Free Stories 2016

by Baen Books

  She squeaked. She was trapped, stuck in a tree with nowhere to go. And all she could think about was how icy his grip on her fingers had felt.

  ~~~

  There was the squeak Astonaris had been waiting for. Poor girl. But there was no time for pity.

  "Be brave, Nia!" he called.

  He groped until he found Saegon's boot, and heaved.

  ~~~

  For an instant, the god teetered in the saddle below her, amber eyes comically wide. If Nia hadn't been so scared, she might have laughed. Then Saegon toppled.

  The hook spun free.

  Be brave.

  She forced herself to move. Her trembling hands made the hook shiver and bob wildly in the air.

  ~~~

  As Saegon fell, Kwambo threw himself into motion. Surprise was his only advantage.

  He slid past a hasty parry, nicking the man's blade arm. Just a scratch, but he'd won first blood.

  That was all he won. The other paladins were good. Three stayed to protect Saegon. The remaining two vaulted off their horses and closed in on his flanks.

  Kwambo pressed them as recklessly as he dared. If anyone remembered that he was a paladin too, all they had to do was put a blade to Aston's throat and the fight was over.

  ~~~

  Her makeshift hook rattled in the cage's wires. She gave the string a tug. To her relief, the cage lifted into the air.

  But a soldier stood in his stirrups, reaching for it. She reeled faster. Hurry, hurry, hurry!

  His fingers missed by a hair.

  "Ha!" she crowed.

  The soldier gathered himself and leapt from the saddle.

  She yanked the cage higher. His fingers batted it, setting it swinging. Was that a cracking sound? She should have chosen a sturdier stick for the hook.

  Inside the cage the dragons were spitting and biting at each other. Why couldn't they just hold still? Why couldn't she stop shaking?

  Hand over hand, she reeled the dragons in. Please don't break. Please don't break.

  She wrapped her fingers around the handle, and grinned in triumph.

  Saegon climbed to his feet. He pointed at the man who had leapt after the cage. "You! Get my dragon back!"

  The soldier ran to the tree, but his boots scrabbled uselessly against the zingana's bark. She couldn't help it; she giggled. Trees were meant to be climbed barefoot, not in boots.

  "Hurry, you fool!" snarled Saegon.

  Growling, the soldier discarded his shield and helm to lighten his load, and tried again. This time he wrapped his legs around the tree. He reached up, took hold, and pulled himself higher, inchworming his way up the trunk.

  Her triumph faded. She had to go higher. To branches too slender to hold a full-grown, armor-wearing man. And she still hung upside down. She tried pulling herself up, but her good hand held the cage and her wounded hand kept slipping, hurting.

  The soldier had nearly reached the tree limb.

  She grabbed the branch and, grunting, straining, pulled herself upward. Desperation lent her strength.

  At last she made it. But it was too late. The soldier was already there, crawling out after her.

  "I've got you now, girl." His smile was a frightening thing.

  ~~~

  Outnumbered three to one, Kwambo was forced on the defensive. Surviving against superior numbers depended more on footwork than swordplay. He kept moving, circling, keeping them off-balance and in each other's way.

  Against most, he'd have made an opening by now. His longsword gave him greater reach, his armor protected him better, and he'd nicked one already, yet he couldn't win through.

  Something had to change.

  He danced away from a flanking attempt, then reversed directions. His armor should keep him safe. A blow glanced off his pauldron, another against his backplate. He parried the last, and his riposte nicked the man's knuckles.

  Second blood. He watched their confidence falter. Even three to one, he could—

  A clout from behind knocked him to his knees. His helmet rang like a gong. Or was that his ears? He blinked back stars.

  A sword flashed overhead. He had to get his shield up. Sluggishly, his arm obeyed. The impact bashed the top of his shield against his visor.

  Was he seeing double? No, a fourth paladin had joined the fray.

  Kwambo tried clambering to his feet, but he was hammered down again and again. He sheltered behind his shield.

  This couldn't be happening. Aston needed him. He had to . . . Had to get up. Had to fight.

  A mighty blow cracked his shield in half. A second and a third turned it to splinters. A sword arced down and, shieldless, he raised his arm.

  The blade struck his hand with enough force to shear through the armor. Pain erupted in his fingers. The sword rose for the finishing strike, but Kwambo couldn't tear his eyes away from his bloody gauntlet, now two fingers short.

