Starship Freedom

by Daniel Arenson

  But the Freedom was an old ship, built before neural implants became a military standard. Everyone aboard the Freedom could access MindWeb, but the bridge still kept the old monitors, a system considered downright antique. ATLAS and MindWeb were the old and new, finding an uneasy alliance aboard the starship.

  When King said "Give me an update!" it wasn't just an order. It was also a rebuke of neural tech. Even with his ruined voice, he was talking aloud instead of communicating telepathically. He was making a statement.

  I let my ship succumb to the tourist industry, he thought. I'll be damned if it succumbs to the goddamn MindWeb too.

  Lieutenant Commander Jordan approached. The XO had been manning the bridge during King's tour of the ship. He was wearing his parade dress. Golden buttons shone on his white coat, and his saber hung at his side.

  "We're still entering full yellow alert mode," Jordan said. "Eighty percent of the crew are at their stations across the ship. Power has been diverted from the upper midsection decks to engineering and weapons. Shields have been enhanced with electromagnetic boosters. ATLAS system is doing a level-5 diagnostic sweep of our surroundings. We've got ten sensors awaiting more info from the Rubicon, twenty performing an inspection of deep space, and the rest monitoring the fleet orbiting Earth."

  "And the tourists?" King said.

  Jordan grimaced. "That's the last piece of the puzzle. So far, we've only moved about half into their bunks."

  King lifted his minicom and called Darjeeling.

  "Sergeant Darjeeling, this is Commander King calling from the bridge. Give me an update."

  The Englishman's voice came across the line. "Begging your pardon, sir. But these tourists are a rowdy bunch. I've got a hundred enlisted men working on rounding them up. But it's like herding cats in heat, sir. I've got teenagers lighting fireworks in the skating rink, and there are gamblers who refuse to leave their slot machines."

  "Double your crew," King said. "Pull soldiers off cannon duty. It's not like we have ammo anyway, and the Christmas fireworks display is canceled. Will a hundred more soldiers help?"

  Darjeeling could be heard arguing over the line. "Hey, you kids! Put down that statue!"

  Laughter sounded. Kids could be heard repeating the words in a mock English accent.

  "Trouble, Darjeeling?" King said.

  "No sir, I can handle them. Though yes, a hundred extra spacers would come in handy."

  "Get it done, Sergeant. I want every last tourist in their bunks."

  "Yes, sir!"

  King hung up and turned toward Jordan. "Nice outfit. You should always dress up for the bridge."

  Jordan glanced down at his parade whites, then looked back up at King. "Why, thank you. At least one of us doesn't look like a slob." He grinned. "I was rather looking forward to singing at the gala tonight. I suppose that's the true reason you called a yellow alert. Just to ruin my plans."

  King chuckled. "Maybe if you'd sing some old country music, I wouldn't mind so much."

  Jordan gasped. "Me, a trained opera singer? You wound me."

  A few bridge officers heard the banter and stifled smiles. That was an intentional move on King's part. Some light banter told the crew that while this was serious, things were under control. There was no need to panic.

  Jordan leaned closer and lowered his voice. These words were for King alone. "You know, Jim, if this is nothing, we'll be the joke of the fleet."

  "We're already the joke of the fleet," King said. "We became the joke of the fleet when we allowed the minigolf course to open."

  Jordan raised his eyebrows. "You don't like the dinosaurs? Not even the brontosaurus who eats the golf balls? My daughter loves those. Well, she used to when she was younger." He patted King on the shoulder. "I know, Jim. You're being careful. I would do the same thing."

  Mimori approached the two men. She was Model 1, the original android. The bridge model. Like Jordan, she wore her parade whites.

  "Sirs?" the android said.

  "What is it, Mimori?" King said.

  "I have an update. ATLAS is reporting suspicious activity deep in the solar system."

  King's stomach sank.

  "Elaborate," he said.

  Mimori frowned. "It's hard to explain, sir. It's a bending of spacetime. An echo in the very fabric of reality. And—" She gasped. "Another anomaly! Just reported! This one is in low Earth orbit, sir!" She clasped his hand. "Sir, there's something happening just above Earth."

