Legend

by Webb, Nick

  The old scientist in her did the mental math. “A megaton thermonuclear bomb. Multiplied by seventeen ships.”

  Zivic whistled. “Holy shit.”

  “Sampono, give me the fleet frequency,” she said.

  She nodded. “You’re on, Admiral.”

  “All IDF vessels, this is Admiral Proctor. Full stop. I repeat, full stop. From now on, maneuvering thrusters only, and keep it below a thousand meters a second. Also, spread out. Keep at least . . . ten kilometers in between you and another IDF ship.” She figured the more spaced-out they were, the chances of multiple ships hitting a single momentum-transfer shield went down.

  On the screen she watched as the fleet responded. Even the Resolute. She had half-expected Oppenheimer to rescind her order immediately, but even he had some sense, it seemed.

  “Get me the Resolute,” she said, and when Sampono nodded back, she continued. “Christian, we need to withdraw and come up with some tactics against that thing.”

  His voice sounded shaken, but he was still defiant. “We had them on the run until this. We still do. Focus all fire on—”

  “Christian! It’s over. Before we lose the entire fleet.”

  “And leave Paradiso to its fate?”

  She paused and watched the city continue to burn on the viewscreen. There couldn’t have been any survivors from that. And Saavedra city was by far the largest on Paradiso. Just a few dozen smaller towns, as it was a newer colony.

  “Yes. We’ve done all we can do. We can’t leave Earth defenseless.”

  A long pause. “No. We stop them here. I’m not risking Earth. Oppenheimer out.”

  She gripped the armrests of her chair as if to tear them off. “That man will be the death of us all. Very well. Status, Commander Urda?”

  “The two remaining task forces with Oppenheimer have slowed, and are engaging the enemy. We still have the Hammer, the Kobe, the Dyson, the Daejeon, and the Malawi. The Malawi is on batteries only and has lost life-support.”

  She made a decision she’d been dreading. “Do they have q-drive?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And conventional drive?”

  “Just battery-powered, ma’am, so maybe only ten percent thrust, but yes.”

  She motioned to Sampono. “Patch me through to Commander Aisha on the Malawi.”

  “Aye, Admiral. Channel open.”

  “Commander? This is Admiral Proctor.” She took a deep breath. “What do you hear?”

  They’d worked out code before the battle. Are you ready for a one-way mission?

  “The choirs are singing, Admiral.” We’re ready. The woman’s choked reply tugged at Proctor’s heart. The woman was clearly nervous. But determined.

  “Then give us an encore.” Do it. Now.

  “Coming right up.”

  “In the key of C, if you don’t mind. And Commander? Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.”

  “And thank you, Admiral, for giving us a fighting chance. Aisha out.”

  The key of C. A tactical maneuver inspired by Captain Volz’s performance at the battle of Penumbra just two months ago.

  “Commander Urda—while they spool it up, let’s make some distractions. Q-jump us back in and target their main ship with everything we’ve got, then make it look like we’ve had second thoughts and pull us away as if we’re retreating.” She tapped on the button that would patch her through to her whole task force. “Angel and Eagle Wings, backup music.” In other words, go do some random shit to distract from whatever the Malawi was doing.

  The remains of their small taskforce had spread out among the fierce battle between the Findiri fleet and the two thirds of Oppenheimer’s fleet, and flitted in and out amongst them all, the newcomer IDF ships thankfully providing some relief since there were now many more targets for the enemy to choose from.

  “The Malawi is retreating. Speed at five thousand kps and climbing. Six thousand. Seven thousand . . .”

  Proctor prayed that the Findiri would not activate the momentum-transfer field on a retreating vessel. She counted down, hoping against hope.

  “They’re initiating q-jump!”

  The Malawi disappeared in a flash, and reappeared just off the starboard bow of the main Findiri ship, aimed straight at its heart.

  It happened so fast—the Malawi was traveling at such an enormous speed that it took a moment for Proctor to realize what had happened. Several moments later there was a giant explosion as one ship collided with another, but it was all wrong.

