“Yes, Spectre,” said Lurch. And then that dumb drooling idiot went off to do his bloody work.
Spectre waited patiently for it to be done. Taking no chances. Yet, as the future-humans swept through the ship, they found nothing … nothing but an empty ship, devoid of crew and escape pods in equal measure.
He had them check again. And again.
Nothing.
So finally, Spectre stepped through the door in the armored casement, and onto the bridge.
Everything was calm. Quiet. The machines hummed silently, reporting everything as normal. Spectre scanned over them briefly, checking each one. He was half-expecting a computer voice to be softly counting down a self-destruct sequence, ten, nine, eight … such that he’d have to make a desperate escape. But no. Nothing. Everything was normal.
Odd. He would have expected Mattis to try something.
Slowly, carefully, Spectre lowered himself down into the command chair, smiling to himself as he slid comfortably into the soft seat. The material creaked faintly as he adjusted himself. What was this stuff? Some kind of synthetic leather, perhaps? It felt firm but comfortable, smooth and yet gave plenty of friction.
“Lurch,” he said into his radio, as much to himself as to the creature. “I’ll have to get myself one of these when I’m done with this ship. Maybe I’ll take it with me.”
Lurch didn’t answer. Given its nature, that made sense, but Spectre checked the readouts again, just to be sure.
And then he saw it. An excess of heat in the hangar bay. The glow drew him in, snatched his attention as something that was distinctly out of place.
The image looked so grainy and unclear to him; so lacking in the finer details. Going back to this level of technology was frustrating. He swept the camera over the hangar bay, left and right, and then found the source.
The glowing outline of his shuttle—the one he’d originally used to travel to the Midway, its engines and reactors powered up.
So simple, and yet, so effective. The old bastard Mattis … that was his trick; using the very ship Spectre had sailed in on as a bomb, no doubt. Overloading its reactors. Obviously flooding it with coolant to try and keep the secret hidden until it was too late, keep the heat levels at roughly that which would be expected for a ship that size.
Clever. Spectre appreciated the effort.
But a simple tap on his console jettisoned the ship out of the hangar bay, shooting it off into space, the tiny ship tumbling end over end as it shrank away.
His ship. The ship he had come aboard the USS Midway on. There was a certain poetic symmetry to it; they had traded ships, although, of course, Spectre had absolutely no affection for that tiny vessel. It was just a lump of reactor strapped to some engines. Spectre double checked everything, just in case, waiting for its reactor to explode or its weapons to activate.…
The ship just continued to lazily turn over and over. It became a blip on their close range radar; still within range to damage the Midway’s paint job if it blew, but hardly any more than that. He watched idly as the Midway’s computers identified it based on its transponder signal, flagging it as US Navy Vessel 57014.
Odd. Hadn’t his shuttle’s transponder originally squawked a civilian code? Spectre flopped back into the strangely comfortable seat, watching the ship’s tiny blinking dot on the radar screen.
And all the other grey dots closing in toward it.
Frowning, he sat up again, watching the swarm of dots get closer and closer. Were they fighters? No, unlikely. Where would they have launched from? Long range sensors were clear. Were they munitions of some sort? No. Why would anyone target his little ship?
Slowly, slowly, the truth dawned on him. The grey dots were mines. The mines that were programmed to destroy any military ship that came close without an approved transponder code.
The shuttle wasn’t the weapon at all.
It was bait.
“Mattis, you son of a bitch,” he muttered to himself, unable to keep a respectful, almost admiring, smile off his face as a dozen heavy gravity mines slammed into the shuttle. With a surge of energy and a white flash, the shuttle’s hull imploded, crushed to oblivion. The resulting surge of gravity, barely a stones throw off the bow, tore the Midway across space, peeling off its hull plating and snapping its bones like twigs. Air howled as it rushed out of thick cracks in the armored casement that surrounded the bridge, a thousand spider-web fractures crawling all over it, the force sending tiny spears of metal in all directions, the armor spalling and shredding the inner heart of the Midway.
Yet the ship managed to survive even that. Bloody, battered, Spectre watched through one eye—the other taken by a whizzing shard of metal—as the gravity surge pulled the ship and the surrounding cloud of debris in closer. The forward section of the ship cracked and broke off, spiraling lazily toward the gravimetric surge as more of the dastardly mines activated, the powerful forces nearly yanking him from his chair.
For a brief moment, everything went quiet. Too badly damaged to even whimper out an alarm, the bridge computers fell eerily silent, their lights dying as the damage broke their internals.
Then a brief moment of tranquility, where the loss of gravity caused him to drift slightly out of his chair, floating in the bridge’s rapidly escaping air.
Lovely, almost.
A dull roar heralded a series of powerful secondary explosions as the terrible damage done to every part of the Midway spread to the massive pile of freshly loaded ammunition nestled deep within its hull, the freshly overstocked reserve of explosive shells detonating all at once, blowing apart the ship from within.
And everything after that was white nothingness.
