Legacy (First Colony Book 3)

by Ken Lozito

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Connor asked.

  “Wil and Kasey. They were your closest friends. You have to grieve.”

  “They’re dead. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  Lenora’s gaze hardened. “They deserve better than that.”

  Connor threw his hands in the air. “What do you want from me?”

  “All you’re stating is facts—they’re dead. What you’re refusing to admit is that they mattered to you. That their loss means so much to you that you can hardly stand it,” Lenora said.

  “I’m sorry. Roaming around Sierra weeping isn’t going to help anyone,” Connor replied.

  “God, you can be such an ass. You could teach a rock about being stubborn, and when it graduated from the Connor School of Stubbornness, you’d still have more to teach it. Why is everything black and white with you? It’s either hot or cold. I’m not telling you to run around crying uncontrollably, you idiot. I’m telling you to acknowledge their loss. Accept that they’re gone. You don’t have to be okay with it. In fact, you shouldn’t be,” Lenora said.

  Connor looked away from her. He knew he was keeping everything locked up inside. He felt it all pushing against the walls he’d built, but he was afraid that if he let it out, there would be nothing left.

  “Wil was right there in front of me. I should have been able to save him. If I hadn’t left him in the computing core . . .” Connor’s voice trailed off.

  Lenora came over to his side and stood next to him, rubbing his shoulder with one of her hands.

  “He was dying and he was still concerned with the data he’d found on the ship,” Connor said.

  “He knew it was important,” Lenora replied.

  Connor’s shoulders slumped.

  “What’s the video log you keep watching?” Lenora asked.

  Connor’s shoulders stiffened, and he wheeled away from her.

  “Noah told me you keep watching something that was retrieved from the Indianapolis,” Lenora said, leaning toward him.

  A wave of fury washed over Connor. How dare that little shit pry into his personal logs! “Did he say what it was?”

  Lenora shook her head. “No, just that you watch the same ten-minute video multiple times a day and have been doing so since he gave you the files. What’s on it?”

  Connor balled his hands into fists, thinking how he’d like to pummel Noah for poking around where he shouldn’t. But that would be stupid because it was those same instincts in Noah that Connor had come to count on over the years.

  “What’s on it?” Lenora asked again.

  A long moment passed before Connor spoke. “It’s my son,” he said softly and looked away from her.

  “Your son?” Lenora muttered in disbelief. She walked in front of him.

  “He died on the Indianapolis. Our team made it to the bridge of the Indianapolis two months ago and there were signs of a battle having been fought there before. I think that’s where he—” Connor said, his voice cracking.

  Lenora looked at him, her brows drawn up in concern. “That’s awful, Connor. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  Connor felt as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff and all it would take was a slight breeze to push him over it.

  “Who would I tell? You? The last time we spoke we ended up screaming at one another,” Connor said.

  Lenora’s face reddened. “I would have listened,” she said. After a few moments, she continued. “What was he like?”

  Connor swallowed hard as sorrow tried to close up his throat. “Young. He looked strong and bitter, with eyes that had seen too much. He didn’t want to record anything. Wilkinson asked him to do it. He was more of a father to him than I was.”

  “You can’t do this to yourself.”

  “What? Admit the truth?”

  “That’s not fair and you know it. You didn’t leave him behind. You were forced onto the Ark against your will. You didn’t leave your son behind. He was left behind because of what Wilkinson did. You want to punish someone, punish him,” Lenora said.

  “Wilkinson was just trying to protect me.”

  “Fine, then just accept that none of this was fair and there’s nothing you can do to change anything,” Lenora said.

  Connor’s eyes became misty. “My son hated me, blamed me for leaving him.”

  “You’re not to blame—”

  “Aren’t I? I was the one who volunteered to lead the Ghosts, to do my duty.”

  “Why does anyone have to be blamed? It doesn’t make any sense. His memory of you is that of a small boy who missed his father,” Lenora said.

