by Nick Webb
“Exactly. Like a fool, I was aiming for Proctor, thinking that if she killed Quimby she’d have no qualms about killing me. But I was an idiot: I trusted Huntsman, and look where that got us. I almost just destroyed humanity. And now? I have to save it. Let’s go.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Bridge
Sword of Justice
Debris cloud of El Amin
Liu and Danny had to leave the asteroid cloud in a hurry. Two unidentified ships were bearing down on them, sending hails and charging weapons when they didn’t answer. And so they did what any sane person would do.
They charged the q-jump engine and got the hell out of dodge, and now they were already plodding through q-space, jump after jump towards Britannia, when the meta-space distress calls went out.
“Oh.” She started at the message in disbelief. “Oh.”
“What is it?” Danny asked. But she couldn’t answer him. Couldn’t unlock the fear that had seized her throat and sealed it solid. She shook head, dislodging her biological response to shock and fear through the force of habit. She cleared her throat.
“Britannia’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone how?”
Liu shook her head. “No, it’s gone. Destroyed.”
Danny’s face screwed up tight. But he didn’t cry. Not yet. Liu was glad. She hated it when he cried, not that it happened much, but when it did she couldn’t bear it.
“I’m sorry, Danny. I know your parents were there.”
He stared straight out the front viewport, eyes unblinking. “Everyone I ever knew, before San Martin.”
She was numb too. She never cried, but even if she could, the magnitude of the loss was too great. Crying wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. How do you mourn eight billion people? “Tell me about them. Your parents.” She needed to change the subject, and helping Danny grieve seemed as good as any subject.
“Yeah. Ok. They garden. They go to the beach like five times a year. They … They’re great. Were. They were great.” And that was enough. At the utterance of the word were, he broke down.
She stood up to go put her arms around him. That, at least, she could do.
But she only made it about halfway. She doubled over and started retching, vomiting huge heaves of almost nothing onto the floor. Just more stomach lining. The radiation she’d absorbed was starting to show its affects again, after that first wave aboard the Defiance.
And there was nothing she could do to stop it, however much she wanted to believe the lies she told Proctor. The radiation would kill her. Inexorably, and surely.
“Fiona? Oh my god, hey—Hey, let me help you.” He’d gotten out of his own seat and was kneeling beside her, rubbing her back, his own tears momentarily forgotten. “I know. I want to throw up too. But I’ll stick with bawling for now.”
She shook her head through the heaves. When they finally subsided and she collapsed to a sitting position on the side of one bent leg, she made her decision. He had to know. He’d know anyway in a few hours, no matter what she said. “Danny, I’m dying.”
“What?”
“I was onboard your aunt’s ship when an attack happened. I was in the engine room, and I absorbed … a little more radiation than I probably should have.”
“How much more?”
“A lot more, Danny.”
He was shaking his head in disbelief. “No. I can’t. I can’t lose my parents. My home. My planet. And … you, all at once.”
“You’ll be ok, Danny. I found you. You’re alive. I’m taking you back to your aunt—she ordered me to find you. And, hey, let’s face it,” she looked up out the viewport like he had earlier. “We’re all about to die anyway. The Swarm isn’t going to stop this time. No matter what Jesus Granger has to say about it.”
The sat in silence for a long, long time, Danny occasionally shaking with a few silent sobs, Fiona sometimes leaning on all fours, retching again.
“No. I’m not sitting idly by while you die. I’m not doing it.” He stood up abruptly and starting opening storage containers on the walls of the bridge, peering inside, and slamming them before opening another.
“Danny? What are you doing?”
“Saving you. What the hell does it look like I’m doing?” He opened another container, looked inside, and then slammed it.
“By … throwing a tantrum?”
He opened another, and reached inside. “Got it.” He pulled something out. It was in his palm and she couldn’t immediately see what it was. “No tantrum. Just a little … fluid exchange.”
“Now? You want to have sex now?! What is that, lube?”
