Forever Free

  She spun it on its axis and slid to the outbound lane, sending a delivery van that was on auto straight out into a field of snow. The people on manual were all pulling over, evidently from some police command; it was interesting that the ones on auto took longer to comply.

  They were no doubt clearing traffic to get to me. I ran after Marygay as fast as I could, but soon lost her in the white distance.

  What could they send after a fighting suit? I’d find out soon enough.

  Strident blue flashing lights cut throught the swirling snow as I approached the spaceport. Marygay’s bus was blocked at the entrance by a Security floater.

  Two officers, evidently unarmed, were standing by the driver’s side, yelling at her. She looked down on them pleasantly, and gave no reaction when I passed behind them.

  I picked up one end of the Security floater and easily flipped it over. It went crashing down into a drainage ditch. The two officers, sensibly, ran like hell.

  The lack of radio contact was a handicap. I bent down next to her window. ‘Park it up by the main building and I’ll drain the fuel cell there.’

  She said okay and sped off. My power was down to 0.01 and the numerals started flashing red. That would be great, stranded a couple of hundred meters from my destination. Well, I could always open the suit manually. And run naked through the snow.

  As soon as I started walking, the suit added a ‘beep … beep’ in time with the flashing digits, I suppose as a convenience for the blind. The legs started to resist my commands, feeling as if I were walking through water, and then mud.

  I did make it to the floater while the people were still unloading. Max stood there with his arms crossed, the pistol prominent.

  I popped the rear utility door and clipped my emergency cables to the fuel cell’s terminals, and studied the directions on the grimy plate on the side of the cell. Then I pushed the ‘fast discharge’ button and watched my numbers start to climb.

  They’d reached 0.24 when I heard the heavy thrum of a floater braking, and found out what they could send after a fighting suit.

  Two fighting suits. One human; one Tauran.

  If they were armed, I was nothing but a target. Either suit’s weapons could vaporize me or slice me like lunchmeat. But they didn’t fire, or couldn’t.

  The floater lurched as the Man got out, and he repeated my performance, falling on his face. I resisted the impulse to tell him that the longest journey begins with a single step.

  In the floater, the Tauran suit flailed, trying to keep its balance, and tipped over backwards. Neither of them had any more recent practice than I had. My hundreds of hours of training and fighting, even though mostly lost in the mists of time, might be worth more than their two-to-one advantage.

  The Man had gotten up on hands and knees; I covered the distance with a graceless leap and swiveled a hard side-kick to the head. It probably didn’t hurt him physically, but it sent the suit skidding and tumbling.

  I grabbed the front bumper of the floater, my strength amplification whining loud, and tried to swing the heavy machine around to bash the Tauran. It managed to dodge, and the effort made me stagger and fall. The floater buzzed away like an angry insect.

  The Tauran threw itself on me, but I kicked it away. I was trying to resurrect what I once knew about Tauran fighting suits; what weakness might give me an advantage, but all the musty ALSC stuff was about weapon systems, range, and response speed, which unfortunately seemed not to apply.

  And then the Man was on me, falling on my shoulders with a crash like some heavy playground bully. He tried to grab my suit’s head, and I batted his hands away – that was a good target; the suit’s brain wasn’t in the head, but its eyes and ears were.

  I flipped him away clumsily. My weapons systems’ telltales were still dark, but I tried the laser finger on him anyhow. When it didn’t lance out and cut into his suit, I was curiously relieved. My underdeveloped killer instinct hadn’t become fiercer with age.

  While I was peering through the snow for something I could use as a weapon, the Tauran had found one; it whacked me from behind, across the shoulders, with an uprooted light pole. I went down and plowed into a snowbank. While I staggered up, it kept clanging against my shoulders and upraised arms.

  My visual sensors were smeared, but I could see well enough to aim a kick between its legs, an aim more anthropomorphic than practical – but it did unbalance the thing enough for me to grab hold of the light post and jerk it away. I had seen the Man in my peripheral vision, running toward me; I swung the pole around in a flat arc and caught him at knee level. He spun sideways and hit the ground hard.