  ~~~

  Cornered, Nia retreated further down the branch. The soldier crawled after her. The limb sagged lower, creaking beneath their combined weight. Lower still.

  A flash of worry crossed the man's face. He let go long enough to beckon. "Give me the cage, girl."

  She glanced down. The ground was so far away.

  Don't let fear stop you.

  Swallowing, she shook her head.

  The soldier inched closer. She cowered back.

  With a great, cracking roar, the branch broke. She, the dragons, and the soldier all tumbled toward the ground.

  ~~~

  Paladins spent years honing their instincts to defend first their god, second themselves. When the branch snapped, Kwambo's opponents' focus divided. Not long. A quick glance was all.

  Kwambo moved without thought. He had prepared for this. He'd already marked the gaps in their armor, already noted who was the most dangerous. His body knew what to do, even when his mind was full of fog and pain.

  With a roar, he came to his feet. He batted aside his victim's sword. A flick of his blade, and the man was clutching his throat.

  Kwambo pivoted to the next. He slammed his elbow into the paladin's helm. The man's arms windmilled, opening his guard. Kwambo thrust low, severing the artery inside the man's thigh.

  He felt heavy, plodding, as if he were wading through water, but he forced himself on. Once he stopped he wouldn't be able to start again.

  ~~~

  The sound of splintering wood seemed to go on forever. The whistle of falling leaves, the screams, the rattle of breaking twigs, the thuds of two bodies—one small, one grown—coming to an abrupt stop.

  Astonaris held his breath. This was the moment of truth. All these subtle nudges to fate—weakening Nia's grip, what he'd told Kwambo and what he'd withheld, how sharply he'd thrown Saegon from the saddle, accounting for the breaking point of the tree limb, and on and on. All were to orchestrate this moment. One wrong note and the entire symphony fell into discord.

  And Saegon, the soloist, had a penchant for improvisation.

  Astonaris listened intently, impatiently, but the rustle of settling leaves and the clamor of battle drowned out his confirmation. Was Nia getting to her feet or had the landing snapped her neck? Was that groan from the fallen paladin or Saegon? Times like these, he really wished he could see.

  The dragons' cage fetched up against his leg. That was his cue. He would have to trust that events were unfolding as he had hoped.

  Astonaris knelt and righted the cage. Within, the dragons yowled their anger at the injustice of it all. He felt for the latch. With his wrists bound together, it took him a while.

  Throwing open the door, he groped as the foretelling had shown; his fingers closed around a slender, scaly neck. The dragon hissed and scratched at his hands. He wished he were more certain she was not Pyrkaia.

  "Cease!" Astonaris shouted. "Or I'll wring her neck!"

  ~~~

  Nia slowly picked herself up. Her back hurt, her hand hurt, her head hurt. She hurt all over, really.

  On the ground
beside her, the soldier roused. Pains forgotten, Nia backpedaled. But he wasn't after her. He was disentangling himself from the limp form he'd landed on: Saegon.

  Nearby, Kwambo and two soldiers stood poised, neither taking their eyes off the other. Astonaris gave the ice-blue dragon a little shake, and it gave up the fight and hung there, panting.

  "Put down your swords," said Astonaris.

  She was almost surprised when Saegon's men did as they were told.

  "Come Kwambo, cut me loose. We're leaving. Oh, and I'll be taking Saegon's mare."

  A soldier made as if to argue, but a moan from Saegon interrupted him.

  "When your god awakens," Astonaris said, "tell him to give up this hunt."

  "And if he won't?"

  "Then the next time will be his last." He paused to help Nia into the saddle. "The same goes for this girl and her family. Should any harm befall them, Saegon will suffer the same fate."

  "What about his dragon?" asked another.

  Astonaris bent and let her go, and the ice-blue creature disappeared into the underbrush. "If you don't waste your time chasing after us, you'll find her on a rock by the stream."

  "What stream?"

  "How should I know? It'll be the first one you find."

