Victory (36 page)

“Thank you again, Commander Proctor, for your service, and for your stellar performance during the war that has so devastated our civilization,” began the long-winded senator. She could tell by his expression that he didn’t like her, that he was putting on a good show for the crowd. But he was a nameless face to her. Soon, she’d fly off to Britannia, where her brother, and his wife and kids were waiting for her.

She was retiring. She couldn’t bear the thought of being a pawn again. After reading the senate reports of the previous months, as the armed services committee grilled admiral after admiral, general after general, and finally the president herself, it became clear that there was far more to the story than was being made public. Inconsistencies, aberrations between people’s stories, gaping holes in the computer records. She didn’t know exactly how, but it was clear to her that Granger, herself, and countless others in the military had been led on by shadowy figures in the government.

Avery professed her outrage, of course, and demanded that the senate get to the bottom of it. But, at least for now, Proctor didn’t care anymore. She had a cushy professorship waiting for her on Britannia, and a cozy mother-in-law studio with her family. She’d get to play with her nieces and nephews. Go out to eat. Lay on the pristine Britannia beaches.

“—So for the record, Commander Proctor, you have no knowledge of how or when the antimatter torpedoes were loaded into that storage bay on the
Warrior
, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir. I was on a brief one-day leave at IDF Science at the time.”

“Ah, yes. So it says in your report,” huffed the senator. “That’s when you expanded your science team to include half a dozen IDF scientists.”

“Yes, sir. Ensign Brendan Roth, Ensign Fayle, Lieutenant Kurt—”

“Yes, yes, I have their names here,” interrupted the senator, waving some papers in his hand. “What I’m wondering, Commander, is why we have no record of those service members at IDF Science. It’s like you came in and picked up some ghosts. Did you have ghosts on your science team, Commander Proctor?”

“I—no, sir. These were real people I worked with.”

“Then where are they, Commander?”

Silence in the great marble hall. Although she couldn’t hear anything, she knew that dozens of photographers were crouched nearby, taking her picture.

“I don’t know, Senator—” Her eyes darted quickly to the nameplate. “Quimby. As I said in my report, they probably were lost in the escape pods when we came under Swarm fire as we fled the
Warrior
.”

“Well surely you would have remembered at least
one
of their faces during your short stay aboard the
Victory
? Surely, you and Granger, having lost not one, not two, but
three
Legacy Fleet heavy cruisers in the space of less than five hours, might have thought to, I don’t know, check to see if at least some of the crew made it out alive before you sauntered off to the next ship?”

The crowd erupted in jeers behind her. She knew the crowd was on her side, that everyone practically worshipped Captain Granger and anyone that had served with him. Still, the question unnerved her. Because in truth, she didn’t know. So many unanswered questions.

And yet, they’d won. Against all odds, against all hope, they’d won. For now, that was all she cared about. That, and getting back into a classroom, seeing her family, and resting.

The senator held up a hand, and the crowd settled down. “I’m sorry, Commander Proctor. I’m sure it was a harrowing time. Losing the
Warrior
like that, then seeing the
Constitution
used like a brick against that dreadnought, and then escaping to the
Victory
, only to see it get swallowed by a black hole while at the same time you sent the time-travelled Old Bird back through another Russian singularity, all the while losing crew member after crew member ... I’m sure it was terribly hard on you. You’ve been a good sport.”

His paternalistic tone and attitude grated on her. If she wasn’t under oath and under the tight thumb of dozens of video cameras, she had half a mind to vault over the table and punch the senator in the face. As it was, she held a saccharine smile glued to her own.

“Will that be all, senator?”

He vaguely waved a hand again as he examined his notes. “Yes, yes, I think we’re done with you,” he said. She started to get up. “Actually, hold on a minute. One more question, if you don’t mind, Commander Proctor.”

She lowered herself slowly back into her seat. “Yes, Senator Quimby?”

“Your graduate dissertation. On Swarm Periodicity and Refractory Processes. It was never taken seriously by the academy. Neither the broader academy, nor IDF Science. It was, for all intents and purposes, completely ignored. And yet, it turned out to be remarkably prescient on many issues related to the Swarm. Not perfect—no dissertation is, of course. But remarkably accurate, given what little we knew at the time. Why do you suppose it was not taken seriously?”

