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“Setting a battleship in motion is going to be challenge.” He laughed nervously.

“What do you have in mind?” I asked. I was the one putting his ass on the line, not Mars, not Hollingsworth, not Doctorow; and I did not like the plan so far. The ideas sounded too damn theoretical, and the wall of dead ships blocking my way sounded too concrete.

“General, sir, we’re going to attach a fleet of transports to the hull of the ship and use them like booster rockets,” Mars said.

“What about the men in the transports?” asked Hollingsworth. “What about the pilots?”

“No live pilots; everything will be remote control,” said Mars. “This mission involves guiding a battleship into a nuclear explosion. No one in his right mind would fly into a nuclear blast.”

“But that’s what I’m doing?” I asked.

Nobody answered.

CHAPTER NINE

The plan was to attach thirty remotely controlled transports to the hull of a derelict battleship to use as external rockets. No one had ever used transports to move a derelict battleship or anything of like size. Everything was theoretical, but Mars assured me that it would work.

When you place your life in other men’s hands, you want to know that they take their work seriously. The Corps of Engineers called their plan “Operation Chastity Belt” and referred to the battleship as “Harris’s Tool.” They probably took the mission seriously, but they were also enlisted men; juvenile humor was part of their makeup.

They had clever names for every element of the operation. “Harris’s Tool,” the battleship, would travel nearly three hundred miles gathering speed in a linear acceleration before poking “Chastity Belt,” the wall of destroyed Unified Authority ships that blocked the way to “Virginity,” the hot zone. When the Tool was precisely forty-seven miles from Chastity Belt, the engineers would fire a series of nuclear devices that would both damage and superheat the U.A. ships, but the blast would not destroy them. They labeled this part of the operation “Foreplay.” Just as the negative 450-degree temperature of space would set in, turning the metal brittle, the Tool would ram into the ships. If everything went right, the Tool would hit with sufficient velocity to break through the barrier.

Lieutenant Mars might have been counting on “God’s good grace,” but he carefully calculated acceleration and timing as well. Without the proper velocity, I would not have the power to smash through the ships.

My battleship/barge/battering ram would be wedge-shaped and wider from wing to wing than from bow to stern. This meant that I would have a better chance of survival traveling sideways, leading with the starboard wing while I hid in the landing bay on the port side of the ship.

I explained all of this to Sergeant Nobles, and he said, “It sounds like you’re trying to kill yourself, sir.” Nobles was a trained transport pilot. Officially, I did not have a personal pilot; but when I took rides in transports, he generally flew the bird.

We sat in the empty mess area of a vacant wing of Fort Sebastian. I wanted privacy as I explained the mission.

It was raining outside; gusts of wind blew a steady stream of water against the windows. The mess had a wall of windows overlooking Sebastian Commons—a park in the center of the base. The lawns outside those windows were as flat and even as a gymnasium floor. Even though we did not have enough men to fill the base, I had my men mow the grass. When forts become run-down, the men surely follow.

“Then it may be a double suicide,” I said.

“Oh shit,” he said. “You’re asking me to come with you.”

“I’ll need a pilot,” I said.

He’d been my pilot for nearly a year, making him one of my oldest friends on Terraneau; but until this conversation, I’d only known him as “my pilot.” We’d flown missions in which we both nearly died, and I didn’t even know his name. Was it because he was a clone? Had I become antisynthetic?

“Please say this is a joke, General,” Nobles said.

“Once I get through to the other side, I’m going to need someone to fly the transport off the battleship.”

“You mean the Tool?” Nobles asked.

“Yeah, okay, the Tool,” I conceded.

“General, do you know where we’ll be when we get to the other side?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted.

“And you want me to come along for the ride?” he asked. “Are you ordering me to come?”

“I was hoping you would volunteer.”

“Have you asked for other volunteers?”

I shook my head and told the truth, “There’s no point placing additional lives in harm’s way.”

“No, sir. Why would you want to put anyone else in danger?”

I would not order Nobles to go. I could. He was a clone. In theory, his programming would make him comply. In theory, our battleship would break through the barrier, and we would sail into the broadcast zone safe and sound. In theory, military clones were incapable of fighting against the Unified Authority. I’d never placed much faith in theoretical solutions, but that wasn’t stopping me from placing my life on the line.

“You’ve been my pilot since they transferred me to the Scutum-Crux Fleet. I’d hate to go without you,” I said. It sounded weak, but Nobles liked the distinction of being my pilot. From what I could tell, he did not mind high-risk missions, either.

He gave me a sly, one-sided smile, and asked, “Since you put it that way, when do we leave?”

“Oh, our schedule,” I said, feeling a bit ashamed. I had not told him about the mission until the last minute because, assuming he agreed to fly me, I did not want to give him enough time to change his mind. “We leave within the hour.”

“Aye, sir, an hour,” he said. “I’ll go pack my things.” He’s a good man, I thought. I’d seen so many good men die during the ten years I’d spent as a Marine.

I didn’t give my pilot time to have second thoughts, but I also secretly hoped for a delay. One man’s delay is another man’s reprieve. I had not yet told Ava that I was ready to leave. She knew about the mission, but she had no idea about my schedule.

I went to visit her at work. She worked in one of the three skyscrapers left standing in a cluster in the Norristown financial district. One of the buildings served as a dormitory for orphaned boys, another for girls. Now that Mars and the Corps of Engineers had restored the power, the locals used the third building as a hospital, among other things. Ava taught literature and drama classes in the girls’ dormitory.

I drove up to the building in my jeep, rain thrumming on the removable roof, making a noise like a thousand fingers tapping on a desk. The triangle of streets between the three buildings stood empty. One of the streets had been dug up and railed off from traffic. The Corps of Engineers had been laying cable there; but with my mission about to begin, the project had stalled as they were needed elsewhere.

I parked my jeep along the curb right beside the girls’ dormitory. When I opened my door, a cold wind blew rain onto the dashboard. I jumped out, and the wind slammed the door shut behind me. My shoulders hunched against the cold and my right hand holding down my lid, I ran to the entrance. As I approached the covered walkway that led to the door of the building, an armed guard stepped out of nowhere and planted himself in my path.

He was a civilian, a kid in his twenties with a little beef on him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

A year ago, I would have planted the kid on his ass, but that was before the shoot-out with the U.A. Marines. I had not had a combat reflex since the Marines shot me with five neurotoxin-coated fléchettes. Instead of feeling the warmth of testosterone and adrenaline in my blood, I felt a slight tinge of nerves. That tiny glimpse of fear bothered me far more than the kid himself. I could not afford to hesitate when challenged, not even for a millisecond, so I responded with more prejudice than needed. Instead of explaining why I had come, I said, “Out of my way.”