2166 - FORCE LIBERTY Page 9

  Dana looked then to the boy who'd stopped jumping around as if the room were one big puddle and now stood as still as he could. He trembled slightly and the water made expanding rings around his ankles.

  "The boy...is he?"

  "I'm Harry Cozen," the boy said. "He started the war with the Squidies. And he won it. I have his genes and the implant, too. I know everything he knew. Except how he died. I know you were the first Human to call a Squidy a Squidy. You said it to Mickey Wells after you hacked one of their diplomats to pieces. So much hate under that pretty face. That's what Harry thought." He nodded at her shocked expression. "I know more than anyone," he said. "Ram Devlin wants us gone, but if he doesn't let us stay, then I won't tell him any of what he wants to know."

  "And he does need to know what we know," Margo said. "Staas Company's Board of Directors would have eaten him alive five times over by now if it wasn't for our advice. He's growing too powerful. They want him dead."

  "But even if I believed you. This can't be the safest place for you..."

  "We have enemies made over two lifetimes on Earth and human cloning with mnemonic transfer is highly illegal. This is the safest place for us. Your beau, Devlin, acquiesced to our demands for sanctuary because he recognizes our subject matter expertise in a number of fields. One of them is leadership. So whether you believe us to be war criminals or not, when Matilda Witt and Harry Bloody Cozen tell you they believe you have what it takes to sit in the Captain's chair, then you bloody listen."

  "If what you say is true, then you're a pair of history's greatest lairs and murderers and I should do the universe a favor and rid it of both of you."

  "But you don't even know who we are yet," the boy said. "Not really. We've got their memories, but we're not them!" he stamped and splashed. "We're not! Why did you tell her!"

  "Forgive the boy. He's eight years old and has all the ugly memories of the man who built Staas Company's military contracting wing and fought across the bloodiest fronts of three wars."

  The boy blinked at her and she couldn't tell what was behind those eyes. "What about you?"

  "We make our own choices, Captain Sellis, and that determines who we are. There is no genetic predestination, not for clones or for anyone else. Every day, we decide who we are just like you do. It's what we do that makes us who we are, the choices we make, not our genes. Even we don't know what we'll do with the memories and the gifts we've been given. But we know we deserve a chance to live and see. And we know we'd rather entrust that chance and our survival to you, our Captain that we bloody chose, than to surrender and entrust our lives to the mercy of the heartless Shediri. We believe in you, Captain. So does your crew. Don't bloody disappoint us."

  11

  SCS Hardway

  In low orbit around the banded gas giant

  Anton Cyning stormed into the counter-surveillance cage that filled Devlin's ready room. He acted like he'd cornered Ram there. "I was stuck in a lift for ninety-six minutes! What kind of a rust-bucket is this ship? Was that your idea of a power play? Are you testing me, Devlin?"

  Ram closed the door of the cage, locking them inside the bubble of secrecy. "Supporting an alien coup to put a friendly Hive Regent in power is gunboat diplomacy of the worst kind and if we go down this road, we will find ourselves without a single species that trust Humans enough to form an alliance with them."

  "You sound like Special Envoy Gilead. You surprise me, Devlin. The personality simulations I ran based on your company psych profile and your previous actions predicted a far different response. Who would think the man who helped Harry Cozen start the last war would take issue with my diplomatic style? The company's Board of Directors wanted you on this mission for a reason, Devlin."

  He made a point not to let Cyning see how that remark stung him, but it made perfect sense. Of course that was the reason they wanted him. They thought he was dirty. Once they think you're already stained, they assume you won't mind getting just a little dirtier. For some people that was true, but not for Ram. He did what he had to do then - he lied. "Don't get me wrong, Mr. Cyning. I can see the masterful strokes in what you've wrought and I think even Mr. Cozen himself might have appreciated them. He would have envied them, at least. As do I. But respectfully, if I can spot your chicanery, others will, too."

