neck.
I drifted into a light sleep.
If the man had waited a few more seconds, he might have caught me fast asleep instead of just dozing off. He had his gun ready when he slipped through the door, but I had already heard the soft hiss of the pneumatic piston and rolled off the bed.
He must have thought he’d found an empty room. He stepped in and closed the door behind him, pausing when he saw my unmade rack. Peering from a gap between my desk and my bed, I saw the man’s legs and the silenced pistol he held in front of him.
My billet was small, a bed, desk, closet, and head all built around each other as tightly as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The lights of my communications console blinked on and off on the far wall; someone was trying to reach me. I hoped they would come to check on me when I did not answer.
His gun at the ready, the man took a step toward my bed. Maybe he knew I was in here, maybe he thought I left it unmade like a guest in a hotel; but he took no chances. He walked to the edge of my rack, and said, “You might as well come out.”
I heard uncertainty in his voice. He didn’t know I was in the room.
“I know you’re here, Harris. I saw you come in.”
I did not believe him. I sat quiet and waited. Hidden by the desk, I managed to crawl along the far side of the bed toward the bathroom. I was as silent as a cat on the prowl, and I felt the beginning of a combat reflex running through my veins.
The man laughed, and said, “I can see you.” The stupid son of a bitch had his back to me when he said that. He was aiming his gun into my closet when I lunged at him from the door of the head.
The bastard had lightning reflexes. He spun and clipped me across the jaw with his pistol. Lights popped behind my eyes, and my head spun for a moment, but I grabbed his gun hand with both of my hands as my momentum slammed both of us into my tiny work desk. He smashed a fist into my head as I knocked the pistol out of his hand.
The man brought his knee into my chest as I slid to the floor and grabbed the pistol. He stomped at my hand, then kicked me across the jaw; but I held on to the gun. The fight was as good as over. He kicked me in the chest, sending me to the floor, then he bolted from the room. I took a moment to recover, then I leaped to my feet and ran through the door. By the time I reached the hall, the speedy bastard was gone.
I reported the attack and placed the ship on alert even though I knew it was a waste of energy. Captain Villanueva placed security posts throughout the
He reacted thoroughly and by the book; but if stopping the infiltration had been that easy, Warshaw would have nipped our infiltration problem long ago.
That night I received a message from Warshaw summoning his admirals to Gobi for a summit. As the “highest-ranking” officer in the E.M. Marines, I was required to attend.
St. Augustine would have to wait. Screening my men would have to wait as well. They would be trapped on the
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I brought the dead sergeant with me to the summit.
Before wheeling him out of sick bay, I opened his cryogenic body bag to make sure it held a stiff instead of a stowaway. Frozen mist rose out as I spread the seam. The dead and partially dissected Kit Lewis stared back at me with his one remaining eye, little folds of skin peeled back from his cheek, ear, and neck.
Seeing the frozen body, I realized that no one in their right mind would hide in a cryogenic bag. The temperature inside the bag remained a constant zero degrees, and there was no air.
“You know you wouldn’t be in there if you had just dropped me at Fort Sebastian,” I said as I closed the bag. I slung it from the table to the cart and wheeled it toward the landing bay.
In the meantime, a team of twenty MPs swept the landing bay and the transports for signs of tampering or unwanted visitors. After I heard the bay was clean, I posted the MPs by the door. The only people allowed in the landing area were me, Admiral Cabot, and my pilot—Sergeant Nobles.
I found Nobles and Cabot when I arrived at the landing bay. They met me as I came up the transport ramp. Nobles, clearly uncomfortable around Cabot, shrugged off his generally casual attitude and stood at attention as he said, “Sir, this Marine does not mean any disrespect, but that body bag looks full.”
“A coroner is going to have a look at him while we’re on Gobi,” I said.
“From what this Marine has heard, sir, there are plenty of dead men at Gobi Station. Do you have any idea what killed them?”
I nodded toward the gurney, and said, “He did.”
“Sir?” asked Cabot.
“Before I bagged him, our passenger was a Unified Authority infiltrator clone,” I said. Both Cabot and Nobles stared at the bag as if its contents might try to climb out; but Cabot understood, he’d been in on the investigation on St. Augustine. Nobles, like most of the men in the fleet, had no idea that Unified Authority had cooked up a new line of clones.
“How soon can we go wheels up?” I asked Nobles, stealing him from his thoughts.
“Whenever you are ready, sir,” he said.
“I’m ready,” I said.
I sent Cabot to go sit with Nobles in the cockpit while I remained in the kettle with the cadaver. The cabin was silent, filled with shadows and cold. I looked over the still form of Kit Lewis in his blue-gray body bag and remembered his fury as he attacked me. He’d had murder in his eyes and charged at me with not so much as a moment’s hesitation.
These bastards could kill, no doubt about it. If we did not discover their secrets, they would spread and destroy us.
I left the
Every ship in the fleet was under lockdown. Until we figured out some way to protect ourselves, the best we could hope to do was stop the disease from spreading. For now, we would settle with a tourniquet approach, but soon enough we would upgrade to amputation.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The summit began the next day.
For lack of a safer place, Warshaw decided to hold his summit in Gobi Station. Why not? He had a small army guarding the place. He had posts taking meaningless DNA samples at every door. Gobi Station was the safest spot in an entirely unsecured empire.
Warshaw assigned human guards and robot sentries to patrol the grounds outside Gobi Station. Armored vehicles ran the perimeter. A battery of rocket launchers waited inside the gates. Gobi Station was prepared for war, not infestation.
