Freehold (64 page)

Other weapons burned Yokohama, Dallas, Madras, Kuwait, Rio de Janeiro and Djakarta. The carnage was terrifying and from orbit could be seen the incandescent ruins left as signatures. They would glow for days.

The second wave rocketed forward on chemical engines at extreme acceleration. Only seconds after the first wave they detonated in low orbit, blowing clouds of ions and dust in a screen against any possible detection. Some few of them continued down, to hit hardened military targets. These were dirty explosions, designed to trap the occupants until heavy rescue equipment could arrive.

The third wave were large blocks of foamed polymer to confuse sensors. Inside them, precise charges detonated and the warheads within stopped dead in orbit. Another charge accelerated them vertically at over eight-thousand meters per second. They dropped over their targets, glowing red as they passed through the atmosphere in seconds.

The warheads in question were mere bars of metal with simple guidance packages—the weapon Kendra had seen used to cut a pass for a road. They steered straight down for any large mass. At that brutal velocity, they vaporized on impact, blasting holes into buildings. Polymer, concrete and glass rained down in their target cities. Fires erupted, buildings began to slowly topple from structural damage, traffic ground to a halt and deep holes punched into buildings made evacuation awkward.

The dust settling in the atmosphere contained tailored nanos that sought crops in fields and hydroponics factories. They were coded for specific crops. It had been standard practice on Earth for centuries to tailor specific seed and fertilizers, both to improve yield and to ensure "customer loyalty," since the same manufacturer provided both the seed and the necessary nutrients for it. This policy had not changed when those producers were nationalized; the yield was better from such plants than natural ones.

The nanos infiltrating that artificial biome were coded to block some of those catalyzing nutrients. Within days, several important species of grain would wither and die. A percentage of the vat-grown meats would also suffer. If casualties on Earth were as predicted, the shortage would not be too severe, merely enough to keep the industrial base busy feeding the survivors.

If casualties were lighter than expected, this supplemental attack could be thought of as "Plan B."

Earth's and Sol System's defensive net snapped awake. It looked for targets and found none. This was partly due to the scarcity of such targets—a mere twelve small ships scattered throughout the system's volume—partly due to their stealthiness and partly due to a third attack, or second backup. Naumann was known for his thoroughness.

During the raid on Langley Facility, several software agents had been infiltrated into the local net. Each had been individually crafted by experts, all of whom were unaware of their colleagues' efforts. Human skill from Freehold had made them all but undetectable. Human laziness on Earth had salvaged most of the network, rather than building a new one. Those agents had attached themselves, byte by byte, block by block, to any convenient transmission. They were cunningly crafted and deeply hidden and had slumbered silently until certain sequences of code awakened them. They woke now.

Angrily and triumphantly, they tore into the software that had carried and fed them. Various parts of the networks were swamped with alerts, rendered blind or had their information doctored only subtly. With no basis for comparison, the artificial intelligence had to start from nothing, compiling data and attempting to determine what was wrong where. The agents danced maniacally from system to system, occasionally defeated, but more often steps ahead of attempted fixes. It would take days to correct all the errors to an acceptable level for combat and days more to check the results. The system would never regain full efficiency and would eventually have to be abandoned.

None of the attacks were indefensible against. None were particularly state of the art, although the phase drive engines used as directional energy weapons were a new twist. It had simply been thought unthinkable to attack in such a fashion, laying waste to civilian territory so callously. And it would have been unthinkable had not the UN attacked Freehold first with nukes and kinetics and had not "Madman" Naumann been in control of the Freehold military.

Few cities are equipped to handle more than a few hundred deaths per ten million population in any given day. The combination of attack, induced riots and the predictable panic reactions of millions of terrified inhabitants brought the death tolls into the thousands, then the tens of thousands. It became impossible for emergency services to get into the cities. Panic spread even to cities not attacked, rumors of impending doom creating wild disturbances and attempts at evacuation. The UN and regional governments tried to squelch news stories, but the necessities of modern communication made it all but impossible. Those attempts created further panic that either the government had lost control, had been subverted by one of many conspiracy theories floating around or was attempting to eliminate what civil rights were left. All government forces were tied up preventing the trouble from spreading; none could assist the shattered cities. Without power and water, they began to die, rapidly.

With only bare hours of food available in the stores and no water, the fighting escalated to food riots. Young parents gladly killed the elderly to ensure food for their children. Street toughs and organized crime saw profit, as did some storekeepers, until they realized they were trapped themselves. With a virtual ban on any modern weapon, it quickly devolved to contests of sheer brute force with improvised weapons. Fearing the gangs, families grouped together and attacked any gathering of youths preemptively.

Fires, started for heat and light, ignited buildings with poor or substandard attention to codes. Thousands of building custodians who had paid off inspectors began to realize the error of their ways, as apartments and offices became roiling torches to careless desperation. The death toll kept rising. Heat and cold added their own numbers to the count. In the sublevels, ventilation and lights failed. Those trapped below turned into howling beasts, tearing each other apart with their last breaths.

Automated repair equipment swarmed through the tunnels and streets, blocked in every direction. Mindlessly, the machines tried route after route until their power ran out or response circuits overloaded. A few, stressed far beyond the point where a human controller should take over, malfunctioned into orgies of destruction.

Hospitals, denied power, lost all patients in supportive care and most in surgery. Drugs and nanos quickly decayed without refrigeration. In terror, the hospitals locked their doors to keep out the masses of casualties they couldn't care for. Police stations and government offices also barricaded the mob out.

Shortly, the legions of dead would begin to rot. There were no facilities to process them, no transport or handlers. Rats and other vermin would run rampant.

