Free Space

by Scott Bartlett

  “Ah.” Mittelman thought he saw where this was going, now. “Let me guess. They’ve begun making their displeasure known. In unpleasant ways.”

  “That is an understatement. But it’s a little more nuanced than that. You see, Kibishii does not only specialize in using stealth to get marines to wherever our clients need them to be. We also specialize in stealth detection. Meridian’s entire business model relies on their warships’ ability to move about undetected, whereas ours relies both on detecting ships that are using stealth, and on having better stealth than anyone else.”

  “I see. How has Meridian expressed their displeasure, then?”

  “By destroying the Boundless Horizon. It was actually a mining vessel, belonging to Kibishii’s mining arm.”

  Mittelman sat a little straighter in his chair. “Do you have evidence of that?”

  “We do not. Any evidence that might have existed was destroyed along with Horizon. But we are certain. No other company would have been able to get the drop on one of our ships and then sneak away without being seen by any witnesses. Of which there were several in-system.”

  “Okay.” Mittelman drew a deep breath, trying his best to limit the rise and fall of his shoulders. “Tell me what you want from Frontier.”

  “We’re hoping to gain an ally. Someone who can help us catch Meridian in any further acts of violence, and retaliate if necessary, but also someone who will have our backs in case this fledgling super-alliance falls apart. Obviously, we would prefer it to remain intact. But we cannot remain part of an organization for very long when that organization fails to take injustices seriously.”

  “You said you had no evidence.”

  “It’s a simple process of elimination, Mr. Wills. There is no other corp in Daybreak space capable of doing what has been done. At the very least, there’s enough pretext to launch an investigation into Meridian. But Herwin Dirk, the new leader of the Combine, has done everything he can to protect them from such an investigation.”

  Mittelman nodded, his eyes drifting to the far wall as he processed everything Xu had told him.

  “It is a delicate time, Mr. Wills. And we all need friends more than ever. If Frontier is willing to commit to Kibishii, then Kibishii is willing to commit to Frontier. We have already shown that today. As you know, your position is already quite fragile, with the Degenerate Empire amassing on your border—”

  “Wait, what? Degenerate Who?”

  Now it was Xu’s turn to blink at him. “Have you not heard? The pirate coalitions to the north have chosen a name for a super-alliance of their own. Rumors say that criminals have been flocking to their ranks from all over the north and east. They’re calling themselves Degenerate Empire.”

  How did I miss that? Things were certainly moving quickly in the Cluster. “I think they need a better PR manager,” he muttered, almost to himself.

  “Whoever they have may be just the person for the job, actually. The name of their alliance might be a masterstroke. It will attract exactly the sort of element they wish to attract. Those who embrace their criminality. Who would welcome the label ‘degenerate.’”

  “You may be right.” Mittelman stroked his goatee. “You’ve certainly given Frontier a lot to think about, Mr. Xu. I’ll need to run all of this by our CEO, Veronica Rose—as soon as I can find her in all this mess.”

  “Of course. I am relieved that a dialog has begun. And that you are more…amenable than I initially assumed.”

  Oh, I wouldn’t rely too much on that assessment. But in response, Mittelman only smiled.

  Chapter Eight

  New Houston, Oasis Colony

  Freedom System, Dupliss Region

  Earth Year 2290

  Rose poked her assault rifle around the rock, fired a wild spray of bullets across one of the tunnel mouths containing Xanthic, then pulled back behind her boulder.

  As she did, an alien projectile hit the boulder directly in front of her, causing its surface to morph and rise, becoming a landscape of vaguely pyramidal structures.

  I don’t have much room to play with here, do I? With the two firing angles the Xanthic were shooting from, the boulder offered her just enough cover to stay alive.

  The only reason she hadn’t been hit was that her marines were pouring round after round toward both Xanthic locations, who shot back at them in kind. They were diverting the aliens’ fire, which was keeping her alive.

  Something clicked against rock, and a second later an explosion roared from the direction of one of the Xanthic positions. She pressed herself back as close to the boulder as she could get. Her HUD flashed an alert that the temperature of the air around her had risen sharply—she was sure she could feel the explosion’s heat even inside the power armor.

