The Freedom Army

by E.C. Tubb

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

To escape war and suffering, humanity had allowed itself to take a drug that killed all emotion. But a small number of insurgents - including the returning astronauts from a mission to Mars - had refused to take the drug, and waged an armed rebellion. The last survivors of the Freedom Army were holed up in a besieged bunker when one of their number, the physicist Burges, constructed a gateway to another dimension-an alternate existence. Ex space-pilot Lanson leads the remnants of his Freedom Army in escaping through the gateway-only to find themselves in an alternate world were humanity has been enslaved for the last 30 years by a toad-like alien race, the Zytlen!

Release date: December 30, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 200

Sample

THE walls were of bare concrete, mottled with damp and stained with time. A pattern of fine cracks marred the once smooth surface, and little heaps of dust glinting with specks of silicon and grey with cadmium lay beneath them. Blue light painted the walls with a harsh, shadowless glare, and the soft whine of the air purifiers complemented the strident chatter of the geigers.

From time to time the walls shook a little, the tiny cracks widening, thin trails of dust sifting from them to join the waiting piles on the floor. Coinciding with the tremors, the geigers chattered a little louder, a little more eagerly, then died as the walls stilled again.

“How much longer, Lanson?” A man swung from his seat before a complex instrument panel and looked worriedly at the other occupant of the chamber.

Lanson shrugged. “Depends on the structure, but it can’t be very long now.” He stared at a wall and idly ran his fingers along one of the widening cracks. “They built well,” he murmured.

“Not well enough!”

“As well as they could,” Lanson said with quiet reproach. He was a tall man, with a supple, slender build and an easy carriage betraying hidden strength. His skin was pale from lack of sunlight, and his thick, black hair clung damply to his high forehead. Faint lines of good humour saved the firm mouth from cruelty, and his eyes were as black as space.

He moved restlessly about the instrument-lined chamber, his black uniform with the blazing gold insignia rumpled and creased. Dark patches beneath his eyes told of lost sleep.

“Regret it, Bender?”

“No. Not yet at any rate, but I probably will.” Bender rested his head in his hands, his blond hair giving him a startling boyish appearance. “If we could only fight back!”

The walls shook and powder spilled from the cracks. The geiger counters chattered as radioactivity seeped in from the exploding bombs, then faded back into their steady murmur.

“How they must hate us,” muttered Bender.

“They have reason to, but I don’t think that they are capable of hate. We are an obstacle, therefore they must destroy us.” Lanson smiled tightly. “It is as simple as that.”

“Like a man stepping on an ant.” Bender glared at his dead instruments. “We mean nothing to them one way or the other, but because they wanted Earth, and wanted it their way, we have to die.” He spun from his seat, eyes glinting strangely in the blue lighting. “Is there nothing we can do?”

“Nothing.” Lanson was very calm. “We knew what the end would be. We chose to be different from the majority, and now we pay the price of individuality. Personally, I wouldn’t have had it otherwise.”

“I still can’t understand it,” muttered Bender. “It happened so suddenly. When we left on the Mars flight, Earth was normal, when we returned—” He looked helplessly at Lanson.

“The flight to Mars and back took more than three years, and a lot can happen in that time.” Lanson fumbled in his tunic pocket for cigarettes, lit one, and sent blue smoke wreathing across the chamber. “We should have expected it, but how could we guess? People had reached their breaking point, they had sickened of the constant fear of potential war, starvation and poverty. De Bracy’s method offered them security, utter and final security, and they took it. Can we blame them?”

“Not all took it. Some held out, more than we knew. This wasn’t the only strongpoint to be defended.”

“Maybe we were the ones that were wrong?” Bender sounded very tired. "De Bracy offered something man has searched for since time began. Why should we be the only ones to refuse it?”

Lanson snorted and stamped on the butt of his cigarette. “De Bracy solved a problem in the only way such problems can be solved, by eliminating the problem, not by finding a solution. It is the wrong thing. You can’t cure cancer by killing everyone who has cancer. They couldn’t cure smallpox that way, and they certainly couldn’t cure foot and mouth disease, they tried it long enough. No. De Bracy was an idealist, and his death only served to make him a martyr. He knew that the cause of man’s unhappiness lay in unstable emotions; hate, fear, greed, desire, envy, all fought with his intellect and brought the entire race to the verge of insanity. De Bracy thought that he had discovered a remedy.”

