by Nick Webb
CHAPTER TWELVE
Veracruz Sector
Chantana III
ISS Tyler S. Volz
Backwash Pub
“You just want to get rid of me so Shin-Wentworth will stop breathing down your neck,” said Zivic. “You going to tell me why I’m leaving yet?” He finished off his beer and slid the mug over to the fighter pilot who was putting in a shift as the bartender.
“I’m going to have to cut you off, Commander,” said the pilot.
“Wad, I’m not a commander here. My rank insignia is over there in the peanut bowl, remember?” He pointed at the corner of the counter where both his and Captain Whitehorse’s rank insignias lay in a pile with several others, mixed with some salted peanuts. Drinking was officially against regulations on IDF starships, but it was unwritten tradition that the fighter pilots always maintained an underground pub, and that every officer literally checks their rank at the door.
“I prefer the full callsign, Jerkwad, thank you very much.” The pilot mocked a miffed-looking pained expression. “It loses the crass when it’s just Wad. Gotta have the crass, man.”
“Spitwad would be more appropriate,” suggested Whitehorse.
They both looked at her askance. “Ma’am, with all due respect,” began Wad, “appropriateness is the last thing on my mind when I’m doing the dance.”
“The dance?” She sipped her Manhattan. “Do tell.”
“The dance. The energy, the firepower, the intensity, the life and death, birds flying around each other, giving and taking, until one makes a single misstep, and the partners switch up: one for another bird and the other for death herself. The dance gives me life out there, and I’m not fucking it up by having my comps call me,” he pronounced the name with a look of disgust, “spitwad.”
“Wow. Is he always like this?” she asked Zivic, thumbing at the pilot.
“Wad likes drama, what can I say?” Zivic reached out and tapped the mug. “Fill it.”
“Look, Batshit, I take the dance seriously, and I take my hospitality services seriously. You’ve had two. You’re done.” He attempted to stare Zivic down, and Ethan wondered if the man was going to start squirming. Instead, he added, “Sir.”
“Fine.” He turned back to Whitehorse. “You didn’t answer me.”
She finished off her Manhattan. “You didn’t give me the chance. Shin-Wentworth? He’s harmless. Mousy and obsessed with rules and regulations and his own brain, but his heart’s in the right place. And bonus—with you gone, he’ll be able to focus more on his science mission of understanding the Chantana Three crust physics. But the more important question is—” she glanced up at Wad, who was still hovering. A quick jut of her chin told him to scram.
When he left to attend another officer at the bar, she lowered her voice. “That Itharan message. Huge, Ethan. Think about it. Granger apparently helped these aliens escape from the Swarm who-knows-how-many thousands of years ago, and somehow they keep alive a message from him in their oral traditions passed down through the ages, and manage to get it to just the right people to ensure it gets back to Granger. That’s wild. And the message itself? It’s only the prologue, as Klollogesh calls it, and just the prologue is dripping with information that could prove vital.”
“Such as?”
“Well first off, the fact that Granger was here, helping them. Who knows what technology he gave them as he helped them carve out their living space underneath that planet’s crust? That crust is the reason we were stuck with Shin-Wentworth in the first place. The fact that it’s tech that Granger gave them? Remember the Granger moons? Remember Titan? If this tech is related to that tech, well then the security implications are enormous.”
“I’ll say.”
“Second, the part of the message where he says that some of the weapons he created to stop the Swarm got perverted or corrupted. Not just weapons, but races. People.”
Zivic shrugged. “We knew that part. I mean, the Findiri themselves are just that, right? Didn’t he supposedly create them? To stop the Swarm? And now they’re breathing down our necks?”
“Yes, but his message suggests a motivation. It’s the first concrete thing we know about them now. To—how did he put it—remake all good things to its own ends, and take back what was withheld from them? What does that mean?”
“No idea, Jerusha.”
