Merchants in Freedom Read online

  Nodding, Morgan said, “When I first joined the Marines, back when I was still working out how to shave, we had an instructor, he seemed ancient then. Veteran of a couple of wars, scars all over his face, bionic leg, the works. He told us then that we were all going to die, and that many of us were going to die wearing our uniform. That the oaths we signed meant that we had to be perfectly happy to meet our end in some forgotten desert or back alley, with nobody to know or to care how or why we died. That’s what happens in a war. Most people don’t die as heroes. They just die. And that’s the end of the story.”

  “Christ, that sounds like it really must have cheered you up.”

  “Three people quit that night. I guess they thought about it and decided they couldn’t do that, couldn’t take that last leap into the dark. The rest of us knew, though. Knew that we could. It made a difference.”

  “Nobody ever gave us a pep talk like that at the Academy,” Winter mused. “Perhaps they should have. Perhaps that might have changed things. It certainly might have driven a few of the careerists back into whatever hole they belonged in.” He paused, sighed, then said, “I suppose it doesn’t matter now, does it. Have you looked at the manifest, the list of crew we’re taking with us? Less than half are actually Fleet personnel. A few reservists like Bianchi, the rest former rebels. It’s a nice, mixed fleet.”

  “The Colonies won’t forget,” Morgan predicted. “No matter what else happens, they’ll remember what happened here, and they’ll make sure the warning is passed on.” He glanced up at the clock, and added, “Are you going to tell Mendoza that you’re going to let her go ahead?”

  “I already did,” he replied. “She’s working on it now.”

  “Are you going to tell her that you’re expecting, damn near counting on her failing?” He paused, shook his head, and added, “I guess not.”

  “I don’t dare. She could take it, I’m sure, but I can’t have any doubt in her mind when she interfaces with the network. That would be fatal at this stage. They’ve got to believe in her, and the best way I can think of to make that happen is for her to believe in herself.”

  “That’s pretty good advice for you, if you stop and think about it.”

  He cracked a smile, then said, “I guess you might have a point at that.”

  “Have you recorded your last messages?” Morgan asked.

  “I have. Nothing much. Letters to a few old friends. You?”

  “The same, really. I never stopped to realize just how few connections I managed to make back home. It didn’t seem important to me until now, but I think I’ve left it a little on the late side.”

  “I think we both have. Though under the circumstances, that’s probably for the best, don’t you think?” Rising to his feet, he reached for his uniform jacket, and said, “I’m going to head up to the bridge. The last of the transfer shuttles should be arriving at their ships by now. I think I’d like to see off the fleet.” He looked around the cabin, and added, “I never thought it would end like this.”

  “How did you think it would end?”

  “I don’t know, I never really gave it much thought,” he said with a smile. “I suppose you never do, not until it becomes a reality. Are you coming?”

  “Sure, I don’t have any other plans for the remainder of my life,” he replied with a smile. “Let’s go make history.”

  Interlude

  The Sleeper had waited for untold centuries, locked in his icy tomb. Memories of his past life danced before him in distant dreams, his thoughts drifting away a piece at a time, fragments of history lost forever with the coming of every dawn. Still he waited, and the ancient monitoring devices that had been the last legacy of his people, watched the heavens, waiting for a signal that he knew in his heart would never come.

  He’d seen the ruin of his world. Watched as cities were torn asunder, heard the screams of the dying in their final seconds, knowing that they were cursed to final death. Though somewhere, out on the limits of the network, he sometimes sensed that there were other beings present. That had happened more and more in recent years, though he thought it nothing more than a figment of his imagination, some sort of shadow from the past.

  There had been activity again. Ships in his system. All strange, unfamiliar, twisted bipeds digging into the ruins of his world. For a time, he’d hoped that it was his people returned, but he’d soon realized that they were nothing more than scavengers, and he resumed his former slumber once more, waiting for a sign, a signal.

  Two conditions had been established for his awakening. The first was the return of his masters, those lost amid the light-years, increasingly distant in both time and space. His entombment had never been intended to last for this long, his systems failing, only the determined labor of the long-dead engineers to build for eternity driving them onward, their wills succeeding where perhaps simple machinery could not.

  It would come, one day. It had to.

  At his heart, he knew the truth. In what passed for the remnants of his consciousness, sluggish and weary, the Sleeper knew that the first condition would never be attained. His people had forgotten him, if they still existed at all. The second condition, perhaps. There was still a chance. The faintest hope. And now, after so many, many years, as war raged in the heavens above, perhaps the Sleeper might yet awaken.

  In the heavens, above his world, the second condition was about to be fulfilled.

  Chapter 19

  All eyes were on Winter as he sat in his command chair, once more doing his best to portray the spirit of optimism that his crew required. The ship was racing towards the gas giant, now dominating the viewscreen, and every passing moment saw them coming closer and closer to their fate.

  “Have you got a positive track on the wormhole?” he asked, turning to Holloway at the sensor station.

