by Nick Webb
Danny! Language! His aunt’s sharp voice cut into his thoughts. If he wasn’t about to die, he’d have laughed at the absurdity of hearing her scolding in his head, even as he drifted through space in free-fall.
Time seemed to elongate, stretch out past all recognition of seconds or minutes, and he could have sworn that at one point he fell asleep, though he granted that he may have been hallucinating. Either way, the small engine exhaust plume that was the Magdalena burned faster and faster towards the surface, until it was just a tiny dot set against one of the habitation domes.
“Goodbye, Mags,” he whispered.
And then the nuclear missile detonated.
Danny’s eyes automatically closed, his hands covered his helmet, and even through the hands, his eyelids, the face shield, and the vomit, the intense glare of the piercing radioactive light made him cry out.
A minute later, a mushroom cloud. And a minute after that, he started to feel the faint roar in his suit that announced he, too, was entering the outer fringe of the atmosphere.
And strangely enough, rather than focus on his own impending death, all he could think about was the cargo, the mysterious customer, and the equally mysterious boarding party that had killed his friends, and killed his ship. Killed his future. As the roar intensified and his arms and legs began to feel the drag of the rarified air, another thought struck him as he watched the mushroom cloud billow up to the upper atmosphere.
Whoever they were, they were trying to start a war.
Chapter One
Oxford Novum University, Whitehaven, Britannia
Curie Building, Lecture hall 201
Professor Shelby Proctor paused her lecture mid-sentence to glance at the monitor on her lectern. A text box had popped up, flashing red. Priority One—Integrated Defense Fleet CENTCOM.
Priority one? Bullshit. IDF could wait. I retired ten years ago—I’m not their lap-dog anymore.
She clicked the message off with a wave of her hand and turned back to the chalkboard in the front of the packed auditorium. She was the only professor that she knew of at Oxford Novum University that used a chalkboard—the only professor on Britannia for that matter. But she was sixty-eight years old, a decorated former fleet admiral, a friggin’ war hero, and, most importantly, an expert in xenobiology. She’d use whatever the hell she wanted.
“So you can see that the mere presence of the mitochondrial DNA structure within the Skiohra cell walls suggests not only a similar evolutionary pattern to species native to Earth, but also implies that primordial prokaryotic cell union into eukaryotic structures is not only one possible basis for advanced life, but perhaps the only basis. Especially given that similar structures are seen in Dolmasi cells, and every other fossilized remains of now-dead civilizations that we’ve happened upon in the power vacuum left behind by the Swarm—”
“Is it true that you fought the last Swarm carrier twelve years ago, Professor Proctor? Destroyed it? The only living Swarm matter left in the galaxy?” An interruption. Damn kids.
She turned around from the chalkboard to face the rows and rows of university students. They were getting younger by the year, it seemed. And if she wasn’t mistaken, stupider. Or was that just the cranky old fleet admiral talking? Stupider? She could almost hear her proper English-major mother berate her.
“That is not only incredibly off-topic, young man, but also highly classified. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you where you sit.” Her eyes drilled into him like anti-matter beams, and she could tell the student wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. “And don’t assume that I’m kidding.”
The kid blushed. Good. Proctor struggled to keep a smirk off her own face.
“Oh. Uh, I mean, everyone talks about it, so I assumed … I mean, I thought that since you were there, fighting the Swarm over Earth and Britannia and stuff, I mean, I thought you could tell us a little….”
He trailed off as her eyes drilled into him again, and he started squirming. “You know what happens when you assume? You make an ass out of you, and … only you—I’m a horrible speller.” Some of the class laughed. For the rest of them, she added, “normally, assuming makes an ass out of you and me. But today the monicker belongs exclusively to the young man in the back row.” The rest of the class laughed.
He flustered even more. “But … uh, I mean, I was just thinking that the genocide of the Swarm might, you know, be helpful to talk about and….”
