Leviathan: Book 8 of the Legacy Fleet Series Page 4

  Jasper followed him to the door. “But . . . what’s on Earth?”

  “We have a motto, son. You never leave a man behind. I did. And that’s a mistake I need to correct, right now. Lieutenant Commander Qwerty is stuck there, and for all I know is being interrogated by the Findiri as we speak. We’re going to find him and get him the hell out of there.”

  “Oh,” said Jasper.

  “And it doesn’t hurt that he’s got one of the manuscripts. Get the ship prepped. We leave immediately, and we don’t come back without our man, come hell or high water or hell freezing over or whichever other bland idiom you prefer.”

  Diaz smiled. “There’s the Tim I know.” He nodded at Jasper. “Best do what he says, son. Granger’s back.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Veracruz Sector

  Chantana III

  ISS Tyler S. Volz

  Physics Lab

  “Commander Shin-Wentworth, please report to the bridge.” The comm speaker jolted him out of his concentration. Calculating q-field perturbations across normal space-time geodesics was hard enough, but in the presence of these two dimensional singularities? Nearly impossible.

  Nearly.

  “I’m busy. Can it wait?”

  “Captain Whitehorse is the one issuing the order, sir. I’d say no,” replied the comm officer.

  “Dammit,” he breathed. “I’m on my way.”

  He hit pause on the simulation, started to turn, but then stopped. “We’re wasting time.” With another tap, the simulation continued. He’d have to leave it by itself for a while. If any solutions to the field equations popped up, they’d just have to wait until he had the time to verify them and reset the boundary conditions.

  Time. Always always always he needed more time. No time to shave. No time to double check the duty roster. No time to respond to IDF memorial affairs in their efforts to plan a memorial service for his brother.

  There was only time to take the next step. And then the following step. Everything else was noise. Distractions.

  The next step? He glanced back down at the running simulation and watched the progression of the various field parameters. The next step was relatively easy—lock down a good range for the q-field strength and polarizations that they should generate inside the test chamber.

  And the step after that?

  Finally test their experiment. Dr. Tedros Wiggum was asleep, thankfully—the man was starting to get on his nerves. But when he woke up Shin-Wentworth wanted to be ready for the first test. If he could reproduce the Itharan’s two-dimensional singularity technology with its mysterious gray interior, he’d be one step closer to getting them back.

  His Molly. Megan. Little Edward. Crushed under the Findiri’s momentum transfer shield on Paradiso. Heh—what an ironic name for that planet, in retrospect.

  He nearly ran into the door to the elevator, absentmindedly expecting it to open for him, but the lift car was still returning. When it opened, one of the fighter pilots threw him a casual, half-hearted salute and stepped off. “Commander.”

  “Lieutenant . . . Brady. Ace, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what they dealt me,” she replied with a half-smile.

  “Any word on when we get our CAG back? I understand you’re filling in for him.”

  She shrugged. “Hell if I know. Proctor’s got him all buried under tactical and strategical planning. Trying to make a respectable officer out of him, rather than a death-defying reject like the rest of us. Sir.” It was clear that she still didn’t know what to make of him. Her manner of speaking flip-flopped between too-casual and too-formal, and it was clear she’d rather just be back in the pilot’s lounge.

  “Well. I think we’re in good hands until he returns.” He attempted a smile. “Speaking of which, did you get my note about the crew rotation?”

  Her face went a slight shade of red. “Uh, yes sir, I saw that. Was just heading down to the CAG’s office to handle paperwork.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” He turned to step onto the lift, but paused. “Oh, and Lieutenant?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “I heard Commander Qwerty is still stuck on occupied Earth. I’ve heard you two are close. And just wanted to say—hang in there. We’ll get him.”

  She almost blushed. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Carry on.” He stepped onto the lift car. “Deck twelve,” he said.

  “Aye, sir,” she said, and gave another casual half-salute.

