by Nick Webb
The girl tugged at her sleeve, insistent. “The virus.” Her face was white. “The modified Seed virus. They’re starting to transmit it again.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Earth, Upper Atmosphere
Western Pacific Ocean
VSF Arianna King
Bridge
He burst onto the bridge with the map rolled up in one hand.
“How’re we doing?”
“Breaking atmo.” Greer looked over at him with a nod. “We’ll be in position for the drop in a few minutes.”
“Any pursuit?”
“None yet.” A tap of the man’s fingers brought up a map, and a red bulls-eye. “Tokyo’s gone, remember? They don’t have many other cities in range, so they aren’t flying a lot of patrols around here. Still, good to get in and out quick.”
Larsen nodded. He wanted desperately to say something to distract himself, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
He’d left her. He’d left Laura, quite possibly to her death.
He knew exactly what she would have told him to do if he’d tried to stay with her, but that didn’t make this any easier. He looked at the view of Earth, its warm colors bright with life, and tried to keep it together.
“Sir, if I could ask….” Greer looked around himself. “What are we dropping here?”
Right. This was exactly the sort of thing you should give a reason for. He was risking all of their lives with this.
“Communications buoy.” The lie rolled off his tongue easily. “It’ll help us jam their satellites when it comes time for an invasion.”
There were some intrigued murmurs, and the crew went back to their work with a greater sense of purpose. Now they were preparing for something, laying the groundwork for a day they all longed to see.
“Sir, we’re ready.” Greer nodded at him.
“Drop the payload.” He didn’t hesitate.
Larsen watched the screen as the small capsule detached, quickly plummeting on its trajectory towards the Marianas Trench, its depths hidden beneath miles of Earth’s swirling seas.
His crew waited, ready for the order to execute their exit protocol. But Larsen held still, following the capsule’s blinking trajectory as it arced towards Earth. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a brief alert sounded: target reached.
Good. Larsen waited for the knot in his stomach to release, but the tension would not budge. He knew what that confirmation meant. It was the confirmation of the loss of Earth. Humanity would be homeless. He should feel horrified, but he was so tired of the countless battles—with the Telestines, with other humans, even with Pike—that all he could feel was the dull satisfaction of fulfilling his promise to Laura Walker.
He would gladly see every one of the Telestines dead. He would pull the trigger himself, if he needed to.
He had promised her.
And when the others learned the truth … well, he wouldn’t think about that. He’d been happier not knowing a great many things.
“Execute emergency atmosphere exit protocol C on my mark.”
Larsen took one last look at the blue jewel rotating silently beneath them.
“Go.” It’s over now. We can leave.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Near Earth
EFS Intrepid
Bridge
A barrage of missiles burst across the lower decks. The Intrepid thrummed with the reverberating onslaught.
“Ma’am, fire reported in gunnery—”
“Ma’am, emergency bulkheads in sections 18–23 of Deck 4 are now sealed off for a possible breach—”
“Ma’am.” One voice cut above the others. Desperate eyes met Walker’s gaze. “Thrusters are offline. No response. We’re dropping, fast—”
“I’ll go,” Delaney cut in.
“What?” Walker whipped her head around, eyes widening. “No!”
“I know more about those systems than any of the kids down there,” he replied bluntly.
“You heard her.” She leaned close to whisper furiously. “There may be a hull breach. I need you here.”
His eyes took in the sudden panic on her face and he smiled.
“You don’t,” he said softly. His face was lit by the glow of the videoscreens, Earth a blue-green blur in the side of her vision. “You need me there, keeping this ship together so you can have a full fleet.”
“For God’s sake, Jack, we have engineers!”
“I’m better than they are, and right now, we need better.” He was already moving, squeezing her hands and moving away too quickly for her to grab at his hand and haul him back.
She took two steps and snatched at his sleeve.
“Laura—”
“You get out if the hull goes, you hear me?” Her voice was shaking. “No heroics.”
“No heroics,” he agreed, far too easily. And then he was gone, and she was staring after him like a lost little four-year-old.
“Ma’am—”
“I know.” She pulled herself together. She couldn’t think about the hull buckling right about now. The Intrepid had made it through a dozen engagements by this point. The old girl would hold a little longer.
She focused on the battle readout. “Swing broadside. We’re going to direct everything we’ve got at the Pius. If we take George out, there’s a chance the rest of them may stand down.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Near Earth
EFS Intrepid
Engine Deck
Jack Delaney’s breath came short and his knees creaked as he took the stairs down toward the engine rooms.
His grandfather had been right. Age was a damned curse.
He let the pain occupy his mind. Pain kept him grumpy and grumpiness kept him from grasping the magnitude of what was happening: that they might very well die in a skirmish with their own mutinied ships, in an entirely meaningless battle, before there was any chance to save Earth.
