Merchants in Freedom

by Richard Tongue

  “That could be something of an understatement,” Morgan said, tugging at his restraints to ensure they were tight. “Sixty seconds, mark. All systems secure, docking clamps are locked down.” Glancing up at the ceiling, he said, “Feels so damned strange not to be able to ride the controls.”

  “We’ve got a good pilot at the helm,” Winter replied. “Just try and relax, let it happen.”

  “Try and relax,” Morgan said, shaking his head.

  The seconds counted down, the two men watching the feed as the satellite drifted into position, perfectly placed to get the best possible look at the situation on the surface. A second image flickered into life, a different angle, this one from Mendoza’s shuttle as it flew around the planet, far lower than the satellite. It was going to be an astonishing show. Of that there was no possible doubt. The final seconds slowly trickled away, and without quite realizing it, Winter grasped the armrests of his chair, his knuckles growing white as he braced himself for the shockwave.

  There was a blinding, an overwhelming flash of light from the surface, all eighteen charges detonating at the same instant, burning into the ice sheet with the force of thousands, tens of thousands of tons of explosives, each positioned perfectly to take advantage of the existing flaws in the terrain, ripping and gouging a path down to the subsurface ocean.

  Superheated steam raced in a mighty column into the air, and the shuttle bucked and swayed from side to side, tossed by the thermals in unpredictable directions as the pilot struggled to maintain control of his craft, fighting the swirling atmosphere in a bid to hold course. It was imperative that they reach the surface as rapidly as possible.

  “We’re through!” Morgan yelled, pointing at the screen. There was a fissure, a crack in the ice, growing wider by the second as the overwhelming heat did its work, exposing the bare water beneath for the first time in uncounted centuries. The shuttle had stabilized, was now diving for the surface at full speed, the battered remnants of the heat shield hurled clear to rain down elsewhere upon the surface, scraps of superheated material bombarding the planet.

  Winter reached up for the release lever, using his other hand to switch to the forward view, watching as the shuttle skimmed over the surface, the pilot attempting to compromise between reaching the crack before it started to close and slowing to a safe speed to deploy the submersible. The ship dived to the side, weaving deep into a ravine, the walls high on either side.

  “I think our pilot’s having a little too much fun,” Morgan said.

  “We’re almost there,” Winter replied. “How’s our speed?”

  “Too high yet,” the veteran said. “We’ve got to slow down a hell of a lot if we’re going to make it in time.” Abruptly, the shuttle banked, engine slowed to a minimum, gaining height at the expense of speed.

  “That’s more like it!” Winter said.

  “Crack, just ahead,” Morgan added. “Ten miles and closing. Looks to be at least a half-mile wide. Temperature readings are still way above boiling point. Atmospheric temperature way up, as well.” As if on cue, the shuttle weaved from side to side once more, and he added, “Getting through these thermals should be entertaining.”

  “Xenophon to Submersible,” Bianchi said. “All conditions look favorable at this time. Our best estimates give you something on the order of thirty-nine minutes before the ice pack becomes too thick to burn through with shuttle thrusters. We won’t be able to retrieve you if you stay any later than that.”

  “Just make sure there’s a taxi waiting on the rank to get us,” Winter replied. “Thirty-nine minutes, mark. Just how big a safety margin is there on that?” He paused, glanced at Morgan, and added, “There must be some sort of give in that estimate.”

  “Technically, the numbers are forty-two minutes, plus or minus three, but I’d strongly recommend that you don’t push it that hard. We’ll have a shuttle waiting on five-minute alert, and will assume a pickup at thirty-nine minutes unless we get other instructions from you.”

  “Understood. We’re ready here. Keep listening out.”

  “Target in one mile, slowing nicely,” Morgan reported.

  “Ready to drop,” Winter said. “Wish us luck, Xenophon. Out.” His hand grasped the lever, knowing that the pilot of the shuttle was working the same control, both of them warring with the automated systems to be the first to activate the mechanism, a triply-redundant system. One mistake, and they would at least bounce harmlessly off the ice. More likely, they’d be smashed to pieces, and even if they survived the landing, they’d lose their window.

