by Nick Webb
Yarbrough shook his head. Maybe a little too quickly. Oh well, he’d learn. Just like she did. “I will, Admiral. I’ll do my best. You can count on me. Though, Admiral….?”
“Yes?”
“If we’re going to trust one another, completely, like you’ve so eloquently suggested, I’d really like to know why we’re going to San Martin. It’s in the same sector, sure, but we have no reason to believe that the mystery ship went there….”
“Right. I’ll admit, there is a personal aspect to going there. My nephew is missing.”
He paused, and his brow furrowed, as if he were making quick mental calculations. “I see. I’m sorry. But is this really the time—”
“It is. I have reason to believe that there is a connection between his disappearance and the recent terrorist action on Sangre de Cristo.”
He frowned. “That’s all well and good, but my question stands: what does that have to do with the alien ship?”
She smiled. “Good. You’re doing your job. Calling me on my shit. Good. You’re right, there is no obvious connection. But call it a hunch. Terrorists managed to get their hands on a nuclear missile and destroy one of the habitation domes on Sangre de Cristo, by all accounts a peaceful world, who, in spite of their GPC leanings, have never presented IDF with any problems. At the same time, a mysterious ship appears and wreaks havoc in several systems nearby. Coincidence? Maybe. But I think there’s more here than meets the eye. So we’re doing what I do best.”
Yarbrough smiled. “Saving Earth?”
Yarbrough puffed a breath of air in exasperation. “Figuring shit out. Saving Earth was Granger’s job.”
“I’m with you, Admiral. I’ve got your back. You figure this out, and I’ll keep the ship running for you.”
“Good.” She nodded, and stood up. He followed her to the door to the bridge, where she paused. “So to address the reason we came in here, yes, it’s true, I don’t have the best relationship with Admiral Oppenheimer. I feel like he failed me at a critical moment in my life. But he’s a good man, and a good admiral. One of IDF’s finest. We can’t be publicly questioning his loyalty in front of the crew. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry, it won’t happen again.”
She smiled, and touched his elbow again, before striding—limping—back onto the bridge. “Ensign Riisa, are the t-jump calculations complete?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Proctor sat down. “Then get us there, Ensign.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
“Admiral?” Commander Yarbrough had taken his seat at the XO’s station and strapped himself in for the jump. “Shall I update Admiral Oppenheimer on our progress?”
“Yes, Commander, please.”
She held on to her armrests in preparation for the t-jump. Her stomach quivered, a moment of vertigo came and went, and when she looked back up at the viewscreen, the view of Bolivar had been replaced with the tranquil San Martin rotating beneath them, blue and green and safe, for now, from the dangers Bolivar and Sangre de Cristo had been facing in the very same sector.
Now to find the connection.
“Where the hell are you, Danny?” she whispered under her breath, to no one in particular.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Irigoyen Sector, Bolivar System, Bolivar
Bridge, ISS Independence
Commander Yarbrough released the seat restraint that chafed a little too much against his chest, and brought up the meta-space controls on his console. He composed a message. One that he was sure Admiral Proctor would look at, and so he composed it deliberately and transparently.
Mystery ship engaged, damage sustained to the Independence. No apparent damage to the mystery ship, which has since disappeared after digging deep into Bolivar’s moon, Ido, and depositing a strange device into the moon’s core. Tracking the ship. Now at San Martin to follow up on a few leads. Will update soon. —Yarbrough.
He prepared the message for the meta-space transmission, which operated at such a low bandwidth that it could only accommodate text messages.
But it wasn’t that low of a bandwidth. It could handle an underlying data stream on the carrier wave that carried the signal itself, and to this he appended another message. One he was sure Proctor would never read.
Gaining Proctor’s trust. The plan continues.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Irigoyen Sector, San Martin System, San Martin
Landing pad, CENTCOM San Martin, Ciudad Libertador
The shuttle ride down to the surface of San Martin was turbulent—far more than Proctor preferred, such that when she finally stumbled out of the shuttle at CENTCOM San Martin in Ciudad Libertador, she was positively nauseous. This time she’d told her young executive assistant, Ensign Flay, to stay up on the ship—surely Proctor could reach her own tea while on the shuttle. And Admiral Tigre, head of CENTCOM San Martin, had an entire battalion of marines assigned to her protection and was organizing her security himself. He met her at the landing pad, standing at the head of a squad of twenty well-armed men and women, with a look of studious concern on his face.
“You all right, Shelby?”
“Fine.” She waved him off, and held on to the nearby railing—the steady, unmoving railing—to center herself before trying to walk any more.
“We weren’t expecting you. Oppenheimer told me you were tracking the Golgothic ship that destroyed the Chesapeake. But we haven’t seen hide nor hair of it out here….”
“I know. But I’m following up on a few leads while we track it.” She looked to either side to make sure they were out of eavesdropping range of the marine guard and his aides. “Tell me, what’s the GPC activity like on San Martin?”