  “Oh my god,” she said, for what she felt was the fiftieth time that day.

  The Malawi seemed to pass right into the main Findiri ship, disappear, then emerge from the other side, and clipped one of Oppenheimer’s ships several kilometers away.

  Except when one ship clips another at seven thousand kps, the collision may as well have been head-on. Both vessels disintegrated into a cloud of white-hot vapor, wreckage, and super-heated liquid metal.

  “Commander Zivic? Tell me what the hell happened,” she said, not believing her eyes.

  He scowled at his instrument panel. “I don’t know how, but the Malawi entered some kind of transient q-jump field generated just at the surface of the Findiri ship. They essentially q-jumped it to emerge through a linked transient q-field on the other side of the ship.”

  So. The Findiri had another tech up their sleeve. And two IDF starships and their crews just paid for her mistake. In her mind’s eye she could see her scoreboard tilt heavily to the left as the number of dead shot up.

  “Admiral! Receiving a meta-space distress call from Earth!” said Ensign Sampono. At least a hundred Findiri ships just q-jumped in and are approaching orbit!”

  It’s over, she thought, and scanned the tactical display for the Resolute. “Get me Oppenheimer,” she said.

  “I can’t raise the Resolute, Admiral,” said Sampono.

  “Is it destroyed?”

  “The whole battle space is a jumble of ships, micro-thruster mines, and debris, Admiral, just give me a second—”

  “No time. Patch me through to the fleet.” She waited for the nod. “All IDF ships. This is Admiral Shelby Proctor. Regroup at Earth. Immediately. We’re done here.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Il Nido Sector

  Paradiso, High Orbit

  ISS Hammer

  Bridge

  Commander Shin-Wentworth pulled himself together. He had too. Don’t think about them. Cry later. Don’t think about them. Cry later, he kept on telling himself. Do your fucking duty.

  The action on the bridge was a blur, like he was watching it from a distance, and yet he was in the thick of it, issuing orders that he wouldn’t have believed were his if he didn’t feel his mouth moving.

  Time had simultaneously stood still, and sped up by a factor of ten. Reality was unreal, and space was inverted. At least, experiencing the world this way kept the grief at bay. Don’t feel it yet. Not yet.

  He vaguely heard Proctor issue her orders to the Malawi and the rest of the task force, and he ordered the Hammer to attack the nearest Findiri ship. Its torpedoes and railgun slugs expended, all they were left with was their bank of gigawatt lasers. But given their power plant status even those would be expended in short order.

  The Malawi struck the side of the largest Findiri ship, and disappeared. At first he thought the disappearance was just his psyche’s continued attempt to make it seem that reality was altered, and wrong, such that the grief would be stayed for awhile.

  Then the Malawi reappeared, after what seemed an eternity, on the other side of the Findiri ship. In the blink of an eye it shot out and struck an IDF ship and the two died a fiery death.

  But Shin-Wentworth’s mind was kilometers away. Not on the dead surface of Paradiso. Not on the crushed home of his family.

  But on Chantana Three, and its inexplicably floating crust.

  “Tactical, send me all the sensor data we took from—all that,” he said, waving his hand in the genera
l direction of the viewscreen, meaning, that crazy shit we just saw.

  “Aye, sir, but—what about the battle?”

  “You take it from here,” was all he said, and he dove into the numbers pouring onto his screen, searching for what he hoped, no, what he knew to be true.

  There it was.

  The two-dimensional artificial singularity signal he’d seen in the data from Chantana Three. Right on the hull of the Findiri vessel.

  As fast as he could, he brought up the sensor data from their brief automatic scan of the Malawi after it emerged. Where was it, where was it, where was it . . .

  There it was. A ping from the Malawi’s transponder, just as it emerged from the transient q-field. He compared it to the reading just before it struck.

  They were nearly identical. Off by a millisecond—the standard repeating frequency of a transponder.

