Authors: Nick Webb
Isaacson’s eyes followed the path of several work crews as they walked the surface of the ship in gravity boots, carrying tools and boxes containing what he presumed was repair equipment. “How long has it been here?”
“Two and a half days.”
So
, he thought,
if everything happens like it did four months ago, the
Constitution
, and Granger, will go back through the same singularity he came out of in less than one day
.
Now, what do I do to take matters into my own hands? How to throw off Avery’s domination? How to not be played by Malakhov? By Volodin? By Granger and Norton and—shit—all of them?
Malakhov leaned over the low railing, holding loosely to a bar that connected the railing to the ceiling. “And in that time, we’ve cleaned up engineering—it was flooded with radiation from the damage it sustained with the Swarm—and I’ve installed some equipment you’ll find very useful in your mission. Ten singularities should do it. One for each of the six remaining Skiohra dreadnoughts. One for Avery. And three extra, just in case you need them.”
“You trust me to take the
Constitution
, fire singularities at the Skiohra dreadnoughts, send Avery into another, and then return in time for you to patch Granger back up and send him on his way back to Earth?”
“It’s not a matter of trust, Mr. Vice President. It’s a matter of interests. I know you. This aligns with your interests. You want to replace Avery. You want peace with me. You want to be rid of the Swarm. This accomplishes all three.”
He was right, of course. This
was
something Isaacson wanted. All three of them.
But he was tired. Sick and tired of being the tool. Of being the pawn in someone
else’s
game. That Isaacson was dead. Gone. He wouldn’t stand for it anymore. Malakhov was playing him, using him for his own purposes, just like Avery was doing. No more.
Malakhov grinned at him, and turned back to watch the work crews scurry over the
Constitution
. “I take from your silence that you’re in. Good. Preparations have already been made, and within—”
He was still leaning over the railing, and, surprising even himself, Isaacson grabbed the President and thrust him outward with all the strength he could muster.
Malakhov was surprisingly strong. The epic photographs of him weren’t exaggerations—before he could fall down three hundred meters into the cavern, he grabbed firmly onto the support bar that held up the railing, swinging out, and then toward the ledge, grabbing at the support railing with his other hand, dangling there, his face overcome by shock. This was clearly the last thing he expected.
Isaacson channeled his anger, all the bottled-up rage and violence he’d been suppressing over the months he’d been under Avery’s thumb. Every violent thought, every feeling of vengeance and malice he’d been pushing deep down within himself and away from Avery’s all-seeing view finally burst out. He screamed, kicking at Malakhov’s stomach and lunging out to punch the man in the face again and again.
In spite of Isaacson’s assault, Malakhov was managing to pull himself back onto the ledge.
Shit
, he thought. If the other man stood up, Isaacson was a goner. He kicked at the leg Malakhov had managed to swing up onto the ledge, and without even thinking pulled the pen from his pocket and rammed it straight into the man’s eye.
Malakhov screamed. He reached up to pull at the pen. Isaacson kicked at the remaining hand holding the rail.
And President Malakhov fell. Three hundred meters. Screaming, all the way down.
A final crunch confirmed he was gone. Isaacson felt a thrill of something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Control. Victory.
He was free.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Sickbay, ISS Victory
Interstellar Space, 2.4 Lightyears From Sirius
Granger looked down at the admiral. His friend. No—friend was too strong a word. But the man had stood up for him among the top brass when no one else would.
Now he was alone, with a General Norton who was possibly under Swarm influence, at least according to Zingano.
“Doctor, please inform the bridge of the Admiral’s wishes,” he said, looking sternly at the woman.
She nodded slowly, still in shock at seeing her first alien and losing her commanding officer within the span of a few minutes. “Commander Oppenheimer, this is sickbay....”
“Go ahead, Doctor,” came the reply. “Make it quick, we’re in a bit of a situation here....”
It wasn’t until then that Granger became aware of the ship shaking all around them as it was pounded by enemy fire. The battle had continued without him this whole time, but he hadn’t even noticed.
“Sir, Admiral Zingano is dead. And he invoked standing order ten.”
