I weighed all of the possibilities in my mind, then I smiled, and said, “We won’t have much of an empire if we let everybody die.”
The compromise was obvious. Freeman probably expected it from the start. He said, “The computer stays with me. When we need to contact Sweetwater, I control the computer, and you control the broadcast access.”
I was the commanding officer of the largest navy in the galaxy, and he was nothing more than a mercenary, but he had just proposed an equal partnership. I thought about it for a second, and said, “I can live with that.”
Freeman and I sat side by side in a conference room on the
Freeman toyed with the links going to his computer, and asked, “What time is it?”
I looked over at the wall and saw what Freeman already knew. “01:00 STC,” I said. STC was short for “Space Travel Clock,” the twenty-four-hour clock used for synchronized space travel.
“They’re asleep,” he said.
As nothing more than sophisticated computer animations, Sweetwater and Breeze should have been able to work around the clock; but they had been programmed to eat, sleep, and shit. They didn’t know they were dead. No longer needing sleep might tip them off to their virtual state; and if they learned they were virtual, no one could predict how they might react. They might go into a depression or refuse to work.
If some virtual lab assistant answered our call, he’d undoubtedly warn the Unifieds that we had broken into their system. “Maybe we should wait until 10:00,” I said. “We wouldn’t want to disturb them.”
Freeman, being Freeman, did not note the irony in the situation, and said, “They’ll be in the lab by 07:00.”
I nodded. “Not much we can do until then,” I said, meaning there was not much for Freeman to do. I, on the other hand, had a hundred hours’ worth of work to fit into the next six hours.
As Freeman took his communications device and left the conference room, I called Captain Cutter and asked him to join me.
I did not know Cutter well, and I needed to find ways to distinguish him from other clones. He was a standard-issue U.A. military clone. He stood five feet ten inches tall, had brown hair cut to regulation length, and brown eyes. Every clone of his make, which included every last sailor on the ship, fit Cutter’s description.
The Unifieds did not consider clones to be human. Since standard-issue clones like Cutter were programmed to think they were natural-born, they tended to be a little antisynthetic as well. When clones like Cutter found out the truth, all hell would break loose. A gland built into their brains released a fatal hormone into their systems; it was a fail-safe that was supposed to prevent a clone rebellion. They called it the “Death Reflex.”
When clones like Cutter looked in a mirror, their neural programming made them see themselves as blond- haired and blue-eyed. Like every clone, including me, Cutter had grown up thinking he was the only natural-born resident in an “orphanage” that trained military clones. He had memories programmed into his head. We all did.
Seeing himself as the only blond-haired, blue-eyed natural-born in the entire Enlisted Man’s Navy, Cutter would naturally become suspicious if I did not recognize him. So would every other clone on the ship.
The door to the conference room opened, and in walked Captain Don Cutter. I pretended to recognize him when in fact the only thing that stood out was the eagle on his collar.
I was not the same make of clone as Cutter, by the way, though I was no less synthetic. I was a Liberator, a discontinued model with a penchant for violence. Instead of a gland with a deadly toxin, Liberators had a gland that released a mixture of testosterone and adrenaline into our blood during battle. They called that the “combat reflex,” and it worked too well. My forerunners became addicted to violence, which was why my kind were discontinued and replaced by a class of clones with a fail-safe mechanism.
Cutter and I traded salutes and formalities, then I asked, “What is the status of your ship?”
“We wouldn’t do well in a fight, but she’ll get us where we want to go,” he said.
“Can she broadcast?” I asked. Even as I asked it, I realized it was a dumb question.
“She broadcasted here,” Cutter said without a hint of sarcasm. One thing I noticed about Cutter, he always gave me the benefit of the doubt. I had just asked an obvious question, and he did not call me on it.
“What happens if we find ourselves in a fight?” I asked.
“It depends who we’re fighting, sir,” Cutter said. “As things stand now, the
“How about U.A. battleships and carriers?” I asked.
“Permission to speak frankly, sir?”
“I wish you would.”
“The attack at Olympus Kri specked us up good,” he said, his formal tone now gone. “Our forward shield is fine, but our ass is exposed. If the enemy comes up behind us, we’ll go down fast.”
We had gone to Olympus Kri to help the Unified Authority evacuate the planet, then the bastards attacked us.
The Enlisted Man’s Empire and the Unified Authority were entangled in an antagonistic triangle in which every side had two enemies. Our enemies were the Unified Authority, the Earth-bound empire that once ruled the Milky Way, and the Avatari, the alien race that was systematically destroying the galaxy for mining purposes. The Unifieds had to contend with us and the Avatari. The Enlisted Man’s Empire and the Unified Authority would have loved to destroy the Avatari; but their world was in another galaxy. We were more concerned with survival than conquest.
So the Avatari came to Olympus Kri and incinerated the planet the same way they incinerated Terraneau. Working with the Unifieds, we managed to evacuate the population before the aliens arrived; then the Unifieds ambushed our ships. The
“They specked us up good,” I agreed, reflecting on the other ships that did not manage to broadcast out of the trap. We lost our entire command structure when the Unifieds ambushed us at Olympus Kri.
I thought about what he had said. The U.A. Navy had newer ships than ours. Their ships had shields that wrapped around their hulls like constantly renewing second skins. Our ships had six independent shields that formed a box around the hull. If a shield gave out, parts of the ship were left unprotected.
“Can you repair the rear shields?” I asked.
“They got the antenna, sir. We’re going to need to build a new rear array.”
“I see,” I said. “Has Lieutenant Mars had a look at it?”
“He says he can fix her if we take her into the dry docks.”
I sighed, thanked Cutter for his report, and dismissed him. All in all, the news could have been worse. We had a working ship and a way to communicate with Sweetwater and Breeze. Given a little time, Mars and his engineers might even get the spy ship operational. All just a matter of time, but we did not have time.
Glad to have a moment to myself, I reviewed the situation in my head.
The good news was that we had liberated the Golan Dry Docks from the Unified Authority, so we had facilities for repairing the
And then there were the Avatari. Over the last two weeks, the bastards had attacked New Copenhagen, Olympus Kri, and Terraneau. They were destroying planets every three or four days. Unless we stopped them, we’d be galactic nomads in another few months.
The room was oblong, brightly lit, its nearly soundproofed walls devoid of art and windows. Sitting in the well-lit silence, I stared straight ahead, taking in the sterile emptiness around me.
I could not win this war, yet I felt compelled to fight. We could attack and defeat the Unifieds, but they were more of a distraction than a problem. They had massacred our leadership while holding up a flag of truce, but we wouldn’t make the mistake of trusting them again.
If it came to a fight with the aliens, on the other hand, we didn’t stand a chance. We couldn’t even strike back at them if we wanted.
How the speck do you defend planets from spontaneous combustion? If anyone could figure out a solution, it
