“Your Marines are on board, sir,” Villanueva said.
“All of them?” I asked, feeling a bit stunned.
“All twenty-two hundred men are accounted for, sir. Are you sure you want to leave all of that equipment behind?”
The equipment was the rather extensive arsenal of weapons I had procured from the graveyard of ships. It must have seemed strange to Villanueva that I would leave guns, grenades, rocket launchers, tanks, and even a half dozen transports in the hands of the local militia. Maybe it was a bad idea, but I wanted Doctorow to have the weapons. If the Avatari came back, he’d need them …she’d need them. Ava. Everything was about protecting Ava.
“The Marine compound on this ship is fully stocked,” I said.
“Aren’t we arming a potential enemy?” he asked.
“You see Terraneau as a potential enemy?” I asked. “It’s an undeveloped planet with leaders who want to create a utopia. Hell, the locals probably don’t even want our guns.
“I’ve got more important things on my mind.” I did. I had a complement of two thousand two hundred Marines that needed screening. We would leave for St. Augustine immediately, but I would keep my men under quarantine until I had searched them for infiltrators. With that many men, it could take a full day to check them all out. I gave Villanueva the order to take us to St. Augustine and excused myself.
I was still feeling the effects from a couple of long days, and I should have gone to my quarters for an hour’s rest. Instead, I went down to the Marine complex for a quick inspection.
The men were unpacking, and most of the barracks were dark. A team had begun setting up the shooting range. The cooks and their assistants clanged pots and fired up the stoves in the mess. Hollingsworth met me as I watched a few of his men mopping their barracks. I asked him how the move was progressing, and he told me he had it under control. Our conversation lasted a few antiseptic seconds, and I left for my billet.
Villanueva sent an ensign to my quarters with the news that we had reached St. Augustine. When the ensign asked if I had any orders for him to relay back to the bridge, I shook my head and closed the door on the kid. I was genuinely tired, but I did not want to go to sleep. I had too much to do.
I decided to rest for a few hours, then I would check my troops for intruders, then I would return to St. Augustine. I was stalling. I did not want to return to St. Augustine. It wasn’t the planet that bothered me; it was the group of ambitious officers who awaited me there.
I hated having an entourage, but I had little choice in the matter. My preference was to travel quietly and alone, and to drop in on bases unannounced. I preferred traveling under the radar; but if I wanted to flush out the infiltrators, I needed them to see me coming and make the first move. Having a troop of worthless comfort-class officers in my wake made me easy to spot. So I would go back to wearing a bull’s-eye and waiting for someone to shoot.
There was something else I wanted to avoid as well—contacting Admiral Warshaw. He wanted regular progress reports; but unless a coroner found something useful about the late Sergeant Lewis, I would have nothing to report.
I turned off the lights and lay down for a nap, wondering what secrets the autopsy would reveal. A ship’s medic might not find anything, but that coroner on St. Augustine was another story. He’d know what to search for and how to find it. Yes, I told myself, I would bring in a trained coroner, then there would be results.
My thoughts ran their course. Had I been Lewis’s first victim? No, of course not. We never found the body, but he must have killed a real Kit Lewis.
What would have happened if Freeman had not followed us? I asked myself. The answer was obvious. I would have died. The answer was as obvious as the bruises on my face, arms, and neck.
I drifted into a light sleep.
If the man had waited a few more seconds, he might have caught me fast asleep instead of just dozing off. He had his gun ready when he slipped through the door, but I had already heard the soft hiss of the pneumatic piston and rolled off the bed.
He must have thought he’d found an empty room. He stepped in and closed the door behind him, pausing when he saw my unmade rack. Peering from a gap between my desk and my bed, I saw the man’s legs and the silenced pistol he held in front of him.
My billet was small, a bed, desk, closet, and head all built around each other as tightly as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The lights of my communications console blinked on and off on the far wall; someone was trying to reach me. I hoped they would come to check on me when I did not answer.
His gun at the ready, the man took a step toward my bed. Maybe he knew I was in here, maybe he thought I left it unmade like a guest in a hotel; but he took no chances. He walked to the edge of my rack, and said, “You might as well come out.”
I heard uncertainty in his voice. He didn’t know I was in the room.
“I know you’re here, Harris. I saw you come in.”
I did not believe him. I sat quiet and waited. Hidden by the desk, I managed to crawl along the far side of the bed toward the bathroom. I was as silent as a cat on the prowl, and I felt the beginning of a combat reflex running through my veins.
The man laughed, and said, “I can see you.” The stupid son of a bitch had his back to me when he said that. He was aiming his gun into my closet when I lunged at him from the door of the head.
The bastard had lightning reflexes. He spun and clipped me across the jaw with his pistol. Lights popped behind my eyes, and my head spun for a moment, but I grabbed his gun hand with both of my hands as my momentum slammed both of us into my tiny work desk. He smashed a fist into my head as I knocked the pistol out of his hand.
The man brought his knee into my chest as I slid to the floor and grabbed the pistol. He stomped at my hand, then kicked me across the jaw; but I held on to the gun. The fight was as good as over. He kicked me in the chest, sending me to the floor, then he bolted from the room. I took a moment to recover, then I leaped to my feet and ran through the door. By the time I reached the hall, the speedy bastard was gone.
I reported the attack and placed the ship on alert even though I knew it was a waste of energy. Captain Villanueva placed security posts throughout the ad-Din, he set up security cameras and posted MPs to guard vital areas.
He reacted thoroughly and by the book; but if stopping the infiltration had been that easy, Warshaw would have nipped our infiltration problem long ago.
That night I received a message from Warshaw summoning his admirals to Gobi for a summit. As the “highest-ranking” officer in the E.M. Marines, I was required to attend.
St. Augustine would have to wait. Screening my men would have to wait as well. They would be trapped on the ad-Din with an infiltrator in their midst. I had Villanueva send a transport to retrieve Cabot, then we set off for Gobi.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I brought the dead sergeant with me to the summit.
Before wheeling him out of sick bay, I opened his cryogenic body bag to make sure it held a stiff instead of a stowaway. Frozen mist rose out as I spread the seam. The dead and partially dissected Kit Lewis stared back at me with his one remaining eye, little folds of skin peeled back from his cheek, ear, and neck.
Seeing the frozen body, I realized that no one in their right mind would hide in a cryogenic bag. The temperature inside the bag remained a constant zero degrees, and there was no air.
“You know you wouldn’t be in there if you had just dropped me at Fort Sebastian,” I said as I closed the bag. I slung it from the table to the cart and wheeled it toward the landing bay.