by Nick Webb
“Shelby, they’re coming.” He grunted. “Shelby, they’re coming, Shelby, they’re coming—honestly, Shelby, that could mean anything. It could even be a random chance—it could have been a random pattern and maybe Commander Mumford just read too much into it. Or it could just be a GPC hoax. Get us all looking the other way while they consolidate power on the worlds they control. Or maybe a Russian Confederation plot—they’ve been quiet for years, and maybe this is what they’ve been working on. Or maybe—”
She held up a hand to interrupt him. “No. The evidence is in. The data is there. That alien ship was built out of material from the ISS Victory. Pieces of it, at least. Commander Mumford did some more tests and confirmed it. I know it’s not proof, but it tells me that, somehow, Tim Granger managed to get a message to us before he died. In theory, time would have sped up for him as he was falling into the black hole in the Penumbra system thirty years ago. Maybe he saw something in our future, and somehow … set pieces in motion to get a message to us? I know, I know,” she said, seeing his skeptical reaction. “I know, I sound like a Grangerite.” She heaved another sigh. “Look, I’m not claiming he’s a prophet or someone ascended to heaven or a higher plane of existence or some bull like that. But Ballsy, the evidence is there. How else do we explain this? The tungsten alloy on that alien ship matched that of the Victory with ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent certainty, but with isotopics that show it has aged thirteen billion years. Billion, Ballsy. Thirteen billion frickin’ years!”
They’d had the conversation several times before and it always went the same way, but he played along. “That’s a long time.”
“It’s almost as old as the universe itself! Just eight hundred million more years, and it would be as old as the Big frickin’ Bang.” She tossed her hands up in the air in frustration. She was used to dealing with mundane numbers, statistics, data … evidence that always pointed to conclusions based in reality. Not impossible stuff like this. A ghost returning from her past, but traveling through the entire age of the universe to get to her—that was crazyland.
But it was what the data claimed. It’s what the data demanded. And as her academic advisor always told her, once upon a time, trust your data, and it will trust you.
She wanted to punch her advisor in the face for giving her such a bland bromide. But, dammit, it was true. Data was data, conclusions and implications be damned.
Volz swung the chair back around and sat in it normally. “So, the question is, regardless of who the message is from and how long it took to get to us, is it talking about the Swarm? And when is it referring to? Are they coming next week? If so, let’s get ready. Are they coming next year? Likewise. Are they coming in a hundred years?” He shrugged. “Honestly, only so much we can do about that.”
Silence fell between them as they both considered the awful possibilities. She finally shook her head. “Who else could they be, if not the Swarm? And my gut says it’s coming earlier. Not a hundred years. It’s now. We have to assume now, because if we don’t, and they do come, and we’re not prepared, then we’re dead. It’s that simple.” She stood back up and refilled her cup. “I got another report this morning from fleet Science Division. The earthquakes on Titan are intensifying.”
“Do the recon ships and science teams know what’s going on down there yet?” Volz balanced a boot up on his knee and bounced his leg nervously.
“No. But Titan’s mass has increased by point oh oh one percent since the core of the alien ship penetrated the crust. And just a few days ago a massive EM jamming field appeared around the moon. The recon ships are basically blind now—they have no idea what’s going on under the surface, beyond the earthquakes and the increase in mass.”
Volz grunted. “Unbelievable.” He tapped a nervous finger on the desk. “How is the evacuation of the Saturn system coming?”
“Almost complete,” she said, sitting back down with her refilled cup of tea. “It’s no small feat to evacuate ten million people from seven different moons. Rhea and Mimas are empty. They’re running into trouble with some colonies on Iapetus, though. The locals don’t trust IDF down there very much.”
“GPC loyalists?”
