2166 - FORCE LIBERTY

by A. D. Bloom

  The redsuit shook his head. "No. Not really. But your new alien friends bothered to rebuild the melted power couplings out of the same materials like they intended us to power it up the same way we did before."

  "Do it," Cyning said.

  The redsuit waited for Ram's nod. "Go ahead."

  Tig shouted to his team, "seal the bay and give the vent warning." The cherry on his crew threw the young Chief his helmet.

  When the atmo blew out the emergency vents for the test, the drop in pressure made a quick fog before Maintenance Bay Two was a vacuum. Tig Meester's voice spoke in their helmets over local comms. "Right. We're going to feed this thing power at its regular flow rate, but we're going to do it nice and slow. The battery cart we've got up there with the device should be able to power that thing at low power for a few minutes, anyway. So.... uh.. yeah. You should all maybe duck down behind the maintenance carts. Here we go," Meester said as he gestured through the imaginary controls and menus projected to appear in his visor. "Starting with 1% regular power flow......"

  "Getting a field reading..." Win said, "Yeah." The redsuit with the pinch diagnostic set told him, "It's a stable repulsive field already, but it's small...less than a meter around the pinch."

  "Right," Meester said. "Jumping to 2%."

  Ram had noticed that Tig Meester's redsuits had lowered the scissor lift, but hadn't removed it from where it sat five meters below the unit, three meters from the alien modded pinch undergoing testing. There wasn't time to say anything more before it happened.

  When the power jumped to 2%, the projected field didn't intersect with the deck, but it extended far enough to vaporize the shape of the field through one edge of the cart. It melted the top corner of one side off the moment it intersected the metal. The severed piece jittered and shook and smoked. You could see from the way the gasses coming off it didn't mix that the shaped field was acting like an impermeable shield around the pinch.

  "A repulsive shaped field," Cyning said. "A shield. Like an Imperium ship's shield perhaps."

  Tig said, "Sorry about the cart, Commodore. Right. Kimi, hit it with an MA-48. Use the under-barrel pulse laser."

  The redsuit shot from the hip when he fired the MA-48 at the edge of the field. It didn't penetrate, but the field in that area gave off visible light and a little microwave radiation if Ram's exosuit read the spectral burst right. Then, the whole ovoid field shimmered before it buckled and collapsed.

  "That was enough to kill it," Tig said.

  "If it's a shield, it doesn't work very well," Biko said. "That's not even strong enough to protect us from small arms fire."

  Captain Chun said, "So it's useless? The great gift of Hive Hrt'ee is useless?"

  Anton Cyning didn't look worried. "Mr. Meester," the company man said to the redsuit. "What happens when projected energy fields of a similar sort interact?"

  "Happens on a ship all the time with the artificial gravity and inertial negation systems. When two of the same kind of field intersect, they become part of the same field system." It looked to Ram as if Tig Meester's face went blank for a half second. Then, he began to nod in his helmet and chuckle. "Yeah," the young Chief said. "Penetrator."

  "What are you saying?" Chun squinted at the redsuit.

  "This thing they made out of UNS Mako's pinch...it's a working shield...just isn't powerful enough to be useful. But you can use it to get a hull through a stronger shield. Just the same way you can piggy-back little inertial negation fields. If we've got a field of the same type as theirs, and I believe we do, then contact with the Imperium ship's shield will turn this field into an extension of that one."

  "Devlin, what is your redsuit trying to tell us?" Anton Cyning only pretended he didn't know.

  "The two fields will become one," Meester said. "If one of our ships is carrying this, it can fly through the Imperium vessel's shield without damage."

  Ram said, "How big a ship? You mean a fifty-meter torpedo junk?"

  "If we could use Guerrero's or Hardway's reactors to really juice this unit up, the field would be big enough to surround the ship and stable enough to guarantee penetration when the fields merge."

  "So it's a breaching tool. That's why the Hive Hrt'ee gave it to us," Cyning pretended. The company man wasn't as subtle as he thought he was. His plan stood out like a straight road in the jungle. Maybe Anton Cyning just thought Ram wouldn't object to what he was doing. That thought bothered Ram most of all.

