allocating their resources to a rocket defense. We need to go in fast, land our Marines, and get the speck out of there.”
That ended the debate.
Cutter finished by saying, “God help us if I called this wrong.”
Lieutenant Mars couldn’t have said it better.
I told Freeman about the meeting, and he said, “Missiles, not rockets.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“They recently built three high-security missile bases around Washington, D.C.”
“There must be more,” I said.
“Just those three.”
“Why would they build all of them in Washington?” I asked.
Freeman glared at me. “This is the Unified Authority.”
“Yeah. The whole damned planet belongs to the Unified Authority,” I said.
“Where are you planning to attack?” asked Freeman.
“The capital,” I said.
He was right. They were right. It did not matter where else we attacked, the war would be decided on the eastern seaboard of the former United States. In their minds, no other target was worth invading. It was the only target in my mind as well. The Unified Authority would remain in place so long as Washington, D.C., remained.
“Damn it,” I said.
Freeman watched me silently.
“How dangerous?” I asked.
“They’re big bases. They have millions of missiles,” he said.
“So we’re screwed,” I said.
“I can shut them down.”
He was a skilled saboteur. I asked, “Do you have a way to hack into their system?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t even try; the security is too solid.”
“Do you know how to break into the bases?” I asked.
He shook his head.
I thought he’d probably come up with something elegant, some imaginative loophole. I was wrong. He said, “I bought warehouses near each of the missile bases and filled them with bombs.”
I had to laugh. “You said you weren’t sure which side you were going to take,” I pointed out.
Freeman looked down at me, blinked once, and asked, “Do you want me to tell you about the bombs I set up next to your bases?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
After speaking with Freeman, I spent fifteen minutes throwing together a strategy for establishing a beachhead, then I told Cutter to launch the invasion.
I boarded a transport and sat in the cockpit, in the copilot’s seat. Beside me, Lieutenant Christian Nobles ran the controls. “Sir, do you know what we’re up against?” he asked, as the sled dragged our transport through the first set of locks.
“You’re going to have plenty to deal with on the way down,” I said. “The Unifieds have a new missile defense.”
“What about the Earth Fleet? What did they do with their fleet?” Nobles asked.
“We don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say the bastards sent it to intercept the barges at Terraneau.” I did not mention my conversation with Tobias Andropov. Nobles had not returned to Earth for most of a decade. Tobias Andropov had risen to power during Nobles’s absence, and I doubted that the name would have meant anything to him. The sled began dragging our transport into the launch tubes.
“It sounds like the Unifieds are in the shit,” Nobles said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We captured the Golan Dry Docks, right? That left them high and dry without anyplace to build new ships. We don’t have anyone who can design ships. They don’t have anyplace to build them. Either way, you end up stranded once you run out of ships. I bet that’s why they’re using a missile defense.”
I silently stewed over Nobles’s words as we entered the second atmospheric lock and the huge metal door closed behind us, sealing off the rest of the carrier as the outer hatch opened, revealing space. We left the artificial-gravity field. Nobles gave the thrusters a slight kick, and the transport coasted out to space.
We were at the head of an enormous armada, flying toward Earth at several million miles per hour. In space, where there is no friction to slow you down, a slow-flying bird like a military transport can travel a million miles per hour riding on the inertia of the ship from which it launched.
The first wave of fighters led the way, and we followed, an enormous swarm of transports. Ahead of us, I saw the sun, the Earth, and its moon. The engines of our Tomcats looked like tiny sparks. They traveled ahead of us, looking like a field of ambercolored stars. Above them, a few capital ships cleared the way.
At that point, the transport pilots used their thrusters to slow their ships as the invasion fleet left us behind. The change in speed played havoc with the gravity inside the transports. I felt a wave of nausea roll over me as the artificially generated gravity that rooted me to the floor did a tugof-war with the genuine gravity that pulled me forward.
As the gravity from our deceleration stabilized, I put on my helmet and used the commandLink to speak to Ray Freeman. We did not fly down to Earth on the same transport.
“Ray, you there?”
“Yeah.”
“How long will it take you to destroy the bases?” I asked.
“Depends how far I need to travel.”
“We’re going to try and come in as close to Washington, D.C., as possible,” I said. “If we run into resistance, you may have a trek.”
That was when the shelling began. Far ahead of us, so distant that the explosions looked like light shining through hundreds of pinholes, U.A. missiles lashed out at our capital ships.
“Harris,” Cutter called. His voice came on a direct line over the interLink and on the communications console.
“Harris, here,” I said.
“We found their missiles,” Cutter shouted. He probably did not mean to shout, but the man must have been drowning in adrenaline. His voice rang in my ears. “We’re losing ships. Damn, we’re losing ships.”
Cutter had planned the pass correctly. Our big ships streaked by at several million miles per hour, traveling so fast that the missiles could not lock in on individual targets.
Cutter mumbled something, then said, “We lost twenty-seven ships.” Having seen the extent of the damage, he sounded more stressed than panicked.
Twenty-seven ships did not sound like a lot. I said, “They only nicked you. This could end early.”
Cutter put the damage into perspective. “We lost twenty-seven ships passing four hundred thousand miles outside of Earth’s atmosphere at three million miles per hour. You’ll be entering the atmosphere at two thousand miles per hour.”
“We’re going to get nailed,” I said.
He did not respond.
“Warn your men,” I told Cutter. “They deserve to know what they’re up against.”
Cutter signed off and changed frequencies. A moment later, speaking on an open line that every fighter and transport pilot would hear, he made his report.
“This is Captain Donald Cutter of the E.M.N.
