Merchants in Freedom

by Richard Tongue

  “Sir,” Bianchi said, “I have Commander Dixon for you.”

  “Patch him through,” Winter said, the image of the too-young officer instantly appearing on the monitor, replacing the endless whiteness below. “How’s the fleet, Commander?”

  “Closing on target, sir, and we should be in position to provide support when you give the word. The shuttle has completed its firing pass and is on approach to the landing site, but it flew rather strangely during its run.”

  “Did it have the desired effect?” Winter asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “As far as we can tell, yes, sir,” Dixon replied. “We’re sending updated tactical projections to you right now. Jack, if this doesn’t work out, we’re going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble. They’ll tear us apart.”

  “I have no intention of letting that happen, Dix. We’ll set them up, you knock them down. Just make each shot count, and have the techjammers throw everything they’ve got into the mix. Good hunting. Out.”

  “Nervous,” Morgan said.

  “He’s got every reason to be,” Winter replied. “I wouldn’t blame him for being a little scared given the circumstances. Helm, how are we doing?”

  “Coming around the far side of the planet now,” she replied, her eyes never wavering from her monitors. “We’ll be coming in right behind them. Unless they’ve worked out a way to look through solid rock, we’ll be giving those bastards the surprise of their life in a little over four minutes.”

  “All weapons systems are ready, and I’ve programmed the target selection into the master computer,” Morgan added. “They’re going to be throwing a lot of fire our way, but from the tactical projections Dixon sent to us, they seem to have their main focus on the rest of the fleet. They’ve written us off as the decoy, just as we hoped.”

  “A little too perfect?” Winter asked.

  “Possibly, but that’s just my well-honed sense of paranoia. They were slow to react, and they damn near wiped the shuttle off the map.”

  “Then maybe we actually have managed to catch them by surprise,” Winter said. He turned to Holloway, and asked, “Anything unusual out there, Specialist? Anything out in the deep system that we should be worrying about?”

  “I can’t see anything out of the ordinary, Commander,” the young technician replied. “Everything seems as it should be, at least for the moment.” He frowned, then added, “I’m getting some long-range images of the surface now, but the weather conditions down there are bad, very bad. There’s a lot of interference. Our sensor suites aren’t really designed for atmospheric…”

  “I accept that, Specialist,” Winter interrupted. “Best guess will do.”

  “There’s some sort of mining operation going on down there, sir. They’re in one of the crevasses, right down at the bottom, and I think they are operating some sort of drilling equipment. Something pumping out a lot of heat, anyway. I’m seeing half a dozen shuttles on the surface, but I don’t believe any of the structures are permanent.”

  Nodding, Bianchi replied, “That’s consistent with our operations on Callisto. The surface is far too unstable to support any sort of permanent habitation. Everything is built to be transported and moved in a hurry.”

  “What about numbers?” Morgan asked. “How many enemy troops could be down there?”

  “It’s impossible to tell, Major,” Holloway said. “Anywhere from fifty to a thousand, depending on how tightly they’re packing them into the habitation modules. I can’t get resolution anywhere near good enough to detect individual people, even in spacesuits.” He turned to Winter, and added, “I’d say our shuttle is heading right for a key strategic base, sir, probably extremely well-defended.”

  “Are you suggesting that we abort the mission?” Winter asked. He looked into the eyes of the technician, and added, “Speak your mind, son. That comes with the territory. I make the final decision, but I’m dependent on the information you and the others provide.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend a surface landing, sir, not unless the situation dramatically changes. They’re tightly packed together, though. It’s possible we might be able to manage some sort of orbital bombardment.”

  “We’d have to do some pretty substantial engineering to pull that off,” Morgan said. “I don’t think the Tyrants are going to give us the time to try.”

  “Coming out of the upper troposphere now,” Sabatini warned. “Hull temperature dropping, well within safe tolerances. They’re going to see us in less than twenty seconds.”

