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

by Bobby Adair

  “Stop,” I tell him.

  “Every target coordinate on every base is pre-planned. You know that. If you want to give Brice something to do, why don’t you send him forward to make sure the team up there is making sure the nukes are properly mounted.”

  "Fine." I turn to Brice to ask him to go forward, but he's already on his way. "See if we have any extra optimism while you're up there."

  As he steps down the stairs to the central hall, he replies, "I like you better when you're a pessimist like me."

  "No, you don't," I call after him. Well, not exactly call. It all happens over the comm link. I turn to Phil.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he says. “Find someone else to pick on.”

  “I’m not picking on anyone.”

  “You’re antsy,” he tells me. “Why don’t you take a nap or talk to Silva about making babies on a farm out in the colonies or something. We’ll receive the message when it gets here. Until then, we have to wait. And that’s it.”

  I turn to Silva.

  "Don't start on me," she says. "I'm monitoring the frequency for an incoming signal."

  “All you have to do is listen for it,” I say. “It’s not like you’ve got to play with the dials or anything.”

  “I think Phil’s right. You’re antsy. Why don’t you do some breathing exercises or meditate?”

  Ugh.

  “Wait,” she says. “I’ve got something coming in.”

  I wait and watch Silva sitting at her station, listening intently. A moment passes, and she replies. She looks up. “There are no cruisers at Ceres. They’ve already left.”

  “Brice,” I say, “I need an ETA on completion of mounting the nukes.”

  “One sec,” he tells me. “I just got up here.”

  All of us on the bridge wait for the reply.

  “Eight minutes,” he tells me.

  “That’ll work,” I say, though I’d have preferred to take off that very moment. “Phil, calculate an ETA for us at Ceres. Silva, as soon as you get it, send the info to the scout and the freighter. Lenox—”

  “I know what to do,” she says. “Phil already has the course dialed in. I’m just waiting for the word from you.”

  Chapter 18

  Just like on the jump out to the rendezvous point, the trip back goes quickly.

  One moment, the ship is awash in the scintillating bubble jump glow, and the next moment it’s gone. But that barely registers as I feel the Turd II surge under max g and see the mass of Ceres suddenly coming up in front of us.

  “Phil?” I ask.

  “We popped out exactly where we planned,” he tells us, rushing through his words.

  “Target lined up,” says Lenox, eyes drilling holes in her monitors, hands gripped tightly on the controls. “We’re coming up to bombing speed.”

  “We’ll be at the drop point momentarily,” says Phil.

  “Silva?” I ask.

  “Already sent the arrival signal,” she tells me, not mentioning the morbid purpose of what she’s just done. The other two ships in our small fleet, both millions of miles away from the action, will know we arrived. If they hear nothing else, they’ll deduce we were destroyed in the attack.

  “Five,” says Phil. “Four. Three.”

  “I’m good to go,” says Lenox.

  “Two,” says Phil. “Release.”

  Lenox reverses our grav field, the change so smooth I’d have bet Penny was still flying.

  With my grav sense, I feel the mass of a nuclear device separate from the ship, and then I see it appear to accelerate ahead.

  Lenox nudges the ship toward the horizon as the distance between us and the nuke rapidly expands.

  A railgun round shoots up from the surface, small, but bright, fired wildly, with no chance of hitting anything.

  “More grav,” says Phil as the nuke shrinks away from us.

  The ship lurches harder as Lenox follows Phil’s instructions.

  “The nuke is a thousand meters away,” says Peterson, using radar to track it precisely.

  “Accelerate,” orders Phil.

  Lenox shunts power into our drive array, and we accelerate with a noticeable surge in our inertial field.

  Another burst of railgun rounds shoots up from the surface.

  “Are we on target?” I ask.

  “Within a hundred meters,” says Phil. “Thirteen seconds to impact.”

  “Are they targeting the nuke?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” Phil tells me.

  “Lenox,” I say, “Max grav.”

