Chapter Fifty-Four
Outside the seed bank
Ganymede Colony
Lucas tried again, pressing in the ignition on his transport. No dice. It wouldn’t start.
Typical. The moon’s harsh conditions could even interfere with things inside the protective shield of the colony, and would often play havoc with a transport that regularly went outside.
Still, despite that, he’d always been able to coax the thing into starting up before whenever this happened. It was important for his job, a weird part of his duties for the mining colony, the administration of the CEO’s little pet project. He didn’t know what lay beyond the thick steel doors tucked at the end of the box canyon. All he knew was that it was his job to read the numbers on the display, write them down on paper—actual paper—and send them via the post to Earth.
The actual postal service. It seemed totally absurd to him; the CEO of a mining company was obviously rich enough to afford a Z-space relay, and there were only a few reasons to send actual letters by the painfully slow postal system. Tradition, or accountability, or its opposite—someone had something to hide.
His lawyer had assured Lucas that, no matter what was happening beyond those doors, he had no knowledge of it, so he was legally in the clear. Besides, he was paid an extra five hundred euros a month for twenty minutes work, so…definitely worth it.
He set the paper off to one side and, closing his eyes, did the one thing that almost always worked.
In de naam van de Vader, de Zoon en de Heilige Geest. Amen.
If God was out there, watching down from the stars, he might help. Or the engine might be flooded and need time to clear itself. Either way, things would work out.
Lucas tried the ignition again. The engine choked, spluttered, and sprang to life.
Phew. That one was close. He’d have to remember to log the form to request a replacement. No sense in trying to repair the busted old thing. Like with most things these days, it was just cheaper to throw it away. Park it somewhere and leave it. Then there would be no more need to bother the Almighty with his annoyances. God preferred to help those who helped themselves.
Slowly, the transport began to trundle back toward the mining outpost, its six wheels spinning occasionally on loose gravel and rocks. Lucas adjusted his space suit and sang quietly to himself.
What if all the world were dried whitefish,
And each tree a sausage,
And every puddle made of pure shoe polish
That quenches the thirst?
That is the question, ladies and gentlemen,
Over which for seven years,
Seven professors
Have scratched behind their ears.
A traditional nursery rhyme. It might have seemed weird to an outsider, singing a children’s song as he drove a rover across the barren landscape with the massive striped gumball—that’s what they called Jupiter, the gumball—taking up half the sky, but his kids liked that song, and it helped pass the time.
Ahh, his kids. Dutch stock, through and through, a rarity in these modern times. Mixed race people were far more common, just due to the demographics of everything. Not that that was a bad thing—he wasn’t bigoted—but it was nice to know where he came from.
The Dutch were the first settlers on Ganymede. No strangers to hard work, they enjoyed the challenge. It was a big task bringing his kids to this place—many would ask why, and question what kind of life they could have here—but the two boys had a small school, plenty of space, and it was safe. Nothing could ever hurt them here.
A bright flash stole his attention. Another meteor impact, so close? That could be an issue. Lucas pulled over and popped open the door. More flashes from above, more light. He’d seen this kind of thing before, twenty years back, as a child. When the US and China decided that diplomacy and peace were less preferable to posturing and war.
A space battle, in high orbit. A firefight so close made staying here dangerous. Vacuum had no resistance; a round fired in orbit would travel forever until it hit something, and if a quarter of the sky was Ganymede…well. The average battle could put out a lot of rounds. The odds weren’t good.
And then something happened. Something he had not seen before. A glinting thing, getting larger and larger. Big. Reflections of ice and rock, heading directly toward him. Toward Ganymede Colony.
Men and their tools of death. Lucas closed his eyes. Time to ask God for a big one. Not for him, but for his kids.
“Wees gegroet Maria, vol van genade, de Heer is met U. Gezegend zijt gij boven—”
Then there was only white.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Bridge
USS Midway
Mattis watched in helpless, stunned silence as the alien ship hurled a mass of rock and ice down from space, through Ganymede’s vanishingly thin atmosphere and to the surface. It struck silently, almost anti-climatictally, and from their position in high orbit, they could see the barest flash from the surface.
At that distance, the blast must have been thousands of megatons if it was visible from so far away. A bright light on the dark surface of the moon, quickly fading away to nothing.
Maybe it had missed. A planet was a big place. Mattis pulled up the display on his command console, zooming in on the position of the colony. A dark grey mushroom cloud, the pulverized upper kilometer of the facility and surrounding colony, rose up through the atmosphere like a living, growing thing; a time-lapse of actual growth, blooming on a lifeless world.
But this flower symbolized death, not life.
“Damn,” said Commander Pitt, summarizing exactly how they all felt.
Mattis slumped in his command chair. The Spearway burned, its guns silent as it slowly spun, over and over, in space, drifting inexorably down toward Ganymede. Escape pods flew out of it in all directions. Some relief, then, at least…not that it counted for much.
“Sir,” said Lynch, breaking the tense silence. “We have an incoming transmission from the Somerset.”