“And the fact that he knew he was going to be losing a huge part of himself in the future. Why? What stakes, what benefit would have caused him to go through with that? I assume it’s the process of reassuming a mortal body. But why? He could have come back to us as cosmic technologically-advanced Jesus-Granger, but instead he chose to come back to us all broken and old and belonging in a nursing home. Why? The message seems to suggest it was all part of a plan.”
Zivic stroked the stubble on his chin. Fighter patrol duty for the Ballsy had been quite lax for the duration of their current mission, as the Itharans appeared to be nothing but eminently peaceful—even bordering on hedonistic. Training his pilots had been his main activity, and given that half of them were brand-spanking-new, he was swamped with work. Time for non-essential activities like a daily shave was a thing of the past. He yearned for the days when his lapses in hygiene were from saving civilization and not babysitting recruits. “Again, no idea. But, yeah. It sounds fishy. Worth taking to higher ups, for sure. But why not fleet command? Why not Oppenheimer?”
“Don’t tell me you trust Oppenheimer.”
“Well, he is the Fleet Admiral of IDF. He’s not my best buddy, but he is in charge.”
Whitehorse shook her head. “No. Not with this. Not yet. There’s something about him that just . . . I don’t know. Gives me pause. I know he and Proctor have since made up and buried the hatchet, but remember how he tried to hunt her down? Rumor has it that he may even have been part of that assassination plot on board the Defiance. If it weren’t for Fiona Liu, she might be dead right now.”
He motioned to Wad and pointed at Whitehorse, indicating he bring another Manhattan. “Okay, then let’s tell Proctor.”
She nodded. “Already did. Well, I told her about the Itharans having a message for Granger and that I wanted to get it delivered to him personally. She agreed—didn’t want whatever it is going out on the airwaves for unwelcome ears to hear. Plus, I had to ask her where he is.”
“Where is he?”
“Oppenheimer sent him out on a, quote, getting-your-sea-legs-back mission. Just something basic to get him thinking again, get him in the command chair, on a mission of, shall we say, less-than-critical importance. Sent him out to investigate old extinct alien civilizations muffed out by the Swarm. Hoping it’ll jog his memory.”
“And? Which system?” Zivic intercepted the Manhattan that Wad delivered and took a sip before Whitehorse snatched it away, spilling half of what was left.
“Thanks, asshole.” She downed the remaining quarter. “That’s the thing. He’s gone off course. Hasn’t checked in yet. Proctor doesn’t know exactly where he is—neither does Oppenheimer, for that matter.”
“Wait. You’re saying Granger has disappeared? The thirteen-billion-year-old man who brought back twelve planet-destroying Granger-moons with him and helped permanently defeat the Swarm and is the key to defeating the Findiri and Quiassi . . . has disappeared?”
“I wouldn’t use the word disappeared, yet. He’s only been gone a few hours. But the upshot is that Proctor and the top brass like to know his whereabouts at all times, and she currently doesn’t know exactly where he is. And she’s pissed, as you can imagine. Him running off like that, in his condition, in the state we’re all in. That’s the second of three birds my stone of a fiancé is going to be hitting—hide-and-seek with the geriatric.”
Zivic snorted. “And how exactly am I going to be finding Granger?”
“Well you weren’t exactly going to be q-jumping out there in your fighters.”
“Fighters? Plural?”
“You’re taking your squadro
n. Proctor wants more firepower following the old man around. And we can’t spare the Ballsy for a measly fighter transfer. So she called an old friend who should be able to help you track him down, pretty quick-like. In fact,” she pulled out her comm device. “Bridge, has the Crimson Phoenix arrived yet?”
“Just a few minutes ago, Captain. Shall I send Mr. Proctor and Ms. Liu down there when they board?” said the comm officer.
“Negative. We’ll meet them in the shuttle bay. Whitehorse out.” She stood up and motioned to the door, plucking her rank insignia out of the peanut bowl on her way out. He followed close behind, fiddling with his own rank insignia and wings—standard for every fighter pilot. Except his were gold, as the CAG.
