“The one in the truck?” I asked.
Freeman did not answer.
“Does that mean they’re dead?” I asked, wondering if I had somehow destroyed the computer world in which they existed.
Freeman responded with a rare show of humor. He said, “Not any deader than they were before.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Without Sweetwater and Breeze guiding our next steps, Freeman and I ended up sitting on the ramp for twenty minutes before deciding to take our chances on the street. I still had a go-pack filled with weapons, so I piped a grenade into the parking lot. When it lasted long enough to explode, I hurled the empty launcher after it. The six-inch chrome cylinder clanked when it hit the cement, rolled in a circle, and came to a stop.
“Looks safe,” I said. Freeman climbed to his feet and started hiking toward the entrance without responding.
As we stepped out, I took a temperature reading using the atmospheric thermometer built into my visor. The air temperature had dropped to a mere ninety-three degrees—about one percent of what it had been earlier that evening. I took a Geiger reading and found that the radiation levels were normal, possibly even low.
I looked at what had once been a brick-lined planting bed with large bushes. There was no sign of the bushes or the soil below them. Instead of dirt, the ground was covered with a combination of soot and coal-like crystals that sparkled like fool’s gold.
Wispy spirals of steam rose from the ground below our feet, but our boots did not sink into the ash-covered concrete. Ripples of heat rose from a crane lying on its side a few feet ahead of us.
My brain numbed by the devastation on every side of me, I followed Freeman around the administration building and out to the street. Newly formed air pockets in the sidewalk caved in under my feet as I walked along the road; crystalline glass and ash crunched under my boots when we walked on the soil.
Using my commandLink, I signaled for Nobles to come and get us. When he asked if he should come in a transport or the shuttle, I told him to bring the shuttle. Soft seats and a carpeted cabin sounded good at the moment.
A few minutes later, the sleek bird appeared in the sky, winding its way down to us so quickly it looked like it might crash. Nobles touched down on an empty stretch of highway, his wheels sinking two inches into the crumbling ground.
We flew to the
ad-Din
through almost vacant space. The barges had long since left. So had most of our ships. With Olympus Kri evacuated and burned, there was no reason to maintain a fleet in the area. What remained was a small coven of six E.M.N. cruisers, which included the
Kamehameha
. That meant that Warshaw had called yet another summit, which I hoped to avoid. Now that Warshaw was grooming Hollingsworth to replace me, I thought he would go as the token Marine.
My ship, the
Salah ad-Din
, hovered by itself several miles from the others. So did a Unified Authority cruiser. It looked so small beside our fighter carriers. Seeing the U.A. ship, I realized this might be more than an Enlisted Man’s summit. That cruiser had probably ferried some high-level U.A. negotiator.
As we approached the
ad-Din
, I received a message from Captain Villanueva directing me to the
Kamehameha
. I acknowledged the transmission and cursed under my breath.
“Do you have any interest in attending an Enlisted Man’s summit?” I asked Freeman.
He shook his head. He looked down on politicians and general officers every bit as much as they looked down on him. “I have a plane waiting on that cruiser,” he said.
“What are you going to do next?” I asked.
“Same as you, I’m getting ready for Terraneau,” he said.
I laughed, and said, “It sounds like you’re out to save humanity.”
He did not answer.
I went to the little stateroom at the back of the shuttle and changed out of my armor before meeting with Warshaw. I showered, shaved, and put on a fresh uniform. By the time I came out, Freeman was long gone.
No one came to greet me as I came off the shuttle. I left the landing bay and found my way to the fleet deck; only with Warshaw in charge, it was more than a fleet deck—it was the seat of an empire.
One of Warshaw’s lieutenants interrupted the summit to let him know that I had arrived. About thirty minutes later, having called a brief recess, Warshaw and his entourage came out to greet me.
“General Harris, the man of the hour,” Warshaw said, giving me a rare salute. “A lot of people are still alive because of you.”
He looked tired. His eyes were red, and dark blotches showed on his cheeks. His broad shoulders were tight and as straight across as a board.
