Freedom's Fire Box Set: The Complete Military Space Opera Series (Books 1-6)

by Bobby Adair

  “Nothing but the MSS,” says Phil.

  “If Blair does her job,” I say, as I look at Bird, “and doesn’t betray us.”

  “Or just fuck it up,” adds Brice.

  “What have you heard from her?” I ask.

  “She’s on earth,” says Bird. “She’s safe. She’s establishing a network. No guarantees yet on what intel we’ll get or what she’ll be able to make happen.”

  “What about Iapetus’s spy network on earth?” I ask. “Can we depend on them for anything?”

  “We’re working that angle, too,” says Bird. “Iapetus never depended on them for anything outside of intel and candidate identification.”

  “Candidate identification?” asks Brice.

  “The people they kidnapped from earth to join the colony here,” says Bird.

  “Do you think they can become an effective insurgency?” I ask.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “If we take the battle stations and the moon,” I say, “and the earth, then it’s only the fleet and their resupply bases left to contend with.”

  “The fleet and the supply bases are enough,” says Bird. “That’s how this war started. It’s all they had when they attacked. A fleet a little smaller than the one they have now—about the same size as ours—plus a full-strength moon base, full-strength battle stations, and the industrial power of an entire planet.”

  “All under dysfunctional Gray control,” I counter. “Earth can go into high gear manufacturing Arizona Class ship—”

  “You’re overestimating the efficiency of humans,” says Bird. “I don’t think we’ll be able to make an instant change from being a planet full of slave people who don’t like one another into a species united against a common enemy.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” says Brice. “The first thing the Trog cruisers will do is blast every shipyard into dust. By the end of the first week, we won’t be able to build another Arizona Class ship until the war is over.”

  “We can distribute manufacturing,” I suggest. “Other countries at war have done it with great success.”

  “With an organized government and a motivated population,” says Bird. “I’m not sure we have either of those.”

  “Unless we co-opt the MSS,” I say. “They can be our organizational tool.”

  “The MSS will never go to work for us,” says Brice. “At the first chance, a general will take control and then it’ll be one coup after another until some strongman consolidates enough power to stay at the top of the hill. Then things will be just as bad as they always were, only we’ll be working directly for a North Korean dictator instead of a North Korean manager who’s working for the Grays.”

  “We can cross that bridge when we get there,” I say.

  "If we don't plan for it," says Bird, "then Brice is right. That's what we'll get, and the earth won't be any better off than it was before."

  “Then we need to plan for it,” I submit. “I don’t know how yet, but we need to find a way to keep the MSS organizational structure in place while cutting off the head, just like we’re doing with the Grays and the Trogs. And we must find a way to weaken the Trog fleet enough that we can fight them off with the battle stations we have, long enough to give ourselves some breathing room to build up a fleet of Arizona Class ships. I know we don’t have all the answers right now—we’re close. We can do this. What do you say, Bird? It’s your decision. Should we ship out to the colonies to save the last four thousand in the pods, waiting for years to see if there’s any earth left to save, or are we fighting with what we have?”

  It’s a difficult call for Bird. “It feels like I’m condemning them, yet four thousand lives isn’t a steep price to pay if we win.”

  “And another four thousand won’t matter, if we lose another three or four billion on earth,” says Brice. “Rounding error.” And then he laughs.

  “We’ll do it,” says Bird. “We’ll wake them and give them the bad news.”

  Chapter 12

  “Peace,” I say. “That’s how we end the war.”

  “Did you just read that off a fortune cookie?” asks Brice.

  Taking a second to look at Phil, Bird, and Brice in turn, I tell them, “If we can successfully take control of the battle stations and the earth, and neutralize the moon, we might kill half the Grays in the system. Three thousand dead. We might take thirty thousand Trog prisoners in the deal. That’s a fifty-percent loss.” I turn to Phil, “Earth armies crumble under those kinds of losses. What will the Grays do? Are they resilient enough to take those kinds of casualties?”

  “Not to mention all the cruisers they’ve lost since the war started,” says Brice. “More than half of everything they’ve sent here.”

  “In total,” I guess, “they’ll be down by what, eighty percent, since the war started? With no chance of reinforcement.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” says Bird, glancing at Brice to make it clear he’s on Brice’s side of that argument. “But maybe we can do more.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Remember those nukes you collected from Guam?” asks Bird.

  I do. Of course. We tried to drop them on Trinity Base with zero success.

  "We have over a hundred,” he says.

  “Were there that many there?” I ask.

  “Where are they now?” asks Brice. Clearly the better question.

  “Some of them are here,” says Bird.

  “Why?” I ask.

  Bird doesn't answer that question, but I see a flash of old despair on his face that makes me guess at why he doesn't answer us. It's not good. "Most of them are stored on another of Saturn's moons."

  “All thermonuclear devices?” I ask.

  Bird nods. “Hydrogen bombs. Most of US manufacture. We have nearly twenty old, high-yield soviet nukes and more of the B61s like you took out to 61 Cygni. Those all have yields in the megaton range. We scrounged up thirty-some tactical nukes with yields of just fractions of a kiloton.”

