Freehold (63 page)

"Understood, sir," he acknowledged with a nod.

By the end of day five, Kendra was bandaged in other places from burns and nicks. Her ribs were stiff and her left arm wouldn't raise above halfway from the cumulative effect of its wound and the tautness of her ribs. Her legs ached with every step and cramped up when she held still. She trudged on.

There were bodies in the street, mostly UN, some Freehold militia and occasional civilians. Then the odd ones, like the six-year-old boy still clutching a rifle and the body of a two-year-old girl that looked as if she were simply sleeping. She tried to stop Dak from seeing that one, but he saw and began shaking with rage. She noted he hadn't taken any captives or wounded anyone. He wasn't deliberately murdering would-be prisoners, but he was doing his best to not give them the opportunity. She found she no longer was bothered by it.Eventually, the few remaining UN troops surrendered or suicidally attacked. The morning of the twelfth day, they simply appeared in the streets, hands and weapons held high and let themselves be taken. Some few arrived firing mindlessly, until they ran out of ammo or were cut down. The battle was over for most of them and the Freehold was secure for the time being.

Marta swam awake through a nightmare, gasping through her mouth.
I'm hyperventilating,
she realized. She was lashed down and felt touches she couldn't be sure were real or dreams. Unbidden, an ugly scream erupted from her throat and she snapped a foot out, contacting something. An answering howl indicated she'd caused some damage.

"Fucking
cunt!
" someone said, and a huge weight smashed into her wounded face. She felt teeth splinter, pain lanced through her jaw and she blacked out again. Her last thought was that it was real.

She woke again, feeling tumbling vertigo. She was completely restrained and wet. Vague memories surfaced. She'd been doused with a bucket of water. She was still alive, despite contusions, lacerations, massive trauma and the damage to her face. As she took stock of things, there was more violence.
Not again
, she wished,
Goddess, not again. I seek peace in the storm—this can't be happening—this—in the storm. Sun strengthen my spirit, oceans wash me clean, winds . . . oceans . . . winds . . . 
Her prayer evaporated in another scream of utter terror and hopelessness.

"It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish."

—Thomas Szasz

Naumann stormed into the new command center, hurriedly being wired and set. He stopped against a bulkhead and oriented himself with everyone else. It still looked like a converted freighter, but it would place the battle staff closer to the operation. "We do it," he said simply. Everyone present turned silently to their systems and went to work.

There was a target that Naumann found controversial, but could not drop from the list. He sighed, realizing this was going to be a painful operation, and paged Kendra Pacelli.

While he waited for her, he took up another issue. "Ops, what do you have on that rescue mission?" he asked.

The operations officer replied, "Nothing yet, sir. We think she's in Jump Point Three, but it's a big facility. Despite the surrender order, we're still digging aardvarks out of there."

"Get to it. I want her back," he snapped.

"As soon as we can, sir," was the confident reply.

"Sorry," Naumann apologized. "Strain. Hernandez is a first-class troop and I want her back alive. We owe her."

Kendra had no idea what Naumann wanted. She was busily scheduling loading and docking sequences, with far too few docks and far too much materiel. In between times, she was coding information for the targeting instruments the weapons would carry. That was not properly a logistics task, but then, much of what she'd done the last several months hadn't been logistics, either. She ended a plot of fuel schedules and saved to hard memory. Then she dragged herself through the crowded tube to the rear cargo bay, now command post.

"You paged me, Colonel?" she asked. He looked drained and sad. He was flanked, as always now, by four Black Ops people with no sense of humor. She thought assassination was an extremely unlikely step for the UN to attempt, but Naumann was taking no chances with his safety. It wasn't cowardice; he was more than capable of protecting himself, but there were no other officers of his level available. He kept the bodyguards, even when they got in the way.

He nodded to her. "Let's find a corner," he motioned and twisted around, swimming for a gap between instruments. She followed and somersaulted between them, yawing to the same orientation as Naumann. His wall of henchmen kept a discreet distance, but were close enough to swarm her or him if necessary. Considering that he'd recently sent most of them to their deaths, she was amazed at their dedication. Utter emotionless professionalism. Scary.

"The target list is out," he told her. "There are some cities locked in and others that are tentative."

"Do you want me to help prioritize them, Colonel?" she asked.

He winced. He hadn't even thought of that. This was definitely going to hurt. He blurted out, "Minneapolis is on the final list."

Kendra was stunned silent. It hadn't occurred to her that she'd be intimately familiar with any targets. She stared emptily, her head whirling and not from free fall.

"There are . . . assets in place that could warn your family," he said, and before the hint of relief in her face could become a false hope he finished, "but I cannot compromise security by doing so. Because I believe your parents to be as honorable as you, I'd expect them to try to warn the government. They'd probably be ignored, but I cannot take that risk."

Kendra felt near to fainting. She had sudden flashbacks to a team of "civilians" she had briefed in detail on central North America and another debriefing she'd had several months before and gulped back bile. After gathering her composure, she said simply, "I understand, Colonel."

"I'll have the chaplain meet you in your quarters," he hinted rather than ordered.

Kendra shook her head. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather stay. It'll keep me occupied. And I don't want to see it done half-assed."

It took three tense, nervous days of preparation to finalize the massive operation. Naumann barely slept and his temper was frayed. There were so many details and this was properly work for someone who had been to war college and held a rank at least two grades higher. Strategic weapons properly required a huge staff and on-site presence. Since he was the only one available, he saw the futility of complaining, not to mention the damage to morale. He worked furiously, driving himself over any doubts or remorse, and tried to sit calmly during the rare moments when nothing was pending.