“Just because you’re able to open your mouth and dribble verbal diahrrea, forming barely-intelligible phrases which I assume are English, spilling sensitive, classified information out for all our enemies to hear and take advantage of, does not make it unclassified. This may not be a military college, young man, but that does not mean that we won’t strictly observe security protocols while I am your teacher.”
The kid was clearly embarrassed—his face turned red and he started playing with the dozens of piercings hanging off his ear. He was just like all the other kids in this generation. Oblivious to the sacrifices made by the ones before him. Her sacrifices. Blithely throwing around words like genocide that he hardly understood the meaning of. Proctor grimaced as she saw him begin to open his mouth again.
“Damn, prof, it was just a question. No need to get snippy or—”
Snippy?
Proctor dropped the chalk, and it clattered into several pieces when it broke on the floor. “Listen, young man, I realize your hearing must be completely shot, what with all the nano-dildos sticking through your earlobes, so I’ll repeat it once more for you. We don’t talk military shit in this classroom. We talk science. Got it?”
The auditorium was as quiet as space itself. The student started packing up his things. “Professor, this is a micro-aggression. Your words are incredibly hurtful and I’m going to file a report with the Committee for Respect and Inclusion and get you reprimanded for speaking hurtfully to a student who only asked—”
“Oh please,” she began, picking up the pieces of chalk. “We both know what you were implying. That I’m some kind of genocidal maniac for finally destroying the last remnant of the race that terrorized our civilization for decades. Let me tell you, young man, you have no idea what it was like out there.” No idea. None of them. How could they? How could anyone? But now that the stopper was released, there was no holding back. “No idea. Never knowing when death would find you, wondering if your next engagement with the Swarm would be your last. So unless you want to see what a macro-aggression looks like, I suggest you high-tail it out of my classroom and get your ass into Dick Knitting 101.”
The look on the kid’s face was priceless, and well worth the official reprimands she knew would trickle down from the administration. Same as the last time she’d lost her cool and went to town on the previous unsuspecting clueless student. So far there hadn’t been any investigations or committee hearings, just the university president taking her aside at the last senatorial reception and giving her a stern, but deferential talking-to. She was the former fleet admiral of IDF, after all. She fought alongside the frickin’ Hero of Earth himself, Captain Timothy Granger.
He got up and left in a huff, and the faces of the remaining students seemed to be evenly split between looks of worshipful adoration and distasteful sanctimony. But she was too old to care what people thought about her. All that mattered now was the science, the teaching, and kicking back with a glass of the finest cabernet at night.
“Now, where were we…. Yes, mitochondrial DNA. One interesting facet of the most recent knowledge exchange with the Skiohra generational ship Magnanimity is that their cell structure is—”
The door to her right creaked open, revealing two burly military MPs in IDF fatigues escorting some top IDF brass, followed by a face out of her past. He strode in purposefully, as if he owned the place. The overhead lights gleamed off the white fleet admiral bars on his shoulders.
The old man nodded once, and, glancing at the rows of students, said, “Admiral Proctor, I�
��m sorry to intrude, but I’m afraid it’s urgent.”
The jackass. She could see his subtle grin at the students as rustling whispers spread through the auditorium like wildfire. Everyone recognized the head of IDF—Integrated Defense Force, United Earth’s interstellar military organization. He always loved performing in front of a captive audience, occupying the center of attention, and being fawned over by adoring civilians.
“Class dismissed,” said Proctor, waving them all off. When the last student had gathered her things and closed the door, Proctor turned back to the man. “Fleet Admiral Oppenheimer. To what do I owe … the pleasure?”
“Shelby,” he began. “It’s good to see you.” An extended hand.
She ignored it.
