Freedom's Fury (Freedom's Fire Book 2) Read online

  I shake my head. If she had a bug in her head, she’d know. “It’s not the Trogs I’m worried about. They have Grays on that ship.”

  “Why them?” she asks.

  I give her the briefest rundown of what I saw on the cruiser my platoon commandeered, emphasizing the number of Grays we saw in the command section. I remind her that Phil sensed more of them on the Potato, somewhere down in the tunnels. I finally tell her, “I don’t know if the Trogs and Ticks are allies or what, but if I grav up there, to one of those big-headed gargoyles I’ll glow like a Roman candle. The dust won’t hide my grav signature.”

  Blair’s shoulders slump. She understands. “Let’s walk, then. We’re bound to find something. This rock isn’t that big.”

  I press on.

  She follows.

  She tries to raise the others on the comm again. Louder bursts of static are the only thing we hear.

  I scan the moving slurry around us for any hint of a structure.

  More minutes pass, I guess. I still didn’t check the time on my d-pad. “How long have we bee—”

  I freeze.

  “What?” asks Blair, concerned, and rightly so.

  “Shhh.” Pointless. I remind myself again, sound doesn’t carry in a vacuum.

  I watch as the dust ahead of me takes on a different texture—puffs with sharp edges, dark clouds.

  Blair nudges me and whispers over the comm, “What?”

  A few meters ahead, shapes are moving, left to right, and the bug in my head helps me see the dense mass of each. It’s not dust.

  “Trogs,” I tell her, still stuck on the unnecessary whisper. “Back up.”

  Instead, Blair leans to look past me, and I bump her as I step back.

  She’s not moving. “I can’t see them.”

  Scooting around beside her, I grab her arm and pull her down to her knees, pointing with my rifle. “You can barely make them out. They’re filing by. Watch. You can see faint shapes.”

  Leaning forward, Blair says, “Kind of. I think I can see them. God, you have good eyes.”

  Mostly it’s my sense of gravity. “Don’t move.”

  “We could have run right into them.”

  “Yeah.” I’m trying to detect the end of the line, hoping it’s not that whole Trog horde coming this way.

  “What next?” Blair asks, softly, humbly, as hard as it is for her to step off her ego pedestal for a moment.

  I think.

  Retreat?

  Find another way in?

  Oh, fuck it!

  It’s been a day of insane risks. I spot what looks like the last in the line of them, although for all I know it might be just a gap. Frustration over our current mess reinvigorates the anger I have toward the Trogs for the bombardment, and it’s time to vent it. “I’m going to fucking kill them.”

  Blair shrieks, “What?”

  It always amuses me how much meaning can be packaged around a simple syllable. Human language is so interesting.

  I’m up and on my feet, letting go of my rifle and drawing my pistol as I move toward the last Trog in line. “Stay right behind, Blair. If I lose you out here, I won’t find you again.”

  “This is a bad idea.” She’s angry. “You’ll get us killed!”

  “Unless we can figure out a way to turn this shit sandwich into a Salisbury steak, we’re dead anyway.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Just be ready with that rifle if this goes south.”

  “If?” She scoffs. “If?”

  She says more, however, I’m ignoring her. I’m straining to feel the grav of any humanoid masses moving nearby. All I see is the line of Trogs stretching out in front of me as I fall into step.

  They’re walking close, just far enough away from one another so the one behind won’t kick the heels of the one in front when they step.

  Second thoughts and pictures of all that could go wrong start to spin in a flurry of nerves as my mouth goes dry, but I can’t pay attention to any of that. All the best shit only works if you jump right in.

  I shuffle my feet to match the rhythm of their march. In long strides, I close in on my target.

  As I get in range, he senses something and turns to glance over his shoulder.

  Dammit!

  The telepathic fucker probably caught a sniff of my bug.

  I reach out and grab his integrated backpack with one hand while I jam my pistol just under the metal ring attaching his helmet to his suit. I pull the trigger and send a slug up through the base of his big bony skull.