It would be weeks before any semblance of control returned. Even then, the deaths would continue until the infrastructure could be restored. Earth no longer had any resources available for war.

"War does not determine who is right, but who is left."

—old military proverb

Caledonia Jump Point One Traffic Control suddenly found itself swamped. The message that came through from Earth on a priority drone was panicked and inconsistent, but made it clear that all UN registered merchant and military vessels were needed at their home ports at once. It requested emergency humanitarian aid from all planets and asked that a cease-fire with Freehold be negotiated immediately. It advised that an envoy would arrive shortly. The message repeated.

All Earth merchant ships immediately requested traffic plans back to Earth and incoming messages from other systems indicated that large numbers of vessels were all traveling that way in the next few days. The fleet bound for Freehold that had been held up for the last six days also reversed course, abandoning its obvious assault.

The controllers didn't know what stunt Freehold had pulled, but the veterans who'd met Freehold forces provided plenty of rumors. Most were close in spirit, but wide of the mark. Later that day, a drone arrived with a message from the Freehold, ending debate.

"This is Colonel Alan Naumann, commanding the Provisional Freehold Military Forces. I read a statement from the Citizen's Council of the Freehold of Grainne.

"Earlier today, elements of our military attacked the infrastructure of the United Nations of Earth. This resulted in the deaths of many innocent civilians. We regret that necessity.

"The survival of our system, our people and our way of life depended on ending the UN's assault on our system. Their attack was unprovoked, unjustified and a political attempt to gain power and profit at the expense of our residents. Our requests to be left alone, our historical documentation and guarantee that we are a neutral nation, no threat to Earth or any other sovereign system and our requests for political resolution to the dispute were ignored. It was made clear to our Citizen's Council that only unconditional surrender and acceptance of a lifestyle we choose not to embrace would appease our invaders.

"Our cities were bombed with weapons of mass destruction, our civilian shipping seized, our military personnel and civilians were tortured, raped and abused in violation of all laws of war and all human decency. Our residents were left without power, without representation and without food in a black parody of a medieval siege, attacked by biological agents that indiscriminately killed and maimed noncombatants, and our legitimate, self-selected government representatives were imprisoned or forced to assist these would-be conquerors.

"Faced with the destruction of our society, we took all civilized and reasonable steps, from negotiation, appeal to all human societies in space and to limited military engagement. We drove the invaders from our system, to be faced with further brutality en route to us. Lacking any credible forces for limited engagement, having exhausted all peaceful and rational means to maintain our sovereignty and our very lives, we were forced to resort to limited major war to render the UN incapable of continuing this outrage.

"Details of our counterattack are included in this transmission, describing where damage was done and where aid will be needed most. We regret the impossibility of providing aid ourselves, since our system has been reduced from its previous wealth to abject poverty. We urge all nations to provide aid to the UN and guarantee safe passage through our jump points to humanitarian craft. We ask only that you remember our needs for aid also and recall that we were their victims.

"There will be no further attacks on the UN, its registered ships, citizens or interests, provided no further attacks take place against ours. We reserve the right to retaliate to any attack at a time and place of our choosing. All UN-based commercial interests are encouraged to resume trade immediately with their Freehold counterparts.

"Should the UN or any other nation, state or party attack our society or its interests, our current state of affairs dictates our only viable response to be a similar attack against a second echelon of Earth cities or any other attacker's infrastructure. What forces we have are dispersed for this eventuality, but no attacks will be initiated without provocation.

"Patrick Chinratana, speaker for the Citizen's Council of the Freehold of Grainne."

The message and attached images and reports of the U.N. attack shocked human space into silence. Shortly, that silence exploded into debate. Fear, disgust and hatred all mixed freely, with the obvious jockeying for political power underneath. The UN's current state left a huge power vacuum and there were those determined to fill it. Some pushed for occupation of Freehold; the images convinced them that the threat was not idle.

Humanitarian aid did flow, and quickly. Gigatons of food, medical supplies, generators and personnel arrived from every system save the Freehold. It sent minimal materials as could be spared, but no personnel; the risk of mob violence was too great.

Chinratana and Naumann accepted an invitation to Triton in Sol System to discuss terms and reparations. Caledonia agreed to arbitrate.

Chinratana was unsure what to make of Naumann. The man was a gentleman in every sense of the word and compassionate to a fault. But he was also the most absolutely ruthless bastard he'd ever met. He'd spend out of his own pocket to help cure a civilian from another culture, who was victim of a third nation's hostility during the Mtali conflict, but would willingly exterminate six billion people in warfare. He wondered how the man slept at night.

After spending long hours of the trip formulating a debate strategy for their goals, he wondered if the man
did
sleep.

"It doesn't require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires to people's minds."

—Samuel Adams

Naumann was escorted by his usual team of Black Ops bodyguards, backed up by Kendra. He had asked for her as an intelligence asset, to help decode cultural assumptions. She'd agreed, reluctantly, but was fascinated by the proceedings. There was also a squad to protect Chinratana and a well-crewed light cruiser, the
FMS Puckett
.
The
light cruiser, currently. No others could be accounted for, although one or two might still exist. Chinratana had protested, but Naumann was firm; the UN was not to be trusted, even under a white flag. The politician had deferred to military expertise, greeted his bodyguards politely and graciously and made no mention of them.

The ten-day trip to Jump Point Two was boring for Kendra. She spent her waking time answering questions about Earth customs, gestures and language, and her off hours, unable to concentrate, sleeping poorly. Once in the Caledonia system, it was a mere five more days of mind-numbing tedium to its Jump Point One and then only three days of anxiety to Triton.