Merchants in Freedom Page 3

  “You’ve got it worse than the crew,” Morgan said. “They’re at the stage where they’re willing to accept death. You…”

  “Five ships, Joe, and I wouldn’t like to go out there with fifty at my back. And the small detail that I’ve never commanded a fleet before, and staff college was a long, long time ago. Not to mention that half of our crews were fighting the other half a few months back. And will probably get right back to that as soon as this is over. Like you said, we’re a long way off-script at this point. I can’t see any way to get back on.”

  “That’s your plan, then? Find the enemy capital and complete the ultimate kamikaze run?”

  “That’s my backup plan, sure. And I’ll be honest enough with you to admit that I don’t really have another plan at the moment, but that’s going to be dependent on the circumstances we find when we get there. We’ve got a sharp crew, and we’ve won through before. That’s something. They know they can win, and that’s an even bigger advantage.” Shaking his head, he said, “Ultimately, everything I said in that meeting is true. We’ve got to fight, and we’ve got to win. That’s all there is to it. We don’t have any choice, not now.”

  “And if we are flying right into a trap?”

  “Then we’re dead, humanity essentially becomes extinct, and all our hopes and dreams are gone as though they never existed in the first place. There aren’t exactly any other options here.”

  “There is, and you’re missing it,” Morgan said. “Code Ragnarök.”

  “We’re not there yet.”

  “Aren’t we? I’m not sure. The Tyrants don’t have unlimited resources, and even with everything they have, attempting to absorb all of Earth will take them years, decades. The rebels have the ability to build hyperspace beacons. That means we can move more rapidly than we’d hoped. We find a place to hide, a nice quiet little star, and we move everything we’ve got into position, and then we run for it. We run as far and as fast as we can, and we pray that we’re fast enough. Optionally, we go sublight, set out on a generation-ship scale voyage. In theory, our ships could handle that if we prepared for it. Between the stars, we really would be safe.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting that?”

  “I’m suggesting that there may be other options available here, and that this might not necessarily be the end of the road, even if we fail. We represent, I guess, the bulk of our free forces, but there are probably other ships out there that haven’t been suborned, and the same is likely true of a lot of the colonies. On Earth you can slip past mandatory annual physical checks; on a space station or a colonial outpost you can’t. There’s probably a good reason why they’ve been trying to pit the colonies against Earth.” He paused, then added, “Assuming that’s what they’ve been trying to do, of course. That’s the problem with this situation. We’ve got no real way of knowing how much of the last few years is down to the Tyrants, and how much is good old-fashioned home-grown incompetence.”

  “I have no intention of writing off billions of lives, no matter…”

  “And if the cost of those high ideals is the future of the human race? Do you remember Colonization 101, from the Academy? The course on population bionomics? Five thousand people could preserve the human race indefinitely. Mankind’s been that low before, on Earth, and come back from the brink. And that’s assuming no genetic assistance. With the technology we’ve got, a thousand would suffice. We can cram that many onto our ships. More if we add a few transports.”

  “Then what? Head off into the unknown and hope that the Tyrants either self-destruct or run into something worse before they catch us? Doom every generation to looking over their shoulders, waiting for the bad guys to pounce? That’s every bit as bad…”

  “Humanity has spent most of its existence living with the Sword of Damocles hanging over its head. That’s nothing especially new. Hell, if we’d been paying a little more attention over the last few decades, we probably wouldn’t be in the mess to start with.” He paused, then said, “I’m not seriously advocating that option. There are a lot of things wrong with it, unless we can find some way of getting far, far away from the Tyrants. All I’m trying to tell you is that you cannot afford to be blinded to any potential alternative options. There’s too much at stake for that.”

  With a deep breath, Winter said, “I just don’t see any, Joe.”

  “That’s because we don’t have all the information yet. What happens if we don’t find anything at our first target star, and we can’t work out a way to transit to the next one?”

  “We double back, and we work out something else. We find another option. As a last resort, we’ll follow Commander Dixon’s suggestion.”

  “Bring Earth into the equation? I thought you’d ruled that out.”

  “I’ll do whatever is necessary to win, no matter what the cost. If I have to wreck Earth’s government to save it, I’ll do it. I’d rather not. I’d rather come out of this mess with as much grace as possible, but maybe it would be all to the better if the whole story did leak to the public. They’re not children to be protected from the universe by the grown-ups. They have the right to make their own decisions, and we have no right whatsoever to prevent them from doing just that.” He paused, smiled, then said, “This is becoming a speech.”

  “Hell, I’ll vote for you,” Morgan replied. He placed his hand on his old friend’s shoulder, and added, “Jack, I know that you’ve been given a hell of a burden. I can hardly imagine what sort of a nightmare you are going through at the moment, and I know as well that this isn’t something you either expected or wanted, but you’re handling it well. As well as anyone else would, or could. I think I can speak for the crew when I say that they feel the same way.” He paused, then added, “You’ve just got to believe that yourself.”

  “That’s easier said than done,” Winter said, shaking his head. “Right now, I just want all of this to be over. A part of me was longing for some Admiral to show up, turn out to be on our side, that I could turn all of this over to. Damn it all, Joe, I’m a ship driver. I never even expected to get my own command, not in the military, and now I get all of this dumped on my shoulders.” He paused, grinned, and said, “And you’ve come down here with the express purpose of giving me a chance to vent.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time, though my ringing eardrums are warning me that I must have been out of my mind.”

  “Sorry,” Winter said. “I guess I was a little lost in myself.”

  “You’ve got every right to be, as long as you snap yourself out of it in a hurry. We’re going to need you at your absolute best when we return to normal space.” Glancing at his watch, Morgan said, “In about twelve hours from now. You want some more free advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “Come up to the mess and have a bite to eat with an old friend, then head to your cabin and get at least eight hours’ sleep before transition. We can handle everything until then without trouble, and I’ll make sure someone comes and gets you with at least ninety minutes to go. Most of the crew’s working along similar lines. You could do a lot worse than to follow their advice.”

  “Sleep?”

  “We don’t want you yawning during the final battle, boss.”

  “You’re assuming I don’t get bored in between firing passes,” Winter cracked. “Fine, Doctor Morgan, I accept your diagnosis and your prescription. Though I hope the quality of the food in the mess is better than normal. Your next quarterly review depends on it. Assuming anyone ever gets to read it.”

  Chapter 4

  Winter waited, eager and expectant, as Xenophon prepared for the return to normal space. Entering a new system was always an exciting prospect, one more usually restricted to the massive Explorer-class vessels, each prepared to spend a year conducting a thorough, systematic exploration of the new territory, or the small, nimble scoutships that pioneered the way, fast and dirty surveys looking for anything that might justify further interest.

  He’d dreamed of com
manding ships of that type when he was young, one of the reasons he’d entered the Academy in the first place, but one by one, those heroic ships had been taken out of service, either placed into mothballs or sold to civilian contractors who never used them for their designed purpose, instead turning those majestic vessels into bulk transports or fast couriers. It seemed a betrayal of ships that had once sailed from star to star, fulfilling the original purpose of mankind’s exploration of space.

  He caught himself wondering once more, wondering whether that had been the work of the Tyrants, their insidious infiltrators burrowing into Earth’s government and forcing them to bend to their cruel will, holding humanity back lest their plans be discovered too soon. With a smile, he shook his head. He didn’t need to conjure complicated conspiracy theories. The brutal truth was that humanity had reached out for the stars, but hadn’t found very much. Some valuable resource deposits to exploit, a host of research stations, some of them in their second century, but nothing more than that. No new worlds for humanity, those few where humans could breathe the air and drink the water inhospitable in other ways.

  Perhaps if they’d found an Ithaca, a new, unspoiled Earth, it would all have been different, a mad rush to settle the untouched territory, to build that brave new world out among the stars. And likely as not, ruin it as they had ruined Earth. Humanity had found plenty of alien races out among the stars, but little evidence of starfaring, and what they had appeared to be short-lived, perhaps the beginnings of exploration that had faded away.

  An alien race. That had been the real dream. Contact with another sentient species. They’d found plenty of life, out among the stars, but nothing to talk to, no intelligent race to meet with, interact with, learn from. Or war with, the cynic inside him said, though even that would have been a spur of its own, a drive to push deeper into the stars, onward forever. There had to be something out there, something other than the Tyrants.

  Perhaps one day he’d have the chance to find out for himself. Until then, this was as close as they were likely to get. He looked around the bridge, the officers at their posts, only the briefest murmur of conversation as they prepared for the battle he feared was to come.

  “All decks are cleared for action, Commander,” Morgan reported.

  “Very good,” Winter replied. “Holloway, I’m going to need a full sweep of the system as soon as we arrive. Don’t worry about keeping us quiet. Anyone with eyes is going to know we’ve arrived. If you see any blind spots within ten million miles, launch probes to cover them.”

  “Aye, sir,” the technician said. “We’re ready here.”

  “Thirty seconds to emergence,” Sabatini said from the helm. “I’m picking up the rest of the fleet behind us, and they should be coming through right on time. I have an evasive pattern programmed in, just in case.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t need it, but I’m glad we’re prepared,” Morgan said. “All weapons systems are charged and ready. I can throw several different types of hell at anyone you order, skipper.”

  “Ten seconds, sir,” Sabatini added.

  “Look sharp, everyone, and game faces on. Time for the party.” Xenophon lurched as the ship slid through the portal torn into the very fabric of space-time, stumbling into normal space and returning to reality, the familiar lurch sending Winter’s stomach into paroxysms, making him thankful that he’d had a light breakfast. It was worse than normal, but the ship was old, had been too long between refits. Under normal circumstances, a ship would go into spacedock after six transitions. Xenophon had completed more than five times that since her last visit to a shipyard, and the purpose of that visit had originally been to scrap her.

  “Sensors running,” Holloway reported. “Wait one.”

  Winter looked at the images flooding into the tactical display. The only information they’d had prior to their arrival in-system had been the reports from the long-range surveys, none of which could show the details they’d needed. Large planets, dust belts, but there had always been the chance that they would stumble into a field of asteroids that would ruin their whole day.

  Nine worlds. A lot for a system of this type, but all but one of them were small, none larger than the Moon, and all looked distressingly familiar, their surfaces torn and jagged, battered and beaten. A gas giant that could be Neptune’s twin. His eye caught one, only a few million miles away, spotting a sheen on the surface, the dust exposed in places to reveal a planetary ice-cap. Where there was water, there was life, even if it was only primitive.

  “Contacts, threat warning!” Holloway reported. “Five, correction, seven enemy vessels in geosynchronous orbit over the planet, as well as eight transfer shuttles heading down to the surface. I can’t see what they’re aiming for from this position. It’s in a sensor blind spot, but they’re definitely extremely interested in something going on down there.” He turned to Winter, and added, “None of them are showing any signs of registering our presence, sir. They’re just sitting there.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Morgan said. “We don’t represent any sort of threat right now. That’ll change if we start moving towards them.” Looking up at his sensor relay, he added, “I think we can take them, skipper, based on our past performance, but in an open battle we’re going to sustain significant damage.”

  “This isn’t the last battle of the campaign,” Bianchi warned. “We don’t dare take that sort of risk, not at this stage. There’s got to be a better way of handling the situation.” She paused, and asked, “Could we bypass them?”

  “We need to access their systems if we’re going to get their beacon signatures, Commander,” Morgan replied.

  “I know, Major, but we might be able to complete the same mission using long-range hacking from our techjammers. We’ve got some damned talented people on board, and if we can avoid a pitched battle, we should, regardless of whether or not we expect to win it.”

  “I’m forced to agree,” Winter said. “What do you think, Joe?”

  “Not a chance,” the veteran replied, shaking his head. “It’s a nice idea, sir, but that’s all it is. I don’t see how we could pull off a hack at any sort of range. We’d have to get close, and if we’re going to send a shuttle in that tight, we might as well be launching a full-scale assault. The effect will be the same.” He paused, then added, “I suppose we might be able to rig some sort of feint, but they’ve got the numbers to cover any conceivable approach.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sabatini said. “I can take the ship down low, sir. Pretty damned low. We could get in underneath them and catch them completely by surprise, and I could set that maneuver up to look as though we’re coming out anywhere. What if we make it look as though we’re attempting a hacking maneuver and using this ship as the feint, but switch the two operations at the last minute. The rest of the fleet could move into support, back us up for the final stages of the battle.”

  “Specialist, have you been reading tactical manuals again?” Morgan asked. “If you have, I’d like to borrow them. That’s inspired.”

  “I’m trying to get into the Mustang program, sir,” she replied. “I’ve been working on the recommended reading in my down time.”

  “Assuming we all get through this in one piece, Specialist, I don’t think you’re going to have anything to worry about on that score,” Winter said. He looked at the sensor display, and added, “There’s some sort of central structure at the heart of that. Looks like a supply depot.”

  “Probably,” Morgan replied. “I’m not making out anything other than tanks and storage modules. No living quarters, no outgassing. It’s probably just what it appears to be.” He paused, then added, “There’s a reactor, though, and a communications set-up. You’re thinking that it might be housing the local network, aren’t you?”

  “That is precisely what I am thinking, Major,” Winter replied. “Take that out and we win the game. Not to mention that I want to know just what it is they’re focusing on down on the planet. They’ve got a substantial o
peration here, and I want to know why.”

  “A staging area for attacks on Earth?” Bianchi suggested.

  “Possibly, but I somehow think there’s more to it than that. If they were simply positioning supplies, why pick one of the obvious targets for any ship entering the system? Why not just find some dead rock in the middle of nowhere?” He paused, then added, “For that matter, an asteroid would have made a lot more sense as a depot. Bury it deep enough in the rock, and we’d have a hell of a time blowing it up.”

  “Then we need to go down and take a look,” Bianchi said. “Part of the decoy, perhaps.”

  “Are you mad?” Morgan replied. “That’s going to be crawling with Tyrants. I wouldn’t want to land on that planet with a strike company at my back, still less a handful of shuttle jockeys.”

  “Nevertheless, we’re going to have to make the attempt,” Winter said, “and the fact remains that we need to gather intelligence. I think this is a job for Technical Officer Mendoza and her strike team. They can launch in their shuttle, try a fast flyby to lure the enemy ships into position, then come around the planet and take a look at whatever is down there on the surface. If we’re successful, then the enemy will be disrupted for some time, in any case. We might only have a narrow window of opportunity to pull this mission off, and I don’t want to waste it.”

  “It’s one hell of a risk,” Morgan warned. “No options for rescue or recovery if something goes wrong, and those are some damn good people we’re putting on the firing line.” He paused, looked at the viewscreen, and added, “Though I don’t see that we’ve got all that many options.”

  “I don’t like it either, Joe, but we play the hand that we’re dealt.”

  “Getting data in on the planet, now,” Morgan added. “I wish we had a full scientific team to interpret this. It’s been a very long time since I took that Planetology course. As far as I can work out, we’re looking at a larger version of Europa. A lot of volcanism creating a subsurface ocean, with some of the crevasses pretty close to the surface.”