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Authors: Steven L. Kent

The Clone Redemption (34 page)

BOOK: The Clone Redemption
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Maybe we should land the ship,
Takahashi thought; but he could not give that order. The
Sakura
was made for deep-space travel, away from gravity. She did not have the wheels or skids needed for landings. When she needed repairs, the
Sakura
floated into a deep-space dry dock. The only gravity she was designed to withstand was the gravitational force of an orbit.
 
The second landing bay had been stripped for the colony. Oliver found an empty chamber, vast and black. No lights shone in the void, not even over the emergency exit. With his genetically enhanced eyes, he could see that the floor was bare. No equipment. No bodies.
Other SEALs came to help. Some were injured. One man had broken his right arm, a nub of bone stuck out of his forearm. He carried a flashlight in his left hand. Seeing this, Oliver wanted to send him away; but with his dislocated shoulder, Oliver needed as much help as he could get.
“You, with the flashlight, over here,” Oliver barked at the injured SEAL. The man came to join him. “Follow me.”
Oliver led the pack to the third landing bay. There they found the same kind of damage that the master chief had seen in the first bay. Oliver also saw something else. Hitting the communications button, he said, “Bridge,” waited a moment, then said, “I'm entering the third bay.”
“The pods?” asked Takahashi.
“I'm just entering.”
“We're running out of time, Master Chief,” said Takahashi.
“Yes, sir,” said Oliver.
Nearly one hundred SEALs entered the bay behind him, some bleeding badly.
“The only easy day was yesterday,” muttered the man with the broken right arm and the flashlight. It was a proverb often repeated by SEALs.
Oliver heard the words and nodded, then told the SEAL to check the computer stations.
The SEAL stumbled off to look at the toppled stations. A moment later he returned, and said, “The computer stations are broken.”
“Did you hear that, sir?” asked Oliver.
“I heard,” said Takahashi.
Despite the calm in Takahashi's voice, Oliver read his desperation.
“What happened down there?” asked Takahashi.
“They weren't expecting a rough ride, so they didn't secure the launch devices. I don't know how we could have secured them anyway. They're made to fit in transports.”
Senior Chief Warren entered the bay and pushed his way through to Oliver. He asked, “What can I do?”
“Take some men and get me a launcher and twelve caskets,” Oliver told him.
“What are you doing with caskets?” asked Takahashi.
“That's SEAL-speak, sir.
Caskets
are infiltration pods,” Oliver explained. “I was speaking to one of my men.”
“What is the condition of the pods?” asked Takahashi. “Why haven't they exploded?”
“It's just a hunch, sir, but I'd say the broadcast disrupted the charging process,” said Oliver.
“That doesn't make sense,” snapped Takahashi. “Those pods have been through thousands of broadcasts.”
“Not when they were charged, sir,” said Oliver. As he spoke, Oliver surveyed the wreckage. One moment everything looked hopeless, then he saw a transport and the solution occurred to him in a flash.
“I need seven minutes,” Oliver said as he stared at the bulky old transport.
“Seven minutes? We may not last one minute,” shouted Takahashi.
“I need seven minutes, sir,” Oliver repeated.
“It only takes three minutes to charge up the pods, and I'm not sure we can last three minutes.”
