Torch of Freedom

by David Weber

  Only one attack fully succeeded, even so, but it was the one upon which he'd lavished the most care and effort, and he wasn't taking any chances on simply erasing the data he was after. Oh, no. His attack came equipped with the specific security codes for the computers in question, triggering the command sequence which reformatted their molecular circuitry itself. Turned those computers' memories into solid, inert chunks of crystalline alloy from which Saint Peter himself could not have recovered one single scrap of data. And because the man who'd prepared that attack came from so high inside Security itself, he'd known where all the backups were maintained . . . and how to reach them, too.

  In that one successful attack, over ninety percent of all Mesan records concerning the Ballroom—those of the "official" agencies and the Alignment's alike—simply vanished. And since Mesa still considered Torch an extension of the Ballroom, all the Alignment's data on Torch went with it.

  All gone, except for whatever scraps survived in partial form in other locales. No doubt there were enough of those scraps to reconstitute much of that data in the fullness of time, yet it was a task which would take literally years . . . and never be anything remotely like complete.

  The day after Scorched Earth, Jeremy X himself could have walked openly down the streets of any Mesan city, giving DNA samples at every corner, without anyone being the wiser, unless he was spotted by one of the very few Mesans who'd encountered him personally and survived the experience.

  * * *

  Among the other cybernetic systems which were damaged were those of Mesan customs. The damage was . . . odd, and seemingly quirky.

  E.D. Trimm stared at the main screen in her operations center, unable to believe what she was seeing. All the many ships were still shown. They could still track any of them, whether approaching or leaving or in orbit. Presumably, if they scrambled furiously, they could open up manual lines of communications if any of the ships was in danger of colliding with another.

  But the rest of the information was lost. Gone. Vanished.

  "Which ship is which?" she half-wailed.

  "I can still figure out tonnages," said Gansükh Blomqvist. "I . . . think."

  "Oh, wonderful. My day is complete."

  * * *

  David Pritchard's air car was caught in the blast and blown wildly off course. He barely managed to avoid a wreck. Rather, the automatic pilot did. David's air car skills were pretty rudimentary, as was true of most seccies.

  When his head cleared he saw that he'd overflown the stadium. He looked back, and despite his fury, his eyes widened as he saw the shattered wreckage of what had been Suvorov Tower. The structures of counter-grav civilizations were tough almost beyond belief, and Suvorov had been the better part of a kilometer tall, yet so broad that it looked almost squat. Now it looked like the broken, smoke-and-flame-spewing fang of some hell-spawned monster. The towers on either side were heavily afire, their façades badly shattered, yet they'd coffer-dammed much of the blast effect. Suvorov might be a total loss, and several square blocks of Green Pines' commercial district had been savagely mangled, but—as the people who had planted that charge had planned—the residential portions of the city were untouched.

  "Warning. Warning," the autopilot squawked. "Unsustainable damage. Cannot remain airborne longer than five minutes. Land immediately."

  Pritchard stared at Suvorov for a moment, then whipped his head around. Pine Valley Park was now clearly visible ahead of him, the dark-blue waters of its central lake dotted with model sailboats.

  "Manual control," he commanded.

  * * *

  Ganny Butry's clan, including Ganny, didn't put much stock in the so-called "wisdom of age" except when the phrase was applied to Ganny herself. So the pilot of the shuttle that waited for Anton and Victor on the tarmac was Sarah Armstrong, all of twenty-two years of age—and her copilot was Brice Miller, eight years younger than she was.

  Why were they the pilots? Because they were the best Ganny had at the moment. Simple as that. A lot of things were simple for the clan, probably because they were often too ignorant to know better.

  "I don't think that's a good idea," said Brice dubiously. He watched as Anton and Victor and Yana and a man he didn't know and two women he'd never seen before but one of whom was already of great interest because she was about his own age continued to unload one of the crates. They were unceremoniously dumping everything it held into a refuse bin that Yana had brought up from one of the nearby maintenance centers. (The mechanics hadn't objected. Partly because Yana gave them her biggest smile but mostly because she gave them an even bigger bribe.)

