Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (139 page)

The scene outside the viewport was enough to make her question four decades’ worth of assumptions and prejudices.

On a stage awash in vessels dancing a chaotic dance of death, a single confrontation captured her attention. One of the impossibly large alien superdreadnoughts, broken and afire due to multiple hull breaches, careened into the broadside of a frigate outwardly identical to the one she occupied.

The comparatively tiny craft cracked in two faster than a brittle eggshell. Golden flames poured out of each half as they ricocheted down the length of the alien vessel.

From above the viewport came dual laser beams to sear into the superdreadnought. One of the existing ruptures expanded under the new onslaught. The behemoth cavorted in fits and jerks like a marionette in a macabre burlesque.

The shadow of an Alliance cruiser grew above the scene—the source of the laser fire. She gawked, transfixed, as dozens of the tentacled ships swarmed around it, burning holes into its hull but not yet slowing its advance.

Two frigates joined in the assault on the superdreadnought, yet still it barreled forward to send crimson beams each as wide as a frigate tearing into yet another Alliance vessel.

Abruptly blood-red plasma erupted from the other side of the superdreadnought, pouring out in a shockwave as the vessel’s hull splintered along the plasma’s path until the ship literally disintegrated before her eyes. Jagged pieces of the hull shot out in every direction, skewering two fighters and ripping into the impulse engine of one of the frigates.

A glimpse of an additional cruiser briefly emerged through the rubble as her ship accelerated away.

She huffed a quiet breath, here alone in this little room. The scene she’d watched had all been a decoy, a diversion to enable an attack from the opposite side.

As the sky began to darken she sank down in the chair. Her shoulders ached; she had been tensed forward in the restraints for some time.

She had just watched over a thousand Alliance soldiers die in the space of less than a minute. Yet the encounter would be considered a victory, for the enemy was vanquished. But at such a cost.

Perhaps she could reduce that cost? She considered what Alex had asked of her…and began to understand.

Abigail was deep in thought when the door opened. Rather than her previous escort, an older man in a nicer uniform with more officer’s bars walked in. She fumbled with the restraints but managed to release them before he was forced to aid her.

When she stood he extended a hand in greeting. “Dr. Canivon, I’m Lt. Colonel Oursler, commanding officer of the
EAS Fitzgerald
. I’ll show you to your quarters for the trip to Earth momentarily. But first, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what you possess that’s so important I was ordered by the head of the entire damn military to abandon my fellow soldiers and flee this battle so I can ferry you and eighteen tonnes of hardware to Earth. No offense intended.”

As recently as this morning she
would
have felt offended at the man’s rudeness and audacity in challenging her. But given what she had witnessed…she found she couldn’t particularly blame him.

Her expression drew tight with weariness after what had been one very long day. “Lt. Colonel, I believe I have the ability to ensure not only that the deaths of those soldiers today will not be in vain, but that far fewer will die in future battles. Deliver my hardware and myself to Earth, and we may be able to win this war.”

8

SPACE, CENTRAL QUADRANT

E
ARTH
A
LLIANCE
S
PACE

“
G
OOD WORK.
Y
ES, GIVE HER
whatever she needs, within reason…no, not that. I’ll forward the request to Brigadier Hervé. Perhaps she can accommodate it once they reach Earth.” A longer pause. “Thank you, Lt. Colonel.”

Richard watched as Miriam seamlessly transitioned to yet another conversation. She had been working non-stop since they left Vancouver: holo-conferences, one-on-one communications, the occasional argument and many issuances of orders. When she wasn’t meeting with others she was studying maps of ship migrations and updates on colonies under assault.

Alex’s pulse earlier had spurred a new flurry of activity and orders involving Sagan, an emergency evacuation and Dr. Abigail Canivon. He had to wonder why they needed an additional quantum computing expert badly enough to divert resources away from an engagement the outcome of which appeared to be in doubt in order to rescue her. When he’d queried Miriam on it, though, she’d simply shrugged while connecting to a new conference.

Miriam in action, even in the otherwise empty passenger compartment of a military transport, was impressive to behold. David would be ridiculously proud if he could see her. The man had never lacked for confidence—occasionally veering into cockiness—but he’d worshiped the ground Miriam walked on. The two were so unlike one another, but somehow the relationship had worked.

Some days he missed the man who was his closest friend for twenty-five years more than others. There had been a lot of those days recently.

He wished David were here to talk to about…everything. Selfishly, he wished David were here to thank him for clearing his daughter’s name. Very selfishly. Mostly he wished David were here with them at the end of the world. His friend would tell them they were going to win and would believe it; his unwavering confidence would make them believe it, too.

Richard studied the portable screen he’d propped on the table, his half-eaten dinner pushed to the side and long forgotten. His thesis was due in two days, and in the harsh light of day his writing from the night before bore all the marks of sleep deprivation.

What advantage did he foresee a Masters in Contemporary History was going to get him in the military, in any event? The courses he’d squeezed in on nights and weekends had neither taught him to shoot straighter nor pilot so much as a shuttle. He hoped they’d made him wiser, but he wasn’t convinced wisdom qualified as a job requirement.

