by Nick Webb
The hearing adjourned, and Lieutenant Diaz met her outside the Senate Hall. “Lunch?” he asked.
“Famished,” she said.
They walked five blocks to the commercial district and Diaz led her up to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant. “Sandwiches ok?”
“Fine.” She followed him in. To her surprise, the place was packed.
Except she recognized everyone there. Ensigns Prince, Diamond, and Prucha. Rayna Scott. Several fighter pilots including Volz and his remaining Untouchable crew. Most of the surviving bridge crew from the Warrior, including Commander Oppenheimer from the Victory and several of his people.
They were all looking at her, solemnly.
“What the hell is this, an intervention?”
“In a sense,” said Diaz. “Look, Proctor, I know you’ve turned them down. I know you’ve got that cushy professorship waiting for you on Britannia. I know we can’t really compete against that and your family and warm Britannia beaches. But, in our defense….” He trailed off.
Ballsy finished for him. “We’re pretty kick-ass.” Everyone laughed. He seemed a lot happier than he’d been in awhile.
She laughed too, putting her arm around Rayna. “Look, guys. I think I need to stop while I’m ahead. They always say, quit at the top of your game, and you’ll always be remembered kindly. Stay too long and, well, you know what they say about guests overstaying their welcome. Rotten fish and all that.”
Diaz nodded. “Fine. We understand.” He turned to one of the bridge crew members and pointed. “But, before we go, we wanted to show you this. One last pathetic effort to get you to change your mind.”
The lights dimmed, and on the wall appeared the image of a ship, projected from some handheld device.
It looked exactly like the Constitution. With a few modifications.
“The ISS Chesapeake. We’re her crew. Every one of us here. I asked the top brass, and no one could tell us no.” He turned to Proctor. “All she needs is a captain.”
Her hand covered her mouth.
Rayna added, in a low voice, “We kept the seat warm for you, Cap’n. IDF was about to name another captain, since you turned them down. But we convinced them to wait a few more weeks. To give you time, you see.”
She wanted this. She didn’t realize how much she’d been wanting this. The grilling by the senators only confirmed it—she had no desire to sit at a desk, to deal with bureaucrats. And, damn, if the academy wasn’t chock-full of bureaucrats.
“On one condition,” she said. The tiny restaurant fell silent. “We change her name. From now on, she’s the Granger.”
No one spoke. But everyone nodded.
“She’s the Granger,” repeated Rayna.
Pew Pew snorted, and laughed out loud. “She’s? She’s the Granger?”
Commander Scott rolled her eyes. “Ships are girls, Lieutenant. Get over it,” she said, to more laughter.
They sat down to eat, and as the hour passed, Proctor became more and more comfortable with her decision. Her brother would be hurt, of course, as would the kids—they were opening their home to her. Giving her a well-earned respite from the rigors of command and IDF and ships and space and battle, and everything uncomfortable and unpleasant about living in close quarters with a thousand other misfits aboard a floating hunk of metal.
But the Old Bird, and the Warrior, they were her home. And this was her family. And the Chesapeake—the Granger—she couldn’t imagine a better home than that.
Epilogue
President's Stateroom, Frigate One
High Orbit, Britannia
President Avery puffed on her cigar, her feet kicked up on the desk. A whiskey bottle fell off with a crash as her calf brushed up against it, but she shrugged. There were plenty more bottles. All the time in the world now to get drunk and dally with the cabana boys as she saw fit. A woman had needs, after all.
“I think we’ve got things tied up on my end. What I still can’t believe, is how damn lucky we were with Granger. That a man should pop up out of nowhere and rise to the occasion—boggles my mind. We should have had something more concrete in place.”
Avery nodded at her companion. “He was pretty amazing, I admit. One big-damn-hero moment after another. But, you know, if he hadn’t been there, someone else would have. That’s the thing about us westerners. Everyone thinks they’re the hero. But when the time comes, most people scatter. They wilt. But not Granger. He had spine. And if it wasn’t him, it would have been Proctor. Or Zingano. Or someone.”
“After all our plans, Avery, it unnerves me to think it all rested on chance. If he hadn’t pulled off what he did, if he hadn’t been susceptible to the clues we sent his way, sent Proctor’s way … I shudder to think. I mean, what if Granger had denied her science team to board?”
“He wouldn’t have done that. There was no time for him to pore over personnel backgrounds. He trusted Proctor. And she had no time to pore over personnel backgrounds. Believe me, Mr. Malakhov, no matter who was there, I’m confident we would have pulled it off.”
The Russian shook his head, and slammed back another shot. “Whatever. I’m done. My end is clean, and, if I’m not mistaken, I’m dead. No thanks to you.” He winked at her with his new eye—the surgery scars were healing fast.
“Yes, terribly sorry about that.”
“Did you really have to send Isaacson after me like that? Sloppy.”
“Honestly, I didn't know he'd actually try to kill you. But either way, we both know the Swarm had to be absolutely convinced we were at each other’s throats. They had to be completely and utterly distracted by our little civil war. I think we accomplished that, wouldn't you say?”
