We'd been in the air for less than thirty minutes when the pilot of the transport gave the signal to prepare for docking with the cruiser. For Ava, those thirty minutes must have been a long and lonely time. Not taking a chance on one of my Marines striking up a conversation with her, I had crippled the interLink interface in her armor. She could listen in on open-channel communications, but she could only speak to me. The last thing I needed was for my men to hear a woman's voice over the interLink.

"Are we there? Have we reached Terraneau?" Ava asked.

"Not even close. We've reached the ship that will take us to the ship that will take us to Terraneau."

"Harris, I need to use the restroom," she said.

"There's a tube in your . . ." I started.

"Um, my plumbing doesn't exactly match up with the equipment," she said, sounding irritated.

"Speck, I didn't think about that."

"Honey, you seemed pretty interested in my plumbing last night," she said, sounding more bra.s.sy than ever.

"I wasn't thinking about how you matched up with the armor," I said. "You're going to have to hold it."

"Don't they put bathrooms on these planes?"

"There's a head, but everyone's going to notice if you go in wearing combat armor." The booth-styled bathrooms they built into these transports were too tight for use in combat armor. I explained this to Ava. She didn't like it, but she didn't argue the point.

A few minutes later, I heard the hiss of booster engines and the m.u.f.fled creak of the landing gear as we touched down. There was a loud clank, and the rear doors of the transport slowly ground apart, revealing the ramp that led out of the ship. I removed my helmet and headed down the ramp.

A team of officers greeted me at the bottom. We traded salutes and formalities-in military circles discipline must always be maintained-and a nameless, faceless, p.r.i.c.k of a natural-born asked me to follow him to the bridge.

I told him that some of my men were sick and asked if they could go to the head aboard the cruiser. When he asked why they didn't just use the facilities on the transport, I explained that they were in combat armor and that settled it. I ordered all of my noncoms to go. Ava was a bright girl; she'd find a way to get herself in and out of the stall without being noticed.

Having arranged for my men to use the head, the officer escorted me off the transport. Before we left the landing dock, I turned back and watched Corporal Rooney bringing up the rear as my noncoms left for the head. I could only imagine what they were saying over the interLink. Most of them would be indignant about being sent to the head.

Across the bay, I saw our four transports lined up in a tight row and neatly stowed for this journey. This was a cruiser, the smallest of capital ships. Our four transports filled the landing area to capacity.

"Captain Pershing wanted me to bring you up to the bridge," the ensign said, as we left. He was a short, slight man with thinning blond hair. He walked fast, pumping his skinny legs in overdrive but taking short, mincing strides.

"Is this call business or social?" I asked.

"He didn't say," the ensign answered without looking at me.

I had never spent any time on a cruiser. The ship had narrow halls and low ceilings. Equipment filled every nook and niche. Squeezing past sailors on my way to the lift, I felt more than a little claustrophobic.

This scow had both a broadcast engine and a nuclear reactor; it only made sense that it would fly hot. The cooling system succeeded only in keeping the temperature to a low bake around the engines, but then they built this ship more than fifty years ago, in an era when Congress feared an imminent attack. The engineers back then sent ships into s.p.a.ce the moment they knew they could fly.

"Aren't you hot?" I asked the ensign.

"I'm warm," he admitted, still sounding haughty. "You get used to it."

As we entered the lift to go to the bridge, I saw an engineer, a natural-born seaman first cla.s.s wearing a greasy smock covered with sweat stains. His face was blood-blister red and damp with perspiration. Normally clones did this kind of work.

When the doors closed behind us, the ensign and I stood in silence, each of us pretending not to notice the other. The lift started a slow climb, and a blessed gush of cold air flowed out from the vents. A moment later, the doors opened, and we stepped on to the bridge.

"Well, Captain Harris, I'm glad you decided to come up," Captain Pershing said as he met us off the lift.

"I appreciate the invitation, sir," I lied. There's a big difference between captains in the Navy and captains in every other branch. A Navy captain is the equivalent of a colonel in the other branches. Even with my promotion to captain, Pershing outranked me.

"Tell me, Captain, have you ever been on a bridge during a broadcast?"

"Yes, sir. A few times," I said.

"On a cruiser?"

"On a fighter carrier," I said.

"So you're a virgin." Pershing grinned. "You've never seen a broadcast until you've seen one from the bridge of a cruiser."

