At first, I thought it must be a joke. The map or chart Warshaw had spread was blank, just a square of plasticized cloth with no marks at all. It took me a moment to understand. The cloth projected a virtual display that Warshaw and his techs saw through their visors. That function had not been activated on my visor. Paraphrasing Warshaw’s mantra in my head, I mumbled, “specking naval operations.” I returned to the viewport and saw a second battleship cruising toward us.
“Warshaw, there is a second battleship out there,” I said.
“I’m aware of that,” Warshaw said, his voice sounding testy. “I’m also tracking a third ship coming in at about five o’clock. Now, if you don’t mind, Harris, I’m busy at the moment.”
I did mind.
The first battleship came closer, cutting through the empty space with the confidence of a shark gliding through open waters. I studied the way its shields adhered around it like a second skin, as if the ship had been dipped and coated in glowing plastic. Sparks flashed in the shield when anything struck the ship—tiny explosions that flared and faded in the silent darkness.
I looked back toward Warshaw and saw him pointing at invisible details above that mat. Was it a map? A schematic? I should have been in on the planning. Yes, I was a lowly Marine, but I was also the highest-ranking officer in the fleet, damn it. Except, of course, Brocius had given Warshaw a third star. We had the same specking rank, even if this was a naval operation.
“General, would you like to join us?” Warshaw asked. It was not a friendly invitation. He was not asking me to help with the planning. He wanted to give me an obligatory briefing, the same kind of briefing company commanders give their platoon sergeants before throwing them into a battle.
Outside the viewport, the first battleship pulled even with us, then flashed past. I stared out into the darkness for another second, unable to tell whether the light to my left was the second battleship or a visual echo burned into my irises from the first ship.
“Harris, care to join us?” Warshaw repeated, a note of annoyance in his voice.
“They have new technology in their shields,” I said, as I turned to join the planning.
“Yes, I suspect they do,” Warshaw agreed.
“It looks like it’s based on Avatari technology,” I said.
“What kind of technology?” A perfunctory question.
“The technology the aliens used,” I said.
“I wasn’t aware that the aliens used ships,” Warshaw said. I could hear other people on the Link as well. I had been invited into a conference.
“They didn’t, but they lent the technology to the Mogats,” I said.
“The Mogats used alien technology in their shields? That explains a lot,” Warshaw said. I heard notes of agreement in the background. “We found disabled shield generators on almost every ship we’ve boarded. A few of the ships didn’t have any shield systems at all.”
“That’s because they used a central generator that the aliens gave them,” I said.
“Do you think the aliens might have given a similar generator to the Unified Authority?”
Of course not, you pompous, preening son of a bitch, I thought. “I think the Navy may have deciphered their technology. Lord knows, they’ve had enough scientists trying to work it out.
“If they do have it worked out, we’re screwed,” I added.
“We’re going to find out,” Warshaw said. “In fifteen minutes, we’re going to open fire on those ships.”
CHAPTER FORTY
A three-dimensional map of the area appeared in the air above the table. The hulls of twelve ships appeared in red, surrounded by the hulls of another three hundred ships in green.
“The red ships are the ones we’ve boarded,” Warshaw said.
I wanted to congratulate him for his ability to state the obvious, but I knew better. If he reverted into “naval operation” mode, he would leave me in the dark until we either died or returned to the fleet. “I thought we had more teams out,” I said.
“Some of the teams have not been able to break into their ships,” Warshaw said. Poor them. That meant those teams would spend the battle playing possum in their transports.
“Judging by the way they are patrolling, the U.A. ships know we are here, but they have no idea where we are hiding. One of them bumped into a transport without scanning it.”
“How is the transport?” I asked.
“The pilot is shook-up, but …”
“No, how is the transport itself?”
One of the techs said, “The pilot did not report any problems.”
“What are you getting at, Harris?” Warshaw asked.
“Just curious,” I said.
The shields the Mogats used absorbed energy. If a Mogat ship bumped a transport, its shields would have drained the transport’s batteries. I decided to file the information away rather than share it.
“My teams have found functional weapons systems on seven of the ships,” Warshaw said. As he said this, the display darkened as five of the red ships turned a swampy blue. The seven remaining red ships formed a misshapen ring.
I pictured the landscape in my head. If I had it right, the ships the U.A. sent to chase us down had passed right through that ring. Assuming Warshaw’s men could get those weapons systems up and running, they could incinerate those ships the next time they passed through. It sounded too good to be true. In fact, it sounded downright impossible.
“How can these wrecks have working weapons systems?” I asked. These derelicts had been floating in space for years. I did not understand how they could have working systems.
“Functional, not working,” Warshaw said. “We’ve isolated the weapons systems from the rest of the ship and supplied our own power.”
“What about shields?” I asked. “Can you get them working?”
Warshaw laughed. “It sounds like those U.A. battleships make you nervous.”
That summed up my feelings accurately. On the battlefield, I had some control over the environment. Out here, all I could do was sit back and watch. If the ship went down, I would go down with it.
“What do you have, lasers and torpedoes?” I asked. Having seen all of the damage along the hull of this ship, I wondered how reliable the torpedo tubes might be.
“Just lasers,” Warshaw said. He sounded distracted, as if he was holding a conversation with someone else at the same time that he answered my questions. He had the commandLink, he could do that …the bastard.
“No torpedoes. What if you can’t get through their shields?” I asked.
In the sixty years since the construction of the ships in this derelict fleet, the Unified Authority had stopped building lasers into battleships and switched to a more effective particle-beam technology; but even particle beams did not cause the trauma of a torpedo.
“Then we’re dead,” Warshaw answered in a voice that sounded like a verbal shrug of the shoulders. “We’re as good as dead if we don’t find a way to get rid of those ships before Franks comes back.”
He had a point.
I never claimed to understand the naval approach to combat. For some reason that defied all logic, Warshaw insisted on pulling the trigger from the bridge. On a working ship with operational systems, that would have made sense. On this derelict, he sat in a pitch-black chamber filled with lifeless computers, broken systems, and an audience of stiffs.
I remained on the off-bridge observation deck, watching the battlefield through the viewport. In the distance, I caught brief glimpses of light, nothing more than a streak here and there. Perhaps we had hidden too well the first time the battleships patrolled our little corner at the edge of the graveyard.