by Nick Webb
“Yes, sir. My family’s lived in Londinium for centuries. Fourth great grandfather was one of the first settlers there. Helped build Londinium from the ground up. Well, at least his workers did. Never did enjoy getting his hands dirty, the old sod.”
“You talk about him like you knew him.”
“I did. He only died twenty years ago. Right before I joined IDF.”
Granger looked at him askance. “Your fourth great grandpa died just twenty years ago?”
“Well, when you own half the city of Londinium you can afford all sorts of age extending procedures. Replaced half his body at least four times before he finally came down with a common cold and died of pneumonia. One hundred and eighty-nine. Oldest man on York when he died.”
Captain Granger whistled. And to think he was going to die at a paltry sixty-four. Sixty-five, if he was lucky. Unless they came up with a miracle cure for stage four lung cancer, a malignant brain tumor, and pancreatic cancer that didn’t involve replacing his entire body and flooding his head with high-energy protons to zap the free-roaming malignant cells. He breathed in as deeply as he could, stifling a wince at the pain. “What did you bring me here to see, Tyler?”
The CAG flipped the computer on and brought up several star maps and fleet movement schedules. “The British and the Russian fleets were supposed to conduct joint training exercises in the Britannia system yesterday. I know because my father commands the ISS Gallant, which is the flagship of the third British fleet. We talk every other day for a few minutes, and this morning he mentioned something that struck me as quite odd.”
“Yes?”
“The Russian fleets never showed up.”
“Strange,” said Granger. “The Russian Confederation space is right there next to British space, out towards Sirius. Practically neighbors. Did he have any idea why they didn’t show?”
“No. But that wasn’t the only odd thing. He received some special orders from IDF High Command to go patrol the border between British and Russian space. Out near the Veracruz Sector.”
“Did he say why?”
“He didn’t. The orders were classified priority one top-secret. Hell, he shouldn’t have even told me what he did.”
Granger stroked his chin. Damn the Russians. Slippery bastards as always—Earth nearly lost the Swarm War because of their antics, refusing to coordinate planetary defense with the allied powers right up to nearly the last moment. It took several Swarm nukes over St. Petersburg to finally convince them that it was in their best interests to cooperate with the rest of the civilized world. What were they up to this time?
“Probably just on guard against whatever President Malakhov has up his sleeve,” said Granger.
“Oh, they’re calling him President now?”
“He did win the last five elections.” He paused and smirked. “Albeit with only ninety-eight percent of the vote.”
“Sounds like they love the guy. I wonder what he promised the voters?”
“Probably made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Promised to take the Veracruz Sector and re-annex Mongolia, all while masturbating shirtless on top of a bengalese tiger.”
Pierce snorted, and shook his head. “Yeah, it’s probably just his regular old chest-thumping. Still, my father sounded genuinely worried. He knew something he wasn’t telling me. Has anything come down from High Command?”
“To me? Hell, they didn’t tell me about my own ship’s decommissioning until a week ago. I doubt I’m high on their list of officers to keep up to date on hypothetical Russian aggression.”
The CAG picked up a picture frame and looked at it, his two boys smiling back at him. Granger wondered how long it had been since he’d seen them. “Well, let’s hope nothing out of sorts is going on. I know Malakhov is a crazy bastard, but this isn’t like him. The politicians have never been friends, but we’ve always had good inter-military relations. They’ve never missed a joint training exercise.”
Granger studied the star map. Sure enough, eight IDF carriers, a handful of heavy cruisers, and an assortment of lighter vessels—missile frigates, destroyers, tow barges, and supply ships—were gathered at the outskirts of the Britannia system, the main population center of British space. Nearby, Russian space shimmered red, and opaque, as the Russians no longer shared near-real-time sensor data with the rest of IDF. There could be a Russian fleet just on the other side of the border—in the Liv system, and they’d never know it until they decided to show up.
“You think something’s up? I mean not just the Russians? You think the Swarm is back?”
Pierce shrugged. “The Swarm? They’ve been gone for over seventy years. Not so much as a peep out of their space in all this time—assuming we know where their space is. Hell, we don’t even know what they look like. All we ever found in the debris from their ships was gray goo.”
After their first engagement with the Swarm, humanity tried to study the ships they’d managed to cripple or destroy. It wasn’t easy work since most of the defeated ships self-destructed—any vessels that survived intact were heavily damaged, and there were never any survivors. No bodies, either. Somehow, they’d managed to program their ships to either be entirely automated, or to automatically vaporize any dead bodies. All that was left behind was a thin sheen of organic liquid coating the floors and walls. The hallways and compartments were so small that IDF supposed that the aliens couldn’t be more than a few feet tall, if that.
And yet their technology was stunningly advanced. They used energy weapons—some form of accelerated negative ion beams. Anti-helium particles, if he remembered his academy classes correctly. Granger wondered if the new armor every new ship had been constructed with since then would make a difference—hell, even the Constitution only survived the war because of her ten-meter-thick tungsten plating. She was practically built out of an asteroid back in the last century—SG10551 was the rock’s designation. By the time she was finished, there was hardly anything left of the asteroid.
