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

  For now, thirteen humans and an alien. Jill has the same number.

  The latest round of modifications to the Rusty Turd have changed its purpose. Technically we still have the ability to ram a Trog cruiser. It’s a tactic I want to leave in the playbook because we’ve had such success with it in the past. Of course, ramming with the tank ring attached will destroy our tanks. Ramming with the tank system removed will likely break off enough brackets to make re-coupling with the ring impossible. Both outcomes lead to us being stranded in 61 Cygni.

  As for seizing a Trog ship after ramming it—even if we had enough marines onboard to mount an assault, all of the assault doors off the platoon compartment, except for one, have been welded shut. Only the foremost section of that compartment remains in vacuum. That’s where we store the nukes, tucked right up behind the grav lens. The assault door on the starboard side of the ship up there has been widened to make it possible for the nukes to be loaded inside, and for them to be pulled back out again once we shed our tank ring after reaching 61 Cygni.

  The rest of the ship is now livable space, well, those parts of it that aren’t packed to the brim with ammunition for the axial gun and supplies to keep the crew alive for eighteen months. The trip there and back is only supposed to take ten—five each way—so we have some cushion built in.

  And that underscores the one thing that’s going to make this journey survivable, from a morale perspective, anyway. With so much of the Rusty Turd’s interior now livable space, the plan, after the first day of flight, is to remove our orange suits and spend the five months living like humans. We’ll walk, exercise, work, and recreate in artificial earth g generated by our interior grav plates. We’ll breathe, eat, use the restroom, and take a shower just like normal humans back on earth. We’ll each have a berth a little larger than a coffin to sleep in. We have a few common areas, one, a multi-purpose space that’s large enough to hold us all snuggly. We can configure it as a dining room, a workout space, even a theater for watching old vids from back before the siege, back when humans had the resources to waste on such frivolities. The infirmary is smaller than in the original ship design, but is convertible to be a quiet reading or socializing space with a couch and a few chairs. Several computers are set up in another area just down the hall.

  It sounds like more space than it is, but the ship wasn’t designed for roominess, and it sure was never intended for a long voyage across the stars.

  I’ve set the crew up in three shifts. With a third of us on the bridge at all times, a third sacked out, so four at a time can take advantage of the ship’s leisure spaces. Phil is the only one left out of the rotation. His up and down time is on the Gray’s schedule.

  Chapter 28

  Two months into the journey, and boredom has set in. It’s worse than the long shifts I worked in the grav factory. At least there, I had something to keep myself busy with through the sweaty hours.

  Now, there’s little of importance.

  Every day, I spend time with Phil and Nicky—it’s still hard to call it that—trying to get a deeper understanding of Gray history and behavior, trying to put myself in the mind of the Trogs, hoping I’ll earn an insight that gives me an advantage when we face them again in combat.

  Nothing yet.

  I push Phil for answers on the exact location of the Trog supply depot in 61 Cygni, but nothing Phil can dredge out of the Gray’s secondhand memories points us where we need to go.

  Tarlow has gone to the trouble to put together a dynamic map of the system based on all we’ve learned from Spitz’s astronomers, what we’ve been able to observe in our brief periods out of bubble as we inch closer, and mostly what he’s assembled from the Gray’s memories interpreted through Phil.

  61 Cygni is a binary system, two stars orbiting one another at roughly eighty-six Astronomical Units, eighty-six times the distance from earth to the sun, nearly twice as far out as the old planet, Pluto.

  Cygni A has the most planets, a dozen varying in size from half the size of Mercury on up to some much larger than earth. They’re rocky–some are layered in gases like Venus, others are tidally locked, half-frozen, half-molten. Most are barren, though a few sound like they might one day evolve life.

  Cygni B has only two gas giants, one so large we guess that it’s eaten up any smaller planets in that system. But that’s pure, uneducated conjecture. Not one of us is an astronomer.

  Cygni A has two dense asteroid belts, both fairly close to the star. A giant Oort cloud encompasses the whole binary system, and Lagrange points dot the system in places that aren’t intuitively obvious to any of us. The largest, most populace Lagrange zone is a vast swath of space where we think the supply depot sits. It covers an area larger than Sol’s inner solar system, and it’s something of a system-wide dumping ground for asteroids, everything from sand particles and golf-ball-sized pieces of ice and rock to moon-sized spheres and protoplanets.

  Based on what we know of earth’s asteroid belts, Kuiper belt, and Lagrange zones around Jupiter, we guess this place holds millions, and maybe billions of bodies large enough to house a Trog supply depot. What we’re trying to get out of the Gray is a concept of landmarks, the largest of the moon-size objects that we can use as a means to narrow down our search.

  Unfortunately, the Grays’ navigation methods are so intertwined with their innate sense of gravity and not based on anything mathematical, the way the memories are stored don’t translate well to Phil’s human brain. What does come through is garbled in Phil’s attempt to translate into words concepts that exist outside human vocabulary.

  So, we find ourselves listing and defining, and correcting and shuffling words around to try to invent the language to describe the concepts from a Gray point of view. It frustrates us all. Brice and Penny sit in on the sessions from time to time, as does nearly everyone on the ship. It’s a problem we all need to solve. It’s central to the success of our mission.