He grinned. “I’ll take a rain check.” He held the item up in his fingers. A small utility knife.
“You’re … going to … cut … the radiation out of me?”
He sat back down next to her. “Fiona, it’s a long shot. But it’s my only shot.” He sliced the tip of his finger, suppressing a groan through his teeth. “God, that hurt.”
“Danny, what the hell are you doing?” She reached for the knife. He pulled it away.
“Fiona. I was dead.” He looked down, as if ashamed. “I … I don’t know if you knew that.”
His face was still red, whether from embarrassment or from the steady healing of his burns, she couldn’t tell. His hair was just barely starting to grow back. “Yeah. I read that in Avasar’s notes. I’m sorry, Danny, that sounds rough.”
“Hell, I don’t remember it. But you know what I do remember?” He held his bloody finger tip up. “Coming back. When they injected me with that Swarm stuff, I told you, it was like a woke up. And Fiona, it fixed me. I wouldn’t be here without it. There’s something about this virus that, when it mixes in with our cells and blood and DNA or whatever, it fixes everything it mixes in with.”
She started crawling backward. “No. Danny, I’m not getting that shit in me. You have no idea if they still won’t figure out a way to control you. I’m not going to risk that.”
“You’d rather die? Than risk that?” He frowned at that. “Fiona, listen to me. I’ve thought a lot about this over the past few weeks, ever since they injected me. I’ve had almost every waking moment available to think about it, since I was pretending to be asleep half the time. Here’s what I think. I don’t think this is Swarm matter. I think it’s just … Valarisi. Swarm-free. It’s like, there’s this voice inside me. It’s so odd.”
She kept crawling backward. “A … voice?”
“But … but no, not like what the Swarm were supposed to be like. With them it was like you could hear all their voices at once, all talking to each other in perfect harmony, because you had no choice to think otherwise. This feels way different than that. I feel … like there is one, solitary other individual inside of me. Alien. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt, and yet it’s as clear as day. I can almost feel its personality. It’s … humanity, if you will.”
She stopped crawling, and leaned back on her hands. “Is it … talking to you?”
He shrugged. “Kinda.”
“What is it saying?”
“It says to not be afraid, Fiona.” He held out his bloody finger.
“Danny, how the hell can you trust it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He looked at his finger, then back at her. “I just know I’d rather have you alive and fixable, than dead and gone.”
The argument was actually a compelling one. It was true: Granger had, at one point, been infected with the Swarm virus, and he’d been rid of it. She pulled her own tactical knife out of her belt and quickly nipped her forearm. She wouldn’t slice anywhere on her hand—she might still need to punch someone. “Danny Proctor, you always get me into trouble.”
They leaned in towards each other. His finger touched her arm. Blood mixed. And that was that. They both leaned back on their hands again, still on the floor.
And then she gasped.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Bridge
ISS Defiance
Near
Britannia
Proctor slid a finger in the air near her throat, indicating to Lieutenant Davenport to cut the transmission. “The nerve of that woman. Watching our planet get destroyed, and then asking help for a game of hide and seek.”
“But ma’am,” said Davenport, “what if … she’s right?”
“I beg your pardon?” She swiveled her seat around to face him. Marines weren’t supposed to squirm, and he very nearly did.
“She says finding that Dolmasi ship could help end the war.”
She guffawed. “That’s bullshit.”
“Has she ever bullshitted you, ma’am?”
She pounded her armrest. “Goddammit, lieutenant. My answer is no.”
“Ma’am, what else have we got?”
She held up the box. “We’ve got this.”
“That’s a box. From which you heard voices in your head,” said Commander Carson.
“Oh not you too, commander.” She stood up and paced towards them, slowly. “It wasn’t voices. It was Tim fucking Granger. And, from what he told me, he is in this box.” She shook it in front of her, and then stared at it. “My god, that does sound crazy.”
Carson demurred. “If you weren’t going to say it, ma’am, then … I probably would have eventually.”