But not only were their weapons advanced, they seemed to be able to achieve huge accelerations and tolerate massive changes in inertia—changes that IDF’s inertial cancelers could only dream of handling. As such, the Swarm fleets were far more maneuverable and faster compared to IDF. That, and their computer control systems put IDF’s to shame—each fleet they encountered was so well coordinated, each fighter so well connected to the whole, that it was like fighting one large organism rather than a few hundred little individual ships. Their own targeting computers and command and control centers were simply no match. They’d had to rely on the grit and gumption of their individual pilots, and in many historians’ estimations, that made all the difference.
“Let’s hope it’s not the Swarm. I’d much rather fight a few chest-thumping Russian thugs than those bastards again.”
“You think it’ll come to that?”
Granger shrugged. “Honestly? No. There’s too much space—such an abundance of resources that there’s just no point. That’s what the Russians have always wanted: territory and resources. Since there’s no shortage of either, it’s just senseless to fight. No, things will blow over in a few years, Definitely when Malakhov hits his term limits—”
“Wait, you haven’t heard?”
“What?”
Pierce grunted a laugh. “The Duma voted away the presidential term limits a few months ago. Old Malakhov is in for life.”
The captain snorted. “You’d think he would just save time and call himself Emperor Malakhov instead of spending all this energy on pretense.” Granger stood up to leave. He was glad his CAG had pulled him into the office—he’d calmed down enough and was far less liable to toss Proctor out the airlock. “So how many fighters have we got left in operational status?”
The CAG rose to his feet to follow the captain out. “About a quarter. Maybe twenty? Proctor took around forty, and twenty were down for overhauls before she showed up. Why? Expecting trouble?”
“In the five days we have left? Do
ubt it. But if we’re not ready for anything fate throws at us, it’s our own damn fault.”
Chapter 18
Sol System, Earth orbit
Valhalla Space Station
“Admiral Yarbrough? The Vice President’s shuttle has arrived.”
She stood up from her desk and nodded her head to the empty room. “Thank you, Commander. Please see that he’s escorted to the ISS Winchester’s docking tube. I’ll meet him there.”
Pausing for a moment by the window before heading out to meet the second most powerful person on the Earth, she stared down at the green and blue globe far below. Valhalla Station’s orbit was about double geosynchronous, and at 50,000 kilometers from the surface it only orbited once every thirty-seven hours, affording them an uninterrupted view of whatever continent they flew over, which at the moment was North America. Squinting, she could just make out the slightly grayish look of the major cities—New York, Washington, Miami. Nashville was obscured by clouds, but she could imagine seeing the giant civilian spaceport there, rivaling the size of even the IDF port in Omaha.
So small from up here, she thought. Letting her eyes drift farther north, she could barely make out the huge scars left by the Swarm War—circular pockmarks indicating where several cities in Ohio and Michigan had stood. The multi-megaton warheads the Swarm dropped had completely wiped those cities off the map: Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland—all gone. And in the aftermath of the war the government had seen little point in rebuilding them, opting instead to let nature take its course, and now the blast zones were covered in lush green. Dense radioactive forests. She remembered schoolyard rumors that the wildlife there had glowing eyes.
But the Swarm was gone. The surveillance missions to known Swarm worlds following the war had indicated that there was not a trace of them left. All their cities abandoned. Not a single ship, not a single alien left behind. Some fundamentalist religious leaders went so far as to claim that the Swarm was simply a scourge manufactured by God for the punishment of mankind for her many sins. And once the punishment was delivered, the scourge was taken away by God without a trace.
IDF intel thought otherwise, and spent decades searching for them, to no avail. They were entirely, and inexplicably, gone.
But now there was a problem in the Veracruz Sector. The ISS Kerouac was missing, Starbase Heroic had gone silent, and the scout ship she’d dispatched to investigate had similarly not reported back in for over thirty hours.
She turned to the door—a lowly IDF admiral should not keep the vice president waiting. As she left, a flashing indicator on her desk monitor caught her eye.
Returning to her desk, she examined the report.
A badly damaged data pod from the intel ship Tirian.
Her eyes bulged as she watched the video surveillance play out.
Dammit. They’re back.
Chapter 19
Halfway between L2 and Lunar Base
ISS Constitution
“Captain, we’re within 150,000 kilometers of Lunar Base,” said Ensign Prince.
The bridge, which had been humming along just moments earlier, came to a quiet. Granger stood up. Everyone knew that this would be the final time the Constitution would fire her engines as a commissioned IDF vessel. The ship needed to slow down sufficiently to enter orbit around the moon. He hoped they weren’t expecting another pep talk. “Thank you, Ensign. How’s the power plant?” he said, turning to the engineering section.
“Operating at nearly full capacity, sir. Commander Scott says we’re good to go.”
“Very well. Full reverse. Fire forward thrusters. Sixty percent power.”
