Constitution: Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Trilogy (29 page)

“Tim. Good to see you.”

“Admiral.” He took a few steps towards his ground taxi waiting on the street.

“Tim, we need to talk.”

Granger stopped, still looking towards the taxi, his back to the Admiral. “The answer is no.”

“I haven’t even asked you yet.”

“I know what you’re going to ask.” He turned to face the other man. “I’ve resigned. I’m not coming back. The
Constitution
is dead. She’s my ship, and I’ll not serve on another—I’m too old. That duty belongs to younger men.”

Zingano snorted. “Bull. Tim, we need you. Like it or not, you’re now the most decorated and battle-tested veteran in the fleet. You’re the only captain to have faced the aliens at the helm of a starship and lived to tell about it. You and Proctor. I can’t just let you retire.”

“Like hell you can’t.”

Admiral Zingano looked down at the grave, and nudged some more dirt in with the toe of his boot. “He was a spitfire, recalcitrant, rebellious old bastard, wasn’t he?” Zingano smiled. “Just like you.”

“On a charm offensive, I see,” remarked Granger.

Zingano sighed. “I’ll give you a new ship. You won’t have to wait for the
Constitution
to be refurbished.”

Granger had turned to leave again, but now paused mid-step. “Did you just say you’re refurbishing the Old Bird?”

“I did.”

The
Constitution
. Alive again. Rising from what he had been sure was her grave.

“Then I want her. That’s the only way you get me back.”

Zingano smiled—apparently he knew exactly how to get Granger back. “She’s yours. But, Tim, she won’t be ready for at least six months. I’ve drafted an army of engineers and workmen to restore her as fast as humanly possible, but it’s a big job.”

Granger started walking toward his ground car again. “Then I’ll see you in six months.”

“I’ll give you another one in the meantime.”

Granger chuckled. “I don’t want some modern, slick, paper-thin-hulled monstrosity that IDF seems keen on churning out these days.”

“No, not one of the modern super-carriers or cruisers—in fact, IDF is scrapping that design and is in a frenzy to build a whole fleet of solid metal behemoths like the
Constitution
. No, I’ve got something better for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“The
ISS Warrior
. One of the remaining ships of the old Legacy Fleet. She’s been mothballed over at Europa Station ever since her decommissioning nearly forty years ago, and we intended to use her for scrap. But you know how IDF bureaucracy works. They run paperwork at the speed of thick chicken shit. As a result, she’s still there. Stripped some, but otherwise intact. I’ve had a team of a thousand workers there for the past five days getting her ready, and she needs a captain.”

Granger closed his eyes. Since the cancer had left, and seeing pictures of the wreck of his old ship, he’d wanted nothing more than to retire to a warm, white sand Florida beach with an open bar and free massages courtesy of IDF’s generous retirement package. Another tour? Another ship? Another crew?

“Your planet needs you, Tim. I need you. Miami’s gone. Houston’s gone. Phoenix is gone, and the aliens are coming back. We’ve already detected activity in their space, and it looks like they may be on the move soon. You, at the helm of a Legacy Fleet ship, are the best weapon in our arsenal.”

Granger took a turn kicking dirt into Haws’s grave.

“Fine. But I want my old crew. Every single person that’ll have me as their captain.”

“Done.”

“And I want Proctor.”

Zingano started. “Shelby? Sorry, no. She’ll be commanding the
Chesapeake
, the other Legacy Fleet ship we’re restoring. After you, she’s the most battle-hardened veteran we’ve got, and I need her at the helm of—”

“Then my answer is no.” Granger turned to leave, but didn’t walk away just yet.

A long pause.
A game of chicken,
Granger mused. Who would give in first?

“I’ll ask her, and give her the option. But it’s her choice—I’m not going to dangle a command in front of her and then snatch it away just to send her back to some old crank,” he replied with a wry grin.

“And I won’t blame her for turning me down. But I can’t imagine going into battle without her.”

He walked back to his taxi, and noticed the fleet security guards pull up behind him in their own vehicle. Granger waved Admiral Zingano down. “Call off the intel goons or the deal’s off.”

