by Nick Webb
“You’re telling me this stuff can literally infect someone? Is it communicable?” asked Granger.
Proctor shrugged. “No idea. I still need to run a whole gamut of tests—I only just discovered this before you walked in. Usually doing science like this requires protocols and controls and all that shit, but I’m kinda bootstrapping here, flying by the seat of my pants. Science at light speed.”
Unbelievable. If the Swarm could not only put someone under their influence, but have that influence spread like a viral infection, then everyone on the ship could be at risk. Hell, everyone on Earth and throughout inhabited space.
But, no. If the Swarm virus were truly communicable, Earth would have been overthrown long ago.
It didn’t make sense.
“And one more thing: I’m not sure about this, but the evidence is compelling, based on what we know about Swarm communication. These metallic groups within the proteins … they’re set up in such a configuration that makes graviton-based manipulation possible. It’s really … quite remarkable.”
Unbelievable. “You’re telling me that the meta-space signal not only has organic patterns, but is organically generated?”
She nodded. “It’s incredible. I don’t completely understand it yet, but if it’s true, that would explain the Vishgane’s ability to communicate with the Swarm without any type of comm device.”
Interesting. With communication abilities like that, it was no wonder the Swarm was able to coordinate such vast and varied forces from such large distances.
“Keep at it, Shelby. I’ll get out of here and leave you to it. Keep me apprised of any breakthroughs.”
She raised her eyebrow and returned to look through her scope. “Oh, believe me, you’ll hear about it.”
He smiled—it was nice to see her absorbed in her work—she’d seem distracted of late. He knew she loved commanding a starship, and longed for a ship of her own. But she just seemed so … driven. Happy was the wrong word since recent events really did preclude anyone feeling any joy whatsoever, but single-mindedly driven and purposeful seemed appropriate words.
Once on the bridge, he summoned the captains of the main attack wings on conference call. Their faces tiled the screen on the wall, each showing immense relief at the news they’d be going back to Earth.
“We’ve just got to confirm this first, Tim. Very prudent,” said Captain Connelly.
Granger squinted. “We’re not returning to Earth to confirm, Connelly. We’re going back to summon the rest of the fleet. We’re going all in on this.”
Captain Barnes shook his head. “If you can convince the president, then yes.” The words hung in the air between all of them. The implication was obvious—Barnes, and several of the other captains, judging by the solemn uncomfortable looks on their faces, didn’t think the president or Admiral Zingano would go for it.
“I’ll convince her. Volari is it. I know it.” He debated telling them all the truth. That he was starting to remember his vacation, as several of the crew had started calling it. That he could remember looking down on this planet so clearly it was like he could see it with his very eyes.
But they wouldn’t understand. That would raise their suspicions even more. If he let on that he was trying to get the whole IDF fleet to this mystery planet based on what they would call nothing more than a hunch and a dream, they’d probably mutiny and take the fleet away from him and haul him back to Earth in the brig for being a Swarm agent.
Hell, he didn’t even know if he was a Swarm agent or not. Hurry up, Shelby.
“We’ll depart immediately. Stay tuned for our flight plan—we’ll link up nav computers shortly.”
“Through Russian space?” asked Captain Connelly.
Granger nodded. “Yes.”
“Not going to ask for permission this time, Tim?” said Captain Barnes with a wry grin.
“I think not. I hope they don’t mind. And if they do, then they can go shove it up their—”
A blaring klaxon interrupted him. All five captains on the screen simultaneously looked around quickly as they heard the alarms on their own vessels.
“Captain!” Ensign Diamond waved him down. “We’ve got company!”
Chapter 53
Near Penumbra System
Bridge, ISS Warrior
“Who?” Granger punched fingers at his tactical display, seeing the new sensor contacts appear.
Shit. They were all around them. Coming in from every vector. Completely surrounded.
This ought to be an interesting fight.
“Swarm, sir. So far I’m reading thirty carriers. And that’s not all, sir. There’s Dolmasi ships out there, too.”
Granger looked back at the screen, a momentary look of horror on his face. There was no way the Swarm could know they were there. Or the Russians. Or the Dolmasi. That was the point of deep space rendezvouses. You didn’t hang around at some random point in deep space because of the scenery. You did it because space was immensely, hugely, massive. The chances of anyone simply stumbling upon you were near zero.
Captain Connelly grumbled. “We’ve got to go, Tim.”
He nodded. “Agreed.”
“Send over the coordinates,” said Barnes.
Granger shook his head. “No. Split up. Get to Earth on your own vectors. Pick random directions and meet back up there by tomorrow.”
“What?” Captain Connelly looked incredulous, as did the others. But it made sense. If the Swarm knew they were here, it meant that someone on the Warrior was broadcasting coordinates to them. Dammit—they’d probably been doing that all along. What else could explain the Swarm at Epsilon Garibaldi, or the Dolmasi trap there?
“If we go together it means we’re going to be intercepted many more times before we ever get back to Earth.” He sighed—the truth would have to come out eventually. No sense hiding it now. “There’s a chance we’ve got a Swarm sleeper cell over here, people.”
