by Webb, Nick
She closed her eyes. Wait for it . . .
She cracked her eyelids open just enough to see Ensign Destachio cock his head to the side as if deep in thought. Then he turned toward her.
There it is.
“Unless, Admiral, you want me to head down to engineering and I can help the commander develop a more efficient cooling algorithm. Or maybe we can just jump now—I think we’re well within the standard five sigmas of acceptable risk analy—”
She held up a hand to stop him. “No, Ensign, five minutes is perfectly fine. The world isn’t ending quite yet.”
He looked crestfallen. “Ah. Uh, understood, Admiral.” The crestfallen face turned to tight browlines of worry. “Oh no, I did it again—”
“You’re just fine, son. Breathe, and get back to work.” She forced a tight smile and gave him a reassuring nod. He visibly relaxed and turned back to his station.
My God, these recruits. Due to the disaster of the final Swarm war several months back—with billions of dead and the death of her beloved planet of Britannia—IDF had, in desperation, graduated almost the entire upper three classes of the academy en masse and was working overtime to bulk up the forces again after the sickeningly high attrition rate they’d suffered. The result was dealing with nuts like Ensign Pistachio.
So unready. But you go to war with the army you’ve got. Would that she had her crew from just two months ago. Jerusha Whitehorse. Ethan Zivic. Rayna Scott. Even Qwerty was gone. All promoted and reassigned. When you’re a veteran of saving civilization, you rise up in the ranks spectacularly fast. The potential war ahead required it.
Would it be war? Again?
She prayed they’d be spared. But the reembodied Granger’s warning and the long-range meta-space listening posts indicated otherwise.
“Admiral,” began Ensign Sapphira Sampono, another week-old fresh-faced recruit, “incoming meta-space transmission from Admiral Oppenheimer. He’s requesting virtual conversation.”
“Thank you Ensign, I’ll take it right here.” She tapped a few buttons on her console that generated a holographic privacy screen and damped out her voice. Her bridge crew didn’t need to hear the latest portents of gloom from the Fleet Admiral of the Integrated Defense Force. They’d see a blurred Admiral Oppenheimer and hear nothing.
“Yes, Christian?”
His face appeared. But since meta-space transmission bandwidths were so pitifully low, it was a computer-generated version of his face speaking the words he was sending, and a computer-generated voice. Slightly uncanny. He’d see something similar of her on his end.
“Shelby. You there yet?”
“Nearly.”
“Okay. Remember, in and out. Your people aren’t ready for a fight. At least not until Admiral Okoye shows up with his task force. I’ll be there when I can, but certainly not before Okoye.”
She rolled her eyes, knowing the transmission on his end wouldn’t include that. He’d see the stoic-faced sixty-eight-year-old formerly-retired Fleet Admiral of IDF, former exo-biology professor from the formerly-living world of Britannia. Someone who’d formerly had patience with bullshit. “Cut to the chase Christian. You didn’t call to remind me my crew couldn’t tell a railgun from a laser. What’s up?”
A long pause. She might not have been able to see his actual facial expressions but she could interpret long uncomfortable pauses just fine. Followed by a long breath—it seemed the meta-space comm system sent at least some non-verbal cues—Oppenheimer said, “It’s Tim.”
“No change?”
“A little. His memory is improving somewhat. Rice is going to try something new with him. But . . .”
Oh dear, she thought. Ever since his miraculous reembodiment inside the room behind the impassable door, he’d had . . . memory issues. Extreme memory issues. “What now?”
“Two things, actually. First, the lawsuit really is going forward. Civil lawsuit, but sucks ass all the same.”
“Shit. They’re really going through with it? Can’t President Sepulveda do something about it? What’s the fun of being president if you can’t issue pardons whenever the hell you want?”
