The Price of Freedom

by William R. Forstchen

  Blair grunted, then began his inspection walk around the fighter. He pulled and tugged at the recessed ordnance, making certain the pins were tight and the safety tags had been pulled. Once he was satisfied the Lance had been correctly prepared he ascended the ladder to the cockpit and slipped inside. Pliers plugged him into his console and handed him a clipboard which he signed, certifying that the load-out teams had done their jobs.

  Pliers hunkered down beside him as Blair did his internal pre-flights. "You got the IFF codes Lieutenant Sosa uploaded?"

  "Check."

  "Flight recorder with updated telemetry?"

  "Check."

  "Got your cover story memorized?"

  "Go to hell, Pliers."

  "No bullet holes or laser burns in the flight suit?"

  "Not anymore."

  "Okay, son, you're ready."

  Pliers started to back down the ladder. He reached out and gave Blair a squeeze on the shoulder. "Good luck, Colonel."

  "Thanks, Pliers," he said. "What're the bets running?"

  "Twenty-one to one against," the grizzled crew chief replied, grinning.

  "Great," he answered. "Put me in for twenty, would you?"

  "Just come back to collect it." Pliers gave him a final smile, then backed down the ladder. Blair ran the rest of his pre-flights as Maniac's Rapier and Hellcat patrol spun up their fuel compressors and fired their engines. Drives ignited all around him, rumbling through the bay. The star field ahead whirled as the Intrepid turned away from the Border Worlds fleet' to launch fighters. Blair was grateful to Wilford for that small gesture. He might have been the hottest fighter on this side of the .wgjr, but he still had no desire to pass through a destroyers drive plume.

  "Stand by for launch," the flight officer said, his voice young and nervous. Blair winced. He'd gotten used to Velinas honeyed tones.

  "Launch!" Maniacs afterburners glowed. The brand-new, up-rated fighter nearly stood on its tail as it rocketed off the deck. The squadron roared after him in close intervals, shaking the inside of the bay with their thunder and vibration. Blair waited until Maniacs last patrol fighter cleared the flight deck before he goosed his throttle controls.

  The Lance responded, boosting down the deck and off into space with a smoothness that was almost disconcerting. The fighter damned near flew itself. He hit his cloaking device the moment he cleared the Intrepid and executed his clearing turn. He cued the worm program that began to creep through his computer core, destroying his Border Worlds' IFF codes. He set his course for the system's jump point and the first of two diversionary jumps from Telamon before he proceeded to Axius.

  He took one final look at Telamon and the glittering blue-white diamonds that marked Maniac's distant fighters. The patrol squadron moved towards its assigned positions and its grim task of enforcing the quarantine over the stricken world.

  He set his ship to autopilot, opened his Bussard intakes, and accelerated towards the first jump point.

  The Black Lance performed flawlessly in navigating the second sphere of mines surrounding Axius. The safe path had been pieced together from Sosa's analysis and data recovered from the flight recorder. He reasoned that if the path through the meandering field was big enough for a cap ship to pass, his little fighter had nothing to fear. The mines' real intent was to channel and delay an enemy while the locals arranged a welcoming committee.

  His AI chirped, indicating he'd passed the second field. He checked his knee board for his estimated safe distances. The inner mine belt had to extend far enough away from the planet for the base to orbit safely. He glanced out of the cockpit and saw no sign of the base. He cursed to himself. It would be just his luck that he'd come through the passage while the base was on the far side of the planet

  "Dragon Five-Four to Axius Control, request landing instructions." He swallowed, feeling the tension build in his gut. Sosa had sent him a chip via messenger drone that would hopefully overlay DuMont's voice print over Blairs radioed voice, making him sound like the dead pilot. He knew the ruse wouldn't fool a sophisticated VP analysis, but it should work for routine communications. He hoped that Axius didn't voiceprint every communication, or he was a dead man. V

  Time stretched while Axius control kept him on ice. Nervous sweat soaked his armpits.

  "Verr-ry good, umm, Five-Four, is it?" a mans voice said.

