The Price of Freedom

by William R. Forstchen

  Terrorism, Taggart thought, is many things, but it is never "random." And it was common knowledge that the Border Worlds had refused to release the carriers acquired from Earth until long after the Kilrathi had begun their assault. The frowns he saw in the gallery suggested that he wasn't the only senator to make that connection. He smiled slightly, amused at Tolwyn's ability to play both sides of the aisle.

  Tolwyn grasped the podium with both hands, taking physical control of it as he thrust his head aggressively forward. "I don't know who is doing this," he said, slowly and distinctly, letting the moment build, "but I shall find out. And then… I will see to it that it stops."

  The senators clapped and cheered. Taggart banged his gavel repeatedly, trying to restore order. He waited until the clamor had been reduced to a buzz, then looked down at Tolwyn. Tolwyn had played the body masterfully, gathering the senators in and building his case. Any legislator challenging Tolwyn's position would be seen as coddling the Border Worlds or condoning the attacks. No one wanted to be put in that position with so many cameras about.

  Taggart saw he had two choices: he could tack with Tolwyn's gale, or be blown by it. The decision wasn't especially difficult. He put on what he called his "political face," the bland, friendly expression everyone in the Hall wore most of the time.

  "Admiral," he began, trying to match Tolwyn's sense of presence. His own style was more folksy, and didn't lend itself well to this type of occasion. "… our relations with the Border Worlders have been damaged by these, urn, incidents. They've claimed to suffer from attacks similar to ours, and share similar concerns. Tensions between our government and the Border Worlds are high and we want this situation defused as quickly as possible. Time is of the essence."

  Tolwyn nodded gravely. "I shall assume personal control of the investigation." He raised his voice. "And I shall use all of the forces at my disposal to find the perpetrators… and defuse them." He grinned then, a sharks smile.

  Taggart swallowed at the thought of Tolwyn's fleet carriers deploying to the frontier, and how the Border Worlds were likely to respond to that. He tried to think of a way to put some back-pressure on what was happening, to slow the tides of the moment. He opened his mouth to suggest a more low-key response, then glanced up, uncomfortably aware that all of the vid-cams in the Hall were pointed at him. "The Assembly looks forward to the results of your investigation," he said lamely. He tried to change the spin of Tolwyn's victory, to make his commission investigative, rather than active. "We shall decide a course of action within, ah… a fortnight of your completed report."

  Tolwyn made a show of gracious acceptance. Taggart knew Tolwyn had gotten what he wanted, and now could afford to be gracious. Tolwyn turned slightly. Taggart was certain he did it to be better seen by the cameras. He raised his voice slightly, enunciating clearly for the journalists. "Thank you, Paladin. When you served under my command I knew I could always count on you," the admiral said. "I accept your vote of confidence on behalf of the Strategic Readiness Agency, and we shall endeavor to match your timetable for action."

  "Two weeks," Taggart said, convinced Tolwyn was playing him, annoyed at Tolwyn's pointed reference to his once having been subservient to him. He searched for some sign of smugness or victory in the admiral's eyes, and saw nothing. Tolwyn's expression remained cool and still.

  The admiral gave him another small smile. 'Two weeks." Taggart shook his head fractionally as Tolwyn turned back to the lectern. He had just been backed into agreeing to a fortnights unspecified operations with unspecified forces along a potentially explosive frontier. He just hoped that Tolwyn knew what the hell he was doing. For all their sakes.

  Christopher Blair picked up his wrench and counted to ten. His knuckles still throbbed from where he'd bashed them while trying to open the aerator pump's access cover. Sweat rolled down his face, soaking his shirt and dripping into the pumps guts. He rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead, then pinched his fingers together on the bridge of his nose to try and wipe away the stinging stuff.

  He looked up at the thin blue sky and Nephele Prime. Prime was an insignificant main sequence yellow G-type star on the edge of nowhere. Nephele Two was tucked just on the inside of the "green band," the range of distances that a planet could occupy that would support human life. Two barely fit the criteria, resulting in a biosphere only marginally adaptable for human beings. The planet's principle exports were sand and rare earths, with just enough agriculture to provide the locals with some vegetables.