  Identical.

  He rewound the video recording, and stepped it forward and backward, keeping his eye on the time-stamp.

  It disappeared. It reappeared. Five point two seconds later.

  Reality was still skewed, still a soup, swirling around him. He heard voices from his tiny bridge crew, distant explosions seemingly coupled to the motions from the deck that nearly threw him to the floor, pain in his side from where he’d collided with the console earlier, blood on his brow from another fall, mixing into his left eye to produce a half-normal, half-red view of the bridge that made it look like he was using the old-time 3D glasses.

  But in the midst of the reality soup, his mind fixated on something. And he made a decision. He committed to it. He would make it his reality.

  “My babies, Megan . . . I’m coming to get you,” he said. “No matter what.”

  Ensign Callahan’s voice pierced his new reality. “Q-jump complete. We’ve arrived at Earth.”

  Had he given the order? He couldn’t remember. Maybe. Probably not. All he knew was that he needed to take his first step in the new plan. And then the next step. And the one after that.

  And then? Rescue his babies. His Megan.

  “Hail the Independence. Tell the Admiral I’m coming over there with vital technical information regarding the Findiri. Lieutenant Thomas? You have the bridge.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Sol Sector

  Earth

  Virginia, North America

  Arlington National Cemetery

  Granger was halfway back to his waiting ground car when he got the call.

  “Captain Granger? Tim Rice, please come in.”

  He fiddled with his comm device. “Granger here. Report.”

  “The first Findiri ships are here, sir. Nearly a hundred of them. How fast can you get back to the shuttle?”

  “It’s gonna be at least fifteen minutes, Commander. I’m not even back to the ground car yet—that’s assuming the driver even stuck around.”

  “Fleet command is ordering all ships in the vicinity to immediately form up into a new fleet under the command of Admiral Proctor. Seems Fleet Admiral Oppenheimer is MIA. Orders effective immediately.”

  “Then get out. I’ll get up to you when I can. You’re in charge, Commander.”

  “But sir—”

  “Let’s face it, son, you’re in much better shape to be commanding a ship in a battle than me at the moment. That’s an order. Get to the fleet. I’ll be there when I can. Granger out.”

  He cut off the channel before the other man could respond. He’d be all right—the kid was a prodigy officer. If he was half as good at tactics as at managing a half-crazy captain, he’d go far.

  High above he could hear the whine of engines. The whine soon grew to a roar, and he looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun. A few unfamiliar-looking ships were soaring across the sky, trailed by a few IDF fighters, and those trailed by yet more unfamiliar-looking ships.

  Unfamiliar—and yet, it was like he’d seen them in another life. And he most likely had, the more he thought about it.

  “The Findiri,” he said to no one, still walking as fast as he could back to the waiting ground car. He saw it up ahead in the distance, waiting on the side of the street.

  His comm device beeped with an emergency signal incoming. It started playing even without him turning it on. “Tim! Tim, do you copy? Tim? Take cover! Now! Tim? Are you there? Dammit—”

  “Shelby, I’m here. My god. You’re alive. How did you make it out?”

  “Luck. Listen, Tim. They’re after you. They’re coming for you. And I’m reasonably confident that they know where you are. You’ve got to get out. Come to the Independence if you can’t make it to the Defiance.”

  He looked back up at the ships exchanging deadly fire in the skies above Arlington. A few had peeled off and were indeed heading straight down toward the cemetery grounds.

  “Well shit, Shelby. You’re right. They’re heading this way.”

  It was inevitable, he supposed. He’d wanted to die, that’s for sure, but this was far easier than the dark thoughts he’d been having of late. No need to cock a gun. No need to pull a trigger. An alien race he’d created billions of years ago would do the messy business for him.

  “I’m sending an extraction team. They’ll be there in five minutes. Tim, find cover. Hide. Anything. Just stay safe.”

  “Got it,” he said, and spotted an out-building a hundred meters or so off to his left, a mausoleum. He started jogging toward it.

