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

by Bobby Adair

  He’s looking at the map on his d-pad. “It’s getting worse, but I know where we are.”

  The others come up behind us.

  “How much protection will these suits give us from the radiation?” asks Silva.

  “More than we’re getting right now,” Lenox tells her, recalling information from her days when she was instructing recruits on the features of our fine, orange terrariums. “We need to get inside, though.”

  “We will,” I tell them.

  “With no air resistance,” says Phil. “Only gravity will act on the particles, and they’ll be moving at the speed of a railgun round when they come down straight on the top of our heads. Billions of them.”

  Lennox looks up. So does Frank.

  I elbow Frank hard in the ribs. “Don’t worry about that. Everybody, amp up your defensive grav. The high-speed particles aren’t coming down yet, okay? Anything moving that fast away from the moon will take a long time to get back here. And it’s going to be all over the surface—right, Phil? That’s what you said, right?”

  “All over,” he tells us. “You wouldn’t want to be out here anytime in the next thousand years.”

  Lennox looks at him with a sneer. "A thousand years?”

  “Plenty will be falling sooner,” he says.

  “C’mon,” I tell them as I point. “About three hundred meters that way. See that bump? You can barely make it out in the distance. That’s a bunker. We’ll take to the air and come down on it from above. The bunker contains anti-personnel guns. The guns inside won’t be pointing up. The Trogs inside won’t be pointing that direction, either.” I look down at my suit. It has a thick covering of moon dust, providing the perfect camouflage against the background. “They won’t ever see us if we’re fast, and neither will any of the other gun emplacements.”

  Brice peeks out from behind the rock to get a good look at the spaceport. “You can’t even see all the way across right now.”

  “We’ll leave the nuke here,” I say, “and come back to get it after we take the bunker.” I look around to make sure we’re all on the same page with my flimsy plan.

  Everyone nods except Phil.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” says Phil. “You’re making it too complicated. Let’s do this my way.”

  Chapter 45

  Moments later we’re spread out amongst the rocks, using the irregular ground for cover. Phil is standing beside the big stone we’ve been using for concealment when I give him the nod.

  Instantly, I feel it—pain in my head that I know isn’t real, yet it wants me to believe it’s searing into my synapses, running up the nerve bundles from my hands, feet, and heart. It’s a familiar sensation, and when I realize that, I grit my teeth against it. I felt it all those years ago when Phil and I saw that Gray being run over by the truck. I felt a hint of it every time I gunned down a Gray, and especially when they didn’t die right away. I received a full dose of it when I murdered most of Nicky’s pod back on the Potato.

  I also understand it’s not just a Gray’s way of punishing the lowly creatures, it’s their cry for help, their demand for it.

  A few hundred yards away, I know the Trogs in that bunker feel it, and they’ll do what good Trogs everywhere do—they’ll come to assist an injured Gray in need. That’s what Phil is doing with his mind, he’s producing the Gray distress call, and for all I can tell, he’s doing it perfectly.

  I take a place beside the stone, drop to a knee, and ready my rifle. Over the comm’s static, I call to my crew, “Wait for the word from me before you open fire. I want to hit them all.”

  With no respite from Phil, I grit my teeth and suffer the assault on my senses, knowing it’ll end soon enough.

  Moments pass.

  And then minutes.

  “Phil?” I ask.

  They’re out of the bunker. It’s a telepathic response from Phil. I don’t complain. They’re coming.

  I relay the information to the others.

  How many? I ask.

  One pod. All Trogs. All coming to help me.

  “I see one,” says Brice, just as I see shapes materialize from the thickening haze.

  “There’ll be six,” I tell them.

  “I count three,” says Silva.

  “Same,” says Lenox.

  “Patience,” says Brice. “We’ve all been here before.”

  At ninety meters, the last of them comes into view.

  Phil raises his railgun and takes up a position beside me. His Gray distress call doesn’t relent.

