Freedom's Fire Read online

  Shaking his head, because he can’t come up with a decent solution, Brice says, “We leave him on Juji. He’ll get picked up by a rescue party in a few days and put back into circulation.” Brice chuckles. “He’ll be dead five minutes into his next deployment anyway.”

  Brice’s solution is a relief, also a new burden. It worries me. “He’s a witness to what we did.”

  “If the MSSW gets their hands on us,” concludes Brice, “we’ll hang for what we’re doing whether we kill him or not.”

  “Leave him here, then. I’ll unlock his suit when we take off.”

  With a relieved smile, Brice nods and heads up the hall.

  Chapter 44

  Looking out through one of the small, thick windows, I see an assault ship slowly weaving its way through the debris field. “Is that Jill?”

  “Yes,” Phil answers.

  Having expected Jablonsky to respond, I turn toward them with the question apparent on my face.

  “Gravity signature,” says Phil.

  I look back through the window and see gravity fields fluxing off the plates of Jill’s ship. Nothing appears unique to me. “Hmm.”

  Phil says, “Maybe now you can apologize for calling me an idiot.”

  “Phil,” I resist, as I watch Jill’s ship come in, “you were doing that thing you do. You’re going to get yourself in trouble one day and I won’t be there to pull you out.”

  “I don’t need you to help me out of trouble.”

  “I know, Phil.” Sarcasm is such a wonderful thing. “Any word from the platoon?” Brice and Lenox have been down inside the station for ten minutes and tons of metallic asteroid ore lay between us. My suit comm isn’t powerful enough to send or receive with them.

  “A lot of static in the line,” says Jablonsky, “but they’ve found something.”

  “Ammo? Hydro?” I ask. “Cal packs?”

  “Can’t say,” answers Jablonsky. “I relayed the information on to Lieutenant Rafferty, though.”

  “Jill’s coming to resupply, too?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Jablonsky confirms.

  “Thanks for passing our plan along to them,” I tell him. “Let her know we’re on a short deadline here. Our top priority needs to be getting these ships to the Free Army’s base.”

  “Are you ready to share that location with us, yet?” asks Phil.

  “Location?” I shake my head. “Nothing against you, Jablonsky, but I’ll keep that info to myself until we’re well away from the earth. Phil, you two coordinate a rendezvous point with Jill somewhere a long way from here. Once we bubble out, we’ll meet up there, and I’ll pass along the coordinates.”

  “Yes, sir,” answers Phil, just like any snotty junior high kid would say it.

  “Is there really a Free Army base?” asks Jablonsky.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “Don’t worry, this rebellion is bigger than just two ships.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Of course.” Honestly, that’s my worry, too, and it’ll stay that way until I see the base with my own eyes. “You two get to work.”

  “A word?” asks Penny.

  “You don’t need to ask permission to talk,” I say.

  Andrea shrugs. “I wasn’t sure how military we were going to be with Phil calling you ‘sir’ and all.”

  “Do you have a question, Penny?”

  “Grays,” she says simply.

  “Yes?” I prompt for more.

  “Why were there Grays on the bridge of that other ship?” asks Phil, turning away from his task.

  “Are you done finding us a rendezvous?” I ask.

  “Sure,” he answers. “I just gave the coordinates to Jablonsky. He’s radioing them to Jill’s ship.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “It doesn’t take that long to pick a random point in space,” says Phil. “Most of it’s empty.”

  “Why were the Grays there?” asks Penny.

  “Not just there on the bridge,” clarifies Phil, “but commanding the ship and targeting the weapons, just like they do on our cruisers.”

  “Not exactly,” I answer. “On our ships, the Grays are mostly on the bridge, and Korean bug-heads handle the targeting.”

  “That’s not the point,” argues Phil. “We’re supposed to be at war with the Trogs. Why are we fighting Grays?”

  That’s the question that’s been nagging me since I stormed the bridge of the Trog cruiser and saw all those Grays there.

  “Maybe we’ve been fighting them all along?” suggests Phil.

