by Nick Webb
His console beeped, indicating the last escape pod had launched. With grim determination, he slid into the helmsman’s chair, set the container on the console, and pushed the acceleration back to full. In a moment he would initiate the singularity controls that would inexorably increase its mass to permit passage of the debris ball.
He was committed. He’d crossed the line of no return. Within minutes, he’d pass the event horizon, bringing with him the artificial singularity—the one paired with the sibling soon to be launched at the debris ball bearing down on Earth. In the back of his mind, he could just barely feel Polrum Krull's reassuring presence, lightyears away. She was projecting to him: they were close. Expect the package any minute now. Initiate singularity mass increase in preparation.
The next moment he found himself flying across the room, his head exploding with pain and stars. He landed in a heap, moaning from the sharp ache behind his ear.
“Granger,” said a voice behind him. He slowly lifted his head.
Fishtail, holding the container for the singularity. Smirking at him. “Missing something?” she said, her fingers poised over the control panel on the side.
Chapter 74
Bridge, ISS Victory
Near Penumbran Black Hole
“No,” he whispered. “Fishtail, put it down.”
“Shall I deactivate it? I wonder what will happen.” Fishtail chuckled. A mirthless laugh, cold and jeering. “You’ve failed, Granger. And not only have you failed, you’ve been our most valuable tool. We’ve played you, right up until the end.”
“How?” said Granger. “We’re here. At the link. And any moment now about a quadrillion tons of shit is about to come out of that thing you’re holding, and your precious link to your shit-hole of a dimension will be closed forever.”
She smiled again, balancing the box with her fingers, tossing it from one hand to the other. She was still dressed in her flight suit, and trailing from one arm was the tube used to adminster the sedative in sickbay. In the rush of the crew transfer to the Constitution she must have been overlooked. “No, it won't. It would have been quite the explosion.” With a few taps of her finger she manipulated the controls on the container. The occasional pulses and flashes from the box became dimmer and less frequent. “There,” she said, “I've locked its mass. Nothing larger than a brick will be coming through it now, whether human or otherwise.”
No.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Fishtail, I know you’re in there. I’ve been there myself. Under Swarm control. I remember what it was like. It was overpowering, but I was still in there, somewhere. So are you. I could still think. Still remember who I was and what was important to me.”
The cold smirk. “Nice try, Granger. We assure you, she has no control over this body.”
“Even so, I know you’re there, Fishtail. Fight them. This is the moment. Our world is on the line. Fight them. Fight them for your husband. Your parents. Fight them for your son, back there on Earth. We can still win this.”
She laughed again. “Granger, don’t you understand? It’s over, no matter what you or this pilot does. The board has been set, the die cast. There is nothing you can do to stop our victory. Nothing but antimatter could plug this hole, and fortunately, the only source of antimatter is currently destroying the traitor Skiohra out there, beyond your reach. We were very, very careful not to give antimatter weapons technology to the Adanasi, the Dolmasi, the Quiassi or Findiri. Only the Skiohra and the Valarisi have it, and of them one is about to be destroyed and the other we control utterly, and will control until the end of time.”
Antimatter?
His mind darted to the storage bays down near engineering. The Warrior had been stocked with thousands of antimatter torpedoes on Avery’s orders, ostenibly for carpet bombing any Swarm worlds they came across, and most likely a few Russian worlds as well in retaliation for their treachery. And if the Warrior had them perhaps the Victory had them, too. But they would need to be activated. He glanced to the side of the bridge and recognized the new antimatter weapons control station installed near tactical just as it had been on the Warrior.
In the instant he thought it, Fishtail’s eyes grew wide. But he was too fast for her. He sprang out of his seat and lunged for the antimatter torpedo control panel. Before he could move more than a meter something struck his head, making him see stars again as he tumbled to the ground.
The container holding the latent singularity fell to the deck nearby, its corner tinged with his own blood. Before he could react or dodge, a foot caught him in the stomach and he felt himself fly halfway across the room.
