by Nick Webb
“I’m sure the Chinese would dispute your insinuations. But that’s not the point Shelby.”
“How is it not the point, Ballsy? Enlighten me.” She was agitated, and treating him harsher than she meant, but he took it in stride, seeming to understand that the source of her consternation was not him, or even the GPC thugs, but that little boy she’d bounced on her knees.
“There are GPC people in all four nations. Not just UE. They’re sick of us. They’re sick of the international tensions and disputes. They see themselves as the people.” He rolled his eyes as he put air-quote around the people.
“People my ass.” The shuttle bounced in the upper atmospheric turbulence, and she glanced at the ETA timer on the pilot’s dashboard. Five and a half minutes to Shovik-Orion City, Bolivar. Shovik-Orion City. Idiot corporations and their idiotic naming and branding schemes.
Her executive assistant, a young red-haired ensign with a noticeable bump on her lower abdomen, entered the cabin from the tiny galley, offering Proctor a steaming cup of tea. “Thank you, Ensign Flay.”
Volz continued. “Have you been in a mining colony before, Shelby?”
“This isn’t the twenty-second century anymore, Ballsy. Sure, humans did awful things to each other. Sure, the mining colonies out on Ceres and Vesta and all the other Asteroid belt settlements were scandalous, ugly affairs. But that was five hundred years ago.”
Volz shrugged again. “Uh huh. But tell that to people living in mining colonies today. Yeah, they’re not necessarily starving, or growing up with chronic bone deformities because of the low-g. But you ask any iridium miner whether he actually wants to be there, guess what you’re going to hear? You ask some farmer out on Cadiz whether they want UE bureaucrats two hundred lightyears away on Britannia deciding the finer details of harvest equipment certifications. You ask Russian merchants on Syrene if they want a distant Russian Confederation government telling them what they should be paying in taxes just because they live on the wrong side of their own city.”
“Then they can leave! They can move on and go farm somewhere else. Or sign up for IDF. Or go on the dole if they want. Seriously, my taxes are high enough that half of UE could be living like kings if they didn’t throw it all away on post-Swarm War defensive posturing.”
Ballsy’s eyes narrowed. “Oh come on Shelby, you were the architect of half those programs—”
“Like hell. It was all President Singh. I was constantly telling him the Swarm was gone. I killed the last ship, after all, and my Skiohra contacts assured me that they could detect nothing through their mental meta-space link—the Ligature, or whatever they call it. The Swarm was dead. There was no reason to spend ninety-five percent of our friggin’ galactic budget on defense if all there was to defend against was each other.”
Ballsy fell quiet, looking at her intensely through the comm device on her lap. “So then what the hell was that thing out there? That ship?”
She paused, thinking. Considering. It just didn’t feel like the Swarm. The Swarm was relentless. Overpowering. Almost bloodthirsty. So far, the best descriptor she had for this mysterious ship was … erratic. “I don’t know.”
“You think it’s the Swarm?”
She slowly shook her head. “No.”
“Me either. Look, you go find your nephew. I’ve got my pilots here in the conference room and we’re poring over the vids and scans, designing appropriate attack measures and defensive postures, and I’ve borrowed some of your bridge tactical folks and we’re doing the same with them, figuring out how the Independence itself should respond next time. When you face them again, you’ll have some options.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Ballsy. I’m glad you’re with me on this one. After seeing Jeremy go like that….”
He nodded. His face was taut, as if he were trying desperately not to feel. Not to hurt. “Prucha was a good man. Let’s make sure no more join him. Volz out.”
His face winked out from the comm, and she settled in for the rest of the descent. She prepared herself to meet this woman, this mystery person that Admiral Mullins claimed was Danny’s girlfriend. This woman who’d apparently been in such a position that she’d not only seen the so-called Secretary General Curiel of the GPC, but also been in a position to report it to Mullins. What the hell was she, an intel agent? She supposed she’d soon find out—Mullins had arranged a meeting, and Proctor was on her way to CENTCOM Bolivar in Shovik-Orion City to talk to her in a briefing room. And finally get some answers about her nephew.
Ensign Flay had strapped in and was on her comm device coordinating Proctor’s security with the marine office at CENTCOM Bolivar. Eventually she shut the device down and nodded over at her. “All set, Admiral.”
“Thank you, Ensign Flay.” Her eyes dropped down momentarily to her abdomen. “Congratulations.”
“Oh,” the ensign replied, blushing slightly. “Thank you. Seven months went fast. Maternity leave starts next week, if you were wondering. Sorry you’ll have a disruption in your staff—I’ll train my replacement well and make sure it’s as painless as—”
Proctor held up a reassuring hand. “It’s all right, Ensign. Life happens. And besides, this is a short term assignment for me anyway. I won’t even be here next week.”
The young ensign looked relieved. Proctor reviewed a few administrative items with her, and before long the ETA timer had ticked its way down to zero. She unstrapped herself from the seat and descended the shuttle’s ramp.
“I’ll be with you shortly, ma’am. I need to hand off the shuttle to the guard,” said Flay from the cockpit.
