Valence (Confluence Book 4)

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  Bonham went on. “As you know, six Americans visited a sectilian ship fourteen years ago. As a result, we’ve been warned about threats that may come from beyond this system. We’ve sent probes throughout our system to monitor strategic points. Three weeks ago, one of these probes recorded these images.”

  A chorus of strangled gasps went up from the crowd. Zara had read Jane’s text file many times, but even she was shocked by the pictures. The gleaming black shells of enormous beetles. Confluos giganus. The Swarm. There had to be at least one hundred in this pod. The camera angle changed to a much closer image. The bugs’ faces were pointed away from the sun, their bodies oddly shaped—short and wide. Then she realized they appeared to be foreshortened due to their velocity. They’d flipped and were burning their organic anatomical drives to slow their momentum in preparation for reaching Earth. Such creatures should have been impossible, but the evidence was right there for them all to see.

  “This is the Swarm. They’ve just entered our solar system, crossed the orbit of Pluto yesterday. We estimate they could reach Earth in just over five weeks.” Bonham’s face filled the screen again. “Dr. Jane Holloway and the sectilian database have told us that they’re capable of consuming every living thing on Earth if we don’t stop them.

  “Look around you. What you see is one people, wearing a single uniform, united with one purpose: to preserve our world. We are the guardians of Earth. We are the beacon of hope in a dark and dangerous universe. This fleet is the pride of Earth, outfitted with the most advanced technology that two different civilizations can offer. In seven days you will be using the sectilian artificial-wormhole drives to jump to the Swarm’s location in the space between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. There, we will engage the enemy and we will defeat them. I am confident that you’ll each do your part.” Bonham nodded and looked down. The screens went dark for a moment.

  The screens lit up again, now displaying Walsh as he stood before them. “You all know who I am, where I’ve been. You know that this ship is the flagship of our fleet. Now you know what we face. We will not allow even one of these bugs to reach Earth, to escape, or to transmit any information about Earth and our defensive capabilities to another pod.” He scanned the crowd for a few moments, then gestured at Zara, indicating it was time for her to come forward. “I will take a few questions.”

  He was running this more like a press conference than a typical address to the troops. Zara moved to his side, doing her best to look calm and poised, though she was nervous as hell. It wasn’t like she hadn’t translated for important people before. She’d done that all the time at NASA. But for Mark Walsh?

  A few people raised their hands. Walsh gestured at a young Asian woman. She spoke in Mensententia. “I’ve been trying to text my husband and my texts aren’t being delivered.”

  Zara translated her words into English.

  Walsh nodded. “As of thirty minutes ago, all personal communication with Earth has been terminated, as a measure of security. I assure you that when we complete our mission, the populace will be informed of our success. But until then, we will protect them from needless worry.” Walsh watched as Zara translated what he said into Mensententia, and then he gestured toward a small dark-skinned man with his hand in the air.

  He also spoke in Mensententia. “What is our estimated chance of success, Captain?”

  After she translated, Walsh looked at the man disdainfully. “We will not fail.” He pulled back from the podium for a second, then leaned in to say, “Your department heads are fully informed and capable of answering any further questions. Dismissed.”

  The screens went off, and the lights in the cargo hold came back up. Walsh, Compton, and the rest of the command officers left the platform and walked out of the cargo hold.

  The crowd immediately began to move toward the exits.

  Zara stepped down from the platform and scanned the crowd until she spotted Ben. He pulled her into a bear hug and introduced her to some of his team members. They all stood around fidgeting and looking uncomfortable. She hoped it wasn’t because she outranked them or because she’d just been standing on the dais.

  “You holding up okay?” Ben asked.

  She nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “That was short,” one of Ben’s teammates remarked in Mensententia.

  “That’s why it’s called a briefing,” Ben retorted with a wry look, no mirth in his voice or expression.

  A woman in a dove-gray hijab that matched her uniform moved past their small group. “I wish I could say I was surprised. They got us all up here in a hurry. I knew something had to be up.”

  Zara looked around uneasily. She was glad everyone knew now. Most of the faces Zara saw were expressionless or displayed little more than determination. A few people looked paler than usual and drawn, probably scared or worried. Everyone would deal with the news in their own way.

  Zara felt a sense of vague anxiety. She was more than a little numb. She’d known about the contents of this announcement for two days, but she’d been kept so busy that she just dropped dead on her bunk at the ends of her shifts. She hadn’t had time to think about any of it. Everything was happening so fast that it didn’t seem real. Her main emotion was grief over leaving behind her entire support network. Maybe if she’d had someone to talk to about all of this, it would feel different.

  Ben put his hand on her shoulder. It felt so comforting. “Hey, we’ve got a lot to do in the next seven days, so we better get started. Text me if you have time to grab some chow, okay?”

  “I’ll do that.” She tried to smile, but her lips just wobbled a little. She watched Ben depart with his teammates, then hurried to return to the command deck.

  49

  IMMEDIATELY, Brai knew something had gone wrong.

  Every kuboderan in the anipraxic network knew something had gone wrong.

  Hot panic flooded every cell of his body. Quickly he checked and rechecked Pio’s calculations, his thoughts speeding with a rapidity he’d never experienced before.

