by Nick Webb
“And what’s stopping them from q-jumping away once they realize they’re about to get gobbled up by a black hole?”
“We embed their hulls with q-field interdictors. We should only need two or three per ship. Just gotta get up close and personal enough, launch one with sufficient force to embed into their hull, and bam, they ain’t going nowhere, and we let the black hole do the dirty work for us.”
Volz stroked his chin. “I’m going to be honest with you, Lieutenant. It sounded less stupid the first time.”
Zivic didn’t even try to hide his eye-roll this time. “You know what? Why don’t you just go and suck a—”
“Gentlemen,” Lieutenant Whitehorse repeated, this time staring directly at Zivic.
Zivic shut his mouth and closed his eyes, taking moment to steady himself. “It can work.”
“How the hell do you know how many Swarm ships will even show up? What if we plan a party for ten, and a thousand show all dressed up for dinner and a movie? There’s no way in hell we can attach that many q-field interdictors at once, and if we let a few dozen get away, then all we’ve done is summon a few dozen almost comically oversized Swarm ships that much closer to Earth, and made them very, very angry. Idiotic. More than idiotic, it’s insane.”
“We do the best with what information we’ve got, sir.” He only ever called his dad sir when he was pissed. And he was pissed.
“Bullshit. With the information we’ve got we may as well go eat pistols and pull the triggers than do what you’re proposing.”
“Ok, fine. Fine. It needs work. But it’s a start, ok?”
Now it was Volz’s turn to roll his eyes. “It’s a joke, is what it is.”
“Ok, you know what?” Zivic waved the screen off. “I’m done. Go find yourself a new goddamn strategist. I’d have better luck dating the Swarm’s leader, make questionable decisions in a hotel room with it, get it pregnant, sue the piece of shit for custody rights, and take the goddamn hybrid Batshit Swarm shit kid out to an amusement park where I convince it with candy and ferris wheel rides to go back to its people and get them to please oh please stop attacking us, than to convince you of anything, goddammit!”
He left so fast the doors almost didn’t have time to open. When they closed, all that was left in the conference room was a stunned silence and three IDF officers trying to piece together what he’d even said.
“Now, that’s not fair. I’m convincible. He convinced me just last week that the Britannia Falcons had a better offensive line than the Callisto Raptors.”
Whitehorse shook her head. Rayna snickered. “Now that was a dramatic hissy-fit storm-off if I ever saw one.”
“You’re being too hard on him,” said Whitehorse, glancing at Volz with a look of annoyance mixed with desperation.
Desperation was in heavy supply these days, and Volz knew it. “Look. If we don’t figure something out and soon, we’re all dead. Not just us, but all of humanity. And you both know it. That cool million last week on New Dublin? Fried in the blink of an eye? That’s just the beginning. A million people. Just gone. So if you’re going to coddle him just to keep his precious feelings unhurt and his manhood intact, then … yes, we need a new strategist because fiery, painful death awaits us all if we can’t do something, for god’s sake.” He hit the table harder than he meant to and swore from the pain.
More silence.
“Any word from Shelby?” said Rayna.
He went glum. “She still hasn’t surfaced. Having the authorities think you killed the president of United Earth does horrible things to one’s welcome and reputation.”
“Ballsy, if I know her, she’s deep into something. Planning. Figuring shit out. It’s what she does. She’ll turn up. And when she does, pow!” Rayna slapped her hands together.
Volz nodded. “For all our sakes, I hope you’re right, Rayna. Cause things ain’t looking so good right now. If we didn’t have that fleet of … moons patrolling our space, with mysterious Jesus-Granger at the helm, we’d be dead weeks ago.”
One last uneasy silence as they considered the almost laughable improbability of a dead Captain Granger coming out of a black hole and turning a dozen moons into giant space stations to protect them from the Swarm. And then the urgent voice over the comm snapped them out of it.
“Sir! Just receiving a meta-space distress call from Britannia.”
