FORT LIBERTY: VOLUME ONE

by M. ORENDA

  Clara’s eyes slide toward the grid. “All sound reasoning, but a striker? Striker’s nothing more than a pirate vessel, flying without a pinger and shielded from grid monitoring. NRM purged most, but always knew they’d be back in fashion one day. Why not today? Thought they’d attack the richest ship on the grid, a NRM cruiser, and things didn’t go as planned. Possible, right?”

  “No,” Petra says, speaking from her gut. “Not possible.”

  “Okay… so what’s to be done?”

  “End Protocol, that’s what.”

  Clara stares for a bit, then looks down at the consoles, like she’s got no quips, no feisty comebacks on her tongue this time. And, of course, she wouldn’t, because she knows exactly what End Protocol means.

  They’ve practiced it before, but with the pilot and the crew never really taking it seriously, because attacks on the shadow road never happen, not since the days of strikers and mercs and the pirates which thrived in space before NRM contractors tracked them down and killed every last one, installing checkpoints with laser cannons to keep all traffic flowing in steady, compliant lines.

  Five decades of peaceful space flight breeds complacency, and if she were a different kind of smuggler, a smuggler who hadn’t learned the right lessons, then she’d have slept blissfully all these years and there’d be no End Protocol, and nothing to do but wait for that mystery striker to appear from the black.

  “Get it started,” Petra nudges. “I’ll deliver the order to the crew in the hold myself, quiet and personal.”

  Clara is frowning. “But… even if we’re talking about a striker… it’d have to be a fast ship to attack that cruiser then catch up to us when we’re at full accelerator burn… not even sure that’s possible.”

  Petra nods. “Someone’s gone to all the trouble of building a shielded attack vessel, against all laws, probably in development for years, and you’re assuming that it’s flying on the same plasma accelerators we use for commercial transport?”

  Clara’s frown deepens… no longer assuming that.

  “Attacking a cruiser means they will hunt you down no matter what,” Petra continues. “So I’m thinking they’ve got no qualms about destroying every single vessel on flight path to kill what we got sitting safe and otherwise secure in crew cabin two. The captain before me would’a tried to make a profitable trade of that, instead of getting blown to bits.”

  “Probably.” Clara mutters. “Not him though, are you?”

  Petra looks at her, needing it to be understood. “Not just my life at risk.”

  “And never was. What crew like ours sails on the guarantee of safety? And anyway, the man’s got beautiful eyes.”

  No need to ask what man.

  “Full burn,” Petra says. “Fifteen minute, silent countdown.”

  Wyatt says nothing, processes for a moment in silence, because he’s as seasoned as they come. The other two… well, they aren’t. Gojo’s swearing under his breath, reading line after line on the small monitor he’s rewired in their cabin, now a direct feed from the ship’s comms.

  Space object collision.

  Explosions. VIP compartments gone.

  Fucking gone.

  Top Tier managers among the dead and dying. Entire ship being evacuated.

  Shit!

  Forty-eight hours till rescue vessels arrive.

  “That was us,” Logan says, his expression strained. He floats now as if he’s been in space all his life, overtired, and thinned to the point of being gaunt. “That’s where we would have been, right?”

  “Exactly where we would have been,” Gojo replies, uncharacteristically grim. “Dead center.”

  Voss grimaces. The bodies that are now lost to space, or burned beyond recognition in compartments they couldn’t escape from, were people who thought they were untouchable… because they should have been.

  Managers, in their shiny white suits with their fresh baby faces, maybe too young but exceptionally well educated, sent by the NRM to monitor the status of Earthbound bases and security forces, report back positive numbers to the Block 12. They had done their jobs, and they were going home to anxious mothers, wives or husbands… maybe kids.

  It hits home, a knife in the gut.

  This has just turned into an undeclared war, a cruiser destroyed, civilian lives lost, suddenly much darker, more ruthless than he thought it would it get. He’d followed his instincts, anticipated there might be some act of sabotage, some attempt to wipe his team out on the cruiser—which is why they weren’t on it—but he hadn’t expected wholesale slaughter.

