Rogue clone (27 page)

I had no plan. Here I was, on an enemy ship, probably in the center of the enemy fleet, and I was not sure what to do next. I did not make it off the transport in time to tail Wingate. I did not have a prayer of sabotaging the fleet, or even this ship. Escape seemed out of the question. My best bet would be to find a way onto the bridge of the ship and learn the fleet’s galactic coordinates. If I could locate that information and broadcast it to Huang, the U.A. Navy could come after the bastards. After what I saw on New Columbia, I liked the idea of U.A. ships having a fair fight.

Looking around the landing area, I stared into the ivory horizon where the runway met the walls. Cavernous and square, this hangar was designed for transports and cargo ships, not fighters. With the exception of Harriers, which had a vertical take off, fighters took off in runway tubes, allowing them to build up speed before entering battles.

The overalls were a bad fit. Either the kid I took them from had been less than six feet tall or he liked wearing pants that showed his ankles and sleeves that did not cover his wrists. And his clothes were baggy. I did not expect a tailored fit, still they had looked snug on the boy’s muscled body. With my tall and lanky frame, I vanished under the wide swath of cloth.

The worst thing was the boots. A swampy, phosphorous stench rose out of them, and they were hot and moist around my feet. Given the choice, I would have preferred to go barefoot. I found a pair of mediaLink shades inside one of the waist-line pockets. The lenses were greasy and dusted with dandruff. I checked the three small pores at the base of each of the eyepieces to make sure that the microphones were clear. The pores were mostly clean and I blew off the hairs and dandruff. When I reached the door of the hangar I stopped to look back. There sat the transport, alone in the center of the brightly lit landing pad. The world around the transport was ivory white. In that bright lighting, the transport was the color of eggshells. It almost blended with its surroundings; but because it did not quite blend in, it stood out even more.

What about Fred the chatty mechanic and his friend the pilot? Would they discover the little surprise I had wrapped up in the cargo bay? They might, but that could not be helped. Sooner or later, somebody would spot the body no matter where I hid it.

The hall outside the hangar seemed to stretch the entire length of the ship. The polished gray floor went on as far as the eye could see. This was a major corridor, a squared tube with twenty-foot walls. Clumps of people moved through it, but it was far from crowded. Compared to the bustling walkways of most U.A. ships, this corridor was deserted.

Enough time had passed since Wingate left the transport that I had not a prayer of catching up to him. In my mind, Wingate had become a low priority at this point. He had led me to the enemy fleet. But even capturing Crowley and Atkins seemed unimportant at the moment. What would I do with them this deep in enemy territory?

All I could do was go along for the ride. My first priorities now were to blend in and to find my way around this ship.

Navy crews had a practice called “hot bunking.” It meant that three men slept in the same rack—obviously not at the same time. They had eight-hour shifts—work eight hours, recreate eight hours, sleep eight hours. That meant that at any time, one-third of the crew would work while one-third slept and another third ate and played. The thirds were not always equal. The day crew, meaning the crew on duty when the captain was on duty, was generally larger than the others. Hot bunking caused problems for saboteurs like myself because it meant that the ship never slept. There would always be men at the helm and in the engine rooms. So what could I accomplish? I toyed with the idea of slipping a cable into the broadcast engines, but I did not feel like committing suicide. Feeling like I needed a better disguise than these coveralls, I followed the hall toward the center of the ship. Old as this ship was, it was still of a Unified Authority design. The basics were the basics. I knew that the landing bay would be on the bottom deck and that I would have to go to another deck to find what I wanted—a gym. Fifteen minutes and two decks later, I found one. I began unzipping my jumper even before I entered the locker room, and had it off my shoulders by the time the door closed behind me. Training did not appeal to these sailors by the look of things. The locker room was nearly empty. I heard someone in the shower and a couple of men with towels around their waists discussed the battle at New Columbia in front of the mirrors. Both men were Japanese. I noticed that quickly. They had black hair, narrow eyes, and bronzed skin. One man stole a casual glance in my direction while his friend spoke. Had this gym been for Japanese only, I might have been caught. But a moment later, a blubbery man with white skin turned the color of rare roast beef stepped out of a steam room. The man did not have a towel. Drops of water splashed from his flabby legs as he walked.

