by Nick Webb
“Yes, sir!” said one of them. “An honor to serve with you, sir!” And the man fired off a few more rounds at the advancing enemy.
He risked a peek around the corner and saw the Findiri. Dozens of them were advancing, giving cover to each other, methodically making their way toward the building. He glanced back at the veterans providing cover.
They didn’t stand a chance.
“Sir, it’s time. Run!”
“But what about them?” he said, motioning at the veterans.
“They know what they signed up for. We’ve got to get you out. Run!”
And with that, he ran, following Jasper toward the waiting ship that had just landed a hundred meters away. He soon passed the young man, and it seemed Jasper positioned himself between Granger and the advancing enemy. A few energy bolts shot past them and he could feel their radiating heat.
The hatch on the waiting ship lowered just as they got there and Granger leapt inside, followed by Jasper, who then pushed him to the deck. “Fly!” the young man yelled. “We’ve got him! Fly!”
With a stomach-lurching jerk, the ship shot up into the air. No inertial cancelers dampened the impulse. It was just a frantic acceleration upward, and Granger could see why. Dozens of energy bolts streaked past them, some hitting the ship, as the Findiri soldiers on the ground saw where their quarry had gone. And a few Findiri fighters noticed too.
“Strap in!” yelled someone from up in the cockpit, and Jasper pulled Granger up and into one of the seats nearby.
More stomach-churning maneuvers followed as they tried to shake their tail. An impact and an explosion rang out, indicating that the enemy were shooting to kill if they couldn’t capture him.
Why him?
“Prepare for atmospheric q-jump!”
Granger grabbed onto his armrests and steadied himself. These could be rough. It was against IDF regulations to ever perform them, for good reason. Nine times out of ten they were only violently bumpy. The other ten percent of the time they resulted in reappearing inside solid rock.
Light streamed in from all the viewports and the ship jolted, jerking Granger and pulling the seat restraint so tight across his chest and abdomen that it hurt.
And then there was silence.
It was dark outside the viewports, and he wondered if they’d reappeared in rock and that he was actually dead.
“We made it,” said the pilot from up front.
“Where are we?”
“Over Bern, Switzerland. About to land at one of our old bases. The first base, in fact, if the stories are true.”
Granger finally breathed. His mind raced. So much had happened in the last ten minutes that he was still processing it all, wondering where to even start. He turned to Jasper, seated next to him.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, young man.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Sol Sector
Earth, High Orbit
ISS Independence
Bridge
She’d no sooner terminated the call with Granger than Commander Urda waved her down. “Did you send an extraction team?” she said.
“They‘re leaving now.”
“Good. Ship status?”
Commander Urda looked back down at the XO’s station. “Main power at fifty. No t-jump drive—it’s just gone. Q-drive on its last legs before it needs a total overhaul or replacement. Half our railguns out. Heavy hull damage, especially on the port side. Over eighty dead, two dozen missing, a hundred plus injured. But we’re still in the game, Admiral.”
She glanced at the tactical display. At least a hundred Findiri ships had spread out across various orbits over Earth. They weren’t doing anything yet, but that wouldn’t last. “Their flagship hasn’t arrived yet. Maybe they’re waiting on that.” She glanced over at Zivic. “What do you think? Options.”
He ticked off numbers on his fingers. “Well we can’t go faster than a snail’s pace unless we want to get smeared across a momentum-shield and flatten a major city, one. Two, we can’t throw anything big at them since it’ll get tossed right back at us. Three, they’ve got those micro-thruster mines that are a bitch to deal with. Throw on top of that their regular old railguns and that fancy energy beam they have that looks an awful lot like the Dolmasi’s and Eru’s anti-matter beam, and you’re looking at a recipe for surrender soup with a side of negotiation. Sorry, Admiral, I can’t think of a way out of this one, beyond a suicidal battle with what fleet we’ve got left.”
“No.” She balled a fist on the command console. “We’re not giving in. Not yet.”
