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

by Bobby Adair

  From the opposite side of the console, he says, “I told you, I’m not—”

  “Don’t be a hero,” I tell him as I scan over the helm console. The board isn’t the Gray standard. It’s the UN model, designed by humans for human use. All manual. No grav switches to control anything. That'll make this harder. "There's no upside. Colonel Bird said you were some kind of indispensable genius. Please act like it and get to the Turd.” I glance quickly across the bridge, catching as many eyes as I can. “All of you need to get over there fast. They’re not going to wait for you. If you stay, you’ll probably die.”

  Phil comes on my comm. “What are you doing?”

  “Is Silva on the bridge yet?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” he asks.

  “What’s going on?” asks Silva, panting from the effort of getting to the Turd II’s bridge quickly.

  “I need you on the comm station,” I tell her. Then I turn to Punjari’s people and open up my comm to everyone. “Move now. Phil is leaving in sixty seconds.”

  “I’m at the comm station,” says Silva. “Who do you want me to connect with?”

  “Me,” I tell her. “Keep the link open to the cruiser.”

  Silva curses and I cut her comm.

  “If you’re thinking of repeating your trick from the Arizona Massacre,” says Phil, “you need to—”

  “That’s not the plan,” I tell him, as I watch most of Punjari’s engineers climb out through the hole. “I’m going to try and save the rest of these people and this cruiser if I can.”

  Chapter 48

  “I know what you did over Arizona,” Punjari tells me. “If you’re going to fly this ship, you’re going to need help.”

  "I managed just fine last time." I glance down at my d-pad. "You're wasting your seconds." I comm to Phil, "How's our intercept time looking?"

  “Maybe four minutes,” he tells me. “Those last two blips were Arizona class ships. They're accelerating out for a flanking attack."

  Great.

  “Ramming other ships is one thing,” says Punjari, “if you want to keep this cruiser intact, we’ll need a bridge crew to do it.”

  “The Grays keep a crew of twenty or thirty up here to run the ship,” I tell him. “We don’t have that many people, and we don’t have that much expertise.”

  “We have more than you think,” he tells me as he comes around to my side of the console. He points to the grav control workstations to his left. “That’s all still Gray equipment over there. None of my people can work it. If you want us to survive, then prove you can competently manage a complex defensive field. Or are the Grays that much better than you?”

  “Trying to manipulate me won’t do anybody any good,” I tell him. “Do you know how to pilot this ship?”

  “I’m not just an engineer,” he says. “I’m a pilot in the UN’s reserve force. I can fly.”

  “Well do it, then.”

  Punjari points to a woman who's been lingering and watching. “Reactor systems.”

  Phil comms in. “Everybody who came out is onboard. I’m leaving.”

  “Hide behind us for the moment,” I tell him. “Can you read my thoughts from there? Because to me, you and Nicky are a blur.”

  “I can read you,” says Phil, “but that won’t last.”

  “Tell Silva to keep us connected through the ship-to-ship.”

  “Do you have someone on your ship manning the comm station?” Phil asks me.

  Punjari directs one of his people to the communications console, another to internal systems, one to navigation, one to the tactical radar, and one to the bubble jump computer.

  “We’re good to go,” I tell Phil. I comm to Madsen. “In thirty seconds, I need you, your people, and every engineer in the main bay or rear sections to be secured in a room or tied down. After that, get up to the bridge as quickly as you can. Make sure you herd any engineers this way.”

  “After what?” Madsen asks.

  “You’ll see,” I tell him. “Punjari, as soon as you have enough power to move, punch the array up to max grav.”

  I feel the drive array push. “Bring us around. I want you to head right for the six coming this way.”

  Punjari is reluctant.

  “Do it,” I tell him. I call to Lenox. “Things are going to get bumpy in a sec. You may want amp up the Turd’s defensive grav in case we hit one another.”

  “Aye, aye,” she says.

  Phil asks, “What do you have in mind, Captain Surprise?”

