Shadow of Freedom

“All right,” she said. “Those are your terms. Well, here are mine. You stay the hell off this planet. You put one shuttle down here, one frigging Marine, and I start shooting prisoners. I’ve got over thirty thousand of them in the stadium. You’re welcome to take a look for yourself. And I’ve got two companies of gendarmes over there. I can kill every fucking person in that stadium in five minutes flat, and if you try any shit like landing on this planet, I swear to God I will!”

“Courageous and determined to ‘serve and protect’ to the last, I see,” Terekhov observed contemptuously, and Yucel flushed as he tossed the Solarian Gendarmerie’s official motto into her teeth.

“Just try me and see,” she snarled through gritted teeth.

“One more time, Brigadier, and my patience isn’t unlimited. If you choose not to accept the terms offered, the consequences will be on your own head.”

“What? You think I believe you’d come down here after me? Wreck the rest of this podunk city coming after my people and get everybody in the frigging stadium killed?” She sneered at him. “Not you. You’ve got to be the goddammed white knight in shining armor. Well, you come down here and screw around with us, and you’ll get plenty of blood on that armor. I guarantee it!”

“I see. Perhaps I should be having this conversation with President Lombroso. He might be perfectly willing to hand you and your gendarmes over to me if he thought it would save his own skin.”

“Lombroso couldn’t hand you candy from a baby! He’s hiding in the damn basement—him and Hadley both! He deputized me to ‘negotiate’ with you, and I’m all done, friend. Now. Are you going to accept my terms? Or do I need to pass the order to shoot the first hundred or so prisoners to make my point?”

“Why is it,” Terekhov asked conversationally, “that people like you always think you’re more ruthless than people like me?”

Something about his tone rang warning bells in the back of Yucel’s brain, but she refused to look away. She held her glare locked on him, refusing to back down, and he shrugged.

“Stilt?” he said without glancing away from Yucel.

“Yes, Sir?” a voice replied from outside his com pickup’s field of view.

“Pass the word to Colonel Simak. Then set Condition Zeus.”

“Condition Zeus, aye, aye, Sir.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Yucel snapped.

“I can’t say it’s been a pleasure speaking to you, Brigadier,” Terekhov replied. “Educational, yes, in a disgusting sort of way, but not a pleasure. In fact, I’m just as happy we won’t be speaking again.”

“Good,” she said. “Now get the fuck out of here before I change my mind and decide to shoot a couple of dozen of them to hurry you on your way!”

“Oh, I’m not afraid of that,” he assured her. “In fact,” he raised his wrist and glanced at his personal chrono, “you should be receiving my response to your terms”—those ice-blue eyes flicked back to her face—“just about now.”

She frowned, wondering what the hell he was talking about.

She was still wondering two and a half seconds later when the kinetic projectile struck Lombroso Arms Tower at approximately thirty kilometers per second.

* * *

The Mark 87 “Damocles” Kinetic Strike Package was a containerized weapon system designed to fit into any standard shipboard magazine and sized to dep0loy through a counter-missile launch tube. The KSP could be configured with several different types of payloads, but the most common variant—like the one which had been deployed from Quentin Saint-James number three CM tube shortly after she’d entered orbit—carried a rack of six of the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps’ M412 kinetic penetrators. Each penetrator was a six hundred and fifty kilogram dart fitted with its own small, short-lived but powerful impeller drive, a capacitor ring for onboard power, and a guidance package. By controlling acceleration rates and times, the M412 could produce an effective yield of up to one megaton…but this particular application called for a slightly smaller sledgehammer than that.

The projectile impacted at barely one tenth of a percent of light speed. The tower was enormous, the projectile wasn’t all that huge, and its velocity might seem positively snail-like compared to the eighty percent of light speed a Mark 23 could attain, but it was sufficient. In fact, its produced an effective yield of just over sixty-seven kilotons as it struck dead center on the tower’s roof at an angle of exactly ninety degrees and punched straight down, pithing it with a spike of plasma that vaporized everything in its path.