The Price of Freedom

by William R. Forstchen

  He was less than amused that the higher-ups had chosen to overlook the fact that Paulson wasn't fit to command the ship. He had neither the temperament nor the experience. Seether's loud complaints against his assignment had produced one unexpected and unpleasant outcome. He'd been assigned to baby-sit the bastard— never mind that his own tasks had to be put on hold and his schedule disrupted. Still, orders were orders.

  Seether wondered if the higher-ups realized that the decision to cashier a commander as famous and popular as Eisen was bound to be problematic. Harrietts Admiralty Court

  could be counted upon to provide a convincing trial and an appropriate verdict. Unfortunately, convicting Eisen couldn't be done quietly unless he was willing to permit it. Seether doubted they'd be lucky enough for Eisen to agree to throw himself on his sword for the greater good.

  Eisen had friends in high places who wouldn't be pleased to see him cashiered. They were bound to make trouble, and would certainly mount a vigorous defense on his behalf. They would doubtless bring attention to the circumstances of his relief and perhaps provide him with a venue to tell his side of the story. The Project couldn't risk that kind of exposure.

  Seether rubbed his hand across his chin. The best way to ensure Eisen kept his mouth shut was to close it permanently, a prospect as unsavory as it was necessary. It would be unfortunate for a man of Eisen's tremendous talents to die, but it would tie up several loose ends at once. The trick would be to make the man's death look like an accident.

  He glanced at his watch. Paulson would have to approve Eisen's use of a Lexington shuttle to take him to the Euralius for transport back to Jupiter and Judge Harnett. Seether would need to know which shuttle Paulson was going to approve in order to arrange the "accident." The timing would likely be dicey, but at least he didn't need approval from on high. His orders would bend that far.

  The thought of having to depend on Paulson for even the smallest thing galled him. The captain had doubtless received his summons to report to the landing bay, but there was no way he would know he was being assigned a keeper. Seether grinned tightly. Paulson, who apparently thought he was actually going to command the vessel, was about to have what the old man called a "come to Jesus" meeting with Seether. Paulson, he thought maliciously, wasn't going to like it.

  He received the "landing approved" signal from Naismith, lined the ship up with the flight deck, and brought the shuttle smoothly into the Lexingtons bay. He wasted no motions, using precise finger pressures on the control yoke to flare the ugly little ship into a crisp three-point landing. The magnetic floor plates grabbed the shuttle, bringing it into contact with the center of the bull's-eye with a sharp clang.

  He smiled, permitting himself a small indulgence. The Lexington was one of his favorite warships. She was the last of a long line of proud vessels to bear the hallowed name, a veteran who'd given her life and her crew to defend Earth. He had been pleased to be at her recommissioning and watch her rising, phoenixlike, from her ashes to resume her rightful place at the forefront of Earth's thinned defenses.

  He looked up at the awards painted on the shuttle bays crash bulkhead and smiled. The battle honors went all the way back to when she was sailing the blue seas of Earth rather than the blackness of space. The Lex, truly a lady, bore her honorable scars well. He silently asked forgiveness for inflicting Paulson on her.

  The landing tell-tales winked green, advising him that the flight deck officer had released his ship from the powerful magnetics. He steered for the embarkation ramp to await Paulson's arrival.

  He saw one of the Third Fleets posh VIP craft standing ready on the far side of the recovery maintenance bay. He shook his head fractionally, the only evidence of his disapproval. He suspected that the Fleet would have had an easier time maintaining its fighting edge if the brass hats were forced to fly in standard shuttles, with their uncomfortable sling seats and exposed conduits, rather than the winged sofas they preferred. It would figure that Paulson would have one of those.

  A contingent of Marines entered the landing bay and spread out, each clearing a section of the landing deck and herding the last of the crew out the doors. He laughed, deep in his throat. Paulson had obeyed his instructions to the letter. Perhaps he can be taught, he thought sarcastically.

