Starship Freedom Read online

  STARSHIP FREEDOM

  by

  Daniel Arenson

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  AFTERWORD

  NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

  KEEP IN TOUCH

  Illustration © Tom Edwards - TomEdwardsDesign.com

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  PROLOGUE

  Rubicon Space Station

  18 Billion kms from Earth

  Dec 24, 2199

  Mike was trapped in the dark, so far from home.

  It was too quiet out here. Too isolated. Too cold.

  A shiver scuttled down his spine like a centipede. He missed Earth.

  "Ah, relax, Mikey!" Boris leaned back in his seat, a grin spreading across his pasty face. "You Americans worry too much. You know that? You need to be more like us Russians! Kick back, have some vodka, and everything will be good again, ah?" He took a swig from his bottle and smacked his lips.

  At least I'm not completely alone out here, Mike thought.

  Though sometimes he thought being alone would be preferable. There was one other astronaut in the space station. Just one. Unfortunately, he happened to be a drunk Russian with a death wish.

  "This ain't right," Mike said. "To be out here at the heliopause, the very border of intergalactic space. Just two men to guard the solar system. Just us. Alone before the darkness." He shuddered. "It just ain't right."

  Boris leaned forward in his seat. He put down his bottle and stared at Mike. The smile faded from his face. He didn't even blink. Suddenly the pale Russian seemed entirely sober.

  "I know," Boris whispered, his voice like wind through a graveyard. "No men should be out here. Not so far from Earth. We are on the border of the unknown. Out there . . ." He gestured at a porthole that gazed out into space. "Out there is only the darkness. A realm of evil. What if … the dreaded space goblins get us?" He lunged toward Mike, eyes bugging out. "Boo!"

  "Go to hell," Mike muttered, shoving the larger man away.

  Boris roared with laughter. "Relax, my American friend! I am only teasing. I know what your American movies show you." The Russian snorted. "Giant drooling space bugs and bogeymen. Little green goblins who kidnap chickens and molest farmers." Boris waved dismissively. "Hollywood nonsense. There is no such thing as aliens, Mikey. Out here there is nothing but stars, long hours of boredom, and thankfully plenty of vodka."

  "It's Mike," Mike muttered. "Not Mikey."

  "What is that?" Boris was busy drinking again. "Here, have some vodka. Finish the bottle." He handed it over. Not much remained.

  Mike shook his head. "I don't drink."

  "Ah, what kind of American are you? I thought you guys are cowboys! Hard drinking. Scared of nothing."

  Mike wiped his clammy forehead. Yes, he was scared. He was scared of everything. Scared of being so far from Earth. Scared of what might lurk out there in space. Scared of the next four years, trapped in Rubicon Space Station with Boris. He was told Boris was some esteemed scientist from Saint Petersburg University. But the man didn't seem like a scientist. He was always drinking, and he kept a loaded pistol tucked into his belt. At least when he wasn't firing it out the airlock, laughing between gulps of vodka. The man had actually built a vodka dispenser into his spacesuit.

  None of this was right.

  Mike missed home. He missed his wife. He missed his kids. He missed not being so afraid.

  Sweat dripped down his forehead. Mike had arrived only a week ago, and his nerves were still frayed. How could he possibly survive four years here? He'd go mad within a month! Maybe he was already mad.

  Calm down, he told himself. There's nothing to fear. Dr. Boris Berezovsky is an accomplished astronaut and chemist—not some drunken lunatic. Interstellar space is nothing but a vacuum. There's no such thing as aliens. There's no such thing as monsters.

  He had always feared monsters. Even as a child. He would imagine them hiding under his bed, lurking in dark corridors, and waiting in his closet. It was the old fear of the dark, a gift from humanity's ancestors. Millions of years ago, the earliest hominids learned to fear dark caves, to tread carefully where bears and tigers might dwell. That instinct lingered on. Especially in Mike.

  But now we don't face caves, Mike thought. We face the great unknown. Space. The final darkness of man's soul.

  He approached the porthole and gazed outside. Rubicon Space Station was hovering at the heliopause, the edge of the solar system, the place where the solar wind met the resistance of the interstellar medium. That was the scientific description. But the heliopause was more than that. It was a border. A wall. A warning sign: Go no farther!

  On the old maps, the ones from the Age of Sail, cartographers would name the unknown lands terra incognita. They would write dire warnings on those blank segments of parchment. Here be dragons!

  Here was the new unknown.

  Looking through the porthole, Mike saw antennae sticking out from the space station. He saw a survey drone orbiting the Rubicon like a moth. He saw Pandora's Chariot, the little starship Mike had flown here from Earth. The journey had taken a year.

  He looked beyond them. He stared at space.

  Not at the stars, no. He had counted those stars a million times during his year aboard the Chariot. He stared at actual space—the darkness between the stars. The distance that went on and on forever.

  Humans built great space stations and starships. Humans had colonized Mars and the moons of Saturn. Humans had fought wars in space, had conquered worlds, had explored the underground oceans of Ganymede, braved the firestorms of Venus, and charted the gaseous depths of Neptune.

