Freedom's Fire Box Set: The Complete Military Space Opera Series (Books 1-6) by Bobby Adair

Author:Bobby Adair [Adair, Bobby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beezle Media, LLC
Published: 2019-01-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 58

It takes most of a day. We recover seventeen, including Jill. Unfortunately, no other member of her bridge crew survives. In the tally of mortality in my head, I tick off two more friends from the grav factory. Along with them, two more bridge crews, and three platoons of forty soldiers each—we paid a substantial price for one Trog cruiser.

The calculus of trading three of our tiny assault ships for one of the Trog’s starfaring leviathans and swapping a hundred and twenty-nine human lives for ten thousand Trogs would work out dramatically in humanity’s favor if it weren’t for us being the species we are. The SDF generals and admirals are self-serving MSS functionaries, and the Free Army’s leadership is little better. Even that might not be a fatal disadvantage if humans were united in their effort, yet we’re still fighting each other, swayed into hating one another by the Grays’ MSS propaganda machine.

It might cost us this war and every generation of human children their freedom.

We make a quick trip back to Iapetus, blinking out of bubble jump and then radioing in to let them know it’s us before they send their defenders up to attack. Two hours later, we’re back in the air with our hydrogen tanks topped off and the magazine for our axial railgun once again full. Even better, we have another thousand rounds packed in cases and jammed into every empty space we can find in the ship.

After hearing about how effective the gun was at blasting Trog cruisers, Spitz’s people were only too happy to give us all we could carry. Spitz even hinted that he was willing to apply pressure on the UN council to outfit two more of our ships with the remaining long-barreled railguns they possessed. With three such ships working together, we could make short work of our Trog infestation.

The only problem? Getting two more Arizona-class ships under my command.

We max grav our way out as soon as we have our load, and bubble jump to the Potato.

It’s a fast journey with our newfound speed.

We pop out of bubble a thousand klicks over the asteroid’s surface.

“Three ships here,” Phil tells me before I can see anything but fading blue.

“Three good ships?” Penny asks. “All functioning?”

“Yes,” Phil answers. “Reactors burning H, grav fields up, though one is damaged. Its defensive field is a mess.”

“How far out?” I ask.

“All three a few klicks above the surface,” answers Phil. “They’re starting to react to us.”

I turn to Jablonsky. “You’re up. Send them the message we discussed. Tarlow, do you have the video ready?”

“Aye, sir.” He embellishes it with a pirate, “Argh!”

I spin on him. “You, too?”

He grins and shrugs.

“Jablonsky, send them Tarlow’s file. Tell those ships to stand down, or we’ll blast them out of the sky. And set up a meeting with whoever is in charge down there.”

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