Merchants in Freedom

by Richard Tongue

  “We’re going to have to find a way to give them the time they need,” Mendoza replied. “Coming around. Let’s play chicken.”

  “With a starship?” Volkov asked, eyes widening.

  “We’ve got a lot of relative velocity. Let’s use it.”

  Shaking his head, Volkov reached for the navigation computer, and said, “Plotting a course, but you know they can swing past us whenever they want. This isn’t going to work.”

  “Of course not. It’s a desperation play, and that’s why I’m doing it.” She fired her forward thrusters, bringing the nose around to line up with the distant Eudoxus, closing rapidly on her target. “We’ve got three minutes to think of something else. Right now we’re dancing to their tune. We need some steel-tipped boots to wear.”

  “We haven’t got any armament, nothing we can even improvise,” Volkov said. “No probes, nothing. I don’t know what we can do to hurt them other than throw ourselves at them, and like I said, that won’t work.”

  “What cargo are we carrying?” Rogers asked.

  “Not much. A few bits and pieces of emergency kit, but nothing with the bulk to do what you are thinking. We were too heavily loaded with…” She paused, smiled, then added, “With the charges.”

  “The charges? We used them all up,” Volkov said.

  “Sure we did,” she replied. “All eighteen. You’ve got about two minutes to throw something together that looks like one.”

  “Damn it,” the engineer cursed, struggling free of his restraints and scrambling back into the cargo bay. “Hargreaves, grab that box of spares and a Type Five Toolkit. The rest of you get the hell out of the way, now.”

  “Can he do it?” Rogers asked, sliding into the vacated seat.

  “He’s good,” she replied. “He can throw something together. Don’t worry about that. Now we’ve got to do the hard part. Take the helm, sir.”

  “I have the helm,” he said. “I’m holding course, right?”

  “For the moment. Make it look like we’re on a bombing run.” She blushed, then said, “Sorry, sir, I was…”

  “Hell, don’t worry about it, Tech. You seem to know what you are doing, and I’m happy to let you take the lead on this one.” He paused, then asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Assuming that we put something together that fools their sensors, they’ll check with the internal network to determine whether or not we have a charge to deploy. Likely Xenophon’s.” Her hands danced across the keyboard, and she added, “I’ve got to give them a way in.”

  Nodding, Rogers said, “And make a few minor tweaks to the inventory systems, making it appear that we had sufficient capacity to build a nineteenth charge to use as a backup.”

  “That’s exactly right,” she replied. “I’m making the additions now. Letting them access is going to be a lot tougher. I’ve got to make it look as though we’ve put up a fight, but without making it impossible or allowing them access to the rest of the network.” She frowned, then added, “I think I’ve got it, but I’m going to have to monitor. You’d better keep the helm.”

  “Will do. Fifty seconds to target. They’re still holding course.”

  “They’ll wait until the last possible second, if my guess is right.” Turning to the rear, Mendoza yelled, “Where’s my bomb, Specialist?”

  “In the cargo airlock,” Volkov replied. “It won’t fool anyone for long.”

  “Ten seconds will suffice,” Mendoza said, reaching for a control. “Tell me when, Commander. I’ve got my hand on the trigger.”

  “Any second now,” Rogers replied. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Go.”

  Mendoza threw the control, and the airlock opened, tossing the bomb into the void. At the same instant, Rogers veered off, as though his work was done, the bomb expertly positioned to slam right into Eudoxus. Mendoza looked at her control panel, watching with approval as the enemy attempted to slice into Xenophon’s database, trying to work out whether the bomb was real or simply a decoy.

  The evidence of the sensors suggested that they weren’t going to risk finding out the hard way. After only a second, they veered off, hard to starboard, and Xenophon did the same, the ship gratefully gaining the time they needed to get to battle stations, opening up the range to prevent a battle on the first firing pass.

  “Great job, sir,” Mendoza said, clapping Rogers on the back.

  “They’re heading around,” Volkov said. “Moving into a higher orbit, away from the rest of the fleet. That’s still going to be a problem.” He paused, then added, “It’s going to be a big problem.” Gesturing at the screen, he said, “Because from their current position, the fleet can’t launch a shuttle without risking it coming under fire. The only one who can reach the submersible is us, and if we do, that’s going to make us slower than hell on our ascent. The phrase ‘sitting duck’ comes to mind. They’re perfectly placed to blow us to hell.”

  “Not a problem,” she replied. “We’ve got about half an hour to work out how we’re going to pull this off. Get thinking.”

  Chapter 14

  “It’s more than three miles high,” Morgan said, looking at his screen. “I still can’t make out any definite surface features, but I suppose there has to be something down there. No way in, certainly. As far as the sensors say, it’s just a big solid lump of alloy.”

  “Touchdown in two minutes,” Winter replied, glancing across his readouts. “Do you see anything that might represent some sort of hazard down there, any reason why we can’t make a landing?”

  “No reason at all, but I don’t see what good it could possibly do,” the veteran soldier replied. “We can’t go out and take a walk on the surface of that thing, and even if we couldn’t, there’s nothing out there.” He reached up for a series of controls, and added, “There’s a drill on the end of the manipulator arm. Maybe I can carve out some sort of sample, get something for the computers back on Xenophon to analyze.”

