When Avery had taken command, they’d had two months to prepare for the next round of Swarm attacks. Now they had one. At least, that’s what UEF Intelligence kept telling them. A damned small amount of time to create an efficient war machine driven by a crew dedicated to fighting for one another. And most of them were as new to Avenger as she was.
IDF Intelligence, Avery corrected herself as she swigged water and listened to Commander Brent take the battle report. We’re not UEF anymore. She was still getting used to that bright, shiny IDF symbol on her arm too, and the insignia of the shared service pinned over her right breast. She stared down at it. A failed attempt to rope in the Russians was all the IDF was to her. She and her best friend Addison Halsey, captain of ISS Invincible, had shared more than one conversation over a bottle of scotch about the meaningless rebranding of the service.
“Integrated Defense Force,” she whispered to herself. It sounded good to civilians. It made them feel more secure. And maybe that made it worthwhile. “I guess that counts for something.”
As she wiped the sweat from her forehead, a crewman rounded the corner in front of her and skipped a step as he took in her slick skin and wet running gear. She returned the quick salute he made as he passed by. They were still getting used to her as their captain. Mack White, their old CO who’d been promoted to the Admiralty after the Swarm fled Earth orbit, was a little more formal than she. Make that a lot more.
Well, she could be formal enough when the situation called for it. Like when her XO got her ship blown up. She heard Brent acknowledge the final statistics over the speaker. They weren’t good. The fact that it was only a simulation didn’t matter one damned bit.
“Captain to Bridge,” she said into the wall comms. “XO, report.”
“Ma’am,” grumbled Commander Brent’s reluctant voice. “I guess you heard.”
“Of course I heard, Malcolm. The whole damned ship heard.” She wiped her hands on her shorts and took a moment to wonder if they were wet from perspiration or exasperation. “My question is, why? Yesterday we were running ten seconds hotter. We had a sixty percent kill rate against the Swarm carrier. We’ve had, what, seven simulations so far today? And how many kills?”
“Two, ma’am. But the last simulation had the inertial dampeners operating at half efficiency. That’s not realistic. If we’d been able to turn faster—”
“Sounded like we were slow on the reloads to me. And as for the dampeners, ever hear of mechanical failure, Commander?”
A pause on the other end. Either the comms system had actually failed or the Bridge had gone silent.
“Of course I have, ma’am.”
“So in combat, those dampeners might actually fail too.”
“Ma’am, I can’t be expected to predict every—”
“Who’s at the helm? Lieutenant Hathaway?”
“Yes, ma’am,” came the distant reply.
“Bring Avenger around for another pass at that asteroid we call a cumrat carrier. I’m coming up there.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am.”
“And, Commander?”
Another pause before an admonished Brent answered stiffly, “Yes, Captain?”
“I’ll be up in ten minutes. I’ll be your XO on the next run. That’s a job I had for a long time. But make no mistake—this is your simulation. I’m there in an advisory capacity. And I want to get a bird’s-eye view of what’s blown us up so often today. You’re right. You can’t predict everything in every moment. But we have to be ready to react to anything at any moment. Understand the difference?”
“Aye, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” She thought she heard him relax just a bit on the other end of the horn.
“See you in ten. Avery out.”
As she flipped the wall switch off, she noticed something about the corridor’s still air. She sniffed. Something was foul. And that something was—her, she realized.
She was due on the Bridge in … less than ten minutes, now. And while she might be a little less formal than Admiral White when it came to off-duty attire, stinking up her own Bridge was a little over the line.
And her cabin was three decks up.
“Guess I’d better sprint the last leg,” she said to no one.
* * *
“Captain on the Bridge!”
Avery adjusted her tunic again as the lift doors closed behind her. She hadn’t had time for more than a towel and a quick dose of deodorant. Her new IDF uniform, cranked out of production fast and with no time to be fitted properly, seemed to chafe in all the wrong places. Time to exercise some of that tradition of military discipline. Stiff upper lip and all that.