The air had been knocked out of his chest, and he struggled to breathe. He rolled onto his back, just in time to see Fishtail close the last few meters between them. She kicked again, but this time he was ready. He caught her foot in his hands, which did little to stop the force—he winced as he heard a rib crack.
But holding her foot, he pulled, rolling over to his other side in the process. She fell over him, and he used the scant seconds to crawl toward the singularity container.
From lightyears away he felt Polrum Krull project a thought to him. It’s coming. He felt her mind, and knew that the other end of the singularity pair would absorb the debris cloud at any moment. What would happen at his end now was anyone's guess.
There was no time to lose. He grabbed the container and fumbled with the controls. They were in Russian, dammit. But, thankfully, there were pictograms showing what each button did. He pressed the one that unmistakably said, eject, and with a powered click, the door to the chamber opened.
Inside, the singularity floated, invisible except when encountering a random air molecule that strayed too close, snapping when enough mass fell in, bound on all six sides by the gravity-plate walls—except now the sixth wall was missing, and the shimmering light began to rise up inside the box.
“What are you doing…?” began Fishtail.
But he didn’t give her any time to react. Treating the container as if it were a bucket of water, he whipped it toward Fishtail, and in the absence of the sixth wall, the singularity flew out toward her, caught her square in the chest—
Making her disappear in a blinding flash.
Chapter 75
X-25 Fighter Cockpit
High Orbit, Earth
Volz circled around the shimmering singularity again, scanning the vicinity for any more bogeys. The hundred-odd carriers had launched thousands of them, but between the remains of the IDF fleet, the Constitution, and the newly arrived Dolmasi warships, they’d managed to ward them off. The carriers were now focused on attacking the Constitution herself, apparently intent on destroying the source of the singularity rather than try to take out the singularity itself.
“Pew Pew, stay sharp. There’s another cloud of fighters headed this way. Spacechamp, on me. All fighters, form a perimeter around the singularity, Nothing gets through. Nothing.”
“Sure thing, boss,” said Pew Pew. He’d been almost completely silent since Fodder took out the Swarm carrier earlier in the day.
“We’ve got your back, Ballsy,” said Spacechamp. “We’re not losing this one.”
They swooped around again, heading toward the side of the approaching Swarm fighter cloud. Every second that passed, the singularity got closer to the giant ball of debris, a vast cloud of dust, dirt, and ice swirling around the central mass like a great maelstrom.
And below them, Earth brooded like a hapless, helpless, target, unable to do a single thing about the destruction about to rain down from above.
Suddenly, the singularity flared, then dimmed dramatically.
“What the hell happened? Is it gone?” he shouted into his comm.
“No,” said Commander Proctor. “But we’re reading that something came out of it. And it’s readings have all shifted, somehow. Polrum?”
Polrum Krull’s voice sounded through Volz’s headset. “The other side—the sibling. It is gone.”
“So you’re telling me when we suck all this shit up, it’s not going to hit the Penumbra black hole on the other side?” Proctor yelled.
“No,” said Polrum Krull. “The link is closed. But if we launch the singularity into the debris field, the singularity itself will collapse, resulting in an explosion that should be enough to disintegrate the debris ball and knock the whole thing off course. It is well over escape velocity, so Earth should be spared.”
“You’re sure about that? What about the black hole? The Swarm's link?”
“My Children are sure, Commander. They’ve been running simulations for this eventuality just in case. But we must launch it soon. We'll have to deal with the black hole later—right now Earth is the priority.”
Something tumbled by Volz’s cockpit window.
Impossible.
The unmistakable light gray and blue of a fighter pilot’s uniform caught his eye, and the tumbling, splayed hair told him all he needed to know.
Without even thinking, he pressed the compression button on his flight suit, sealing it shut and filling his helmet with oxygen, and, making sure the safety-line was tied securely around his torso, he pounded hard on the hatch control button.