  Her grip was tight. She was trembling. King knew that the android—the ship herself—was artificially intelligent, aware, and could experience emotions. But he had never known Mimori to seem this scared. Not even during the war.

  "What's happening?" King said. "Mimori, put it on-screen. Main viewport."

  The main viewport dominated the prow-side bulkhead. It was bigger than King's dining room table back on his ranch. The screen began displaying streams of raw data, green text on a black background. Everyone stared.

  King was not a scientist. He had his bachelor's degree in English literature, his master's in history. But decades aboard the starship Freedom had taught him a thing or two. He understood the data racing across the screen. So did the other officers. A few officers gasped.

  My God, King thought.

  There were massive disruptions in Earth's orbit. Gravitational waves. Agitation of the Higgs field. A storm of gravitons. A bending of electromagnetic radiation. King couldn't explain it. He had never seen anything like this. Physics was going crazy.

  "What the hell is going on?" he said.

  "I don't know, sir," said Mimori.

  "Get me a live video feed. Not from the Freedom's sensors. We're in deep orbit, too far from Earth. Tap into a lower orbit telemetry satellite and show me the view."

  "Right away, sir. I'm accessing a video feed from one of MuskLabs' science satellites in geosynchronous orbit. It's only thirty thousand klicks from Earth, so we should get a good view. And we should be getting the video … now."

  The text vanished from the main viewport. The screen now showed a view of space. Earth appeared on the left, a sphere the size of a beach ball. Thousands of satellites, starships, and space stations were orbiting the planet. On the eve of the twenty-third century, Earth's orbit was always cluttered.

  For a moment everything seemed normal. Captions appeared on the screen, labeling important vessels. A handful of warships were orbiting over Europe. Some were frigates. A few were modern dreadnoughts, smaller than the Freedom but newer, faster, and deadlier. Other starships belonged to Earth Patrol, the police fleet that maintained order in space. But most ships were civilian. Cruise ships, space racers, freighters, tankers, and many others.

  Starships were affordable these days. Millions flew across the solar system. Three centuries ago, cars took over the surface of Earth. Today starships dominated space. There was plenty to visit. A century ago, Talaria drives had opened up the solar system to human imagination. A journey from Earth to Mars, which would once take a year, now took a day. Casinos, hotels, theme parks—they popped up on every planet or moon with a solid surface. And if there was no solid surface, you could always build a space station. World War III was a distant memory. The wounds had healed. Half a billion souls had died in that brutal war, but now . . . now peace had come.

  Peace was what King loved. Peace was what he had fought for. Yet peace came with a cost. Peace softened the soul. Softened him.

  Or maybe he wasn't soft. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was just a grizzled old soldier who didn't know how to survive peace. Maybe war was all he knew.

  He watched the panorama of starships for a moment, trying to understand the source of the irregularities.

  And then it happened.

  Right before his eyes.

  He could barely believe what he was seeing.

  * * * * *

  Above Earth, holes tore through space.

  The starlight bent, swirling around a thousand black holes. Shadowy rings rippled
outward like dark water. Caverns gaped open like hungry mouths, swallowing all light. The strange dark circles appeared all around Earth. Chunks of the galaxy seemed to disappear.

  "What the hell?" King growled. "Starboard monitor A, zoom in on one of those holes."

  A side monitor came to life, featuring one of the holes in space. When King looked more closely, he could see a strange landscape inside the hole. Lightning forked between splotches of purple shadows like bruises. Strange shapes moved in the murk.

  "They're portals," King whispered. "Portals through spacetime. Wormholes."

  "There's no such thing," Jordan said. "Scientists have been hunting for wormholes for centuries."

  "Human scientists," King said in a low voice.

  They all remembered the message from the Rubicon.

  "Sir, ATLAS reports more portals opening across the solar system!" Mimori said. "Several over Mars, one over the moon, and—more reports coming in, sir. They're all over!"