  ~~~

  The widow was waiting for them. A tautness in Kwambo's chest eased as Nia slid out of the saddle and threw herself into her mother's arms. Safely returned, as promised. Abwembe tumbled shrieking out of the house and piled on.

  Astonaris said, "Saegon will not bother you again."

  "Thank you," said the widow, hugging her family close. "Thank you."

  "From now on your life's challenges are your own. The more I meddle, the more tangled the mess, so I'll leave you to discover it for yourself. The butterfly should not be torn from the cocoon before its time."

  Kwambo unwrapped the bandage over the stumps of his fingers. The clotting held—it seemed he had finally staunched the bleeding.

  There was a certain justice that his wound should mirror Nia's. He suspected Aston had arranged it that way to assuage Kwambo's conscience. It wasn't his sword hand. He could still strap on a shield, could still protect his god. The pain would fade.

  He felt a tug at his elbow and turned to find Nia. "Why hello, brave one."

  Smiling shyly, she held out her mbira. "For you."

  "But it's yours."

  "I want you to have it. Since you can't play your flute anymore."

  He could hardly bear to accept. That instrument was all she had. But a child's gift should be cherished, never spurned.

  The little wooden box fit easily into his hands. A few missing fingers wouldn't matter, as the mbira was played with thumbs. He gave the keys an experimental pluck. The twangy music brought tears to his eyes.

  Starhome

  by Michael Z. Williamson

  One didn't have to be involved in a war to suffer, nor even in line of fire. Collateral economic damage could destroy just as easily.

  First Minister Jackson Bates looked over the smallest nation in space. From the window of his tower, he could view the entire territory of Starhome up above him. Centrifugal gravity meant the planetoid was "up," but he was used to it. It was a rock roughly a kilometer in diameter, tunneled through for habitat space, with its rotation adjusted to provide centrifugal G.

  The window was part of a structure that had once been Jump Point Control for Earth's JP1. As orbits and jumplines shifted, and as technology advanced relentlessly on, it became cost-ineffective to use the station, and it was too small and antiquated for modern shipping. A new one was built, and this one "abandoned to space."

  When the UNPF made that final assignation, his grandfather took a small ship with just enough supplies to let him occupy and declare it private territory. The tower became the family home and offices, and the control center for their business.

  Agencies on Earth panicked, and there'd actually been a threat of military occupation. The UN courts had ruled the abandonment made it salvage, and the Bates' occupation was that salvage. The family owned a hollowed out planetoid of passages and compartments, and could do with it as they wished.

  At once, the bureaus of Earth protested. BuSpace, BuMil, BuCommerce all took their shots. If they hadn't been so busy fighting each other, they'd have wiped out Starhome a century ago.

  The family's entire livelihood was fringe, marginal and unglamorous. Actual smuggling would have made them a valid threat to be attacked. They were information brokers, dealing with untraceable data that was useful to someone, encoded heavily and carried through the jump point directly. Eventually, legitimate cargo transshipment began, since their docking rates were cheaper, just enough for the additional flight time to be offset for certain classes of ship. Tramp freighters came by, and finally a couple of fleets contracted gate space.

  All of which had evaporated when Earth’s war with the Freehold of Grainne started. The UN bit down hard on tramp freighters, anything with a Freehold registry, and then started more in-depth monitoring of every jump point it could access directly or by treaty.

  The last ship had docked a month before. Little was moving, and what was tended toward huge corporate ships who wouldn't waste time on Starhome. What were docking fees to them?

  For now, Starhome had food and oxygen. When it ran low, they'd be forced to pay for direct delivery at extreme cost, or ultimately abandon the station and return to Earth. There'd already been inquiries from the UNPF to that effect, offering "rescue."

  Jackson Bates wasn't going to do that. He might go as far as Jupiter's moons. He wouldn't step foot on Earth again if he could avoid it.