“Report, Commander.”
Brent stood up from the command chair as she stepped down into the lower Bridge deck they called the pit. “The Swarm carrier was a tougher nut to crack than usual, Captain. Their outer hull plating had been reinforced by the simulator. Took our mag-rails longer to penetrate and open up a hole for the lasers to get in and fry them from the inside.”
“So—we didn’t last long enough to do the job because the enemy innovated their defensive systems.”
Brent motioned with his head. “Again, ma’am, we couldn’t predict—”
She looked up at him and he stopped speaking. It was a strange thing, commanding others taller than herself. Brent was six-foot-two, and her five-foot-eight frame seemed slight next to his. But the rank on her collar made up the difference.
“Commander Brent, we don’t earn our millionaire’s pay to be clairvoyant,” she said. “But we are expected to adapt to our situation.” Turning to Sensors, she said, “Buckland, as we attacked, were the energy curve differentials evident? Could you see we weren’t making the same headway against their plating as before?”
Buckland blinked. He was straight out of the Academy, she remembered. “The data looked a little funny, ma’am.”
“A little funny.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you report this funny data to the captain?”
Buckland seemed perplexed. “You weren’t on the Bridge, ma’am—”
Oh, Jesus. They might as well light a red approach vector for the goddamned cumrats.
“The XO was the captain in the scenario, Ensign,” she reminded him.
“Oh. Right, ma’am. Um, no, I didn’t—”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t think—”
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day, Ensign.” Avery placed her hands behind her back and stepped onto the upper deck of the Bridge. From there, she could just about look Brent in the eye straight on. “Comms, is shipwide still on?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Lieutenant O’Brian.
“All right, people, listen up. Some of you are veterans,” she said, glancing at Hathaway. She noted the amused look of what the hell is the Academy churning out these days? on his face before she fixed Buckland with a glare. “Some of you aren’t. But here’s the thing—it doesn’t matter.”
Avery turned to face Brent. “It doesn’t matter your length of service. It doesn’t matter your record of service. All that matters is that you do your duty to the best of your ability. When the Swarm—when those cumrat bastards come for us, they won’t care how wet behind the ears you are. They won’t care how many medals you earned ten years ago. All they’re trying to do is kill you and everyone you love.”
She turned back to Buckland. “Everything matters. Everything. See an unusual readout? Bring it to my or the XO’s attention. There’s no textbook for this. There’s no template. We’re making this up as we go along. Understood?”
A chorus of “yes, ma’ams” echoed around the Bridge.
“Very well. Commander?”
“Ma’am?”
“Let’s run that simulation again. I’ll stand behind you and monitor—”
“Captain Avery,” said O’Brian, “message coming in from Fleet. It’s Rear Admiral Pierce, ma’am.”
At Churchill Station? Wonder what he
wants.
“On-screen, Lieutenant.”
Brent moved aside as Avery stepped back into the pit and took her position in the command chair. The angular face of Rear Admiral Sir Henry Pierce lit up the screen.
Speaking of stiff upper lip.…
His British lineage stretched far back into military tradition, all the way to Nelson at Trafalgar. Damned near a millennium. But from everything Avery had heard, much of it lately from Halsey stationed at Britannia, he’d mined his military DNA from the shallow end of the gene pool.
Pierce stared down his hawkish nose at her. “Captain Avery, so nice to finally make your acquaintance. I’ve heard quite a lot about you.”
Avery moved in her chair. Apparently she hadn’t finished sweating when she’d slipped her ill-fitting trousers on.
“Admiral Pierce, sir, likewise. What can I do for you?”
“You are ordered to proceed with all speed to the Britannia System to join our defense force.”
She shared a quick look with Brent. His head tilted slightly, reflecting her own curiosity.
“Sir?”
Pierce’s face settled into a look of patrician annoyance. “I would think it was obvious, Captain. The enemy has returned.”
Chapter 3
Earth, Sol System
Washington, D.C.
