The players might have kept their cool in the conference room, but the men watching the negotiation wore their emotions on their sleeves. The man next to me said, “Specking Traynor. Specking Unified Authority. Specking …” His rant lasted more than a minute, and he said “specking” every other word.
Seeing Warshaw put Traynor in his place, McGraw slammed his palm on the table, and yelled, “Right! Damn right!”
Watching the negotiation, it was clear that neither side trusted the other. I thought that was a good sign. Having found himself abandoned in the Scutum-Crux Arm, then used for a target in a military game, Warshaw had little reason to trust the Unifieds.
Maybe the smartest course of action would be to evacuate the people from your planets and leave you and your superior military to handle the aliens, Traynor suggested.
Excellent idea, Warshaw said. Do you think you can fit that many people in your hypothetical underwater cities?
McGraw and several other viewers shouted their approval. On the screen, one of the admirals sitting beside Warshaw gave him an approving nod.
Traynor coughed. He poured himself a glass of water, but still seemed to be choking. His right hand in front of his mouth, he excused himself and asked for a five-minute break.
The tension in the viewing room relaxed as soon as Traynor stepped out of the picture. We watched Warshaw conferring with his admirals. Across the table, Traynor’s secretaries silently reviewed their notes.
While I enjoyed watching the fireworks, I needed to get to Terraneau. I thanked McGraw for the broadcast key and signaled Nobles to get the shuttle ready.
As I stepped out of the viewing room, I saw something that struck me as odd. Walking like a man who is late for a meeting, Martin Traynor stomped past me and continued down the hall. Our shoulders brushed, but he did not look back as he hurried away.
“Where do you think you are going?” I asked in a whisper as I watched him rush past the head. He didn’t even give the door a second glance.
Temporarily shelving my concern for Terraneau, I followed the son of a bitch.
Maybe he heard my steps, maybe he only sensed me behind him, but Traynor picked up speed. His legs pumping quickly, he rounded a corner and headed for the elevators. I jogged to gain ground on him.
By the time I reached the corner, I could see him running to the lifts. He stabbed a button with his forefinger, then held the button down in an impatient bid to speed things up. As I came toward him, one of the elevators opened, and he leaped in. I ran to catch up, but the doors shut before I arrived.
I hit the button, calling for another elevator, trying to sort out the scene as I waited. Traynor fleeing the negotiations made no sense to me. Even if the negotiations fell through, Warshaw would not arrest him, he was an ambassador. Had he forgotten something on his shuttle? A bomb, maybe? I thought; but he wasn’t a saboteur. If anything, he struck me as a stiff.
My lift opened. I pressed the button for the bottom deck, the deck with the landing bays. If I ran into Traynor, I would follow him. If I did not see him, I would board my shuttle and ride to Terraneau. I doubted I would see Traynor, though, and I tried to put him out of my mind.
The doors of the elevator slid open, and there he was, walking down the hall. Hearing my lift open, he turned to look back and saw me. Our eyes met for just a moment and I did not like what I saw. In his eyes I saw abject terror, then he looked down and started speed-walking away.
He scampered down the hall, and I followed. I wanted to yell after him, but I had no idea what I should or should not say …what I could or could not say. I could not arrest him. If I made the wrong move, the negotiations might collapse.
Traynor looked back, saw me following him, and ran. The rule book went out the window the moment he picked up his pace. If I’d had a gun on me, I might have shot him in the leg just to stop him; but he was short and domesticated, and if it came to a chase, I would overtake him in a couple of seconds. I was gaining on him, then I passed an observation window, stopped, and forgot all about the minister of expansion. In that moment, he became the furthest thing from my mind.
Staring out that observation wall, I saw white holes in the blackness of space. The anomalies appeared so far away that their brightness only created spots before my eyes. At first, only five or six appeared, then a dozen followed, then still more. As I watched the scene, Klaxons began to sound.
Hatches opened along the hall, and sailors flooded out, rushing this way and that, headed for their battle stations. I forced my way against the current, fighting to get to the landing bay.
Even as I cut through, something struck the Kamehameha, rocking the ship. When a big ship shakes, the people inside it become as insubstantial as snowflakes in a blizzard. The force struck the Kamehameha, throwing all of us against the walls and the deck. Barely noticing that I had fallen to my knees, I gathered my balance and tried to press forward to the landing bay.
I was almost there when we took the first real hit. Something had penetrated our defenses and struck the ship. At the far end of the hall, the outer shell of the ship gave way. Lights flashed off and on, men screamed, the force of the suction nearly lifted me off my feet in the split second that our atmosphere bled through the breach, then emergency bulkheads slammed into place, dividing the corridor into airtight sections.
The lights came back online, revealing men strewn on the floor, some bleeding, and some writhing in pain. We would remain trapped between the massive bulkheads until the atmospheric pressure stabilized. This was the naval equivalent of an amputation. Parts of the ship that were too badly damaged were sealed off in order to save the whole.
Bulkheads blocked the hall on either side of me. I could not run to the landing bay or return to the elevators. All I could do was wait and wonder if the hull would crack, and I’d be flushed into space.
The bastards hit us again, and I was helpless. How many men had we lost? What part of the ship would the next laser or torpedo hit? How much damage had we taken? How much more could we sustain? If the ship broke into pieces, would my little section of hull float into space with me sealed inside like a bird in a cage? Like a body in a coffin. How many ships had the Unified Authority sent through the broadcast zone?
What if the attack on Olympus Kri had all been a hoax? I knew it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t, but Andropov had used it as an opportunity to get the upper hand. All that bullshit about the Liberators never losing a battle …With the unintended help of the Avatari, Andropov would succeed where his Double Y clones had failed, the bastard.
The lights went off-line again. In the darkness, men screamed and pounded the atmospheric bulkheads with their fists.
Two birds with one stone, I thought. With our cooperation, Andropov had built a temporary broadcast station by Mars, and now he was using that broadcast station to send battleships and destroyers.
Our broadcast station was programmed to send ships to Mars; they’d just sent their specking barges through it. They could hit us and return home, and there wasn’t a specking thing we could do to stop them. Now that they had their own sending station and a way to broadcast their ships home, we were at their mercy …as if the Unified Authority had ever had mercy.
They hit us again. There, in the darkness, I fell as the ship shuddered around me. I listened to the screams, the calls for help, the prayers. I made my way to my feet, and felt my way ahead until I reached the cold smooth surface of the emergency bulkhead. I wondered what I would find on the other side if it ever opened.
Moments passed, then the bulkhead slid open. The lights remained out; so, groping the wall for balance, I pushed forward, tripping over men I could not see in the darkness. The only light shone from panels and signs along the walls.