“What a remedy,” Bender snarled. “I had a girl when I left for Mars. A normal, warm-blooded human creature, and we’d intended to marry on my return. I came back to find a zombie!”

“I know,” agreed Lanson. “I know only too well.” He sighed and his eyes glazed as he stared into the past. “De Bracy perfected a drug which effectively killed all emotion. A man could no longer feel the stirrings of hate or fear. A woman no longer felt desire or love. De Bracy turned a warm, impulsive human race into a collection of robot-like intelligences. Logic ruled. Cold, inhuman logic, and logic decided that all must be the same.”

The walls shook, fragments of concrete flaking from the roof and buttresses. The lights flickered, went out, then burned again with a dull glow. The chattering of the geigers echoed through the chamber.

“We’d better go below,” decided Lanson. “This chamber will be the first to be blasted, and radioactivity is too high for safety as it is.”

“Burges won’t like it! He asked me to leave him alone for as long as possible.”

“Burges?” Lanson frowned then smiled apologetically. “The physicist, I’d forgotten him. What’s he doing?”

“Working on something, he wouldn’t tell me what.” Bender straightened himself, flinching at a fresh tremor of the walls. “Shall we go?” He raised a trap door under their feet. Lanson shrugged and followed him down. Concrete rattled on the closing hatch.

A small man blinked at them as they edged their way past a mass of electronic equipment. He stood at a metal bench intent on soldering a complex mass of wires to a metal and plastic frame. He ignored Bender’s greeting.

“Funny people these scientists,” Bender murmured to Lanson. “His life can be measured in hours, and yet he works at something which will be destroyed with him.”

“Emotion versus logic,” explained Lanson. “If we’d have taken De Bracy’s drug, we would have shot ourselves hours ago, after we had fired the last torpedo at the attacking ships.”

“What made you refuse the drug?” Bender looked at his tall companion curiously. “You had no girl friend, no real reason for refusing. You could have had a high position with the space fleet, and yet you refused. Why?”

“I had my reasons.” Lanson stretched his lithe figure. “Maybe it’s because I have a weakness for lost causes, maybe for some other reason, but I couldn’t take the drug.” He smiled at Bender’s expression. “There will always be the obstinate ones, the stubborn ones, the just plain awkward. I’ve never liked doing what the mob did, perhaps that is why I went to space. Earth had grown dull to a man with a craze for adventure, and I’ve always wanted to see what lay over the next hill. Space offered me a way out, and I pulled every string I could to get command of the Mars flight.

“What had I to lose? A safe, snug little life, doing what I was told to do, or what cold logic forced me to do. Never feeling the surging of hate, triumph, exultation at doing a good job, and doing it well. Just spiritual death.” For a moment his mobile face contorted, the lines around his mouth deepening, stamping his features with cruelty.

“I hate De Bracy for what he did to mankind. They’re out there, waiting, calmly bombing this strongpoint to atomic dust, merely because we refused to join the crowd. When I joined the insurgents I knew what the end must be, yet I would join again. Sabotage failed, frontal attack failed, research for an anti-serum failed. All we could do was to run to these strongpoints, relics of an age when men hated each other and prepared for war, and here we made our last stand.”

“Their losses were high.” Bender had a trace of satisfaction in his voice. “It would have been wiser for them to have left us alone.”

“That is the one thing they couldn’t do. They are idealists, and an idealist is so sure that he is right, and so certain that what he does is good for all, that he will do it if he has to kill you in the attempt.” Lanson sighed and stared at his hands.

“There is another reason why they must kill us. They are not quite certain that what they have done is the right thing to do. For their own peace of mind they cannot allow any untreated persons liberty, to do so would give them a unit of comparison, and the treatment is irrevocable. They dare not be proved wrong.”

The walls quivered, flakes of concrete falling to the dusty floor. The lights flickered then steadied to their normal blue glow. Bender shuddered.

“Time’s almost up,” he said with forced cheerfulness.

“They are being logical,” mused Lanson. “They are probably using this strongpoint as a practice target. Even fifty feet of silicon-cadmium reinforced concrete with five feet of lead cushion, wouldn’t stand up to normal atomic bombs this long. They are using small fission missiles, and they are taking their time.”
. . .