  “That’s right. A father who should have protected him.”

  “You can’t do this to yourself. This guilt you’ve been carrying around is eating you up inside. It’s not right. It happened. You made your decisions and then life happened. You can dwell on it and keep punishing yourself for everything that’s out of your control or you can move on,” Lenora said.

  “Move on,” Connor sneered. “Just like that. Brush it to the side and pretend it didn’t happen?”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  Connor looked away from her and shook his head. “I have to take responsibility—”

  “That’s crap. You’re trying to make yourself feel better because you regret how everything turned out. You’re not doing this for your son. You’re doing this as a way to atone for leaving. You’re feeding your regrets. That’s not how it works. Give yourself a break. You can’t live your life based on hindsight. No one can,” Lenora said.

  Connor pressed his lips together. “It’s not right,” he said.

  “There is no right and wrong. He was about to die. He must have been angry and scared. Did you even consider that?”

  “Of course I did, but . . .” Connor said, his voice dying off. The words just wouldn’t form in his mind.

  “Mitch Wilkinson was a manipulative son of a bitch. You have this unshakable perspective that everything he did was to protect you, right?” Lenora asked.

  Connor jutted his chin out and then nodded.

  “In that case, he didn’t have your son record a message so he could yell at you. Wilkinson knew it would cause you pain, but if you’re right about him, I think he just wanted you to see your son. See the man he grew up to be. He wanted you to know that he did look after your son just like he promised you. He didn’t send the message so you could torture yourself. So stop it. You can’t fight the Vemus if you’re weighed down by guilt,” Lenora said.

  Connor stood there, allowing himself to come to grips with what Lenora was saying. His brows pushed forward and he felt his body sag. He was so tired.

  “Stop pretending you’re in this fight alone.”

  Connor was about to deny it, but she was right. How had he come to be so lost?

  “I don’t know if we can survive,” Connor said at last.

  “Then we’ll die, but it won’t be because we didn’t fight. If Wil and Kasey were here, they’d be telling you the same thing,” Lenora said.

  Connor felt his mouth hang open. There was so much he wanted to say. He wished he could be the person Lenora deserved, but he wasn’t.

  He heard the high-pitched whine of a combat shuttle’s engines flying toward them, and a data link came to prominence on his internal heads-up display, identifying the CDF shuttle.

  Chapter Five

  The hangar bay of Lunar Base was a buzz of activity, and Captain Jon Walker glared at the power conduit he’d been struggling to replace on his ship for the past few hours. Being stationed on the Colonial Defense Force moon base was a new post for him. He’d only been there for six months. What had started out as a tech platform for building missile defense platforms and ships had become a full-blown military base. Since the Vemus attack, personnel had been working tirelessly to conceal the base. Aboveground installations were either hidden away or relocated to belowground facilities per General Gates’ orders. Ther
e was so much work going on that he couldn’t wait on a flight engineer to fix the power conduit on the combat shuttle.

  The connectors for the conduit wouldn’t meet. He grabbed one end of the connector and pulled. Straining to get the pieces closer together, his hand slipped off and he banged it against the sidewall.

  “Piece of shit!” Jon shouted, about to kick the damn thing.

  “That ought to do it,” someone said from behind him.

  Jon spun around to see his brother, Brian, laughing at him. Brian glanced at what Jon had been working on.

  “What the hell did you do to this thing?” Brian asked.

  “Not me. Something from that damn debris field out there tore into the rear of my ship,” Jon said. He noticed that his younger brother had a pale orange EVA suit on. “What’s going on? I didn’t think they let you scientists come topside, where the real work’s done.”

  “Salvage run in the debris field,” Brian replied.

  Jon frowned. “Salvage for what?”

  Brian regarded him for a moment. “We’re looking for an undamaged section of a Vemus ship.”

  Jon frowned. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Why would they have you do that?”

  “They’re not having me do that. I volunteered,” Brian said.