  “Madsen?” I call.

  “Ready,” he tells me.

  To the crewwoman on internal systems, I order, “Open all internal and external airlock doors.”

  “But the air,” she says. “We’ll need it.”

  "No, we won't."

  Internal Systems goes to work with quick hands, and I see the console’s alarms light up with warnings and overrides.

  “Venting a quarter-million tons of air,” says Punjari. His tone tells me he approves. He knows with that much weight off our backs, the cruiser will accelerate significantly faster, and it’ll turn faster than the cruisers coming after us. We’ll be no match for the assault ships headed our way. That’s a separate problem.

  The deck starts to rumble under my feet and the cruiser pushes to the left as the air exiting out of the hangar bay acts like a rocket.

  “Keep us on course,” I tell Punjari.

  “I’m trying,” he says.

  “What’s our power status?” I ask Reactor Lady.

  “Nearly thirty percent.”

  “You take it all for acceleration,” I tell Punjari. “I’ll reroute as much as I need to the grav systems, as I need it.” Talking to Internal Systems, I say, “I can sense the grav switches for the power priority system from my console. So leave those alone.”

  “I have us lined up directly on the oncoming fleet,” says Punjari. “What’s the plan?”

  “Blow by,” I tell him.”

  “What’s the point?” he asks. “They’ll just turn around and come get us again.”

  “They were expecting us to run,” I tell him. “Now they’re moving so fast they'll overshoot us, and it’ll take them an additional three or four minutes to slow down enough to turn and start coming after us again. The seven-minute intercept window we started with will grow. Phil, how’s my guess on that?”

  “You’re right,” he answers. “You still won’t have enough time.”

  “Baby steps,” I tell him.

  The cruiser is settling down. Much of the internal air has already blown into space and the rest is flowing out in a less violent way.

  “What about the Arizona class attack ships,” asks Phil. “You have maybe forty seconds to impact.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I tell him. “You’re still close.” I can tell the Turd has kept itself within fifty meters of our hull through the venting exercise. “I’m taking your power, Punjari.”

  Just like that, I pull all the power out of the main drive array and divert it to the ship’s deflective plates, using them to spin the cruiser around to face the oncoming Arizona class ship. I strobe my forward-facing plates in a rapid burst of max blue flashes, positive and negative g, once or twice a second. Phil is reading my mind as I’m doing it and he knows what my plan is, so he sets the Turd’s fields to strobe in sync with the cruisers and runs max power into his drive array.

  The incoming assault ships jostle in the cruiser’s fluctuating field and their lines of attack float off-target.

  Phil already has the Turd accelerating up through my cruiser’s pluming grav field, and he’s using it for camouflage as Lenox sets her sights on the nearest of the attackers.

  “You ever play pool?” I ask

  “No guarantees,” Phil tells me. “You know how hard this is, right?”

  “If anybody can do it,” I tell him, it’s you.”

  Through the hole in the front
of the ship, Punjari and the bridge crew can see the attacking assault ships coming and they see Phil’s counterattack racing toward them. With the grav pulses strobing everything light and dark, it’s hard for any of us to make out exactly what’s going to happen.

  They brace themselves and gasp at the imminent collision.

  I cut the grav strobe just as the Turd II hits the first attack ship in a glancing blow that tears the Turd’s grav lens down the starboard side of the attacker, ripping its hull open, and shattering its drive array. The broken ship spins off to its port side, as I max power through the cruiser's grav plates in an attempt to create a crude funnel-shaped field, nudging the spinning attacker into the starboard side of the other oncoming vessel.

  The bridge crew, observing the chaos, cheers as the collision breaks both ships apart. That's when I look to see what’s become of the Turd II. "Phil," I call over my comm, as I see it sliding sideways away from the first collision.

  No response.

  “Comm Guy,” I call, not having the time to learn any of the engineers’ names. “Can you connect with Silva?”