I tried to despise Warshaw for the genocide of the Double Y clones, but in my heart I doubted myself. I had mixed feelings. He had disposed of them in a way that was heartless, logical, and efficient. I would not have disposed of them that way; and the Enlisted Man’s Empire would have paid the price for my inability to act. In this instance, Warshaw was not my moral inferior; he was simply more courageous than me.
He guided me into the meeting room. Admirals came and shook my hand. The greetings were cordial, but the smiles did not last long.
“We need to get back to the negotiations,” Warshaw said.
“What negotiations?” I asked.
“I would have thought that was obvious,” he said, a frigid edge in his voice. “You saw what happened down there.”
The tiny drops of sweat on his shaved head reflected light like a coat of wax. He tried to wipe them away, but the perspiration was too fine. He wore his dress whites, with all of its stars and medals and epaulets. Even tired and frustrated, he cut an impressive figure, his bodybuilder’s physique stressing every inch of his stiff white uniform.
“Life as we know it just ended,” he said. “The Unifieds are talking about resurrecting the old Cousteau undersea cities programs. They think we might be able to survive this storm if we go underwater.”
I vaguely remembered learning about the Cousteau program. When the United States and its allies began colonizing space, the old French government turned its eyes toward deep-sea exploration. The program lasted a couple of years before the French gave up and signed on with the Americans.
“Rebuilding those cities could take years, maybe decades,” I said.
“You got any better ideas?” Warshaw asked.
I wasn’t challenging him, but he crushed me just the same. I felt rage spreading through me, then I realized it was embarrassment. I did not have any better ideas. I stood there wishing I could fade away.
“Looks like we’re rejoining the Unified Authority. Earth is the only planet that never got invaded. The aliens will go there last; hopefully, we can get everyone underwater by then.
“Welcome to the future, Harris; it’s just like the goddamned past.”
I stood there, silent and frustrated.
Warshaw studied my expression, and finally said, “This is a negotiation, not a war council. I can’t bring you in, I just wanted to thank you for what you did on Olympus Kri. You gave us a fighting chance, but it’s over now.”
The words stung because I knew he was right.
“I need to get to Terraneau,” I said.
“You’re going to warn them?” Warshaw asked.
“They’re next,” I said.
“I hear you had a girl on that rock,” Warshaw said. “Hollingsworth says you hooked up with Ava Gardner.”
“Yeah, something like that,” I said, already anxious to leave.
“How are you going to get there?” he asked. “I can’t give you the
ad-Din
if you’re traveling into neutral space. The Unifieds might see that as an act of bad faith.”
He was right, of course. None of the reactivated broadcast stations were programmed to send me out to Terraneau. I would need a self-broadcasting ship. “I’ll find a way,” I said.
Warshaw smiled and shook his head. “You’re on your own with Terraneau. It’s not part of our empire.” Then he signaled for an aide to join our conversation. “McGraw, the general needs a broadcast key.”
The aide was an old man. He gave me a surprised glance, then said, “Aye, aye, sir.”
“A broadcast key?” I asked.
“You’re going to need a key if you’re going to get that shuttle you’re flying to Terraneau,” Warshaw said. He started to leave, then turned back, and added, “You be careful with that key, Harris. I only issue them to fleet commanders . . . and now to you. God knows you’ve earned it.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. The man was a prick. The man was a bastard. The man was a savior.
Warshaw gave me a weak salute, and said, “Good luck.” With that, I seemed to dematerialize before him. He turned away as if I weren’t there and began speaking with the officers in his entourage.
“General, perhaps we should get going, sir,” the petty officer said. He was an older man, a veteran sailor with white hair to show for decades of service.
I nodded.
We took a lift down into Engineering. From there, we wound our way into the arcane maze of high-tech specialists, where sailors who worked on weapons systems, communications, and life-support systems maintained their offices. The door to Broadcast Engineering stood out; that was the door with armed guards on either side of it. Warshaw’s aide showed the guards his badge, and they let us through.
