Defiance: Book 5 of the Legacy Fleet Series (The Legacy Fleet Trilogy)

by Nick Webb

“I’m suggesting that maybe it was in the Swarm’s best interest to let us believe we’d closed it. So that we’d let our guard down. Think about it, Mr. President. In the closing days of the war we were actually doing quite well. The Dolmasi and Skiohra were both on our side. President Avery had retooled society such that we were churning out starships by the hundreds and conscripts by the millions. We were the sleeping dragon, and once the Swarm woke us up, there was no stopping us, Swarm technology and viral influence be damned. It was in their best interest to let us think we’d won. In the meantime they’d regroup, and then come at us … smarter.”

  “What, by leaving sleeper agents among us? Then coming at us with a new ship design that pokes holes in random moons?”

  Mullins smirked. “Random?” He waved a hand toward the viewscreen on the wall, which picked up on his movements and automatically displayed a predetermined chart and map. “Take a look.”

  Quimby examined the star chart and accompanying lists of data, but couldn’t decipher it. “Help me out here. What the hell is this?”

  Mullins stood and pointed at certain spots on the map. “Earth, Britannia, Bolivar, San Martin, Mao Prime, and New Jakarta. Six of the largest worlds of United Earth. And each of them has, or in San Martin’s case had, a moon somewhere in their solar systems or in a solar system within five lightyears that was attacked by that alien ship.”

  “So you think the Swarm is targeting moons near our major population centers? To destroy them and rain debris down on us? El Amin exploded, sure, but have you heard that Tal Rishi just flat out disappeared?”

  Mullins nodded. “Yes. And the rest of the moons’ masses are slowly increasing.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  “It means what I’m telling you. The Swarm is here. They never left. And in the thirty years they’ve been hiding, they’ve been developing new technology to end us once and for all. Think about it. Tal Rishi disappeared. Exactly where do you think it’s going to reappear? What if it reappears just a few thousand kilometers from Earth, and slams into it? Would be quite the fireworks show. Same goes for Britannia. Bolivar. All of them.”

  Quimby stood up and began to pace. “So what you’re telling me is that you think the Swarm essentially faked their own deaths, laid low for thirty years, developed moon-flinging technology, maintained a few sleeper agents among our top ranks so that when they decide to fling some moons at us we’ll be busy fighting among ourselves because of all the chaos caused by the sleepers?”

  Mullins shrugged. “More or less. It’s so simple, it’s actually quite brilliant. And Oppenheimer is very busy keeping us looking the other way with this pet Dolmasi war of his and his strange insistence on seeking out the Quiassi and Findiri.”

  “I still can’t believe he’s just trying to start a war to distract us from a Swarm invasion.”

  “You don’t have to believe it. You can see it. Come with me aboard the Vanguard to San Martin, and you can eavesdrop on a conversation I’ll have with Miguel Tigre. Just to see. See if his conclusions are the same as mine. And see what he says to me when he doesn’t know you’re listening. Determine if he’s in bed with Oppenheimer. Christian says he wants to find the Quiassi and the Findiri. Why? To truly end all known unknown threats against us, as the saying goes? Or is it something else? Watch Tigre’s reaction when I tell him the latest news that I found out just moments ago before we walked in here.”

  Quimby stopped pacing the ready room. “And what is that?”

  “Ido just disappeared too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The dreams always came when events felt out of her control. And even within the dream, Proctor marveled that she was able to recognize something like that rationally, even as the dream proceeded against her will.

  “You’re going to be in so much trouble, Shell,” said Carla. She didn’t even bother wearing the wig anymore. She flaunted her shiny scalp like a trophy. Generals and fleet admirals decorated their chests with bars and insignia. Cancer survivors wore their scars like well-earned medals.

  Except it was premature to use the word ‘survivor’.

  “You just worry about keeping lookout and let me worry about the mission.”

  The mission. That’s what they called their pranks. It gave the hijinks a sense of gravitas that otherwise would be absent by just calling them what they were. Stupid, childish pranks. In this case, using a miniature plasma welder Shelby had “borrowed” from the school’s shop to fuse the lock on the door on the principal’s office.