  "They won't listen to good Captain Chun's allegations of conspiracy. Staas Company's Board of Directors and the new Secretary General are in full agreement on the issue of Shediri regime change. The Imperium is already here. We don't have time for Wilhelm Gilead's niceties. Don't worry so much, Devlin. History will paint us as liberators because people will believe what they want to. You, of all people must already know that. Even I don't know the truth of how the 'War of Alien Aggression' began, but I know you engineered it." Cyning didn't know the whole truth. The company man smiled at him then and it looked so nauseatingly genuine, as if that viper, Anton Cyning, thought there was some kinship of liars between them, something the two of them shared as deceivers.

  Ram could taste the bile in his mouth as he fought to keep it down.

  The company man said, "It humbles me to admit the credit for this plan should not go to myself, but rather the Hive Hrt'ee. It is a Machiavellian thinker with frightfully few ethical boundaries. It sent the message to the UN summoning Taipan to land in the palace of a very surprised Hive Regent on Shedir 4. Taipan's unscheduled visit must have looked very aggressive to her indeed. 'Action is truth'." Cyning chuckled darkly. "The main thinker, the driving intelligence of Hive Hrt'ee is a single bitch of a bug three stories high and fifty meters long, waited upon by a thousand slaves. She's been waiting for this opportunity to take the throne from Regent Kesik for hundreds of years."

  "We can't trust her," he said.

  "We can. We'll get Taipan's crew back, Devlin. Because Hrt'ee needs us."

  "If they're still alive after this."

  "Hive Regent Kesik won't kill Captain Sellis. She'll keep hostages to negotiate with. You'll see Dana again soon enough. Really, Devlin...you can fool the Board of Directors, but after five minutes in a room with the two of you in it, even a man like me who claims to possess no such feelings himself can tell Dana Sellis is the one you're in love with, not your new wife Margo. Some advice, Devlin: Margo suits you better since she's a former three-star admiral and remains a professional liar."

  He hoped he hid the fear that shot through him then, but he knew the blood was rushing to his face and Cyning didn't need a thermal scan to see it.

  "I know who Margo really is," Cyning said. "And the boy, too. I know everything. Don't worry; I'll keep your secret safe from the Board of Directors. If I didn't, then I wouldn't have any leverage over you at all, would I?"

  Bridge

  Biko spoke from the Ops console. "We have line of sight to the enemy. The Imperium ship is still hovering in the photosphere of the star around seventeen degrees from the South pole."

  "Comms, get me Captain Chun on UNS Guerrero."

  It took a few moments. The UN captain said, "Our new hardware is still running just like your redsuit claims it should." He sounded surprised. "He'd better be right about how this works."

  "Tig Meester is always right," Ram lied. The alien-modded tech was the only part of this plan he was sure would work. The Hive Hrt'ee had nothing to gain and everything to lose if they failed. That Imperium ship would come for them next now that it had seen them with the humans.

  "Our deceleration routine finally came together," Captain Chun said.

  That was impossible. Ram had run the simulations himself ten times. Once the UN battleship got inside the enemy ship's shields, she'd never have a chance to slow down. "Excellent, Captain," he didn't know what else to say. Captain Chun was going to attempt it despite the dangers. "Good hunting."

  "We'll see you pirates on the other side," Chun said. "And then we'll give the Hive Regent's fleet a pasting, eh? Guerrero out." The UN captain wasn't a great actor, but it was convincing enough. Cyning didn't suspect anythi
ng. As the company man said, people believe what they want to.

  "NAV," Ram said, "do you have this little dance all worked out?"

  "Nose at the enemy, Commodore. They mentioned it at the academy in Perth." Lt. Wei still looked shaky.

  "Fine, then, put us on vector for point A and cozy us up next to the gas giant," Ram said, "Mr. Cyning, now is the time to send your message if you please."

  "Thank you, Commodore Devlin. I'm taunting them now."

  Pardue said, "An insult is going to get that giant Imperium battleship mad enough to steam all the way out here to kill us?"

  "You sound incredulous," Cyning said as he tapped at the console. His last, flourished stab with his index finger told them all he'd sent the transmission. "The Imperium ship will come because this fight isn't just about us. It's about this system and the systems next to it and the ones next to those. For the Imperium, this fight is about proving to the Shediri and everyone else that we Earthlings can't stand up to them. The message I have sent will force them come out here and to prove it."

  "What did you say?"