“Thank you, Doctor. I understand. Oppenheimer out—”
“No, sir,” she interrupted, “you don’t understand. Admiral Zingano named Tim Granger the commander of the
Victory
.”
Silence. Granger was sure he heard a muffled curse on the other end. “Is ... uh ... is he there now?”
“I am, Commander Oppenheimer. I’ll be up to the bridge shortly.”
Another pause. Granger supposed it involved more swearing. “I understand, sir. Orders until you get here?”
“Continue battle operations. You’ve done an excellent job so far, Commander. Please keep it up.” Krull issued a low moan. “Expect me shortly. Granger out.”
He motioned toward Zingano’s body, and the doctor called in a nurse to carry it away. Granger moved Krull onto the examination table.
“Captain...?” began the doctor. “What ... exactly ... is it?”
“She is a matriarch of the Skiohra people,” said Granger. Krull moaned again, softly. “Can you help her?”
“I don’t even know her anatomy, Captain. The only thing I can tell is that she bleeds, is bipedal, and has a similarly shaped head as us. Does it contain a brain? Does she breathe? I assume so, because of the nostrils. Does she—”
“I don’t know, doctor. Just start ... scanning her or something. Surely you’ll see something wrong.”
The doctor grimaced again, and pulled out a device, waving it slowly over Krull’s head, chest, and abdomen.
“Also, you should know, she has ... well, she has about twenty-two thousand Children inside her.” He forced a brief smile. “Don’t let that throw you off.”
The doctor shook her head. “This is all gibberish to me. I mean, I see organs. There’s a brain. But I don’t know what an appropriate blood pressure would be, I don’t know if these cells are anti-bodies or—”
“Hold on,” he said, reaching down to grab Krull’s hand. The Children helped him once. Surely they’d help him save their own mother.
He reeled backward. A flood of images assaulted his mind, They were crying out, in a frenzy.
Because she was dying.
Slow down
, he thought at them.
Too much, too fast.
He glanced at the images coming up on the display being fed from the doctor’s diagnostic device. Error messages flashed on the screen as the medical algorithms struggled to decipher the alien’s physiology.
Just tell me what to do. Slowly.
The flood stemmed to a trickle. The image of blood came into his mind, then numbers, then a few other simple procedures. “You need to raise her blood pressure up above...” he began, relaying all the information they were giving him. The stream ended with an image of her head injury, a bleeding brain, and a chemical formula. “Her brain is bleeding from where Proctor hit her. You need to stop the bleeding with ... something.” He was no chemist.
“With what?”
He strained at the formula, trying to remember his basic chemistry class at the academy. “Two carbons with hydrogens coming off ... a few nitrogens ... phosphorus....”
“That’s not helpful.”
He threw his hands up in the air. Krull was dying. And only she had the secret of what the Russians were up to, and how the Swarm was going to exploit it. “Just fix the brain bleed, doc. Do what you’d do for me. For him,” he pointed to Zingano’s body which lay near the wall. “She bleeds, she walks, she talks, just like the rest of us. Just give her what you’d give me.”
The ship lurched violently to the left, nearly throwing Krull off the bed. The doctor reached down and strapped restraints over the alien, swearing as she ranted about chemistry and anatomy and why the hell doesn’t anyone take basic science anymore and all this wouldn’t be necessary if only they’d give her proper equipment and....
“Doctor, I’ve got to go to the bridge. Keep her alive. Fix her. That’s an order, and your highest priority right now, even if your next patient is me. Understood?”
And with that, he ran out of sickbay, heading to the bridge and to what he knew would be a testy confrontation with General Norton.
If he, the military chief closest to the president, was compromised by the Swarm, then god help them all.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Bridge, ISS Victory
Interstellar Space, 2.4 Lightyears From Sirius
The marines that were supposed to guard the entrance to the
Victory
’s bridge were sprawled unconscious outside the doors, victims of the violent shaking and explosions rocking the ship. Every head snapped toward him as he strode onto the bridge. Commander Oppenheimer stood up. His face betrayed his feelings—it was clear what he thought of Granger. Admiral Zingano may have trusted the Hero of Earth, even amidst the rumors that he was collaborating with the Swarm, but Oppenheimer looked to be more skeptical.