  "A few warheads from a junk can't do the job," Captain Chun said. "I'll put this device on my battleship, but only if the redsuit comes with it."

  "Just a loan," Ram said. "I want him back."

  "Agreed."

  Sub-tower, antenna array.

  Ram used his command codes and his matchbox computer to patch into the carrier's comms array directly. There would be no company record of the communication with Guerrero.

  It was hard to tell over the audio-only comms, but from the unwavering character of the UN captain's voice, Chun seemed to take the truth too well. Most people exhibit more rage when they find out they've been manipulated. Ram decided Captain Chun had already figured out what Cyning, the company man had done. He didn't seem angry because he'd already had a chance to cool down.

  The only thing that surprised him, Captain Chun said, was why Devlin had decided to tell the truth at all. "You and your Staas Company superiors never made a habit of it before," Chun said. "In the last war, I mean. Why now?"

  The rumors about Ram's involvement in a conspiracy surrounding the start of the last war had never gone away. The official story still stood. The world believed the aliens attacked first and it had to stay that way. Ram had made his choice, but it wounded him to imagine so many thought of him as a deceiver. Especially because it was true now. It hadn't been before the war. It was all the more ironic because if there was something of himself he thought he gave up when he turned away from the truth, he thought he sacrificed it for the very same people who would condemn him.

  He looked Chun between the eyes then. "Privateers and UN sailors and pilots died so that Humanity could survive and so that you and I could be here, now. We are their legacy, Captain Chun. I won't dishonor them by allowing the Humanity they saved to become something the galaxy would be better off without."

  "And this is why you're revealing to me Cyning's secret negotiations with the Shediri and his plan to be rid of the UN Envoy?"

  "We can't let our history be written by Staas Company."

  Chun said, "if you're right, then we can't let it be written by the current Secretary General either." The frequency was quiet for a few seconds, just hiss and pop in Ram's ear. "The rot goes deeper than I wanted to believe," Chun said. "If we participate in the coup planned by Cyning and Hive Hrt'ee, no government in a thousand light years would ever trust us again. Hive Hrt'ee might be the last ally Humanity ever won."

  "Agreed," Ram said. "That's why we've got to reveal Hrt'ee's plot to the Hive Regent Kesik on Shedir 4. For better or for worse, she has to know we won't support the coup, no matter what Shedir chooses to do or whom it chooses to ally with."

  Chun sighed into his mic. "If Regent Kesik knows of Hive Hrt'ee's coming attack, she can stop it."

  "That's right."

  "I agree with you, of course, that Kesik is the legitimate ruler and the one with whom we must ally, but if the regent doesn't give back Taipan voluntarily, then there's nothing we can do now. I won't attack the legitimate government of Shediri to get your ship back. The UN envoy believed our mission was to show the Shediri we're civilized. I sincerely hope you're prepared to accept what comes should our mission require sacrificing Taipan to prove it."

  Ready Room

  Four hours later, Devlin was running simulations trying to figure out UNS Guerrero's best path to intercept the Imperium ship without being detected first. That's when Tig Meester found him in his ready room and began to report in person like Ram had ordered him to. The redsuit ate the burger-filled buns the cook had s
aved his Commodore from yesterday's lunch.

  "Got that thing all mounted aboard Guerrero," Meester said. "It was like whoever modified that pinch to make the new field generator knew exactly what we needed with regards to power requirements."

  Of course they did, Ram thought. Cyning told them what we needed. "Just tell me it'll work, Meester."

  "It will."

  Ram nodded and grabbed a steamed bun from the tray himself. While he chewed, Meester spoke freely. Nobody has to say sir and ma'am in the Privateers, but he was still surprised by the young Chief's frankness. "Have I got this straight?" Meester said. "The Hive thing we got this tech from represents all the ships and Shediri bug things out here in the gas giant boondocks of the system."

  "That's right."

  "And it'll help us get our people and Taipan back, but only if we defeat the Imperium ship first to prove we can protect them and then help them have a coup and change whatever Hive thing government is in charge?"

