by Nick Webb
“All enemy fire now directed at the New Dublin Planetary fleet task force,” said Lieutenant Diaz.
For all the good it’ll do them. He watched as the thirteen ships approached their targets. No more than seven seconds away. They continued to accelerate. One exploded under the intense onslaught of the anti-matter beams. Then another.
Each ship—or fragments of a ship—careened closer to its target, each one dwarfed by the massive Swarm carriers looming ahead.
A voice scratched over the comm. Admiral Azbill’s. “This had better work, Granger. Even a high-velocity suicide run by one of our heavy cruisers won’t be enough to destroy a Swarm ship.”
“We don’t have to destroy them. Just watch, Admiral.”
And it was time. Two more heavy cruisers had exploded into fiery pieces, but it was too late—each one found its target. Each plowed into a Swarm vessel, initiating massive explosions that made the enemy ships shudder and convulse. The explosions were insignificant compared to the sheer size of the Swarm carriers, but it wasn’t the size of the explosion that mattered.
It was the location of the explosions.
“Lieutenant?” He turned to the tactical station, eyeing the man at sensors.
Diaz’s eyes darted over his readouts, and he nodded. “Confirmed. All main fighter bays destroyed.”
Granger leaned back and smiled. “Commander Pierce, scramble fighters. Get rid of those singularities, then beat the shit out of the capital ships.” He raised his head. “Admiral? Feel free to deploy the rest of your fleet. Target at will.”
A silence. Granger supposed the man was deciding whether to cuss him out for losing sixteen of his largest ships or acknowledge that the odds were suddenly far more even. “There are still fighters coming out of those things, Granger, I fail to see—”
Granger broke protocol and interrupted. “Each carrier has several fighter bays, yes, but the main one holds over seventy-five percent of their craft. Moreover, compromising their hulls in this fashion disrupts whatever they’re using to block our lasers—their ships are now vulnerable to our full suite of weaponry. What was before an unwinnable battle is now tipped slightly in our favor, but by no means won. We need the rest of your fleet out here now, Admiral. Target their weapons batteries first, then move onto the next. Rinse and repeat.”
Another brief silence. “Very well, Granger. Azbill out.”
Granger raised an eyebrow, then turned back to tactical. “Target every single gaping hole with lasers and open fire. Boil the bastards from the inside out. Send out some nukes for good measure.”
“With pleasure, sir.”
He glanced back at his command console, looking for the timer that would indicate when the first singularity weapon would most likely launch. Damn. Less than a minute. And there were six of them—each one capable of completely annihilating the largest city on New Dublin and the towns surrounding it for hundreds of miles around.
The fighter pilots would have their work cut out for them.
Chapter Seven
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
Lieutenant Tyler “Ballsy” Volz pushed his fighter’s throttle to the limit. Thankfully, the morning’s hangover was a distant memory, and he was ready to kill stuff. The more stuff, the better.
The Swarm carriers loomed ahead, forbidding and threatening, in spite of the fire and debris gushing out from their midsections where the main fighter bays should have been. Enemy fighters buzzed around them like bloodthirsty insects, but not nearly as many as there would have been without the sacrifice of those thirteen cruisers.
“Spacechamp, on me. Pew Pew and Fodder, take the wings and prepare to deliver your cargo.” He glanced at his sensor map. “Bogey engagement in five. Look sharp.”
Before he focused on the enemy fighters bearing down on them, he risked a glance to his side, toward one of his wingmen. Pew Pew, who’d replaced another nameless pilot Volz had lost the week before, held a tight formation despite the bulky cargo strapped to the undercarriage of the craft.
The cargo: a brick. A brick of solid osmium. Only about two meters long and one wide, it was easily twice the mass of the rest of the fighter. And therein lay the key to their best defense against the unthinkably destructive Swarm singularities.
Mass. Enough to close one of the miniature black holes before it launched toward the surface or the Warrior or whatever else the Swarm targeted.