Zingano hobbled towards Granger’s taxi, his free arm making an over exaggerated motion to compensate for the limp and the other useless arm in the sling. “Sorry, IDF intel insists. Says you’re still a possible security risk given the circumstances surrounding the
Constitution’
s disappearance.”

Granger chuckled. “You’re giving me a starship, but think I’m a security risk?” His face turned serious. “Cut the shit.”

Zingano pointed towards the horizon. “Tim, half of Florida is under water. Mobile is a steaming watery pit. Houston is a crater. At least fifty million people have died, and in the meantime you somehow disappeared in a quantum singularity for three and a half days in the middle of the battle for Earth. Intel is right to be a little cautious with you, in spite of your well-deserved war hero status.”

Granger only stared at him icily, daring him not to call the guards off.

Zingano shrugged, and motioned for the guards to leave. “I’ll pull what strings I can at fleet intel, but the order came from high up.”

“How high?”

Zingano turned to leave.

“The top,” he called behind him.

Chapter Seventy

Sacramento, North America, Earth

Miller Residence

Lieutenant Tyler Volz glanced back down at his datapad and confirmed the address. And the picture of the house on his screen matched the modest building in front of him, a nondescript house on the outskirts of Sacramento.

He inhaled, paused, then approached the door. Toys littered the front steps, along with chalk drawings on the walkway, and a small, red tricycle.

Dammit, Fishtail, why did you ask me to do this?

He knocked. He’d thought about calling ahead to make sure they were home, but reconsidered when he realized he would have nothing to say over the comm.
Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Miller, can I drop by later to tell you your daughter died? Ok, thanks.
He shuddered—how do you talk to a computer screen and tell someone their daughter is gone? And wasn’t there a special corps that was responsible for notifying next of kin, showing up in person to console the survivors? He knew the answer: of course there was, but being overwhelmed with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of servicemen and servicewomen, they’d be backlogged for years.

His hand paused mid-knock. It occurred to him that he still had no idea what to say, even in person.

Dammit. Someone was coming.

The door opened.

Mrs. Miller. Fishtail’s mom. He recognized her from the contact file on his datapad. The blood left her face when she saw his uniform.

“No,” she whispered.

Volz cleared his throat and clutched the small package he’d brought with him. “Mrs. Miller? May I come in?”

A small boy peered from behind her legs. Zack.

It was like a dream. He somehow wandered into the house after her—had she invited him? She must have, because she was leading him to the kitchen, where a man with graying hair was sitting at the table. Mr. Miller?

Fishtail’s mother stood standing by the sink, looking out the window. Mr. Miller remained motionless and silent at the table, his eyes bleary and puffy and red and staring at the table, his lips pressed tightly together.

Volz shuffled uncomfortably. He’d never comforted anyone in his life. What the hell was he doing here? He shifted on his feet again.

No. They needed confidence from him. They needed assurance that their daughter had died a hero. That there was a point to all of it. That her sacrifice had not been in vain.

Dammit, why hadn’t they trained him for this?

“Mr. and Mrs. Miller, I’m Lieutenant Tyler Volz. I served with your daughter aboard the
Constitution
. I’m here because....”

He swallowed hard. “I’m here because she asked me to come. To give you this in case something happened to her.” He extended a hand to Mr. Miller, who accepted the offer.

The man held the ring in his fingers, looking down at it. He shook, and closed his eyes.

“She wanted me to give it to Zack, but I thought it’d be safer with you for now. But I brought this for him instead.” He presented the small package he’d been clutching to the little boy who was playing with a toy car on the floor. “Open it,” he said.

The boy accepted the package eagerly, and tried to open it, but couldn’t figure out the ribbon. So Volz ripped the paper off for him.

A perfect model of the X-25 fighter his mother had died in. He squealed with delight, and immediately began playing with it, balancing it high above his head, clenched in his little hand, letting it soar.

After some moments of silence, punctuated by the sounds of the boy playing, Zack abruptly stood up and faced Volz. “Is Momma and Dad gone?”

Volz nodded. “Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“I—I don’t know.”

It was true. He had no idea where Fishtail was. Nothing remained from the collision with the singularity. For all he knew, given Granger’s reappearance, she could be on the other side of the universe, or hiding just behind the moon.

