by Nick Webb
They weren’t firing yet.
“Standby, Admiral,” he said, waving over to the comm.
“Standby? Tim, this thing is over. Dead. Tits up.”
“Understood, Bill. Just give me one minute.” He turned to the comm station. “Put me on with the Dolmasi flagship.”
They still weren’t firing. They were just hovering there, behind the Swarm carriers.
“You’re on, sir. Dolmasi flagship on visual.”
Granger turned to the screen, even as the ship lurched to starboard under the assault of a few Swarm carriers that had come to assist the Russian fleet from the Warrior’s assault. A familiar sight greeted him.
“Vishgane Kharsa. Hello again. I advise you to keep your distance, or you will suffer the same fate as the Swarm and Russian—”
Loud, choking laughter greeted him. “Captain Granger! You’ve been a good friend. A powerful ally. You will be rewarded.”
Granger’s heart sunk. His stomach turned to ice. Was it true? Had he unwittingly been led by the Swarm into this situation? He’d been a tool the entire time. The Swarm’s method of summoning nearly the entire IDF fleet here, to their homeworld, to the seat of their power.
Where the combined might of the Swarm, and the Concordat of Seven could more easily destroy them. With their five other alien “friends.” Where were the others anyway?
Zingano’s voice hollered in the background. “Granger, what the hell is he talking about?”
It was time to tell the admiral how foolish he’d been. How he’d known for over a week now that he’d once been under Swarm control, and—most likely—still was.
But first, one last ditch attempt to scare off the Dolmasi.
“I’m warning you, Kharsa. Get the hell out or I’ll—”
“No need, my good friend. You’ve done enough already. Stand back and witness the fruit of your many labors.”
The screen blanked out, replaced by a view of the battle, which had once again begun to turn south—the appearance of the new threat had sapped the hope from the entire IDF fleet. Here and there, a cruiser winked out as it q-jumped to safety.
The Dolmasi started firing.
Granger blinked. He couldn’t understand what he was seeing.
“Diaz, am I seeing this right?”
Diaz nodded slowly. “Confirmed, sir. Sensors show the Dolmasi are, indeed, firing on the Swarm carriers.” He looked up at the screen as one of the massive carriers exploded. “With remarkable effect.”
It was a dream. It couldn’t be possible. But the viewscreen didn’t lie and the sensors confirmed it: the Dolmasi, flanking the Swarm carriers from behind, were cutting their way through the enemy fleet, ripping the Swarm to shreds. Carrier after carrier broke into pieces, exploded, and careened through the atmosphere.
The battle was turning. Decisively.
Over the comm he heard Zingano yelling orders to the rest of the fleet to reengage, and Granger shouted his own orders to his strike force. “Hammer and anvil, people. Tag team with our new friends. Eddington, Philadelphia, and Arizona, take your light cruisers and assist at thirty mark ten. Oregon, Wales, and Paris focus on that Russian wing where the Dolmasi are already hitting them!”
On the screen, the field of battle was still a fireworks display, but this time, instead of IDF ships falling back and shattering under the withering fire from the enemy, it was the Swarm and Russian ships receiving the brutal lashing. The Dolmasi, apparently, were a force to be reckoned with, especially when they showed up in such vast numbers. The Russian fleet wilted before them. The Swarm carriers lurched and veered out of the way, caught in the crossfire between the new arrivals and IDF, which had redoubled its fire.
And soon, the battle was won. The Russians—what was left of them anyway—began q-jumping away. The Swarm carriers had dwindled down to no more than a dozen, and they soon found themselves surrounded by both IDF and Dolmasi cruisers. Within another five minutes they were vaporized.
It was over.
Against all odds, in spite of bad turn after bad turn, from hopeless and final defeat came the unseen victory.
But how? Why? Granger wasn’t one to look the gift horse in the mouth, but they needed to know if they weren’t next. That the Dolmasi, having turned on their masters, wouldn’t now turn on their new friends. “Hail Vishgane Kharsa’s ship.”
Prucha nodded. “Onscreen, sir.”
The alien’s triumphant face flashed onto the wall. “Captain Timothy Granger. Congratulations on your victory. It was well earned.”
Granger bowed his head slightly. “And congratulations to you, Vishgane. You’ve apparently thrown off your overlords. Well done.”
Kharsa choked out another laugh. “So we have. And more than you know.”
On the other half of the screen, the rest of the battle was being mopped up as the fleet targeted the now homeless and flailing Swarm fighters. The planet still turned serenely below. Their true target. It was time to finish up what they came here for.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Vishgane, we need to raze the surface. If we destroy this world, the Swarm will surely fall. Without their home they will be crushed.”
Kharsa shook his head. “You will do no such thing, Captain.”
“Excuse me?” He knew there was a catch. “Vishgane, this is the Swarm’s homeworld. If we destroy this, we break their backs. We don’t understand everything about Swarm physiology or culture or technology, but I’m sure that if we destroy their home base that—”
“You will do no such thing, Captain Granger, because this is not the homeworld of the Valarisi.”
Granger’s stomach clenched. “It’s not? How do you know?”
