Freedom's Fury (Freedom's Fire Book 2)

by Bobby Adair

  “We just wanted to be together in love,” he continues, “and not have to hide in silence between the blankets of a single bunk with a hundred other workers in earshot, half of them knowing what you’re up to and wanking to the sounds they can hear. It’s perverse, but it’s life up there. You get three weeks of isolation in your suit with only the sound of each other’s voices to make you feel human, or you get five days of zero privacy.

  “It’s easy to get used to it because you realize every day you have less value than you thought you had the day before. You’re a commodity, one of a billion copies from a planet that keeps making more just like you. The lifts keep bringing new ones up from the surface and hauling empty suits back down.”

  “The dead?” I guess.

  “People die all the time,” confirms Brice. “Anything will do it—space trash, accident, inadequate shielding. If you get lucky, if you get good, and you spend enough time out there, the solar radiation eats you up. You’re brain goes first. You make mistakes. You get stupid. Your coordination goes to shit.

  “The trick to staying alive is being picky about where you work. I learned that early on. If they were sending rivet teams inside or outside, you always took inside. You didn’t have much shielding there, but you got a little, and over time, it makes a difference. Think of it like being an albino on earth and always avoiding the sun. It was kinda like that. You always wanted the thickest walls of whatever between you and the void. However, you can’t do it forever. Hell, we were building a giant fucking donut in space. You couldn’t avoid the outside.

  “Worse thing, solar radiation is insidious. You don’t know which are your high-risk days. It doesn’t care, it kills you just the same.”

  Brice stops talking, and we float along in silence for ten, maybe twenty minutes before he picks the story up again. “I first noticed she developed a stutter. It happened occasionally, but enough. I tried to do what I could to have her rotated back to earth, inside workstations, something. She wouldn’t have it. She was a real daredevil. She came to space for the thrill. She always took the most dangerous jobs.

  “Maybe six months after the stutter became worse, she was in the wrong place when a newbie lift driver was bringing in a load of fill-dirt from moon-side. She saw it at the last moment. Well, maybe she missed the last moment by two or three. By the time she did see it coming, it was too late for her to dodge out of the way.”

  The next part is hard for Brice to say. I think he still loves her. “It was the kind of crash that looked like it should have killed her. That would have been a mercy on all of us.” Brice pauses again. I’m not sure if he’s silently crying or suffering while trying not to. “What we did to that driver... We didn’t kill him. Maybe. I don’t know. We beat the fuck out of him three times over. When we stopped, you couldn’t see anything but blood inside his faceplate. He wasn’t responding, but his d-pad said he was alive. Somebody gave him a shove and sent him off into space. Last we saw of him.

  “My girl, she had one leg crushed halfway up the thigh, the other halfway down the shin. Her suit never punctured, so she avoided the mercy of a quick death. Her legs though, were beyond repair. Everybody saw that. They were like jelly inside her suit. We knew death would come for her, if not in a few minutes, then by the end of the day, whatever the hell that means in space where the sun shines all the fucking unmerciful time. Our MSS supervisor had her put in the discard bin.”

  “Discard bin?” I’ve never heard of that before.

  Brice’s mean laugh comes back, and I realize it’s a kind of protection he armors his heart with when the shit of life weighs too heavy on his memories. “It’s a warehouse, a garbage bin, literally, for people who are expected to die. The MSS doesn’t waste infirmary beds on the terminal cases, and they don’t want them taking up a bunk in the slum, sucking up real food and bringing down morale. Morale? What a fucking joke.

  “Problem is, she didn’t die. She suffered in the discard bin for weeks, stealing cal packs and H from others the MSS tossed in who eventually died. Why gangrene or blood loss or shock didn’t kill her, no one knows.

  “The MSS finally fished her out of the discard bin, sent her back to earth, and paraded her as a hero in the propaganda vids to demonstrate the courage of the orange suits serving humanity’s partnership with our Gray brothers.

  “It twisted her rotten inside.

