by Nick Webb
“I trust you,” she said, before he could continue the jargon. “It’ll have to do for now.” She turned back to Liu. “Initiate final q-jump.”
The former intel officer nodded once and pressed a few buttons on her console. Moments later the infrared image of empty space disappeared to reveal a wavering Earth, cloud-dappled and serene. As luck would have it, they’d arrived directly over the Caribbean, and she was confronted with the water-filled hole in the Florida panhandle where Miami had been thirty years ago, until the first battle of the Second Swarm War had completely annihilated it.
Never again.
“Anything?”
Whitehorse shook her head. “Nothing yet. All meta-space signals from IDF vessels are normal. Nothing from the surface.” She looked up. “They might not be here yet.”
“Keep scanning.”
Minutes passed, and Liu settled them into an orbit she claimed would let them see all q-jump arrival points at once. Finally, Whitehorse caught Proctor’s attention.
“Ma’am, no meta-space buildup yet from any IDF ship, but I am reading something … odd.”
“What do you mean, odd?”
She swallowed hard. “Remember how Titan and the other moons the alien ship attacked started increasing in mass in the days and weeks afterward? Well I’m reading some gravitational anomalies in the vicinity of Earth.”
Proctor bolted to her feet. “From Earth?”
Whitehorse shook her head. “No, not from Earth itself. I only noticed it because the navigation system’s computer had to automatically adjust its course to account for the effect. It’s like … there’s extra mass somewhere nearby pulling on all of us. But not in the direction of the sun, or the moon. Hell, I even scanned Valhalla Station, and it looks normal. No idea where it’s coming from.”
A pit had started to form in Proctor’s stomach. “Keep an eye on it. Send a message to Granger, tell him to be on the lookout for—”
“I’m sorry, ma’am … who?”
Proctor caught herself. Damn. She’d been thinking about Tim too much, what with the conversations with Huntsman and Avery, and the fact that Tim’s coffin had essentially been found at the core of an alien ship.
“Captain Volz. Please tell him to keep an eye out for—”
“Admiral!” yelled Whitehorse. “The ISS Vanguard. Mullins’s ship. It’s here.”
“How do you know?”
Whitehorse looked up, her face drained of color. “Because another torpedo just launched from nowhere. And … I’m reading an anti-matter signature.”
Proctor smiled, and sat back down. “Time to catch him in the act. For all of Earth to see. If this doesn’t convince President Quimby to see reason and sack the bastard, I don’t know what will.” She turned to Qwerty and Liu. “Tell Ballsy to have the Independence stay put, Qwerty. Liu? Once we counter the pulse, we should get into a new orbit, since Mullins will immediately know we’re here, and where we are.”
Liu smiled. “Counting on it.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
High Orbit over Earth
ISS Defiance
Bridge
“Admiral! Reading massive meta-space spike!” yelled Lieutenant Whitehorse from across the bridge.
“Counter it.” Proctor gripped her armrests until the knuckles were white.
Whitehorse nodded. “Analyzing pulse, and matching ours to destructively interfere….” She looked up with a smile. “I think we’ve got it. Their pulse amplitude has dropped by a factor of about a million.”
“Is the shunt still transferring energy from the anti-matter blast?”
After a moment, Whitehorse shook her head. “Not anymore. The reaction is over. They managed to shunt quite a bit of energy into meta-space before I countered it, but not early as much as at El Amin.”
Proctor smiled, and finally relaxed. “We’ll do better next time. Terminate ours, but be ready to re-engage. At least we know now we can counter Mullins’s and Oppenheimer’s plans to get us into a war.” She turned to Liu. “Now, get us out of this orbit before Mullins figures out where that meta-space signal came from.”
Liu’s smile was off. More like glee than satisfaction at a job well done. “With pleasure, Admiral.”
Proctor watched the status of their orbit. At first it seemed Liu projected their course slightly down into a lower orbit, before pulling up and increasing their inclination to a more northerly direction—by now they were over France, and aiming towards Norway. Except….