“The fact remains,” she continued, “as crazy as it sounds, it’s what I’ve got to go on. And you saw what was down there with your own eyes. Clearly, some far greater being than any of us, with incomprehensible technology at his or her disposal, created that void in the middle of Titan’s mantle and converted the whole damn moon into a giant q-jumping cannon. Given that, what the hell is so hard to believe about this? If a moon can q-jump, then this box can contain Tim Granger. And at the moment, that’s all I’ve got.”
Davenport shook his head. “Ma’am, you’ve also got Krull’s request. I don’t understand why she would lie to us.”
“Lieutenant, I’ve had aliens lying to me for longer than you’ve been alive.” She turned to look him in the eyes. Very young eyes, too young to have seen the injustices and curveballs and outrages that the universe could throw at you. “Dolmasi have lied to me. Skiohra have lied to me. Swarm did nothing but lie to me. And the Valarisi—” she choked up for a moment. “They would have eventually lied to me, had they ever been given the chance.”
“But you killed them before they could, ma’am,” Carson.
“No! Oppenheimer killed them. My own XO, going behind my back to force my hand. General Norton killed them—he’s the one that gave me the order.”
“But who carried it out, ma’am?”
She left the box on Carson’s terminal, and sighed. She paced back to the captain’s chair, slowly lowering herself into it. Good lord, these soldiers, these kids, questioning her, doubting her, making her … re-examine herself. It hurt. “Yes. I did. I killed them. A whole race, gone, because of me. And would they have lied to me too? You bet.”
They all waited for her to speak, but she was done. She’d watched her planet die. She’d heard her old friend’s voice in her head, and, thinking she’d found him alive at last, found tiny box instead. She’d lost her brother. She’d lost everything.
“All we’re saying, admiral, is that you have choices. Nothing is controlling you. Nothing is determining your destiny. Not that box. Not Krull. Not Oppenheimer. Not Sepulveda. And, most decidedly not a man who’s been dead for thirty years.” Carson finished his speech, and actually looked a little red in the face. Embarrassment? “Sorry, ma’am. I … was a motivational speaker before the military.”
“No kidding?” She chuckled, in spite of her sorry state. “You’re absolutely right, commander. Thank you. Take us to Wellington Shipyards.” Her eyes fell from Carson, down to the box. “I’ve got a present to open there.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Bridge
ISS Independence
Gas giant Calais
Britannia System
Wellington Shipyards was a hive of activity: most of the other ships in the vicinity of Britannia with q-jump capabilities had had the same idea as Lieutenant Commander Whitehorse. Fleet ships that had survived the aborted battle with the Swarm ship were everywhere, waiting for berth assignments. Smaller vessels that had been lucky enough to be far enough away from Britannia when it was hit by Titan’s blast front were scattered throughout the vicinity, probably with their q-drive’s spun up on standby in case the Swarm made a sudden appearance.
Everyone was on edge.
Whitehorse exhaled a deep breath. “Ok. We’re here.” She stood up. “I want a full ship status report. Ordnance inventory. Repair status. Everything. Commander Mumford, you have the bridge. Zivic, you’re with me.”
Zivic followed her out the door and down the corridor towards the lift. He fell into step with her, opened his mouth to talk, but found he had nothing to say. The magnitude of the event was still hitting him. His brain was still processing it.
He followed her to sickbay. He knew exactly where she’d be headed. The door opened to reveal Captain Volz, still knocked out, strapped and cuffed to an examination bed, with a hard transparent plastic partition separating him from them.
“What’s his status, Nurse Cunningham?”
“Physically? He’s perfectly fine.”
“Mentally? Neural pathways? Brain patterns?”
“Also fine. But I’ve also only had a few minutes here. I’m afraid I won’t have any answers for you for awhile. If at all.”
Zivic stared at his father, prone and asleep, snoring lightly. “Answers. So. You know what happened? You heard?”
“Staff Sergeant Bicks told me when he brought the captain in, yes. But you should know, I have exactly zero experience with Swarm matter infection. It’s not exactly a course they taught at med school. I thought the Swarm matter was all gone. Extinct.”