  Penny says, “Despite what the news tells us, people say the SDF has never captured a single Trog cruiser. They could have been there all along and we wouldn’t know it. Phil might be right.”

  “Maybe the Trogs are just like us,” says Phil. “Gray slaves.”

  “You think this is a war between two Gray factions?” I ask. It’s a plausible theory. More than plausible.

  “Why not?” asks Phil. “Humans fight each other all the time. Why wouldn’t Grays do the same?”

  “What if the Grays are Trog slaves?” asks Penny.

  That brings the conversation to a halt. Something neither Phil nor I have considered.

  Is that possible?

  “There wasn’t a Trog—” I drop the thought before I finish it.

  “What?” asks Phil.

  “I was going to say there weren’t any Trogs on the bridge when I got there, but of course there were. Three ghost Trogs were up there, and more were in the halls.”

  “Lenox told me you guys came across five or six of them in the forward section,” says Penny.

  I nod.

  “That’s a lot, if they’re just some kind of ninja assassins,” says Phil. “You never hear about more than one or two. I mean, when you hear stories about them at all.”

  “Or maybe they’re allies,” I guess. “Trogs and Grays. We don’t know anything about their relationship, right?”

  “Except the regular Trogs do the fighting and dying,” says Phil.

  “Just like us,” I conclude the comparison.

  “By the millions,” finishes Penny. “You’ve never seen a video with a thousand Gray bodies laying on the ground. Only humans and Trogs.”

  Chapter 45

  It’s been a long day of pitfalls and fuckups, so when we get the platoon back on board and blast far enough away from earth’s gravity well to make our bubble jump and it all goes as planned, I’m surprised.

  I’m sitting at the front of the platoon compartment in the blue glow of our ship’s inertial bubble, looking down the tube between two rows of facing seats. Brice is on one side of me. Lenox is on the other. I’m wrestling with how I should feel about the empties.

  The empties!

  I realize immediately my mind is trying to dehumanize the loss of half my platoon, protecting itself from indulging too much pain for the casualties of my choices. I tell myself I shouldn’t grieve over people whose names I don’t know, whose faces I can’t pick out of a lineup.

  I was their commander.

  I have to feel something. However, at the same time, I know I can’t let their deaths paralyze me into impotence. What kind of officer would I be, then? Definitely the kind that would get the rest of the platoon killed.

  I turn to analytics, a path to rationalizations I can depend on.

  Most of our losses for the day were suffered while taking the Trog cruiser we rammed. That was an expensive venture, but my God, the payoff. What general wouldn’t trade a handful of lives for so many of his enemy’s?

  How many could it have been?

  Thirty thousand?

  Forty thousand?

  Grays and ghost Trogs among them.

  Three cruisers.

  Hell, they were killing my SDF comrades every moment they floated there in space over the Arizona shipyard, taking potshots at the grunts trying to board ships far below.

  Whatever guilt I have for the mistakes I made—

  No, not guilt.

  I’
ve got nothing to feel guilty for.

  Interrupting my thoughts, Brice asks, “Are you worrying over whether I’m going to frag you?”

  I don’t know how to answer, because in fact, it is a lingering worry.

  Brice laughs. He finds humor in other people’s discomfort. But who doesn’t?

  “Sir?” Lenox nudges me. “You okay?”

  I glance at Lenox and smile, then turn to look at Brice. “Are you thinking about fragging me?”

  He gives it some thought. “Probably not.”

  I cock my head toward the partially empty platoon compartment. “A lot of casualties.”

  Brice shakes his head. “This is nothing.” His face turns pained. “SDF troops get mauled every time we face the Trogs. This is the norm.”

  Lenox says, “Makes me think my odds of seeing my next birthday aren’t very good.”

  “Shitty,” Brice tells her. “Look at me, I’ve lost count of how many actions I’ve seen. At least a couple dozen. Some, like the battle for the moon, went on for nearly a month. That was the only one we won, and I’m still here.”

  “Are you that lucky?” I ask. “Or that good?”

  Brice shrugs. “At first, mostly lucky.” His voice sounds a bit melancholy when he adds, “We’re all alive by the grace of luck, no matter how good we are.”