  "I've made an omnidirectional broadcast in crude Shediri and declared us to be 'The Liberty Fleet'. I have announced our treaty with the Shediri, not Hive Kesik or Hive Hrt'ee, but simply all of them. I've just told the Shediri across the entire system they're all safe from the Ortani Imperium now that we're here. I added 'Action is truth.' The Imperium vessel will have to come fight if we call them out or lose face in front of the Shediri and everyone else."

  Ram said, "Pardue, tell me about my air group." A flick from her console towards the center of the bridge revealed them and their positions in the shadow of the gas planet.

  "The air group is deployed as ordered. Everything we have save three junks and the longboats is out in the black and loaded for bear. The squadrons are currently hidden from the enemy ship's view. If the enemy follows the direct path to get to us, then Flight Element Alpha, the 55th and 99th squadrons and eighteen torpedo junks will be engaging first to help lure the enemy into position."

  That was a nice way to put it Ram thought. He knew he'd hung those pilots out there like worms on a hook. There hadn't been any other way.

  Flight Element A

  56,000 Ks over the gas giant

  Four hours later...

  Strike, aka, Pippa Tsui of Hellcat Squadron flew her Sky Jack F-223 in a tight, figure eight that passed in and out of the strong magnetic lines converging at the gas planet's pole. Hellcat 1-1 led the 47 fighters and 18 torpedo junks chosen for this mission.

  Each and every one of them remembered what happened to the last fighters and junks to come within range of the Imperium ship's weapon. No matter what they had done, no matter how hard they'd flown, it hadn't mattered. That spinning ball of plasma had chased them down and wiped them from the sky. It made her shiver like someone walked over her grave.

  "Keep the spread at least 15Ks between us, Hellcats. Junks, maintain the line evenly on our tails."

  "Acknowledged, 1-1." Lt. Kaisberg aboard the torpedo junk Dangler spoke for all three flights of junks. When Strike gave her fighter a spin on its thrusters to look back, she saw the burning pinpricks of the junks' nacelles as they adjusted down the line to space themselves evenly.

  The Sky Jacks flew abreast and if she zoomed in with her helmet, she could eyeball her wingman, Cheese, in his cockpit. What she saw wasn't much more than a bunch of grainy pixels, but it was enough to see the man staring out into the space in front of him like it was the abyss. "Stay sharp, Hellcat 1-2."

  The fighters would be the ones dodging fire first. The AGC was always one of Hardway's junk pilots and never a fighter pilot and at times like this she thought maybe that's why there were never any bloody veteran fighter pilots left alive on that carrier.

  Strike and the rest of the formation had hidden themselves in the shadow of the gas planet. Its bands twisted against each other in a nauseating way. She hated the color of it and she thought it would be a shite place to die so she hoped the bridge officers on Hardway were really as smart as they said they were. They got to stay on the carrier while she and her Hellcats tested their theories for the first time in combat.

  "Hellcat, 1-1, this is Hardway AT." It was Pardue in her ear. "The Imperium ship is holding course. It's steaming fast and hard to get at the carrier. It'll be in proximity to the gas planet in less than one minute. You'll have LOS after that. It's showtime, 1-1."

  "Acknowledged, Hardway." She called out to all her pilots then and the junks as well. "It's coming, people, just like the brilliant military minds on the bridge said it would. Less than a minute to contact. Follow me onto our planned attack vector and keep loose. Once it picks a target, maintain the formation. Trust each other. Trust the junks and the EWOs piloting those torpedoes. I'll see you on the other side."

  The fighters and 50-meter torpedo junks ripped low enough over the clouds that flashes of lightning illuminated them as they flew towards the star-facing side of the gas giant. The pinprick flares of the fighters to her port and starboard side lined up perfectly then. Through her canopy they drew a razor-straight formation against the murk below.

  "There it is," Cheese said.

  Their flight helmets picked out the anomaly and zoomed in at the same instant their LiDAR and radar arrays chimed out the contact on the scope. It was sixteen kilometers from the tip of the towers at one end of that thing to the other end. The clustered spires extended right through the central hull. Seven sets of them stabbed it seven times, piercing the roughly 3K-wide main hull. It looked like a broken Christmas ornament, but it was the size of an orbital space station. Windowless, apparently featureless, no guns, no engines that could be seen.

