Freehold (5 page)
As Strom had sat down, wedging himself between two bodies, she had seen the pain in his eyes as he looked out at the endless carpet of broken men and machines which passed below. Hundreds of their people were dead or dying—all to settle doctrinal differences between two branches of New Covenant's single church.
Suddenly, the Colonel's eyes had met hers and he smiled. “Looks like you caught one, trooper. Doesn't look too bad though. A few days in an automedic and that leg'll be as good as new.”
For the first time, she'd noticed the dark stain across the front of his uniform. “I'm fine, sir ... but you've been hit bad. Can I help?”
Colonel Strom had shook his head and coughed, the brassy taste of blood filling his mouth. “No thanks, trooper. I'll be fine. Could use a little nap, though. But somebody's got to watch our friend up front.” He indicated the native New Covenant pilot. “He doesn't understand that we've never left our wounded, and never will.”
“Don't worry, sir,” she'd replied, pulling a double-edged commando knife out of her boot sheath. “Either we all go, or we all stay.”
“That's the stuff,” he'd answered. “Thank you.” And with that, Colonel Bull Strom had died, just as he had lived, surrounded by his beloved brigade. A little bit of her had died with him.
“All right,” she said, “you five: Rigg, Dudley, Alvarez, Su, and Mantu. Set up interlocking fields of fire and keep your eyes open. I'm counting on you. Dudley you're in charge.”
“Gotcha, Corp ... okay, you heard her ... let's get organized.”
Then, with her remaining fifteen troopers strung out in skirmish line behind her, Flynn headed for HQ. If it was under attack she knew it was her duty to help. But now they were a couple of blocks away and she couldn't figure out what to do. She'd watched wave after wave of Zonies fling themselves against the brigade's defenses, only to be cut down in bloody heaps. Gradually, the bodies had piled up until they became useful platforms from which the next wave of Zonies could launch their attack. Because the light-sensitive camo suits continued to function after their owners were dead, the piles of bodies seemed to come and go according to the light of battle, adding a gruesome, surreal quality to the scene.
As far as Flynn could tell, the brigade was easily holding its own without any help from her. In fact, from the occasional snatches of conversation that leaked through the jamming, it seemed like no contest. She was about to order her troops back, when suddenly the jamming dropped out for a moment and a frantic voice broke into the command channel. “Watch out! They're comin’ outta the sewers! Oh god, there's hundreds of ’em!” The words were cut off by a long, drawn-out scream that made her blood run cold. There was a moment of shocked silence, before a voice Flynn recognized as Captain Wang's cut in, issuing crisp, clear orders in the same calm voice he used to deliver his dreaded lectures on sexual hygiene. What happened to Major Malik? she wondered. Maybe the Zonies got him. If so, the attack wasn't a total loss.
Flynn ducked back behind the corner she'd been peeking around and tried to think. Damn! It was all her fault. The Colonel had told her to warn them about the sewers ... and she'd failed. Damn, damn, damn.
“What now, Corp?” The voice belonged to Trooper Stickley, better known as Sticks. He had a round, moon-like face, trusting brown eyes, and a gentle personality. As a result, people tended to underestimate him. A serious mistake, if they tried to push him around. Sticks was rated “Instructor” in unarmed combat. Looking at him, Flynn was immediately struck by the fact that he wasn't worried at all. Sticks just knelt there waiting for her to tell him what to do. His faith in her was like a transfusion of strength and determination. With it came an idea just weird enough to work.
“We're gonna do what we always do, Sticks,” Flynn said, getting up with a grin. “We're gonna kick some ass!” Moving quickly from one trooper to the next, she provided each with enough information to do their part, plus someone else's should they be hit. Once everyone had been briefed, she watched them take off, and timed them to their assigned stations. Then, with Sticks at her side, she ran full out for the large sewer grating that marked the middle of the nearest intersection. As she ran, she ignored the Zonies who continued to attack the perimeter a few hundred yards ahead. If they saw her, she would know soon enough.
Reaching the square grating, they dropped to their knees, bare hands frantically scraping at the accumulated garbage covering it. The putrid smell coming out of the sewer made her gag, forcing her to gulp the contents of her stomach back down, but making her happy nonetheless. It was the smell of success. Once the grating was clear, they grabbed the open latticework and heaved. Nothing happened. Flynn looked up to find Sticks grinning at her, rivulets of sweat cutting white tracks through the dirt on his face. “One more time, Corp!”