  The plasma torch was acting finicky, refusing to ignite. “Shell, come on. Hurry! The secretary will be back any second!” Carla whispered furiously from the doorway that faced the sitting area outside the principal’s office where his assistant usually worked.

  “It’s fine. She’ll be occupied for another five minutes at least with those doughnuts. That was brilliant, by the way, Car—giving her your ‘scan-day doughnuts’.”

  “Scan-day doughnuts.” It had become a monthly ritual. Every time Carla was due for a neutrino-enhanced magnetic scan to check the progress of treatment, their father would take a quick shuttle up to New York City to buy a dozen of the best doughnuts in the world from a little shop on Ninth, and they were always still warm by the time she was finished with the scan.

  But this time, they were secretary-bait.

  “Screw that, I miss my ‘scan-day doughnuts’ already,” Carla said, still peering around the corner.

  Shelby took a deep breath, thumbed a few of her rosary beads under her shirt, and lifted the torch up to the lock, whispering a silent prayer. “This will totally be worth it. Best mission yet. Just imagine Principal Calderon’s face tomorrow on morning announcements when he says,” she dropped her voice to a mock version of the man’s, “the culprits will be found and dealt with swiftly and—”

  A deep throat-clearing interrupted her. “Fairly? Or were you going to say ‘mercifully’? Because I assure you, mercy is the last thing on my mind this time….” Principal Calderon, arms crossed, stood over Shelby, who was still kneeling down with her arms raised, miniature plasma-welder in hand.

  “Uh….” Shelby glanced back at Carla in the doorway, who had frozen like a deer in the headlights. “Amicably? Congenially?”

  “Miss Proctor, I thought the last time I had you in my office we agreed that the next juvenile prank would be your last. You agreed to be on your best behavior. You swore it would never happen again. That you would start acting like an adult.”

  Shelby racked her brain for a pithy response. Even in the dream, adult Proctor came up with half a dozen good ones, but teenage-Proctor never got the chance. Before she could even open her mouth, the secretary had appeared, her face urgent. Her hand waving a phone.

  “Josh, it’s Doctor Proctor. He says these two need to get to the hospital right away.”

  Principal Calderon looked like a kid who had had his candy sack taken away from him on Halloween. Shelby could almost hear the swears under his breath. He turned to her. “Miss Proctor, the time will come when you can’t use your sister’s illness as an excuse for bad behavior.”

  Shelby stood up, making a show of dusting off her knees. “I’m so terribly sorry, Mr. Calderon, I—”

  Carla interrupted her. “I think what my sister is going to say, is that we’re going to milk this cockamamie tumor for all it’s worth, sir. Lord knows we’ve earned it.”

  Shelby wanted to kiss her. She didn’t even look back to see the look on the principal’s face as she left the office, her arm around her sister’s shoulder, the other hand rubbing her scalp for continued good luck. “Sis, you never cease to amaze me.”

  Carla scowled. “Hey, we got off that time. But the next time we won’t be so lucky.”

  “The next ‘mission’, you mean? And I love that you automatically assume there will be a next mission. Because you’re right, there will be. And this time I’ve got the perfect Calderon mission. It’ll involve a diving board, the local media, and po
ssibly a goat. Come on, let’s get to the hospital and hear the good news. It’s probably just the doc with the results of your scan.”

  Chapter Forty

  Orbit over San Martin

  ISS Defiance

  Bridge

  “We’re all ready down here, Admiral.” It was oddly comforting to hear Rayna’s old voice coming out of the comm on this new ship. “These engines are a real beaut. Purring like warm kittens—I think I just might adopt them. Smother them with motherly love. Buy them awkward presents. Embarrass them in front of their girlfriend. I’ve got a real mom vibe going on here.”

  “Thank you Rayna,” said Proctor. “Lieutenant Zivic, are your pilots ready?”

  Zivic’s voice answered through the speakers. “Yes, ma’am. Ace and Bucket’s injuries are still smarting, but they keep insisting, and I quote, it’s only a flesh-wound.”

  Another voice interrupted him. “I said I’m fine.” That must be Ace, thought Proctor. “Admiral, is Lieutenant Qwerty up there?”

  “Yes,” she said, puzzled.

  “I talked with him earlier about a way we—the pilots—can maintain contact with the Defiance while she’s stealthed. I think I’ve got a solution. Can you spare him later? I’d like to discuss it with him.”