  “Our relationship didn’t end, so much as sublimate into the vacuum, until one day it didn’t bother me at all that I hadn’t heard from her in weeks, and in fact dreaded the next message. It never came.

  “We, us, whatever mythical thing people conjure in their minds to make themselves believe the bond of their infatuation is more than just chemical needs and engorged erections, that died. It suffered long and slow, just like her. In the end, it was a relief.

  “Some time later, I earned a favor from an MSS supervisor with a kink for strapping young Americans. She took a liking too me.” Brice laughs again, and this time it’s the familiar voice of his dark soul I hear. “She rode me like a man-whore and I didn’t care. She eventually grew tired of me, and called in a favor to have me invited to join the SDF. I ended up in the moon garrison, which was great—fucking great—until the war started.”

  Chapter 43

  Two days zipping through the void, though for all I can tell, we might as well have been drifting in the same spot. The sun still shines harsh and unforgiving, anchored to its throne at the center of the solar system. Jupiter still dominates the sky behind us. Our position relative to both of them seems not to have changed. Only the absence of the little asteroid we escaped from gives us any hint that we moved.

  Or did our acceleration away from the asteroid only serve to negate the speed we’d built up moving in the other direction? We have no navigational equipment, no way to gauge our speed against any of a dozen easily visible objects in the sky, all of which are so far from us and so large we’ll never know whether we’re moving or not.

  “I’ve accepted it,” says Brice after hours of silence.

  “What’s that?” I ask as I scan the sky in front of us, confounded by the disappearance of our gray-brown smudge.

  “Death.”

  “You’re giving up?” I ask curiously.

  “No.”

  I turn to look at him. It’s a nice change for my straining eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not okay with it,” he tells me. “I’m not quitting. I’m not going to cry and whine. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I’m not sure I see the difference.”

  “Sure you do,” he argues. “It’s how I face every fight with those Neanderthal Trog bastards, I accept I’m already dead. It makes the rest easy. You don’t panic. You don’t try to save your ass at the expense of anyone’s life. You do your job. This ridiculous flying field trip through the solar system is like that. I just had to accept it.”

  “Huh.” I laugh as I try to figure out my thinking on the subject. “I’m not sure I do the same. I think I wear a cloak of invincibility. It’s a lie. I know it is. A useful lie.”

  “I’m going to make you an offer,” says Brice, deeply serious.

  “This already sounds bad.”

  He hesitates, and then starts. “We may have enough H here to last a month, maybe two. Hell, maybe a year. I don’t know. What I do know is it’ll last one of us twice as long as both of us.”

  “Hero suicide shit?” I don’t believe it, and my surprise is obvious in my tone.

  “No,” Brice tells me. “I think finding a safe place for us to land our feet is a one-in-a-billion shot. I’m offering to give you my lottery ticket and double your chances. All I have to do is disconnect from this beat-up wire cage and zip off toward Jupiter. All the hydro is yours.”

  “Two times zero is still zero,” I argue. “If I’m going to die, then I’d rather spend the rest of my time with someone to talk to. Twice as much time by myself sounds like a shitty trade.” I catch myself. “Wait, you’re n
ot expecting me to make the same offer, are you?”

  “No,” Brice laughs. “You’re the invincible one, right? I’m the dead one.”

  I laugh, too, and decide staring at the black sky is something I need a break from. I reorient myself so I can watch Jupiter imperceptibly recede behind us. “It’s a beautiful view when you look this way.”

  Brice turns himself around. “I’m tired of looking at fucking stars anyway.”

  “I wonder how far we are.”

  “Maybe ask somebody when we get back to the Potato.”

  “Yeah,” I chuckle. “I’ll do that.” I spot one of Jupiter’s moons, tiny and crisp, a perfect sphere hanging in the sky as it slowly spins through its orbit. “Look, you can see Ganymede, I think.” I point. “Right there.”

  “Yeah,” says Brice, a smile in his voice. “I see it.” He points, too. “Look, down there. Another one.”

  “Yeah.” I see it, different in color, a bit smaller in diameter.