  "Got no choice," grunted Anton, lifting out a piece of equipment only he could have picked up unassisted. "Got to make room for Steph and Nancy."

  The big piece of equipment went into the bin. Brice thought there was something familiar-looking about it, but couldn't remember why at the moment.

  Most of his mind was elsewhere. She must be the Nancy one.

  Sarah was practically dancing back and forth with anxiety. In her case, though, not because of the cargo they were jettisoning.

  "Hurry it up, folks," she hissed. "If we lift off more than thirty seconds behind schedule, customs will have a fit. You could sharpen sticks in their assholes, each and every one. I think they send them all to obsessive-compulsive disorder school for advanced training."

  Anton heaved another piece of gear into the bin.

  "Why can't we just ride in the shuttle?" asked the younger of the two women. She seemed bright-eyed, alert and curious. That, combined with the big knife in her hand, made her thoroughly fascinating. She was sort of pretty, too.

  Brice screwed up his courage. "No room except in the bays. And they're not pressurized. You'd die, outside of the crates."

  The girl looked at him. "Who're you?"

  "Brice. Brice Miller. I'm the copilot."

  "The copilot, huh? How old are you?"

  "Uh . . . almost fifteen. Next month."

  "I'm Nancy. Nancy Becker. I turned fifteen four months ago. So I'm older than you." Having established that critical point of status, however, the girl's expression became quite warm. "Already a copilot. That's really cool."

  Brice still thought dumping the contents of that crate was probably a bad idea. But he didn't care any longer. Not in the least, littlest, tiniest, teeniest bit.

  The crate now emptied, it and its twin were hoisted into the cargo bay with the lift that Sarah had already rented. (For considerably more than she could have gotten it with a bribe—but she was only twenty-two. Still young and naïve.)

  "Climb in, all of you!" she said, heading for the shuttle's cabin. "We can still make our schedule. Barely. Brice, seal them in."

  The crates were segregated by sex. Zilwicki, Cachat and the man Brice didn't know in one. Yana and the two new women in the other. The crate inhabited by the men was crammed full. The one inhabited by the women was . . . not.

  "There's still room for you," said Nancy.

  Brice summoned every ounce of duty and discipline he could muster. "Sorry. Can't. I'm the copilot. But I'll be seeing you soon anyway. Uh, all of you."

  It didn't take long to seal the crates. Then, seal the bay. Nonetheless, by the time he climbed into his seat in the cabin, Sarah was yelling.

  "—fault if we get arrested!" The shuttle began to lift. "And don't expect me to bail you out!"

  Sarah could be dense, sometimes. Brice was pretty damn sure that if Mesan customs—much less police—arrested them and discovered they were smuggling superspies and who-knew-what-else off the planet, making bail would be the least of their problems.

  * * *

  "What happened?" demanded Albrecht Detweiler as his son Collin's face appeared the small display.

  "We don't know yet, Father," Collin replied. "Gamma Center's gone, but we still have no idea why it happened. The 'how' is clear enough, of course. Some way or another, Scorched Earth got triggered. Beyond that . . ."

  With most co
mmunications systems in the vicinity of Green Pines disabled, Collin and Albrecht were relying on their personal com equipment. Collin's wife and children had left some time earlier for the family get-together that would soon be taking place at his parents' villa. That villa was incredibly luxurious and incredibly secure—only a relative handful of people even knew it existed, and still fewer knew who lived there. Unfortunately, it was also the better part of eight hundred kilometers from the capital, which made it an inconvenient commute even by air car. The circuitous (and constantly varied) routing Albrecht's security staff demanded only made that worse, so Collin had sent Alexis and the kids ahead while he dealt with a handful of last minute details of the sort his job threw up only too routinely. There was no point having them kick their heels here in Green Pines rather than splashing around in the surf with grandparents determined to spoil them rotten, after all.