The President’s Bedroom, the White House
President Quentin Chamberlain sat up in bed, finally surrendering to the insomnia that had plagued him off and on for weeks. He’d gotten used to medicating himself to sleep, but that hadn’t happened last night. Milly had been insistent—he relied too heavily on downers at night and uppers to fuel him during the day. Earlier that evening, he’d insisted he needed a whiskey or three to relax, but she’d persuaded him to embrace another method. He’d fallen asleep rather quickly after they’d made love.
But a nightmare had shaken him awake a couple of hours ago, and what felt like his constant state of paranoia now demanded he stay that way. A growing sense of dread, of knowing the end was near, had possessed him ever since Russian President Oleksiy Ivanov had refused his suggestion of partnership in the Integrated Defense Force. They’d proved it could work when the alien threat first attacked, but Ivanov, epitomizing Russian coldness, had rebuffed the Western president’s offer.
“It’s never as good as it seems,” Ivanov had said at that meeting, schooling Quentin in the dark pragmatism of the Russian outlook on life. Ivanov had seemed determined, almost dedicated, to proving that truism by damning the entire human race to extinction by refusing Chamberlain’s offer of alliance.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Quentin stared over his shoulder at Milly snoring softly beneath the covers. He was half-tempted to accidentally jostle her awake as comeuppance for bribing him into unmedicated slumber. What had it gotten him anyway but another nightmare, another night of irresistible insomnia?
But he didn’t disturb her for two reasons. One, he knew she was right. He was too reliant on pharmaceuticals to manage his moods. Too mired in his own self-doubt to allow himself to feel them, deal with them. And the second reason—she’d stood by him his whole political career, through losses and victories, media scandals and opponents’ crucifixions. Sometimes Quentin wasn’t sure if it was him she loved or the power behind the throne. Probably both, he thought, and why not? But in the end, it didn’t really matter.
So he let her sleep. At least one of them should.
The drugs and alcohol were just the tip of the iceberg. He’d acted anything but presidential in the last month. Ever since Admiral Martin Shasta’s Global Intelligent Laser Defense system had failed when the traitor Jason Baltasar, captain of Invincible, sent the codes to the enemy. Baltasar’s betrayal had inoculated the Swarm against GILD’s drone platforms, wasting all that money, all that R&D time. Infected by the Swarm, Baltasar had almost made it possible for them to conquer earth. If not for Addison Halsey and her single-minded dedication to retaking her old ship…. Halsey, Avery, Preble, and the Russians—hell, even the Chinese after they discovered their own compromised personnel—they’d all played a part in saving the peoples of Earth. The entire human race really.
What a team they’d made, Quentin thought, shaking his head at Ivanov and his cold Eastern philosophy. All the old grievances, the old nationalisms had fallen away beneath a united desire to kill the aliens. Cumrat bastards, the troops had begun calling them. Even in the ivory towers of Washington, they’d heard that one.
There were still secrets among the powers, sure. GILD had been one of those, until Ivanov made sure the other major powers knew about it during the summit meeting thrown together to address the Swarm threat. The Chinese had been appalled by GILD.
Or maybe that was just Sun’s playacting, Quentin allowed. Chinese Premier Sun Wu had been revealed as yet another Swarm agent. Just like Baltasar. He’d taken the Russians’ word for that and would have questioned the truth of it, had one of the Chinese ships not attacked his UEF forces. And now the CIA had verified that Sun died a traitor, assassinated by someone in his own Politburo.
Eventually, the Chinese had turned on their own traitors and pitched in against the Swarm too, and together they’d beaten back the enemy. And thus was born the brilliant idea of the Integrated Defense Force. The first of its kind—a multinational coalition of unprecedented scope and cooperation.
Blocked by a goddamned Russian.
Milly’s snoring crescendoed. Quentin turned and touched her side.
“Roll over, honey.”
She murmured and complied. Her snoring stopped.
The IDF. A great idea stillborn by a single word from Ivanov.
No.