Silence among the captains. He supposed they were all thinking the same thing. That Granger was the sleeper agent. Or the active agent, more likely. Connelly shook his head. “No, Tim. It could be someone on any of our ships.”
Granger nodded. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Wherever the agent is, they’re broadcasting our coordinates. No. Get back to Earth however you can. We’ll rendezvous there and discuss our next moves. Go.”
The screen flickered off, replaced by the image of a scattering IDF fleet. “Swarm vessels converging, sir. Fifty thousand kilometers and closing.”
“And sir,” said Ensign Prucha, “the Dolmasi flagship is hailing us. Visual.”
“Prepare q-jump coordinates,” he said to Ensign Prince before nodding to Ensign Prucha at comm.
The Dolmasi’s familiar face flashed onto the screen. “Captain Granger, I can’t say I’m happy to see you here, but I also can’t say I’m surprised. You were told to proceed directly to Earth to bring our demands to your president. And yet you are still here.”
Granger shrugged. “We asked the Russians if we could pass through their space. They denied us passage. Therefore we have to go the long way around.”
“And yet you are still here,” repeated Vishgane Kharsa.
“We’ve never travelled this region of space before, sir. It is not wise to just q-jump our way through it without stopping on occasion to take scans and make adjustments to our course.”
A good bluff, he supposed. Not bad for coming up with it on the fly. The Dolmasi’s face did not look convinced, however.
“It is too late for you, Captain Granger. Prepare to be boarded. The Valarisi have had enough of this nonsense—you will all be made allies.”
“Fat chance.” Granger smirked. He made ready to give the order to q-jump. On his tactical screen he saw that over half his fleet had already left.
Vishgane Kharsa choked on a laugh. “I suppose you think you’re going somewhere? Think twice, Captain Granger. You, too, will be made an ally. Again.”
Chapter 54
Near Penumbra System
Science Laboratory, ISS Warrior
Viral. The damn thing is viral. Proctor had run the scans at least a dozen times, and every single one confirmed it. In spite of random morphologies—she saw any number of vertices, capsomers, and pentons, some with tails, some with no discernible structure at all—it was clear.
This thing was built with one purpose in mind: evade capture and destruction. And probably, she supposed, the ability to control any host it infected. So varied were the morphologies and functional groups, it was obvious this virus had come into contact with dozens, maybe hundreds, of other species.
For another hour she ran a few tests, and, with a burst of inspiration, ran a few experiments. Most of the functional groups seemed to have certain heavy metals in them. Metals that might bind to certain alkali elements if introduced properly.
The problem was, the heavy metals also harbored cyanide-based compounds. Cyanide was deadly. Remarkably so. She supposed it was another defense mechanism—kill too many viruses, and the host will die a painful, cyanide-induced death.
She needed to find out how Swarm-infected blood would respond. The three pilots were dead. That left Hanrahan as the only possible suspect. True, he’d managed to get away from that explosion of the Swarm fighter—Doc Wyatt hadn’t found a trace of the stuff on him—but he was her only lead.
With little alternative, she marched down the hall and boarded the lift for the fighter deck. He liked to keep his post near the fighter bay since he often directed security and Hazmat operations during flight ops. She nodded at passing pilots and deck crew as they passed by her with informal salutes. She liked to maintain discipline onboard, but she also wanted a rapport with the officers and crews—no sense making them resent her by insisting on tiny details in protocol.
There he was. Ahead of her, in the hall, talking with some marines, his back toward her. If he was Swarm-infected, he would most likely find some reason not to give her a blood sample. That was his right—no officer or crewman had to submit to any medical procedure they didn’t want to. She’d have to find another way besides asking.
She approached from behind, coming in close, then intentionally catching her foot on the deckplate. As she fell with a short cry, she pulled a tiny meta-syringe out of her pocket and pressed it against the back of his calf.
“Commander!” cried one of the marines who started to reach down to help.
Hanrahan pulled the marine back. The next moment, Proctor’s vision dazzled as something connected with her forehead. On instinct, she rolled away and sprang to her feet. She risked a glance back as she ran and saw Hanrahan brandishing the butt of his rifle again.
“Arrest her!” he grumbled to his men. They hesitated for a split second, then sprang into action as they advanced on her. Proctor bolted, head still spinning, weaving in and out of the traffic in the hall, literally pushing them aside in order to block the path of her pursuers. Adrenaline surged, and part of her mind noted with mild surprise that it was quite easy to toss people around like that. The other part said only one thing.
Survive.
Chapter 55
Washington D.C., Earth
Munitions Center, IDF Administration Building
Isaacson had to stop it. It was genocide, pure and simple. He nearly ran down the steps of the entrance to the IDF administration building, Conner close behind. As he expected, his secret service detail was waiting for him outside.
“Sir, how can you expect us to protect you when you give us the slip like that?”
Isaacson scowled. “I might have more confidence in your ability to protect me if it wasn’t so easy to give you the slip, mister. How long was it before you’d realized I’d left?”
His head of security shut his mouth in frustration, then motioned his arm toward the waiting car. Isaacson started toward it, then stopped.
