Price of Freedom: Age of Expansion - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Bad Company Book 3)

by Craig Martelle

  Ted shook his head in exasperation. “Tools.” Ankh was first into the corridor, and held the hatch open as Ted walked through. Terry struggled to follow as he balanced the tool chest with the power supplies on top.

  “Hurry up! We haven’t got all day,” Ted called back. Terry couldn’t see him around the huge chest.

  “Are we going to the hangar bay, Ankh?” Terry asked between grunts.

  “Yes. We are on our way to the space station to make the repairs.”

  “I’m taking the elevator,” Terry said as he turned and headed the other way. “Come on, Dokken. I know you’re down there somewhere.”

  I am. Don’t tread on me, human.

  Terry started to laugh. He couldn’t control himself, and had to lean against the bulkhead. His chest heaved with the effort to stay upright.

  “When all else fails, revel in the absurdity.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Smedley flew the shuttle, as he always did. The docking was smooth, and the access through the airlock uneventful. They followed the access tube to where they’d burned through the emergency bulkhead, and passed the power supplies across the threshold one by one.

  Ted and Ankh walked away before Terry could work the tool chest through, and he watched them go without saying a word. They weren’t going to be much help.

  “And keep it upright. Those are sensitive instruments in there,” Ted said over his shoulder. He carried three of the power supplies, and Ankh carried one. Terry almost felt sorry for the Crenellian…until he looked at the tool chest.

  Then the only one he felt sorry for was himself. Terry finally took a good look at the chest. It was four separate units latched together, but the latches were recessed. He popped the releases and broke the unit down. In moments, he had it through the hole in the bulkhead. He reassembled it into two sections and then made two trips to the lowest deck of the station, where an impatient Ted and a stoic Ankh waited.

  The first section of the tool chest Terry had brought wasn’t the one they wanted, so Terry ran up the stairs and returned shortly with the second chest. Arguing with Ted was useless, so Terry didn’t bother.

  Once the second half of the chest arrived, Ted got to work without a word of thanks to Terry for carrying it. TH stayed out of the way and thought back to the thousands of times he’d asked Ted for something. He remembered saying thank you after each exchange. Char always expressed her appreciation. Ted couldn’t be bothered.

  I don’t need you to thank me, but I do need you to make a weapon.

  Terry waited while they did their thing. The first hour passed, then the second, and it was well into the third before Ted looked at the work and grudgingly deemed it satisfactory.

  He opened the box that contained Plato, and the two started talking mind to mind. The lights flashed throughout the station as it came online. The stale air was quickly rejuvenated, and the emergency bulkheads retracted. Even with only the three of them on board, the entire station came to life.

  “That’s it. Time to go back to the ship,” Ted declared.

  “Ted. I have a request.”

  “No. I won’t help you carry the tools. That’s work for minions like yourself.”

  Terry ignored the jibe. “We need a weapon to use against the Skrima, to flush them out of their partial existence in the Etheric dimension and solely into ours.”

  “We already have one of those.” Ted threw up his hands and started walking away. “Bring the tools.”

  Terry lifted half the chest. “What do you mean you already have one of those?” he asked over the top.

  “It’s like a jammer—neutralizes the field so that those sensitive to the Etheric won’t be able to tell someone is there.”

  “That doesn’t sound like what I’m looking for,” Terry replied as he negotiated the stairs. Ankh wasn’t climbing quickly, or Ted would have hurried ahead.

  “It works actively, pulling people out of the Etheric as much as masking the access to energy.” Ted turned and stood with his hands on his hips. “But you don’t want a small field generator. You want something that will work across the whole planet.”

  “Bingo. And then we want to herd the exposed Skrima back through the gate. I’m not up for genocide.”

  Ted’s eyes unfocused as he communed with his AI. When he returned to the present, he replied, “We have a plan. Bring the tools.”

