Legend: Book 7 of The Legacy Fleet Series

by Nick Webb

  She put her hand up in a salute, and he did likewise. “Next week I want a Taco’s ’N More burrito. Haven’t had one of those in ages. Can you manage that here?”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  She finished the salute and made for the mess hall’s exit.

  “What about your breakfast?” said Ethan, falling into step next to her.

  “Oh god, Ethan, I can barely keep my eyes open. Breakfast can wait.”

  The walk to her quarters was mercifully short, as the senior staff’s quarters were all just one deck above the mess hall and galley. When the door closed behind them, she reached for the light. “Hey, did I say you could come in and— oh,” she felt his hand on her ass.

  “Still sleepy?” he said, and started kissing her neck.

  “Stop. Ethan, no.” In spite of the protests she giggled when he tickled her breast from behind. She slapped the hand away, but then grabbed it and moved it lower. “Honestly, Ethan, if the crew knew the CAG was fucking the captain it’d be . . .”

  “Be what?”

  “A scandal.” She reached back and grabbed his thigh, drifting higher. “Scandalous,” she said in a breathy, mocking voice.

  He whispered in her ear. “Scandalous for the CAG to fuck his wife?”

  “Was that a proposal?” Whitehorse leaned back and kissed him, slowly.

  “Sorry kid, I already proposed.”

  She kissed him for a few more seconds before grabbing his hair and pulling him gently back. “Proposals without setting dates are like . . .” She gazed into his eyes for a few minutes before pulling him back in.

  “Are like what?”

  “Couldn’t think of a metaphor.”

  “Simile.”

  “What?”

  Kissing him was the best way she knew to lose track of time. And to pass the time. Waiting for a maintenance and diagnostic report? Kissing. Waiting for fleet command to send new orders? Kissing. Waiting for him to actually sit down and set a wedding date with her? More kissing. Good lord, she felt like a hormone-charged teenage girl. She hadn’t felt this way in ages. She shouldn’t be indulging in this.

  Not IDF’s newest, and possibly youngest, captain on record.

  “Similes are like something else. Metaphors are that thing. Seriously, did you even graduate high school?” He moved on to kissing her neck.

  She let him. “Thanks, Mom. No hickeys. I’ll lose the respect of the crew.”

  “Are you kidding? You’ll be getting high fives all the way down to engineering.”

  “Oh god, you boys and your— whatever it is you have.”

  “Hey,” he said, his voice lowering, indicating he was changing the subject. “Back there in the mess hall? I admit, I thought you were being silly at first. Not acting like a captain should. But then, I got it. I watched those kids actually do their job. And I overheard some of the officers in the line. The things they were saying about you.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know. Good things. Like what an amazing captain they think you are. Lieutenant Peters from engineering? You know, Mr. Dour-faced never-laughs-about-a-thing Lieutenant Peters? He said to his buddy, and I shit you not, glad to finally have a leader for a captain.

  “Peters? Well consider me not-shitted!”

  The door chimed, and they pulled away from each other like lightning. Whitehorse reached for her hair and smoothed it out. Zivic wiped his lips and dashed for the chair across from the desk before waving her on.

  “Come in!” she said, perhaps a little too loudly. Dammit.

  The door slid open and her XO, Commander Shin-Wentworth, walked in. He nodded curtly, giving no indication he had any idea about the heat he’d just interrupted.

  “Ma’am, the request was denied. We’re to continue translation efforts with the regular xenolinguistics team without the assistance of a Valarisi-enhanced officer.”

  “Goddammit, do they think we’ll just magically start understanding the Itharans’ infinitely conjugated hodgepodge of a language all by ourselves? It’ll take years! And that’s just one of their dialects. We’ve identified at least eleven. And that’s just in the Itharan culture we’ve had contact with inside Chantana Three. We haven’t even talked to the ones at the other colonies they claim they have. Can’t we call Oppenheimer? Go over the bureaucracy’s head?”

  “Ma’am, Admiral Oppenheimer denied the request himself,” said Shin-Wentworth.

