by Nick Webb
They were nearing the entrance to the military wing, where Ambassador Shin could go no further. Two MPs stood at the massive doors with arms folded sternly across their chests. “But do you think they were scouting it out for settlement or something? As far as I know there isn’t any Skiohra settlements on land. Their whole civilization lives on six ships.”
“Ah, but they used to, Mr. President. Something Polrum Krull mentioned to your Hero of Earth Captain Granger at one point. She said they had a homeworld once, but that the Swarm exiled them from it, to serve them forever, in space.”
Sepulveda stopped in his tracks, just outside the entrance to the military wing. “Are you suggesting…?”
“I suggest nothing, Mr. President. But our scout teams, decades ago, did find ruins. Shao-587 used to be the home of a large civilization. Tens of thousands of years ago.”
“My god. Could this be it? The lost Skiohra homeworld?”
“No way to know. We have minimal contact with them. But the question remains: why would they fight over Shao-587, Mr. President?” Ambassador Shin shut down the data pad and handed it off to one of his aides. “President Sepulveda, this is highly classified information that only our Premier and his top generals have seen. And now you. I trust you use it wisely. Consider it partial payment for your assistance two weeks ago.”
“Very partial assistance. We lost several ships and thousands of people at Mao Prime.”
For a very brief moment, the professional face of the ambassador fell. “And we lost millions, Mr. President.”
A moment of silence passed as the awful reality of war rested heavily on them both. He saw the pain in the ambassador’s eyes, and could tell the other man saw the pain in his own. And the fatigue, the restlessness, the powerlessness. And also the drive. “Why give us this? What in the blazes are we going to do with it?”
“Honestly, Mr. President? I have no idea. But Premier Wen thought that if this information would be of value to anyone, it would be the Companion to the Hero. Admiral Proctor.”
He shook his head. “No. She’s a criminal of the state. She murdered my predecessor.”
“Dire times call for dire measures at times, Mr. President. What’s worth more? A man’s life? The honor of a single dead president? Or the continued existence of an entire civilization?”
With that, Ambassador Shin turned and walked back towards the State Department side of the atrium.
He glanced back at Peel. “You hear all that?”
“Yes, sir.”
He considered for nearly a minute, as his aides huddled nearby. Finally, he spoke. “Cancel the National Security Council meeting. As soon as Oppenheimer gets in, send him directly to me.” He turned towards his intel liaison. “Is she still in the Britannia system? At Titan? Is that what our sources are still telling us?”
“We believe so, yes sir.”
“Good. Let me know if that changes.” He went through the door that Tom Wen was holding open for him, but then stopped and looked back at the intel liaison. “But don’t tell Oppenheimer that she is. Not a word. Got it? He’ll jump the gun. Huntsman will be livid.”
The liaison’s brow furrowed, but he nodded. “Not one word, Mr. President.
Sepulveda started to turn back into the military wing, but caught sight of a group of people standing off several dozen meters. Many had cameras hovering over their shoulders.
“The press corps. Who the hell let them in here?” He pivoted to Peel. Did they get shots of me crossing the atrium?”
“Probably, sir.”
Sepulveda nodded. “Good thing I was walking purposefully. The people need to see that, Mr. Peel. Especially after New Dublin, and Britannia. If they see me hesitating, even in the slightest, whether it’s how I talk or what I decide, or even how the hell I walk, then it’s over. Manage them,” he emphasized, pointing at the gathering crowd of press.
“Understood, sir.”
For a third time he turned back to the military wing, nodded at the two MPs who saluted back, and entered.
He was about to have a very tense conversation with one Fleet Admiral Oppenheimer.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sickbay
ISS Independence
High orbit, Britannia
“Stop whining and hold still for god’s sake!” In the wake of the murder of Dr. Patel, the only person on board the Independence with any kind of medical training besides the two nurses was Ensign Riisa, who had been a first responder in Chicago before she applied to IDF academy. And the nurses were swamped with casualties far more serious than the bumps and breaks and bruises that Lieutenant Zivic and Captain Volz had sustained.