  Once on the main deck, they left the stairwell and walked toward the corridor that would take them to the shuttle. Ted abruptly stopped, and his head swiveled back and forth as he tried to take it all in.

  Terry put the tool chest down and settled for gawking.

  The main area was filled with color and activity. Trees swayed in an invisible breeze., and Terry would swear he felt the air moving with the motion of the limbs. Everything looked so real that he thought he could touch the new world into which he’d been thrust.

  His hand slid through a rocky outcropping, stopping when his fingers reached the railing. The scene in the atrium was one of outdoor splendor—a jungle wonderland painted in vivid color.

  Terry felt refreshed, as if he were actually in a wild forest. The effect was pronounced, even for Ted. Ankh looked shocked. Terry realized that the Crenellian had probably never been in a forest before.

  TH picked the alien up and let him sit on his forearm, their heads close together as Terry pointed out the wonders of the flora and fauna. Birds and small furry creatures made their presence known, not just by sight but sound, too. Terry swore he could hear a rabbit-like creature in the underbrush, as well as the crunch of his boots on the grit and grass.

  “I’ll have the jammer in place within a day,” Ted said conversationally as he strolled through the central area. He peeked into an office, where the desk was now filled with personal items and even a three-dimensional interface where someone could interact with the system.

  All of it holographic projections that reacted to the beings within.

  Terry put Ankh down, and he ran to Ted’s side. The two held hands like a father and a son would as they discussed the computing power behind the system.

  Of course that’s what you see, Terry thought as he picked up the top half of the tool chest and hurried down the now-filled corridor toward the shuttle. The bulkhead had retracted, allowing TH through. He stepped around the piece they had cut out and almost ran into two full-sized bots. He thought they were projections until they bumped him aside. He let them pass.

  They picked up the section of bulkhead and rose toward the ceiling. Hover technology wasn’t new, but he suspected the bots were using something different than what the Federation was used to.

  So much new technology that they’d been given, but now payment was due. The cost? Close the Rift and rid the planet of the Skrima.

  ***

  “The ship is so much quieter without the platoon,” Kimber said, and Auburn nodded slowly.

  “I can’t hear the difference,” Terry said. Char nudged him with her elbow. Kaeden had a long face. “Out with it.”

  “There’s a party, and we’re stuck over here,” Kae replied.

  “Is that how you see it?” Terry asked.

  Kaeden nodded, followed by the others. Cory and Ramses shrugged before adding their nods.

  “Darn it,” Terry said.

  Ramses shook his head and pulled out his notepad.

  “Go on, then. We’re connected through the forward airlock. Go and join the party. We’ll reconvene tomorrow morning for the final mission brief. We’ll conduct team briefs in the hangar bay, and then perform a combat drop using all six shuttles. As usual, party now, because once we hit the planet we’re not stopping until we’ve accomplished the mission.”

  “Understood,” Terry’s senior team replied—their family and Char’s pack. TH watched them go, and Char watched him.

  “As you said, ‘out with it.’” She poked him in the side.

  “I have a bad feeling about this one.”

  Char traced her hand
up his arm and rubbed his shoulder. “It couldn’t be worse than Poddern.”

  “I suppose not, but what if Ted’s thing doesn’t work? How can we close the Rift?”

  “Ted’s device will work, but what do we do with it? If there are a hundred thousand of those things running loose down there we’re fucked. The difference is, we’ll see how fucked we are.”

  “You’re trying to bait me into swearing, because you know I agree with you. I’ll add my two cents worth here, in the privacy of the conference room. Upside down and backwards. Triple-lindy screwed, and we’ll still give it all we’ve got. I don’t think we’ll close the Rift, but we will have to monitor it continuously and kill anything that tries to come through.”

  “I think you’re right, TH. Closing that doorway could release an untold amount of energy, and we can’t risk that. The Benitons might be a little gruff, but they don’t deserve to have their planet torn apart.”