“Sir? Since we’re down a few engines, that won’t slow us down enough.” Ensign Prince hemmed, and returned his gaze to his computer readout. “That is, sir, ever since engine number six was scrapped and—”
“Thank you, Ensign, for the reminder,” he said, cutting off the young man and mentally sending choice words down towards Commander Proctor in the fighter bay. “Eighty percent on the remaining engines should do it.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Notify me when we’re an hour out.”
He grunted a greeting as Commander Haws staggered onto the bridge. Dammit—he’d been drinking again. The odor was noticeable from a dozen feet away.
“We fired the engines yet?” he slurred.
Granger advanced on his friend and gripped his upper arm, pulling him along beside him towards the door.
“Come with me.”
“Ah, Tim, it was nothing. Just a glass.”
“A glass? You sure it wasn’t ten?”
He saluted to the marines posted at the entrance to the bridge and pulled the XO past some wary-eyed officers paused in conversation outside the operations center next door.
“Look, we’re throwing in the towel tomorrow anyway, what’s the big—”
Granger shoved Haws up against the wall and stared into his face, just an inch away. “What’s the big deal? Dammit, Abe, I’ve stuck my neck out for you so many times I’m frankly getting a little tired of it. I’ve warned you about showing up for duty drunk. There’s only so many times I can sweep this under the rug. You’re hurting morale and you’re disrespecting me.”
Haws snorted. “Stuck your neck out for me, my fat white ass. You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me, after that stunt you pulled. They were about to dishonorably discharge you, but because of me they promoted you. Imagine that—the rogue commander of the Khorsky incident, getting his own damn ship.”
Granger’s fists tightened around Haws’s uniform. Looking both ways down the hall to make sure they were alone, he leaned in close. “You and I both know that’s not true. The fleet’s been on the decline for decades. They needed a kick in the ass and I gave it to them. Just like I’m doing with you.” He released the XO and shoved him down the hall. “Go. Sober up then report back.”
“Is that an order, Captain?” Haws growled.
Granger let his shoulders hunch over. “Does it need to be, Abe?”
An officer rounded the corner and walked past them, nodding a quick salute. Granger let her disappear through a door down the hallway before going on. “Look, Abe, you’re my best friend. We’ve given the Old Bird a good run. Let’s not sully it by—”
Haws brushed past him. “Save it, Tim. Save it for someone who cares. You and I both stopped caring years ago, when they sentenced us to the Old Bird.”
“Sentenced?” he asked. Haws didn’t stop.
“You heard me.”
He turned around the corner and disappeared out of sight.
And Haws was right: their assignment was a sentence. A subtle effort to get the two of them out of the way. To silence and discredit them. A court martial would have brought too much publicity, and a discharge, honorable or otherwise, would have given them the ability to speak out. But a dead-end assignment?
Granger rested a hand on the wall. The ship hummed with the distant pulse of the ancient engines. Her engines. His engines. Haws called it a sentence, and it may have been, but it was the best damned sentence he would have ever dared to ask for.
Chapter 20
Earth’s Moon
Main Auditorium, Lunar Base
Vice President Isaacson of the United Earth Government beamed out from the podium, flashing his toothy politician’s grin at the auditorium full of reporters, dignitaries, politicians, celebrities, and civilians—there was even a class of students from some well-to-do private elementary school in New England.
Granger glanced at his watch—an ancient gold and silver time-piece with leather straps given to him by his mother several decades ago. Damn, this ceremony was taking forever. Isaacson sure knew how to talk.
“—in fact,” the Vice President continued, “some might say that we’ve gone too far in our efforts to modernize the military. They think we should remain constant. Fixed. Unchanging. Well, ladies and gentleman, times change, and with those changes we rise to meet them. The challenges we’ll
face in the twenty-seventh century will be unlike those we faced in the twenty-sixth. The Swarm is long gone, as our intelligence and science expeditions have claimed. There is no sign of any other alien civilizations for all the many thousands of cubic lightyears we’ve explored. Again, as we’ve seen throughout the millennia, our most difficult challenges will come from within, and so we must be prepared for that threat—”
Granger suppressed a wry grin. He knew the Russian president was probably seething if he was watching, which he almost undoubtedly was—who wasn’t watching the decommissioning ceremony of the oldest ship in the history of Earth’s spacefaring fleets?
“—and so we say to you future generations”—Vice President Isaacson inclined his head down to his left, towards the rows of seated students—“the future lies with you, if you will rise to meet it. We deliver into your hands a safer galaxy, a safer humanity, a safer world. Study hard, learn as much as you can, follow in the footsteps of your heroes, and for god’s sake, come up for air from your video games every now and then, ok?” he added, to a roomful of delighted, polite laughter.
And before he knew it, it was his turn. Isaacson sat down, and all eyes turned to Captain Tim Granger as he lifted slowly to his feet, trying hard not to wince from the sharp pain in his lungs.
He approached the podium, and set his hand-written speech down next to a glass of water set out for him. They told him he had fifteen minutes, but damn it all if he wasn’t able to write down more than five minutes of material. Guess he’d have to wing it. Stalling for as much time as possible, he picked up the glass of water and downed it.