  After that, the fire from that Xanthic position tapered off to almost nothing, and the marines used the lull to push out into the cavern to establish better firing lanes on the remaining aliens. After less than two minutes, it was over.

  The second the last Xanthic fell, Avery shoved one of his marines against a boulder nearby. “Do you have any idea the risk you just took with Ms. Rose’s life? Cooking a grenade till the last second? Lobbing it across a dark cavern, where it could easily ricochet off the rock and land near her?”

  “Major I—I—”

  “It’s fine.” Rose reached the pair and laid a hand gently on Avery’s arm, till he lowered it to his side. “This private just saved my life, Major. Something drastic needed to be done. I’m not sure how long I would have lasted otherwise.”

  Avery’s eyes lingered on the private’s forlorn face a second longer. Then he jerked his head sideways, staring at the ground. “Get out of my sight.”

  The private slinked away, looking grateful to escape Avery’s wrath.

  “Truth is,” Avery mumbled, “I’m angry at myself for letting you go ahead like that. It ain’t right, ma’am. Sorry, but it ain’t. You shouldn’t risk yourself like that.”

  “You’re right.”

  He raised his gaze to her face, his eyebrows up.

  “It’s foolhardy for the CEO to charge into enemy territory at the head of her forces. I…I was trying to be like my father. But he would have been smarter than that. This was a wakeup call for me, and I’m going to do my best to make sure it’s the last one I need. I just thank God my stupidity didn’t get anyone killed.”

  The look on Avery’s face mixed shock and horror in equal parts. When he spoke, his voice came out thin-sounding. “Stupid is the last thing I’d call you, Ms. Rose. We all make mistakes, and—”

  She shook her head. “It’s fine, Major. Let’s just get on with it.”

  Nodding, he trotted off to gather his marines, and to marshal the ones still coming into the cavern from the tunnel. Rose let herself lean back against one of the large rocks and took a deep breath. That was much too close. She would have prayed for the story not to get back to Thatcher, if she thought it would do any good. But her people were coming to love Thatcher too much for that. Someone would relay the information to him, if only in an unconscious attempt to curry some favor.

  She fought to calm herself, focusing on the noises of the cavern. A steady drip-drip-drip that sounded from somewhere behind her. The scuff of the marines’ boots as they arranged themselves in squad formations.

  After ten minutes, Avery reconvened with her near the boulder formation. “We’re good to go, ma’am. If I can make a recommendation…”

  She nodded.

  “Maybe you can join Beta Squad, with Gamma and Epsilon bringing up the rear behind you.”

  From the tightness in his voice, she could tell he’d had to work himself up to say that. No one wanted to tell the CEO that she’d tried to bite off more than she could chew.

  But she already knew it. So she smiled, and nodded again. “Sure thing.”

  He smiled back, looking relieved.

  As they exited the cavern and continued through the network of caves, the passageways sharply grew steeper. Th
e rock walls drew her attention again and again, as did the tunnel floor beneath her feet. She knelt to run a hand over its surface—the suit’s gloves had excellent tactile relay—and found it pebbled in a way that was almost uniform.

  Just as she’d expected.

  “Major.” Her radio crackled slightly as she called ahead to Avery, who was near the head of the platoon. Marines had bunched up behind her when she stopped, and now they eyed her warily, like they expected her to do something erratic at any moment. She ignored them. “Can you come back here a moment? I want to show you something.”

  “Sure thing.” He pushed back through the marines, reaching her after a few seconds.

  “These tunnels. They’re artificial.”

  “Uh.” Avery placed a hand on the back of his head. “Well, yeah. I mean, I didn’t expect naturally occurring tunnels to line up with the Xanthic’s attack plan.”

  She chuckled. “That’s not what I mean. It’s just—look. These walls have had something done to them. They’re too uniform, too smooth. I think the Xanthic treated them somehow. For stability, and to make it easier for them to traverse them. Try running a hand over it.”

