by Nick Webb
He turned to the medical station next to the bed, and brought up his charts. Scrolling through the various test results and scan images, he settled on a picture of his lungs. Riddled through with black and mottled-red tumors, the healthy tissue was lost in the sea of cancer and necrotic flesh. It was a wonder he was still alive, much less walking around. “Wyatt said we could have prevented this. But I delayed. I procrastinated. I never came in for my scans. And now, this. Stage ten thousand cancer. And you know why I didn’t get those scans?” He looked back at the blanket-draped figure. “I was scared of dying. Terrified. Didn’t want to face it. Didn’t want to acknowledge it might happen—that I’d be forced to retire, confined to a hospital bed and get bed sores all over my ass. And then, boom. Nothing. No thoughts. No feeling. No existing. Just … nothing.”
The ship rumbled. They’d entered battle—he knew.
And he knew there was no chance they’d survive. Zero. None.
And for the first time in decades, staring from the tumor-plagued picture of his lungs to the draped figure of his dead friend, feeling the violent, distant blasts that he knew all too well meant the aliens were hitting them with the unstoppable, deadly, green energy beam, he sobbed, and sat down on his bed, utterly exhausted.
Dammit. What the hell am I doing? he thought, bitterly. Get off your ass and stop blubbering like a child, you moron, he swore at himself. He raked his fingertips across his face and gripped his hair in frustration.
Getting old was a bitch. Dying was a bitch.
He inhaled deeply—damn the pain! He jumped off the bed and ripped the blanket off his friend, revealing the cold, blue figure of Abraham Haws. His eyes were closed. His temple dented.
“Damn you! Abe! Damn you! Where the hell are you when I need you!” He pounded twice on his friend’s chest, then rested his hand on the stiff shoulder, gripping it tight.
The deck rumbled, even more violently than before, and he heard distant explosions. Without a doubt, he knew, the ship had been breached again by the aliens’ energy beam.
His people were dying. And he was sitting on his ass.
Bent low to his friend’s ear, he whispered hoarsely, “I won’t let them. I promise, you’ll be the last one I’ll bury. You’re the last one they’ll get.”
And without another word, wiping his eyes and squaring his chin, he strode out into the main care area. The doctor intercepted him. “Oh no, you don’t, sir.”
“Doctor,” he said, taking the man by the shoulder and looking him in the eye, “I’m afraid you don’t understand the gravity of our situation—”
“Look, Captain, I’ve already told you, it doesn’t matter how grave it is, you can’t be commanding the ship in your state. I just won’t—”
“Shut your damn mouth and listen to me, Armand. I’m not trying to get command back. I’m trying to save the life of everyone in sickbay. This battle here? This is it. This ship is going down, and it’s going down fast. Minutes, not hours.”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed as he processed what Granger was saying, and he started to shake his head as if in disbelief. Granger continued, “It’s true. We don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell against that alien fleet. We’re dead in twenty minutes. And there’s no escape—the engines are damaged beyond repair.” He pointed to all the patients lying in beds and on tables. “We’ve got to get these people to escape pods. When the evac order comes from the bridge we won’t have nearly enough time to save them all. But if we start now, we might.”
“You’re sure?”
“Dead sure.” The irony of his reply was not lost on him.
The doctor regarded him once more, then spun around to his staff, who had all paused to eavesdrop. “Get everyone here to the escape pods. Five patients and one medical staff per pod. Move!”
Every doctor and nurse sprang into action, organizing the wounded into groups for the pods—the critical patients were distributed evenly to all the pods such that they could continue receiving more intense care from a doctor or nurse, and the less seriously wounded filled in from there. Doctor Wyatt oversaw the operation, grabbing what supplies he thought he needed for any eventuality—Granger heard him mutter something about surviving in the wild in case all the major cities were destroyed. Would it come to that? Of course it would, he knew, if the Constitution failed. If he failed.