  “Everybody got a target?” I ask.

  All do.

  The Trogs are stalking toward what they believe is a Gray in jeopardy, yet they don't have their defensive grav fields on. Why? The only reason that makes sense to me is their logic centers are still muddled from the nuclear explosion.

  “On three,” I say. “Three, two, shoot!”

  The haze illuminates with red spears of light blasting out of our gun barrels. We mercilessly blow the Trogs to pieces. Legs, arms, and heads rocket away, driven by blood and suit gasses expanding into the vacuum.

  It’s over in seconds.

  Phil’s distress call ceases.

  The artificial pain ends, but its aftertaste lingers on my nerves, rasping the edges. “Anybody get a count?”

  “All six went down,” says Brice. “Mostly.”

  “Mostly?” asks Lenox. “I saw six kills.”

  “They didn’t go down,” Brice laughs. “Some pieces are still going up!”

  “Sometimes, you’re so sick,” says Silva.

  “Let’s take that bunker while it’s empty,” I tell my people.

  Chapter 46

  “Craptastic,” says Brice.

  We’re all standing on the floor of the bunker. The view outside is collapsing as the sky continues to fill with dust. That's not what has our attention. We're looking at the airlock. The outer door is open. Inside, there's room for a pair of us and no more.

  “There’s no way we’re getting that nuke through,” says Brice. “Not unless we blow the doors.”

  I look at the time on my d-pad. Our schedule is too tight to search for another way in. Still, I hate to alert every Trog in the area to our presence. “We can’t wait twenty minutes for the air to empty out.”

  “We won’t,” says Brice. “If this battery is built like the ones my crews manned, it’s designed with breaches in mind. That happens in a fight. The tunnel system for this bunker is linked to five others. You know the goddamn Grays, six of everything. That system is linked into the main corridor system through a larger airlock. The nuke should fit through.”

  “It will,” Frank concurs. “The halls below us are narrow and not that long. If we blow these doors, the air will escape in less than a minute.”

  “Any other way to get to the utility shaft?” I ask, looking to Frank for the answer.

  “This is the back way,” he replies. “If we go down here, and reach the service tunnel level, then we can get to the shaft without seeing any Trogs. Probably.”

  “Is there another way?” I ask.

  Frank points out at the spaceport. It's a giant, rectangular hole in the ground, with doors that double as roofs that slide open when grav lifts are coming or going. The light from eight or nine open doors glows on the dust floating above each. As we watch, two lifts ascend. "We can go that way,” says Frank, “yet there’s no telling how many Trogs are in there staging to load up.”

  Decision made. “Blow the door,” I tell Brice.

  Everybody piles back out of the bunker except for Brice and Lenox. They set the charges.

  Once outside, using the bunker’s thick walls to protect me from the coming blast, I turn to Frank. “After we place the nuke, I need an exit path that takes us by the MSS radio room.”

  “We won’t have time for that,” says Frank. “You and your man Clark should have put more time on the timers.”
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br />   “Frank,” I tell him, “we’re already an hour behind schedule. Can we get to the MSS radio room?”

  “We can get there if the Trogs don’t wise up to what we’re doing, if we don’t run short on time, if the nuke doesn’t blow up in our faces.”

  “Figure out how long it’ll take us to get from the drop point to the radio room.” I try to tell myself Frank is risking everything for a revolution he didn’t know was coming when he was having his coffee this morning. “It’s important. We’ll decide whether to try for the radio room after we see how much time we have left after we drop off the nuke.”

  “What’s the point?” asks Frank. “Everybody from here to Mars is gonna know when those nukes blow.”

  He’s exaggerating because he’s not handling the stress well. “Frank, I need to make a call before we go, if we have time.”

  Brice and Lenox hop out through the bunker’s wide gun ports and come down on the ground beside me. “Ready,” Brice tells me.

  “Blow it!” I order.

