Authors: Nick Webb
Slowly, the color returned to his face. His heart rate increased on the monitor. The blood pressure rose. The levels of acid in his system began plummeting to normal levels as the virus began its work.
Proctor pulled something out of the drawer. “A sedative. We can’t just let you wake up now, can we? That would invite Swarm attention.”
Granger nodded. And right as the Granger lying on the table started opening his eyes, Proctor pressed the second syringe to his neck.
He flashed back to his own memories of the scene. There was the room—just as he remembered in his dreams. The tall viewport looking down on the planet. He was on his back, looking up at the overhanging lights, and he remembered feeling the presence of someone there. Someone behind him, standing just out of sight.
Someone
—that someone was
him
.
The heart rate on the monitor slowed as the sedative took effect, and the old Granger’s eyes fluttered shut.
“There. You’ll be asleep for awhile,” said Proctor. “Enough time for us to make some plans, at least.”
“Let’s get back to Polrum Krull. She can find the singularity pair that I came through, and we can see about sending me—him—back. And we still need to figure out what to do with the debris heading toward Earth—”
He paused, staring out the window. Now that he was
here
, where he’d been four months ago, the dreams—the memories—they were coming back more forcefully. He’d stood at
that
window, looking down at the planet. He remembered the feeling of nostalgia, that sense of home. With a start, he realized that Kharsa hadn’t been manipulating that part. He couldn’t create that feeling. He couldn’t force Granger to feel longing when he looked down at that planet. Perhaps Kharsa misdirected the feeling, altered the memory of what the world below actually looked like, made him remember a different planet—Kharsa’s planet.
But there was something else. The feeling was true—his homeworld, the Valarisi’s homeworld, that was indeed down there through the window, far below—and yet ... that wasn’t the whole story. Somewhere, somehow, close by, was his true homeworld. Well, “homeworld” was too precise a word. His—the Swarm’s—origin, was close. Not the Valarisi—the liquid beings, but the actual Swarm. He remembered
feeling
that. Looking down on Penumbra, and simultaneously feeling longing for the surface, and longing for his
true
home, somewhere close by.
“What is it, Tim?”
“We’re missing something,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Just a feeling.” Before he could explain himself, a marine stepped into the room.
“Sir, message from Lieutenant Diaz. He says more sensor contacts have appeared in the debris field.”
Proctor and Granger looked at each other.
“Fishtail,” they both said.
The marine shook his head. “He said there were two new fighters that appeared. Both with transponder prefixes that correspond to the
Constitution
.”
Two fighters?
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Executive Command Center, Russian Singularity Production Facility
High Orbit, Penumbra Three
Granger and Proctor both left the old Granger, still knocked out from the tranquilizer, under the guard of two marines, and rushed back to where Polrum Krull was still rummaging around through the computer database. On another terminal nearby was a comm station. Proctor keyed in the appropriate frequency for the
Victory
’s bridge.
“Lieutenant Diaz, this is Granger. Report.”
“Diaz here. Sir, we just picked up two new contacts. Fishtail and Hotbox. Came out of two latent singularities in the debris field at roughly the same time.”
“Are they responding to hails?”
“Negative. Both fighter’s system’s are in bad shape—I doubt they even have life support. And they’re both on a collision course with a dense cloud of debris.”
“What’s the status of Volz’s fighter?”
Diaz paused, probably examining his sensor display. “Looks like he’s punched his accelerator and is moving to intercept them. But he’ll never save both. I don’t even know what he’ll do if he catches up with
one
of them.”
Granger turned to Proctor. “Patch me through down to the fighter deck. Get me the CAG.”
A moment later, she nodded, and he realized right at that moment what a surreal moment it was—he was about talk to the new CAG, Lieutenant Volz, while the old Lieutenant Volz was out there in his fighter, on his way to attempt rescue of both Fishtail and Hotbox. “Lieutenant, scramble fighters. Get out there and help ... you.”
“The fighter deck is a mess, sir. It’ll be a few minutes.”
Proctor shook her head. “They’ll never make it out there in time. Fishtail and Hotbox have less than two minutes before they run into that debris cloud.”