  “Well. He is . . . an absolute asshole.” She glanced at Commander Zivic. “Metaphor?”

  “I think we’re in fact territory there,” he replied.

  Shin-Wentworth shifted uncomfortably. He was a straight shooter. A scientist through-and-through who only came to the job because of the combination of a severe need for anyone with a drop of leadership experience and his experience with higher-dimensional quantum-field physics. He had little patience with sarcasm, joking, or anything other than strict professionalism when it came from the crew. With her, he tolerated it, but only because she outranked him.

  She waved him through the door that led from the anteroom of her quarters to her office, and followed him there, Zivic in tow grumbling under his breath. “Even with Mr. Morphology himself, Lieutenant Commander Qwerty, we’re still, what, months away from even fifty percent comprehension?”

  “Ma’am, the translation team is, in fact, making excellent progress. The translation software update that IDF IT sent us a few days ago is highly sophisticated. We’re already talking to them with about a fifty percent comprehension rate. Lieutenant Commander Qwerty anticipates we’ll be near ninety within a week.”

  “Oh!” A welcome surprise. “Still, a week. Commander, time is critical. In a week, the Findiri may already be upon us and our translation team will be conscripted into the gunnery crew. We don’t have the luxury of time. A week could break us. That’s why I wanted a Valarisi companion to help us—understanding language is,” she tried to shift into language that would resonate with him, “one of its core competencies.”

  “I understand that, Captain. But I’m sure Admiral Oppenheimer has his reasons. If you ask me, it’s dangerous to rely on the Valarisi for everything. Ever since Penumbra, it’s like everyone has got this savior complex where they think the Valarisi walk on water and will save us from everything.”

  “Uh, they are water, big shot,” said Zivic.

  “Ethan,” Whitehorse shot him a scowl. He knew Shin-Wentworth hated being called that. Or called anything besides Commander, or his last name.

  “They are technically not water, Commander.” She could tell his inner scientist was about to break free. “Water is just their medium for physical movement. They are actually a collection of complex proteins and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, big shot, I know what they are. I had one inside me. So did you. So did the Captain. We don’t need a lecture.”

  She waved him down. “Thank you, Commander Zivic. Please make sure the training program stays on track even during fighter upgrades this week. Dismissed.”

  He held a hand to his chest as if in a mock-display of deep hurt, but she shot him a look that she hoped he heard loud and clear as NOT NOW. After a shrug, he left.

  “Commander Shin-Wentworth, you could have messaged me from the bridge. Is there something else?”

  “Yes, ma’am. There is.” He turned and paced a few steps to his side before taking a breath and turning back to her, as if deciding to go through with something. “I see part of my job as not only managing the crew, maintaining discipline and such, and making the ship run smoothly, but also to keep a pulse on morale and what the crew is thinking.”

  Oh god. The recent lack of command experience in IDF meant not only that the cadets were being graduated in record time, but that critical positions like XO of a starship were being staffed by people that would have had no business in command positions during the regular times. Shin-Wentworth was something of a back-bencher. “And?”

  “I get the sense that there are a few officers that are uncomfor
table with how your personal relationship with the Commander of the Air and Space Group affects them professionally.”

  A few officers. That was rich. She knew that by a few officers he meant Commander Shin-Wentworth. She’d heard nary a word, not even an annoyed glance, from anyone else.

  “Oh no they aren’t. I know exactly what they don’t like, Commander. It’s Zivic himself. He’s an arrogant asshole, and struts around like he owns the place. Don’t looked so shocked. Yes, I’m well aware of the man’s faults.”

  Shin-Wentworth shrugged. “Well, yes, he does do that.”

  “You do know what ship we’re on, Commander.”

  He hesitated, as if sensing some kind of test. “The ISS Tyler S. Volz?”

  “The ISS Ballsy. That’s what half the crew calls it. That’s what half the fleet calls it. Hell, it’s what Admiral Proctor herself calls it.”

  “Admiral Oppenheimer calls it the Volz,” said Shin-Wentworth.

