“Adams, Nielsen, prepare to bolt.” I radioed, still not sure how much to trust Philips.
“Just give the word,” Adams said.
“Philips, you’re on,” I said.
I imagined the scene in my head. The ventilation shafts were four feet wide and four feet tall. Without gravity pulling you down, you could easily fly through them without ever touching the aluminum-alloy walls. Philips would turn off his kit and scramble to the vent where he left his puppet poking out. The Mogats would chase him. If he lived up to his battle record, Philips would pass the puppet and turn on his stealth kit. Knowing his recklessness, he would fire a shot at the Mogats before clearing out, but he could still get away.
“Adams, what’s happening?” I asked.
“Sick bay is clear,” Adams said.
“Get the hell out,” I shouted.
A moment later they signaled to say they had entered the vents.
“See you on the other side, Wallace,” Philips muttered. “Here they come. Can I hit a Mogat when they come, Master Sarge? It would make me feel a whole lot better about sacrificing old Wallace.”
“Get serious,” I said.
“I am serious,” Philips said. A second later he said, “That one’s for Wallace. Sorry about that, Master Sarge. I accidentally hit one of them Mogats.”
I remembered the time we spent drilling and Philips outscoring me on the firing range. “Accidentally my ass,” I said. “Get out of there, Philips.”
“Uhh! Poor Wallace,” Philips groaned.
“What happened?” I asked.
“They just shot his head off,” Philips said. “You should have seen it, Master Sarge. Wallace’s head just about burst like a damned water bomb. His legs are still in the vent but the rest of him went flying across the room.”
“Philips, get out of there!” I yelled.
“I’m leaving…I’m leaving,” Philips grumbled. “See you around, Wallace.”
“Sergeant, may I just take a moment to point out that Private Philips is a lunatic and a danger to this mission,” Evans chimed in.
“He just saved two men from your squad,” Thomer said.
Evans did not answer.
I chanced another look across the launch bay. A few guards congregated near the entrance to the corridor. The closest ship, no more than twenty feet from the elevator shaft in which I was hiding, sat entirely unguarded.
Adams and Nielsen might have nearly gotten themselves caught, but they had also drawn off most of the Mogats milling around the landing deck.
“Start the final act, I’m going in,” I said over the platoon-wide band.
If everything worked right, all of my men would converge in the corridor near the bridge, where Evans and Kasdan had built a barricade. Hidden in the bridge, Evans and Sutherland would track the Mogats’ movements while the rest of my men put on that last act, hiding behind the barricade and staging a losing gunfight. As the Mogats shot their puppets, my men would hopefully escape into the vent system.
At this point I no longer had time to worry about how the show went over. I had a trick of my own to perform. I needed to slip into one of the transports.
Before leaving the lift shaft, I pushed off the walls and went up as high as I could for one last look around the flight deck. The Mogats had left their landing lights on, flooding the bay with bright illumination. Across the way, fifteen guards clustered around a ship on the far side of the deck.
I felt the combat hormone enter my circulatory system. I felt the warmth and the calm. My breathing slowed. The wing of the nearest transport was no more than a few feet from me. I took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. I took another breath, held it, and launched myself at the landing gear of the nearest transport.
With the landing gear between me and the guards, I could not see them. I could not listen to them because of all of the chatter on the Mogat frequencies. The Mogats’ commandos were excited. They were closing in on the enemy.
“Evans, report,” I called as I peered around the landing gear. The guards were still in place, still clustered together uselessly by the entrance. Idiots.
“All according to plan,” Evans said. “They’ve nailed all but three of our puppets?”
“And our guys?” I asked.
“Everybody but Philips is out of there.”
That was according to plan. We couldn’t make the puppets aim and shoot, so we had to do it for them. Philips had volunteered for the job. He liked the idea of shooting at Mogats.
“Okay, I’m almost on board. I want you boys to go dark and stay dark the moment I’m in place. You got that?”
“Got it,” Evans said.
“And that goes double for Philips,” I said.
By this time the hormone had saturated my blood. My muscles tingled the way they might tingle after a perfect workout. My skin had a pleasant sting that reminded me of stepping into a hot shower on a cold night. I took a quick glance around the transport’s landing gear. If the guards had been looking for me, they would have spotted me; but they were too busy talking among themselves.
Pulling myself quickly along the outside of the transport, I rounded a corner and had to grab anything I could find to stop my momentum. Floating inside the kettle, all by himself, was a lone guard.
I managed to hook my foot on a pole before I flew into view. Then I backed out and headed for the next transport.
Maybe the Mogats had assigned a man to stay on each ship or maybe the guy simply did not like a crowd. I should have known something was wrong. Fifteen men guarding four ships—had I stopped to do the math I would have noticed the uneven number.
I pulled myself back off the transport and glanced around the edge of the kettle. Those fifteen useless Mogat guards all faced away from me. Why should they stay alert? Their security systems told them that the only enemies on the ship were a quarter mile away, surrounded by hundreds of commandos.
I looked at the guards and wondered what they were doing. They must have been chatting. You can’t play cards in zero gravity. You can’t smoke or drink in a space suit.
After one last perfunctory glance, I launched myself toward the next transport. It was a tense moment. I had to cross an eighty-foot open area in which I would be completely visible. If someone happened to notice me, I would be an easy target. But my stealth kit jammed their sensors and the guards never looked in my direction. I jetted across the open area at what might well have been fifty miles per hour and caught hold of one of the shield antennae on the next transport seconds later.
From the outside, transports looked bulky and bloated. The kettle, the soldier-and cargo-carrying part of the ship, was a dome with a twelve-foot roof. The core of the ship was a narrow spine with stubby wings. The spine ran across the top of the kettle. From the side, transports reminded me of a severely pregnant dragonfly.
I pulled my way around the next transport. When I came to the opening at the back, I looked around the door and saw three men floating inside. Given the opportunity, I would have pulled my particle beam and shot all three of them. I did not have that option.
“Philips?” I called on the interLink.
“Master Sarge, you on their transport yet? It’s getting a bit hot up here,” Philips said, sounding more bored than anything else.
“I’m in trouble here. You have any puppets left?”
“Sure, Sergeant. I’ve still got a stiffy for you.” The rest of the platoon heard this. I heard them giggling over the interLink.
“Grab your stiff…your puppet, and get down here,” I ordered. “Thomer, watch his back.”
“I’m already on it,” Thomer said. Thomer protected Philips, not that the guy needed much in the way of protection.
Less than ten seconds passed before Evans came on line, and said, “They’re sending in a scout to check out the barricade.”
“Are you dark?” I asked. Dark meant that he had engaged his stealth kit and hidden himself.
“I’m in a vent. I can see them from here. They’re examining the bodies.”