by Nick Webb
But the wreckage of the recent battle still hung in the space about all the ships. Twenty-three heavy cruisers lost. Twenty-three. Nearly fifteen thousand people dead. Just like that. And he hadn’t even laid any bricks that day. No suicide runs. Just intense, brutal, conventional space combat.
Was it worth it? What had they gained?
Time. And of course it was worth it. Every minute he could buy Earth was a minute to treasure. A minute closer to the Swarm’s final destruction. Whatever lives that cost, whatever blood he had to spill to reach that goal, well, so be it. Sacrifices must be made.
“Maybe you’re right. But what a spot I’ve been put in, Shelby. On one hand I’m trying to eke out another week for Earth to breathe a little bit and get ready for Operation Battle-ax, and on the other I might be the very tool the Swarm is using to destroy humanity. Gets to a man after awhile.”
He saw her reflection nod in the window.
“The fleet is nearly ready, sir. Captain Connelly on the Eddington reports they are done with repairs to their q-jump drive, and the Seattle is nearly there as well. We’ll be ready to depart in ten minutes.” She sat down in the chair across from his at the desk and sighed. “Do you think Avery will go for something like that? Kharsa’s proposal? Everything I know about her says she’ll laugh in our faces.”
“Oh, of course she will. There’s no way in hell that we’re giving up those three systems. It’s a nonstarter.”
She tapped her fingers nervously on the desk. “But it buys us time. Right. Time for what, exactly? If we need the location of the Swarm homeworld for Operation Battle-ax, what the hell is one more week going to buy us?”
“A lot.” He eyed the debris out the window. A giant piece of one of their dead ships began to glow, far below them, as it started to enter the atmosphere. He watched as it fell away from them, slowed by the ultra-compressed air heating up its hull. How many bodies were in that ship? How many sons and daughters? He turned to face her. “It buys the Mars Project time to bear fruit. And time for us to find their homeworld out here.”
She glanced up in surprise. “Sir?”
“Send a meta-space signal to the Russian Confederation on Kiev Prime. Ask for permission to cross their space on our way back to Earth.”
“Sir?” she repeated. Then it dawned on her. “He said to go back to Earth with reasonable speed. You’re counting on them buying it?”
Granger sat down too, and propped his sore feet up on the desk. “What, that the Russians will turn down our request, like they have for decades, or that Kharsa will buy it?”
“Both.”
He chuckled. “I don’t care what he thinks. He gave us a week to get back to Earth and send back a reply from Avery. He said to get back there with reasonable speed. It’s just not reasonable to cross Russian Confederation space without permission, don’t you agree, Commander?”
She smirked. “At least, not twice in one week.”
“Exactly. Then, when the Russians say no, we’ll have to go the long way around. And chances are the long way will take us right through Swarm territory.”
“Seems likely,” she said.
He stood up. She mirrored him. “Let’s find ourselves a homeworld, then,” he said, leading the way out the door.
The comm interrupted him. “Sir?” Lieutenant Diaz’s voice came over the speakers. “It’s Lieutenants Martin and Palmer, sir. The pilots injured in the fighter bay accident—Clownface and Hotshot. And … now I’m getting word about Dogtown, too.”
“What’s wrong with them, Commander?”
“They’re dead, sir.”
Chapter Forty-Six
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
Granger stood over the bodies laying on the two tables, Proctor at his side. He had to keep himself from wincing—the injuries were dramatic. And gory. Someone had literally bashed the three pilots’ faces in.
“Doc, how did this happen?”
“It was the night shift, Tim. They were alone, asleep. No one saw anyone else come or go. Not even the marines outside. When one of the other pilots checked on them, he discovered they were missing. After a brief search we found two of them stuffed into a utility closet down the hall. We found Dogtown a deck below in another closet—seems all three wouldn’t fit in the one.”
