel helpless. In the fight-or-flight of the battlefield, I had a measure of control. On a ship, I had no control of my fate. Whatever became of the ship would also become of me.
“Nobles, what’s your first name?” I asked, mostly to clear the suffocating silence from my helmet.
“Chris, sir,” he said.
“Short for Christopher?”
“Short for Christian. My parents must have been religious types.” Like every other clone, he was raised to believe he was a natural-born. In fact, he was programmed to die if he discovered his synthetic heritage. As a Liberator, I was spared that last bit of programming.
“Must have been,” I agreed. “Too bad you never knew them. Do you know how they died?”
“They died in a house fire,” Nobles said.
“Shit, here we go,” I whispered, not even thinking who would hear me.
“General Harris, we set up a video array if you want to follow the operation’s progress.”
I thought that he meant some kind of an interLink display. The last thing I wanted at that moment was images of transports dragging the carcass of a battleship showing inside my helmet.
Willing myself to sound calm, I said, “I’d rather keep the interLink open.”
“They’re not on the interLink, sir, they’re on the screens behind your seat.”
“What?” When I looked at the back wall of the cockpit, I saw five rows of four-inch video screens inlaid in the wall. Most of the screens showed a small section of the battleship’s hull and a bird’s-eye view of cluttered space. The engineers must have placed cameras in the transports along the hull.
“That’s was kind of you,” I said.
“It was Spuler’s idea,” Mars said.
“Think of it as an in-flight porno,” said Spuler. “You get to watch the Tool’s penetration.”
“Spuler,” Mars said.
I tried to ignore them. Looking at the little displays, I realized just how much I wanted to scrub the mission. I felt the jittering in my hands and the throbbing in my temples. Now that the transport had landed, and the runner lights were out, I sat in darkness, seeing only by the light of the night-for-day lenses in my visor. I was scared already, and soon I would be terrified.
Trying to sound confident, I told Mars, “Pull the trigger.” Then I did something I knew I would regret; I told Nobles, “I’m shutting down our Link until we get through,” without giving him a reason why. I wasn’t shutting down the entire interLink, we might need to contact Mars; I was just shutting down the Link between me and Nobles because I could feel the panic spreading through my thoughts like a cancer, and I did not want him to hear me.
“Yes, sir,” said Nobles. He seemed preoccupied as he toyed with the switches and gear around his seat.
I removed the harness and climbed out of the chair. The artificial gravity drawing my boots to the deck, I walked to the panel of screens. When I took a closer look at some of the monitors, I saw the rear sides of transports in the corners of the screens. The engines were already running. We had started the flight without my noticing. Sometimes, that happens in space.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I couldn’t stop myself from looking at the monitors. It didn’t matter that I wanted to stick my head in the proverbial sand; the screens bore down on me like five rows of unblinking eyes. Even when I looked away, I felt their weight upon me.
Across the cockpit, Nobles busied himself checking systems and flight controls. He flipped switches, read gauges, then turned his attention to the video array I wanted so much to ignore. He settled comfortably, and there he sat, his gaze transfixed, the reflections of the little screens showing in rows of bright squares in his visor.
In the isolation of my helmet, I began to panic. “I’m not ready for this,” I said to myself. I said it out loud. There was something comforting in hearing my own voice rolling around in my helmet; and what did it matter, I had shut off the interLink. No one would hear me.
“Did you say something, General?” For a moment I thought I might be hearing voices, then I remembered that I had not severed my Link with Lieutenant Mars.
“No,” I said. “I’m just mumbling to myself.” I thought for a moment, then I said, “I can’t do this. This is crazy, we need to call this off.”
The top screens of the array showed the view from the lead transport drones. The cameras looked out into space, but not open space. A tangle of wrecked warships filled the view, looking as impregnable as a castle wall.
I became aware of the way I was breathing, panting like a winded dog.