  “Working on it,” he tells me. “I can have the ship-to-ship patched into the suit comms in a moment.”

  I spin the cruiser back in line with its course of travel and shunt internal power back to Punjari. “I’m running everything back into the drive array,” I tell him. “Blow past those Trog cruisers as fast as you can.”

  Chapter 49

  “Reactor Lady,” I ask. “What’s our reactor output?”

  “Thirty-four percent,” she answers.

  “Bubble Guy,” I ask, “what’s the minimum power we need for a bubble jump?”

  “Ummm, you really shouldn’t run—”

  “If we don’t jump,” I tell him, “we’re dead.” I put my stern gaze on Punjari’s people. “You all have three minutes to get me a number.”

  “Intercept with the Trog squadron in two and a half minutes.” Radar tells us.

  I tell the other three, “Two minutes would be better. Get me something.”

  “Comm Guy,” I ask. “Any luck on that connection?”

  “Still working.”

  “Do you want to go above or below?” asks Punjari.

  “See that one farthest on the right of the formation?” I ask.

  Punjari is adjusting the magnification on his screens so he can make out the rough ring of cruisers coming toward us. “Okay.”

  “Head right for that one,” I tell him.

  “We’re going to play chicken?” he asks. “And hope he turns?”

  "These Grays are better at this grav shit than we'll ever be," I explain. "As we close in, alter your course, so we're on a line to slip past on his port side at a distance of a few hundred meters.”

  “At these speeds?” Punjari tells me. “That’s suicide.”

  “You asked for the job, Punjari,” I tell him. “Now fly the ship.”

  “I—”

  “Do what I tell you, and you'll be fine." I go on, “As we close in, veer toward the ship. I want to run past so close we can reach out and touch his hull.”

  Punjari goes pale, but alters our course as ordered.

  Madsen comes onto the deck from one of the elevator tubes. “Where do you want us?”

  “You have everybody?” I ask.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  I throw a thumb toward the long, curving wall at the back of the bridge. “Line up back there. Grav tight to the floor. Things are going to get rough, but if we have to bail out, we’ll all need to max grav through the hole.”

  “That hole?” Punjari is pointing at the gaping tear in the front of the ship.

  “It’s the only hole we have,” I tell him. “It’s the fastest way out if the ship starts to come apart.”

  That earns me a few groans from my crew of engineers and techs.

  Phil’s voice crackles over the comm. “Can you hear me?”

  I give Comm Guy a nod of thanks. "I have you, Phil. Is everything all right? Is everyone okay?”

  “We were jostled pretty good, but all’s fine.”

  “Great job,” I tell him. “Great job to all of you.”

  “What’s the plan, here?” he asks.

  “Find us some random spot in space. Send the coordinates to Nav Guy. We’ll meet you there in a day or two.”

  “Can you jump?” asks Phil.

  “We’re still a few minutes away from that.”

  “More like ten,” says Punjari.

  “Ten minutes?” asks Phil. “We’re not leaving until you jump.”

  “We might not make it out of this, Phil.”

  I see the plume of his grav as his ship maxes power to move into an arc that’ll put him on a flanking course toward the oncoming cruisers.

  “We’ll draw their fire and attack,” Phil tells me.

  As if on cue, a swarm of railgun fire erupts from the oncoming Trog fleet.

  “They’re shooting at you, too,” says Phil.

  I divert some of Punjari’s drive power to my forward deflectors. The choice will reduce our acceleration, and reduce the distance I’m hoping this maneuver will put between us and the Trogs. Which means they’ll be back in attack position sooner. It should keep us alive for a few more minutes.

  “Send the coordinates,” I tell Phil. “We’ll bubble out as soon as we can. Good luck.”

  Chapter 50

  We’re flying through a flurry of red-hot railgun slugs. So far, our deflective fields are holding up.

  “Thirty-eight percent,” says Reactor Lady.

  “The rest of you have that number, yet?” I ask.

  Bubble Jump Guy says, “I think we can do a short hop once we hit sixty-percent.”