  “The Grays. Eons before the fall we laughed at people who saw UFOs and claimed to have been taken, and here we are on a planet populated by Grays. They probably abused humans in all kinds of ways, yet we’re standing between them and demons from hell—but that’s what makes humanity great.” Terry smiled at his wife, and her purple eyes sparkled back at him. “Exporting justice, because we will always be the good guys, as long as you don’t get on our bad side.”

  Char stood and pulled Terry up with her. “Going to the party?”

  “Nah. You know how it is when the commander shows up—puts a damper on the fun. I’ll let them drink my beer in peace.”

  “You can get more beer, lover. By all that’s holy! You and your beer.”

  “You knew about me and beer before we got together.”

  “You called that swill ‘beer,’ which should have told me to steer clear of you. We couldn’t let Margie Rose think she wasn’t a matchmaker, though. I did it for her.”

  “Long live Margie Rose!” Terry smiled. “Now I want a beer.”

  “So you are going to the party.”

  “No, I’m just going to get myself a beer. It’s the least I can do before we drop.”

  “I’m talking about the party in our quarters.” Char walked away.

  Terry hesitated for a moment.

  Better go after her, Smedley suggested.

  You got that right, Terry replied.

  Smedley saw everything that happened on the ship, and recorded most of it. He’d been waiting for the colonel to swear, but he didn’t. Ramses would be disappointed, because the credits were starting to swing in Terry’s favor.

  Sheri’s Pride

  Timmons stood with his hands on his hips, wearing a spacesuit that he’d borrowed from Keeg Station. It wasn’t quite the powered armored mech suits that the Bad Company used. It had a minimal heads-up display, and it didn’t have powered assist for the limbs. It was cumbersome in gravity, but it worked in space.

  He still didn’t like it. He looked at the army of faces wearing the extravehicular suits they’d recovered from Ten’s fleet. He activated his suit’s communication system and projected his words to every single member of the new workforce.

  “Today is the day that we start building a shipyard—your shipyard. This is where you’ll work, refurbish ships, and earn money you can use to do whatever you want. Live as free people live. At some point you may decide that you don’t want to work in the shipyard anymore, and at that point the decision will be yours—but unfortunately not yet. You were the enemy a few weeks ago. Give us some time to get used to each other, become friends, and then you’ll be free to choose. In the interim, we have a shipyard to build.”

  “Mister Timmons, sir?” a familiar voice replied.

  “Yes, Brice, and it’s just ‘Timmons.’”

  “I’ve been talking to the guys, and we want to name the shipyard ‘Felicity’s Hot Metal.’”

  Timmons choked back the sound that rose involuntarily.

  “I like it, gentlemen,” Felicity drawled. “But if you must name it after me—what an incredible honor, by the way—but if you must, then may I suggest ‘Spires Harbor, a waystation of hope and rejuvenation?’”

  Does she still go by Spires? Timmons asked Sue.

  She does. I wonder why she didn’t take Ted’s last name.

  Timmons thought for a moment. What is Ted’s last name?

  I thought you knew, because I don’t.

  That’s probably why she didn’t take it. I can guarantee you that he hasn’t told her, either.

  “Felicity Spires, Governor of Spires Harbor,” Brice said, and a number of voices murmured approval into their suit microphones. “And we know you don’t have a name for us, but we’d like one. How about ‘the Harborians?’”

  “Done!” Timmons declared before he lost control. “Now it’s time to start building Spires Harbor. If you’ll bring up the schematics by slaving your pads to your HUDs as we showed you, you’ll know your roles. We’re going to shuffle out the hangar doors and get to work.”

  Dionysus had broken the project plan into individual tasks based on four-hour shifts for a five-hundred-man work party. When the first group returned, the second group would head into space and pick up where the first group left off.

  Timmons was first through and into space, reveling in the lack of encumbrance in zero-gee. The bulky suit started to feel normal.

  “Dionysus, when the workforce is clear, let’s move the ship into position.”