  "That's more or less right," he said. "That's the official plan." It sounded to Ram like Tig Meester didn't enjoy the taste of Cyning's plan. Neither did he.

  "So are we actually freeing the Shediri from the Imperium?" Meester said, "Is that what we're doing?"

  That's what the redsuit wanted him to say, but he knew it wasn't true. Ram wouldn't lie to him and say it was. "The company has us doing a lot of things today, Meester. I'm be the first to admit that some of them aren't great things. They're not even good things."

  "I knew who the Privateers were in the last war, Mr. Devlin. But I don't know now."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We got attacked by the Squidies and we fought back, and I was okay with everything we did after that....with us being whatever killing them made us, but... But I don't know who the Privateers are now. I know Earth couldn't have won the last war without us. Earth and the UN fleet still can't do without us, but...what we're doing here, Mr. Devlin...Who are we now?"

  Ram imagined what they'd become if he followed Cyning's orders. They'd become something other species feared. Many aliens would simply call them 'the enemy'. A few would call them liberators. But no matter what perspective you looked at it from, nobody can trust a species that goes changing out neighboring governments for convenience and profit. Not even to get back Taipan's crewmen.

  "Who are we, Mr., Devlin?"

  "We decide who we are, Meester. With every choice we make, we decide that."

  "So this is who we are? You all done making choices, Mr. Devlin?"

  "No," he said. "And neither are you. Why do you think I ordered you to come back from Guerrero and report in person? I've got a job only you can do."

  Bridge

  "Clear the bridge." After Ram said it, the entire watch just looked up at him from their consoles and didn't move. The two Company Marines by the lift where he'd entered didn't move either.

  "What's going on?" Biko didn't think he could possibly mean for his executive officer to scram off the bridge, but he did mean it.

  "Off my bridge. All of you. Wei, Pardue, Biko, Phipps, you two Marines, Salace and Poole, you as well. Clear my bridge." None of them asked for any more explanation, they just left, looking over their shoulders on the lift to see what he'd do as they left. Better they didn't know.

  He sealed the lift and the two hatches with his command codes and sat down at Anton Cyning's diplomatic console, the one from which the company man sent messages to the Shediri and received them using the conceptual language matrix. He didn't know how to use it and he couldn't ask Cyning. Besides having locked the diplomatic console with his own command codes so nobody else could use it, Anton Cyning was currently suffering a rare, simultaneous comms, lift, and emergency hatch malfunction that had him imprisoned and incommunicado in a lift tube near the mess in the Hab module. Eventually, the man would remove a panel from the lift and use it to bang loudly enough for someone to hear him, but there was an EM field hazard reported in that section of the hab module so there probably wouldn't be anyone nearby.

  Anton Cyning's newly installed diplomatic console used the same old code for its authentication routines as all other Staas Company systems. Cracking into it cleanly was above Ram's current level of systems skullduggery, but it wasn't above Tig Meester's. Before he'd come to the Privateers, Meester made his living cracking Staas systems and raiding their warehouses for parts to build hot rods. In a few more seconds, Ram heard the redsuit bang out shave and a haircut from the open lift on the other side of the blast doors he'd locked.

  He sealed the doors again behind the young Chief after Meester entered. He said, "Can you crack Anton Cyning's executive authentication codes and get me access to this diplomatic console?"

  The redsuit actually smiled then, and Ram realized it was the first time he'd seen Tig Meester do that since the end of the last war.

  10

  SCS Taipan

  Captain Dana Sellis made her decision privately. There was no guarantee of safety, but she couldn't protect her people from the Shediri. The fact that as captain she'd let then get into this mess was proof enough for her. An hour after the demand for their surrender, the first people she went to inform of her decision were Ram's wife and son. They were still where she'd had them locked up in an atmospheric processing compartment.

  A pipe had blown a leak in there and the water was ten centimeters deep. When Dana opened the hatch, the boy was splashing in it and Margo Devlin stood on the other side of the compartment next to the condensers looking bored. Dana closed the hatch behind her and once she'd taken three steps forward, Ram's wife must have been able to see the defeat on her face. "Oh, good lord, don't tell me you're actually going to do it."