  “I think so, sir, but I can’t be sure,” the technician replied. “We’ve never done anything quite like this before, and I’ve only got theoretical baselines to use to determine what I’m looking at. There’s certainly something down there, though, and I’ve got a positive lock.”

  “Something?” Morgan asked with a smile. “Beautiful, Spaceman.”

  “Sorry, Major, I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. We could fire a probe through ahead of us, see what happens when it passes through…”

  “In theory, sure,” Winter replied, “but I don’t want to give the Tyrants any warning that we’re going to be using this approach to their system. That’s imperative at this point. If they saw one of our probes rising out of the other end of the wormhole it’d give the whole game away.”

  “We could follow it within seconds,” Bianchi suggested.

  “I’m afraid we can’t do that either, Commander,” Sabatini said from the helm. “We’re going to have to commit totally to the maneuver, and down there in that soup of an atmosphere, there isn’t going to be any margin of error at all. I’m worried about what the wind’s going to do to our approach vector, but we’ve gathered enough data over the course of our approach that I’m pretty sure I can compensate for it.”

  “Specialist, if you have any doubts about whether we can complete this maneuver, now’s the time to express them,” Winter said.

  “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll thread the needle for you,” she replied. “It’s not as if we’re going to have to come back this way. We should be able to return to our space using conventional warp drive. We’ve only got to make this work once, and that much I think I can do.”

  “I’ll hold you to that, Specialist,” Winter said. “Major Morgan, is the ship ready for action?”

  “All decks are at standby, sir, all systems ready. I haven’t armed the primary weapons systems, though. All power is channeled to the engines.”

  “Good. With luck, we should get through without firing a shot.”

  “How long before we enter the wormhole?”

  “Four minutes, sir,” Sabatini replied.

  “Then please connect me through to the
ship, Major,” Winter said, turning to the rear. Morgan nodded, working the controls, the communications station slaved to his own. The bridge was half-empty, most of the consoles running on automatic. Compared to the rest of the ship, it was almost crowded. Whole decks were deserted, stations left unmanned.

  Xenophon could run with only a handful of people on board, as long as it was simply a matter of flying from one part of space to another. If anything went wrong, they’d be unable to correct it, but given their mission, that hardly seemed important. If they came under fire, they’d be facing sufficient levels of destruction that it wouldn’t matter in any case. There wouldn’t be any chance to make repairs, and if they ended up engaging the full force of the enemy fleet, the fighting would be over in an instant.

  They couldn’t win by force. Guile would have to suffice.

  “You are through to the ship, sir,” Morgan said.

  “Thank you,” Winter replied, reaching for a microphone. “All hands, attention. Captain to crew. You all know what we’re doing. You all know what is at stake, and you all know that the odds of us coming through this in one piece are poor. We’re going in, with only the barest minimum of tactical data, with no idea what precisely we are facing, and a battle plan that is improvised at best, one that we know we will have to modify on the fly. By no stretch of the imagination could this be described as an ideal situation.”

  He paused, then added, “However, those are the cards that we’ve been dealt, and we’re going to have to play them as best we can. Nobody promised that life would be fair or easy, and I guess we’re going to end up as living proof that it isn’t. You’ve all been fighting this war since it began. You all know what is at stake if we fail. That means that we can’t fail. We won’t fail.”

  “I know that this ship and her crew can accomplish this mission. That we can hit the Tyrant homeworld with everything we’ve got, and end their threat for all time.” He looked up at the viewscreen, the gas giant now totally filling the display, and added, “In a little under three minutes, we will be passing through the wormhole, and will be entering the heart of enemy territory. It’s time to take the fight to them. It’s time to make them hurt. It’s time to teach them the meaning of the word ‘payback’. We’ve lost a lot of good people in this war. They’ve paid the price for our victory, paid it in blood, and now the time has come for us to collect. I have no intention of letting them down, or dishonoring their memory.”

  “I would not choose to attempt this mission with any other ship or any other crew. I am proud to have served, proud to serve, with each and every one of you, and I know that you will once more demonstrate just what you are capable of. That we are going to come through this triumphant, and that we are going to bring the threat of the Tyrants to its final end. Good hunting, and good luck. That is all.” He replaced the microphone on its rest, and settled back in his chair, watching as the ship dived into the atmosphere of the gas giant, deeper and deeper.

  “Getting some pull from the wormhole now,” Sabatini reported. “It’s going to get stronger the closer we get. That should make this a lot easier.” Reaching for a control, she added, “External wind speeds are rising fast, five hundred miles an hour and increasing. It’s going to be more like two thousand by the time we reach the target.”

  “It’ll tear the gas giant to pieces eventually,” Bianchi said, shaking her head. “The tidal effect alone must be damn near tearing the core apart.”

  “Sure, Commander, but if you had the right equipment and enough guts, you could fly from star to star with an unpowered glider,” Sabatini replied, her eyes gleaming at the prospect. “You wouldn’t need a starship at all. One day we might be able to step from world to world without even a spacesuit. All of this might be obsolete.”

  “Not today, Specialist,” Winter replied. “At least, I hope not.”