Proctor’s face looked pained as she regarded the bodies. “But aren’t we in sickbay? There must be two dozen wounded in here, with at least half your staff. How in the world did no one see them?”
Wyatt swept his arm around, indicating the crew members lying in their beds. “That’s just the point, Commander. We keep those actually wounded in here. These men technically had nothing wrong with them—they were only under observation from being in contact with Swarm matter from that crash, so I had them moved to the sickbay annex down the hall to free up space. That’s where their bodies were found. I brought them here to attempt resuscitation, but … well….” His voice trailed off with a grim look at the soldier’s unrecognizable faces.
Something tugged at the back of Granger’s mind. Something he couldn’t quite remember, but it felt important.
He rested a hand on one of the dead men’s shoulders. Another one. He knew he’d just lost fifteen thousand people that day. Fifteen thousand good and honorable men and women. Soldiers all. But these two were up close, personal and bloody. These men should not have died.
“Our problems are multiplying,” said Proctor. “We’ve got a genocidal alien race eager to kill us all, we learn they have friends willing to lend a hand, and now it turns out we have sleeper agents onboard the Warrior willing and able to kill crew members.”
Granger was still pulling at the stray thread of thought that had crossed his mind. Something was out of place. “And? Have you found anything? Any way to detect if a person is under Swarm influence or not? Any way to detect Swarm matter in the bloodstream or tissues?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tim. All my tests come up negative. If they had anything floating around in their blood or taking root in their muscles or lipid tissues, it’s undetectable.”
The doctor began dabbing at Lieutenant Palmer’s face with a wet cloth to clean off the dried blood from his partially caved-in temple.
He remembered. The hand. Doc Wyatt’s hand.
Shit.
“Armand, you touched Swarm matter a few months ago, didn’t you? During the invasion over Earth? You touched that Swarm matter oozing from the fighter.”
Wyatt kept dabbing, gingerly cleaning around the man’s closed and bruised eyes. “I did.”
“Then why haven’t we done any tests on you?”
Wyatt laughed. “Oh, believe me, I have. But you’re forgetting, Tim, that I’m a doctor.”
“So?”
Wyatt tossed the blood-soaked rag into a disposal bin. And held his hands up. “A doctor who follows strict medical protocol. Do you really think I’d touch Swarm matter—or any potentially infectious fluid—without protection? I wear neo-cordrine gloves at all times, Tim. They conform perfectly to my hand so you might not see them, but they provide an absolutely impregnable barrier to any infectious disease or contagion. Acids, bases, corrosives, hell, they even give me some radiation protection. I never take them off because I never know what I’ll encounter or when I’ll encounter it. Believe me, if I were infected, we’ve got bigger things to worry about—it would mean that Swarm fluid can traverse neo-cordrine, which, if true, would mean that many, many more people besides myself have been compromised.”
Made sense. If Doc Wyatt had been compromised, he would have had ample opportunity to infect a lot more people, or kill Granger, or Zingano—hell—he’d even been present during an awards ceremony with President Avery. He could have offed her then and made this whole treaty moot.
“Ok, you’ve got your alibi, Doc. Don’t worry, I don’t suspect you.”
Doctor Wyatt chuckled. “Like hell you don’t. And you should. It’s your job. And that’s the m
ost important thing I tell my staff.”
“What’s that?”
Wyatt smirked. “Do your damn job. No matter who you’re working on.”
Granger stared one last time at the bodies before taking his leave. Proctor followed him out. When the door closed they turned to look at each other. Within a moment of watching her face, he knew they were about to say the same thing.
“We need to be able to detect Swarm influence,” she said.
“I agree. IDF scientists have been studying Swarm matter for decades—what else do you think we can do? Wyatt’s already tried, and failed, apparently.”
Her eyes flicked to the closed doors of sickbay. “For one thing, get Wyatt off the project. First off, he’s a doctor with a lot of wounded, and doctors focus on their patients. Secondly, well, let’s just say that his alibi wasn’t one hundred percent airtight, no pun intended.”
