Free Rogue clone by Steven L. Kent

scaffolds looked like threads instead of twenty-foot-wide metal platforms. The dry docks housed over eight hundred cubic miles of space for building ships.
    Golan did not orbit a planet. It was a free-floating space station.
    “Starliner pilot, please identify yourself and prepare for security scan.”
    This request did not worry me. The Golan Dry Docks were one of the most security-intensive facilities in the galaxy. Knowing that Admiral Klyber had picked me for this assignment, the head of Doctrinaire security crafted my new identity and logged my clearance and flight plans while I was still on New Columbia. He knew where I was headed before I knew, it seemed. Rather than enter the Dry Docks as Corporal Arlind Marsten or Lieutenant Wayson Harris, both of whom had damning skeletons in their closets, I now traveled as Lieutenant Commander Jeff Brocius of the U.A. Navy assigned to the Central Cygnus Fleet.
    I flew a Johnston R-56 Starliner, a 20-seat luxury craft on loan to me from the Doctrinaire fleet. The R-56 was generally flown by corporate pilots. Like every other pair of wings on the Doctrinaire , this R-56 had been outfitted with its own broadcast engine.
    “Please state your identity.”
    “Lieutenant Commander Jeff Brocius, U.A. Navy.”
    “Lieutenant Commander Brocius, copy. Are there passengers aboard your flight?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Thank you, Starliner.”
    Traffic Control was acting unusually polite and I had a pretty good idea why. Security gave me the name Brocius because Admiral Alden Brocius, the officer-in-command of the Central Cygnus Fleet, was headed to the Golan Dry Docks for the summit. For all the men in the traffic tower knew, I was the admiral’s son or nephew.
    “Starliner R-fifty-six, we are under heightened security at this time. Please switch off all onboard controls. Our traffic computers will guide your ship into port.”
    “Aye,” I said.
    The traffic tower took control of my ship the moment my hands left the panel. Lights turned on and off as traffic control accessed all of my instrumentation. They might discover that I had unusual equipment on board, but they would not know it was a broadcast engine unless they tracked me from millions of miles away. I had disconnected the power after broadcasting in. Without a generator pouring tera-volts into it, the broadcast engine would look like nothing more than spare parts to their security computers. My ship slowed to a near standstill as it joined the queue waiting to enter the Phase 2 landing bays. Unlike the rest of the platform, Phase 2 of the Golan platform was totally enclosed. Seen from this side, the Dry Docks had a sleek teardrop shape. The outer skin of the station had a pattern of shining black squares against a flat white base. As I flew closer, I realized that those black squares were enormous solar energy cells.
    This side of the Dry Docks facility had three landing bays, each marked by two half-mile wide circular entrances called “apertures.” All ships entering or exiting the docks would have to pass through those doors. As traffic control led me toward one of those openings, I saw the distinctive silver-red of a security laser and knew someone in the dry docks had X-rayed my ship. Leaning back in my seat, I took in the sights as my ship dropped into place before one of the apertures. Inside, I could see the brightly-lit landing area and the staging area that planes entered just before takeoff. Ships and transports of all shapes and sizes sat quietly at the back of the runway. Beyond that, so far away that it looked no bigger than my fist, was the half-mile-wide aperture for departing flights. Whether by computer or human talent, traffic control brought me in for a perfect landing. Thruster rockets in the wings of my Starliner fired as I entered the quarter-gravitational field of the tarmac. My ship landed with no perceptible bounce. A runway technician towed me through the atmosphere locks and into the staging area.