Starship Liberator

by B. V. Larson

  “That’s amazing,” Carla said, running her hand over the smoothed skin.

  “Keep doing that and we may have to send the others away,” Straker said with a grin.

  “Down, boy,” she told him. Then, as if in sudden realization, Carla lifted her hand to her face. “Oh… Great Cosmos… I might…”

  “Yes,” Campos said with a grin. “We can fix your face!”

  “It’s not perfect,” said Straker, “But I think with a little makeup you’ll look…”

  “Normal?” Carla said.

  “I was going to say better than ever.”

  Engels threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. “This means a lot to me.”

  He smiled hopefully. “You hardly need any improvements, but if it makes you feel better, I’m happy.”

  It was the right thing to say, and she embraced him enthusiastically.

  * * *

  The honor guard was just arriving at the cemetery when Straker and Engels got there after changing into their dress uniforms. The two senior officers spent the next hour greeting people, shaking hands and hugging a few civilians, even kissing a couple of babies while speaking their condolences.

  Straker hadn’t known most of the dead personally, but he had a list of names and did his level best to make all the family and friends know he cared. Forty-seven simple fiber caskets would be lowered into the ground today, under a suitably dim and somber lighting that simulated an overcast sky.

  When the proper time came in the mass ceremony, after the community chaplain had spoken his words of comfort, Straker took the podium. He gazed out over the crowd of several hundred—as many as could do it took time off from duties for this observance.

  “I’m not much of a public speaker,” he began, “and I don’t know much about where our souls might go when we die. But in the Regiment—my old mechsuit regiment, that is—when a comrade-in-arms was struck down by the enemy, the chaplain recited words like these, and we all echoed them.”

  He looked down at his handtab, at the modified version of a mechsuiter’s funeral benediction, and read. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Unknowable Creator, into your hands we commend the bodies and spirits of our friends and comrades. As they were worthy, resurrect them on the Final Day, that they may serve honorably in your Celestial Realm once more. Amen.”

  Straker raised his eyes to the onlookers. He didn’t know for sure that what he’d said was even true, but these people needed hope, not doubt. “I believed those words then, and I believe them now. Death is not the end. But even if it were, I wouldn’t do anything differently. I’m going to do my very best to lead you, to lead everyone, down a road that will liberate the oppressed people of the Mutuality, and anyone else we find who suffers under tyrants. Nobody should live beneath the boot-heel of a system that crushes their humanity with torture and threats to their families. This I promise you.”

  He walked off the low dais to more applause and cheering than seemed appropriate for a funeral, but he hoped the people would remember his words and pass them on to their neighbors. He stood at attention next to Engels, Loco, Zaxby, Heiser, the Ritter brothers and others, saluting crisply as the honor guard fired blanks into the air and a bugler sent a sad and ancient melody floating above the gathering.

  When the shots and the music had ended, when the final caskets had been lowered into their graves, Loco and Carla turned instinctively toward him.

  “What now, boss?” Loco asked.

  “Now?” Straker clapped his best friend on the back with one hand and hugged Engels with the other, staring past them at the slowly brightening habitat. “Now the war of liberation really begins.”

  The End

  Read on for an excerpt from BATTLESHIP INDOMITABLE, Book 2 of the Galactic Liberation series.

  BATTLESHIP INDOMITABLE

  Once my ragtag Breakers had established our base of operations in the Starfish Nebula, I began planning the first major revolt. The Sachsen system would be the test case, ripe for plucking given how recently the people there had been conquered. Only one orbital fortress stood in my way. If the Breakers couldn’t seize it, I might as well give up my dreams of galactic liberation right then and there. If they could, more planets would fall like dominoes. Fleets and troops would flock to my banner.

  But first, there were families of my troops to rescue. My people couldn’t be expected to fight wholeheartedly with knives to the throats of their loved ones.

  - A History of Galactic Liberation, by Derek Barnes Straker, 2860 A.D.