  An explosion just a few dozen meters away knocked him off his feet. A torpedo had missed its target. Or they were targeting him. Either way, the wind was knocked out of him and he struggled to breathe.

  Why are you running? This is finally your chance. Just stop, turn around, hold your arms out, and welcome the release.

  He longed for death. He’d longed for it for millions of years—he could feel the avalanche of ancient suppressed memories crush down on him. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years of . . . existing. Of being. And he was just fucking done with it.

  Pushing himself to his feet, wobbling a bit, he started turning. Stopping halfway to hold his head from the dizziness.

  A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back around. A voice he didn’t recognize yelled, “It’s him. Tell the others. We found him. Bring the corvette in.”

  His vision was blurry, and he knocked the hand away from his shoulder, squinting through the blur to see who it was.

  “I’ve met you. Who the hell are you?” he said.

  The kid was tall and gangly. But wiry and muscular, the way only a kid in his twenties could be. Old burn scars covered his neck and part of his face.

  “No time for reintroductions, Captain Granger. Those things are after you,” he said, pointing to the two ships that were now landing just a few hundred meters away. “Come with us if you want to live.”

  “You’re the kid from the restaurant.”

  He nodded. “Jasper. Sir, please, we need to go.”

  “That wasn’t a chance encounter then. You’ve been following me.”

  Jasper nodded quickly. “We’ve been tracking your movements. You’re incredibly important to us.”

  “You’re a Grangerite. Of course I’m important to you. But do you think I’m crazy enough to join the party? I think I’ll take my chances with the Findiri,” he said, nearly spitting, motioning over at the two Findiri dropships that had just landed in the distance. Their hatches were opening and several beings in fully shielded and armored enviro-suits jumped out.

  They were heavily armed.

  “We’re not exactly Grangerites. We pre-date them. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time, Captain Granger.”

  “Let me guess. For thirty years?” He shook off the kid’s hand again.

  “Centuries, Captain Granger. You yourself started our organization. And you gave us a mission. Protect you when you returned, among other things. And now we’ve got to go!”

  The revelation shocked him into silence, but instead of believing the kid, he started running t
oward his ground car. The driver was standing outside the door, waving frantically at him to hurry.

  One of the Findiri fighter ships soared past. A moment later, the ground car exploded in a massive fireball.

  Granger hit the ground and shielded his face. The afterimage of the explosion had seared itself into his vision, and he could see the poor driver flying through the air like a rag doll.

  He heard weapons fire all around him as a battle was just beginning to be joined. Fighters weaved and danced and shot overhead. The Findiri soldiers disembarking from the shuttles were firing at anything that moved, scanning this way and that, presumably to find him. And he noticed that a group of people with Jasper was just as heavily armed, taking cover behind the mausoleum he’d seen earlier.

  Jasper finally caught up with him, helped him to his feet, and they made it back to the mausoleum just as they were showered with a hail of energy rounds from the direction of the Findiri.

  “Well shit, they’ve got guns that bite,” said one of the men, who aimed his assault rifle around the corner and fired off a few dozens rounds.

  Another explosion and fireball mushroomed up from the ground a few dozen meters away, and Granger wasn’t sure if they were aiming at them, or if is was crossfire from the fighter battle, but either way didn’t change matters.

  “You said you have a corvette?”

  “Yes sir, it’s nearly here.” Jasper listened in on an earpiece speaker, then pointed in the opposite direction that the Findiri soldiers were advancing from. “We’ll use the building as cover. Our friends here will cover for us when we make our break. We’ve got to run fast, sir. Are you ready?”

  He looked more closely at the men and women crouched with them behind the building, most training assault rifles on the enemy around the corners. He saw several of them wore vests or shirts or hats with various veterans associations symbols. “You’re all veterans?”

  “Yes, sir!” said one of them. “An honor to serve with you, sir!” And the man fired off a few more rounds at the advancing enemy.