  He stiffens and pitches forward from the momentum of the projectile smashing inside his helmet. My grip is tight on his backpack, and he doesn’t fall. In the micro-g, I hold him up in front of me, and pray the next Trog in line is feeling just as much sensory overload as I am, and doesn’t sense his buddy’s demise.

  Nothing happens further ahead that I can make out.

  I fling the dead Trog’s body to the side, and tell Blair, “Make sure he doesn’t bounce.” In the light-g, it will happen, and the last thing I want is the Grays on that cruiser to start seeing Trog bodies springing into orbit. No doubt, that would prompt them to start pounding us again with their railguns.

  I grab the pack on the back of the next Trog in line, place my pistol, pull my trigger, and toss his body to the side for Blair to handle.

  It can’t be this easy.

  Chapter 8

  Eight down, and even Blair is impressed.

  It’s a great system. I ambush and shoot. She handles the corpses. What’s not to love?

  I’m starting to think we should forget about finding an airlock and just stay out here in the gray slurry, hunting and killing.

  I skip my feet to get in step with the leader of a line that doesn’t exist anymore, except for him and me, and as I adjust my stride to catch up, I’m in a rhythm.

  He stops.

  Shit!

  Panicking, thinking my system just fell apart in a puddle of hubris and that I should move my pistol back up into firing position, I plow into him from behind, and it feels like I’ve bumped into a tree.

  The Trog half turns and elbows me hard on the side of the helmet.

  My defensive grav absorbs the shock, yet the momentum nearly knocks me off my feet.

  Blair is shouting and bringing her rifle to bear.

  The Trog doesn’t turn all the way around. He focuses forward again, not realizing the frail dust-covered moron behind wasn’t one of his comrades.

  Confused about that for a half-second as I regain my balance, I realize the Trog has just pressed his palm into the center of a backlit pad with only one big button.

  An airlock door slides open.

  “Blair, don’t shoot yet!”

  “Why?”

  Lights flicker on inside. I shout, “Airlock!” and rush in after the Trog.

  I’m too slow.

  As I’m getting close enough to put the barrel of my pistol in the best spot to kill him, he reaches the inner door and turns to check that the rest of the squad has followed. His oversized eyes betray his surprise, whether because he sees only two dust-covered suits instead of eight, or because he recognizes me as human, I don’t know.

  I’m already pushing forward and trying to shove the barrel of my pistol up under his chin.

  He blocks me with a forearm that’s longer and more muscular than mine.

  Before I can adjust and pull my pistol free, he’s wrapping a powerful ape hand around my wrist and squeezing so hard I lose control of my fingers.

  Through his faceplate, I see his surprise is gone, replaced by bared teeth.

  He pushes me to my knees.

  My God, he’s strong.

  I’m struggling with all my might and way overmatched. I figure in a few moments, I’ll be dead.

  I amp up my suit grav to push him away and find some leverage. He instantly responds.

  “Double shit!”

  A railgun barrel slides unexpectedly ove
r my shoulder and past my helmet, stopping when it pokes the Trog in the chest. It fires as soon as the barrel makes contact.

  Too close for the Trog’s suit grav to protect him, the dinner-plate-sized deflector over his sternum explodes in a burst of shrapnel and hits my faceplate as all the air from his lungs bursts free. For the briefest of seconds, I see a hole form straight through him as Blair’s round sparks against the airlock’s interior door.

  The grip on my wrist relaxes, and a bubbly fountain of bloody air sprays out.

  I push the Trog away, and he floats up toward the ceiling.

  Blair is punching the button to close the outer door. “You alright?”

  “Yeah.” I rub my forearm and flex my fingers. Nothing broken. “Damn, he was strong.”

  “First time one got his hands on you?”

  I look at her like it’s a stupid question.

  The outer door seals.

  She shrugs. “How am I supposed to know what happened when you went all Blackbeard on those Trog cruisers. You could have arm-wrestled them for control.”

  Attempted humor? From Blair?

  “No hand-to-hand.” Standing up, I scan the airlock’s inner door for a hole left by Blair’s shot. “If I have anything to say about it in the future, it won’t happen again.”