From within the cockpit, Pew Pew turned his head briefly and gave Ballsy a thumbs up. And with that, the alarm rang out, indicating enemy weapons fire in close proximity.
It was time.
In a tightly-coordinated and thoroughly-practiced maneuver, all four of them dove down, split off from their vector, curved out in a tight loop, and converged on a new vector: the nearest singularity. They ignored all the fire strafing across their path.
“Watch your three o’clock, Fodder,” Ballsy said. He pushed his fighter into another tight loop, trying to shake off a bogey who’d latched onto his vector. “Pew Pew, I need help here—” he started to say, but a muted explosion out of the corner of his eye cut him off.
“Already taken care of, Ballsy. Pew pew!” said the other pilot, adding his customary sound effect. If there was anyone that liked to shoot stuff more than Ballsy, it was Pew Pew.
He grunted an acknowledgement, then redirected his sights back on the glimmering singularity. They were remarkable things, really, no bigger than a smaller-than-average grain of sand. But the swirling glow of in-falling material extended out several centimeters and was so bright that it could be seen for dozens of kilometers around. While not massive, it nevertheless would rip apart anything that got within a meter, absorbing its mass and growing even larger.
And it was toward one of these monsters that Ballsy now accelerated. One of the shimmering beasts that had swallowed Fishtail whole. Jessica Miller. He knew her name. All of it. He still had nightmares where she fell into a fathomless black pit and the only thing he could see was her contorted face screaming out for him.
He was half tempted to accelerate further and plunge straight in. Fishtail had done it, on Commander Pierce’s orders. And Granger had done it himself and returned just fine. If the old man could do it, why couldn’t Fishtail? He wanted desperately to believe she was just on the other side, her fighter hobbled and broken down, waiting for someone to come retrieve her.
“Ballsy, what are you doing?” The voice was a woman’s. Fishtail?
No. She was dead, of course. It was Spacechamp, who was tailing him, escorting him and his cargo to the monster.
“Ballsy, pull up!”
He stared at the pulsing light directly ahead. He could almost feel its gravitational pull increase—though the rational part of his mind knew that was impossible this far out. But he was plunging in toward it with alarming speed.
Why shouldn’t he go in? Why shouldn’t he go save her? He glanced at the picture sticking up out of a seam in the dashboard. A small boy. Her boy. Holding a miniature toy model of a space fighter—the same fighter that Fishtail had piloted to her death.
“Ballsy!”
He closed his eyes and pressed the release trigger, and immediately he felt the mass of his fighter decrease by two-thirds as the osmium brick flew toward the singularity. With a jolt he pulled the flight controls up, veering away from the beast at the last moment.
With his maneuverability suddenly restored, he pushed hard on the accelerator, darting his small craft away from the singularity like lightning, and moments later it exploded in a piercing white blast. Glancing behind, he confirmed it was gone.
“What the hell was that, Ballsy? That was way too close!” Spacechamp said, clearly irritated.
“Last time I launched too early the cumrats blasted the brick before it hit. Just wanted to make sure it went in this time.”
Spacechamp snorted. “By sticking your bloomin’ nose into it? Seriously, Ballsy, it’s like you’ve got a death wish or something
.”
He shrugged. Death would be a relief, these days. Nonstop engagements. Near daily skirmishes with the Swarm. More flight missions than he could count. Little sleep. Severely rationed food.
And the friends. All the dead friends. Pilots he’d get to know for a few days before they were snuffed out by relentless Swarm fire.
“Death? Not today, Spacechamp.” He glanced at his sensors. Of the six original singularities, four had been dissipated. The other squads, however, were being harassed by enemy fighters. “We’ve still got two more of these bungholes. Looks like squads Delta and Wolf need help with theirs. Fodder, Pew Pew, Spacechamp, on me. Let’s go blow shit up.”