  “Hull stresses are beginning to rise,” Holloway said, a frown on his face. “Still well within safe levels at the moment, but at the current rate of increase, we might be running into trouble at emergence. Do we know what sort of planet we’re heading into?”

  “Only that it is an extremely large gas giant, Spaceman,” Morgan replied. “And one with a similar atmospheric mix to this one. Hopefully the passage through the wormhole will give us sufficient velocity to get out the other end in one piece.” He cracked a thin smile, then added, “If not, I guess we won’t have anything else to worry about.”

  “Happy thoughts, please, Major,” Winter said. He looked at the image on the viewscreen, his attention locked on the tempestuous storm into which they were flying, clouds broken and swirling, sucked into the mouth of the wormhole ahead. He’d read Poe as a child, back in school. He couldn’t stop thinking of the Descent into the Maelstrom. A story that had gripped him when he’d read it, dreaming of taking that same trip. Now he was going to do it, though in a manner that the long-dead author could never have dreamed, even in his wildest imaginations.

  There were only a handful of seconds remaining. They were totally committed to the maneuver now. Even if they wanted to pull away, to abort, it wasn’t possible. Xenophon was speeding into the unknown to meet its destiny, and a part of him relished the knowledge that one way or another, their fight would soon be over. Either they’d win, or they’d lose, and the odds of them living to see that victory were so small as to hardly be worth worrying about. That didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were fighting. To the last man, to the last breath.

  “Five seconds to entry,” Sabatini said. “Anyone know what it’ll be like in there?”

  “Nobody’s ever done it,” Bianchi replied. “Nothing larger than a photon, and they aren’t talkative at the best of times.”

  “We’ll find out ourselves in a minute,” Morgan said.

  Without any fanfare, any warning, Xenophon dived into the wormhole, dragged into the belly of the beast and thrown along the light-years of its length. Time seemed to stand still, everything frozen, and yet somehow Winter could still perceive reality. And almost something more, something beyond the reality he had known, as though he was in touch with the very fabric of the universe, of space-time itself, somehow reaching in through the infinitely narrow cylinder of reality that the aliens had created thousands of years ago.

  Strange, distant whispers seemed to echo from all sides, as though some eternal entity was attempting to tell him the secrets of the universe but couldn’t quite make itself heard over the noise. Dancing lights drifted in and out of his field of vision, and his skin tingled with the feel of a million microscopic electric shocks racing up and down his body.

  It felt as though he sat there, alone and forgotten, for an eternity, endless time to contemplate the meaning of the strange, peculiar space he found himself in. Perhaps this was reality, the truth of reality finally reaching him for the first time in his life, or perhaps his mind was attempting to cloak the horror that lay around him from his fragile psyche, desperately translating it into something he could understand, comprehend.

  His mind was failing. Badly.

  At last, at long last, his vision blurred, and familiar noises returned, distantly at first but soon at full strength, the noise of the instrumentation sounding from the automatic stations, the rattle of the lifesystem pumps overhead, the endless series of sounds that dominated life on a starship.

  They were through. They’d made it.

  “Report,” he said, his throat dry and dusty, as though he hadn’t uttered a word in a century. “Did we get though intact?”

  “All systems are nominal,” Holloway reported. “Hull stresses falling back to safe limits, no damage reported.”

  “Tactical systems are fine,” Morgan said.

  “I still have full helm control, Commander,” Sabatini said. “We have reached escape velocity and are currently coasting out of the atmosphere. Local gravity is a little lower than we thought. We should be able to launch our probe flotilla within the next sixty seconds.”

  “Sensors, are you get
ting anything?” Winter asked.

  “Working, sir,” Holloway replied, red-faced, gasping for breath. “I’m trying to cut through the clouds. Nothing within firing range, though, or we’d be dead by now.”

  “Did anyone else damn near go mad in the wormhole?” Bianchi asked, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

  “I didn’t feel a thing,” Sabatini replied. “Just the wink of an eye.”

  “No, I had it too,” Morgan said. “As though we were trapped in there for forever and a day. Crazy.”

  “Hold it together, people,” Winter said. “We can compare notes later. For the record, I went through hell as well, but we’ve got more important things to worry about now. Holloway, I need a picture of local space, and I need it now. Is everything where it should be.”

  “Coming on now, sir,” the technician replied. “I’m picking up eighty-plus starships in parking orbit around the enemy homeworld, and the densest satellite constellation I’ve ever seen. There have to be ten thousand objects in orbit. No way to tell if any of them are defensive in nature until we get closer, there’s just too many of them.”

  “What about the planet?” Morgan pressed.

  “Cities, dozens of them, scattered in what look like the old alien settlements according to the data we gathered. Population estimated at thirty to fifty million, but the computer has a substantial margin of error on that. Again, we’ll know a lot more when we get a closer look. I’m not picking up anything much in the rest of the system. Some mining operations on nearby moons, a few shuttles and satellites, but no sign of any sort of systematic activity. I’d say they’ve focused here, on a single world.”