by Nick Webb
On the screen, the field of battle was still a fireworks display, but this time, instead of IDF ships falling back and shattering under the withering fire from the enemy, it was the Swarm and Russian ships receiving the brutal lashing. The Dolmasi, apparently, were a force to be reckoned with, especially when they showed up in such vast numbers. The Russian fleet wilted before them. The Swarm carriers lurched and veered out of the way, caught in the crossfire between the new arrivals and IDF, which had redoubled its fire.
And soon, the battle was won. The Russians—what was left of them anyway—began q-jumping away. The Swarm carriers had dwindled down to no more than a dozen, and they soon found themselves surrounded by both IDF and Dolmasi cruisers. Within another five minutes they were vaporized.
It was over.
Against all odds, in spite of bad turn after bad turn, from hopeless and final defeat came the unseen victory.
But how? Why? Granger wasn’t one to look the gift horse in the mouth, but they needed to know if they weren’t next. That the Dolmasi, having turned on their masters, wouldn’t now turn on their new friends. “Hail Vishgane Kharsa’s ship.”
Prucha nodded. “Onscreen, sir.”
The alien’s triumphant face flashed onto the wall. “Captain Timothy Granger. Congratulations on your victory. It was well earned.”
Granger bowed his head slightly. “And congratulations to you, Vishgane. You’ve apparently thrown off your overlords. Well done.”
Kharsa choked out another laugh. “So we have. And more than you know.”
On the other half of the screen, the rest of the battle was being mopped up as the fleet targeted the now homeless and flailing Swarm fighters. The planet still turned serenely below. Their true target. It was time to finish up what they came here for.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Vishgane, we need to raze the surface. If we destroy this world, the Swarm will surely fall. Without their home they will be crushed.”
Kharsa shook his head. “You will do no such thing, Captain.”
“Excuse me?” He knew there was a catch. “Vishgane, this is the Swarm’s homeworld. If we destroy this, we break their backs. We don’t understand everything about Swarm physiology or culture or technology, but I’m sure that if we destroy their home base that—”
“You will do no such thing, Captain Granger, because this is not the homeworld of the Valarisi.”
Granger’s stomach clenched. “It’s not? How do you know?”
Vishgane Kharsa smiled. “It is not. Because it is ours. It is the Dolmasi homeworld. And with your gracious help, we have now liberated it.”
Chapter 81
Volari Three, Volari System
Conference Room One, ISS Warrior
The silence in the conference room was awkward, to say the least. Admiral Zingano, Vishgane Kharsa, and Granger sat alone in the small room off of the Warrior’s bridge.
“What do you mean, Vishgane, when you say you encouraged Captain Granger here to liberate your world?” Zingano turned to Granger, his eyes flashing with anger. “Tim?”
Granger shook his head.
“It is simple, Admiral,” began the Vishgane. “The captain was once under the influence of the Valarisi, just like us. But, just like us, he managed to find a way to throw off their influence. Somehow, he regained his freedom. We do not know how. But once an individual has been under the Valarisi’s control, their influence never completely goes away. Traces of the Valarisi still course through the captain’s blood. Just as it does with us. It is how we deceive them, letting them think they still control us.”
Zingano swore. Granger put his head in his hands and repeated the profanity.
“Tim, how long have you known?”
Granger looked up at Zingano. “I’ve had the dreams, of course. You knew that. But, the Vishgane suggested as much to me the last time we met.” Granger glared at the alien. “And the last time we met, you destroyed several of my ships. Thousands of men and women. What do you say about that?”
The Vishgane bowed his head, and held it there. The pose was one of humility. Or was it shame? Granger was still trying to decipher the alien’s mannerisms and speech, as they were, well, alien.
“We are truly regretful, gentlemen. It was necessary. At the time the Swarm was watching everything I did. If I didn’t … put on a good show, as you would say, then the charade would be over. They were holding our world hostage, and would surely destroy it if they detected any deception on our part. Billions of my people would have died. The sacrifice of your people will long be sung about among mine.”
Zingano pounded the table. “Bullshit. We are not your pawns.” He glared at Granger. “And how did you do it, Vishgane? How did you make my friend here do your dirty work?”
“Easy. We have a common bond. We are still part of the same great family, even if our parents no longer control us. You went somewhere, Captain, when your ship fell into that singularity. But it was not here. You did not come to our world. You went somewhere else.”
“Where?” Granger felt like a fool, having been played, but he at least could figure out the mystery. What had truly happened to him.
“That much is clear. You went to the Russian’s singularity production facility.”
Zingano swore again. “The Russians?! The singularities are a Swarm weapon!”
“They are. The Russian ships have never been able to generate the amount of energy required to weaponize the singularities. But it is Russian technology, to be sure. They produce them, and the Valarisi deploy them.” Kharsa folded his short, scaled fingers on the table in front of him. “And it was to their production facility that you went, of course, when you emerged from the other side. All singularities are made in pairs. And each in a pair acts as a gateway to the other. Like what you would call a wormhole. Under the right circumstances, what enters one will emerge from the other. And you emerged from the other, near death. The Russians found you. They brought you aboard their station. And, at the behest of our former masters, they injected you with Valarium….” Kharsa hesitated. “I believe you would call it … Swarm matter.”