  I turned to face the Tauran again, but couldn’t see it, which didn’t mean it was far away or hidden – all three of us were white lost in white, invisible from fifty meters in the rolling snow. I tongued over to infrared, which might work if it turned its back to me, with the heat exchangers. That didn’t work and neither did radar, which I expected to work only if the suit moved in front of a reflecting surface.

  I turned back to see the Man lying there motionless. Maybe a trick, or maybe I actually had knocked him out when I knocked him down. The head’s protected with padding, but force is force, and he might have slammed into the ground hard enough to sustain a concussion. I feinted at him, a kick that missed his head by a hair, and he didn’t react.

  Where the hell was the Tauran? No sign in any direction. I crouched to pick up the Man and heard, from the direction of the spaceport, a woman’s scream, muffled by the snow, then two shots.

  I ran toward it, but was a moment too late. The floater was rising fast, slanting away from the smashed front entrance; Max was standing with the pistol aimed at the machine, but with no useful target. I jumped with all my amplified might, and went up maybe twenty meters, almost high enough to touch it, and then fell back down with a crash that rattled my teeth and made my ankles sting.

  ‘The thing got Jynn,’ Max said. ‘It dove through the glass and snatched her and Roberta.’ Roberta was sitting in the snow, cradling her elbow.

  ‘You all right?’ They both flinched; I realized I’d inadvertently cranked up the sound. I chinned it down.

  ‘Damn near yanked my arm off. But I’m okay.’

  ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘We split up,’ Max said. ‘Marygay went on with the bus, out to the shuttle. We stayed here with the gun, try to distract them.’

  ‘Well, you did that.’ I hesitated. ‘Nothing we can do here now. Let’s go catch the bus.’ I scooped up Roberta, then Max, and stepped out on the field, carrying them like bundles. The bus wasn’t visible, but it had blown a clear path through the snow. We caught up with them in less than a minute, and my passengers seemed happy to switch conveyances.

  No sign of the floater with the Tauran and Jynn. I could have heard it if it were within a couple of klicks.

  The bus was crowded. There were two humans I didn’t recognize, and four Men, evidently our welcoming committee.

  ‘They’ve got Jynn,’ I told Marygay. ‘The Taurans took her off on their floater.’

  She shook her head. ‘Jynn?’ They were pretty close.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do. She’s just gone.’

  ‘They won’t hurt her,’ Max said. ‘Let’s move!’

  ‘Right,’ Marygay said, but she didn’t move.

  ‘I’ll meet you at the shuttle,’ I said. I was too big and heavy for the bus.

  ‘Meet you there,’ she said quietly, and pushed the button that closed the door. The bus lurched forward and I jogged past it toward the shuttle launch tube.

  I tapped the tube elevator door button and it opened, looking warm in its yellow light. Then I popped the suit and gingerly stepped out into the snow. The front pocket resisted my efforts, but after one broken thumbnail I got my clothes free and quickly pulled them on in the shelter of the elevator car.

  The bus eased down by my empty open suit and I silently urged them to hurry, hurry – how long woul
d it take for someone to just turn off the power and leave us with a useless elevator? The shuttle might be autonomous, but we did have to get inside it to use it.

  Marygay spent a few precious seconds telling the four Men and two humans to get out of here and underground, which they probably knew. The launch tube would absorb the gamma rays for the first seconds of launch, but after that it would not be wise to be nearby. Roberta had her thumb on the up button and mashed it as soon as Marygay sprinted inside.

  Nobody pulled the plug. The elevator surged up and clicked into place alongside the shuttle airlock, which irised open.

  Getting seated was not simple, gravity against us. We climbed down a ladder net and filled the compartment from the bottom up. The sheriff’s hands and feet were freed for the job and he didn’t resist being taped into place again, once he was belted in.

  I settled into the pilot’s seat and started snapping the sequence of switches that would get us out of here. It wasn’t complicated, since there were only four standard orbit choices. I chose ‘Rendezvous with Time Warp,’ and had to more or less trust the ship.

  The viewscreen came on and it was Jynn. The focus pulled back to show that she was in a floater, next to a Tauran.

