by Nick Webb
Proctor could hardly breathe.
“Admiral!” Whitehorse yelled out from tactical. “The Vanguard is accelerating to port. They’ve got a clear shot.”
“Riisa, match them!”
“Trying, ma’am,” the ensign said, rattled.
The breathing over the comm grew rapid and heavy. “Main power off, thank god. Auxiliary still attached. One moment … Ethan, be ready to come get me—”
Whitehorse called across the bridge. “Vanguard is firing lasers.”
With a crackle, the comm cut out. And on the screen the reason was clear. Complete saturation overwhelmed the viewscreen. When it cleared slightly, she could barely make out the shuttle shooting up out of the atmosphere. At the periphery of her hearing she could hear Zivic screaming profanities through the comm. She wanted to shout them at Mullins herself.
It was like the atmosphere below them was glowing incandescent. She’d remembered the old images from the First Swarm War, when the Swarm had bombed their cities with weaponry so powerful it sent giant mushroom clouds up nearly into orbit. Then, during the Second Swarm War, with her own eyes, she’d seen something similar repeated dozens of times over. Entire continents exploding upward as the crust and mantle below was sucked into a singularity, creating unthinkable pressures which then lifted the ground to the sky. Some planets’ surfaces didn’t see the sun again for years from all the dust.
This was different. It was still so high up that obviously there was no dust to kick up, and the air was so thin anyway that very little differentiation took place. Instead, they saw a glowing teardrop falling in slow motion upward towards space.
And in the center of it would be the gaseous remains—free floating atoms and molecules—of Sara Batak.
Her enemy now had a face. It was not the face of some mysterious alien ship that poked holes into sparsely inhabited moons. It was the face of Admiral Mullins. It was the face of betrayal.
“Lieutenant Qwerty,” she said, as measured and calmly as possible. “What did we pick up on meta-space?”
The comm officer studied his console, before shaking his head. “Looks like with the main power cut to the shunt, the worst of it stayed there in the atmosphere. But some of it leaked into meta-space, probably because it was partially powered by the auxiliary batteries, I suppose.”
Was it enough? Had Batak given her life for a reason?
“The President is ordering the fleet to intercept Curiel’s ships and take him into custody,” said Qwerty.
She shook her head. “That’s just going to heighten tensions. There will be civil war before the week is over.”
Admiral Mullins’s fleet started to surround the small GPC force, flanking them, preventing them from going into a higher orbit, where they could make q-jumps.
More flickers on the screen announced the arrival of yet more ships. “Now what?” Proctor said.
“Admiral Mullins, this is Admiral Tigre. What the hell is going on? We were hanging back at Lunar Base and we just detected a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere over Europe!”
There was a lot of cross-chatter between the two admirals, CENTCOM, the president, and Proctor tried to keep up with the conversation, while simultaneously tracking the progress of the shuttle, and keeping an eye on the long-range meta-space comm, looking for what she hoped not to see.
It came anyway.
“Ma’am, picking up a meta-space broadcast from Saturn,” said Lieutenant Qwerty. He looked up, his face turning white.
“The Golgothics are here.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Terran Sector, Earth
Bridge, ISS Independence
“What’s it doing?” She was standing over the comm station, not even remembering how she got there. The arrival of the alien ship could only mean one thing. It was going for the prize. Earth. The auxiliary-powered shunt on that bomb was still enough to catch the attention of the Golgothics.
“The message from Brandenburg Station on Rhea says they’ve detected an unidentified vessel matching the description of our alien ship that just q-jumped into the Saturnian system. It’s moving towards … Titan.”
Titan?
“There’s nothing on Titan,” she murmured, before turning back to Mumford. “Am I right? Nothing on Titan?”
He shook his head. “Too inhospitable, ma’am. There used to be a research station there, but it’s long since been abandoned. There is an orbital station, though. Just a supply and refuel depot. A few hundred people living there, tops.”
She nodded. “Very well. Ensign Riisa, plot a t-jump to Titan.”
