by Nick Webb
She nodded. Good. It looked like Shin-Wentworth had been busy. She’d been worried about him ever since his return from the battle at Paradiso. He’d lost his family there, and she’d nearly put him on temporary leave to let him grieve for a while before resuming his duties. But he’d assured her he could work through it and begged to on stay active duty.
“Uh, ma’am?” the engineering officer caught her attention. She walked back to the rear of the bridge to the engineering station.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“I’m afraid we’re not ready for rescue operations at this time. Nor will we be for at least another hour.”
She felt her blood pressure rising. “Explain.”
“The main engines are offline, and eighty percent of the power plant output has been shunted to the physics lab.”
“Shin-Wentworth,” she said.
“Aye, ma’am. He instructed me not to bring it up unless asked, or if absolutely necessary. And, well, now seems like a necessary time.”
She nodded and tried to suppress her anger. “You did good, Lieutenant. Please relay instruction to the chief engineer to prep the engines to receive full power again.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” the lieutenant said, with a look of relief.
“And I’ll be in the physics lab.” She saluted to the marines on duty outside the bridge after she passed the doors. And then, to no one in particular, “Time to have a little heart-to-heart with our little renegade scientist.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Veracruz Sector
Chantana III
ISS Tyler S. Volz
Physics Lab
“Increase the phase variance on the meta-space wave envelope by . . . point three percent,” said Commander Shin-Wentworth.
Director Wiggum stood at the control panel nearby and entered in the command. “We’re nearly at the threshold, Commander. In theory, going past thirty-four percent on the variance will result in chaotic instabilities in the gravitational waves.”
“In theory,” said Shin-Wentworth, as he examined the new readings. “In practice, things don’t always line up with theory. Theory can’t account for everything. Sometimes you just have to dive right in and blow past the constraints.”
“And blow ourselves up.”
Shin-Wentworth shrugged. “I mean, any high-energy physics experiment runs the risk of blowing us up.” He nodded approvingly at the new reading. “This one just happens to have the potential to blow us up and rip us out of our universe as well.”
“Don’t sound so excited.” Wiggum took a few steps from the control panel and peeked into the chamber. “Are they supposed to flash like that?”
Shin-Wentworth peered into the chamber. The two tiny, microscopic singularities flashed every now and then with an intense bright white light that made them seem far larger than the half-dozen microns they really were. “Didn’t you watch the old videos?”
“Didn’t make a habit of it, no,” said the scientist.
Shin-Wentworth returned to the analysis station. “Well I grew up on them. Old Swarm War Two vids. Couldn’t get enough of them. Watching the space battles, the hopeless rain of destruction across so many worlds, the artificial singularities that they used to blow up so many cities, and then the legend himself, Captain Granger, leading the fleets that saved us, and then the final vid of him aboard the ISS Victory as it lured the entire Swarm fleet into the Penumbra black hole. God, I think I watched at least fifty documentaries on it.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
Wiggum held his hands up. “The flashing. Are they supposed to flash?”
“I told you. The old Russian ones that the Swarm used flashed, just like this.”
“These are flashing a lot.”
“Relax.” Shin-Wentworth double-checked the status of the gravitational field gradient one last time, and seeing that it finally appeared relatively stable, pointed at the control board. “Okay. Let’s do it. Inject the matter.”
Wiggum shrugged and entered a few commands into the panel.
Inside the chamber, out of a nearby matter injector nozzle, an invisible stream of carbon dioxide rushed out and, supposedly, fell into one of the artificial singularities.
“It’s flashing more. See that? God, I can hardly look at it.”
Indeed, the target singularity had grown so bright that it illuminated half the room that was exposed to a view of it, bathing everything in an intense, purple-tinged light. “Don’t look at it, by the way. We’re shielded from the gamma and x-rays, but ironically the plain old ultraviolet goes straight through that window and could burn a hole in your retina.”
“Shit,” said Wiggum, covering his eyes.
“I said relax. Don’t worry, you’d have to stare at it for an hour to do that. Come on, get to work.” Shin-Wentworth glanced down at the instrument panel. “Okay. The CO2 is definitely falling into that singularity. That’s what the light is we’re seeing—the gas heats up as it falls and orbits tighter and tighter, faster and faster, until it’s so energetic it glows.” He nodded approvingly at the readings. Good. Very good. This could actually work. “Okay, taking measurements of the output singularity . . .”
He swept the sensor package over the second singularity, trying to get a reading on anything coming out.
“Nothing. Hm . . .”
Wiggum scratched at his beard stubble. “Well I mean, it is a singularity. What did we expect?”
“It’s a modified Einstein-Rosen-Rao bridge, Doc. Come on.”
“But those are only theoretical constructs that—”
“Remember, Doc? Practice versus theory? That’s what our variance in the phase envelope is for. Every Planck-second it varies just enough to let matter escape the singularity. And since the two are coupled, what goes in one should come out the other. Just . . . later. How much later is the question. Come one. Tweak the phase variance again. Another point five percent.”
Wiggum shaking his head, complied. “If you blow me up, I swear I’ll—”
“There it is!” Shin-Wentworth excitedly pointed at the instrument panel. “CO2 is blasting out from the second one.”