Chapter Seventy
Chrysalis, Low Orbit
Shuttle Zulu-1
“Mattis, you son of a bitch.…”
More satisfying words he’d never heard. Mattis let the corner of his mouth turn up, a fleeting moment of joy that was stolen away as the hangar bay filled with flame, secondary explosions tore through the USS Midway from within, and the whole ship detonated as the explosions took out her reactors, breaching them and blasting her into a billion pieces. The fragments slowly spiraled out toward the gravity surge, forming a flat, disk-like shape.
Mattis, Modi, and Lynch watched as the ship burned, pieces drifting away as the former ship became nothing more than a slowly expanding cloud of debris, burning gas, and occasional secondary explosions. The future-human fleet, clustered around the Midway, slowly exploded or broke apart one by one, as shrapnel and secondary explosions tore each ship to pieces, their flaming swan songs joining with that of their former enemy.
It was beautiful, in a way, like watching the last firework show on Earth.
“All of the crew definitely got off okay, yeah?” asked Mattis, for what seemed like the four hundred-thousandth time.
“Yes,” said Lynch. “Sure as shooting. I checked the computer myself.”
Mattis turned away from the porthole on the shuttle, unable to look at the raging inferno any longer. “Good,” he said, although the words sounded hollow in his throat, like he knew he’d made some kind of error. “My god … what have I done?”
“You blew up our home, you jackass,” said Modi, although the words did not carry an accusation’s tone … it instead, sounded something like his attempt at a joke.
“It’s just a ship,” said Lynch, echoing Mattis’s earlier statement, as the shuttle touched down on Chrysalis. “It’s just a ship.”
It’s not just a ship. She was far more than that.
She was their home.
The loading ramp unsealed and lowered, revealing the surface of Chrysalis, dotted with escape pods, each one opening like seeds, the dazed, surprised crew climbing out, or helping those who had yet to pry open the doors.
Pieces of the Midway and the future-human fleet fell into Chrysalis’s artificial atmosphere, slowing down and burning up as they encountered the thick air, an artificial meteor shower to match the fir
ework display.
A thousand brilliant lights in the sky turned darkness into daylight, bathing the surface of Chrysalis in strange, lurid lights and shadows, adding a serene, almost surreal, quality to the deep, sinking pain Mattis felt in his gut.
The shuttle banked slightly, and out of the window, Mattis could see a series of bright flashes; the stark white burst of a ship exiting Z-space translation, so bright and harsh on the eyes from this side, and so beautiful and multihued on the other. He squinted as another came in, and another, and another.
A whole US fleet, complete with heavy cruisers and carriers. In amongst the fleet he saw other ships—a pink-colored civilian craft he recognized as Harry Reardon’s ship, pulling in just behind Yim’s cruiser, the Chinese-flagged vessel leading the pack, weapons charged and ready.
You’re just a little bit too late, friend.
His communicator buzzed and, almost in a daze, he hit the talk key. “Mattis here.”
“Good evening, Admiral,” came Yim’s voice, a curious edge to it. “What happened to your ship?”
He didn’t even have the heart to say. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, taking a low, deep breath and letting it out slowly. “She’s gone. It’s just a ship.”
Silence on the line.
“I’m sorry,” said Yim, with all the sincerity in the world.
“I know.” Mattis closed his eyes, letting the soothing darkness keep him from thinking about what he’d done. “Why … how are you here?”
“Your friend, Harry Reardon.” Yim’s voice was gentle but beneath that was a layer of concern that struggled, obviously, against the weight of other conflicting emotions. “He’s … come into possession of something you need to see. One of the future-humans. Alive. He tried to deliver it to you, but once he realized you were engaged with the enemy, he came to me.”
Mattis should have cared. He really, really should have cared; he should have ordered the pilot of Zulu-1 to turn toward Reardon’s ship and complete the original mission he was given, to meet up with the smuggler and take his story, then find out what this … living future-human was, and pry out all the mysteries from its mind he could. He knew that he should do all these things and more, and yet…
And yet he was so tired. He simply couldn’t do it.
“Why don’t we get coffee first,” said Yim, in a way which suggested some level of understanding. “Take a victory lap around Chrysalis. I have to debrief Mister Reardon and his brother, and see what we can find out. I’ll meet you on the surface.”
“Agreed,” said Mattis, and then, slowly and deliberately, closed the commlink.
It was just a ship, he told himself, allowing himself to use the past tense for the first time.
And they knew things. They knew how the future-humans were getting there, and that with the gravimetric technology they could close the rifts through which they came. If Spectre hadn’t been lying they might even begin to understand how to open them, too.
Either way, it was a problem for Modi, and a problem for someone else. Without a ship he was just a man.
And for the first time, he almost felt okay with that.
Everything was going to be okay.
Chapter Seventy-One
Chrysalis, High Orbit
The Aerostar
Reardon squirmed uncomfortably in his seat as he stared out the cockpit window at the massive, expanding debris field which his computer had helpfully identified was largely the former USS Midway.
“Kind of glad we didn’t meet up with them when we were supposed to, huh,” said Sammy, similarly transfixed.
“Pretty much.” Reardon grimaced. “We would have likely have been aboard when she blew.”
