by Nick Webb
The fighters immediately dropped away, pulling most of the swarm fighters with them, and the heavy cruisers formed a perimeter around the Swarm carriers, who continued pounding away at the IDF ships around them, seemingly unaware of the coming threat.
Ten seconds later, one of the Swarm carriers started erupting in explosions from unseen mag rail slugs and ten seconds after that the first ship of Sigma Wing blazed past in the blink of an eye. Several of the enemy carriers shot anti-matter beams after it, but to no avail—it was hundreds of kilometers away already, circling around for its next pass.
The next Sigma Wing ship flew by, then a third and a fourth in rapid succession. The addition of the cruisers’ massive speed to the already-fast mag rail slugs created projectiles with astoundingly high kinetic energy, and the absence of an easy-to-hit target appeared to confound the Swarm.
That was their one failing. For all their overwhelming firepower and speed, the Swarm seemed to lack strategy. He marveled how they could build such advanced spaceships with devastating weaponry like anti-matter beams and the singularity torpedoes, and yet fail in their ability to counter unconventional space warfare tactics. They couldn’t seem to think on their feet—or whatever it was they used to move around. Not that he was complaining about that particular defect.
One Swarm carrier exploded, then the next. Soon there were only two left as the final Sigma Wing ship blasted past, visible for only a second or so. The first Gamma Wing ship would be there in five seconds.
Four.
Three.
Two.
On the viewscreen, one hundred kilometers away, the incoming Gamma Wing ship, the ISS Mayflower, exploded.
“WHAT?!”
Granger bolted upright and reared upon the tactical station. “What happened?”
“It was hit by something, sir. Examining the blast signature now….”
The next Gamma Wing ship was fast approaching.
Four.
Three.
Another explosion. Another cruiser lost. Most lives snuffed out.
“Sir! I don’t know how we missed it, but another fleet q-jumped in right above us. Fifty kilometers higher orbit.”
“Swarm?”
Ensign Diamond shook his head. “No, sir. These readings match the Dolmasi ships we encountered before.”
Dammit.
A third explosion illuminated the screen. He waved over to Proctor. “Abort Granger Three. Call them off. Change course. All of them are to reassemble and make a run at the Dolmasi.”
He turned back to the comm. “All Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Wing ships, let’s finish off these last two carriers and join the others. Granger out.”
Proctor waved him down. “Tim,” she started, lowering her voice once he’d approached the XO’s station, “we’ve got to get out of here. We have no idea how many more are coming. We’ve made our point—they’ll be on the lookout now for attacks in their own space.”
“We can’t retreat.”
She shook her head. “Not retreat. Regroup. This was our plan—hit them hard, then fade away into interstellar space before emerging to hit them again, always avoiding their larger forces. Well this counts as a larger force.”
She glanced down at her console. “Sigma and Gamma wings are assembled, about to move against the Dolmasi.” She looked back up at him. “There’s still time. Let’s cut our losses and fight another day.”
She was right, dammit.
He was about to give the order to leave the system when the sensor officer and comm officer both spoke simultaneously.
“Sir, the Dolmasi—”
“—carriers all ceased fire—”
“—incoming transmission—”
“—all at the same time, sir.”
“—they’re asking to speak directly to you.”
Granger tried to parse both announcements at once. He glanced at his tactical readout and confirmed—both remaining Swarm ships had ceased fire. He turned to Ensign Prucha at comm. “The Dolmasi want to talk to me? They named me?”
“Aye, sir. Incoming visual signal.”
Bewildered, Granger pointed to the monitor on the wall. “On screen, then.”
A familiar sight greeted him.
“Captain Granger. We meet again.” Vishgane Kharsa’s scaled face appeared on the screen. “And this time, it is you who are in our space.”
Granger smirked. “I suppose you’re going to ask us politely to leave?”
If the Vishgane had any emotional reaction it certainly didn’t show in his expression. “No. This time I ask for a meeting. Face to face. I offer to come aboard your ship that we might talk. As warriors and potential future allies and friends.”
Chapter 32
Epsilon Garibaldi Four, Epsilon Garibaldi System
High Orbit
Shit.
Ballsy grimaced as he saw the singularity growing larger ahead of him, the brightness filling his viewport.
He veered away to miss the singularity himself, hoping that the trajectory of the debris would carry it into the shimmering hole, disrupt it, and snap the connection to his own fighter at the same time.
Probably wouldn’t survive the blast, though. Did this make him a hero? He grunted. He was about to die, and all the heroes were dead anyway, so why not?
His fighter lurched as it caught a few rounds of bogey fire on its wing, and the Swarm fighter flew by, strafing him and the debris both. The starboard thrusters shuddered, and his craft veered to the left, pulling the debris with it, out of the path of the singularity. He groaned as they both flew by it, just meters to spare.
“Dammit!”
He’d lost any favorable momentum and approach vector. That was it—he had only one choice.
Go in himself. Sacrifice his fighter, and his life, so that the others could continue the fight.
Hell, maybe he’d even find Fishtail on the other side. In fact, now that the decision seemed to be made for him, he felt an uneasy peace—knowing he was either about to die, or go through and see his old squadmate, or both.