“Second of three birds?”
She nodded, and then stopped, and pulled him in close, after a glance down the hallway. “Yes, dear. Bird three? You’re disintegrating before my eyes. Have you seen yourself recently? You were made for adrenaline and high stakes action. Not training a bunch of kids to fly. Yeah, I gotta get you out of here before my young, virile fiancé becomes a pencil-pushing schoolmarm.”
“By having me hitch a ride with Danny Proctor and Fiona Liu to chase a stray old man?”
“They’ve both kept their Valarisi companions, to the chagrin of Oppenheimer. But they’re not IDF so not much he can do about it. And Danny has found an investor willing to finance his shipping operation, so he’s got a fancy new gunship moonlighting as a cargo carrier. They should be able to track him down through the proto-Ligature without much trouble.”
“Shipping? Didn’t he used to haul ice asteroids around? What’s his new cargo?”
“You’ll have to ask him,” said Whitehorse. “Oh, and speaking of outrageously overpriced taxi services, I need to talk to Qwerty. Rayna’s picking him up in the Dirac and taking him over to Proctor so he can help figure out the Eru.”
“Woah. She’s interrupting Rayna’s science mission to play delivery girl? Auntie Rayna is not going to be happy.”
Whitehorse nodded and added, “And neither will Ace. She’s going to be piiiissed the Admiral is stealing her fiancé.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Britannia Sector
Orbit of Britannia Debris Cloud
ISS Dirac
Bridge
Captain Rayna Scott rapped a hydrowrench on the engine core. Not too hard, but just hard enough to make her point. “You hear that, dearie? The engineer doesn’t think I know you better than I know my own fuzzy navel. You and I know better.”
“Uh, ma’am?” The Dirac’s chief engineer held his hands behind his back, in what looked to Captain Scott to be an awkward pose. Why didn’t people just get it? Her mechanical friends always get it. They understood her. And she them. People? Good fucking grief.
She addressed the engine core. “Dearie, please tell the engineer man that coolant regeneration cycles can be run in series across different lines, and that you can stay active the whole time on partial coolant pressure. You know it. I know it. I mean, I wrote the goddamn book on it—”
“Book?”
“Shhh!” She turned momentarily to the engineer, but with her eyes still locked on the engine core. “Figurative book, dearie. IDF safety regulators didn’t agree with yours truly. But yours truly truly knows your butt. Better than those wanks. Tell the engineer.” She reached down to pat the engine core on the head. “Yes. Yes, I’m sorry you have to deal with him. I know. I know, he’s thick. Dense. Couldn’t tell a polaron field from a Higgs field if it bit him in his quantum dick.”
“Ma’am, I must strenuously object—”
“It’s simultaneously hard and soft. Until you measure it—which he probably does often, hoping against hope to see something different than last time. But then the wave function collapses to something a little flaccid. Anyway. As you were. Literally. I want you as you were. Operational. Like you were this morning. We’ve got a mission from Shelby and I don’t want to be late.” And with that she gave a final rap on the core and spun around to hightail it out of there. Being in engineering was bittersweet. It was her home, where she felt most comfortable. But now her place was the bridge. The cold, empty, drab, boring bridge.
But Shelby had begged her. And she could never turn down Shelby. Good old Shelby. Admiral these days, she supposed. But always Shelby.
“Bridge to Captain Scott.”
“What do you want now?” she replied impatiently to the air as she entered the elevator pod.
“We’ve arrived at Nova Nairobi. The Independence is in orbit, and the alien ships. Wow. It’s big. Just like Admiral Proctor said.”
“Shelby says a lot of things. And they turn out to be one hundred percent true, ninety-eight percent of the time.” She silently bristled as she said the last part, remembering how Shelby had promised her she could keep her Valarisi companion. But that dratted Oppenheimer had stripped her of it anyway. Sucked the Valarisi juice right out of her and dumped it into that goddamn vat. “Did you hail them yet?”