“Whitehorse, did you fire off another meta-space pulse?” Proctor tapped her console, bringing up the data logs from their meta-space transmitters.
“I didn’t.” She glared over at Qwerty. “Did you do something?”
He shook his head, befuddled. “Ain’t me. Looks like it happened right as we were adjusting orbit.”
Before Proctor could figure out what had gone wrong, Lieutenant Qwerty caught her attention. “Admiral, the Vanguard is calling—they’re transmitting a message over ELW radio, coded for us.”
“Play transmission, Mr. Qwerty.”
A buzz as the decoder managed to scrape the message clean of all but the most persistent static. “I can see you, Shelby. Can you see me?”
“He’s bluffing. He can’t see us,” said Liu. “Look. I can’t pinpoint the source, but I can tell that it’s moving towards that other orbit I feinted to.”
Proctor regarded her. “So that’s what you were doing. Did you send out a meta-space pulse without authorization? You were trying to lure him into a particular orbit?”
Before she could respond, Mullins continued over the speakers. “I’ve got President Quimby here with me, Shelby. And he’s been a witness to your betrayal. We saw you coordinate with the enemy at El Amin. We’ve recorded you sending out that meta-space pulse just now. We know you’re behind this attempt to summon the Swarm. Yes, we know they never left. We’ve figured it out. And your plan to re-establish contact with them and help them conquer our world will fail.”
Qwerty glanced up at her. “He’s no longer transmitting on an encoded channel. This is a general broadcast. Everyone in the solar system can hear this.”
“Which means we should be able to track him. What the hell is Quimby doing over there?” she murmured, before flipping the comm receiver on. Proctor chose her words carefully. “Admiral Mullins. I urge you to reconsider your use of the meta-space pulse. I know it was you. I don’t know why you’re trying to start a war with the Dolmasi, but we will not stand for it.”
“Of course you won’t. The Dolmasi are still under Swarm control, just like you. Of course you wouldn’t like us fighting your allies. But I’m giving you one chance. Surrender. I’ll even arrange for you to be officially discharged and there won’t even be a court martial. Just give peace a chance, Shelby.” His voice had taken on a mock-pleading tone. He was on a stage the size of Earth right now, and they both knew it. And unfortunately, he was an excellent actor.
Proctor, on the other hand, was not. “Oh, please. Everyone knows you just want to be a petty little tyrant. Run your own little kingdom and—”
Qwerty interrupted her. “He’s closed the channel.”
“And that’s not all, Admiral. A small Dolmasi fleet just q-jumped into the outskirts of high Earth orbit. They’re holding their distance, but it looks like those six seconds of the meta-space pulse were enough to summon them here.”
“Dammit,” muttered Proctor. She turned to Qwerty. “It’s show time, Lieutenant. Tell them we’re not a threat. Tell them we want peace.”
Whitehorse had leapt to her feet. “Admiral! The Vanguard—it’s … it’s suddenly visible on our sensors! It’s like they … I don’t get it, but their hull is gleaming like the shiniest silver metal coating there ever was.”
“What?”
“It’s … gallium. What the hell? They plowed right through a cloud of gallium. And the Dolmasi have changed course.” Whitehorse looked up in horror. “They’re homing in on the Vanguard.”
/> Proctor strode over and rested her hands on Qwerty’s shoulders. “Mr. Qwerty, I need you to do this. Now. Tell them to back off.”
He nodded. “Working on it, ma’am.” He was muttering furiously into his microphone, distorting his voice into strange-sounding diphthongs and almost melodious strings of vowels. Moments later, he nodded again. “I think it’s working. I just heard back from them, and … well … they sound surprised. Shocked that I can talk to them. Which I suppose is better than them sounding angry.”
“Good. Tell them to back off from the Vanguard. Tell them we’re ready to talk, but that they need to back off from the Vanguard. Now!”
Qwerty sang another few lines of unintelligible sentences back into the microphone, and, miraculously, their advance depicted on the tactical monitor halted.
