Legacy Fleet: The Complete Trilogy

by Nick Webb

  “Very good, Commander. Wrap things up there, and then head to RPO fire control. We’re up to twenty guns, but that’s still only half of what we’ve got.” Granger didn’t know exactly what she would do to speed things up, but she’d proved herself on the fighter deck—somehow, against all odds, they were going into combat with over three quarters of their fighters operational, up from less than a quarter just a few short hours ago. Despite his earlier frustrations with Proctor, he was beginning to respect her.

  “I’m assuming you want them all operational by the time the enemy fleet shows up, sir?” she replied with the slightest sarcasm in her voice. He let it pass. “Also, sir, we’ve confirmed—we have another quantum field coupler here in storage. Shall I arrange for transport to the Rainbow?”

  “Of course. You have twenty minutes. Granger out.”

  He glanced at Haws, who flashed a quick wink, and grumbled, “Putting her through the wringer, aren’t you, Tim?”

  “She deserves it. As penance for stripping everything down for the past two weeks. But I’ve got to hand it to her: she’s good.”

  “Let’s hope she’s good enough.”

  Granger’s console beeped. He glanced: incoming transmission from Vice President Isaacson. In annoyance, he flipped it on. “Yes, Mr. Isaacson?”

  “Captain, am I to understand you have a spare quantum field coupler on board?” The Vice President’s narrow face appeared on his screen.

  “Mr. Isaacson, have you been monitoring the Constitution’s transmissions?” Damn old fool. Didn’t he have anything better to do?

  “I haven’t. But Captain Day reported to me that you’re in the process of transferring a quantum coupler to the Rainbow.”

  “That’s right. There are thirty kids onboard the Rainbow, and a war zone is no place for a child.”

  “True, but it is also not the place for senators, government ministers, cabinet officials, governors, or the Vice President of the United Earth League. Captain, the Winchester is the same design as the Rainbow. You will order that shuttle to deliver her cargo to this ship immediately.”

  Politicians. Several choice words and insults came to mind. He was half tempted to just switch the comm off, but they were out of time. Either send the damn thing over there, or be harangued and pestered until they did.

  “I hope your new quantum coupler gets you safely to Earth, sir. I can’t imagine what we’d do without a tenth of our government. Granger out.”

  He hoped the sarcasm didn’t come across too strongly. Hell, who was he kidding? He hoped it had been strong—strong enough to shame the bastard. This crisis was not improving Granger’s already dismal opinion of politicians generally, and the Vice President particularly. “Comm, order the shuttle to the Winchester.”

  Granger turned back to Haws.

  “Disgusting old bastard, that one.” Haws flipped a middle finger at the dark display on his monitor. “Want to shuttle me over there so I can punch the piece of shit in the nose? I’m retiring anyway….”

  Granger chuckled. “Politicians will be politicians. Truth be told, the kids might be safer with us at this point if the aliens are intent on pressing through to Earth. I just don’t—”

  “Sir!” interrupted Lieutenant Diaz, the officer at the sensor station. “Lunar Base reports engagement with the enemy fleet!”

  Granger snapped his eyes to the timer on his console, which said they still had five minutes before the aliens were supposed to show up. “Damn. Their drive tech is not just more advanced than ours—it puts us to shame.” He turned to his XO. “Sound red alert, combat stations. All retrofit and recovery operations cease immediately and all crew report to battle stations. Except the RPO gun repair crews—we still need every damn gun we can get operational in the next twenty minutes.”

  Haws started barking orders to the various department chiefs. The bridge, which had been collectively holding its breath for the last half hour, now burst into a flurry of activity.

  He watched the screen, which now showed a small cluster of tiny white dots converging on the moon. They were already far too distant to actually watch any of the operations—the resolution just wasn’t high enough—but perhaps one of the satellites….

  “Lieutenant,” he said, nodding to the comm station, “tap into one of the science satellites in orbit around the moon. The Armstrong satellite I believe will do. Redirect it to the battle zone and give us a live feed.”