  Blair closed his eyes. "Yes, Dragon Five-Four out of Speradon. Lucas DuMont."

  "Where have you been… DuMont?"

  Blair could hear the skepticism in his voice.

  "We got hit, bad," Blair said, running out the cover story they'd worked out. DuMont had been killed on the Princetons flight deck, in the opening moments of the Marine assault. Later inspection of his flight recorder determined his patrol route and Blair's alibi.

  He just hoped the base didn't have the Speradon flight roster, or he was screwed. "I was on a leg patrol and didn't get back until it was too late. I shadowed the renegade carrier to Orestes," he said.

  Time lagged again. "Five-Four, stand by for authentication." Blair was ready. He slid the recorder out of his pocket. "Authenticate."

  Blair hit the button on tharecorder. "DuMont, Lucas DuMont. I count one… two… three…" He waited nervously while they puzzled through what to do.

  "Thank you, DuMont, assume course one-two-three standard approach for inbound. You are first in the chute. Welcome home."

  "Thanks," Blair replied.

  He slid his fighter onto the proper course, then goosed his throttles. The fighter smoothly entered orbit and closed on the black, weapon-encrusted fortress hovering above the planets horizon. The orbital base looked evil to him, a repository of malice capable of spawning Telamons misery all by itself.

  He heard a soft hiss in his comm-panel. A computer voice, its tones distantly female, scratched in his ears. He wondered why they would deliberately select such an overtly mechanical response when a natural voice was just as easy to program in.

  "Key identification for landing instructions," it said. "Supply identification for clearance."

  Blair hit his IFF sequencer and prayed Sosa knew her job.

  The machine chewed on the IFF signal. "Landing clearance granted. Conduct single orbit letdown to main bay. Align with strobes and stand by for tractor beam insertion."

  Blair sighed with relief, then began to loop around the base to the flashing strobes that marked the landing bay. A second cigar-shaped body appeared on the horizon. It, like the base, had been hidden from his view by the planets bulk. He thought at first it might be a tanker, but the size was completely out of scale to the surroundings. He swiveled his head to follow its passage. "The Vesuvius?" he whispered, shocked. "What's that doing here?" He thought that ship would be under construction for some time to come.

  His stomach roiled with worry. The huge ship's presence at Axius suggested the conspiracy within the Confederation was much more powerful than they had suspected. Eisen believed the number of conspirators to be relatively small and that they were key people who pulled strings and manipulated events like a band of modern-day real-life Illuminati. If the conspirators had the power to crew the ship and send it to Axius, then the cabal might be far larger and more powerful than anyone had dreamed.

  He controlled his racing thoughts to close on the hulking base and enter the landing cycle. The tractor beams caught him in the first try, pulling him across the bay's threshold and through the outer force curtain. The net of electromagnetic "grab" plates caught him and pulled him gently through the inner force curtain, gently depositing him on the pressurized, positive gravity fighter bay.

  The bay hummed with activity. Grouna crews scurried back and forth, servicing a line of shuttles and Marine transports distinguished by a logo of an exploding volcano superimposed on a large "V." Neat pyramids of duffels stood beside the first row of shuttles. Black Hellcats lined the walls and stood three deep in a red-painted arming area. Further away, under guard, stood a small cluster of Black Lances.
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br />   A harried-looking ground crewman in black coveralls stepped in front of Blairs fighter. He raised his light batons directly over his head, guiding the fighter towards the corner of the cavernous bay that held the Lances. He pulled into the indicated space and shut down his engines.

  The Lances parked on either side were plugged into standard issue crash carts. The flickering monitors indicated the status of their routine post-mission data dump. Blair cued his AI, keyed it to "purge," and crossed his fingers. The "worm" program, another gift from Vehna, would root out and destroy the DuMont voice pattern program and any other stray bits of Border Worlds programming or data that might have accidentally been left behind by earlier erasures. The worm would then destroy itself, hopefully leaving the Black Lance clean of incriminating data.

  A ground crewman slammed a ladder against the Lance's side and climbed up beside the cockpit. Blair unsealed the cockpit. The crewman, his breath smelling of garlic, leaned in to help him remove his helmet and straps.