“That pompous bastard,” Quentin whispered. “Pride goeth before the fall of the whole goddamned human race.”
It was as plain as the bulbous, veiny nose on Ivanov’s sweaty, flushed face. The self-important shit wouldn’t even take Chamberlain’s calls these days. The Russian leader seemed content to sit in the Kremlin while the hours counted down to the next Swarm invasion everyone assumed was coming. Less than a month now, his advisors told him. Less than a month to pull a species-saving rabbit out of a hat.
Quentin got up and poured himself a drink of water. Downing it, he thought again of his nightmare. He’d been in the Situation Room with his Cabinet a month from now, plotting strategy. The Swarm was coming. They were popping up in every sector. As the dream unfolded, Quentin issued some order or other to the head of the Joint Chiefs—deploy this fleet here or there … something. He couldn’t remember the details.
The man, his new IDF uniform replete with flags and medals, had merely refused. Then, one by one, the members of his Cabinet had simply turned and smiled at him.
“Can’t we just be friends?” they asked in unison. “You cumrat bastard….”
Every last one of them—Swarm agents.
Quentin shuddered as the yellow fear coursed through him again. The whiskey decanter next to the water pitcher seemed to call to him. He downed the last of the water and reached for it. His hand was still shaking, and the decanter clinked loudly against the glass as he poured. Cringing, he glanced over at Milly. She still lay on her side, facing away from him.
A swift tilt of his wrist and the burn racing down his throat made everything feel better. He sighed and poured another drink. Grimacing at his own weakness, he set the whiskey back down, the glass bottom clacking on the silver tray.
Staring hard at his glass, he rolled it around, watching the light fold in and out of the dark, amber liquid. Maybe with its help he could rest some more, at least for a few hours. It would give him a good night’s sleep, or at least allow him to sleep through what was left of the night, and help him focus later in the day. He stared at the Kentucky Reserve shining darkly in the glass and decided it’s what he needed for them. To be the leader they needed him to be.
“Quentin?”
The president of the United Earth Federation froze.
“Quentin, is everything
all right?”
He turned slightly, keeping his body between the bed and the serving tray, then downed the second whiskey in one gulp.
“Fine, dear. Just … having a glass of water. Couldn’t sleep.” Half-truths are only half-lies, right? He set his glass down.
“Come back to bed,” she said, sleep making her words long and loose. “I sleep better with you in the bed.”
Quentin smiled wanly. Someone still needed him to be him.
Oh, stop being such a goddamned whiner, he thought savagely, the old, take-no-prisoners politician he’d once been returning. You’re the president of the UEF, for Christ’s sake.
He sat down on the bed next to her. Winter in Washington was a beautiful thing, especially around Christmastime. The sheets always stayed cool, even with the furnace going.
Milly reached out and touched his back. “If I were more awake, I’d make sure you got back to sleep,” she purred. “Worked like a charm earlier.”
But his mind was elsewhere, and he missed her meaning. “Have I ever told you the story of my great-great-great-whatever-the-hell grandfather? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain?”
The first lady made a noise he couldn’t quite read. But it definitely sounded sleepy.
Quentin chuckled. “Of course I have. What? A hundred times?”
“A hundred and three,” Milly said, her voice clearing with reluctant wakefulness. “Not that I’m counting.” She sat up on her elbow in the bed. “What’s once more between spouses?”
He turned to smile at her and saw the way her silk nightgown glistened in the crisp moonlight angling in through the window. It had been a gift from Premier Sun, the traitorous sonofabitch. Though he’d had good taste in negligees, Quentin had to admit.
God, he loved Milly. How could the Swarm possibly defeat them with her by his side?
“So, tell me again,” she said, sidling up next to him. Quentin’s eyes lingered on her pale skin, on her nipples teasing him behind the shimmering silk.
“Since you know the story so well, I’ll just hit the highlights,” he promised.
Legacy Fleet: Avenger (Kindle Worlds) (The First Swarm War Book 2) Page 2