  "Get the Alliance headquarters on the line," King said. "Mimori, can you—"

  "Sir!" Mimori pointed at the monitor. "Look!"

  King spun toward the front monitor.

  "God save us," a lieutenant whispered.

  Another lieutenant fainted.

  King stared, face hard, clenching his fists. Jordan took a step closer to him, staring with dark eyes.

  Starships were emerging from the portals. Starships such as King had never seen.

  They were spiky, jagged things of dark metal. They looked like the exoskeletons of monstrous marine animals, strange urchins or crabs from the depths. Claws thrust out from the ships, curving, irregular. Hundreds of claws grew from each vessel, all pointing at the same direction. At Earth. Some claws were small and serrated. Others were the size of skyscrapers.

  The monitor HUD displayed the size of the ships. They were gargantuan. Many were as big as the Freedom. Many were larger.

  They kept coming, thousands of them, pouring from God knows where into Earth's orbit. They floated in space, hulking, menacing, predators crouched and ready to pounce.

  "Jim, what are those?" Jordan whispered. "Could they be Red Dawn ships?"

  "Those are no human ships," King said. "Earth has just made first contact. This is an alien invasion."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Starship Freedom

  High Earth Orbit

  18:17 Christmas 2199

  King stood on the bridge of the Freedom, watching it happen. Helpless to stop it.

  From his starship, seventy thousand kilometers away, he watched the destruction of Earth.

  "The rahs," King whispered, remembering what Bastian had told him. "They're called the rahs."

  Thousands of alien ships hovered around Earth, their claws facing the planet. Slowly the rings of claws expanded, blooming like metallic petals. They revealed pits of molten, swirling metal. The ships suddenly seemed like hideous steel flowers with centers like dying stars. The cauldrons of energy churned, gullets to hell. The red light was blinding. Radiation alarms blared across the Freedom. The ship thrummed as the shields automatically increased their electromagnetic radiation dampeners.

  "The radiation levels are insane," Jordan said, watching stats on the monitor. "Those are fusion reactors! I've never seen anything like this."

  "Mimori, engage our Talaria engine," King said. "Take us to Earth. We're entering this fight."

  "Jim!" Jordan grabbed his arm. "We don't have ammunition."

  "We can still ram into enemies. We will not stand by while Earth is threatened. Mimori!" King raised his voice as much as his throat would allow. "Why aren't we flying?"

  "Sir?" the android said, eyes wide and face pale. "The Talaria reactor is powered down to idle mode. The guests said they didn't want noise during the Christmas gala. You approved it, remember?"

  Goddammit. He had overlooked this. How could he have overlooked this? He wouldn't have made this mistake during the war.

  "Get the reactor back up and running!" King barked. "How long until we can fly?"

  "Ten minutes, sir. Fifteen at most."

  "Get it done in five," King said.

  Mimori closed her eyes and began to whisper urgently. She was communicating telepathically with her counterpart in engineering. Deep inside the ship, gears turned, motors hummed, and pistons pumped. Even here on the bridge the deck vibrated. The Talaria drive was priming. But it would take a while.

  And every second counted.

  For a moment they were just a rock in space, floating aimlessly. King could only stand and stare.

  The alien ships were now fully dilated. Their claws, which had pressed together at the tips only moments ago, now flared open like rings of swords. Their molten cores churned.

  The Freedom was dead in the water. But she was not the only Alliance starship.

  Several warships, which were closer to Earth, opened fire.

  Torpedoes and photon bolts flew toward the invaders.

  "Get 'em!" King blurted out, leaning forward and balling his fists.

  The fusillade streaked through space, etching white lines, racing at hypersonic speed toward their targets.

  Instants away from impact, the torpedoes and photon bolts hit … something.

  Suddenly space lit up. Glowing orange webs appeared around the rah ships. They looked like laser beams, crisscrossing into a webbed pattern, enveloping each enemy vessel.

  The torpedoes and photon bolts plowed into these glowing webs—and exploded.

  Shrapnel flew through space. Plasma sprayed. The glowing webs quivered, then went dark again.

