Freedom's Fire

by Bobby Adair

  “Enough,” she answers.

  “Brice? Mostyn?” I check again.

  “Here,” Brice answers.

  “Where are you?”

  “In the airlock,” he answers. “Coming out. No signal inside the building.”

  “Careful,” I tell him. “Trogs are massing a few hundred meters back toward the center of the base. They’re shooting and they’ll be coming this way.”

  “Are you up for this?” Brice asks. “You okay?”

  “Bruised is all,” I reply. “I’m good to go.”

  “The airlock is finished cycling,” says Brice. “Let me know when it’s safe to exit.”

  “Now’s good!” shouts Silva.

  I peek around the corner and see Brice and Mostyn run out of the airlock door. They take up prone positions among the empty helmets.

  “This isn’t a defensible spot,” says Silva.

  “That’s okay,” I tell her. “I know it. Hopefully, the Trogs know it, too. I have a plan.”

  I explain quickly.

  Moments later, Brice and Mostyn start firing a slow, steady stream of rounds in the direction of the mob.

  I’m running away and Silva is beside me.

  We’re in danger of being shot in the back, but the Trogs need to see us flee.

  Chapter 61

  “Don’t be long,” says Brice.

  “Don’t shoot us,” I say, grinning as I leap and push power to my grav plates, flying off the asteroid’s surface with Silva right behind me.

  “It’s time to see what this suit can do,” I tell her as I accelerate and turn to follow the curve of the Potato.

  Silva is straining to keep up, so I slow down. We don’t have a lot of time to pull this together but we need to arrive at the same time. Probably.

  In seconds, the mining colony is out of sight. The asteroid’s surface is a few hundred feet below us and it feels like we’re rocketing into the void with nothing but stars shining a hundred trillion miles away. We’re aiming to power through a tight orbit around the narrow trunk of the asteroid.

  “Holy Jesus!” shouts Silva.

  “Thank God for catheters,” I tell her as we pick up speed. “No wet pants!”

  We’re beneath the Potato, I think, on the opposite side of the asteroid from the mining colony.

  “ETA?” asks Brice, barely audible over the crackling connection.

  “Almost there.” I call back.

  Silva and I are burning hard. We come over the horizon to see the mining colony’s building from the opposite side relative to where we left Brice, Mostyn, and Hastings.

  “They’ve split and are attacking us from two directions,” Brice tells me.

  “We’ll be behind them in ten seconds.”

  “I don’t see you!” shouts Mostyn.

  “I see your rounds,” I call back. “We’ll stay out of your line of fire.”

  Silva veers to the right and I swerve left. She’s going to take one of the groups from the rear flank and I’m taking the other.

  I keep my altitude, about a hundred meters up.

  Silva heads for the ground. She doesn’t feel comfortable enough yet with her suit’s gravity to maintain stability while shooting her weapons.

  I can fire from above with no problems, until the Trogs spot me. Then I’ll be in trouble. There’s nothing to hide behind up in the sky.

  Below and ahead of me, Brice, Mostyn, and Hastings are still prone among the helmets. Hastings is covering the left flank, but Trogs are starting to gather in numbers among the pieces of equipment over there. She’s picking them off, one by one. Soon they’ll have enough numbers to feel confident, and they’ll charge.

  Silva is nearly in position.

  I’m where I want to be. I say, “I’m going hot.” I open fire on the Trogs from behind, where they’re weak. I burn quickly through the partial magazine in my gun, while keeping myself stable enough for my slugs to land mostly among the Trogs below.

  At least two dozen of them go down.

  Mostyn is firing at the same group. She’s switched to auto and is spraying them in quick bursts.

  As I’m trading my magazines, the Trogs have stopped creeping forward and they’re looking behind them and to the sides. I make the guess that these basic infantry types aren’t as bright as the ones who’d manned the anti-ship emplacements. They’re all thinking two-dimensionally and none—at least not one with a rifle—has thought to look up to see me.