She grinned in return and, bracing themselves, they heaved once more. Hard muscles bunched and writhed along Stick's shoulders and arms. A vein stood out on Flynn's forehead. Suddenly, she felt the grating pop loose and almost fell over backward. Laying it aside, she felt dizzy from the effort and from the fumes that engulfed her. Strangely enough, Sticks seemed unaffected. Seeing her discomfort he shrugged. “Hell, Corp, it ain't no worse than Doc's socks after a week of maneuvers.”
Flynn laughed, a small part of her brain noting that such behavior wasn't rational when any second the Zonies could notice and kill them, while the rest of her mind worked on the problem at hand. Picking up a light piece of plastic wrap, she tore it into tiny pieces and released them over the sewer opening. To her satisfaction, they floated up for only a second before being sucked down into the blackness below. That meant the Zonies had broken through enough gratings inside the brigade's perimeter to create a positive air flow in that direction. Praying she wouldn't kill half the brigade along with the Zonies, Flynn chinned her mic, waited for a short break in the jamming, and gave the order. Triggering her flamethrower, she aimed it down into the sewer. It gushed orange-yellow flame. She knew the rest of her troops were doing likewise with improvised torches.
At first the flames blew straight back, burning all the hair off her face and arms. But then the gases trapped by countless blockages caught fire, creating a blue inferno. Suddenly she felt lead fingers plucking at her suit and heard the screams of enraged Zonies. She and Sticks ran for the cover of the nearest building, where they turned and cut down the handful of pathetic creatures headed their way.
Meanwhile, the fires started by Flynn and her troopers followed the supply of gas, howled down the pipes to the nearest intersections, split four ways, and then took off to do it all over again, in a chain reaction that wouldn't end until all available fuel was consumed. Flames followed pipes into other sections of the Zone, starting countless fires and causing tremendous damage. But the blue inferno also headed straight for the brigade's compound, just as Flynn had intended. In seconds, it reached sewers still packed with Zonies. Some burned to death, their screams echoing through the miles of pipe underlying the Zone. Those who didn't burn were suffocated as the raging flames consumed all the available oxygen and filled the sewers with carbon dioxide. Inside the compound, huge gouts of blue flame shot twenty feet into the air. Hundreds of Zonies, pinned down around the sewer openings, died instantly. The rest were cut off from any possibility of retreat. They fought to the death.
Because the attacking Zonies had forced the brigade's personnel back and away from the sewer opening, none of the troopers were hurt or killed by the flames. While the brigade got off lightly, thousands of Zonies had been killed or wounded. The screaming went on and on as the brigade's medical personnel struggled to deal with the massive casualties. They could expect no help from the Elders or the other residents of the Zone, so they did the best they could, often being forced to use stunners on the wounded, who otherwise continued to attack with teeth and fingernails.
Meanwhile, Flynn gathered her people together and, with wounded in tow, made her way back to the compound. They had to climb over piles of dead Zonies to reach the gate. Inside, it wasn't much better. It smelled like burned pork.
Once she had delivered the wounded to the overflowing infirmary, and released her troops to other details, Flynn climbed one of the three remaining observation towers that marked the corners of the compound. She told the weary troopers manning it to take a break. After they had left, she gazed out across the endless drifts of bodies, the countless fires burning in the distance, and then down into the tiny compound she'd killed so many to protect. Why do we do it? she wondered. Because it's us or them, the soldier in her answered. But looking down she knew there was another reason. Because for the moment the killing ground below was home, the tiny figures moving from one wounded Zonie to the next were family, and because there was nothing else. And she knew they'd soon leave to do it all over again somewhere else. The tears rolled down her cheeks for a long time before she went down to help with the wounded.
As the room lights came back up, they turned to Stell, waiting for his reaction. He didn't have one ready. Stalling for time, he made an elaborate ritual out of lighting a new cigar. Whoever shot those pictures had guts. He wished he could meet them. But he knew he wouldn't and why. The thought made him sad. At the same time, another part of him stood aside observing and analyzing. It said he couldn't afford such emotions, that too many people depended on his objectivity, that if he failed, they too would die. Had died. How many lost today? With a sudden pang of guilt, he realized he didn't know.