  Proctor nodded. “By all means, Lieutenant Broadside. After we’ve made the q-jump and determined the lay of the land once we’ve arrived.”

  She turned her head to the comm station where Lieutenant Qwerty was finalizing his preparations. “Everything ready on your end?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied in his drawn-out drawl. “Except for this damn shoelace that broke. I swear, if Shovik-Orion’s boot suppliers were half as good as their tactical—”

  “I meant, is the stealth system ready, Mr. Qwerty.”

  “Oh. Right. I’ve tapped into the stealth programmin’ and I can manipulate the apparent spectral pattern of one specific star that appears on our hull from the Independence’s point of view, and encode messages in the spectrum so we can stay in contact with Captain Volz.”

  “Excellent work,” she said. “Let’s test it out. Send a message to old Ballsy that we’re ready to head out. Engage the stealth, and see if they can make out the message.”

  “Also ma’am, I’ve already discussed the use of the emergency long wave radios with Ace. I didn’t think we’d need to go over it again. Maybe those pain meds are messing with her noggin, if you know what I mean.”

  Proctor frowned. He had a point—this mission required a high state of readiness. Of course, didn’t all their missions? She made a note to talk to Zivic about it later. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now, engage stealth.”

  Qwerty tapped a few buttons. Proctor wasn’t sure what to expect when the stealth device engaged. She supposed there would be no discernible change from their point of view, so she was surprised when the viewscreen blanked out, where before they had a full view of the blue planet of San Martin below them and the star field beyond. “What happened?” The screen stayed blank. Oh, for the love…. “Don’t tell me we’re blind with this thing on!”

  “The viewscreen cameras don’t have anything to pick up, no ma’am. But we still have passive sensor capabilities.”

  “Passive sensors. I suppose active scanning sensors would be a dead giveaway for our location.”

  “I’d assume so, ma’am,” Qwerty said with a tip of an imaginary hat. “But passive’s are still pretty thorough. We’re not blind down in the microwaves, radio, and of course neutron, gamma, and neutrino detectors.”

  Proctor grit her teeth. This would be … quite an experience, to say the least. “Begin message to Captain Volz. You read me, Ballsy? If you do, tell me what you really think of this mission.” She glanced over at Lieutenant Qwerty again.

  After a moment of studying his console, he nodded. “There it is, ma’am. Thar she blows. Detecting a passive phase modulation in their magnetic engine containment envelope. Running it through my handy-dandy translator….” He nodded approvingly at his console. “They call my son Batshit, Shelby. But he’s got nothing on you. Stay safe, and we’ll be looking over your shoulder. Assuming … we can see where your shoulder is.” He looked up. “End of message.”

  Proctor smiled. “Loud and clear, Ballsy. All right, people, let’s get this show on the road. Set a course to Sangre de Cristo. I think it’s time we had another chat with Secretary-General Curiel. Maybe we can untangle his relationship with Admiral Mullins and start to get to the bottom of this.”

  Lieutenant Qwerty nodded. “Message sent, ma’am.” He continued nodding. “Ready when you are, Shelby.” A nervous expression passed over his face and he looked up suddenly. “That was Captain Volz, ma’am.”

  “Yes, thank you, Lieutenant. I assumed so.” She turned to the navigation station, which was only three feet in front of her and to the left. The bridge was almost as tight and cramped as her quarters. “Miss Liu? Have you familiarized yourself with the controls?” She had asked the former IDF Intel officer to take the helm, since space was cramped and they needed everyone on the bridge to actually serve a purpose.

  And recent events had shown her she could trust the young woman. With her life.

  “Yes, Admiral. I had basic navigation training as part of my intelligence operative training at the Academy, and these controls are as straightforward as they come.”

  Proctor nodded. “All right. Set a t-jump course to Sangre de Cristo. Let’s go get some answers.”

  Usually she would be able to tell when the jump had occurred by the shifting star field on the viewscreen. But as the viewscreen was blank, she had to rely on the telltale shift in her inner ear’s sense of equilibrium. The very brief moment of vertigo passed quickly, and Liu announced, “Arrived at Sangre de Cristo, Admiral. High orbit.”

