Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3)

by Francis Porretto

  “How can you be sure?”

  He awarded her a crooked smile. “I’m not sure. But those people have been my neighbors all my life. If there were a bloodthirsty soul among them, he’d be over there.” He jerked his head at the Dunbarton group. “Anyway, it’s time to wrap things up.” He made a megaphone of his hands.

  “NEIGHBORS!”

  All tumult ceased as a thousand pairs of eyes turned to the dais. Barton smiled.

  “Thank you for coming here this evening. There’s only one more thing to attend to before we adjourn, and the time for it has arrived.” He turned toward the Dunbartons. “Alex, would you kindly join me up here for a moment?”

  Alex Dunbarton was nonplussed by the request. He peered at Barton as if uncertain that he’d heard correctly.

  “Please, Alex. It’s time to finish this.”

  “Meaning what?” Dunbarton snarled. He stepped to the forward edge of the dais. “What more do you want from me, now that you’ve permanently blackened my name and made me fear for my life?”

  “It wasn’t by my deeds that your name was blackened, Alex. But I mean for you to have your chance to answer. Join me up here,” Barton said, “and we’ll settle up where everyone can see and hear it.”

  Dunbarton mounted the dais uncertainly, his retinue in his train. The knot of Dunbartons moved to within about six feet of the three Morelons and stopped, flexed as if prepared to fight or flee. Emma rested her hand on the butt of her needler.

  “I can think of only three ways we can put this to rest, Alex,” Barton said. “The first is that you voluntarily renounce your patriarchy and your clan affiliation and leave Jacksonville permanently, just as young Victor did.”

  Dunbarton snorted. “You can forget that.”

  Barton inclined his head. “I expected you to say that. The second way is that we have a little war, my clan against yours, until one of us is either dead or the captive of the other. That would result in a lot of dead bodies and no doubt millions of dekas of property destruction, but it would be quite final. Does that appeal to you any better?”

  Dunbarton peered at him as if he’d spouted utter lunacy. “Hardly.”

  “I see. Well, that leaves the third way.” Barton’s voice became steel-hard. “Are you prepared to fight it out with me, man to man, here and now? Winner take all, including the loser’s life should he so choose?”

  “What?” Dunbarton’s mouth dropped open. “You are insane. Or are you having a jest at my expense?”

  Barton shook his head. “I’m perfectly serious.” His words rang brassily over the knoll and the throng before them. “And you had better take me seriously, because if you decline this challenge, the war of Clan Morelon against Clan Dunbarton begins at once.”

  The crowd was silent.

  “All right,” Dunbarton growled. “What weapons?”

  “I challenged you,” Barton said. “That makes it your choice.”

  Dunbarton grinned coldly. “Bodies. Nothing else.”

  Emma gasped. Dunbarton was five inches taller and fifty or sixty pounds heavier than Barton.

  Barton nodded. “Let it be so. Choose your second.”

  “Gene Dunbarton. Yours?”

  “Chuck Feigner.”

  “Place and time?”

  “I told you, here and now where our neighbors can see it. Hand your sidearm and any other weapons you’re carrying to your second.” Barton unbelted his needler, tossed gun and belt to Feigner, and assumed a fighting crouch. His opponent did likewise.

  “Are you ready, Alex?” Barton said.

  “Ready to drink your blood, Morelon.”

  Emma immediately waved the others off the dais. They hurried to comply.

  * * *

  Dunbarton charged at once.

  He came on swinging high and wild, trusting to his greater size and strength, as if he doubted the smaller man’s ability to evade or counterpunch. Barton stepped fluidly to his left.

  Dunbarton struck only empty air, barely righting himself before his momentum tumbled him to the dais. He collected himself and turned to find his opponent behind him, eyeing him from a relaxed, confident crouch.

  “You wanted this fight, Morelon,” he snarled. “Stand and take it like a man.”

  Barton shook his head once. “Bring it like a man. We’ll see who’s standing at the end.”