Vishgane Kharsa smiled. “It is not. Because it is ours. It is the Dolmasi homeworld. And with your gracious help, we have now liberated it.”
Chapter Eighty-Three
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
The silence in the conference room was awkward, to say the least. Admiral Zingano, Vishgane Kharsa, and Granger sat alone in the small room off of the Warrior’s bridge.
“What do you mean, Vishgane, when you say you encouraged Captain Granger here to liberate your world?” Zingano turned to Granger, his eyes flashing with anger. “Tim?”
Granger shook his head.
“It is simple, Admiral,” began the Vishgane. “The captain was once under the influence of the Valarisi, just like us. But, just like us, he managed to find a way to throw off their influence. Somehow, he regained his freedom. We do not know how. But once an individual has been under the Valarisi’s control, their influence never completely goes away. Traces of the Valarisi still course through the captain’s blood. Just as it does with us. It is how we deceive them, letting them think they still control us.”
Zingano swore. Granger put his head in his hands and repeated the profanity.
“Tim, how long have you known?”
Granger looked up at Zingano. “I’ve had the dreams, of course. You knew that. But, the Vishgane suggested as much to me the last time we met.” Granger glared at the alien. “And the last time we met, you destroyed several of my ships. Thousands of men and women. What do you say about that?”
The Vishgane bowed his head, and held it there. The pose was one of humility. Or was it shame? Granger was still trying to decipher the alien’s mannerisms and speech, as they were, well, alien.
“We are truly regretful, gentlemen. It was necessary. At the time the Swarm was watching everything I did. If I didn’t … put on a good show, as you would say, then the charade would be over. They were holding our world hostage, and would surely destroy it if they detected any deception on our part. Billions of my people would have died. The sacrifice of your people will long be sung about among mine.”
Zingano pounded the table. “Bullshit. We are not your pawns.” He glared at Granger. “And how did you do it, Vishgane? How did you make my friend here do your dirty work?”
“Easy. We hav
e a common bond. We are still part of the same great family, even if our parents no longer control us. You went somewhere, Captain, when your ship fell into that singularity. But it was not here. You did not come to our world. You went somewhere else.”
“Where?” Granger felt like a fool, having been played, but he at least could figure out the mystery. What had truly happened to him.
“That much is clear. You went to the Russian’s singularity production facility.”
Zingano swore again. “The Russians?! The singularities are a Swarm weapon!”
“They are. The Russian ships have never been able to generate the amount of energy required to weaponize the singularities. But it is Russian technology, to be sure. They produce them, and the Valarisi deploy them.” Kharsa folded his short, scaled fingers on the table in front of him. “And it was to their production facility that you went, of course, when you emerged from the other side. All singularities are made in pairs. And each in a pair acts as a gateway to the other. Like what you would call a wormhole. Under the right circumstances, what enters one will emerge from the other. And you emerged from the other, near death. The Russians found you. They brought you aboard their station. And, at the behest of our former masters, they injected you with Valarium….” Kharsa hesitated. “I believe you would call it … Swarm matter.”
Zingano glared at Granger as the alien continued.
“The Valarium cured you, Captain. It revivifies living tissue. It hunts down viruses and foreign contaminants, for it itself is a virus. The most advanced virus we have ever encountered. And it changes you. Allows you to organically tap into graviton fields—the core of meta-space communication. That is how they communicate, Captain. How they control. And when we touched, when I shook your hand,” Kharsa looked down again. “You’ll forgive me, Captain, that is when I placed within you the false memory. I saw your memories aboard the Russian station at their production facility, I saw the world you orbited, and I replaced it with an image of my world. When you then looked at it, you felt my desires. My longing for my home.”
Granger nodded, understanding. “I felt like it was here. That this was the place to be. Where we had to come with the fleet.”
“Everything that I felt for my homeworld, you felt for this planet. And so, when you saw it for the first time, you knew you had found it. You took your own memories of your time as a friend of the Valarisi, you tapped into my feelings and determination to take back my own world, you remembered the false memory I placed within you of this world, and the result was something we’d hoped for. We knew this was a great gamble. A risk. But it paid off. You came. In force. And the result is our freedom.”
More silence, as the disturbing news started to sink in.
“Wyatt. Hanrahan. The pilots—Martin and Palmer and Dogtown.” Granger began. “They were all swarm infected, weren’t they?”
Kharsa nodded. “Yes. The doctor two months ago. Hanrahan and the pilots recently. When I shook the colonel’s hand right before yours, I looked into his mind and saw the five of them were under the Valarisi’s control. So I directed him to kill the pilots. In the scant moments I was holding the colonel’s hand and communing with him, I decided the fewer security holes you had to deal with, the better.”
“So, the Swarm is defeated then?” asked Granger.
Kharsa looked at, and shook his head. “Regrettably, no. This was less than half their strength. And remember, we were but one of a great family of seven people. Six formidable friends of the Valarisi. Now that we have betrayed them, the full might of the other six allies will be summoned. The Valarisi do not abide treachery.”
More silence. “Fortunately, the identity of the seventh ally is now revealed. We had worked out the locations and identities of four of the other allies—the Valarisi prefer to keep us separate so that we do not communicate. But today’s battle confirmed it.”