  But humans could not fly faster than light. Humans could not reach the stars. Here, where the Rubicon floated—here was the edge of man's reach. Here was the great barrier they could not cross. Here conquest ended and nightmares awoke.

  "Terra incognita," Mike whispered. "Here be dragons."

  A beefy arm slung across Mike, jolting him.

  "You know what you need?" Boris said, squeezing him. "A good rousing game of chess! Come, I will set the board. We will get good and drunk and play the game of the gods."

  "You're already drunk." Mike turned away from the porthole, shoving the Russian off. "Fine. We'll play. But I'm not drinking."

  They sat down in the galley. The plastic table seemed too small for this cavernous room. Mike himself felt too small. Everything aboard the Rubicon seemed to be somehow the wrong size. The bunks seemed cramped, no larger than closets. The engine room towered, a cathedral for gods of machinery. The ladders that rose through the service shafts seemed built for dwarfs, while the industri
al fridges clearly served giants.

  Mostly, Earth seemed too small. Sometimes Mike thought he saw Earth through the porthole—a pale blue dot floating on the endless black ocean. Then he'd blink and Earth was gone. Maybe it was never Earth at all, just a floater on his eyeball, some memory of the sun. Even the sun was so far from here, just one more star among the billions.

  "You play white," Boris said. "My gift to you. Go on. Make a move."

  Mike blinked, pulling his attention to the chessboard. He moved a white pawn. "I'm not very good at this game."

  Boris moved a black pawn. "No American is."

  Mike allowed himself a shaky smile. He brought out his knight. "So that's what you've been doing here for the past eight years? Drinking vodka and playing chess?"

  Boris nodded, moved another piece. "Vodka, chess, and sex are the three best things in life. Until you Americans send over a woman, well …" He took a swig of vodka. "How do you Americans say? Two out of three ain't bad."

  "Eight years." Mike shook his head in wonder. "I can't even imagine. I've been here a week, and I've already got cabin fever."

  Boris squinted at the board. "The American before you—he lasted only seven months. The one before him? Five months. You Americans. You are used to lots of noise and excitement and movies and fast food. You spend a few months at Rubicon and it breaks you. You, I think …" He scratched his chin, examining Mike. "You will last three months tops. You Americans are a weak people after all. No wonder we Russians beat you in the Greatest War."

  "Actually, the Free Alliance, under the leadership of America, won World War III," Mike said, moving a rook.

  Boris snickered. "More Hollywood nonsense. In movies, you are all cowboys. In space, you are just boys." He slid his queen across the board. "Check."

  "Dammit." Mike bit his lip. He'd have to sacrifice a bishop. "Why is this even necessary? For us to be out here? The war is over, isn't it? It ended thirty-five years ago. Why are we here, one American and one Russian, guarding the galaxy from God knows what?"

  "God?" Boris raised an eyebrow, captured the bishop. "Mikey, I have flown from one edge of the solar system to the other. I chased Alliance brigades across the rings of Saturn. I plunged into the fiery hell of Venus just to plant the Red Dawn flag, take a photo, and watch it melt. I dug for ore in the gas mines of Triton. And I never saw a god." He leaned back, took a swig of vodka. "Now, as for goddesses, well … I have seen plenty of those. Have you ever seen a Russian woman, Mikey?"

  Mike cursed at the board. He saw no way to salvage this game.

  He saw no way to last four years here.

  This tradition had begun thirty-five years ago. Right after the Alliance had won the war. And yes, dammit, they had won. After the peace treaties were signed, after the millions of dead were buried, the bloodied, weary survivors built the Rubicon. A station in the depths of space. A joint project. A symbol of peace.

  Since then, two men had stood guard here. One of the Alliance. One of Red Dawn. One man representing democracy, freedom, and capitalism. The other representing equalism, the movement that had nearly conquered the world. Two men. Two opposing ideologies. Two allies. One species.

  Them against the darkness.

  The politicians spoke of aliens in the void. Of monsters waiting to strike.

  "Let us stop fighting one another and face our common enemy!" they said.

  Mike had never believed any of that. Aliens? Monsters from another world? Rubbish. It was the dawn of the twenty-third century, and nobody had ever seen an alien. Unless you counted those microbes they had found on that asteroid, which nobody did. Well, Mike did. He was a biochemist after all. But real aliens? Big nasty ones like from the movies? Just stories.

  It was all a spin, Mike would tell everyone. Just a made-up bogeyman. A way to unite humanity after the worst war in human history. Aliens? Bah. Children's stories.

  Well, maybe. Now Mike was here on the Rubicon, doing his part to unite mankind. Now he floated on the edge of interstellar space. Now he faced the void. And now he was no longer so sure.

  A klaxon suddenly came to life, blaring across the galley.

  "Goddammit!" Mike cried, leaping up. His chair clattered to the deck. He accidentally overturned the chessboard, and pieces flew everywhere.

  Boris looked at the scattered pieces and sighed. He tsked his tongue. "Pity. I was three moves from beating you." He knelt on the deck and began collecting the pieces. "Calm down, Mikey! Just a false alarm. It happens all the time."