  "There's a chance some of us might live through this if we surrender." She glanced at the boy.

  "I'm not surrendering," he said. "I'd rather kill myself." He stamped the water hard to show he meant it.

  "Don't worry, dear," his mother said. "You won't have to. Captain Sellis is only having a mild crisis of confidence and narcissistic guilt. It has mislead her to believe that the remaining survivors aboard Taipan would stand a better chance of coming out of this alive if they trusted the matter to the Shediri instead of their own captain."

  "That's bloody silly," the boy said.

  "Yes, Hank. Captain Sellis is a bloody stupid cow and I never pegged her for such a whiner. That's more Ram Devlin's style."

  "It is," the boy snickered. "He whines soooooo much. But I didn't think she'd be like him."

  "What the hell are you two psychos going on about."

  "It's such a disappointment, Captain. It's quite understandable and appropriate for you to feel some responsibility for falling into a trap. The fact that there was nothing you could do about it doesn't matter, of course. All the lives aboard this ship are your responsibility. You're right to feel inadequate for having failed them. That's just tasteful humility as some would say. But. Your assumption that since you've shown bad judgment you can no longer do the job of Captain and give us any better chance of survival than if we surrendered is erroneous. I should know and so should the boy. We're experts on command and we're the ones that recommended you to Mr. Devlin for the job. I believe Hank and I even insisted that he appoint you to captain Taipan. And we expected more from you."

  "I did," the boy said. "I expected her to be dauntless."

  "You're no art dealer....and you," she said to the boy, "You're a little monster. That's what you are."

  Ram's wife said, "I'm going to share something with you now, Captain Sellis, a secret which I believe I could keep hid from you and everyone else for decades if I had to, but I'm going to share it with you."

  "Mother, no!" The boy looked genuinely aghast. "No!"

  "I don't expect young Hank to understand. This isn't something I'd expect any man or boy to understand. But you're a woman, Captain, and when I expose to you the vulnerability I am now about to expose, you should know it is because I believe in you and trust my fate to your hands. I trust you t
o do the right thing once you know the truth. And why would I do this? Because you need to know who I am for my faith in you to mean anything you might understand."

  "What is your real name?"

  "My name is actually Margo. Or it was for 25 years. Now, I have the memories of two lifetimes. The last time we met in my previous incarnation, I believe you would have killed me if you had the chance, but that honor went to the pilots of the Bitzer squadrons and to the Lancers. They blew my longboat to smithereens at the Battle of Beta Draconis when I was on my way to trick the Squidies into fake peace negotiations. It was I who sneaked SCS Boomslang past the Squidies' lines in the belly of Arbitrage so a certain, then Commander Devlin could snuff out life on the Squidies homeworld moon. You saw my hero's death yourself. You know my name, Dana."

  She could recognize her now, even with the work she'd had done to hide the appearance her DNA gave her. They'd changed the shape of her face some and her eyes, too, but they hadn't done anything to change the shape of her body. It wasn't fat or even overly wide, but it always looked squared off to whomever she was facing like she was blocking their path or picking a fight. "You're... You can't be. Matilda Witt is dead."

  "I'm her clone. I was 25 and living my own life when she died. Now, thanks to her planning and Q-linked implants, I have all her memories. She wore a quantum-entangled mnemonic implant as I do. All her memories were encoded and uploaded. They're only readable by me, of course, by her clone. Seventeen hours before her death, due to the vagaries of electron entanglement over light years, her memories flooded my mnemonic implant and became mine. All of them save the last ten minutes of her life. My predecessor, Matilda kept those memories for herself."

  "You're lying. That technology was banned seventy years ago."

  "I know what you look like when you're unconscious and in agony. You grind your teeth. Did you know that? I do. Because I tortured you on the bridge of this very ship...my ship, Taipan. I am Matilda Witt, recently slain Senior VP of Staas Company and three-star Admiral of the Privateer Fleet."