  “Now!” Morgan said, and Winter threw the controls, the submersible falling the last hundred feet, a pair of thrusters firing to slow its descent at the last instant, as the hull of the makeshift vessel crashed into the water, immediately sinking under the load of the ballast.

  “Splashdown,” Winter reported. “Buoyancy negative, descending. Hit the aquatic scanners, Joe. Let’s see where we are.”

  “Doing it,” he replied. “Twenty feet, descending.” The vessel began to rock, and Winter only belatedly realized that it was the subsurface current, washing them away from their target.

  “Engaging engines,” Winter said, and the propeller burst into life, pushing them back the way they had come. Beneath them was blackness, endless blackness, the only illumination provided by the crack in the ice above them, the sunlight reflecting down into the stygian abyss, already diluted by the water as they continued their descent.

  “No sign of subsurface life,” Morgan reported, looking at the scanners. “Nothing at all, not even at the microbial level. Conditions are perfect, though. Better than anywhere else we’ve found life in a subsurface ocean.”

  “You’ll find it here soon, at a guess,” Winter replied. “There’s bound to be some contamination from the base on the surface. Come back in ten thousand years and you’re going to find a completely different story.”

  “I’ll be sure to book some vacation time as soon as we get back to the ship,” the veteran quipped.

  “Anything from underneath?” Winter asked. “I can’t see a thing down there. The sensors must be picking up something.”

  “Resolution’s lousy,” his friend replied, playing with the controls. “I’m trying to get it working, but it’s not responding as it should.” Turning to him, he added, “I’ve never done this before, remember.”

  “There ought to be a base-line somewhere in the system.”

  “Maybe there is, but…,” Morgan paused, smiled, then said, “Got it. Bringing them up now. The sea floor is a thousand, two hundred feet below us, smooth as a piece of paper.” He paused, then said, “Hey, wait a minute. That’s not the sea floor. It’s some sort of alloy, not rock. Detectors can’t work it out. We’re going to have to go and see for ourselves. And I’m picking up heat sources from inside, a lot hotter than the surrounding environment.” He frowned, then added, “As though there’s some sort of power grid inside. No way it could be anything other than artificial. Whatever it is we came here to find, I reckon it must be right below us.”

  “We’re descending at a hundred and twenty feet a minute,” Winter replied. “We should be landing on it in ten minutes minus. Run through the research programs. Let’s gather as much scientific data as we can, and gather some samples through…”

  “Wait one,” Morgan said. “The heat signature down there is growing stronger, and fast. Definitely some sort of a grid. I’m…”

  Suddenly, the endless gloom was broken, a bright light shining from the darkness, bringing the structure beneath them into shocking relief, a huge tower, thousands of feet high, with intricate patterns carved upon it.

  “I think you’re right,” Winter said. “We found what we came for.”

  “What is it?”

  “In ten minutes, with luck, we’re going to find out.”

  Chapter 13

  “Look at it,” Volkov said, staring at the plume of steam still rising into the stratosphere as the shuttle sped overhead. “I�
��ve never seen anything like that before.” Glancing across at his sensor readouts, he added, “We’re getting a lot of great data. All systems working perfectly.”

  Frowning, Mendoza replied, “Too perfectly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that all of this is going far too well, and that’s making me pretty damned nervous.” She reached for the secondary sensor controls, and added, “I need the long-range sensors.”

  “We’ve got everything focused on the planet,” Volkov protested. “If we divert any of our bandwidth, we’re going to lose resolution, and the quality of the data will be…”

  “That’s what she’s worried about,” Rogers said, stepping into the cramped cockpit. “The hallmark of sensible paranoia. Everyone in the system will have all of their sensors focused on the planet. I can’t help but wonder if our friends wouldn’t have had that in mind.”

  “That’s insane!” Volkov said, belatedly adding, “Sir. We’ve been running full checks constantly over the last ten hours, and there’s no possible way they could have worked out what we were planning. There can’t be anything out there. It’s just not possible.”