“Is she flying?”

“I—I don’t know.” He couldn’t tell him the truth, but by the look he gave the boy’s grandparents, he confirmed it. “She’s flying really high, Zack.”

“I want to fly too.”

The boy continued to play with the toy fighter, and Volz turned to the parents. “She sacrificed herself. She saved the
Constitution
. She saved Earth. Gave the Old Bird enough time to take out the rest of the invasion fleet. Your daughter is ... was ... is, a hero.” He stumbled over his words, unsure of what to say.

Mrs. Miller turned away from the sink and faced Volz. Tears streaked her pained face, but she forced a smile. “Thank you for coming, Lieutenant.”

Minutes later, he stood outside on the sidewalk, facing the house again. It had started to rain.

“Goodbye, Fishtail,” he murmured, and got back in the taxi.

Chapter Seventy-One

Europa, Jupiter, Sol System

Europa Shipyards

Miraculously, in the aftermath of the devastation on Earth, Lunar Base, and the Veracruz Sector, much of the usual red tape vanished. Granger would have expected a transfer to a new ship to take weeks, and the requisitions for new supplies and ordnance, plus all the crew rotating into their new assignments would have taken months. But it was less than twenty-four hours after the funeral that his shuttle entered Jupiter orbit after a q-jump and set a course for Europa.

“I expect it’ll take some work to get her into shape, Cap’n, but we’ll get her there. You’ll see.” Rayna Scott had accompanied him on the shuttle, along with Ensign Prince and Lieutenant Diaz, to help lead the work crews that were still in a frenzy getting the
Warrior
in shape for service. “My grandpa served on the
Warrior
, you know. Was the assistant chief engineer. Boy, he’d love to see me now, taking over his old engines for him.”

“I’m sure he’d be proud,” replied Granger, craning his head towards the viewport to get a good look at Europa Station. The huge spaceport now filled the window, turning slowly as their shuttle orbited, angling past a handful of starships in various stages of construction in the shipyards.

“Looks like they’re already changing the design of these, sir,” said Diaz, pointing to the nearest half-built cruiser. “They’re not even bothering to strip off the smart-steel. They’re just plating right over it with thicker armor.”

“Like they should have done years ago,” mumbled Granger, still looking out the window. Any moment now....

And there it was. The nearest construction arm of the station swept past, revealing one of the
Constitution
’s twins. The
ISS Warrior
, with hundreds of umbilicals stretched towards her from the construction pylon.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” said Ensign Prince.

Granger snorted. “Ugly as hell. But she’ll be good to us if we’re good to her, just like the Old Bird.”

Once docked, a marine greeted them at the airlock and escorted them to the bridge. Hundreds of workers scurried the halls, working faster and harder than Granger had ever seen unionized crews move in his life.

The doors to the bridge slid aside, revealing a familiar sight.

“Captain on the bridge!” said the marine.

A head popped up from underneath the command console. She clutched a bundle of wires and cable, and smiled broadly. “Nice of you to finally drop in!”

Granger’s jaw dropped.

“You came? What about the
Chesapeake
? I was sure you’d take your own command—”

She chuckled. “Don’t flatter yourself, Tim. I will be commanding the
Chesapeake
.”

Granger deflated somewhat. “Oh.” He glanced around the bridge, watching the work crew install a new tactical station. “I suppose you’re just here to see us off?”

“Of course not. The
Chesapeake
won’t be ready for another two months—they stripped her something fierce, sir. Thought I’d take the best of both worlds—be the XO on the
Warrior
before being the CO on the
Chesapeake
. And besides, I can’t even imagine spending two months overseeing repair of a starship when there’s a war going on. Can you?”

Granger shook his head grimly. “Looks like we’re in it for the long haul. Fleet intel has detected another fleet—this one heading for the Francia Sector.”

“Bailing out the Francia Sector? Nothing ever changes, doesn’t it?”

The irreverent remark caught him off guard, and he chuckled. “Right.”

She bent back down underneath the command console. “Well, sir? What are you waiting for? Let’s get to work.”

He nodded, and tossed his shoulder bag onto the seat of his chair.

It was good to be home. Well, not home, but at least a pleasant rest stop on the way there.