  Fighter pilots, he thought to himself. The most entitled, arrogant, self-important pricks in the whole fleet. Shoot a few enemy bogeys and suddenly they think they’re God.

  The lift opened to deck twelve, and the marines at the entrance to the bridge saluted as he passed. “Captain?” he said, taking his place at the XO’s station. “I wasn’t supposed to be on duty for another two hours. Something up?”

  Captain Whitehorse looked worried, and motioned toward the view screen with her chin. “The Trits are on the move. Seems the Findiri have them spooked enough that they’re evacuating the entire planet.”

  “The entire planet? Aren’t there, what, millions of them underneath the surface?”

  “That’s what Klollogesh says. They have other colonies besides this one, though they’ve never told us where they are, which now seems like an entirely justified decision, given that Oppenheimer would have spilled the beans to the Findiri.”

  “But how are they going to transport that many . . .” He trailed off as he noticed what was in the background on the screen. Coming just over the horizon of the planet, flooded with the intense light of the Chantana sun, was something he’d seen once before.

  Hanging over the sky of Bern, Switzerland.

  The Eru’s giant rotating drum of a spaceship had provided cover for the Independence and Captain Granger to escape from the Findiri. And now it was here.

  “It seems the Eru and the Trits are talking. There’s been a steady stream of transport ships leaving the dozen or so ports into the interior of the crust, and they’re all landing on the Eru’s ship, then turning around to head back to the planet to pick up more passengers.” Captain Whitehorse stood up and faced the screen, her hands clasped behind her back. “This presents us with a dilemma.”

  Shin-Wentworth nodded. “Pause all the research on the Trit’s crust levitation technology and their language and focus all our efforts on helping them evacuate, helping them survive and strengthening our friendship, but at the risk of jeopardizing research which could save our hides in the war with the Findiri.”

  She turned full about to look at him. “No. No, not at all. Commander, all that is a given. We need to pause the research and help, absolutely. That’s not the dilemma.”

  His stomach tensed without him even realizing it until she started speaking again. Pausing the research was a given?

  “The dilemma is how much do we help? Do we offer to transport passengers to their other colonies? Doing that would require knowledge of where those colonies are. But, as you may have heard, there’s a bounty on our heads, and all it takes is one crewmember sympathetic to the Findiri occupation to look out the window and tell the enemy where the Trits have fled to. So offering help may in fact hurt them. And yet, if we don’t offer, especially after they came to our aid on Earth, it may well piss them off and could set our new friendship back.”

  “Hm. That’s a pickle indeed, Captain. But I think whatever we choose, the research may as well go on in the background—”

  It was as if she wasn’t even listening to him, for she continued, “And the other dilemma is that the longer we stay and help, the longer we’re exposed here ourselves. Oppenheimer could send a task force at any moment to come confront us here and try to bring us in. Cutting and running now to save our hides? That could also damage the friendship.”

  Shin-Wentworth nodded. “Of course. Well, I think I lean more toward the helping side, if you ask me, ma’am. We can keep our q-drive on a hair trigger, the calculations already entered in, and
if the Findiri or Oppenheimer show up we just hightail it out of here. I’m sure the Itharans would understand. And that would let us continue the research on the two-dimensional singularity tech.”

  She cocked her head. “I beg your pardon?”

  He chided himself for being so clumsy. He hadn’t exactly filled Whitehorse in on the exact details of the experimental aspect of the research. “Yes. We’ve determined that they’re using a form of the Findiri’s two-dimensional singularity tech to hold up their crust. To counter that threat from the enemy I’ve been doing some experiments—”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, Commander. All hands on deck for this. I need you to organize the ship and crew into shifts that can assist in the evac. Any experiments you’re running need to be put on hold, as of now. I’m going to try again to raise Klollogesh and extend our offer of help, and when that happens I want to be ready, and that’s your job. Understood?”

  He reluctantly nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She said other things, and he agreed and acknowledged her orders like his brain was on autopilot, but wasn’t actively aware of the details. He could review the orders later from the bridge’s audio.

