by Nick Webb
The other captains gathered in the conference room just down the hall from the bridge. Granger sat down with them, a star map splayed out on the wall, and everyone stared forlornly at it. They’d sent scout ships discreetly out to a dozen neighboring systems. Most came back empty—no signs of Swarm, Russian, or Dolmasi activity. One came back and reported suspicious activity around one planet in the Volari System. No visible ships, but plenty of electromagnetic activity coming from the planet itself, indicative of civilization.
But it was fifty lightyears deeper into Swarm territory. Or at least, what they supposed was Swarm territory.
“What have we got to lose?” asked Captain Connelly of the Eddington, commander of Gamma Wing.
“Our fleet, for one. Not to mention our lives,” replied Captain Barnes.
Granger nodded. “It’s risky, I agree. But this entire mission was based on the premise that this was an acceptable risk. That it was worth it to the rest of IDF that we put them on the run. That we send them notice that our conflicts won’t be limited to our space any longer. If Volari Three really is a Swarm planet, I say we hit it, and hit it hard. Rain what anti-matter pods and nukes we have onto the surface. That’ll catch their attention all right.”
A few of the captains nodded. Several shook their heads. Granger had operational command of the mission, but he wanted unity. He didn’t want to force the other captains into something they thought was foolhardy. Not with a decision this big. He’d give the order if he had to, but he knew their chances of success were always greater when all the commanders believed in the mission. He’d have to sell it better.
“Did the scout take any visuals of Volari Three? Did it get close enough?”
Lieutenant Diaz nodded. “They stayed three astronomical units out, but yes, visuals were taken.”
“Let’s see them.”
Diaz fiddled with the controls on the desk and soon the image of their potential target flashed onto the wall.
It was a greenish gray globe, with several large lakes—big enough to be seas, but not quite oceans—dotting the surface.
Granger gasped.
Though it was slightly grainy, the likeness was unmistakable. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be, but it was.
“That’s it,” he whispered.
“Excuse me, Tim?” said Captain Barnes.
“That’s it. That’s the homeworld. Volari Three.” He stared at it. The familiar feelings he’d experience in his dream and during his brief contact with Vishgane Kharsa came flooding back to him.
“What do you mean, that’s the homeworld? How can you possibly know that?”
“I just know,” he murmured, still staring at the vast lakes peaking up through the sparse white clouds. It matched the image from his persistent dream. And he was certain, absolutely dead certain.
Volari Three: he’d been there before.
Chapter Fifty-Two
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
“Tim, what if it really is just a dream?”
“It’s not just a dream, Shelby.”
The captains had returned to their ships with Granger having argued them to an impasse. It wasn’t rational, he knew—there was no reason he could give to convince them that the planet was, truly, the Swarm homeworld.
But he remembered how he felt in that dream—dammit, it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory. A memory that was somehow made more intense by the touch of the Dolmasi. And in that memory—yearning. Excitement. He remembered feeling those things. Getting up from that examination table and looking down on that planet from that window and knowing, just knowing, that he was looking at the homeworld. The point of origin of the Swarm. The source of all their problems.
“Ok. What if it’s something the Swarm wants you to think?”
He cocked his head at her. They were in a lab she’d appropriated from the ship’s science team, she peering down through some type of imaging device at a sample. Some Swarm matter they’d stored in secure, triply-walled and sealed sample vials.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, just suppose for a moment that when you were gone to … wherever you went, that you were put under the influence of the Swarm, or otherwise had something planted in you. A memory. Something to tell you to come to this planet. Something to lure you here with a large portion of the IDF fleet. Then, they’re waiting for you, and they destroy you, leaving the path clear to take Earth and the rest of humanity.”
Granger snorted. “Why go to all the trouble? Seems a convoluted way to get us all in one place. Why not just amass a thousand Swarm ships, let us see them, and then move very slowly towards Earth. That would get our attention. We’d be forced to defend with everything we had, again. And when we did, they send in their reserve force, and pow.” He thumped the table.
She looked up and glared at his fist. “Careful. Science in progress.”
“Sorry,” he said, withdrawing his hand from the table.
She shrugged. “I know, it’s a stretch, but so is everything else, Tim. So is thinking that this is the actual, honest-to-god Swarm homeworld that we just happen to stumble into and it just happens to match the world from your dreams—”
“Memories,” he interrupted. “Let’s call them what they are.”
She looked up at him again with a scowl. “We don’t know that, Tim. They could be anything. We have no idea where you—”
“I know. Dammit, I know, I know—”
“—went that day or who you talked to or what they did to you—”
“—dammit, I know! I know—”
“—or what, pardon me for bringing it up, they injected you with that got rid of that cancer! Plus the pesky detail that you were gone not for twenty seconds, but for three goddamned days, Tim!”
“I know! Dammit,” he said, trailing off, shaking his head. “You have no idea what this is like for me. Second guessing myself. Thinking I might be a Swarm agent one minute, or just a sleeper agent the next, or even—”
“What?” she said, returning to her scope.
“Maybe I did die. Maybe they reanimated my corpse with Swarm matter and I’m just a piece of shit cumrat like the rest of them. I’m a friggin’ Dolmasi. A puppet.”