“Colonel Stell?” Kasten's voice jerked him back into an embarrassing silence.
“Excuse me,” Stell replied with a twisted smile. “I'm terribly sorry about the settlement. Your people were very brave. Pirates?” Stell knew pirate raids on frontier planets like Freehold weren't all that uncommon. Out along the edge of the empire Imperial Navy patrols were few and far between. Some even said that the Emperor allowed the pirates to exist because they helped keep the Il Ronnian empire in check, and did so at no cost to him. As a member of the Star Guard, Stell had always resisted those arguments, partly because they seemed disloyal, but mostly because he didn't want to believe the Emperor would put money before lives. But then they had demobilized his brigade, citing budget cuts, and had reduced the size of the Navy for the same reason. As a result, pirate raids had increased, and so had clashes between the pirates and the Il Ronn. So now he wasn't so sure anymore.
Kasten regarded him for a moment through steepled fingers before speaking. “Yes, Colonel, they were pirates. However, please don't think the raid you saw was a random event. Rather, we believe it's part of a larger pattern of activity.”
“Speak for yourself, Oliver,” Roop interjected. “We don't all believe in your wild allegations.” Satisfied that he'd said his piece, Roop slumped back into studied boredom, his aging chair desperately seeking to accommodate his new position with a hiss of cranky pneumatics.
Kasten smiled tolerantly. “As you can see, the Senator and I disagree about why the pirates keep attacking, but more on that in a moment. First, a little more history. Are you familiar with Standard Planetary Agreements, Colonel?”
Stell frowned as he dredged up what little he knew on the subject. “I know it's an agreement of sale between a planet's owner, usually the Imperial government or a large company, and a would-be buyer, most often a group of settlers. Beyond that, I draw a blank.”
“That's plenty,” Kasten said with a smile. “Briefly, here's how it worked in the case of Freehold. Having found and claimed Freehold, and having assured themselves there were no massive mineral deposits, or other resources they cared to exploit, Intersystems advertised for buyers throughout the empire. Among the roughly 250,000 qualified respondents were my mother and father.” Here Kasten looked affectionately at his daughter and winked. “I'm afraid you'll have to hear the story one more time, honey.”
Olivia laughed, and reached out to squeeze his hand.
“So a consortium was formed,” Kasten continued, “and each of its quarter-million members contributed equal shares of the five-million-credit down payment. The agreement called for another five million credits per Earth year for fifty years. At the end of that time, Freehold would become the sole property of the consortium and their descendants.” Kasten paused to gather his thoughts. “If, however, the payments were missed for two years running, Freehold would revert to Intersystems Inc., and all payments made thus far would be forfeit.” Kasten sighed and shook his head. “It wasn't fair, but that's the best deal they could get. Thirty years have passed since then. As you saw earlier, Freehold is no garden planet. The early years were very hard. My mother died first, then my father, and thousands more with them. But we managed in spite of that. For the first few years we barely made the payments on time. Gradually, things started to improve. We found ways to deal with Freehold's hostile environment, even ways to profit from it.”
Now Kasten's eyes glowed with the fervor of a man on his favorite subject. “Eventually we managed to produce a small surplus. We used that to buy the technology we didn't have, but needed. We put the technology to work and our surplus grew larger.” The glow faded from Kasten's eyes and his shoulders slumped as if under a great weight.
“Then our good fortune stopped. As you might expect with a planet like Freehold, the weather is cyclical. We're still learning what makes it tick, but the geological evidence, plus our own experience, tells us that years of reasonably moderate weather can be followed by equal periods of bad. Two years ago we entered such a time and are only now coming out of it. Consequently, all sectors of our economy have suffered. Our surplus was quickly eroded, and then gone.”
Now the pain in Kasten's eyes turned to anger, huge fists opened and closed in frustration, and he fought to keep his voice level. “Even so, we would have made it except for the pirates. Oh, we always had a few raids from both the pirates and Il Ronn, since the budget cutbacks most of the frontier worlds do, but nothing like this. Day after day, week after week, raid after raid the pirates pound away at us. And they've exacted a terrible toll, not just in material terms, but in human lives and suffering as well.” Kasten's voice broke, and he turned away for a moment as he fought to regain his composure.