“So did we. And here he is.” Of all the things that still had Zivic in shock, it was this. His father. Who, just hours before, was crammed into a fighter with him manning the rear gun, shooting mini Swarm fighters off their tail. Who just half an hour ago was giving him a heart-to-heart life lesson. Who just today had called him so many names he’d lost count. Did the Swarm call people names in jest? How had whatever was controlling his father acted so convincingly?
“We need to wake him, Nurse. I have questions. Urgent questions that need answers,” said Whitehorse.
Nurse Cunningham nodded and touched something on a console near the wall. Out of the examination bed, a meta-syringe extended and pressed against Ballsy’s neck. In about a minute, he was awake.
“Where the hell am I?” He looked around himself, tried to get up, but found himself restrained. “What the … what is this? Ethan?” His father was finally looking at him. “Ethan what’s going on? Did I black out during the battle? Was I injured?”
Zivic walked around the plastic enclosure, still staring at the thing inside that had the body of his father. “You’re really good. I’d read the stories, the history of the war. I knew Swarm-controlled agents were excellent actors. But I had no idea.”
Ballsy swore. “What the hell are you talking about? Get me out of this bed. Now.”
Zivic kept pacing. “They say the entire Russian High Command at the time was infected, including several people in high UE posts. Even Granger himself had the stuff in him at one point.”
“It was all destroyed,” said Ballsy. “There was no Swarm matter left. And I was there when Proctor destroyed the remaining Valarisi. They’re dead too. There is no possible way I could be infected with Swarm matter.”
Zivic stopped pacing and folded his arms. “And yet here you are.”
“Yes. Here I am. Tied to a bed by a no-good son who’s got mush for brains. Let me the hell out.”
“No, Dad. You’re staying right there until we can find the cure. If there even is a cure. Granger was cured, so maybe you can be too.”
Ballsy stopped struggling. “Ethan, look, we can talk about the finer details of Swarm War h
istory later. But I know, for certain, that there is no more Swarm matter any—”
“You destroyed Britannia, Dad,” he blurted out, interrupting him. “You destroyed Britannia. You fired a singularity-tipped torpedo down to Titan, and it blew. It was too close to Britannia, trying to stabilize its orbit, so now Britannia is gone too. You destroyed a Granger moon, and you destroyed….” His voice caught in his throat. “Our home. And eight billion people. So no, Dad, I am not letting you out of there until we can explain this.”
Ballsy’s face turned sheet white. His eyes darted to Whitehorse. “Jerusha? Is it true?”
She only nodded.
Zivic had never seen his father cry. But the tears welled, and poured down his cheeks. “Everyone?”
Whitehorse nodded again. “I don’t see how anyone could have survived. Even buried in a bunker a hundred kilometers deep. Everyone. Everyone is dead.”
Ballsy’s head collapsed back down onto his pillow. After a moment, he spoke. “Kill me.”
“Dad?”
“Kill me now. You have absolutely no choice. And as your captain, I’m ordering it. Kill me.”
Zivic returned to Whitehorse’s side. “No, Dad. You’re not in command anymore. Jerusha is.”
Whitehorse was defiant. “And we’re not killing you. Not until we make every effort to get that stuff out of you.”
“And if you can’t, do you promise you’ll kill me?” Ballsy’s eyes pleaded.
The question took Zivic aback. “No, Dad. If we can’t, then we try again. And again. AND AGAIN. Until you’re you again. Understand?”
Whitehorse took a step closer to the plastic. “Captain, we need to know a few things. For one, do you remember when the order came into your head? Do you know who told you to nuke Titan? Was it the Swarm?”
He was shaking his head. “No, no. It can’t be the Swarm. I’d know. Wouldn’t I know?”
“Does that mean it was a human voice? A human told you to do it?”
“I don’t know. I have no memory of it. I was standing by my chair on the bridge, and the next thing I know, I’m here.”