  Already she thought she saw a glint on it that wasn't a reflection of Shedir's light. The forward side of it was in shadow, lit only by the blush that bounced off the gas giant, but on the tips of the spires she could see the energy buildup. Her helmet displayed the increased IR emissions and the leaking high-energy particles that rocketed off them like sputtering sparks.

  "Hellcats, flight one, torpedoes away." Strike and the other three planes in her flight loosed the single mk3 warspite torpedoes they'd been carrying on the keel-side hard mounts and went blind from the torps' plasma exhaust in their faces.

  When their flight helmets dimmed enough to let them see the constellation of warspites on-target, the auras dancing over the planet looked like they'd shifted. Two immense, bright ones curved over the gas giant and pointed right at her and her Hellcats. "Charge spike on the hull," she said when it flashed in her visor. "It's got us lassoed with a mag line for targeting. They're targeting us now, Hellcats...follow me. Dangler, we're counting on you and your EWOs."

  The alien weapon launched from the alien spires and hunted them just like it had when it came for Kodiak Squadron. The spinning, spiraling, electrified plasma weapon was whole kilometers wide and it followed the curving path to its target that had been drawn in space by the immensely powerful magnetic loop the Imperium ship projected. That loop was visible in the outermost gasses of the atmo when the charge traveling along it electrified them. She could see it chasing her fighters as they flew, guiding the plasma to them.

  "Impact in 5 seconds...Where are your torps, Dangler?"

  The spread of warspite torpedoes the eighteen junks had fired blazed by her cockpit canopy on both sides, blinding her again. "Hold on to your hat, 1-1. Detonat-"

  The fission warheads blew only kilometers above and below her squadron with disruptive blasts of gammas and x-rays and electromagnetic pulses. After the flashes, the residual plasma from the torp casings buffeted their fighters so hard she thought her nacelles would come off, but she hit the thrust then like they'd been told to do, so hard the inertial gee forces overcame the little fighter's pinch and she was paralyzed with the acceleration.

  When she could finally turn her head to look, she saw the whole, spiraling cloud of weaponized plasma whipping off in the wrong direction with all the energy of t
he snapped magnetic line that had guided it. The fifty or so fission warheads launched from the junks had broken the alien weapon's targeting.

  "It missed!"

  Hardway had been right. "Roger that, 1-2," she said as their mk3 warspites arrived and detonated over the Imperium ship's shield. All they did was decorate it with fiery boutonnieres.

  She didn't see Hardway come into view of the enemy until the first salvo from the carrier's railguns impacted together along the other side of the alien, drawing half its full ovoid shape against the stars. The rouge of the dets washed over the Imperium ship's towers, but nothing penetrated that shield.

  It targeted Hardway then, and Strike saw the auras burning from the magnetic lasso it used whip our and ensnare the kilometer-long carrier.

  SCS Hardway

  Over the north polar region of the gas giant

  "NAV, get us below the planetary horizon again." Devlin said. "Break the line of sight with the Imperium ship. We have to lure them clear to the other side of this gas giant and down close to it in order to give UNS Guerrero her chance."

  "Flight Element A appears to have successfully survived an attack."

  It worked once, he thought, that doesn't mean it'll work again. "NAV, why does that enemy ship have LOS magnetic lock on my carrier still?" It would fire any second.

  Energy or matter or both, ejected from the sparking tips of the spires and passed through the shield in cones that met and formed a single, fast-rotating ball of plasma. It rocketed down the curving line of the magnetic loop on its collision course with the carrier.

  Biko said, "Thirty-two seconds to impact..."

  "NAV, descend closer to the planet. Shoot the outer atmo. Cut the clouds there. Over the storms."

  "Descending..."

  He was afraid the novice would shy away from the atmo, but Wei flew Hardway low enough that the carrier's wake cut a deep trench behind her in the gas giant's clouds as the alien fell below the planet's horizon. Lightning flashed everywhere below. For a moment, putting the gas giant and its electrical storms between them and the alien appeared to be enough to sever the magnetic targeting loop. The twin lines of curving, faintly glowing particles chasing the carrier vanished. Half a heartbeat of relief was all they got.