  But those same routine tasks were the reason he'd been at home when the disaster happened. Since "home" was the penthouse on one of the high-rent residential towers that fronted Pine Valley Park, he had an excellent view of the wreckage which had once been Suvorov Tower and the Gamma Center. Now he stood gazing out through the crystoplast wall of the dining room, shaking his head slowly, as he continued his report to his father.

  ". . . was another explosion in one of the old industrial areas, about twelve kilometers away, just about simultaneously."

  "Nuclear?"

  "Apparently so, Father. At least, we've gotten reports of high radiation readings from the first responders in the area."

  He noticed an air car approaching from the west. Its approach looked damned shaky, even at this distance, a corner of his mind noted. Not that it was especially surprising. It might well have taken damage from the explosion, and even if it hadn't, the pilot was undoubtedly badly rattled. From his approach angle, he must have been almost on the fringes of the blast itself . . . no wonder he was making for the park's parking apron. In his place, Collin would certainly want to put his car on the ground as quickly as possible!

  Those were just idle thoughts, however. The focus of his mind was elsewhere.

  * * *

  David Pritchard managed to land the air car on the parking apron without wrecking it. But the landing was about as rough as any landing an air car could survive without suffering significant damage.

  He could see a pair of city cops turning toward him, and he snarled. They weren't even security legbreakers—just two of those pretty, duded up, glorified nannies who took care of the kinds of people who lived in Green Pines. The kind of people David Pritchard hated from the very bottom of his soul. The kind of people he could see beyond the cops, laughing and talking while their kids played in the park, enjoying the morning sun. They were turning now, those happy faces, staring at the huge plume of smoke rising to the west. He could see their owners gesticulating at the rising cloud, could almost hear their babbling curiosity.

  From the look on the cops' faces—concern, mostly—he realized the men must assume that he himself was a scorpion in good steading. Someone whose vehicle had been damaged by the blast, perhaps, and who'd had to set it down wherever he could and as quickly as he could.

  He scanned the area, for a few seconds. There was no way to escape, in the time he'd have.

  So be it. He'd expected as much. He pulled out the device's control unit and began keying in new timing instructions.

  * * *

  "—may as well leave and come here, Collin. The first responders are already blanketing the area—the same at the other location—and what seems to be an army of security people has gotten there also. You won't be able to add anything important from Green Pines."

  "On my way then, Father." Collin tucked away his com unit and headed for the door to the corridor beyond. He didn't bother to stop for a jacket, since the weather was so pleasant today.

  * * *

  "Hey!" one of the cops shouted suddenly. "That guy's a seccy! He doesn't belong here!"

  He and his partner both paused for a moment in disbelief. Sure enough. And now that they looked at it from close up, they could see that a lot of dents and nicks in the air car were vintage wear and tear, not anything produced by the rough landing.

  Any seccy intruding into Pine Valley would have had a hard enough day under any circumstances. On this day, with their coms screaming about nuclear explosions and the evidence of those same explosions rising before their very eyes . . .

  One of them reached for his pulser.

  * * *

  David figured six seconds was enough time. But after he keyed the final code, he discovered he had nothing to say. No final words, no speech. His fury was simply too great.

  So, the last sight two Green Pines City Police had was of a face distorted with rage, screaming something they couldn't hear because the seccy was still inside the cockpit.

  One of them was something of a lip reader, though. So he figured out that what the seccy was shouting was just "Fuck you!" repeated again and again.

  * * *

  As he waited for the elevator, Collin called Albrecht again. "Father, have you heard anything from Benj—"

  At that proximity, the radiation from the blast barely had time to penetrate the protective glass that formed the penthouse's walls on three sides before the hydrodynamic front arrived. As tough as they were, those windows had never been designed—nor could they have been—to withstand that sort of overpressure. They disintegrated into thousands of slivers which would have ripped Collin Detweiler apart if he'd still been standing there. As it was, everything inside the penthouse from the furniture down to the bedding was turned into shreds and the shreds themselves ignited by the thermal pulse.

