Victory (7 page)

“Why?”

“Mainly because the rest of them were killed by the Swarm. They had it coming, the bastards, god rest their souls,” she crossed herself. Volz had forgotten she was religious. “But I lived. I survived. I fought my way through and clawed my way out when those other wankers got themselves killed. By the time I left, Spacechamp was my badge of honor. It was my title that said,
Suck it, bitch, I’m better than all your sorry asses
.”

She turned and pointed to Fishtail. “She survived. Both because she’s a kick-ass pilot, and because you risked everything to bring her back. She had the lady-balls to put her life on the line for all of us, throwing herself into that thing to save the ship. Something tells me she’s going to fight this thing, and win. You just watch.”

Volz shook his head, finally turning to face her. “You haven’t talked to it, Spacechamp. You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like. It’s completely taken her. When she talks, it’s all Swarm. All hate and malice and chest-thumping and dick-wagging about how they’ll overcome us all and make us all
friends
, or kill us if we resist. I just ... I just worry that in spite of her bravery, in spite of me bringing her back, that we’ve lost her after all.” He bit his lip. “And that I’ll have to go back to that house,
again
, and tell them that their daughter and his mother is dead,
again
. I don’t know if I can handle that.”

He was looking her in the eye, but she seemed distracted. Following her gaze, he scanned sickbay for what Spacechamp was looking at, and gasped.
 

Fishtail was awake. And staring right at him, with dead, glassy eyes. A joyless smile curled the edged of her lips.

He put his hand on the window. One of the nurses noticed the monitor beeps announcing Fishtail’s return to consciousness, and raced over to the transparent enclosure, jabbing a few times at the automatic IV to dispense a new dose of tranquilizer.

A few moments later, she closed her eyes again and fell asleep.

That look. That look on her face.
He shuddered. The expression had horrified him. But there was still hope, wasn't there?
She’s got to be in there
. He pulled his hand back from the window, and made a decision.
 

He needed to talk to her. Break past the monster and reach Fishtail. And bring her home.
 

Again.

Chapter Fifteen

Conference Room, ISS Lincoln

High Orbit, Britannia

“She calls herself Vice Imperator Scythia Krull. Says her people, the Skiohra, have been servants of the Swarm for thousands of years. She claims that once they realized the Dolmasi had managed to throw off Swarm influence, it inspired the Skiohra to do likewise.”

Admiral Zingano scratched his facial stubble as he studied the schematic of the super dreadnought displayed on the conference room wall. “Sounds damn suspicious if you ask me, Tim.”

And even as he said the words, something stirred in the back of Granger’s mind. Something someone once told him about the Swarm. But the words eluded him. Was he remembering something he learned during his Vacation?

On the opposite wall of the conference room was a video feed displaying the image of President Avery surrounded by General Norton and a handful of her military and intelligence advisors, seated in the command center of her new presidential starship,
Galactic One
.
Interstellar One
had been destroyed two months ago by unknown saboteurs—somehow the woman had managed to avoid an impressive number of assassination attempts.

“How convenient for them,” she said with a snort, “that their come-to-Jesus moment came right as Bill’s fleet was about to show up.”

Granger nodded in agreement. “The optics are unsettling, I agree. And Krull did tell me that she didn’t decide to make her move until she received intel that Bill was on his way with the fleet. She—or he, I’ve discovered you really can’t tell very easily with the Skiohra—thought that switching sides during a major battle would be a lot more devastating to the Swarm than to do it all by themselves, alone. Basically she wanted to desert when she was assured that she’d have the cover of our fleets. If she did it alone, she reasoned the Swarm would have destroyed every single Skiohra ship.”

“Bastards,” muttered Avery. “Just like that shithead Kharsa. Using us for their own gain. Using us like a shield, or in Kharsa’s case, a spear, and risking our lives instead of their own to free his planet. I’m telling you, gentlemen, if we ever get out of this thing with the Swarm, we’re going on a nuke spree with these other bastards—things were so much simpler when all we had to worry about were the Russians and a long-dead Swarm threat.” She seemed to notice Commander Proctor’s eyes widen a bit and chuckled. “Not to worry, Shelby, I’m not as cutthroat as that. Still, I’m getting sick of the politics. I know, politics is my game. I’m good at it. Hell, I thrive on it. But intergalactic, interspecies politics where I don’t even know the motivations of all the players is a bit much for even my tastes.”