“I wish I could say the same, Christian.” She wanted to say worse, but even so his face cringed slightly. He’d replaced her as fleet admiral of IDF ten years ago, and the parting had not been amicable. They hadn’t clashed when they first met, years ago, during the emergency of the Second Swarm War. The derelict Constitution had been sacrificed to hold off the Swarm during one of the last violent skirmishes, and the Warrior was destroyed by overwhelming Swarm anti-matter beams. Granger and Proctor had mustered their surviving crew aboard the Victory, where Oppenheimer was serving as XO. He’d been level-headed and down-to-earth then, not the political showman he was today. There were three things that could fundamentally change a person: time, alcohol, and managing a bureaucracy. And Oppenheimer suffered from at least two of the three.
“We have a situation,” he said, withdrawing his hand and beginning to pace across the front of the auditorium. The two MPs accompanying him stepped out the door, as if by previous arrangement with him. “Something is happening in the Irigoyen sector, and in the Dolmasi sectors near it—the Dolmasi would never admit it to us, but our intel is unmistakable—something has them reeling.”
Her heart skipped a beat.
“Swarm?”
“No.”
She relaxed a hair, though she considered what her reaction meant. She was responsible for their complete and utter annihilation, years ago, and even though she’d taken umbrage at the sniping from the micro-aggressed student suggesting that she was responsible for genocide … well, it was half true. She felt it, the … guilt? Was she a monster? No. She was following orders. Saving Earth. Saving civilization. And she slept well at night. But half true all the same.
Oppenheimer continued, “Not that we can tell, anyway, which is very little. But the attack signatures are definitely not Swarm. It’s something else.” He stopped pacing and faced her. “Something new. Something … big.”
She shrugged. “Not my problem anymore, Christian. Give an old woman her retirement. Why don’t you send the Chesapeake out there? Captain Diaz is more than capable. He served with me on the Constitution, the Warrior, the Victory, and even the Chesapeake itself. It’s the friggin’ flagship. If anyone can handle the situation, it’s him.”
Oppenheimer nodded, stroking his chin. “We did, last night.” A pause. He leaned against the chalkboard, and seemed almost reluctant to continue. Dammit—she knew what he was about to say before he even started. “We just received word this morning that Captain Diaz is dead. The Chesapeake is destroyed.”
Chapter Two
Oxford Novum University, Whitehaven, Britannia
Curie Building, Lecture hall 201
“Destroyed? How?” Proctor groped for her chair, and collapsed into it. Diaz was an old friend. Served as her XO for years aboard the Chesapeake before she’d left starship command to become the fleet admiral and lead all of IDF.
Worst decision of her life.
“We lost meta-space contact with the Chesapeake early this morning after they reported engaging a ship of unknown design and origin out in the Irigoyen sector. A scout ship was sent to pick up their trail, and all it found was debris and signs of an intense battle. No sign of the unknown ship.”
Proctor couldn’t believe it. Captain Diaz was the best officer in the fleet, as far as she was concerned. And the Chesapeake was IDF’s flagship. There were other ships that were more powerful, others that were larger, and every single ship in the fleet was more modern by far. But Chesapeake was the last of the Legacy Fleet—the handful of ships whose thick tungsten armor and ability to sustain massive amounts of damage helped save Earth not once, but twice, from Swarm incursions.
And now it was gone. The last of the Legacy Fleet. Gone forever. An era had officially passed.
“Did they send back any visuals?”
“Negative. There was just no time between when they engaged it and when they were destroyed. We literally know nothing about this threat, other than the fact that it handily destroyed our flagship in less than five minutes.”
“What about the terrorist action on Sangre de Cristo? Is this related? Same sector.”
Oppenheimer shook his head. “Not that we can tell. We still have no idea who did it. The GPC claims it was us. Our intel points to a radical faction of the Russian Confederation. The RC claims it was Grangerite fanatics. The Grangerite Patriarch announced on the news this morning that he suspects the CIDR, which the Chinese, of course, vehemently deny. CIDR think it’s us, too. Just a massive, fucking headache—”
“Watch your language,” she replied automatically. But she was lost in thought, trying to make connections between the two incidents.