“Ma’am?” said Lieutenant Whitehorse, “is it worth leaving the current … situation, to go save a few hundred station-folk?”
“It is, Lieutenant. It’s our mission. Because after Titan? What’s next for that thing? The Saturnian system alone has millions of people living on the moons. Rhea? Mimas? New Mongolia City on Iapetus? I’m not going to abandon them because a corporation wants to engage in a little petty war-profiteering and have bought off an admiral to do it. Riisa, are we ready?”
“Ready, Admiral.”
“Initiate.”
The background chatter on the comm dropped away, and the cooling nuclear teardrop cloud disappeared. In the place of a cloud-dappled blue Earth came a misty, rust-colored globe.
“Arrived at Titan and entering orbit, Admiral,” said Ensign Riisa.
Proctor stalked back to her seat at the center of the bridge. “Lieutenant? Anything on sensors?”
“Yes, ma’am. Detecting the alien ship holding station at a northern latitude,”
She sat down. It was showtime. “Get the hell off my lawn,” she murmured.
A familiar voice behind her. “You sound like a grumpy old man, Shelby.” Captain Volz walked onto the bridge. “Sounds like something I would say. Hell, sounds like something Tim would have said.”
Proctor nodded. “If only Granger were actually here. President Quimby might actually listen to him.”
Volz shook his head. “Every time needs its own hero, Shelby. And this time, you’re it.” He thumbed up at the screen. “Let’s get this done and go home.”
“Let’s go home,” she repeated, still staring at the screen. The Golgothic ship was still a dot at the center, hovering over a spot on the northern hemisphere. “Is Ethan ok? And why are you up here, Ballsy?”
“He’ll … be fine, eventually. And have you seen the CIC? Fighter bay is gone. No reason for me to be down there. Figured I’d be more help up here.”
“Fine. You’re my new XO.” She swiveled to face him. “Did you have to kill him, Ballsy?” It was still so raw. It had been years since she’d seen death and blood, and now between Captain Prucha and Commander Yarbrough, she’d seen too much of it. “Was that necessary? You could have shot his leg out, or something. He was a witness. He could have been interrogated. Implicated everyone else. I think Mullins and Shovik-Orion is up to something … sinister. But I can’t prove it yet. I needed Yarbrough to testify.”
“And what if he refused to testify?”
She risked some dark humor. “Then I at least would have liked to break his leg trying to wring the information out of him.”
A shadow passed over Volz’s face and he gripped the hand rail. “The bastard killed a few good pilots down there, Shelby, and half a dozen deck hands. And he had a gun pointed straight at your chest. If I hadn’t acted, you might be dead.” He walked over to the XO’s station, which had sat vacant for the past half hour. She hadn’t even noticed when they’d removed Yarbrough’s body.
That was the worst part of war. The trivialization of death. Ten thousand here. A million there. A body on the floor one moment, now it’s gone. Where did it go? Didn’t matter—there were more. There were always more.
If only the Grangerites knew what Granger, what Proctor, what all of them had to turn into to win a war. You had to be a killing machine, or else you died. You became a factory, whose input was weapons, hordes of willing heroic young men and wom
en, and a shit-ton of coffee, and the output was bodies. Lots of them. And if you died, then humanity fell, simple as that. Be the last one standing, and humanity lives on.
Fuck war, she thought.
Language, Shelby! came her mother’s voice. In her mind’s eye, she flipped off her pearl-clutching mom. Proctor was old, and she felt it in her bones, in her body, in her soul. She was tired. All she wanted was sleep, a beach, and some good wine, and yet here she was as Earth’s first defense. She wondered if Granger felt the same way during his last stand over Earth all those years ago. Of course he did. She was old enough, had seen enough, experienced enough—she knew the stakes if she failed. And the lifetime of regret and pain and momentary and fleeting triumphs gave her the tenacity, the energy, the will to say what needed saying.
“Get off my fucking lawn.” She pointed up at the alien ship on the screen. “Whitehorse, rail-guns loaded? Lasers caps primed?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
She waved back at Mumford. “Have you gone through that data yet? The price we paid was high enough—it had better have been worth it.”