Grumpiness kept him fixated, instead, on the fact that the goddamned gravitational calibration wasn’t working correctly, and he was going to have to crawl around the baseboards on aching knees for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few weeks. The deck crew couldn’t handle it, they’d failed to fix it a dozen times, stymied by old controls that had been thrown together hastily rather than with careful planning and structure. None of them had lived through the first exodus—none of them knew the peculiar logic of the machines that had been built then.
He jumped when a tall figure appeared in the hallway ahead of him.
“There you are,” Pike said grimly as he fell in alongside Delaney. “Gravitational calibration again?”
“What are you doing?” His voice wasn’t as strong as it should be. Damn age, and damn these lungs of his. “Get to the bridge.”
“You need help,” Pike said simply. “And I don’t think Walker particularly wants to see me where I have no sense being in the first place. I can do more from here.”
“Get to the bridge,” Delaney said again. He grabbed Pike’s arm and stared up into those blue eyes. “Listen to me. Thrusters are not responding. We are going down. I am going to fix them, but that doesn’t solve the problem of how many ships the Funders have. You may need to get your little girl off this ship.” He thought of the way Pike watched the Dawning—like his heart was outside his body, like he would tear the world apart just to protect her.
Delaney knew that look.
“And Laura,” he added quietly. “Get the admiral off the ship, too. We need her.”
Pike’s face closed off at the mention of Walker. “I—”
The ship rocked sideways and they both slammed into the wall. Delaney brushed the side of his head, feeling blood sticky against his fingers, and locked eyes with Pike.
“Listen to me.” He stepped forward to speak the words quietly in Pike’s ear, the words he had tried to say a dozen times to Walker. She had always brushed him off, but Pike listened quietly.
And then the man looked at him, his face lit sp
oradically by the flashing emergency lights.
“How can you believe that?” he asked quietly.
“I have to,” Delaney said, just as softly. “She’s like a daughter to me. You trust that girl with just as much blind faith, and don’t tell me you don’t. You know I’m right. Now go. I’ll take care of the machines.”
Pike swallowed, hunched his shoulders, and then ducked at the sudden sharp sound of scraping metal nearby.
There was no more time for decisions.
“Go.” Delaney spun him around and shoved him. “Go!”
He took the next flight of stairs as fast as his aching knees would allow, and, to his relief, heard Pike’s pounding footsteps headed up the stairwell.
The doors to the engine rooms slid open, and he was greeted by acrid smoke and urgent shout mixed with the occasional scream.
Time to pray they were gambling correctly. Delaney let the doors slide closed behind him and strode into the conflagration, still grumbling about aching knees and young mechanics under his breath.
CHAPTER FORTY
Near Earth
EFS Intrepid
Engine Room
Delaney thrust his arm into the gap between two of the supports and jerked his hand back almost instantly with a sharp hiss. The metal, far too hot now, had seared a bright stripe onto the back of his hand.
He could barely see through the smoke. The only sounds in here were the crackling comms and the coughing crew as they desperately tried to find a way to brace the machinery. Somewhere in the haze, Delaney saw the bright flash of welding equipment. A desperate attempt to keep the ship together?
For all the good it would do them. They were crashing. Whole or in pieces, it wouldn’t matter.
They were working with a feverish intensity. Whatever had hit above them, the airlock doors had slammed down. They were shut in here, stuck on a ship that was half-dead already. They could only pray that Walker had things under control on the bridge, and work to give her the power she needed to maneuver.
There was a shriek and a groan, and Delaney felt his stomach slip oddly sideways.
“What the hell?” The yell, from one of the younger members of the crew, was followed by a hacking cough.
“It’s nothing.” He kept his voice sharp. “We’re working on the calibrators, what the hell do you think it is? Keep working. We must be getting somewhere with this.”
“Right.” The call came back apologetically. “Sorry.”
The thing about young people these days, Delaney reflected, was that they didn’t know the machinery they worked on. They had no idea that he was lying.
The disorienting jolt they had felt was the Intrepid beginning to hit Earth’s atmosphere.
They had seconds left.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Earth, Upper Atmosphere
EFS Intrepid
Bridge
The hit from the latest missile spun them too hard for the engines to compensate and the ship shuddered, tipped, and began to accelerate into the atmosphere.
“Ullmer, give me the status on Larsen’s group of destroyers.” Tell me they dropped the damned bomb. Though, of course, Ullmer wouldn’t know about that.
“They’re away, ma’am.” Ullmer was gripping the desk to keep from tipping sideways as the ship listed, but the idea of them crashing was too big for her—at least she could tell Walker what was happening with Larsen’s ships. “All three have disengaged from orbit and begun acceleration.”
“Thank you, Ullmer.” She was shaking like a leaf. She had prepared for this moment every day, for years—or so she thought.
Her ship was going to go down.
Now that she was here, it occurred to her that she had no idea how to die. It was a ridiculous thought. Everyone died. It clearly didn’t take much skill. But she still didn’t know how to do it, or what it would be like. Would she feel anything?
She was afraid.
Some piece of her told her to let that go. She didn’t know how to die, but she did know how to do one thing: kill other ships.
If she was going to die, so was George. She had to trust in her engineering crew to get them back into space, and focus on her own talents in the meantime.
“Train all fire on Pius,” she ordered. She linked her hands behind her back and felt the bizarre sensation of the resistance of Earth’s atmosphere slowing their fall. Albeit with a glowing fire that blazed all around the hull as they plunged deeper.
It was a strange irony that Earth was going to kill her before she managed to kill it. She looked over at the girl, and met inscrutable black eyes.
“Get to a shuttle, and get off the ship.” She hesitated. “With Pike.”
She didn’t want Pike to die. After everything, she didn’t want him to die. The girl opened her mouth to say something, and Walker looked away. She didn’t really know how to do goodbyes, either.
“Laura.” Delaney’s familiar voice. “You need to evacuate.”
“There’s no time.” She paused. “You still could, though.”
“I’m not gettin’ off. A captain goes down with his ship.” A pause. “And this isn’t your ship, it’s mine. So go on. Your captain’s ordering you.”
She blinked rapidly. “I’d think it would set your soul at ease to know I died today, before….” Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to speak the truth in front of her bridge crew. She looked up and around at all of them. “Sound the order to evacuate,” she said. “All of you, go. Your orders are to get off Earth and back to the fleet. Reclaim it—and defeat our enemies, whoever they are. Go.”
Most of them went. The rest, the navigation crew at their desks, hung on with a savage sort of intensity, still desperately trying to right the ship.
Fools. The thought was dispassionate. She felt lightheaded, and couldn’t tell if it was due to her emotions or the sensation of free fall.
“Laura.” Delaney was still in her ear as the evacuation alarm began to sound. “Get off the ship. Your life is worth saving. Go to the window.”
“What?” Her ears were beginning to ache. There must be dozens of hull breaches to let them feel the change from vacuum to atmosphere. Was this what it always felt like to land on a planet with an atmosphere? If so, she hated it. She found a cold humor in that.
“Go to the window at the back of the bridge,” Delaney instructed.
She went, simply because there was nothing else to do. The guns were locked onto George’s ship, and still firing. There wasn’t much of anything worth wrapping up, given that the ship would soon be smithereens.
Briefly, she wondered where her drive to live had gone, but that mystery didn’t seem to have an answer. She stared out at the swirling blue-green planet, which was growing larger every second. Was Delaney going to have her escape somehow?
“What now?”
“Look at it. Look at that, and understand what it means.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Earth, Upper Atmosphere
EFS Intrepid
Engine Room
“D’you know what you’re looking at?” Delaney asked her hoarsely.
Outside, he could hear wind shrieking around the torn pieces of the ship. There was no way they would right themselves with this drag.
“An … island.”
“Your home. That island is called England. Your ancestors lived there.” She still didn’t understand, and now, when it was too late, he was desperately afraid that she would never grasp it. She had never looked, after all. Why hadn’t he noticed that she never looked at Earth? She didn’t let herself want it. “Air without filters, so much water that we could never drink it all. Fish to eat, land for crops.”
“Jack—”
“You listen to me!” He slammed a hand against the too-hot metal. The heat was climbing and he was starting to get dizzy. The room was shaking so hard he could barely make his way to the airlock door. “What you’re looking at is hope, Laura. You can give humans as much food and water as they need, and wit
hout hope, they will still die. Do you hear me? You know in your heart how much we need Earth. You know what it cost the Telestines to lose their home. You’ve seen Tel’rabim. He could defeat us and he still wouldn’t be whole. Their planet is gone. Ours is still here.”
“Jack.” She was crying, he could hear her.
“You can still right the ship if you get rid of the drag,” he told her, his voice softening. And then, more quietly: “I love you. I trust you.”
The vast engine compartment was whipping back and forth on the ship like a dog’s tail. Every time it clanged against the ship it changed the trajectory, making steering impossible, and of course the drag was immense.
Without it, the helmsman could use the airlines and emergency thrusters to soften their impact. To survive. Maybe.
He gripped the final last manual override, grunting, with all the force his aging body could muster, and then he twisted and ripped it from the socket. He felt his section of the ship with its jagged metal tear free and tumble away. His body tumbled too, and his head slammed into the side of the bulkhead. Delaney thought he saw new stars burning in the pain that coursed through his entire body. Before he could wonder where these stars would lead him, his body went limp, and he knew nothing.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Earth, Upper Atmosphere
EFS Intrepid
Bridge
“No!” She felt the section of the ship go. He’d been in engineering, of course he had, and the drag was gone, the ailerons extended, and—
There were shouts, dimly. A hand grabbed her to haul her toward one of the crash seats; voices were screaming to one another as the ship’s spin began to slow.