  While Jon had chosen to join the Colonial Defense Force and become a soldier, his younger brother had gone in a different direction. Brian worked at a level of intelligence that was a cut above the norm. It was for this reason that Jon and Brian had gotten to come on the Ark. Jon’s aptitude scores were high, but Brian’s were definitely pretty far to the right of the bell curve that measured such things.

  “What are you doing?” Jon asked.

  “I told you, I’m—”

  “I don’t mean that. This is a field mission. Aren’t you supposed to be in a lab somewhere trying figure out a way to stop the Vemus?”

  Brian jutted out his chin. “We need samples, living samples, in order to figure out how this thing works.”

  Jon eyed him for a moment. “Can you wait a couple of hours? I’ll take you out there myself.”

  Brian was about to reply when someone came around the rear of the shuttle.

  “What’s going on here?” Colonel Hayes asked.

  Jon immediately stood straight and snapped a salute. “Nothing, sir.”

  Colonel Hayes looked at Brian. “Walker, you and your team are to report in on Explorer II.”

  “Sir,” Jon said, “permission to go on the salvage mission.”

  Colonel Hayes frowned and then looked at the state of Jon’s ship. “Your ship isn’t flight-ready.”

  “Sir, I can have it fixed and ready in an hour,” Jon said.

  Colonel Hayes glanced at the power conduit Jon was trying to get installed. “Those conduits are always a pain in the ass. After that, you’ve got to get the couplings on the right or the actuators won’t pivot the pad properly. You’ve got more than an hour’s work here, Captain.”

  Jon tried to think of a reply, but everything the colonel had just said was right. Damn it! If he’d just left it alone he could have flown Brian and his team out there. Explorer II was piloted by Davis, who wasn’t the best pilot for the job.

  “Dr. Walker, get on over to Explorer II. They’re waiting for you, son,” Colonel Hayes said.

  “Yes, sir,” Brian said.

  Jon watched as his brother left. “Stay sharp, kid,” Jon called out.

  Brian turned around and gave him a wave.

  “He’ll be alright,” Colonel Hayes said.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “I know he’s your brother,” Colonel Hayes said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Colonel Hayes called over a flight engineer and ordered him to get Jon’s ship ready.

  “Where am I going, sir?” Jon asked.

  “Another run to the Phoenix. We’ve got HADES IV-Bs fresh off the line that need to be delivered ASAP,” Colonel Hayes said.

  Jon sighed inwardly. Delivery runs were about the only thing they got to do these days. He understood the necessity of it, but that didn’t make it any less boring.

  “We’ll get it done, sir,” Jon said.

  “Carry on, Captain,” Colonel Hayes said.

  The flight engineer examined Jon’s work and then called a couple of his crew over while Jon set about helping them repair his ship. They couldn’t afford not to have all of their birds flight-ready. He glanced over at Explorer II as it flew out of the hangar. He’d promised his parents he’d watch out for Brian, which hadn’t been so easy since they normally weren’t at the same place. The Vemus were dangerous. He’d heard stories from the survivors of the Vigilant and the Banshee. What they’d faced on the Vemus ship was enough to give anyone nightmares, but he knew Brian didn’t see them that way. He was too analytical. He thought of the Vemus only in scientific terms and not as an enemy to be destroyed. If his ship hadn’t had a damaged engine pod, he could have flown Brian out there. Now his brother was out there with Davis, who wasn’t the worst pilot on the lunar base, but he wasn’t the best one either. He’d seen the debris field full of the remnants of Vemus ships. It was dangerous space to fly through, and with only one ship that could be spared for Brian’s mission, a rescue if things went wrong would be long in coming.

  Brian had wanted a mission of his own and now he’d gotten it. Jon just hoped it wasn’t too exciting for him.

  Chapter Six

  Noah had spent the remainder of his day prepping his team before he left for Sanctuary. He knew Lenora had spoken to Connor, but he hadn’t heard anything else since then. He hadn’t seen Connor either. He thought of opening a comlink to Sean, but since Sean was always within earshot of Connor, he didn’t think that was his brightest idea.