  What we do with the navigation information we glean is pump it into a piece of military battle simulator software used for gaming out scenarios.

  Tarlow sets each game up with modified situations and different pitfalls. Sometimes, we arrive in system, and no Trog cruisers are there to greet us. Other times, the depot is heavily defended with gun emplacements fortified in bunkers on the surface of a moon-like object in a constant and predictable grav field. And on occasion, the base is sitting on an asteroid roughly the size of the Potato, in a swirling field of other rocks with gun batteries buried all through, with grav fields bent every which way, and in flux in strength and direction with the positions and rotations of the asteroids.

  In that kind of system, any railgun round fired is likely to miss its target unless a great deal of care is calculated to account for every variable field line that a ballistic object needs to cross. That part is nearly impossible to simulate to any close approximation of reality. We do the best with what we have.

  We imagine having to evade or engage with fleets of Trog cruisers. We simulate the battle with two assault ships, and sometimes just one. We discuss plans for how we’ll mount our attack if both ships are disabled and we have to go in commando-style to destroy the facility.

  I don’t know if we’re learning anything from all the effort, building false confidence, or just killing time. At least it takes our mind off the slowly moving calendar and gives my people something to look forward to when I’m not pressing them to make progress on a cross-training schedule.

  We’re in the common area—me, Tarlow, Brice, Lenox, and Silva—discussing the last round of the battle simulator, trying to list the flaws in a failed attack plan, when a call comes over the comm from Penny. It’s short and ominous. “They’re not here.”

  Chapter 29

  I make my way down the main hall. It’s cramped with the axial railgun running right down the center. Once on the bridge, I see my first-string team. Penny and Phil greet me with silent, worried faces. Jablonsky is on the radio, calmly hailing Jill’s shi
p to no reply.

  Our plan upon heading out had been to stop at waypoints along our trip, to touch base. Neither of us had the ability, or that’s to say the accuracy in navigation, or the balls to try and make the trip to 61 Cygni in a single long bubble. We agreed to attempt to stop at all the same places along the way, places where we’d compare notes on anything that might have gone wrong or right with the other’s ship, or just as a way to develop some best practices for interstellar navigation with humans being so new to it.

  Over the first several days of our trip, we’d stopped every hour and managed to keep ourselves on parallel paths and similar speeds, which meant that once coming out of bubble, we seldom had to wait long to find and contact the other ship. Overall, it slowed us down, but we figured it wouldn’t add more than five or six days to the length of our journey.

  “How long since we stopped?” I ask.

  “Nearly four hours,” answers Penny.

  “That’s a while.” I was aware we’d come out of bubble. Everybody on the ship was. The interior inertial bubble always glows steadily when we were in that state. I’d been so caught up in the evaluation discussion I’d lost track of time. I connect to Tarlow over the comm. “Get up to the bridge as soon as you can make it.”

  He grumbles something in typical Tarlow fashion, but I’ve learned to ignore his perpetual moods. His jack-of-all-trades genius is worth the price of his quirky personality. So far.

  “Tarlow can run a scan with his radar systems,” I announce, hoping that solves our problem.

  “I’m broadcasting in all directions,” says Jablonsky, “on all frequencies.” He doesn’t say the radio works on electromagnetic radiation, just like the radar system, but he clearly thinks Tarlow’s radars will add nothing to the effort to search the vast space around us.

  “Keep it up,” I tell him. Turning to Phil, I ask, “How long was this last jump? Two weeks?”

  “The first two-week jump,” Phil confirms, though I knew the answer before I asked. I’m just gearing up to start talking through the solution to a problem that will get more and more serious with each passing hour. Nobody wants to mention the possibility that we’ve lost half our attack force before getting halfway to 61 Cygni.

  “Two weeks at 30c,” says Phil. “That puts us six billion kilometers from our last rendezvous point.”

  “And any small errors in heading or speed magnify over that distance,” Penny reminds us.

  “What’s the longest we’ve had to wait for them so far?” I dredge my memory of all the meet-up points.

  “Nearly two hours,” says Jablonsky, accessing the computer on his console. “Our first three-day jump.”

  “Did we figure out what happened?” I ask. “Was that a speed problem?”

  "Yes," Penny confirms. "We realized their reactor was putting out slightly less than ours, or that’s to say their drive array was converting it less efficiently to speed. We re-calibrated over the next several jumps, and thought we had it fixed. After that, we were jumping in near-perfect sync, always coming out of bubble within a few seconds of one another, always within a hundred thousand miles of the other ship.”

  “And suddenly this?” I ask it, but I don’t expect an answer. “Thoughts on how to proceed?” I do expect answers on this one.

  “Do we go back?” Jablonsky asks, between calls over the ship-to-ship.

  “First we wait,” suggests Penny. “I don’t know how long, but I think we need to decide now, rather than later. The longer we sit here, the more likely we are to become emotionally involved with the problem. If that happens, we’ll be less likely to make a rational decision.”

  "Agreed.” I give her a nod. "We’re at four hours now. Do we wait for another four?"