  Dunbarton advanced more cautiously that time, gradually becoming aware that assets other than his were in play, that strength and fury alone might not carry the day. Barton remained motionless, his eyes roving about his opponent’s body.

  When they’d closed to arm’s length, Dunbarton swung again, this time a vertical hammerblow intended to drop his opponent to the decking and leave him defenseless before a barrage of kicks.

  Barton stepped inside the swing, simultaneously twisting to his right. He hooked Dunbarton’s left ankle with his own and yanked sharply. The larger man crashed face-first onto the dais. The impact thundered through the clearing.

  Dunbarton was slower to collect himself that time. As he rose he put a hand to his face. It came away damp, with a splotch of red. He glared at his enemy with redoubled hatred.

  “You’ve broken my nose,” he growled.

  Barton shook his head. “You broke it by falling on it. It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t swung at me. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t targeted me and mine. But this is a fight, Alex, and things like that happen in fights. Are you ready to concede, or do you want one more shot?”

  “Concede? I’m here to kill you!” Dunbarton screamed. He charged for the third and final time.

  Barton stood his ground.

  As Dunbarton’s fist screamed toward his head, he jerked it downward. The underside of that meaty bludgeon grazed his hair. The swing left all of Dunbarton’s most vulnerable points completely undefended.

  It was time.

  Barton struck straight and hard, shoulders and hips swiveling in synchrony, with perfect follow-through.

  His knife-hand strike pierced Dunbarton’s thorax just below the sternum. The chest wall ruptured. His knuckles brushed the column of Dunbarton’s spine. He held it there as hydrostatic shock rippled through his opponent’s vital organs and his face glazed over in terminal realization.

  Barton pushed him backward. He flopped onto his back and lay still, unfocused eyes staring into the blackness above.

  The other Dunbartons roared in fury and surged toward the dais.

  “HOLD!”

  Feigner’s bellow froze them in place. They turned to find the snouts of his and Emma’s needlers leveled at them.

  “We loaded lethal rounds,” Feigner said. “Take one more step toward our patriarch and we’ll use them.”

  A sneering Dunbarton stepped to the front of the group. “The Wolzmans haven’t made lethal rounds for thirty years.”

  “We have,” Emma said. “Hold your peace or you’ll get the proof in your bellies.”

  They stepped back.

  Barton moved to the forward edge of the dais and squatted to peer at the Dunbartons. “Which of you,” he said, “is Alex’s scion?”

  The leader shook his head. “He never named one.”

  Barton nodded. “I see. That’s consistent, at least. Take Alex’s body and go back to Dunbarton House. Bury him properly. Then select a new clan head. Try to make it someone who doesn’t hold a grudge this time. Someone with no dreams of empire. This mustn’t happen again.”

  The leader frowned. “You want nothing from us? No reparations? No...tribute?”

  “Nothing but peace. Can you manage that?”

  The leader’s face twitched.

  Presently he said “You’ll be hearing from us,” leaped onto the dais, and hoisted the late patriarch onto his shoulders. He dismounted, turned to his kinsmen, and indicated that they should depart. The group made its way slowly off to the west.

  When they had disappeared, Barton rose and beckoned to Emma for his gunbelt. When it hung from his h
ips once again, he dropped to one knee, bowed his head, and spoke to the dumbfounded people of Jacksonville one more time.

  “Good night, neighbors.”

  ====

  On the Relic, the labors of the group had gone into very high gear.

  Probe proved invaluable as a consultant on the retrofit of war provisions to Liberty’s Torch. Though it was unable to explain its own method for going superluminal, it was intimately familiar with the unique requirements of that condition. It taught Martin a technique for reducing the detection profile of Liberty’s Torch, and provided a compact design for a stealth module for the starship based on Probe’s own equipment. It advised him minutely on the necessities involved in surface-mounting extra equipment to the starship’s hull. The collaborators paid particular attention to the control runs that would pass through the hull to the control consoles inside.

