by Nick Webb
“Look, Tina, I’m sorry you’re in the predicament you’re in, and I wish I could help. I really do. But, you shouldn’t even be here, and if you’d stayed away, you wouldn’t be in this position now, would you?”
She almost laughed to herself. The mental calculus was playing out. Inside his head, his Good Angel was folding its arms and looking sternly at Eli. The Good Angel looked like his mother, most likely, and she was giving him her best WHAT WOULD JESUS DO, face, because, given his use of the word heathen, he was most likely a Third Day Christian, an evangelical sect that hated Grangerism and called its adherents heathens. But they weren’t murderous. Not most of them, at least. But there were sociopaths in every religion.
And against the Good Angel was the Bad Angel, and its face was his own. But he was stunningly beautiful. Rich. He’d paid off his college debt through his hard work as a staff pilot for the GPC and now he owned his own business, and this girl here was a teensy little bump along that road, but, as teensy as she was, bumps could not be tolerated, and so no one is going to mind if you just leave her out here, dammit.
“Eli … I’m … I’m really scared. I know I shouldn’t be out here. I made a huge mistake. I thought I could sneak here and make enough quick money that I could pay for mom’s meds for a whole year. That would let me take some time off, you know? Actually go hang out with friends for the first time in two years or something wild and crazy like that. Please, Eli, I don’t know what to do.”
Another audible sigh.
“Ok. Fine. I’ll help you this time, but this is the last time I want to see you out here, ok?”
“Ok.” Again, small helpless voice. “Eli, I really appreciate it.” And, her coup de grace, a quick sniffle, a sob, and then a little chuckle of disbelieving joy. “My god, I’m so lucky I found someone good out here, you know? I could have hit that rock and been all alone and died, and my mom would have never known what happened to me.”
His voice became even softer. She’d won. And just in time, too. The spinning of the freighter was starting to make her sick. “Hey, it’s gonna be ok. Here’s what were going to do. I’ve got a tow cable. I’ll shoot it towards you. It’s going to latch on to your hull. You’re going to feel a really quick jerk, ok? Make sure you’re strapped in real tight. The cable’s going to wrap around you a time or two before the jerk, and so afterwards I’m going to unwind you, then pull you out of here. Once you’re out of the asteroid cloud, you can fix your engine by yourself, yeah?”
“Yeah. I think I can. Thank you, Eli. So much.”
A few moments later, a thud, and then the jerk. He wasn’t kidding—it was almost as strong as the explosion had been, but this time she’d remembered her restraint. “Got ya, Tina. Now just hold on and enjoy the ride for a bit….”
“Heh heh. I’ll try, Eli. I’m used to flying, not getting towed. But hey, I could get used to this! First class service.” She’d already won, but why not seal the deal? Plus, it would be even sweeter to kill him mid-good-guy-monologue. He started pulling her, accelerated, and soon they were moving at a healthy speed back out of the asteroid cloud, the grave of El Amin.
“Yeah. I’ve had this happen before a few times. You wouldn’t believe what lengths people will go to for a quick buck. Had a whole extended family of folks from Sangre de Cristo last week, each of them in their own little tiny prospector. That was fun, let me tell you. Had to actually fire warning shots that time. But you, Tina? You seem like a good girl. In fact, when this is all over, I hope … OH SHIT—”
She’d found a larger asteroid near their path, and right at the last second fired her port thruster, catching the asteroid on the taut cable between them. Because the asteroid hit the cable so close to her, she only swung into it with enough force to almost knock her out of her seat again if she wasn’t wearing her restraint.
Eli wasn’t so lucky. His fighter swung around in a wide arc, blindingly fast, faster than he’d ever be able to react and detach the cable, wrapped around and smashed right into the front of the asteroid in an impressive explosion.
“Sorry, Eli. Already got a date.”
She kicked the thrusters back on and swung around towards where he’d intercepted her, where the hidden ship was likely to be. A few taps and she was on her way again, the cable still trailing along after, a blackened chunk of metal trailing behind.
