Freedom's Fire Box Set: The Complete Military Space Opera Series (Books 1-6)

by Bobby Adair

“Phil told me things weren’t good between you. That you two wouldn’t stay together. Why?”

  “Phil told you a lot.”

  Silva responds with a sly smile.

  “Did he tell you why I won’t be with my wife? In the long-term, I mean.”

  She shakes her head. “He said I should ask you.”

  “We took in a hatchling.”

  “A Gray?” She’s surprised, disgusted.

  I nod to confirm it.

  “Is it true what they say?”

  “They say a lot. What are you asking, specifically?”

  “Do they stink up your house? I mean, they reek, right?”

  I nod again. “The whole place smells like Gray stink.”

  Silva grimaces.

  “You get used to it once inside for an hour or so. But every time I come home and open the door, I nearly gag.”

  “What about her?” asks Silva. “They say it ages the woman.”

  “It does.” The picture of Claire, old and wrinkled with eyes as lifeless as they ever were, haunts its way through my memories. “She’s my age, but she looks eighty. She’s wasted down to wrinkles and bones. She’ll be lucky to live long enough to see the thing mature.”

  Silva shudders. “How does that work? I never understood it.”

  "Nobody knows. Nobody’s ever studied it. A doctor explained it to me once, but I think he was mostly guessing. When a Gray sleeps, an immature Gray needs the warmth of a human body, or whatever creature they used before they came to earth. Whenever our hatchling slept, Claire cuddled around it like it was a baby. Naked, skin-on-skin. The doctor told me the Gray’s skin acts like a magnet, I mean, he had a bunch of words for it about chemical reactions and things I don’t remember, but that’s what it sounded like to me. Maybe like a sponge, sucking all the nutrients through Claire’s skin. It puts stress on a body, trying to support two lives at once. After the Gray moved in, Claire started eating two or three times as much as she used to, but she kept getting skinnier. I guess that’s why people call them Ticks.”

  Silva shudders again. “I never understood why somebody would do it—I mean, trading their life for a tick.”

  “For the privileges. For the money. Some mothers do it to get a family exemption from military service so their sons and daughters won’t have to go to the war and die.”

  “But that’s not why your wife did,” concludes Silva. “She’s still at home with the Tick, and here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why? You already had a good job at the grav factory. You lived in a nice house. You even had a car and a gas ration, right?”

  I confirm with a nod.

  “Then why do it?”

  “They started automating the grav plate factory I worked in. My job wasn’t going to be protected anymore.”

  Silva laughs. “ not very good at lying, are you?” She points at me and waves a hand around the cabin. “ here.”

  “You already know the truth of it,” I tell her. “I’m here because of the revolution. I thought I made that clear on the day we blasted off from the Arizona shipyard.”

  “But that doesn’t answer the question of why Claire took in the tick. Is she a super-patriotic believer in humanity’s camaraderie with our benevolent brothers from the stars?”

  I laugh, harshly, darkly. “No.”

  “Then why?”

  I sigh, and go on to tell her the story of my cold relationship with Claire and the wooden stake I drove through its heart on the drunken night I slept with Claire’s sister. The story feels like a sin oozing the stink of shame. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I tell it, or in which way I order the words. It always comes to the same ending, that I’m a shit.

  “You should forgive yourself.”

  “Why?”

  Silva giggles. “Well, for one, you’re never going to have sex with me if your plan is to turn into a self-loathing old man.”

  I laugh at that. “No, that’s not my plan.” Not consciously, anyway. “Besides, I’m a long way from being old.”

  “You’ll get there a lot faster if you let your mistakes keep eating you up.”

  “You don’t talk like some one who’s seventeen.”

  “I’m almost eighteen.”

  "Okay, eighteen. Are you somebody’s reincarnated grandma or something?" I laugh, because it almost sounds like a joke.

  “I think you’ve spent too much time watching pre-war videos of teenagers with big, baggy pants and brightly colored shirts going to school in shiny cars and smart-assing their teachers all day. People these days grow up fast. We know what the world is like.”

