Freehold (12 page)

“Okay,” Stell said. “Endo it is. And I take it there's a wing based there.”

“Yup,” Samantha answered, blowing twin streams of scented smoke from her nostrils. “And a good one at that. Falco's Falcons.”

Stell frowned thoughtfully. “Never heard of them.”

“This wouldn't be Commander Jack Falco, would it?” Como growled, snapping together the receiver and barrel of the grenade launcher he was cleaning with a loud click.

“The same,” Sam replied, blowing a stream of smoke toward the overhead. “Although the Navy takes a dim view of cashiered officers using their former rank. I understand his people just call him Jack.”

“That's right,” Como said, thinking out loud. “He's the one who got court-martialed for chasing some pirates all the way back to the Rock. Broke every standing order in the book.”

“Then, do we want him?” Stell asked. “Casual is one thing ... undisciplined is something else.”

“True,” Sam agreed soberly, “but you've got to understand the circumstances. Falco was out on a training patrol with a flight of greenies right out of the Academy. By chance, they stumble on a liner—the
Jupiter,
if I remember correctly—and she's just been hit by pirates. I mean there they are, right in his sights, hightailing it for home. And as usual they've got a bunch of passengers who'll end up as slaves somewhere. Well, I guess he just couldn't stand it. He threw the general orders away and led his students after them.”

Stell could easily imagine the scene. The liner drifting, looted and empty, her drives disabled by the crew as the pirates boarded, a brief and hopeless battle at the main lock, then men, women, and children herded aboard the waiting pirate ships for a journey into slavery. To know about such horror was one thing, but to witness it, and do nothing because the empire wanted to preserve the pirates as a buffer against the Il Ronn, that was something else. “And?” Stell asked.

Como and Sam grinned in unison. “He caught ’em,” Como said. “First they freed the
Jupiter
's passengers and crew by cutting off the transports. Falco sent them back with two fighters apiece for escort. Then they went after the rest and burned ’em one at a time. I heard only two or three out of a dozen made it back to the Rock.”

Sam nodded her agreement, and said, “His court-martial followed. Fortunately for Falco, some of the liner's wealthier passengers felt he got a raw deal, chipped in together, and gave him a very nice reward. He used it to form Falco's Falcons. End of story.”

“Okay, I'm sold,” Stell said thoughtfully. “He sounds like our kind of folk. He also sounds like he's good, and I've got a feeling we're gonna need him.”

Com Tech Chu swore softly to herself as the dots appeared on her screen. Pirates. Two ... three ... five ... six altogether. Just like the people on the
Zulu
said there'd be. Like everyone else on Freehold, she'd been waiting helplessly for the last twenty minutes. Now, at least the waiting was over. But one of them was huge. A real monster. Great Sol, were they really going to land a ship that big? It was the size of a light cruiser. Quickly, her fingers danced over the keyboard. Come-beams obediently leaped out from the No-Hole tracking station to key locations all over the world. One was Colonel Krowsnowski's command center, deep underground, near Freehold's north pole.

Seconds later, Krowsnowski's crisp, concise orders were crackling out to units all over the planet. Within minutes, all locations had acknowledged his orders and were standing by. Without air cover, that's all they could do. Thanks to the warning from Captain Boyko, Krowsnowski had enough time to scramble three wings of fighters. Except he didn't have the fighters to scramble. So there they sat, with no air cover and most of the brigade still digging in. Well, he reflected, searching for a bright side, six ships can't take the planet. True, he answered himself, but they can take any single target, plus raise an awful lot of hell. And what about that big sucker? What would they do with that? All he could do was wait to find out. As he watched the little dots move across the plotting projection, he wondered what Stell would do in the same situation.

Deep below Freehold's surface, Quarter Sept Commander Feeg's tail twitched back and forth in frustration. The monitor in front of him displayed the pirate ships as blue arrows, five small and one large. What were the pirate scum up to? Surely they didn't plan to land a major war ship. Even they weren't that stupid. Or were they? A ship that size is very vulnerable on the ground. Damn them! Their continued attacks only served to mobilize the settlers even more. And that could interfere with his plan. Turning to an aide, he issued terse orders. Moments later a powerful micro-burst of code punched its way up through the atmosphere and out into space.

