Constitution: Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Trilogy (22 page)

“We need to hit that thing with something really big,” said Proctor.

“Well said, Commander.” Granger raised his eyebrow at his XO’s way with words. He scanned his command console, looking for the most damaged cruiser—one that might be near destruction anyway. Jabbing the screen with a finger, he thumbed open the comm.

“Captain Bryan, your engines are going critical. What’s your status?”

He watched the light cruiser tumble out of control. Debris was streaming from its sides. It was a wonder anyone was still alive over there. A voice crackled faintly over the comm. “Tim? Is that you?”

Granger winced. “It’s me, Gordon.” Gordon Bryan was one of his good friends from his first assignment aboard the
ISS Warrior
. That old ship—another one in the Legacy Fleet and basically a carbon copy of the
Constitution
, lay in dry dock at Europa Station around Jupiter, but Granger still kept in touch with many of his old friends from his time there.

“Not going so well, is it?”

“No, it’s not.” Granger glanced at the timer on the screen that indicated roughly how long they had until the singularity was expected to launch. Less than two minutes. “Look, Gordon, our readings indicate you’re about to lose engine containment.”

“Yeah, turns out that battle’s a bitch. Who knew?” His friend chuckled, but then grew serious. “Look, Tim, I know what you’re going to ask me to do. But our navigation’s out. We’re goners.”

Explosions and yells came out of the speakers. “Gordon?” Granger leaned forward. No response. He sighed. “Gordon? You still there?”

A cough, and a rasp. “Yeah, still here.”

Granger studied the tactical arrangement of the battle on his screen. The
Missouri
, Captain Bryan’s ship, was very close, and directly between them and the growing singularity. “Gordon, we’re going to push you in. That’ll disrupt the singularity, and give us more time to take these bastards out. If we don’t, the
Constitution
is toast. And it’s looking like we’re the only armor out here that can put up with that—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, you want me to take a bullet for you.” A pause, and a fit of coughing over the speakers. Damn—Gordon sounded worse than Granger, who suppressed coughing of his own. “Sounds like a plan. Push us in. We’ve only got another few minutes anyway.”

Granger motioned over at navigation, and murmured, “Move us in close, rest the hulls together, and give them a momentum transfer in the direction of the singularity.”

“Aye, sir.”

Granger looked at the comm speaker, imagining his old friend on the other side, most likely burned, or bleeding. “Gordon, we’re coming in close now.” He paused, searching for words appropriate to the occasion. Nothing particularly eloquent came. “Thank you, sir. It’s been an honor.”

“Likewise, Tim. Say goodbye to Julie for me, if you come out the other side of this alive.” The ship lurched as it gently collided with the
Missouri
, and began to push against it. The other ship slowly, but surely, tumbled away, moving steadily toward the singularity. “Tell her I love her. Tell her sorry. I wanted to come back and work things out with her but—”

Granger nodded. His friend was rambling. Probably a little delirious from loss of blood or combat stress, and talking about things that Granger wasn’t familiar with, but it didn’t matter. “I will, Gordon. God bless.”

“Tell her I wanted to make it right. Tell her I wanted to—”

The speaker cut off in a hiss of static, and Granger’s stomach clenched as he noticed the green flash on the screen.

“No,” he breathed, watching as one of the alien ships lanced the
Missouri
with its green beam, and the light cruiser exploded in a fiery white blast. It was so close that the
Constitution
was caught in its wake, pelted with debris, and the Old Bird shook and lurched.

Commander Proctor approached him from behind. “Sir, we need something with higher velocity, or else they’ll just blast it before it reaches the target.”

He nodded. Numbly, as if in slow motion, he reached for the comm again. “Commander Pierce, bridge.”

“Captain?” came Pierce’s voice.

“Order one of our fighters into the singularity.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me.”

Pierce protested. “But, sir, I can’t—”

“You
will
, Commander. Do it now. That’s an order. Granger out.”

He turned to Proctor, shaking his head. The horrified look on her face told him all he needed to know.
 