  That’ll change as soon as I start firing again. A spray of glowing rounds leaving the barrel of my weapon will show them all exactly where I am.

  I fire again.

  They fall. Some of them come apart. Most of them don’t look dead because of the air escaping through the holes in their suits, jerking their bodies back and forth.

  The ones that turn to face me get it in the back from Mostyn—the ones that keep moving toward her get it in the back from me.

  When I stop firing, some of the Trogs are running away. Most are dead or writhing.

  “I’ve got this now,” Mostyn tells me.

  No doubt. Only mop-up work left on this flank.

  “We could use some help,” says Silva, coming back onto the comm.

  I’m already zooming in her direction, and see the other half of the mob was mauled just as badly as the first half and Silva is gone.

  “I’ve got these,” Brice tells me, as I fly past.

  A flash of red over by the equipment yard catches my eye and I see Silva standing atop a bulldozer, shooting into the gap beside it.

  Before I arrive, she leaps and lands on a stack of conveyor sections.

  She fires into another gap as railgun rounds sail past her from another direction. She doesn’t see them.

  “Behind you!” I yell.

  She leaps again.

  I come down on another stack of conveyor sections and point my rifle into the gap where the shots aimed at Silva just emerged. A handful of Trogs are down there, still looking in the other direction. Four are carrying disruptors. One has a rifle and I cut him in half with a burst through the back. His innards explode into the vacuum and splatter his comrades, who barely have time to react before I shred them, too.

  It takes us several minutes to clean them up, at least all we can find, leaping from one piece of equipment to the next, and shooting down on the Trogs from above.

  “Any more?” Brice asks.

  Everyone responds to the negative.

  “Everybody all right?” I ask.

  “Good,” answers Silva, though I can see her twenty meters from me, looking around for targets.

  “I’m good,” replies Mostyn.

  “Bueno.” says Brice.

  “Me, too,” adds Penny.

  Penny?

  “What?” I look up, finally having a second to take my mind off the battle on the asteroid’s surface.

  The Trog cruiser is drifting past the end of the Potato and smashing into one of the huge asteroids as atmosphere spews through the breaks in the hull and random blue grav fields slide across its surface.

  Looking higher, I see our ship coming down toward us. I tell Penny, “We could use some reinforcements.”

  Chapter 62

  We’re standing in front of the warehouse looking at Hastings’s body. A huge gash is cut down into her chest, starting where the shoulder meets the neck. Her heart stopped beating minutes ago, but the vacuum of space is still sucking blood out of the wound.

  Mostyn sounds like she’s choking back tears as she walks around in the garden of loose helmets, inexplicably collecting an armload of them.

  “What gives?” asks Silva.

  Brice provides the answer. “All these helmets out here on the ground, they belong to people inside.”

  “Alive?” Silva is shocked. “Inside?”

  Brice answers with a nod.

  “Wait,” I tell Mostyn.

  She immediately stops and turns to me for more instructions.

  “More people?” I as
k.

  “SDF,” answers Brice. “A hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty.”

  “Rebels, like us?” I push. “Or loyal SDF soldiers?”

  He shrugs. “This is a Free Army base, right?”

  I nod. I don’t know why SDF troops would be here unless they were mutineers, like us.

  Glowing blue and coming in fast, our ship arcs down toward a flat patch of rock behind the warehouse. I flinch back a step and everyone turns to see what I’m looking at. Dust and small rocks fly away, pushed by the ship’s blue grav waves as it settles onto the asteroid’s surface.

  “Penny’s getting a real feel for driving that ship,” admires Brice.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “She’s a real hotrod.” Back to business. “Mostyn, come over here.”

  She does.

  I raise my wrist and show her my d-pad. “Does yours function?”

  “Yes,” she answers, confused. She doesn’t know what I’m driving at.

  Brice looks at his.

  I ask, “Can you pull up the regiment hierarchy?”

  She shows me her load of helmets, as if to point out how silly my request is.