  After a moments hesitation, he gave him the helmet. The team planning his raid had reluctantly discarded the idea of wearing the helmet inside the ship. He knew his face had been famous, but he was older now, and his looks seemed similar enough to many of the others on board

  that he might pass for one of them, at least for a time. Wearing the helmet would cover his face, but might attract more attention than he might otherwise. Instead, they bandaged half his head.

  "Do you need to see the docs? You'd better hurry," the crewman said conversationally.

  "Hows that?" Blair asked.

  The crewman gave him an odd look. "The old man himself's come in to check things out. He's supposed to give a briefing for you Dragons."

  Blair scrambled to cover himself. "That's today?" The crewman furrowed his brow. "I just came in from following the ships that hit Speradon," Blair said, launching into his cover story. "I was out of the net long enough to lose track of time."

  The crewman nodded. "That's rough." He offered his arm to Blair, who used it to lever himself up and out of the cockpit. "I need a fast turnaround," Blair said, "I'm supposed to re-launch as soon as this is over."

  "No problem," the tech replied.

  Blair scrambled down the ladder, leaving the tech to close out the ship's flight log and higher order systems. A cluster of pilots, all in black, swept past him. "What are you waiting on?" one called out. "You're gonna be late for the show."

  Blair fell in behind them, mumbling his thanks. The group walked past a caged area festooned with bio-hazard symbols. Blair saw, behind the heavy wire, a cluster of Black Lances, and beside those, a pallet of canisters identical to those Clivers had reported seeing on Telamon.

  He struggled to maintain control of his facial features. Here was the proof they needed, the positive link between Seether, Paulson, the black ships, and the plague on Telamon. Now all you have to is live long enough to tell someone, he thought grimly.

  The pilots, oblivious to his turmoil, laughed and joked amongst themselves. They walked past the cage. He heard one pilot start a joke, "How many Telamonders does it take to…" Fortunately, the rest was drowned out by the pilots' cross-talk.

  The group walked through an access way. Blair hoped the base followed the standard practice of locating the^ briefing rooms near the flight deck. Otherwise, he stood a better-than-even chance of getting lost trying to find his way back to the bay.

  They made a right turn, then a left. Blair worried until they passed through an open door and into an auditorium-sized briefing room. He slipped away from the laughing pilots to slide among the black-clad personnel lining the back wall.

  He found a good vantage just as an electronic voice boomed, "Attention!" The seated rows stood, blocking his view. He had caught a glimpse of a white-haired, black-clad man who marched purposefully across the stage and stood behind the lectern.

  "At ease." The Dragons sat, revealing Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn, dressed in a pilot's black uniform. Although Blair wasn't aware of it until he saw Tolwyn, a tiny piece of him wasn't surprised to see the admiral. The conspiracy needed someone in the highest echelons of the military. He was, he finally admitted to himself, more saddened than surprised.

  He shook his head fractionally. Why, Admiral? he wanted to shout. After all that you did for preserving the Confederation, why this? A guard, walking along the aisle to Blair's right, stopped and stared. Blair glanced over, realizing that no matter what shock and anger he was feeling, it mustn't show. Their eyes met a moment. Blair broke the exchange, shifting his attention back to the podium, and adjusting his bandage casually.

  Tolwyn rocked on his heels, smiling down on the crowd. "You, the select few," he said, beaming, "are on the brink of successfully completing the first phase of The Plan. Our goal, the salvation of humanity—from itself, and from outside enemies—comes tangibly closer as a consequence of your efforts and your sacrifice." Tolwyn stepped closer.

  Apparently his remarks would be more of a pep talk than a military briefing: He saw Tolwyn as he never had, a true believer, preaching to the faithful. That image, so unlike the cool and distant Tolwyn he knew, disturbed him. He cursed silently, furious with himself that he hadn't thought to record the briefing. To have Tolwyn's words recorded would be the incontrovertible proof they needed to expose the conspiracy.