Still, books—reading them, studying their contents, absorbing the knowledge they held and lessons they imparted—had propelled him out of the orphanage and into university; they had propelled him out of a minimum-wage job and into a scholarship program. He trusted they could take him yet more, better places.

Movement in his peripheral vision distracted him. He looked up as David Solovy slid in across the table from him, meal tray filled with one of everything available at the food service.

He tilted his head in mild surprise. “When did you get back to base?”

David had already attacked his meal with gusto, so the response was several seconds in coming. “Two—no, three—hours ago, and I’m out again in the morning. The
Trafalgar’s
being routed to Ceres for a mission I’ll presumably be informed of approximately ten minutes before we arrive.”

“How’d it go on Perona?”

David’s eyes lit up and his fork clattered to the plate. “Beautifully. I met the woman I’m going to marry.”

He stared at David in perplexity. It was hardly a rare occurrence, of course. “Okay…first off, I meant the mission, or at least I thought I did. Second, is she aware of this?”

“I don’t think so. She hasn’t quite declared her undying love for me yet, but give it time.”

“How much time?”

“As much time as it takes, my friend. She’s worth it.”

“And you’ve determined this after knowing her for…?”

“Three days. Hey, I’m as surprised as you are. I am completely bowled over.”

Richard drew his plate closer, finding he held a renewed interest in it after watching David devour his food with such zeal. “I can tell. I assume the mission was a success, then, since you had time to meet the love of your life afterward?”

“Oh, I met her on the assault—she’s the XO of the Perona outpost. The mission was a bloody and brutal incursion and I came within a centimeter of losing my left arm to a frag mine. We took some injuries, but all my people survived. And we won, naturally.”

He chuckled dryly. “You know, it’s not actually ‘natural’ that you would win. You could have lost.”

David cocked an eyebrow. “Your history texts tell you that?”

“Yes, they did. In order for one side to win, the other has to lose—and both sides expect to win, so by definition one side will find itself sorely disappointed, not to mention likely dead.”

“Sorry, but it
was
natural that we would win. Preordained, even.”

“Why?”

David flashed a brilliant smile, the one which garnered him easy friends and admirers. “Because we were the good guys. We were in the right. The universe looks out for people who act with honor in furtherance of an honorable cause. It must, or we never would have gotten this far as a species. We won—this little conflict and a thousand like it—because we were destined to win. The universe will allow no other outcome.”

Richard rolled his eyes at his own sentimentality. He had pondered once or twice over the years, usually when in a brooding mood, whether the assertion, if true, meant David died at Kappa Crucis because in the First Crux War the Federation had been the ‘good guys.’

It made him uncomfortable to place his government in the role of evildoer, and deep down it wasn’t nearly so simple. In the end no one had officially won the war, though the Federation would argue otherwise. Still, recent events were blurring the lines of right and wrong and good and evil more than he’d realized.

He felt fairly confident, however, that in this war against the Metigens humanity was on the right side of the struggle…and he hoped whatever David had meant by ‘the universe’ agreed.

He straightened up in the marginally comfortable transport seat and nudged the thoughts away. They’d be at Pandora in two hours and he had his own work to do.

The intelligence network was in a kerfuffle over how to act in the face of the new peace with the Federation and the new war with the Metigens. The role of intelligence agents during a war generally tended to be one of spying on the enemy. Occasionally active covert operations were required, but usually such actions fell to special forces.

Given the nature of this particular adversary, it remained unclear exactly how and to what extent they could spy on the enemy, covertly or otherwise. The answers thus far seemed to be ‘no idea’ and ‘not much.’

He was saved from seeking better answers by a pulse from Devon.

I’ve found something on the Fionava virus, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.

I’m not surprised. What you got?

So you remember the altered logs of the Detention Center from the night Caleb Marano was ‘released’? The ones I ‘didn’t find’? Well, I didn’t technically delete the logs from my personal data store.

This also does not surprise me.

Heh, guess not. Anyway, the operational methodology of the virus bears some…‘tics’ is probably the best way to describe it…which are similar to the Detention Center hack. See, even the best hackers have personal preferences and styles of coding, and sometimes they’re unique enough to be noticeable. When I studied the virus it kept bugging me that I felt like I’d seen some of the idiosyncrasies before, and I was right. Where I saw them before was the alteration of those logs.

Richard groaned and sank deeper into his chair. Miriam glanced over, but he waved her off.

You’re telling me the same person wrote the code to hack the Detention Center and the virus General O’Connell used on Fionava?

I think so. Call it ninety percent likelihood.

What does ANNIE say?

I haven’t asked her—this is my own work. I didn’t want to distract her from the Metigen analysis.

Right. Alex couldn’t have written the Fionava virus, which means she got the Detention Center hack from someone else. I’ll work on it.

Uh, sir, respectfully…how do you plan to do that when she’s missing? Unless you know something the rest of us don’t.

I’ll let you know when I have intel.