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

by Bobby Adair

  “I don’t care about that.”

  Exasperating. “What the hell are we talking about?”

  “I told you, I’m angry. I thought you were going to die. I never want to feel like that again.”

  “You know what I do for a living, right? I could be killed any day. So could you. Where’s all this coming from, all of a sudden?”

  Silva lies back down and puts her head on my chest.

  I pull her close and kiss her on the top of her head. “I love you.”

  “All the times before,” she says, “we were in danger together. If we were going to die, we were going to die together.”

  Not exactly. But I don’t say that.

  “I want you to promise me that we’ll stick together from now on.”

  “You know things don’t always work out like that, right? Sometimes we get separated. Sometimes in a fight, we have to go different directions. Different missions.”

  “I know,” she says. “I understand that. We’ve always been in the fight together. That’s what I want. If we win, we win together. If we lose, we lose together.”

  “You mean we die together.”

  “I don’t want to live without you. I’d rather be dead.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “You’re too much of a self-centered man to know what I mean.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is. So just listen to me and believe me when I tell you that’s how I feel. Don’t ever abandon me again. If you plan to go on some kind of suicide run, I’m going with you.”

  “You’re young. You don’t know what you want out of life. I don’t want you to die. And I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life alone in a cabin pining away for me. I want you to go to the colonies, find a fat, ugly man, marry him, and have lots of babies. That way you can pine for me in the company of others.”

  She punches me again. “You’re a shit.”

  Chapter 66

  After spending the entire night in a real bed, sleeping with Silva’s skin touching mine, sharing the same breath, and feeling connected, morning comes on the chiming alarm from a d-pad connected to a suit still on the floor. The war is calling. Nothing urgent, just the usual list of a million things that need doing. We don our suits, checking one another as we go to make sure every seal is set, every wire connected, everything functional.

  “What are you going to do?” Silva asks as she clips her helmet to her belt.

  “About?”

  “The only thing you’ve been thinking about since you landed?”

  I reach out and squeeze her breast through the layers of suit cloth. “That’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

  “Liar. Are we staying to fight, or are we going to the colonies?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I told you already. I think we should go. I don’t care if we give up on this war and all the people of earth. I hate to sound like a selfish bitch, but if earth wanted its freedom, why isn’t it fighting? This isn’t the siege anymore. We’re not helpless. If the people of earth grow a spine and fight the Trogs and the Grays we’ll win, hands down, no contest. Millions or maybe billions will die, yet they’d have their freedom. Unfortunately, freedom’s not worth the sacrifice to them. And if it’s not worth them risking their lives, then it’s not worth it to me, either.”

  I don’t know how to respond.

  “You don’t see it that way?” she asks.

  “I follow your logic. I understand.”

  “Still, you can’t let it pass. You think leaving makes you a coward.”

  “No,” I say, “but it makes me give up on a dream, and that’s hard. It’s the only dream I’ve ever believed in.”

  This time, Silva reaches out for my hands and puts them on her heavily protected breasts. “The only one?” She smiles. I do, too. “That’s why you have to decide,” she tells me. “I’ll stay by you. I won’t regret it. I won’t resent you. I’m with you, now. That’s my dream. This is happiness to me. I don’t want to ever have anything else.”

  “I don’t—”

  Silva puts a finger to my lips. “We’re not talking about me anymore. Not us. I’ve made my choice. You need to do what you need to do to live with yourself.”

  “I meet with Bird tonight for dinner. He’ll expect an answer.”

  “Then, tell him.”

  With all the awkwardness of two fat ducks, we hug—layers of orange, weapons, ammo, helmets, and all.

  “I love you,” she says.

  “The emotive drive of our mutual attraction—”

  She punches me so hard I fall down.

  Chapter 67

  I had higher expectations for the meal with Bird. Unrealistic, but still.

  On my first visit to Iapetus, I ate well. Vegetables and fruit were plentiful at every meal, though limited in variety. What passed for meat were soybean and algae proteins restructured into products resembling bacon, chicken, pork, and beef. The pseudo-meat tasted okay, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the real meat I had on earth on those rare occasions when it was on my table.

  Another class of foods was something the Iapetens called Neapolitan porridge—NP. NP came in three flavors, hence, three colors: almost red, barely blue, and bright green. One bowl was rumored to contain a balance of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and vitamins, enough to make up an average-sized meal for an average-sized person.

  NP was the easiest food product to produce on Iapetus, given the base’s limited resources. It was easily stored in bulk, and apparently had no shelf-life limitations.

  NP is what filled the bowl on the table in front of me. Bird had the same, barely blue for both of us.

  Bird enjoyed his. Apparently, one develops a taste for it.

  I fiddled with mine, eating it because I needed something in my stomach, but mostly playing with the lumpy gel in low g.

  “You don’t care for the blue?” asks Bird.

  “Almost red is my favorite.”

  Bird reads my sarcasm correctly and he chuckles. “You get used to it.”

  “Have you had enough time to consider what you’re going to do?” I ask.

  Bird nods. “I don’t want to beat around the bush, but before I tell you, have you decided?”