  “Nevertheless, we’re going to check,” Mendoza said, entering a series of commands. “I’m not taking much, Vik. Just enough to see if there’s anyone else out there, anyone who shouldn’t be there.” She called up a tactical view of local space, the icy planet at its heart surrounded by a cluster of small moons, each with its own satellite in distant orbit. Everything seemed as it should be. Then she looked at the formation again, and frowned. “That’s odd.”

  “What’s odd?” Volkov asked. “They’re all there, just as planned.”

  “Eudoxus is lagging behind,” she said.

  “I think I saw something about that in the communications log,” Volkov said, skimming through the files. “Here it is. Malfunction to secondary thruster controls. They’re drifting back to allow them to conduct a series of maneuvering tests without risking any of the other ships in the formation. All signed and approved by Commander Winter.”

  “Give me the mid-range sensors,” she ordered.

  “Come on, Ronnie, this is getting crazy,” Volkov protested. At a glare from her, he sighed, then said, “Mid-range sensors coming on-line.”

  “What have you spotted?” Rogers asked.

  “That ship isn’t quite behaving as though the thrusters had failed,” she replied. “There’s no sign of formation drift. She’s holding her position in the formation, and if they were testing the thrusters on any sort of sequence pattern I’m familiar with, they’d be flying all over the place, especially if they had malfunctions. They’re just sitting there.”

  “She’s undermanned, remember,” Volkov said. “Maybe they’re having problems with their maintenance routine. Hell, maybe they’ve just got a lousy Chief Engineer over there who doesn’t know what he’s doing. It wouldn’t be the first time.” He paused, glanced at her, and said, “Bringing up the mid-range sensors. Let me pull up the specifications on that ship. If there’s some sort of defect, we ought to be able to track it.”

  Looking at the monitor, Rogers asked, “What’s that shuttle doing?”

  Glancing across, Mendoza said, “That’s the release shuttle, moving into parking orbit.” She frowned, then added, “She is getting a little close to Eudoxus. Was that planned?”

  “It was, but Eudoxus wasn’t meant to be there when the shuttle was,” Rogers reported after a brief consultation with the records. “It’s almost as if someone tailed the position of that ship to bring it closer to the shuttle than they were supposed to be.”

  “Sensors coming up,” Volkov said, ignoring the still-spectacular display from the planet below to focus on Eudoxus, his eyes running over the monitors. “I’m showing some signs of damage to the forward thruster, but it’s all external.” Jabbing at the screen, he added, “Look there, right by the primary power coupling. That’d be annoying as hell, but it isn’t exactly urgent. The secondary systems work just as well, and if the ship needs to maneuver, it should be able to use those just fine.”

  “Where’s the work crew?” Mendoza asked. “If this is an external repair, there should be someone out on the hull trying to fix it. They’ve been on station for more than an hour. That’s long enough to get an engineering team suited up and on the outer hull.” She reached for the communications controls, and said, “Let me see if I can get a look at their scheduling systems.”

  “If you attempt to log into their systems, they’ll know what you are doing,” Rogers warned. “Maybe we ought to go right to Commander Bianchi.”

  “Relax,” Mendoza said. “I’ve hacked enough Fleet systems in the past without anyone knowing what I was doing.”

  “I’m scared to ask,” Rogers said, as Mendoza’s fingers rattled across the controls. The firewalls were firmed, the security far tighter than it should have been, and she immediately realized that her suspicions were far too real. Eudoxus had one of the weaker security teams in the fleet. Under normal circumstances, she should have easily been able to get read-only status on the ship’s database. The circumstances, evidently, were far from normal.

  “Anything else strange on the sensors?” Mendoza asked.

  “Nothing yet,” she replied. “She’s just sitting there.”

  “Get me a tightbeam transmission to Commander Bianchi, now,” she ordered. Looking at the sensor display, she added, “And contact the pickup shuttle. They’re going to be at closest approach in less than a minute. Damn it, I hope we’re not too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Volkov asked. He frowned, then added, “I can’t get the shuttle. Looks like they’re talking to Eudoxus.”