  Chapter 1

  2817 A.D., Old Earth reckoning. Prael System.

  “We’ve found them, Commodore Straker,” said Captain Gibson over the secure narrowband comlink. He was calling from his shuttle on the surface of the cold, miserable little world of Prael.

  Commodore Derek Straker stood on the Spartan bridge of Lockstep, Gibson’s ship, a former Mutuality fleet auxiliary transport. The ship held a company of Straker’s Breakers—his troops—and orbited above Prael, squawking forged codes that showed it to be a different vessel, one that had not been pirated from the Mutuality.

  “They’re at a labor camp near the equator,” Gibson continued. “I sent you a data file.”

  Prael’s equatorial zone got warm enough to grow food, but only barely. Life was hard even outside of a labor camp. Inside... well, no one in the extensive system of Mutuality prisons, camps and re-education facilities expected anything but misery.

  Gibson’s report meant the families of the Lockstep’s crew, even the small children, had been rounded up, ripped from their lives and put to work. Because they were connected to enemies of the State, they would slave until they died.

  Or, if they were suitable, until they were turned into Hok troopers by forcible injection of invasive biotech. That was policy in the worker’s paradise of the Mutuality. The crushing weight of the State fell on anyone that stepped out of line.

  Gibson had infiltrated the bleak town where their former residences stood, intending to contact someone he could trust, and to learn their fate.

  Now, he had.

  “What do their defenses look like?” asked Lieutenant Johnnie “Loco” Paloco, Straker’s best friend and comrade-in-arms, from his seat at an empty bridge station. The slim man’s booted feet rested on the unlit console and his hands were laced behind his head.

  “My contact gave me what info she has. It’s a typical camp setup. More importantly, she heard a Mutual Guard mechanized company has been deployed there,” Gibson answered.

  “Only one reason to defend a labor camp with armored vehicles,” Straker mused. “They expect us to try a rescue, and they want to harden the target, maybe trap us. Typical Mutuality tactic.”

  “Inquisitors are smart and paranoid, and they don’t like it when you kill their brother clones,” Gibson said. “There’s probably another Lazarus there, waiting like a spider in his web.”

  “Good thing we have a few hammers to squash spiders. Foehammers. Sledgehammers.”

  Loco winced. “We really need to work on your jokes, Derek. That was terrible.”

  Straker raised an eyebrow at Loco. “Who said I was joking? I’m looking forward to killing another of those clones.”

  Loco grinned and leered. “Hmm, maybe if we’re lucky we’ll pick up another concubine like Tachina. I hear all the Lazaruses have them. I’d like a piece of that action.”

  “I thought you were with Campos.”

  “I am. But things can change. Or maybe they’ll get along. Make a Loco sandwich outta me.”

  Straker shook his head ruefully. “Like sharing a cage with two wildcats, more likely. Good luck with that.”

  “Die young, stay pretty.”

  “Don’t die yet. I still need you.”

  Loco held up his hands at Straker’s hard look. “Aww, boss, I didn’t know you cared.”

  “I need you and your suit to do your mission, Loco. Now get your head in the game.”

  “All right, all right, boss.”<
br />
  Things had been so much simpler as a Hundred Worlds mechsuiter. Straker could see why the chain of command discouraged fraternization and locked their troops into specific roles and routines: train, fight, R&R, repeat, until dead or retired. It was far simpler than living a real life.

  He turned back to Gibson’s image on the screen. “We’ll hit them in about… seven hours, at two in the morning local time. They’ll be less alert, and they’ll stand out better on thermal when it’s colder.”

  “I’ll meet you there. Gibson out.”

  Loco put his feet on the deck and activated his console. “Let’s see what the good captain sent us.” Soon, he had a visiplate showing a crude, hand-drawn diagram of the labor camp, marked with locations of guard shacks, towers, offices and barracks. “Let me pull up a recent image.”

  Lockstep had been circling the rocky planet for three days, and her crew had been continuously taking imagery of manmade facilities in preparation for identifying the target. Now, Loco manipulated the two pictures to get the scale right, and overlaid one on the other.