  "A nuke can destroy one of those cruisers," says Brice, "if we could get it close enough. However, I guarantee you, that'll only work once. Back out at 61 Cygni, I don't know if the Grays guessed how lethal those bombs were that we dropped, or if they just got lucky when they pulsed their grav fields. We didn't score a single hit, not on the base and not on any of those cruisers."

  “How are you planning to use the nukes?” I ask.

  “Same tactic,” says Bird, “only we drop them on the resupply bases here in the solar system.”

  Brice shakes his head.

  “If we hit the bases when there aren’t any cruisers there to pulse a g field,” says Bird, “then we can score some hits.”

  “Okay,” I agree. “That could work, but you’d have to come in close to do it. If you dropped the bombs on a ballistic arc, the gunners on those bases would probably shoot them out of the sky. If you have nukes mounted on chemical rockets, you’ll probably get the same result.”

  "Use the Turd II," says Bird. "You could dive bomb the base using your grav lens for protection. Our engineers could set the bunker busters to detonate a minute or two after impact, so you'd have time to get out before the blast."

  “That could work,” I say, as I glance to Brice for confirmation.

  “And a million things could go wrong,” says Brice, because it’s obvious and he’s right.

  “That’s just war,” says Bird. “It’s what we all signed up for.”

  Brice shrugs his surrender.

  “And by hitting the bases,” I guess, “you’re thinking we can knock out the Trogs’ supply infrastructure here.”

  Nodding, Bird says, "It won't neutralize their fleet immediately. It leaves them with only one load of ammo and no way to refuel.”

  “I think they’ll work out the H problem,” I say. “No doubt they’ve got H skimmers running on Jupiter right now. We just haven’t found them yet. But taking out their ammo supply m
akes the cruisers useless. Slowing down their refueling supply does hamper the fleet in a major way. At the very least, it buys us time on earth to build some ships to counter them.”

  “It could force them to negotiate,” says Bird.

  “If we’re going to talk peace with the Grays,” says Phil, “it has to be me and Nicky who communicate with them. Nicky can tell them what we did at 61 Cygni—all of it. They’ll have to believe her, and then they’ll understand that they’re cut off with a fleet of Trog rebels blocking their only escape.”

  “They’ll start doing the math,” I say. “They may think they can win this war even without reinforcements, but stinging from a fresh fifty-percent loss, the Grays will have to be thinking they might lose everything here. They’ll start thinking about ways to get back to their home world and rebuilding their strength, or fighting the Trog revolution that might arrive before they do. They might not make peace with us, yet an armistice might work out. Or they might tell us to go to hell and make a threat to come back and kick our ass but leave anyway. Whatever they do, I think our odds are good we can bring the war to an end.”

  “It’s worth a try,” says Bird. “You have to remember, when the Grays first showed up in our system they had no interest in talking to us. They gave us their demands, and they dropped railgun slugs on the planet until we surrendered.”

  "Back then," I counter, "we didn't have the ability to speak to them as equals."

  “They won’t see us as equals, now,” says Bird.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I argue. “We’ll have plenty of bugheads who can talk to them in their language by then, and we have Nicky. We can assert equality, by force of arms. They’ll listen to that.”

  “I don’t think anybody has to do anything,” says Brice.

  “We can give them an incentive,” I say. “When we capture the battle stations, maybe we don’t kill all the Grays. Maybe we kill enough of them that the weaker ones in the pods surrender. We could do the same down on earth. We might end the battle with a few thousand Gray prisoners. Offering to return those alive would be enough to bring the others to the negotiating table.”

  “You just wanna let two thousand Grays go?” asks Brice. “For a chance to talk to a bunch of Ticks who won’t listen anyway?”

  “The number of Grays doesn’t matter,” I argue. “Not militarily. It’s the number of Trogs and the number of cruisers that matter. That’s their power. If a cruiser has ten Grays on it or a thousand, it makes no difference. The Grays are valuable to them and worthless to us. Killing them neither gains nor loses us anything. So trading them for a ticket at the negotiating table is a good deal for us.”

  “Not completely,” says Brice. “If those cruisers out there are underhanded, one might deduce that they don’t have enough Grays to target their guns effectively. Giving those Grays back to them makes their cruisers more powerful.”

  “He’s right about that,” says Bird.

  “Then we’ll figure something out,” I say. “We need to be able to talk to the Grays if we’re going to make this work.” I look around at them. “I think we have to try to make peace. I don’t see another way to win this. Do any of you?”

  Chapter 13

  When the meeting breaks up, Colonel Bird takes Phil to meet the bugheads on his staff. Bringing the bugheads up to speed on communicating effectively with the Grays is the lynchpin to making the whole plan work. Training needs to start immediately.

  “Where are we going?” asks Brice as he walks beside me, letting me lead the way.

  “I need to find Punjari,” I answer.

  “I thought Punjari was with the cruiser, finishing up the repairs.”

  “I heard he was here for a few days taking care of loose ends or something.”

  “Why do we need to see him?” asks Brice.

  “I need a reference.”

  Brice laughs. “You applying for a job?”

  “No. You and I need to modify our suits.”