  “Here we go, people,” Winter said. “Let’s make this good.” He sat in his command chair, watching as the rest of the bridge crew hastened to complete the last-minute preparations for battle, the final adjustments that could not be done in advance, only in the seconds leading down to the confrontation. He looked at the tactical view, data streaming in from the rest of the fleet as they advanced. Xenophon was coming in on a vector that should catch the enemy totally by surprise. It would certainly have shocked him if he was the Tyrant commander.

  Under normal circumstances, a combat commander attempted to restrict his ship’s exposure to enemy fire as much as he possibly could, reducing his time in the battlespace way, way down. This time, he was doing the reverse, and far from racing on a fast flyby as the manuals insisted, he was attempting to prolong the time of contact, to match course and speed as much as possible to give them the greatest possible chance to wreak havoc on the enemy.

  This was a high-risk strategy, to put it mildly. If it worked, if the enemy were caught by surprise as he wished, then they’d have a significant chance to complete their mission. If the enemy were prepared, were ready for their encounter, then Xenophon could easily be annihilated before it fired its first salvo, and the only way they’d know whether the plan would work or not was to try it in action. In ten seconds, maybe a little more, they’d find out.

  “Contact!” Morgan yelled. “They’re scattered, sir, just as we’d expected.” His practiced hands raced across the controls, and he continued, “Main battery has a firing solution, combat range in six seconds.”

  “The enemy formation is trying to turn, sir,” Holloway said. “We’re going to get a few clear shots. The rest of the fleet will be entering the action in seventy-six seconds. Two seconds behind schedule.”

  Two seconds. Two eternities.

  “Major Morgan, you may fire at will. Sabatini, I want a full evasive course, now. Don’t let any of those shots through. Bianchi, liaise with Commander Dixon and keep him informed about what we’re doing. The enemy will almost certainly attempt to block our tactical update feeds. Don’t let them succeed.”

  “Aye, sir,” Bianchi replied. “I’ve got us locked onto the tactical network. No sign that they’re making any serious attempts to penetrate the grid yet.” She paused, frowned, then added, “Which is strange, sir. They should at least be making the attempt.”

  “Are you sure they aren’t?” Morgan asked.

  “If they are, they’re either doing a damn good job of hiding it or they’re so inept that they haven’t even got close,” she replied.

  “Keep watching,” Winter said.

  “Opening fire now,” Morgan reported, tapping in a series of controls to unleash wave after wave of crimson death onto the enemy. Xenophon’s primary armament opened up to fire precisely where it was needed, disabling weapons systems and communications antenna, trying to disrupt the enemy formation and give them a chance to live through the fire that was to come.

  Sabatini played the thrusters like a master, waving form side to side as the first of the incoming salvos hammered through the sky towards them, megawatt bursts of laser fire erupting all around them. Winter smiled as the strategic view showed precisely what they wanted, the enemy vessels scattering, their formation broken by their assault.

  “Concentrate on the station,” he ordered. “If my guess is right, that’s where we’re going to find their communications hub. We take that out, we win the game.” He turned to Bianchi, and
said, “Have the rest of the fleet open fire at extreme range. It doesn’t matter at this stage if they can’t hit the broad side of a barn, as long as they start getting some of those shots home.”

  “Aye, sir,” she replied, issuing the appropriate orders.

  Xenophon swept through the rear elements of the enemy formation, her side-mounted weapons raging broadsides as they passed through, diving towards the station ahead. Winter quickly looked over the sensor data on the display, trying to find a weak spot, a vulnerable point to target. The station looked oddly familiar, like a ghost from the ancient past, a museum exhibit, just like the complicated structures that had been lifted from the surface of Earth in the time before the Last Wars, some of which still survived in orbit today, entering their third century of service.

  That was the goal. Right at the heart. The central torus, with an oxygen reservoir. There was no sign that any part of the station itself required it, but the ships that it was servicing certainly did, and while the enemy had carefully positioned the storage tanks to be difficult to hit, a good series of shots would bring it down.