Wiggum, apparently forgetting his earlier caution, peeked into the chamber again, in spite of the intense UV flooding out from it. “Really? What’s the carbon ratio?”
“Checking now,” he said. “Going in, it was exactly one in a trillion, carbon fourteen to twelve. Now? It is,” he punched a few more commands, “one in one trillion, six hundred and two.”
Wiggum looked slightly crestfallen. “That’s . . . an incredibly small difference.”
Shin-Wentworth smiled. “Yes, but let’s run the numbers. Okay, looks like that CO2, wherever it went, spent nearly an hour there before coming out the second singularity.” He looked up at Wiggum and smiled. Wiggum slowly matched his, a look of triumph spreading over his face.
“Holy shit, it really did work.”
“It did,” Shin-Wentworth replied. And now the next step. Every small step leads to the next. And the final small step? It would be worth it. They’d be with him again. “Okay, no rest for the wicked, Doc. Let’s set up for the ex-situ experiment. For that we’ll have to switch over to the Trit’s two-dimensional tech. I think . . .” He looked up and scanned the room. “There, in the corner. We’ll construct the singularity there, and link it to a secondary singularity in the opposite corner—”
“You will do no such thing, Commander,” said a voice behind him.
He turned. “Captain.”
Captain Whitehorse stood in the doorway. “I trusted you, Commander. You promised me up and down, left and right, that you were fit for duty. That you could grieve and process your loss and still serve. And now this? After I gave you a direct order to cease all experiments and focus on the Itharan evacuation? Explain yourself.” Her arms were crossed, her face like a stone.
Like a bloody stone. She didn’t care. She didn’t know his loss. The magnitude of it. The unfairness of
it. “Captain, I—” he caught himself on his words, trying hard to be diplomatic yet firm. “You can’t understand. No one can. To lose everyone dear to you, and then to have the power in your hands to bring them back, and then . . . not. I can’t, Captain. I can’t not try. I owe it to them.”
She nodded. “So that’s what this is about. Are you insane? You’re actually going to try to use banned singularity devices to bring back your family?”
“No! It’s not just them, Captain. Think about it. We’re losing this war. Hell, we already lost. Earth is taken. And the Swarm are back. It’s only a matter of time before we’re all dead. But if we could use this technology to go back, save—not just them, but change the timeline, give ourselves . . . something, a tool, a weapon, a plan, anything that could have helped us when it mattered, turned the tide when we were still able. It’s not just them, it’s everything. It’s Earth. It’s the millions of dead we already lost. It’s the billions that are about to die.”
She was shaking her head the entire time. “No. You don’t get to play God. You’re not a force unto yourself, answerable only to yourself, a renegade hero that rushes off and plays with fire to save us all. You know what happens when idiots like you try that? People end up dying. You cause misery and death and that’s it.”
“Tell that to Granger.”
“Excuse me?” She was angry now. He half expected her to confine him to the brig.
“You heard me, Captain. Granger did exactly this. He took it upon himself to save us all. Many times. And not just Granger, but Proctor too. How the hell is this any different?”
“I’ll tell you how it’s different. Because it wasn’t just Granger. It was Granger and his XO and his crew. They acted as a team. And Proctor? Same deal. You think the battle of Penumbra a few months ago was all Proctor? No. It was every single one of us, linked together by the Valarisi, that defeated the Swarm.”
“Everyone except you, of course. You didn’t get a Valarisi companion. And you never did explain to me why not. Were you afraid?”
Her face reddened. “Take it all apart. Now. And get your ass to the bridge and get moving on that evac. The next time you disobey an order, you will find yourself in the brig until you can face court-martial. Understood?”
He wanted to keep punching, keep explaining, justifying, keep searching for words and arguments that would sway her and convince her that this truly was the right path, the only hope any of them had to defeat their enemies. But he could see she was unpersuadable. For now. “Yes, Captain. We’ll do so immediately. I’ll be on the bridge in ten minutes.”
“Good.” She turned to leave, but paused. “Commander,” she began again, her tone softened, “I truly am sorry about them. I can’t imagine what it feels like. It’s no justification for what you tried to do, but . . . I am sorry. I sincerely hope you can find peace in the months ahead.” She nodded once at a frozen Director Wiggum, who looked like he’d been caught in the act of stealing a cookie out of a jar. “Director. We’ll drop you off at our next stop on a UE world. Thank you for your service.”
She left.
They both breathed a sigh of relief. “Why do I feel like I let my mom down?” said Wiggum.
Shin-Wentworth shook his head. “She’s right, in a way. This is impossible to do alone. Even the two of us. To really make this thing work we’ll need,” he drummed his fingers on the instrument panel, “the whole crew. The ship.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Did you think we were sticking to CO2?”
“I—”
“We’re committed now, Director. Let’s get stage two set up. While I’m running the Itharan evacuation operation, I want you to finish the preliminary tests, and when I return I want to run the same test on a two-dimensional singularity, there,” he pointed to the empty corner of the lab, “and there,” he pointed to the other empty corner. “Got it?”