She chuckled. “Actually, no. Mongolian Amish. I won’t even pretend to understand the history on that one. But the Saturn moon system should be completely evacuated within another week, and not a moment too soon. Bolivar’s moon Ido never exploded, but the debris from El Amin’s destruction is starting to affect the next closest planet in the San Martin system. I understand there are a few dozen new massive craters on that planet, and the cloud of debris is only expanding. The domes on Sangre are at extreme risk. San Martin itself should see a drastic uptick in meteor activity in about a year.”
“Any risk to the population?”
“Thankfully, no, it won’t get that bad. Most of the debris is re-collapsing back in on itself. But if Titan explodes? Every moon circling Saturn will be virtually razed. The closest ones might even be destroyed eventually, depending on Titan’s blast profile. And if there’s a chain reaction of moon collisions out there, and by chance one of the larger fragments gets ejected towards Earth’s orbit?”
He shook his head in disbelief. “I’d almost prefer to face the Swarm again. At least that was something we could fight against. How do you stop a moon fragment?”
She finished her second cup with a grimace at the burning heat in her throat. “Luckily, that’s extremely unlikely. And yet, something is going on inside Titan. Let’s say it doesn’t explode. Then what? What’s actually happening down there? And on Ido? And on the half dozen other moons we’ve discovered that were visited and drilled into by that alien ship before it was destroyed?”
It was an unanswerable question, and they both considered it silently.
Volz started tapping his temple, thinking. “And in the middle of it all, Admiral Oppenheimer orders you to go out to the fringes of known space and look for signs of the Findiri and Quiassi. Two races we’ve never had contact with. Not even a hint. What’s he playing at?”
“He’s trying to sideline me. I know it. Send me out on a wild goose-chase for two alien races that we’ve never met. We’ve never had any intelligence suggesting that they even exist. He’s ordering me go out there and bait them with a meta-space pulse, thinking that they’re tied into the Ligature like the Dolmasi and Skiorha are.”
Volz shook his head. “That’s only going to tick off the Dolmasi and Skiohra.”
She could only agree. “And yet, he’s also ordering us to use the meta-space pulse against the Dolmasi if they show up in force against us. Thinks that it will disorient them. Make it easier to take them out.” She held her forehead in a hand. “I tell you Ballsy, I can’t believe it’s come to this. The Dolmasi were our allies against the Swarm. And now Oppenheimer is prepping for all-out war with them. What the hell is going on?”
“Do you think he’s intentionally antagonizing them? Instigating war?”
She didn’t want to answer. She didn’t want to say yes. “I can’t believe he’d do something so … heinous.”
The comm interrupted their thoughts. “Admiral Proctor?” said Lieutenant Qwerty.
“Go ahead.”
“Receivin’ a distress signal from Mao Prime. They say they’re under attack, ma’am.” The words came with such a laid-back southern twang that one could have mistaken his pronouncement for an idle commentary on the weather.
She bolted up out of her seat and gripped the edge of the desk. Volz shot her a knowing, nervous look. “Attack? By whom?”
“They claim it’s Dolmasi.”
Volz gave her a heavy look. “Are you ready to do what Admiral Oppenheimer ordered?”
She returned the look. “Blast them with a meta-space pulse?” and then looked up towards the comm speaker. “Highest alert status, Mr. Qwerty. I’m on my way.”
They both stood up and headed to the bridge.
“Orders are orders, Shelby. Especially from
Fleet Command. Oppenheimer himself.”
She smirked. “I’ve known other Fleet Admirals in my time. I can say from firsthand experience that they’re often full of shit.”
He smiled back, even as the red alert lights started flashing. “Don’t be so harsh on your previous self. And if I may quote you…?”
“Yes?”
They arrived at the doors to the bridge, and Volz paused before opening the door for them. “Watch your language.”
Chapter Two
Orbit over Mao Prime
Lieutenant Ethan “Batship” Zivic whipped his head around, counting the bogeys trailing him, wondering where the hell his backup was.
Five bogeys. He shrugged and gunned his engines, leaping forward through an expanding debris cloud, provided by his previous victim. He could handle five. A quick glance up to the counter on his heads-up display overlaid on the cockpit window told him he was almost a quarter of the way to his goal. Twenty-five out of a hundred and one.
