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  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 Swar
m 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—”

  The co-pilot twisted around suddenly in his seat, and pat a bulge under his vest. “I’m not going to ask you again. Sit.”

  Lieutenant Rodriguez glanced at the bulge—could be a firearm, but probably just a canister of chew—and swore as the freighter bucked again as the pilot chose another direction.

  “Look, see these?” He pointed to a a pair of small medals pinned near his flight suit’s shoulder, just under the epaulette. “This one here. Wings on fire. Any idea what that means?” Before the copilot could answer, Rodriguez did it for him. “Fighter combat. And the one next to it, the one with the number fifteen on it? Any guesses?”

  A proximity alarm went off as the nearest Swarm fighter closed in. Raf, the pilot, swore and punched it off. “Are you going to go sit down, fly-boy, or do I need to—”

  “It means I’ve been in orbital fighter combat bloody fifteen times against the cumrat bastards out there.” He jabbed a finger toward the viewport. The distant Swarm fighter was quickly becoming visible to the naked eye. “So if you want to live, give me the controls. Now.”

  Avi looked like he was about to jump up and try ripping Rodriguez’s arms off. “Why you little ignorant piece of AWOL shit.” He reached into his vest and pulled out the firearm. Rodriguez grit his teeth—he had been sure the man was bluffing. “I’m giving you to the count of one to get the hell—”

  “Avi,” began the pilot, “stand up. Give him your seat.” He jabbed his thumb toward the cockpit door. “No, don’t give me that look. You’re half drunk anyway. Go. Get up.” When Avi hesitated, looking from his gun to Rodriguez to the co-pilot controls, Raf repeated himself. “Go. Before you put a hole through the hull. Now.”

  Avi grumbled as he thrust himself from the seat and stalked out of the cockpit. The pilot glowered at him as he left. “Don’t worry,” he said, watching Rodriguez take Avi’s place, “the gun was empty. He just carries it around for show. Micro-dick compensation, most likely. Now are you going to show me your fancy flying, or what?”

  “That’s the idea....” Rodriguez studied the controls. It was similar to his fighter cockpit, but just different enough to give him a moment’s pause. “Time to intercept?”

  The pilot glanced at the sensor readout. “That bogey’ll be here in twenty seconds.”

  “What’s the maximum acceleration on this thing?”

  “Staying within inertia-canceling limits, about two point five—”

  “I didn’t ask about inertia-canceling limits. Tell me. Maximum acceleration?”

  The pilot considered a moment. “Five g’s. But that’ll give our passengers quite the scare, I don’t know if—”

  “They’ll live.” Rodriguez pushed the control stick to maximum and flipped off the acceleration governor. “Maybe.”

  The thrust nearly took his breath away. He heard his kids scream behind him as everyone was thrown violently against their restraints and he could swear he heard Avi fly through the air and crash into the bulkhead, but all that mattered now was getting them all to safety. Wherever that was.

  “They’re still gaining on us, and our trajectory is straight at the planet—” the pilot’s face turned white, “—straight at that plume coming from what used to be New Bangalore....”

  “We’ll just skirt through the top. Hold on....”

  The billowing debris cloud loomed in the viewport ahead of them. From far away it had looked static, but now that they approached, Rodriguez realized the cloud was expanding at what was probably a supersonic rate. He wondered how good the freighter’s shielding was.

  The pilot apparently read his mind. “If there is any debris in there bigger than a grain of sand, we’re goners.”

  “We’re goners anyway. Here we go....”

  They plunged into the cloud, and the freighter began to lurch violently as the turbulence from the debris plume buffeted the ship. After a few seconds Rodriguez shifted the controls, veering the craft hard to the left, still at maximum acceleration, staying in the turn until he’d nearly completed a full-about.

  The pilot nodded his understanding. “Hoping they keep a straight course, and meanwhile we pop out of the cloud right where we entered it?”

  “That’s the idea....”