“This is Salt.” Her voice sounded weak, strained, as though all the life was being drained out of it. “Admiral, we can’t let them fire again. Here, or anywhere else. That ship must be stopped. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Mattis couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say yes—he couldn’t doom the dying woman to a fiery death—but he couldn’t say no, either. Salt was right. “Just… do what you feel is best,” was all he could manage.
“Aye aye, Admiral. Ah, this was a bad day to give up the scotch.” The Somerset accelerated, big and bulky and leaking atmosphere from several holes in her decks. The massive transport lurched toward the capital ship, sublight engines flared, maneuvering thrusters at full. It continued spitting at them, its little cannon splashing ineffectively off the larger ship’s shield, until the two met.
Her hull crumpled, her superstructure buckled, her small gun fired one more time, and then the whole ship evaporated in a searing flash of white light.
The alien cap ship remained, blackened and scarred, but the Somerset had done its work: the rails of the mass driver were bent and warped. Salvageable, maybe, but its accuracy would be well down.
A seemingly petty sacrifice for a whole ship and its crew.
The remaining alien ships, all nine of them, began to turn and, in seconds, jumped away.
Now all that remained was the burning wreck of the Spearway, three heavily damaged frigates, the Midway, and a cloud of strike craft mopping up.
And the terrible, crushing guilt.
“Oh, nice work,” said Senator Pitt, his voice equal parts venom and sarcasm and…something else Mattis couldn’t identify. Fear? “Very well done, you damned idiot. Great work, ordering that woman not to ram the ship when it would have counted, then waiting until after they’d fired!” He started to shout. “What were you thinking, Mattis?”
Good question. Mattis knew he’d made a terrible error, but it was—it was the right decision at the time. He had no idea they
would fire at Ganymede mid-battle. Why would they want to destroy the seed bank? He’d always assumed they wanted what was there—to take it, to use it for nefarious purposes. To simply bomb the repository of human DNA was pointless. What did that prove? Their actions made no sense to him.
“Get him off the bridge,” said Lynch.
“To hell with you,” spat Commander Pitt, glaring at his father with a dark look in his eyes. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No, son, you don’t know.” Senator Pitt hissed in anger, his eyes meeting Commander Pitt’s, holding his gaze. For a brief moment, Mattis thought there might be a fistfight, but then Senator Pitt turned back to him. “If my son was in command, Ganymede Colony would still be there. Captain Salt was dead the moment she turned her reactor off containment, and you were too damn stubborn to realize it. You sacrificed everything on that planet for the life of… of someone you’d just barely met. And look what happened. She died anyway, and the damn aliens blasted the moon.”
It was true, but what could he do? He couldn’t undo the past. Couldn’t bring back Salt, or the Ganymede colony, or the seed bank, or anything.
Senator Pitt stalked closer to him, his face twisted and bent out of shape. “This is all your fault, you broken-down fool.”
At a signal from Lynch, the bridge marines grabbed the Senator and dragged him off and through the door, but his words lingered.
“Orders, Capt—I mean, Admiral?” asked Lynch.
Captain. The position he’d inherited from Malmsteen. And taken from the man who’d really deserved it, Commander Pitt. Mattis’s voice stuck in his throat. Commander Pitt, the whole bridge crew, they sat there, waiting, as their CO said nothing. Despite it all, the only thing he could think of was Chuck and Javier.
“I have to…I have to make a call,” he murmured and pushed himself out of his chair, heading for his ready room.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Captain’s Ready Room
USS Midway
What an idiot he’d been.
How had it come to this? How had he come to this place, this ship, taken command…and for everything to go so horribly wrong?
I did my best was the refrain of those who had failed, and that was what he’d done. Failed. The seed bank had been blasted to ruins. The Spearway was abandoned and burning, drifting down toward a fiery grave on Ganymede’s unforgiving surface.
He sat on the bed, head in his hands, playing the mass-driver strike on the seed bank over and over in his head. That huge mushroom cloud, the debris. The sight of the Spearway tumbling end over end, her bow aflame, like a falling candle in the dark.
What had he done?
Mattis snatched a coffee mug from the end table and flung it across the room, roaring angrily. The mug smashed into a million pieces against the far wall, showering the room with tiny sharp shards of porcelain.
Well. That didn’t solve anything. And it didn’t feel any better. He grabbed the little table and upended it, the wood splintering as it hit the unyielding steel, smashing into flat panels, spilling its contents all over the floor. Dozens of sheets of paper. A calculator. Pens of all colors.
A chromed revolver, the faintest gleam of brass cartridges visible in the chambers.
Mattis stared at the gun for a split second. It was Malmsteen’s sidearm. His service pistol. The symbol of his office. The symbol of the ship’s authority, really. Gleaming metal, polished to a mirror shine, perfectly well kept. Loaded and ready to fire.
Wouldn’t be the first time for a seasoned commander on the verge of defeat. Nobody would blame him, and—
No. No. Mattis shook his head, trying to clear out the bitter thoughts, but they clung like spider webs over his thoughts. Sticky. Tenacious.