The cockpit hatch burst open, and he swung the bird around to match the velocity of the tumbling figure, and pulled up as close as he could. Then he released his seat restraint and bounded out of the cockpit, flying toward his target with arms outstretched.
When he reached her, he could tell she was awake. But just barely, and not for long. Without a thought for himself, he took several deep breaths, wrapped his legs around her torso so she wouldn’t tumble away, then ripped his helmet off. The force of the escaping air nearly tore the helmet out of his hands, and it took some fumbling but he shoved the helmet onto her head and clicked the seal button, pressurizing her suit.
The pressure inside his head and lungs was overpowering. He felt capillaries burst on the surface of his eyes, and the urge to exhale was almost irresistible. But somehow, he managed to pull them both along the safety line and back into the cockpit. Distant, hazy memories flashed through his mind. But he knew it wasn’t simply déjà vu. He’d watched himself do this before, just hours earlier.
His vision was fading. Flailing with his hands, he tried to close the door. To repressurize the cockpit. To finally, and irrevocably, save Fishtail once and for all. To finally make good on his promise to the kid.
But the safety line was caught in the hatch.
He felt his lungs erupt as the air escaped his throat, and blackness overcame him.
Chapter 76
Engineering, ISS Constitution
High Orbit, Earth
“Commander, this is your last chance to save your world,” said Polrum Krull.
She watched the sensor readout. Ballsy and the unknown pilot had entered the fighter, but were still drifting. On the other screen, the serene, blue planet turned slowly, unable to defend itself against what was coming. Slowly, she nodded her head. “Do it.”
Whooping and yelling through the comm grabbed her attention. “Got them, Commander. Let’s blow this joint!” Pew Pew’s voice cut through the chatter of all the pilots as they blazed their way from the doomed ball of debris. The surviving IDF cruisers had pulled to a safe distance, and the Dolmasi, presumably warned by Polrum Krull through the Ligature, were corralling and luring the remaining Swarm carriers into what Proctor guessed would be the blast zone, on a tangent perpendicular to the direction of Earth.
“Now, Polrum.”
Polrum Krull nodded, and pressed a button on the singularity control station. The shimmering light disappeared. An instant later, the giant ball of debris erupted. A massive piece of the ball shot off to the left at a terrifying speed, but to the right, the remainder of the ball disintegrated in a colossal explosion.
The rapidly expanding fireball started overtaking the fleeing Swarm carriers. The Dolmasi, whose propulsion systems were faster, managed to outrun the explosion, and after only ten seconds, the last remaining carrier was swept up in the blast. It almost reminded her of a supernova seen from lightyears away, but sped up a billion times. It was actually beautiful, and she wanted to stay and appreciate the scene.
Someone groaned behind her. Granger. Lying on the floor, starting to come out of the shock of being controlled by the Swarm and passing through the singularity.
She still had one last job to do. “All hands, to escape pods or shuttles. Now. You have five minutes. Proctor out.” There was only a skeleton crew, and it should only take them a few minutes to evacuate. “Are you going to project it somewhere in front of the Constitution?”
Polrum Krull shook her head. “There’s no direct port to get it out of here. All the carriers and our dreadnoughts were retrofitted with equipment to allow quick transport past the hull. The Constitution lacks such equipment.”
“Then how the hell are we going to launch the Constitution into that damn thing?”
Polrum Krull looked miffed, as if she’d expected Proctor to understand this whole time, or read her mind. Proctor supposed Polrum had been growing used to doing just that with Granger. “Commander, it will work just fine in here.”
“In engineering?”
“Of course. It does not matter which point of the Constitution touches the singularity first. At the moment of contact, the spacetime occupied by the whole ship will distort, contract, and finally collapse in on itself, re-emerging from the other side. By my Children’s calculations, it should arrive back where it started no more than fifteen seconds after it left, just like you observed. Though, I would move Captain Granger from this area. The curvature of spacetime in the vicinity of the singularity will be … extreme, to put it mildly, especially with so much mass moving through. To be safe, move him from here.”
