Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3) Read online

  FREEDOM’S FURY

  Books by Francis W. Porretto

  The Spooner Federation Saga:

  Which Art In Hope

  Freedom’s Scion

  Freedom’s Fury

  The Realm of Essences trilogy:

  Chosen One

  On Broken Wings

  Shadow Of A Sword

  Other novels:

  The Sledgehammer Concerto

  Priestesses

  Short-story collections:

  For The Love Of God

  A Dash Of Spice: Erotica for Good People

  Colored Shadows, Unsetting Suns

  Caucuses, Cabals, Assignations and Trysts

  Non-fiction:

  The Storyteller’s Art: How Not to Bore Your Reader to Sleep, Tears, or Homicide

  From The Bit Bucket: (A)Musings on Engineering, Supervision, and Management

  An Indie Writer’s Odyssey

  Francis W. Porretto

  FREEDOM’S FURY

  A novel of the Spooner Federation

  Copyright © 2013 by Francis W. Porretto

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without the express written permission of the author, except for brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. The persons and events described here are entirely imaginary. They are not intended to suggest or imply anything whatsoever about actual persons or events.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All locations and institutions are employed fictitiously.

  Contact: [email protected]

  To Beth

  To Liz Pavek

  To lovers of freedom everywhere

  And, as always,

  To the greater glory of God

  ====

  “Freedom is not free, free men are not equal, and equal men are not free!”

  –Richard Cotten–

  ====

  “Where the State begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.”

  —Mikhail Bakunin—

  ====

  “He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it.”

  —Ecclesiastes 10:8—

  Foreword

  If you’ve read Which Art In Hope and Freedom’s Scion, you’re well prepared for what follows. If not...well, let’s just say that you’ve missed too many critical events for a mere Foreword to bring you properly up to speed. I beseech you to read the previous two Spooner Federation novels before continuing on.

  Freedom’s Fury is the concluding volume of a trilogy I hadn’t intended to write. The torrent of pleas, after Which Art In Hope was published in early 2010, for more about Hope and its wholly ungoverned denizens—I can’t really call them “citizens,” now, can I?—eventually moved me to extend the story arc...but in a way I hadn’t intended at any previous point.

  Freedom’s Scion did perpetuate the setting and some of the characters of Which Art In Hope. However, whereas the earlier novel was principally concerned with a moral-ethical problem an anarchic society would find supremely difficult to face, the later one moved in a somewhat different direction: an exploration of the most insidious of all the processes known to operate among men: the rise of power politics. Freedom’s Fury continues in the direction Freedom’s Scion undertook to follow.

  I shan’t attempt to deceive or misdirect you: I’m horrified by politics and all its fruits. I consider the use of coercive force against innocent men the greatest of all the evils we know. But I try, most sincerely, to be realistic about the world around us. In that world, peopled by men such as ourselves, anarchism—the complete abjuration and avoidance of the State—is unstable. In time, it will always give way to politics. Hammer it to the earth as many times as you may, you will never succeed in killing it permanently. The State will rise again.

  However, as we’ve learned to our sorrow these past few centuries, the State is unstable, too. It always deteriorates and falls, though not always swiftly. What follows it varies from place to place and era to era.

  As one who passionately loves freedom, I’ve striven to understand the processes involved, and to unearth a path to a stable free society. I’ve failed to find one. But the insights I’ve gained through my studies have left me feeling an obligation to share them as stories that, hopefully, will edify as well as entertain.

  From this point forward, the verdict will be yours.

  Francis W. Porretto

  Mount Sinai, NY USA

  July 4, 2013

  Quintember 12 , 1324 A.H. (Estimated)

  Simultaneity, the experts say, is a purely local condition. The finite speed with which the fastest signal can travel from point to point makes determinations of simultaneity inherently imprecise. Thus we cannot be absolutely certain of the Hope dates upon which the following events occurred, as they occurred in Eridanus cluster, in the solar system where orbits the Loioc home world.

  A council of powerful persons, all of them female, sat to consider a problem and how they might deal with it. The problem arose from the failure of a venerable plan for exploiting a long-awaited event that had recently occurred. The sequel included the destruction of the space station the Loioc had built to suppress interstellar travel, and the destroyer’s promise of an invasion to come.

  The councilors were unanimous that the matter was supremely grave, and justified the most extreme imaginable measures. However, they were inhibited by their distaste for violence. They could not bring themselves to reply in kind to the destruction of their property. Worse yet, when they considered the non-violent possibilities available to them, they could not be certain which ones could not be captured and turned against them by the denizens of their target system.

  In the near term, only one non-violent measure appeared both beyond that possibility and likely to have the desired effect. They agreed to employ it.

  A vehicle that had been mothballed many centuries before was pulled out of storage and inspected as closely as its present-day tenders could manage. That wasn’t very closely, as no one alive on the Loioc home world possessed genius approaching that of the vehicle’s inventor. However, Loioc preservation technology was highly advanced and generally deemed trustworthy.