“I—” stammered Wiggum.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take the heat. You’re civilian. There’s nothing she can do to you.”
“I—”
“Director.”
Wiggum finally looked at him. “Yes?”
“We’ll be heroes. No, we’ll be more than that. We’ll be legends. We’ll be saviors. Billions will live because of us.”
“I . . . okay.”
“Then let’s get busy.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sol Sector
Earth, High Orbit
Vestige Corvette Legend
“Kid, there’s one thing I can be one hundred and ten percent sure about, is that I never, ever, ever, did anything with your mom that would have resulted in . . .” he held a hand up and waved it back and forth in front of Jasper, “you.”
Jasper shrugged. “I mean, there’s an easy way we can verify . . .”
Granger held his forehead in his palm. It really was impossible, he thought. There was literally no way. He’d decided early on in his career that he’d be childless. So sure that he’d snipped his tubes. There was literally no way. “Plus, you’re what, twenty . . . five?”
“Twenty-six.”
“So if you’ll recall, I fell into the Penumbra black hole nearly thirty-one years ago. Case closed. I’m not your pops.”
The cockpit fell into several seconds of uncomfortable silence, Granger not quite knowing what else to say, Jasper apparently embarrassed beyond all reason, and Qwerty fiddling with his handheld scanner.
“So, uh, yeah, I’ve got a setting on this thing that can cut to the chase real quick, sir,” said Qwerty, tapping his scanner. “Was using it to study the meta-space signature left behind on the Voynich Manuscript, but it’s got a molecular scanner too, and I’m pretty sure there’s a DNA analysis package in the software.”
Granger rubbed the bridge of his nose with one hand and held up the other to indicate he proceed. Qwerty tapped a few menus on the interface, then held it up to Granger’s arm. After several seconds, the scanner beeped, and he repeated the process with Jasper.
It beeped again.
“And?” said Jasper.
Qwerty studied the interface on the scanner, his brow slightly wrinkled. “I guess the question is, why didn’t your mom give you the name Jasper Granger?”
“No,” said Granger, shaking his head. “No. How is it possible? I was in that black hole, son—” as the casual word son that he so often used came out of his mouth it actually affected him this time, like it never had before. “I mean, kid. Plus, I hadn’t even seen your mom for decades before that.”
“Well no turning back now, I suppose. Look, Dad—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Jasper looked slightly hurt, but continued. “You and Mom met in a bar in Omaha, and then you spent several months together, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And then you left. Became captain of your new ship. And Mom moved on.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
“Except she didn’t just move on. Or rather, you couldn’t move on, and you didn’t let her either.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Granger felt his blood pressure rising.
“You’re not seventy years old. You’re thirteen billion. When you left mom to be a captain, that was thirty-year-old you. Except thirteen-billion-year-old you was here too. You couldn’t let her go. Wouldn’t let her move on.”
“You’re saying that, at least from my perspective, I met your mom thirteen billion years ago, and then, just twenty-six years ago, decided to show up on her doorstep and rekindle the flame?”
Jasper shrugged. “I don’t know all the details . . .”
“And then left, travelled to some distant part of the galaxy, and reintegrated myself into that old piece of the ISS Victory, and came back a few months ago to save the world by creating a bunch of Granger moons?”
“Like I said, I don’t know all the details. But maybe if you thought hard enough, you could remember—”
Granger shook his head. “I remember
nothing about your mom, except for our time together when I first met her. Everything else is blank.”
Jasper drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “What about that memory sphere? It’s probably all there.”
“Maybe. But Diaz warned me that it wouldn’t contain any details of the plan to stop the Findiri. Just an index of my memories. A table of contents.”
“But surely you would have saved memories of her.”
He had no answer to that. Yes? Wouldn’t he have saved memories of her, if she meant that much to him?
Qwerty had been reading something on his handheld. “Uh, sir, there’s a video feed coming out of the UE executive tower in New York. Broad transmission to the whole planet. It’s Talus.”
Granger turned to the cockpit’s dashboard, looked for the right controls to tune into the broadcast, and failing that, motioned for Jasper to do it.
When the screen came to life, Director Talus—Haws—stood in front of the camera. Behind him was the plaza in front of the United Earth executive office tower, the fountain splashing and sparkling in the setting sunlight. Dozens of people, both human and Findiri, were assembled in the background.
“I repeat. Citizens of United Earth. We are a nation of laws. No one, and I mean no one, is above those laws, including the traitor Timothy Granger. Tim, I know you’re here. You’re in orbit right now. And you will turn yourself in. Whether it happens now, or later, it will happen. So why not save us all the trouble? Go ahead—respond. Right now. Tell the whole world why you’re too much of a coward to turn yourself in. Tell the world why you’re about to let people suffer and die, just because you refuse to face justice. Tell the world why you refuse to accept responsibility. Tell the world why you’re above them, why you’re above being held accountable.”
Granger could now distinguish what was going on in the background. Some of the humans were recognizable to him as senior IDF officers, including Admiral Oppenheimer, who stood somewhat behind Talus, his expression as stone. The other humans were assembled in a long line that stretched across the plaza and off-camera.