  Blair had picked the place for its isolation, as had most of the other emigrants. His nearest neighbors were a monastic group of Zen Buddhists, whose hobbies appeared to be meditating and leaving him alone.

  The long lines of sight had been the hardest thing for him to get used to on Two. The ability to see all the way to the horizon was something that just wasn't possible on a carrier deck. It had taken him a long time to decide he liked having room to stretch his elbows.

  Nephele also offered air that hadn't been through a 'fresher, water that didn't have a chemical aftertaste, and unrecycled food. It was paradise, compared to the Fleet. Or so he told himself. Daily.

  He looked down at his salt-crusted watch. It was only nine a.m., local time, but the temperature was already up over 42 degrees centigrade. He suspected that it would top 45 before noon. That conclusion took very little deductive reasoning. Two topped 45 degrees every day.

  The blazing heat drew his attention back to the task at hand. The broken pump was supposed to draw water from the aquifer deep below the farmstead arid up into porous pipes below ground. The water would then be forced into the soil around the plants, giving them the precious liquid they needed to survive in Two's desert regions. Losing either the pump or suction in the well shaft would require repriming the system, a costly and difficult prospect. Meanwhile, his plants would broil in the brutal sun.

  He applied the spanner to a broken solenoid, removing it in only twice the time the manual said it should take. He replaced it, dropping the new part in the sand and bashing his hand. He finally got the access panel closed. The pump hummed and clicked to itself as it ran its internal diagnostics program, then flashed system ready on a tiny screen.

  Blair crossed his fingers and hit the starter button. The machine began to shake and rattle as the old solar-powered engine tried to turn over. "Come on, you old piece of…" he said, then stopped as the pump rumbled to life. He exhaled in relief, then dropped his head in frustration as it died.

  He checked the diagnostics. The display read system

  FAULT.

  "No kidding," he grumbled. He took the wrench and attacked the solenoid again, tightening and loosening it in its socket to try and get a better contact. He hit the starter again. The machine flared to life, sputtered, and died.

  Blair sighed in frustration and looked across the hectare or so of crops that surrounded him. The plants would be wilted by nightfall if he couldn't get water to them, and surface irrigation was out of the question. Water pumped onto the plants during the day would either evaporate at once or would act as a lens, concentrating the sunlight and searing the vegetation even more. He needed to get the pump operational, and soon, or his crop was finished.

  He thought he'd done well to eke as much life out of the desert as he had, and with virtually no experience. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time… to spend his days creating life rather than destroying it. The process, though, had proven to be full of heartache and physical pain. He couldn't decide if he was proud of his meager accomplishment or sorry he'd ever begun it.

  He knelt beside the aerator again and began to work the wrench into the solenoid's socket. He thought that perhaps the new part was bad. He hadn't thought to bench test it before he tried to install it. He cursed. It wouldn't have been the first time the Farm Bureau had sent him a new part that arrived broken.

  He gave the engine a third try. It sputtered and died. This time a sound like a gulp came from the inside of the mach
ine as it failed. Blair swore sulphurously as the display flashed system integrity lost—pipe pressure failure. He had no choice now but to have the pump reprimed. He'd lose a significant portion of his crops before that happened.

  He threw the wrench down with an oath and stalked off towards the run-down-looking house, noticing for the dozenth time that the place needed a new coat of paint. He wasn't especially disposed to do much more than recognize that the need existed. His domestic urges didn't include painting, especially in Neph's blistering heat. The notion of contracting a job like that locally was laughable. Not that he could afford it, even if he could cozen someone into doing it.

  He stepped around the clutter on the steps and went inside to make the repair call. The house's main room was cluttered rather than dirty, with memorabilia covering every horizontal surface. The walls had no decoration other than old two-dees of comrades (many long dead), his framed citations and promotions, and curios picked up during twenty years of war. The room looked, he mused tiredly, like a display from a military museum. Which, in a way, it was.