  Brice taps his d-pad and brings up the screen I’m looking for.

  I reach over and start pointing at the names of pilots, nav officers, and commissars. “These are the ones I know I can trust. If any of them are in there, give them helmets and bring them out first. The rest stay, for now.”

  Brice takes a moment to consider my request. “I understand.”

  To Mostyn he says, “Wait for me out here.” Looking at me, he continues, “If none of them are in there, it’ll be easier if I don’t bring any helmets in with me.” He heads toward the airlock.

  Lenox and her squad, disembarked from the ship, come bounding around the corner of the warehouse.

  “Sir?” she asks as she comes up.

  “At the moment, we’re clear up top,” I tell her. I look around. “Or we’re between attacks. Deploy your troops in a defensive perimeter around this warehouse. Make sure the machine guns have good fields of fire. This building is full of human prisoners.”

  Lenox looks at the helmets scattered everywhere. “Pretty ingenious way to keep them in, take their helmets and leave them inside. You don’t even need to lock the door.”

  “Yeah.” I point at Silva and Mostyn. “You two mind doing recon?”

  Mostyn drops his load and nods. In the light-g, the helmets don’t fall. Instead, they start to sink very slowly.

  “Will do,” says Silva. “Where do you want us?”

  I look at the black sky. “A few hundred feet up, where you can see the whole colony. If Trogs pop out anywhere, don’t shoot and give your position away, call in the troops.”

  “I’ll go up, too,” says Lenox. “It worked well back on the Trog cruiser we captured, with me controlling my squad from up there.”

  “Okay.”

  She turns to Mostyn and Silva. “I’ll watch the area around my squad. You two keep an eye on the rest.”

  Moments later, they’re all three off the ground and taking up positions overhead.

  Brice emerges from the airlock. By the expression on his face, I can see he’s pleased. “Jill Rafferty is in there.”

  “No shit!” That is good news.

  “And some pushy MSS Colonel named Blair. She wants out first.”

  Chapter 63

  Brice is back inside the warehouse, having gone in with two spare helmets—one for Jill, one for Blair.

  I’m waiting for him to come back out, while formulating plans about what to do next as I make guesses about our enemies. I know there have to be more Trogs on this asteroid.

  “Grays,” says Phil, over the comm, tossing the comment into the silence on our link like it’s barely worth a remark.

  “Here?” I ask, surprised.

  “Yeah,” he tells me. “I can sense them.”

  “Do you know where?” I’m already spinning through guesses as to what the presence of Grays implies.

  “Hard to tell, exactly,” he answers. “Somewhere down inside the asteroid. If I got out of the ship and walked around—”

  “No,” I tell him. “You need to stay on the ship. Penny, you should probably get the ship off the ground, but stay close. If Grays are present, there are probably a lot more Trogs down in the subterranean levels.”

  “Will do,” Penny tells me, and I see the ship lift off immediately.

  “How many Grays are below?” I ask.

  “A pod,” answers Phil. “I don’t think more than that.”

  Six Grays would be enough to target those defensive railguns we had to take out. That would explain the accuracy of the fire coming from those weapons.

  The warehouse airlock opens and Brice comes out with Blair and Jill in tow.

  “Kane?” says Blair, like she can’t read the name off my chest.

  I give her a nod and then turn to Jill. “Your crew? Your platoon?”

  “Most of them are inside,” she tells me.

  “Your pilot?” I ask.

  “He made it,” she answers, uncertain why I’m asking.

  Blair starts to say something, and I silence her with a raised hand. To Jill, I say, “Grab the helmets you need. Round up your crew and troops and free them as quickly as you can.” I point to the mine operation’s big tug. “See if your pilot can fly that thing. I need it in the air as soon as possible.”

  “What do you need him to do?” she questions.

  I point toward the giant Trog cruiser shrinking in the distance as it drifts toward Jupiter. “Penny and Phil destroyed the bridge on that thing. It’s not going to fly again. However, it’s probably full of Trogs who are going to figure out soon enough their best chance of staying alive is to put on their suits and grav-drive themselves back here.”