It couldn’t be. But it made sense, of course. All the signs pointed to it. Granger only nodded as Kharsa finished his thought.
“The seventh ally is humanity.”
Zingano snorted. “You mean the Russians. Bastards.”
Kharsa nodded. “The Valarisi do not see you as separate factions or people. To them, you are one society. One race. Your political divisions are unimportant to them.”
“Then why are they trying to destroy us?” said Granger. “Why the invasion? Why the bloodshed, if they already consider humanity to be their friends, through the Russians?”
“Because, Captain Granger, the Valarisi can not abide division and confusion. In their eyes, they see you as a malignant tumor that must be rooted out. Seventy-five years ago they encountered you, and like every other race they found before, they tried to conquer and convert you. But they started late in their cycle. You put up such a stiff defense that they realized it would take them far more time to convert you than they had planned, so they left, and let you be for a time. They needed to begin the next cycle.”
Granger nodded. “Proctor was telling me about this. So they just stopped because their evolutionary cycle was over? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” said Kharsa. “It’s built into their genetic code, Captain. They’re hard wired to return home and commence the next cycle when the current one elapses. But this time, they were interrupted. Your people—the Russians, as you call them—found the Valarisi. Communicated with them. Traded technology with them. Gave the Valarisi a weapon that was so devastating it changed the entire calculus of their cycle. They decided to accelerate—to commence the expansion phase of their cycle far earlier than usual.”
Granger shook his head. “And that’s when they invaded Earth again. Right where they left off.” He paused. “But where do I come into all this? How do you know me so well? The first time I encountered your ships you seemed to know me and my ship as well as I do. And your command of our language and your knowledge of—”
Kharsa held up a hand. “That is because we have met before, Captain. For you it was nearly three months ago. For me … it was five.”
The realization began to dawn on him. “What are you saying?”
“Five months ago, I was at the Russian singularity production facility. It was our task to integrate the new technology into the Valarisi’s ships. That is also part of their evolution—they have no hands, no feet, no way to physically manipulate the environment around them. There is no need when you have other races to do that for you. So it fell to us to upgrade their ships. We were about halfway done when, to our surprise, the Constitution appeared out of nowhere. Streams of air and smoke and debris coming from deep holes in its hull. The Adanasi—or, Russians, humanity—they were instructed to take you. To convert you. To alter your ship and send you back to your world as—” He seemed to struggle with words.
“As a Trojan horse?” Zingano filled in for Kharsa.
The Vishgane smiled. “Precisely. You, aboard the Constitution, were to fly back to Earth at that time—two months prior to the planned invasion—and with several dozen singularities of your own, were to destroy your centers of leadership. Your military positions. Then, the Valarisi would come in behind you, land a thousand carriers, unleash a swarm of Valarium distribution vehicles into your cities and towns, and convert the rest of you. As they’ve done for tens of thousands of years.”
Unbelievable. He was going to be the vehicle of Earth’s destruction. In the past. Somehow, one of the singularities transported him to the past.
But it didn’t work. He’d found a way to defeat them. Even if he couldn’t remember how.
“But I didn’t do that. I didn’t travel to Earth. At least, not in the way they had planned. Earth was saved.”
Kharsa nodded. “True. Earth was saved from that first invasion, from the Constitution returning with singularities targeting its surface. It was saved. But not by you.”
Chapter Eighty-Four
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
It took Granger a moment to unde
rstand the Vishgane’s meaning. Earth had been saved from a Swarm-controlled Trojan horse: Granger. In the past. By someone else. Before he could ask who it was, the comm beeped.
“Sir, you’ll want to see this,” said Ensign Prucha from the bridge.
Granger started, grabbing his armrests, before jumping up and dashing toward the door. He motioned to Kharsa to follow, and within moments he, Zingano, and the alien were striding onto the bridge.
“Sir, it just came out.”
“What came out? And from what?”
Diaz pointed to the viewscreen. A fighter. From the looks of it, it had recently come through an intense battle. He scanned the markings—it was clearly one of the Warrior’s.
“Commander Pierce, all fighters have been aboard for over an hour, right?”
The comm computer relayed his question to the CAG, whose voice soon came over the speaker. “Aye, sir. All surviving fighters are accounted for.”
“Then who the hell is this?”
Another voice came over the comm.
“Lieutenant Tyler Volz, sir. I … I flew into a singularity. Just like you. And I’m back. And I brought an old friend. She needs the doc, sir. She’s in a bad way.”
Granger’s knees began to weaken as he stumbled into his chair, overcome. He didn’t even need to ask who it was.
Volz continued. “Fishtail is alive, sir. But barely. Her pulse is faint.”
Someone he sent to die for him. Someone else he’d used up, used as weapon, as a stone in a sling, as a brick through a window—they were alive.
Granger’s voice cracked: “Keep her alive son. Medics will meet you in the fighter bay.”
Chapter Eighty-Five
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
The president rearranged his secret service security detail, so it was with her own personal agents that Isaacson made his way from the executive spaceport to his residence. The new officers escorted him to the door, shut it behind him, and when he was finally alone he collapsed onto a sofa nearby, rubbing his arms.