Chapter Eight
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
The rest of the New Dublin Planetary Defense Force descended from their higher orbit and joined in the fight. Granger nodded in approval as he watched them engage the Swarm, taking heavy damage but dealing out their share too, wantonly blasting at the anti-matter cannons dotting the surfaces of the Swarm carriers with mag rail and laser fire. The debris field was so dense that the paths of the normally invisible laser beams glittered with intense blue light.
“Tactical, focus on those three ships at twenty-eight mark four. They’re still capable of singularity generation.”
The Warrior’s mag rails showered the three Swarm carriers with thousands of slugs while dozens of IDF fighters engulfed them in small weapon’s fire, and soon the three hulls were ablaze with fire and debris spinning off into the deadness of space.
It was going well. Very well. Far better than he’d hoped, especially given that there were thirteen Swarm ships instead of the expected ten. The Warrior, her fighters, plus a few dozen heavy and light cruisers from New Dublin and their fighter wings were pulling off what would have been thought impossible a few months ago.
A victory. An almost easy victory.
But with the smart-steel armor now capable of enduring more than two blasts of the Swarm’s anti-matter weapon, the odds for each battle were now far greater than they’d been over Earth two months prior.
Victory, yes. But it reminded him of the cost. The sacrifice. He’d written off the lives of the crews of sixteen entire ships. Used them as bricks. The brick-layer—that’s what scuttlebutt said his new nickname was these days. Hero, yes. Legend, sure. But a butcher who wantonly threw his people’s lives away so that he could keep fighting? Dammit—no, he couldn’t think about that. No hesitation. No worry. Only focus. Thinking otherwise would make the sacrifices all vain.
And the treachery—they had a traitor in their midst. No other explanation could satisfy why updating the smart-steel algorithms two months ago was enough to make it suddenly effective against the Swarm’s fire. Someone was collaborating with the enemy. Someone up top.
“They’re on the run, sir,” Lieutenant Diaz said with a wide smile. “The remaining five ships are pulling away. Slowly—their drives seem to be damaged.”
Granger nodded. “Good. Order pursuit. None of those five get out alive.” He scanned his sensor readout. “And the first ship? The one we disabled on our first pass?”
“Still in high orbit, sir. But it looks like they’ve fixed their drive and they’ve set a course out of the system.”
He nodded again. “Just as they should. Relay orders to the New Dublin fleet to ignore that one. Proctor should have taken care of it, but we need to be sure Admiral Azbill understands that—”
“Sir!” Ensign Prucha waved a hand. “Admiral Azbill is on the comm. He doesn’t sound happy.”
“Speak of the devil.” Granger sighed. “Patch him through.”
The angry voice boomed over the speakers. “Granger, what in the hell are you playing at?”
Granger kept his voice neutral, in spite of his desire to blast the comm speaker with his sidearm. “Admiral?”
“Why are you letting that carrier escape? Are you batshit crazy?”
“Batshit crazy?” Granger grinned. “Sounds about right. I had a plush retirement planned down on a Florida beach, and somehow I let Zingano convince me to stay on for another tour.”
Azbill huffed. “A Florida beach that no longer exists, Tim. The lower peninsula is gone. The panhandle’s a wreck—almost uninhabitable. Tens of millions dead, and our asses out here are on the line because of these Swarm bastards, and you’re letting it get away?”
“I am. And you should too,” Granger replied, struggling to keep a dangerous note out of his voice.
“Excuse me, Captain?”
Granger stood up. “I have direct orders from Fleet Admiral Zingano. We are to ignore that carrier. It poses no threat to us, and will be allowed to escape.”
A long pause.
“I don’t believe you. Azbill out.”
Granger’s eyes widened, and he swore.
“Sir, the flagship and several more New Dublin cruisers are pulling off and laying in a pursuit course for that first carrier.”
Granger spun toward navigation. “Ensign, intercept course. Full speed. Head them off.”