“Admiral,” began Sampono, “Commander Shin-Wentworth has left the Hammer and requests permission to board. Says he has some important technical info on the Findiri that might help.”
She nodded. “Smart man to not blast it out across the airwaves. See that he’s escorted to the bridge.” She turned back to Zivic. “And? Where’s my out-of-the-box-ideas man? Goddammit, Ethan.”
Zivic held his forehead in a hand, rubbing slowly. “Okay. What about . . . pretend we’ve got Granger on board. They want him, right? They won’t just blow us up if they think he’s aboard. And we hightail it to Jupiter. Conventional engines. With any luck, most of them follow us. Give us time to assemble every last remaining ship in the fleet, beg the RC, CIDR, Caliphate, Dolmasi, and everything that moves to q-jump in and meet us there and—”
“No time, Commander. And no guarantee they’d send more than a few ships after us.”
“Okay. What about . . .” He finally looked up at her, his face more serious than she’d ever seen it. “Just give them what they want? Give them Granger?”
“Not a chance. There’s too much rattling around in that brain of his. Who knows what technology they could glean from some random memory? Remember the Granger-moons? Say they figure that out from interrogating him. No. Granger is off the table. Next?”
“Well, since we’re desperate, do you think President Avery kept any more of those artificial Russian singularity devices around? We could—”
“Absolutely not. Those things kicked off this whole sequence of events thirty years ago. We can’t mess with time again. We just can’t, even if our intentions are good.”
“I mean, does it necessarily mess with time? Just use them like the Swarm used them. As weapons. Shoot one right into the center of their flagship, have it rematerialize in the sun, and bam, problem solved.”
Proctor shook her head in exasperation. “Again, no. They’re unpredictable. We think we’re sending them into the sun, but what if we send them to the sun’s current position, but, say, five minutes from now? Sun’s no longer there, and we’ve got a very angry Findiri ship on our hands. We studied them, but not enough to be sure how to use them. So no.”
Zivic paused for several moments. “So, you’re saying . . . we actually do have a few lying around somewhere?”
“Classified. Next idea, Ethan. Come on. Think!”
Another voice came from behind them. “I have an idea.”
They turned to see Commander Shin-Wentworth. His forehead was bloody, and he wasn’t putting any weight on his right leg.
“Welcome aboard, Commander. What have you got?” said Proctor.
He limped forward. “That suicide run you sent the Malawi on. It would have worked, had we known about the Findiri’s transient q-field on their hull. I ran some numbers. Just a tweak to where you come out of q-space, and shift the target a bit—it should work.”
She waved him toward the command station. “Explain.”
“That field on its hull. Look, we can’t q-jump our ship inside their ship—that we knew already. And now we know we can’t just surprise them by coming out of q-space a kilometer away from their ship and smashing into it. But what happens when a ship comes out of q-space too close to the q-field of another ship?”
“It’s not pretty,” sad Zivic. “The reappearing ship basically reappears as disassociated subatomic particles.” He shook his head. “But, okay, th
at still doesn’t get around their little trick. We send another suicide ship in, have it come out of q-space too close to their ship, and ours gets vaporized. And that big cloud of vapor still hits the enemy hull and its transient field, gets sucked in and shot out the other side at one of ours.”
“Sure. But are you sure that transient field covers their entire ship?”
Zivic began, “I—well, no. Are you saying it doesn’t?”
Shin-Wentworth nodded. “I saw something similar that the Trits use on the crust of Chantana Three. Too much to explain, but it’s basically a two-dimensional artificial singularity. But it’s got to be a closed two-dimensional surface, and you’re not going to park a ship inside it—wouldn’t be in our universe if you did. So you create it outside the ship, make it super flat, and try to get as much of your ship behind it as you can. Think of it like a reeeeally distorted bubble. An almost flat bubble.”