No, he had more business inside the administration building. He turned around and walked back up the steps. The security detail fell into step behind him, Conner trailing at the rear. Once in the security checkpoint reception area, he waved off the men. “Stay. I’ll be just fine down there—it’s IDF administration, for hell’s sake,” he said, when he saw the chief’s scowl.
He got back on the elevator and lifted his head to speak. “Munitions,” he said, remembering what Norton had said to get them down to MUNCENT, the casing production facility deep underground.
A few minutes later he was stalking the aisles of the production facility. Once in a while a floor manager or engineer would recognize him, but they kept going about their business, thinking it was an unannounced inspection tour. He scanned the floor, looking for….
Ah, there she was. Sergeant Gall, the Yale scientist. He strode over. “Ms. Gall?”
Her face reddened. “Mr. Isaacson! I … you … I—”
He held up a hand and smiled. “Not to worry, Sergeant. I’m just here to follow up on our conversation from the other day. You said something that interested me. You said you were working on containment methods?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, apparently still unsure of what in the world the vice president of United Earth was doing in her workspace, unaccompanied, in the middle of a war.
“You said your particular method was probably not viable, correct?”
She nodded. “That’s right, sir. Electric containment is problematic. Well, at least the way I’ve been trying it.”
“Explain.” He pulled a chair over and sat down next to her. She nervously sunk down into her seat as well.
“Well, we’re working mainly with anti-tungsten. Basically a whole lot of anti-neutrons, some anti-protons, and of course, the positrons.”
“Positrons? I’m sorry, I’m not a physicist.”
Her face said, clearly, but she nodded and added, “Anti-electrons. And that’s the problem with electrical containment.”
He stroked his chin. “Positrons don’t like the electrical containment?”
“Positrons are a lot freer to move around compared to the anti-neutrons and protons. So when you’ve got an electric field pushing them one way, if anything is out of balance, even slightly, just one positron being pushed too far is all it takes to send the whole thing into a cascading chain reaction.”
“And that’s … bad.”
“Boom,” she replied.
He crossed his legs, glancing at the white board nearby, full of incomprehensible equations. He didn’t even recognize most of the symbols. An upside down triangle? What the hell was that? All her letter h’s had crosses through them. “We want a more controlled reaction.”
“Well, not necessarily controlled. I mean, when we want the reaction to happen, we do want it to happen all at once. Like I said, boom. If there’s no boom, there’s no bomb, uh, so to speak.”
“So?” He tried to appear patient. But in truth, he hated talking to scientists. They could never get to the point.
“So we need to precisely control when the reaction happens. And furthermore, we need to make sure it doesn’t happen accidentally. The default state needs to be off. We can’t have anti-matter devices sitting around, getting old, and exploding on us. We need them to be safe long-term, and make it impossible for them to go off on their own. It was the same deal with nukes for hundreds of years. We got really good at making those things stable long-term. But all this anti-matter business is new, and a few years ago the team here made a breakthrough.”
She stood up and went to the whiteboard. Isaacson tried not to let his eyes glaze over as she pointed to a few equations. Shit, didn’t she realize it was a friggin’ foreign language?
“Look—the Schrödinger equation for a single atom. Dolled up a bit since it’s anti-matter we’re talking about, and a pretty big atom—tungsten’s wave function isn’t exactly aesthetic. But for our computers it’s no problem to crunch through. Turns out, if you get the electron wave function surrounding it into this configuration,” she waved toward another equation nearby, “the anti-t
ungsten will stay put. And it takes a very precise signal to change this wave function. You can’t just throw the bomb at something and hope it explodes. You need to trigger it right at the moment of impact.”
He nodded. “And you do that remotely? From a safe distance?”
“Well, no, it’s still triggered internally. There’s a complicated set of electronics inside the casing that detects whether the bomb has been launched, or is just taking a beating. That way you can’t detonate one by just hitting it, or, for example, destroying the ship carrying the bombs. The casing is basically indestructible to any outside force. Nearly solid chunks of reinforced tungsten-iridium composite alloys don’t break easily.”
He waved his hand repeatedly to move the conversation along. She needed to get to the point. Fast. “So tell me, Sergeant, say a foreign power were trying to sabotage these. Make them inoperable. How would they go about it? What’s the easiest way?” He watched her face, looking for any sign of suspicion. Just to be safe, he added, “The president is worried about this, yes. We need to be sure we can count on these devices to work when we deploy them, and therefore we need to know how someone else could conceivably disable them.”
She nodded, not the least bit suspiciously. “Oh, that’s actually pretty easy. Just adjust the wave function of the surrounding material, such that it doesn’t respond to the trigger signal.”
“Adjust? How?”
“Any kind of adjustment, really. The wave function is imprinted during manufacture by an external field, but it’s easily changed.” She pointed to one of the equations. “For example, take the coefficient of the wave function of the surrounding material. Optimal is exactly two-pi. Six point one four yada yada. Change that to six point one five, and, whoops! No boom.”
He nodded slowly. “And no boom means no bomb.”
Chapter 56
Near Penumbra System