  “Yes. I want to stay and fight.”

  Bird’s determined smile tells me what his answer is going to be before he says it. “Me, too. You talked to Phil?”

  “He’ll stay with the ship.”

  “And the rest of your crew?”

  “All staying,” I answer. “I didn’t sell any of them on it. In fact, I urged them to go to the colonies. The odds are stacked against us here.”

  “Your people are experienced. They know what they’re getting into. They each made a choice.”

  “Are you telling me not to feel bad about influencing them to stay by doing that myself.”

  “Yes. You need to hear it, and you need to accept it. Things could go very badly for us all. The death of people we love is hard enough without carrying the burden of their choices with you.”

  “And?” I ask.

  “I don’t want you cracking under the weight of that choice.”

  “Gotcha, boss.”

  “Don’t be flippant,” says Bird. “Please. I’m serious.”

  “I’ll do my best with it,” I tell him.

  “Do better,” advises Bird. “Trust me on this one.”

  “You’re guilty of carrying the responsibility for other people’s choices?” I guess. “That’s what you’re telling me, right? You feel strongly about it because you’ve made the mistake before.”

  “Life gets easier,” he says, “when you don’t have to make all the mistakes yourself. Learn from others when you can.”

  I know good advice when I hear it. I don’t always heed it, but at least identifying it is a first step. “Now that you and I are on the same page, we have one ship and one crew, wher
e do we go now?”

  “I’m going to address the troops,” he says. “I’m going to explain the situation, tell them the odds, and ask how many want to stay. Hell, you know what I’m going to tell them. You’ve had the conversation a half-dozen times with your people.”

  “Makes you wish Secretary Kimura was here,” I say. “She’d inspire all of them to stay.”

  “Which is why it’s better that it’s me,” says Bird. “These men and women need to make this decision with their heads, not their hearts.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “How many do you think will stay on?”

  “It’s hard to say. At least a thousand. Maybe most of them. We have a good bunch of soldiers. They’ve all fought in the tunnels here on Iapetus. A good number of them fought at the Free Army base before it fell. Many have been in the war for years.”

  “At least some of them may have given all they have to give,” I suggest.

  “And if that’s the case,” says Bird, “and I’m sure it is, I’ll make it easy for them to go. I’m not going to sell them on this. Like I said, I’m going to lay it out and let each soldier make his or her own decision. That’s the way it’s got to be.”

  “I know,” I say. “I think now that I’ve decided to stay and fight, it’s easy to succumb to the expectation that everyone else should, too.”

  “I understand.”

  “After the speech,” I ask, “what then? Have you thought about our strategy?”

  “Yes,” says Bird, “but I don’t have all the answers. You know that. I like the idea of trying to turn the MSS to our side. I think bringing earth into the war by showing them that revolution is in their best interest is the right path. What we’ve been doing so far, trying to win the war in space to pave the way for them to reach for their freedom has been the wrong way. If the people of earth want to be free, they need to fight for it. All of us together can win. That’s the only way.”

  FREEDOM’S FATE

  The Final Episode

  Book 6 in the Freedom’s Fire Series

  Chapter 1

  Blair’s hateful eyes drill me so fiercely I blink. “What I’m telling you, Major Ego-Up-His-Ass Dylan Kane, is exactly what you should already know. The Grays conquered us thirty years ago. This new war with the Trogs has been wearing us down for three years, and what do we have to show for it? Earth is being stripped of everything, especially people. We lost the fleet we built for the Grays. The Free Army is defeated. And all we’re doing now is more of the same, thinking something is going to change. What you don’t seem to understand is that we’re wasting our time.”

  I look down at my d-pad, and make a note. Nine times. It’s the ninth different way Blair has told me how everything we’re doing is a stupid fiasco that’ll end in our pointless deaths. Yet it feels like the hundredth.

  Blair and I are in the cramped cargo hold of the Free Army’s only operational stealth scout. Brice is with us. He’s sitting on a bench beside Blair, pretending he’s asleep. Or maybe he’s really trying to sleep. I’m not sure. Phil, and Nicky with the barely noticeable bulge of a growing seed in her lower abdomen, are on the bench beside me, facing Blair and Brice. The only other person on the ship is the pilot, a competent guy name Chikere. He’s busy keeping the ship en route.

  “How much longer?” I ask Chikere over a private comm link.

  “Depends,” he tells me. “Thirty minutes? Two hours? Plenty of traffic around that we want to avoid, if you know what I mean.”

  He’s talking about Trog cruisers, battle stations orbiting earth, and fleets of grav lifts. They’re moving materials and the next crop of expendable humans cocooned in dilapidated orange suits into orbit. The new bunch of Grays in town is working on bringing the damaged stations back to full operational status. Like the old Grays, they’re doing it on the backs of the humans in their labor pool.

  If there were a million people in orbit doing the work it wouldn’t surprise me. Little orbital ant specks, all orange and busy, are everywhere. Among them, MSS supervisors are conveying their boss’s instructions. Grays are on the stations, guiding the work, using Trog muscle to enforce their will.