Proctor saw where he was going. “So don’t have the attacking ship come out of q-space right on center. Have it come out right at the edge. So it still explodes from the regular old q-field on the enemy hull’s surface, but it’s not going to fall into that two dimensional artificial singularity. Have it reappear right at the edge of the enemy ship. You’re hoping that the explosion will be violent enough that it will essentially take out at least part of the ship.”
“Correct, Admiral.” He shrugged. “It’s not much. But it’s all I’ve got on such short notice.”
She looked at Zivic, who considered, then nodded. “Okay. We’ll try again.”
“Admiral!” said Commander Urda. “Their flagship has just q-jumped in! It’s joining one of their task forces in low orbit.”
“Battle stations,” she said. “And Zivic? Figure out which of our Angels is the most damaged and unlikeliest to survive the battle, and get me in touch.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Sol Sector
Earth
Bern, Switzerland
The corvette—a small ship little bigger than a large IDF shuttle—angled around a building at the outskirts of downtown Bern falling into dusk, swiveled ninety degrees, and entered a large bay whose door loomed open to receive them. It slowly lowered to the ground. Out the viewport next to his seat he could see a ground crew prepping.
“You’re not explaining yet,” said Granger, eyeing the young man next to him.
“I know. I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I’m not even sure if I’m the one to be telling you everything—I only joined the Vestige two years ago. I had been a Grangerite for only about a year before I was invited.”
“The Vestige?”
“That’s the name of our organization. Kind of the brains behind the Grangerites.”
“You told me that I started it. What do you mean by that?”
Jasper nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s what they told me when I joined. That you fell into that black hole thirty years ago, but came out in the distant past, and laid the plans to destroy the Swarm and all our enemies. You came to Europe over a thousand years ago and started Vestige, and left yourself supplies and things that would help when you returned. And . . . here you are. Just like the records told us you would be.”
Supplies. He left himself supplies? “Records? I want to see them.” Yes, that could potentially be even more useful. Some clues as to what he was thinking, what he was planning. If anything. Maybe it would all turn out to be like the battle of Penumbra two months ago, where he was miraculously restored to his body, bringing a dozen space station moons with him, but no plan to speak of. They’d relied entirely on Shelby and her officers to plan that battle.
And it had worked. Barely.
“Yes, of course, sir. You can see it all. Have it all. It’s all yours. The whole organization, it’s yours. You’re now the head of Vestige. At least, that’s what I think the Warden would say.”
“Is he here?”
“No, sir, he’s on San Martin. Vestige relocated HQ there after the First Swarm War over a hundred years ago.” He motioned to the corvette’s hatch that was just beginning to open.
Granger removed his seat restraint and stood up, following Jasper out the door and down the ramp to the landing deck of the bay they’d entered. “No welcoming committee. I’m disappointed.”
“Like I said, sir, it wasn’t really supposed to happen this way. We were preparing to bring you here in a much more . . . orderly fashion.”
“That’s why you came to me outside the restaurant,” said Granger.
“Yes. We were gauging if the time was right. We wanted to make sure you were well first. That your memory had stabilized. It seemed at the time it hadn’t—has that changed?”
Granger nodded. “The docs have worked some miracles over the past week.”
“Good. The arrival of the Findiri stepped up our timeline. Please follow me, sir. We have something you might find useful.”
He followed Jasper through the door from the landing bay into a stark corridor. Old plaster was peeling from the wall in places, and it smelled musty.
Jasper opened the door to what looked like it might have been the office of a monk in a medieval monastery. Ancient wood desk and chair. Blackened candle sconces on the walls. Except the medieval decor coexisted side-by-side with modern touches. Luminescent panels on the ceiling, several monitors on the wall, and a computer terminal on top of the desk.
“Those pictures on the wall,” he began, and walked over to them. One picture grabbed his eyes. There he was, as a much younger officer—a new captain, standing next to a gruff-looking yet fresh and almost baby-faced Abraham Haws. It was his first day as captain of the Constitution, and Haws’s first day as his XO. “Good lookin’ fellas.”