  Chapter 47

  Six precious minutes later, and we’ve climbed back into the bunker, hauled our bomb through the destroyed airlock, climbed down the stairs, and flew the length of the hall.

  Now we’re all squeezed into the airlock that’ll give us access to the maintenance tunnel system one level deeper. The air pressure inside the lock is equalizing.

  “Trogs,” says Phil.

  I sense them, too. Six, of course.

  “Where?” asks Brice.

  “And humans,” adds Phil. “Another work crew.”

  "How close?" Brice is reading the pressure gauge, and he knows we're only seconds from opening the inner door.

  “There’s a long ramp outside the airlock that slopes down another ten meters,” says Phil. “At the bottom, a transit corridor runs right and left. The work crew is to the right another twenty or thirty meters down.”

  “Going away, or moving toward us?” asks Brice.

  “Coming this way,” says Phil. “Trogs in front, humans marching behind.”

  “Can you do that Gray distress call again?” asks Brice.

  “No,” says Phil, “I— ”

  That’s all I need to hear of Phil's explanation, because we don't have time for all the irrelevant details he wants to school us on. "We take ‘em at the bottom of the ramp."

  A light flashes green over the inner door, and it automatically unlatches and swings open.

  “Mind your thoughts,” Phil tells me, “or they’ll hear you.”

  Lenox and Brice are through the door first, followed by me and Silva. Phil plods along after. Frank and Skip stay in the airlock with the nuke, keeping the door propped open, effectively making the airlock unusable for anyone trying to enter from the outside.

  In seconds, we four shooters are arrayed on the ramp, all with clear lines of fire down to the hallway intersection ahead. Phil is standing in the middle of the ramp, looking down, communicating some kind of Trog gibberish so fast I can’t understand what he’s trying to say.

  Lenox asks, “What are you doing, Phil?”

  He flinches back, and I sense a change in the minds of the Trogs nearing in the hall. “Get ready.”

  A moment later, the Trogs burst around the corner in a tight mob, disruptors out, defensive fields maxed, charging up the ramp.

  There’s no need for orders, we fire.

  Nobody aims at the center of mass. We’ve done this before. All rounds go low, aimed at ankles and knees.

  Every Trog falls, but none are dead yet.

  I jump to my feet and hurry down the ramp to gain a better angle for finishing off survivors with shots through the tops of their helmets or into their backs.

  Brice is right there with me doing the same.

  Lenox is taking a different, tried-and-true approach, firing long streams of rounds on them to overwhelm their defensive grav. The combined effect is lethal. In moments, every Trog is dead.

  Down at the bottom of the ramp, men and women in orange suits are peeking around the corner to see what’s just transpired.

  “They’re running away,” says Phil. “Most of them.”

  I reach out with my mind to pick up what I can from the people still down there, recalling that I can't sense non-bughead human thoughts the way Phil can. Through the rock, I can only sense vague blurs of human-sized masses moving. Across all the standard channels, I comm a message to those I can see, We mean you no harm.

  “Who are you?” one asks.

  “We’re the revolution,” I tell him, as I glance down at my d-pad. “In thirty-seven minutes, there’s going to be a smoking hole three miles wide right here. Tell every human you can find to move as far away from here as they can.”

  “But the Trogs— ”

  “If you don’t go,” I repeat. “You will die. Do whatever you have to do, but get away. Now, go!”

  I turn to Frank and Skip who are wrestling the nuke out of the airlock. Neither has yet armed himself. “Grab a disruptor off one of the Trogs, you two. You may need it before this is over.”

  “Are we done with the motivational speeches?” asks Brice. “We need to get moving, because this place will be swarming with Trogs in about five minutes.”

  Phil looks at us with wide, lost eyes. “Less than that.” He points to the dead Trogs on the ramp. They passed a message. Soon every Trog within a mile will know intruders are down here.”

  Skip—Frank’s buddy—finally makes himself useful. “There’s a big barrack complex down to the right about a half a klick. Maybe a thousand Trogs bunk down there.”