Color drained from Whitehorse’s face. “My god,” said Volz. “Swarm?”
“Yes, sir. Three Swarm ships just jumped into the vicinity and are headed directly for the planet.”
Volz leaped to his feet and ran for the door. “Britannia’s our biggest planet. This is it, folks. It’s show time.”
Chapter Two
Admiral’s quarters
ISS Defiance
Sector 21-G
“Ma’am, we found it.”
Admiral Shelby Proctor had been asleep in her quarters, but at the words—the words she’d been waiting to hear for two weeks, she practically jumped out of her bed. “You’re sure?”
“Sure, ma’am. It’s Titan. Complete with a smashed Swarm ship on one side of it. The whole thing is still glowing molten red from the impact.”
“I’m on my way,” she said, giving herself a once-over glance in the mirror. Good enough, she thought. She’d slept in her uniform, but that was standard these days. She remembered back to the Swarm War aboard the Constitution and then the Warrior with Captain Granger—she’d once gone three weeks in the same uniform. Only the anti-septic and deodorizing sonic spray kept her from smelling too badly. But war was war. And personal hygiene took a back seat to keeping people alive.
The Defiance was so small that she was on the bridge in less than a minute after leaving her quarters. The marine she’d deputized into being her first officer stood up from her command chair and she settled into it. “Report, Commander Carson.”
He seemed to wince at the rank. He’d been a staff sergeant. Enlisted. But being the former fleet admiral of IDF came with certain privileges, and in wartime, protocol and customs be damned—she needed a first officer, and first officers were commanders, not staff sergeants. “It’s in orbit around a red dwarf star in sector 21-K. We tracked it using the q-field variance interferometry method you showed us, ma’am. It q-jumped in less than an hour ago, and I’ve tapped into the meta-space solar system readout from the IDF listening post there. It’s definitely Titan.”
“Is the probe picking up any transmissions or … anything from it? Meta-space or otherwise?”
“Inconclusive, ma’am.”
“Very well, commander. Take us in. How many q-jumps away are we?”
“Just five, ma’am,” Carson said.
“Good. Let’s get moving.”
Commander Carson gave a nod to the marine sitting at the navigation station who entered in the coordinates and engaged the q-jump engines. Within ten minutes they were there: a tiny red dwarf star just fifty light years from Earth, its weak light displayed on one of the bridge’s tactical displays.
“Where is it?”
Commander Carson made a curt motion to the marine at the tactical station, and she zoomed the camera in to a tiny dot near the star. It expanded to reveal a dull red glowing moon. Titan.
Tim.
“Shall I take us in, Ma’am?” said Carson.
“Not yet. Full meta-space scan. Full EM scan. Full … everything scan. Neutrinos. Tau. Neutron. Gravity wave spectrum. Q-field interferometry. Everything.”
The marine at tactical shook his head. Davenport. Specialist—now Lieutenant Davenport. “Ma’am? I … don’t know how to do most of those.”
She sighed, and approached his station. “Here. Watch, and learn. I’m only showing you once more, so pay attention this time.” She ran him through the various menus and submenus of the types of scans the Defiance’s sensor suite was capable of. “You know the difference between active and passive scanning, right, Lieutenant?”
He looked affronted. “Of course, ma�
�am. Active scanning sends out a signal and detects how it interacts with the target and—”
“You don’t need to explain it to me, Lieutenant. I’m just seeing what I’ve got to work with here.” She tapped through a few more menus and initiated the gamma and x-ray scan of the glowing moon ahead of them. “Look. Nothing showing up on the high energy end of the EM spectrum except for standard background. That tells us a few things. It means whatever power source Tim built in that thing is either inactive, or so heavily shielded that we can’t detect it, because all—and I mean all—high energy sources are going to give off some type of high energy EM radiation.”
“Do you think it was damaged when it rammed the Swarm ship over Earth?” said Carson.