  "Yes, sir." Lenox hits the power hard, and the Turd II shoots toward Ceres's horizon. Our plan is to have most of the mass of the spherical asteroid between us and the detonation.

  “We’ll make it,” says Phil.

  “That nuke?” I ask, turning to scan Peterson’s radar screens to see where it is.

  “It’s fine,” says Phil. “More railguns are starting to shoot. All aiming at us.”

  “They don’t see it?” I ask, knowing any answer I get will be speculation.

  “Almost there,” says Phil as the Turd skims down close to the surface, passing below the line of sight to the base. “We’re in the clear.”

  “Can you still make out the nuke?” I ask.

  “Not with the mass of the asteroid in the way,” he answers.

  We knew that was going to happen. Still, I had to ask.

  Phil starts to say something, and then pauses. “Detonation. I feel it.”

  I feel it, too, millions of tons of rock, blowing away from the surface, a shockwave, tearing through Ceres, shifting a billion tons more. The fluctuation in the local grav field is so sudden and sharp, it stuns my implant and spins my equilibrium so far off kilter that I feel the urge to puke.

  I close my eyes and draw a deep breath.

  “You okay?” asks Phil.

  “What the hell?” I ask.

  “What’s up?” asks Brice, suddenly beside me, a hand on my shoulder as he looks over at Phil.

  “The blast,” I say. “It messed with our bugs.” I turn to Phil. “Is Nicky okay?”

  Phil’s looking at her, but nodding.

  None of the rest of the crew seems to have been affected, just us bug heads and Nicky. I say, “Lenox, bring us around for our next run.”

  We’re already pulling hard g’s to follow the curve of Cere’s surface.

  “Do you see the course on your monitor?” asks Phil.

  “I have it,” Lenox says as the Turd II starts to pull away from Ceres, still using the asteroid’s mass to reshape our orbit while our grav plates push into a wide swing.

  “We need to figure out how to handle the blast flux,” I say.

  Phil nods, but says, “We’ll be positioned for our next bomb run in just under three minutes. We’re taking a wide arc that’ll put us on track back toward the base.”

  “Clark,” I call over the comm. “Is everything good up there?”

  “A little bumpy,” he says. “But no problems.”

  “As soon as we come out of bubble at the other end of this,” I say, “I want that team loading nukes into our six mounts as quick as they can.”

  “No waiting?” asks Clark. He knows the plan calls for us to attack the next base on our list after we’ve had time to assess the damage on the first, regroup, and scout the second, a series of steps that could take hours.

  “I want to bubble out to target two as soon as we’re ready.”

  “Aye-aye, captain.”

  “Silva.” She’s next on my list. “Comm the scout. Tell them to go on to target number three. We’re going to hit number two blind.”

  “Blind?” she asks.

  “We’ll pop out of bubble at the target,” I tell her. “If no Trog cruisers are present, we’ll make a run. If they’re there, we’ll move on to target three and hit them.”

  “That’s a bold change in the plan,” she says.


  “The Grays will need time to react to what we’re doing here,” I tell her and everyone else on the bridge. The more targets we can hit before they understand what’s happening, the safer we’ll be.”

  “I like it,” says Phil. “When we bubble in, I can have nav set up to either bubble right back out or start our attack run, depending on whether cruisers are present. With the scout staying one step ahead of us and not going back to evaluate damage, we might hit five for six bases before the Grays react.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping for,” I tell him. Back to Silva, I say, “Get them on board. Let Leroux know what we’re up to, and keep her informed on each of our destinations, so she can jump to the corresponding resupply points we planned.”

  "Will do," she says.

  “Coming around for our next run,” says Phil.

  I turn back to see Ceres looming in Lenox’s screens again. Geysers of fire are blasting out of the hole left by the detonation of our first nuke. A huge plume of broken rock is expanding into space around it. “Phil?”

  “I see it,” he tells me. “The grav lens will protect us.”

  I say, “I’m worried about us. I’m thinking of the nuke we’re dropping.”