Admiral Tigre looked surprised. “GPC? No more or less than other systems in the sector, which is to say, it’s a little turbulent. But we try not to get involved in politics here at CENTCOM.”
“Good.” She released her death grip on the railing, and allowed herself a few hobbling steps.
“You ok? You look awful. You’re limping.” Tigre held out his hand for her to take as she walked towards the doors leading into the CENTCOM building. Last time she’d done this she’d nearly died.
“I’m fine. Just a little incident on Bolivar. I ask about GPC because, well, I was almost one of the casualties of a GPC terrorist action there at CENTCOM Bolivar. An explosion took out a whole side of the building there. Killed a couple folks.”
“I heard. We’ve raised our readiness alert level in response, and I’ve instituted special security measures to all critical systems within CENTCOM San Martin, just in case. But I trust my people here, Shelby. You’re safe.”
She eyed the aides following Admiral Tigre, and with a quick glance at him, she locked eyes and told him without saying a word that she wanted to talk privately.
He nodded. “Right this way.”
Tigre led her to a conference room next to the command center. “We’ll just be a moment,” he said to his aides, smiling briefly before pushing the door shut. He turned to her. “What’s up, Shelby? Why the cloak and dagger?”
“I’m sorry, Miguel, I just don’t know who I can trust.”
“Can you trust me?”
The words hung ominously, but after a moment his intense stare broke into a mischievous smile.
“Miguelito,” she said, using the nickname his friends called him, “if I couldn’t trust you, then we may as well throw up our hands and surrender to whatever that thing is out there, and hand the entire government over to Curiel and the GPC. Pack up the whole shop.”
“You think the GPC is behind the mystery ship?”
Proctor shrugged. “No idea. But that’s not exactly why I’m here. Miguel, Danny’s missing.”
His eyes went wide. “Little Danny?”
“Little Danny. But little Danny isn’t little anymore, and is apparently a twenty-year-old GPC loyalist. And I want some bloody answers.”
Tigre sighed, and put an arm around her should
er. They’d been good friends back during her days as Fleet Admiral. He’d been her chief of staff, and had become a good friend of the family, even coming to the dinners she hosted for her brother’s family. The man had taken a liking to little Danny, having been a grandpa himself.
“We’ll get some answers, Shelby. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Just tell me what you need, and you’ve got it.”
She sniffed. Damn, was that a frickin tear? “Thank you, Miguelito. All I know is that Danny was living here in Ciudad Libertador. I need his address, and access to his apartment. Do you have a relationship with the local police force? Will they look the other way if I, well, force the lock?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know the police chief. We owe each other favors. Give me a few minutes, and you’re in.” His shoulders slumped a little. “You don’t suppose Danny had anything to do with the alien ship? Or with the Sangre incident?”
“I sure hope not. He’s just not the type. I mean, he was always so idealistic as a teen, so I can see, just barely, that he might have fallen in with the wrong folks if their rhetoric was convincing enough. But terrorism? No. Not Danny.”
Admiral Tigre looked at her long and hard. They’d been friends for a long time, and she knew he wouldn’t BS her, so she braced herself for what was coming. “Shelby … this is hard.” He hesitated.
“Spit it out, Miguel.”
“You know that Sangre de Cristo’s defense is basically provided by CENTCOM San Martin, right?”
“Sure. I set the whole situation up when they established the first colonies there fifteen years ago. But I remember that we put them on a path to getting their own defense establishment, including their own CENTCOM. Isn’t that progressing since I left?”
He shook his head. “It’s not up to me to divulge such high level operational affairs with a former head of IDF. Sorry, Shelby. But I bring it up to remind you that I’m effectively in charge of Sangre’s defense, and all investigation of the incident has gone directly to me.”
She nodded. “Go on.”
He walked over to the viewscreen on the wall and input a few commands into the console. A video feed popped up, showing the grainy image of a ship making a hard burn for the surface of a planet. After a moment she recognized the planet as Sangre de Cristo.
“Is that what delivered the nuclear device?”
“It is.”
She watched as it accelerated into the atmosphere, and the shock wave began to glow red. “When does it launch the missile?”
“It doesn’t. Watch.”
The hull started to break apart, white-hot streaks peeling off from the sturdy bulk of the craft. It was built to last, that was for sure. It was an older ship, clearly, built out of solid, heavy metal. It dove through the atmosphere, finally breaking its acceleration as the main thrusters gave out from the duress of uncontrolled atmospheric reentry.
And then it exploded in a blinding flash, the glare overwhelming the optical sensors of whatever was recording the image.
“This is the telemetry picked up by a weather satellite. Just got it a few days ago. My people have been working on it, and we’ve ID’d the ship.” He fished a datapad out of his pocket and handed it to her. “The Magdalena Issachar. Cargo freighter. Out of San Martin.”
She accepted the datapad and examined it.
Impossible.
“Miguel, this is … no. I can’t believe it. I won’t.”