Admiral Zingano’s brow furrowed as he studied the dreadnought’s layout on the schematics displayed on the wall. He gestured toward Proctor: “And what do you make of this, Commander? These super dreadnoughts are basically extremely large copies of the regular Swarm carriers. Similar interior design. Same weaponry. Nothing like the Dolmasi ships.”

Proctor nodded. “It sure does look like one of two things. Either the Skiohra are using ships supplied by the Swarm, or perhaps building their own based off designs supplied by the Swarm....” She trailed off, her brow furrowing, as if realizing something.

“Or...?” Zingano prompted. All eyes turned to her.

“Or, the Skiohra gave the designs to the Swarm, or even built the carriers for them. Think about it—the regular carriers have corridors, consoles, even door handles, though the Swarm themselves are essentially liquid. Why? Well look at the size of those corridors, consoles, and door handles. Everything matches the dreadnought. The dreadnought which happens to be a perfect match for Skiohra ergonomics. They’re a little shorter than us, it seems. Smaller hands.” She turned to Avery. “I think we’ve finally solved the mystery of where the Swarm gets their ships, and why they’re designed how they are.”

Avery leaned in toward the camera. “Do you think that the Skiohra are the Swarm’s shipbuilders? Could it be possible that they’ve just lost their ship-building capabilities with the Skiohra defection?”

Proctor shrugged. “It’s just speculation at this point, ma’am.”

“And they could be playing us,” said Granger. “This still gives me a bad feeling.”

“Playing us?” Zingano shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “They destroyed five carriers before the Swarm high-tailed it out of there. Doesn’t sound like a particularly effective strategy—feign friendship and destroy Swarm carriers? Look out, here come the humans! Quick, let’s pretend to be their friends while we blast our real allies to hell?” He sniffed. “Cynical cloak-and-dagger false flag tactics like that work great in novels, but in real-life military strategy? I’m not buying it.”

Proctor shook her head. “You’re forgetting that the allies of the Swarm are not independent individuals,” she said with a glance at Granger. He knew what she was insinuating, consciously or not, and it grated on him. Even if his annoyance was unfair. “The Dolmasi, before they managed to throw off Swarm control, were completely and utterly controlled by the Swarm. Likewise with the fighter pilot we recovered. Fishtail. She
is
Swarm. Same with Doc Wyatt and Colonel Hanrahan. They weren’t Swarm allies, they
were
Swarm. So saying it doesn’t make sense for the Skiohra to shoot up a few Swarm carriers to pretend to be our friends is missing the point.”

“And the point, Commander?” Zingano looked impatient.

“The point, is if they are playing us, it’s not the
Skiohra
who are playing us, it’s the Swarm. Assuming the Skiohra haven’t broken Swarm control over themselves. Every action they take is not
their
action, it’s
Swarm
action.”

Avery nodded in agreement. “And the implications of that? What do you think, Shelby?”

Proctor shrugged heavily. “Just that as we try to decipher the Skiohra’s motivations, we can’t look at it from
their
point of view. We still need to look at this from the
Swarm
’s vantage point. They certainly could be capable of executing a false-flag attack on their own ships if they think it could give them a strategic advantage over us in the long haul.”

Granger shook his head. “The Swarm has overwhelming firepower and numbers. In all our battles they’ve never relied on anything but sheer blunt force. Their tactics have been, shall we say, lackluster. They’re slow to adapt to quickly-changing orbital battle conditions. It’s like they have two modes: attack with overwhelming force when they think they can win, or retreat when it looks like defeat is imminent.”

Zingano nodded. “You’re right. I don’t buy it. This is totally out of character for them. My experience with them matches yours, Tim. Why would they suddenly use subterfuge in a misdirection like this?”