The admiral ignored her. “Whoever dropped that bomb will pay. Ever since last week we’ve been escorting the relief ships in the humanitarian convoys heading out to Sangre. Completely destroyed one of the habitation domes. About fifty thousand dead, and the rest of the domes are in a state of pandemonium—they all think they’re next. Riots. Food shortages. The works. And with all the political bullshit going on—everyone pointing fingers at each other, half of them aimed at us—we get this. An unknown ship. Completely foreign design—not human, not Dolmasi, not Skiohra. And not responding to any of our hails. And now, the Chesapeake….” He trailed off.
Professor Proctor stood up and grabbed hold of the lectern, using it to steady herself. The news came as a shock. And she suspected why Admiral Oppenheimer had come. Given her lifelong expertise with not only the Swarm, but all things alien, be it Dolmasi, Skiohra, Quiassi, Findiri, or the handful of long-dead civilizations destroyed by the Swarm in their ten-thousand year scourge across the galaxy, he was most likely going to ask for help understanding the new threat. To study up and as the old adage said, science the shit out of it.
“Fine. Send me everything you’ve got. I’ll make my recommendations to the Joint Chiefs once I’ve had a chance to go over the material. And I’ll even set up a rapid-response science team if you manage to bring back any samples or recordings of the new threat. I imagine that—”
“Shelby, I’m not here asking for your help in a lab. We don’t have time for science.”
She turned to face him. “Then what the hell are you here for, Christian?”
“I’m here because I need you back. I need you to take a ship, and go figure this out before it destroys us all.”
She laughed out loud.
“Christian, you can’t be serious. I’m almost seventy years old. I teach xenobiology 101, and I just bought a condo down on the beach. Only twenty kilometers away. Do you know how long I waited for one of those properties to free up? Do you realize what the real estate market is like on Britannia? Beach properties have a ten year waiting list, at least. It’s insane, Christian, they tried to charge me over—”
“Shelby,” he wasn’t buying her change of subject. “We need you.”
“I need me. My baby brother and his wife and kids need me. My students need me.”
“United Earth needs you.”
No. She was done. She’d played the puppet, she’d acted the part. She’d let her military career be run and manipulated by aspiring and conspiratorial admirals, generals, and worse, unscrupulous and greedy politicians, always responding to the next politically manufactured cr
isis rather than addressing the real threat.
That real threat: the galaxy was an unthinkably large place, and humanity surely hadn’t discovered all its perils. There were other Swarms. Other civilizational threats. And what had United Earth’s administration and the Joint Chiefs had her do during her tenure as captain and later as fleet admiral?
Maneuvering the fleets for maximum political posturing. Against the Russian Confederation, against the Caliphate, against the Chinese Intersolar Democratic Republic. Against whatever internal enemy-du-jour the United Earth politicians wanted to impress or intimidate with a few starships.
“United Earth? Pfft. The Administration can go to hell.”
Admiral Oppenheimer grunted and bent over to pick up a stray piece of chalk that had escaped her notice. “The government? I’m not talking about the government, Shelby. President Quimby can go finger his own asshole for all I care. I’m talking about our civilization. The hundreds of billions of children, women, and men that call our worlds home. That United Earth needs you.”
She sat down, flicking off her lesson plan, and stared at the blank monitor screen.
She’d heard it all before. It was the same speech every administration figure and every senator had thrown at her when she was fleet admiral.
And the answer was still the same. “No,” she said, and stood back up, picked up her briefcase—she hated calling it a purse—and opened the door. “Find another hero, Christian. This one’s ship has sailed.”
“There’s one more thing, Shelby.”
She paused at the threshold. “Yes?”
“I understand your nephew, your brother’s son, is living on San Martin.”
“Yes?” she repeated.
“San Martin is in the Irigoyen sector, Shelby. And Sangre de Cristo is in the San Martin system. And just two hours ago I received … reports.”
Her stomach clenched. Danny was her brother’s oldest, and had just started college on San Martin the year before. “What kind of reports?”