  “Uh, sir, that’s a civilian craft run by the Unified Science Federation. We can’t just—”

  “Actually, we can, Lieutenant. When asked for credentials, pipe it through to my console. Every captain in the fleet has backdoor access to every single spacecraft, satellite, defense platform, and data pod. If it’s in space, I can access it. A nice little feature we implemented after the Khorsky incident a decade ago.” He glanced around the bridge. “That’s classified top-secret, by the way.”

  “Aye, sir. Sending it to your console now.”

  The access authorization script appeared on his screen, and he entered in his personal red-level security code. He hoped against hope that IDF hadn’t already deactivated it. It was an irrational thought—they weren’t relieving him of his rank, just his command. But really, what was the difference?

  “There you go, Lieutenant.”

  Granger watched as the monitor on the side wall of the bridge flipped from a split-screen Earth/Moon image to a nightmare.

  Eight alien ships, all larger than IDF’s largest carriers, lurked in stationary orbit over Lunar Base as the remnants of the IDF fleet engaged them. Remnant was the best word to describe the defenders, as at least a dozen smaller frigates and most of the heavy cruisers and carriers careened, broken and fragmented, through space.

  A flurry of defensive fire blasted up from the surface—Lunar Base’s robust orbital defense was giving the alien fleet a run for its money. Granger heard a few abortive, quiet cheers as one of the alien vessels broke apart under the withering fire from below, but they soon fell silent as they watched another huge alien ship bear down on the ISS Clyburne—itself a massive carrier—and slice it in two with a devastatingly effective directed energy weapon that arced across space in a lethal, brilliant green light.

  Granger heard several officers behind him moan. After entire careers of waiting and training vigilantly for an enemy that never came, they were unprepared for the emotional impact of real threats and losses. He knew several of them probably had friends on that ship. He knew Captain Arenson personally, and a giant pit formed in his stomach as he watched one of the halves of the Clyburne burst into a massive explosion as it was hit by a second devastating beam.

  Chapter 30

  Earth’s Moon

  Bridge, ISS Constitution

  “Captain, something’s happening,” called out Lieutenant Diaz. Granger peered at the screen and saw that he was right—something very odd was happening, just as in the surveillance vid from Phobos Station. A piercingly bright light had appeared in the midst of the alien fleet.

  And as before, the video feed began to pulse.

  But this time he noticed something else. A faint humming in the deckplate. Like a distant vibration, low and rumbling and barely perceptible.

  He turned to Haws. “You feel that?”

  “Feel what?”

  Dammit—was his head playing tricks on him again? If they survived the day he’d have to go down to Doc Wyatt and get his brain scanned. The headache, combined with the faint vertigo from the deep pulsing in the ship were evidence enough that the cancer had spread.

  “That pulsing. It started just when the video began shaking, and that light showed up next to the alien ships.” He glared at his XO. “You’re telling me you can’t feel it?”

  Another voice sounded out across the bridge from the doors sliding open. “I feel it.”

  Granger breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. “Good, so I’m not crazy. Why are you not down in fire control, Commander Proctor?”

  “Not
much point. They’re going to have about eighty percent of the firing systems up in the next fifteen minutes. Not much more I could do, so when I heard the alarms I came down here. Thought you could use some of my expertise on the Swarm. Such as it is,” she added with a faint grimace. “No one knows much, but my doctoral dissertation was on Swarm anthropology.”

  He regarded her with a skeptical eye. “How in the world did you study Swarm anthropology without any living specimens? Or dead specimens for that matter.”

  But he hardly heard her answer, as his attention had swiveled back to the screen to watch as the brilliant light increased in intensity, even as the bombardment from the defenses on the surface intensified. One of the alien ships erupted in a massive explosion as one of the high-yield quantum thermonuclear warheads found its target, but the other ships held formation around the growing point of light.