  “Admiral Oppenheimer hated Captain Volz’s guts. But everyone else, literally everyone else loved the man. He was Ballsy. Even to his galley crew gang he was Ballsy. To the maintenance workers: Ballsy. The janitors: Ballsy. There was no protocol, no rank with him, to the chagrin of the top brass. Even the little red-faced week-old baby ensigns called him Ballsy. And you know why?”

  “Because . . . he was ballsy?”

  She chuckled. “That he was. He helped win the Second Swarm war. And he saved us all two months ago. He threw his life away to save us. They measured his ship as traveling over one hundred kilometers per second when it collided with that Swarm ship. He turned his body into a gaseous collection of atoms so that we’d have a fighting chance at the battle of Penumbra. Yeah, I’d say he was ballsy. But that’s not why they all called him Ballsy.”

  Shin-Wentworth was silent for a few moments before answering. “Yes. I understand the crew loved him. I understand he was a hero. He had swagger. He had so-called personality.” He held up four fingers for air quotes around those words.

  “He didn’t have personality, Shin-Wentworth,” she mimicked his air quotes, “He had a fucking big actual honest-to-God personality. He had heart. And yes, he did have swagger. He earned it.” She pointed at the door. “And Commander Zivic? His son? What do you expect? He’s the same. And you know what? He’s earned it too. Tenfold. We would have not only lost the battle of Penumbra without him, but the battle of New Dublin too, and who knows how many others. So don’t give me bullshit about some crew members getting their panties in a bunch because the captain is boinking the CAG. That’s not what they have a problem with, and we both know it.”

  She left unsaid what everyone in that room knew. That if someone with different genitalia were getting handsy with a fighter pilot, there’d be high-fives and thumbs-ups instead of disapproving whispers. Or at least Shin-Wentworth’s claims of disapproving whispers. For all she knew, it was all in the XO’s head. The guy was a puritanical asshole, pure and simple.

  Except it wasn’t that simple. She knew his parents and siblings and nieces and nephews all died—all but one, a single brother serving in IDF. All on Britannia. All of them crushed and ground up and vaporized in an instant. His wife and kids on Paradiso were safe, but family is family. She knew the pain he must be keeping well-hidden. Didn’t make him any less of an asshole. But at least she could see he wasn’t only an asshole.

  Shin-Wentworth was nodding. “I understand, Captain. I really do. But . . . don’t you think you could . . . ask him to tone it down? That swagger, that attitude might be fine as a typical fighter jock. But he’s the CAG. And he’s not just that. He’s your fiancé. And he’s, well, famous. It shouldn’t surprise you, Captain, that famous people are under the microscope, and while we love them we also hate them and magnify every single failing and make them personal slights against us. God knows, when I was associate director of the Pendleton Accelerator in Centralia, Washington? Tiny town like that? I couldn’t sneeze at the coffee shop at eight-thirty without half the town thinking I had Pentavirus by lunch.”

  “I—” she stopped, catching herself. He was absolutely right, of course. Ethan needed to tone it down. “Thank you, Commander. I’ll take it under advisement. Is there something else?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The Itharans are almost here. They sent a shuttle about twenty minutes ago, unannounced, and they’ll be docking shortly.”

  “The Trits are here?” She sighed. The Itharans were an especially . . . spontaneous bunch. Flighty, almost whimsical. Twits? No. But they had three fingers per hand, so Trits came close enough.

  “We don’t know what their reaction would be to their popular nickname, Captain, so perhaps we shouldn’t be encouraging its use.”

  She sighed. Why did she pick this guy as her XO? Oh, that’s right. She didn’t. Oppenheimer did. “Did they say why they’re coming?”

  “Hard to tell, given the communication issues. But from what we can tell, to see you.”

  “Me? They’ve talked to me before. We understood maybe ten percent of what they were saying at the time, so why do they want to see me again? In person?”

  “Yes. You. They didn’t say. Just that they were coming to see you. I don’t know, could be a courtesy call for all we know.”

  Whitehorse stood up and straightened her uniform. “Shuttle bay two? One is still down for maintenance, right?”

  “Correct, ma’am.”