She shook her head. Why the hell was he bringing
that
up? She’d spent years on her research, living and breathing cyclical Swarm theory and breaking ground on what she thought would be convincing new directions in Swarm research. And then, she’d given it up. Command had caught her eye, and her imagination. Traveling to so many former worlds devastated by the Swarm—that had given her the wanderlust. The hope for adventure and exploration. And so she made her choice to give up the science and pursue command.

Now she was turning her back on IDF, and heading back into the classroom. What was she running from?

“I—I couldn’t say, Senator,” she said, inexplicably flustered.

“Do you think it was intentionally suppressed?”

Chattering broke out amongst the crowd. The nut-job conspiracy theorists had been having a heyday with all the events of the last six months, finding multiply-nested conspiracies amongst multiple government entities, colluding with Russians, with anarchists, with oligarchs and plutocrats from dozens of worlds, with the Swarm itself. The idea that true knowledge about the Swarm had been suppressed was one of the more popular theories, making Proctor, much to her extreme discomfort, something of a hero to the tinfoil-hatted nut-jobs. If she had her politics right, Senator Quimby was somewhat of a nut-job himself.

“I couldn’t say, Senator. The idea of widespread suppression, coupled with a clear lack of evidence of said suppression, has never sat well with me. As you know, I’m a woman of science, and until you show me the proof that backs the idea up, the data that proves the hypothesis, then I’m afraid I can’t subscribe to such theories.”

More chattering. Another raised hand quieting the crowd. “Commander Proctor. Your credentials are impeccable. Your performance the past few months equally so. And so it boggles my mind that you were not taken more seriously before this whole fiasco began. Don’t the aggregated circumstances and clues point to something deeper here? That perhaps, the Swarm was coming, and someone or some
ones
deep undercover
knew
they were coming, and prepared the way for them? Suppressing dangerous knowledge and ensuring that when the Swarm struck, we would fall before them like chaff before the wind? That we would be sifted, weighed, and found wanting?”

Senator Quimby was a religious man, and Proctor recognized the dog-whistles in his monologue. He was trying to stir up his base among those who were watching. And as far as she knew,
everyone
was watching. Hundreds of billions. All of United Earth, the Caliphate, the Chinese Intersolar Republic, and even the Russian Confederation.

But she wasn’t taking the bait.

“No, sir.”

He threw his notes down in a huff, and waved her away. “No further questions, Mr. Chairman.”

The rest of the questioning was more subdued, though the fireworks flew again when the final senator grilled her on the possibility that perhaps Captain Granger would return again, out of the abyss, like he had before. It was the most popular, but most benign of the conspiracy theories, because, at least in Proctor’s opinion, it came from a place of hope, rather than fear. She assured the committee that, no, Granger was gone. That, in fact, a scout ship had ventured as close to the Penumbran black hole as it safely could, and made optical observations of the event horizon, and confirmed that, at least from the outside universe’s perspective, Granger was inexorably passing through the horizon itself, and would appear to do so for the next hundred thousand years. Or, at least until his image was so redshifted that the wavelength of the light leaving him became as large as the event horizon itself, at which point, all information about his journey toward the center of the black hole would be lost to the universe forever.

The hearing adjourned, and Lieutenant Diaz met her outside the Senate Hall. “Lunch?” he asked.

“Famished,” she said.

They walked five blocks to the commercial district and Diaz led her up to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant. “Sandwiches ok?”

“Fine.” She followed him in. To her surprise, the place was packed.

Except she recognized everyone there. Ensigns Prince, Diamond, and Prucha. Rayna Scott. Several fighter pilots including Volz and his remaining Untouchable crew. Most of the surviving bridge crew from the
Warrior
, including Commander Oppenheimer from the
Victory
and several of his people.

They were all looking at her, solemnly.

“What the hell is this, an intervention?”