She breathed a deep sigh of relief. Good. War averted. For now.
“Like hell,” someone muttered behind Proctor’s back. “For you, Danny.” Proctor turned, and when she saw Liu’s face, she understood. Finally.
“Liu, back away from the terminal.”
Liu smiled. An almost frenzied smile. “Too late. It’s done.”
“Admiral! She fired a torpedo!” yelled Whitehorse.
Proctor motioned at the marine standing by the door. “Arrest her.”
Liu’s smile deepened, even as the marine secured her arms. Her eyes were as wide as saucers. “You’re too late! This is it, Admiral. Finally. Revenge. And yours too. Mullins took our Danny from us. From me. From you. And now I’m taking his life from him.”
“Can you disable it?” she shot at Whitehorse, who was shaking her head.
“No, she’s done something to it. Modified it. I can’t access the—”
And before she could finish, the viewscreen lit up. The Vanguard, which had turned into a shining metal ship, its stealth tech apparently overwhelmed by some unknown countermeasure, exploded in a vast, muted fireball, quickly extinguished by the vacuum. Glowing red hunks of shattered hull and a fine mist of molten slag was all the was left to mark the grave.
Whitehorse continued. “And, ma’am, if these readings are correct, there was another active meta-space shunt on the Vanguard. Lots of that explosive energy made it into meta-space. More than lots. About a million times greater than the pulse they transmitted earlier. About the same level as the one at El Amin.”
Mullins was dead.
President Quimby, newly-elected president of United Earth, was dead.
And the entire solar system probably believed that she killed them. And summoned the Dolmasi to help her do it.
And, to top it all off, the destroyed ship had dumped an untold amount of energy into meta-space, and in the absence of the Ligature, she had no idea what that meant. They’d just announced to the universe, on the galaxy’s largest bullhorn: we’re here, come get us.
Each of those events was, by itself, unlikely. And for all of them to happen at once was…
One in a million, she thought.
She spun around to Liu. “Why? How? How did you….”
Liu was laughing almost maniacally. “I’ve been planning this for weeks, Admiral. As soon as that fucker did this to me,” she indicated her ruined face, “as soon as he killed my Danny, he sealed his own coffin. I arranged for that gallium to paint his ship a nice shiny silver for all of Earth to see. Oppenheimer was all too happy to provide the funds when I told him my plan. I tweaked our stealth system so that someone, if they knew just where and how to look—especially someone familiar with stealth tech, like Mullins—could see where we were. And I lured him into the path of the gallium. And now Danny is avenged.”
Her half-melted face was grinning so widely, it almost looked skeletal. Ghoulish. She was crazy. Absolutely crazy.
She motioned to the marine holding Liu. “Get her out of here.”
“Admiral…?” began Whitehorse.
Now what? Proctor sighed, and turned to tactical. “Yes?”
“I think I know the source of that gravitational anomaly from earlier.” She hesitated, as if not even believing her own words. “Titan just showed up.”
“Titan.” She repeated the word, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice.
“Titan, ma’am. I don’t understand how it’s possible, but it’s here. Less than fifty thousand kilometers away. And … it’s heading this way.” Whitehorse finally looked up from her console, her face looking quite dazed. “Really quickly.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
High Orbit over Earth
ISS Independence
Bridge
“Captain Volz! The main body of IDF’s Earth Defense Fleet is moving to flank the Defiance, led by the Resolute. Oppenheimer’s flagship. Looks like they’re trying to hem them in, sir.”
Volz seethed, gripping the armrests of the captain’s chair until his knuckles were white. “Oppenheimer,” he said, bluntly. “How are they tracking the Defiance? Is their stealth system still working?”
The tactical officer shook his head. “It was until a few moments ago. Looks like they plowed right through the same cloud of gallium that exposed the location of the Vanguard. Their hull is now painted bright and metallic—it’s impossible to mask.”
How in the hell…?
But there was no time to dig down the rabbit hole of nested conspiracies that was United Earth politics, IDF, GPC, Grangerite maneuvering, and whatever the hell Mullins had been up to. Until the Defiance had slagged him.