  “How many moons does Jupiter have?”

  “Sixty some, I think.”

  “That many?” Brice muses. “Almost hard to believe.”

  We both watch the Jovian giant for a while, pointing out moons as we find them orbiting slowly over the swirling surface.

  “Look at that one,” says Brice, pointing. “Just above that rusty band, in the gray.”

  “Where?”

  “See the big spot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Follow the rusty stripe below it to the left, back, almost to the horizon.”

  I see it, but it’s not well-defined. “I don’t think that’s—”

  I can’t believe it.

  “What?” Not understanding the cause for my surprise, Brice is ready to pounce.

  “I think that’s the Potato.”

  “No.” Brice is leaning forward. Habit.

  I am too. I’m squinting. Anything to help. “It’s got to be. We must have passed it. Shit. We must have missed it yesterday, or a few hours after we left.”

  “If that’s it,” says Brice, “I think we didn’t start off on the right vector.”

  He might be right. He might not be. He might be accusing me. He might not. I don’t care. “We have a bunch of H here. I say we burn through some bottles and speed this kiddy ride up. I’m tired of drifting.”

  “Spark it, buddy. Let’s go home.”

  Chapter 44

  Eight hours. Six canisters of H burned dry. I accelerated hard, guessed at a midpoint, and decelerated just as hard. We were nearly obliterated a dozen times by high-speed collisions with bits of stone and metal expanding in a deadly plume out from battles around the Potato’s dirty smudge.

  As harrowing as those close calls were, Brice and I are in good spirits, the best since we first rocketed away from the small asteroid we were marooned on. The Potato, still engulfed in a haze of dust with untold numbers of Trogs on the surface and in the subterranean complex, looks like an oasis to us.

  I make a guess. “Less than a hundred miles, I’ll bet.”

  “Do we have a plan?” asks Brice.

  I chuckle, maybe from fatigue. I know I’ve slept in the past few days of our journey. I’m not sure how much. It’s easy to lose track of your anchors in time and place when you’re drifting in the void. “Since we started our burn, I’ve been pretty focused on driving.” Translated as ‘avoiding skewering space trash.’

  Misunderstanding my weariness for irritation, Brice apologizes.

  Our relationship is evolving. We’re learning how to bicker our way around our moods.

  “Sorry,” I tell him. “I’m just tired.”

  “Might be a good time for a shot.”

  “Suit Juice?”

  “Gift of the gods.” Brice laughs lazily. “I don’t know what’s down there,” he points at the Potato. “My bet is we’ll wish we still had some ammo for these guns when we arrive.”

  “Shit. I forgot I was empty.”

  “There was that thing on the cruiser we blew up,” says Brice. “Remember all the Trogs chasing us?” He laughs because I think he’s tired, and in his exhausted brain, that seems like genuine hilarity.

  Brice exhales loudly like he’s just had a very satisfying orgasm.

  I glance over at him. “What are you doing?”

  He smiles and shows me his d-pad. “I just juiced.”

  “I thought you said the high dissipates the more you do it.”

  “I don’t do it that often. Just enough.” He nods toward my d-pad. “Give yourself a kick. You’re gonna need it, and you know I’m right.”

  Yes, I’m sure he is. I hit the button on my wrist and feel the instant chemical love of lying molecules telling my senses I’m not a beat-down, butt-dragging draftee, but a born-again, electric-fueled, fusion-drive, ready-to-rock motherfucking killer.

  Brice laughs at me.

  I bust a belly laugh, too. “I love this shit.”

  “Love what shit?”

  I laugh even harder. “You sound just like Penny when you do that.”

  “That wasn’t me.” Brice is serious. He’s looking around.

  “That’s because it was me,” says Penny.

  I can’t believe it. I’m scanning the sky, too. Is Suit Juice a hallucinogen? “You’re alive?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” asks Penny.

  “And Phil?” If she’s alive, then his irritating, stupid ass must be, too. “The ship?”

  “We’re maybe ten klicks behind you,” says Phil.