Chapter Thirty-One
Fighter cockpit
Near planet Shao-587
The formation cruised towards the Skiohra Generation ship, and Zivic’s thumbs were twitching on his controls, ready to light up any enemy fighter that appeared to oppose them. But none did. In fact, on his sensor scopes, he was reading massive power fluctuations throughout the hundred-kilometer-long ship.
“That thing sure don’t look to be in good shape, Moonshine,” he said into his helmet headset.
“Well, dammit. Not sure if we’ll get to see any action today, boys,” said Moonshine.
“Says the guy who just became CAG three hours ago. Looks like you’ll still get a chance to beat the last guy’s record. How long did Bucket last, five days?”
Ace laughed. “Six if you count the time he was calling the shots while Hold’em was still alive and spurting blood.”
They’d become so casually dark and fatalistic that he wondered if, when the war ended, they’d ever even fit in a civilized society again.
And the war had only lasted two weeks. He imagined after a year of this, he’d be so hardened he wouldn’t feel a thing.
Then again, the average fighter pilot only lasted three months during the last war with the Swarm. And in spite of Ace’s dark joke, he’d seen her and Qwerty spend more and more time with each other. Almost every waking moment when they weren’t in a battle. Sometimes non-waking moments.
“Ok people, we’re at the ten yard line. Pull into final escort formation. Let the troop carriers through.” Moonshine’s bird zoomed ahead of them all and flew in wide arcs around where the troop carriers would dock and disgorge all the boarding marines. Zivic pushed his controls forward and let the carriers move on aheads while he angled himself around in wide arcs of his own, on the lookout in almost every direction at once for any stray bogeys.
Minutes passed, and still no sign of a fight. The marines all boarded, and ten minutes later they received the all-clear signal. “Wow. That was … easy,” said Zivic.
“I thought those things had tens of thousands of Skiohra warriors on them?” said Ace.
“Yeah. They should.” He thumbed the comm over to a private channel to Whitehorse. “Jerusha, what’s going on?”
It took her a few seconds to pull away from what she was doing on the bridge, but soon her voice crackled in his helmet. “Ethan, the Skiohra. It looks like they had a civil war or something aboard their ship. Lots of bodies. We’ve secured their command center, and it looks like we’ve got Polrum Krull over there, still alive.”
“Wow. So … I guess we’re in a war with the Skiohra now?”
Whitehorse paused, obviously torn by something. “Yeah. That’s the thing. It’s Oppenheimer. I don’t know why he’s doing this. It doesn’t add up. Why would we pick a fight with the Skiohra in the middle of the war with the Swarm?”
“Looks like we caught them with their pants down. Maybe Oppenheimer caught wind of it and decided that our war needs were greater than the death blow this would be to any diplomatic relations we ever though of having with them.”
Some incomprehensible voices on the bridge bled over the comm, and after a moment Whitehorse began again. “Yes, sir, acknowledged. Ethan, you still there?”
“Yeah.”
“The big guy wants you over here. Quick.”
“Why?”
“You’re the ideas guy, right? He wants your ideas, I’d wager.”
“He hates my ideas.”
“Well, he wants them anyway. He’s feeling the same misgivings about Oppenheimer as I am. He wants you here as another voice of reason.
Zivic laugh
ed out loud. “Me? A voice of reason? Can I get that on a plaque or something?”
“Just get over here. Oppenheimer is saying crazy shit like summoning the Swarm and using the Skiohra ship to summon other Skiohra ships to fight it. Says this planet is their homeworld and they’ll do anything to defend it.”
“Yeah, that’s different than the other crazy shit we normally get, but it’s still crazy. I’m on my way. Batshit out.” He thumbed the comm over to his squadron’s channel. “Moonshine? Request permission to hightail it back to momma bird. I’m wanted on the bridge, apparently.”