  He slipped out of the pilot's seat and into the spartan passenger compartment. The six newest members of the Lexington's detachment waited, sitting erect and unmovine in the shuttle's uncomfortable sling seats. Six sets of cool brown eyes turned to regard him. "Stand by," Seether said as he crossed to the shuttle's side hatch. The pilots, their expressions neutral and dispassionate, nodded as one.

  He unsealed the hatch and stepped into the open door, yawning to equalize the pressure in his ears with the ship's atmosphere. Paulson stood waiting on the deck with two guards at his back. Seether was willing to bet they were armed.

  "T-t-to what do we owe this pleasure?" Paulson said, trying and failing to act casual. Seether smiled to himself. The captain's being nervous was a very good thing. It kept him honest.

  He crooked a finger at Paulson, summoning him into the shuttle. The Lexingtons putative commander followed, blinking in the sudden gloom as he entered the shuttle. Seether turned towards him and reached into his tunic. Paulson tensed until he saw the data holo-cube in Seethers hand. Seether, pleased at his ability to instill fear into the man, handed him the cube. "You'll find this contains mission details and instructions from the old man." He paused, making certain he had Paulson's undivided attention. "I have been assigned to command the Lexington's detachment, for the time being. You will obey my orders from now on, completely and without question. Do you understand?"

  His blunt words startled Paulson out of his nervousness. "Now, wait a second," the captain protested, "I command the LexingtonV

  Seether found himself tiring of the situation. Paulson was nothing more than a parasite who had used his access to "black funds" to buy influence. The vague accounting within the super-secret funding process let him funnel huge amounts of resources, personnel, and money to The Project, sidestepping Fleet comptrollers and government auditors. His ability to be devious had served The Project well. However, he was no longer in a position to tap that river of money. That made him expendable.

  The rumor mill said that the old man himself had gone to Paulson, hat in hand, when he needed discreet funding. Paulson had doubtless called in those markers, setting a rear admiralcy as his payoff. It galled him to watch Paulson using the Lexington to punch a ticket. The Lex deserved better.

  He looked up at the captain. Any tiny inclination towards tact vanished. "You may command this ship," he said coldly, "but I command you. As though I were the old man himself. Do you understand?"

  Paulson nodded silently, then looked away. He seemed to notice the six men in their black flight suits for the first time. "Who're they?" he asked.

  Seether tipped his head to one side. "They," he said quietly, "are none of your business. You will list them on your crew roster as part of the technology assessment team." He let his voice grow condescending, trying to coax Paulson into a reaction. "All you need to know is that they will work for me, and me alone. You will not put them on your duty roster. You will forget you saw them."

  Paulson looked as though he was going to make an issue of being lectured. He looked defiant a moment, then seemed to collapse in on himself. He licked his lips and dipped his head. "All right," he said simply.

  Seether felt his contempt for Paulson increase a notch. The man hadn't even the juice to stand up for himself. "You may leave now," he said, making no effort to hide his disgust. Paulson set his jaw, then turned away. "Remember," Seether said as he stepped out of the shuttle, "you take your orders from me."

  Seether glanced at the six. They might have been made of stone for all the reaction they showed. "Let's go, people," he said, "we have work to do."

  Blair closed the Arrow's canopy and checked the repair printout. The crew had replaced the entire star
board attitude modulation sensor and control unit. He clicked his tongue against his teeth. Replacing a modulation assembly was a second echelon maintenance task and usually done in a repair facility. He wished he knew more about his crew chief. Then he wouldn't have to second-guess her abilities.

  His instincts told him to deadline the bird until he could get a second opinion on the repairs. He knew the crew chief would correctly interpret that as a lack of confidence in her abilities, thereby killing any chance of establishing the kind of rapport they would need to have to work together.

  He'd originally planned to run a quick diagnostic before signing off on the repairs. Now, his best interests were to run the full inspection program and hope that gave him enough information to decide on whether to down-check the bird.