  Guiltily, I tell her, “I didn’t watch that many pre-war vids.”

  “But you’re stuck with a bunch of old-fashioned ideas, like seventeen-year-old girls for some reason aren’t allowed to have sex. Have you ever been to one of those required-attendance MSS singles’ events? It’s practically the law. Once you turn sixteen, you need to go. You need to find somebody who seems pleasant enough and then marry them and start having babies. That’s what they tell us girls, anyway. Half the girls I know already had their first kid by the time they were my age.”

  “Still.” Oh yeah, the one-word non-argument.

  "What do you think, I’m a fourteen-year-old prude or something? I’m no virgin, if that worries you. I’ve had boyfriends. I’ve had sex. I’m pretty good in bed.” Then she gets miffed, like maybe she’s said too much, or tried to hard. “Not like you’ll ever know.”

  “I’m sorry.” That’s what you do, right? When the girl gets pissed, you apologize, even if you’re not sure why.

  “If you’re not interested, just say so. I don’t need to beg for it. I know I’m pretty. There are other men around.” And then she laughs at a joke even as she tells it. “At least for now.”

  I laugh, too, because Brice’s darkness is contagious and twisted.

  “I am interested,” I tell her. “I just can’t right now. I’m sorry, but I’m old-fashioned that way. If you want to be patient, you’ll have to wait until you’re eighteen.”

  “And then what?” she asks. “Will you tell me you can’t because you’re still married?”

  “The marriage is nothing to me. It’s a legal technicality, nothing more.”

  “So, you do like me.”

  In the face of her candor, it’s an easy thing to admit. “I do.”

  Silva smiles again. “Maybe I’ll wait, but you better mark your calendar with my birthday. I’m not going to take any more of your shit.”

  Chapter 12

  Sleeping and dreaming of Silva—the time I saw her wearing nothing but her suit’s blue translucent undergarment hiding nothing of her feminine curves and R-rated parts, I don’t want to wake, even though the sound of my suit alarm keeps chiming in my helmet.

  It’s the shaking on my shoulder that finally pulls me away from my fantasy.

  I open my eyes and sit straight up as Brice jumps back, laughing, “When you finally wake up, you wake all the way up.”

  Nodding, I smile and scan the cargo container. Light is beaming in through the rust holes and worn seams. “What’s the story?”

  “We’re getting close,” he tells me. “We’re coming down on the day side. We’ll be hitting the atmosphere any minute now. I figured you’d rather me wake you than the buffeting of the wind. Know what I mean?”

  I do. That kind of noise and jostling would turn my prurient dreams into disaster terrors in a heartbeat. "How long before we get where we’re going?"

  “Penny says an hour or two.”

  “Have you slept yet?”

  Brice shakes his head.

  “Once we’re down in the atmosphere why don’t you give it a shot? I’ll stay on the line with Penny.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Brice has a guilty look in his eyes.

  “What else?”

  “They took me seriously on the bet?”

  “The bet?” />
  “A joke I made about how likely we were to find what we’re looking for on this mission.”

  I grind my teeth because I want to say something I shouldn’t say to my sergeant. “Didn’t you bet that we were all going to die?”

  "It’s a pool," explains Brice. "You can pick any number from zero on up.”

  “Did anyone pick zero?”

  “‘bout half.”

  I grimace. Half of my marines think this mission is a waste, a risk of their lives for nothing.

  Brice punches me on the shoulder and grins. “Take it as a compliment. They still followed you here.”

  I straighten up and look around the container as thin air starts to whistle through the holes. “They followed us.”

  Brice smiles again. “Don’t blame this on me. I bet on zero.”

  “What’s the pot?”

  Brice shrugs again. “We’ll figure something out.”

  I laugh. “Put me down for a full load.”

  “You think we’ll find twelve?”

  “Somebody’s got to believe.”

  Chapter 13

  The worst part of riding in the cargo box of a grav lift is that you can’t see what’s happening outside.