It was the key to the whole operation. Save New Dublin? Fine. More than fine—millions of people lived down there. But save humanity? Even more important. But until they knew where the Swarm homeworld was, or for that matter, any Swarm planet, all they could ever do was defend. Defend, and lose. Strong defense never won a war by itself. Without an actual offense, the war was as good as over.
That carrier had to get away. Granger glanced down at his command console and confirmed: the Warrior had launched a small tracking device on its first pass and it had attached itself to the Swarm carrier’s hull. It now streamed a constant, low power telemetry signal.
And when the carrier q-jumped away, Granger would know exactly in which direction it had jumped, and how far.
But he couldn’t tell Azbill that. The plan was highly classified. Only a handful of his bridge crew even knew about the tracking device, and of his senior staff only Proctor knew the full plan. Hell, even he didn’t know the entire plan. Zingano and President Avery were holding that pretty close to their chests.
But he knew it involved him, finally, going on the offensive. And he’d be damned if he’d let some stuffy ego-inflated admiral deprive him of the joy of going on the offensive against the Swarm.
“Time?”
Ensign Prince glanced at his navigational board. “Two minutes.”
They wouldn’t get there in time. On his own sensor readout he saw that the New Dublin ships were nearly there, less than thirty seconds away. The Swarm carrier wouldn’t survive more than a few dozen peta-watt laser blasts.
He turned to the comm. “Patch me through to the flagship.”
After a moment, Ensign Prucha nodded. “You’re on, sir.”
“ISS Galway, stand down. I repeat, stand down. On Fleet Admiral Zingano’s authority himself. There’s still five ships to take care of down in lower orbit—plenty of ass-kicking to go around. I repeat, stand down.”
Granger drummed his fingers on his armrest. No response. The first mag rail slugs shot out from the bow of the New Dublin flagship.
Dammit! He watched as his hopes melted away with every slug that collided with the hull of the Swarm carrier. All the sacrifice and loss that day, wasted. If that enemy bird didn’t get away, if Warrior couldn’t track it, they’d be back at square one.
They’d allowed half a dozen Swarm ships get away over the past month, and they’d managed to zero in on a few quadrants of space out toward Ursa Major. But it was still far too much space to search through planet by planet. They needed to triangulate better, and for that they needed at least a few more Swarm ships to escape.
“Reading massive internal explosions in the Swarm carrier, sir.”
Granger debated telling Azbill over the comm why they were letting the carrier escape. But no. Far too risky. If the Swarm overheard that conversation, and transmitted it back to their homeworld through a meta-space signal, then it was all over. IDF w
ould never learn where the Swarm was coming from, and humanity would be pounded relentlessly into submission, then oblivion.
He had to block that mag rail fire.
“Ensign, move the Warrior in between the cruisers and the—”
“Captain!”
Granger spun around to the sensor station at the officer who’d just yelled. The man’s face was flustered. Bewildered.
“What?” said Granger.
“More ships, sir. Reading ten—no—fifteen new signals.”
Dammit.
“Swarm?”
The officer screwed up his brow. “I—I’m not sure.”
“Visual?”
The officer nodded, and punched in a command.
Granger turned toward the viewscreen at the front of the bridge. It flickered, changing views from the bombardment of the hobbling Swarm carrier to the newcomers.
Not Swarm.
Not IDF either.
Russian? Chinese Communion?
Ensign Prucha called out from the comm. “We’re being hailed, sir. Video feed.”
Granger nodded for the man to put it up on the viewscreen, and within a moment he found himself staring at something he’d thought he’d never see in his life.
Aliens.
A man, or at least, a head attached to a vaguely reptilian torso, looked Granger up and down before opening its mouth. It spoke only one word, and Granger didn’t even think to wonder at the fact that it spoke English.
“Leave.”
Granger paused as he tried to process what he was seeing and hearing.
The alien spoke again, this time leaning in threateningly toward the screen, its voice twisted in an accent that spoke both of its difficulty with English and its utter foreignness. It was definitely other.
“Leave. Or die.”
Chapter Nine
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior