2166 - FORCE LIBERTY Page 11

  She said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

  "Dana was ready to gut some bugs," he said. "So she's charging their barricades with the bayonet, firing..."

  "I didn't know the Shediri had orders to disengage from us," she tried to explain.

  "Don't ruin the story, Captain," he said. "Dana here and her crew don't know anything about the new alliance with Hive Kesik. They don't like bugs much after that day and they think this is an extraction under enemy fire so they're making a break for the junks they saw come down and they're throwing grenades and firing rounds liberally as they charge at these barricades. The hundred or so Shediri right there are waving their arms around and running away because they've got orders to avoid all contact and the Taipan crew just keep chasing them and chasing them...past the barricades, down the avenue screaming, "Die, bug! Die!" shooting at them and missing, mostly, since they were running. They got a few, but the bugs that didn't get hit kept going."

  "Nobody told us it was over," she said. "I shot that stupid translator bot an hour earlier and they were still jamming our comms."

  "And the bugs keep running and the crew of Taipan keep chasing them, screaming until they'd driven about two-hundred stripey soldier bugs past the junks. They're waving a thousand arms and clacking and hissing and whistling like cracked steam pipes trying to get away. When we got back to the junks ourselves, Dana was standing near the airlock like she was waiting for us to come out. She sees me and she shouts, "Ram! Come on! We've got them on the run! We've got them on the run! Let's take the whole bug-fucking palace!"

  The UN captain laughed with the Privateers, but he exhaled slowly as Dana filled his glass with another finger of scotch. His eyes rested on the liquor without drinking, eying it now with suspicion. "I will not lie to you. I will not say I don't enjoy your pirate hospitality, but why...why all this pleasantry, Commodore Devlin? Why does the lovely Captain Dana Sellis pour me glasses full of your expensive liquor while you entertain me with amusing stories?"

  Ram's and Biko's and Dana's smiles didn't fade completely, but self-consciousness flattened their expressions as silence fell across the foursome. Captain Chun looked to Ram for an explanation.

  They sat on the observation deck, not in the counter-surveillance cage, so when Ram answered the UN captain's question, he chose his words carefully. "We need to be friends. It's that simple. We're going to have to rely on each other in the future, Captain Chun. And no one else. After all, we're very much on the same side now, aren't we?" He could tell Chun took the less-obvious meaning of his words to heart by the distaste on his face. Anton Cyning could never have had his way without help from inside the UN. Ram said, "The arc of history will not bend itself. If we want to see our vision of Humanity's future be more than an idealist's dream, then we must rely on ourselves and each other to make that future happen."

  Chun raised his glass. "Action is truth," the UN captain said before he drank.

  Ready Room

  Ram Devlin closed the door on the counter-surveillance cage in his ready room, locking himself inside with Anton Cyning. The company man withdrew a matchbox computer from the pocket of his wool suit and placed it on the table in front of them. He gestured through documents until he found the one he was looking for. The translucent ghosts of Ram's own bank accounts floated in the air between them. "Staas Company's Board of Directors now claims you were following their orders," Cyning said. "Note the current balance of this new account, if you will."

  When he saw the new account and the number Cyning gestured to and how enormous it was, his first reaction was alarm. It flashed hot over his face. "I didn't open this account. It isn't mine."

  "Of course you didn't and of course it is. It's yours. Staas Company stands to profit substantially from the rights granted us by Hive Regent Kesik with regard to the Shediri Cynium."

  "The what?"

  "The indigenous element used in the fabrication of the shield penetrator device, named after me. Cynium. It will be in anything made to breach an Imperium shield and who knows what else. Because the Board of Directors said so, you're going to get .004375 percent of Staas Company's Cynium profits. It's a very generous deal. What you see in that account represents money the company has already made here. More will come."

  "We haven't exported a gram of anything yet."

  "We will..."

  "I don't want this money," he said.

  "Of course you do. Take the money, Commodore. Mind you, it's not nearly what we would have gotten if I had my way in this process. But you'll still be able to use it. Repairing Taipan will cost a literal fortune. Believe me, Staas Company will bill you. All those redsuit teams are working overtime."

  He all but groaned when Cyning said that. The company man would make sure he got billed for repairs of a personally owned ship.

  Cyning finished his glass of Ram's scotch and stood up. "As long as you're spending in the billions, I hear Staas Company is offering some spectacular deals on used escort carriers from the last war."

  "Why would I want to personally own more carriers?"

  That polished face cracked with his last smile. Anton Cyning knew something he wasn't saying. "I'll be going now, Devlin. I've already said my farewells to the Hive Regent."

  "I'm surprised she'll talk to you. And Hrt'ee? Any communication since the double-cross?"

  "She says she's no longer talking to the barbaric and untrustworthy humans." Cyning shrugged. "My personal yacht, Aquitaine, is about to depart. I've got a breaching ship and a company cutter waiting to escort me home. Next time, Devlin, I won't make the mistake of assuming you're something you're not."

  Ram doubted there would be a next time. He doubted Anton Cyning would make it all the way back to Earth. Captain Chun had generously offered the company man a UN destroyer for transport, but Cyning had been smart enough to decline. He'd never make it home alive if Captain Chun had anything to say about it.