Granger nodded. “Right. Who exactly are you suggesting?”
“Tim,” she sighed. “I love command. I really do. But what we need right now is a scientist, not a doctor. Not an XO—”
“Bullshit. I need you, Shelby—”
She touched his arm. “And you’ve got me. I’m not resigning or anything. But Diaz can step up and be XO for awhile. Give me some time to dedicate to this Swarm matter business. There’s no one more qualified—I spent nearly a decade studying the Swarm before I switched to command.”
He paused, weighing his options. “If we’re in a firefight, I need you.”
She nodded. “Agreed. I’ll put research on hold if slugs start flying.”
It made sense. They simply couldn’t afford gallivanting around a Swarm-infested galaxy with potentially one or more infected and compromised crew members. They couldn’t be negotiating with the Swarm when one of their own was a double agent. And they certainly couldn’t plan an invasion of the Swarm homeworld with their enemy knowing exactly when, where, and how IDF would strike.
“Ok. Get to the bottom of this, Shelby. Too much is at stake to ignore this any longer. I’ll go talk to Diaz.”
She smiled, squeezed his arm one last time, and took off in the opposite direction. Damn—he was going to hate running the ship without her. Diaz was good, but good in an Abraham Haws kind of way, more than a Shelby Proctor kind of way.
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Abraham Haws. That old bastard. Granger missed the hell out of him. An old warrior taken before his time.
No. It was his time. He did his duty. He made his sacrifice. He put himself forward so that others would be safe and paid the price. A price he paid gladly. Abe did his job.
Now it was time for Granger to do his. He strode onto the bridge. “Ensign Prucha, did the Russians get back to us?”
“Yes, sir. They refused passage through their space.”
Granger nodded. “Just as they should. Signal the fleet. Ready for q-jumps. We’ll be taking the long way around Russian space. First target,” he glanced at his tactical readout which displayed a star map of the adjacent sectors, “the Penumbra System. Calculate route and distribute to the rest of the fleet.”
A pause, and shortly Ensign Prince nodded. “Should take forty-five minutes, sir. Communicating our flight plan and linking nav computers now.”
“Good. Engage when ready.”
A moment later the stars shifted. Then again. And again. Nearly an hour later, they arrived on the outskirts of the Penumbra System. The preliminary scout report had indicated electromagnetic activity in the system that would suggest habitation or occupation. One more q-jump and the fleet would be there. A yellow, g-type sun glittered spectacularly against the background stars, only point one light year away.
“Final q-jump, sir,” said Prince.
Granger nodded his assent.
The stars onscreen shifted to reveal a blue, cloud-dappled world. The entire surface seemed to be an ocean, and Granger wondered if it was water, or just an icy-cold bath of liquid methane. No—the color was too deep a blue for that.
But what caught his attention more than the blue planet were the ships orbiting it.
The dozens—no—hundreds of ships.
Russian ships.
Chapter Forty-Seven
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
Isaacson couldn’t sleep. He’d been expecting to come home, bust a nut with a prostitute, have a drink, then fall blissfully asleep knowing a doubled secret service detail was keeping watch in the houses next door to and behind his own residence.
But something was nagging at him. Most unusually for him, they were numbers. One thousand bomb casings a week at the MUNCENT fabrications plant. Anti-matter—enough for fifty-thousand bombs—produced weekly at the Squaretop Mountain facility in Wyoming. Obviously, there were other casing production plants. But how many? And why so many?
That explosion near Elko. Conner’s brother and his mysterious death. What were the chances they were both related to the anti-matter program? And if they were, what were the chances that he personally knew of someone drafted into the program? Very low, unless, of course, the number of people drafted into that program was higher than he thought.
Throwing his covers off, Isaacson padded down to his office, waving his computer terminal on. Intel services had recently given him access to most records, at Avery’s request—part of his behind-the-scenes effort to track down which politicians were behind the assassination attempts. Time to test them out.