  He stepped over to the fridge plugged in next to his easy chair, reached in, and grabbed a beer can. He pressed the icy-cold plastic against his sweaty forehead, sighing in relief at the feel of the container against his heated skin. He glanced around, looking for his holo-comm controller. It was, for the moment, lost. He decided he wasn't particularly in the mood to look for it. The Farm Bureau could wait. God knows, he thought, they're going to make me wait, once I call.

  He plopped into his chair, surrounded by a litter of magazines, books, and a trash bin half full of dead beer cans and food cartons.

  The remote control for the holo-box was still sitting on the chairs arm. He picked it up and idly turned on the box. The news channel appeared to be carrying a feed from Earth. He checked the caption on the bottom of the screen. It was a delayed telecast from the Assembly Hall on Earth, and only two days old. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. The short delay suggested that the news must be really hot. Nephele was so far from Earth that what tapes they got were usually ten days old at the earliest. He settled back in his chair and opened his beer, interested in what the government had to say.

  He cued the sound. The announcers voice came from multiple speakers that were supposed to have been set into the walls but were instead scattered around the floor. "… and we've been told," her earnest, young voice said from off-camera, "that Admiral Tolwyn himself will be addressing this session of the Assembly on behalf of the Strategic Readiness Agency. Assembly Master Taggarts office has informed us that the nature of Admiral Tolwyn's remarks is not yet ready for release. We've heard from 'highly-placed sources' that the admiral's address will deal with the raids on Confederation shipping, likely by Border Worlds forces. Back to you, Miguel."

  Blair took a slug of beer and belched as the pundits took over, trying to predict what Tolwyn would say. The camera zoomed back in on Taggart, who looked faintly bored. Paladin's done well for himself, Blair thought. Taggart's moustache and hair were still more blond than gray and the smile lines around his eyes had grown a little deeper. Blair decided that life as a politician agreed with him.

  Taggart glanced at his watch and started banging his gavel, trying to bring the floor to order. Blair noticed that he wasn't having much luck at first. The room finally quieted, and Blair listened as Taggart introduced Tolwyn. Blair laughed again. Paladin appeared to have lost his accent. He'd always suspected Taggart's thick, Scottish brogue had been a put-on. A spy with a burr just didn't fit Blair's image of a secret agent.

  Blairs laughter died as the admiral stepped up to the podium, his dress uniform aglitter with awards and decorations. The sight of Tolwyn stirred mixed emotions in Blair. The admiral had at one time thought Blair to be a turncoat, or, worse yet—incompetent, as a result of the loss of the Tiger's Claw. Blair had since proven otherwise, mostly by accomplishing more than his fair share of Tolwyn's suicidal missions.

  Blair considered Tolwyn's reputation for risk taking with other peoples lives to understate the facts. The admirals willingness to sacrifice anyone or anything to achieve his objectives had long been lauded in the popular press. He was "the man who got things done."

  Blair had often been placed in the position of being one of those sacrificed, a singular honor he had rarely appreciated. He'd always managed to come back. Many of his friends, also flying on Tolwyn's orders, hadn't been so lucky. Tolwyn had won more than he'd lost, the butchers bills notwithstanding. Tolwyn, so far as Blair knew, had never expressed remorse for those who'd died pursuing his schemes.

  He listened, unimpressed, as Tolwyn laid out his case for mounting a major expedition to the frontier. There hadn't been much going on since the Kilrathi War, and Tolwyn was doubtless looking for some action. He laughed. The old war-horse was trying to find an excuse to get out and ride his carriers.

  The news reports had indicated that the raids hadn't been more than a pinprick. Tolwyn's reaction seemed to him to be more akin to smashing grasshoppers with a sledgehammer than a military operation, unless the press was downplaying the real situation. He shrugged. He laughed out loud as Tolwyn maneuvered the Senate into anointing him with a strike force. If Tolwyn wanted to chase pirates with a battle fleet, then that was fine with Blair.