  Lenox leans forward to look past me and finds a direct line of sight to Brice. “Do you really believe that? Can’t a well-trained, disciplined grunt make good choices and live?”

  “There’s always an element of luck,” says Brice. He looks up at the glow of our inertial bubble. “This ship could have broken up when we went to light speed. We all talked about that on the bridge. Nothing you could have done about it. Bad luck.”

  Lenox leans back in her seat.

  “You can swing the odds in your favor,” says Brice, “but there’ll always be things beyond your control. Hell, this day’s been full of ‘em.”

  “That’s the truth.” It sounds like a nothing phrase, however, it’s a truth sinking in with me as I realize how many times I tempted fate and won.

  The pleasant glow of the inertial bubble flickers out, and the platoon compartment turns back to dim, yellow light splattered over steel and rust. We’ve just finished another jump—our fourth, though we’d only planned for one.

  Phil links through the comm to tell me something I already know. “Kane, we’re coming out of jump, and we’re finally where we’re supposed to be.”

  “Is Jill here?” I ask, hoping her ship wasn’t one of the unlucky ones that fell apart while powering up for light speed.

  “She’s been here three or four minutes,” says Phil. “Quick guess is her ship will do the full 1.5. We barely made it over the hump. That screwed up our navigation.”

  “As long as we can make light speed,” I tell him. “It’s not like we’re flying out to another star. Everything else okay?”

  “The ship handled the jumps fine,” says Penny. “It looks like she doesn’t fly straight, though. Maybe a degree or two off.”

  “So Jill’s ship works just fine, and she made it to the right place in one jump?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” says Phil. “That’s about the size of it.”

  “I see.” I’m a tad jealous. “Penny, can you correct for the imperfection on future jumps?”

  “Mostly,” she answers. “Probably. On a long jump, I can’t make any promises.”

  “Noted,” I tell her. “Phil, I assume we’re alone out here?”

  “Nobody but us, and Jill,” he answers. “Everything going as planned.”

  I hate that he said that. Maybe down deep, I’m a superstitious believer in bad luck. Maybe it’s the weight of all those empty seats. I key in the orbital coordinates of the Free Army’s base and send them to Penny. “After it decrypts, share it with Phil.”

  “Asteroid belt.” A moment later, Phil says it like he knew it all along.

  Maybe he did. With the asteroids in that belt traveling a solar orbit one and a half billion miles around, and with one or two million of the rocks big enough to build a base on, Phil’s guess is still pretty worthless. I keep that to myself, though. “Forward those coordinates over to Jill’s bridge crew. Sounds like she’ll be there ahead of us. Tell her to save me a place at the bar.”

  “You think they have a bar?”

  “I hope so.” In truth, I don’t care. Mostly, I want to hook up with the Free Army so I can feel the security of knowing I didn’t drag two platoons of grunts into a rebellion that’s already fizzled out.

  Chapter 46

  Brice opens a private comm between us. Everyone else in the platoon compartment is asleep or trying to. “Penny tells me you slept with Phil’s wife.”

  I didn’t expect that to come up, especially not from Brice. I deflect. “You and Penny getting pretty chummy over the comm?”

  “We hit it off,” he admits. “Nice girl.”

  I feel a twinge of jealousy. Still, I’ve got no claim on Penny. She’s got none on me. No matter what carnal thoughts she and I have teased through our imaginations over the years, we never moved past friendship. “That’s not an answer.”

  “More than you gave me,” Brice chides.

  “Yeah.”

  Brice waits a moment and says, “If it’s something you don’t want to talk about.”

  Yes, it’s not something I want to talk about.

  I start to explain, but stop myself. What does it matter? “Yes, I did sleep with Phil’s wife.”

  Brice nods slowly as he takes that in. “You and Phil, you’ve been friends a long time, right?”

  I rise to my defense. “Don’t make it sleazier than it already sounds. Sometimes fucked-up things just happen.”

