Freedom's Fist (Freedom's Fire Book 4) Read online

  I can’t put a number to it, either. “Perhaps an investigation,” I suggest. “So we’ll understand how many she killed through her choices.”

  “Incompetence isn’t a crime,” Bird reminds us. “What am I to do, execute every officer who makes a bad decision?”

  “Bad decision?” Brice snorts. He’s well out of line considering the rank difference. He shakes his head and then drills Bird with a challenging glare. "Officers sticking together? Same story in every army.”

  That accusation is a step too far for Bird’s patience. “Sergeant, I understand your point of view, and you have a right to it, but whatever accusation you think you’re making, you’re wrong. At least in the Free Army, under my command, you’re wrong. Nobody, including those of high rank, gets favoritism. We all live by the same rules. Anyone who breaks them will be investigated and court-martialed. Anyone—officer or enlisted person. Colonel Blair, as I said, made mistakes. Her mistakes resulted in a lot of deaths. The one thing you need to keep in mind, Sergeant Brice, is that soldiers make the wrong choices every day, whether they’re squad leaders, platoon sergeants, captains, or commanders. Every time a bad choice comes down the chain of command, people in an orange suit pay the price.

  “You and me, we can sit on the sidelines and make our retrospective judgments, but we both know, things look different in the battle than they do afterward. Would you have me punish everyone who makes a bad call? Would you have me execute every officer and non-comm who screws up? If that’s what you want, then there’ll be a long line at the guillotine, I can tell you that much.”

  “No, sir,” answers Brice. “We can’t execute everyone.”

  Bird’s stare doesn’t let up.

  Brice doesn’t back down.

  I know the words that just passed between them didn’t change either’s opinion, not even an inch. Bird believes in equal, pedantic justice. Brice has seen too much criminal behavior by too many officers, and seen them get away with it.

  With no idea how to defuse the tension, I say, “We should get inside. The meeting is starting in a moment.”

  Chapter 25

  It’s an oblong, bland conference room with seats for twenty-five, every one filled. Jill Rafferty is present with her pilot, navigator, and sergeant. Brice and Penny are here, Phil isn’t. He and the Gray are inseparable, and nobody wants the Gray in a meeting where so many secrets might be shared.

  Spitz is present along with some from his staff. Bird and his two aides are across the table from Brice and me. The rest of the people in the room are officers in what passes for Iapetus’s military branch, and several are from the ruling council, whatever they call themselves.

  “What’s up Brice’s ass?” Penny whispers.

  I glance over at Brice. I know he’s steamed over his conversation with Colonel Bird out in the hall, however, he’s doing a gold-medal job at hiding it. Penny sees through his guise. I shrug. "Nothing important."

  “You’re lying,” she whispers.

  “Is Phil teaching everybody to be a mind reader, now?”

  She smiles. “You’re not as clever as you think.”

  “Nobody is.”

  She leans back in her chair as a spectacle-wearing pair of women takes up places near a large, blank video screen at the end of the room.

  One of the ministers calls the meeting to order and introduces the women—one astronomer, one a navigational engineer.

  Dr. Leeds, the astronomer, starts as the room lights dim and a map of several dozen stars sprinkle the black screen. Using her laser pointer, she selects a dot in the center labeled as ‘Sol.’ "This is our sun.” Streaking the red dot across the screen, it comes to rest on another star. “This is 18 Scorpii, forty-five light years from us. From the information we’re able to glean from the Gray, we know to a high degree of certainty that this is the home system of the Trogs and Grays who’ve been attacking us.”

  “Forty-five light years away?” mutters one of the ministers whose name I didn’t catch. “I thought their cruisers couldn’t go more than—”

  “Minister Ward,” Dr. Leeds interrupts, “all of this is in the data file you’ve had access to for two weeks. We’ve been updating it with the latest information as we make our determinations.”

  Minister Ward points at the screen and starts in, “But you’re—”

  “Providing a brief overview to make sure we’re all up to date,” she tells him. “If you have questions about the veracity of our information or the methods utilized to deduce our conclusions, please review the data file and I’ll be pleased to talk with you offline.”

