by C H Gideon
Jenkins furrowed his brow in confusion. “Do you have any idea how difficult it was for us to get here with the wormhole gates down?”
Alice smiled, and for a moment Jenkins didn’t see a Solarian interrogator or even a cybernetically-enhanced member of humanity’s Solar branch. He saw a woman who seemed genuinely delighted by what she was about to say, and it was one of the most beautiful things he’d seen in a long, long time.
“It seems you brought everything you needed to safely return home, Lee,” she said knowingly before moving through the crowd of Metalheads.
First through the door was Captain Xi Bao, who moved to Jenkins’ bedside and scowled at the myriad medical devices attached to his body.
She was followed by Podsy, who clutched Jem’s ruby-red cylinder to his chest. Concerningly, to Jenkins’ eye, Jem’s crystalline surface seemed to lack its former luster, having turned at least partially opaque at the core.
After Podsy came Styles and Colonel Moon, followed by Chief Rimmer. Lieutenant Nakamura, Private Quinn, Lieutenant ‘Sargon’ Benjamin, and even Lieutenant Winters were also present as Metalheads streamed in.
As the survivors of Operation Antivenom filled the cramped room, Jenkins was moved by the faces he didn’t see. Colonel Li. Lieutenants Ford and Yuan. But most notable was the absence of Sergeant Major Trapper, and the briefest look to Lieutenant Podsednik saw Podsy shake his head in silence.
It had been as costly as they had all known it would be, but against all odds, they had done it.
They had saved Earth, and probably the entire Solar system, safeguarding the lives of a hundred billion fellow humans in the process.
Maybe General Akinouye would have known the right words to say as the silent, unified band of Metalheads stood around his bed following such a momentous and costly victory, but Jenkins was not Akinouye’s equal. He knew with every fiber of his being that he would never measure up to the late general’s high standard, so he spoke the only words that seemed appropriate under the circumstances…
“Let’s go home.”
21
True Illumination from a Spark
“I still can’t believe Trapper’s gone,” Xi said after settling in aboard the Solarian transport. She shared a cabin with Podsy, Styles, and Quinn, with Jem silently settled across Podsy’s lap.
“You should have seen him, Xi.” Podsy shook his head in unmasked awe. “I’ve never seen anyone do what he did. A fist-sized grouping of three rounds with a fifty, from his knees, in three seconds. And those RPGs at the end…”
Podsy seemed shaken by the memory, prompting Xi to squeeze his shoulder supportively. “I thought that old bastard would outlive all of us…or at least you, Styles,” she added with a lopsided grin.
“Yeah,” Styles deadpanned. “Because I’m ‘Mr. Dangerous’ over here, always running headlong into the enemy HQ with nothing but a sidearm and a well-stuffed codpiece.”
“Is that a jab at my rack?” Xi retorted, projecting outrage.
“It is what it is, Captain.” Styles grinned.
“You guys are terrible.” Quinn sighed, drawing laughter from the other three.
“We’re like that maggot-laden cheese they used to make in Europe,” Styles assured her.
“Yeah.” Xi snorted. “Smelly, full of holes, and a living testament to the fact that some boundaries should never be crossed.”
“Oh, come on,” Podsy chided. “The way I see it, you’re just talking about a little bit of extra super-fresh protein in the cheese. Sure, it may taste like ass, but that’s something everyone in this room is familiar with after licking Drill Sergeant McMasters’ boots for six weeks of Basic.”
“Oh, Jesus, Podsy! I could have gone the rest of my life without thinking about her.” Quinn groaned, rubbing her eyes with her hands and drawing Xi’s attention to the machined nut on the woman’s ring finger.
“It’s not just Trapper we won’t be seeing again,” Xi said, casting a somber shadow over the berth. “It’s funny…I was there when General Akinouye died. I saw it happen with my own eyes. It hurt, and still does, but it felt real. Our losses in Antivenom? They still don’t feel real, you know?”
“I do,” Podsy replied, and the others nodded. He leaned forward intently. “What’s going to happen to the Legion now?”
