Victory (2 page)

But making it through the perimeter of the Swarm fleet would be another feat entirely.

One more won’t make a difference
, the woman had said. But, besides the rosary, there was only one thought in Rodriguez’s mind:

Granger, where the hell are you
?

Chapter Two

Bridge, ISS Warrior

0.3 lightyears from Indira, Britannia Sector

Captain Timothy Granger paced the
Warrior
’s bridge. He was late, and it was killing him inside. Each second that ticked by was like a dagger twisting in his gut.

Because he knew that with each tick, another ten thousand people were likely dying.

“Initiating q-jump twenty-seven,” said Ensign Prince.

The scene on the viewscreen shifted, and the central bright star grew slightly larger. And around that star, a planet. And on that planet, people. Millions of people. And drawing nearer to that planet, with a disconcerting head start....

“Any more word from CENTCOM about the Swarm fleet approaching Indira?”

Ensign Prucha slowly shook his head. “Sorry, sir. All outer system bases went quiet fifteen minutes ago. Last word was over twenty incoming vessels.”

Damn. The Swarm had abruptly changed tactics the past two weeks, with deadly effect. Rather than slowly waltzing their way into a system, giving the population time to panic and scatter, they’d taken to striking as quickly as possible, with overwhelming force. Instead of three Swarm carriers here, four there, their enemy had entered a new phase of the war. A phase of extermination.

You ain’t seen nothing yet
, she’d said. That young pilot, Fishtail, had spoken those words after her life was saved by injecting her with Swarm matter. She wasn’t lying. The scale of the new Swarm offensive was breathtaking. Three entire worlds destroyed in the past two weeks. Hundreds of ships lost. Billions of lives.

And the next target, Indira. Right in the heart of United Earth territory. Less than five lightyears from Britannia itself. Fifteen lightyears from Earth.

And Granger was caught with his pants down, stationed at Britannia, ready to defend against an attack that never came. The hammer was striking Indira instead.

“Ready for q-jump twenty-eight,” he said.

“Sir, the
ISS Colorado
is reporting trouble with their cap bank. They need five minutes to lock down the problem and recharge.”

He shook his head. “No. Leave them. Ready for q-jump.”

Not having the
Colorado
there would hurt, but getting there five minutes later would hurt more. Plus, fighting with thirty-seven ships instead of thirty-eight ships wouldn’t make much difference, especially if the Swarm had brought their newly unveiled super dreadnought.

While not quite as large as the massive Swarm orbital space stations they’d destroyed over Volari Three—the planet that had turned out to be the homeworld of the Dolmasi—the super dreadnoughts were formidable. Easily ten times the size of the run-of-the-mill Swarm carriers, packed with antimatter beam turrets and loaded with the singularity weapons the Russians had provided them with.

There were only three or four of them—the intelligence community hadn’t come to agreement on that point—but whether there were three or three thousand, the result was the same.

Utter destruction.

“Ready, sir,” said Ensign Prince.

“Initiate.”

The viewscreen shifted again, and the central star, Indira Prime, grew even larger. Just two more jumps, nearly half a lightyear, and they’d be there, late, for the battle of their lives.

Or, they’d find a broken, empty, devastated world, depending on how late they were.

“What do you think?” Commander Proctor had been working doggedly at the science station, conferring with her new science team, immersed in a project that had consumed nearly all her time the past few weeks, but now she sidled up next to his chair and bent low to his ear.

“We’re too late.”

She nodded, apparently in somber agreement. “And if we really are too late? What then? Stay and fight? Wait until we’ve got backup? Wait for the Dolmasi?”

He grunted. “If we don’t fight them here, then we fight them over some other world. Here is as good a place as any, and if the planet is already ravaged, best to limit the destruction.”

She lowered her voice. “But if it’s the case that the planet is lost, wouldn’t it be more prudent to at least wait until Zingano shows up?”

Granger shook his head. “Weren’t you listening earlier? He’s dealing with a sudden incursion into the Maori System. Small raid of only four Swarm ships, but his fleet won’t be here for hours, at least.”