I grabbed shorts and a shirt from a shelf and tossed my coveralls into a locker. A moment later, I walked out to exercise, the mediaLink shades hidden in my pocket. And things continued to go my way. There was only one other person working out. He did not look at me as I climbed on a stationary bike, dropped the shades over my eyes, and began pedaling.

Now that I had changed to exercise clothes, I blended in. What I needed to do next was contact Huang or Freeman; but with another person in the room, I did not want to hold a conversation. In this case, I went the old-fashioned route and composed letters, customizing a form letter by choosing words and phrases from a menu and optically typing words when needed. On my own shades, I had a menu of people I contacted on a regular basis. It was a short list that included only the late Bryce Klyber and Ray Freeman. The boy’s shades had a different list. Using optical commands, I typed Freeman’s address on a virtual keyboard that was always present at the edge of your vision when you composed letters.

Freeman and I swapped emergency codes so that we would always be able to locate each other in situations like this. There may have been multiple Ray Freemans in the galaxy, but he was the only one who received messages sent with this code.

Optical typing was a slow process. When I switched from the keyboard to the context-sensitive letter, it was a relief. I selected an urgent document. The default letter that appeared was a request for financial assistance; but every word was interactive and as I changed words at the front of the letter, the rest of the document composed itself.

Ray,

I have stowed away on a GCF ship. I believe Warren Atkins and Amos Crowley are on this ship.
Contact Huang and let him know that I will transmit the location of this ship as soon as I have it.
I will call when it is safe.

Harris

I mailed the letter. When I removed the shades, I discovered that a new crop of people had entered the gym. Four men stood in the weight lifting area, joshing with each other as they pushed levers and pulled handles. Their weights clanked loudly as they lowered them. I climbed off of the bicycle.

“Buddy, you mind tossing me a towel?” one of the men called.

“Sure,” I said. I picked up a gym towel and tossed it to him. He snatched it out of the air and turned back to his weights without thanking me.

I went back to the locker room and stripped for a shower. The goal now was to remain inconspicuous as I killed time and waited for the right change of clothing. I needed something I could wear on the upper decks without attracting attention. So I went in the shower room and soaped and showered, peering out whenever I heard people entering or leaving the locker room. More than an hour passed before the man I was waiting for arrived, and I counted myself lucky that he had come so soon. I heard the door close and rinsed myself off. When I looked out of the shower, I saw a crewman walking around the floor picking up a few sopping towels that had been discarded and tossing them into the laundry cart.

Drying myself off as quickly as possible, I listened as he emptied bins filled with dirty gym clothes into his cart. As he left, I pulled on a fresh pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt. Stepping out into the corridor, I saw the crewman moving away slowly. He stood hunched over the laundry cart, his head turning to follow everyone he passed. He turned down one hall and then another before reaching his final destination.

Capital ships had more than one laundry facility. Chances were, there was a special facility on the upper decks just for cleaning officers’ uniforms; but this laundry would do. I approached and the door slid open.

“What do you want?” the crewman asked as I stepped into the room.

“My clothes,” I said, doing an impersonation of a peeved officer. “You hauled off my uniform in one of your laundry carts.”

“Sorry,” the man said in a flat voice. He went back to sorting dirty clothes and did not look back in my direction. Such insubordination. I was an officer. He was an enlisted man. Okay, I was a spy pretending to be an officer, but he didn’t know that.

I had at least thirty carts to choose from. In the third cart, I found an officer’s work uniform.

I went to the emptiest room on any battleship—the chapel. There I could speak freely.

“Who is Derrick Hines?” Freeman’s face appeared on my MediaLink shades.

“Never heard of him,” I said.

“You’re using his Link address,” Freeman said.

“Oh, him,” I said. “He was a crewman on a GCF ship.”

“Confederate or Mogat—?” Freeman asked. He had no interest in Hines’s fate. Freeman was on a communications console. I could see his face. It was as impassive as ever. Judging by his nonplussed expression, you might have thought that I had called from a bar in Mars Spaceport.

“No idea,” I said. “I think it’s their flagship.”

“How did you get on?” Freeman asked.

“I followed Colonel Wingate, the commander of Fort Clinton.”

“That was the Army base that got destroyed on New Columbia,” Freeman said. “What’s he doing on a GCF ship?”