  “We don’t need it to be raining Trogs,” Jill tells me. “You want us to ram it with the tug?” She grimaces. She knows the tug wasn’t built for that kind of work.

  “No.” Pointing toward the gas giant so prominent in the sky, I explain, “If the tug has enough fuel, push the cruiser into orbit around Jupiter.”

  “We can shove it out of the orbital plane and accelerate fast enough so it’ll never be a problem,” suggests Jill, “and we’ll be back here in an hour, instead.”

  “Not a bad idea.” I look at the cruiser, weighing the pros and cons. “I hate to waste the ship. I’m hoping we can one day salvage it, if we leave it in orbit long enough for the Trogs onboard to die.”

  Nodding, Jill says, “Okay, I’m with you. I’ll make it happen.” She turns and scoops up an armful of helmets and heads for the airlock.

  “I’ll give her a hand,” says Brice, turning to follow.

  I finally give my attention to Blair.

  “Good job,” she tells me. “Mission accomplished. You made it here. You saved us.”

  I don’t know what to say to any of that. I’m half-believing that this Free Army base was a trap all along and she’s the one who put my neck in it. But I have no way of proving that one way or another. “How many of those inside are Free Army?”

  “Most of them.”

  “How’d you get here?” I ask.

  “I brought my assault ship.”

  “I thought you were on the command ship.”

  “I was.”

  “Division command is in there?” I can’t help but glance at the airlock door. “This revolution goes that high up?”

  Blair shakes her head. “Division command is dead.”

  “Dead?” I reply.

  “All of them,” she tells me.

  “How?” I ask. “Did your ship take fire on the way up?”

  “Kill switch.” She’s proud of her answer.

  “The MSS gave you kill-switch authority over the division’s top officers?” That’s beyond belief.

  “We have people in places where they need to be,” says Blair. “I wasn’t supposed to have kill-switch access over anybody but my commissars.”

>   “When did you do it?” I ask.

  “As soon as we took off.” She doesn’t seem to have any emotion attached to the murder.

  Murder? Why does that unvoiced word seem to be the right one?

  I don’t know whether to admire her coldness or be afraid of it. Either way, I know now she’s a lot more dangerous than I initially thought. “So, who was left on your ship?”

  “Me,” she answers. “The pilot, and the grav officer.”

  “Comm?” I ask.

  “He was North Korean.”

  Dead, of course.

  “We came straight here,” she continues. “We were the first to arrive, the first to be ambushed.” She nods at the warehouse. “In there ever since.”

  “So those really are our people in there?” I ask.

  “As soon as we get them armed again,” she tells me, “they’re our army.”

  “Is this it?” I’m disappointed. “All of us?” God I hope not. A few hundred against an endless flow of Trogs, not to mention what’s left of earth’s armies who are loyal enough to the Grays to fight against us.

  Blair shakes her head. “We have other bases, too.”

  “How many?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “You better.” A threat is veiled behind my words. “I’m not playing the secrecy games anymore. This isn’t spy bullshit now. This is war. The Grays and North Koreans back home will figure out eventually what we’ve done and they’re going to come after us. I’m okay with that. I’ve been planning for this a long time, but I’ve got men and women who are fighting and dying for me, for this rebellion. I need to be able to look them in the eye and tell them it’s real, tell them there are enough of us that we have a chance to actually win.”

  “Let’s move all these troops out of the warehouse,” Blair tells me. “Put weapons in their hands and kill the rest of the Trogs on this base. We’ll have plenty of time to talk afterwards. For now, I swear to you, this rebellion is real. It’s bigger than just us on this little rock. We’re not throwing our lives away on nothing. We can win this. We can free our people.”

  Free our people?

  She’s talking my language like she’s reading my thoughts and using them to convince me. I can’t argue, can’t resist. That is my dream, to free my people.