He nodded. “It was, ma’am. I’ve located several spots on their hull that might be vulnerable. And from these new scans it looks like Lieutenant Zivic’s stunt actually did far more damage than anything we’ve hit it with so far. The hatch where those spheres came out of is stuck open and the structural integrity around the blast zone is greatly diminished.”
She smiled grimly. “Good. Let’s go finish the job.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Terran Sector, Saturn System, Titan
Bridge, ISS Independence
“The ship is opening fire, Admiral. Drilling beam is tunneling down into Titan,” said Whitehorse.
“They’re nothing if not predictable.” Proctor stroked her chin. So far, there had been no word from the Bolivar system about any change on Ido, besides the minuscule but unmistakably persistent increase in mass. Same with El Amin. And she supposed there were any number of other moons that the Golgothics had targeted that they simply didn’t know about, because United Earth only had worlds or outposts in perhaps five percent of all star systems. Only so many Earths and Britannias to go around. “Position us right under that hatch Mr. Zivic was kind enough to destroy for us.”
A minute later, they were there. On the screen, with the golden mists of Titan forming a striking backdrop, the alien ship with its burrowing purple-white beam hung in space with its damaged section exposed to their view.
Proctor secured her seat restraint. “Open fire.”
The distant thumps from the deck told her the rail-guns were firing, and the viewscreen confirmed as dozens of tiny explosions erupted from the damaged section of the Golgothic ship.
Finally.
“Reading power fluctuations from the ship, Admiral,” said Mumford. “Their structural integrity is weakening.”
“Good. Keep it up, Lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Whitehorse coordinated the barrage with her targeting crew, and soon the entire ship shuddered with the response from the alien ship. “It’s returning fire, Admiral!”
The viewscreen flashed with weapons fire. It seemed the other ship had finally decided the Independence was a threat, and instead of just the occasional rail-gun slug, it was letting loose with other energy weapons similar to the drilling beam. Four different spots on the ship erupted with purple-white beams lancing out towards the Independence.
The ship rumbled. “Those have some bite, Shelby,” said Volz. “Decompression reported on decks five, ten, twelve, and sixteen, all starboard.”
“Will laser countermeasures work against those beams?” she shouted out to anyone who could answer.
Mumford shook his head. “Unknown, Admiral. But we can try.”
“Do it!”
Moments later the space in between them filled with rushing streams of silvery gas, each intersecting an enemy beam and composed of trillions of tiny micron-sized mirrors that would reflect and disperse incoming laser blasts.
An explosion ripped through the deck below them, which nearly threw Proctor out of her chair in spite of the restraints. “And?”
“Some effect, yes. Incident power reduced by fifty percent,” said Mumford, the edge in his voice rising with each rumble of the deck.
She wondered if it would be enough. On the screen it was obvious the Golgothic’s ship was taking considerable damage. Zivic’s stunt had apparently weakened the ship enough to allow their rounds to penetrate the hull. She wondered what kind of technology had allowed the ship to essentially be immune to their weapons earlier. Solid-state plating? Smart-steel armor?
“Shelby, we’re not going to make it,” yelled Volz. “We’re losing structural integrity past section eight.”
On the screen the alien ship was taking a pounding. But not fast enough, not hard enough, dammit. “Riisa, port thrusters. Show them our other side.”
The barrage continued. Explosions rang out below decks, above their heads, all along the hull and deep in its core, near the bridge. Proctor gripped her chair like it was a life raft. “Steady,” she said. “Maintain fire. The bastard has to give eventually.”
“Shelby! We’re facing a core breach here. Rayna Scott is yelling in my ear to get the hell out or we’re toast.”
Proctor pounded the armrest. “No!” She pointed up at the screen and turned to face him. “We’ve got them right where we want them! Let’s finish this, dammit!” Finish this for Danny. Then go find him.
Volz lowered his voice. “Shelby. Get us out of here, or we’re dead. That thing will just keep doing its thing while we burn. We can come back. Fight another day. But we gain nothing by throwing away our lives.”