Polrum Krull glanced over to them. “The
Benevolence
is closer. My people have several shuttles ready to launch. I can notify them through the Ligature and they can attempt rescue of the fighter your pilot won’t be able to reach.”
Granger nodded. “Do it.” He turned to Proctor. “Get me Volz. The other Volz.” She nodded when the comm link was established.
“Lieutenant Volz, this is Captain Granger. I’m sending help. You go grab Fishtail. Don’t be alarmed when you see some shuttles that ... well, they’re going to look like Swarm fighters, Ballsy. But they’re not. They’re coming to help.”
A laugh came through the comm channel. “Right. You really expect me to believe you, you bastards? A big Swarm carrier with a whole Russian fleet, and the
ISS Constitution
, all next to a big friggin' Russian space station. Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
Proctor whispered in his ear. “He probably can’t see that the ship out there is the
Victory
, not the
Constitution
. They look identical.”
Polrum Krull brought up a video feed on the monitor. At least twenty Skiohra shuttles had launched, and were approaching the three fighters. Volz’s craft was getting close to Fishtail’s, but suddenly it swiveled toward Hotbox. “No, you bastards. You’re not getting him. You’re not making him a
friend
.”
Granger grabbed the console with both hands in a tight grip. “Volz, you don’t know what you’re doing. We’re not Swarm. Don’t do something you’re going to regret.”
“You may have gotten Granger, but you’re not getting Hotbox.”
And before Granger could say anything else, Hotbox’s fighter exploded into a brief fireball as Volz squeezed off a few dozen shots. “Dammit,” he breathed, then waved over to Polrum Krull. “Call them off. Call them off!”
On the monitor, he saw the Skiohra shuttles move away, back toward the dreadnought. Volz’s fighter had finally come within meters of Fishtail’s, though they were both still sailing straight for the debris cloud, now less than a minute away.
The hatch blew, and Volz launched himself out of the cockpit. A safety cord was tied around his waist, and as he sailed past the open hatch, he grabbed it and pushed himself toward Fishtail’s fighter. In a breath-taking twisting maneuver, he managed to catch one of her fighter’s gun barrels in one hand, and swung himself up toward the hatch of her cockpit. He keyed in an emergency open command, and the hatch swung open, letting him reach in to pull her restraints loose.
But it was too late. They were in the debris cloud. And even as Volz pulled Fishtail loose, a chunk of rock struck her in the helmet, denting it, and a stream of smaller pellets showered them and the fighters.
Chapter Seventy
Executive Command Center, Russian Singularity Production Facility
High Orbit, Penumbra Three
Volz’s voice came through the comm—the Volz onboard the
Victory
. “Uh, sir, I don’t think I’m pulling out of that.”
Granger leaned forward toward the speaker. “Ballsy? Are you sure? I mean, you’re here, right? You made it.”
“I’m saying that my memories stop here. I either got hit on the head or passed out or maybe I just don’t remember what happened, but after I reached Fishtail ... I don’t remember anything past that. I got back in my fighter and then ... nothing. The next thing I remember was seeing the
Warrior
out my window, with Fishtail on my lap.”
Even as Volz described it, they all watched the monitor as the old Volz dragged Fishtail behind him as he pulled his way back along the cord toward his own fighter, struggling through a shower of terrifyingly fast rocks and pellets. There was no way he was going to be able find the singularity he’d come out of. Hell, he wasn’t even sure Proctor could find it even using the
Victory
’s sensors.
Granger spun around to Polrum Krull. “Quickly. Can you manipulate the singularities? Can you do it from here?”
Polrum Krull navigated through a series of submenus on the console. “Yes. All latent singularities can be accessed from here. All I have to do is send out a focused graviton beam coupled with phased meta-space—”
“Just do it. Open the one he came out of, and send it toward him. Can you do that? Can you move them?”
Polrum Krull didn’t reply, but furiously worked the controls. “Beam initiated, and integrated into singularity 8013b. It’s opening. I’m feeding it mass—it needs to be at least half the mass of the fighter if they want any hope of surviving the fall—”
The cloud of debris showering them was getting denser. Luckily they were inside the fighter by then, but one well-placed rock could fly right through their viewport at any moment. “Just move it into their path. They’re out of time.”
