The Price of Freedom

by William R. Forstchen

  The Border Worlds were the perfect bogeymen. The Colonials were notoriously touchy and half paranoid about the Confederation anyway. Their navy was strong enough to be a threat, but lacked the force projection necessary to prosecute a war on the Confederation's scale. It wouldn't take much provocation to nudge the prickly Border

  Worlders into open warfare. Then the Confederation would have its war and could still claim to be the injured party.

  The whole scenario felt totally, deeply wrong, yet he wasn't certain how to refute Paulson's arguments. Paulson, Blair decided, might not know how to shoot straight, but he had definitely seen lots of political action. Blair mulled through who would benefit from a simmering little war. His quick list of winners was as short as it was significant.

  The Admiralty Court

  was once a joke, but now, with its ever broadening mandate and growing power—it could stay in business forever if the emergency decrees were never lifted.

  Chris supposed elements within the civilian government benefited as well. The emergency decrees had suspended civil liberties, suppressed political opposition, delayed elections, and restricted public oversight—all deemed necessary to keep the Confederation in the war after the Kilrathi pasted Earth. Some senators doubtless enjoyed their freedom from public scrutiny and Earth's rambunctious press establishment. They might not be overly enthusiastic about unmuzzling an often raucous press.

  Many of those same legislators sat on the appropriations committees that allocated funds to the Fleet. Peace meant fewer credits for ships and troops and less largesse to distribute to member planets.

  It was no secret that the sharp reductions in defense spending had created havoc in an economy that had become geared for war. He'd seen that for himself hundreds of times, the latest in Nepheles bar. Cancelled orders for military hardware closed factories and caused suppliers to slash work forces. The sharp spike in unemployment, coupled with the influx of hundreds of thousands of released troops, had spiralled a dozen planets, including Earth, into depression. Even Blair could see that some politicians would go for a quick fix by reinflating the economy through defense purchases.

  He doubted that a conspiracy would involve all of the circles that would benefit from war, but a few key officers backed by the right powers and deep enough coffers might be enough to start the process. Then, like a rolling stone that triggers an avalanche, events could be expected to cascade out of control. They would have their war, their full employment, their fleets of shiny new ships, even their fresh cadres of newly minted combat veterans.

  At what cost? he asked himself. The images of the dozens of friends killed and maimed in battle against the Kilrathi flashed through his mind. They were the bill paid for a similar focus against the Cats. The war against the Border Worlds would kill more. The image of Seether and the captured pilot loomed in his mind. The sight of the kid's twitching corpse would be repeated thousands of times if the war progressed.

  "So," Paulson said, after leaving Blair to think, "has our little chat helped clear things up?'

  Blair nodded, "Yes, sir," he replied with complete honesty.

  "Well," Paulson said, rising to his feet, "I knew we could count on you." He looked at the wall clock Eisen had left behind. "We begin the next phase of our operations tomorrow, Colonel, so why don't you go get some shut-eye."

  Blair stood and took Paulsons proffered hand. Blair noticed that while the captain's expression was friendly and open, his eyes were cool and calculating. Keep it cool, Chris, he said to himself.

  Paulson nodded fractionally, apparently satisfied he'd found what he was looking for. "I'm sure things'll seem clearer to you in the morning. We're supposed to step up operations against the carrier that launched those fighters. It must be nearby. Fleet HQ has signalled us that we are to eliminate the rebels' presence from the Masa system and to secure the jump point. I'm counting on you to lead your wing against the rebels." He clapped Blair's shoulder.

  Blair, his mind and spirit in turmoil, said nothing.

  Chapter Six

  Blair lay in bed that evening, dreaming. He and Jeannette were dressed for a party. She stood a few meters away, beautiful in her teal dress. The body-hugging sheath had been slashed where Prince Thrakhath had disemboweled her, but her skin underneath was intact.

  They were celebrating. She laughed at his joke, the silver wires she'd woven into her hair glinting as she tipped her head back. He'd always loved her laugh. It was uninhibited, a mature woman's enjoyment of life, not a giggle.

  She raised her glass. Their eyes met, hers full of love and laughter. "To old friends, comrades," his Angel said, smiling, "and friends future and unmet."