  The only part of the situation that disturbed him was Paladin's surrender. Taggart appeared to be Tolwyn's loudest cheerleader, helping to write the admiral a blank check for his private little war. Blair wondered how that boded for the future. The military, through the admiralty courts and martial law, had usurped much civilian authority in the name of protecting humanity from the Kilrathi. Blair had watched the government use one pretext after another to slow the transition back to complete civilian rule. Blair had been skeptical that Paladin, as a former military man, would do his part to restore the civilian government's prerogatives. This abdication seemed to confirm his assessment.

  A chiming sounded from the depths of the room's clutter, drawing him from his ruminations. He stood, drained off his brew, and began sorting through the piles in the main room, in search of the comm-unit's remote control. He regretted the passing effort he'd made at tidying up the clutter. He'd only managed to move the piles around enough to lose track of everything.

  He rooted through end-table drawers and among the seat cushions, through piles of dirty clothes, stacks of books and magazines, and piles of printouts. The comm-unit buzzed again, giving him a vector to zero in on. He found the holo-comm box hidden under an article discussing more efficient planting strategies, and a thick pile of newsfaxes.

  He checked the unit, his eyebrows climbing in surprise at the flashing light. He read the display. "Incoming— planet." He turned the unit over, trying to refamiliarize himself with the device. He couldn't remember if this was the second or third message he'd received since he'd bought the place, but he hadn't had enough mail for him to bother learning how the unit worked. He pressed one button on the side of the box. The room darkened while a section of wall slid back to reveal a holo-tank.

  Rachel Corialis' face appeared, blurred and scratchy from a hundred playbacks. "Chris," her sad voice said, "I can't do this anymore. I can't spend my life on a backwater, and I can't stand the way you've crawled into that bottle." She took a deep breath, on the edge of tears. "You won't let me help you, and I can't live this way." She looked down. The playback fuzzed her voice into a scratchy whisper. "Chris… I love you but… goodbye…" Her image faded as the old chip lost resolution.

  "Damn," Blair said, under his breath, "I thought I erased that." He squinted at the controller again, then hit another button.

  The signal jumped and flickered, then settled down to reveal Todd Marshall grinning at him from the tank. Blair groaned.

  "Same to you, old buddy," Marshall said sarcastically, glancing around the part of the room he could see through Blairs pickup. "Nice place you got there. I like the style— early bachelor." He looked at Blair again. "I hope you put the goats outside befor
e you go to bed."

  Blair kept his expression still. "Hello, Maniac." He glanced at Marshall's shoulder pips, pleased that he was still a major. "Sorry about your promotion." He didn't try very hard to hide the insincerity in his voice.

  The fleet had apparently decided that it was a bad idea to give a colonelcy to a pilot whose callsign described his state of mind. Blair, for once, agreed wholeheartedly with the armchair warriors. Maniac had abandoned far too many wingmen for Blair to want to entrust a squadron to him.

  Marshall's face twisted in a sardonic expression that Blair had come to loathe. "Yeah, well, now that the amateurs have taken over, it's getting harder for us professionals to get ahead. I was supposed to get a squadron."

  Blair kept his face still, unwilling to give Marshall an opening. He checked the source code of the call, confirming it as on-planet. "What brings you this far out?"

  "I was just passing through," Maniac said, his voice thick with sarcasm, "and I smelled pigs. So I said to myself, 1 wonder what the Scourge of Kilrah is doing these days?" So I dropped by." His smile turned unfriendly. "You know, chief, most washed-up fighter jocks take on honorable occupations, like drinking or whoring." He paused. "But, farming, that's disgraceful." He chuckled.

  Blair, unamused, placed his thumb over the disconnect button and held it up where Marshall could see it. "If this is a social call, Maniac," he said, "then I'm through being sociable."

  Maniac raised one hand, his expression turning serious. "Listen, hotshot, you gotta meet me at the starport. I'll be in the canteen. We have to talk."

  "We're talking now," Blair answered.

  Maniac shook his head. "Not good enough. The channel could be monitored. This is important, too important to leak." He paused. "Look, a lot of lives are on the line here. It's vital I see you." He grinned. "So, see if you can fit me into your busy schedule, okay?"