  “You see that, Joe,” he said, gesturing at the two long, deceptively slender tanks. “That’s our mark.”

  “Got it,” the gunner replied. “Five seconds to optimum firing range.”

  As he spoke, there was a loud ringing from the hull, a siren wailing in the distance as a sea of red lights swept onto the monitor station, Sabatini cursing under her breath as the ship drifted to starboard, out of control.

  “Report,” Winter said. “What’s the damage?”

  “A hit on the port side, close to the primary communications relay,” Bianchi reported. “I’ve switched over to the auxiliary systems to keep the tactical link going, but we’ve lost a hell of a lot of bandwidth in the process. We have a hull breach on Deck Seven, no casualties reported, and the damaged area has been locked down. Lieutenant Bryant has a damage control team heading there now.”

  “Three hits on the same area, time-on-target,” Morgan said, shaking his head. “That could have been a lot worse.” He looked up at the controls again, and added, “Launching first salvo on the station.”

  “Enemy fleet is turning towards us now,” Holloway said. “Twenty seconds and we’ll be surrounded, sir.”

  “Can you break us out, Helm?” Winter asked.

  “Not a chance, sir,” she replied. “I’ve lost five thrusters on the port side, and they’re moving in too quickly.”

  Winter cursed, then looked back to the tactical display, his frown turning into a smile as he saw the techjammers coming into position, racing ahead of Dixon’s formation at reckless acceleration to engage their electronic warfare suites, accompanied by the first salvos of fire speeding towards their distant targets. The Tyrants were caught between a rock and a hard place, but if Morgan couldn’t get his shots home, it would all be over extremely quickly.

  “Firing!” the veteran said, and all eyes were on the targeting display, watching as the first bolts of energy sped towards the drifting station, harmlessly impacting on the surrounding superstructure, the force of the explosion setting the installation tumbling, spinning. The second shots would be far harder than the first, but Morgan pressed his attack, totally focused on his objective, each shot closer and closer to the target until finally, perhaps more by luck than judgement, he caught the starboard oxygen reservoir square on.

  The sky flickered briefly as the tank ruptured, a flare of light instantly extinguished by the cold vacuum of space. The force of the explosion destroyed the second tank, and the combined effect reduced the station to twisted scrap metal, floating futilely in space, endlessly floating through the void. Just as he had hoped, the enemy fleet hung dead, the loss of the central processing facility rendering them at least temporarily helpless.

  “Power levels on the enemy ships are falling, communications totally disrupted,” Holloway reported. “We’ve done it, sir.”

  “Commander,” Bianchi said. “Request permission to go over to the nearest enemy ship with a boarding party. I’d like to take a look at the enemy for myself.” She looked up at the viewscreen, and added, “There are far too many unanswered questions here, sir, and I think…”

  “Request denied,” Winter replied. “Joe, co-ordinate with Dixon and the rest of the fleet. I want the Tyrant forces systematically destroyed. Take them down. We won’t have long to finish them off. Make it happen.”

  “Aye, sir,” Morgan said, flexing his fingers with relish.

  Winter turned to the frowning Bianchi, and said, “I understand your feelings, Commander, and to an extent I agree with you, but we simply can’t take the risk. Not at this time. We’ve got a landing party heading towards the surface right now. Maybe they’ll manage to find some of the answers we’re looking for. Our focus has to be on supporting their efforts on the planet, as best we can.”

  “Can I be frank, sir,” Bianchi said. “This went far too damned well. We shouldn’t have won, not so easily. Either we’ve managed to find some sort of weak spot we weren’t expecting, in which case we’ve got to identify it right away so that we can make better use of it in the future, or they let us win for some reason. I don’t like that answer.”