And in all the bustle and confusion, Granger quietly slipped out the door.
Chapter 62
Low Earth Orbit
X-25 Fighter Cockpit
For the third time that long day, Lieutenant Volz wove in and out, through and under and around the thousands of alien fighters that had come pouring out of the intruding ships, which had seemingly been holding back their swarming hordes until the very end.
And half his squad was gone—Fishtail and Pluck both lost in the previous engagement, and Hotbox in the one before that. “Dogtown, pull up hard. I’ll knock those bogeys off your tail!”
He squeezed off a few shots, and the two alien fighters erupted in a cloud of debris, leaving Dogtown free to swing around and blast his way through a few bogeys angling for one of the laser turrets on the Constitution.
In spite of the thousands of ships disgorged by the alien cruisers, things didn’t seem quite so hopeless this time, at least in the fighter battle. Hundreds, possibly up to a thousand IDF fighters had risen up from the surface to join them, mobilized to defend Earth. They may have been without capital ship support, but they were making the aliens pay a punishing price for their intrusion into low-Earth orbit.
“This is Commander Pierce. All Constitution fighter squadrons, join with Eagle Wing from Fort Walton and focus all firepower on the alien ship at twenty mark two.”
Volz muttered under his breath—he saw how badly the Constitution was being pounded by the alien fleet and knew if they pulled off to assault the alien cruiser the Old Bird’s time would be even shorter. “Come on, Ballsy,” said Dogtown, “let’s get over there and put the little bastard out of its misery.”
He gunned his thrusters, and darted away from the Constitution in a blaze of ion-drive fire. On his port side, he saw another cloud of fighters rise up from the Florida peninsula. Eagle Wing. Just in time to join the assault on the alien cruiser Pierce had indicated. They numbered some five or six dozen Y-52’s, and before he had time to catch his breath, the battle was back on.
“This is Commander Kruger of Eagle Wing. Hello, boys! We’ll tackle the bow if you guys will handle the stern. Let’s take this bitch out!”
They swarmed over the alien cruiser, pelting it with hundreds, thousands of streams of fire, ignoring the hordes of bogeys that had diverted from the main fighter battle to scare them off.
An explosion out his starboard viewport made him wince. Damn—that was one of the Qantas’s fighters. Caught in a crossfire.
They were being torn apart. By focusing all their attention on the alien cruiser, the fighters were being picked off one by one.
But it was working. Judging by the way the massive ship started to list to starboard, the cumulative effect of all their fire was having a devastating effect on it. “Keep it up, boys!” came Commander Pierce’s voice over his headset.
And in a piercing explosion, it was over. The shockwave of the alien ship blasting into two pieces caught him in its wake, and for a moment he thought it was the end, but his fighter’s containment held, and he darted away out of the blast field before getting punctured by high-velocity debris.
“Oh, no….” Commander Kruger, of Eagle Wing, moaned through the speaker. “No. No. No.”
Ballsy looked around, seeing a swarm of alien fighters on his scopes, but that was normal.
Then he saw it.
The familiar shimmering white globe that had begun to form between the invading ships had disappeared. And judging from the massive brown and black cloud over the southern tip of Florida, he knew exactly where it had gone.
Pierce’s voice shouted over the comm. “All fighters! Get your
asses to the ship at forty-two mark five! We can’t let another singularity through!”
Dear lord. The cloud was enormous. It spread and mushroomed higher and higher, looking like the old footage of the first Swarm War, when the aliens struck multiple cities with thermonuclear warheads.
But this was far bigger. Far more devastating. Destruction on an unthinkable scale.
It was hell on Earth.
“Roger,” he said. “Let’s get the hell over there, Dogtown.”
How many had just died? How many lives snuffed out in an instant? How many more were screaming, terrified, as the blast zone continued to expand outward, ripping apart neighborhoods and communities and towns?
He shook his head. No. He couldn’t think about that. Not yet.