President Avery glanced at them all in turn before pursing her lips. “Right. So we take the Skiohra at their word. At least until we have reason to believe otherwise. But in the meantime, be careful, gentlemen. Just as with the Dolmasi, we do not share intelligence about fleet movements or capabilities. By the way,” she turned to Granger, “how big
is
their fleet?”

“Ah yes, that’s another interesting point. According to Vice Imperator Krull, the only ship the Skiohra deploy is the super dreadnought, and they have six of them. Up until yesterday, that number stood at seven. And we were just moments away from destroying a second one before it q-jumped away.”

Avery nodded. “Brilliant work, by the way. Those dreadnoughts out-power you, what, two hundred to one? And you took it out within a minute? Brilliant.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“And putting your own life on the line to do it, shielding the rest of your fleet. Very admirable, Mr. Granger. There are those who toss brick-laden epithets your way”—her eyes darted to General Norton, whose frown stiffened—“but I think you’ve shown you’re willing to throw your own life away to stop these bastards. You’ve got a spine. You have my
full
confidence, in spite of recent events.”
 

Her eyes moved around the room again, laying her eyes on the assembled admirals, generals, and captains. Her meaning was clear. Ever since the fighter pilot, Volz, had reappeared with Fishtail, claiming that a Swarm-controlled Granger was on the other side of the singularity they’d traversed, it seemed the top brass trusted Granger even less than they did before, Admiral Zingano being the lone exception. Some days it seemed that if Zingano were gone, Granger would find himself in a solitary cell deep inside CENTCOM Intel, or worse, airlocked.

“Speaking of recent events,” Proctor began, “has IDF Science come to any conclusions about Volz’s trip?”

Avery glanced at a man seated next to her. The head of IDF Science, Commander Rome, cleared his throat. “As far as we can tell, Volz’s fighter was gone for about half an hour, judging from his shipboard computer. We can detect no tampering with the records. From the
Warrior
’s perspective, he was gone for less than an hour. So whatever time dilation was present with The Event is markedly less in Volz’s case,” he said, using the more neutral The Event for Granger’s disappearance rather than Vacation, as everyone else called it behind Granger’s back.

Rome continued, “However, Lieutenant Miller had been gone, from our perspective, for over two months. Obviously, we don’t have access to her fighter, but we analyzed her DNA, looking at telomere length and a few other markers, compared it to her last physical, and came to a rather remarkable conclusion—from her perspective, she’d only been gone a few minutes at most.”

Proctor nodded knowingly. The others looked perplexed. “Strange,” she said, connecting the dots for the rest of them. “Tim was gone for fifteen seconds, which for him was three days. Volz was gone for half an hour, and from what we can tell that’s how long he thinks he was gone for. But Fishtail was gone for two months, and for her the time dilation wasn’t stretched, but instead it was compressed somehow, since for her she was gone only a few minutes.” She turned to the chief scientist. “Has IDF Science run any more simulations of matter traveling through a micro-singularity connected wormhole?”

“Nonstop,” he said. “Of course, we know little about them, other than the fact that we’ve indirectly observed their existence not once but
three
times now. But in all our simulations we’ve run up against the hard truth that in essence we are physical matter, which is governed by quantum mechanics. And inside the event horizon of a singularity—even an artificial micro-singularity—the rules are set by general relativity. All our models break down and we’re left with guesswork. I mean, it’s a miracle the three of them came out in one piece and not creamed into a soup of atomic particles.”

Avery cleared her throat. “Shelby? You look like you’re hiding a secret. Spill it. What do you think is going on with these trips through the singularities?”

“Oh, nothing certain. But the timing of those three singularity events seems to suggest one of two things. Either the time dilation component is completely random, or it’s being precisely controlled. From the other end.”

General Norton rolled his eyes. “Precisely controlled? How would whoever is on the other end know where and when to send everyone back if they’re in the past?”

Commander Rome held his hand up. “Or the future. Honestly, until four months ago I would have thought if time travel was possible, the
only
direction one may travel is into the future. Although, I concede that based upon what Vishgane Kharsa has told us, along with Commander Proctor’s groundbreaking work on Swarm detection through blood test, it’s undeniable that Granger went to some point the past during The Event. I mean, he clearly has blood markers for former Swarm influence.”