“Possibly.” Admiral Proctor sat back down in the command chair and stroked her chin. “But after the collision, he jumped away, so whatever reactor he’s got down there was working until at least then.”
It was not lost on her that she kept on referring to whatever was down on Titan as him and he, rather than it, like the marines were doing. They didn’t believe. So be it. She’d had enough evidence already. She knew exactly who was down there.
But where had he been for thirty years? Or was it really thirteen billion?
“Ok. Run through the other scans. Should take you about twenty minutes if you do it right, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.” Lieutenant Davenport hunkered down, going through the various frequency bands, occasionally looking up to report on his findings. Always negative.
Please be alive, Tim. Please. We need you.
A million people died last week on New Dublin from the Swarm attack, before Ido, Hestia 9, and Ampera Raya showed up and blasted the thing to hell and back. It took three Granger moons to destroy just one Swarm ship.
Granger moons. Everyone called them that, but did they believe? Did she? Did she really? It was absurd, but there they were. Twelve moons, all somehow converted through the use of some kind of incomprehensible technology into massive cannons capable of q-jumping anywhere in United Earth space to counter any Swarm incursion.
But the Granger moons didn’t always show up on time. And as a result, they’d already suffered horrific losses. A million gone meant tens of millions of grieving living, and tens of billions of terrified people wondering if their family was next.
“Ma’am, nothing.”
“Meta-space?”
Lieutenant Davenport blanched. “Sorry ma’am, forgot that one.” He hunkered down again, and within a minute was scratching his head. “Ma’am? This is … strange. I think. I’m no meta-space expert.”
She stood up again and glanced at his console readout. Then she bent lower to get a better look. How very odd. “You’re right. That isn’t normal. It’s like the entire moon is acting as a … spherical conduit for a larger, extremely low frequency meta-space wave.”
Commander Carson came up behind them. “What does it mean?”
Proctor turned to face him. “I don’t know.” She sat down. “I’ve never seen it before. I didn’t even know something like that was possible. What does it mean? God, what does any of this mean?”
The marines had no answer for her. And, she suspected, no one in the universe did.
Except for one man.
She glanced at the young marine manning the helm. “Lieutenant Case, take us in.”
Chapter Three
Terrace Heights playground
Whitehaven
Britannia
Sarah Watkins was eight, and her favorite part of the playground was the swing set. She could swing so high she felt she could touch the sky. Her feet would soar up above her, toes outstretched in the warm Britannian sun, reaching up high to the clouds.
She’d play games on the swings. Always with herself. She had friends, but they didn’t like playing with her sometimes. They called her weird, but they were the weird ones. She talked to herself. And who wouldn’t? She was interesting!
“Now I’ll start twisting. When I twist and swing, my legs go back and forth. Sideways. Like this.” She demonstrated. She talked to her best friend, of course. No one could see her, but she was there. Samantha. She called her Sam. She stood right next to the swing set, watching. Sure, she was imaginary. But Sam was also fun, and that made up for the imaginary bit.
“Sarah, be careful!” her mother called from the edge of the playground.
“Okay!”
Her legs swung sideways back and forth as her body went up and down in a wide arc, swinging higher and higher. It was hard to get that just right, to make the up and down swing go higher and higher while thrashing back and forth. Her dad was a physics-ist. Or a physicalist? Physicist? Physica…cist? Whatever. But he used strange words like momentum and angular and … something else, to describe what she was doing.
Dads were weird. What she was doing was having fun.
“Sarah, I said be careful! That’s too high! You’re going to fall off.” Her mother called again, but her voice made it sound like she wasn’t paying that much attention. She was too busy talking to her friend on the phone. Perfect. That meant she could go just a little higher before her mom would actually get mad.
Higher.
Higher.
Her toes splayed out, and at the top of the arc, she peered up through them towards the sun, squinting at the light filtering through.
Higher.
Higher.
Her mother screamed.