  “Neither do I,” Winter replied. He paused, looked at the monitor, and said, “Once the battle is over, take a couple of shuttles and a salvage team, see what you can determine from an analysis of the wreckage. Maybe we just got lucky, or maybe their strategy was too damned clever to work. Or maybe you are right, and there’s something else going on.” With a sigh, he added, “Sending a team over to one of those ships is a gamble I just can’t accept.”

  “I understand, sir,” she replied. “It’s going to take longer this way.”

  “We’re just going to have to make the time, Commander.”

  “Assuming the Tyrants permit. By your leave?”

  “Dismissed,” Winter said. As she left the bridge, he turned back to the viewscreen, watching the light show being put on by Morgan and Dixon, crimson bolts flying through the sky to methodically reduce the enemy fleet to scrap metal. It was everything they had hoped for, worked for, risked for.

  Bianchi was right.

  It had been too damned easy.

  Chapter 7

  The shuttle rocked from side to side as Ortiz struggled to maintain its descent trajectory, warning alarms sounding as the heat shield burned past safety limits, chunks of debris burning away as the crew watched on the viewscreen. Volkov’s eyes darted from one monitor to another, shaking his head as the telltales winked from green to amber.

  “We’ll make it,” the engineer said, “but it’s going to be a rough landing, and it’ll take days to clear up the mess when we get back to the ship.” He looked across at another panel, and added, “We should be able to stay clear as well. More than enough fuel to get us out of here.”

  “Signal from the fleet,” Singh added. “They’ve taken out the Tyrant forces in orbit. Everything is clear up there.”

  “Perfect,” Mendoza replied. “That ought to give us a smooth run down on the surface. What sort of activity…”

  “Threat warning!” Singh barked, his hand reaching for a control. “Power surge from the base on the surface, missile launched, heading right for us.” His hands rattled across the controls, and he added, “It can’t reach us, not yet. We’re too high up and moving too fast.”

  “Warning shot across the bows,” Volkov warned. “They won’t miss with the second missile. If we drop lower than twenty miles, they’ll have us cold.” Turning to the pilot, he said, “Nick, can we abort?”

  “Sure, but should we?” the pilot asked.

  “We’re not going to get another chance at this,” Mendoza replied. “By now they’ll have seen what happened up in orbit. I’d hoped that they might be on the same network as the orbital station, but evidently they’ve got one down on the surface.” Looking at the sensor feeds, she added, “They’ve got shuttles down there. It doesn’t take much imagination to s
ee them turning them into interceptors. Short of an orbital bombardment, we’d never get through.”

  “Then we do that,” Volkov pressed.

  “It does seem the most logical option,” Singh added. “It might take a little time, but with control of orbital space secured, we’ve got all the time we need to complete such a project. Certainly within…”

  “And then what?” Mendoza asked. “We came here to find out what the Tyrants are doing, and to gather the information we need to finish this damned war. We’re not going to find any of that at the bottom of a crater.”

  “Fair point,” Ortiz said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Why does that phrase fill me with dread?” the engineer said.

  “I can take us down into the crevasses, right down, deep,” Ortiz replied, a smile on his face. “That’ll get us within fifty miles of the base, maybe less.”

  “And the heat exhaust from the engines will melt the ice behind us as we go,” Volkov protested. “Not to mention that if one piece of ice crevasses, we’re dead. This is suicide.”

  “Maybe, but it’s the best idea on the table,” Mendoza said. “Nick, level with me. I want the truth. Can you pull this off?”

  “Damn right, ma’am.”

  “Then do it,” she said, turning her seat to face forward, watching as the shuttle dived for the surface, the icy wilderness below seemingly racing towards them in their desperate race to safety, every crack in the ice thrown into sharp relief by the monitor. It was cold, uninviting, impossible, yet still one of the more hospitable worlds humanity had yet discovered. The gravity was low, but there was atmospheric pressure, and the temperature was just barely survivable for a man without a suit. For a little while, anyway.