  “Sixty,” I say. “That’s good.” It's better than waiting for one hundred percent.

  “How long of a jump?” asks Punjari.

  “A hundredth of a second,” he says.

  “What’s that,” asks Punjari, “fifteen thousand miles? That won’t do us any good. They’ll see us come out of bubble. They’ll know where to find us.”

  “Less,” says Nav Guy.

  “At sixty percent,” says Reactor Lady, “we won’t make the full 8c this ship is capable of. With the current mass, you know, without the atmosphere, and current power availability, we might make 4 to 6c.”

  “I’ll bet on 10k,” I say. “That buys us some breathing room.”

  “Just for a second,” argues Punjari. “They’ll just jump right after us.”

  “It’ll take them a few seconds to figure out what happened and where we went. They’ll have to plot a jump to come after us. Hell, we might buy eight or nine seconds. And that’s if they don’t have to assemble into one of their telepathic committees to decide.” I turn back to my team. “How quickly can we make a second jump? Immediately, right? If you use the nav computer?”

  “Four or five seconds,” says Bubble Jump Guy. "I need to reset the parameters for the new output levels from the reactor, so each jump will be longer than the last."

  “I don’t care about that,” I tell him. “Program in ten jumps as fast as the nav computer can run them. We’ll pause at the last one and recalc the reactor output and jump another ten. And don’t run us down a straight line. I don’t want the Trogs to guess where we’ll be coming out of the last jump.”

  “We’ll use a hell of a lot of fuel,” says Reactor Lady.

  “Use it or lose it,” I tell her, “along with the rest of the ship.”

  “Less than a minute until impact!” says Punjari.

  “Not impact,” I tell him, “unless you need me to fly the ship.”

  “No,” he says, “I have it.”

  “I’m drawing more power for the deflective grav field. In a moment, you won’t have any left.”

  “Take what you need,” he says.

  “What about the jump?” asks Bubble Jump Guy.

  “You let me know when you
need it,” I tell him. “I’ll shunt everything back to the drive array as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Got it.”

  I comm out to Phil. “What are you doing? I thought you were drawing fire off us?”

  “Better plan,” he says. “We’re staying in your shadow.”

  “They know you’re back there,” I tell him, though deep in my heart, I’m just fine with him keeping the new Turd out of the line of fire. Our cruiser, even at thirty-eight-percent power, can absorb a lot of railgun slugs before its deflective shields start to fry.

  “They don’t know what we’re up to,” says Phil.

  That’s when I realize what he’s doing, using the grav noise of my cruiser to mask an attack run, and staying out of harm's way while he does it. "Good move," I tell him. "Don't aim at the cruiser I'm headed for. He won't be there when you come out from behind me."

  “Can do.”

  “Forty-one percent,” says Reactor Lady.

  “That was a big jump.” I’m pleased.

  “The ramp up isn’t linear,” she explains.

  I turn to Punjari. “You ready?”

  He nods as his eyes fix on the shower of railgun slugs deflecting off our grav field and the Trog squadron growing large in front of us.

  “Get us in close,” I tell him as the last seconds tick away.

  Most of the bridge crew flinches. Some of them duck uselessly behind their consoles.

  It really does look like we’re going to ram the other cruiser.

  It takes all my concentration to adjust defensive grav fields to keep them lined up in a deflecting wedge growing from our bow right down or port side, to push the incoming fire to the sides with minimal energy expenditures.

  Our target cruiser comes up beside us, veering hard to starboard as they lose their nerve about being so close to our trajectory.

  To Punjari's credit, he steers after them. As we swish by at a distance of less than a hundred meters, I punch every amp of current through my port side plates to push against the cruiser, and I feel it knock us hard to our starboard. Action versus reaction.

  Punjari curses as I feed power back to his systems.

  Our cruiser is rolling and spinning. Everyone on the bridge not locked tight enough to the floor is thrown toward a wall.