Proctor nodded her approval and continued down to the landing pad where she met an aide to Admiral Mullins who had come with a marine honor guard. They indicated towards the entrance to the massive CENTCOM building from the landing pad, where two more guards stood at attention.
And suddenly, the guards were no longer standing.
They were flying.
Flames gutted windows all around them and the doors blasted outward in a jarring explosion. Proctor touched her forehead and her hand came away red. She didn’t realize until moments later that she was lying on the ground several meters past the shuttle from where she’d been walking.
Don’t pass out … don’t pass out….
Chapter Twenty
Irigoyen Sector, Bolivar System, Bolivar
Shuttle Fenway, High orbit
“What do you mean, they’re following us?”
Zivic eyed the sensor readout, pointing at the map of the surrounding space in their orbit over Bolivar. Transponder codes and insignia from hundreds of different ships dotted the schematic, but the main one, the biggest one, had changed course and was headed straight towards them on an intercept course.
“That’s what I’m saying. The Urquiza is on our tail. And if those two Bolivaran Intelligence Officers”—he made some air-quotes with his fingers—“are any indication, there’s clearly some people that want us off the board. And they’re high up enough to redirect Bolivar’s main emergency response ship. That spells trouble if I ever saw it.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “I just don’t get it. So you saw a guy get offed. I mean, that’s really bad. Sure, it’s murder. But let’s face it, the entire station exploded. You’d think the authorities would have bigger fish to fry here.”
What’s the connection, Zivic?
“What?” she said.
He hadn’t realized he’d murmured the question under his breath. “Sorry. Just … what’s the connection? Two IDF officers blow a guy away, on a station that’s just been hit by a mysterious ship and is about to go critical, they steal a shuttle, which later shows up on the relief cruiser. Then two different guys working for a phony intel service try to kill me—”
“Shovik-Orion,” she murmured.
“What?”
“That’s the only connection. Shovik-Orion. Jerry Underwood was a Shovik-Orion employee. And I swear at least one of those goons back there was too. At
least, I think he was. There’s been tons of staffing changes lately. Lots of new people. Lots of old hands getting pink slips. New managers, same old shit.”
He shrugged, eyeing the schematic map warily. It would take the Urquiza a while to spin up its engines enough to change course, and their shuttle had a good head start, but the massive colonial transporter had more thrust than they did, and, most likely, a few hidden rail guns.
“What the hell would a corporation want with me? Why would they kill the contractor? You don’t think they have anything to do with the alien ship, do you? I mean, you work for Shovik-Orion, right? You’d have heard … something.”
“Well, yes and no. I’m technically with a sub-contractor. Snell Staffing corp.” She pointed to a tiny name badge on her chest, which had been obscured by a rip in the fabric. It displayed her name, Sara Batak, along with a little company logo made up of two intertwined S’s surrounded by a larger C.
He frowned, and brought up the shuttle’s computer. “Those two IDF guys were looking for something. The contractor—Jerry—claimed it was on board the shuttle. Go check the hold, will you?”
The restraints across her chest and hips fell away as she sprang out of her seat and ducked out of the cockpit. It seemed that, with something to finally do, she had some pent-up energy. An outlet for the nervousness and stress that came from being shot at. And almost exploded.
“Nothing,” she called back from the tiny cargo hold. “It’s empty.”
“No hidden panels or anything?”
She reappeared in the cockpit. “In a T-39? These things are built for space efficiency. No hidden panels, no compartments under the floor. Nada.”
“So you’re saying this thing ain’t built for smugglers. Fine, so whatever was here is gone. Those two IDF assassin guys made off with it.” He scanned the computer logs for the shuttle’s most recent ports of call. Usually the shuttles on Watchdog were used to transport crew members on and off station, and it relied on the contractors like Shovik-Orion to shuttle their own supplies and materials on their own transport ships.
But there was always a chance he was wrong.
“Looks like the last time this thing left the Bolivar system it went to San Martin,” he said, running through the logs.
“Makes sense,” she said. “It’s the center of power here in the Irigoyen sector, center of commerce, yada yada.”
“Then that’s where we’re going.” He glanced at the schematic map to check up on the Urquiza trailing them. Sure enough, it was catching up. He did a scan of the ship, and just as he thought, he saw that an exterior panel had retracted, revealing the unmistakable profile of a rail gun. It was still in the process of swiveling towards them. “And there’s our cue to leave.”
He entered the coordinates for San Martin into the q-jump drive computer and confirmed that the cap banks were full. “Shuttle’s caps are small, so should take us a few dozen jumps to get out there. Settle in for a good nap. With any luck, I can tap into CENTCOM San Martin when we get there and find out where my pops is.”
“You really think he can help us? If this is some kind of IDF, Shovik-Orion, GPC, alien conspiracy thingie, what good can one guy do against that?”
“Don’t know.” He pushed the initiator button when the q-jump computer indicated it was ready. The view out the front window port adjusted. The green-blue of Bolivar disappeared along with the approaching Urquiza, replaced by the blackness of deep space. “But he knows people. And they know people.” He glanced at her. She didn’t look convinced. “At this point, what other choice do we have?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Irigoyen Sector, Bolivar System, Bolivar
Hutchins Memorial Hospital, Room 1400
When she woke up, Proctor was a little surprised to see Admiral Mullins standing over her. Who the hell had let him in her quarters? She’d have to have a stern talk with her marine detachment. But not before getting something for the splitting headache.