It clicked—she remembered, and she felt foolish for even bringing him down to Engineering in the first place. Afterburners—the bar—was a deck above them and down the hall, right where she’d found him four months ago.
Proctor lifted him onto her shoulders. He was mumbling under his breath, still unconscious, but slowly coming out of it.
“Wait, what about the black hole? The link? We’ve failed our mission.”
Polrum Krull closed her eyes for a moment, before opening them, looking at the slumped form of Granger on her shoulders. “No. We have not failed. Granger seals it now. Sealed with his own blood. It is an omen—the Swarm shall never rise again.”
Proctor shook her head at the mumbo jumbo, and strode toward the exit. Granger was light—just like she remembered from last time. His body still freshly ravaged by cancer, his muscles and tissue wasted away, he lay limp as a rag doll. She ran up the stairs away from engineering, turned left down the long hall, and emerged in Afterburners. She grabbed a chair from near the wall and dragged it behind her, placing it right in the middle of the room, facing the window, just as when she’d found him before.
“Might as well give you a hell of a view, Tim.”
She started to walk away, toward Polrum Krull waiting for her in the hallway, toward the escape pod, but stopped in her tracks when she heard a low mumble.
“Tim?”
“Goodbye, Shelby.”
Polrum Krull’s cryptic words came back to her about Granger sealing the black hole with his blood, and she turned back with a start. “Tim?”
His eyes were open to slits. She reached down for his hand, and another mumble escaped his lips. “Goodbye, Shelby. Thank you.”
Polrum Krull clapped impatiently. “Commander. The singularity’s chamber will open in less than two minutes. My Children and I must leave.”
“Coming,” she said. She squeezed the hand harder. “Goodbye, Tim. See you in a few.”
He fell back into unconsciousness, and as she ran down the hallway with Polrum Krull, she wondered. Was that old Tim, or current Tim, reaching across the lightyears through the Ligature to bid her goodbye? She had half a mind to ask the Skiohra matriarch, but soon they we
re scrambling into the escape pod and strapping their restraints. With seconds to spare, she launched the pod, and it shot away from the Constitution.
A moment later, the Old Bird disappeared with a familiar, blinding flash.
Chapter 77
Bridge, ISS Victory
Near Penumbran Black Hole
Granger stood at the antimatter torpedo station on the bridge of the Victory. On the viewscreen, the event horizon loomed large, taking up over half the viewable area. The stars all around it seemed warped and contorted near the edges, flickering and shifting rapidly as he approached the black hole.
Fishtail was gone—the Swarm with her—and the singularity she fell into seemed to have collapsed, since it disappeared in a flash as soon as she vanished.
All that remained was the final act. His last stab at the Swarm, the beings reaching across the ages and incomprehensible distances between universes, connected by the tenuous link of the singularities—natural or otherwise.
But how to do it? He supposed that, whatever happened, the antimatter needed to go in first, before any reaction with regular matter had occurred. It seemed to make sense in his mind. As Fishtail had said the words, he’d reached out through the Ligature and tried to comprehend, to read the Swarm’s collective mind, and the answer seemed to lie in unreacted antimatter.
So he loaded up as many antimatter torpedoes as he could, keying in the commands to have the warheads launch from the torpedoes without initiating. As such, they would fall into the black hole unactivated. The antimatter of the warheads and the matter of the torpedoes might eventually touch as they fell, but he hoped against hope that, long before then, the antimatter would somehow poison the link.
The torpedoes launched with the press of a button. Watching the viewscreen, he saw he still had time to launch another few volleys, so he set himself to work, sending out hundreds of torpedoes from the bow of the Victory, which split apart and sent their antimatter warheads tumbling into the abyss ahead of the great warship.