Constitution: Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Trilogy (26 page)

I am
, he thought, but he said, “You will do no such thing.”

“But the ship keeps shaking. I can hear explosions. They ... they say the aliens are going to blow up the ship!”

“Over my dead body. Son, I’m going to get you off this ship, get you safely back to Earth, and then I’m going to kick their asses. Got it?” He remembered the boy had liked short, vulgar speeches, and sure enough, his face broke into a small smile. “Look, Dexter, don’t worry. You’ll grow up and race your motorcycles. But first we have to get you and your classmates off the ship. Where’s your teacher?”

Dexter pointed through the open door, down a hallway where Granger saw the teacher trying to keep twenty other schoolchildren calm inside another small conference room. He motioned the woman out into the corridor. “Get the children and follow me. We’ve got to get you all into escape pods.”

A minute later Granger, Dexter, the teacher, the
Rainbow
’s captain, and twenty children were rushing down the hall. Granger pushed a button on a control panel along the wall, exposing two escape pods. He ushered the teacher into one with ten children, and the
Rainbow
’s captain into the second with the ten others.
 

Dexter was the last to climb in. He looked a little less scared than a minute ago, but his face was still drained of color. “Later, Captain. Go kick their asses.”

Granger winked at him. “Watch your mouth. And”—he nodded—“I will.”

The hatch closed and he ensured the pods’ engines fired before continuing down the hall towards the stairwell. With a deep, painful sigh, he started the long descent, wincing with each rumble and explosion as the ship sustained more direct hits from the Swarm invasion force. Proctor had better be giving them a pounding in return.

He stopped—it was deck fifteen, and he knew that beyond the door at the opposite end of the hallway from the stairwell was
Afterburners
and the observation deck.
 
Huge windows spanned the length of the exterior wall. It was one of the very few places on the ship not guarded by ten meters of solid tungsten armor—here, it was only two meters, and was recessed behind the giant doors to the fighter bay such that, while still affording an excellent view, the windows were not as exposed as they might have been in other areas of the hull.

Hesitating, he made his decision, and jogged the length of the hallway, just to catch a quick view. Get a feel for the lay of the field of battle before he made it to his destination.

The doors slid aside, opening his view up to the wall of windows that looked down on the battle raging outside.

Earth was there. Close, and immediate. It filled up nearly the entire view from the windows.

And the battle raged. Somehow, IDF had managed to scramble up another handful of ships. Not as large as the fleet at
Valhalla
Station
had been, but formidable nonetheless. Nearby, less than a kilometer away, floated one of the alien ships, and it was taking a beating from the
Constitution’s
mag-rail batteries.

But it, and one of its fellows was walloping the
Constitution
in return, lancing it with the now familiar deadly green energy beam. A fighter screamed past the window, and Granger jumped as it exploded when another green beam shot straight through it and slammed into the hull just a hundred yards to stern. The explosion nearly threw him off his feet, and he steadied himself against the wall.

He counted. One, two, three, four.... Four. Somehow, against all hope, Proctor had managed to take out two whole alien capital ships by herself. Well, probably with the help of Captain Pickens on the
Congress
.

Searching the field of battle for the
Congress
, he almost thought it had already been destroyed. It was nowhere to be seen. Just four alien ships, a handful of IDF heavy and light cruisers, along with a small fleet of frigates and gunships, and a swarm of fighters, both IDF and Swarm. But no
Congress
.

He caught his breath when he saw her. She drifted out from behind the shadow of one of the alien ships, nearly engulfed in flames shooting out of what looked like a hundred holes dotting her hull.

“No....”

Another green beam lanced out from the alien ship nearest it and ripped into the forward section of the
Congress’
s
hull. The old ship spewed more debris and flame. It lurched.

Moments later, one of its massive rear thrusters exploded, sending the ship into a tailspin as it descended towards the Earth. The faint glow of compressed air lit up like a shell around it as it hurtled through the upper atmosphere, tumbling out of control.