  For me, that’s less of a problem because I can sense the grav of everything around us. The ship’s drive system isn’t powerful enough to wash it all out. The picture in my head isn’t clear, and it’s certainly not the vivid full-color, super-detail view I get from my eyes, but at least I’m not oblivious.

  That, and Phil is keeping everyone informed. Between he and the Gray, they have the mental power to make out everything.

  We’re skimming over the waves of a calm Pacific Ocean, not thirty feet up. It’s late in the day. Pelicans are dive-bombing small fish near the surface. Gulls are soaring on the breeze over the surf as Penny decelerates. A cliff face is standing tall ahead of us, a few hundred rocky, vertical feet.

  Penny warns us a few moments before she pushes the lift to leave the beach and elevator up the face of the cliff on nothing but the strength of our grav plates and her skills. The g’s increase, not significantly, but uncomfortably so. Not a marine in the metal box is fazed. This is a kiddie ride compared to what we’ve been through out in the solar system’s inhospitable vacuum.

  For a moment, all goes weightless as we reach the top, and Penny angles the grav lift over level, grassy ground, heading toward a forest of squat, young trees.

  She brings the lift up a little higher as we skim the treetops for a bit. She slows.

  “Coming in,” she tells us.

  No seatbelts on this flight. We all need to take care to brace ourselves for unexpected bumps.

  She sets the lift down on the ground as gentle as a feather.

  Brice jumps to his feet, reaching for the door latch as he feels his land legs. “Time to clock in, grunts!”

  I’m on my feet in a flash with my rifle at the ready. The trees and tropical shrubs growing up around us, getting denser toward the island interior, are too thick and chaotic for me to make anything out but them. “Phil?”

  “Nothing alive bigger than a bird that I can see.”

  I give Brice a nod.

  He flings the big metal door open, and my squad rushes out.

  I decide I want to smell earth air and open my helmet.

  With my visor up, feeling the earth air on my face, tasting and smelling the jungle’s humidity, I listen to the sound of wind through fronds and leaves. I hear the squawk of birds, and the rustle of heavy boots through undergrowth. The feet belong to my squad. The troops fan out and settle into defensive positions with railguns up.

  Tree trunks, flash-burned black, litter the ground—hard to see from a few paces away because of the thick growth of plants, reclaiming their minerals and repopulating the island.

  Jill Rafferty calls over the comm, “Forty-seven micro-Sieverts.” She’s carrying one of our two gauges.

  I put my visor back down and seal my suit up tight. That’s all the luxury of this tainted South Pacific paradise I’ll afford myself.

  A pair of my marines power up one of the two of the hand-drive cargo lifts we brought along.

  “Leave those inside, for now,” I tell them.

  Chapter 14

  “Phil?” I look around to see him standing near the open door of the lift with the Gray beside him, looking every bit like a plastic doll from a souvenir shop in Roswell. “Anything?”

  “A minute,” he requests, as he slowly turns his head, peering at the trees like he’s looking right through them, which I know he is.

  “People,” Phil tells everyone on the channel. He points east as we all tense.

  “How many?” I ask.

  “Twenty-three.”

  Brice drops to a knee beside me.

  Jill comes up on the other side. “North Koreans?”

  “It would be suicide to garrison this place,” Brice says as he scans the jungle.

  “How close are they?” asks Jill.

  “A few miles,” answers Phil. “In some bluffs down near the ocean.”

  “Fortifications?” I ask.

  "I see some stone-walled buildings, none very big.” Phil is confused. "They seem to be set up for defense but I can’t tell what they’re defending."

  “Do they know we’re here?” asks Brice, getting right down to the meat of it.

  “Not that I can tell,” answers Phil.

  It’s my turn to ask, “Any other threats?”

  “Not that I can make out.”

  “Let’s move it, then.”

  Brice and Lenox pass the orders along.

  Jill leads. “The bunkers should be this way.”