She turned to Mumford. “Status of the Golgothics?”
“Widespread power fluctuations. Structural integrity damaged, but holding.” He looked, shaking his head. “We’re giving them a beating, but I’m afraid it’s going to take a lot more to finish the job.”
Dammit.
“Ensign Riisa, back us off. Full thrust. Get us around the limb of the atmosphere.”
The inertial cancelers must have been damaged since the sudden change of velocity threw her back into the chair and to the side. But after a few seconds the rumbling and shaking dropped away as they escaped the incoming fire from the alien ship. Soon, the image of the other vessel, drilling relentlessly into Titan with its purple-white beam, disappeared behind the orange line of atmosphere on the limb of the moon.
She breathed deep and closed her eyes. “Volz. Damage report. Casualties.”
“Heavy structural damage all over the ship from the enemy’s rail-gun. Their energy beam didn’t penetrate as deeply, but where it did hit they cut in at least a section or two. Life support out on about a quarter of the ship. Rayna’s got the core under control, but the power couplers from the reactor are out so everything electrically powered is on batteries until they’re back up. Casualties….” He shook his head. “Report still coming in. But estimates are at least eighty dead. Fifty plus are severely wounded. And … dozens missing.”
Whitehorse cleared her throat. “And Admiral, not to pile it on, but the ISS Vanguard just q-jumped in. Mullins brought his fleet. Admiral Tigre too, with his ships.”
Lieutenant Qwerty flagged her attention, speaking softly. “Admiral. General Mullins is calling for our surrender and for you to be arrested.”
“What the hell is wrong with him? Is he blind?” She waved at the screen, where in place of the alien ship drilling into Titan, the IDF fleet now approached. “Can he not see we’re under attack?”
Volz grunted. “Looks like he wants to prove to everyone he’s not bought off by Shovik-Orion but is actually the knight in shining armor bringing in the vigilante.”
Proctor chuckled a dark laugh. “So I’m a vigilante now, huh?”
“Incoming hail from Admiral Tigre, ma’am,” said Qwerty. “Private channel. Wants to talk just to you.”
“Patch him through to m
y terminal here.” She motioned to her console next to her chair. It was private enough. She didn’t have time to retreat to her ready room. And she’d already been through life and death with her bridge crew. She had nothing to hide from them.
“Shelby,” he began as soon as his face appeared on her screen. “You need to be careful here. Half the government, half of IDF high command thinks you’re in bed with GPC terrorists. President Quimby authorized General Mullins to bring you in for questioning.”
“The President? Where the hell is Fleet Admiral Oppenheimer?”
“Still on Britannia.” Tigre leaned in close to the screen. “Shelby, the reason I’m here, I mean, besides the fact that I figured you’d want some backup against that ship … Shelby, I’ve heard from my team on Sangre de Cristo.”
She felt her heart fall into her gut. “And?”
“They found Danny’s remains. He fell through the atmosphere. Landed in a remote area. He didn’t survive reentry. My people say he probably died very quickly once he hit the atmosphere. No suffering. I’m sorry, Shelby.”
So, she’d failed. She’d failed before she even started.
Maybe it was just time to pack it in. Retire for good. Get the hell away from Mullins and politics and war, humanity be damned. If she couldn’t even protect her own family….
“Thank you, Miguelito. It’s … a relief to know the truth. Finally.” She just realized her head had been cradled in her hands, and she looked up at him. “I’m done here, Miguel. I’m out. Will you get me a shuttle? I’m going back to Britannia. I’m going back home. For good this time.”
“Shelby, I….”
“Don’t try to convince me to stay. No. I resign. I came into this to find Danny. He’s found. Now I’m going home. I’ve lived my life, done my part, fought my wars, and now I deserve a little peace.”
Admiral Tigre squinted, grit his teeth. Oh Miguel, don’t try to stop me. “Shelby, there’s something else you should know. Danny’s suit was relatively intact—at least, the data chips were. His camera was running the entire time from the point he put the suit on, to when he … hit.”