"I would think it's all the same once the shields go up," I said.

"Cruisers don't have tint shields, Captain," Pershing said, as one of his men handed me a pair of thick wraparound goggles with black-tinted gla.s.s.

The sailor said, "You'll want to put these on before we broadcast."

My helmet had tint shields, but I had left it back on the transport. I would have preferred my helmet over goggles. Hesitating for just a moment, I slung the strap behind my head and let the eyepieces rest on my forehead.

"Right, well, Captain Harris, if you could excuse me for a moment, the captain of the cruiser always directs the broadcast himself."

Pershing turned and drifted back into place in the center of the bridge. On other ships, bridges looked something like business offices with computer stations located around the deck. On this smaller ship, the bridge was more like a tiny movie theater with a window into s.p.a.ce instead of a screen.

"Lieutenant Kim, do you have the coordinates logged into the broadcast computer?" Pershing asked.

"Aye, Captain."

Turning to his intercom, Pershing asked, "Landing bay, have you secured the outer hatch?"

"Hatch secured, aye."

Pershing said, "Lieutenant Kim, is the broadcast generator charged?"

"Generator charged, aye."

"Seal the hatch to the bridge," Pershing ordered.

"Aye, aye. Bridge hatch is sealed, sir." I guessed this was to prevent anyone from walking in without goggles.

"Goggle up," Pershing said to no one in particular. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes. I followed his example. The half-inch-thick rubber rim around the goggles formed a tight seal, blocking my peripheral vision, and the bridge vanished from my view.

Pershing must have stepped beside me because when I next heard his voice it sounded close by. He asked me, "Have you ever been in Washington, DC, during a New Year's Eve celebration, Captain?" Then he barked out, "Initiate broadcast."

I had been in Washington for New Year's Eve, but I was on duty, so I missed his meaning. Then the fireworks began, and I understood.

They called the electric fields created by broadcast engines "anomalies." I had seen traces of anomalies through the heavily tinted windows of fighter carriers and s.p.a.celiners. I knew anomalies were bright, but I had never appreciated how bright.

What happened next I could only describe as chaos. Somewhere ahead of me, a pulsing silver-white circle appeared. I hoped it was outside the viewport, but with the dark goggles over my eyes, I could not be sure. The circle spread in an unsteady jolt, then seemed to explode, sending jagged tendrils in every direction.

Only a physicist could grasp the workings of broadcast technology, but I knew enough to understand that there was enough electricity dancing on the outside of the ship to incinerate the entire crew. The lightning would coat the hull with highly charged particles that could be translated into some kind of wave and transferred instantaneously across the galaxy. Judging by the sheer violence of the anomaly, I suspected that the broadcast equipment on this cruiser had been designed for a larger boat.

The anomaly around the cruiser began at the bow of the ship and wound around the hull like an electric skein. With my goggles on, I saw only lightning, creating the illusion that it might be inside the ship. I felt a stab of fear, then the broadcast ended, and everything went dark.

"You can remove your goggles now, Captain," Captain Pershing said.

Feeling unsteady, I clamped my trembling fingers on the goggles and pulled them from my eyes.

"Isn't that something?" Pershing asked. "You never get used to it." He sounded so d.a.m.ned excited.

"Specking h.e.l.l," I whispered, still feeling jitters in my muscles.

I had not meant for anyone to hear this, but Pershing did and laughed. "Harris, perhaps you would join me in my stateroom. It's going to be a while before the Kamehameha arrives. We might as well get to know each other."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Pipes and cables ran along the ceiling of Captain Pershing's stateroom. He had a dented metal relic for a desk wedged into a s.p.a.ce so small that books falling from his shelves would almost certainly hit him. At least the room was bright. Two high-lumens light fixtures dangled from the ceiling, projecting glare so bright that it made me squint.

Apparently, Pershing believed we would chat like old friends. He pulled a chair up beside his desk for me, then threaded his way through the narrow alley between his deck and the wall. He slid his chair out as far as he could, then ducked beneath a bookshelf and squeezed his legs into the tight gap under his desk. Once safely seated, he said, "I'll tell you up front, Harris, Fleet Command showed me your orders. Some duty you got there. Play your cards right, and you could end up the most powerful man in the galaxy."

Having known Pershing for about five minutes, I gave him the politic response to any statement by a superior officer. "Yes, sir."

"You don't seem excited about it," Pershing noted.