Zingano glared at Granger as the alien continued.
“The Valarium cured you, Captain. It revivifies living tissue. It hunts down viruses and foreign contaminants, for it itself is a virus. The most advanced virus we have ever encountered. And it changes you. Allows you to organically tap into graviton fields—the core of meta-space communication. That is how they communicate, Captain. How they control. And when we touched, when I shook your hand,” Kharsa looked down again. “You’ll forgive me, Captain, that is when I placed within you the false memory. I saw your memories aboard the Russian station at their production facility, I saw the world you orbited, and I replaced it with an image of my world. When you then looked at it, you felt my desires. My longing for my home.”
Granger nodded, understanding. “I felt like it was here. That this was the place to be. Where we had to come with the fleet.”
“Everything that I felt for my homeworld, you felt for this planet. And so, when you saw it for the first time, you knew you had found it. You took your own memories of your time as a friend of the Valarisi, you tapped into my feelings and determination to take back my own world, you remembered the false memory I placed within you of this world, and the result was something we’d hoped for. We knew this was a great gamble. A risk. But it paid off. You came. In force. And the result is our freedom.”
More silence, as the disturbing news started to sink in.
“Wyatt. Hanrahan. The pilots—Martin and Palmer and Dogtown.” Granger began. “They were all swarm infected, weren’t they?”
Kharsa nodded. “Yes. The doctor two months ago. Hanrahan and the pilots recently. When I shook the colonel’s hand right before yours, I looked into his mind and saw the five of them were under the Valarisi’s control. So I directed him to kill the pilots. In the scant moments I was holding the colonel’s hand and communing with him, I decided the fewer
security holes you had to deal with, the better.”
“So, the Swarm is defeated then?” asked Granger.
Kharsa looked at, and shook his head. “Regrettably, no. This was less than half their strength. And remember, we were but one of a great family of seven people. Six formidable friends of the Valarisi. Now that we have betrayed them, the full might of the other six allies will be summoned. The Valarisi do not abide treachery.”
More silence. “Fortunately, the identity of the seventh ally is now revealed. We had worked out the locations and identities of four of the other allies—the Valarisi prefer to keep us separate so that we do not communicate. But today’s battle confirmed it.”
It couldn’t be. But it made sense, of course. All the signs pointed to it. Granger only nodded as Kharsa finished his thought.
“The seventh ally is humanity.”
Zingano snorted. “You mean the Russians. Bastards.”
Kharsa nodded. “The Valarisi do not see you as separate factions or people. To them, you are one society. One race. Your political divisions are unimportant to them.”
“Then why are they trying to destroy us?” said Granger. “Why the invasion? Why the bloodshed, if they already consider humanity to be their friends, through the Russians?”
“Because, Captain Granger, the Valarisi can not abide division and confusion. In their eyes, they see you as a malignant tumor that must be rooted out. Seventy-five years ago they encountered you, and like every other race they found before, they tried to conquer and convert you. But they started late in their cycle. You put up such a stiff defense that they realized it would take them far more time to convert you than they had planned, so they left, and let you be for a time. They needed to begin the next cycle.”
Granger nodded. “Proctor was telling me about this. So they just stopped because their evolutionary cycle was over? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” said Kharsa. “It’s built into their genetic code, Captain. They’re hard wired to return home and commence the next cycle when the current one elapses. But this time, they were interrupted. Your people—the Russians, as you call them—found the Valarisi. Communicated with them. Traded technology with them. Gave the Valarisi a weapon that was so devastating it changed the entire calculus of their cycle. They decided to accelerate—to commence the expansion phase of their cycle far earlier than usual.”
Granger shook his head. “And that’s when they invaded Earth again. Right where they left off.” He paused. “But where do I come into all this? How do you know me so well? The first time I encountered your ships you seemed to know me and my ship as well as I do. And your command of our language and your knowledge of—”
Kharsa held up a hand. “That is because we have met before, Captain. For you it was nearly three months ago. For me … it was five.”
The realization began to dawn on him. “What are you saying?”
“Five months ago, I was at the Russian singularity production facility. It was our task to integrate the new technology into the Valarisi’s ships. That is also part of their evolution—they have no hands, no feet, no way to physically manipulate the environment around them. There is no need when you have other races to do that for you. So it fell to us to upgrade their ships. We were about halfway done when, to our surprise, the Constitution appeared out of nowhere. Streams of air and smoke and debris coming from deep holes in its hull. The Adanasi—or, Russians, humanity—they were instructed to take you. To convert you. To alter your ship and send you back to your world as—” He seemed to struggle with words.
“As a Trojan horse?” Zingano filled in for Kharsa.
The Vishgane smiled. “Precisely. You, aboard the Constitution, were to fly back to Earth at that time—two months prior to the planned invasion—and with several dozen singularities of your own, were to destroy your centers of leadership. Your military positions. Then, the Valarisi would come in behind you, land a thousand carriers, unleash a swarm of Valarium distribution vehicles into your cities and towns, and convert the rest of you. As they’ve done for tens of thousands of years.”
Unbelievable. He was going to be the vehicle of Earth’s destruction. In the past. Somehow, one of the singularities transported him to the past.
But it didn’t work. He’d found a way to defeat them. Even if he couldn’t remember how.
“But I didn’t do that. I didn’t travel to Earth. At least, not in the way they had planned. Earth was saved.”
Kharsa nodded. “True. Earth was saved from that first invasion, from the Constitution returning with singularities targeting its surface. It was saved. But not by you.”
Chapter 82
Volari Three, Volari System
Conference Room One, ISS Warrior
It took Granger a moment to understand the Vishgane’s meaning. Earth had been saved from a Swarm-controlled Trojan horse: Granger. In the past. By someone else. Before he could ask who it was, the comm beeped.
“Sir, you’ll want to see this,” said Ensign Prucha from the bridge.
Granger started, grabbing his armrests, before jumping up and dashing toward the door. He motioned to Kharsa to follow, and within moments he, Zingano, and the alien were striding onto the bridge.
“Sir, it just came out.”
“What came out? And from what?”
Diaz pointed to the viewscreen. A fighter. From the looks of it, it had recently come through an intense battle. He scanned the markings—it was clearly one of the Warrior’s.
“Commander Pierce, all fighters have been aboard for over an hour, right?”
The comm computer relayed his question to the CAG, whose voice soon came over the speaker. “Aye, sir. All surviving fighters are accounted for.”
“Then who the hell is this?”
Another voice came over the comm.
“Lieutenant Tyler Volz, sir. I … I flew into a singularity. Just like you. And I’m back. And I brought an old friend. She needs the doc, sir. She’s in a bad way.”
Granger’s knees began to weaken as he stumbled into his chair, overcome. He didn’t even need to ask who it was.
Volz continued. “Fishtail is alive, sir. But barely. Her pulse is faint.”
Someone he sent to die for him. Someone else he’d used up, used as weapon, as a stone in a sling, as a brick through a window—they were alive.
Granger’s voice cracked: “Keep her alive son. Medics will meet you in the fighter bay.”
Chapter 83
Washington D.C., Earth
Vice President’s Residence
The president rearranged his secret service security detail, so it was with her own personal agents that Isaacson made his way from the executive spaceport to his residence. The new officers escorted him to the door, shut it behind him, and when he was finally alone he collapsed onto a sofa nearby, rubbing his arms.
That bitch.
They ached. The devices Avery had injected into him didn’t go in gently, even though they were most likely tiny—no bigger than a pill. No bigger than his remaining dignity, he supposed with a wince as he felt a sharp twinge near his elbow. He held the arm up and examined the wounds left behind. They pockmarked his skin, an accusing trail that went all the way up to his biceps. Several angry welts screamed out from his chest too.
He’d kill her. He really would this time. No hesitation. No remorse.
Instantly, his head exploded in pain and he cried out.
Moments later, as the pain subsided, he realized his comm card had been beeping. How long? He pulled it out of his pocket and tried to open his eyes—the room was only dimly lit, but the light seared his sight after the unexpected blast of pain in his head.
It was a voice memo. He tapped it to play.
Avery’s voice rang out from the card. “You won’t kill me, Eamon. You won’t because you can’t. You’re an impotent little slug. Yes—that’s right, I know what you think. I know what you feel. I told you—I own you completely now. Every thought. Every fe
eling. You’d better learn to guard yourself or I’ll just have to keep this pain button clicked to maximum. Your life is over, Eamon. I killed you back on the Lincoln. You’re dead. The only way for you to live again is to do exactly what I tell you, perfectly and willingly, until this war is over and our civilization safe. Then, if you’ve proved yourself, you’ll be reborn. I’ll grant you a new life, Eamon. All your own. Without the old battle-ax hovering over, telling you what to do.
“Now, go to bed. Do nothing else. Get some sleep. You’re going to need it. In the morning report to the executive mansion for your first assignment.”
He sighed. She was right—he was dead. His thoughts were not his own. His feelings were not his own. He was a prisoner in his own body. Worse—he was a slave in his own body. In appearance, one of the most powerful men in the galaxy, but in actuality only an automaton.
He’d kill her.
Dammit! Another short burst of pain reminded him of her constantly monitoring presence.
A sound made him jump off the sofa with a start. Someone was moving in another room.
He crept around the corner, peering into the empty kitchen. He heard it again—it was coming from his bedroom down the hall.
Padding softly across the carpet down the hall, he pushed the door open to his bedroom, only to relax when he saw the source of the sound.
Conner, you brilliant bastard.
He flushed and swelled at the sight. Just like he described her. Beautiful. Young. Exotic. Laying invitingly on his bed, with eyes that said now.
His belt came off. He struggled with the clasp on his pants. She raised an inviting finger, motioning him forward. Oh god, she’s amazing. Like wildfire, a heat rose up from his groin, electrifying his chest to the point he felt almost lightheaded. It had been way too long. Nearly a week.