  His phone chimed.

  "Yes?" he answered. All forty-three staff and family knew who he was.

  Engineer Paul Rofert said, "Sir, if you're not busy, I need to show you something at the dock tube."

  "On my way," he said.

  Starhome's docking system was a long gang tube with docking locks protruding. It was axial by design, so ships had to be balanced with each other or counterweights. In practice it was "mostly" axial. Over a couple of centuries, drift happened. That was a known issue, and he hoped that wasn't the problem now.

  It took three minutes to run a trolley car down the tower, to the axis, and along it. He knew every centimeter of the route, every passage and compartment. Those had once been quarters for visiting VIPs, when just visiting a station was novel. That had been rec space, and still was, officially. There weren't enough people to make proper use of the gym, so some of the equipment had been relocated over there, to what was once commo gear for jump control. Everything a century or more out of date was aging in either vacuum or atmosphere and quaint at best. But, it was his home. Apart from four years in college in Georgia, this was the only place he'd ever lived. There was room enough for hundreds.

  Rofert was waiting at the hub before the dock tube, which was still empty. Jackson's executive, Nicol Cante, was with him. He unstrapped from the car and shoved over in the near-zero G to give her more room.

  "Chief," Jackson greeted and shook hands. Paul Rofert was tall, black with gray hair, and had worked for the family for three generations. He knew every bolt and fissure in the place.

  "Sir," Rofert said with a nod and a firm shake back. "I hate to deliver more bad news, but . . . "

  "Go ahead." It wasn't as if things could get much worse.

  "The axis drift is worse than we'd anticipated. It has precessed enough the tube can't be considered axial anymore. We'll need to adjust rotation."

  "Can our attitude jets do it?"

  "No, we'll need external mounts and a lot of delta V over several days to avoid lateral stresses. And it has to be done soon or feedback oscillations will rip the dock apart."

  "Then I guess we're out of business," he replied. He was surprised at how easily he said it. Apparently, he'd known the outcome and just been waiting for the cue. "We can't afford that."

  Rofert said, "Sorry, sir."

  He sighed.
He was glad his father wasn't here to see that. They'd lasted two generations as an Independent Territory. Now they were done.

  "I'm Jackson to you, Paul. We're friends even when the news is bad." He continued, "My personal craft can take twenty if we have to use it. That will be the last one out. See what transport you can arrange, Nicol. Call Space Guard if you must, but I'd prefer we leave with dignity."

  She swiped at her notepad. "On it, Boss. When should we plan for evacuation?"

  "Part of me wants to get it over with, and part wants to hold out until the bitter end. Use your judgment."

  "Got it."

  Her judgment was exceptional. She had degrees in physics and finance. She'd offer him a grid of windows, costs and movements and guide him through the decision. That ability was why he'd hired her. No doubt she'd find other employment, but he felt he was cheating her by asking her to plan her own evacuation.

  He'd sounded depressed and defeated. She'd been calm and solid.

  #

  Nicol's suggested schedule meant they'd start leaving in a week. There was one in-system charter willing to haul most of the staff at that time, and that would clean out much of the available credit. They were that deep in the hole. The command staff would go with him, as would a Demolition Crew, who'd strip cables, metals, food, anything aboard that could be salvaged. It would either go aboard, or in a planned orbit. Mass and material were commodities in space. At least with that and the proceeds from selling his boat he'd be able to reestablish on Titan, or if he had to, on Earth, somewhere reasonably still free. Chile, perhaps. Sulawan. New Doggerland.

  He still wouldn't be in space then though, nor independent.

  Nothing had docked this week, either. Nothing was going to, even if they could have. The dock and davits were silent, the workers helping tear out nonessential materials for recovery. What had been the old gym was now a pile of iron and aluminum for reuse, for the little value it held. The hatches were sealed, the oxygen recovered to stretch what was used in the working space.

  His phone chimed, breaking his musing and his mood.

  "What?" he answered.

  "Inbound vessel, sir. Very stealthy. And it came from out and forward, not from the point."