Starship Freedom - Super Box Set (Book 5-8): The Sci-Fi Adventure Continues, page 1
STARSHIP FREEDOM
BOOKS 5-8
by
Daniel Arenson
Table of Contents
LET FREEDOM RING
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
IN PURSUIT OF FREEDOM
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
THE GUNS OF FREEDOM
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
A TIME FOR FREEDOM
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
AFTERWORD
NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON
KEEP IN TOUCH
Illustration © Tom Edwards - TomEdwardsDesign.com
STARSHIP FREEDOM: BOOKS 5-8
The starship Freedom is just a museum ship. Until the aliens attack...
This box set contains books 5-8 in the Starship Freedom series. If you're new to the series--stop! You should read books 1-4 first. You can find them conviniently bundled in one box set here:
DanielArenson.com/StarshipFreedom1-4
If you're all caught up, let's continue the story...
BOOK FIVE: LET FREEDOM RING
CHAPTER ONE
King marched through his starship, jaw clenched.
Nobody paused to stand at attention, not now, not during a war. Alarms still wailed and red lights flashed. All around King, spacers bustled. Medics raced by, carrying a man on a stretcher. The poor bastard. Both his legs had melted down to the bones. Mechanics ran in the other direction, dragging repressurizing tubes. The plastic cylinders wriggled along the deck like serpents, bloated and ready to expel oxygen. King passed by a breach in the hull. A force field shimmered, keeping the air inside. Construction workers floated outside, welding and rewiring cables. A corpse hovered among them like a haunting spirit, watching from the shadows.
King's upper lip twitched. His metal fist creaked.
His ship was hurt. Hundreds of his spacers were dead. Rage and grief battled inside King like fire and ice. He ached to make the aliens pay. He vowed to destroy the Tyranny. To destroy Arakavish, the rah homeworld. To hunt down every spider across the stars. That was the rage. But deeper down lurked the grief. And the grief knew that the rage could only burn, not heal. That nothing could bring those people back. People under King's command.
Children. They were like children to him. And he had lost too many.
King reached the bottom of the starship. He walked across deck 1. The underbelly of the Freedom hummed and vibrated beneath his feet. In some places on the Freedom, you could almost forget you were inside a starship. King's Library with its antique books and crackling fireplace, the aerie lounge with its retro jukebox and pool table, the Dinogolf with its plastic palm trees and echoes of laughter—they could be anywhere on Earth. But deck 1 was different. In the underbelly, you never forgot where you were. Every thump of the pistons that powered the Freedom—you felt it pulse throughout the deck and bulkheads. Every crackle of electricity through the cables that wound throughout the Freedom like arteries—they raised your hackles. King almost imagined that he could feel space itself under his feet, the tug of the abyss trying to swallow him.
He walked between armed military policemen in full riot gear. They stood along the corridor walls, rifles gripped in tense gloved hands. Their commander stood at attention and saluted. King returned the salute, gave the man a nod, then made to step toward the brig.
"Sir?" said the head guard.
King paused. "Yes, Sergeant?"
"Before you proceed, sir, I should warn you. The prisoner is dangerous."
"I know, Sergeant. She destroyed one of my hangar bays. That's why we have her locked up."
The sergeant was pale. "I mean, sir, she's dangerous even inside the brig. We've experienced strange hallucinations. All of us here."
Oddly, the sergeant had the face of a caterpillar. All bristly and coiling and lumpy. King blinked. The guard was back to normal. Just a trick of the light.
"Hallucinations?" King said.
Caterpillars with dog faces crawled over the guard's ceramic armor. "Yes, sir. The closer we get to the prisoner, the worse they get."
King frowned. A child's giggle sounded beside him. He turned but saw nobody.
He looked back at the guard. "Understood. I'll keep that under consideration."
He walked past the guard, turned around a corner, and reached the brig.
There she lurked in her cell. Telve'rahda. His captive arachtaur. King stood and stared.
It was a large prison cell, larger than a human prisoner would enjoy. They had built this brig to hold aliens, sealing them behind metal bars and a force field. But this creature wasn't just any alien. It was a monster risen from hell.
Her body looked like a black widow the size of a cow. Claws tipped her eight gleaming legs. Rahs had spikes on their abdomen, each spike impaling a severed head. But Telve'rahda was smooth. Her abdomen was completely black aside from a red splotch like a Rorschach stain in the center. It reminded King of a skull.