  He looked at his watch. A full diagnostic would take almost half an hour, long enough to make him late for the reception. Paulson appeared to be a stickler for trivia. He would doubtless be unimpressed with a wing commander who showed up late to his party. He sighed. Why couldn't anything be simple?

  He flipped a mental coin. Paulson lost. He brought the fighters command system up, borrowing power from the auxiliary power unit. The cockpit readouts flickered and stabilized as the APU came on-line. He cued the system into its diagnostic mode, ordered a full internal inspection, and settled back to wait while the ship's computer poked and prodded every on-board circuit, system, and connection.

  He closed his eyes to rest while the Arrow clicked and hummed to itself. He'd been short on sleep, and was finding himself falling back into the pilots' habit of catnapping whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  The flight deck's alarm klaxon sounded, the tones pitched to cut through massed fighter engines and the clamor of the recovery deck. He sat bolt-upright, his heart pounding in his chest. The evacuation strobes began to flash and the deck's "Zero-atmosphere" warning lights winked amber. "Warning!" a computer voice announced, "Zero-gee operations to commence in two minutes. All non-essential personnel evacuate the recovery deck. Warning! Two minutes to zero-gee."

  Blair watched the work crews streaming for the exits. He knew that zero-air, zero-gee operations were the norm when recovering fighters, but to the best of his recollection all of the Lexingtons birds were on board. He looked down at his console. Regulations called for him to evacuate the bay during zero-air. That would require him to abort the test cycle and start over. He had no desire to do that.

  He glanced around and saw the last of the recovery deck crews passing through the access hatches. No one remained in sight. He checked his canopy, making certain it was airtight, then hunkered down to hide from the safety team. Their job would be to sweep the recovery deck and ensure no one lingered without a pressure suit.

  The personnel lift door opened. Blair expected to see crash crews in pressure suits emerge. Instead, Paulson stepped out from the personnel lift with two armed Marines at his back. Blairs mouth went dry as he realized the grunts were from the dozen that Paulson had brought on board, rather than from the Lexingtons own contingent.

  Paulson's pet Marines swept the bay. He caught a quick glimpse of one of the team members as she skirted the edge of the ordnance-stripping area. The woman wore Marine gray instead of the safety crews' bright orange. She shifted to one side, peering down into the wells that housed the missile defusers. Blair saw she wore a sidearm, a nasty looking M-42 machine pistol. Whatever the hell was going on in the landing bay didn't involve recovering fighters.

  The guard commander signalled the all clear. The grunts jogged towards the personnel hatches and rammed gauging spikes into the handwheels, blocking them. Blair blinked, surprised at the flagrant violation of standing orders. Sealing fire doors was a court-martial offense and a damned stupid thing to do.

  The automatic strobes marking the center of the approach lanes began to flash. A shuttle, one of the new jump-capable, long-range jobs, passed through the curtain and landed crisply in the center of the middle bull's-eye.

  Blair whistled silently. Landing a pigboat that smoothly required a lot of skill. The pilot was good.

  Paulson walked towards the shuttle. The ships side hatch opened and a compact man in a black flight suit leaned out. Blair felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck as he recognized the pilot who had almost killed him in the bar. He racked his brains a moment before he could match a name to the face. He focused on the remembered image of the man's name tag. Seether.

  "What the hell?" Blair whispered. His sense of alarm grew stronger as he watched Seether crook his finger at the visibly nervous Paulson. The Lexingtons captain meekly obeyed, following the black-suited pilot back into the shuttle. They emerged a few minutes later, followed by a group of a half-dozen pilots wearing black flight suits and carrying flight bags. Blair noticed that all of the pilots were about Seether's height, and nearly identical in appearance and build.

  The pilots trooped into the personnel lift. The jump shuttle pivoted on the landing circle and took off, passing through the force curtain as it launched off the recovery deck's rearward facing ramp. Paulson's Marines waited for the shuttle to clear the bay before they removed their gauging spikes from the hatches, permitting the dogging wheels to spin freely. They withdrew, surrendering the deck to the perplexed and angry-looking deck crews that began to wander in the open doors.

