by Nick Webb
“Tim?” Granger turned to the voice. It was his CAG. Commander Tyler Pierce.
“What the hell do you want?” he replied gruffly, still eyeing the nervous marines, who clearly were quite torn. What was the military coming to? Had the decades of peace and prosperity made them all fat and complacent? What was Yarbrough thinking, undermining him like this?
“Just wanted to show you something, sir.” The CAG thumbed in the direction of the Air Group’s mission room. He was a younger gentleman, clearly the son of some patrician senator or oligarch on one of the more prosperous worlds, perhaps York, or Versailles, judging by his decidedly upper-class accent and the overly conservative part in his hair.
Still glowering at the two marines, he followed his CAG into the mission room—a mini-amphitheater surrounding a podium in front of a holoscreen. Several technicians were busy installing a few extra rows of seating in the front and another was fiddling with the terminal on the podium.
“What are they doing?” Granger asked, indicating the techs.
Pierce’s expression betrayed his annoyance. “Do you really need to ask?”
“Proctor?”
Pierce nodded. “They’re turning this into a fighter combat simulation room. Bring fifty tourists in at once, show them a cute battle sequence up there on the screen, brief them on their mission, then off they all go to sit in the cockpits of the fighters out there.” He thumbed in the direction of the fighter bay, which Granger now had zero desire to see, even though Proctor was in there and he was itching to blast her out one of the fighter bay airlocks.
“Is it bad? Are they all stripped down?”
The CAG shrugged. “Well, not all of them. Just twenty or so. And all of the fighter’s systems are still intact. They’ve just rigged them with dummy torpedoes Proctor printed out in the fab, and upgraded ... uh, downgraded the computers with some new battle simulation program she brought with her from the Smithsonian. But they’re all roped off and repainted some god-awful shade of purple and yellow—she thinks it’ll make them look more futuristic for the visitors, you see....”
The captain groaned. “Purple and yellow?”
“Yeah, tell me about it. But Tim, this isn’t why I asked you here. Come into my office for a moment.”
Granger followed him into the CAG’s office and took a seat next to the terminal next to Pierce. He smiled at the pictures of the man’s family displayed neatly in dark metal frames on the desk—two little boys sitting on the lap of a gorgeous blonde woman posed in front of some pine trees. “Family’s on York?” He nodded towards the picture, the faintly purple tinge to the deep blue sky clueing him in to where it was taken.
“Yes, sir. My family’s lived in Londinium for centuries. Fourth great grandfather was one of the first settlers there. Helped build Londinium from the ground up. Well, at least his workers did. Never did enjoy getting his hands dirty, the old sod.”
“You talk about him like you knew him.”
“I did. He only died twenty years ago. Right before I joined IDF.”
Granger looked at him askance. “Your fourth great grandpa died just twenty years ago?”
“Well, when you own half the city of Londinium you can afford all sorts of age extending procedures. Replaced half his body at least four times before he finally came down with a common cold and died of pneumonia. One hundred and eighty-nine. Oldest man on York when he died.”
Captain Granger whistled. And to think he was going to die at a paltry sixty-four. Sixty-five, if he was lucky. Unless they came up with a miracle cure for stage four lung cancer, a malignant brain tumor, and pancreatic cancer that didn’t involve replacing his entire body and flooding his head with high-energy protons to zap the free-roaming malignant cells. He breathed in as deeply as he could, stifling a wince at the pain. “What did you bring me here to see, Tyler?”
The CAG flipped the computer on and brought up several star maps and fleet movement schedules. “The British and the Russian fleets were supposed to conduct joint training exercises in the Britannia system yesterday. I know because my father commands the ISS Gallant, which is the flagship of the third British fleet. We talk every other day for a few minutes, and this morning he mentioned something that struck me as quite odd.”
“Yes?”
“The Russian fleets never showed up.”
“Strange,” said Granger. “The Russian Confederation space is right there next to British space, out towards Sirius. Practically neighbors. Did he have any idea why they didn’t show?”
“No. But that wasn’t the only odd thing. He received some special orders from IDF High Command to go patrol the border between British and Russian space. Out near the Veracruz Sector.”
“Did he say why?”
“He didn’t. The orders were classified priority one top-secret. Hell, he shouldn’t have even told me what he did.”
Granger stroked his chin. Damn the Russians. Slippery bastards as always—Earth nearly lost the Swarm War because of their antics, refusing to coordinate planetary defense with the allied powers right up to nearly the last moment. It took several Swarm nukes over St. Petersburg to finally convince them that it was in their best interests to cooperate with the rest of the civilized world. What were they up to this time?
“Probably just on guard against whatever President Malakhov has up his sleeve,” said Granger.
“Oh, they’re calling him President now?”
“He did win the last five elections.” He paused and smirked. “Albeit with only ninety-eight percent of the vote.”
“Sounds like they love the guy. I wonder what he promised the voters?”
“Probably made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Promised to take the Veracruz Sector and re-annex Mongolia, all while masturbating shirtless on top of a bengalese tiger.”