Only
four ships. He inwardly chuckled that he now considered four swarm carriers to be a
small
raid. Four months ago, four ships had nearly destroyed Earth. While their defenses had improved since then, Zingano would lose at least a dozen capital ships and tens of thousands of men and women in that engagement with
only
four ships.

Proctor scowled. “I didn’t hear. When was that?”

“Just ten minutes ago.” He eyed her warily. “You ok, Shelby?”

She glanced around the bridge before dropping her voice to a whisper. “I think I’m on to something. The team and I.”

“What?” He scanned the bridge as she spoke, watching the officers and crew. Proctor had subjected every crew member of the
Warrior
to the blood test that revealed Swarm infiltration, and though no one else had tested positive after Doc Wyatt and Colonel Hanrahan, Granger was still wary of speaking openly of either IDF’s strategic plans or Proctor’s Swarm research. For all he knew, the blood test was incomplete and there could still be Swarm agents among them. Best to practice good OPSEC hygiene in the meantime.

“Just something about the fundamental mechanism behind Swarm communication. With the meta-space signals. It’s quantum based. Using gravitons. Quantum particles.”

“Right....” He wasn’t sure where she was leading.

“But the singularities, they’re not. All equations governing gravitational waves, gravitational singularities, gravitational
anything
, at least on a macro scale, is general relativity-based. Quantum mechanics, and general relativity—those two branches of physics just don’t mix very well. We haven’t reconciled them in the seven hundred years we’ve known about them, and here the Swarm is using both of them to devastating effect.”

The viewscreen shifted as they made another q-jump. Only one more before show time.

“And?” he murmured.

“And ... that’s it, mostly. Just a hunch. I’ve performed a few experiments I want you to look at later. Some of the results are ... interesting. To say the least.”

Ensign Prince glanced back. “Ready for final q-jump, sir.”

Granger nodded. Proctor retreated back to the XO’s station where her deputy, Lieutenant Diaz, had been making preparations for the battle. Now that it was upon them, she took up her post, glancing at the tactical crew, who nodded back, indicating they were ready.

As ready as they’d ever be. Granger knew he was never ready for any battle. How do you prepare to lose tens of thousands of people under your command? It was something he hadn’t grown used to, and hoped he never would, his nickname be damned.
Bricklayer? Bullshit.

“Initiate,” he said, sitting down just as the contents of the viewscreen shifted.

In place of the starfield centered on the distant sun of Indira Prime came the image of a planet.

A devastated, broken planet.

“Ensign...?” he whispered.

Ensign Prucha shook his head. “All planetary defenses are silent. Every other comm band is just frenzied chatter, both civilian and military bands.”

Ensign Diamond at sensors worked his controls. “Most major cities destroyed. The Swarm fleet is spread out across an equatorial orbit, targeting the smaller population centers. Thousands of colonial transports and freighters are trying to break free of orbit but they’re being intercepted by Swarm fighter craft.”

Once again, he was left with the choice of who to save. Who to fight for. Who to die for. The hundreds of thousands of people in orbit who would form the next wave of refugee camps in the adjacent star system? Or the millions of people left on the ground, about to be either burned alive or vaporized in a singularity explosion under their feet?

He gripped his armrests, knuckles white. He’d had enough. A yell erupted from his throat, culminating in a balled up fist hitting the console swiveled in front of him, which snapped off onto the floor with a clatter that startled all the crew members around him.

All eyes were on him.

“Where the hell is that super dreadnought?”

Diamond scanned his console. “At longitude fifty-nine point two four, latitude—”

Granger cut him off, still staring at the wrecked planet below. “Send coordinates to the fleet. Prepare for maneuver Granger Omega Three.”

Commander Proctor looked up suddenly, her face bunched up with concern. “Tim, we’ve only tossed that idea around. Never practiced it. Haven’t even run simulations. Are you—”

“Now’s as good a time to practice as any,” he replied, maintaining his fiery stare at the screen.

To her credit, Proctor sprang into action, erupting into a flurry of orders. “Alert all crew on decks one through five to move to higher decks. Ensign Prince, full acceleration along heading fifteen mark eight. Prucha, coordinate fleet positioning behind us....”