In the quiet of the ready room, he finally noticed his communicator vibrating in his pocket, the noise a nuisance. A distraction. Vrrt. Vrrt. Vrrt Mattis snatched it up and got ready to hurl that thing away too, but saw a text message on the front. A series of them. They had been there for a while.
He brought them up.
M. Ramirez: Hey, what the hell kind of interview was that?
M. Ramirez: Talk to me, Jack.
M. Ramirez: Jack!
Damn. He should really check his messages more often. These had been sitting there for ages. He kept scrolling.
M. Ramirez: Jack, hey… I’m sorry, okay? I know that must have been difficult for you. But my job is to be a reporter. My job is to find the truth.
M. Ramirez: I don’t know. Maybe I went too far with this one. It… I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t thinking of the last time. I just wasn’t. I didn’t realize you were either.
That softened him a little. It took a lot for someone to admit they were wrong. He had trouble with it. Such a stubborn old fool.
M. Ramirez: You’re right to be mad. You have every right to be, I guess, I just…
M. Ramirez: I just want you to know, this has been difficult for me too. Being around you. Being in your space. It…reminds me of what could have been.
There was a long gap between texts. Almost an hour.
M. Ramirez: I wish things had turned out differently between us.
Mattis’s hands shook slightly, and he had to swallow his feelings. This wasn’t the time to second guess himself. It wasn’t a good place to be, especially with the thing he’d found. The gun. His eyes drifted back to it unconsciously. That might still be the best option…
No.
A brief knock on the door stole his attention. “Yeah?”
“Hey,” said Ramirez on the other side. “Sorry, I just… You weren’t answering your texts, I just need to talk to you.”
He wasn’t sure about this. “Briefly,” he said, a little more angrily than he meant to. Then, quieter, “Sorry. Come in.”
She pushed open the door and stepped into the ready room. Her make-up was all smudged.
“You okay?” asked Mattis.
Ramirez looked at the smashed stuff scattered around. “Are you okay?”
He smiled. She smiled.
“Sure,” said Mattis.
“Did you read—”
“Yeah.”
“So, I was thinking—”
“Yeah.”
They stood there awkwardly, exchanging a long, held smile.
“Good talk,” said Ramirez, and then, with a playful smile, she left.
It was weird, awkward and cringeworthy, but Mattis couldn’t help but chuckle. It reminded him of when he was younger. When they were both younger. Of things that could have been. Of the things that could be…
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, torn between walking out after Ramirez and picking up the weapon, but the ringing of his communicator broke him out of the trance.
Temptation to throw the thing came back, but he resisted. “What?” he asked, snapping into the line the moment it opened. “This better be fucking important.”
“It’s Chuck,” said his son, the mere sound of his voice bringing Mattis back down to reality for a moment. “Is this a bad time?”
People who asked that question were usually ill prepared for the answer to be no, but as Mattis took a breath, he realized that speaking to Chuck was exactly what he needed. “It’s a perfect time, son. What can I do for you?”
“Two things, Dad.” The joy in Chuck’s voice was almost infectious. Almost. “The surrogate gave birth. And I know we should have talked to you before we dropped this on you, but there just wasn’t time. We…uh, we named him Jack.”
Despite it all, that brought a confused smile on his face. “I…I thought his name was Javier,” said Mattis, a little quiver in his voice that was entirely unbecoming of an officer of his standing.
“That’s my boyfriend’s father’s name,” said Chuck, the awkwardness of his sentence obviously designed to deflect attention away from the guy. “But we talked it out, and we think—we both think—that it’d be better if Javier was his middle name. Jack Javier Mattis. That’s what we put on
the birth certificate. It’s official, Dad, you’re a grandfather.”
Well, now, wasn’t that something.
Mattis couldn’t help but smile and, ever so subtly, kick the pistol under the bed where it was out of sight.
Jack. Jack Javier Mattis.
In the midst of all this chaos, it was nice to hear some good news. But Chuck had said there were two things, and people usually lead with the good news first, especially if the bad news was particularly bad. “You said there was something else?” he asked, almost dreading the answer. What if Javier—or Jack, rather, he had to remind himself—had been affected by a birth defect? Herbicide overuse had made this an unfortunately common outcome. One in a thousand, or something. What if Jack was the one?
“Well,” said Chuck, his tone apprehensive. “I just…” Please, no. Please, no. Please, no. “It’s something I shouldn’t even be talking to you about.”
“Just spit it out, son.”
“It might cost me much more than my job to even mention it, but there’s…something that Pitt’s office just received. It came in a little envelope. We opened it, of course, and the first page was a series of numbers and letters. Like a code.”
Mattis tried to make sense of it. “Any chance of decoding the message?”
“I don’t think it’s like that,” said Chuck. “I don’t think it’s a coded message, it’s too short, just twenty characters long. I think it’s more like an access code. It says: D5G-KXZO-WPW.”
An access code? “Did it say anything else?”
“Yes,” said Chuck. “It says: I couldn’t send ships, but I could send this. Does that mean anything to you?”
The President. She’d come through for them.
The Last War: Book 1 of The Last War Series Page 20