  Brice’s dark laugh taunts me with how much it shames me. “You ever wonder if that’s a common thing, coming up with tidy excuses so you don’t have to feel guilty?”

  “You think that’s what it is?”

  “I don’t know, Kane.” Brice reaches his hand up clumsily and hits his faceplate. He chuckles. “You’d think after all the time I’ve spent in one of these suits, I’d remember I can’t scratch my nose.”

  I chuckle. “I miss scratching.”

  “Not as much as you’re gonna,” says Brice. “Seems it peaks around day three. After that, you lose the urge. You get used to it. Go back to Earth, though, take off the suit, and the next time you’re in it, it starts all over again.” He looks at me, truly curious. “I wonder why that is.”

  The urge to rub my eyes suddenly seems too much to bear.

  “Do you feel guilty about what you did?”

  Ugh. I hoped we were off that subject. “I suppose.”

  “You and Phil,” says Brice. “Seems like he hasn’t gotten past it.”

  “Probably not.” I nod my head aft, toward the bridge where Phil is working his navigation magic with Penny at the helm to bounce us all over the solar system. “Phil doesn’t let go of things. He carries shit around a long time.”

  “How long?” asks Brice. “Years?”

  “Maybe forever,” I laugh. “I’m trying to think of the last thing I know of that Phil actually stopped whining about.”

  “Stopped whining?” asks Brice. “Over infidelity? Kinda cheapens it, right? No big deal?”

  “You’re judging me,” I suggest. “Maybe I’m too harsh on Phil.”

  “Is that why you did it?”

  I laugh some more. “Are you trying to be a dick?”

  “Maybe a little bit.” Brice smiles. “Comes natural sometimes.” He sighs. “I can’t count the number of times I told a soldier to do a thing and do it now, only to have him choose something stupid, like ask why, or wait and think about it, or choose to do something else. Then they die. Makes you wonder if being nice is worth it.”

  “Nice?” I’m not sure ‘nice’ is the right word.

  Seemingly resigned to it, Brice says, “It wears a man down.”

  We let that sit for a moment. I don’t have a
nything to add, no advice to give. I’m still the novice leading people into war.

  When Brice becomes bored again, he looks at me with an obvious question.

  I know which one, so I tell him. “Phil and me go way back. We grew up together. And no, that’s not why I did what I did.” I rearrange myself in my seat, turning to face Brice. “You want to hear this story?”

  “There’s no inflight movie. How else am I going to pass the time? Everybody else is asleep.”

  “You need to lay off the stimulants,” I tell him. “Too much of that shit will fuck up your head.”

  “Suit Juice?” asks Brice. “It’s not addictive.”

  “You know the fact that the MSS tells us Suit Juice isn’t addicting pretty much guarantees it is, right?”

  Despite the artificial stimulants in his blood, Brice suddenly seems a little worn down. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Kane. I know what I’m doing. I know what I need. Suit Juice sharpens my focus when I’m in the shit. Might be the reason I’m still alive.” His laugh comes back. “I’d rather be a live addict than a clean corpse.”

  I don’t know if that’s funny, but I laugh anyway.

  “What about you?” he asks. “You juice much, yet?”

  “A little,” I tell him. “I don’t think I get any focus out of it. Focus is something that comes naturally to me—hyper-focus, almost.”

  “When the slugs were flying and Trogs were dying,” Brice flattens a hand and gestures down an imaginary straight line in front of him, “you were 110% in the game. It’s like you turned into a war machine back on that Trog ship. You don’t see many guys who can do that.”

  “Thanks?” I think it’s a compliment.

  He reaches over and raps his knuckles on my helmet. “I read an old news article once from before the siege.”

  “You’re a history buff?” That surprises me.

  “After I joined the SDF,” says Brice, “I started reading any old military literature I could get my hands on. Figured I could learn something that might keep me alive.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah, some stuff,” says Brice. “This particular article I read, it was about this helmet they developed at some warfare science lab they had back then. I don’t remember what it was called.” Brice spreads his fingers and drags them down over his head. “This helmet was full of wires and little magnetic electrodes or whatever the right word is.”