  Then they turned to sludge.

  They were all checking the calculations, simultaneously. He sensed them all reaching the same conclusion. This shouldn’t be happening.

  He drifted between thoughts. He was aware of a stillness punctuating his mental impulses in arrhythmic staccato sequences. Communications with the others in the anipraxic network pulsed in and out of phase. He felt his blood pressure rise as he attempted to overcome the disturbance through sheer force of will. It was insurmountable.

  Until it wasn’t. His brains surged, as though his body had stopped but his mental momentum had not. The voices in his head were screaming, discordant wails of fear.

  Every kuboderan feared this.

  A wormhole failure.

  The non-kuboderans only knew incomprehensible wrongness. They had yet to understand that they were caught in the open mouth of the wormhole. He tried to explain to Jane but was cut off midthought. Nothingness. Surge. He tried again.

  What had gone wrong?

  Pio, repeating: “Look to below starboard of the Oblignatus. A mass.” Again. Then again. She was trying to get through to the rest of the group.

  Every eye turned. Every tentacle reached out like a whip to adjust a monitor to view the Oblignatus’s exterior cameras.

  The out-of-sync periodicity returned.

  His hearts quit beating for long moments.

  He sucked in great gulps of water, desperate to achieve enough gas exchange, anything to compensate for these interruptions.

  Jane burst inside his mind, larger than life. “What do we do?”

  All he could say to her was, “Working.”

  There was an additional mass that had entered the wormhole with them. A Swarm beetle? More than one? It was anchoring them just inside, because it had not been part of Pio’s calculations.

  Someone said, “Can we recalculate?”

  That didn’t make sense. Were they proposing opening another wormhole within a
wormhole? The mass was unknown. He could not calculate for that. No one could. He’d never heard of a wormhole generated from within a wormhole. The laws of physics changed on the inside. It was impossible. He could not make that calculation.

  “No.”

  “No.”

  “No.”

  Would they remain stuck there, skipping in and out of reality for eternity?

  “If we destroy the mass, the conversion to energy might momentarily allow us to pass through. The wormhole might absorb the energy, freeing us.”

  Had he thought that? Said that? Or had someone else?

  He grappled with reality, to not fade away.

  Jane said, “Pio—fire laser cannons at the mass.”

  Blankness.

  Pio fired.

  And missed. The space-time distortion bent the waves of light. The beam scattered and collapsed.

  “I can’t aim properly!”

  “Keep trying.”

  She fired again.

  The laser bent back upon itself.

  “Stop firing! The Corgnomon has been hit!”

  Alan’s mental voice, raging with insight. “The blink drive, Pio. Create a warp bubble around the mass—surround it with normal space-time. Then fire.”

  Calculations. Cross-checking. Readiness.

  Emptiness that stretched on and on.

  Implementation. Pio fired again and again, relentlessly.

  The mass disintegrated. Pio dropped the warp bubble.

  And they were through.

  50

  February 9, 2031

  ZARA SPENT every waking hour of the next seven days translating correspondence and communications for senior officers and looking up information in the sectilian database. Then there were the conferences held on the Aegis because it was the flagship. They were long and the atmosphere of every meeting was charged.

  Every scrap of information about the Swarm and every detail about every documented encounter with the enemy the Sectilius had ever recorded was picked apart in excruciating detail. Arguments often broke out about the age of the intel, the veracity of any particular data point as it compared to another, and whether information should be trusted or ignored.

  The weight of the world was on her shoulders. If she missed some crucial bit of information, if she were inaccurate in the most minute shade of meaning, it could mean life or death for too many people for her to comprehend. She worried she wasn’t good enough. That they hadn’t had enough time to prepare. There were new ships in the shipyards, but they were months from completion. There wouldn’t be time to get them ready to defend their world. The crews had been trained, but the bulk of them were inexperienced in battle, aside from simulations. It all felt too fast.

  The upcoming fight could mean a future for Earth or no future at all.

  Her only solace was that she wasn’t the only person combing through all of this. There were dozens of interpreters of the highest skill level working right alongside her from all over the globe. Surely they’d pick up on anything she missed and vice versa. When they looked at each other across the table, she saw the kinship of their shared misery and fierce determination in their eyes.

  The most frustrating part of the process was that every conversation between the leaders of the Earth United military went through several rounds of translation because few of the fleet’s officers were proficient enough with the language for this level of discussion. Questions would start in the speaker’s native language, then be converted to Mensententia, and from there they had to do interpretations in Mandarin, English, Russian, and more, until everyone was up to speed. Then the replies were orchestrated in reverse. It took forever, and the process got on everyone’s nerves. Tempers ran high and the opinions expressed became increasingly pithy, disregarding all nicety just to save time and effort. The process bred misunderstandings and on occasion nearly led to blows.

  One of the major differences between the Aegis and a sectilian class-six dreadnought was the absence of a kuboderan to control navigation and communication, among a host of other things. While she didn’t think a kuboderan normally served as a translator, having one would probably speed up this process in some way.