  “Thank you Ms. Liu.”

  “Stealth is holding steady, Admiral,” said Qwerty.

  “Thank you,” said Proctor, standing up out of her chair, and peering at the empty screen. “I’m afraid I’m not going to get used to this. I hate flying blind.”

  “Hang on, ma’am, let me see if I can work some magic,” said Qwerty. He tapped a few buttons, shaking his head, mumbling to himself. After about a minute of silence across the tiny bridge he looked up, a look of triumph on his face. “Here we go, let’s see if this don’t work.” The viewscreen shifted to reveal what Proctor would have called an infrared view of the planet, and the fixed star field behind it. It wavered and flickered slightly almost as if heat currents were passing in front of it, but at least now she could see what was going on. Or rather, confirm with her own eyes that they were indeed orbiting Sangre de Cristo. She could just make out the ruined habitation dome that was destroyed by the nuclear weapon.

  The nuke inadvertently delivered by her own nephew. The same nuke that someone had killed her Danny for.

  Focus, Shelby.

  Proctor shook her head in delighted amazement. “Mr. Qwerty, you have outdone yourself this time. You’re a polyglot, and the now you apparently can do rapid signal analysis at the drop of a hat. If they don’t give you a pay raise I’m sending a sternly-worded letter to your supervisor.”

  “Aw shucks, ma’am, writin’ a letter to yourself would be awfully kind.” He tipped his invisible hat again. “Honestly, signal analysis isn’t all that much different than figurin’ out a language. I mean, sure, it’s nouns and verbs and morphology and all that malarkey versus carrier waves and Fourier analysis, but there are actually a lot of similarities. All you have to do is look for the patterns.”

  Proctor’s inner voice repeated the phrase. Just look for the patterns. But what if there was no pattern? What if it was one-in-a-million?

  Fiona Liu swiveled her chair to look at him, interrupting Proctor’s thoughts. “Why do they call you Qwerty, anyway?”

  “Well ma’am, seeing how it’s my name and all, makes sense, don’t it?”

  Liu raised a single eyebrow. “Really? Your last name is Qwerty? As in, Q-W-E-R-T-Y?�
�

  Qwerty grinned. “Yes ma’am,” he drawled, but hesitated. “Or rather, it is now. Funny story behind that. You see, I applied to the Academy on a dare and—”

  Proctor cleared her throat. “Mr. Qwerty, I am confident this is a good story, but … it can wait. Civilizations to save, remember? Right now we need to find Curiel, and while I’m interrogating him I need you to decipher an entire alien language. Possibly two, if the info that Krull gave us about the Ligature is off in any way. Please run a passive comm scan on all bands, both civilian and military, and see if we can’t track him down. Last I heard, Sangre was his center of operations.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Qwerty. He swiveled his chair back around and began scanning, looking up at Lieutenant Whitehorse, who nodded, and the two, as if by prior agreement, began to split the work between them.

  “How is the Independence doing,” she said. Her old ship had just t-jumped in moments ago. It struck her how she already thought of the sleek cruiser as her old ship, even though she’d only been on it for two weeks. “Let’s send Captain Volz a message that says—”

  Qwerty hesitated, “Uh, Adm’ril, I don’t exactly have the comms crew with me. Just a mom and pop operation we have going on here,” he shot a wink over at Lieutenant Whitehorse, “No offense, ma’am, I didn’t mean to marry us off so fast.”

  He was right, of course. Proctor was used to barking out orders, and having a bridge full of officers at her beck and call to carry out her instructions. This would take some getting used to.

  Ensign Babu cleared his throat from the corner of the bridge. “If you need an extra bridge hand, ma’am, I, well, I do have two of them.”

  “Ensign Babu, pardon me, you are entirely correct. Please, if you would, go get me a cup of fresh coffee.”

  Babu actually looked crestfallen. Maybe he couldn’t take it as well as he dished it out. He ducked out of the door to the bridge and returned a few minutes later with the steaming cup. “Thank you, Ensign,” she said. He perked up at that, and she made a mental note that he’d probably benefit from an actual mission sometime, just to give the man a break from his coffee-duty. But nothing too dangerous—good assistants were hard to come by, and after her last assistant, the late Ensign Flay…. She brushed the line of thought aside.