Shadow of Freedom (ARC)

387 Pages·2016·1.72 MB·English

by  Weber David

Shadow of Freedom – eARC
David Weber
Advance Reader Copy
Unproofed
Baen
BAEN BOOKS BY DAVID WEBER
HONORVERSE NOVELS:
On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen The Short Victorious War Field of
Dishonor Flag in Exile
Honor Among Enemies In Enemy Hands
Echoes of Honor Ashes of Victory War of Honor
At All Costs
Mission of Honor Crown of Slaves (with Eric Flint) Torch of Freedom (with Eric
Flint) The Shadow of Saganami Storm from the Shadows A Rising Thunder
HONORVERSE YOUNG ADULT NOVELS:
A Beautiful Friendship Fire Season, with Jane Lindskold
HONORVERSE ANTHOLOGIES:
More than Honor Worlds of Honor Changer of Worlds The Service of the Sword
In Fire Forged
EMPIRE FROM THE ASHES:
Mutineers’ Moon The Armageddon Inheritance Heirs of Empire Empire from the
Ashes (omnibus)
WAR GOD:
Oath of Swords
The War God’s Own Wind Rider’s Oath War Maid’s Choice
WITH JOHN RINGO:
March Upcountry March to the Sea March to the Stars We Few
Path of the Fury In Fury Born
The Apocalypse Troll
The Excalibur Alternative
WITH STEVE WHITE:
Insurrection
Crusade
In Death Ground The Shiva Option The Stars At War The Stars At War II
WITH ERIC FLINT:
1633
1634: The Baltic War
WITH LINDA EVANS:
Hell’s Gate
Hell Hath No Fury
For a complete listing of Baen titles by David Weber, please go to
www.baen.com.
Shadow of Freedom
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Words of Weber, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof
in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-4516-3869-1
Cover art by David Mattingly
First printing, March 2013
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
t/k
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
February 1922 Post Diaspora
“It’ll be easier the next time…and there will be a next time. There always is.”
—Frinkelo Osborne,
Office of Frontier Security,
Loomis System.
Chapter One
The wingless, saucer-like drone drifted through the wet, misty night on silent
counter gravity. The fine droplets of rain sifted down in filmy curtains that
reeked of burned wood and hydrocarbons and left a greasy sensation on the skin.
Despite the rainfall, fires crackled noisily here and there, consuming heaps of
wreckage which had once been homes, adding their own smoke and soot to the
atmosphere. A faint, distant mutter of thunder rolled through the overcast night,
though whether it was natural or man-made was difficult to say.
The drone paused, motionless, blacker than the night about it, its rain-slick,
light-absorbent coat sucking in the photons from the smudgy fires which might
otherwise have reflected from it. The turret mounted on its bottom rotated
smoothly, turning sensors and lenses towards whatever had attracted its
attention. Wind sighed wearily in the branches of sugar pine, crab poplar, and
imported Terran white pine and hickory, something shifted in one of the piles of
rubble, throwing up sparks and cinders. A burning rafter burned through and
collapsed and water dripped from rain-heavy limbs with the patient, uncaring
persistence of nature, but otherwise all was still, silent.
The drone considered the sensor data coming to it, decided it was worth
consideration by higher authority, and uploaded it to the communications
satellite and its operator in far distant Elgin City. Then it waited.
The silence, the rain, and the wind continued. The fires hissed as heavier drops
fell into their white and red hearts. And then—
The thunderbolt descended from the heavens like the wrath of Zeus. Born two
hundred and sixty-five kilometers above the planet’s surface, it traced a white
line from atmosphere’s edge to ground level, riding a froth of plasma. The two
hundred-kilo dart arrived without even a whisper, far outracing the sonic boom
of its passage, and struck its target coordinates at thirty times the speed of sound.
The quiet, rainy night tore apart under the equivalent of the next best thing to
two and a half tons of old-fashioned TNT. The brilliant, blinding flash vaporized
a bubble of rain. Concussion and overpressure rolled out from its heart,
flattening the remaining walls of three of the village’s broken houses. The fury
of the explosion painted the clouds, turned individual raindrops into shining
diamonds and rubies that seemed momentarily frozen in air, and flaming bits and
pieces of what once had been someone’s home arced upward like meteors
yearning for the heavens.
*
“Thank you used a big enough hammer, Callum?” the woman in the dark blue
uniform of a lieutenant in the Loomis System Unified Public Safety Force asked
dryly.
She stood behind the drone operator’s comfortable chair, looking over his
