Shadow of Freedom
David Weber
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?”