by Nick Webb
“Captain, language changed again. It’s English. And they added a word.” Prucha looked up at her, his expression pained. “Peace, please.”
One hundred lightyears beyond the Veracruz Sector
Bridge, ISS Chesapeake
Captain Proctor had unstrapped her restraints and stood up, but couldn’t even remember doing it. She’d been mouthing the words, peace, please. Peace, please. She watched the Valarisi fighters continue swarming around the carriers, looking less and less like angry bees and more like elegant swans circling their nests.
“Captain, more q-jumps detected. Reading several more vessels in the vicinity,” said Diaz.
“Who?”
Diaz shook his head in disgust. “Three more news organizations. Uh, make that four. And there’s a ship claiming to be with the Survivors of New Dublin society.
Proctor knew the situation was getting out of hand. “Survivors of New Dublin? That’s a feisty crew if I ever saw one.”
Oppenheimer had come to stand next to her, watching the new arrivals on the screen. “They’ve been the most vocal of all the survivors organizations, pushing IDF to hunt down the remaining Swarm ships and eradicate them.”
She sighed. “Then they’re here to make sure we do it. Make sure we wipe them out.”
“Looks like it.”
Prucha waved her down. “Captain, the Survivors of New Dublin ship is hailing us.”
“Onscreen.”
A well-dressed older man met her gaze on the screen. “Captain Proctor! So good to see you. Especially now. This will be a day long remembered for all New Dubliners, and for all of United Earth. God bless you.” He held up a hand when she started to reply, cutting her off. “Don’t worry, we’ll stay out of the way. We just wanted a front seat to history, and stand as witnesses to the final judgement against humanity’s greatest enemy.”
His face disappeared, replaced by the swirling formation of fighters surrounding the carriers.
Peace, please.
“Christian, we can’t do this. They’re begging us for peace. They are every much a victim of the Swarm as we are.”
His lips tight, eyes squinted, but he nodded. “That may be so. But our actions here were predetermined by the Swarm itself. That sludge out there in those ships, that intelligent goo, Valarisi, they’ve been the main tool of the Swarm for ten thousand years. And whether they deserve it or not, they have to go.”
“New meta-space message from IDF CENTCOM, Captain,” said Prucha. “Uh, belatedly warning us about all the incoming visitors. General Norton says that, quote, under the circumstances please dispense with the science and intel gathering and commence the attack immediately.”
She swore silently to herself. Her hands were tied. The outcome had been decided before she’d arrived here—that much Oppenheimer got right. But it had been decided not by the Swarm, as he suggested, but by traitorous, bloodthirsty humans.
God help them all.
“Lieutenant Diaz, ready fifteen anti-matter torpedoes. Target each carrier. Full acceleration.”
Diaz went through the process with his crew of arming the torpedoes, which took a full minute, since the anti-matter was an active reactant and required robust measures to prevent accidental detonation. She silently cursed President Avery for ever starting the research program that produced them.
“Ready, Captain,” he said.
“Back us off, Ensign.”
Prucha entered the commands in, and the Chesapeake accelerated away, putting several dozen kilometers in between them and the Valarisi formation.
“Fire.”
The torpedoes leapt out from the Chesapeake’s hull, darting out in fifteen different directions, accelerating so fast her eye couldn’t track them.
Fifteen separate explosions merged into one. She knew, intellectually, that she should have heard nothing, but in her mind the explosions rang and the cries of billions screamed.
Terran Sector, Earth
Bridge, ISS Chesapeake
Lieutenant Diaz entered the ready room, and Captain Proctor stood up to greet him. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Please close the door.”
She accepted the data pad he handed her, and sat back down across from him. “Is the analysis complete?”
“Yes, ma’am. We were doing a full sensor sweep when the torpedoes hit. We can confirm the destruction of fourteen carriers. And the fifteenth … it was furthest from us, and obscured from direct line of sight when the other carriers exploded.”
“So it could have escaped?”
He shrugged. “Doubtful. But yes, I suppose it could have. But we read no q-jump signatures during the approximately three second window its location was obscured.”
“The explosions could have interfered with sensors. They might have jumped, and we’d never have detected it.”
“Possibly,” he said.
She looked up from the data pad and leaned forward towards him. “Lieutenant Diaz, I want to be clear with you. The order I’m about to give is … well … let’s just say it lacks legal basis.”
A smile tugged at his cheek. “I’m listening.”
“I want you to lose this report. Consider it classified at Tau Twenty-one.”
“Tau Twenty-one?” He slowly nodded. “Understood, Captain.”
There was no Tau Twenty-one. Tau Twenty was the highest classification level in IDF and every other UE service. The penalty for compromising Tau Twenty was death. The implication she was making to Diaz was unmistakable. Don’t tell a living soul.
“If that ship escaped, and it’s truly the last one, we’d turn into the very monsters that we’ve been fighting if we go hunt it down.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He stood up and took a step towards the door. “This report never existed. All fifteen were destroyed.”
“Thank you.” With a few taps, she erased it from the data pad. “And the other information I asked you to look into?”
“It’s there on the pad, ma’am. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
She nodded and dismissed him, and plunged into his second report. He was right: it was very interesting.
“Commander Oppenheimer, report to my ready room. Immediately.”
Moments later, he was standing at attention in front of her desk.
“Christian. I understand your sister works for TCN News.”
She kept her tone measured, and neutral, but her implication was clear, and he understood it. It was almost as if he’d been preparing for this moment, and rehearsed his answer. “If you’re wondering, Captain, I have not been in direct electronic contact with my sister for over a month.”
She smiled. “Ah. So you’re saying your message to her is untraceable.”
“There was no message—”
“I know there was no message, Christian. You covered your tracks very, very well. But I think you met her in person. Your movements right before we left certainly leave that possibility open.”
He remained silent. She interpreted that as admission.
“Get out. You’re being reassigned.”
“But, Captain—”
“I said get out!”
He looked taken aback, but nodded once and retreated out the door. “Norton has my back, Shelby. He’ll never let you—”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what Norton says, what Norton thinks, or what Norton does. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone that you’ve compromised Tau Twenty information. You’re right. I have no proof. And you’re right, there’s no way in hell Norton would let any court martial move forward against you. But that doesn’t change the fact that you forced my hand. You, Christian Oppenheimer, are the most….” She searched her mind, trying to compose the more vicious insult she could think of.
But she came up blank. There was no insult worthy of him. Nothing could capture how she felt. He’d turned her into an arch-murderer, ten billion times over. An architect of genocide.
He smiled. “The Survivors of New Dublin Society just declared you a hero
on TCN News, and is conferring the Diamond Cross on you. You’re a hero, Shelby. An honest to god hero, just like Granger.”
The smile was more of a gloat. He was looking the words at her: I won.
She grit her teeth, pursed her lips, tightened her brow, struggling to contain an outburst. “Dismissed. Be off the ship within the hour.”
She sighed back into her chair and reached for her cup of tea in the receptacle on the wall. Oppenheimer’s final words rang in her ears. You’re a hero. Just like Granger.
The words repeated like a refrain, over and over. Finally, after several sips, she replied to the silent voices—the voices of the billions of humans killed in the war, the tens of thousands of Skiohra she’d inadvertently killed when she’d bashed the Matriarch over the head, the tens—possibly hundreds of billions of Valarisi she’d just unwillingly killed. The voice of Oppenheimer, taunting her with the siren call of hero worship.
“Peace, please,” she whispered.
“Please.”
The story continues in Independence, Book One of the Legacy Ship Trilogy, available now on Amazon.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Constitution
Warrior
Victory
Hero