Pierce snorted, and shook his head. “Yeah, it’s probably just his regular old chest-thumping. Still, my father sounded genuinely worried. He knew something he wasn’t telling me. Has anything come down from High Command?”
“To me? Hell, they didn’t tell me about my own ship’s decommissioning until a week ago. I doubt I’m high on their list of officers to keep up to date on hypothetical Russian aggression.”
The CAG picked up a picture frame and looked at it, his two boys smiling back at him. Granger wondered how long it had been since he’d seen them. “Well, let’s hope nothing out of sorts is going on. I know Malakhov is a crazy bastard, but this isn’t like him. The politicians have never been friends, but we’ve always had good inter-military relations. They’ve never missed a joint training exercise.”
Granger studied the star map. Sure enough, eight IDF carriers, a handful of heavy cruisers, and an assortment of lighter vessels—missile frigates, destroyers, tow barges, and supply ships—were gathered at the outskirts of the Britannia system, the main population center of British space. Nearby, Russian space shimmered red, and opaque, as the Russians no longer shared near-real-time sensor data with the rest of IDF. There could be a Russian fleet just on the other side of the border—in the Liv system, and they’d never know it until they decided to show up.
“You think something’s up? I mean not just the Russians? You think the Swarm is back?”
Pierce shrugged. “The Swarm? They’ve been gone for over seventy years. Not so much as a peep out of their space in all this time—assuming we know where their space is. Hell, we don’t even know what they look like. All we ever found in the debris from their ships was gray goo.”
After their first engagement with the Swarm, humanity tried to study the ships they’d managed to cripple or destroy. It wasn’t easy work since most of the defeated ships self-destructed—any vessels that survived intact were heavily damaged, and there were never any survivors. No bodies, either. Somehow, they’d managed to program their ships to either be entirely automated, or to automatically vaporize any dead bodies. All that was left behind was a thin sheen of organic liquid coating the floors and walls. The hallway
s and compartments were so small that IDF supposed that the aliens couldn’t be more than a few feet tall, if that.
And yet their technology was stunningly advanced. They used energy weapons—some form of accelerated negative ion beams. Anti-helium particles, if he remembered his academy classes correctly. Granger wondered if the new armor every new ship had been constructed with since then would make a difference—hell, even the Constitution only survived the war because of her ten-meter-thick tungsten plating. She was practically built out of an asteroid back in the last century—SG10551 was the rock’s designation. By the time she was finished, there was hardly anything left of the asteroid.
But not only were their weapons advanced, they seemed to be able to achieve huge accelerations and tolerate massive changes in inertia—changes that IDF’s inertial cancelers could only dream of handling. As such, the Swarm fleets were far more maneuverable and faster compared to IDF. That, and their computer control systems put IDF’s to shame—each fleet they encountered was so well coordinated, each fighter so well connected to the whole, that it was like fighting one large organism rather than a few hundred little individual ships. Their own targeting computers and command and control centers were simply no match. They’d had to rely on the grit and gumption of their individual pilots, and in many historians’ estimations, that made all the difference.
“Let’s hope it’s not the Swarm. I’d much rather fight a few chest-thumping Russian thugs than those bastards again.”
“You think it’ll come to that?”
Granger shrugged. “Honestly? No. There’s too much space—such an abundance of resources that there’s just no point. That’s what the Russians have always wanted: territory and resources. Since there’s no shortage of either, it’s just senseless to fight. No, things will blow over in a few years, Definitely when Malakhov hits his term limits—”
“Wait, you haven’t heard?”
“What?”
Pierce grunted a laugh. “The Duma voted away the presidential term limits a few months ago. Old Malakhov is in for life.”
The captain snorted. “You’d think he would just save time and call himself Emperor Malakhov instead of spending all this energy on pretense.” Granger stood up to leave. He was glad his CAG had pulled him into the office—he’d calmed down enough and was far less liable to toss Proctor out the airlock. “So how many fighters have we got left in operational status?”
The CAG rose to his feet to follow the captain out. “About a quarter. Maybe twenty? Proctor took around forty, and twenty were down for overhauls before she showed up. Why? Expecting trouble?”
“In the five days we have left? Doubt it. But if we’re not ready for anything fate throws at us, it’s our own damn fault.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sol System, Earth orbit
Valhalla Space Station
“Admiral Yarbrough? The Vice President’s shuttle has arrived.”
She stood up from her desk and nodded her head to the empty room. “Thank you, Commander. Please see that he’s escorted to the ISS Winchester’s docking tube. I’ll meet him there.”
Pausing for a moment by the window before heading out to meet the second most powerful person on the Earth, she stared down at the green and blue globe far below. Valhalla Station’s orbit was about double geosynchronous, and at 50,000 kilometers from the surface it only orbited once every thirty-seven hours, affording them an uninterrupted view of whatever continent they flew over, which at the moment was North America. Squinting, she could just make out the slightly grayish look of the major cities—New York, Washington, Miami. Nashville was obscured by clouds, but she could imagine seeing the giant civilian spaceport there, rivaling the size of even the IDF port in Omaha.
