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

by Bobby Adair

  “And if they didn’t,” she asks, “will the radiation kill us?”

  “I’ll let you know about that before you get close. Call in when you’re a half klick out.” I punch my suit grav, shoot down close to the surface, and skim toward the crater.

  Chapter 35

  Radioactivity?

  Unless I see a nuke broken open and spilling its radioactive core on the ground, I have no way of knowing whether the site is hot. By then, it’ll probably be too late for me. The hope I’m running on is that the nukes we’re carrying, the B61s, were built to be tough enough to slam into rock at terminal velocity, using momentum to burrow through before exploding. I have every reason to believe that they survived. Not the least of which is that Phil activated the grav lens to full power just before impact.

  Putting on my amateur forensic scientist cap, I guess that the Turd II must have come out of our bubble jump course tangential to the moon’s surface, but instead of coming out at five hundred meters up, we exited ten or twenty meters above the moon’s rocky surface, our bad luck, compounded by the crest of rock standing right in our way.

  Whether it was the mass of the moon combined with our choice to roll the dice once too often, bubbling in and out close to significant gravitational bodies, or whether it was our hinky grav switches, none of it matters now. We are where we are. Nicky and Peterson are dead.

  I don’t know what we’ll do when we face the Grays at the end of this without Nicky.

  Will they on even talk to us without our own Gray to facilitate the deal?

  And what about Phil? Can he pull his shit together long enough to communicate or will we have to use one of the bugheads he trained back on Iapetus?

  I sigh.

  I can’t fixate on any of that shit. Two dozen obstacles stand between me and meeting the Grays, and like Phil told me before, our side needs to have luck turn its way at every step for us to eventually win.

  I follow the debris scattered back toward the rock crest through which we busted. The gouge at the base of the rock face contains what I’m searching for.

  I come down at the edge of the oblong hole, looking inside. It’s easily two hundred meters long, a hundred wide, and blasted all to hell at the terminus. I don’t know at what point the stresses bending the hull broke my ship half, or why the physics buried the nose here and the stern a few kilometers behind me. All I can tell for sure is, we hit pretty damn hard.

  In the bottom of the hole, ragged metal fingers reach out, thick steel railroad tracks, bent and broken. The reactor, thank God, didn’t fail when we collided. It kept power running through the grav lens and the hull plates. Otherwise, I and everyone else onboard would have been smashed jelly inside our suits.

  Not seeing any nukes in the hole, I hop into the hole and float down to the bottom, coming to rest on the shifting ground where the railroad tracks are sticking out from the dirt. I step between a pair of them and peer into the ship’s central hallway, now a dark hole angled into the ground. My suit light illuminates the dark. At the other end, the bulkhead separating the platoon compartment is sealed tight.

  “Clark.” I float a hopeful call over the comm. “Lieutenant Clark.”

  “Colonel,” asks Clark. “Is that you?”

  “It is. What’s your status? Are you still in the forward compartment?”

  “We are. Most of us passed out from the rapid deceleration of the impact, but we’re all good to go.”

  “Have you been outside?”

  “We were just talking about that,” says Clark. “I took a look out the door a few minutes ago and noticed that the back half of the ship was missing.”

  “Injuries?” I ask

  “Like I said, we came through it just fine up here. The grav lens protected us.”

  “The nukes?” I ask.

  “We have six inside. All still in their racks, like nothing happened. Well, they’re a bit bent. The racks, I mean. But the bombs look untouched.”

  “The four in the mounts outside?”

  “They’re buried, as near as I could tell,” says Clark.

  “Come on out,” I tell him. “I’ll be at the rim.”

  I engage my suit grav to fly back up to the edge of the crater. When I land, I’m facing the crash site for the front half of the ship. There’s a cloud of debris is growing in the sky above it, but it’s shaped like a long jet exhaust and tons of rocky debris is flying away at orbital velocities, driven by the escaping air from the breached tunnel.