  Lars Mallory waited for Noah to power off the holoscreens. “Why are they sending you to Sanctuary?”

  Noah left his work area, and he and Lars walked out into the hallway.

  “They want me to look at the alien power station there,” Noah said.

  “Last I heard about that was that they weren’t able to get it to generate a significant amount of energy,” Lars said.

  “Yeah, the preliminary report I saw was that it’s early fusion tech. Looks like the alien species that lived here was developing their own fusion reactor,” Noah said.

  “They said it was a few hundred years old,” Lars said.

  “Yup, and no one knows where the species that built it actually went.”

  “That’s probably a blessing,” Lars replied.

  “Why do you say that?” Noah asked.

  “Because they also genetically altered some of the species here.”

  “Like the ryklars and the berwolves?”

  “Precisely. They’re way more intelligent than we expected from a predator,” Lars said.

  “Maybe we should convince them to fight with us when the Vemus get here,” Noah said.

  Lars stopped walking and pursed his lips. “That’s not a bad idea, you know.”

  “I was kidding,” Noah said quickly.

  “I know, but it really isn’t that bad an idea,” Lars said and started walking in the opposite direction.

  “Where are you going?” Noah asked.

  “I’m going to talk to my father. Have fun in Sanctuary, and try not to blow the place up,” Lars called back as he hastened down the hall.

  Great, Noah thought. He’d just become responsible for the CDF putting animals in their war against the Vemus. He’d better get to Sanctuary quickly before he accidentally gave anyone else ideas of questionable moral implications.

  Chapter Seven

  The combat shuttle flew toward Phoenix Station, and Connor brought up the optical feed onto his personal holoscreen. Sean shifted in his seat next to him, and Connor noticed him looking at the holoscreen.

  “She would have made a beautiful ship,” Connor said.

  “It would have been something to see her fly, sir,” Sean said.

  The Phoenix
was supposed to be the Colonial Defense Force’s first battleship carrier, but Connor had scrapped that plan after the Vemus attack. Instead, he’d challenged his engineers to come up with something the CDF could use in defense of New Earth, and this was their answer. They’d presented Connor with the option of having a battleship carrier that could be combat ready in six to eight months or a slower-moving space station with a comparable combat arsenal in just two months. Thus, the Phoenix became Phoenix Station, whose combat readiness increased with each passing day. On the surface, it was an easy decision to make, but it had meant forgoing any type of mobile combat units beyond New Earth’s immediate vicinity.

  “There are only a few sections I recognize from the Ark,” Sean said.

  Connor nodded.

  Phoenix Station was an elongated cylinder with a massive section of it covered by the Montgomery III construction platform. Instead of a grouping of massive magnetic drive pods in the rear of the ship, they’d put smaller MDPs in subsections of the station.

  Connor watched as Sean brought up his own holoscreen and zoomed in on one of the subsections.

  “Looks like they’ve completed sections seven and eight,” Sean said.

  Phoenix Station was like a heavily armed mobile wall positioned at a point in space where the gravitational pull from New Earth and the star in this system were equalized. Positioning Phoenix Station here made maintaining its orbit relatively easy, but the downside to the smaller MDPs was that the behemoth combat station was slow to reposition.

  “Two more sections to be brought online,” Connor said.

  They’d had to cut some corners to get Phoenix Station operational, which meant that not all the sections were equal in their capabilities. Each section had a wide array of weapons capabilities, but not all sections had the same complement of sensor arrays. The sections without sensors were dependent on those that had them. Sections that were comprised primarily of missile tubes just needed targeting data, which could be uploaded from any sensor array. Connor knew the ingenuity that had gone into Phoenix Station was enough to make any NA Alliance general proud, and since he was the CDF’s only general, he was quite pleased with what they’d been able to accomplish in a short span of time.