  Althea assisted Claire in the assembly, organization, and maintenance of the devices that would produce the counter-nanite to the Loioc’s evil microbe. There were many such, for not only was it necessary to verify every stage in the production operation with meticulous attention; it was also imperative that end-to-end tests be performed to assure that when they fired the end product into the atmosphere of the Loioc homeworld, it would do exactly as they intended. It took several more flights of Freedom’s Promise to provide them with the components and ingredients they needed. Each launch made Patrice Morelon grumble audibly, despite Althea’s solemn, multiply repeated assurance that all Morelon expenditures would be fully recompensed...eventually.

  The discussions of God, the nature of metareality, and the relationship between them continued nightly. Probe posed questions more penetrating than any Althea had ever thought to ask. They proved to be the sort that illuminates why so many humans reject the notion of God. Yet each could be answered in several ways, and always there was one approach that preserved the plausibility of the assumption—indeed, that made it appear the preferable course.

  And there came a day, after months of innovation, labor, testing, and hard study, that they found themselves ready to proceed.

  ====

  September 11-12, 1327 A.H.

  The sintering system laid the fifth and final coat of ferroceram around the sphere in its grip, rotated it twice around all three axes as its lasers played over the surface, stopped, and lit its Ready light. Claire killed the power, opened the hatch to its work region, carefully lifted the completed sphere out of the machine’s grippers, and held it out to Martin and Althea.

  “Number two hundred,” she announced.

  “Spooner’s beard, Claire, put that thing down carefully,” Althea breathed. “Probe?”

  “Yes, Althea?”

  “Your payload is complete. Are you ready to accept it?”

  “I am. Your repairs have returned my deployment system to nominal operation. I have rechecked the volume, energy, and thermal calculations and found them to be accurate. The mission is feasible, with a more than adequate probability of complete success.”

  “Excellent. I should be there in a few hours. Thank you, Probe.” She turned to her spouses. “So what does that leave?”

  “Loading up,” Martin said. “Pre-flighting Liberty’s Torch. Guiding Probe to its mount point and ensuring a firm attachment. Filling the hydrogen and reaction mass tanks. Transferring the mini-mass driver to the dorsal mount and loading Claire’s little gems into the feed basket. Reviewing the supply manifest. Putting the air plant on auto-titer and damping the reactor to maintenance level. Oh, and if you’ll allow me, I’d really like to inspect the charging circuits for the laser cannons one more time.”

  “Whoa,” Althea said. “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Reminding Claire and me why we keep you around.”

  Martin smirked. “I daresay I could think of at least one more reason,” he said. Claire giggled. His smirk faded as he raised a finger. “I left something out of that list: Convincing ourselves that we won’t get homicidally sick of one another after three years cooped up in a flexosteel hull.”

  The statement had an unexpectedly sobering effect on all three.

  “You don’t want me to fly off alone again, do you?” Althea said.

  Martin shook his head. “Never again, love.”

  “I wouldn’t permit it in any case,” Claire said.

  “Then—”

  “No one’s ever done this before, Al,” Martin said.

  “What about the Spoonerites?”

  “They had the whole volume of the Relic,” he said. “Space enough that a little solitude was usually available to someone who needed it. Besides, if the records are accurate, there were about three thousand of them. That’s a lot more variety in companionship than we’re going to have.”

  Althea looked away.

  I never thought about any of that.

  “Are you seriously worried about us, Martin?”

  His mouth twisted. “I don’t know whether or not to be. When I try to dismiss it, I think about the way confined rats turn on one another. When I try to take it seriously, I start wondering what’s wrong with me that I should doubt my love for you. Because that’s what the question amounts to: Do we love one another enough to endure that kind of compulsory immediacy for three years?”

  Althea fumbled, uncertain what she could say. She was about to speak when Claire held up a hand.

  “I’d never felt love—I didn’t even know what love is,” she said, “until I loved you. But there’s more, Althea. I’ve had a chance to observe a lot of other people who say they love their wives, or their husbands, or their children. I’ve watched and listened as closely as I could. And as best I can tell, only about ten percent of them mean anything like what you, Martin, and I do by it.”