  Minister Ward snorts and turns his attention to his d-pad, making a show of reviewing all he’s missed right here in the meeting while the rest of us proceed with our business.

  "Based on the data and what we know of Trog cruiser design, it’s our belief they are following this path to reach us.” On the screen, several systems are circled in red, with straight red lines joining them as they zigzag through the star map. "Making jumps as long as two calendar years, sixteen light years based on the cruisers’ max hyper-light capability, the Trogs are able to leapfrog through these star systems, stopping at supply depots in each to refuel for the next leg of the journey. Our engineers have been studying the problem and running simulations based on what we know about the Trog cruisers. By completely removing the payload of railgun slugs, and the railguns themselves, the cruisers can store enough hydrogen fuel for their ships and enough food for the crews to make a sixteen-light-year jump.”

  “No railguns?” Minister Ward scoffs. “They sure show up here ready to fight.”

  “Precisely,” Dr. Leeds responds. “The last leg of their journey is only eleven-and-a-half light years. We believe 61 Cygni is where their last supply depot is before earth. We believe they have the facilities there to harvest and store hydrogen to fuel the ships, oxygen, factories to produce food for the crew, and also the industry to build the railgun systems they install in the ships when they arrive. We believe the ships all arrive in the earth system ready for war, but low on hydrogen, supplies to support the crews, slugs for their railguns. They stock up at one of the Trog outposts in system before going into battle.”

  “We have three assault ships fitted with axial guns,” says Ward. “We saw at the battle of Ceres how effective a single one of these ships can be against a whole fleet of those cruisers.”

  Penny kicks me under the table and puts on a smug face. She appreciates the adulation even if the minister isn’t naming us. Everybody knows.

  “Why don’t we just wait for them here?” asks the Minister. “We can ambush them when they’re completing their jumps and shoot them out of the sky when they’re low on fuel with no ammunition for their guns.”

  Plenty of people around the table sigh loudly. Ward’s questions have apparently been answered already in other meetings.

  A high-ranking military man leans over the table and tells Ward, “It’s not that easy. The Trogs have dozens of bases scattered around the system and we can only guess at that. We suspect we don’t know where half of them are. Hell, they could be all over the Oort Cloud, and we wouldn’t have a clue. Earth hasn’t sent a ship out there, and we haven’t either. No warships. No scout ships. All we have are long-range scans from ships stopping for a short time, enough to calculate their next jump on the way to one of the colony systems."

  "That’s what I don’t understand," Ward tells him, coming to a triumphant point, "if we can’t find a Trog base in our solar system with all the resources and scout ships and surveillance satellites we have floating around, how the hell are we going to be able to search an entire alien system with just two ships?"

  “We have a pretty good idea where the base is,” says Dr. Leeds. “Information from the Gray. It’s in your data file.”

  “From the Gray,” snorts Ward, and then he repeats it, emphasizing it in slow syllables as he looks around the table for supporters. “We’re putting our trust in this creature not one o
f us can communicate with. We have to believe this Phil character to interpret what it says.” Ward throws himself back in his chair in a dramatic tantrum.

  I’m offended, but keep my cool.

  Penny glances at me, I guess to make sure I’m going to play nice.

  “Well?” Ward looks around. “Anybody got anything to say about that? We’re going to trust this alien creature with our safety. With our future. We’re going to send our two most powerful ships—”

  “Your ships?” asks Bird, underscoring an unresolved fracture between the UN and the Free Army. Both were cooperating on the ships, but Colonel Bird hasn’t suborned the Free Army to UN authority.

  "A discussion for another time," says another minister, stepping into the budding argument with a placating tone. "We’re all on the same side, human against invaders. Whatever our differences, we’ll find a way to work together, or we’ll perish, every one of us.” And then he glares at both Ward and Bird. "Have we learned nothing from the MSS and our decades of occupation?"