“Granted. Hope you see more action there than we did out here.”
He nodded. “Something tells me I actually might.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Inside Titan
Near Britannia
The landing pad was cool to the touch. That in itself was miraculous, given that the heat radiation coming off the nonexistent walls should have brought everything up to the same scorching temperature inside the void. Whatever technology Tim was using to create the void in the first place was also being used to create a pocket of … negative entropy, she supposed. What else could explain a cool asteroid in the middle of two thousand degree lava?
She stood up and triple checked the seal on her suit. Even given the extraordinary nature of the technology on display, she supposed it was too much for Tim to generate a breathable atmosphere for her. She wondered what he was breathing. If he was breathing. For all she knew, he didn’t even need oxygen anymore.
“Ok. Let’s go.” She tapped on the comm controls on her wrist. “Carson? Keep the engines running, if you please. We might be hightailing it out of here, for all we know.”
“Acknowledged, ma’am,” came his voice inside her helmet.
Case took point, she followed with Davenport walking behind. Case and Davenport were both hefting assault rifles that looked heavier than she was. Near the landing pad was, of all things, a stairwell that led into the asteroid itself, hewn out of the rock. The gravity here felt like it was around half a g, for which she was thankful since she had no idea how deep the stairs descended and she was not looking forward to an hour of stair stepping in Earth gravity. In fact….
“Case? Does it feel like the gravity is actually … that way? It feels like we’re on a hill, but all our sensors are saying this is flat and we’re just standing up at a slant to the ground.”
“Seems that way, ma’am.”
She fiddled with the limited suite of sensor controls on her wrist, before it finally hit her. “Oh god, I’m dumb. This is not the center of Titan, of course. The core is …” she waved her hand around to let the sensors adjust and triangulate a better reading, “that way. Right in the direction of what feels like down, of course. The ground here isn’t perfectly oriented to that. Though I guess I don’t see why it would have to be. Ok. Mystery solved. Let’s go. And let’s also hope we don’t fall off and take a hot bath.”
The stairs were thankfully not all that steep, and as an added gift, there was a banister. “Small blessings. Thank you, Tim. But I’d much rather have air than a handrail.”
“Sorry.”
She stopped in her tracks. “Davenport? I wasn’t actually talking to you, you know.”
He stopped behind her and shook his head. “I didn’t say anything, ma’am.”
She turned to Case, who’d stopped ahead of her, five steps down. “Lieutenant?”
“Ma’am?”
“Did you just say something?”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am.”
Dammit, old lady, stop inventing voices in your head. “Ok. Keep going.” Case turned back around and continued downward and she followed close behind, grasping tightly to the stone banister.
Minutes passed. Maybe a quarter of an hour. And still they descended.
“If this were a building, ma’am, we’d have gone down around a hundred floors by now.”
“And my knees would say two hundred, Lieutenant Case.”
She could hear the grin from the slight change in his voice. “Yes, ma’am.” He abruptly stopped.
“Case?”
“The walls change here, ma’am. From rock to smooth metal.”
She extended a hand and ran it along the wall. Sure enough, over the course of a few meters, the rough surface of the asteroid gave way to metal, and in a few more steps she nearly bumped into Case’s back. “Lieutenant?’
“There’s a door, ma’am.”
“Well? Get on with it. Open it.”
Case turned back to her. “There’s no handle, ma’am. Just … what looks like a palm scanner or something.”
Various gruesome scenarios played out in her head, and she watched in her mind’s eye as she ordered Case to put his hand on the scanner, only to be vaporized or blasted into chunky bits or beheaded or some other nightmare. She shook it off. “Try it, lieutenant.”
But a niggling thought in the back of her mind suspected it wasn’t keyed for him.
He laid his hand on the scanner. It briefly glowed in a short pulse of yellow light, then returned to normal.
Nothing happened.
“It’s not for him, Shelby. It’s for you.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Tim?”