Although, well, there would have been so many other different possibilities that might have played out that, potentially, the ship wouldn’t have been destroyed at all, or wouldn’t have even come to Chrysalis. A thousand possibilities swarmed in his head; some better, some worse, but all irrelevant because they never happened.
Sammy glanced over to him. “How did you know Admiral Yim, anyway?” he asked.
Reardon cocked a little smile. “I don’t,” he said. “But I saw him on the news once. Something about a friend of Mattis. Seemed close enough.”
“Bro,” said Sammy, sounding half disappointed, half angry. “You can’t just sail up to a Chinese warship like you did and just … you know, expect that they won’t destroy us simply for getting too close to them. You risked both our lives on a lucky guess.”
Reardon just smiled. “So, business as usual, then.”
“Business as usual,” echoed Sammy.
He sat there, watching the spinning debris field, and then his computer chirped. Reardon sat up, blinking in surprise.
“What’s that?” asked Sammy, leaning over to look at his console curiously.
“That,” said Reardon, “is a signal from the listening device I put on the cat. Way back on that station above Ganymede. I programmed it to alert me if certain words were said. Most notably, Spectre.”
“I’d honestly forgotten about that,” said Sammy, wide-eyed. He stared at Reardon. “Can I listen?”
There was something in his tone that caught Reardon off guard. A strong desire to be … useful, perhaps? He knew better than to try and steal away something Sammy could do. Especially since opportunities for him to help out, beyond piloting and gunnery, were so limited. “Go for it,” he said, waving his hand. “Lemme know what they’re saying.”
Sammy clipped on an earpiece and listened. His face contorted, first in confusion, fading to bewilderment, then something vaguely resembling dull surprise. “It’s hard to tell because of all the purring, it’s making it hard to be certain, but…”
“What?” asked Reardon, curious.
“It’s … Spectre,” said Sammy, his tone skeptical. “And … Spectre. But both aren’t Spectre.”
That made absolutely no sense at all. “Uhh, okay … try again.”
“It is,” said Sammy, insistently. “There’s like, two different people talking. Near the cat. And they’re both referring to each other Spectre.” His eyes widened. “It’s … really weird.”
“Like…” Reardon struggled to process it. “They’re twins or something?”
“No, not twins,” said Sammy, grimacing. “Seriously? Why would twins have the same name, dumbass.”
“Yeah, my bad.”
“No, it’s like, they’re both calling each other Spectre. And others. But they add stuff after the Spectre, like there’s Spectre-Logistics, and Spectre-Intel, and … more.” He looked up, ashen-faced. “I think there’s a lot more.”
“What like it’s just a nickname? For different people?”
Sammy shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. I … think it’s a lot worse than that.”
Chapter Seventy-Two
Earth
United States
Georgetown, Maryland
Presbyterian Hospital
The door finally opened, and in walked a nurse holding a happy baby Jack, followed by the doc, who looked equally happy.
“Mr. Mattis. I’m happy to report that your child is perfectly fine.”
Jack was smiling. A lot. He sure did look … fine.
“Really? But didn’t you just say an hour ago that he’d developed a new heart murmur? Worse than bef—”
“I was wrong, and I apologize. Little Jack is fine.”
Chuck looked from the smiling nurse, to the smiling doctor, down to the smiling baby Jack.
The hair stood up on the back of his neck. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. He couldn’t explain it, but it just felt … off. He took Jack out of the nurse’s arms and looked skeptically at the doctor. “So, how can you go from a diagnosis of strange and disturbing new heart murmur, to perfectly fine, in the space of less than an hour?”
The doctor heaved a sigh and held out his hands in what his father Admiral Mattis would often call the penguin salute—something his enlisted men would
do when they were trying to say Sorry, boss, no idea how that canister of high explosives fell into the barbeque pit. “Mr. Mattis, sometimes these things just happen. A kid comes in, looks sick, we come up with a theory as to what’s wrong, and in the meantime, the kid just gets better.” He snapped a finger for effect. “Just like that.”
Chuck wasn’t buying it. Though Jack did look very happy.
“All right.” He stood up and carried Jack to the door of the exam room. “All right, uh, I’ll follow up with you if, uh, … things change. Ok?”
The doctor smiled broadly again. “Absolutely. But I wouldn’t worry about a thing.”
Chuck left the room. Left the hospital. Left downtown and finally made it home to their apartment in the suburb. And by the time he walked through the front door, he was sure: he was very worried. That doc was talking out his ass. And he was going to get to the bottom of it.
Epilogue
Chrysalis
Surface
Guano pressed the open button on her escape pod, and once again, the screen flashed up in front of her.
ERROR: POD DOOR JAMMED
ATMOSPHERIC INTEGRITY COMPROMISED
She was far from an expert in escape pod maintenance but that didn’t sound good at all. Guano hammered on the door of the escape pod, worry growing within her. What if she had landed in an unpressurised zone? If the door opened, she would just, you know, die. Which would not be ideal. The whole point of escape pods was to avoid death. Not bring her to it.
Taking off her flight suit had not been a great idea.
The Last Dawn: Book 3 of The Last War Series Page 28