Proctor pointed to the monitor. “Tim, that chunk of ice is going to hit them. It’s going almost one kilometer per second—they’re not going to survive that.”
“Polrum, now!” Granger yelled.
Polrum Krull touched a spot on the console, and moments later, the fighter disappeared with a brief flash of light.
Granger breathed a tentative sigh of relief. “Any way to tell if they made it through?”
Polrum Krull nodded. “The singularity did not collapse. I was able to grow it enough that they safely passed though.”
Proctor eased up behind Polrum Krull’s chair. “So if the singularity is too small in relation to the mass suddenly falling it, it collapses?”
“Catastrophically,” said Polrum Krull, nodding. She was picking up human mannerisms. “And the effect is channeled up the graviton beam we use to control it. If the object going through is a small fraction of the singularity’s mass, the beam—and the source of the beam—is relatively unaffected. But as the mass of the object increases up toward double the singularity’s mass, the effect becomes catastrophic, and will destroy the source of the beam. That is how you destroyed those Valarisi ships over Earth four months ago. The
Constitution
was just a hair over double the singularity’s mass, and because the three carriers were still linked to it when you went in, they didn’t survive.”
“Then how did we survive just now? Didn’t the beam originate from somewhere here at the station?” Proctor was studying the data readouts, her brow furrowed.
“Because I shut it off right before impact,” said Polrum Krull. “I have no death wish.”
Before Granger could ask any more details, one of the marines came in. “Sir, I thought you should know. He’s—you’re ... awake again.”
Chapter Seventy-One
Executive Command Center, Russian Singularity Production Facility
High Orbit, Penumbra Three
Granger raced back across the common area, past the giant window, and came up to the doorway of the hospital room. Outside, two marines still stood guard, assault rifles at the ready, pointed into the room, keeping their sights trained on the patient inside.
He looked into the room. The other version of him was not in the bed, but standing up, right next to the window, looking down at the planet below. He wasn’t making any provocative movements, not saying anything. Just watching through the window, calmly.
“Do you remember this?” whispered Proctor in his ear.
He nodded. The more time went by, and especially now that he was watching the situation unfold again, but from a different perspective, he
did
remember.
And so it was with confidence that he strode into the room, pulling the door shut behind himself. The two marines were probably have aneurisms watching him walk into danger like that without an escort. Screw ‘em. He knew exactly what the other version of him was feeling at the moment.
Longing.
And he, current Granger, needed to grill himself, and the Swarm inhabiting his body.
“Nice view from up here,” he said. The other Granger didn’t even turn.
“It is. So peaceful. You’d never know that the Adanasi were up here planning our destruction the whole time. We see why you fight them.”
Granger stayed by the door. No sense in endangering himself unnecessarily. “Frankly, I’d do the same. In fact, I’m still planning on it.”
Old Granger chuckled. “What’s the point, Tim? Soon, very soon, we’ll have you back, as well as all of the Adanasi. We will all be one. We’ll bring the Skiohra back into the fold—such a shame that they fell by the wayside. A flaw in the design of the virus flowing through their blood—a flaw we’ve already corrected. They’ll be with us again soon. The Adanasi, the Skiohra, the Dolmasi, the Valarisi, the other two races you haven’t even met yet—the Findiri and Quiassi. And us. Seven peoples. One family.”
“Who is us?”
“All of us. Me. You. Everyone on this station. We are all us. We will all be family, friends, bound by unity and purpose.” Old Granger finally turned around and took a few steps toward Granger.
He made a gambit. “You’re so sure of yourselves. So cocky. Arrogant. It will be your undoing. Even now, I’ve putting into motion the operation that will finally destroy you.”
Old Granger chuckled again. “Believe me, that planet down there is completely safe from you. We have nothing to fear.”
“That’s not what I was referring to. I’m not attacking the planet. I’m attacking you. The link to our universe you come through.”
Old Granger stopped. “Impossible.”