  Granger knew what was about to happen. They’d seen it less than an hour ago, and the next moment confirmed his fear. The light disappeared—it moved so fast his eyes couldn’t track it. He wasn’t even sure it moved, possibly because when it disappeared the video feed was overwhelmed with static and distortion. But a second later a massive explosion erupted out of the lunar surface far below, blasting outward, taking the entire Lunar Base with it.

  Someone across the bridge in environmental operations vomited.

  “Well, Commander? What does your Ph.D. in Swarm Anthropology tell you about that?”

  Proctor was silent as the entire bridge watched the aftermath. A giant plume of rock, dust, and debris wafted up from the surface, the low gravity of the moon permitting the cloud to extend hundreds of kilometers upwards. Soon, it was nearly where the alien ships had been, though they had quickly moved off after their doomsday weapon launched. They were now finishing off the remaining IDF vessels that survived the initial onslaught.

  “Well, for one, they’re an evolutionarily cyclical species. This is just the latest of a series of regular leaps forward for them. Each cycle they expand outward from their core systems or homeworld, clearing out the space around them, before retreating back.”

  Granger stared at her. “How the hell do you know all that? I thought we knew nothing about them. All of IDF’s expeditionary forces came back empty handed. The Swarm disappeared seventy-five years ago, inexplicably, without a trace, and now you’re telling me you somehow know more than IDF intel about our deadliest enemy—”

  “Oh, they know all this. Or rather, they’ve been told. None of this is corroborated. You’re right, all the expeditionary forces sent out in the early years after the Swarm War came back empty handed, so I had to rely on … more indirect methods. I studied the worlds they left behind, reconstructed maps of their expansion, networked with technological anthropologists to glean what we could from their ship design. In the end I couldn’t come to many firm conclusions beyond what IDF scientists have come to, but I have my hypotheses. Or rather, I used to. I left my science career fifteen years ago for the military.”

  Granger considered her for a moment, wondering if they could glean anything from her previous studies that might help them, but out of the corner of his eye, movement on the still-playing video feed caught his attention. An IDF ship breaking off from the melee, which had become more of a mop-up operation for the aliens.

  “It’s the Thrush, sir,” said one of the tactical crew. “My brother is on—” but he broke off as he watched a brilliant green beam flash out from the nearest alien ship and lance right into the heart of the Thrush, a smaller light cruiser. The beam emerged from the far side, and within a few seconds the entire ship burst into a muted flame, quickly extinguished by space.

  And then it was over. Every IDF ship had succumbed, and without hesitating, the alien fleet started moving as one.

  Straight toward Earth.

  Straight toward them.

  Chapter 31

  Near Earth’s Moon

  Flightdeck, ISS Constitution

  The simulator training was intense, but over far too quickly. In a sense, flying the simulated fighter was like flying her usual shuttle, only with guns. And now she was encouraged to fly at breakneck speeds and take the curves as fast as she could.

  “Did pretty good for a newbie,” said Lieutenant Volz as she pulled herself out of the simulator, using his offered hand as leverage.

  “Thanks, Ballsy.”

  “Just don’t fishtail your landing, Fishtail, or that callsign’s gonna stick.”

  The hour was up, and the two of them jogged through the fighter bay, which swarmed with activity as the work crews frantically pushed to get as many birds into service as humanly possible. The interactive museum displays, models, and soft ropes and poles for queue formation were shoved unceremoniously into a corner—all trappings of retirement had been tossed aside.

  “Ok, you’re in that one there. Stay close to me. Our squad will fly in three-man attack wedge formation with single backup while we’re out there, just like you practiced in the sim. You, Dogtown, and Hotbox will fly point and I’ll back you all up.”

  She climbed up into her bird, and before she knew it she was initiating the engines and lifting off the deck. The pulsing screen of the energy airlock shimmered around her as she passed out into the vacuum at the end of the runway where she awaited with her squadron the inevitable order to deploy.

