by Nick Webb
That bitch.
They ached. The devices Avery had injected into him didn’t go in gently, even though they were most likely tiny—no bigger than a pill. No bigger than his remaining dignity, he supposed with a wince as he felt a sharp twinge near his elbow. He held the arm up and examined the wounds left behind. They pockmarked his skin, an accusing trail that went all the way up to his biceps. Several angry welts screamed out from his chest too.
He’d kill her. He really would this time. No hesitation. No remorse.
Instantly, his head exploded in pain and he cried out.
Moments later, as the pain subsided, he realized his comm card had been beeping. How long? He pulled it out of his pocket and tried to open his eyes—the room was only dimly lit, but the light seared his sight after the unexpected blast of pain in his head.
It was a voice memo. He tapped it to play.
Avery’s voice rang out from the card. “You won’t kill me, Eamon. You won’t because you can’t. You’re an impotent little slug. Yes—that’s right, I know what you think. I know what you feel. I told you—I own you completely now. Every thought. Every feeling. You’d better learn to guard yourself or I’ll just have to keep this pain button clicked to maximum. Your life is over, Eamon. I killed you back on the Lincoln. You’re dead. The only way for you to live again is to do exactly what I tell you, perfectly and willingly, until this war is over and our civilization safe. Then, if you’ve proved yourself, you’ll be reborn. I’ll grant you a new life, Eamon. All your own. Without the old battle-ax hovering over, telling you what to do.
“Now, go to bed. Do nothing else. Get some sleep. You’re going to need it. In the morning report to the executive mansion for your first assignment.”
He sighed. She was right—he was dead. His thoughts were not his own. His feelings were not his own. He was a prisoner in his own body. Worse—he was a slave in his own body. In appearance, one of the most powerful men in the galaxy, but in actuality only an automaton.
He’d kill her.
Dammit! Another short burst of pain reminded him of her constantly monitoring presence.
A sound made him jump off the sofa with a start. Someone was moving in another room.
He crept around the corner, peering into the empty kitchen. He heard it again—it was coming from his bedroom down the hall.
Padding softly across the carpet down the hall, he pushed the door open to his bedroom, only to relax when he saw the source of the sound.
Conner, you brilliant bastard.
He flushed and swelled at the sight. Just like he described her. Beautiful. Young. Exotic. Laying invitingly on his bed, with eyes that said now.
His belt came off. He struggled with the clasp on his pants. She raised an inviting finger, motioning him forward. Oh god, she’s amazing. Like wildfire, a heat rose up from his groin, electrifying his chest to the point he felt almost lightheaded. It had been way too long. Nearly a week.
His head exploded in pain again.
“No!” he said. “No, no, no….”
Maybe it was a fluke. He let his pants drop to the floor.
The pain intensified. Pulsed with a regular, unnatural rhythm.
With a sigh, he sat down on the corner of the bed and pointed to the door.
“Out,” he mumbled.
The woman hesitated.
“Leave.”
She swore, slid off the bed, and pulled her clothes back on before slipping out the door.
His comm card beeped again, and with a reluctant sigh he reached down to his pocket near the floor and tapped it.
The president’s voice grated on his ears. “Don’t worry, Eamon. You’ll get some action. But only when I tell you. And only if you’ve been a very, very good boy.”
Chapter Eighty-Six
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
The medics had carried Fishtail to sickbay, and with good reason: her face was smashed, her lungs collapsed, and her blood pressure was so low that the nurse said her heart would stop at any moment.
Granger ran to sickbay with Zingano and Kharsa and a handful of marines in tow. At the door to sickbay a young man stopped him. A pilot from the looks of him, who eyed Granger warily.
“Stand aside, son.”
“You were there, Captain. You were there. With the Swarm. With the Russians. Just moments ago. And … and, now you’re here.” He struggled for words. “I … I—”
“I understand your confusion, Lieutenant, I don’t understand it myself. But I’m here now. And so are you. And Miller.”
Volz’s face contorted in grief. “Not anymore. Her heart just stopped.”
With a curse, Granger shoved the young man aside and walked into sickbay. A nurse and his team worked frantically on the body of the pilot he’d sent to die, but from the looks of their faces, it was over.
He was numb. The woman’s blood stained the table where she lay, spilling onto the floor and staining the gloved hands of the medical staff. He’d never had to face the consequences of his painful decisions with such … such viscerally gruesome immediacy. He’d always ordered from afar. The ships would receive his orders, and they’d fly against their targets, and it was over. He’d never seen the aftermath up close and personal. Not like this.
Proctor stood in the background, apparently recovered enough that she could be out of bed. Her hand covered her mouth. Bandages wrapped her shoulder where Doc Wyatt’s bullet had struck, but she looked like she’d be just fine with rest and—
Holy hell, he thought. Proctor. Doc Wyatt. He’d been infected with Swarm. But then Proctor had cured him.
Granger had been infected by Swarm matter, which had cured his cancer. Kharsa said the matter acted like a virus that killed every other competing virus and foreign contaminant. That the Russians had injected him with it, saving him, and condemning him to Swarm control at the same time.
But he’d been cured of Swarm control, too.
And if he could be freed from the Swarm….
“Proctor, you still have active Swarm virus?”
She nodded, and produced a small vial from one of her pockets.
“Then what the hell are you waiting for?”
She shook her head. “I … I can’t, Captain.”
He stepped forward and grabbed her arm. “What do you mean you can’t? I’m cured. Doc Wyatt was cured. We can still save her.”
She shook her head again.