More green beams blasted out from the alien ships towards the
Constitution
and the ship rocked violently.

It was nearly time. He turned and bolted back down the hallway, and took the stairs two at a time at a speed that would have tired him out thirty years ago.

At last, he rounded the final turn and stepped out onto the landing in front of his destination. Two marines stood at attention as he approached. “Sir!”

“As you were.” He stepped forward.

They didn’t move.

“I’m sorry, sir. No one can go in there. Radiation levels are too high.”

“I know, son. Stand aside. In fact,”—he looked back up the stairwell—“you’re dismissed. Go help the injured to escape pods. The battle’s nearly over.”

The marines looked nervously at the door, then back to him. “Don’t worry,” Granger went on, “I’ll lock it from the inside. No one will get in.”

“But, sir, you’ll die in there.”

He smiled. And it was a genuine smile. “A captain’s got to go down with his ship, son. Once you’re all evacuated, there’s something I have to do. Go.” He pointed back up the stairs, where he could hear the frantic sounds of pounding footfalls and agonized shouting as the injured were dragged out of the damaged sections just above them.

The two marines looked at each other, back at him, and then ran up the stairs, leaving Granger alone outside the doors.

Did he really want to do this? The radiation would kill him within half an hour. He could just wait until the ship was deserted and carry out his plan from the bridge.

No. He was a dead man anyway. He’d made his decision. There was nothing to fear from the radiation. Nothing could hurt him now. Not even the bloody Swarm. It was remarkable—once he had taken his life into his own hands, once he had decided to face his mortality, he was invincible.

With a smile—his first real smile in weeks—he passed his credentials over the ID reader. The doors slid aside with a groan, and he stepped forward into the warm flood of radiation that bathed engineering.

Chapter Sixty-Four

Low Earth Orbit

Engineering, ISS Constitution

It was strange—he couldn’t feel the deadly bite of the radiation. There was no indication whatsoever that he was absorbing many dozens of times the accepted yearly dose of radiation every second. But almost as soon as he stepped into engineering, his head lightened, his vision stabilized, and his purpose and final mission became crystal clear.

He dashed across the room to bring up the ship’s status schematic, and immediately saw that the situation was dire. Decompression on nearly a dozen decks. Systems failing. Main power gone. Most mag-rails inoperable. Life support on the fritz.

The
Constitution’
s time had come.

And so had his. It was the Old Bird’s time to shine. Theirs, together.

His hand hovered over the comm button, ready to message Commander Proctor his intentions, but at the last moment thought better of it. She might try to dissuade him, wasting precious seconds she didn’t have. No, if he knew her, she’d already ordered most personnel to escape pods. He clicked over to general standing orders, and confirmed his suspicions. There was a general evacuation in effect. All hands to escape pods except for the bridge crew. They would leave last, of course.

A pulsing sensation throbbed through the vast bay. A sensation he recognized very well by that point. In confirmation, he brought up the sensor readings, and nodded. There it was. A forced singularity was forming just three kilometers off the starboard bow, in the middle of the four remaining alien ships.

He scanned the rest of the field of battle and saw the remains of all the ships that had been mustered for this final, desperate fight. They were almost all in pieces, billowing smoke and debris. The few that survived hobbled along, pockmarked and broken, pelting the four remaining alien vessels with whatever paltry, ineffective weaponry they had left.
 

And the
Congress
continued its flaming descent through the atmosphere, with a fiery tail like a comet.

“Goodbye, Bill,” he murmured. “I’m sure you and Proctor made a good team.”

Too many goodbyes.

Checking the main engine status, he winced when he saw that five of the six main thrusters were almost completely destroyed. Luckily, the sixth seemed operational. Barely.

The pulsing intensified, indicating the growing size of the singularity. He checked the time. Assuming a similar growth rate to the previous ones, he had less than three minutes.

With a glance at the escape pod status screen he confirmed that nearly all the main pods had launched, leaving the handful reserved for the bridge crew, and soon those, too, began to zip away from the broken and beaten ship.