“Kavanaugh’s probably already sold us out by now.” Styles snorted. “I don’t know why the old man didn’t boot her out years ago.”
“Command is never as simple as it seems like it should be,” Xi said, recalling a dozen different decisions she’d made in recent months that she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt had been less than ideal given the circumstances and available intel at the time. “General Akinouye played the hand he was dealt, just like any of us, and humanity might not have survived without him running this thing precisely the way he did. Second-guessing is one thing, but if Akinouye kept her around, Kavanaugh must have been a valuable member of the team.”
“Probably,” Podsy allowed. “But how can you undo an entire branch’s legacy while its longest-tenured leader’s body is still warm? What kind of person does that?”
“An ambitious one,” Quinn suggested, drawing an approving nod from Styles.
“Not just ambitious,” Xi corrected, “but arrogant. She didn’t see the wisdom in what the old man did, which was an epic mistake. We do things a certain way for a host of reasons, some of which are obvious and others almost impossible to recognize. Akinouye didn’t stand at the Legion’s head for as long as he did by accident. Kavanaugh, at the very least, should have had some respect for his leadership.”
“It doesn’t matter, though.” Styles sighed. “It’s out of our hands at this point. I can’t stop thinking about whether or not the Fleet kept our homes safe. That Jemmin gate-crasher…” He visibly shivered. “I don’t even want to think about what would happen if two of those things came through a gate one after the other.”
“It is unlikely,” Jem suggested, speaking for the first time since arriving aboard the Solarian transport, “that Jemmin would have taken additional action against the Terran Republic. Jemmin is methodical, and its failure to take New America 2 will cause a radical adjustment in its priorities, but that adjustment will not manifest against your worlds for at least several of your weeks.”
“How confident can you be about that?” Xi asked skeptically.
“As confident as you are that your heart will continue beating,” Jem replied matter of factly. “Jemmin is vast and incorporates tremendous computational power into its matrix, but it is hardly incomprehensible. If one understands the underlying fundamentals of a thing, predicting its behavior on a macro scale is a simple if energy-intensive endeavor.”
“What do you think Jemmin is doing right now, Jem?” Styles pressed.
“That depends primarily on the Vorr’s current posture,” Jem said indifferently. “I was tasked by my forebears with disseminating knowledge that would be crucial to combating Jemmin. What is done with that knowledge is ultimately determined by those who receive it.”
“How’d we measure up, Jem?” Podsy asked with open curiosity. “You gave us information crucial to humanity’s survival, along with the evidence of Jem’un interaction with humanity thousands of years ago. How do you think we did with it?”
“The people of Sol were sufficiently impressed by the evidence I presented to you and which you in turn presented to them,” Jem replied. “If you are asking for my opinion of ‘Operation Antivenom,’ I will say that you not only validated my forebears’ collective expectations of your species, but you exceeded them. Jem’un life students long believed humanity to have some of the highest potential of all intelligent species. Their sole concern was whether you would survive your recklessness.”
“Goddammit,” Xi quipped. “First the Vorr call us unintelligent, then the Solarians call us ‘aboriginal,’ and now a dead race that literally wiped itself out with a fucking social movement calls us ‘reckless?’”
“Con
sider,” Jem easily riposted, “the fact that it was your species’ inherent mistrust and willingness, or possibly even eagerness to flout authority, that led to Operation Antivenom’s success. Such traits are integral to independent actors and are fundamentally incompatible with the continued progression of intelligence along the vast majority of development arcs. Even your own brains are segregated into specialized sub-components that are capable of both cooperating and actively competing with one another. These are inherently primitive traits, according to Jem’un study of life in the galaxy. Had humanity’s psycho-social makeup been any less primitive, it is unlikely that your species would have survived Jemmin’s machinations.”
“Way to pull it out there at the end, Jem.” Quinn smirked. “You almost made it sound like calling us ‘primitive’ was a compliment.”
The group laughed as the intercom blared to life with a woman’s voice. “We are breaking orbit in five minutes. Proceed to your flight stations.”
“Earth.” Styles sighed. “I never thought I’d get so close without actually setting foot on it. So close, yet so far away.”