  “Phil?” Brice’s rapid improvement in fortune makes him sound happy even with Phil’s name on his lips.

  I spin around, and though I can just make out the Rusty Turd against the darkness, my bug sees its mass as clear as day. “I don’t understand.” Stuck somewhere in the purgatory of not being sure Phil was dead, I suddenly feel overwhelmed with relief he’s not. Despite all the shit between us, all of his annoying foibles and his disgustingly enviable talents, he’s the friend who’s been beside me my whole life, my brother in every way except for the difference in birth-parents.

  Phil says, “Gravitationally speaking, you’ve been glowing like a comet out here all day. I’d have to be blind not to see you. We’ll pick you up. Once you’re onboard, we’ll talk.”

  Chapter 45

  I’m not good with reunions and gushing emotions, but we hug—me and Penny, me and Phil, even Brice who’s been burdened with my non-stop company for the past three days can’t help but squeeze me like he never wants to let me go. Jablonsky smiles and gives me a perfunctory squeeze, which is satisfactory for both of us.

  Lenox, Silva, and Mostyn, inexplicably on board all share in the warmth, Silva in particular. Our embrace followed by a lingering look into one another’s eyes feels like something that should be shared by two people way more intimate than us. Nevertheless, it’s not awkward, not one second of it.

  It all lasts too long. Emotions bubble all over the comm, leaving smiles behind faceplates, and real human touch behind layers of worn orange composite and grav plates.

  It’ll do.

  With our commando squad listening in, Brice shares our story with the bridge crew, the only three people on the Rusty Turd when the Trog cruiser popped out of bubble jump nearly on top of them. They listen, ask questions, and then explain to us how the cruiser’s grav field bumped our ship like a billiard ball with such sudden force all three were knocked unconscious, and like Brice and I, they woke up shooting through space, thirty thousand miles from nowhere trying to understand what happened.

  The ship suffered some damage they had to repair before they could get underway again. When they were finished and found their way back to the Potato, they saw the remnants my commando club left in their wake. Not knowing what had happened, not knowing the situation down on the surface, except that Phil sensed the presence of thousands of Trogs down there, they surveyed the outer asteroids while hailing on all the SDF frequencies. That’s how they found Lenox, Silva, and Mostyn.

  After
that, they waited.

  “We’ve been out here in space, a few thousand miles off the surface,” says Phil, glancing at Jablonsky. “We’re able to communicate with Blair, though we lose the signal at least half the time.”

  Jablonsky adds, “It’s improving as the dust settles. Better by the hour, almost.”

  “We were trying to decide what to do,” says Penny. “Unfortunately, Blair’s not as forthcoming with information as she could be and she’s not open to suggestions.” Her eyes fall on Phil. “He has an idea.”

  I turn to Phil. “Which is?”

  “Oh,” interrupts Penny, needing to get one more word in, “Jill is back.”

  More good news? It’s like real Christmas, the kind in the old vids where the kids receive so many great gifts they lose themselves in the wrapping paper pile. She says, “They shoved the other Trog cruiser into orbit around Jupiter and right now they’re eight or nine thousand klicks away on the other side of the Potato.”

  “Her ship?” I ask, meaning the mining tug she and her platoon flew out with. “Her crew?”

  “Fine and fine,” Penny answers. “All safe. No casualties. Nothing happened along the way. Pretty boring trip.”

  Nodding, I’m mentally cataloging the pieces of my tiny military force. Where twenty minutes ago, it was Brice and me with no ammo deorbiting blindly onto a rock full of hostile Neanderthals, now I have a battle-tested fighting force, small, but effective.

  “What’s the story down on the Potato?” I’m already guessing it’s not good, an easy leap given neither of my ships has chosen to land. Clever General Kane rides again!

  “It’s that insufferable Blair making a mess of everything,” Phil blurts. “If she’d stop being so controlling—”

  “This is not news,” I tell Phil, slipping right into the snippy tone I generally take with him, one made comfortable out of habit.

  Phil follows the pattern of our well-rehearsed behavior and starts to sulk.