  Chapter 26

  With relative silence settling over the meeting’s participants, Dr. Leeds finishes explaining our plan and the logic behind it.

  A UN admiral stands and takes over, spending time talking about the salvage opportunities available with the broken assault ships floating in earth orbits, near the Potato, around Ceres, and around the Free Army’s former headquarters. He paints an optimistic picture of how quickly the UN and Free Army working together will be able to scale up the fleet. He talks about training based on the tactics we know work against the Trogs, and he tries to leave the room with the understanding that sending two assault ships into the void is only a temporary setback regarding fleet strength. In a few months, the ships will be replaced. In six months, optimistically, or a year at worst, the two ships won’t even be missed.

  Minister Ward groans several times during the presentation, but his ire doesn’t rise enough to turn into an argument.

  Dr. Spitz goes to the head of the table and gives everyone a rundown on the status of the two ships—the Rusty Turd, and Jill’s assault ship. He explains how we’re each going out with the necessary crew and only a squad each of marines. The plan doesn’t call for anything that would make their presence necessary. They’re along as a backup system. What for, he can’t explain, except to say that this is a military operation. Things will go wrong, and we need to be as prepared as we can afford to be. He finishes by explaining that that’s why they’re sending their best, my ship and Jill’s ship.

  As Spitz is taking his seat, the conference room door opens, and Secretary General Kimura strides in on a presence that bigger than stature would suggest.

  All side chatter in the room ceases.

  “My apologies, I couldn’t get here sooner,” she says.

  “We’re just finishing up,” says Spitz. “You have the floor.”

  She looks over the room, and in a reassuring voice starts in with a speech I guess she’d already planned to make upon entering the room at exactly this time. “This is the first step we’re taking here. The first huge step, not just in reuniting humanity to work together, but to take the fight to our enemy. We’re sending a military force to another star system. We’re no longer hiding in holes on minor moons and scurrying off to uninhabited star systems in hopes we’ll be able to thrive outside of the view of races more advanced and numerous than ourselves. This expedition, more than anything is humanity asserting its freedom.”

  That raises a standing ovation from the room.

  At least we’re all able to unite behind that ideal.

  Penny leans over and whispers, “Maybe there’s hope for us.”

  I chuckle and tell her, “I thought I was the cynical one?”

  Once we all sit down, feeling more optimistic than at any moment since coming in, Minister Ward decides it’s time to open up his box of grievances. “Secretary Kimura I agree, that if nothing else, we’ll remember this day as the first time the UN and Free Army joined together to fight for our freedom in interstellar space. We’ll all talk about it for as along as we live. But you know as well as I do, it’s nothing more than a wasted Doolittle Raid.”

  Brice bristles at that and Penny puts a restraining hand on his forearm.

  I decide I don’t like Ward at all.

  "In that, I disagree," answers Secretary Kimura looking down at Ward, who is still seated. "Colonel Doolittle flew sixteen bombers to Tokyo on a one-way mission of little material effect but significant propaganda value for America during the Second World War. This raid is nothing like that. We fully intend for both ships to return. What’s more, we’ll disrupt the Trog supply line. There’s much about the Trog military and supply methods we don’t understand, but if they are sending warships from depot to depot and from system to system, it’s possible that news of the destruction of this one supply depot will take four or five years before it reaches the Trog home system. Another four or five years will pass before work crews with construction equipment will arrive in system to start the repairs, another process that might take years. So, we might be buying ourselves ten years. That’s time in which not a single Trog vessel will be able to make it into earth’s solar system.”

  Ward takes the opportunity to follow up. “That’s a very rosy picture you paint Madam Secretary. What if every fleet that leaves their home world does so with support vessels capable of foraging the necessary volatile elements from whichever system they arrive in, or worse still, brings along vessels with the crews and equipment necessary to build out their bases, as we know they must have done when they arrived undetected in earth’s system some time before starting the war. Then what do we buy with this folly, a few weeks? A few months? Maybe not that.”