“Careful,” Podsy muttered. “You wouldn’t want them to learn that you’d been planning to hack the One Mind even before learning about the Jemmin conspiracy.”
Xi’s eyes went wide, as did Styles’ and Quinn’s. The ship almost certainly had ears in every compartment, given the Solarians’ totalitarian approach to information, but Podsy just laughed as the same woman’s voice once again came over the intercom. “The terms of your amnesty protect you from those charges, Mr. Styles…assuming you promise not to pursue such efforts in the future.”
Podsy slapped his thigh while doing his utmost to hold back the tide of laughter yearning to burst past his lips as the color rapidly drained from Styles’ face.
“Come now, Mr. Styles,” the woman on the intercom continued. “You of all people should know that someone is always watching…as your exhaustive collection of hidden-camera pornography attests.”
“You fucker!” Styles growled, chucking Podsy hard on the shoulder and causing Podsednik’s pent-up, infectious laughter to fill the room. “That’s not funny!” he snapped. “Now everyone in Sol knows about my collection!”
“Not everyone,” the woman interjected. “Merely eighty-two percent of us, which is a little over eighty-two billion people.”
Now it was Xi’s turn to laugh. She didn’t want to know how Podsy had pulled off that particular prank, but it earned top marks across the board as far as she was concerned. “Well played, Podsy.” She offered a high-five, which Podsednik quickly supplied.
Even Styles grudgingly gave his approval of the pre-flight joke as the transport broke orbit and burned for the Sol 1 wormhole gate, through which a field of stars was still clearly visible when the Terran-filled vessel pulled away from Luna.
Colonel Jenkins was still in a bio-bed recovering from the wounds he had suffered at Luna One, which put Colonel Moon and Captain Xi on the transport’s bridge during final approach to the Sol 1 wormhole gate. The transport, which had an alphanumeric designation of TV-0135, was one of the few starships Xi had been aboard that was equipped with an honest-to-God bridge.
With a wraparound viewing portal, the vessel’s transport deck seemed like a throwback to the seafaring days of humanity’s distant past when command bridges afforded the commanding officers maximum visibility. But human warships rarely, if ever, featured command decks with outside observation ports or viewing screens. And since Xi had only ever ridden warships through the void of interplanetary space, standing on an actual bridge was an experience she intended to savor.
Command and control centers or combat operations decks were well secured within fleet vessels.
The wormhole gate loomed before the ship, just close enough that she could make it out as a dull silver speck. Its magnified image was projected on the bridge’s central holodisplay, and Xi noted the glittering stars on the far side of the gate where none would be if it was active.
She didn’t know how the wormhole gates worked, and she didn’t much care to learn. She had been forced to study them during the battalion’s earliest training sessions since they were integral to Terran Fleet operations (and since, at that time, then-Commander Jenkins’ armor experiment had been under the Fleet banner and not Armor Corps’). But aside from wormholes involving a quartet of micro-black-holes, two on each ‘end’ of a gate pair, Xi suspected no member of the human race knew much of substance regarding the mysterious devices.
Somewhat alarmingly, the dormant wormhole was far from the most impressive feature on display. Xi and Colonel Moon exchanged several long, pointed glances as they beheld the most awe-inspiring sight in near-Earth space.
Stretching out in a perfect cloud formation that completely englobed the wormhole gate were four hundred Solar warships divided into penny packets and sub-fleets, some of which were individual pickets as well. The Solar Fleet was a breathtaking sight.
Xi guesstimated the fleet contained at least two hundred destroyer-class warships, a hundred cruisers, thirty battle carriers, and at least as many battleships. Several sleek, nimble-looking corvettes and cutters skirted the outer edges of the formation like hyenas stalking the perimeter of a camp in search of weakness while the heavies ignored their presence.
But one thing the Solarians lacked were rivals to the Terran Republican-class dreadnoughts. Not even the Solar battleships approached the scale of the Terran Fleet’s pride and joy, However, Xi knew that while size was usually decisive, it wasn’t always the most important factor when it came time to exchanging fire.