“Yeehaw!”
A voice hollered out of his comm set, and he looked all around, searching for the source.
“Get out of the way, you moron!” Pew Pew’s voice called out again, and that’s when Ballsy saw it.
And swore again.
Pew Pew, his fighter mostly disabled, was pushed up against another piece of debris, using only his landing thrusters to guide the chunk of metal on a looping, spiraling, semi-chaotic course. With another curse Ballsy pressed on the accelerator and veered out of the way.
And just in time.
The debris connected with the singularity, and the three objects exploded together in a piercing light.
But not before Ballsy saw something shoot out from the fighter, away from the explosion.
When the blast subsided, he breathed easier. The shock wave bowled over him, and more debris caught in the blast front slammed into a few Swarm fighters nearby.
But Pew Pew was gone. Shit—that guy had lived through everything. Always throwing himself at the craziest situations. Always disappearing and being given up for dead, only to reappear at the last—
“Ballsy, you gonna come get me, or what?”
Volz laughed, and shook his head. “You didn’t….”
“I did. Ejected at the last second. I’m about to run into a mighty big cumrat ship though, and turn into a soupy blob myself, so I reckon you might want to make all available haste in getting your ass over here.”
Still laughing at the absurdity of it—making a crazy suicidal run at the singularity, failing, only to be bailed out by a similar suicidal run, and then having to rescue his rescuer—and within a moment he had his friend on the radar.
He swooped past and matched velocity, glancing out his rear to verify at least some length of cable was still there.
It was. Just a few meters, but it was enough.
“All right, Pew Pew, grab on. Don’t get roasted in my ion trail
—I hear those bastards can get toasty.”
The Swarm carrier loomed closer and closer, and he nudged his craft toward his flailing friend, tumbling and twisting out in the vacuum as he careened toward the enemy ship. Only a few seconds left before they both smeared against the hull….
“Got it! Go!”
Ballsy nudged the left wing’s thruster to ease them out of the way. Too much acceleration and Pew Pew would fly off the cable and smash into the Swarm hull.
They weren’t going to make it.
“Ballsy, punch it! Don’t worry, I’ll hold on! Got it tied around my waist!”
Swearing again, he pushed more power to the thruster and they sailed out of the way, sending Pew Pew wrapping around him in a wide arc.
But they missed the hull. By only three meters, but a win was a win.
“Yeehaw!” Pew Pew called again. Ballsy puffed air in disbelief—it was a wonder the other man could still breath.
He glanced at his radar and saw, with satisfaction, that Fodder and Spacechamp had managed to knock out the other singularity. And if his readings were correct, they were even still alive.
But his radar showed something else. New contacts. Lots of them.
Dolmasi ships. But they weren’t firing yet. No fighters belched out from their bays.
But it was inevitable. They’d come. And with Pew Pew hanging on by a literal thread, they’d both die.
Time for yet another miracle.
Chapter 33
Wyoming, North America, Earth
Squaretop Mountain Production Facility
“Dead?” Conner’s face went red. “How? When? But—”
This was just awful. Isaacson never learned how to console anyone, much less a man-child freshly graduated from high school. He’d never wanted kids. Now everyone on the shuttle was probably expecting him to … well, do something.
Sighing, he went into empathetic politician mode. The I feel your pain mode. He stood up and sat next to him, putting his arm around the kid’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Conner. There was an accident. They wouldn’t say what exactly happened, but they say he died fast. Painlessly.”
Rather than sob, the young man was completely emotionless. “He was the last one. The only family I had. Now I’m it. Alone,” he said, his voice dead.
Isaacson did his best to console the kid, but in the end there was little he could do. The shuttle landed, and Isaacson went down the ramp with Levin. A soldier was waiting for them on the launch pad. He spoke in his chief’s ear. “Look after the kid. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
Levin nodded, and returned to the shuttle. The soldier held up a hand to salute, then to shake Isaacson’s. “Mr. Vice President, I’m Colonel Titler. Welcome to the Squaretop Mountain production facility. Allow me to show you inside.”
From the launch pad they walked up to what looked like an old shack set against a low hill. Beyond the hill, just a kilometer away, rose a sizable mountain, which, as the name suggested, appeared flat on top. Once inside, he saw that the interior actually spread out and away under the hill, and, like the small building above the military complex in D.C., it served mainly as a checkpoint and security processing station.
“General Norton said you wanted me to show you around. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by our progress. When the president showed up last month we were still scaling up production. Heh—she wasn’t too happy with us. Now you can report back and assure her we’ve improved our process flow.”
Isaacson nodded. Clearly the officer thought he was there on an inspection tour, sent by the administration. He’d get more information out of the colonel by playing along. “Very good, Colonel Titler. President Avery will be most pleased.”
The colonel showed him through a few sets of doors, then down an elevator, through more doors, and down yet another elevator, plunging deep into the Earth.
“How long ago did you start this facility up?”