A few hundred miles away, on the edge of the settlement known as Two Holes, Sergeant Flynn squinted up into the sun. Suddenly a dot appeared, quickly became a blob, which resolved into a ship, and grew to blot out the sun. “Oh, shit,” she said softly to herself. The brass weren't on Yirl drug after all. The ship was so big that it must be at the upper limit of what could land and still blast off again.

Standing next to her, Corporal Stickley shook his head in amazement and yelled over the roar of the descending ship. “What now, Sarge?” He grinned broadly, knowing what she'd say.

“Why, we're gonna do what we always do, Sticks,” Flynn yelled back. “We're gonna kick some ass!” She made an obscene gesture at the ship and then ran toward the half-completed weapons pit. Or lose our asses, she thought. One or the other.

A few hundred feet above, on the bridge of the Brotherhood's light cruiser
Avenger,
Major Peter Malik reclined on an acceleration couch and watched the monitors above him. Ant-like figures were running in every direction. Didn't they know it was useless? He shook back his long yellow hair, savoring the moment, anticipating the pain and death, his breath coming a little faster. He was tall and rangy, almost gawky, but well muscled. Under bushy yellow brows, pale-green eyes gleamed with energy and vitality. The nostrils of his blade-like nose flared with excitement, and between his legs there was a familiar stirring. It was always like this before a battle, and he welcomed it.

As though sensing his mood, Lady Almanda Kance-Jones turned, laying ice-cold fingers on his arm. “Remember, Major, Intersystems wants the extractor and nothing else this trip. After all, that's the point of grounding this barge, isn't it?”

“Don't worry your little head about it,” Malik replied condescendingly, completely missing the glint of anger deep in her beautiful eyes. “We'll get the extractor, plus teach my old friend Stell a thing or two about soldiering. By now he's got elements of the brigade sitting in every one of these little hell holes. We're gonna cut them to pieces. God, how I wish I could see his face just now!”

“The Major forgets himself,” a low-voice growled over Malik's head set. The voice was that of Brother Mustapha Infam Drago, commander of the ship, and a full-fledged member of the pirate council. “This is my ship, and I'm not putting it down to satisfy the Major's personal vendettas. Now I desire silence while we land.”

The ship was hovering over the settlement at a height calculated to cause maximum damage. Everything her drives touched was turned to molten slag. The heat caused beads of sweat to pop out on Flynn's forehead. She winced as the pilot deliberately moved the pillar of fire across the settlement, carving a swath of death and destruction a hundred feet wide. Homes, businesses, public buildings—all disappeared into the roaring inferno. Fingers of blue light leaped up from a dozen half-completed weapons pits to touch the ship with death. At least half were right on target, but the ship's powerful defensive screens simply shrugged them off. Answering beams of coherent energy lanced down to destroy one cannon after another. Next to her, Sticks continued his efforts to raise their commanding officer, a Free Scout named Mullins. “Delta two to delta six, come in delta six. Delta two to delta six, come in delta six.”

Finally, a laconic voice answered saying, “Delta two, you can forget delta six. He went hero, and was last seen running toward the ship with a demo pack. I think you are in command, or will be in a few seconds.”

Above them, Drago watched the ground coming up in the stern monitor, and cursed in a dozen languages as a solitary figure appeared from the left, racing the huge ship to the point where it would touch down. Then the figure was gone in a blinding flash of light, as the heat from the retros incinerated the man and set off the demolition charge on his back. Drago was temporarily blinded by the flash. The upward rush of exploding gases hit the ship at a slight angle, pushing it sideways just as the pilot put it down.

Malik and Lady Kance-Jones were thrown hard against their restraints as the ship hit, and then held, tipped at a slight angle. Malik released the restraints and quickly headed downship to join the raiding party. Almanda left her acceleration couch more slowly, taking the time to check her makeup in a small hand mirror before carefully stepping down into the command center where Drago was still rubbing his eyes. He was a small, bony man with sallow, waxy skin, beady eyes, and a short temper, but just now he looked like a little boy with something in his eyes. Kance-Jones laughed at the thought and turned her attention to the action outside.