Case turned around. “Ma’am?”
She looked from him to Davenport and back. They were both staring at her, looking at her with the skeptical eye of someone who suspected you were about to pass out. “You … you don’t hear him, do you?”
They both slowly shook their heads. Case glanced up at Davenport and she watched them exchange a knowing glance.
“I promise you I’m not crazy. Look. Here’s my vitals.” She scrolled through a menu on there wrist controls and waved it at them. “Blood pressure, oxygenation, brain neurotransmitters. All normal.”
“But you heard Captain Granger,” said Lieutenant Case.
She pursed her lips. “I did.” She looked up at the featureless metal ceiling, illuminated by the flashlights shining off her helmet. “Tim? Are you really there? Can you hear me?”
“Indeed, Shelby. I’m not far.”
Her breath came more heavily. It was like talking to a ghost. A spirit of someone long since passed. “You’re alive.”
A pause. “After a fashion. Yes. I’m missing a few parts. But yes. I’m here. It’s me.”
Another pause as she searched for the words to say—what do you say to a dead man? His voice sounded through her helmet again. “Took you long enough to get here, Shelby.”
She risked a smile. “I hit a few speed bumps.”
“So did I.”
She let herself chuckle. “Clearly.”
Case and Davenport looked from each other, to her, and back to each other. She frowned. “I can hear his voice audibly. It’s not in my head. I hear it with my ears. You’re telling me, you hear nothing? Nothing at all?”
“Just you, ma’am,” said Case.
“But, the channel is open. You should be able to hear anything going on in my helmet. Tim? Say something. Let them hear you. Prove I’m not crazy.”
“We’re all a little crazy, Shelby.” His voice was Tim. But it was different. It was off. The tone was slightly higher. It sounded like it had been run through an auto-tuner that various singers used. But … it was Tim.
“Indeed. But let’s just show my lovely assistants here that I’m not just talking to myself.”
A long pause. “Shelby,” he began, “it would take far too long to explain. But they won’t be able to hear me. I’d need a few weeks to set things up for that, and frankly, I don’t have time. We’re all running out of time.”
A pit was forming in her stomach at his mention of their lack of time. “How long do we have? Months? Weeks?”
A long, long pause.
“Tim?”
“Days, Shelby. You have days.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Bridge
ISS Independence
Near planet Shao-587
When he walked onto the bridge, he could feel the tension almost palpably wash over him. His father’s and Admiral Oppenheimer’s faces were inches from each other. He had the feeling he’d just missed some yelling.
He was wrong. He hadn’t missed it.
“This is insubordination!” Oppenheimer jabbed a finger out in some random direction. “Don’t think I won’t haul you into a court martial just because you think you’re some kind of fucking war hero, Tyler. You’re not so untouchable that I can’t sit your fat ass in a prison cell for five years!”
Ballsy was almost as animated. “Christian, you’re as insufferable as you were aboard the Chesapeake. What the hell has gotten into you? It’s a war, Christian. A war! And you’re threatening me with a court martial? Pull it together, man!”
Oppenheimer’s face was almost purple. “This isn’t just insubordination, Tyler, this is mutiny. If you don’t stand down right now, I’ll order the marines to haul your ass down to the brig and you can sit out this battle twiddling your thumbs.”
They were standing in the center of the bridge, right next to the captain’s chair. Every single bridge crew member was rooted to the spot, too paralyzed to move or speak. Some continued to pretend working, tapping random spots on their consoles that did nothing. Whitehorse stood at attention near the executive officer’s station, looking extremely uncomfortable.
“Sirs?” Zivic took a tentative step onto the bridge.
“Not now, Ethan.” His father waved him off.
“That’s right, lieutenant. Your father is busy making both an ass and a criminal of himself. We don’t have time for another Volz to be a bastard around here—”
Zivic interrupted. “I’m sorry, admiral, but it’s actually Zivic, not Volz. I took my mother’s second husband’s name.”