All he cared about now was what the hell to do about the moon that had just shown up.
He still couldn’t believe his eyes. A moon had just shown up. It was almost surreal—Volz couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. He watched as less than a hundred thousand kilometers from Earth’s moon, Titan grew ever bigger, a stark white and sickly yellow orb bearing down on the birthplace of humanity.
Twenty billion people are probably looking up into the sky and shitting their pants right now, he thought. “He actually thinks she did it. Damn you, Oppenheimer. We’ve got a planet-sized space station flying towards Earth, and you’re focused on arresting the one person who can do something about it.” He jumped to his feet and approached the tactical station. “Lieutenant, show me the latest scans of Titan. What happened to the hole that the Golgothic ship bored into it? Is it still there?”
He shook his head. “Partially, but when the scraps of the ship crash-landed it basically buried the hole under a few hundred meters of rock and soil.”
“What if…” he turned to one of the tactical monitors that showed the positions of the various ships and fleets around Earth, waving Commander Mumford over from tactical science to join him. The Defiance was there, shining brightly with its new coating of gallium on the hull. Most of IDF’s Earth Defense Fleet was bearing down on it. A large Dolmasi fleet hovered in the distance, apparently trying to make up their minds about what to do given the new developments of both Mullins’s ship exploding and a rogue moon showing up at the wrong planet. “What if we can convince the Dolmasi to help us … reopen the wound, so to speak? Basically replicate what the alien ship did to Titan. Bore down into that hole, and then when it’s fully exposed, knock the shit out of … whatever burrowed its way in there.”
Mumford looked skeptical. “Like, launch a nuke down the hole and hope it knocks out the giant moon-sized space station?”
“Something like that, yeah,” said Volz.
“Uh, sir, I think that only works in the movies.”
Volz shrugged. “Well, it’s all we got.” He turned to the comm. “Get me the Defiance.”
Moments later, Proctor’s lined face appeared on the screen. “Ballsy? What do you think? Shoot at Oppenheimer? He probably thinks I killed the president and is trying to arrest me. The Dolmasi? Titan? We’ve got a target rich environment here….”
“I’d say we focus on the one that can take out Earth, Admiral,” said Volz.
“Agreed. But I’m fresh out of moon-stopping ideas.”
Volz laid out his
plan, and to his surprise, Proctor didn’t laugh at him. “Ok. I’ll get Qwerty on the horn to the Dolmasi and see if we can’t convince them that Titan is just as much a threat to them as it is to us.”
“And the Earth Defense Fleet?”
Proctor smiled. A defeatist, sad smile. “If they shoot me down as I try to save Earth? Fuck ‘em. Yeah, you heard me, Oppenheimer. I know you’re listening in—this channel isn’t secured. You want to have at me as I try to save our fucking planet? Go to hell. Have at me. But I’m going to die on my feet, saving my people. Just like … just like Tim. Just try and stop me.”
To Volz’s surprise, the comm officer caught his attention. “Sir, hail from the ISS Resolute. Requesting to join the conversation.”
Volz jerked his head up towards the screen and nodded, indicating to the officer to patch the admiral through. Moments later, the Fleet Admiral of IDF showed up on the viewscreen, alongside Proctor’s face. “Shelby. You’ll pay for what you’ve done here today.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Christian, just hear me out on—”
“Save it, Shelby. Killing the president is one thing you’ll never walk away from. But … we can postpone justice for now. You’re right—that moon is an existential threat to Earth. I bet one against a million that it’s the Quiassi or Findiri. If you had have gone out and looked for them and neutralized that threat like I’d ordered, maybe we wouldn’t be in this position. All the same, they’re here, and we need to move fast.”
Proctor looked … surprised. She’d apparently not planned on Oppenheimer to be so … pragmatic. Neither had Volz. Anyone can change, he supposed.
“Yes. Yes, we do, Christian. Did you listen in on our plan? Have anything to contribute?”