  He raised his glass to return the Fleet toast. "And to comrades gone," he replied, smiling at her. In that moment, all was well with the universe.

  She looked at him, puzzled. "Chris, mon ami, why are you pointing that gun at me?"

  He looked down at his hand. His glass had become a laser. "You were born in the Colonies," he said, his voice sounding muffled in his ears, "that makes you the enemy. I'm sorry, my love." He raised his pistol, sighted carefully, and…

  … awoke, trembling and soaked with sweat. He untangled the twisted and rumpled bedclothes, wrinkling his nose at the acrid smell of perspiration. He looked at his clock. Two-thirty. He'd been asleep a little more than an hour. He took a deep breath, trying to slow his beating heart. The dream had been that vivid, in full color and with such detail he thought he could smell her perfume. He turned the lights up. These quarters, so like hers, only added to the eerie feeling. He killed the lights and lay back down.

  He tried to compose himself to go back to sleep. His mind, whirling from the dream and Paulsons lecture, refused to cooperate. His thoughts were drawn like iron to a magnet by Paulson's claim that Earth needed a focus, an enemy, to keep itself going.

  He thought back across his two decades of service, remembering all of the tests and tribulations of holding a commission in the Fleet during the war. He remembered botched missions, incompetent officers (mercifully few— extended battle imposes its own brand of Darwinism), and stupid lies told to salvage pointless mistakes and paper over the needlessly dead.

  - Blair knew that in spite of everything he'd seen, his loyalty had never been tested. He thought back to the dark times, after he'd been relegated to flying Ferrets on leg patrols. In those days he'd been suspected of being either a turncoat, a coward or, worse yet, incompetent. Yet he'd remained loyal, and eventually had been given the opportunity to rehabilitate himself on the Concordia.

  In his experience, the Fleet took care of its own, both good and bad. The service had done what it could to salvage the worst of the mistakes and warriors were too precious to squander to salvage egos. The Fleet tried to do right by its people, even if it stumbled and was occasionally heavy-handed.

  The warrior caste within the military did its part by accepting into its ranks anyone who shared its goal of taking the war to the Kilrathi. The only credential needed for acceptance into the club was the desire to make the furballs pay in blood for their desire to conquer humanity. The tests of war did the rest to mold them into a unified force.

  The peacetime Fleet lacked that warm camaraderie. Majors competed for precious few colonel postings. Officers of every grade were forced to look at their peers as competition. Failure meant discharge, leaving men and women who had commanded ships and squadrons on the beach and without prospects.

  He'd sensed the first wisps of change at the end of the war. He recalled that what many officers considered reality, that the Kilrathi were winning, was labelled as defeatism by Fleet Headquarters. Captains were admonished to keep an eye on their wardrooms and report "defeatist" officers. Few skippers had bothered, but the regulation had remained in force to remind the pilots they were being watched and to watch their mouths.

  The pilots, for their part, had strapped into cockpits day after day, fighting numbers that never seemed to shrink even as their own forces dwi
ndled and the prospect of winning faded. He, like most pilots, had been so focused on taking as many of the furry bastards with them as possible that they'd long since abandoned wondering what fruits victory might bring. Looking back, he realized they'd had a taste of that surprisingly bitter harvest during the disruptions that followed the Kilrathi's false truce.

  Paulson's view of the war, that it had been a unifying force that brought humanity together, overlooked history and reality. Paulson, Blair thought scornfully, had never been closer to a real battle than a newsfax, the assault on Earth not withstanding. How could he know that in the end, the war had become a series of desperate hopes, each more forlorn than the last? Operation Behemoth and the Temblor Bomb had both depended far too much on luck. He couldn't help recalling that, in spite of his own participation in both operations, he'd been skeptical of success.

  No, Paulson had it wrong. And he was part of the group that wanted to take Blair and all humanity back into that hell.

  Paulson's war wouldn't be about defending humanity. Instead, it would cement into permanence structures created in the desperate times after the Earth was bombed and the civilian government fell into chaos. Martial law had been declared only to keep things running until freedom and democracy could be restored.