  Anger is a force all its own, and as much as he keeps it in check, it simmers under the armor, his adrenaline up, the power of will enough to go kit up and rain hell down on anything.

  Someone wants Niri dead. They want it bad enough to overrun a company base and destroy a company cruiser… kill whoever gets in the way.

  That means his team, his guys, his brothers.

  It also means Petra.

  He drops his gaze, jaw set, knowing that the mercurial smuggler matters more to him than she should. Protecting his team, protecting Niri… he knows how to do that, at least as well as it can be done. But protecting Petra—a person he will abandon when the time comes—is impossible.

  He looks up to find Logan searching his expression. The medic presses his lips together, unsure if he should intrude, but deciding to do so anyway. “They have to think we’re dead now. Right, Colonel? I mean, that was our section, and we’re on that manifest, and now we’re missing. It’s—”

  “Nothing’s missing,” Gojo interrupts the kid, this rare degree of utter seriousness making him sound annoyed. “The ship’s powered down, but the life support is still going, and the AI units are working, already counting heads, already launched at least three dozen repair drones to retrieve bodies and material. Every sliver of debris is being tracked and identified. Once collected, the analysis takes minutes on these big AI systems. They’re going to figure out, relatively quickly, that there is absolutely zero confirmation that we were ever on that ship. No meals. No comms. No vid. No witnesses. No bodies. No fingers, teeth. Nothing.”

  Wyatt nods his agreement.

  “That doesn’t mean they’ll know what ship we’re on,” Logan says. “They can’t have saboteurs on all of them. And this one—”

  The hatch comm buzzes, a yellow light blinking on its dark glass panel.

  Voss cuts his gaze to Gojo, who switches views on his monitor.

  “It’s the Captain,” Gojo says, his half-grin returning. “Looks pissed.”

  Wyatt and Logan start reaching for the awkward net of storage bags and clothes they’ve tied to the ceiling rungs, dragging a curtain of odd stuff over Niri floating unconscious in her hammock. It hides her, but only superficially because the curtain is an oddity unto itself, and draws the eye immediately.

  Voss pushes to the hatch and waits, hand hovering over the console. He imagines Petra on the other side, eyes dark and furious… having watched that cruiser listing in the holo grid with its grim report of casualties, temper burning her up like a fever, all spitfire, no patience, no diplomacy, no plan… just a straight charge to his hatch to give him a beating.

  He expects it, and he deserves it. But when the hatch rolls open, she’s not that woman. She’s not so furious, not swinging for his chin. Rather, she’s steeled, small body tense, lips parted, eyes narrowed.

  Petra. Focused.

  “Bring your most technical,” she says. “An’ follow me.”

  Petra glides ahead of him, her body sailing through tube sections, haloed in the cold fluorescent glow. She’s moving fast, grasping onto handholds, propelling herself through the Sparrow’s weightless labyrinth, paths so familiar to her that she can navigate them on muscle memory alone. Voss couldn’t catch her if he tried, but he can hear her, the determined hiss between her teeth in tight spaces, the careless brush of her sleeve along the railing. Her sense of urgency is apparent. Her plan is not… which he doesn�
��t like.

  Her ship is now clearly at risk. Her life is at risk. He’s to blame for all of it, and he’s getting led down a corridor without explanation. One could be forgiven for thinking there’s an aft airlock with his name on it.

  She hasn’t elaborated on her claim of murdering a smuggler crew, so he has no context for that, but the difference between killing several members of a criminal enterprise, and killing a few Assaulters who threaten your existence with their presence, is not all that great when viewed from the standpoint of survival.

  And yet…

  He doesn’t think it’s going to happen like that, spent too many years training men how to kill to take such an admission of murder at face value. Maybe she’s responsible for the deaths of a smuggling crew, and maybe she’s not. Maybe she only holds herself responsible. Or, maybe she killed them and had a damn good reason for doing so. He believes she has it in her. It just doesn’t feel like she’s a psychopath who kills for money, or convenience.