“We’re a nation of laws, Shelby. And even though it was the martial-law code in effect at the time of the incident and Captain Granger can’t be prosecuted for the deaths of the Chesapeake’s crew, civil code and the local courts still have jurisdiction. Long story short, every plaintiff settled except for one. The widow of the assistant chief of engineering is suing. She refused all offers of settlement. A billion coins, Shelby. We offered a billion. She could buy her own island in the New Dublin tropics for that. Nope. She doesn’t want money. She wants justice. And this is the only way she’s got left to exact it.”
“And Tim? Does he know yet?”
“Not yet. His defense team is still strategizing. We thought it best not to trouble his mind too much with this during his recovery.”
“We’ve got to tell him, Christian.”
“No. We need him to focus on getting his memory back. Too much depends on that.”
Damn you, Christian. He’d been headstrong and uncompromising since she’d met him, years ago, serving together under Captain Granger on the Constitution and the Warrior. Those traits had blossomed into full-blown narcissistic personality disorder since he’d been named Fleet Admiral of IDF by the previous administration, it seemed.
“This could be something that jogs his memory. Forces him to remember what it was like being that disembodied ship.” The ship that they for a short period called the golgothic ship, but that they eventually discovered was the thirteen-billion-year-old remains of the ISS Victory, the ship that Granger piloted into the black hole at the end of Swarm War Two.
“No. I’ve got another plan for him. I want to send him out on a low-stakes mission. His own ship, his own crew. Highly supervised, of course—I’ve got someone there I trust. But getting him in the captain’s chair again might be just the thing.”
“Fine.” She knew better than to argue with him at this point. Besides, it wasn’t a terrible idea. “And the second thing? You didn’t interrupt a mission into a war zone just to tell me about a lawsuit.”
“You’re really not going to like this one.”
“Out with it.”
She almost thought she could actually see the computer-generated version of Admiral Oppenheimer’s face fall into a hopeless gloom.
“You know the outpost on Ceti Tau 3? Zion’s Haven?”
“The fundamentalists? Offshoot of an offshoot of some obscure branch of Mormonism? Or was it Amish?”
“A little of both. Their voyage there last century was the one brush with technology they would allow themselves. Well, it turns out our friends in Zion’s Haven had a little brush with what we assume are the Findiri.”
“And they survived?”
“Turns out, no. All million-plus colonists are either dead or unaccounted for, except for one young boy. Little guy named Orson Frye Smith. This happened last week, and we only just found out yesterday when UE sent out a regular diplomatic mission to check up on them. Their only satellite was just orbiting wreckage, and the cities and towns are almost totally destroyed.”
“Weeks? But they’re only, what, a few hundred light years out?”
“Three hundred and some odd from New Dublin, yes.”
“That’s the same sector as Nova Nairobi! They’re at our doorstep, Christian.” An unnerving cold feeling was developing in the pit of her stomach. “What’s this got to do with Tim?”
“The boy has proven to be somewhat of an unreliable narrator, given that he’s twelve, but he was very clear that the aliens that attacked Zion’s Haven were looking for something very specific.”
“Please don’t tell me that specific something was a seventy-year-old geriatric with memory issues.”
He sighed. “We were worried that maybe the kid just saw or heard about Granger in the headlines and inserted him into the narrative somehow . . .”
“But they’v
e probably got no video or even audio media set up there, right? Do Mormon Amish fundamentalists watch the news?”
“Exactly. So we think maybe he’s overheard one of his parents or a teacher talk about Tim. I mean, even on Zion’s Haven, someone’s had to have heard about the Hero of Earth. But no, their little cult leader, God rest his paranoid little bitch soul, had them pretty tightly clamped down. Very little information in or out. The child therapists we’ve got working with him all agree, he’s not making this up.”
“So the aliens, whoever they are, are hunting for Tim Granger.”
Oppenheimer nodded. “They can get in line. Wait till you hear the second thing.”
“You already told me the second thing, Christian. Tim’s lawsuit, Findiri hunting Tim . . .”
“Shit, I miscounted. There’s three.”