  Claire indicated Martin with a toss of her head. “Martin told me what you said when he was...not himself. About love, I mean. I will never, ever forget it. I doubt he will, either. And I feel exactly the same way toward both of you.” Her face had lit with an unprecedented glow. “I treasure the opportunity to be alone with you, or I would never have urged us to come back up here. Being with you both makes me feel...whole.”

  Althea stared at her, stricken of speech.

  “Also,” Probe interjected, “I will be available to converse with anyone who desires it.”

  The humans laughed in unison.

  Presently Martin said. “Thank you for that, Probe. Claire, will you forgive me for merely saying ‘Ditto?’”

  “How...how did we do this?” Althea whispered.

  Martin smirked. “We didn’t, space babe. You did.”

  “What?”

  “It couldn’t have happened with anyone else in the middle, Al,” he said. “It had to be you.”

  A laugh welled up inside Althea that she was unable to suppress. “But Martin, I’m only in the middle one night out of three.”

  Claire giggled. “Tonight you are.”

  “Hey! I thought it was your night.”

  “Don’t make a liar out of me over a niggling little detail.”

  * * *

  “We’re loaded, pre-flighted, and ready to cast off,” Althea said into the mike.

  “What’s your planned time of departure?” Despite the static and tinniness of the radio’s speaker, Barton’s voice was warmly wistful.

  “Tomorrow morning, around daybreak for you. One more decent dinner, a good night’s sleep, and we’ll be off to Eridanus cluster. With luck, the Loioc won’t have figured out how to conceal their entire planet from us.”

  “Are you joshing or is that a real possibility?”

  Martin beckoned for the mike. Althea handed it to him.

  “We don’t really know, Bart. They command esoterica of physics that Althea hasn’t mastered. We’re just going to have to go there and see.”

  “Hm. Do be careful, guys. I want you all back here safe and sound as soon as possible. By the way, when’s that likely to be?”

  Martin’s
thumb wavered over the transmit key. He glanced sideways at Althea. She shrugged minutely.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Our estimated one-way transit time is fourteen months, twelve days. That’s a little shorter than Al’s maiden voyage. I managed to goose six percent more power out of the fusion plant. So if we were to get there, turn right around and head back, you could expect to see us in late Sexember, 1330. We have no idea how long the war will run, of course.”

  “And it really will be a war, won’t it? With all the usual trimmings.”

  Martin cringed. Althea put out her hand, and he laid the mike in it. She depressed the key.

  “We still have hope that it won’t be, Bart. Martin’s come up with some anti-detection gear that might allow us to sneak into their system, bombard their world with our nanites, and get away without any sort of...engagement. But we’re ready for anything. As ready as we can make ourselves, at least.”

  “I certainly hope so. You wouldn’t believe how badly everyone down here misses you three. We...they all talk about you constantly. If the Loioc manage to kill you, I’m going to be vexed.”

  Against her will, Althea’s face split in a huge grin. She looked over her shoulder at her spouses. Martin and Claire wore identical expressions.

  “I’ll be sure to tell them that, Bart. For now, you look after the clan and...what did you call it?”

  “The Autonomy of Jacksonville.”

  “Yeah, that.” Althea swallowed painfully. “I’m sure we’ll have a ton of stuff to catch up on when we get back.”

  “And a ton of war stories, I’m sure.” Barton’s speech acquired a formal cadence. “Go with God, kinsmen. May he protect and guide every step of your journey, and assist you in bringing freedom to the helpless men of the Loioc. We’ll all be praying for you.”

  Althea swallowed again, all mirth gone from her. “Thank you, Bart. Give our best to everyone planetside. Signing off.”

  She returned the mike to its hanger, stood and turned to her spouses.

  “This is it, guys,” she said. “It’s really going to happen. At least, I’m going to do it. You can still back out, you know.”