A black cavern with pockets of orange-pink lights spread out in every direction. It was a dark world in which tan, green, and blue cars—the colors of the military branches—scurried like rodents. In the bad light, the green and blue cars looked black.
Other vehicles passed us at incredible speeds. We traveled at 150 miles per hour, and I had the feeling that some vehicles more than doubled us. “These guys drive like maniacs,” I said to Illych.
“We don’t have to go very far,” he said
Illych had done a good job memorizing his route. He found the next ramp and drove up to the top level, taking us right to the spaceport. We parked along an empty street. I waited outside the Jeep while Illych changed out of his Marine sergeant’s uniform and into his Navy pilot’s duds. Since I still had the uniform I stole on my way down, I was already a lieutenant.
We drove to the port and presented orders Illych had drawn up back at the supply depot. We had no trouble getting in. Hacking into the Mogats’ computer system, Illych had already booked us on a military transport. The transport would drop us off on the battleship Illych had flown in from the Perseus Arm—very likely the battleship I’d flown in on as well. We built our escape around the idea that this particular ship received the alarm signal from the derelict in the Perseus Arm. If we were right, the ship would take us back into Unified Authority territory very shortly.
If everything went according to plan, I hoped to see this planet again very soon.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Even with my bald head, bleached eyebrows, and temporarily green eyes, I did not want to socialize. We traveled in the kettle of a transport, a lucky break. In a Starliner, people would have been able to get a better look at me.
Illych and I sat apart so that if the Mogats caught one of us, the other might still escape. He sat toward the front of the kettle, not far from the stairs that led to the cockpit. I sat in the shadows toward the back.
A Mogat officer came and sat beside me.
“Good Lord, Lieutenant, what happened to your face?” he asked.
“I got burned, sir,” I said. He was a lieutenant commander.
“What happened?” he repeated.
“You know the bomber? I was just outside an admin building he attacked. The explosion burned off my hair and did this to my skin,” I said. It sounded good for spur of the moment.
“Lord,” the lieutenant commander said. “Did you hear the good news?”
“What news?” I asked.
“You’re going to love this. It turns out there were two bombers, and it looks like they blew themselves up. They were hiding out in a supply depot.”
“Great to hear,” I said.
The hatch of the kettle ground shut and the only light inside was red emergency light. The flight went quickly. We hovered horizontally for a minute, then entered the gravity chute. My stomach dropped below my feet. The chatty lieutenant commander sitting beside me started to moan, then brought out a plastic bag and vomited into it. The ammonia smell coming from that little bag nearly made me retch.
The lieutenant commander looked up at me and apologized. “Late breakfast,” he said. When we left the chute, and our flight pattern normalized, he excused himself and deposited his prize package down the toilet. Probably embarrassed about having coughed up his meal, he found another place to sit.
Up to this point, our plan gave the Mogats nothing to worry about. To them, this day began like any other day. We arrived on a routine shuttle flight to the fleet.
Illych and I deplaned with the other passengers. No one paid any attention to us at all as we crossed the launch bay and went our separate ways.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The alarms started before the announcements. First we heard the alarms sounding general quarters. This meant that every man on the ship—sailor and commando—had to report for duty.
Then came the announcement: “All commando teams, report to launch bay. All commando teams, report to launch bay.”
A second announcement followed on the heels of the first: “Prepare for broadcast. All hands, prepare for broadcast.”
Amber lights flashed in the halls. Men scrambled to their posts. In a moment, our ship would enter a battle zone.
I stood in the open hatch. Men ran past me without a second glance. No one noticed the bald, bleach-haired, green-eyed Liberator. They ignored me, and I ignored them; it was a reciprocal relationship that would come to a rapid end. I needed commando armor. The only way I could get it was to take it.
An entire platoon of commandos darted past me. They all wore the armor I needed, but they ran with the herd. I needed a straggler. And here he came, right on time. The man was nearly my height. The boy looked to be in his midtwenties, the same age as me but still just a boy. His black hair hung past his ears. He held his helmet like a bowl of water. He seemed distracted. He did not pay attention as he walked.
We were near a latrine. I approached him. I was about to shove him in the open door of the latrine. There I would…
“Jason.”
The boy turned. “Oh, hey, Frank. Any idea where we’re headed?”
“Perseus Arm.”
“Not again,” the boy whined.
I had no choice. I kept walking and headed into the latrine and watched as my armor on the hoof walked away.
Standing in the door of the latrine, I watched as sailor after sailor trotted past me. I saw no more commandos. I was going to miss my specking transport. I was going to sit out the mission I had specking planned. Then I saw him.
He was the last of the commandos, maybe a sergeant bringing up the rear. As he rumbled past the door of the latrine, I made my move. I grabbed his shoulder armor and swung him into the latrine using his own momentum to force him around the corner and face-first into the wall. He spun so quickly that his feet nearly left the ground. I hoped the shock would cause him to drop his pistol. It didn’t.
I must have picked a fight with the wrong man. The guy kept his wits about him. I expected him to reach for his pistol, leaving himself open for a dozen different deadly attacks. Instead, he took a lethal swing at me with his helmet. The plasticized metal was light but hard, and that old helmet design had lots of corners. He landed a glancing blow with the helmet that bounced off my shoulder and across my face.
Had the guy been wearing normal clothes, I could have hit him in the sternum and knocked the air out of his lungs. Of course, if he’d been wearing normal clothes, I would not have needed to kill him. In a normal fight I might have broken his arm or his leg, but his armor protected his elbows and knees against hyperextension. It also protected him from groin and kidney shots.
At least the guy was too tough to yell for help. Small miracles.
I grabbed the hand with the laser pistol and pushed my weight against it as I spun into his body, coming in too close for him to shoot me. By this time, my combat reflex was in full flow. I felt strong. Still pinning down the arm with the pistol, I twisted my shoulders and flung the man toward a bathroom stall with a poorly executed flip. My move did not lift the guy off the ground, but it had enough force behind it to make him stumble backwards into a stall.
He tripped over the toilet and dropped both his helmet and gun as he caught himself against the wall. I slammed my fist into his face. Blood splattered everywhere. I smashed the cartilage in his nose, and he grunted softly. He must have known he was in trouble as he started waving his hands wildly, but I pinned my knee into his chest and caught him between the wall and the toilet.
Realizing that he would not win the fight, he started to call out. I cut into his throat with the blade of my hand. Blood and spit flew from his mouth. I had no time for sympathy. My third punch shattered both the front and back of his skull.
My fist shattered the bones around his right eye socket. The force of the punch smashed the back of his head against the lip of the stainless-steel toilet. When I pulled the guy up to hit him again, I saw blood in his hair and realized that his skull had caved in. Men have survived with a shattered skull, and a live man has the potential to set alarms. I snapped the man’s neck.