“Lieutenant Qwerty is doing that now, ma’am.”
“Well tell Mr. Lieutenant Qwerty to just head on over so we can get back to our survey.” The debris cloud of Titan wasn’t going to study itself, for heaven’s sake.
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
“Just one aye.”
A pause on the other end of the comm. “Ma’am?”
“Just one aye. You used two. Just one is enough. It’s a waste of syllables. Hell, just say yes, or okay, and be done with it. ‘Kay will do in a pinch. Conservation of syllables. It’s Newton’s fourth law. Look it up.”
“O . . . kay . . . ?”
“Rayna out.” She punched the comm button closed on the elevator wall, and not a second later the lift stopped and the doors opened to reveal the bridge and Commander Simmons in the command chair, who glanced over at her with a start.
“Captain! I . . . that was quick.”
“I’m full of surprises, dearie.” Captain Scott took the man’s place in her command chair and he retreated to the XO’s station. “Lieutenant Qwerty, you ready?”
“Just about, ma’am. Running through some final numbers from your last scans of Titan’s debris cloud.”
“You’re my taxi passenger. Why are you taking the science department’s job?”
Qwerty glanced up, as if surprised. “My specialty is finding and recognizing patterns, ma’am.” He tipped the brim of an imaginary hat. The twang in his words sounded Texan. Or something—Captain Scott had never lived on either Earth, nor Nuevo Laredo.
“Well recognize the patterns over on the Independence. Shelby wants you over there to help them with something. Linguistic. New alien language. Hexadecimal something something. Right up your alley.”
Qwerty flicked off his screen on the comms console and started to stand up. “Yes, ma’am, on my way.”
“Wait. What did you find in the debris cloud? Something the science teams missed on the first scans?”
Qwerty shrugged. “Well, hard to be sure. I was studying the spectroscopic signatures of certain portions of the cloud that were, well, anomalous. Your science teams chalked it up to interaction with expelled debris from Britannia’s ocean. But, the thing is, the oxygen isotopics are slightly off.”
“Off? What the hell does that mean?” Captain Scott had been studying her command console while talking as she usually did, but at that she finally looked up at him.
“Well, just that the ratios of oxygen sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen—the three stable ones—don’t quite match the ratios that were present in Britannia’s ocean before it vaporized.”
“Yes? I thought we knew that already. Didn’t the science team reason that it was from mixing with the isotopic ratios of oxygen from Titan itself?”
“Well, maybe. But maybe not. You see, it’s a simple linear equation problem, with three variables from three sources: Titan, Britannia, and the wreckage of the Swarm ship that blew up. Except when I make that assumption and try to model the isotopic distr
ibution we’re actually measuring, it’s underdetermined, and it’s like we need a fourth source of oxygen to supply the ratios we’re seeing.”
Rayna glanced back down at her console and fiddled with a few screens. “Huh. Interesting. Well, Lieutenant, thank you for your insight, I’ll take it from there. Off to the Independence with you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, with the ma’am drawn out into three syllables. The bridge doors closed behind him.
“Helmsman. As soon as our shuttle gets back from Independence, get us the hell back to Britannia.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
The XO caught the helmsman’s eye just as he finished with the second aye, and subtly shook his head, eyes slightly widened. “I mean . . . ‘kay.”
Rayna smiled broadly, still looking at her console. “Thank you, helmsman.”
The XO had approached her chair. “Ma’am, what do you think it means? Seems pretty left-field. A major—capital M—distraction if you ask me. We’re supposed to be surveying the debris clouds to model the danger to the nearby planets in the Britannian solar system. But oxygen isotopes? Is there a there there?”
“I don’t know, Commander. But Qwerty was right. That’s fishy. And as Shelby always told me on the Warrior, ‘Trust your data and it will trust you.’ The data’s the data, and we have to follow it wherever it leads.”