All that wasn't the worst part. King hated spiders, but after killing thousands of them, a man became desensitized to their horrors. It was Telve'rahda's upper half that filled his throat with bile.
At a glance, she was beautiful. From the hips up, she was a young woman, curved and graceful. Her breasts were bare, her lips full and mocking, her eyes like pools of emeralds under moonlight. But a closer look revealed an unholy pallor. She was the color of a corpse. Blue veins marbled her skin, and dark stains ringed her eyes. Claws grew from her fingertips, and when she smiled, she revealed fangs and a forked tongue.
"Hello, James."
Her voice was melodious. Her lips moved, but the voice seemed to speak directly in his mind like telepathy. It was a voice like pouring wine in a forest full of fireflies and buried bones. Like a butterfly caught in a coffin, wings fluttering against the wooden walls. Like a rivulet of gold trickling into a pool of tar. She spoke only two words, but with those words, she painted images. She created worlds. He saw pale faces peering from shadows, long fingers gripping tree trunks, and a broken sword upon a stone altar. He saw a little white spider, wrinkled like a colorless old grape, glued to the center of a sagging web.
King gritted his teeth and shut off his MindLink. Was this creature hacki
"Rowan!" he said, taking a step closer to the cell.
The dead girls opened their eyes. They looked at him and smiled. Their voices spoke in his mind.
Hello, Pop Pop.
An illusion, King knew. His heart pounded. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, counted to ten. When he looked into the cell again, the visions were gone. Only Telve'rahda remained, alone in the bare room.
The arachtaur gave him a crooked smile. "Are you not feeling well, James King? Sit down. Have a glass of water. A man of your age should not push himself so far."
"What the hell are you?" King said.
She smiled thinly. "Your death."
"Cut the melodramatic crap."
"I speak truth. I was created to kill you. To kill all humans. I have no other purpose, no other desire. My only reason for existence is to kill you. The only meaning of my life is the end of yours."
"I said cut the melodrama, not heap it on. Who created you?"
Her smile widened. "You know who."
A chill scuttled down King's spine like baby spiders. "The rahs."
Telve'rahda clattered forward, stared between the prison bars, and licked her fangs. "Be more specific, James King. You know who made me. When you first stepped into my lair, you saw her."
King clenched his jaw. His eye twitched. The vision flashed before him again—the decrepit spider, just a white wrinkly sac, hanging on a dusty web.
"This is not your lair," he said. "This is your cell."
"Say her name, Admiral King." Her voice was smoke and silk. "Say the name of my creator."
On the sagging web, the ancient spider lifted her head. Her eyes were sunken into puckered pits. Blind eyes. Eyes like white buttons on a rag doll.
King's throat felt dry.
"Elder'rah," he whispered. "The empress of Arakavish."
"Good, James King! Very good." She wrapped her fingers around the bars. Venom dripped from her fangs. "I am a rahda. I have the strength of a rah, the loyalty to Arakavish, and the dedication to Ishar, the web that all rahs must weave. But I am also a human—those called the da in the tongue of my mother."
"Why?" King demanded. "Why did Elder'rah create hybrids?"
"You know why, James King. You defeated the rahs. The spiders are old creatures. Very old, James King. For millions of your Earth years have my mother's people woven the cosmic web. Their instincts are old. Hive instincts. Hive minds. A rigid hierarchy binds them. But humans are new. Humans are disobedient. Unpredictable. Individualistic. Their ways are strange for the very old. And my mother is very old indeed. But I am young. And I have the mind of a woman. This mind is my weapon. With this mind, I will plan your extinction."
"You talk a good game for somebody locked in a prison cell."
She released the bars, took a few steps back, and gave him an enigmatic smile. "We are all trapped in cells, James King. This ship is your prison. And it will be your tomb. If only you knew the horrors that await."
He wrapped his prosthetic fist around a bar. The clawed metal fingers creaked. He stared at the creature. "Tell me everything you know about the Tyranny. Her weaknesses. Her weaponry. So long as you speak, you will not suffer."
"No, Admiral, I don't think I'll be telling you a thing. Torture me if you like. My kind cannot feel pain. Starve me. Threaten me. Do with me as you will."
"You're bluffing." King snarled into the cage. "I'm not. You murdered my spacers. If torturing you saves a single human life, I'll torture you myself. We'll see if you indeed feel nothing."