  He followed her out the door of her office and toward the lift that would take them up to the shuttle bay on the top of the ship. Fresh cadets from the academy stopped in their tracks to salute as she passed and she nodded back. She knew there was more than respect for her rank in those salutes, and she could see it in their eyes as she passed by. Many of them were positively gawking at her.

  At her. Little old Jerusha Whitehorse, she thought. Who the hell am I that they should stare? “Can we get them to stop that?” she muttered through her teeth to Shin-Wentworth next to her.

  “What do you expect, ma’am? You’re one of the heroes of Penumbra. You fought alongside Volz, Proctor, and Granger himself. You’re part of the legend now.”

  “The legend? Good grief.”

  “You better get used to it, ma’am.”

  “Fat chance.”

  They parted at an intersection outside the shuttle bay. “I’ll be in the physics lab going over the latest scans of the Itharans’ habitat underneath the crust. Last night we theorized that there might be some temporal-gravitational effects going on at the quantum level. Today’s scans will shed light on that.”

  She nodded. “Temporal, huh? Well if you can temporally-gravitationally-quantumly summon me some extra nap time, do let me know?”

  He mirrored her nod, surprisingly good-naturedly. “I’ll see what I can do, ma’am.”

  Maybe he’d do okay after all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Savannah Sector

  Nova Nairobi, High Orbit

  ISS Independence

  Bridge

  “Onscreen, Lieutenant.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral.”

  Peaceful white clouds hanging over an idyllic green and blue world were replaced by something far less peaceful, and definitely not ideal.

  No.

  Not now.

  Not yet, not while United Earth was still rebuilding, still reeling from the loss of Britannia and half the fleet. Please.

  A giant ship approached—almost unbelievably large had the admiral not already seen ships as large as moons destroy her beloved Britannia. It was like an absurdly-gargantuan rotating drum. And flanked by dozens upon dozens of cruisers, many the size of the Independence, easily.

  And they were bearing down on Nova Nairobi at breakneck speed.

  She held a hand to her mouth. “My god. I thought we’d have more time. We’re not ready.”

  No one answered her. Silence momentarily hung over the bridge. Like a calm before a raging, cataclysmic storm. Or rather, like a wake, a vigil.

  “Admiral? What do we do?”r />
  Admiral Shelby Proctor stood up from the command chair in the center of the bridge. “Lieutenant Sampono? Status of our task force? How many are here?”

  The young woman—too young, Proctor thought—glanced down at her terminal and scanned for the right commands to enter, brief confusion passing over her face before she remembered the right sequence.

  “Just under half, ma’am. Nineteen cruisers, eleven destroyers.”

  “Admiral Okoye? Has his task force arrived?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And Oppenheimer? The Resolute?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Very well, Ensign. Open a channel to the fleet.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral.”

  She waited a moment, then spoke a little louder. In her thousands-of-nervous-officers-are-listening-to-me voice.

  “All hands, all ships, this is Admiral Shelby Proctor. It’s true. I thought we’d have more time, but time is a luxury that seems to forever elude us. It appears the long-elusive Findiri are here, and in force. There’s only one thing left to do: fight like hell. If we do not stop them here, our entire civilization lies defenseless behind us. We’re the wall. We’re the shield. Nothing gets through us.”

  She took a deep breath.

  They were not ready for this.

  “Admiral Okoye, take your task force and execute battle plan Proctor Alpha. Admiral Laghari, battle plan Proctor Sigma with half our task force. I’ll take my half right down the middle of that drum—perhaps they’ll avoid firing and risk hitting themselves. Godspeed. Proctor out.” She motioned to the helmsman. “Ensign Destachio? Take us in. Right towards that monstrosity. All hands, ready for battle.”

  The ISS Independence leapt forward, flanked by three other heavy cruisers and a destroyer, straight toward the giant, gargantuan vessel bearing down on the beautiful world of Nova Nairobi. One of United Earth’s newest colonies.

  The very existence of the colony was an act of hope. At a time of devastation for humanity, when entire worlds had been ravaged by war with the Swarm thirty years ago and again just two months back, humans continued exploring, expanding, putting down new roots, as they always do.