  A unique and deadly weapon, developed concurrently with the vehicle, was pulled out of storage as well. It was handled with the most extraordinary care, for it was unable to discriminate between its owners and their target. A premature release would have consequences that could never be undone.

  The weapon was loaded into the vehicle. The vehicle's onboard intelligence was awakened, educated, and primed for its mission, its reaction drive was fueled, and it was loaded into a Loioc ground-to-orbit spacecraft. The craft was launched with solemn ceremony. Upon reaching low Loioc orbit, the crew unshipped the vehicle, calibrated its navigation system, defined the identity of its target from the most recent available ephemerides, lit its reaction drive, watched it sail out of sight, and returned to the surface of Loioc.

  Fifteen days later, at the outer edge of the cometary belt, the vehicle quenched its reaction drive and paused for a careful electromagnetic survey of the nearest stars. When its onboard intelligence was satisfied that it had identified the target system beyond all possibility of error, it refined its navigation program, activated its interstellar drive, and began a journey of eleven light-years’ distance and seventy-three million seconds’ duration.

  Its target was Hope.

  ====

  Octember 17 , 1325 A.H.

  In a nondescript windowless conference room in the bowels of Dunbarton House, six men and a woman sat around a table plo
tting the end of the world.

  They did not know that their common ambition, or more precisely the plans by which they hoped to achieve it, encompassed such a development. They thought in purely local and limited terms. Yet it has often been the case that seemingly pedestrian undertakings have brought about convulsions that would shake the world. He who doubts this should reflect upon the achievements of Gavrilo Princip, Muhammad of Mecca, and Jesus of Nazareth.

  “He won’t bend,” Quentin Reinach said.

  “Oh, he will,” the woman replied.

  “What makes you so certain, Charisse?” Allan Fitzpatrick said.

  Charisse Dunbarton, formerly Charisse Morelon, smiled ever so slightly.

  “Because we will bend him.”

  All the others sat up at that.

  “You contemplate force?” Fitzpatrick murmured.

  “How else? Do you really think he or...his clan would yield to anything less? Besides, I know him. He’s even more stubborn than his father.” She smirked. “Chalk it up to his conversion.”

  Patrick Wolzman eyed her dubiously. “Stubborn implies significant resistance, and force requires an effectuating agency,” he drawled. “Somehow I doubt you could raise a sufficient army from our six houses.”

  At the word army, all eyes swerved to Wolzman’s. He noticed and shrugged.

  “What else are we speaking of, gentlemen?,” he said. “Armed men united in a common purpose—a coercive purpose—constitute an army. Anyone who thinks we can...what was the word you used, Charisse?”

  She smiled. “Conscript.”

  Wolzman nodded. “Anyone who thinks we can conscript an army sufficient to impose our decisions upon the Morelons has seriously overestimated our powers.” He smirked. “I rather doubt mere persuasion would do the job. We are talking about sending men into harm’s way, are we not?”

  “We are,” Charisse said. “Voluntarily if possible, but involuntarily if not. Do you doubt your capacity to command your people, Patrick?”

  Wolzman’s eyes narrowed. He did not respond.

  “When I was matriarch at Morelon House,” Charisse said, “my kin did as I directed. They didn’t always like it, they didn’t always agree with the necessity, but they did as I told them. There were times when pain was involved, or personal sacrifice, or sometimes both...and they did as they’d been told anyway.” She smiled. “Why do you suppose that was, Patrick?”

  “I do not,” Wolzman muttered, “demand that degree of deference from my kin at Wolzman House. I doubt that I could obtain it.”

  “You don’t? Are you quite sure?” Charisse’s smile became broad, mocking. “Have you ever tried?”

  “My kinsmen,” Wolzman grated, “are free men. They do as they please. If I ask a service of them, they’re free to decline, and sometimes they do. I don’t flatter myself that I possess the sort of power you claim from your time as head of Clan Morelon.”

  The word power seemed to hang in the air over the gathering.

  “Tell us, Patrick,” Charisse said, “how long it’s been since one of your kin last declined to comply with one of your requests. Has it been a week? A month? Perhaps a year?”

  Wolzman opened his mouth, closed it without speaking. Charisse nodded.

  “We are unaware—perhaps willfully so—of the nature of conditioned obedience,” she said. “Yet I severely doubt that anyone at this table has ever faced an absolutely intransigent kinsman. We are raised to our positions in various ways, but the position, not the occupant nor the manner in which he reached it, is what matters. The clan head exists to plan, to organize, to direct. He commands. He may do so politely, even apologetically, but he commands nevertheless, and his kin know the importance of maintaining his primacy by following his orders.”

  She glanced sideways at Alexander Dunbarton. He nodded, and she rose from her seat.