"Are we speaking man-to-man, or am I a clone Marine speaking to his superior?"

"The gloves are off," Pershing said.

"I've never traveled on a self-broadcasting cruiser before, but every other self-broadcaster I've ridden could go wherever it wanted," I said. "Is there a problem with your broadcast computer?"

"What's your point?" Pershing asked.

"We could have broadcast in right beside the Kamehameha ," I said.

Pershing's expression hardened into something a little less friendly. "True enough."

"So Fleet Command asked you to stage this little soiree," I guessed.

Pershing leaned back in his chair and laughed. "Captain Harris, you're a bright man. Admiral Brocius warned me you were smart."

I did not respond. I had to play this interview just right, pa.s.sing myself off as cautious instead hostile. If I came across as spoiling for a fight, Pershing might report back to Brocius that I was too big a risk. If I played it too polite, he might suspect a hidden agenda.

Pershing waited several seconds for me to speak, then added, "Okay, yes, this conversation may have been authorized on some level. Admiral Brocius is keeping an eye on you. Do you blame him?"

I still said nothing.

"You do realize that they're giving you command of the largest fleet in the galaxy?"

"The largest fleet in the galaxy," I repeated. "That's one way of putting it. Here's another, they're sending me to the far end of the galaxy with no way to return."

"Is that really how you see it, Harris?" Pershing asked. "You'll have three times as many battleships as the Earth Fleet."

True enough. All of the six galactic arms had three fleets; but in the Scutum-Crux Arm, the Unified Authority combined those fleets into one.

"Are they giving me any self-broadcasting ships . . . you know, for shuttling in supplies?"

Pershing shook his head. "It's not in the cards."

"Are they planning on reestablishing a broadcast connection between Terraneau and Earth?"

"No," Pershing said in a quiet voice, making no attempt to mask his irritation.

"So I'll have big ships, plenty of guns, and a lot of empty s.p.a.ce."

"There's always Terraneau," Pershing pointed out.

"If we can't break Terraneau away from the aliens, we're screwed," I said.

Pershing sat silent for a moment. In former times, before the civil war and the Avatari invasion, the commanding officer of a scow like this cruiser would barely have been considered an officer at all. Some commanders didn't even think cruisers qualified as capital ships. Pershing had a shabby little office with pipes running along the ceiling and battered furniture, a stateroom fit for an officer with a dead-end career.

But times had changed. He was the commander of a self-broadcasting naval ship, a scarce commodity indeed. Officer country on this scow may have been dingy, but the men who inhabited it had friends in high places.

"You've got yourself a fleet, and I have no doubt you'll recapture Terraneau, Captain." Pershing said this with the voice that officers use when they want to signal the end of an interview.

I thought about offering to swap places with Pershing-he could have the gigantic fleet and the strategic planet, and I would take the dilapidated cruiser; but I knew better. I had already pushed him too far and, despite his chatty demeanor, his interest in me was anything but friendly.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Some Pentagon genius must have choked when he saw the logistics. The Navy originally intended to ship the entire population of Clonetown to Scutum-Crux in one ma.s.s transfer. Who came up with the idea of trusting thirty thousand trained killing machines to behave themselves as you shipped them out to nowhere?

The plans changed. Instead of shipping us off like Marines, the Pentagon transferred the inmates of Clonetown the way prison guards transfer inmates-with limited contact and in small groups. Granted, they did not place us in shackles, but we were confined to our transports. Pershing's cruiser served as the prison bus, hauling us in increments of four hundred men at a time.

Captain Pershing's shuttle service ran in both directions. After dropping us off with the fleet, his orders had him loading up natural-borns and returning them to Earth. The Navy intended to complete the entire transfer four hundred men at a time, but I did not think the sailors out in Scutum-Crux would be happy with this slow-trickle approach. The natural-born officers coming back to Earth had just spent the last four years of their lives running laps around a tiny planet in a nondescript corner of s.p.a.ce, they'd be in a rush to head home. The problem was, there were so many of them.

The Kamehameha was an old Expansion-cla.s.s fighter carrier, making it the smallest of the thirty-six fighter carriers in the SC Fleet. She carried an eight-thousand-man crew, nearly a thousand of whom were natural-borns. She also carried a complement of two thousand Marines, almost two hundred of whom were natural-born officers. It would take Pershing's cruiser three trips just to bring home the natural-borns on the Kamehameha.