No, not beaten.

That left one pod. The main command pod, reserved for the CO and a few key bridge officers. He tapped a button on the screen and confirmed it was still operational, but not launched. Had she gone in one of the others?

In answer to his unspoken question, Proctor’s voice sounded over the speakers. “If anyone’s still here, this is the final warning. Evacuate immediately. The ship will not last more than a few minutes. CO out.”

And a moment later, the indicator for the command escape pod turned red, indicating it too had blasted away.

Granger was alone. Just he and the dead. A fit of coughing overcame him, and his hand once again came away dripping red, and a wry, gallows-humor grin tugged at his face—a dead man piloting a dead ship full of the fallen, to save those who still lived.

He pulled up the navigational controls and nodded in approval when he saw that Proctor had set the ship on autopilot, on a heading that would take it directly into the singularity.

But it would not be enough. That was his suspicion, his fear. The aliens would not stand by and permit them to disrupt another singularity, and in confirmation, the ship rocked and shuddered as one of the alien ships laid into the
Constitution
with a full barrage of energy beams. He pulled up the tactical display and watched the four ships, with the singularity in their midst, pull away from him, eluding the autopilot, which, after all, could only move towards a specific point in space—not follow a randomly changing location.

“Oh no you don’t. I see you, you bastards.”

Chapter Sixty-Five

Low Earth Orbit

Command Escape Pod

Commander Proctor settled into one of the cramped seats on the escape pod, gritting her teeth against pain—she’d twisted her ankle during the last violent barrage of fire from the aliens.

“Heading?” asked Ensign Prince, who squeezed into the limited nav controls—escape pods weren’t built for maneuverability, rather escape, but they could at least guide the craft towards a target.

Proctor racked her brain, trying to think of the most appropriate destination. If her last gambit didn’t succeed and the
Constitution
failed to disrupt the alien ships by slamming into the singularity, then Earth was doomed, and in a sense it mattered very little where they landed. In that scenario, it might make the most sense to steer towards a lightly populated wilderness area in an attempt to evade the alien’s destruction and live to fight another day.

But if the plan succeeded, IDF would regroup, and this surely would not be the last wave of Swarm vessels. If Earth survived the day, it would need to prepare itself for the unavoidable reprisal that would soon follow.

“Omaha. CENTCOM HQ was destroyed in the singularity explosion under Miami. Omaha is the auxiliary HQ, and is where IDF will regroup, most likely.”

“Aye, sir. Setting course for Omaha.”

The atmosphere started blazing around them as the compression shock wave enveloped the pod, and the little craft shook violently. The things were not designed with comfort in mind, only survival.

“Sir! They’re firing on the
Constitution
!”

Proctor craned her neck to look out the tiny viewport. Sure enough, the alien ship was pounding the Old Bird with a heavy barrage of its energy weapon, blasting chunks off into space. The fresh punctures briefly belched fire before the deadening vacuum of space quenched the flames.
 

“It’s not going to help, you bastards,” she muttered to herself, smiling darkly.

But then her heart sank as she watched the formation of alien ships pull away, with the singularity following them in their midst. They passed over and to starboard of the
Constitution
, moving out of the targeted heading she’d entered into the autopilot.

“Shit,” she breathed.

So it was over.

Within a minute, the aliens would teleport the singularity down underneath yet another North American city—most likely Los Angeles, as that was the closest obvious target below them—and after that would continue raining down destruction upon city after city, remorselessly and mercilessly vaporizing human civilization from the map.

And from there the destruction would spread. The Veracruz Sector was most likely already lost, but dozens of other sectors and scores of worlds would follow. And without Earth, without the center of humanity’s strength, how could they even think of prevailing against such a deadly and persistent enemy?

“Uh, sir?”

“What now?” she snapped.

Lieutenant Diaz pointed out the viewport. “The
Constitution
. She’s changing course.”