Colonel Titler opened a door for him and led him through into an antechamber. Giant windows looked out onto what looked like a production floor. Dozens of people in full-body hazmat suits roamed the area, some carrying small sample bottles or vials, others pushing grav-lifts of storage containers.
“A few years ago. But we didn’t ramp up production until two months ago. You know, when the war started. General Norton called the next day and ever since it’s been a madhouse around here. We staffed up, retooled our production chambers where the material is produced, and now we can get through about ten kilos a day.”
All the talk was gibberish to him, but one part caught Isaacson’s ear. “A few years ago?”
“Yes, sir. Right at the beginning of the first term of Avery’s administration.”
Interesting. A weaponized anti-matter facility created at the beginning of Avery’s tenure, right in the middle of the implementation of the Eagleton Commission, no less.
“Ten kilos, huh? Tell me, what does that translate to? About a thousand bombs a month?” he said, remembering the figure General Norton had quoted him in the MUNCENT facility underneath the capitol.
Colonel Titler chuckled. “More like fifty-thousand, sir. I think President Avery will be quite pleased with our progress, like I said.”
Fifty-thousand? What in the world was Avery going to do with fifty-thousand anti-matter bombs per month? She must have one hell of a war strategy up her sleeve.
But what was she originally going to do with all that anti-matter if the Swarm had not invaded?
Isaacson smiled. “She sure will.” He watched the production crew wheel a giant pallet onto the floor, and begin unstacking its contents. “You sure had to acquire new staff pretty quickly. Happy with the people?”
Colonel Titler nodded. “Yeah, they’re working out. All draftees, of course. Got a crew of about ten thousand that keeps this place running. You wouldn’t know it by that shack outside, would ya’?” He laughed. “Actually, we’ve got other entrances scattered around the local town. Can’t have workers without bars, brothels, and restaurants now, can you?”
Isaacson grinned. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Titler made a slight choking noise. “Yeah, heh. Well I was kidding. These are mostly scientist and engineering types. They wouldn’t know a brothel if it bit them in the ass. Mostly recruited from the Ivies and other big tech and science schools. They wanted the best of the best for this operation—brightest minds, and all that. Mistakes can kill. And stupid workers make dead workers.”
Scientists and engineers. Total war, indeed. He’d read the statistics. Every single able-bodied person below the age of forty had been drafted, and millions more older than that had volunteered. No one was overlooked. Every profession was represented. In centuries past, the elite classes might have avoided such duties. Not this time. Everyone—especially the ones with a technical background—was fair game.
Conner’s brother—he’d been in science, hadn’t he? Had things turned out differently, the young man might have been drafted into the anti-matter research and production program, and would be down there on one of the production floors below. Hell, Conner would have been able to go in and harass him for a few minutes while Isaacson talked. If only.
“Ten thousand workers, huh? Need any more? Are your needs met?”
Colonel Titler nodded. “We’re just about at capacity, sir. Any more and we’ll have to set up more barracks and living facilities. As it is we’ve got people sleeping in shifts.”
“Good. I’ll pass the word on to the president. Excellent work here, Colonel.”
An hour later, on the shuttle, Conner didn’t say a word, and Isaacson didn’t try to draw the kid out. He sat ensconced with Levin in the back, thumbing through documents the intelligence and secret services had provided him with, trying to piece the puzzle together.
“I don’t get it, Hal. The only source of anti-matter bombs is our own military. I just went and inspected the material production. Colonel Titler runs a tight ship—I don�
�t see how he could let anything slip through his fingers and into the wrong hands.”
The national news was playing on a screen in the cabin, and the news anchor announced the results of the previous day’s battles with the Swarm: ten ships lost during the last engagement at New Dublin and the Centauri Systems.
Isaacson snorted—the administration’s propaganda arm had been busy. He knew the true losses were far higher. He watched as Captain Granger’s face flashed on the screen, with images of a giant parade in his hometown of Boise on repeat in the background. Damn. The man was a legend in his own time. It was a wonder they hadn’t promoted him to Fleet Admiral already.
Levin shrugged. “Maybe there are other production facilities?”
Isaacson thought about that. “Others? Seems unlikely. Titler told me that they produce enough material for fifty-thousand bombs per month. General Norton told me his facility under D.C. only made a thousand casings per month. So if anything, there must be other manufacturing facilities making casings for all this anti-matter. Maybe forty-nine more, if the layouts are the same. I can’t imagine they’d need any more production facilities.”
The news continued, playing footage reels of the battle over New Dublin, emphasizing, of course, the destruction of the Swarm vessels. Eventually, the images changed to damaged houses and shots of dusty, barren terrain—the news anchor had switched topics.
And in other news this evening, residents of Wendover, Nevada report feeling a powerful earthquake this morning. Geological survey equipment recorded the quake as registering at seven point one on the Richter scale, an unusually large tremblor this far from the usual fault lines out west. There are several reports of witnesses seeing fireballs out in the Utah salt flats and hearing an explosion at the time of the quake, but those reports are not independently confirmed at this time. We’ll have more on this story as it develops.
“Well look at that, Hal.” He pointed at the screen. “I wonder if we’ve found ourselves another anti-matter production facility.”