He poured himself another glass. “Yes, well … next time tell your puppets not to aim for my eye. That hurt.”
“What are your plans?” Avery puffed another ring of smoke into the air.
“Vacation. One, long, thirty-year vacation. I’ve been president for, what, sixteen years now?”
“Come now, Mr. Malakhov, something tells me you could pull some strings in the Duma, and you’d be president for life.”
“I’m dead, remember? Went through a great deal of hassle to get to this point. If I were to suddenly come back to life, that would be a fearsome amount of wasted effort.” He poured himself another shot from the whiskey bottle. “No, Madam President, I’ll be quite content to disappear into the countryside of the Caucusus. Or maybe a little island on New Petersburg.”
They smoked their cigars and drank in silence for awhile longer, before Malakhov finally stood up to leave. “Well, Madam President, it’s been a pleasure. A fruitful and profitable thirteen year relationship. The fact that humanity is still here—well, I think that says a lot about what we’ve accomplished.”
She tapped her shot glass with a finger. “There’s one last thing I’m still not understanding.”
“Yes?” He stopped at the door.
“The antimatter. All my clandestine programs developing that shit. The manpower, the expense—all of it. We loaded it up on all those ships at your insistence, waiting for our chance to shove it down the cumrats’ throats. And then at the end, of course, it worked. We shut down the Link. But my question is—well, two questions, actually.”
“Shoot.”
“Why didn’t you just give us the damn antimatter technology to begin with? I never understood that.”
“Appearances, Madam President, as you know all too well. It would have raised suspicions.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes. Whatever. I’m sure we could have arranged something. But no matter. The bigger question is this. And I have the feeling you don’t have an answer for me.”
“Try me.”
“The antimatter pods. From the torpedoes Granger launched. They’re still on their way to the target. He hasn’t even finished crossing the event horizon yet, from our perspective, and won't for another hundred thousand years at least. From his perspective, my scientists tell me that he’ll w
itness the end of our galaxy before the tidal forces get strong enough to finally rip him to shreds. How can the Link be truly destroyed if we can sit outside that infernal thing, point a sensitive scope at the horizon, and still see the damn antimatter falling in? Nothing’s been destroyed. No antimatter has reacted with a single molecule of that black hole yet.”
He paused with the door halfway open, nodding. “You’re right. Makes no sense. All I knew was that, in my interrogations with the Swarm subjects, that point came across loud and clear, though they never said a word. They tried to hide it from me. They were terrified of the idea of antimatter falling into that thing. It’s why they never gave us the antimatter beam technology. Just think what we could have done with that. Fly a hundred ships out to the little bugger and beam a few tons of antimatter straight into the hole itself. No fuss, no muss.”
She shrugged. “Anyway. It’s over.” She puffed another ring. “What do you make of the reports from the Octarous cluster about possible ship movements in Findiri and Quiassi space?”
He walked out the door. Before it closed, he called back, “Not my problem anymore, Barb. And if you’ll take my advice, you’d get out before it becomes your problem too.”
HERO
A Short
Prelude To
The Legacy Ship Trilogy
Terran Sector, Earth
IDF CENTCOM, Omaha
“Just a reminder to you all, this presentation is classified top secret. Level Tau Twenty.” The intelligence official cast a dour glance across the assembled officers, as if judging their worthiness.
Lieutenant Volz whistled. “Tau Twenty! This must be some serious shit.”
“Cut it, Ballsy.” Captain Proctor swiveled around to glare at him. He always chose the most inappropriate times to be a smart-ass.
The IDF Intel officer glowered at Volz, but continued his scripted speech. “Per regulation thirty section eleven, and by United Earth statute UE dash 2654 dash 511, I must now review classification levels and penalties—both civil and criminal—before we go on. Top secret level Tau One comprises all information regarding IDF fleet movements. Penalties include imprisonment up to five years and up to one hundred thousand UE credits. Level Tau Two comprises….”
He droned on and on, and Captain Proctor was beginning to wonder how they’d ever won the war in the first place. If the bureaucrats had had their way, they’d still be reviewing paperwork and reciting regulations for months after the first attack, and in the meantime the Swarm would have pulverized every last UE world into dust, which no doubt would have been documented into a ream of paperwork by the surviving bureaucrats.
“Top secret level Tau Ten comprises all information regarding weapons systems, regardless whether such information is common knowledge or not. This includes all rail-gun technology, any laser systems over one hundred megawatts, and all—”
Volz snored, his head lolled back. Proctor reached forward and whacked him on the side of the head. “What? What?” He jerked upright in his seat. “Did I miss something important?”
To her right, Lieutenant Diaz and Ensign Prucha had to stifle snickers with balled-up fists. Proctor rolled her eyes. “Just get on with it please, Commander.”
The intel official leveled an icy glare at Volz, but continued. Several minutes later, he finished, finally. “And top secret level Tau Twenty comprises all information, military or otherwise, regarding the Swarm.”