He squeezed harder. “Do it. Inject her. While we still have time.”
She looked at him. “Captain, Doc Wyatt is dead. The antidote didn’t work. It killed him.”
Impossible. He looked at the body. The medical team had stopped their efforts, and the nurse swore before sighing. “Time of death, twenty-two hundred hours, five minutes.”
No. He wasn’t going to have her here, alive, brought back from the brink of death, a fate that resulted directly from his decision, his actions, only to lose her again. He spun back around to the Vishgane. “You. You found a way to subvert Swarm control over your people. If we inject her with Swarm matter, you can keep her safe!”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Captain Granger. Our physiology is quite different from yours. Our method would most assuredly result in her death, too.”
He looked back at her. The broken body lying on the table, still dripping with blood. The bruises still blue and purple and the bones still broken.
“Do it.”
Proctor stared at him. “Captain?”
“I said, do it. Inject her.”
“But the antidote will only—”
“I know what the goddamned antidote will do! Inject her with Swarm matter anyway. We’ll figure out the cure later.”
Shaking her head, Proctor fumbled in a drawer for a meta-syringe, and, loading the vial in, she pressed it against Miller’s bloody neck.
He motioned to the nurse. “Continue life saving efforts. Get oxygen into her lungs. Keep it flowing.”
T
he nurse looked confused, eyeing the captain warily.
“DO IT!”
The medical team sprang back into action, one of them shoving the oxygen tube back into her throat, the others pumping on her chest to induce blood flow to the brain, working just enough oxygen up there to keep it from dying before the Swarm matter had the chance to repair the damage.
It didn’t take its time. To everyone’s shock, she suddenly breathed, gasping for air. Her eyes opened. Her chest rose and fell. She reached out and grabbed the arms of the two medical techs nearby.
Proctor sidled up to him. “And what if we can’t find a way to counteract the Swarm virus, Captain? We can’t risk having her spread it. We still have no idea how virulent it is once inside a human host. If we hadn’t stopped Doc Wyatt and Colonel Hanrahan they might have been able to infect the entire crew. What if she tries to do the same?”
He watched as the medical staff worked on Miller, sealing up the wounds, setting the bones, injecting her with what he assumed was pain medication and something to induce tissue repair. “Then I kill her again, Shelby. But at least this time I get to look her in the eyes when I do it.”
The head nurse, who’d taken charge in place of Doc Wyatt, cleared sickbay. Vishgane Kharsa left, escorted by the marines, back to the shuttle bay where he returned to his ship. Zingano left, with instructions to Granger that they meet to talk within the hour. Soon only Granger, Proctor, and the young pilot who’d come back holding Miller’s dying body remained.
“You did good, son.”
Volz nodded, but said nothing.
“Look, son, I may have been under Swarm influence when and where you last saw me. But that’s over. And we’ve just won the biggest battle with them yet. And they’re stripped of one of their most powerful allies. We’ve got them on the run.” He turned to look at the pilot—the young man didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Granger recalled distant memories of looking so thin and athletic. “We’re going to win this war, son.”
The young man met his eyes. “Are we, sir? Only heroes win wars. All we’ve got are millions of dead. We get our heroes, but only as martyrs: they die in the very act of becoming a hero.”
“Bullshit. People like us win wars. Not heroes, not legends. Us. Me and you.”
They looked each other over, a momentary silence passing between them. Medical scanners beeped in the background.
“She’s not dead, Lieutenant,” Granger said, pointing to the young woman on the table. “She’s a hero, and she’s alive.” He fingered Volz. “And you’re not dead either.”
The pilot nodded. “No, sir. I’m not dead. And neither are you. The entire Earth watched you not die.”
The Hero of Earth.
Granger was about to respond with contempt at the idea that he was a hero, but he stopped, wondering if maybe the kid had a point. Sure, regular people won wars. That meant regular people were the heroes. He was ordinary. He could be a hero. Could he be comfortable with that? Even knowing how many bricks he’d tossed, how many ships he’d ordered to their fiery deaths?
He nearly retorted something back, but stopped: Miller’s eyes were open. And staring straight at Granger. He stepped forward and nodded at her, glancing to see that the restraints the medical staff had put on her arms and legs were secure to the bed. “How are you feeling, Lieutenant?”
She smiled. He never met Miller before, but this smile seemed … off. Haughty. Amused.
“Our good friend. We are overjoyed to see you again.”
Granger frowned. He glanced at the restraints one more time before stepping right up to her bed.
“What do you want?”
“We’ve told you this before, Captain Granger. To be friends, that is all. We are safer that way. You are safer. We all are safer, and prosperous, and secure.”
He scoffed. “Safer? One could say that slaves are the least safe of all. Neither they nor their masters. Didn’t work out so well with the Dolmasi, did it?”
She mimicked his scoff. “A minor setback. They’ve been replaced in the Concordat of Seven by the Adanasi, our truest, most faithful, profitable allies. Of which you are part. Peace has already been made, Captain, on behalf of your entire race. Submit now, and join with the rest of the Adanasi. Take your place at our side. The friendship of the entire galaxy awaits. We will ally with worlds without number. And they will rejoice.”
He puffed a mocking breath of air. “No deal.”
Miller sighed. “It was worth a try.” She fixed her eyes on him. “Captain Granger, just as with you, we now know everything this person ever did. Every fact, every bit of knowledge, and every turn of phrase. Every colloquialism. I’m sure you’ll recognize this one.”
“And what’s that?”
Miller’s gaze turned cold.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
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