Zivic winced as the needle went in. The autodoc was damaged, the casualty of an unfortunate power surge caused by a glancing blow from the Swarm’s devastating anti-matter beam. And the other nurses must have been using all the meta-syringes, because Riisa had to rely on good old fashioned barbaric hypodermic needles.
Many were dead because of the Swarm. He wondered briefly how many more would die due to medical staffing issues. “Sorry, Annie, it’s just that your bedside manner is somewhere in between a vertically-challenged marine drill sergeant with a chip on his shoulder and a BDSM sadist.”
“See? More whining. God you’re more fragile than a frickin q-field generator.” She yanked the needle out, eliciting another yelp.
“Dammit! Was that necessary?” He rubbed the spot where she’d jabbed him. All around him in sickbay, severely wounded crew members were either moaning softly or in medically induced comas, and part of him felt ashamed at vocalizing his hatred of needles. But goddamn that hurt. “It’s a flesh wound! That Swarm round barely even nicked the skin. It bled for, what, a minute? Why the hell do I need a full-spectrum antibiotic?”
Captain Volz used his good arm to roll up the sleeve of the uniform on the arm with the dislocated shoulder. He, too, was bleeding from a few spots, but nothing mortal. “Suck it up, Buttercup. I always knew you were a drama-queen.”
“But—”
His father cut him off. “Sure, it’s only shrapnel. Maybe a round. But if it’s Swarm we can’t risk it. Thirty years ago we had no idea who was Swarm-compromised and who wasn’t. And that damn virus could infect just through touch alone. So anyone—anyone—who may have been in contact with anything Swarm related is getting the shot. Period. We’re lucky Admiral Proctor and her team came up with an antidote back in the closing days of the war.”
Zivic glared at him, still rubbing his arm. “Fine.”
“Your turn, sir,” said Ensign Riisa, brandishing the needle.
He waved her off with one hand and held out the other, palm wide. “No need, ensign. Unlike my dramatic son here, I’m brave enough to not only take a needle, but to friggin do it myself.” He smiled. She placed the needle in his outstretched hand.
“I’ll be back in a minute to fix that shoulder, sir. A sonic displacer will help me get it back into place.” She turned and went back into the sickbay storeroom, which required her to walk past the room they had transformed into a temporary morgue. Zivic watched her turn her head away from that room as she passed it, and he could just barely make out a quiver of her shoulders. Her hand went up to her eyes. And then she disappeared behind the storeroom door.
He jutted his chin out at the storeroom. “She hides it well.”
“What?” Captain Volz had been fiddling with the syringe.
“Riisa. She acts stoic. She tries to play the part of the no-nonsense IDF officer that gets the job done, quick and clean and professional.”
“That’s because she is, idiot. You could be so lucky as to learn something from her.”
Zivic rolled his eyes. “But her morale, dad. Sure, she doesn’t show the pain. The horror at losing friends and family and being on the front lines and seeing all the death from a front row seat. But it’s all there, right under the surface. And if you’re not careful with her and some of the other officers, you’re going to have someone freeze up or
break down right at the wrong moment.”
Volz pursed his lips, closed his eyes, and set the syringe down, still unused. Zivic worried he was about to get another round of berating comments. Instead, his closed eyes winced even further, as if he was holding back tears. Except Ballsy never cried. Zivic had never known him to. “I know, son. Goddamn it, I know. I was there, you know. Thirty years ago. I was there in the thick of it.” He pointed a finger after her. “I went through it just like she’s doing now. Just like you’re doing now. And I … I got through it.” He finally opened his eyes. “Somehow.”