“Commander Oppenheimer, I relieve you, sir,” said Granger.
Silence. Even amidst the shaking and rocking and distant booms and yells, every head on the bridge stared at Oppenheimer, to see what he would do.
“General Norton—before we q-jumped in—announced to all of us that you’d turned. That you’d been corrupted by the Swarm.”
Granger stared at him. There was nothing he was going to be able to say to convince them otherwise. Nothing to do but wait and see what they decided.
“But ... the Admiral trusted you. After Norton signed off, all Bill said under his breath was ‘bullshit.’ And Doc tells me he transferred command to you right before he passed.”
He stepped aside from the chair. “I stand relieved, sir.” He retreated to the XO’s station. “Please don’t get us all killed,” he said under his breath.
Granger smiled grimly, and took the captain’s chair. “We’re still alive, Commander. And while we’re still alive, we’ve got a fighting chance.” He examined his tactical readout at the command station to his right. The battle was a mess. The remaining Swarm carriers were pounding the surviving IDF ships, who fought back under the seemingly random fire from the dreadnought, which appeared to be shooting at both Swarm and IDF targets.
A green antimatter beam lanced out from the dreadnought and ripped into the nearest Swarm carrier, hitting it in a weak spot and piercing it through. But moments later the same turret focused its attention on the
ISS Panikkar
, one of
Victory
’s escort ships. The
Panikkar
fired back.
It was a free-for-all.
And he supposed the marines were still slogging through the ground war all along the hundred kilometer length of the dreadnought.
“Get me General Norton,” he said toward the comm station. The comm officer worked the controls. Granger turned around slowly, looking for a familiar face.
Where the hell was Proctor
?
“You’re on, Captain.”
“General Norton, this is Captain Granger commanding the
ISS Victory
. I strongly encourage you to call off—”
Norton’s angry voice interrupted him. “What the hell? Granger? Commander Oppenheimer, what is the meaning of this?”
“General, I’m the commanding officer of the
Victory
, by the express command of Admiral Zingano. I ask you again, sir, call off the attack and regroup to—”
“Like hell. Look, Granger, we’re doing well over there. We control about ... ten percent of the ship. But now that it’s started firing on us ... and these Swarm carriers are still hounding us....”
Why was the dreadnought firing on both sides? He reached out in his mind, calling to the Skiohra on the
Benevolence
, thinking the question to them.
You are all a threat. You must all be neutralized
, came the furious chorus of a reply. And he saw their strategy as they thought it: attack both the Swarm carriers, and IDF, keeping them on equal footing, such that neither would have the advantage over the other until it came down to the last two ships, most likely the
Victory
against one of the least damaged carriers. Then the
Benevolence
would lay into both of them, even if it meant sacrificing one of their own matriarchs.
Wait
, he told them.
I can save your matriarch. We can still destroy the Valarisi together. Just give me a chance.
Prove it
.
He had to get that army of marines to stand down. There was no negotiating with the Skiohra until they did. “General,” he began, “if I can convince the Skiohra to destroy the remaining Swarm carriers, will you order a cease-fire? Give us a chance to figure out what’s going on?”
Norton didn’t immediately reply, though he heard muffled discussion on the other end.
“General, too many lives are at stake. If we don’t act now, hundreds of thousands of IDF soldiers and officers will die.”
“Fine, Granger,” said Norton. “If you can get them to turn on their own ships, then fine. Give us a breather, and we’ll talk to them. For all the good it will do us.”
“Thank you, General. Granger out.”
He closed his eyes. This would require all his powers of persuasion.
Please
, he began.
Please stop firing on us. If you destroy the Valarisi ships, I can convince my superiors to withdraw all the soldiers on your ship
.
Lies
.
Believe me
.
Your people are not to be trusted. They have already demonstrated that.
But we can learn. We can learn from you. You are an honorable, ancient people. We have much to learn from you. Please grant us that chance
.