by Nick Webb
Warrior
Book 2
The Legacy Fleet Trilogy
Nick Webb
For J., L., and C.
Other books by Nick Webb
The Pax Humana Saga:
1: The Terran Gambit
2: Chains of Destiny
3: Into the Void
Chapter One
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Planetary Command Center
Governor Wolfram wrung his hands nervously. Sweat beaded on his shiny forehead but he didn’t even bother wiping it. Power was being diverted away from luxuries like air conditioning to more useful things like planetary shielding and orbital plasma-particle beams.
They were coming.
And fast, he noticed, watching the flurry of large dots on the tactical readout, each indicating a massive Swarm carrier, all likely full of thousands of fighters, rapidly approaching the inner system defenses.
“Any response yet from CENTCOM?” he barked at the admiral huddled with his commanders near the tactical station.
From his tight smile and furrowed brow, Governor Wolfram could tell the admiral was annoyed. “No, sir. We only just sent out the meta-space distress call an hour ago. We’re expecting a response any moment now.” Admiral Azbill resumed the coordination of the New Dublin planetary fleet defenses.
Wolfram nodded, and turned back to the tactical readout nearby. Ten ships. Ten. The fleet that had attacked Earth just over two months ago had numbered ten, too. A first wave of six, followed closely by four more. In all the Swarm incursions since that battle, they’d only sent in smaller strike forces now that they knew Earth knew how to fight back. Two ships here, three there, always striking at smaller settlements on fringe worlds where they were assured a quick victory and a sharp, devastating raid before they melted away, disappearing to whatever star systems they were originating from.
But New Dublin was not on the periphery, and ten ships meant they were coming for blood. This was the real deal.
He wrung his hands again, and watched as the last defense outpost about halfway out to the nearest planet—a handful of automated laser turrets mounted to a smattering of small asteroids orbiting their sun—disappeared from the tactical readout, and the flurry of large dots resumed their course to New Dublin.
Less than an hour away.
There was no hope. If CENTCOM was only now receiving and responding to the meta-space distress call there would never be enough time to dispatch a rescue force.
They were doomed. In one hour. With ten Swarm ships incoming, there was no way any city or town on New Dublin would survive. Their planetary defense fleet was simply no match for that much firepower.
He’d often wondered why the Swarm came at a planet with conventional inertial thrusters, rather than q-jump all the way into a system. Q-jumping would give their targets far less time to assemble and organize any sort of defense. But Admiral Azbill, the IDF commander in charge of the New Dublin force, assured him it was not because of any sort of technical shortcomings on the Swarm’s part.
No, he believed they did it to sow fear and terror in their victims. Let them see you coming for hours. Let them stew in their own juices, painfully aware that their end was coming very, very soon. Let them run around in a frenzy, inciting confusion and distress in the population, allowing for maximum disorder and mayhem and destruction when the Swarm finally arrived.
Why would the Swarm do this? Why would they care? Nobody knew. Nobody seemed to know anything about them, as far as he could tell.
How could you fight an enemy you knew nothing about?
The blood drained from his face as a new dot suddenly appeared on the tactical screen, just a hundred thousand kilometers from New Dublin. Damn. Maybe they’d changed their tactics. Were they sending in an advance warship to soften them up before the main body of their fleet arrived?
The new dot swooped in, terribly fast, toward a low orbit.
It was massive. The energy readings coming off the ship indicated it was charging weapons and preparing for a fight. Wolfram’s stomach tensed. The end would come sooner, rather than later, it seemed.
He heard a whoop off to the side, and snapped his head toward the officer who’d made the sound, bouncing excitedly at his station. The comm station.
“Admiral! It’s the Warrior! It’s Granger himself!”
Admiral Azbill’s face immediately transformed from that of a grim, harried commander to an expression of something Governor Wolfram had not seen in quite some time.
Hope.
“Amazing,” Wolfram muttered. “He’s managed to assemble his strike force and get here already? But where are his other ships?”
