“Yeah,” Freeman grunted. This was not the transport in which Yamashiro had found us. The crew of the Sakura jettisoned that ill-fated ship. Yamashiro’s engineers said that our broadcast engine experiment had damaged it beyond repair.
The transports on the Sakura were fifty years older and even less sleek than our old one. This transport had the same basic floor plan and controls. Not much had changed over the last fifty years. Military transports were still shitty little tin cans designed to take maximum abuse on short trips at slow speeds.
“Earth is different,” Freeman said. “The government is still down there, not just a bunch of shell-shocked Marines.” He sat in the pilot’s chair and went over the controls.
We still had an hour to kill before we launched. I sat in the copilot’s seat and fastened the safety harness across my chest. My thoughts wandered back to New Columbia and the gang-riddled city of Safe Harbor.
Technicians walked around the launch bay. One came and inspected the outside of our transport.
On our way out of Little Man, I’d read a Bible story in which Syria laid siege to the capital city of Israel. As the siege continued, the people starved.
One day a woman approached the king of Israel to ask for help. When the king asked what she wanted, the woman told him about an agreement she had made with another woman. They would “sodden” her son one night and then the next night they would “sodden” the other woman’s boy. They did indeed sodden the first woman’s son; but the next night, the other woman reneged on the deal.
When I asked Ray what “sodden” meant, he said, “stewed.”
“You mean like boiled?” I asked.
He did not bother to answer.
In my mind, I imagined Washington, DC, under Syrian siege. I envisioned ruined buildings, herds of homeless people, and a city carved up by gangs.
In that Bible story, the king blamed the destruction of his city on God. “Why should I wait for God to save us?” he asked Elisha, who happened to be God’s press secretary at the time. I agreed. I saw God as a metaphor for government. In my mind, the king was not really a king but just a middleman placed between God and the people. In this case, God got scared and ran away long before the Syrians arrived.
Would we find the same thing on Earth? Had the government that created me run scared when the Mogats overpowered its fleet?
“Prepare to launch.” Takahashi’s voice came over the radio. Yamashiro had not bothered to see us off himself. Did his absence betray a certain lack of confidence? Realistically, our chances of landing near Washington, DC, and slipping into the city undetected seemed slim.
“Ready,” Freeman answered.
Red lights flashed around the launch bay. The heavy doors of the atmospheric locks slid open, revealing the curtain of space. The deck officer cut the gravity in the launch bay so that we lifted off the deck the moment Freeman touched the boosters. Freeman took us five feet up, then floated us through the doors and into space.
Had the Sakura maintained full speed, it would have disappeared into space before we could have seen it. Instead, it had dropped to a mere five thousand miles per hour for our launch—virtually a dead stop by space-travel standards.
We only caught a glimpse of the ship as it vanished. The ships in the Galactic Central Fleet had charcoal-colored hulls. The combination of speed and dark coloration acted as camouflage against the backdrop of space.
“Once we enter the atmosphere, they’re bound to spot us,” Freeman said.
Earth loomed ahead, a glowing green-and-blue sphere with polar white caps, tan-colored deserts, and swirls of cloud. We came in toward the coast of Europe, adjusted our angle parallel to the ocean below us, and flew west. A blue sky with clouds the size of city blocks stretched out before us.
“We’re about two thousand miles from Washington airspace,” Freeman said.
“Do you think they saw us coming?” I asked.
Freeman nodded.
“Do you think they will try to intercept us?” I asked.
“It depends on just how bad the city was hit,” Freeman said.
“Yamashiro said that the Mogats only took out the clone farms and the bases,” I said.
“Maybe,” said Freeman. “I don’t think he has spent much time around here. His officers seem nervous about running into the Mogat fleet.”
We entered the atmosphere at Mach 2, though we could have flown at well over Mach 3. Before the Unified Authority fell, all atmospheric travel was limited to a maximum speed of three thousand miles per hour.
Soon Ray cut our speed to one thousand miles per hour. At that speed it took us two hours to reach Washington, DC. The Atlantic Ocean stretched out beneath us like a gray-blue carpet, but it did not seem long before we reached the end. Up ahead of us, I could see the coast. Green forests and rocky cliffs marked the edge of the sea. Clouds so effervescent they should have been steam melted into the horizon.
“Here comes our escort,” I said. Up ahead, three fighters scrambled out to meet us. They left billowing contrails across the sky.
“We’ve got three more behind us,” Freeman said. I looked at the radar screen. It showed three blips behind us and three more ahead.
“How long have they been there?” I asked.
“Within radar range?” Freeman asked. “A few seconds. They picked us up back at Iceland. They’ve been giving us room to maneuver.”
“But they haven’t tried to contact us?” I asked. That did not make sense.
Freeman shook his head.
“Maybe they’re scared,” I said.
Freeman responded with one of his glacial “you don’t know what you are talking about” glares.
Three of the fighters formed an ellipse behind us, and the other three formed an arc just below the nose of the transport. Their contrails formed a carpet of cloud. They were clearly sent as an escort, not a guard.
“Transport pilot, this is Dulles Civil Traffic Control, please respond.”
“He seems awfully polite,” I observed.
“They think we are Mogats?” Freeman said. “We just came out of a GCF battleship.”
“I’ll bet you’re right,” I said. Our transport was the same make and model that the Mogats used. There were six fighters surrounding us, and they hadn’t even aimed a missile in our direction. They thought we were Mogats, and they did not want to get us mad. “They’re either scared or glad to see us,” I said.
We were getting close to Dulles Spaceport.
“Dulles Civil, this is transport pilot,” Freeman said into the radio.
“What is your destination, transport pilot?”
“We wish to land at Dulles Spaceport,” Freeman said.
“You are cleared for Runway One.”
“That was easy,” Freeman said to me.
“I’ve never felt so welcomed,” I agreed.
By this time we had crossed greenbelts and the bays. Flying at one thousand miles per hour, we passed from sea to city in four minutes. Freeman slowed the transport to landing speed, and we followed our fighter jet escort to the runway.
“Leave your gear in the transport,” I told Freeman as we touched down and taxied into a hangar.
The Spaceport Authority would almost certainly send security to meet us. We didn’t want to come off the transport with a bunch of small weapons in our hands. It would not take them long to figure out we were not Mogats, and the last thing I wanted was to give them an excuse to shoot.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“We’ve got them, sir.” The sergeant paused for a moment. He was clearly uncomfortable about my hearing what he had to say next. “Sir, they can’t be Mogats. One of them is a clone.”
He should have been uncomfortable. The soldier was a general-issue military clone. He was programmed not to talk about clones and cloning; but he was also programmed to obey orders, and some officer had clearly ordered him to report when we stepped off our ship. The cognitive dissonance this must have caused that poor grunt.