Enemy weapons fire illuminated the cockpit and made him veer left, then right; then he plunged downward towards the atmosphere of the planet before looping even further in a maneuver that outpaced the fighter’s inertial cancelers and threw him upward against his restraints with gut-churning force. Well, gut-churning for a mortal.
But he was Ethan Batship Zivic. Heh—Batship. His callsign was actually Batshit, but Admiral Proctor had ordered all callsigns be non-vulgar. But Batshit was not vulgar. It was descriptive. Normal orbital dogfight maneuvers were for mortals, not batshit crazy people like him. What he was doing was reserved for fighter gods, not fighter jocks.
It wasn’t that he thought too highly of himself, he considered as he plowed through a formation of enemy fighters, clipping one on their port thruster and sending it into a tailspin while peppering another with a hundred rounds of fire, blasting it into a fiery explosion. It was that, well, he was a fighter god. His own mom and dad had nothing on him. Ballsy? Amateur. Spacechamp? Her training records would fall, god rest her soul.
He sailed through the dissipating cloud of glowing dust and debris before immediately looping around and taking a second pass at the formation, which had seemed to only just barely register his presence. Two more explosions coincided with the counter on his screen ticking up to twenty-nine.
His comm headset erupted in his ears. “Ethan, watch your six!” Lieutenant Jerusha Whitehorse was tracking his progress. He smiled—she needn’t have worried.
“Way head of you, hun.”
There wasn’t just one trailing, or two. Four stayed on his tail, matching his every move. He knew they’d expect another gut-churning loop. Instead he was going to commit suicide: turn and face them head on. With a flick of his thumb he cut the forward engines, applied the dorsal and starboard thrusters, flipped the fighter one-hundred and eighty degrees, and reapplied the forward drive at full power. Fifteen g’s, which the inertial cancelers managed to regulate to four g’s. It was still enough to make him see stars.
But it worked. Another bogey exploded in a cloud of expanding slag and the others veered at the last millisecond to avoid hitting him, crashing into each other instead.
Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two.
Another number below the counter loomed large on the heads-up display. One hundred and one. His goal. The all-time record held by any IDF fighter jock against the Swarm in a single engagement. And he was going to beat it if it killed him.
He soared towards the Independence, looped around, and shot up a bogey that had lingered too long in the same course. Thirty-three. A twitch of his wrist sent him careening towards the other capital ship, the ISS Kobe, and he let their point defense guns make quick work of his two tails. He grunted—those two didn’t count. But another hapless bogey found itself in his sights.
Thirty-four.
He breathed deeply a few times and took a moment to survey the layout of the battle. Besides IDF’s two capital ships, the ISS Independence and the ISS Kobe, at least a hundred other IDF fighters were flitting in and out of the melee, and over two hundred enemy bogeys, based out of four enemy capital ships, loomed large in the background behind the Independence, which was unloading everything it had into the nearest one. It was like a fireworks show, and he had a front row seat.
“Remember you’ve got a squad, Batship,” said Whitehorse in his ear. He grimaced, and had half a mind to disable his comm set.
“If they could keep up, I could use them.”
“Regardless. They’re your team. Depend on your team and let them depend on you, or you’re all dead.”
As if to punctuate her words, a dozen rounds from an enemy bogey that came out of nowhere stuttered across his left wing and ripped apart the thruster. “Dammit!” His craft started to spin uncontrollably.
He could pull out of it. He could. The hull of the Independence loomed large ahead of him. He had exactly three seconds. All he needed to do was—
Another burst of red streaks connected with the body of his fighter, and the main engine exploded behind him. His craft tumbled hopelessly. There was no pulling out of this one. The Independence’s hull approached like a barren gray lunar landscape, punctuated here and there by a port window or rail-gun turret. He wondered what death would feel like. Would it be fast? Did it hurt? How long did one’s brain synapses survive a fireball? Enough to feel pain for a few seconds?