  As the ageless company man opened the door to the cage and stepped out, Ram wondered what the chances were that another Imperium ship might be lurking and lying in wait along Cyning's route home. They were good enough, Ram figured, that anyone who wanted to kill him wouldn't have to make it look like an accident.

  Bridge

  "Contacts are changing vector, now approaching with maximally diminishing range and bearing," Dolan said.

  "Not again." His XO had the bridge and he sounded like he'd had enough excitement. "What the hell do the Shediri think they're doing?"

  After he got off the lift, Ram looked them over from the Ops console trying not to cramp Lt. Dolan next to him. He saw small Shediri ships, war-painted and closing fast. "There must be nine hundred of them."

  "960," Biko said. "They're about ten minutes out at this speed."

  "Did we call the Hive Regent?"

  "Not answering."

  UNS Guerrero held station nearby like a scarred-up moon, but the bristling boar's hair coat of her point-defense guns had been flayed off in the impact with the Imperium ship. Those little guns were all gone now and her sixteen main guns weren't going to be any help.

  Only half of Hardway's small guns were currently operational.

  "Launching alert Sky Jacks and gunnery junks," Pardue said.

  The swarm of painted ships came at them too slowly and practically abreast as if to show their numbers. It wasn't how they attacked before.

  "Incoming message on the diplomatic console," said the comms officer on duty. "It's from the Hive Regent." His pause went on so long that every face looked up and away from their stations in a complete abandonment of discipline.

  "Don't keep us in suspense, Briggs."

  Briggs read it slowly even though the message was simple. "Approaching now. These Shediri follow Devlin. Success to Devlin Liberty Fleet. Hive Regent and Human alliance. Action is truth."

  Biko said, "It wants to contribute forces to your fleet?"

  "Action is truth. She's putting her money where her mouth is."

  "Are
they coming with us to fight the Imperium?" Biko said, "I mean... if they come with us, Pardue can't fit all those ships in the bays. What are they going to fly off? And the what hell are we supposed to feed them?" He sounded worried like a carrier XO always does. "You're going to need more ships, Ram."

  "I hear escort carriers are on sale," he said. "And I just came into some money."

  Sub-tower

  He knew it was almost as easy for someone to get to him as it was for someone to get to Anton Cyning, so Ram had already put Company Marines on guard duty outside his quarters in the sub-tower. He'd told them not to let anyone inside. When he got there and they told him Captain Dana Sellis was already inside waiting for him, he didn't want to chew them out for letting her in. All he wanted now was to see her in private.

  Dana's eyes burrowed into him as he entered. "Commodore, when the hell were you going to tell me?" She practically shouted it at him before he could get the hatch closed behind him. Once he did, she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I know who those two psychos on my ship really are, you lying bastard. I know everything. Were you ever going to tell me the truth?"

  He wanted to say that action is truth, but she'd never buy that. Instead, he pulled her close enough that maybe the secrets couldn't get between them.

  If you enjoyed this story from 2166, then read The War of Alien Aggression.

  The War of Alien Aggression

  All five books in a single volume - the 2164-2165 war with the Squidies from the first engagement to the final detonations.

  540 pages, 192K words

  Hardway

  Intelligent life reaches out to Humanity using particle beam weapons and masers. The pilots and crew of the carrier Hardway are first to fight in the conflict that quickly escalates from a bloody first contact to a full-scale, interstellar war. Ram Devlin thinks he and the rest of Humanity may have been tricked into fighting a war that never had to happen. The verity of the history being written is in doubt, but the survival of his crew and the very future of mankind is now at stake.

  Kamikaze

  The privateer attack carrier Hardway invades Procyon to destroy an alien blockade gun meant to keep the human race confined. Hardway and her pilots meet their match in the Squidies' massive gun and the alien aces that protect it until they discover why the aliens are beating them. Hardway's officers must commit to paying for victory in war's only true currency.

  Lancer

  Privateer Admiral Harry Cozen needs pilots for an experimental fighter squadron, so he offers the inmates of Bailey Prison a deal. Colt is serving 5-7 and he knows the deal is too good to be true, but he still takes it. He and the rest of the C-Block nuggets learn to fly the new F-151 Bitzer and prepare to sortie against alien aces on a mission far more dangerous than anyone's telling them.

  Taipan

  The privateer attack carrier Hardway is drafted into a force group commanded by Harry Cozen's bitter rival from Staas Company. She stole his fighter program and his thousand new pilots. Now, she's determined to use them as cannon fodder. Nobody can argue with her battle record, but the officers and crew of Hardway and the Lancers of the 133rd Fighter Test Squadron may be all that can keep her pilots alive in a knife-fight deep behind enemy lines.

  Cozen's War

  The Staas Privateers and the UN fleet have brought the fight to the Squidies' home system. The massive Earth invasion fleet faces off against every ship the Squidies' can muster. Harry Cozen is in command and this is his greatest gambit, but alien propaganda threatens to reveal the war's greatest secret on the very day the broadest and bloodiest battle of the conflict unfolds. Humanity must win, but the price of victory may be a thousand more years of war.

  About the Author

  A.D. Bloom types loudly on a 1998 IBM M13 mechanical keyboard (13H6705), prefers writing on vertical monitors, and claims he’ll make portable aerial radar from a $12 usb radio dongle when he’s done with his current project.

  amazon.com/author/a.d.bloom

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve