by Nick Webb
An idea struck her. She paced over to the comm station. “Lieutenant Qwerty, can you tap into the shuttle’s systems?”
A nod. “Yes’m,” he drawled.
“Lieutenant Whitehorse, is the shuttle’s reactor still active?” she said, watching as Qwerty established a link to the shuttle’s computer.
A moment later she replied. “Yes, Admiral, it is.” Whitehorse cocked her head. “Are you going to…?”
“Of course I am. Qwerty?” she leaned down to peer at the Lieutenant’s work.
He nodded. “I’m in control of the shuttle’s systems. I assume you’re gonna order a cascade failure of the drive?”
“Please,” she said.
“One quantum cascade failure coming right up. Might take a moment. They build these things to not overload, you know.”
They all watched the screen—it seemed they all knew, without speaking, that if the pilot was going to escape, it had to be now.
“I’m ready, ma’am,” said Qwerty.
Proctor nodded. “Mumford?”
The science chief was tapping his foot nervously. “I think I’ve got it. Sensors piercing up into the ship now. Trying to interpret—”
“Scan now, interpret later. Get all the data you can—”
A flash on the screen, and tenth of a second later, the deckplate under her feet rumbled. “It’s firing!” yelled Whitehorse.
Commander Yarbrough called out from the XO’s station. “It punched a hole down on decks seven through ten. Clean through the hull.” He pointed nervously up at the screen. “Admiral, it’s now or never.”
She swore, and cast a glance at Mumford. “Commander?”
He shook his head. “Scanning. But could use another few minutes for a more complete—”
“We don’t have a few minutes, Admiral!” yelled Yarbrough.
The deck rumbled again with another impact of the alien ship’s devastating rail gun slug. And again a third time.
The fourth struck much closer, and the lights momentarily went out. She studied the viewscreen, finally seeing a telltale movement close to the Golgothics.
“Lieutenant, is that what I think it is?”
Whitehorse furrowed her brow, studying her sensor display. “It’s Zivic.”
The camera zoomed in even further, and showed the pilot tumbling end over end, away from the hole he’d cut in the shuttle door.
“Admiral!” said Yarbrough impatiently. “We’ve got eleven dead on deck seven alone. How much longer are we going to wait?”
She grit her teeth as she watched Zivic tumble away. He was still too close to the shuttle, and a core explosion would mean instant death for him at that distance.
“Almost,” she murmured.
The deck rumbled again. And again.
“Two more impacts, deck fifteen, sections one and four,” said Yarbrough. He shook his head. “Complete decompression. At least five dead.”
She turned to Mumford, eyeing him questioningly. He shrugged. “The more time, the better on this sensor feed. But we’ve already gotten quite a package of data.”
Fine. It was time. “Lieutenant Qwerty, initiate feedback.”
Zivic continued his slow tumble, now nearly a kilometer away.
It would have to do.
A moment later, the screen oversaturated with the piercing light of the shuttle’s explosion.
When the screen cleared, Proctor gasped.
“Was it that easy?” she murmured.
The alien ship was gone.
Chapter Forty-Three
Irigoyen Sector, San Martin System, El Amin
Captain’s ready room, ISS Independence
An hour later, confident that Commander Yarbrough had a handle on the recovery and repair operations, Proctor took a moment to retreat to the ready room. Just to breathe. The door slid shut behind her, and all she could think about was the epithet: Mother-killer.
Years ago, just before the final battle of the Second Swarm War, she’d earned that title. She’d killed a Skiohra matriarch by whacking her head with a steel pipe. She’d only meant to incapacitate the alien, but Skiohra physiology was still unknown to her, and the impact resulted in the Matriarch’s death. And with her, over fifty-thousand embryo Skiohra who, as far as she understood, were all completely developed individuals living inside the matriarch, just waiting for their bodies. Most never live long enough to get a body. In the case of the Matriarch Proctor killed, none of them did.
Fifty thousand dead. With one blow from Proctor. Such a small, insignificant action that had unthinkable consequences.
They’d won the war. The Swarm was destroyed, and the Skiohra liberated from the Swarm’s influence. Not to mention humanity saved. The upper Skiohra leadership officially forgave her for her actions, but the anger simmered under the surface. And in the few dealings she’d had with the Skiohra since then, the name followed her: Mother-killer.
She felt it even more acutely now, in the aftermath of the battle with the Golgothics, and she collapsed on the couch by the wall. In the final analysis, forty-two crew members had died that day. Eight of them while she was waiting for Zivic to float far enough away from the shuttle to survive the explosion. Waiting for Mumford to take his data.
Eight. Including Ensign Flay. Pregnant Ensign Flay.
Mother-killer.
The door chimed. She didn’t answer.
It opened anyway, and Captain Volz stepped through. “Ballsy,” she whispered, not even moving from her prone position.
He sat down next to her, still silent.
“I messed up. It’s all my fault.”
A moment’s silence.
“That doesn’t sound like the Shelby I know.”
She stared at him. She wanted to glare, but didn’t even have that in her. All she wanted to do was escape. Disappear. Run from the ever-growing pile of bodies left in her wake. “How can I keep going? Keep doing this? Letting people die. Making people die, through my actions. Or inactions. If I breathe, someone dies. If I give a command, someone dies. If I don’t give a command, someone dies. I just … can’t. Not anymore. Not again. It’s all my fault.”
“Bullshit,” he said.
She sat up and faced him, hoping against hope that the tear on her cheek was just sweat. She was not a crier. “I killed eight people today, Ballsy.”
“And you saved my son,” he said, his lips tightening. “For as much as I hate the bastard, I’m … I’m glad he’s alive. Thank you, Shelby.”
“But I killed eight people doing it,” she said. A pit had formed in her stomach. The same pit she’d felt decades ago when she’d realized what she’d done to the Skiohra.
“Again, if you’ll permit me to repeat myself …” he leaned in close to her, face to face. “Bull. Shit.”
She pushed him away. “Just … stop. Let me wallow in self-pity in peace. It’s part of the magic of command, you know. I’ve got to be the Iron Lady out there. But I pay for it every now and then in here with a good pansy-ass cry.”
He chuckled. Grimly. “Shelby, do I need to say it? Again? Bullshit. Seriously, you’re what, seventy years old? You’ve commanded more ships and men and women into battle than any officer alive. You of all people should know that you don’t bear responsibility for those deaths.”
“Of course I do!” She swiveled on the couch to face him. “Of course I do! I’m the commanding officer of this ship, and anyone that dies here is my responsibility.”
He waved a hand, as if batting aside her argument. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Shelby, we both know that the responsibility for those deaths lies in one place, and only one place.” He pointed over to the bulkhead. “That ship. Those aliens. The Golgothics, or whatever we’re calling them. They’re responsible for those deaths. No one else. You? You’re responsible for the rest of us being alive. Never forget that.”
She wiped her eye with a sleeve. “Ballsy, I … look. You remember the Skiohra? My history with them? Mother-killer? I just … it just all came ba
ck to me today. Between getting shot at down there on San Martin, then leading us through that battle, and making decisions that lead to deaths, after over a decade of not having to make a decision more monumental than where to go out to lunch, it’s just … a little jarring. Plus, Ensign Flay….”
He nodded. “Yeah. I heard. That’s why I’m here, because I knew you’d take that hard.”
A long silence.
She turned away and leaned back to the wall behind the couch. “You know I miscarried once?” She watched his face. Studying his reaction. He flinched slightly. There was something there.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he said. “When was that?”
“Oh, long, long time ago. I was like twenty. Had a fling with a guy. He was … fantastic, but lied about his protection. Before I knew it I was two months along and … well, I was two years into my first science degree—”
He snorted, then flushed. “Sorry. Bad time to call you a nerd?”
She shook her head in mock disgust. Ballsy was always ballsy. “—Two years along, and I decided, well, I decided I’d keep it, of course. And then, a month later, he was gone.”
He. At that moment she realized she’d never even told anyone besides her brother and his wife, never mind revealing the sex.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I know it must be hard for you. With Ensign Flay. I’ve lost people too, Shelby. Lots of people. Hundreds. It never got easy. Even when it seemed routine, it was never easy. I just … you know this better than anyone alive … I just got numb to it. Like a strange combination of searing pain and guilt every time it happened, and a dull numbness at the ghoulish routine of it all.”
She nodded in agreement. “You paused there. A moment ago, when I mentioned the miscarriage.” She phrased it as a statement, but the question was implied.
He shook his head. “Not my place to say. I’ll let her tell you, if she wants to.”
“Who?”
He shook his head. “Not my place. But I’ll say this. Ethan was grounded from flying for very good reason. He was reckless. Unbelievably reckless. Like he was trying to one-up me and his mom.”
“Spacechamp,” she said, remembering the pilot from the ISS Warrior.
“Yeah. I mean, Ethan and I had a huge falling out after the divorce. Accused me of … well, doesn’t matter. He was only fifteen. His mom married a guy right away. Zivic. And Ethan changed his last name just to spite me. He was young. And I was….”
“You. You were you.”
“Yeah.” He breathed deep. “Anyway, he had this chip on his shoulder. Had something to prove, you know? Parents were two of the most legendary fighter pilots of the war. He had to be his own man. Be better than us. So he was … reckless. Around the time of the accident, he’d hitched up with Jerusha—”
“Hitched up? I didn’t know they were that serious.”
He chuckled. “Heh, yeah, at the time, neither did I. Anyway, they were an item. Had plans to get married. Start a family. She was going to retire early and he was going to keep flying and … well. Then the accident.”
“Tell me about it. All of it. I only heard snippets and rumors. I was fleet admiral at the time, but stuff like that didn’t always trickle up to me. I only read the final report.”
He shrugged. “Nothing much to tell, really, beyond what was probably in that report. He was flying his mom and stepdad around in a shuttle over France during leave, and he was trying to impress them, and … crashed. Like I said. Reckless. He was a wreck. So was I. We … fought. More. At the funeral, no less—your stereotypical family brawl right over the grave.”
“Oh—” she said.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “And things got really rough between him and Jerusha. Really rough. She was a wreck. And she, well … between the trauma and the fighting and the grief….”
“Oh my god,” she said, putting two and two together. “She was pregnant.”
“You didn’t hear it from me. Not my place. But I just tell you all this so you know the history there, before you decide to put Ethan back into the cockpit of another bird. Before you decide to put more lives in his hands.”
She held her head in her own hands. But after a moment, she stood up and unsecured two cups from the cupboard. “He was amazing today, Ballsy. He may have singlehandedly destroyed that ship, helped us extract vital intel from the inside of it by giving us enough time to complete the scan—you know, in case they come back in greater numbers I’d sure as hell like to be prepared.”
He nodded. “And he saved those three kids from the research station.”
She poured tea into the two cups and handed one to him. “That too. All the more reason that we need to consider using him again, assuming this situation isn’t over yet. If these aliens come back, I want all the weapons and tools at my disposal that we have. And your son is one of them.”
The door chimed, and Proctor waved the door open. Lieutenant Qwerty took a step inside. “Ma’am, meta-space message from Admiral Mullins at CENTCOM Bolivar. He’s demanding you deliver Lieutenant Zivic to his custody immediately. Uh, and the shuttle that he stole. Fenway. And the mechanic that came with him. Sara Batak.”
Proctor raised an eyebrow. “Speak of the devil.” She turned to Ballsy. “Has Ethan said anything about what happened back at Watchdog?”
He shrugged. “Haven’t had time to talk to him yet. He’s still in sickbay. Got a bad radiation dose from that explosion.”