  “Override the transmission, damn it, I’ve got to speak to them now!”

  “Doing it,” Rogers said, reaching over the engineer’s shoulder to enter his access code. “What did you find on…”

  “I can’t get in, and I should have been able to. Someone’s firmed up the defenses, and the only reason I can think of is that someone on that ship is desperate enough to hide what they’re doing that they don’t mind making it so damned obvious that they’re doing it.”

  “I’ve got the shuttle,” Volkov said.

  “Shuttle Three, this is Shuttle Nine. Evasive course. Get clear of Eudoxus right away. This is an emergency. I repeat, this is an emergency. Don’t ask questions, just do it, damn it.”

  “We’re on a carefully calculated flight profile,” the crisp tones of the shuttle’s pilot replied, “and we cannot just…”

  “You’ll be dead in seconds if you don’t, damn it!” Mendoza yelled.

  “Heat signatures from the forward armament on Eudoxus,” Volkov warned. “They’re going to action stations, and pretty damned quickly. Looks like they’re warming up the engines as well. Now I wonder where they could be thinking of going.”

  “Altering course,” the pilot of Shuttle Three said, “though as soon as this is over, I’m going to report you to…”

  “If you’re still alive, feel free,” Mendoza barked. “Where’s my transmission to Commander Bianchi?”

  “I can’t raise her,” Volkov replied, shaking his head. “Everyone’s out of position. I’ve got Lieutenant Bryant on the bridge, but…”

  “That will do,” she replied. “Patch me in.”

  “You’re on,” Volkov said.

  “Lieutenant, this is Technical Officer Mendoza on Shuttle Nine. I have reason to suspect that Commander Dixon and the crew of Eudoxus has been suborned by the Tyrants, either in whole or in part. I don’t know how it could have happened, but their behavior suggests that it has. I strongly recommend you bring the fleet to immediate alert status and disperse.”

  “Are you kidding?” Bryant asked. “We’re in the middle of a highly complicated maneuver, and we’ve got a team under the ice. I can’t throw the fleet all around the system based on nothing other than your suspicions.”

  “Power curve rising,” Volkov said.

 
“Lieutenant,” Mendoza said, “Eudoxus is going to action stations. She isn’t responding to signals. I think she’s going to try and take out Shuttle Three. I’ve warned the pilot, but I don’t think he’s got sufficient time to get out of the way. If I’m right, she’s…”

  “Lieutenant Bryant, this is Commander Rogers,” the erstwhile castaway cut in. “You will follow her orders, and you will do it as though they were mine. I will take full responsibility for the consequences that may ensue, but I do not want to take the risk of losing humanity’s last battle fleet. I doubt you do either. Bring the fleet to alert and disperse. That’s an order.”

  With a sigh, Bryant replied, “I’ll get it in works, sir, but I will have to confirm those orders with Commander Bianchi.”

  “Energy spike, maser blasts!” Volkov yelled. “You were right, Ronnie. They’re going after the shuttle. That was a damned near miss.”

  “Christ! Battle Stations!” Bryant yelled, seconds too late to do any good. With a sick feeling in her stomach, Mendoza watched as the shuttle’s desperate pilot weaved around, attempting to evade the incoming fire. It was a battle he couldn’t win, and both sides knew it. Shuttle Three was still passing far too close to Eudoxus, had almost matched speeds prior to their encounter, and was more heavily laden than it should have been. The pilot did his best, he did his absolute best, but it wasn’t enough.

  A star briefly filled the sky as a maser blast hit home, ripping the shuttle to pieces, a small cloud of rapidly dispersing debris where it once was.

  “My God,” Volkov said. “They…”

  “We’ll mourn them later,” Mendoza barked. “Where’s Eudoxus going? What’s her course and speed?”

  “Right towards Xenophon,” Volkov replied. “Contact in three minutes and change. Xenophon’s powering up, but I don’t think they’ve got time…”