  “I’ll transfer the annotations to the photo. It would be good to get a high-res shot, though. Can we alter orbit for a close pass?” Loco asked.

  Straker thought about it, and then shook his head. “I don’t want to do anything to warn them early. Do what you can with what you have. I want a mission overview ready to brief the Breakers in three hours.”

  “Without a high-res pic, I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to identify the hidden tanks, boss,” Loco said in a warning tone.

  “It’s a balance of risks. I believe surprise is more important.”

  “Aye aye, Commodore Derek, sir.”

  Loco got to work.

  Six hours later, Lockstep began her descent on a path designed to avoid the sparse Mutuality aerospace control facilities. The camp had been diagrammed and the mission briefings distributed. All of Straker’s Breakers knew their roles and their parts.

  Nobody had questioned the wisdom of risking an entire company and a ship to save thirty-odd family members, plus whoever else they could scoop up. Most of the Breakers hated the Mutuality in a visceral way, and would do almost anything to liberate their prisoners. Straker had no doubt his troops would take grim satisfaction in killing all the Mutuality minions—thuggish guards, cruel torturers, smug brainwashers—in the labor camp.

  “Time to mount up,” Straker said to Loco and to Karst, the only other trained—well, half-trained—mechsuiter he had. The three men left the bridge in the hands of Gibson’s XO and headed for the spacious cargo holds.

  The Lockstep was a ship of the largest class of freighters that could routinely land on planets. Though no dropship or assault boat, she was adequate for insertions such as this, as long as they had no aerospace opposition. They’d have to set down away from the camp, though, or risk taking fire as they landed. The Lockstep was unarmored, and one round from a tank or a missile crawler could knock her out of the sky.

  In the main cargo bay, three mechsuits lay like reclining giants. Seven meters from head to toe, the constructs represented the peak of Hundred Worlds ground force technology. Properly handled and using brainlinks, they were each worth a hundred armored vehicles, perhaps more.

  But brainlinks were finicky things, and Straker and Loco hadn’t been able to get theirs to synch with these mechsuits. It took a high-tech facility and specialists to match one pilot to a specific suit.

  Still, before his capture, Straker had been the best Hundred Worlds mechsuiter alive, and Loco was an elite veteran as well. They could use the manual backup systems and still be five to ten times as effective as any tank, Straker figured.

  The three climbed through the robotic vehicles’ opened chest plates into their cockpits. Tight-fitting sensors enfolded them, ensuring the mechsuits would mimic their every move. This was the major advantage of the ’suit; a wearer strode about the battlefield like fifty tons of avenging demigod, running and dodging, pointing and shooting, more akin to a martial artist than an armored vehicle.

  Straker and Loco piloted standard Foehammers, built by the factory they’d hijacked on the asteroid habitat Freiheit. Karst drove a Sledgehammer, a monstrosity kluged together from salvaged mechsuit parts plus the addition of a simple, heavy weapon in each arm and missile boxes on its shoulders. It was slow, unreliable and lacked agility, but it carried a heavy punch. Straker couldn’t afford to leave it behind, and anyway, Karst needed the experience.

  The three suits remained strapped to the deck during the long, shallow suborbital approach. Straker keyed his comlink to the general network and spoke. “Straker here. Sound off for commo check.”

  “Loco here. I read you Lima Charlie.”

  “Karst here. Loud and clear, sir.”

  “Heiser here. All good.” Heiser was Straker’s first sergeant, or “Spear,” leading the infantry company.

  “Ritter One here. Alles klar,” said Aldrik, the eldest of the two surviving Ritter brothers, in his harsh, Old Earth German accent.

  “Ritter Two here. Me too, sir.” That was Conrad. The brothers were Heiser’s two platoon sergeants.

  “Double check your people’s cold weather gear,” said Straker. “We have a fifteen-kilometer convoy into battle and the wind chill will be well below zero.”

  “Frostbite will be its own punishment,” said Conrad.