  Mike covered his ears. The alarm kept blaring. Never stopping. And suddenly Mike was four years old again. Just a terrified little kid, huddling in a bunker as the Russian planes roared above, as the bombs fell, as the sirens wailed and wailed like wounded animals. He remembered pissing himself. He remembered the bunker wall cracking and dust falling from the ceiling. He remembered his grandfather having a heart attack and dying there in the bunker as little Mikey Bawden pissed all over the floor.

  "Shut it off!" Mike cried.

  Boris rose with a groan, abandoning the fallen chess pieces. "All right, all right! Calm down, you crazy American." The Russian grabbed his vodka bottle, took a swig, then swayed toward a control panel. "I forgot to tell you. The damn alarm is as sensitive as my ex-wife. Any asteroid that flies by, it goes nuts and starts screaming." With thick fingers, Boris tapped a few buttons. "Ah, there we go."

  The alarm died.

  Silence filled the space station.

  Mike was trembling. Terror seized him. Not of any aliens invading the station, of course. But of his anxiety claiming him. Of pissing himself here in the galley, as if he were four years old again. That old anxiety had always been the monkey on his back. Ever since that night long ago in that bunker.

  Even as an adult, the trauma haunted him. At work, he'd go to meetings and freeze up, unable to speak, caught between all those staring eyes. After work, he would drive home, get stuck in traffic, and scream and curse and tremble, trapped among the cars like a prey animal among metal predators. At night he'd lie awake, agonizing over all the ways he had embarrassed himself during the day. Years later, he was still stuck in that bomb shelter, the walls cracking around him.

  It was no wonder they had sent him here. He was a brilliant biochemist but a nightmare to work with. And what did you do with outstanding citizens of the Free Alliance you wanted off your back? Well, send 'em to the Rubicon! It was as far from Earth as anyone could fly, which his bosses figured was just a tad too close.

  A symbol of world peace? Mike snorted. Maybe once. Today it was a goddamn penal colony.

  The chessboard forgotten, Mike returned to the porthole. He wanted to see the asteroid that had triggered the alarm. After all, he was a biochemist. He studied the most basic building blocks of life. Or used to, before they sent him here. Asteroids sometimes contained carbon molecules, even—one time at least—the fossils of ancient microbes.

  They said aliens didn't exist. But if microbes grew on other worlds … couldn't larger, smarter animals? The old stories returned to him. Monster stories.

  He stared out the porthole, seeking the asteroid, and froze.

  He stumbled back.

  "Oh my God," he whispered. "Oh Jesus. Oh God. This can't be happening. Oh God above, save us."

  At first he thought the alarms were wailing again. But it was a ringing in his ears. A pulsing, throbbing pain. A demon rising inside him. And Mike did it again. Thirty-five years later. A grown man, he pissed himself.

  * * * * *

  "Wake up, Mikey!"

  Pain blazed on Mike's cheek.

  "Wake up, you crazy American!"

  Mike blinked. A blurred, pasty face appeared above him.

  "You slapped me."

  "You fainted," Boris said. "And you pissed all over the deck. What the hell is wrong with you?"

  The Russian heaved Mike to his feet. For a moment the American stood swaying. He took deep breaths.

  "We're dead," Mike whispered. "We're dead."
/>   "What the hell are you talking about?" Boris demanded. "My God. The last American did not go crazy for a full six months. You come to my station, and within a week, you are raving like a madman."

  Slowly, almost languidly, Mike raised his arm. He felt oddly calm, as if this could not be real. He pointed out the porthole. "Look."

  Both men stared through the round pane into space.

  The alien fleet was flying toward the space station.

  It had to be an alien fleet. It could be nothing else. No human in the solar system had such technology. This was a terror from the darkness beyond the stars.

  A nightmare.

  Please, God, let this be a nightmare.

  Mike must still be asleep. He must still be lying on the galley deck, dreaming the whole thing.

  And in his dream, they flew there. Thousands of them. Thousands of gargantuan, spiky spaceships.

  These were no sleek, angular machines like human starships. They were craggy, irregular, organic. One might mistake them for asteroids but for one damning feature. Claws grew from the ships. Massive metal claws. Each alien starship grew a dozen or more. These metallic blades all thrust forward, angling toward a central point, like a hand with all five fingertips pressed together.

  All those claws were pointing at Rubicon Space Station.

  Luminous letters appeared on the porthole's HUD. The station's computer was displaying stats on the glass pane. Mike could not judge the alien ships' size with his eyes, not without any point of reference. But the computer could, and it gave him the info.

  Those starships were the size of skyscrapers.

  Those claws were as long as city blocks, forged of dark iron. Each one could skewer the Rubicon like a saber through an apple.

  "Boris, are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Mike said slowly, staring at the armada.

  The Russian rubbed his eyes, stared out the porthole again. "It is impossible. It … it has to be a prank. Ha! I know how they did it. Somebody must have hijacked the porthole, covered it with a video screen. It is just some Hollywood movie!" He laughed, but the laughter sounded uneasy. "Come on, Mikey, is this your work?"