  The mass of bodies drifted into space, unseen pneumatic jets maneuvering them into position. Many of the workers hung onto each other while one would use his attached thruster pack.

  The group moved upward, grabbing the spine of the infrastructure already in place—a single metal beam hundreds of feet long with four transverse beams attached. That was the entirety of the shipyard that had been put into place so far.

  Keeg Station had not previously had the manpower or project managers for the work. With Sue and Timmons plus the Harborians and the AI Dionysus, the pieces were now in place.

  Sheri’s Pride shifted position. Thrusters engaged for attitude control and micro-maneuvering. It approached the framework and stopped.

  “Put the attachments into place. Welders up!” Timmons called, even though the AI had already delineated the tasks and the workers saw them on their HUDs. Many were already moving when Timmons spoke.

  He was obligated, just like Terry Henry was obligated to say “Wagons ho” whenever the group moved out.

  It made no sense besides tradition. The Harborians. Timmons chuckled to himself. He didn’t care what they called themselves. He hadn’t encouraged a name—although he probably should have—but sometimes things worked themselves out.

  The workers strapped beams together while bots performed the welding. Humanity was too frail in the older-style spacesuits to risk a torch burning through a suit.

  One after another, the beams went into place. Sheri’s Pride was becoming the hub of a vast shipyard.

  Spiderlike legs would dangle beyond and below the ship and more legs would be added to hold ships steady as major or minor repairs were made. Directly below the Pride a full-service dock would eventually take shape, with gantries and a structure in which a ship could be put together from prefabricated components.

  Timmons activated his jets and flew into space so he could take it all in.

  “Dion, can you overlay a projection of the future shipyard over what I’m seeing?”

  A scaled and textured image appeared on Timmons’ HUD. Sheri’s Pride disappeared within a great structure. The geometric balance of Spires Harbor was broken up by the projection of ships from the anchor points. In the projection the War Axe clung to one of the legs, and the vast ship looked small compared to the immensity of the Harbor. Timmons blinked the image away, leaving only what was before him.

  “Much work to do, Dion, but the first weld has kicked it off. I wish I knew what TH and the others were up to.” Timmons remained floating in space, serenely watching the bevy of
Harborians work. Over five hundred suited men crawled over the outside of Sheri’s Pride, and flashes of light signaled where the bots were finalizing the attachments.

  Timmons breathed deeply and closed his eyes. Within his helmet, he heard music from Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte. He hadn’t asked for it, but it seemed appropriate for that place and that moment in time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The War Axe

  Sixteen mechs were parked in the hangar bay as Colonel Terry Henry Walton stalked back and forth in front of the entirety of Bad Company’s Direct Action Branch.

  Even Ted and Ankh were there, although they weren’t going planetside. The War Axe had made three high-speed passes in low orbit to deposit the satellites that contained the Etheric jammers. Ted and Ankh would control the signal from the ship and adjust on the fly to deliver exactly the right amount of counter-energy.

  “Team leaders, have you issued the mission orders?” Terry asked.

  “Sir, yes, sir!” came the bold replies.

  “I expect that they’ll run soon enough. Keep the way to the Rift clear, because that will mean fewer bodies to clean up.”

  Some of the warriors grinned, and others chuckled out loud. None of the senior leadership changed expression.

  “When we activate the weapon we may be blinded too, but that evens the field—which means we have the advantage.” Terry pulled his Damascus steel Mameluke sword from its scabbard and whistled it through a cross before him. In his other hand he held his Jean Dukes Special.

  Christina hefted her boarding axe in one hand, and in the other was a railgun. One to the next, the weaponry and firepower carried by the small unit known as the Bad Company was overwhelming.

  Was it enough to tame an entire planet?

  “How do you eat an elephant?” Terry asked.

  “One bite at a time,” Marcie answered.

  “Oorah,” Terry replied softly. “One well-aimed round at a time. One enemy down, and then the next. Let’s send these sons of wenches back to hell.”