  All he could think about was the shimmering momentum transfer shield hanging ominously over Saavedra City, and how his daughter must have felt looking up at it. First, she would have felt wonder and awe at the sight, perhaps even thinking it was IDF throwing up some kind of shield to protect her. And then terror as it came crashing down, first pinning her to the earth, and then crushing the life and blood out of her.

  And how, with this tech, and with the old Russian artificial singularity tech, he needed to stop it from happening. How far back would he have to go? Hours? Days? Would he make sure his family was out of the danger zone and leave it at that? Or would he attempt something more daring? Something that could save the entire city? The entire planet?

  The door to the physics lab opened for him, jolting him back to reality. He’d walked the entire way back on autopilot, it seemed.

  “Ah! Commander! It appears the simulation has concluded and given us some promising boundary conditions for the first experiment! What did Captain Whitehorse say about redirecting the primary engine’s power to the chamber for the experiment?” Director Tedros Wiggum, the lead civilian scientist that UE had assigned to the ISS Volz to assist in the Trit technology research, was excitedly scrolling through the data from the finished simulation.

  He’d forgotten to ask her, what with the arrival of the Eru ship and her new orders for him.

  He wanted to comply with the orders. He really, really did. That’s what good officers did. That’s what good people did—they obeyed their senior officers.

  But wasn’t his goal good too? Wasn’t his aim the higher goal? Saving thousands, maybe millions of lives? Didn’t Granger and Proctor routinely disobey orders for the higher good?

  Damn right they did.

  “She said full speed ahead.”

  Wiggum rubbed his hands together. “Excellent! Everything’s ready on my end.”

  “Then let’s get cracking, Doctor Wiggum. You load the boundary conditions into the chamber’s computer, and I’ll go check the matter supply lines.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Kiev Sector

  Bellarus, high orbit

  ISS Independence

  Sickbay

  The walk down to sickbay was a welcome relief—Proctor felt like she hadn’t stretched her legs in days.

  “Ma’am?” said Ensign Sampono, who’d been walking silently next to her through two decks. “You wanted to continue our conversation?”

  “Yes, my apologies—I’ve been lost in my head recently. Too much to process and figure out. I was telling you that I chose you to serve on the Independence for a reason.”

  “Why? I haven’t even graduated from the academy yet. Hell, half the bridge crew hasn’t graduated. They bumped us all up because of—well, because of . . . Britannia.” It was as if even saying the word Britannia was bad luck. “I just don’t get how you can know anything about me based on—”

  “Your record. Yes, I know it’s sparse, but you show limitless promise. And your background. From the Bali colony? I hear that’s a rough place to grow up.”

  “It is, ma’am.”

  They passed a few officers near the galley, and Proctor nodded at them as they stopped and saluted.

  She continued, “and yet, here you are, near the top of your class at the academy. I want people like that, Ensign. People that start with nothing, but who don’t let that stop them from doing amazing things.” She watched the young woman react to her words, her face softening and even looking a tad embarrassed. “Tell me about your childhood. How did you make it out?”

  “Well, with my brother, actually. We were inseparable. We looked out for each other. You know how it is with twins, ma’am. It’s like we have a psychic connection. Had, rather. Our dad died when we were young, our mom was at work like twenty hours a day, and in the halfway house when she got too addicted. It was rough, yeah. But we relied on each other, and when we hit sixteen, we were out. Got jobs on a freighter running rare earth shipments out in the Bali system’s asteroid belt. I got into the academy. He didn’t. And, well . . . now I’m here.”

  “Ah. I see.” At the end of the hallway Proctor pressed the call button for the lift. “Did he apply to the academy too?”

  “We did everything together, ma’am. Yes. He did.”

  “And he wasn’t accepted.”

  She shook her head. “He’d been addicted to haze for a few years back when we were teens. And the academy doesn’t take former addicts, so . . .”

  “I understand. He should reapply. We changed the standards. Clean for five years, and you’re in.”