  I turn to Frank.

  I can tell by his face I’m not going to like his answer. “About halfway down to those barracks is where we can access the service tunnel to take us over to the utility shaft.”

  “We can’t,” says Phil. “The Trogs are already coming.”

  “From the barracks?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “Hundreds. Maybe all of them.”

  I look at Frank. “What’s the fastest way to the hangar?”

  “Bottom of the ramp and go left,” he says. “One turn and a hundred meters down puts you at the hangar airlock. We can be there in a minute or two.”

  I weigh the risk of running the tunnels against going back out into the radioactive slurry settling over the landscape. “The tunnels, that’s where we’re headed. Somebody put a C4 charge on this airlock. Set it for five minutes. Let’s go!”

  Chapter 48

  We’re flying down the corridor following Frank’s directions. He’s helping to carry the nuke now, as I need shooters out front with me.

  I have my railgun pointed up the hall, ready to fire at anything that steps out in front of us. Phil, to his credit, isn’t lollygagging at the rear anymore, he’s flying beside me, weapon at the ready—only I can’t tell if he’s looking to shoot something or if he wants to be the first one to die when we run into the Trogs. Just below and between us, Brice is skimming along the floor, railgun up, ready to kill.

  “The left turn is up here," pants Frank. "About a hundred meters." Frank reduces his speed to make the corner, and so do the rest of us. We're there in a few seconds, and have to slow to nearly walking speed to make the turn before we start racing again.

  I can’t help but look back down the length of the corridor. I can’t see the Trogs down there, but I feel them.

  “At the end of the hall,” says Frank, “it spreads out into a staging area for the hangar.”

  “This is the only way?” I ask.

  “The vertical utility shaft is accessible through the loading dock on the other side of the hangar bay. Crossing the hanger is the only way that won’t run us through half the Trog army.”

  “Let’s clear it.” I amp up to max grav and race ahead. Brice is right on my heels, and Phil is right behind him.

  “Trogs,” says Phil, as we close in.

&nb
sp; And that's all the time we have. I spin feet first and brake hard. It takes all of a half-second for the staging area to open up in front of me. I come out of the hall facing left to see three pods of Trogs, loitering and looking at one another, like they’re shooting the shit while waiting for their lift assignment. I'm already firing on full-auto before I come to a stop. With my finger holding down the trigger, and my weapon blasting out rounds by the hundred, I have to grav tight to the floor and lean into my fire. I'm spraying back and forth across the mass of Trogs, not aiming, not trying to pick out any target, just letting my gun do its nasty work on enemies who weren't expecting me to show up and ruin their day.

  When my magazine runs dry, I pop it out and slam in a replacement as I scan across the place in the staging area where eighteen Trogs had been standing just a moment before. Now there’s nothing but the carnage only a high-velocity railgun slug can bring down on unprotected flesh.

  All my Trogs are dead.

  I scan, looking for anything moving on my end of the staging area. Nothing.

  “Clear,” I call, as I turn to see if Brice and Phil need help.

  Even more dead Trogs are scattered on the floor. Brice and Phil fired together and devastated the waiting Trogs.

  I ask, “All clear, Phil?”

  “No more in here.”

  “Lenox,” I comm, “bring the nuke.”

  “There,” says Brice.

  I glance around to see him point at a large airlock close to one corner of the staging area.

  “That’ll take us out to the hangar.”

  Phil soars across the staging area to look out one of the many windows opening up to the hangar. He laughs. “Too many. Too many.”

  I look up and realize there's a background noise under my thoughts. Trogs. At first, I think it’s the horde coming up behind us, but then realize it’s coming from another direction.

  “Out there loading into grav lifts,” says Phil. “Maybe two hundred. Maybe two-fifty. They know something just happened, but they don’t know we’re here yet.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” says Brice. “Every moment is more fun than the last.”