  The Tauran pointed to the windows next to Jynn. Vague through the snow, you could just make out the twin shuttle launch towers.

  ‘Please proceed,’ the Tauran said. ‘Three seconds after you launch, this woman and I will be killed by your radiation.’

  ‘Do it,’ Jynn said. ‘Just go.’

  ‘I don’t think you will,’ the Tauran said. ‘That would be inhuman. Murder in cold blood.’

  Marygay was next to me, in the copilot seat. ‘Jynn—’ she started.

  ‘You don’t have any choice,’ Jynn said evenly. ‘For the next part to work, you have to show … what you’re willing to do.’

  We looked at each other, both frozen.

  ‘Do what she says,’ Max whispered.

  Suddenly, Jynn’s elbow jabbed out and drove into the Tauran’s throat. Her wrists were bound with metal handcuffs; she twisted them around its neck and jerked sideways with a loud crack.

  She pulled the inert creature down across her lap and reached sideways for the floater controls. It whined and her image bobbed. ‘Give me thirty seconds,’ she shouted over the straining motor. ‘No, twenty – I’ll be behind the main building. Get the hell out of here!’

  ‘You come here!’ Marygay said. ‘We can wait!’

  Maybe she didn’t hear. But she didn’t answer, and her image disappeared.

  In her place, the calm image of a male Man in a grey tunic. ‘If you attempt to launch, we will shoot you down. Don’t waste your lives and our shuttle.’

  ‘Even if you could do it,’ I said, ‘you probably wouldn’t.’ I checked my watch; I’d give her the full thirty seconds. ‘You don’t have any anti-spacecraft or anti-aircraft weapons here.’

  ‘We have them in orbit,’ he said. ‘You will all die.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ I said, and turned half around to face the others. ‘He’s bluffing. Stalling for time.’

  Po’s face was ashen. ‘Even if he is not. We’ve come this far. Let’s finish it.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Teresa said. ‘Whatever happens.’

  Thirty seconds. ‘Hold on.’ I slammed the FIRE switch down.

  There was a tremendous roar and the gee force went from one to three in the short time it took us to clear the launch tube. Snow streamed away from the front viewport and was suddenly gone, replaced with bright sunshine.

  The shuttle rolled over for orbital insertion, and the solid-looking clouds of the storm drifted away. The sky darkened from cobalt to indigo.

  They might well have weapons in orbit, I knew. Even if they were antiques left over from the Forever War, they could do the job.

  But there was absolutely nothing I could do to affect that. No evasive maneuvers or counterattacks or even clever arguments. A kind of tentative and temporary calmness settled over me, that I remembered from combat: you may only be alive for the next few seconds, but whatever happens, it will just happen. I carefully tilted my head against the acceleration and could see the strained half-smile on Marygay’s face; she was in the same state.

  Then the sky turned black, and we were still alive. The roar abated and then was silent. We floated through space in free fall.

  I looked back. ‘Everybody okay?’ They murmured tentative assent, though some of them looked pretty bad. The anti-nausea medicine worked for most people, but of course space travel wasn’t the only stress they were going through.

  We watched the Time Warp grow from brightest star to non-stellar sparkle to a hard bright image that grew and then loomed. The automated part of our trip ended with a not-quite-human voice telling me that control would be surrendered to me in ten seconds … nine … and so forth.

  Actually, it was responsibility rather than ‘control’ that had been transferred to me; the shuttle’s radar still mediated the rate of approach to the docking area. I kept my right hand gripped on a dead-man’s switch; if anything seemed wrong, I would let go, and the previous moment’s maneuvers would be quickly reversed.

  The airlocks mated with a reassuring metallic snap, and my ears popped as our air pressure dropped to match the thin but oxygen-rich mixture in the Time Warp.

  ‘Phase Two,’ I said. ‘Let’s go see whether it works.’

  ‘I think it will work,’ the sheriff said. ‘You’ve done the hard part.’

  I looked at him. ‘There’s no way you could have learned our plans. No way.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But you know us so well – you’re so superior – that you knew exactly what we were going to do.’