“God help me, Shelby.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

Near Earth

X-25 Fighter Cockpit

“Ballsy! I—there’s—” Miller broke off, struggling to maintain control as she weaved through the knot of alien bogeys. This time there were more of them. Many, many more. Hundreds. Possibly in the thousands. She began to understand why they’d picked up the name
Swarm
all those years ago. “There’s too many! I can’t—”

“Just hold on! Pull hard to your left on my mark and corkscrew z minus two. Ready ... GO!”

Trusting his tactics, she pulled sharply to the left and was thrown violently to her right into the restraints. Struggling against the g-forces, she keyed in the corkscrew. Plunging through the plane of attack and wincing from several rounds that hit the body of her X-25, she exhaled in relief as Ballsy shot upward through the middle of her corkscrew, blasting about half a dozen bogeys into brief fireballs.

“Woo hoo!” he yelled into the comm, and she grinned. Reaching forward to touch the picture propped up on her dash, she swung the fighter around and came up behind Dogtown and Pluck, who’d picked up several bogeys on their tail. With a few quick depressions of the trigger, she unleashed a stutter of rounds into each craft, sending them flaming, tumbling end over end, until they broke apart on the hull of the alien ship just a few hundred meters away.

“Well now you’re just showing off, Fishtail.”

She took a moment to survey the battle. In spite of their squad’s successes, things looked desperately grim. As she watched, another IDF heavy cruiser broke in two as a devastating green energy beam darted out from the nearest alien vessel and sliced right into its core. Debris and fire coursed out of the blast zone. She felt sick when she realized what some of the debris was—the unmistakable tangle of bodies and limbs. One flew by her cockpit viewport as she raced ahead of the exploding cruiser, cartwheeling head over heels out into the deadness of space.

“Fishtail! Pay attention!” Ballsy’s voice broke her focus on the body, and she snapped back into action.

Nearly too late.

A pair of bogeys was bearing down on her, and she flinched at the jolt of rounds colliding with her wings.

“FISHTAIL!”

She swerved, and plunged, and banked hard to the right—anything to lose the two craft spewing fire at her.

And to her surprise, they exploded. An X-25 fighter burst out of their debris cloud. “Ballsy?” she asked.

“That was all Pluck this time. That little mother-plucker.”

If her stomach wasn’t already up in her throat she would have chuckled at the poor joke, but that was too close of a call for comfort.

The cockpit walls all around her pulsed, throbbing with regular intensity. She knew what that meant.

A voice crackled over her comm. “This is the CAG.” Pierce paused, as if unsure of himself. “Pluck. You’re hereby ordered to make an Omega-Protocol run at the singularity. Ram it full speed. That’s an order.”

Silence and static came over the headset. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. A moment later, Pluck’s young, confident voice answered. “Aye, sir.”

Pierce’s voice was broken, and raw. “Thank you, Lieutenant. You’re a great man, and you’ll be remembered in honor.”
 

Fishtail watched out her viewport as Pluck veered off towards the shimmering white light, dodging a few bogeys that veered towards him, guns firing.

And she screamed.

Pluck’s fighter exploded as a deadly green beam lanced out from the nearest alien ship, slicing the little craft in two.

Fighting back a tear, she set her sights on another alien fighter and blasted it to pieces, using far more ordnance than was necessary as she pummeled it until there was nothing left.

“Fishtail, you’re up,” came Pierce’s voice again.

She closed her eyes momentarily. This was it.

Somehow, in that moment, her only thought was that she did not envy Commander Pierce’s position in the slightest. To make decisions like he’d just made was unimaginable. Realizing she was thinking this, she also noticed that she was remarkably calm.

It was time. It was her time.

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, Jessica.”

It was her time.
 

Forgive me,
Zack,
she thought, touching the picture on the dash. She wanted more than anything to be there for him. But first, he needed to live. He needed a planet to live on. His world needed saving.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed the controls forward and darted away at maximum acceleration.

“Fishtail,” came Ballsy’s uncharacteristically quiet voice. “I’ve got your back. I’ll escort you in.”

“Just promise to pull away in time,” she replied, dodging a green beam that shot out from the alien ship nearby.

“Right on.” He swooped in behind her and blasted a pair of bogeys that had her in their sights. “Let’s get this done.”