It was the searing pain that finally jogged her memory. She was not in her quarters. She was in a hospital in Shovik-Orion City.
“What the hell happened, Tim?” she murmured, rubbing her forehead.
A wrinkled frown bloomed down Mullins’s face. “Tim?”
Oh, damn, she thought. “Sorry, Ted. Old habit. Last time I was this injured, it was….”
Mullins nodded. “On the Warrior. With Captain Granger.”
“Yes.” That blast must have hit her hard. She forced her eyes open and blinked a few times. “Please tell me that wasn’t a bomb.”
“It wasn’t a bomb.”
She looked at him incredulously, then glanced around at the other beds in the intensive care unit, all of them full.
“Bull,” she replied.
“It was a well-timed power surge, that triggered a cascade buildup and subsequent failure in the internal cap banks at CENTCOM. We rely on our own power of course, and not the city’s grid, and it looks like in this case it bit us rather firmly in the ass.”
“You’re telling me it was an accident?”
He looked down at her gravely, slowly shaking his head. “No. I’m not.”
Shit. She repeated the word in her head like a mantra. She was desperately trying to deal with a potentially civilization-ending threat embodied by a mysterious, unthinkably powerful ship, while simultaneously trying to find her lost nephew. She didn’t have time to deal with saboteurs and malcontents.
“Who the hell was it then?”
He sat down in the chair next to her bed. “We’re still trying to figure that out. Whoever it was, they had long-term access to CENTCOM’s power systems, and the expertise to pull this off under the radar, right under our noses. And the expertise to keep us from immediately being able to know who it was—they’ve covered their tracks like regular pros.”
“Speculate then.” Proctor glanced around for a nurse or the attending physician—the pain was subsiding, but her back ached, and she wanted a rundown of her injuries before she duly ignored the sound medical advice and returned to the Independence to save civilization as they knew it.
“GPC loyalists. Who else could it be?”
“Are they that brazen already?”
“Extremists always are. What zealot ever waits until it’s prudent to act? They always jump at the chance to make a big splash and catch everyone’s attention.”
She frowned. “Zealot? What do you mean?”
Mullins shrugged, and hesitated a moment before continuing. “I have reason to believe that this is not just GPC. There might be a Grangerite element to this.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
“You don’t think some of them would be capable?”
She shook her head, and caught the eye of the doctor at another bed across the room, waving him over. “It’s not that they’re not capable, it’s just I still can’t believe that, A, there are Grangerites to begin with, and B, that any of them would leave their temples or churches or underground lairs or whatever the hell they have, long enough to plan something like this.”
“You’ve had thirty years to get used to the idea of Grangerites, Shelby.”
“And I had four months before that to get used to the idea that Tim Granger was a human being. Not some kind of god-damned prophet. Seriously, if you’d seen him like I saw him, knew him like I knew him, you’d realize the absolute absurdity of it—”
He held up his hands defensively. “Hey, no need to convince me of their lunacy. But just because we think they’re lunatics for worshipping a bloke we all knew, praying that he comes back to save us all and bring us candy and unicorns, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take them seriously. At least their potential threat.”
“What do you mean? They’re ignoramuses. The only dangerous thing about ignoramuses is when they vote for ignoramuses. And last time I checked there weren’t any Grangerite candidates in any elections that matter.”
“All I’m saying is that—well, I’ve just
heard things. Rumors. That something big is going to happen, or has happened, or is happening. Something that the true zealots are excited about. And then this explosion happens. Right as you show up. Coincidence?”
“But Ted, who the hell would want to kill me?”
The attending physician finally arrived at her bed and looked questioningly at Mullins, as if expecting him to leave. He stood up, but touched Proctor’s elbow and leaned down towards her ear. “I’m not sure it was you they were trying to kill.”
Her eyes grew wide, and she knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Fiona Liu? Your nephew’s girlfriend? She’s dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Irigoyen Sector, Interstellar space
Shuttle Fenway
Zivic wondered how anyone could stand interstellar travel in a ship with such a small q-jump cap banks, and when he thought about it too much it gave him a sense of almost overpowering vertigo.
“You never think about how empty it is out here until you’re in it,” he murmured, staring out the port at the endless stars.
“Huh?” Batak stirred, and opened her eyes. Oops, he thought, not realizing she’d dozed off.
“Space. Interstellar space. It’s just so … empty. Think about it. If that cap bank fails, we’re fifty-thousand years from the nearest star at full thrust. We lose the cap banks and the meta-space transmitter in one go? Then here we are, stuck for the rest of our lives, on this shuttle.”
“The rest of our very short lives,” she said, closing her eyes again and leaning back. “Only so much food the material re-processors could make out of our shit.”
He squirmed at the thought. Luckily the console beeped to distract him. “Coming up on q-jump number three hundred and fifty-two. Eight-hundred and eleven to go. Only eight hundred and ten if we decide to stop off at El Amin.”