So small from up here, she thought. Letting her eyes drift farther north, she could barely make out the huge scars left by the Swarm War—circular pockmarks indicating where several cities in Ohio and Michigan had stood. The multi-megaton warheads the Swarm dropped had completely wiped those cities off the map: Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland—all gone. And in the aftermath of the war the government had seen little point in rebuilding them, opting instead to let nature take its course, and now the blast zones were covered in lush green. Dense radioactive forests. She remembered schoolyard rumors that the wildlife there had glowing eyes.
But the Swarm was gone. The surveillance missions to known Swarm worlds following the war had indicated that there was not a trace of them left. All their cities abandoned. Not a single ship, not a single alien left behind. Some fundamentalist religious leaders went so far as to claim that the Swarm was simply a scourge manufactured by God for the punishment of mankind for her many sins. And once the punishment was delivered, the scourge was taken away by God without a trace.
IDF intel thought otherwise, and spent decades searching for them, to no avail. They were entirely, and inexplicably, gone.
But now there was a problem in the Veracruz Sector. The ISS Kerouac was missing, Starbase Heroic had gone silent, and the scout ship she’d dispatched to investigate had similarly not reported back in for over thirty hours.
She turned to the door—a lowly IDF admiral should not keep the vice president waiting. As she left, a flashing indicator on her desk monitor caught her eye.
Returning to her desk, she examined the report.
A badly damaged data pod from the intel ship Tirian.
Her eyes bulged as she watched the video surveillance play out.
Dammit. They’re back.
Chapter Nineteen
Halfway between L2 and Lunar Base
ISS Constitution
“Captain, we’re within 150,000 kilometers of Lunar Base,” said Ensign Prince.
The bridge, which had been humming along just moments earlier, came to a quiet. Granger stood up. Everyone knew that this would be the final time the Constitution would fire her engines as a commissioned IDF vessel. The ship needed to slow down sufficiently to enter orbit around the moon. He hoped they weren’t expecting another pep talk. “Thank you, Ensign. How’s the power plant?” he said, turning to the engineering section.
“Operating at nearly full capacity, sir. Commander Scott says we’re good to go.”
“Very well. Full reverse. Fire forward thrusters. Sixty percent power.”
“Sir? Since we’re down a few engines, that won’t slow us down enough.” Ensign Prince hemmed, and returned his gaze to his computer readout. “That is, sir, ever since engine number six was scrapped and—”
“Thank you, Ensign, for the reminder,” he said, cutting off the young man and mentally sending choice words down towards Commander Proctor in the fighter bay. “Eighty percent on the remaining engines should do it.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Notify me when we’re an hour out.”
He grunted a greeting as Commander Haws staggered onto the bridge. Dammit—he’d been drinking again. The odor was noticeable from a dozen feet away.
“We fired the engines yet?” he slurred.
Granger advanced on his friend and gripped his upper arm, pulling him along beside him towards the door.
“Come with me.”
“Ah, Tim, it was nothing. Just a glass.”
“A glass? You sure it wasn’t ten?”
He saluted to the marines posted at the entrance to the bridge and pulled the XO past some wary-eyed officers paused in conversation outside the operations center next door.
“Look, we’re throwing in the towel tomorrow anyway, what’s the big—”
Granger shoved Haws up against the wall and stared into his face, just an inch away. “What’s the big deal? Dammit, Abe, I’ve stuck my neck out for you so many times I’m frankly getting a little tired of it. I’ve warned you about showing up for duty drunk. There’s only so many times I can sweep this under the rug. You’re hurting morale and you’re disrespecting me.”
Haws snorted. “Stuck your neck out for me, my fat white ass. You wouldn’t even be here if it
wasn’t for me, after that stunt you pulled. They were about to dishonorably discharge you, but because of me they promoted you. Imagine that—the rogue commander of the Khorsky incident, getting his own damn ship.”
Granger’s fists tightened around Haws’s uniform. Looking both ways down the hall to make sure they were alone, he leaned in close. “You and I both know that’s not true. The fleet’s been on the decline for decades. They needed a kick in the ass and I gave it to them. Just like I’m doing with you.” He released the XO and shoved him down the hall. “Go. Sober up then report back.”
“Is that an order, Captain?” Haws growled.
Granger let his shoulders hunch over. “Does it need to be, Abe?”
An officer rounded the corner and walked past them, nodding a quick salute. Granger let her disappear through a door down the hallway before going on. “Look, Abe, you’re my best friend. We’ve given the Old Bird a good run. Let’s not sully it by—”
Haws brushed past him. “Save it, Tim. Save it for someone who cares. You and I both stopped caring years ago, when they sentenced us to the Old Bird.”
“Sentenced?” he asked. Haws didn’t stop.
“You heard me.”
He turned around the corner and disappeared out of sight.
And Haws was right: their assignment was a sentence. A subtle effort to get the two of them out of the way. To silence and discredit them. A court martial would have brought too much publicity, and a discharge, honorable or otherwise, would have given them the ability to speak out. But a dead-end assignment?
Granger rested a hand on the wall. The ship hummed with the distant pulse of the ancient engines. Her engines. His engines. Haws called it a sentence, and it may have been, but it was the best damned sentence he would have ever dared to ask for.
Chapter Twenty