  “Eight total?” Penny asks, grimacing as she comes to her choice—a hard one—but maybe the necessary answer. “Yes.”

  Tarlow stumbles up the stairs. I fill him in on the situation and direct him to take a seat at his station and start scanning. His muttering disappears once he understands the seriousness. He gets right to work.

  Brice and Lenox both come onto the Bridge. Penny explains things to them as I lean over Tarlow’s shoulder to get a first peek at his initial results.

  “We’re deciding at what point we give up on the rendezvous and proceed to 61 Cygni,” she says. “We’re thinking eight hours.”

  I stand up and look around at the others. “Any input?”

  “Choosing a time to go is wise,” Brice tells us, glancing at Penny to acknowledge her good choice. “We’ve waited four hours. That’s probably enough already. Waiting another four isn’t likely to impact the situation when we arrive in system at 61 Cygni. I don’t know that waiting longer will increase the likelihood the other ship will arrive. For all we know, they’re a few million miles away, trying to make the same decision we are right now. Obviously, if we both wait out here for the other immobile ship to show up, we’ll wait forever. Four more hours is plenty.”

  I scan around the bridge. “Any other thoughts?”

  Phil, surprisingly, is the first to agree with Brice.

  Penny does, of course. I get nods from Lenox and Jablonsky. Tarlow doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  “Four more, then.”

  Chapter 30

  Time ticks slowly past.

  We spend a good deal of it speculating and reviewing what we know of Jill’s ship, her crew, and what they communicated to us at each of our previous stops as we worked through the calibration and reactor output problem. Nothing comes of it except frustration that infects the whole crew, as we’re all involved.

  Tarlow’s scans pick up nothing. Everything, he explains, is just too far away for his scans to do any good. As far as he can tell, we’re surrounded by a void at least several light-years across, exactly what we’d expect to find in interstellar space.

  After the eighth hour of our wait ends, we don’t discuss it further. I give the order. Phil uploads the nav data. Penny powers up the drive array, and we bubble jump into another two-week hop.

  Chapter 31

  I’m staring at the ceiling in the dark. Well, the blue glow.

  Silva, that’s what I call her. It seems like the only name she’s ever had. The only one that feels natural. She’s asleep, with my arm wrapped under her, holding her to me.

  We’re both off-shift. We have the library to ourselves. The library, that’s what everyone in the crew has taken to calling the private space with a couch and a door that latches from the inside. We don’t have any books in the library. I’m not even sure who tagged it as such. Maybe people sneak inside in pairs and try to be quiet.

  Penny is good about it when she’s inside with Brice.

  Lenox surprises me because she’s quite the screamer when she’s snuck off with Clawson.

  Silva isn’t loud, but she’s not quiet. We’ve been in here enough over the two months since her birthday that I think I know every sound she’s going to make and how she’s going to make it. We’ve practiced our encounters with such frequency and—I laugh, trying to keep my silence, so I won’t disturb her.

  Practice our encounters?

  She teases me because I am, at times, too clinical.

  We fit together like two people who’ve grown comfortable over years. She’s told me she loves me, not two weeks after we first slept together.

  I don’t know that I love her.

  I can’t trust myself to make the call on that one. I sold myself a heaping lie on it once before. Once to a plastic-eyed beauty queen who rolled down the assembly line at the baby factory when the angel in charge of plugging souls into infants had slipped off to take a dump.

  The question that nags me is, if I could fall into Claire’s trap, what won’t I fall into?

  Have I been cursed with a gullible heart?

  I don’t know if Silva’s my soul mate, if she and I are intertwined like Phil and Nicky. I am infatuated with her so much it hurts, and the only thing that makes that sweet pain go
away is when her lips are kissing mine, and my hands are sliding across her bare skin, and her legs are wrapped around me, and we’re doing what lovers have always done when they’re alone.

  In seven hours, everyone onboard is scheduled to suit up again. We’ve all been on the liquid diet for three days. I checked out my suit before my last shift started. It’s been sitting in a locker for five months. I had to run a check on the system. Everything worked, but damn if it didn’t smell like a mildewed jockstrap. Something you don’t notice when you first put them on, because they’ve just been steam cleaned, but these are pungent, having last held us. And we don’t have the facilities onboard to give them a thorough washing.

  The first few days back inside are going to suck.

  They’ll suck even more because the closest I’ll come to touching Silva again will be through layers of translucent undergarment, insulating material, micro-sized grav plates, and the flexi-composite orange stuff they make these suits out of.

  I don’t know if still being able to see her and talk to her whenever I want is going to make our time apart easier. I make a point to talk to Brice about how he managed the relationship he had with that girl he told me about when he was working construction after first blasting into space before he joined the SDF.

  They got together for a few days once every two weeks.

  I wonder how long we’ll be in system. Will we find the Trog base a day or two after arriving, drop our nukes, and get back on a long, slow trip back to earth? A long trip I’m no longer dreading. Maybe that’s the measure I need to think about as I try to put a label on what it is I feel for Silva. The only passion I’ve had room in my heart for all these years was the revolution. Now, the thought of lying in this room with her in my arms seems like the most important thing I can ever do.