Within a minute, preparations were complete. He could just barely feel the pull of the thrusters straining away at maximum, the inertial compensators struggling to keep up, pushed past their limit. The extra thrust, adding to the inexorable pull of the planet’s gravity, was building their velocity up to a range that would take them far out onto a wide elliptical orbit after they swung around the planet.
 

But not before they blazed past the super dreadnought at a dizzying speed. With
Warrior
in the lead, shielding the rest of the fleet.

There was a good reason they called the maneuver Granger Omega Three. It could very well be the last thing Granger ever did.

“Time,” he said. The bridge had fallen to a deadly quiet.

“Sixty seconds.”

Granger nodded. “Cut thrusters. Rotate us with aft lateral thrust. Show them our belly.”

“Done, sir,” Ensign Prince said after a moment.

“All ships,” Granger lifted his head to the inter-fleet comm, “prepare to fire on my mark. Keep your heads, and remember the pattern.” He glanced up at Proctor, who nodded once, confirming all was ready. “And if we don’t make it out of this one ... it’s been an honor serving with you. However—” he nodded toward the tactical station, where ten officers were staring at him, grim-faced, “—I do not give you permission to die until that piece of cumrat shit is destroyed. On my mark ... fire!”

Chapter Three

Star Freighter Lucky Bandit

Low orbit, Indira, Britannia Sector

Elsa and Tomas both jumped nervously against the restraints as the freighter lurched again. It was clear to Lieutenant Rodriguez that the captain was repeatedly changing their heading, to avoid either Swarm fighters or debris pluming up from the dozens of singularity impact sites on the battered continent below.

After calming the children down, he glanced toward the passenger compartment’s lone viewport, a round thing less than half a meter across. Indira’s atmosphere looked like a thin shell wrapping around the fragile, besieged planet—a shell that was rapidly turning from a vibrant, living blue to a sickly brownish gray over the dozens of spots where the ground had erupted outward. Too numerous to count, the mushroom clouds seemed to extend up past the edge of the atmosphere and into space itself.
 

The planet was bleeding.

How many people had just died? The last sounds from his hurried walk through the camp still rang in his ears—the sick, crying babies. Were they silent now? Probably not—the Swarm would target the major cities first, and only make it to the smaller refugee camps once the larger population centers were smoking craters. But other babies were silent in their place.

Rodriguez wished he could cry, but the magnitude of the loss was too great to comprehend. Besides, he’d already mourned his own planet, Merida. He’d already mourned his extended family, his hometown, and everyone he ever knew.

He’d already mourned his wife. How could he have anything left to mourn?

The freighter lurched again. And again. A third time.
 

He knew what that meant—they were under attack. The captain was flying a merchant freighter. He’d have little experience evading Swarm fighters. Hell,
no one
had experience evading Swarm fighters.

But he wasn’t going to trust his kids’ fate to some merchant freighter pilot. He ripped the seat restraint away and maneuvered around the rows of seats, tripping over passengers’ legs as he ran to the cockpit.

When he got the door open he found the pilot and his copilot arguing heatedly. Just a glance through the viewports told him what he needed to know—the Swarm was all around them. Looking down at the sensors he grimaced as three contacts approached from three different directions.
 

They were being hemmed in.

“I’m telling you, Avi, we’re no match in speed for those things, we can’t just blaze past one and think they’ll ignore—”

The copilot shook his head and swore. “Raf, all I’m saying is doing
something
is better than doing
nothing
. We can’t just go back and land for god’s sake—”

“And what, are you just going to pick a random direction and hope it doesn’t take us past a fighter? For hell’s sake, there’s three of the bastards zeroing in on us right now!”

Rodriguez squeezed the shoulder of the co-pilot. “Gentlemen, if you’ll allow me?”

The co-pilot, a short, stubby man with a close-cropped black mustache, shot him a dangerous look. “Get back in your seat, sir. I’ll get around to the cabin beverage service after we figure out how to not die.”

Rodriguez scowled. “Look, I—”