  They both entered the lift when it arrived. Sampono smiled, but slowly shook her head. “He’s . . . no. He’s done . . . other things.”

  “I see.” She wanted to say more, but questioned the wisdom of doing so. Instead, she backed up. “One part of your record stood out to me, Ensign. You were accepted to the academy twice. You turned the first offer down. I know the broad brush strokes of the backstory, but care to explain?”

  “Well, ma’am, I thought I was pretty clear to the committee. I just wasn’t ready. I needed more time.”

  Proctor reached out and pressed the stop button, and the lift slowed to a pause.

  “Bullshit, Sapphira. Tell me the real story.” She eyed the young woman, who looked genuinely surprised.

  “Well,” she took a deep breath. Then gulped. “Yeah, okay. I was a drug runner. Brother got addicted, but I never did. Never even tried it. I’m not dumb. Ran plenty of that shit though. And we made enough money to get us the hell off Bali Prime. Got us into real jobs.”

  “But?”

  “But.” Sampono nodded. And for a moment, she looked far older than twenty-five. “But being a drug runner means you sometimes have to do . . . bad things. And I did very bad things. Not often. I tried—so damn hard—to just be there in the shadows, unnoticed, minding my own business, doing my own thing. But sometimes, when someone owes you money, you have to be . . . persuasive.” She took a deep breath. “And hot damn, I could be persuasive. Got me a record. They never caught me, but several warrants were out for my arrest. Under different names. No one never really knew who I was. Not even IDF knew at the time.”

  “Oh, they did.”

  The blood drained from Sampono’s face. “They did?”

  “No one hides from the pencil pushers at IDF. Go on.”

  “Okay.” Another deep breath. “So I got off Bali, got my job running rare earths out in the Bali Belt. Got sick of that shit too, and applied to the academy. And, to my surprise, they accepted me. But,” she fiddled with her hands for a few moments. “Here’s the thing, Admiral. I’d fucked up so much shit in my life by that point. I wanted to do it right. Finally. I wanted to finally do something right. I didn’t want to be in the academy knowing that the police could swoop in at
any time and arrest me and get me kicked out. So I went back to Bali. I brought all the money I’d made since. I walked right into that police station and confessed everything, and dumped all the cash on the desk of that surprised detective. I don’t know why I brought the money. I guess just to show them I was sincere and wanted to pay my debt to society. In retrospect, that might have been idiotic, making it look like I was trying to bribe him or something. Anyway.”

  Proctor nodded. “Okay. I knew everything, except that.” She reached out and pressed the resume button. The lift started up again toward deck fifteen and sickbay.

  “Except what, ma’am?”

  “Your motivation. I mean, I suspected, but I wanted to hear it from your own mouth. You wanted to do something right, you said. You didn’t want your military career overshadowed by your previous mistakes. So you owned up to them, you tried to make things right, and you tried again.” Proctor reached down and rubbed her knee, still sore from the assassination attempt on Bolivar. “And then?”

  “The guy I fucked up? The one that got me the warrant for my arrest? He had already died. Cancer. Not because of what I did. And besides my confession, there was scant other evidence—”

  “And they can’t convict just on your confession, yes.”

  “So, they let me go. And, after a talk with the DA, she cleared my record. Then I applied again, and here I am.”

  The doors opened and they exited the lift, turning left for sickbay. “Ensign, that’s why you’re here on the Independence. And here’s what you need to understand, though I suspect you already know. First, everyone makes mistakes. But what separates the great from the rest is that the great own up to them, and change. And you’re one of the great. Second, your biggest mistake is not what defines you. It’s the sum of your life choices that define you, not one act, not one choice. And third, and perhaps the most important reason of all, and the main reason why you’re here,” she trailed off, wondering if she was talking to the Ensign or talking to herself. Would her greatest fuck-up define her? Killing an entire race of beings—the Valarisi—on the orders of a dipshit fleet admiral?