Tim’s not the only one with memory issues, it seems, she thought to herself. “Yes?”
“It’s the Trits.”
The new alien race living under the surface of Chantana Three. They revealed themselves just two weeks earlier. Her former XO, Jerusha Whitehorse, was currently leading the diplomatic mission aboard the ISS Volz, facilitating both the language translation project, and another, more covert mission to understand what physics the aliens were using to hold up an entire planet’s crust from the colony hiding underneath it. “They call themselves Itharans, by the way, not Trits. Probably not the best diplomatic practice to start calling them nicknames when we don’t know the first thing about them.”
“Fine. Well they asked us for something too. Classified top secret, by the way.”
“You’re kidding. Tim?”
“Bingo. From what we can tell—translation’s still iffy at this point—they want an audience with him. So it seems our friend is currently the most wanted man in the galaxy. The problem is we don’t have time for all this shit. The secret to defending ourselves from the Findiri is locked up in that gray matter of his. Our sole focus needs to—”
The holographic blur dropped and Ensign Sampono appeared in front of her. “Admiral? We’re ready.”
She nodded and waved her away. “Sorry Christian. We’re t-jumping in to Nova Nairobi. We’ll have to finish this later.”
“Fine. Godspeed. The Resolute will be there as soon as we can. Oppenheimer out.”
She waved off the holoblur screen and stood up. Saving her friend would have to wait. It was time to save Nova Nairobi from whatever fresh hell was going on there. And if it really was the Findiri?
“God help us all,” she murmured.
CHAPTER TWO
Veracruz Sector
Chantana III
ISS Tyler S. Volz
Bridge
Captain Jerusha Whitehorse. I still can’t get over that.
The captain of the ISS Tyler Volz, or, the Ballsy, as her crew affectionately called her, kept repeating her new title over and over again in her mind as she made her way to the mess hall. She’d made commander in near-record time, but that was in the before times, before the Swarm had returned, before Britannia had died, before the massive scramble to restaff the surviving and newly-built IDF fleet ships with fresh officers and crew.
Every cadet had been automatically promoted and was told on-the-job training would have to cover the rest of their schooling. There wasn’t necessarily a draft to boost the enlisted numbers, but the signing bonuses offered to fresh recruits was so absurdly high that your average mechanic, plasma hydraulic technician, or high school graduate would be hard-pressed to say no.
And officers like her who’d fought the battle of Penumbra, defeating the Swarm while falling into a black hole and living to tell the tale, were essentially made the senior officer corps of the new fleet.
“There you are,” said a man behind her, just outside the mess hall.
Ethan Zivic. Her Commander of the Air and Space Group. And fiancé. And cheeky rapscallion—her mother’s latest description of her husband-to-be.
His face was red. “My birds are all grounded. All of them. And you want to know why? Some idiot new recruit left the plasma conduits open after a repair, and when the bay’s airlock opened this morning? Bam. Every bird coated in fusion precursor. Gonna take all day to get even half of them cleaned.”
They walked into the mess hall together and were greeted by a line that stretched nearly to the door. Many dozens of impatient officers and crew were making a valiant effort not to look put out that they had to wait for their breakfasts and coffees. Zivic immediately made for the front of the line, but Whitehorse grabbed his shoulder and shook her head. He sheepishly followed her to the back of the line. On her ship, the officers didn’t get special treatment in the mess hall, and she was determined to set the example.
“Sixty-two percent of the fleet is new blood, Ethan, as of last week. Commander Shin-Wentworth has only just finished scheduling out the new shift rotations after the big influx of newbies we got last week. You know what the average length of service was for the new batch?”
“What, two months?” he joked, looking pleased with himself. He thought he’d lowballed the number for comedic effect, clearly.
“Two weeks.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah.” She pointed to the poor recruits who’d been assigned mess hall duties, serving up eggs and French toast and fruit and coffee in a whirlwind, that, despite their frenzied pace, seemed woefully inefficient and slow. “Your deck crew isn’t the only department that’s suffering.”