  He had always thought the roots of their democracy ran deep and would weather any storm short of Kilrathi victory. Now he wasn't so sure. What was freedom? What did he know about democracy? He had been a child when the war began, and fought almost all of his adult life in a most undemocratic Fleet.

  Younger officers had even less experience with representative government than he did. Many of them had grown up after the war began and civilian freedoms had already been suspended. Many considered the Senate self-righteous and out of touch, and blamed the politicos for accepting the Kilrathi olive branch and the horrible consequences that stemmed from that foolishness. How many Fleet officers, if offered a choice between the chance to pursue their careers in Paulson's ordered society, and an amorphous, chaotic democracy, might choose order?

  Blair winced at the possibility that elements within the Fleet might be undermining the freedoms they had fought so hard to secure, and in doing so, were turning their backs on the dead who had died for those freedoms. It hurt him to think that the Fleet, once the bulwark of the Confederation, now seemingly led the charge to disable what so many had died to protect.

  He wondered what sort of government the conspirators had in mind. The emergency decrees, martial law, the trend towards centralizing power, the suspension of civil liberties, the forming of secret cabals within the military with even more secret agendas: all had some of the trappings of the Kilrathi Imperial system. He wondered if the old adage about war was true—that in the end one becomes like one's enemy. Was that to be the price of victory, that they become like their enemies?

  That thought worried him as few others had. He rolled away, physically rejecting the idea. He didn't know what was right, but he sure as hell knew what was wrong. And Paulson's plan was dead wrong. But what to do about it?

  He considered Eisen's offer to leave the Confederation and join the rebels, then discarded it. He couldn't abandon his comrades by turning his coat any more than he could abandon the sense of duty that had sustained him in the horrible times after he'd realized he'd destroyed an entire planet with the Temblor Bomb. It had been his shield then. He couldn't abandon it now.

  He tossed and turned, trying to decide what to do. He considered and discarded the possibility of resigning his commission. He'd seen officers resign in protest before. He had thought them quitters and had no desire to be tarred with the same brush. They also became obscure martyrs, fading quickly once they had left. He had gotten a chip in the big game and had no desire to cash it in yet and go back to the farm.

  He had no real alternative than to blow the whistle on Paulson and company while performing his duties. He pursed his lips, trying to decide whom to contact first. Tolwyn seemed the best bet. The admiral had placed him on the Lexington, and while he and Blair had little affection for each other, Blair could get access to him. Tolwyn also detested rear echelon officers and would be less than thrilled that someone had put an armchair commando like Paulson in charge of one of his precious fleet carriers. Blair smiled. The admiral could be counted on to fix that travesty, at least.

  His troubles seemed more manageable once he'd found a course of action that didn't require treason. He relaxed. Fatigue washed over him like a tide.

  Sleep had just claimed him when the ship's klaxon sounded, summoning all crew members to action stations. His eyes snapped open as he heard shouts and running footsteps in the corridor. He sprang out of bed, his heart racing with excitement, and flipped on a light. The comm-station's screen came to life.

  "What's going on?" he demanded as he climbed into his flight suit and hit its closure tab.

  "A leg patrol from the cruiser Dominion blundered into a rebel squadron," the lieutenant replied. "They've called for reinforcements. The commander, Third Fleet, has ordered us to react."

  "What're Paulsons orders?' Blair snapped as he reached for his boots.

  "Magnum launch," Naismith replied. "A full deck strike." He paused. "I'm getting the ready group in the tubes now. It's shaping up as a meeting engagement. Long range telemetry suggests the rebels are vectoring in reinforcements."

  "Damn," Blair said, "log me as the officer-in-charge of the ready group."

  "Sir," Naismith protested, "Lieutenant Colonel Fan's listed on the flight roster as the OIC."

  "Negative," Blair retorted. "I'll need her to muster the main deck strike." Naismith looked as though he might protest again. "Do it!" He closed the contact, cutting Naismith off before he could retort. Blair pulled on his boots and sprinted for the hanger bay.