Zivic puffed out air in a show of sarcasm. “And it fucked you up. Just ask mom.” He immediately wished he could call back the words. In his minds eye, he saw the words as physical daggers flying through the air and burrowing deep into his father’s chest. “Look, dad—”
“You’re right, son. War fucks us all up. It changes us all. Turns some of us into heroes, some of us into monsters. And some of us into both.” He drummed his fingers on the side table. Another pair of marines appeared at the door, holding a bloodied deck hand between them, who looked to be missing a foot, and was either in shock or heavily medicated because he didn’t even moan. “And all of us? It changes us forever. In ways we can’t even know.” He stood up and looked down at Zivic. “So you give Ms. Riisa a break, son.”
Zivic shook his head. “No, dad, that’s not what I was getting at.”
“And what were you getting at, son?”
“They need you, dad.”
Volz grit his teeth. “I’m here. Can’t you see that?”
“You’re here. You’re giving orders. You’re getting it done. You’re dishing out fire and fury and taking it to the Swarm, just like, just like the stories about Granger. But—”
“But what?”
Zivic sighed. “The fighter pilots, dad. We hear things. We’re plugged in to the heart of the crew, if you know what I mean. You were one, after all. And dad, morale is low. From the bridge all the way down to the janitor on the flight deck. Everyone has lost someone. Some have lost everyone. They don’t just need a captain. They need a leader. They need to believe in something. They need hope.”
Volz put this hands on his hips, still staring down at his son. In the background, the deck hand the marines had just brought through the door and laid on a table finally started screaming, as if he only just now saw the bloody stump at the end of his left leg. “They need victory. They need to win. No better morale boost than a win.” The doors slid open again and an ensign rushed through, handing a data pad to Captain Volz. He glanced at it, sighed, then turned and strode through the doors which barely opened in time to let him pass. “Get fixed and get two hours of sleep. Then report for duty. We’ve got another problem.”
“What?” Zivic called after him.
Volz turned long enough to hold up the data pad and reply, “Britannia’s been shoved too far out of orbit by those blasted Granger moons and Swarm ships. If we don’t figure out a way to get it back into its regular orbit, everything we sacrificed today was for nothing.”
Zivic felt his stomach sink. “How the hell do we push a planet back into its orbit?”
“You tell me. You’re the ideas guy, right?” And then the doors closed and he was gone.
Riisa had returned from the storeroom. “He—he left without getting his shoulder put back into place?”
Zivic still stared at the doors his father had left through. “He’s good at leaving.” He glanced up at the monitor above the late doctor’s desk in the corner, which kept a running tally of the dead since the war started. It had ticked up that day. Eighty-seven. “Especially when it hurts.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bridge
ISS Defiance
Near Britannia
Fiona Liu was in a shocking state. Her face, which had already been devastated by the fires of the assassination attempt at Bolivar, had been further degraded by the intense radiation of the engine compartment. She was pale, and every few minutes she gagged on the remnants of her stomach lining, which was still coming up.
But she was alive, and she assured Proctor that the modifications IDF Intel had made to her body would allow her to survive.
Barely.
“You know, this doesn’t erase what you did.” Proctor sat down next to the sickbay bed. “You killed the president of United Earth. When the truth comes out—which it will—you’ll be locked up for the rest of your life.”
“No capital punishment? I’m hurt, admiral.” But she said it with a smirk.
“No capital punishment. I may be a wanted criminal myself, but when the truth comes out, I’ll use whatever influence I have left to prevent that.”
Liu folded her arms, pushing the IV tube out of the way. “Great. Life in an IDF prison. Perfect payment for saving your life. Again.”
They let the silence settle between them. Liu was right, of course. She had saved Proctor’s life twice now. Once just twenty minutes earlier, and another time on board the Independence two weeks ago when unknown assassins, posing as marines, managed to infiltrate the ship and attempt to kidnap her. If it hadn’t been for Liu’s quick thinking….
She’d be a prisoner of whoever sent those damn agents.
“Tell me. Who do you think sent those men posing as marines two weeks ago? Who’s behind all this?”
Liu shrugged. “Honestly? There’s any number of assholes who want you dead or out of the picture, admiral. Pick your poison. Oppenheimer, the GPC’s Speaker Curiel, the Grangerite prophet Huntsman, Admiral Tillis, half the senate, the Russian high command, probably even the Caliphate, though they’d never admit it. You’re lucky that I took out two of them for you already: Mullins and Quimby.”