Admiral Azbill shrugged. “Patch him through.”
A few moments later, the officer at comm nodded. “You’re on, Admiral. We’ve got visual, too.”
“This is Admiral Azbill of New Dublin Planetary Command. That you, Granger?” They all turned to the viewscreen covering half of one of the walls.
An image of an older man, his faced lined and dark bags sagging under his eyes, snapped onto the screen. And in spite of the lines and scars and obvious signs of months of battle, he was smiling.
“Good to see you, Azbill. I understand you’re in need of some assistance?”
Admiral Azbill gave a hollow laugh. “Yeah, you could say that.”
Granger’s smile widened. “Well then, let’s get this party started. I’d like to send one of my people down to you to help coordinate and integrate with operations on the Warrior. You’ve got your planetary defense fleet assembled, I presume? We’re going to need them.”
Azbill hesitated. “Captain, where’s your strike force? They coming in right behind you?”
Granger shook his head. Oddly enough though, his smile deepened. Governor Wolfram felt his stomach tighten. No fleet?
“The Swarm is putting us through the wringer today. Three separate incursions. I’ve sent my fleet on to the Johannesburg Sector to deal with the four Swarm ships there, and Admiral Zingano from CENTCOM is personally dealing with a Swarm raid in the Centauri System with the strike force based at Sol.”
Azbill’s back stiffened. “Am I to understand, sir, that you’re it? No one else is coming?” Governor Wolfram thought it odd that an admiral was addressing a captain as sir. Was the man’s reputation and mythos that powerful? Granger had become something of a legend in the past two months, as he was able to repel invasion after deadly invasion. The man seemed to have a knack for dealing with the Swarm.
Not to mention his inexplicable return from the dead. The Constitution had disappeared—the satellite cameras had broadcast the event to the entire Earth. One moment she crashed and disappeared into a singularity, taking out three Swarm carriers with it, and the next moment she’d reappeared, careening through the atmosphere.
“That’s right, Admiral. The Warrior’s it.”
Silence fell on the previously busy command center. He heard an officer cough nervously behind him. One ship? Wolfram thought. One ship against ten swarm carriers! The man is mad.
Admiral Azbill was becoming agitated. “Granger, is this a joke? Your fleet is right behind you, I hope, for all our sakes. In case CENTCOM didn’t update you, we’ve got ten Swarm carriers incoming. Ten.”
Granger leaned in slightly to the viewscreen. “No joke, Azbill. They’ve got ten carriers. But we’ve got your entire planetary defense fleet, one ISS Warrior … and one me.” Governor Wolfram almost missed it, but Granger actually winked at them. The man had style. And balls. “I’d say the odds are about even.”
Chapter Two
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warr
ior
Captain Granger nodded toward the comm officer on duty to cut the transmission, and swiveled his chair to face Proctor.
“You ready, Commander?”
She nodded, and stood up to leave. “I’ll get down there right away.”
It was always painful to have her leave—fighting without Proctor was like tying your good arm behind your back during a fist fight—but he needed the coordination with the surface forces only she could provide. The woman had a knack for getting things done—quickly and efficiently. And besides, excluding himself, she had the most experience fighting the Swarm. Her capabilities would be the most valuable directing the response of the rest of the defense forces planet-side.
He swiveled back to his station. “Should be just like Tau Ceti,” he said. “Swarm’ll never know what hit them.”
She paused at the door. “Tim, this is hardly like Tau Ceti. We fought four ships there. We’ve got ten incoming.”
“But New Dublin’s defense force is far more capable than Tau Ceti’s.”
“True,” she conceded.
He glanced over at the tactical station, motioning to Lieutenant Diaz, the tactical officer, to join him. “Don’t worry, Commander. The bastards will never know what hit them. This time tomorrow we’ll be back to planning Operation Battle-ax.”
Proctor stayed at the door a moment longer, then left. He knew what she wanted to say: You’re being too cocky, Tim. She’d warned him several times over the last few weeks. She thought he was being too overconfident. Too brash.
And the truth was, he felt it. His confidence brimmed over, and he knew, he just knew he was going to crush those bastards. Ever since he’d woken up on Proctor’s shoulder as she carried him down to engineering in a flaming Constitution careening through the atmosphere. Ever since the cancer had left.
Ever since those missing three days. Or fifteen seconds, depending on how one looked at it.
Somehow, the miraculous nature of the circumstances, and the fact that he and Proctor had almost single-handedly saved Earth, granted him the knowledge that they’d be ok. They would survive. More than survive: they’d win so convincingly that the Swarm would either never attack them again, or be wiped out so utterly that the win would amount to a genocide. And Granger was ok with that. That vague feeling, that voice in the back of his head, it gave him confidence. Swagger.
He didn’t stifle the swagger. On the contrary, he flaunted it. His people ate it up. They needed it. Craved it. And in the aftermath of the invasion of Earth, he’d gained—and cultivated—an almost legendary status. The Hero of Earth. He found that by acting the part of the legend, his people responded in kind with legendary performance. He acted the part for them. They wanted a hero? Then, by god, he’d give them one, if it meant the Swarm would be destroyed and humanity saved.
“Helm, report.”
Ensign Prince, whose red, raw face just recently emerged from the bandages that had covered the severe burns he suffered during the previous week’s engagement with the Swarm, cocked his head to the side in answer. “Assuming a low orbit. We’ll be swinging around the limb of the horizon just as the Swarm arrives, sir.”
“Perfect.” He glanced to the side. “Tactical?”
“All mag rails primed and ready.”
“Any more trouble with the new ones they installed last maintenance?”
IDF had upgraded the Warrior with over one hundred new mag rail guns, more than doubling her complement. That meant over five hundred new crew members to manage and worry about, but it was well worth the extra firepower.
“All power conduits are reading normal. Looks like Rayna’s got them all under control.”
A voice chimed over the comm system. “Cap’n, my baby’s ready for you. Treat her nice or I’ll be grumpy tomorrow.”
Speak of the devil. He cleared his throat and raised his head. “Thank you, Commander Scott. Your baby’s my baby.”
“Uh, sir?” He could hear the smirk in her voice. “I’m a married woman.”
“You can’t marry a ship, Rayna. Granger out.” He smiled and swatted at the comm button. He glanced at the new communications officer, a young man straight out of the Academy. Top of the class. Ensign Prucha. “Is Proctor down there yet?”
Prucha checked his console, and nodded. “Just arrived a moment ago.”
“Good. Once you two have a system link set up, we can get this show on the road.”
He checked the status board, confirming that all crews were ready for combat. One more senior officer to report in….
As if on cue, a patrician British voice chimed over the comm: “Captain Granger, all fighter crews ready.”
“All four hundred? I’m still amazed you found a way to pack that many in there, Commander Pierce.”
The CAG’s calming accent contained the smallest quiver. “Desperation is the father of genius, sir.” He hesitated. “Will we be deploying all fighters this time around?”
Pierce, while being the best CAG Granger had ever served with, still hadn’t recovered from the loss of his father, who’d commanded a British warship before encountering the initial Swarm invasion force. Or was it deeper than that? Could it be that the other man just couldn’t live with losing his pilots? As Captain, Granger knew it was never easy: they lost a handful of people in every engagement. The Flight Academy could hardly keep up with the attrition rate. Granger could understand the man’s concern.
But this was not a time for hesitation. “All fighters, Commander. Will that be a problem?”
A brief silence on the other end. “No problem, sir. All fighter squadrons reporting ready.”
“Good. Granger out.” He thumbed the comm off.