  “A clan head commands. He need not punish. His position is sufficient. Rare is the clan in which his kin would fail to enforce his orders with their own means. I haven’t the slightest doubt that if you, Patrick, were to ‘request’ that your menfolk organize a militia, that ‘request’ would be met with immediate and near-total compliance. Your kin would fall into ranks at once to await your next ‘request.’ Any who balked would be pressed by their fellows to think again and better of it. Any who remained resistant would find shortly thereafter that they had no friends at Wolzman House. They would be quietly told that the time had come for them to find other kin and other accommodations—and you would need to take no hand in it.”

  She smirked and emitted a spate of half-rueful laughter.

  “I could not have said this to you were I not...who I am and what I’ve been. You would not have accepted it from one who hasn’t wielded the authority I have known. You might not have accepted it from anyone else among you. But I can see from your faces that you accept it from me. And I will tell you why: because each and every one of you came to me, at some point during my matriarchy, for an arbitration, or a favor, and I commanded some accommodation, or concession, or tribute from you, and you did as I ordered you.

  “We flatter ourselves that we’re free...but we do as we’re told, if told by one we deem to possess authority over us. We recognize rank without ever speaking of it aloud. We defer to those of greater altitude even at cost to ourselves. And we like it that way. Those who receive such deference seldom allow themselves to become aware of the power they possess...but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.”

  Charisse propped herself against the edge of the table and lowered at the other attendees.

  “While we’re on the subject of power, gentlemen, what about Morelon power? They’ve come to control the electrical power market for all of Jacksonville and a good distance beyond. No one outside that clan has the faintest idea how to maintain, repair, or reproduce the fusion generators they’ve leased to us. We don’t even know what goes on inside them. It might as well be sorcery. Do you like being completely dependent on technology you don’t have any hope of understanding, much less controlling?

  “The Morelons also control the availability of air freight service to our region. Without their patronage, Grenier Air would be economically non-viable. I should know; I wrote most of those contracts myself. If they wanted to run any of our clans out of business, a word from their clan head to Adam Grenier would more than suffice. Are you comfortable with being at the mercy of Morelon good will for the ability to ship your wares?

  “Finally there’s the spaceplane. It’s not a pleasure yacht, gentlemen; it’s a weapon. With the right ordnance fitted to it, it could pulverize all our homes in mere minutes. I tried to prevent it being built. I knew how threatening it would be to the security of the region. I failed, which is one of the reasons I’m here today: I’m trying to atone for my failure.”

  Charisse paused and straightened. There was no response from any of the others.

  “We are Spoonerites, gentlemen, if only by virtue of our heritage. It is not in our nature to watch the emergence of an institution that lacks only the name of a State, smile, and tell one another that we can tolerate it so long as it doesn’t turn its guns on us. If there must be instruments of power, let it be our power. Let it be under the mastership of this council and its heirs. Let us not fool ourselves that the monopoly privileges Clan Morelon has amassed through technological accidents and good fortune will never be used at our expense.

  “It will not be our six houses alone. Not for long. Given time and a demonstration of the way of things, all the other regionally significant clans will join us,” she said. “They will fear to be left without a place at the table. Once we have demonstrated that it is possible, they will scramble for our leavings. It’s always that way at the introduction of a new order. Be glad you’re here at this time, gentlemen. I assure you, you will find your positions far superior to theirs.”

  She swept the gathering once more with her eyes, nodded, and resumed her seat. A leaden silence descended on the room as the attendee
s exchanged glances.

  Presently Alexander Dunbarton said, “Are we agreed?”

  “What are you asking us to agree to, Alex?” Aaron Luchin said.

  The Dunbarton patriarch looked off briefly, rose, and assumed a formal stance.

  “I propose that we form an ad hoc militia for the purpose of compelling Clan Morelon: first, to relinquish its contractual hold over its share of Jacksonville’s air freight capacity, that capacity to be reapportioned as it seems best to this council; second, to surrender its spaceplane to this council for sequestration and study; third, to release all plans, specifications, parts lists, procedures, and other technical data relevant to the Morelon fusion power generator to this council, to be maintained in trust for the good of the community; fourth, to accept continuing oversight of all researches into fusion power, and the allocation of whatever might result from it according to the decisions of this council or its successors.”

  “I have kindred at Morelon House,” Fitzpatrick said.

  “Do you?” Dunbarton said. “Do they style themselves Fitzpatrick today, Allan?”

  Fitzpatrick did not answer.

  Dunbarton looked from each attendee to the next, briefly but directly engaging their eyes. Each nodded in his turn.

  “I think we have an agreement, Alex,” Charisse said.

  The Dunbarton patriarch turned to her and smiled. “I think we do, Charisse.”

  ====

  November 23, 1325 A.H.

  “They’ve got us surrounded.” Dorothy Morelon’s voice hummed with more than ionospheric static. “We can’t even poke our heads out an upstairs window for fear it will draw fire from those strange weapons.”