Everything went completely black.
He still breathed heavily.
“You should have listened to me,” said Whitehorse.
A piercing white light illuminated the front screen, making him wince and cover his eyes. The cockpit simulator opened, and his eyes readjusted gradually to the intense glare of the overhead lighting of the simulator room. Jerusha Whitehorse smirked at him as he pulled himself out.
“Thirty-three, huh? What’s one hundred and one minus thirty three?”
He shrugged. “Shut up.”
She fell into step beside him as he walked to the prep area. Several towels were stacked next to the bottles of water, and he wiped his forehead with one of them. While not quite as intense as an actual live-fire fighter battle, the simulator could be … bracing, and even experienced pilots could sweat a liter during a training session.
At least, he assumed a live-fire battle was more intense. He’d never actually fought in one.
“Hey, thirty-three is pretty amazing, Batship. The record in the simulator at the academy is thirty-six.”
He shrugged, and gulped down half a water bottle. “Yeah. But Ballsy took out one hundred and one at the battle of Cadiz.”
“That was live-fire. You can’t compare the two. Apples to oranges. When you compare like to like, you’re only three away from the academy record.”
He sighed. “Jerusha, look.” He turned towards her, and smiled as sincerely as he could manage. “I know what you’re trying to do. I appreciate it.”
A shadow of exasperation passed over her face. “And what am I trying to do?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Enlighten me.”
“You’re trying to make me feel better. I don’t want to feel better. I want to blow shit up. That will make me feel better. Bam and pew pew and revenge and I just want to punch the shit out of something and for now imaginary bogeys will have to do.”
He knew he made no sense. He knew the stuff coming out of his mouth was word soup. But that was ok. All that mattered was getting ready for what was coming.
And what was coming?
War.
“Bull. Look, Ethan, I know she meant a lot to you. I know it’s hard for you. Sara Batak should not have died. And the way she died, with that nuke….” She trailed off, the terrible image of the nuclear missile detonating in Earth’s atmosphere, vaporizing Sara Batak, the mechanic from Bolivar, was permanently seared in both of their memories. “Admiral Mullins will have to account for his actions some day, but—”
He threw the mostly-empty water bottle against the wall, and it rebounded and splashed all over his boots. �
��He killed her, Jerusha. He murdered her. He’s not just going to account for his actions. No. He’s going to pay for them.” He grabbed another bottle and ripped the cap off. “And I’m going to make him pay for it. With interest.”
“Ethan, I—”
He plowed ahead, interrupting her. “And he’s going to find the price to be more than he can afford.”
Another smirk. “Done with the cliches yet?”
She had been spending a lot of time with him. Ever since Batak had died. While things weren’t the same between them—the romance was long, long gone—he appreciated it, even if he didn’t show it. Watching Batak get vaporized in the nuclear blast was … terribly difficult. He thought it was going to send him over the edge. But it didn’t. Yet. All it did was harden his resolve, and focus his anger and rage.
And having Jerusha there, talking him through it, encouraging him, hugging him, supporting him—well, it wasn’t quite like old times. Those times were gone. But it was nice to have a friend.
She had fallen silent, and stooped over to pick up the water bottle he’d thrown. After she dropped it into the recycler, she turned to leave.
“Jerusha, I….” He swore. “Look. Thanks for being here for me. I … I appreciate it.”
She paused at the door and looked sidelong at him. “It’s been less than a month. No one’s expecting you to just get over it, Ethan. But you need to start remembering who your friends are, and treating them like it.”
The door clanged shut behind her.
“Shit,” he breathed.
He was about to run after her, but the klaxon interrupted him. The lighting strips along the edge of the floor pulsed red.
“All hands to battle stations,” said the automated system. “Red alert. Threat level maximum. All hands to battle stations,” it droned on and on. But he was long gone, running towards the fighter bay.
He had no idea what the threat was. No idea who he was about to fight. But he grinned. Finally. He was going to get to break his dad’s record.