“Now you’re in fantasyland, Tim. I assure you, you’re not a zombie.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not. I’m not normal, that’s for sure. But whatever I am, I’m sure of one thing.” He pointed toward a bulkhead. “That planet out there is what we’re looking for. I know it. I feel it deep down, like I’ve never felt anything before. No—” He paused. “I’ve felt this before. The Khorsky incident. I knew, I just knew there was something going on in that sector, and sure enough, I saw what I saw. Over Vitaly Three. A Swarm ship, right in the middle of a Russian task force. Then, two months ago, I was sure that I needed to pilot the Old Bird into that singularity. After you’d all gone and set the ship on autopilot—”
“You were supposed to be in an escape pod, sir, if I remember correctly. Doc Wyatt should be fired for letting you out of his sight.”
“Good thing he had better things to do than babysit some cancer-riddled swooning captain who can’t stay on his feet in the most critical moment of a battle,” he said wryly. “But Shelby, I was sure of that decision. I had singular focus. Vision. Drive. I knew what I had to do. And it’s the same now.”
A silent pause.
“So? Are you going to order the fleet to attack?” She shifted from the scope to glance at the data readout on the display nearby.
“No. Not yet.”
She cocked her head toward him. “No? After all that? You sounded like you were trying to convince me that we should attack right this second.”
He stood up. “No. It’s time. Time for Operation Battle-ax. Whether the president is ready on her end or not, we’ve got to do it. We’re heading back to Earth. We’ll use whatever she’s been able to throw together with the Mars Project, but right now we’ve got the advantage of surprise. Th
ere’s no way they could know what we’re planning, or that we’ve finally found the right target.”
Her face said, “If we’ve found the right target,” but she only nodded, and peered back at her screen as the data flashed by.
“What have you found?” he said, looking at the data on her screen.
“Actually, I’m close. Using the phase modulation, I’m probing samples with as highly focused of meta-space beams as I can manage. Mind you, you generally can’t focus meta-space gravitons. They’re too long of a wavelength to get them even remotely narrowed down to the tiny space I’m interested in,” she said, pointing to the tiny sample of Swarm matter.
“But?”
“But I’ve induced a response.”
His jaw just about dropped. “A response?” He wanted to reach out and hug her. Instead, he sidled up to look at the data. “What kind? What did it do?”
“Well, there was a signal response, almost like a meta-space echo. But, even more interestingly, there was a slight transformation. Almost like a secretion.”
“A secretion? Like, the goo oozed more goo?”
“No, but part of the goo separated itself—slowly, mind you—and that separated gunk is a little different than the old stuff.”
“Fascinating,” he said, peering at the images and scans she’d taken. “Is the new material like the old?”
“No. See? Swarm matter is composed of a complex soup of proteins, heavy metals, and lubricating fluid—almost like our blood plasma. We can only guess at the function of most of these proteins—they’re just completely alien. Like nothing we’ve ever seen on Earth. Our proteins don’t have stuff like hafnium and vanadium in the chains. This is utterly foreign. But we knew all this decades ago. What’s new is that this new fluid I just produced is vastly different from the original Swarm matter.”
Dammit. She loved playing coy too much. Especially when she knew something he didn’t.
“How so?”
She looked up, and frowned. The creases on her forehead ran deep—she was clearly troubled by what she’d seen.
“It’s viral.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
“Tell me again, sir, why we’re breaking into the IDF Administration Building?” Conner stood next to him outside the elevator of the vast complex. The bureaucratic heart of United Earth’s military arm. MUNCENT lay hundreds of meters below them.
“Conner, I’m the vice friggin’ president. I don’t break into military admin buildings.”
“Then where’s your secret service detail?”
Lousy kid.
“I told you, I want to be discreet. You can’t be discreet with a dozen bulky well-armed men following you around, calling ahead to all your destinations to arrange security and in general making nuisances of themselves.”
“Nuisances that prevent more car bombings intended to kill you?”
Damn. The kid was getting mouthy. He wanted to say, Car bombings that only happen because the president wants to off her second in command and finger the Russians, but thought better of it.
“Look, you don’t have to be here. I just thought it’d be fun for you to do something other than iron my shirts and get me coffee. Lovely can you left on my counter last night, by the way. I was hoping for something a little more … authentic.”
Conner shrugged. “Best I could do last minute. We’ll see what I can get for tonight.”
The lift arrived, and Isaacson keyed in one of the upper floors—General Norton’s offices were down there, and he knew the secretary. A little too well. She’d no doubt be able to get him internal computer access.
A minute later the doors opened, and he strode confidently up to the reception desk. General Norton’s secretary smiled. And winked. “Mr. Vice President. Fancy meeting you here. Do you have an appointment with the General?”
He smiled back. “Christine, the vice president never needs an appointment to talk to anyone.” He took her hand and rubbed it gently between his. “Except you. How have you been?”
“Lonely,” she replied. “You never call anymore.”