Chapter Fifty-Six

Near Earth

Bridge, ISS Constitution

A silent pall had fallen over the bridge as every head turned toward the screen. A lone fighter had peeled off from the melee of combat and was screaming towards the shimmering singularity, now nearly as large as the one had been over Lunar Base before it launched at the surface.

Granger stood up. If a pilot was going to willingly sacrifice himself for his fellows, the least he could do was stand to acknowledge it. “Commander Proctor. Give me his name. Rank. Hometown. Tell us who it is.”

The XO tapped buttons on her screen before clearing her throat. “Lieutenant Jessica Miller. Callsign Fishtail. From Sacramento, California. Age twenty-four, newly married, and was scheduled to transfer to the
ISS Clyburne
after our decommissioning to serve aboard the same ship as her husband.” Proctor looked up, her face obviously pained. “The
Clyburne
was one of the carriers destroyed defending Lunar Base.”

Granger nodded, and bent over to tap the comm. “Fishtail, this is the CO.”

“Hell of a view from out here, sir,” came the static-laced voice. The bridge watched as the fighter, tiny against the backdrop of the remaining IDF and alien ships still blasting away at each other, swerved and dodged the wreckage of dead ships and the intense energy beams as the aliens tried to knock out her little craft before she hit the singularity.
 

But the fighter was too fast and nimble for them.

“I’m sure it is, Jessica. Godspeed, Lieutenant. And thank you.” He saluted. The rest of the bridge crew, those not occupied with immediate combat duties, likewise stood and mirrored him.

“Ah, hell, sir, you would have done the same for us if you were out here.”

The distance between the fighter and the singularity narrowed to just a few hundred meters, and closed fast. Lieutenant Miller continued, “Besides, this is how I always wanted to go out.” Her voice quavered slightly, betraying her attempted show of bravado. “Taking out a shitload of Cumrat ships.” She was silent for a moment, before whispering, barely loud enough for Granger to hear, “I’m sorry, Zack-Zack. I’m sorry.”

And, too soon, the fighter closed in on the shimmering light. “Oh god—” Miller’s voice murmured, right as her ship plowed into the singularity, which a moment later erupted into a massive explosion that engulfed the nearest alien ship, and the wreckage of the
Missouri.

When the blast subsided, the alien vessel was spewing flame from the side nearest the destroyed singularity.

Granger spun around to tactical. “Whatever we’ve got left, send it into that blast zone on that ship,” he yelled, pointing frantically to the screen.

“There’s nothing left, sir. All our mag-rails are either destroyed, or empty of—”

“Then lasers! Anything! Just pound that blast zone with whatever we’ve got!”

 
A moment later, all the remaining undamaged laser turrets lit up and unleashed a brilliant barrage of ultra-high-energy pulses at the gaping wounds on the alien ship, vaporizing all the debris in their paths, penetrating deep into the core of the vessel which then spewed even more fire and debris.

Moments later, after what seemed like minutes but could only have been a dozen seconds, the entire alien ship lurched, and exploded in a blinding flash as its core went critical and split into several steaming chunks.

“Two down, two to go,” murmured Proctor.

Granger sat down, staring steely-eyed towards the screen at the remaining two alien ships. “Two down, and it only took half our fleet going down in flame to do it.”

Two down. Two left. Granger shook his head. The odds looked grim. The
Constitution
was hobbling along, punctured and wounded. The remains of the fleet, which at the beginning of the battle had numbered over forty ships, now crept along at just over ten. And the massive
Valhalla Station
, the centerpiece of IDF’s headquarters and Earth’s primary defense, floated in pieces, smoldering and steaming, debris still occasionally blasting off into space from the explosions erupting on its wrecked surface.

The odds looked beyond grim. They looked impossible.

“Sir,” the tactical officer turned to face Granger with a tired look on his face. “The other four alien ships have arrived.”

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Omaha, North America, Earth

Operations Center, IDF Spaceport

Vice President Isaacson, his chief of staff, and a handful of senators and cabinet officials sat off to the side in the operations center of Omaha Spaceport as the officers worked frantically to scramble the fighters and what other last minute defenses could be mustered. They’d been given that area of the center as a communications hub to coordinate with the rest of the civilian government still in New York and Washington, and CENTCOM headquarters in Miami.