“In a sense,” said Diaz. “Look, Proctor, I know you’ve turned them down. I know you’ve got that cushy professorship waiting for you on Britannia. I know we can’t really compete against that and your family and warm Britannia beaches. But, in our defense....” He trailed off.

Ballsy finished for him. “We’re pretty kick-ass.” Everyone laughed. He seemed a lot happier than he’d been in awhile.

She laughed too, putting her arm around Rayna. “Look, guys. I think I need to stop while I’m ahead. They always say, quit at the top of your game, and you’ll always be remembered kindly. Stay too long and, well, you know what they say about guests overstaying their welcome. Rotten fish and all that.”

Diaz nodded. “Fine. We understand.” He turned to one of the bridge crew members and pointed. “But, before we go, we wanted to show you this. One last pathetic effort to get you to change your mind.”

The lights dimmed, and on the wall appeared the image of a ship, projected from some handheld device.

It looked exactly like the
Constitution
. With a few modifications.

“The
ISS Chesapeake.
We’re her crew. Every one of us here. I asked the top brass, and no one could tell
us
no.” He turned to Proctor. “All she needs is a captain.”

Her hand covered her mouth.

Rayna added, in a low voice, “We kept the seat warm for you, Cap’n. IDF was about to name another captain, since you turned them down. But we convinced them to wait a few more weeks. To give you time, you see.”

She wanted this. She didn’t realize how much she’d been wanting this. The grilling by the senators only confirmed it—she had no desire to sit at a desk, to deal with bureaucrats. And,
damn
, if the academy wasn’t chock-full of bureaucrats.

“On one condition,” she said. The tiny restaurant fell silent. “We change her name. From now on, she’s the
Granger
.”

No one spoke. But everyone nodded.

“She’s the
Granger
,” repeated Rayna.

Pew Pew snorted, and laughed out loud. “
She’s
?
She’s
the
Granger
?”

Commander Scott rolled her eyes. “Ships are girls, Lieutenant. Get over it,” she said, to more laughter.

They sat down to eat, and as the hour passed, Proctor became more and more comfortable with her decision. Her brother would be hurt, of course, as would the kids—they were opening their home to her. Giving her a well-earned respite from the rigors of command and IDF and ships and space and battle, and everything uncomfortable and unpleasant about living in close quarters with a thousand other misfits aboard a floating hunk of metal.

But the Old Bird, and the
Warrior
, they were her home. And this was her family. And the
Chesapeake—
the
Granger
—she couldn’t imagine a better home than that.

Chapter Eighty-Three

Epilogue

President's Stateroom, Frigate One

High Orbit, Britannia

President Avery puffed on her cigar, her feet kicked up on the desk. A whiskey bottle fell off with a crash as her calf brushed up against it, but she shrugged. There were plenty more bottles. All the time in the world now to get drunk and dally with the cabana boys as she saw fit. A woman had needs, after all.

“I think we’ve got things tied up on my end. What I still can’t believe, is how damn lucky we were with Granger. That a man should pop up out of nowhere and rise to the occasion—boggles my mind. We should have had something more concrete in place.”

Avery nodded at her companion. “He was pretty amazing, I admit. One big-damn-hero moment after another. But, you know, if he hadn’t been there, someone else would have. That’s the thing about us westerners. Everyone thinks they’re the hero. But when the time comes, most people scatter. They wilt. But not Granger. He had spine. And if it wasn’t him, it would have been Proctor. Or Zingano. Or
someone
.”

“After all our plans, Avery, it unnerves me to think it all rested on chance. If he hadn’t pulled off what he did, if he hadn’t been susceptible to the clues we sent his way, sent Proctor’s way ... I shudder to think. I mean, what if Granger had denied her science team to board?”

“He wouldn’t have done that. There was no time for him to pore over personnel backgrounds. He trusted Proctor. And
she
had no time to pore over personnel backgrounds. Believe me, Mr. Malakhov, no matter who was there, I’m confident we would have pulled it off.”

The Russian shook his head, and slammed back another shot. “Whatever. I’m done. My end is clean, and, if I’m not mistaken, I’m dead. No thanks to you.” He winked at her with his new eye—the surgery scars were healing fast.