“Damn amateurs,” Flynn said wearily as the brilliant flash marked Lieutenant Mullins's death. “Always in such a hurry to get killed. Well, I guess that's what a chain of command is for.” As she slid her binoculars across the settlement, she began issuing orders.

Thousands of miles to the north, Krowsnowski bit his lip as he watched the computer projection. Five of the enemy ships had split up to hit widely separated settlements. They were obviously intended as diversions. Yes, it was the big sucker he should worry about. Why Two Holes? He no sooner asked the question than the answer hit him. The bastards were after a thermium extractor.

“Remember ... get the thermium extractor!” Malik yelled into his throat mic as he climbed into the huge tank.

“Roger, Major,” his tank commanders answered one after another. A rectangle of bright sunlight appeared as the huge cargo doors slid open to the loud whine of hydraulics. One after another, the big crawlers rumbled toward the hatch and down the ramp to Freehold's surface. Malik rode in the lead tank and had insisted on manning the top turret himself. As he worked the foot pedals, traversing the turret right and left, he squeezed the twin grips and sent out streams of lead death, tossing the running figures about like so many dolls. Many wore the A-suits of the brigade. Those he lingered over, taking extra seconds to carve already dead bodies into pieces. Below, he felt himself grow even harder. Later, he'd give Almanda “I'm such a big deal” Kance-Jones a real good time.

“Delta two to all delta units. Fall back. I repeat, fall back,” Flynn ordered as the last of the crawlers rolled off the ramp and headed for the group of buildings by the river. There was no way her people could stop tanks with assault rifles. She noticed that some of the crawlers had dozer blades and others mounted cranes. The last two were pulling trailers, and she wondered why. “Units three, four and seven,” she said calling up the energy cannon still able to fire, retarget on the armored vehicles and fire when you come to bear.” At least the ship's weapons had been forced to cease firing or risk hitting the tanks. Moments later, one, then another, then all three of the energy cannon lashed out at the crawlers, immediately destroying two. While they couldn't beat down the ship's screens, they were more than equal to the tanks. She felt Sticks pulling at her arm. He motioned toward her com-set and she chinned it off. “Yeah, Sticks?”

“Command just called on sealed beam, Sarge—they say to take out the extractor plant, and fast. They say that otherwise the pirates will get it.”

Of course! Why was she so stupid? The bastards were going to steal an extractor ... and it didn't take a genius to figure out why. After all, what good's a planet loaded with thermium if you don't know how to extract it from the rivers that carry it? The pirates were afraid that by the time they managed to take the planet, all the existing extractors would have been damaged or destroyed in the fighting. Swearing a blue streak, she spun back toward the buildings by the river, only to see that it was too late. The surviving tanks were next to the buildings and parts of the extractor were already being loaded onto trailers.

Malik was standing on the bow of the lead tank, screaming orders. Slugs and energy beams flashed around him, but he hardly noticed. Deep down he somehow knew that it wasn't his day to die. The carefully placed shaped charges had opened up the side of the building with surgical precision. Dozer units had quickly moved in to push most of the debris out of the way. A specially trained crew had entered and used laser torches to slice the extractor equipment into easily transportable chunks. Now the last of those chunks was being swung onto the surviving trailer for the short trip back to the ship. Once it was in place and magnetically locked down, he took a minute to look at the flames and destruction, enjoying the moment, knowing Stell would recognize him when the battle tapes were analyzed. The tank lurched, into motion under his feet and reluctantly he resumed his place in the top turret.

“Take out the trailer!” Flynn yelled into her com-set. “Aim for the trailer!” There was only one trailer left. If they hit it, at least the bastards wouldn't get what they came for. The cannon crews worked like demons to find the new target and lock on to it. One even managed to score a direct hit before it, and its crew winked out of existence. Drago had opened fire with the ship's weapons. He'd held back for fear of hitting his own people, but he couldn't let the settlers destroy that trailer. The ship's guns burped twice more and the last two energy cannon disappeared as their accumulators blew up. In frustration, Flynn pulled her sidearm and aimed it at the ship. She kept on firing even after the magazine was empty.

“Nicely done, Brother Drago,” Kance-Jones. said, smiling a perfect smile. “Things have gone so well that I'm inclined to indulge Major Malik's desire to visit a few more settlements before we leave.”