“It will take you seven minutes to charge your broadcast engine. Captain, I think you and your men are going to survive this mission,” Oliver said.
“Survive? What are you talking about? How are we going to do that?” asked Takahashi.
As he walked through the shadows to have a closer look at the transport, the
Sakura
sputtered, bounced up, then dropped so quickly that Oliver felt his feet leave the floor.
“What do you mean we're almost out of fuel? Use the reserves. There have got to be reserves.” Torn between two conversations, both urgent, Takahashi sounded distracted. He yelled, “Master Chief, we aren't going to be around in seven minutes.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
After that last shake, Oliver understood what had happened to the men and machines in the landing bays. On the bridge, the furniture was attached to the floor. The ceiling was low. When the ship bounced, sailors who did not brace themselves got bounced. On the big bounces, they hit their heads and shoulders on the ceiling, then landed hard on the floor.
In the docking bays, there was nothing to stop a man from bouncing twenty-five feet in the air. The ceiling was twenty-five feet up and there was nothing on the deck to secure the men to the floor.
The
Sakura
took another hard knock. Men and machinery flipped in the air. Already broken, the launchers crashed, shattered, and bent. Stealth infiltration pods dropped on bodies and slid. Oliver was thrown ten feet in the air and landed badly, trying to catch himself with his dislocated arm as he tumbled.
But the transport did not move.
The transport did not move. It was clamped into a launch sled.
The rear hatch of the transport hung open, a gaping maw in the dim light of the bay. Oliver looked back and saw two teams of SEALs wheeling in pods and equipment. He signaled for them to follow him, then trotted into the transport.
Fortune smiled upon him in the grimmest of ways. As he started up the ramp, he spotted a launch device and computer station in the darkness of the kettle. No glow rose from the computer screen, and no lights winked along the side of the launch device, but the transport had obviously been powered down, and Oliver thought that the odds were pretty good that both mechanisms still worked perfectly.
The
Sakura
hit what might have been a small pocket of turbulence. The deck of the transport dropped out from beneath Oliver. It was a small bounce. He landed on his feet, rolling his right ankle. If he somehow survived another hour, the sprain would hurt; but he knew that he would not live long enough to feel it. For now, he could still walk. The joint did not seize; it simply felt stiff.
He looked at the pod-launching equipment. Both the computer and the launch device had not moved. Bolted into tracks that ran across the floor and ceiling of the transport, the launcher remained fixed.
Oliver crossed the kettle. He struggled as he climbed the ladder one-handed. When he reached the top, he flopped onto the catwalk. Ignoring the pain in his dislocated shoulder, he stood and entered the cockpit.
Like many of the SEALs, Corey Oliver had received flight training for transports. Hoping the bird had not been abandoned because of mechanical problems, Oliver climbed behind the stick and powered up the controls. The board lit up without a hitch.
He would fly the transport and launch the S.I.P.s himself. It was a one-man job. Only one man would die. The
Sakura
and her crew would live.
 