  Ceramacrete was incredibly strong, however—and the buildings at Green Pines had been designed with the possibility in mind that they might be subject to attack from terrorists. The ceramacrete towers in Nouveau Paris which surrounded the Octagon had managed to survive its destruction during Esther McQueen's coup attempt—and that blast had been far more powerful than the one set off in Green Pines.

  Collin Detweiler's tower was far enough from ground zero to be well outside the fireball. Moreover, the interior walls protected him from the effects of radiation as well as keeping the fires in the outer apartments from spreading into the inner corridors and elevator shafts.

  So, he was still alive when the rescue teams arrived. Battered into a pulp by the effects of the blast, with multiple broken bones and contusions and lacerations seemingly covering his entire body. Barely alive, but alive—and given modern emergency medical techniques, that was enough to ensure his survival.

  * * *

  "You did WHAT?" shrieked Andrew Artlett, less than two minutes after the shuttle began disgorging its contents in one of the cargo bays of the Hali Sowle.

  * * *

  "There goes another one, E.D. What do you want me to do?"

  Helplessly, Trimm stared at the screen. Yet another ship was leaving orbit. That was hardly unusual, in and of itself, given the traffic that came in and out of the Mesan system. But there were now at least twice as many ships leaving as there normally would have been.

  Whatever had happened down on the surface of the planet to have caused this chaos, it had obviously spooked a lot of ship captains.

  She still had no idea which ship was which. But—for once—that jackass Blomqvist had proved to be useful. His jury-rigged system for gauging ship tonnages seemed to be working pretty well. So at least E.D. could separate the big boys from the flotsam and jetsam.

  "What's their mass?"

  He studied the screen for a few seconds. "I make it about a million tons. Give or take a quarter of a million, you understand."

  Trimm waved her hand. "Doesn't matter. It's a small fry. No point in worrying about it with everything else on our plate. I'm not sending out what few pinnaces we have available to check anything smaller than four million tons."

  * * *

  Less than an hour after they made the
ir upward alpha translation, Andrew Artlett was completely and totally vindicated.

  Mainly because they'd just made an unscheduled—and most unpleasant—downward translation.

  "Congratulations, you stupid goofballs. The hyper generator is now officially defunct. We're damned lucky it lasted long enough for the failsafes to throw us back into n-space before the stabilizer went. Of course, that was all the good luck we got issued. You may have noticed that the damned rotor shaft is snapped? Not warped, not bent, not deformed—snapped? Which doesn't even mention the collateral damage the thing did when it went! And—thanks to a pair of frigging cowboys I could name—the parts we need to fix it are in a garbage bin somewhere down on the surface of Mesa!"

  His volume had risen steadily through the course of his explanation. That might have had something to do with how long he'd spent throwing up after the violent nausea of the totally unexpected crash translation. Or, of course, it might have stemmed from some other concern, Brice supposed.

  Most likely not, though.

  Victor Cachat didn't seem disturbed, however. Neither did Anton Zilwicki.

  "Trust us, will you, Andrew?" Victor said. "Nothing that can happen to us now is remotely as bad as what would have happened had we not gotten off Mesa in time."

  Andrew was still glaring. "It's going to take months to get that generator working again!"

  Zilwicki shrugged. "I admit that's unfortunate—but mostly because I'm worried what's going to happen before we can finally get our news back home. Just drifting in space for a few months by itself—we've got power, right? Plenty of food and water, too—is no big deal. That's why they invented chess and card games and such."

  * * *

  Andrew didn't stay mad for long. He was no stranger to hard and tedious labor and a damn good card player. But what overrode all those issues was that if Zilwicki and Cachat hadn't dumped the spare parts a certain Steph Turner wouldn't be on board the ship.

  Given the right circumstances—especially the right company—there was actually a lot to be said in favor of drifting through space for months.