The mood in the room changed, palpably. What had before been a nuisance, now seemed urgent. They all knew why they were here, five years after the end of the Second Swarm War. Five years after Captain Tim Granger had piloted the ISS Victory into the heart of the black hole in the Penumbra system with a shipload of anti-matter bombs, ending the Swarm’s reach into the galaxy.
There could only be one reason why they were here, why General Norton had summoned them from what they had long been waiting for: a routine planetary survey out in unexplored space—the reason they’d all entered IDF in the first place. Only one reason was urgent enough. IDF Intel must have found a surviving Swarm ship.
“It doesn’t matter if a piece of information about the Swarm is in the public domain or not—all intel we gather on the Swarm is classified top secret level Tau Twenty, and all IDF personnel or ordered to refrain from public comment in any news media. Penalties include a minimum of thirty years in prison, with a maximum penalty … of termination.”
“Death, you mean,” said Volz. “Just say it, man.”
The intel official nodded. “Now, with that out of the way, I’ll bring in the General.” The man stepped out of the room, and moments later, Norton came in.
Everyone stood. He waved a hand at them, patting the air. “Please be seated.” He took the podium at the front of the small briefing room and pulled a data pad out of his briefcase, clearing his throat before he looked back up at all of them. Proctor had brought her command crew with her, plus all department heads. She knew why they were here, and thought they deserved to know the truth about their upcoming mission. Given what they’d been through five years earlier, she felt they all deserved it.
“I’m sure you’ve all guessed why I’ve summoned you here.”
“Is the Swarm back?” said Volz, his tone dramatically changed from earlier. Now he was deadly serious. Proctor was half tempted to tell him to shut up and let his superior officers do the talking, but then remembered that Ballsy and his pilots would be on the front line if it turned into a shootout. He had just as much right to do the questioning as any of them.
“Yes, and no,” said Norton, hedging. “As background, let me describe to you, briefly, our efforts regarding the ongoing Swarm mop-up operation. You all know that the Swarm is actually a trans-dimensional race based in a universe parallel to our own, that somehow managed to find its way into our universe some twenty thousand years ago though the black hole in the Penumbra system. Over the millennia, they usurped the liquid race we know as the Valarisi, and through them managed to bring other races under their control: the Dolmasi and the Skiohra we know, as well as the Findiri and the Quiassi, both of which we still have had no contact with. They controlled all these races and individuals remotely through what the Skiohra call the Ligature, basically an organic meta-space link. The same one they implanted into Granger that let him communicate with the Swarm. They also controlled a substantial proportion of the upper Russian Confederation government and military, though over the past five years most of them have been … purged.”
Volz snorted again.
A hint of a glimmer in Norton’s eye, as if he concurred with Bally’s unspoken assessment of the Russian purges. “Anyway, over the years we’ve essentially hacked our way into the meta-space link. The Dolmasi and the Skiohra have changed the way they use it now that the Swarm are no longer controlling them, so we don’t have any insight into those races. But the Valarisi … they are another matter.”
“You mean, they’re still active? The Valarisi?”
“Of sorts, yes. Not active like they were under the control of the Swarm. Hell, most people still consider the Valarisi the Swarm. In most peoples’ minds, the two races are the same. But with the trans-dimensional Swarm gone, the Valarisi have … had a rough time of it. In the immediate aftermath of Granger’s gambit—”
“You mean his ascension,” said Volz, with a smirk.
Norton rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t get me started on the Grangerite nonsense.” He looked as if he wanted to say more about Granger’s new religion, or whatever the wackos called themselves, but continued on with the briefing. “After the war, the Swarm carriers essentially shut down, and we had a field day. You all remember. We destroyed hundreds of ships. Razed a dozen worlds of Swarm matter, or, Valarisi, as we later came to understand.”
“We almost caused a genocide,” said Captain Proctor. The room went still.
Norton nodded. “I won’t contest that characterization. But at the time, what choice did we have? Over half of United Earth’s worlds we
re utterly devastated. Billions had died. Imagine what the public would have done if we just sat on our hands and let the Valarisi waltz off into the sunset as if nothing happened?”
Commander Oppenheimer, her XO, shrugged. “One good attempted genocide deserves another….”
“So, you’re saying that you hacked into the Ligature, and found another Swarm carrier—A Valarisi ship?” Proctor corrected herself.
“Not just one Valarisi ship. From what we can tell, we found all of them.”
Proctor had thought the room was quite before. But now all fidgeting stopped.
“All of them?” she said.
Norton lifted his data pad and tapped it repeatedly. “All of them. My teams have been over the evidence and the analysis is nearly one hundred percent certain. We’ve tracked down every single remaining Swarm carrier to one star system. Far beyond UE space. Beyond Russian Confederation space. Hell, we’ve even been in touch with our contacts with the Caliphate and the slaver syndicates out on the periphery. As far as we can tell, no one has been out that far.”
“Let me guess,” began Proctor. “You want the Chesapeake to make contact? Go out there and assess the situation? And it’s to be top secret level Tau Twenty because if the public found out we were scoping out the Valarisi rather than destroying them, there’d be hell to pay?”