“Quimby? He wanted me out?”
“Probably.”
“Why? What’s going on that I don’t know about? Surely you know something, coming from IDF Intel.”
Liu held up a burned finger. “Former IDF Intel.” She winced at the pain of shifting her arm—the skin was very tender. “Admiral, you’re a woman with power. There is a certain breed of man that doesn’t like that. Hell, there’s a certain breed of woman that doesn’t like that. And you probably have more power than just about any woman in history.”
Proctor rolled her eyes. Nonsense. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Admiral, you’re one of the few people in history that have made their way into our mythology, while still alive. You might not realize it, but there are millions of people who would drop everything and do absolutely anything you told them to do. Hundreds of millions, probably.”
“Ludicrous.” But she remembered the words of her marines on the bridge: We believe you. We believe in you. We’ll follow you to the end.
“Yes, it is. But it’s also true. You’re the Companion to the Hero of Earth,” she said, putting up four fingers into air-quotes. “You’re practically the living symbol of an entire religion, whether you like it or not. And, if you ask me, there’s your answer right there.”
“Excuse me?”
Liu had sat up straight and now leaned in close. “The answer to your question. Who is behind everything? You’re the living symbol of an entire religion. Who does that threaten? Well, anyone with political power, obviously. But it’s more than that. Religious leaders in particular prefer dead symbols. It’s a lot easier to speak for them that way. And you’re a symbol who is very much alive. Ask yourself: who does that threaten?”
“Huntsman.” Proctor shook her head. “I met him. He just … didn’t seem the type. He used to be a Mormon bishop, for pete’s sake. They’re as benign as they come. He probably doesn’t even drink coffee, much less be capable of ordering an assassination.”
Liu laughed, and shook her head. “Admiral. Good Lord. How old are you? Seventy-five? Six?”
Proctor’s eyes shot daggers. “Sixty-nine.”
“You don’t know a lot of religious people do you?”
The question actually gave her
pause. It was the very question she’d been struggling with for weeks. She used to be intensely religious, as a child, at the insistence of her mother. But her experience of losing her younger sister at such an early age had wrung the religion right out of her. For years. Until two weeks ago. The … miracles of the events surrounding Tim’s reappearance were … unavoidable. She couldn’t reconcile them with her scientific worldview. “My mother was religious. And my brother is, in a sense. More his wife, actually.”
“There’s a certain type. Not all religious people, for sure. But there are quite a number of them. Their religion prohibits them from doing innocuous thing X, or tiny thing Y, or using harmless substance Z. But when it comes down to real good and real evil, when it comes right down to whether they, for example, look the other way when entire ethnic groups are slaughtered, they don’t bat an eyelash. They shun their coffee or their alcohol and pat themselves on the back for it, passing the time away in their temples or churches or sacred groves or whatever, enjoying the fruits of the bloodshed, all while subconsciously trying to feign ignorance as to where it all came from. Those tiny rules become a proxy for them. A way to tell themselves they’re righteous, when in fact they’re demons.”
“So … you think Huntsman is a devil, then?”
“No way to know. But he certainly has the motive. You’re a threat to his power. Don’t rely on his coffee-shunning and lack of vulgarity to keep you safe.”
She looked at the young woman, laying prostrate in her bed, her body ruined, her face disfigured. So capable of horrific acts, and yet so … wise? That felt like the wrong word. But she certainly seemed older than her years. She could see why Danny fell for her.
Proctor decided. It was time she knew.
“Danny’s alive.”
Liu’s eyes widened, and after a pause she practically jumped out of bed. “What?”
“He survived the fall through Sangre de Cristo’s atmosphere.” She leaned over and swiped at the computer monitor on the wall to turn it on, then swiped through a few menus until she found the image. “There he is. Danny Proctor. My nephew. Once was lost, now he’s found.”