Squeezing off a few shots at some passing bogeys, he veered towards the next alien cruiser. On his status screen, he saw that they’d lost over forty fighters in that last assault, and they were down to less than eighty.
The odds were not in their favor.
Chapter 63
Low Earth Orbit
Engineering Section, ISS Constitution
Granger stumbled down the hallway. He’d wanted nothing more than to take Haws with him into one of the soon-to-be departing escape pods, and hopefully arrange for a proper burial once they were on Earth, but it was not to be.
As it was, he was huffing and sputtering for lack of air just to make it down ten decks. The damn Swarm energy beam had cut clear through the main lift. Stopping every deck for a breath, he cursed himself for not getting a secondary lift installed like his XO had demanded five years ago. He thought it unnecessary at the time, but was now regretting his obstinacy. How had Haws put up with him all these years?
Hell, they’d put up with each other—the other man was no picture of perfection himself.
“Are we going to die, Captain?”
Granger nearly stumbled over someone crouched near an open door on a landing. No, he wasn’t crouched, he was just short.
“Cornelius?”
“We’re going to die out here, aren’t we?” His small face looked pained and he spoke softly. A far cry from the incorrigible boy back at Lunar Base.
I am, he thought, but he said, “You will do no such thing.”
“But the ship keeps shaking. I can hear explosions. They … they say the aliens are going to blow up the ship!”
“Over my dead body. Son, I’m going to get you off this ship, get you safely back to Earth, and then I’m going to kick their asses. Got it?” He remembered the boy had liked short, vulgar speeches, and sure enough, his face broke into a small smile. “Look, Dexter, don’t worry. You’ll grow up and race your motorcycles. But first we have to get you and your classmates off the ship. Where’s your teacher?”
Dexter pointed through the open door, down a hallway where Granger saw the teacher trying to keep twenty other schoolchildren calm inside another small conference room. He motioned the woman out into the corridor. “Get the children and follow me. We’ve got to get you all into escape pods.”
A minute later Granger, Dexter, the teacher, the Rainbow’s captain, and twenty children were rushing down the hall. Granger pushed a button on a control panel along the wall, exposing two escape pods. He ushered the teacher into one with ten children, and the Rainbow’s captain into the second with the ten others.
Dexter was the last to climb in. He looked a little less scared than a minute ago, but his face was still drained of color. “Later, Captain. Go kick their asses.”
Granger winked at him. “Watch your mouth. And”—he nodded—“I will.”
The hatch closed and he ensured the pods’ engines fired before continuing down the hall towards the stairwell. With a deep, painful sigh, he started the long descent, wincing with each rumble and explosion as the ship sustained more direct hits from the Swarm invasion force. Proctor had better be giving them a pounding in return.
He stopped—it was deck fifteen, and he knew that beyond the door at the opposite end of the hallway from the stairwell was Afterburners and the observation deck. Huge windows spanned the length of the exterior wall. It was one of the very few places on the ship not guarded by ten meters of solid tungsten armor—here, it was only two meters, and was recessed behind the giant doors to the fighter bay such that, while still affording an excellent view, the windows were not as exposed as they might have been in other areas of the hull.
Hesitating, he made his decision, and jogged the length of the hallway, just to catch a quick view. Get a feel for the lay of the field of battle before he made it to his destination.
The doors slid aside, opening his view up to the wall of windows that looked down on the battle raging outside.
Earth was there. Close, and immediate. It filled up nearly the entire view from the windows.
And the battle raged. Somehow, IDF had managed to scramble up another handful of ships. Not as large as the fleet at Valhalla Station had been, but formidable nonetheless. Nearby, less than a kilometer away, floated one of the alien ships, and it was taking a beating from the Constitution’s mag-rail batteries.
But it, and one of its fellows was walloping the Constitution in return, lancing it with the now familiar deadly green energy beam. A fighter screamed past the window, and Granger jumped as it exploded when another green beam shot straight through it and slammed into the hull just a hundred yards to stern. The explosion nearly threw him off his feet, and he steadied himself against the wall.