“He swapped sides,” I said. “Turns out he was using Fort Clinton as a surplus outlet and the Mogats were his favorite customers. Think he’s worth much?”

As I thought about it, I had plenty of reasons to hate Batt Wingate. He would have sold me out without a second thought when I was regular military. He’d certainly sold out enough other clones. He must have helped William Patel smuggle bombs into Safe Harbor. Did he know that I would be there or was he just after Jimmy Callahan? I would gladly kill the man myself if I got a chance.

“He’s worth something,” Freeman said. “The Mogats routed the Navy at New Columbia. They shot down twenty-three U.A. ships and destroyed all three military bases. The pundits are saying that Washington is desperate.

“Have you got a location on the Fleet?”

“No,” I said.

Freeman waited for me to say more.

“Ray, this is too big for us. We’re going to need to bring Huang in on it. Keep this channel open. I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but I will get you a location. Once I have something, you’re going to have to turn it over to Huang.”

He agreed.

“Where are you now?” I asked.

“I was on my way to Little Man.”

“Your family okay?” I asked.

“A carrier buzzed them last night. I think it scared them. They’re colonists. Having the Navy around makes them nervous.”

“Did anything happen?” I asked.

“The captain gave them one month to evacuate the planet. They’ll still be there when this is over with.”

For some reason, I got the feeling that he was not anxious to visit Little Man. Until recently, he never even mentioned his family. Now, when he talked about them, he did not seem to exude warm feelings. We agreed to meet in Safe Harbor once I got off this ship. Freeman would go and see what happened to Callahan and the commandant at Fort Washington. One way or another, I thought I could bring in Batt Wingate, and we would need witnesses to prove he was our Benedict Arnold.

My new uniform made me a lieutenant in the Confederate Navy. Now that I was an officer, I moved around the ship more freely. I walked the halls and looked for clues. The first thing that struck me was the sheer emptiness of the ship. U.A. ships were crowded with personnel. Engineers, weapons officers, cooks, communications officers . . . wherever you looked, you saw sailors. Command ships seemed doubly crowded because, along with the crew, they had fleet officers and administrative flunkies.

This ship had a skeleton crew, maybe a half-crew. I walked down major arteries between engineering and weapons systems passing only an occasional sailor.

The ship itself was clean, brightly lit, and remarkably unorganized. The cables that I saw lining the walls down in the landing bay also snaked along the halls on the upper decks. They were about three inches in diameter and highly insulated, which led me to believe that they might carry a high-voltage electrical charge. The ceilings in this part of the ship were only eight feet tall, and the cables hung one foot lower than that. At one point, thinking I was alone in a long hall, I stopped to examine them. The outside covering of these cables was black with maroon strips.

“Is there a problem with the cables, Sir?” somebody asked behind my back. I whirled around expecting to see an MP. It was a petty officer—a maintenance technician. I recognized the crossed hammers insignia on his blouse. It was the same insignia that the U.A. Navy used. This man did not suspect me of being a spy. He was worried about my spotting a flaw in the way that the cables were hung.

“Looks sound,” I said.

He saluted, but he had a curious, maybe even slightly nervous look on his face. “Sir,” he said, looking as if he was not sure he should continue. I thought I knew what he would say and I was ready.

“Yes?”

Now lowering his voice to a whisper, he leaned forward and said, “You forgot your bars.” As he said this, he pinched the right side of his collar between his thumb and forefinger and shook it. That was not what I expected. I pretended to be confused. Seeing that there were no bars on my collar, I acted surprised and embarrassed. “Thank you. I can’t believe I missed that,” I said with an expression that I hoped looked like a nervous grin. The petty officer saluted and left. Of course there were no bars pinned to my collar, I had liberated this blouse from laundry. No officer worth his spit would leave his bars or clusters on the collar of a blouse that was headed for a cleaning. My first discovery was that this ship was a battleship. I found that out when I passed a directory on the top deck. The directory showed the ship’s seven decks plus a picture of the ship from the outside. A ship of this size should have had a 2,500-man crew. Now, having walked its length on every deck, I guessed the crew at no more than 800. Maybe one-tenth of the crew was Japanese. The engineering area was almost all Japanese.