  Avery patted one of the walls, then rubbed it. “Yeah. I think I see what you mean.”

  “Before that cavern we passed through, the tunnels looked like what you’d expect. Rocks, dirt, roots, all mixed together. But it’s too uniform here. Like it’s all the same surface.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “It doesn’t look like much, but I think we’ve entered the Xanthic’s home. Which means they’ve been living under Oasis Colony for a while. Maybe longer than we’ve been here. Which raises the question of why we didn’t see any sign of them before today.”

  “Maybe they’ve been gearing up for an attack all this time.”

  Not long after her observations, they began encountering offshoot caves at regular intervals—again, too regular to be natural. One of the chambers had some more of the Xanthic firearms, and Rose made a mental note to have the marines collect some of them on the way back, for study. Most of the rooms contained what looked like furniture, but made for creatures as large and oddly shaped as the Xanthic.

  To avoid getting flanked from behind, the marines took the time to clear each chamber before continuing down the tunnel. In one room, Rose paused next to a piece of furniture that looked like it might be the alien version of a couch, or maybe a bed. It was lumpy and misshapen, but clearly made for a massive Xanthic to sit or lie on top of.

  Her night vision washed it with green, but tapping at her wrist panel, she instructed it to convert it to real colors. That wasn’t something the power suit’s computer had the processing to do in real-time, but it only took a few seconds to feed her a still image.

  The thing was mostly brown, but speckled with white and gray, as though multiple substances had gone into molding the lumpy mass.

  She pinched a piece of the object, and to her surprise a lump came off in her hands. Activating the suit’s olfactory function, which was designed to filter out harmful agents, she held it up and took a sniff. Avery wouldn’t have liked that, but he was checking a room farther up the tunnel.

  Rose wrinkled her nose. The thing smelled…well, like shit.

  Then her suit finished analyzing the substance using sensors built into the fingertips, and she learned that manure was indeed one of the ingredients—at least, what the suit’s AI projected to be the Xanthic equivalent of manure. There was also urine, earth, sand, and clay.

  “So they sat in their own shit,” she murmured. “Wonderful.”

  Checking each chamber slowed their progress to a crawl. After an hour of this, Rose trotted ahead to catch up with Avery. He looked a bit uncomfortable with her appearing at Alpha Squad’s position, but he said nothing.

  “There’s no one here, Major. No Xanthic, I mean.”

  The marine commander tilted his head sideways. “I still don’t think we should stop clearing the chambers.”

  “That’s not what I’m suggesting. It’s just…odd.”

  “Agreed. It’s putting my people on edge. Me too, if I’m being honest.” They were speaking over a two-way channel, so Avery could afford to be a little more candid than he would have otherwise been.

  “You’re expecting an ambush?”

  It took him a few moments to answer. “To be honest, Ms. Rose, I’m counting on it. I’d offer to send some marines to escort you back to the city, but—”

  “But you know there’s no way I’ll allow you to weaken your force when you might need every marine.”

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “Good. Let’s continue, just as cautiously as we have been.”

  They did just that, clearing chamber after chamber until the central connecting branch grew all but vertical, exhibiting a slight spiral as it descended. Some other branching passageways were too long to clear, and Avery made the call to gamble on forging onward rather than split up his force.

  After hours that seemed to stretch on for days, they came to the end. The tunnel let out onto a ledge overlooking a vast cavern, much bigger than the one they’d encountered before. Rose couldn’t see the opposite side through the gloom.

  But it wasn’t the cavern’s size that made her breath catch in her throat. It was the sprawling mosaic of bio-luminescent moss that stretched across the entire space, embedded seamlessly into the rock. She couldn’t be sure until she left the ledge, but from here it looked like you could run your hand over the cavern’s floor without ever encountering a seam between the moss and the rock.

  Avery stood beside her as four marines descended the steep ramps on either side of the ledge, to inspect the cavern before the others followed. More marines guarded the tunnel behind them.

  “It reminds me of something.”

