Freedom's Fist by Bobby Adair

Author:Bobby Adair [Adair, Bobby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beezle Media, LLC
Published: 2017-10-27T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

It takes us a day to put a comfortable distance between us and the nearest gravitationally significant mass. No planets nearby. No moons. Even Jill’s ship is over a thousand klicks distant. As unlikely as the occurrence might be, we don’t want to chance a light-speed collision during our trip. The Rusty Turd jumps first, leaving the solar system at nearly 30c. Jill will follow in a minute or two.

We’re traveling with a light crew, just Phil and the Gray, Penny, of course, Jablonsky, Tarlow who’s become a bridge fixture, Brice, Lenox, Silva, and Peterson, along with two techs who run the axial gun. The two techs, a man, and a woman went through that battle over Ceres with us, and they’re starting to feel like they’re part of our platoon. The only outsider is Clawson. He’s one of Spitz’s people, an engineer. He’ll be in charge of arming the nukes when we get where we’re going.

For now, thirteen humans and an alien. Jill has the same number.

The latest round of modifications to the Rusty Turd have changed its purpose. Technically we still have the ability to ram a Trog cruiser. It’s a tactic I want to leave in the playbook because we’ve had such success with it in the past. Of course, ramming with the tank ring attached will destroy our tanks. Ramming with the tank system removed will likely break off enough brackets to make re-coupling with the ring impossible. Both outcomes lead to us being stranded in 61 Cygni.

As for seizing a Trog ship after ramming it—even if we had enough marines onboard to mount an assault, all of the assault doors off the platoon compartment, except for one, have been welded shut. Only the foremost section of that compartment remains in vacuum. That’s where we store the nukes, tucked right up behind the grav lens. The assault door on the starboard side of the ship up there has been widened to make it possible for the nukes to be loaded inside, and for them to be pulled back out again once we shed our tank ring after reaching 61 Cygni.

The rest of the ship is now livable space, well, those parts of it that aren’t packed to the brim with ammunition for the axial gun and supplies to keep the crew alive for eighteen months. The trip there and back is only supposed to take ten—five each way—so we have some cushion built in.

And that underscores the one thing that’s going to make this journey survivable, from a morale perspective, anyway. With so much of the Rusty Turd’s interior now livable space, the plan, after the first day of flight, is to remove our orange suits and spend the five months living like humans. We’ll walk, exercise, work, and recreate in artificial earth g generated by our interior grav plates. We’ll breathe, eat, use the restroom, and take a shower just like normal humans back on earth. We’ll each have a berth a little larger than a coffin to sleep in.

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