Looking at the tactical screen, Takahashi saw a city that showed no signs of life. Buildings both round and square, some metal, some mirrored, stood in straight-edged rows. He saw bridges and streets. Part of the city was covered with waterways that looked both narrow and deep; but he did not see boats, cars, flying vehicles, or pedestrians.
“Sir, maybe they've evacuated the city,” said one of the weapons officers.
“Maybe they're in emergency shelters,” said Suzuki.
Given the view in the tactical screen, either man might have been right; but to Takahashi, the city looked abandoned. There would have been cars along the roads if the population had hidden in shelters. There would have been debris. The city looked like it had been stripped bare by time.
Most of the buildings were a few hundred feet high, but some stood a couple of thousand, vanishing into the perfectly flat dome of shining energy.
“Captain, we can't navigate around these buildings. The
Sakura
doesn't handle like a fighter, she's too big,” said Commander Suzuki. They'd already bumped hard as they tried to maneuver around one of the buildings.
Just beyond the city was the shoreline. Takahashi said, “Take us over open water, Commander.”
As the captain of the
Sakura
, Takahashi Hironobu would not let her die until she had completed her mission. If they could just hold on for a few minutes more, she might not need to die at all. “What's our fuel status?”
“We're out,” said Suzuki.
“We're still flying,” said Takahashi.
“We should have gone down three minutes ago,” said Suzuki.
“Just keep us up,” said Takahashi.
He looked at the timer by the tactical display. Five more minutes. He did not know what was keeping the
Sakura
in the air. He did not know the source of the miracle, but he hoped it would last. A few more minutes, and the broadcast engine would be charged. Then they could launch the transport and broadcast to safety.
A three-dimensional holographic map showed in the air above the captain's table. The map showed the cityscape along with a representation of the
Sakura
flying above it.
Takahashi walked to the chart table for a closer look. He bent so close over the scrolling holographic city that he could see through the translucent landscape.
It's not a city, it's an artifact,
he thought to himself.
He remembered a conversation from before everything went wrong, a briefing Admiral Yamashiro had held with his four captains. Seen from thousands of light-years away, some of the stars in Bode's Galaxy appeared dormant. They'd been dead for hundreds of thousands of years. The aliens must have mined them all those millennia ago.
The occupants of this planet had probably killed off their nearest neighbors first. Who knew if they had even seen resistance, let alone retaliation. If they had, how long had it been since enemies had knocked on their door?
“Captain, I found our route.” Suzuki's voice woke the captain from his musings. Suzuki sounded excited. He said, “I'm going to need to clear a path. May I engage weapons?”
Takahashi laughed. “We came here to destroy the planet.”
Maybe there is no one left here to destroy,
Takahashi thought.
What if they died fifty thousand years ago, and all that remains are the machines they created?
“Captain, there's something out there,” said the weapons officer.
“Where?” asked Takahashi.
“I'm changing course! I'm changing course,” yelled Suzuki.
The holographic map showed the outer fringe of the city followed by an endless plain of pristine, cerulean sea.
“There's nothing on the display,” said Takahashi, his heart pounding, his breath short. He looked at the timer. They had three minutes and twenty seconds to go. Just another two hundred seconds!
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“The caskets are loaded,” said Senior Chief Warren.
“Okay, get out of here. Every man off the transport, I need to launch this bird.” Oliver checked the instrumentation. Everything was ready. “Get the atmospheric locks opened.”
“I've never worked a control tower before,” said Warren.
Oliver rolled his eyes, and asked, “How hard can it be? It's automated.” If he'd been a swearing man, if the ability to use profanity had not been programmed out of him, the master chief would have unleashed a string of expletives.
“You should take somebody with you . . . just in case,” said Warren. “How are you going to pilot a transport? You have a badly sprained ankle and a broken arm.”
“It's not broken.”
“It ain't whole,” said Warren.
“Good thing I'm not flying far,” said Oliver.
“You need a copilot, somebody to help launch the caskets.”
“Senior Chief, you are wasting valuable time. Now get to the control tower and get the locks open!”
Though it was not proper protocol to salute another enlisted man, Senior Chief Warren saluted Oliver and left the cockpit. Oliver didn't see the salute. He'd already turned back to his controls and powered up the engines.
He looked at his watch. The S.I.P.s were overcharged. With a simple computer command, he could make them explode. It would take the
Sakura
's broadcast generator another minute and a half to finish charging.
Ninety seconds,
thought Oliver.
If I can hold out for ninety seconds, they can escape.
Oliver's dislocated shoulder hurt, but he ignored the pain. The injury rendered his arm useless for climbing and lifting, but he only needed one arm to fly the transport.
Warren and his men solved the riddles of the control tower quickly. Even before Oliver managed to check the power to his booster rockets, the sled beneath his transport came to life, pulling the bird forward toward the first of the atmospheric locks. Up ahead, the heavy metal door slid open.
Thank you, Senior Chief Warren,
Oliver thought.
You deserve to survive.
He smiled and nodded, then said it again, out loud, “You deserve to live.”
 
“There's nothing on the tactical,” said Takahashi.
“Fifteen miles and closing,” said the weapons officer. “It's moving slowly. It's shadowing us.”
“It looks like it's moving into our path,” said Commander Suzuki. “It's advancing slowly, like it's stalking us.”
There were dozens of sailors on the bridge, but everyone else had become silent.
“I need a visual,” said Takahashi. His frustration quickened into desperation. There was something out there, possibly sent to destroy his ship; and he could not see the threat. He felt like he was drowning, like someone was holding his head underwater. “What is it? Where is it, Commander?”
BOOK: The Clone Redemption
11.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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