She stood back up, setting her tea aside. “Thank you, Commander. Please tell Admiral Mullins that we’ll be there as soon as the situation permits. Dismissed.”
Qwerty retreated, and the door closed. Ballsy stood up and handed the empty cup back to her. “Sounds like we need to have a long heart to heart with my son.”
She nodded, and walked to the door. “Yes. But not yet. I think it’s time we go talk to his companion.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Irigoyen Sector, Bolivar System, Bolivar
CENTCOM Bolivar, Command center
“Admiral Mullins?”
The aide poked his head into the office, and Mullins waved him in. “Any word?”
A curt nod. The lieutenant handed him a datapad. “The Independence is damaged from its engagement with the Golgothics, sir. They’re going to continue repair operations, and get to us when they can.”
“And they confirmed they have Zivic and the mechanic in their custody?” He leaned forward in his seat, studying the message from the Independence’s comm officer.
“Yes, sir.”
Mullins scanned through the data file on the Independence, her status, damage from the battle—everything that the comm officer had attached to the meta-space message he’d sent in reply to Mullins’s own.
Something popped out at him. A name in the list of officers.
Volz. Commander Air Group.
Mullins stood up abruptly. “Alert the captains. We need to accelerate the schedule.”
“Sir?”
Mullins urgently paced out into the hallway and back to the operations center. “You heard me.”
“Aye, sir. But, shouldn’t we wait until—”
Mullins cut him off with a brisk shake of his head. “No. No time. There’s something we all missed.”
“What?”
The door to the operations center slid open at the last second. “That Lieutenant Zivic’s old man is on the Independence. We can’t afford a lapse of operational security right now. Tell the captains.”
The aide nodded and saluted. “Aye, aye, sir.” He turned away to go to the comm center.
“And Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir?”
Mullins dropped his voice. “I don’t need to remind you to keep this off any channel that Curiel can monitor.”
The aide nodded again. “Of course, sir. Non-IDF channels are harder to encrypt, but we have a workaround.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Irigoyen Sector, San Martin Syst
em, El Amin
Brig, ISS Independence
They don’t make brigs like they used to, thought Proctor. The shiny plastic door slid open to reveal the cell beyond, whose walls were made of the same smooth material, looking more like a sterile, plastic psych ward room than a jail cell. She supposed the flimsiness of it was a purposeful deception. The door could probably withstand several rpg blasts and a plasma torch. Lure would-be escapees into revealing their hand, only to be stopped by progress in materials science. The irreverent slogan of her favorite college professor rang in her ears. Science, bitches!
“Sara Batak?” said Proctor, stepping into the cell. Captain Volz followed.
“Ma’am,” protested the marine on duty. “It’s against regulation for flag officers to go into detainee’s cells without—”
She spun around to face him and held up a hand to quiet him. “That will be all, corporal. Dismissed. Please guard the doors and see that we’re not disturbed.”
Chagrined, the marine took a step back, and looked from Batak to Proctor to Volz. Apparently deciding the mechanic didn’t pose a threat to either of them, he saluted and retreated past the doors to the brig and shut them inside. She turned back to Batak.
“You were on Watchdog Station when it blew?”
The mechanic nodded.
“Going through your records it appears you’re an employee of something called Snell Staffing Corporation? I presume you’ve been contracted out to one of the major defense conglomerates?”
“That’s right.” Batak nodded. “Snell hired us out to Shovik-Orion as temp workers about a year ago. I figure Shovik-Orion don’t want to pay benefits, so they rely on places like Snell to get them through the loopholes.”
“Is that legal?” Ballsy turned to Proctor. “Can they do that?”
Proctor nodded. Unfortunately, during her stint as fleet admiral she’d witnessed the grift, waste, fraud, and abuse firsthand. But as the corporations were private entities and she was military, her hands were tied. She could steer contracts to the certain reputable contractors, but in her opinion, it was always simply to the least bad of all the available options.