  We leave one squad to guard our grav lift, and the rest of us work our way quietly into the jungle. The first bunker can’t be more than a hundred yards away, invisible from above, buried somewhere in the undergrowth. The only way to find it is on foot.

  We spread wide as we search, never straying more than a dozen paces from one of us to the next. Everyone has their weapons up, ready to pump a dozen high-velocity rounds into any shadow that looks too ominous. We’re all on edge. Not one of us has ever had to fight in a jungle environment—not many trees in space. We don’t know what dangers might be waiting for us on the island and we don’t want to invite trouble.

  Sensing the tension, Phil connects over the command channel with me, Jill, Brice, and Lenox, “There isn’t anything here. Everything on the island was killed in the siege.”

  “Those people are here,” Brice tells him.

  “They shouldn’t be,” Phil argues.

  “Neither should we,” Brice answers.

  “Over sixty micro-Sieverts,” Jill adds, to backup up Brice’s response. “The annual occupational dose limit is fifty.”

  Brice laughs. “I don’t think those government regulations apply anymore.”

  He’s right. Nobody’s paid attention to any of that kind of stuff in over thirty years. The Grays running the show on earth just don’t value human life the way we used to.

  “What I’m saying,” Phil clarifies, “is that when the Grays bombed this island, they killed every person, every dog, every cat, every rat, every snake. Nothing was alive when they were done.”

  “The plants came back.” I gesture at the trees. “And the birds.”

  “And those people over by the ocean,” adds Brice, making sure we don’t forget them.

  The ground rises as I walk. It’s a hill, a gentle slope. The forest thins unexpectedly in front of us and with the sun slipping behind the trees, and the sky turning pink in the east, I step out onto the rim of a deep crater.

  A long-dead leftover of our masters’ handiwork.

  “This is what’s left of Anderson Air Force Base,” says Jill.

  The rocky crater rim we’re standing on the edge of is pushed up from the ground around us and gives us a view over the trees and over the plains on this end of
the island. At the bottom of the steep walls, the sea has flowed in to form a lagoon that wasn’t a feature of Guam before the Grays showed up.

  Three more large craters are easy to make out on the north end of the island. Dozens of smaller craters dot the grassy hills. Who knows how many are hidden by the trees.

  “This,” says Brice, “is what it looks like when the Grays want to make sure your military is destroyed.”

  The rest of us are silent. We know he’s right. Most of us have seen the pictures. In the thirty years since the Grays pounded our defenseless planet, humans had plenty of time to sneak onto the sites of the destruction and take pictures and videos and share them. Every military installation on earth looks something like this.

  One thing can be said for the Grays—they’re thorough.

  Jill points southeast. “The runways and bombers were over there, where those two big craters merge.” Pointing into the hole, and then turning back to the jungle behind us, she says, “The munitions bunkers were laid out in a grid all over this part of the island.”

  Brice leans precariously over the edge and grimaces at the crashing waves far below.

  Pointing back into the jungle, Jill says, “The ten or twelve bunkers that survived have to be right over there. That’s what’s on the map the Iapetus spies gave us.”

  “This close to the impact,” says Brice, looking back at the jungle, “I don’t know that survive would be the right word. Oh, I’ll agree that they weren’t vaporized, but survived? I don’t know.”

  “They were built to withstand a nuclear blast,” says Jill.

  “An air burst is one thing,” argues Brice, pointing at the enormous crater, “but this? Piles of dirt are all we’re likely to find."

  Lenox asks, “Do we know which bunkers held the nukes?”

  “Only one way to find out,” I tell them.

  Brice laughs and points to Jill’s meter, “Based on what that thing’s been telling us, I think most of them are down at the bottom of that hole.”

  Chapter 15

  The first bunker we find leaves us standing in the tropical jungle, staring. Its thick steel doors are bent, its reinforced concrete walls, shattered. Jill, looking down at her meter as she inches closer, suddenly stops. “Doesn’t matter if anything is in there,” she says. “The radiation…” She slowly shakes her head.