She tossed back her head and laughed. "You think you can intimidate me? I'm one branch in a tree that engulfs the universe. Cut the branch and you only strengthen the roots. I'm done with you for now, Admiral King. Leave me. Or it will be you who suffers."
King gripped the bar tighter with his metal fist, ready to shatter it, to charge into the cell, and beat the damn thing bloody.
A voice rose behind him.
"Pop Pop?"
"Rowan?" He turned around.
She stood there, his beloved granddaughter. But her skin was gray and veined, and her eyes shed tears of blood. From the hips down, she had become a spider.
"Help me, Pop Pop," she said. "Please. Kill me."
King spun back toward the brig. He gripped the bars with both fists. His metal fist thrummed with power, denting one bar, then cracking the metal.
"Get the hell out of my head, you piece of filth!" he growled.
The arachtaur smiled thinly and pattered backward on her claws. Never removing her eyes from him, she climbed the wall, weaving a web, and perched in the upper corner.
"Help me, Pop Pop, help me!" the arachtaur said, speaking in a perfect imitation of Rowan's voice. Then she laughed. "Midsection deck 22, bunk 7b. That's where Rowan is asleep. But not for long."
King left the brig.
He raced across the starship.
Ten minutes later, covered in sweat, he burst into his granddaughter's room.
"Rowan! Are you all right?"
She looked up at him. She was sitting cross-legged on the rug, playing with model starships. In her right hand, she held a model of the Freedom. In her left—a model of the Lenin. Plastic starfighters lay scattered on the rug around her.
She was fine. No gray skin. No spider body.
"Hi, Pop Pop! Want to play space wars?"
King took a deep breath. He closed his eyes.
Thank God.
It wasn't like him to panic. The arachtaur had planted visions in his mind. Had she planted the panic there too? He had turned his MindLink off. It should be impervious to hacking even when on, definitely when off. What kind of telepathic power did these creatures possess?
Clearly the arachtaurs were more dangerous than rahs. King had fought the nastiest rahs in the galaxy. These things scared him more.
"Pop Pop?" Rowan laid down her toys. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, sweetheart." He sat down beside her, joints creaking. "I'm all right."
He would get answers from this creature in his brig. He would destroy the Tyranny. He would get his people home. He would defend Earth from this new terror. But right now, for just a few minutes, he needed to play space wars with his granddaughter.
He lifted the toy Lenin.
"Roar! I am the evil Red Dawn starship!" He even put on a Russian accent.
Rowan giggled. "The Freedom will beat you! Pew pew!"
Very soon, King must return to the bridge. He savored these precious moments. This was why he fought. Here was a girl he loved with all his heart. He would blow out every star in the galaxy to keep her safe.
* * * * *
Hanging on her web, trapped in her little cell, Telve'rahda smiled.
How easy to manipulate these humans! Their minds were like flies in gossamer, and she was pulling the strands. They had no idea what awaited them. She had carefully concealed the vent behind her web. The old fool hadn't even noticed.
She closed her eyes, smiled, and wriggled backward on her web. She placed her cloaca against the HVAC vent, and she purred as the cool air blew. It felt good. She had never felt the wind. She had never hunted in the ancient forests of Arakavish, for she had been born from the mud and ooze in deep caverns. But the memories of her ancestors were with her. She had been born with all their wisdom and experiences. Yes, wind. That is what this felt like. Wind in the forest.
She had bred before leaving her world on this hunt, and she carried her brood inside her. She had never built a den of silk. She had never laid eggs into a gossamer embrace in a warm cavern under cold hard earth. But she imagined that it felt like this. And it felt good.
"My purpose is to kill you," she whispered, and a tear rolled down her cheek. She tasted blood. "But I remember all the dreams and desires of my ancestors. The old ones are with me."
She gasped suddenly. She had not expected such pleasure. To lay eggs, to give forth life—it was pure joy, for the life she gave would spread death. She had no forest. No cave. No world of mist and underground streams. But she still had killing. And killing was so sweet.
Telve'rahda collapsed onto her web in her prison cell. A smile on her lips, she slept.
CHAPTER TWO
Stowy paused her stopwatch, groaned, and tugged her hair.
"Awful. Just awful, Algernon! It took you seven minutes to solve the maze. How are you going to become a show mouse if you can't even solve a maze within a reasonable amount of time?"