  “Think of the debris like an expanding soap bubble,” he tells me as we race toward a curtain of broken rock. “The blast threw it all out, but once we’re inside the bubble, the space is clear. That’s where we’ll release the nuke.”

  “Good.”

  “Another thirty seconds,” says Phil to Lenox, as I feel the mass of all that debris slide past our hull with barely a bump against our grav lens’s powerful field.

  “Lining us up on the target,” she tells him. “Hitting the undamaged sector of the base.”

  “It doesn’t look like it,” says Phil. “But it’s all damaged.”

  “But not destroyed,” I remind them. “That’s our goal.”

  “Twenty seconds until release,” says Phil.

  “No railgun fire, this time,” says Lenox. “You think we killed them all?”

  “Doubtful,” says Phil. “They’re probably stunned from the first shockwave, though.” He glances at me, because we’re thinking the same thing: if we felt the blast from where we were, the Grays and Trogs, down so close to it, must be so dazed they don’t know which way is up.

  Ten seconds later, Lenox releases the second nuke. Just as we did on the first run, she eases off the power until we gain some separation from the falling bomb, and when it's far enough away, she leans into the power, and we shoot for the horizon. We painlessly burst through the other wall of the expanding debris bubble and put Ceres's bulk between our ship and the explosion.

  “That was easy,” I say, as I start to worry. “I hate it when things go that smoothly.”

  “Agreed,” says Phil, as Lenox powers us into another tight trip around Ceres.

  “You didn’t sense any cruisers bubbling back to rescue the base?” I ask.

  “No,” says Phil.

  “Peterson?” I ask.

  “Nothing on my screens,” she tells me.

  “I doubt anyone down there knows what happened yet,” says Phil, “let alone being able to get their head on straight enough to call for help. Those nuke shockwaves have to be murder on the subterranean levels.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Still, I can’t help but worry. I keep my eyes on Lenox’s forward-facing screens and Peterson’s radar monitors. “Phil, keep me a bubble solution on hand, just in case we need to jump.”

  “I’m two steps ahead of you.”

  “Good,” I say, dreading the detonation of the nuke we just dropped, but not faltering from the course. “Lenox, get this last run around Ceres done, so we can drop the third nuke and get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter 19

  After reaping our destruction and getting away clean from Ceres, we bombed our second target, another outpost in the asteroid belt built on a giant lump of rock, but smaller than Ceres and not massive enough to have rounded itself into a regular sphere. It still took three nukes, as its facilities were spread more widely across the surface, not clustered and deep, like they were at the huge Ceres base.

  Target three, was a pass, as the info the scout ship picked up on its flyby showed a full squadron of Trog cruisers on hand. Targets four and five weren’t so lucky for the Trogs. We pulverized each, one with two nukes, one with a single, though two would have been better. After that, we were out of bombs and had to rendezvous with the freighter, which we met a few AU's below the orbital plane. The scout ship came out with us, and I had Silva set up a real-time debrief over the ship-to-ship comm system. With all three ships sidled up close for the transfer of H and nukes from the freighter, there’s no distance delay in the comm signal.

  I run through a quick list of what we’ve done so far and ask, “Any questions or concerns?”

  "How was the targeting?" asks Chikere. Under the original plan, it would have been his role to do the after-action flyby for a damage assessment. “How close did we drop them?”

  "We didn't see any of the nukes impact," says Phil. "As you all know, we had to be on the other side of the orbital body, so the mass was there to protect us when the detonation occurred. The last time we saw each bomb, it was on track to fall on target, though I'd estimate a hundred meter spread for human error."

  I don’t say that I disagree with Phil’s overly generous allowance for error. My guess is that each nuke hit exactly where he wanted it to go, with one exception, and Phil brings it up. “One bomb was deflected by a glancing hit from a railgun round fired from the surface,” says Phil. “I estimate that one came down within five hundred meters of our intended impact point.”

  “Where was that?” asks Leroux.