  “That might be true in training,” Heiser snapped, “but on a mission, it can get your buddy killed too.”

  “Jawohl, Spear, we hear you,” said Aldrik.

  Straker went on, “I want a smooth deployment on landing. Infantry straight into the crawlers, no screwing around. Mechsuits will pull security. Stay out of our way, people. Without brainlinks, we don’t have situational awareness enough to know not to squash someone who gets underfoot.”

  The freighter shuddered with the fast, shallow descent, first bleeding off speed through atmospheric heating, and then flying through by the air using the ship’s stubby retractable wings to glide.

  “Any sensor pings?” Straker asked.

  “No, sir,” said one of the Lockstep bridge crew.

  “Let me know.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Straker wouldn’t call off the mission if they were detected. He’d just have to accept the price in blood if the enemy were alert and ready, rather than dozing on midnight watch as he hoped to catch them.

  He ran three systems checks on his Foehammer before they finally set down. Silence settled for a moment, broken only by the ping-pop of cooling hull metal, until Heiser barked at the infantry to get moving.

  Straker released the cargo clamps that held his mechsuit and rolled carefully to a crouch. Extra layers of crysteel beneath him shielded the deck from abuse it was not designed for, the pressure of alloy gauntlets, knees and feet. The big cargo bay door in front of him dropped to form a ramp, and infantry hastened to lay a path of plates to protect it as well.

  Once set, he carefully ape-walked out on toes and knuckles until he could rise to stand on the ramp. Then he stepped gingerly, like a man on a fragile roof, until his feet hit the frozen ground. He immediately brought up his HUD in thermal imaging and light-enhancement mode, giving him a combination of monochromatic day-like vision and false color heat sensing. Behind him, the other suits would be doing the same.

  Straker strode forward down a rutted road in the direction of the labor camp, until he could see a farmhouse set in a hollow between two hills. This was the only dwelling for kilometers, and the freighter’s approach path had been carefully chosen to minimize overflight of locals.

  He raised his force-cannon and, after suppressing the bimetal reactive ammo load, fired straight into the building. The magnetic tube that normally contained and guided a destructive jet of plasma lanced out, empty of heat. Without the ammunition to create plasma, what resulted was a directed electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, useful for disabling electronics without destroying anything else.

  The farmhouse went dark as a
ll of its circuitry fried. The locals couldn’t be allowed to report their landing. Straker had to keep the giant mechsuits, his deadly surprise, hidden until the last moment possible.

  “Breakers, sound off,” Straker called.

  “Loco in position, nothing to report.”

  “Karst in position, nothing to report.”

  “We’re loaded and ready, sir,” Heiser said.

  “Lockstep good to go, sir,” said the freighter’s XO. “Waiting to reposition, on your word.”

  “Move out.” Straker stepped off at a comfortable pace designed to minimize noise. Mechsuits were never quiet, but he didn’t have to make it easy for the enemy. He walked straight down the dirt road, with Loco and Karst behind, left and right of the crawlers.

  Double trailers on each crawler carried the two platoons of straight-leg infantry. The whole arrangement proceeded at about fifty kilometers per hour, which would cover the fifteen kilometers to the target in roughly twenty minutes.

  Nineteen minutes later, Straker slowed and halted the convoy behind a low hill.

  He’d detected no outposts or sensors. Had Straker been setting a trap, he’d have made sure the camp was ringed by both. Of course, the Lazarus clone was almost certainly expecting a simple infantry raid, possibly with a few gun trucks or light armored vehicles, not full-up mechsuits, and he’d want to make the target look as inviting as possible.

  Straker watched as the infantry deployed. They’d cover the last kilometer on foot. With a mechanized company waiting in ambush, coming in on the crawlers would be suicide.

  “All right men, follow us at a double time but stay away from the ’suits. Their heavy stuff will be targeting us. No reason to catch that hell. Request support fire from Corporal Karst if you need it, and proceed according to the mission order. Work the plan, and the plan will work. Straker out.”