  He arrived at a dead run and scanned the bay for his Hellcat. He saw a welter of scrambling ground crews, the controlled chaos of sequencing the launch cradles into the chute, and the last minute adjustments as pilots called for orders, but no Hellcat with wing commander's markings. He grew worried. His fighter was not in its usual maintenance slot and a quick check at the wall-sized ready board showed it was not already spotted.

  He turned, ready to grab the first tech he saw, when Gunderson grabbed his sleeve. "This way, sir."

  "What the hell's going on?" Blair demanded. He heard the distant roar and felt the vibration as the first fighters catapulted down the launch bays and into space. Operating an entire wing from a single bay would slow reaction time, requiring the fighters to orbit while the squadrons formed up. That would necessitate deploying in waves, a tactic Blair thought was fine—as long as he was in the first wave.

  The master chief pointed towards one dark corner of the bay. Blair saw his Hellcat, its guts torn out and crash carts arranged around it. The ship looked to be rigged to a half-dozen diagnostic machines. He whirled Gunderson, his temper dangerously close to exploding. "What the hell?"

  "Paulson's ordered a Class Three diagnostic," Gunderson said. "Apparently, you had a spontaneous power flux that cooked your flight recorder. That's the second unexplained surge in two days, so Paulson ordered it torn apart." He pointed towards the lift. "I've got you spotted in a Thunderbolt. Its in the cycle for twelfth spot. You'd better hurry."

  Blair, confused by the quick turn of events, nodded. They arrived on the launch deck just as the last of the ready groups eight Hellcats launched. A Thunderbolt stood waiting to one side of the ready lift, its cockpit open, and its launch cradle oriented on the magnetic tracks that led to the launch tube. He sprinted for the heavy fighter, scrambled up the retractable ladder and jumped in. Gunderson helped snap him into his harness and plug him into his com in -panel.

  Blair glanced around at the cockpit and saw that everything had already been pre-flighted for him. He looked up at the master chief, uncertain how to express his thanks. Gunderson cut him off. "It's okay, sir, just be careful out there." He looked quickly around. "Watch your back, sir. There wasn'
t time to scrounge up a tail gunner, so'll you'll have make due with automatics."

  He reached into the cockpit and keyed the canopy lever before Blair could speak. The thick canopy closed around the cockpit just as the hrr-thrrruuum of the first Thunderbolt launching drowned out all sound in the bay. Blairs fighter bumped forward into the launch tube as two more Thunderbolts rocketed into space.

  Then it was his turn. The push-slam of the engines and catapult pressed him into his seat as the heavy fighter hurtled forward and out the tube. The launch proved rough and his clearing turn slow, the results of having been away from the big ships for two years.

  He tested the Thunderbolt's control yoke, easing it back and forth as he got the feel of the craft. He found himself over-controlling as he tried to handle it the way he would his Arrow or Hellcat. He had to remember that the process went "stick over, pause, then sluggish turn."

  He worked a pair of slalom turns, slewing, the Thunderbolt up and out, then pulling it back onto its base course. He lost his heading on his first couple of attempts, then managed to keep it on course, through tighter and tighter sequences as old reflexes and conditioning quickly reasserted themselves.

  "Naismith to Ready Group Three," the comm officer said, his voice sounding tinny in Blairs headset. "Engage enemy fighters on course three-three-zero, Z minus zero. Colonel Blair, callsign Tiger, will assume control. Strike group Gamma, under Colonel Fan, will begin launch cycle as loadout is complete."

  Blair switched to the tactical frequency and passed his flight instructions to the sixteen ships that formed the ready group. He placed the four Thunderbolts in the middle of the diamond formation, with one section of Hellcats above and below. The four Arrows darted ahead, scouting to give him a more accurate picture of the battle that was shaping up on his scanners.

  It appeared at first that the Dominions half-squadron was heavily engaged against a slightly larger force of Border Worlds craft. The cruisers fighters seemed to be holding their own, however, in spite of the enemy's edge in numbers. They remained locked in a swirling defensive formation while the rebel fighters swarmed around outside. There didn't seem to be whole lot of shooting going on. Blair guessed the rebels were more interested in keeping the Confed pilots tied up than they were in pressing the attack.