  “Target number two,” answers Phil. “It was our first drop on the target.”

  “The last nukes were on target?” she asks.

  “Yes,” Phil tells her. “As Kane explained, after the first detonation, the bases pretty much go dead. Me, Nicky, and Kane all felt a grav pulse after each explosion. Since the B61 is a bunker buster, it’s designed to penetrate deeply underground before it explodes. Because it’s under so much rock, the detonation vaporizes or blows away millions of tons, while sending a shockwave through the entire asteroid. The sudden shift in so much mass causes a pulse that disorients us because of our implants. No doubt, the Grays and Trogs suffer the same effect, only to a greater degree, being so much closer to ground zero than we are at the time of detonation.”

  “Interesting,” says Leroux. “I’ll be sure to include that in the status report we send back to Bird. His people may have a use for it.”

  “Every advantage helps,” says Chikere.

  I continue with my report. “Target number two had the widest spread of impacts, so it has the highest likelihood of survivors and intact facilities.”

  “I’ll work a flyby into our schedule,” says Chikere.

  "We may have to take another run at it," says Leroux. "That asteroid has very high concentrations of metallic ores. Of the top five on our list, it needed accuracy more than any of the others."

  “Agreed,” I say.

  “How long do we plan to stay here?” asks Chikere.

  I look at my d-pad. “We’ve been at this for seventeen hours. I don’t want to, but we need the rest to stay sharp. I say we take six hours for sleep for anyone who can get it. We’ll do a quick conference afterward, and then step off on the next targets on the list. Same plan as today.”

  “On my ship,” says Chikere “We’ve been rotating.” The way the scout ships normally operate is with a crew of three, rotating one of the three into the small cargo bay for rest, so the ship can stay online around the clock. We can head out as soon as we finish up. We can run through most of the target list and be back here by the time you’re ready to leave tomorrow.”

  “If you’re up for it,” I agree.

  “It’s the kind of work we do,” he s
ays.

  “Keep in mind,” adds Leroux, “the intel will all be old by the time we act on it. So you’ll need to be careful when you come out of bubble, Kane.”

  “Noted,” I tell her. “We should probably expect a response by the time we start bombing again. Today, we got away with it because surprise was on our side.”

  “Which is why we shouldn’t repeat yesterday’s tactics,” says Leroux. “Maybe it’s time to go back to the original plan, and attack on a random schedule.”

  Phil turns to look at me, and I don't need to read the thoughts he's pushing my way to know he agrees with her. I say, “You’re right, Leroux. Chikere, run by target number two and get us the intel on our hit there. Visit all the others if you can squeeze them in, and tomorrow morning we’ll decide which targets offer the most enticing kills. Best case, we can locate the majority of their fleet out here and have a good idea which bases they aren’t at.”

  “I wouldn’t pin my hopes on that,” says Chikere. “The Grays will be back on a war footing by now. They won’t have squadrons languishing at resupply bases. They’ll get in, load up as quick as they can, and get back out, with four or five ships stationed nearby, ready to pounce an any attackers that make the mistake of coming in for an ambush.”

  “But,” I say, “they will be sticking together. How often do the Trogs do anything in units smaller than a squadron?”

  “Through most of the war,” says Chikere, “their fleets seldom fell below six ships, though it seemed there were always singles, doubles, and triples out there.”

  “We should expect them to lay traps for us, now,” says Leroux. “If not on the next few runs, then on those coming up. If they haven’t deduced it already, they’ll figure out pretty soon that we’re attacking their supply capability. They’ll figure out that it’s only one ship doing the bombing. And the more we go at it, the more information we’ll give them. They’ll soon realize that we have a resupply ship somewhere, because even though they’re Grays, they’ll see the number of nukes we have onboard changing, and not always just going down. So they’ll start hunting. They might look for us, or they might start looking for a base, like Iapetus. They’ll start to pull cruisers away from the earth-moon system to do it. That’s a lot of firepower coming our way.”