  “Be careful,” Winter said. “We don’t want to make anyone mad.”

  “There’s nobody here to get mad, Jack,” Morgan said, shaking his head. “There’s nobody down here at all. Just some sort of ancient monument. If we had time for a proper survey, maybe we could do something more, but as it stands, I think about all we can do is take some nice films and hope that someone smarter than either of us is able to conjure something out of them when we get back to Earth. There’s no…” He paused, frowned, then added, “Wait a minute. I might have to eat my words.”

  Before Winter could respond, a blinding flash of light shattered the Stygian gloom, and he peered down to see a door opening in the surface of the structure, directly beneath them, as though inviting them to descend. He glanced across at Morgan, smiled, and worked the controls to guide the submersible safely inside, calculating carefully for the drift.

  They slid into the space inside the mysterious structure, the walls rising on either side as the hatch above slid shut, until finally they came to rest at the bottom of the chamber, a faint gurgling sound from outside as the water drained away, as though they were lying inside the largest vehicular airlock ever seen. Morgan looked across at his readouts, shaking his head.

  “Atmosphere’s strange out there. The pressure and temperature are about right, but the mix is way off. Lots more carbon dioxide than we can stand, and argon instead of nitrogen. You couldn’t breathe it for very long without dying, though I guess that isn’t the point.”

  “We couldn’t go out for a walk as it stands anyway,” Winter said. Looking up, he added, “Right now I’m rather more concerned about getting out of here again. I hadn’t expected it to close up quite so abruptly.”

  “Heat signatures all around us,” Morgan reported. “The area just ahead of us is smooth, though, and no sign of any activity there.” He frowned, then added, “Hey, there’s something up there. Look.”

  Winter squinted at the wall, and saw shapes beginning to form, as though an image was resolving itself, settling into life as if a distant pro
jector was working. Then the lights went out, leaving the only illumination the image on the wall, now clearly a sphere, a world not unlike Earth, with green continents resting upon an azure sea, the whole surface capped with clouds.

  “Tell me you are recording this,” Winter said.

  “Since the lights went dark,” Morgan replied. “I’m throwing every detector we’ve got at that wall.” Pointing at the image, he added, “There’s a starfield in the background. When we get back to the ship, we should be able to work out where this was. I’m guessing this was their homeworld.”

  A series of lights began to flicker on the surface of the world, as though mirroring the starfield above, and Winter realized that these were cities, spreading across the land like a virus, connected by thin filaments of light that linked them into an ever-more complicated network. Then they started to flicker out, one after another, the intricate latticework fractured and broken. The surface was dark once more, for what seemed like an eternity.

  Then, at last, the lights returned, three of them, spread almost equidistant across the planet. Each began to expand, slowly and tentatively, reaching out with the filaments once more, the civilization on the planet growing more complicated with every second, though it was immediately apparent that the three original centers were feuding with each other, the moves as strategic as an insanely complicated game of chess.

  “This isn’t going to end well,” Morgan said. “They’re stalemated. Just like Earth was during the Nationalist era.” He gestured at the planet, and added, “Look at the sky. It’s getting darker. Thematic?”

  “Or pollution, industrial waste,” Winter said, his voice soft. “I think they tried to make this as accurate a representation of their past as they possibly could, way back then.”

  Suddenly, another network appeared, this time a brighter, almost electric glare, starting at a single point on the border between two of the powers and dancing from dot to dot, breaking across the border which immediately started to soften.

  “World government,” Winter said, as the lights began to shift, strategic objectives being wiped away under the new regime, a series of shifting and dancing lights indicating the alien civilization’s new priorities. “Though there’s no sign of backsliding, no sign of change at all.”

  Morgan glanced around, then pointed to the side, where a second image was resolving against the wall, this one of a cranium, an alien skull that nevertheless looked similar enough to that of a human that Winter could recognize some of the features, some of the image. At first, it was completely organic, but then an interface was added behind one ear, then a chip inside, then another, and another, until an all-too-familiar network of implants was positioned inside the skull.

  A second cranium appeared, linked to the first by the same glowing tendrils of light that had been apparent on the world map, then a third, a fourth, a swarm of skulls dominating the wall, all linked together into one network, growing more complicated by the moment.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Morgan asked.

  “Not only have we found the alien homeworld, but I think we’ve found the Tyrants’ base of operations as well. Those are the same basic implants we’ve found. They must have found and retro-fitted the technology. It seems incredible, but it makes sense.”

  The side image faded away, and as the two men looked back to the globe, it was a sea of winking lights, all of them pulsing in harmonious sequence, the entire population as one. It was an overwhelming sight. Lights started to rise from the surface, the planetary population taking their first tentative steps into space, rapidly resolving themselves into an intricate series of satellite constellations.

  “Magnificent,” an awed Morgan said. “Absolutely magnificent. They were later to space than we were, but when they finally got around to it.” Shaking his head, he added, “That’s a greater infrastructure than Earth has today. I don’t see anything that could be a defense system, though. No sign of any conflict at all.”