He counted. One, two, three, four…. Four. Somehow, against all hope, Proctor had managed to take out two whole alien capital ships by herself. Well, probably with the help of Captain Pickens on the Congress.
Searching the field of battle for the Congress, he almost thought it had already been destroyed. It was nowhere to be seen. Just four alien ships, a handful of IDF heavy and light cruisers, along with a small fleet of frigates and gunships, and a swarm of fighters, both IDF and Swarm. But no Congress.
He caught his breath when he saw her. She drifted out from behind the shadow of one of the alien ships, nearly engulfed in flames shooting out of what looked like a hundred holes dotting her hull.
“No….”
Another green beam lanced out from the alien ship nearest it and ripped into the forward section of the Congress’s hull. The old ship spewed more debris and flame. It lurched.
Moments later, one of its massive rear thrusters exploded, sending the ship into a tailspin as it descended towards the Earth. The faint glow of compressed air lit up like a shell around it as it hurtled through the upper atmosphere, tumbling out of control.
More green beams blasted out from the alien ships towards the Constitution and the ship rocked violently.
It was nearly time. He turned and bolted back down the hallway, and took the stairs two at a time at a speed that would have tired him out thirty years ago.
At last, he rounded the final turn and stepped out onto the landing in front of his destination. Two marines stood at attention as he approached. “Sir!”
“As you were.” He stepped forward.
They didn’t move.
“I’m sorry, sir. No one can go in there. Radiation levels are too high.”
“I know, son. Stand aside. In fact,”—he looked back up the stairwell—“you’re dismissed. Go help the injured to escape pods. The battle’s nearly over.”
The marines looked nervously at the door, then back to him. “Don’t worry,” Granger went on, “I’ll lock it from the inside. No one will get in.”
“But, sir, you’ll die in there.”
He smiled. And it was a genuine smile. “A captain’s got to go down with his ship, son. Once you’re all evacuated, there’s something I have to do. Go.” He pointed back up the stairs, where he could hear the frantic sounds of pounding footfalls and agonized shouting as the injured were dragged out of the damaged sections just above them.
The two marines looked at each other, back at him, and then ran up the stairs,
leaving Granger alone outside the doors.
Did he really want to do this? The radiation would kill him within half an hour. He could just wait until the ship was deserted and carry out his plan from the bridge.
No. He was a dead man anyway. He’d made his decision. There was nothing to fear from the radiation. Nothing could hurt him now. Not even the bloody Swarm. It was remarkable—once he had taken his life into his own hands, once he had decided to face his mortality, he was invincible.
With a smile—his first real smile in weeks—he passed his credentials over the ID reader. The doors slid aside with a groan, and he stepped forward into the warm flood of radiation that bathed engineering.
Chapter 64
Low Earth Orbit
Engineering, ISS Constitution
It was strange—he couldn’t feel the deadly bite of the radiation. There was no indication whatsoever that he was absorbing many dozens of times the accepted yearly dose of radiation every second. But almost as soon as he stepped into engineering, his head lightened, his vision stabilized, and his purpose and final mission became crystal clear.
He dashed across the room to bring up the ship’s status schematic, and immediately saw that the situation was dire. Decompression on nearly a dozen decks. Systems failing. Main power gone. Most mag-rails inoperable. Life support on the fritz.
The Constitution’s time had come.
And so had his. It was the Old Bird’s time to shine. Theirs, together.
His hand hovered over the comm button, ready to message Commander Proctor his intentions, but at the last moment thought better of it. She might try to dissuade him, wasting precious seconds she didn’t have. No, if he knew her, she’d already ordered most personnel to escape pods. He clicked over to general standing orders, and confirmed his suspicions. There was a general evacuation in effect. All hands to escape pods except for the bridge crew. They would leave last, of course.