  I don’t see Silva or the others coming my way, yet.

  We still have nukes. We’re on the moon. All is not lost. The planet-killer battery isn’t that far away. I just need a delivery system.

  Brice!

  He was stationed on the moon. He fought the Trogs in the tunnels when the war started.

  I figure I can make that work for us.

  “Clark,” I comm, as I seem him emerging from the broken nose of the ship. “Have your people load up on as much ammo as they can carry. Pull the nukes out of the bow compartment and—”

  “They weigh seven hundred and fifty pounds each,” he tells me.

  “We’re at one-sixth g here, on the moon,” I remind him. “So, one-twenty-five each.” Still a hell of a load to wrestle. “We have a window of opportunity, here. Trogs may arrive at any minute to investigate the crash. We can’t let them have the nukes. I’ll bring the others to help.”

  I jump off the ground and max grav back toward the bow section’s crash site.

  Chapter 36

  I’m slowing down and descending, following an arc that’ll put me through the hole and onto the floor of the tunnel beside the back half of my ship. A familiar chatter in my head startles me. I realize what it is I’m picking up, and it’s not good.

  I blaze a straight line for the dirt just beyond the edge of the hole. Once my feet touch down, I flop onto my belly and peek into the stark shadows inside.

  Two grav lifts are on the floor of the tunnel. I recall Brice telling me that they used lifts inside the tunnels where no rail was installed. In front of the parked grav lifts, some twenty orange-suited humans are standing, armed with nothing but tools for digging and salvaging. In front of them, fanning out around the ship, are twelve Trogs.

  “Dammit!”

  All twelve Trogs turn as one and look right at me.

  “Double dammit!” Having spent so much time with Phil, using my bug to communicate, and having spent hours with Prolific Man Killer, getting comfortable relaying thoughts the way Trogs are comfortable hearing them, I didn’t think to mask my thoughts from them. I committed the sin that, among Trogs, makes surprise a moot endeavor. Even before I’m finished chastising myself, two of the Trogs lift off and fly to get up to my level. Another four, the rest of their pod, scramble toward me over the rocks.

  What to do? Take them on here, or wait for them to trickle up out of the hole?

  Option two is safest for me, but time is not on my side, and I don’t know whether Trogs are already inside the ship, killing the last of my friends.

  Decision made.

  I flip my rifle to full auto and rip a stream of high-velocity steel at the nearest Trog's face plate. His head explodes as I adjust my aim and kill the second flyer with a patter of rounds through his chest that leaves him with little more than sinew holding his torso together. I turn my aim toward the climbers as they wise up. Defensive grav fields blossom bright from all the remaining Trogs, and they rush the rubble pile, climbing up to get me.

  I wound another pair before the remainder of the Trogs bunch up to ascend together, using their combined defensive fields and the rocky face of the rubble pile to thwart the penetrating power of my weapon. I manage to kill another by overpowering his defensive field with a long stream of hot rounds from my railgun, but I can do the math in my head quickly enough to know they’ll get to me before I can kill them all.

  Deciding whether to roll out of the way and go back t
o plan B, leaving a C4 booby trap behind to even the odds as they crest the crater’s edge, I suddenly don’t have to.

  Several streams of railgun fire hit the Trogs from the flank, and three go to pieces in a bloody haze.

  A few of the remainder turn to defend themselves from my friends, on the ship, and open their flank up to my fire. They die before they understand their mistake.

  A few more seconds is all it takes before the Trogs are all dismembered and dying.

  I jump off my perch and grav over to land in front of the stunned workmen.

  Brice and Lenox zip past me, flying fast toward the grav lifts.

  As my feet touch the ground in front of the workmen, Brice and Lenox are making sure the grav lift pilots understand that they’re not to move.

  Broadcasting over all frequencies, I tell my orange-suited prisoners, “Line up against the wall.”

  One guy jumps, gravs hard to turn, and fly up the hall.