  “That’s the most pessimistic view,” allows Secretary General Kimura.

  "And what if this isn’t the only system where the Trogs have a base?" Ward is smug about this supposition. "What if they have depots in two or three—or every star system within a dozen light years of earth? What if they come to earth down different paths, and this Gray we’re depending on only knows the one way? What then? We accomplish nothing except to throw away two ships.”

  I can’t help but notice Ward doesn’t mention the lives of the people on board. He’s an easy man to despise.

  “Eventually,” responds Kimura, “we’ll send scout ships to every system within a dozen light years, and farther. As you well know, we’ve scouted or have colonies in four systems already, and we haven’t found any sign of Trogs. However, we need to search the rest. We need to know what’s in our neighborhood if we’re to survive.”

  Kimura scans the room to catch every eye watching. “We’ll need outposts and garrisons to monitor our frontier. We’ll need a fleet to protect it. We’ll need a navy and an army, marines, air force, everything as we expand.

  “We live in a hostile universe. The only way we’ll survive as a species is if we militarize and grow our population at a rate never seen in human history. Just like the Grays figured, we need to have people getting married and having babies by the dozen, so we’ll have the bodies to spread across our colonies and to build out our ships, and we damn well better figure out how we’re going to pay for the endeavor. We may need a new set of economic and social theories to support the kind of interstellar expansion required. Money might become irrelevant when survival of the species is the only return on investment that matters.

  “The danger we’ll face when we build out this enormous military-industrial-imperial complex is that it could turn into a Frankenstein that draws us into a state of perpetual fascism from fear of the infinite universe and its endless possibilities? We have to find a way not to lose who we are as a species. We’re not just colonists and soldiers, expansionists and constructors—we’re artists and scientists, parents and poets.

  Secretary Kimura catches herself and smiles. "I get carried away with the future sometimes. I apologize for that. But if we don’t plan for the future we want, and don’t start
asking today what world we want to leave our children, then we won’t have a say in it, and that’s exactly what happened to humanity this time around. We weren’t prepared for what we knew was coming. The Grays showed up three decades ago and took our freedom, and now the Trogs are here. Do they intend to enslave us for all time or annihilate us? Either way, we can’t leave the decision to them.

  “Right now we need to fortify what we have, build our massive navy, protect earth and the colonies. We need this mission to 61 Cygni to succeed in cutting off the Trog supply route. If we can defeat this union of Trogs and Grays, then we can overthrow the union of the MSS and Grays here at home. It all starts here with us, in this room, in every room and hall on Iapetus, and in every Free Army base in the solar system, on every ship, and in every heart. We need to bond ourselves together as humans to a single purpose, survival. No longer can we squabble as nations, ethnicities, religions, organizations, and armies. We need to become one, or we’ll be swept away by a species that is capable of acting together. Survival and freedom, those are the two things we fight for. Who stands with me?”

  Everybody does. Of course we do. That was the kind of speech the old sci-fi epics creamed in their pants for. We all cheer.

  For the first time in a long time, I feel pretty optimistic about us. And then I know why Kimura is running the show on this rock. She dreams big, and she inspires. She’s the hero earth needs.

  Chapter 27

  It takes us a day to put a comfortable distance between us and the nearest gravitationally significant mass. No planets nearby. No moons. Even Jill’s ship is over a thousand klicks distant. As unlikely as the occurrence might be, we don’t want to chance a light-speed collision during our trip. The Rusty Turd jumps first, leaving the solar system at nearly 30c. Jill will follow in a minute or two.

  We’re traveling with a light crew, just Phil and the Gray, Penny, of course, Jablonsky, Tarlow who’s become a bridge fixture, Brice, Lenox, Silva, and Peterson, along with two techs who run the axial gun. The two techs, a man, and a woman went through that battle over Ceres with us, and they’re starting to feel like they’re part of our platoon. The only outsider is Clawson. He’s one of Spitz’s people, an engineer. He’ll be in charge of arming the nukes when we get where we’re going.