  “How’s that?” he asks.

  “If this works out like we plan,” I say, “then I’m guessing we’ll be stuck in a face-to-face powwow with the Grays and their Ghost Trogs. Remember when we put the deal together with Prolific Man Killer, he wouldn’t sign on until he met us face to face. I’m guessing that’s a behavior passed down to him from the Grays. Tradition or something. I mean, it makes sense, right? Who would want to make a treaty with somebody they’ve never met in person?”

  “Why don't you ask Phil or Nicky? The Tick’s gotta know, right?”

  “Phil can’t hear about this.”

  “Phil already knows we’re meeting up with the Grays at the end of this.” Brice reaches over and raps his knuckles against my skull. “You okay in there?”

  I dodge away. “I’m fine. Phil can’t know what we’re up to with suit modifications.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “If Phil knows, then Nicky knows. If Nicky knows, then the Grays we meet up with will be tipped off. I don’t want them to know anything about it.”

  “So, whatever you’re keeping secret here, Phil can read it from your mind, right?”

  “I know how to hide things from him now,” I say. “It’s like hiding things from the Grays, only harder.”

  “And me?” asks Brice. “Phil’s a nosy bastard. He can read me, right?”

  “He’s not as bad as you think,” I say. “But just to be on the safe side, avoid Phil. And the hard part will be when you’re around him, concentrate on other things.”

  “Like baseball?” asks Brice. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “We’ve got plenty to keep our attention. It shouldn’t be hard.”

  “So what is this I’m supposed to keep a secret?” asks Brice.

  “Prolific Man Killer is a warrior,” I say. “He let us meet him with our weapons in hand.”

  “They had weapons, too, if I remember right.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “We all did. My point is that I don’t think the Grays will let us meet them with our weapons in hand. For starters, they don’t live by the same honor code they impose on the Trogs. Besides, we won’t be meeting them from a position of strength. I don’t think they’ll see it that way. I think the strongest card we’ll be playing is human unpredictability. Despite what I’m sure will be our relative weakness, we’ll want to sell our unpredictability as the reason we can beat their fleet. If they believe that, then they’re not going to want a couple of unpredictable monkeys with guns in the same room as them.”

  “Makes sense in a backward kind of way. So what is it you’re planning?”

  “I promised myself a long time ago I’d never kneel to a Gray again and I’d never face one without a weapon in my hand.”

  “I think I like where this is going,” says Brice. “You want to rig our suits so we can sneak a little lethal something along in case we find ourselves meeting the Grays and they take our weapons first.”

  “Exactly,” I say, “only I’m thinking a lot of lethal somethings. We need to brainstorm with Punjari and anybody he has who’s good with weapons and suit mechanics so we can be prepared for whatever they try to pull with us.”

  “I suppose we can try,” says Brice.

  Chapter 14

  After an hour of tracking, we catch up with Punjari in the hangar bay, where he’s ensuring the right items are loaded onto a waiting freighter.

  “You got a minute?” I ask.

  Punjari nods as he scans a list on his d-pad. Once he reaches the bottom, he looks up and smiles broadly. “You’re back. Finally.”

  “We did a bit more scouting while we were out,” I say. “We’re working on a plan for the war. How are things going with the cruiser?”

  “Three more weeks.” He wobbles his head and adds, “Always three more weeks.”

  “Are you heading out with this freighter when it goes?”

  Punjari shakes his head. “Why do you ask?”

  “Bird will want t
o meet with you and probably any project leads you have on hand.”

  “About?” he asks.

  “I’ll let Bird summarize it for you,” I say. “Nothing’s set in stone yet, but I’m guessing Bird is going to be meeting with his officers to work through the details.” I look over to Brice. “What do you think? Is Bird on board?”

  “Yup,” he says. “Unless someone talks him out of it, which I don’t think is likely, we’ll go with what was discussed.”

  “There are probably improvements to be made,” I say. “So until Bird decides for sure exactly what we’re doing, I don’t want to spread rumors.”

  Punjari is cautious, but goes on to ask, “What do you want with me, then?”

  I say, “I need to know if you have some creative engineers who can make some modifications to our suits.”

  That piques his curiosity. “You realize that I’ll need to know what you hope to achieve if I agree to provide any valuable input, right?”

  I look at Brice, and he shrugs. Turning back to Punjari, I say, “Me, Brice, and a few others might have to meet face to face with the Grays and Trogs at some point.”

  “Like you did with Prolific Man Killer out at 61 Cygni?” Punjari guesses. “Diplomacy? Are you thinking we can end this war with a peace treaty?”

  I’m not sure how much to say. “Well— ”

  “What’s changed?” he asks, letting excitement wind him up. “What happened on your trip to earth?”

  I raise a hand to stop him. “You’re heading down the wrong path. Nothing special happened. The bottom line is we gathered some intel we think we can turn to our advantage. We believe it’ll help us win back the battle stations, earth, and the moon.”

  “Probably not the moon,” says Brice, “although we think we can neutralize it.”

  “We don’t have a way yet to defeat the Trog fleet,” I say. “Remember, this is all just between us, for now.”