  “If the Tyrants stumbled across this world in a defenseless state, I hate to think what they might have done to it,” Winter mused. “That fleet of theirs was armed to bear. They could have lain waste to half the surface from orbit, suborned the civilization just like they wanted to do to Earth.”

  Shaking his head, Morgan replied, “No, I don’t think so. Look at the industrial potential. The only reason they don’t have orbital defenses is that they don’t need them. If they did, they’d have them. Fast.”

  As the two old friends talked, the image zoomed out, the planet receding into the distance, a solar system now displayed on the screen. Points of light leapt to each world, all connected by the ubiquitous filaments, racing across the sky and still keeping the whole collective into the cohesive whole that had saved their world. The atmosphere of their planet began to shine, undoing the damage that had been wrought upon it. They were watching the Golden Age of the civilization, one that the people who had built it were justifiably proud of.

  Time passed, centuries, perhaps, as the civilization began to take full advantage of its new territory, the lights clustering across the planets. Then the image zoomed in once more, to a gas giant on the outermost limits of the system, a halo of connected lights surrounding it. A dot descended into the atmosphere, then raced at speed off the map, the focus following it as it left its home system far behind.

  The aliens had mastered interstellar travel, but not in any manner humanity had ever seen. The new system was familiar at a glance, the system they were currently in, and the image first focused on the single gas giant before tracking towards the world they were on, shrouded with ice, the point of light descending.

  “This is perfect,” Morgan said. “We’ll be able to determine stellar drift from the constellations we’ve got here, and work out exactly when all of this happened, down to the decade at least, maybe better. That’s going to tell us just where that system is. We’ve done it!” He glanced at his watch, then added, “Though if we don’t get out of here in the next ten minutes, nobody else is ever going to know about it.”

  “We’re going to be launching a few probes when we get home,” Winter said. “That much I do know. That strange storm in the gas giant…”

  As he spoke, the view shifted again, back to the homeworld, where now there was something different, a more menacing tone to the image. Time seemed to slow down, then freeze, and he spotted a series of tiny red lights launching into space. These didn’t make for orbit, instead curving down, down upon the cities, as though some madman had decided to destroy everything, wipe out all life on the planet. One by one, the lights winked out, replaced by tiny bursts of flame that obviously represented atomic blasts.

  A gray shroud descended across the planet, blotting out the few lights that remained, and the speakers burst into life with the sound of weeping, a single desolate child crying for the death of his people, of his world. The image zoomed out once more, revealing the other planets of the system, the lights still bright, the tendrils still connecting them, but somehow more faded than before. One by one, the lights winked out, the connections broken, until only a solitary light remained, endless sentinel on a lonely moon, lingering for what seemed an eternity before, at last, it was extinguished.

  “Christ, imagine sitting there, watching that for so long,” Morgan said, shaking his head. The view shifted once more, drifting back to the icy planet, a single point of light remaining, endlessly, on and on, until finally, at last, it winked out. The last of the stars had been extinguished.

  “Unbelievable,” Winter said, glancing at the clock. “Eight minutes left. Maybe there’s something…”

  “Hey, we’ve had a big data dump,” Morgan interrupted, looking across at one of the monitors. “Damned huge. It’s pretty much filled up our storage. I can’t make any of it out, but something just gave us a hell of a lot of information.” Glancing at his friend, he added, “I’m guessing that’s the transcript of what we just saw.”

  “Reasonable guess,
but we’re not going to know until we get back to the ship,” Winter replied. “Assuming we can work out a way to do just that.”

  As if on cue, the doors open them cranked open a little, enough for water to start flooding in once more, the level rising rapidly until it filled the hitherto empty space. The doors opened wider, and with a thin smile, Winter released some of the ballast from the tanks, a trickle of bubbles rising above them as they slowly began to drift upwards, towards the ice sheet. Morgan looked nervously at the depth gauge, frowning at the slowly rising indicator before turning to his friend.

  “Maybe you should give it a little more speed,” he said.

  “Not until we get clear of the building,” Winter replied. “I’m still a little worried about the currents, and if we end up getting smashed to pieces, that’s not going to help. We’ll make it.”

  He looked up at the ice cap, throwing a control to focus a sensor on the surface. It had already formed up again. He’d expected as much. Even the tremendous heat from the focused explosion they had unleashed could only hold back the inevitable for a short time. The key was the thickness of the ice. As long as it was thin enough, they’d be able to break through. Or a shuttle could burn a hole with its thrusters.

  Except that there was no sign of a shuttle waiting for them above. If they’d gone according to plan, Shuttle Three should have been close by, its beacon signal radiating loud and clear, strong enough that they ought to be able to detect it. Or at least the heat signatures from its reactors.

  There was nothing there. They were alone. Something had gone terribly wrong, and locked in their icy tomb, they’d never know what it was. He looked at his controls, reaching for the emergency ballast release. There was one option. A final option. The submersible had been overengineered out of necessity. There had been no time for any refinements, and the engineering team that designed and constructed it hadn’t had the experience to make any if there had been. It was essentially a big hunk of alloy. That gave him one advantage. The two tanks to the side, still almost full, gave him another.