shoulder at the display where the pinprick icon of the explosion flashed brightly.
The operator—a sergeant, with the sleeve hashmarks of a twenty-T-year veteran
—seemed to hesitate for just a moment, then turned his head to look at her.
“Unauthorized movement in an interdicted zone, Ma’am,” he replied.
“And you needed a KEW to deal with it?” The lieutenant arched one eyebrow.
“A near-deer, do you think? Or possibly a bison elk?”
“IR signature was human, Ma’am. Must’ve been one of MacRory’s bastards,
or he wouldn’t’ve been there.”
“I see.” The UPS officer folded her hands behind her. “As it happens, I was
standing right over there at the command desk,” she observed, this time with a
distinct bite. “If I recall correctly, SOP is to clear a KEW strike with command
personnel unless it’s time-critical. Am I mistaken about that?”
“No, Ma’am,” the sergeant admitted, and the lieutenant shook her head.
“I realize you like big bangs, Callum. And I’ll admit you’ve got a better
excuse than usual for playing with them. But there are Regs for a reason, and I’d
take it as a personal favor—the kind of favor which will keep your fat,
worthless, trigger-happy arse in that comfortable chair instead of carrying out
sweeps in the bush—if you’d remember that next time. Do you think you can do
that for me?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the sergeant said much more crisply, and she gave him a nod
that was several degrees short of friendly and headed back to her station.
The sergeant watched her go, then turned back to his display and smiled. He’d
figured she’d have a little something to say to him, but he’d also figured it would
be worth it. Three of his buddies had been killed in the first two days of the
insurrection, and he was still in the market for payback. Besides, it gave him a
sense of godlike power to be able to call down the wrath of heaven. He’d known
Lieutenant MacRuer would never have authorized the expenditure of a KEW on
a single, questionable IR signature, which was why he hadn’t asked for it. And if
he was going to be honest about it, he wasn’t really certain his target hadn’t been
a ghost, either. But that was perfectly all right with him, and his intense inner
sense of satisfaction more than outweighed his superior’s obvious displeasure.
This time, at least, he amended silently. Catch her in a bad mood, and the by-
the-Book bitch is just likely to make good on that reassignment. He shook his
head mentally. Don’t think I’d like slogging around in the woods with those
people very much.
*
“Confirm impact, Ma’am,” Missile Tech 1/c George Chasnikov reported.
“Looks like it drifted fifteen or twenty meters to planetary west of the designated
coords, though.” He shook his head. “That was sloppy.”
“Was the problem at their end, or ours?” Lieutenant Commander Sharon
Tanner had the watch. She also happened to be SLNS Hoplite’s tactical officer,
and she punched up the post-strike report on her own display as she spoke. “I’m
not real crazy about ‘sloppy’ when we’re talking about KEWs, Chaz.”
“Me neither, Ma’am,” Chasnikov agreed sourly. “Reason I brought it up,
actually.” He shook his head, tapping a query into his console. “I hate those
damned things,” he added in a mutter Tanner knew was deliberately just loud
enough for her to hear.
She let it pass. Chasnikov was an experienced, highly valued member of her
department, a lifer who would stay in SLN uniform until the day he died, and
every TAC officer he ever served under would be lucky to have him. That
bought him a little extra slack from someone like Sharon Tanner.
Not that he didn’t have a point, she thought bitterly, reflecting on all the things
Hoplite and her small squadron had been called upon to do over the past few
weeks. Compared to some of those, expending a single kinetic energy weapon
on what had probably been a ghost target was small beer.
“Their end, it looks like, Ma’am,” Chasnikov said after a moment. “It didn’t
miss the designated coordinates; it missed the amended coordinates. They sent
us a correction, but it was too late to update the targeting queue.”
“And did they happen to tell us what it was they wanted us to kill this time?
Or if we got it?”
“No, Ma’am. Just the coordinates. Could’ve been one of their own battalions,
for all I know. And no strike assessment, so far.” And there won’t be one,
either…as usual, his expression added silently.
“I see.” Tanner rubbed the tip of her nose for a moment, then shrugged. “Write
it up, Chaz. Be sure to make it clear we followed our checklist on the launch. I’ll
pass it along to Commander Diadoro. I’m sure he and the Skipper will…
reemphasize to Groundside that little hiccups when you’re targeting KEWs can