  Any one of those humans, Grays, or Trogs might notice us and put us in jeopardy. It’s a risk we discussed at least a dozen times before we embarked on the mission.

  By our estimate, there are probably six thousand Grays in the system, spread between earth, the battle stations, the moon base, and three score Trog cruisers still strutting through the solar system like they own the place. For the time being, I guess they do.

  On the Trog count, we’re guessing fifty to a hundred thousand.

  As for the MSS, the betrayers of our species, and the bureaucrats that hold their leash, Blair estimates a count of ten million—give or take a few. One of the things about the MSS is that their rank counts are swollen by the requirement that every boy or girl born to Korean parents join one of the youth organizations responsible for funneling bodies into the machine. That doesn’t even mention the draftees like Blair and I, non-Korean humans holding rank and wearing the uniform while hiding hatred in our hearts.

  How many true believers are in the MSS? Blair guesses a soft twenty-percent. She further guesses that half to two-thirds of those are sick of seeing their brothers and sisters die to appease their interstellar masters. She thinks they’ll take up arms if given a big enough nudge.

  My skepticism runs deep on Blair’s guesses, but they’re the foundation of the only hope humans have left. We need the MSS if we’re going to have a chance at victory.

  Picking up on my mood, and looking to keep me from letting it run off with my mouth, Phil enters the conversation. “When we were on Iapetus, back before the mission to 61 Cygni, I asked around about what they were doing to combat the Grays and Trogs, you know, besides conventional force.”

  “And?” asks Blair, not wanting to wait for Phil’s pause to transform drama into importance.

  “They were researching ways to create a microbe that would infect Grays without harming humans.”

  “No surprise,” says Blair. “The Free Army looked into it. So did the MSS.”

  “What about Crazy Stick?” I ask, thinking back to the Gray Phil and I saw when we were kids. It lost control of itself and stepped in front of a truck driving down the road. "We know they're susceptible to something."

  “Getting samples was always the problem with that,” says Blair, losing her hostile edge with having something to talk about other than her anger. “Grays are connected,” she taps her helmet. “The telepathic thing, you know. If one dies, the rest know about it. They know when it happens and where it happens. No Grays, live or dead, were ever available for rogue MSS researchers or anyone else on earth to study.”

  “But that changed when the war started,” I suggest, “right?”

  “Of course,” says Blair.

  “There are the pair of prisoners I left with you on the Potato,” I tell her.

  “We had those two shipped off,” she said. “I don’t know what became of them, but you can bet medical research was part of it. The Free Army had a standing order to capture as many Trogs and Grays as we could. It was never discussed openly, yet everybody knows biological warfare was on the table.”

  “And the MSS?” I ask. “Did they have any backroom research projects to find a magic virus to kill the Trogs?”

  “From time to time,” admits Blair, “but every time one of those projects came to light, the labs were burned, and everybody involved was tortured and hanged. Not just the scientists, but their families and anybody they were connected with.”

  “Typical MSS,” I muse.

  “Effective,” says Blair, as if that’s a valid defense.

  I don’t rise to the fight. “And the Trogs? Their physiology is pretty close to ours. I’ll bet we share more than 99% of our genetics.”

  “True, as far as I know,” says Blair. “But you have to remember, before the war started, there wer
e no Trogs on earth. Even during the war, there weren’t any, not until they invaded while you were out at 61 Cygni.”

  “What about all those Trog prisoners we left on the Potato?” I ask.

  “Mostly used up in experiments,” says Blair. “I heard through the grapevine they were exposed to a dozen strains of influenza, chicken pox, smallpox, even ebola. Nothing phased them.”

  “Ebola?” Phil asks. “You can’t be serious.”

  “They tried diseases I’d never heard of,” says Blair. “I don’t know how, but the Trogs are immune to every earth-borne illness we had samples of.”

  “On Iapetus,” says Phil, “there was speculation, and I confirmed this with what I learned from Nicky, that Grays had been visiting earth for decades before choosing to conquer us.”

  “You never told me that,” I say.

  “It never came up.”

  "Not in all the months we spent flying back from there?" I ask.

  Phil doesn’t answer me. Instead, he says, “The Grays have scouted out every world within a hundred light years of their home system, knowing one day they’d need to return and invade. The Grays don’t understand immunology in the same way as human scientists—they understand cause and effect enough that they’ve devised a way to breed immunity into their Trogs. I think they can resist any disease they’re likely to encounter on any of the planets they might one day occupy.”

  “So we were always a target?” I ask.

  “Yes,” says Phil. “Earth had been scouted and forgotten, scouted again, and forgotten again, a dozen times before our Gray conquerers finally showed up. One of the reasons they thought they’d be safe here.”

  “So disease is off the table,” I conclude, “unless we can re-establish a bio-warfare lab and capture enough Grays and Trogs to keep the pipeline full of test subjects.”

  “And a few years at least,” says Blair, “or decades. This kind of research can take a long time to bear fruit.”

  “They have time in the colonies,” I tell her. “We may lose the war here, however, if we can send enough prisoners out to the colonies, they may be able to create a germ warfare defense.”