He searched. How many drafted? He ran through the records, collating and compiling lists and spreadsheets of draftees and arrived at a number. From Earth alone, among the United Earth nations, there were three billion. A few more billion were not drafted, but worked in related support industries. But all told, nearly a third of humanity on Earth was directly working and fighting in the war effort. Total war. And that was just on Earth. He didn’t even bother with the other fifty-five worlds of the broader United Earth.
Very well. Raw numbers aside, how many were in the anti-matter program? He ran a search, and quickly determined that no such program existed. Seems that Avery wasn’t giving him access to all classified documents. Fine—he’d have to improvise.
He spoke the next few commands—his computer skills were adequate, but certain search parameters would take him too long to figure out. “Cross reference this list of draftees with the list of assignments. Highlight all subjects whose assignment is unclear.”
A moment later the result appeared on the screen. A list of people, over ten million records long. Interesting. Either the bureaucrats had yet to enter in the data, or ten million people had been assigned to black ops programs. Programs so sensitive, not even the projects’ code names could be mentioned on draft records.
But how many of these were working on anti-matter?
“Cross reference this list with subjects’ personal files. Highlight school and career and general interests in science.”
Another list popped up on the screen. Nearly nine million. So nearly all the people working in the black ops programs were either scientists, engineers, or college kids with even a passing interest in science. He supposed the other million were support staff. How many of those died at the Elko facility, he wondered.
“Display how many of these are deceased.”
The new list appeared. Damn. That was one big facility. Nearly a hundred thousand had perished so far.
No, that couldn’t be right. There was no way to hide that many people out in the deserts of Nevada. There were only ten thousand people in the Wyoming plant alone, and that facility dwarfed the one at MUNCENT under the capitol.
There had to be others. Many others. And several of those had already had accidents, just like the one in Nevada.
But why so many? How many anti-matter bombs would it take to destroy the Swarm’s homeworld—and was that the intended target?
A soft, unexpected beep made him jolt. Someone was calling him. Who the hell wanted to talk to him at this hour? He brought up the call on his screen, an
d looked for who it was.
It was an unidentifiable-source transmission from Moscow. Frowning, he punched the call through, and Yuri Volodin’s face appeared on the screen.
“Eamon,” the other man whispered. He sounded worried. Urgent. “Is the channel secure?”
“Reasonably, secure—I am the vice president, after all—”
“No, you need to secure it. Turn on your quantum scrambler.”
Isaacson glanced around his desk and saw the little box they’d installed on his system. “Ready?”
Volodin nodded. Isaacson pressed a button, and he saw the ambassador do likewise on his end. “Good. We can talk freely now,” said the Russian.
“What is it, Yuri?”
“Something has come up, Eamon. I think Avery is planning something. Something big. Something awful.”
“Isaacson frowned. “What do you mean? Against the Swarm? Isn’t that what we all want?”
“Not against the Swarm. Against us! You know she has it in for us. She and the rest of her party. If the entire Russian Confederation ceased to exist tomorrow, she’d pop out a bottle of champagne, jump up on the table and dance an old-lady Irish jig. She hates us.”
It was true, of course. It’s how half the government felt, and a good chunk of the citizenry. “That’s not exactly a secret, Yuri. How—”
“She’s planning something. I just got word. In all the engagements with the Swarm, in all the ship movements and troop transfers, she’s managed to hide it quite well. A few ship transfers here. A few more there. A fighter squadron supposedly deactivated for repairs but actually sent off to some unknown location. A secret shipyards facility in the Columbia Sector that we just uncovered. Where do its ships go? We’ve tracked dozens of odd occurrences like these. She’s managed to hide them well, yes, but she finally made a mistake, and now we’re on to her. Eamon, Avery is going to blow up half a dozen Russian Confederation worlds. Possibly as early as next week.”