“We can’t go on like this, Jerusha. We’re just on a diplomatic mission to figure out the Itharan language and establish relations with them. Imagine if we were on a real mission. You know, like one with shooting?”
“Well we’ll have to muddle through, since it’s our only choice. And maybe instead of belly-aching about it, you actually do your job and train the poor things and whip them into IDF shape, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am!” He saluted in an exaggerated caricature of an over-zealous officer.
A loud crash at the front of the line interrupted their banter. One of the newbie scullery crew had just dropped an entire stack of plates on the floor. Good thing they were indestructible, but god, the noise.
“This line ain’t moving, Jeru,” he said, standing on his toes to see what the holdup was. “Are you starting your shift now? You just might want to pull rank. The bridge kinda needs a captain.”
“Finishing my shift, actually. About to head to bed.”
“Oh?” His ears perked up when she said bed.
“Not a chance.” She was watching the commotion at the head of the line. “In fact, I didn’t need my sleep anyway. Come on,” she grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the head of the line.
“Finally! You know, it’s perfectly okay to play the captain card occasionally. I mean, what’s the point of being captain if you can’t jump the coffee line every now and then,” he said.
“Ethan,” she sighed. “We’re not skipping. Final answer.”
“Then what . . . oh no.”
She reached out to the new recruit who was picking up the plates. The entire line had stopped moving because the young man—couldn’t be older than eighteen—had paused his food serving to clean up his mess. When he looked up, the blood drained from his face as he recognized her.
“Captain! I, uh, I’m so sorry. I’ll get this cleaned up.”
“You’ve got quite a line here, recruit.”
His white face became ashen. “I . . . I, uh. Yeah. Yes, ma’am.” He looked over at the woman who’d just come in carrying a giant platter of bacon. “Hey! Get the hell over here and help me get this cleaned up!”
Captain Whitehorse waved her off. “Disregard that order, recruit. You focus on getting these people their breakfast.” She touched the kid’s shoulder. “You too. I’ll pick these up.”
He looked incredulous. “Uh, ma’am?”
“Did I stutter?”
“No, ma’am!” He practically scurried back to the tables where the people at th
e head of the line were waiting impatiently for their food.
“Come on, Ethan, give me a hand.”
“I thought you wanted me to whip the deck crew into shape?”
“After we whip the galley crew into shape.”
“By doing their job for them?”
“Save it, Commander.”
That shut him up. Whenever she used his rank, he knew she meant business and didn’t want him, well, acting like her fiancé.
Between the two of them they gathered the plates and carried them back to the galley to be washed. When they reemerged into the mess hall, the line had barely budged. “Recruit,” she said, pointing to the fresh-faced kid who’d dropped the plates. Who’s in charge?”
“Uh, well technically, I am right now.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I mean, yes, ma’am. I managed a Taco’s ’N More in Sacramento for two years before I signed on. The Chief Steward is off duty, and he made me the Steward’s Assistant just yesterday after the last one practically burned his fingers off making pizzas.”
“Okay then, Steward’s Assistant . . .” she peered at his name tag, “Fenton. Put me to work. You’ve got me for one hour, then I really do need to sleep.”
“Ma’am?” said Fenton.
“Ma’am?” said Ethan.
“Don’t you ma’am, me, Commander,” she said, then to Fenton, “Put us both to work. Come on. Let’s get this line moving.”
Half an hour later, they’d managed to catch up such that the line had shrunk to just a handful, and the kid serving as the Steward’s Assistant was slightly less flustered and nervous than before.
“Okay, Steward’s Assistant Fenton, contrary to popular opinion, the captain needs her sleep. You got it from here?”
His smile beamed practically from ear to ear. “Yes, ma’am!”
She put her hand up in a salute, and he did likewise. “Next week I want a Taco’s ’N More burrito. Haven’t had one of those in ages. Can you manage that here?”