  Silva fires and destroys him, sending a spray of blood and exploding organs over the other workmen.

  The rest need no more convincing to comply. The two grav lift pilots join them.

  Chapter 37

  I give Silva a nod of thanks as she moves toward me, but the halo of happiness I project around her is eclipsed by Phil’s black octopus of a mood, growing like a monster from the shadows as he trudges forward. The weight of Nicky’s death is bearing heavy on his heart with the rapturous power of the suit juice amplifying every ounce of his pent-up anger into lethal thoughts.

  “Face to the wall!” Phil yells at them.

  “Phil?” I ask.

  He ignores me. I can feel his anger, restrained under heavy chains, wanting nothing more than to pummel me with telepathic fists that will turn my mind to bloody mush.

  “Jesus,” I mutter, as I step back. I didn’t realize how much power he had under the hood.

  Phil strides down the wall behind the men and women, pausing for half a second behind each, tapping some and commanding them to go stand in an area apart from the rest.

  The workmen get nervous, but the business ends of our railguns keep them obedient.

  Silva looks at me for direction, as does Lenox. For once, I’m at a loss.

  “What’s going on?” one of the workmen asks, as he steps away from the wall.

  “Go!” Phil yells, as he spins on the man.

  The man starts to yell back at Phil, but he collapses as though punched.

  That’s the truth of Phil’s power, right there in front of me.

  He’s kept it hidden, very well. It’s surprising and frightening. More so, because I can see that he’s stronger than a Gray. Or more attuned to the human mind. Either way, I’m worried. I destroyed Phil’s faux marriage, and he blames me for killing his soul mate.

  I’m afraid a showdown is going to come between us, and I don’t know if I’ll survive.

  When the sorting is done, seven of the workmen are standing apart from the others. Three of them are MSS. The markings are clear on their suits.

  “What now?” asks Silva, over a crew comm link.

  “Kill them,” says Phil, pointing at the seven.

  “What?” shouts Silva.

  Phil, carrying a railgun, and gripping it in hostile hands for the first time ever, levels the barrel at the seven and sprays them until his magazine is empty.

  It happens fast, too fast.

  We’re all too stunned to react.

  And now we’re watching as body parts fly float through the vacuum and blood slowly vaporizes into crystals.

  “What the hell was that?” shouts Brice.

  “Expeditious action,” Phil tells him in a cold voice. “Those seven had loyalist tendencies that ran too deep.”

  “Loyalist tendencies?” shouts Lenox. “Tendencies?”

  Phil turns to me. “Tell them, Kane. We don’t have time to fuck around here, do we?” He throws a thumb at the remaining sixteen. “They hate the Grays and Trogs as much as we do. They’ll join the rebellion. They’ll help us.”

  I don’t doubt that Phil is right about the sixteen; at least, he was right until he shredded their friends with his railgun. But would all of the other seven have fought against us? Were they all that loyal?

  “We don’t have time for half measures,” says Phil. “Our comrades are dying down here and back on Earth. You and me committed to this, Kane. You and me are going to see it through.” He’s not suggesting. He’s daring me to defy him. It’s like something in him ruptured when Nicky died, and it’s infecting his brain with every manner of vileness that can warp a mind rotten.

  Silva, Lenox, and Brice are all trying to open private comm links with me to ask the same questions: What do we do about Phil? The murder of seven civilians? What the hell is going on? Did we risk our lives for this?

  “Phil,” I command, as I point a finger at the sixteen, “figure out which ones know the layout up here best. I need them and the lift pilots. Send the rest back to their holes. Tell them to tell their people that it’s time to take up arms against the invaders. The revolution is here. Shit’s gonna come down hard, and it’s gonna come down fast.”

  Brice’s manic, black laugh puts a seal on the atrocity.

  Chapter 38

  With eyes that won’t settle back into the rational world, Phil goes to work, cajoling and scanning.

  “What the hell?” asks Silva, as I finally let her, Silva and Brice on my comm link.