  Tolwyn clasped his hands behind his back and stepped away from the lectern. "Twenty years ago," he said conversationally, "we ran an exhaustive computer analysis of the Kilrathi War. We used the best data we had to cover every possibility, no matter how remote. We programmed hundreds of variables and thousands of scenarios. Hundreds of millions of credits were spent to simply build the hardware we'd need to do the study."

  He faced the crowd, his hands open, as though trying to embrace it. "The machine's results confirmed what we had secretly come to believe: that the war, as we fought it, wasn't winnable without a miracle. The Kilrathi, with their superior genetic structure and focused society, would bring to bear greater and greater resources and withstand the tribulations of protracted war better than our spoiled race. The fittest species would survive, and it wouldn't be us."

  He assumed a professorial air as he turned and paced the stage. "The Black Projects division, the search for a miracle that would save us, was begun. Hand in glove with the short term goal of surviving the war came the realization that we needed to restructure society and even the race itself, if we were to have long-term viability. And so was born The Plan.

  "It so shocked the higher-ups that they buried it—buried you. We were able to divert a small amount of money here. Those funds kept the research going, and provided the genetic templates for the future.

  "We achieved our short-term goal." He tossed his head and raised his voice. "We won the war by a fluke! A lucky rabbit punch against a superior opponent delivered by an exceptional man."

  His voice dropped again. 'That short-term success did nothing to resolve the long-term issue. Fortune is notoriously fickle, and it is dangerous to expect every crisis to be resolved through benevolent interdiction, or luck."

  Polite laughter rippled through the room.

  "Humanity," he continued, "can't depend on miracles. Our long-term need remains imperative. We need a plan for survival, one that programs our development for a thousand years and a thousand years beyond that." He frowned. "As our current economic situation demonstrates, our race has proven incapable of planning from year to _year, much less for the generations and centuries ahead. We must begin planning for the next war, for the next conflict that tests our race, even though we may not see it for a millennium."

  He pointed his finger at them. 'The Kilrathi will be back, eventually. While we wallow in misery at a little economic upheaval, they are testing their genetics in fratricidal wars. They fight, warrior against warrior, for the glory of their houses and themselves. They grow stronger, year by year, as the best prevail. In a generation or two, they will be back—rearmed, reorganized, and even stronger."

>   Blair felt the movement in the crowd. The pilots on either side of him were grinning and nodding, relishing the idea of renewed conflict.

  Tolwyn gave them a moment to savor the possibility. 'The Kilrathi aren't the only threat, however. Records we've decoded show that beyond them, closer to the galactic core, are races the Cats believe to be even more fearsome, ruthless, and technologically advanced than they are." He grinned ferally. "If the Kilrathi are afraid of them, then they must be truly awesome."

  More laughter. Tolwyn stood still, waiting until he had their full attention again. "The Kilrathi were desperately preparing themselves for war with their core-ward enemies.

  We were a sideshow, never rating their full strength." He paused, letting the moment build. "We'll be doomed if we, in our current sad condition, ever face those races."

  He stopped and turned towards the audience. "There is only one way for us to be ready for the day they come. We must create a united, focused species joined in lockstep behind you, our vanguard. We have to be united towards the speeding of our evolution and producing a higher order of intellect and physique capable of waging and winning wars against the galaxy's best. If we don't, we'll be as extinct as the Neanderthal.

  "Survival is our goal. We must accomplish it—without dissipating ourselves in divisive strife or internal conflict."

  He walked to the front of the stage. "The answer, The Plan, shows us the way. Bio-convergence, the idea that we might program physiological changes in the species, allows us to begin the process of sifting and discarding the chaff of humanity while keeping you, the seeds of our future. You are the embodiment of The Plan, and Black Projects' finest miracle."

  He smiled at the crowd. "You, my friends, the ground crews, and the infantry battalion, are the Second Generation. You are the first to gestate, and the first to come of age. Each of you is faster, better, and stronger than the best 'common' man has to offer. Your children born in The Plan's third generation, and augmented by bio-convergence, will outstrip your formidable talents. And so forth. In fifteen generations, your descendents will be like gods to us—and we, the foresighted, will be their ancestors."