“It’s registered to a shell corporation called Emigrant Metrics, which we’ve linked back to another major corporation that’s backing the GPC. But the port logs are unambiguous: they list Danny Proctor as the captain of record of the Magdalena Issachar. He flew that bird for two whole months before this, docking at a dozen spaceports before heading back here to San Martin, and then off to Sangre. Then, for a week, nothing. He doesn’t show up on any station logs or planetary spaceport customs. Nothing. It’s like he just floated out in space somewhere for a week. Then, this,” he waved a hand toward the viewscreen, which still showed the destruction unfolding on the planet’s surface, as the hapless habitation dome imploded under the incontestable pressure from the nuclear shock wave.
“You honestly think Danny nuked a city? Our Danny?”
“Of course not. But the data says what it says.”
It couldn’t be. Danny wouldn’t do this. Someone either put him up to it and didn’t tell him all the details, or he wasn’t on that ship. Or … something. Not Danny.
“You’re still analyzing the video, I assume. Are there others? Surely there was not just one weather satellite in orbit around Sangre?”
He nodded. “My best people are working on it.”
“I want access to his apartment. Now.”
He reached over and touched a few buttons on the datapad he had given her. “There. That’s the only apartment we found registered to his name. Just downtown a few kilometers. I’ll let the police chief know to look the other way for the next two hours.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Irigoyen Sector, Interstellar space
Shuttle Fenway
“What do you mean, you have no idea?” Zivic reached out for the scanner Batak was still scrutinizing, but she waved him off, and fiddled with a few of the settings.
“Switching to Q-band,” she said, sweeping the area of the cargo hold with the scanner, waving it back and forth.
“Sara…?” He tried looking over her shoulder at the scanner, but she kept moving around the hold, pausing every few seconds to examine a spot on the floor or wall or some other nook.
“It’s … it’s not nuclear, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said.
“Then what the hell is it?”
“Working on it. I’m not a friggin’ scientist. Just a deck lackey. I fix shit. I don’t theorize shit. And this,” she indicated the scanner with her free hand, “this is theory shit. It shouldn’t be here.”
He tried grabbing the scanner again, but she moved out of his way. “Sara, just tell me what you’re seeing on that thing.”
Her brow furrowed deeper. “It’s … meta-space. I mean, that’s not possible. You shouldn’t be able to detect any meta-space signatures from anything other than a meta-space transmitter, but all the same—”
“I’ll go check the transmitter. Maybe it got stuck in the ‘on’ position somehow.” He turned and dashed back to the bridge and examined the dashboard, bringing up the meta-space controls with a few swipes of his fingers. The transmitter was off. Definitely off.
“It’s not on,” he called back to the hold.
“I didn’t think so,” she called back. “This reading isn’t so much an active signal as it is a … signature? Ghost reading? I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe go manually check the transmitter? That console might be lying to you.”
He nodded, and bent down under the dashboard to remove the panel on the wall underneath. At least, that’s where he assumed the transmitter electronics were. A quick glance at the tumble of wires and components told him he guessed right. “Uh,” he poked around at various flashing parts of the circuit board, “how does one go about figuring out if it’s actually transmitting?”
“You just—” he could hear her swear under her breath, though it was clearly audible. “Hold on.”
A moment later she knelt down next to him, holding another instrument, this time just a common multimeter. She poked one of the leads at the ground terminal and the other at another spot on the board he didn’t immediately recognize. She shook her head. “No. Definitely not transmitting.”
She looked up at him, her brow still furrowed. He shrugged. “So? What does it mean?”
With a small grunt she fell back from her knees to her rear, and tossed the multimeter aside. “Honestly? No idea. Could be absolutely nothing. Like I said, I’m a mechanic. I don’t know the first thing about meta-space theory and quantum shit.”
“Is that the technical term?”
She smiled. “Basically. Look, all I know is meta-space waves a
re very … finicky, I guess. Hard to produce. Low bandwidth. They pass in and out of regular four dimensional space, interacting with the background…” she waved her hand around in the air, “whatever.”
“The background whatever?”
She glared at him. “You know what I mean.”
He shrugged. “No, honestly, I don’t. I’m a former fighter pilot turned sensor officer. I wouldn’t know a meta-space signal from an fm-band signal if you shoved both up my ass and twisted real hard. I mean, I’m good at reading the console, doing some quick analysis, and parroting it back to the commanding officer. That’s it.”
At least, that was all he was good at now. He dreamed of getting back in the cockpit. Alternately wishing for it, and having nightmares about it.
“Fine. It interacts with the background vacuum energy all around us. Particles popping in and out of existence all around us. The meta-space wave we generate interacts with those, and propagates by … virtually … magically … popping in and out of existence right along with those pretend particles, which lets it somehow travels faster than light. Much, much faster.”
“Ok. So how does that jive with what you’re reading?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, exactly. But what we’re reading back there is like … it’s almost like a meta-space signal is caught in some kind of loop. Which is weird all by itself because meta-space signals are like regular old light signals, or radio signals—they travel in a straight line. You can’t have a light wave that just circles around a common center. Light doesn’t orbit anything. Neither do meta-space waves.”