  Too much empathy. Too much… torment.

  In some sense, he trusts that. Probably more than he should.

  They slip into the chilled air of the cargo hold, curving banks of lights casting a solid white glare over orange plastic netting and numbered rails. The crew—men they weren’t supposed to see, and who weren’t supposed to see them—are now hard at work. Voss counts five guys unlashing cargo and moving crates. And they’re not wasting time. They don’t look up. They don’t stare. He catches a glance, maybe two, but they’ve all been told… something.

  Odds are, it’s something they didn’t want to hear.

  What are you doing, Petra?

  She leads them through lines of cargo then out of the hold, pulling herself down one vertical ladder way, then another.

  The air grows colder by rapid degrees.

  Plastic panels become diamond steel walls, soft lights and white tubes giving way to scarred metal hatches and cable trays, thick pipes coded with different shades of paint, tiny spaces lit by maintenance lamps.

  Here, comforts and illusions are surrendered. The machine doesn’t exist for the humans. The humans exist for the machine, bared to its grit and dull shine, exposing the skeletal ribs of bulkheads, the metal veins of pure utility, walls humming with the rush of liquids and gases along sweating pipes, its power and fiber optic cables hidden in shielded conduits, its passages dotted by battered valves and dogging wheels as primitive as those in the early submarines that plumbed the depths of Earth’s oceans on sonar waves.

  Ahead, Petra grabs the inside of a hatch and pulls herself into a weightless crouch between sections. She leans toward them, her words quick and curt, delivered on frosted breath. “We got five evacuation shuttles, each for ten people… so plenty more than we need. Three of ‘em are lined up here. They power up on automatic signal from the flight deck. They got beacons, and they’re programmed for direct path to Midstation, or Mars Port, whichever’s closer. They got standard fuel engines which fire at intervals and take an extra two or three months to reach the closest destination if no rescue picks up. All have enough rations, and redundant life support units to account.”

  Voss shakes his head. “And you think we’re about to need these?”

  She locks gazes with him, looking as if she might want to lash out, but it turns into something else, some hint of genuine fear, for her ship and crew certainly, but also—if he’s not mistaken—for him too. “You got someone powerful what wants you dead. Cruiser you were supposed to be on is now floating in the black, and every ship from here to Mars Port in the crosshairs.”

  “Crosshairs?”

  “Of a striker, most likely.”

  “A what?” Gojo asks.

  “A ship that can hide from grid detection an’ so attack without warning. It’s the only explanation for such violent hull breach on a cruiser. Sabotage is too difficult with AI monitoring. Rocks and debris on flight path are seen and tracked, repelled by magnetic force shielding, but invisible attack ships, and what advanced missiles they may fire, are not. There were plenty of such ships in earlier days, and now there’s supposed to be none, so whoever’s after you has lethal imagination and a powerful cash flow.”

  “Fucking kidding me,” Gojo mutters.

  Voss ignores him. “So we’re preparing for an attack.”

  “Sparrow’s not a cruiser,” she replies. “Won’t survive an attack. We’re initiating full accelerator burn and a straight sprint to Mars. We’re closing all compartments, everyone in slim suits with helmets kept at arm’s reach. Time to think hard about putting your executive here, ready in an evac shuttle, because you might not have time to get him here otherwise.”

  “Especially if we deviate, “Gojo says. “It’s a bad idea to miss your stop and just blast toward Mars. You’ll flag us for everyone who’s watching. They’re going to know that this is the ship. They’re going to—”

  “Gojo,” Voss shuts him down.

  The younger man hisses under his breath, stopping short of saying more, though Petra—and her temper—have already risen to the bait.

  “No, go on,” she quips. “Tell me all about bad ideas, e’en though you’re maybe not the smartest chunk of muscle who ever got strapped into a rocket, as it turns out. Once they find out you weren’t on that cruiser, they’ll start searching through the records on other ships, and they’ll find you easily enough, as we falsely registered you, as a last minute addition, a comm crew, and had to do such because the airlock security systems on Copernicus record all traffic. You were on vid when you floated aboard this ship, and that vid is available to the same people who can access passenger manifests of cruisers.”