  He looked at her expectantly, but she couldn’t quite place her finger on it…

  “Oh.” She tapped her wrist to activate voice commands for her HUD. “AI, superimpose the Dawn Cluster over the moss.”

  Her HUD did so, creating a jumbled mass of light.

  “Rotate sixty degrees.”

  It complied. Closer.

  “Three degrees more.”

  There. “It’s a heat map. Of the Dawn Cluster.”

  Avery had been watching his marines venture across the moss-covered surface, but now he swept his gaze across the patterned floor. He wouldn’t have heard her voice commands to her AI, so it took him a few seconds to catch up.

  Then he nodded, and raised a finger to indicate a point just before where the mosaic faded into the green-tinged darkness. He synced his suit with hers, so that the part he was pointing at lit up red. “That would be the Lacuna Region, then. Right?”

  She swept her gaze to a nearby system, compared it with her AI’s map, then followed his finger again. “Yes. I think you’re right.”

  “Why is the largest concentration of moss over there? Looks like it’s concentrated in the Ucalegon System, specifically. What exactly does this heat map represent?”

  Rose didn’t answer. Instead, she found herself looking for the Dupliss Region, and then for Freedom System.

  As her gaze settled on it, the base of her throat tightened. It was lit up too, though not as much as the system in Lacuna.

  “I think this is a map of where the Xanthic intend to strike, Major.” She swallowed. “By the looks of things, Lacuna is next.”

  Chapter Nine

  New Houston, Oasis Colony

  Freedom System, Dupliss Region

  Earth Year 2290

  Executives and employees from the various corps trickled in, and Rose watched the ones already seated around the board room table make small talk with each other.

  Three of the four Frontier board members who’d been on this side of the wormhole when it collapsed were present; the other was away negotiating with a prospective ordnance supplier in a nearby system.

  Captain Fujio Sho bowed across the table at the man in the seat
opposite his—Simon Moll. “I’ve heard much about Sunder Corporation, Captain Moll. It is a privilege to meet her CEO.”

  “Really?” Moll quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t get that very much. Then again, most people meet me for the first time across a battlespace.”

  Sho fell silent, his expression going blank, as if uncertain how to interpret the remark.

  Rose resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Moll had no shortage of bravado, and while he certainly had the track record to back it up, it did get somewhat tiresome after a while.

  For her part, she sat at the head of the table, somewhat isolated from the others. Right now her only neighbor was Commander Tad Thatcher, who showed no interest in the small talk. Kibishii’s COO, Theodore Xu, sat diagonally from Thatcher and had tried to engage him in conversation exactly once. Thatcher’s stiff, one-word responses had quickly put an end to that.

  The man either didn’t care that Frontier had something to gain from Kibishii or wasn’t willing to engage in empty pleasantries to get it. She suspected it was the latter.

  He never would have gotten along with my father.

  She had no idea where that thought had come from, but it happened to be true nevertheless. The two were too much alike. Sternness bordering on coldness. And a savage competence that caused Thatcher to err on the side of micromanaging his subordinates.

  I doubt his crew are likely to ever get away with much. But they seemed to love him regardless, especially after his performance against Reardon Interstellar and the pirates that corp had aligned itself with.

  Moll took his eyes off the far wall, which he’d been staring at since breaking off his conversation with Sho, and twisted toward her. “If you wouldn’t mind, Ms. Rose. I’d like to get our little meeting started before pirates overrun the entire Cluster.”

  She found herself glaring at the Sunder CEO, until her father’s voice cut across her biting thoughts. Peace, Ronnie. Give them honey, always. That way they won’t expect the stinger till they’re skewered by it.

  Hans Mittelman appeared at the boardroom doors, gave her a slight nod, then took the seat closest to the door without saying anything. He had been the one holding things up—she’d wanted him present. Mittelman’s facial hair had begun to colonize parts of his face beyond his usual chin patch, and his trademark blazer looked rumpled, along with the t-shirt underneath. I’ll give him a pass, given what he’s been through. Apparently the Xanthic attack had been something of an ordeal for the spymaster.