  A German colonel stood up and shouted in English, “We need a break! We just spent fifty-seven minutes discussing a battle for which we do not know the precise number or types of ships involved, the number of casualties, or even how many adult Confluos were present. We’re wasting our time. Please. Let us take a break.” He collapsed back in his seat, and all of the translators began murmuring to their officers.

  Zara glanced at Walsh and Compton. Walsh, who as fleet admiral ran the meetings, nodded. “Call for a break.”

  She stood and made the announcement in Mensententia. Almost instantly the doors to the room opened as the occupants fled. Zara, Walsh, Compton, and Bonham were the only ones left in the room. Bonham rose slowly and leaned against the table. “Wagner’s right.”

  Walsh shook his head. “If we don’t turn over every stone… There’s too much at stake.”

  Compton’s lips were pressed together in a thin line. “It’s tedious, but we can’t leave anyone out of the loop or we’ll be accused of taking over. This has to remain an international effort in every respect.”

  No one had any better ideas, so they continued on, analyzing, interrupting, and clarifying until they’d come up with a final battle plan.

  The days seemed interminably long as they passed, but when they were finished, she realized another precious day had slipped through her fingers. What kind of life would she have led if she hadn’t stolen the files from her dad’s laptop all those years ago? Would she be blissfully unaware of all this taking place in orbit around Earth? It was strange to realize that it was entirely possible that none of this might be happening at all if not for her.

  And where was Jane Holloway? Why hadn’t she come back with help or fresh information? What could be keeping her away from her home for so long? Was she in danger or dead somewhere out there? Had she been able to get to the United Sentient Races and let them know that Earth was real and they needed to work together?

  If Earth were truly a seed planted by the Cunabula that was meant to save the rest of the galaxy from the Swarm and others like them, surely the United Sentient Races would see that humanity was just in its infancy. It needed to be nurtured, helped to grow. If the galaxy’s other sentients left them to die, they were sealing their own fate. The Swarm would nip humanity in the bud, and any chance for the rest of the galaxy would die on the vine.

  The download just wasn’t enough.

  On the last day before the fleet was due to leave, Zara finished writing her notes from the final planning session and closed her laptop. She looked up, expecting the conference room to be empty. Compton still lingered. He rose, looking weary, and closed his own laptop. “You’ve done well, First Lieutenant. Several of the officers have recommended you for a commendation for your patience and competence.”

  She didn’t deserve such praise. She wasn’t working any harder than anyone else. Couldn’t they see that? They were all just doing their best. All of them. As a team.

  A surge of emotion welled up inside her, fatigue making it impossible to control. She should just say thank you and gather her things to go. She looked down and bit her lip, willing the feeling to subside. That seemed to make it worse. A tear fled down her cheek and she was sure the struggle must have visibly played over her face. She was mortified at the display. What was wrong with her? Why was she acting so stupid? She didn’t want him to think that she was crying because she’d been waiting to be noticed. That was the opposite of how she felt. She stood and turned away from him and breathed deeply, looking up at the ceiling until she could master herself. “Thank you, but the teams work well together. It’s not just me.”

  When she glanced back at Compton, he had a kind and understanding look on his face. “It won’t always be like this. When your generation fully comes to power, Earth will have become
a fully Mensententia-speaking world. These are growing pains, Zara. But until that day comes, sadly, you need old codgers like us.”

  It was an attempt to lighten the mood, to help her get through this. He’d understood. They’d chosen the perfect XO for this ship.

  She couldn’t say the things that were actually on her mind: that she was terrified they’d never have the chance to do what he said. Saying them would mean that he’d have to comfort her further, and she couldn’t lay that at his feet, knowing all the responsibility he bore already. She tried to smile, but she didn’t think she was very successful.

  He rubbed his face. “Go get some sleep if you can. I’ll see you on the bridge in a few hours.”

  She plodded toward her small, sterile room. Her roommate was on an opposite shift and wouldn’t be there. In the corridors people gathered in small groups, talking in hushed tones, sharing meaningful touches, even kisses. In twenty-four hours some of these people might not be among them anymore. Everyone was painfully aware of that, and they were saying whatever goodbyes to each other that they needed to.

  She absently checked her phone. She didn’t expect there to be any messages, and there weren’t. She’d never gotten together with Ben for a meal. There just hadn’t been time. She wished now that she’d found a way to make time. A friendly face might have helped these last few days feel less lonely.

  Inside, a new ache formed around her heart as she dwelled on the lovers she’d seen in the corridors. She was twenty-seven years old and had never had a serious relationship. She spent ninety-five percent or more of her waking hours working. She’d had crushes but never acted on them for many reasons, none of which seemed good enough in this moment.

  Most of the people she worked with were twenty to thirty years older than her, and the taboo against fraternizing with MSTEM scholars had lingered even after she’d grown past the age of consent. The most intimate relationships she had were with her roommates, and while they’d fooled around from time to time, trying nearly every sexual configuration in a vain attempt to blow off steam, it had never led to anything because there just weren’t enough hours in the day to maintain anything serious. All their lives were devoted to the cause—to preparing for the very thing they were about to do. They hadn’t had the opportunity to be teenagers or young adults in the historic sense.