“That is precisely how I see it,” I said.
“I like that,” Illych said. He was my first convert. I felt like quite the evangelist.
Admiral Brocius checked in every few days to update me on different events. Yamashiro signed an alliance with the Unified Authority and the Confederate Arms. He sent engineers to the remote Golan Dry Docks facility, the most advanced aerotechnology program in Unified Authority space. I had always imagined that the people in the dry docks were marooned after Mogats-Confederate Arm forces destroyed the Broadcast Network; but, in fact, maintaining the dry docks had been a top priority. Explorer ships bearing food and medical supplies had visited the dry docks within twenty-four hours of the battle.
Brocius updated me on the Naval Intelligence hunt for Ray Freeman. “It’s like the man is a damned ghost,” Brocius said once.
“He’ll turn himself in when he’s ready, sir,” I said.
“Do you know where he is?”
I did not answer. We had been through this before.
“He assaulted an Intelligence officer,” Brocius said. “I could have you arrested for aiding and abetting.”
“Why don’t you send some men out to arrest me?” I asked.
“You’re on your way home,” Brocius said. I could hear mirth in his voice. “We can arrest you once you’re back.”
Changing the subject, I asked, “What about the House of Representatives?”
“What about it?” Brocius asked.
“With the alliance…”
He interrupted me. “The Confederate Arms is an ally, not a member. Hughes says his planets have no interest in rejoining the union. We have a military alliance, and not a very strong one at that.”
As the chairman of the Confederate Arms Treaty Organization, Hughes would know, I thought to myself. “What about Yamashiro?” I asked.
“What about him?” Brocius asked.
“Is he just an ally?” I asked.
“We’ve offered to take him back. So has Hughes. Nobody knows where his base planet is located. If he’s based in Orion or Sagittarius, I suppose he’ll sign with us.
“Something you should know. We had another scrape with the Mogat Navy this week. This time it was in the Orion Arm.”
“Mogats in the Orion Arm?” I asked.
“The inner curve of the Orion Arm, yes. You want to guess how it went?”
“There were three or four of them,” I guessed.
“Six, this time,” Brocius corrected me.
“And we destroyed one of their ships?”
“Right you are. Five of their ships went completely undamaged. The one that we managed to hit, we damn near sliced in half.
“The other Mogats ran away,” Brocius said.
“Is the wreck near any place of value?”
“Olympus Kri,” Brocius said.
“That’s Gordon Hughes’s home planet,” I said.
“Yes, that occurred to us, as well.”
With just a few minutes to go before we left the armory, I could not find Illych anywhere. I checked the different supply rooms. I checked our on-site living quarters. Finally, I found him out by the Jeeps. I arrived in time to see him placing bombs inside the various cars. He used card-deck-sized bombs, which he placed under the chassis of trucks and Jeeps. One bomb should have been enough to demolish the entire depot. Illych said he had already placed fifty, and he must have had another thirty ready to go in a box.
“That’s a lot of bombs,” I said.
“It should get the job done.” He was on his back lying under a Jeep. He placed a bomb near a fuel tank.
“What if something goes wrong?” I asked.
“Goes wrong?” Illych parroted.
“Oh, I don’t know. There are all kinds of things that could go wrong. What if the Mogats don’t send our battleship out to the Perseus Arm?”
“What about it?” Illych said. He stopped working and looked up at me from beneath the chassis.
“We’ll end up right back here,” I said.
“We’ll come back somewhere,” Illych said. “We won’t come back here. I’m blowing up the place.”
“But if you don’t blow the place up, we could come back,” I said.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Illych said. “They already suspect us.”
“Who suspects us?” I asked.
“Army Intelligence. They sent a couple of guys to investigate this morning.”
“I didn’t know about that,” I said.
“I didn’t want to worry you,” Illych said. He finished placing the bomb and crawled out from under the Jeep. “I took care of it.”
“So we’re okay?”
“For now,” Illych said.
He wasn’t telling me something. “You killed them?” Considering Illych’s homicidal leanings, it seemed like a safe bet.
“They’re in that Jeep. With any luck, whoever investigates the explosion will mistake them for us and say that we accidentally blew ourselves up.”
“You don’t honestly believe that will happen.”
“No,” Illych agreed, “but we should be safe on a Mogat battleship. It won’t matter.” He carried a stack of three bombs and wired them to the electric eye that guarded the front door.
“You ready to leave, sir?” he asked.
“I’m a master sergeant,” I said. “We’re the same rank.”
By this time Illych had done just about everything he could to disguise me. He requisitioned green dye for my eyes. He shaved my head and bleached my eyebrows. He tried to stain my skin; but my cheeks and forehead burned instead of tanning. I thought I looked like a bald Liberator clone with olivine eye stain, bleached eyebrows, and bad skin.
“They’ve probably got the building under surveillance,” Illych said, as we climbed into our truck.
“Is that a problem?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” Illych said. “They’ll outnumber us; that’s a problem. If they get a good look at us, they might radio a warning. That might make it hard for us to make our flight.
“On the other hand, I’m guessing that we’re better armed than they are.” As I opened my door, I saw the stash of weapons Illych had placed behind the seat. We had rocket launchers, laser pistols, automatic rifles, and grenades. He’d also thrown a copy of the Bible back there. I made a trade, stowing the box with my helmet behind my seat and taking a grenade and a laser pistol for the ride.
I ducked low in the cab as we rolled out. Illych, still wearing his sergeant’s uniform, hit a button closing the gate behind us and, incidentally, arming all of the bombs he had placed in the motor pool.
The Mogats placed their training grounds and armories on the second level of the military district. Who knew what they had on the third, fourth, and fifth. The sixth level was an enormous freeway that not only laced together the entire military sector, it reached under the other sectors as well.
Illych knew the way to the ramp that led down to the sixth level. He had never driven there before, but he had memorized the route. It took us past a couple of buildings he had tried to blow up. He pointed them out as we went by.
“There must be a broadcast engine working somewhere on this planet,” I said.
“You think they’re planning on broadcasting the planet?” Illych asked. He could not stop himself from laughing at his own droll joke.
“I think they have some kind of newfangled shield on this planet that they broadcast out to their ships,” I said.
Illych’s grin disappeared. “So the same shield that protected those ships is protecting the buildings? How do people get in and out? Wouldn’t a shield stop them?”
“You’re thinking about technologies we understand,” I said. “When we use shields, they’re like walls in front of our ships, right? Their shield technology could be totally different. It’s only a guess, but it’s my best guess.”
I saw the ramp up ahead. It was a half mile wide, big enough to accommodate a formation of tanks. We bounced as we went over the incline and started our way down. The ramp headed down at a shallow angle. We drove for more than a mile before reaching the bottom deck.