Still, the sight of the Solar fleet was enough to send chills down anyone’s spine. The assembled firepower on display was easily several times that of the entire Terran Fleet, although it was difficult to compare the two given the lack of Solar dreadnoughts. While the Solar fleet could certainly deliver a serious punch, a Republican-class dreadnought could take the best the enemy could throw at it while continuing to pour Terran fury from its keel-mounted mass driver array.
“We are at the designated coordinates, Colonel, Captain,” reported the transport’s commanding officer. She lacked a formal military rank, yet she conducted herself with measures of dignity and authority rarely seen in civilian circles.
“Thank you, Captain,” Colonel Moon acknowledged, turning pointedly to his junior officer. “Captain Xi, I believe it’s time.”
“Agreed.” She nodded, activating her wrist-link and calling down to Podsy. “Lieutenant, Jem is authorized to transmit the signal.”
“Confirmed, Captain,” Podsednik replied. “Transmitting signal now.”
The signal went out with a corresponding chime from her wrist-link. At first, nothing seemed to happen. Seconds stretched into a full minute, and nothing about the wormhole gate changed. Xi’s nerves began to fray as she wondered if Jem had failed, or worse…if Jem had some ulterior motive for bringing them all to this particular point.
She trusted Jem as much as she trusted anyone who wasn’t part of the Metal Legion, which was to say she didn’t trust him farther than she could throw him.
But her silent skepticism was short-lived; a brilliant flash erupted from the wormhole gate. As soon as Xi turned her focus to the magnified image of the gate, she was relieved that she could no longer see stars on the other side of the ring-shaped device.
“Sol 1 wormhole is online,” declared the transport’s CO, and like a school of fish, the cloud of Solar warships parted and reoriented.
With maneuvers that brought some of the ships within a hundred meters of each other, the Solar fleet moved with enviable precision and coordination as twenty warships separated into a column that moved toward the now-open wormhole gate. The first group of those warships were small, a dozen corvettes and cutters proceeding ahead of two battle carriers and three battleships, with a single courier vessel bringing up the formation’s rear.
Every human serviceman knew that the most dangerous period in any deployment
was the moment a ship passed through the mysterious wormhole gates. Despite humanity’s ongoing refinements to gate travel procedures, not a year went by without at least some human ships being destroyed while navigating the Nexus-linked transit system.
“I’ll never understand,” Colonel Moon muttered just loud enough for Xi to hear, “why Sol chose to position its gate so close to Earth.”
Xi had wondered the same thing from a young age.
When the Illumination League had initially extended humanity the offer of provisional inclusion in the interstellar organization, Sol had been granted the benefit of choosing where to place the Sol 1 wormhole gate. Standard practice was to place the all-important terminus gate near a gas giant in a species’ home star system several light-hours away from the homeworld.
Sol’s government had inexplicably placed the Sol 1 gate less than two light minutes from Earth on an orbit that kept its position almost perfectly stationary relative to the planet. Aside from Earth’s mildly eccentric orbit creating relatively minor fluctuations in the distance between the gate and humanity’s birthplace, the Sol 1 gate stood constant, motionless overwatch of the blue-green planet.
As she watched the Solarian warships file toward the reactivated wormhole, Xi was suddenly struck by a haunting thought…
What if the gate’s proximity to Earth was part of Jemmin’s plan all along? she wondered. What if Jemmin planned to use that proximity to expedite humanity’s erasure from the face of the galaxy?
She gritted her teeth as the first of the Solar warships disappeared over the wormhole’s event horizon. The second ship followed, then the third. The fourth. The fifth. One by one, each Solarian vessel was transmitted to the Sol 2 system, where a fleet the size of Sol 1’s was on constant deployment.
Xi could feel the tension throughout the sparsely-crewed bridge as the last of the warships ventured through the wormhole. She hoped Jemmin had spared the Solarians in Sol 2, rather than attempting to wipe them out as it had done to the Terrans of New America 2. Had the Terran dreadnoughts failed to unleash their full arsenal immediately upon Jemmin’s arrival in New America 2, it was likely that the Jemmin gate-crasher would have succeeded in clearing that star system of Terran assets.