  ‘I would not put it so harshly. But yes, I was told to expect rebellion and perhaps violence, and advised not to resist.’

  ‘And the rest of it? What we’re about to do?’

  ‘That’s a mystery to me, or conjecture; I was asked not to tap the Whole Tree, so I wouldn’t know too much.’

  ‘But the others know. Or think they know.’

  ‘I’ve said too much. Just continue with what you’re doing. You may learn from it.’

  ‘You may learn something,’ Max said.

  ‘Let’s move along,’ Marygay said. ‘Whatever they’ve got set up for us, whatever they think they know, it doesn’t change Phase Two.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Max said. ‘We should find out what we can from this bastard. We can’t lose anything by squeezing him.’

  ‘Or gain anything,’ the sheriff said. ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

  ‘Let’s find out,’ Roberta said. ‘Max is right. Nothing to lose.’

  ‘A lot to lose,’ I said. ‘You sound like my old drill sergeants. This is a negotiation, not a war.’

  ‘They were threatening to kill us,’ Po said. ‘If it’s not a war, it’s something close to it.’

  Marygay came to my rescue. ‘Leave it as an option. Right now, I think we’re ahead for not having hurt or coerced him.’

  ‘Other than beating him up and tying him down,’ Roberta said.

  ‘If we ultimately have to force information out of him,’ Marygay pushed on, ‘then we can do it. Right now we have to act, not talk.’ She rubbed her face. ‘Besides, they probably have their own hostage by now. Jynn couldn’t get far in that floater.’

  ‘Jynn killed one of them,’ Max said. ‘She’s dead meat.’

  ‘You shut up, Max.’

  ‘If she’s alive, she’s a liability.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘You home cunts,’ Max said, ‘You always—’

  ‘My wife is not a cunt or a home.’ I tried to keep my voice down. ‘When we walk through that door she’ll be your commander.’

  ‘And I have no problem with that. I had a long career and never saw a het commander. But if you think she’s het, you’re blind as a worm.’

  ‘Max,’ Marygay said quietly, ‘my heart has been het
and home and irrelevant, as now. William is in charge on this ship, and you’re being insubordinate.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said flatly. To me: ‘I lost my head and I apologize. Too much has happened, too fast. And I haven’t been a soldier since before my kids were born.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I said, and didn’t push it. ‘Let’s just move.’

  On the other side of the airlock, we expected it to be dark and cool, the minimum-energy mode we’d last left it in. But the artificial sun was bright and the air was warm and fragrant with growing things.

  And there was a Tauran waiting for us on the shipside landing, unarmed. It made their sign of greeting, hugging itself. ‘You know me,’ it said. ‘Antres 906. Are you the leader, William Mandella?’

  I looked beyond it to the well-tended fields. ‘What the hell is this?’

  ‘I speak right now only to the leader. Are you he?’

  ‘No.’ I put my hand on Marygay’s shoulder. She was also staring, stunned. ‘My wife.’

  ‘Marygay Potter. Come with me to the control room.’

  ‘They’re ready to ride,’ Max said behind me. ‘Straight to Earth.’ They’d told us there would be several weeks of tending to the lifesupport farms, before we went into suspended animation. This looked like we were headed straight to the tanks.

  ‘How many are here, Antres?’ Marygay said.

  ‘No one else.’

  ‘This took a lot of people.’

  ‘Come with me.’ She followed Antres to the lift, and I came along, both of us struggling with the zerogee nets. Antres was deft with them, but elaborately slow.

  We went up to the command level and picked our way into the control room. The center screen was lit, with the image of an older male Man, perhaps one we had talked to in Centrus.

  Marygay climbed into the captain’s chair and strapped herself in.

  ‘Are there any further casualties?’ the Man said without preamble.

  ‘I was going to ask the same thing. Jynn Silver.’

  ‘The one who killed one of us.’

  ‘A Tauran is not “one of us” if you are human. Is she alive?’

  ‘Alive and in custody. I think we have deduced much of your plan. Would you care to reveal it now?’