  “That strong?” Blair walks the length of the airlock to punch the button by the inner door to cycle the atmosphere back inside.

  I’m still examining the door for a hole as I hear a high-pitched hiss. Air is filling in around me.

  “Don’t worry.” More of her irritating certainty. “The round didn’t go through.”

  Chapter 9

  The airlock stops hissing. A light above the door turns green. We’re matched for the pressure inside.

  Blair has a palm on the door handle. She looks at me for confirmation.

  Who am I kidding? She wants me to know she’s going to open and it and I better be ready.

  With my rifle set to full auto, I’m prepared to kill however many of whatever is behind door number one. I nod my response.

  The inner door swings open and I take a quick step forward for a full view.

  I scan left to right.

  Upturned and scattered are lounge chairs, the kind you might find by a pool back on earth—not now, but the kind in old movies when people with enough meat on their bones to look alluring in a swimsuit would sun themselves by the blue water and demurely try to get laid.

  Clearly, the Trogs didn’t appreciate the arrangement of the chairs and tables.

  We’re under the big smart-glass dome at the center of the colony, right where we intended to be. The main floor is down a short flight of wide stairs coming out of the airlock. Along the top edge of the circular wall supporting the dome’s glass, dim lights glow in a ring broken by dead and flickering sections. Doorways are set at irregular intervals around the perimeter, each opening to downward stairs and obscured hallways.

  In the center of the circular room rises a fountain of the same shape. At first, I think it’s filled with an unfamiliar super-viscous liquid. That damned earth-borne intuition again. The goo is actually water flowing in the micro-g, with droplets falling so slowly they seem to be suspended in the air. Vertical waves, several feet tall and narrow, crawl around the fountain’s inside edge, not collapsing, but standing and morphing ever so slowly into mesmerizing, impossible shapes.

  Impossible back on earth.

  “There!” Blair points.

  I swing my rifle and find a target.

  I don’t pull the trigger.

  The suit is orange, not white. The helmet is normal, human with a high forehead. His uniform, as grimy as any of the worn-out suits most of us wear, isn’t layered in the asteroid’s dust. That means he wasn’t outside when the bombardment started.

  But there’s no Korean name and rank stenciled on his chest. He’s not military.

  “Who are you?” I demand, sending a signal across all the standard comm channels, and looping Blair in. I step down the stairs. Blair follows.

  “SDF?” he lies.

  “Who are you?” I demand, taking a step forward and jabbing the barrel of my railgun in his direction, even while I’m thinking what a stupid gesture it is—Oh, looky, in case you didn’t notice, here’s my big fucking gun.

  “Tarlow,” he answers. He’s cagey. Just a pinch shorter than me. Not at all intimidating. He reminds me of a real live Teddy Bear. I have an inexplicable urge to hug him. He glances at the airlock up the stairs behind us like maybe he thinks if he makes a dash for the door, he’ll move so fast all my shots will miss.

  I don’t need hugs today. I’m ready to play.

  Maybe he guessed at the thoughts behind my eyes. He doesn’t run. Instead, he asks, “The Trogs?”

  “Still out there,” Blair tells him. “Who are you? Are you one of the miners?”

  He glances down at his suit and then back to us as if that’s a sufficient answer.

  I’m thinking maybe I’ll just shoot him. Something’s not right about him, and the more I get comfortable with the act of ending lives, the less it seems like it’ll be a burden on my conscience to erase this cuddly irritant.

  Blair hops off the final stair and stomps across the big circular rec area like maybe she’s about to slap some MSS-super-interrogation-shit on him. Clearly, she has no patience for Mr. Cuddles, either.

  It’s surprising how little crap you’ll put up with when sixty seconds ago you were fighting for your life.

  I ease to the side, so Blair isn’t in my line of fire.

  As she closes in, I see Tarlow’s smirk slip into something a little less confident. I figure he’s reading the hostility on her face, and filling his suit’s recycler. His hands fly up with open palms and his scruffy beard parts wide to reveal a glowing, toothy smile.

  I wonder how long it’s been since he was last out of his suit.