  The rah warships had survived without a scratch.

  "Those were shields," King said grimly. "Energy shields such as we've never seen. These clawed ships have technology we can't even understand."

  And then the alien ships attacked.

  And then Earth's history changed forever.

  And then this day went down in infamy.

  From the churning cores of these steel flowers roared pillars of flame.

  Lines of searing red light filled space. Thousands of flaming columns constructed an unholy cathedral. They were like tornadoes of fire. Like the swords of titans. Each pillar was longer than cities, brighter than nuclear devastation, as hot as the center of stars.

  Alarms blared across the Freedom. Gauges spun and shattered. The radiation warnings leaped off the charts. Even here, so far away, the radiation bathed the Freedom. Light flooded the bridge.

  King remained standing. In the blinding inferno, he stared, squinting, grieving.

  Just ahead of him, magnified by the ATLAS sensors, he saw it happen.

  A pillar of fire plowed into the FAS Templar, the flagship of the Alliance fleet, a mighty dreadnought. The Templar cracked open. Another blast shattered her into a million pieces.

  Alliance frigates charged to battle, mighty warships the size of city blocks. Blasts of enemy fire ripped them apart as if they were merely twigs. Dreadnoughts, starfighter carriers, destroyers, frigates—around Earth, they burned.

  The Alliance fleet was crumbling.

  At the same time, some of these spinning, crackling pillars of flame descended through space—and slammed onto the surface of Earth.

  One pillar plowed into New York City.

  Another carved through Beijing.

  A raging inferno crashed into London.

  It was happening all over the world. Over every major city, the aliens were raining fire. Their searing beams drove holes into the world.

  On the Freedom's bridge, people cried out. Somebody screamed. Somebody wept. An officer fainted.

  "A nightmare," whispered a tactical officer. "A nightmare. It can't be real. It can't be real …"

  King remained standing, staring with dry eyes.

  No. This was not a nightmare. This was very real.

  "Mimori, is the Talaria drive ready?" he said. He forced himself to speak calmly. He must remain calm for his crew.

  "Five more minutes, sir, and w
e can fly," the android replied.

  Jordan stepped closer. The light from the monitors bathed him. Horror filled his eyes like ghosts haunting dark chasms. He was from Los Angeles, one of the cities hit.

  "Jim, we can't win this," the XO said softly. "Even if we were armed, even at the height of our power, we could not withstand this enemy. We have civilians aboard. Thousands of them. We have to run."

  "I will not run from a fight," King said. "There is no safe place for civilians anymore. And this ship is now part of the war."

  He swept his eyes across the bridge, staring at his officers. One after the other. Some officers were weeping. Others were praying. All were terrified. Aside from him and Jordan, none of them had known war.

  "Sir, they're destroying Earth!" said a navigator. "We have to run. Oh God, we have to—"

  "Get ahold of yourself!" King snapped. "All of you. Stop your whimpering. You are soldiers! Stand at your stations! Prepare for battle!"

  "Jim." Jordan held his arm. "We don't have ammo."

  "But we have our mass," King said. "We're flying in a ship the size of a town. We'll ram into the enemy. We'll use our bulk to destroy them."

  Jordan spoke in a low, urgent voice. "Jim, how long do you think we'll last in there? I want to fight too. But we need to arm ourselves."

  King growled deep in his throat. He leaned toward his XO, speaking in a low voice. "There are armories on Earth. We'll carve our way through."

  "We'll never reach Earth without our cannons booming," Jordan said. "The enemy would destroy us like a piñata. Jim, Mercury is a hundred million kilometers from Earth tonight. We can be at Alliance Mercury Armory within ten hours. We can stock our bays with missiles, torpedoes, and bullets, then fly back."

  Alliance Mercury Armory. Nicknamed Merc Mory by the troops. King remembered it. A rickety old space station, orbiting Mercury. Freedom had docked there once during the war. It was a good armory. But far.

  King clenched his jaw. "It's a long flight. Even once we're there, filling our armories can take a full day or two. By the time we're back, Earth might be gone."