He gripped his armrests, suppressing the rising tension. Playing the part of swaggering hero for his people was one thing. Fooling himself that the upcoming battle would be a cakewalk was another entirely. This would be the battle of his life, and while he was confident they would prevail, he knew he’d lose people. A lot of people. And New Dublin would face heavy casualties, too. It was unavoidable. War was hell, and modern space warfare was fiery, brutal hell on an epic scale.
The time ticked by. Granger busied himself with the last minute details of battle preparation, but it was all window-dressing. They were ready. The guns were primed. The missiles loaded. The lasers powered. All they needed was a target.
“Sir! Coming up over the limb of the planet now. Visual contact with the Swarm fleet.”
“Shelby, I hope that was enough time for you,” he said under his breath.
Diaz gawked at his screen, waving emphatically at Granger. “Sir! Detecting thirteen Swarm capital vessels.”
Thirteen?! Damn.
Chapter Three
New Dublin, Eyre Sector
Bridge, ISS Warrior
Proctor dashed down the lowering ramp of the shuttle as soon as it was safe, rushing abruptly past the Commander who’d been sent to receive her and making her way briskly toward the command center. Granger’s idea. Show them, with urgency, who was in charge and who’d be calling the shots. Even though she didn’t know where the command center was.
“Commander Proctor!” said the short man, running after her. His uniform was too tight, as if he were someone who vainly and stubbornly clung to his older, smaller clothing despite gaining fifty pounds.
“Please keep up, Commander,” she replied, without slowing or turning around. With no idea of how to get to the command center, she needed him to catch up faster, but she wasn’t about to slow down to wait.
He huffed, breaking out into a jog, falling into step alongside her. “Commander Proctor, why did CENTCOM only send the Warrior?”
She looked askance at him, raising a single eyebrow. “Actually, Commander, CENTCOM wanted to send in the Warrior’s whole strike force. Captain Granger convinced them not to.”
Proctor almost laughed as she saw the man’s jaw drop a full inch. But she kept moving ahead until she reached a T in the hallway that forced her to slo
w down momentarily to await his direction.
“But … why?”
She saw a sign pointing to the command center and quickened her pace now that she no longer needed his assistance. “Two reasons. Both of which the captain already told Admiral Azbill. He felt the strike force was needed in the Johannesburg Sector, and he’s confident that the combined strength of the Warrior and the New Dublin fleet will be more than sufficient to meet the threat.”
“But … but that’s … that’s just mad!” The man looked flustered, his thick face turning red either from the jogging or disbelief at what she was saying.
“Mad? Probably. You’ll find that Granger’s tactics have become a bit … unconventional as of late. But he’s also effective. We’ve actually got great odds.”
“And just what do you place the odds at?” They passed the doors to the command center, which opened right in time to receive them.
“Oh, twenty-five percent? Thirty? Hard to tell.”
She was kidding, of course, but the expression of dread spreading over the commander’s red face was priceless. The real odds were far higher. Fifty fifty, just like Granger had said. But he’d had an incredible streak of luck the past few months. Maybe this was the battle that would restore some balance to their track record.
Admiral Azbill greeted her with a curt nod. “Commander Proctor.” Although he projected the confidence befitting a senior commander, she could discern several subtle signs of stress. He squinted. His eyes flickered between her and the status screens on the wall behind her. He was in over his head, and he knew it, but he was not about to let anyone else know it. This could be tricky—she needed operational authority if they were going to pull this off, but he might just be the type to stubbornly refuse.
“Admiral Azbill, I’m honored to be here—Captain Granger has spoken very highly of you. He asked that I coordinate the Warrior’s efforts with your forces. The experience we’ve gained engaging the Swarm will be best implemented if I assist you directly down here.” She translated in her head: Granger asked that I come and take over your fleet so you don’t, in his words, piss away our victory and kill us all. She looked him up and down. A career IDF man. Probably served at a desk job for ten years in the old Miami HQ, deep in the bowels of the bureaucracy. Most definitely not one tactically-adept bone in his body.