  Voices of the other pilots chattered excitedly over the comm, and she felt a thrill of adrenaline. But after a minute of waiting, she reached into her back pocket and pulled out a picture of Zack as a baby, held in her husband’s arms. It was when they were on a hike up in Yosemite right before her redeployment.

  She reached and jammed it into a small space between the dashboard and one of the indicators so that it popped up vertically on its own. Her two favorite people in the world right in her view as she readied the rest of her fighter’s systems for combat.

  Ballsy’s voice rang over her headset. “All right, bitches, we’ve got confirmation! Get ready!”

  Glancing one more time at her baby son and Tom, she gunned her engine.

  She swore she’d see them again.

  Chapter 32

  Near Earth’s Moon

  Bridge, ISS Constitution

  “Sir, they’re accelerating rapidly!” said Lieutenant Diaz. “I don’t know how, but they’re at thirty g’s. At this rate they’ll be on top of us in five minutes!”

  Haws sidled up to him and whispered in his ear. “Tim. This is crazy. We’re no match for them—not even with the Qantas backing us up. We’ll be dead in five minutes.”

  “What are you suggesting?” murmured Granger.

  “Q-jump with whatever civilian ships that are capable of docking with us, and get back to Earth now. Meet up with the fleet. It’s our only hope. Maybe fighting alongside the rest of the fleet we might actually make a difference. But this? This is suicide.”

  Haws had kept his voice low, to avoid any listening bridge crew from hearing their commanders discuss a possible retreat. Worse—a retreat leaving behind defenseless civilians to their certain doom.

  “None of those ships have q-jump capability, and we don’t have time to let them dock. I’m not going to leave these people to their deaths,” he replied in a murmur.

  “Tim, if we stay, they’ll still die, just a minute or so later,” pleaded Haws.

  “And if we leave, we’ll die just a few hours later. So what’s your point?” He said this out loud and several officers glanced at the two of them. He raised his voice to the whole bridge and pointed at the comm officer. “Pipe me through to the ship.”

  “You’re on, sir.”

  “This is Captain Granger. As you may know, we’re about to engage with the enemy fleet. Probably Swarm. I’ll be honest with you: the odds don’t look good. These bastards just took out Lunar Base and half a dozen IDF vessels in under ten minutes. This is the real deal, folks. This is the moment we’ve trained our whole lives for.”

  He paused to glance around the bridge. Ex
cept for the hum of systems and the sound of the ventilation, all was silent, all paying rapt attention to the captain. He needed this to be good.

  God, he hated speeches.

  “We’ve already lost friends. We’ve lost family. Ships newer and larger than ours have already met their end. But I’ll tell you something.” He glanced at Haws, who glared back. “This ship has never met her match. Seventy-five years ago, when she was already fifty years old, she held her own against the Swarm. She and the rest of the Legacy fleet. The Congress, the Warrior, the Independence, and the Chesapeake, all lived to tell the tale. So I say to you: do your duty. Stand firm. Keep your wits about you. Remember your training. Be true to her and she’ll be true to us. And if we fall, then by God we will fall in defense of humanity, and those after us will tell stories that will pass through the ages. Granger out.”

  Haws grumbled. “Let’s hope there’s still someone around to tell stories about us.”

  Granger ignored him. “Launch fighters. RPO crews stand ready. As soon as the fleet is in range I want firing solutions. Scan their vessels for their power plants and focus on them. I want their power systems crippled as soon as possible. Contact the Qantas, tell them to back us up—our armor is ten times as thick as theirs. And if Captain Argus gives you any guff about his precious smart-steel armor, just remind him I have operational authority over this mission.” His string of orders came out so fast that those around him at first weren’t sure which was directed to whom. But within a few seconds they snapped into action, Haws barking orders to the weapons crew, Commander Proctor relaying orders to the fighter bay, and the comm station chattering into their headsets.

  “Time?”

  Lieutenant Diaz glanced at his console readout. “One minute, twenty seconds until maximum firing range, sir.”