  “I’m putting together a plan,” I tell her.

  “I mean, what the hell with Phil? I think he snapped. I think him and Nicky were too tightly connected—mentally, I mean—and now he’s not all there.”

  I shake my head, not because I disagree, but because I don’t see a good end to the situation. “Let’s give Phil some time and see what comes of it.”

  “And?” she asks.

  “No ands,” I tell her. “I’ll deal with him as we go. I’m just as new to this mess as you are. We all know Phil. This isn’t him. He’s crazy, right now.”

  “What if he doesn’t stop being crazy?” asks Brice.

  “No what-ifs,” I tell them.

  None of them like my answer, but I can sense enough about normal human non-verbal communication to know that none of them have any better ideas. None of them wants to commit to anything.

  “What about them?” I ask Lenox, glancing at the dead workmen.

  “We’ve all seen worse,” I tell her. “We’ll see a lot more, a lot worse than this, by day’s end.”

  “They were innocent,” say Lenox.

  God, I don’t want to make Phil’s case, because I think what he did was an act of insanity. “They were the enemy. This is war.”

  “They had loyalist tendencies,” says Lenox. “They were not the enemy.”

  “Phil evaluated them,” I answer. “He can do it better than any of us.”

  “He’s going nuts,” she tells me. “You don’t need to watch him murder anyone to know that. Just look at him. Listen to him. He snapped.”

  “He’s what we have,” I tell her. “You and Silva, put some of those guys to work cutting the uniforms off dead.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “We need to fashion some slings to carry the nukes that survived the crash.”

  “What?” I can’t tell if she’s mortified by stripping the dead or fashioning slings to carry the nukes.

  “I told you, I’m putting together a plan.” I turn to Brice, because I know that, as much as he didn’t like what just happened, it won’t keep him from pulling the trigger on the rest of our prisoners. Not if becomes necessary. “Hang back. Keep all of these guys in sight, until we have a better idea what they’re going to do.”

  “If we’re going to pretend Phil was right about those seven he killed,” says Brice, “then we need to buy that he’s right about the rest of them, right?”

  “Oh, fuck me, Brice. Just do it.”

  Brice’s grin
is malevolent. “Yes, sir.”

  “Phil,” I call. “Which of these guys knows what’s what up here? I need somebody who’s on the same page as us.”

  Phil glares at me.

  “Like you said,” I snap. “People are dying. No half measures. Do it now!”

  Chapter 39

  “Frank Massey,” says the guy, sticking a hand out to shake mine, but glancing at Phil, who’s standing off of his left shoulder, scrutinizing him.

  “What do you know about the tunnel systems, the layout of the subterranean facilities, and the deployment of Trogs and MSS?”

  “You want a lot,” says Frank.

  “I don’t have time dick around, Frank,” I tell him. “The war for your freedom is here, and too goddamn many of my friends died getting it here. So you can jump on the bus and give me your enthusiastic help, or you can get out of my face.”

  Frank is taken aback, but recovers quickly. “I been up here nigh on twenty years. I started out a digger, running a tunnel boring machine.” He waves a hand at the missing ceiling and walls. “I was on the crew that dug this one. I worked my way up to foreman supervisor before the new bunch showed up.”

  “Foreman supervisor,” I ask, “what’s that?”

  “A lead foreman. I had three pods of foremen below me, and each of those foremen had three pods of workmen below him. Some three hundred and fifty people. We built out most of the base around this part of the moon.”

  “Any parts you don’t know?” I ask.

  “The new grays have been expanding the their domicile retreat down to a thousand feet.”

  “What’s that?” I ask, as I see Phil take a keen interest. “A domicile retreat?”

  “It’s their idea of Eden,” says Frank. “The original bunch built out these massive caverns down around five hundred feet, full of bright lights, pools, and gardens. They spend most of their time down there. We were always expanding it to accommodate more and more of them.”