We entered, and the petty officer went to a computer and filled out the requisition protocol. It took twenty minutes.
Broadcast Engineering looked like a mediaLink repair shop. A workbench littered with parts and tools ran along one of the walls. The lights were so bright they dried my eyes. A half dozen men worked here, all of them sitting on tall stools and gazing through magnifying lenses as they tinkered with circuit boards. Everyone in the room, of course, was a clone.
When McGraw finished typing out the request, he hit the SEND button, then called across the room, “Baxter, I just sent you a high-priority requisition.”
“Got it,” Baxter yelled back.
They were joking around. They were sitting less than thirty feet apart and could have whispered to each other. Once Baxter saw the requisition, however, he became serious. He climbed from his stool and walked over to McGraw. “Why in the world would Warshaw issue a broadcast key to a Marine? Does this guy even have clearance to be up here?”
“All I can say is that Magilla gave me the order,” the petty officer said.
“Shit. You’re kidding.”
The old petty officer shook his head.
I don’t know what I expected a broadcast key to look like, maybe a torpedo or some other projectile that I would fire into the broadcast zone. When the sailor returned, he handed me a palm-sized box no bigger than a candy bar.
“And a book,” McGraw told Baxter.
The sailor sighed and went to fetch the book.
The key was a tiny touch screen, an unimpressive trinket that would fit in your pocket without making a bulge. The book was three inches thick and lined in black leather. The petty officer took the book, handed it to me, and said, “General, sir, you now hold the key to the empire.”
McGraw traded salutes with Baxter, and we left Broadcast Engineering.
As we waited for the lift, I examined the key, and said, “It’s a lot less impressive than I expected.”
McGraw laughed. “It’s a transmitter. Transmits old-fashioned frequency-modulated radio waves. Warshaw set up the hot zones to disassemble anything that enters them, but the zones don’t disassemble signals from the key.”
“And the Unifieds haven’t figured that out?”
“No, sir. I mean, these are FM signals, it’s old, old technology. The Unifieds aren’t watching for ancient technology, it’s like we’re controlling the stations with smoke signals, it’s that old.”
“And the book?” I asked
“It’s an index of established broadcast coordinates. It’s the same book the Mogats used on their self-broadcasting fleet . . . same codes and everything. We stole the books along with the broadcast equipment off their wrecks.”
Back in the days when the Unified Authority counted the entire galaxy as its territory, the Republic established 180 colonies. The coordinates for the colonized worlds all fit on the inside flap, the rest of the volume held coordinates for scientific research sites, satellites, and rendezvous spots.
Seeing McGraw tap the lift button several times, I asked, “Are you in a hurry?”
He apologized, and said, “I’m nervous about the negotiations, sir. I don’t trust the Unifieds.”
The elevator arrived, and we rode it to the fleet deck. Still carrying the key and book, I followed McGraw into a small side room in which most of Warshaw’s remoras sat watching the negotiations on a large monitor.
I’m not entirely sure such a partnership would be in our best interest.
I did not recognize the man who said that, but he spoke in the same imperious tone as Tobias Andropov. The screen showed a nearly empty conference room in which Warshaw sat flanked by three admirals on one side of the table, the man representing the Unified Authority sat with two male secretaries on the other.
“Who is that?” I whispered to McGraw.
“His name’s Martin Traynor. He’s the U.A. minister of expansion; but I get the feeling he thinks he’s God.”
We have more people than you. We have more planets than you do. We have more ships than you do. What do you mean the partnership isn’t in your interest? We control the broadcast network,
Warshaw said. I expected to see him flexing the various muscles in his arms as he spoke, but he did not do that in this negotiation. He sat hunched in his chair, looking like a man kept alive by coffee and prayers.
Unless you do something quick, you will be out of planets and civilians in three more months,
Traynor said. He looked like the quintessential bureaucrat, perfectly coiffed, manicured, dressed in wool and silk. Satisfied that he had just laid down an unbeatable hand, he leaned back in his chair and smirked.