“Been busy. You know, war. Coordinating planetary defenses and fleet readiness and all that.” In truth, he hadn’t called because she’d developed a strange and sudden case of halitosis, but that would have been shallow of him to leave her over a thing like that. And if he was anything, it wasn’t shallow, dammit. Just … picky. “Very busy. You?”
She sighed. “Busy too. It’s been a mad house around here. What can I do for you, Eamon?”
“I need access to Norton’s files. He said he’d send some stuff over for me but it never showed up. And rather than send classified files over the air, I thought it’d be more prudent to look at them here anyway.”
“Did he authorize it?”
He smirked. “Of course he authorized it. Do you want me to call him?” He reached in his pocket for his comm card. “He’s probably in a meeting with the president right now and won’t be too happy to be interrupted like this, but if you insist—”
“No, no, darling, that won’t be necessary. Come on.” She stood up and led him to a small room nearby, her high heels clicking neatly on the tiled floor. A few computer terminals lined the wall, along with old, decrepit secure filing cabinets, complete with spin dials and faded classification stickers from a bygone era. The general was old-school.
“Thank you, dear. I won’t be long.” He smiled and squeezed her hand again. “Conner, wait outside, please. Let me know if someone wants to see me,” he said with a look that said, see that I’m not disturbed.
He shut the door and rushed to open up a computer terminal; soon he was digging through the top-secret classified files. There were folders with titles like Logistics, Production, Draft, Deployments, R&D, and a host of other one-word descriptions of IDF’s activities.
There. There it was—a folder most likely to tell him what he wanted to know. At least about the anti-matter program. Special Offensive Capabilities. Such a sterile term for something so menacing. He opened it.
And was disappointed. Just budgets, with only vague descriptions of line items. Something called the Mars Project—what the Mars habitation programs had anything to do with offensive capabilities was beyond him … ah, except there within the Mars file was a list of material production facilities. And casing fabrication facilities. As he suspected there were dozens of bomb casing plants, not only on Earth but on Britannia as well. But what surprised him was the number of locations involved in anti-matter production. Not just the Wyoming plant. Not just the Wendover plant. There were ten. Scattered throughout North and South America and India.
He followed the production line. Special material was produced at one of the ten production centers. Bomb casings were manufactured at one of the dozens of fabrication facilities. The casings and material were all shipped to a third type of building—integration labs. He supposed it was quite an engineering feat to stabilize the anti-matter within the casings and keep the blasted things from exploding at inopportune times.
From the integration labs, the completed weapons were shipped to ordnance storage. As far as he could tell, there were only two of those. One in Saskatchewan. The other in the Britannia System, several dozen light years away, in a station orbiting Calais, a gas giant near Britannia itself.
Britannia. Calais. Just like Volodin had said.
He opened the files for fleet movements and tried to follow the tracks, but it was hopeless. There was nothing to indicate any type of covert buildup of forces near Britannia. He opened the file labeled Missions and Operations, and likewise was met with disappointment. Just standard fleet operations against the Swarm. Files for each engagement to date, describing intelligence leading up to the fight, tactics used, casualties, recommendations for future strategies—somehow the pencil-pushers in the Administration Building had managed to take such a deadly, serious affair and turn it into mind-numbing buzz-word-filled bu
reaucrat-eese.
“Eamon. How kind of you to drop in. Can I help you find something?”
Isaacson’s head snapped around and he felt the blood leave his face. Dammit.
“General Norton, I’m glad you’re here. Actually, I think you can help me find something.” He waved the general over, wondering if his act was convincing.
Norton didn’t move. “I know why you’re here, Eamon.”
Isaacson raised an eyebrow. “You do?”
“I’m not stupid, Eamon. I may not be a politician, but I know how you people operate. You’re looking for dirt on Avery. I know. Don’t deny it.”
“Of course I deny it! How could you suggest such a thing?”
Norton smirked. “Of course. Then, might I ask, what are you doing here? In my offices, going through my files, uninvited?”
For once, words failed him. “I….”
“Exactly. Let me help you out then, Mr. Vice President. You’re looking in the wrong place.”
Interesting. Was the General wanting Avery out as well? “Oh?”
“I’m sure by now you’ve heard of Sparks’s death?”
Congresswoman Sparks. The accident involving the president’s escort ship. “Yes. That was unfortunate. She was a friend. You’re sure it was Swarm sabotage? Has their reach really extended that far?”
“Farther,” said Norton. “But in this case, no. Congresswoman Sparks didn’t die in a Swarm sabotage event. That did happen—fifty good soldiers lost their lives on board the Recto—but that’s not how she died.” General Norton took a few steps toward him and took a seat nearby. “She died when President Avery put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Murdered her in cold blood.”
Isaacson couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it. He knew she was ruthless, tough as nails, and would do anything she thought was necessary to save Earth. But murder?
And yet it was aligning with the recent picture Volodin had painted. “Why?”
“Why? She thought Sparks was plotting to kill her. Hell, you should know all about that.” Norton smiled at him—his tone made it sound like he knew a lot more about Isaacson than he thought. He’d been careful, dammit. And now the chairman of the joint chiefs was alluding to possible treason on Isaacson’s part. What did the man want?