  Blair waited a few more minutes for the grunts to clear out, and the flight deck to return to something like normal before he popped the Arrows canopy and climbed out.

  He stepped down onto the ground, using the Arrow's retractable ladder. A single guard in powder gray stepped out from behind the Arrow next to Blair's. Blair wasn't certain which of them looked more surprised. He met her eye as his feet hit the metal decking, exchanged a quick nod, and brushed past her towards the exit.

  He cleared the flight deck, expecting at any moment to hear the guard shout or an alarm sound He took the lift to the senior officers quarters with the intention of making a beeline for Eisen's quarters. He paused, reconsidering. Eisen was a prisoner. His wings were clipped and he was being monitored. There was little he could do.

  Maniac, he thought glumly, was the only officer on board with sufficient rank to be useful and whom he knew well enough to take into his confidence. He walked to Marshall's quarters and entered without knocking. It wasn't until a second after he stepped through the door that he recalled that Maniac slept with an armed hand laser under his pillow.

  Marshall looked up from his computer terminal. Over his uniform trousers, he wore a loud Hawaiian-style shirt that looked like the precise color of a hangover.

  "To what do I owe the pleasure, Colonel?" he asked in a voice that sounded like a mix of amusement and annoyance.

  Blair saw no choice but to plunge ahead. He described his experiences on the flight deck. Marshall swore loudly when Blair told him that Seether was on board the Lexington.

  "You're absolutely certain it's the same man?' Maniac asked.

  "Yes," Blair answered. "Why?"

  Marshall smiled contentedly. "What a coincidence. Do you remember Corinne?"

  Blair thought a moment. "Cute redhead," he asked, "used to work in the comptrollers office?"

  "The same," Marshall replied with a tomcats grin. "She's in charge of the Euralius' personnel section." He leaned back in his chair. "I was chatting her up earlier and mentioned your little fracas back on Nephele. She remembered Seethers name from somewhere. She said she'd use her access to look into it."

  "And?" Blair asked impatiently.

  "She passed me some tidbits about Mr. Seether," Maniac said.

  "Such as?"

  "Nothing much," Maniac replied with shrug, "just some training records and pilot certification updates for Seether and eight others. Their check-rides were all done while they belonged to a unit titled only '212.' Corinne remembered that '212' was some kind of classified special operations team formed at the end of the war for reasons unknown. She said that the program has retained its funding, even tho
ugh the wars over. She said she'd try and find out what it was supposed to do."

  "And?" Blair asked.

  "I'm supposed to call her back." He raised one eyebrow. "You want to listen in while I find out what she's learned?"

  Blair settled into a chair and made a "go ahead" motion with his hand.

  Maniac activated his holo-tank, then keyed in the access number. The screen fuzzed and cleared to reveal a hatchet-faced woman in a security uniform and a buzz cut.

  "Umm," Maniac asked, "where is Lieutenant Commander Hartely?"

  The woman looked hard at him, as though memorizing every feature. "Major Marshall, is it?" she asked harshly, "Hartely's been relieved of duty, pending investigation. Can I help you?'

  "No," Maniac said, "I was just calling on an old friend…"

  The screen went blank. Maniac spun in his chair. "She cut me off! What's going on here?"

  "I wish I knew," Blair replied.

  "Well," Maniac said, still angry, "at the rate things are going, I'd say that pretty soon we're all going to have to figure out whether we're going to stand for this kind of nonsense."

  Blair opened his mouth to answer when the ship's alarm klaxon sounded. Lieutenant Naismith's voice boomed over the loudhailer. "All hands to general quarters! Ready group to launch tubes! This is not a drill!"

  "What the hell?' Blair demanded.

  Maniac looked at him. "Would you care to join me, Colonel?' he asked, "I've got the ready group this week and I know you need the flight hours." He grinned, his earlier troubled expression slipping away. "Besides, I know how rusty you are."

  "Thanks," Blair answered drily, "I'd be delighted."