Kendra saw the tired intensity of his determination. She had no idea how he maintained the pace. He jumped from analyzing the continued recovery of the planet and dictating orders for it, to directing the tattered remains of the fleet and the volunteer reserves to strategically important positions, to planning a massive counterattack against Earth. He demanded absolute perfection of data from his sources and got it. He spent divs staring at screens and making minor adjustments. Somehow, he had scraped up enough phase drives to outfit marginally enough weapons for what he had planned. Brandt StarDriveSystems had a few in preparation and storage facilities in the outer Halo and Meacham Hyper had finally paralleled the Brandt work, just before hostilities erupted. Naumann clearly wasn't happy with the numbers available, but he assured his staff it would be sufficient.

From her viewpoint, he was a strategic genius. The sheer numbers they faced had convinced her even a stalemate was impossible, but he was driving toward a win. Unbelievable. She dozed when she could, programmed data as it came in and kept her emotions clamped tightly. If her friends could suffer the massive losses they had already, she could accept the risk to her family and home. She didn't have to like it.

Finally, they were finished. All craft were loaded, all weapons set, everything sealed and ready. They would stay here and the task would be handled at Earth by automatic systems and a few control personnel. Intelligence reported a UN task force in the Caledonia system, ready to transit and attack. There was no margin for error. If this didn't work, they could all expect life in prison if they were lucky, brainwiping or death if not. She tried not to think about how she would be regarded if captured, as it made sleeping impossible.

"In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage . . ."

—William Shakespeare,
King Henry V
 

It was Monday morning rush hour in Minneapolis' zone +6 and traffic was as bad as it always was. Pedestrians and floaters and vehicles all fought for space. The crowd at the corner were mostly familiar to one another and stared around as they waited for transportation or crossing signals. A white van pulled over to a curb and set out a warning beacon. It broadcast its signal to traffic control and flashed an alert to the controls of any vehicle in the area.

One man got out, levered up a ground panel and reached inside. A subtle
snick!
indicated success and traffic suddenly halted as the grid control was destroyed. The self-control functions on the vehicles kicked in and began feeding them one at a time, very gingerly, across the intersection. Traffic instantly snarled for blocks around and a second
snick!
ensured the damage would not be easy to fix. He continued inside, dumping data from cubes into various lines to other parts of the grid. No one paid any attention to the van; it was background.

"What the hell are you doing?"
a cop snarled. The terrorist did not recognize his specific uniform, but the thuggish attitude was unmistakable. He stepped forward while smiling and raised a hand to gesture. The gesture turned into a vicious attack that dropped the cop to the pavement and the man departed.

Nearby, a woman dressed as a visiting professional walked into a construction site. She had a protective hat and shield and a comm. She strode through the site, watched occasionally for her young prettiness, but unbothered by questions as to her purpose. It was a matter of seconds to get the attention of the force crane operator, approach and disable him and board his equipment.

There was a girder in the beam and she took advantage of its mass. It made a satisfying hole in the side of a nearby building and dropped lethally onto the frantically gesturing site boss. She slid out while panic reigned and dropped her hat and shield as she left the fence. A quick turn took her inside another office block. She found the maintenance access and a few seconds fiddling with a coder let her inside. A swipe of a deadly toy scrambled tens of data lines, and another access a few meters away crippled the elevators and drop tubes. She turned and left, pulling a manual fire alarm as she did so. Outside, a car swerved across traffic, inexplicably on manual, and bumped another. That one stopped, but the manual operation confused the already snarled local grid. It attempted to correct, failed, and a third vehicle rear-ended the second.

She slipped into the first car, which turned in traffic and fled. The route had been chosen to keep them on the outside of the growing circle of chaos. There was little outgoing traffic this time of the morning and the driver wove rapidly through it, terrifying other operators.

Several bomb threats were called in and two police cars had been set on fire, along with two fire protection units, which were trapped in their garages and roaring with explosive-induced flame. A few real bombs detonated high in skyscrapers, killing workers within and showering the crowds below with rubble and glass. Every building began evacuation to the streets. Illegal firearms were in use, shooting out windows in the finance district. A power transformer went offline, disrupting business in the city building. Toward the outskirts, a substation caught fire. The resulting shift in power flow at a critical time caused fluctuations across the grid, creating numerous secondary problems. Faulty software caused a series of pressure waves to rupture water mains. Fire alarms were sounding in tens of locations. The local police had experience with riots, but not in preventing them. They watched helplessly as the city ground to a halt, one problem after another dominoing into madness. It might be days before order was restored. They would have been shocked to know that four people were responsible for all the mayhem.

The pattern was repeated in Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Louis and elsewhere, with poison gases, bombs, system failures and attacks. The undersea city of Baja Pacifica had its dome shattered by a tiny nuclear device. Europe and Asia received their own share of abuse. Several well-designed worms and windows created gaps in the comm-nets, bouncing through electronic space like manic grasshoppers. But while politicians at hastily arranged conferences sweated, a far worse danger was brewing, minutes and infinite distance away.

A silent swarm of death snapped into existence near Earth. There was localized interference due to gravitational distortion. Blurred ripples surrounded each dropout, damping almost immediately. The sight would have been fascinating and eerie to any observers, but there were none to see it. Shortly, however, there would be billions of witnesses.

The first wave, oriented, fired powerful retros to position themselves, then triggered. They immediately reentered phase drive in a precisely planned manner. With no destination, their mass converted to pure energy, still within the normal space-time reference. Googolwatt levels of photons streamed forward, only to smash into the obstacles ahead—the cities of Earth. Detroit felt the lead sting by nanoseconds, being directly underneath the first. The wave front vaporized much of the northern industrial sector and the ground beneath it. The shock wave tore outward, shattering everything as far as Windsor and Pontiac. The overpressure could still be felt to slap structures as far away as the Toledo suburb.