  Gojo takes a second. Then his gaze cuts to Voss. “Colonel… ”

  We’re in deep shit.

  “Not finished,” Petra continues, her voice all edge and breath. “One of these evac shuttles is not so much about evac-ing. Retrofit to the ship. Bought it off an old pirate who bought it off an e’en older one. Operational, but needs someone with the right skills to make it work.”

  Voss grimaces. “What?”

  She presses a few keys on a console and a series of locks release, popping a hatch loose from the wall. She grabs hold and swings the thing open, revealing an open airlock and a cramped flight deck set into the compartment beyond it. A semi-circle of computer screens flicker on, followed by a labored hiss of air from an oversized life support unit, the small craft struggling to come out of cold sleep.

  It’s old style… very old style. No holo grid. Angled cockpit windows and aluminum bulkheads … rows of panel switches, caution lights…

  The thing’s a relic.

  Only it’s got teeth. To the left of the pilot’s chair is a crude weapon’s station with its own seat, controls equipped with a protruding black joystick, trigger grip, and targeting screens that appear to be based on the early grid system.

  “Gun,” Gojo murmurs.

  “Oh, now we’re getting smarter,” Petra replies. “Seven barrel, attached exterior, under the cockpit. Fires thirty millimeter, armor piercing rounds that are belt fed from the lower deck. But the loader’s jammed, and mechanics who could fix it proper are in short supply.”

  “Wyatt.” Gojo looks at Voss, knowing he can’t compete with sniper expertise on matters of antique gun maintenance. “Wyatt and I will get it running.”

  “Get him down here.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gojo pulls himself back into the corridor then disappears up-ladder, leaving Voss floating in the cold with Petra.

  For a moment she looks trapped, like she can’t get around him, or around the thought of him… it’s unclear which.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Should’a fixed that gun before now.”

  “We’ll fix it. I thought you said this vessel was unarmed.”

  “Looks unarmed, is what I meant,” she mutters, drifting to another console, her attention set on the keypad. “Got to power up all the shuttles. You know how to hit an ignition button, I take it, i
n case I’m not here to show you such.”

  And there it is. In case I’m not here…

  She’s scared. And she should be. The threat is immediate, a vessel that can fire from a distance, tear up her ship before its presence is detected, rip away walls, destroy sealed compartments, drag any of them out into the void, last words left unsaid, life unfinished.

  She opens a hatch and pulls herself into the murk beyond it, her lithe silhouette now colored by red panel lights, indicators blinking on start-up, system checks, her movement eerily silent amid the glow of activity.

  Voss follows her, descending into a small compartment with a console, flight chairs and two short rows of seats. It’s the other kind of evac shuttle, the standard, unarmed box with engines, every inch of wall and floor space fitted with metal pipes, tanks and supply boxes, food, water, med kits, life support…

  He’s seen enough to suspect that there is, indeed, just one button to be pressed for the entire machine to perform its purpose. Human intelligence not required. Sit in the seat. Push blinking light with finger. Get blasted off flight path and into the whole of big sky, life riding on probabilities, on one-use technology never field tested.

  “It’s here,” Petra says, pointing to that exact control, a button covered by a clear switch guard, blinking with a precisely timed sense of urgency.

  “Got it,” he says.

  “Same, more or less, on all of them. Press it. Airlock closes. Autopilot engages. We can do it from the flight deck too, but… ”

  “Understood.”

  They’re maybe a foot apart now, swathed in frosted breath, and he can feel the tension in her, always there, always drawn as tight as a bow string. Touch her, mind or body, and she resonates.

  It’s not the right time for it to cross his mind, but it does anyway. Because the threat is close, and that makes everything significant. What might be the last thing you did, the last thing you said to someone…

  Sometimes it’s like this, in the electric calm before contact with the enemy, only he’s never in the presence of a woman he’s attracted to, much less one he’s put at risk. Petra’s placed her life, and some portion of her livelihood, on the line to get his team to Red Filter.