  I shudder over the idea of my future spending every day in a flexible orange coffin.

  “I’m not one of the miners,” he says. “I’m a tech. A jack-of-all-trades. A gopher. I fix things.”

  “Like what?” Blair demands, from just a step out of fist-punching range.

  “Everything.” With Blair stationary, some of Tarlow’s new-found deference disappears and he looks at Blair like the question is nearly too stupid to expound on. His eyes drift down to the single-shot rifle still in her hands. He doesn’t know she failed to chamber another round after she killed the Trog manhandling me in the airlock.

  Come to think of it, I’m not sure Blair knows either.

  Maybe she had time to work the bolt action, but I didn’t see her do it.

  “We’re on a rock a billion miles past bumfuck-nowhere,” snorts Tarlow. “We’re running an illegal mining operation. We can’t exactly call back to earth for a repairman when something breaks. I fix everything.”

  “Nobody fixes everything,” I retort. I decide he’s lying.

  He looks past Blair, and sees me sighting my rifle at the center of his chest. Whatever the stabbing thing I did with the railgun a moment before didn’t convey, apparently my demeanor does now. He gulps. “I don’t fix the mining machinery, not much of it. Well, the kilns sometimes, and the small-scale smelters. I support other systems, air purifiers, electrical lines, radio repeaters, networking, lights.” He gestures at the malfunctioning illumination along the edges of the glass dome, just in case we don’t know what a fucking light is. “Oh yeah, explosives, you know, for blasting rock. I mix the chemicals and set up the charges before they drop them down into the drill holes.”

  Blair relaxes. She seems to have gleaned an answer she deems sufficient. “What happened here?”

  I keep my rifle up. I’m not that trusting.

  “Trogs.” With Blair’s aggression dialed back a notch, Tarlow cranks an extra helping of disdain back into his answer. “You said they were outside.”

  “They attacked the base?” Blair asks.

  “Base?” Tarlow shuff
les back a step as he glances at the SDF stencils on Blair’s chest. “Who said base?”

  Blair exaggerates a sigh and glares back at me. She’s out of patience.

  “Stop being evasive!” I order. What the heck? Blair was going to say it anyway.

  “I know this is a Free Army base,” she tells him. “That’s why we’re here. You know it’s a Free Army base or you wouldn’t be here. Can we please skip the secret handshake game? Tell me what the hell happened and tell me why you’re freely wandering around with Trogs everywhere, because I have to tell you Mr. Fix-it, with every stupid answer you give me, you’re convincing me you’re a collaborator who needs to have a round punched through his chest.” Blair lunges forward and jams the barrel of her empty railgun between Tarlow’s ribs. “Answers. Fast.”

  Chapter 10

  “I… I…” Tarlow is looking at me, eyes pleading. The bitch is crazy!

  Duh!

  Maybe it’s a mistake, but I now feel sorry for him. I transition from orders to advice. “Really, stop being evasive.” He’s rattled, and I’m guessing the answers will come slower. That’s probably rationalization.

  “I’m not being evasive.” He’s stumbling over his words. “They’ve got everyone locked up—the ones they didn’t kill.”

  “Where?” asks Blair.

  “Level nine?” Tarlow points down. “In some of the empty reservoirs.”

  “Reservoirs?” I ask. That word doesn’t seem to fit with our current environment.

  Tarlow looks at me like I should know the answer to that question already. “It’s why the Trogs came here.”

  “Because of reservoirs?” Blair doesn’t understand, either. She thinks Tarlow is spinning up some bullshit.

  “Water,” Tarlow pronounces. “The rock in this asteroid is hydrous, thirty-nine billion tons of stone soaked with a billion tons of H20.”

  Blair is taken aback. “Water?”

  The water comment throws me off too.

  “Frozen,” Tarlow tells us. “We mine it out of the core, extract it from the rock, and store it in subterranean reservoirs—big tanks down on level nine until we ship it out to the other mining colonies. It’s the main thing we dig for out here. I think that’s why the Trogs came. There aren’t that many water mines in the asteroid belt.”