The Chayio, for instance, guarded the space over a small island chain, fairly boring duty. The captain of the ship was not even on the bridge when the storm hit; his first lieutenant had the helm.
The young lieutenant walked around the deck talking casually with other officers. Watching the video record that was found in the remains of the ship two days after the attack, I got the feeling that he did not take his duties seriously.
“Sir, I’m picking up increased energy signatures on the planet,” one of the communications officers called out. “It looks like a fleet of small ships.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” the lieutenant said, breaking away from another conversation. He walked toward the scanning station too slowly. Clearly he thought the sighting was a nuisance.
“My reading just spiked,” the communications officer said. “More ships are flaring up, sir.”
“What?” The lieutenant sounded baffled. He leaned over the communications officer’s shoulder for a better look; and then it happened.
There was a brilliant flash of blue-white light and two dreadnought destroyers appeared in front of the Chayio. At that point, our display screen divided in two. A small window in the corner of the screen showed the bridge of the Chayio, while the rest of the screen showed the scene as captured by a communications satellite orbiting Ezer Kri.
I had never seen ships of that make before. They bore the familiar sharp lines and forward shield arrays of U.A. Navy ships, but the hull design and size were completely foreign. The ships were several times larger than the Chayio. They had globelike bridges studded with cannons and firing bays. Their coloring was darker than charcoal—so dark that they seemed to blend into space itself.
“Forward shields, now!” the lieutenant shouted, demonstrating surprisingly quick reflexes.
The dreadnoughts hung silently in space for a moment. During that moment, the lieutenant at the helm of the Chayio called for his captain and sent a distress signal to all nearby ships. Neither the captain nor the nearby ships arrived in time.
One of the dreadnoughts fired into the frigate’s shields.
“Do not return fire. Channel all power to the shields,” the lieutenant ordered. He must have planned to keep a wall between his ship and the dreadnoughts until help arrived. His plan should have worked. With all of its power poured into the forward shield, the Chayio might have survived the battering for several minutes as it waited for help from the Kamehameha.
There was a blue-white flash behind the Chayio, and another destroyer materialized behind the frigate. This third ship took only a moment to stabilize before firing two torpedoes. With all power to its forward shields, the rear of the Chayio was unprotected. The little frigate exploded into a fireball that was quickly extinguished in the vacuum of space.
As I watched the frigate explode, I noticed streaks of light in the background. A swarm of smaller ships evacuated Ezer Kri and disappeared into space as the battle occurred.
Seeing the video feed, I knew that the fleeing ships would belong to the Mogats. Who else could they belong to? What other population needed to flee en masse? But I always thought of the Mogats as a bunch of crank religionists. Where the hell had they gotten a fleet of small ships? Another question: How had they gotten their hands on destroyers? As a Marine, my biggest question was, “Where are they going to next?” Wherever they went, I wanted to greet them.
CHAPTER TEN
Though he would never have confided his feelings to his corporals, Sergeant Tabor Shannon must have sensed the upcoming war. Other platoon leaders let their men relax between patrols; Shannon had us dress in full combat armor and drill. He sent us on ten-mile hikes in the muddy forests north of Rising Sun. Three days after the attack on the Chayio, he took us for a predawn drill up the sheer wall of a nearby mountain. I could see the shape of the full moon in the clouded winter sky. Its distorted silhouette showed through the clouds like a smudge on a photograph.
Shannon dropped ropes from the top of the cliff; the rest of the platoon scaled up the face of the mountain to meet him. When we reached the top, he smiled and sent us rappelling back down. Our combat gear protected us from the cold, but nothing stopped the muscle burn in our arms and backs.
If there had ever been a layer of dirt covering the face of these cliffs, it had long since washed away. This face was rock and ice with a few stray ferns growing in its crags. As I dropped down the edge of the precipice, my boots clattered on the wet stone face.
“Move it! Move it! Move it!” Shannon shouted down at us.
My right foot slipped against the wet rock, and I struggled to find good footing. Like me, most of the troopers had trouble finding secure footing on the way back down. We did not practice rappelling on board ship. The last time I had done so was in the orphanage. We had jetpacks, why would we need to rappel?
“Too long! Too slow!” Shannon shouted.
“I’d like to see you do this,” I said under my breath.
Shannon’s cord dropped just to my right. I looked up in time to see him jump over the edge of the cliff. Taking long, narrow bounces, the sergeant plunged down the cord so quickly that it looked like a free fall.
“I could do that,” I said to myself. “I just don’t feel like showing off.” I took a quick look over my shoulder. The lake filled the horizon. Craning my neck to look out, I could see the waterfront. In the daylight, the buildings looked like ice sculptures. I took a deep breath and prepared to drop faster. As I exhaled that breath, a bullet struck the cliff, shooting sparks and rock fragments that bounced against the visor of my helmet.
I blinked, though my visor protected me. Reflexes. At that same moment, I opened my fingers and let the cord whip across my armor-covered palms, dropping me into a loosely controlled free fall. As I reached the trees below, I tightened my grip to slow myself. I let go of the rope and dropped the last few feet into the mud. Standing a few yards away, Sergeant Shannon stood muttering to himself under his breath and firing live rounds at the cliff. He had removed his helmet. His face was spattered with dirt. The mud, combined with his all-tooth smile and wide, excited eyes, gave him a crazed look.
“You call that climbing?” Shannon yelled. “Move it, you dipshit maggots,” he bawled with a string of accompanying cusses. “I did not bring you here to go sightseeing!” He fired his rifle, and two of the men crashed down to the mud.
“I’ll bet that’s Lee,” Shannon muttered as he stared up at the cliff. “Hey, Lee, have a nice fall.” With the butt of his rifle tucked under his arm, Shannon squeezed off two shots that severed the cords just above one of the man’s hands. The man plummeted, bouncing off the face of the cliff before igniting his jetpack and lowering to the ground safely. Seeing what happened, the rest of the men rappelled down the cliff more quickly.
“Jeeezus sakes Christ!” Shannon yelled, looking over his panting platoon. “I could have picked off the whole friggin’ lot of you. The whole damn lot. I thought I came to drill Marines, not take old ladies sightseeing. Hell, I could have cooked me a barbecue and called your next o’kin before I started shooting. Next time, I’m loading rubber bullets and bagging me some maggots. You sisters better wear your safety loops tight. Next time I’m shooting rubbers.
“And, ladies, when I say ‘next time,’ I mean after lunch.”
All of us “ladies” groaned.
Lunch was no treat. It rained. We gathered around the truck and opened our MREs. No heated food to soften our bellies that day, just the standard mushy vegetables and prefabricated stew. Despite the vacuum packaging, everything tasted stale.