“Mom, it’s not that high! I’m fine! Watch!”
She pumped the swing even higher. The sideways motion had disappeared, and now she focused on getting as high as she could. To impress Sam, and her mom too.
The screaming didn’t stop. What was it with moms?
That’s when she noticed it was a lot darker than it had been before. She reached the top of the arc of the swing, and peered up through her splayed toes again, towards the sun.
It wasn’t there.
The sun was gone.
“Sam, did you take away the sun?” she joked to her friend. But in her gut, she knew it wasn’t funny.
Her mother kept screaming. It was making her nervous. She put her legs down and looked up at the sky, towards where the sun had been. In its place, with sunlight trying to stream all around it like a golden white crown, was a … thing. A ship?
Then she understood the screaming. Her parents had talked about it in hushed tones at night, when they thought she was asleep. Something had come back. The Swam? The Worm? The Swarm? It was the Swarm. She remembered hearing about them in school. They sounded worried during those conversations, but she didn’t understand why.
Until now. The darkness deepened. Frightened, she looked across the sky, searching for what her parents had called the Granger moons. Something that might help. They told her the Granger moons had saved her aunt and uncle on New Dublin last week. They nearly died, but the moons showed up at the last second. But not before lots of people died. She scanned the sky, whipping her head back and forth.
There was nothing else there. Except for two more big ships, glowing white from the sun, brighter and larger than the moon.
Her mother didn’t stop screaming. Now she heard other screams joining hers.
She didn’t understand why they were screaming. But since they all were, Sarah started to scream too.
Chapter Four
Bridge
ISS Independence
Near Britannia
“Status report.” Captain Volz strode onto the bridge, which was already at the highest alert level with every station settling into battle mode.
“Three Swarm ships, same general design as all the ones we’ve seen so far,” said Whitehorse’s deputy at tactical.
“Except now there’s three of them. Good god, we’re going to need all twelve of the Granger moons on this one.” He glanced over to the long range scan station. “Any word?”
“Nothing, sir. No moons yet.”
Volz sat down in the command chair. “Well if the p
attern holds, they should start showing up in about five minutes. That gives us five minutes to buzz around them like gnats until they squish us and move on to the juicy target below.”
Eight and a half billion people down there on Britannia. Apart from Earth, the planet below held what was essentially the center of human galactic civilization. Volz momentarily held his hand to his forehead, steeling himself against what was certain to be a horrific, apocalyptic catastrophe. “Ok. Who’s in command of the Britannia defense fleet now?”
“They called in Admiral Tillis from San Martin, sir,” said Lieutenant Whitehorse, having taken over from her deputy. “He’s assembling the fleet near defense platform Cerberus Nine.
“Are all defense platforms online?”
“Cerberus One through Fifteen, yes. But half the Hydra system is still in maintenance.”
“Shit.” Volz swiveled his chair to the command console. “Ok. Inform Admiral Tillis or his deputy that we’re going in for the special ops.”
On the viewscreen, the closest massive Swarm ship loomed large, completely eclipsing Britannia’s moon and slowly turning to aim one of its weapons, spires down towards the planet below. Thousands of fighters were disgorging from bays that were too far away to make out, but the tiny ships clustered and billowed outward, reminiscent of the videos he’d seen of the First Swarm War over a hundred years ago.
“Sir, Admiral Tillis is ordering us into formation with them and to engage in interdiction maneuvers.”
“Interdiction?” Volz wanted to punch the console like he’d punched the conference room table. “Tillis knows we can’t just blow up their engines, right? We’re not even sure we know where they are.”
“The Endeavor is relaying coordinates for what they think are the engines, sir. They claim they’ve analyzed the sensor data from previous engagements sufficiently to pinpoint their exact location.” Whitehorse was shaking her head. “But … I’m not so sure about these. It’s one spot near the rear of the ship, relative to our location. But everything we’ve seen about these ships …”