“That’s your first day on the Constitution? I think that’s been hanging there since it was taken.”
Granger couldn’t pull his eyes away. He’d just had an entire conversation with the ghost of Haws in his head, and now he was looking at him. Just as he remembered. They’d already served together for nearly ten years by that point. “I wish we had him here now. He’d sure as hell know what to do. Saved my ass during the Khorsky incident before the war. Second Swarm War, mind you, not the one we just had.”
“I know it well. It’s the job of all Vestige members to study up on your life.”
Granger was shaking his head. “It’s unbelievable. You all. The Vestige. The Grangerites. Had I known at the time that there was a bunch of people tracking my every move . . .”
“You can imagine that the members of Vestige at the time had to be pretty damn careful to make sure you never found out about this. You, as in young Granger and not thirteen-billion-year-old Granger.”
“Didn’t want any grandfather paradoxes going down, I presume.”
Jasper chuckled. “Something like that, sir.”
Another picture caught his eye. “Oh my god. Where the hell did you dredge this one up?” He reached out and touched it. It was him. Even younger than his first day as the captain of the Constitution. His arm was wrapped over the shoulders of a woman, and they were both laughing at something off-camera.
Jasper seemed tongue-tied, but recovered quickly. “Oh, that one. Yeah, all of these were here before I was even born, sir. No idea.”
“I haven’t thought about Reah in ages.” He gestured up at the photo. “You see that, kid? Actual evidence that I wasn’t completely married to my ship. Son of a . . .” He chuckled and put his fingers back up on her face. “I was thirty-five. Right before I was offered my first command. Met a pretty girl at a bar and took her home. Had some amazing times, me and Reah. Stayed together for what, six months? I wanted to ask her to marry me.”
He stopped. It wasn’t exactly painful to continue the story. But the nostalgia, the wistfulness, the might-have-beens itched in a way that stole his words.
“But you were given command of the Theseus. And new captains don’t have time for new brides.”
Granger nodded. “That’s right. She understood.
At least, she said she did. Never saw her again. God, if she were alive today she’d be, what, a hundred at least?”
Jasper slowly shook his head. “No. She’s dead. Died on Indira during the Second Swarm War.”
“Oh.”
He left his fingers on the photo for a few more seconds, then pulled away. “You have something for me?”
Some distant rumbling made them both look up. “That’s the sound of reentry. Something is coming down right over us.”
“Let’s move. Give me what you got and let’s get the hell out.”
Jasper circled around the desk and ripped the bottom drawer open. Inside was a tiny safe, which he placed a thumb on, prompting it to open once it scanned his print.
“Hurry, son,” said Granger. The roar of the sonic boom overhead was dissipating, which meant whatever had come down was getting closer.
Jasper snatched something out of the safe and handed it over to Granger. “Here. This belongs to you.
It was a tiny sphere. It looked remarkably similar to the little box that his memories and . . . essence, basically, had resided in when Proctor took him out of Titan’s core. “My god. Where did—”
“No time. Let’s move.”
He nodded, shoved it in a pocket, and the pair ran out and back to the corvette. They had no sooner closed the hatch when an explosion ripped through the hangar door behind them, revealing a Findiri fighter hovering a few meters off the ground, its guns still smoking.
“Oh shit,” said Jasper.
The kid was going to freeze up, wasn’t he? Why did they send an eighteen-year-old to rescue me? “Move over.” He shoved Jasper out of the pilot’s seat and grabbed the controls. “This used to be a monastery, huh? Wood?”
“I—I think so,” he replied.
“Good.” Granger gunned the engine, hit the launch thrusters, and pushed the accelerator to maximum while pointing the nose straight upward. “Rock beats paper.”
The ceiling flew toward the cockpit viewport and there was a terrifying crunch and crash and explosion, and Granger couldn’t tell what was the sound of breaking wood and what was the sound of Findiri weapons fire blasting away at them.