  A moment later they cleared the plume and the violent shaking ceased, but Rodriguez maintained the gut-churning acceleration. A quick glance at the sensors told him the gambit had partially worked—the Swarm fighters trailing them were nowhere to be seen. Probably on the other side of the massive debris plume by now.

  But ahead of them loomed a new nightmare.

  The Swarm super dreadnought, flanked by two regular-sized carriers. Green antimatter beams lanced down toward the planet, raking across towns and smaller cities, even as a half dozen bright points shimmered around the giant ships—growing singularities readying for their imminent launch.

  “We’re screwed,” breathed the pilot.

  An odd reading on the sensors. Rodriguez studied the anomaly. A large mass approaching at a dizzying speed. No, not one large mass. It was broken up into several discreet pieces, approaching as one large clump. Had one of the Swarm carriers broken apart?

  Raf’s eyes widened as he studied the readout. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Rodriguez scanned the transponder frequencies. They were IDF ships. Packed together into as tight a formation as he’d ever seen, moving faster than any fleet had a right to.

  He grinned. “Yep.”

  The Hero of Earth had arrived.

  Chapter Four

  X-25 Fighter Cockpit

  Indira, Britannia Sector

  Lieutenant Tyler “Ballsy” Volz gripped his controls. If he wasn’t wearing flight gloves, he imagined his knuckles would be white with tension. With good reason—they’d never practiced the Granger Omega Three maneuver before. Lately, he hadn’t practiced much of anything.

  All he could think about was Fishtail. He visited her every day. Or rather, visited what had taken her place. A smug, over-confident Swarm agent—at least, when she wasn’t under full sedation. Gone were Fishtail’s mild-mannered wit and sarcasm. Her easy-going charm. In its place was ... something alien. Utterly foreign.

  “All craft, prepare for launch. Watch yourselves, people. None of you have ever launched at this speed before, and you most certainly have not launched all at once like we’re trying today.” The CAG, Commander Pierce, listed off the instructions one final time. Each fighter, in its turn, would launch exactly one third of a second after the one before it. All one hundred and fifty of them. The accelerations would be gut-churning. The distances between fighters uncomfortably small.
<
br />   There was no room for error on this one.

  And the giant osmium brick tied to the undercarriage of each fighter more than doubled each craft’s mass. Maneuvering would be difficult.

  The Granger Omega Three maneuver. Omega: an appropriate term. It would most likely be the last thing they ever did.

  He glanced to his left, down the line of fighters with their engines idling. Spacechamp. Pew Pew and his brother, Fodder. He’d sure miss them. Commander Pierce’s voice cut through his headset. “Standby ... five seconds ... three, two, one, NOW!”

  To his right, the line of fighters started shooting out the giant bay door, one at a time, every point three three seconds. Much of it was computer-controlled, but not the actual maneuvering. When his time came, the engines roared to life automatically, and he barely had time to steer the nose of his fighter out toward the exit and space beyond.

  Fifty seconds later, they were all in position, forming a vast halo around the ISS Warrior. Thirty-some-odd heavy cruisers bunched up tightly behind the giant tungsten-armored carrier. All of them blazing toward the planet ahead of them. In orbit above that ravaged world stood the largest Swarm ship any of them had ever seen. It was still a tiny dot, but it grew larger.

  “All craft,” came Pierce’s voice, “brick launch on my mark.”

  Volz checked the computer calculations one more time, ensuring his thrusters were linked appropriately to the targeting computer. All clear.

  “Launch.”

  He flew back against his seat as the fighter leapt forward and to starboard, and moments later he felt the tell-tale clank as the osmium brick detached. A moment later he reversed thrust, aligning his nose with the edge of the Warrior’s bulk and maneuvered his fighter around the ship. There was no time for all of them to land in the fighter bay, and staying out to fight during the flyby was pointless. All they could do was hide in the shadow of the Warrior like the rest of the cruisers.

  Hide, and pray.