Constitution: Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Trilogy (8 page)

“Let’s hope it’s not the Swarm. I’d much rather fight a few chest-thumping Russian thugs than those bastards again.”

“You think it’ll come to that?”

Granger shrugged. “Honestly? No. There’s too much space—such an abundance of resources that there’s just no point. That’s what the Russians have always wanted: territory and resources. Since there’s no shortage of either, it’s just senseless to fight. No, things will blow over in a few years, Definitely when Malakhov hits his term limits—”

“Wait, you haven’t heard?”

“What?”

Pierce grunted a laugh. “The Duma voted away the presidential term limits a few months ago. Old Malakhov is in for life.”

The captain snorted. “You’d think he would just save time and call himself Emperor Malakhov instead of spending all this energy on pretense.” Granger stood up to leave. He was glad his CAG had pulled him into the office—he’d calmed down enough and was far less liable to toss Proctor out the airlock. “So how many fighters have we got left in operational status?”

The CAG rose to his feet to follow the captain out. “About a quarter. Maybe twenty? Proctor took around forty, and twenty were down for overhauls before she showed up. Why? Expecting trouble?”

“In the five days we have left? Doubt it. But if we’re not ready for anything fate throws at us, it’s our own damn fault.”

Chapter Eighteen

Sol System, Earth orbit

Valhalla Space Station

“Admiral Yarbrough? The Vice President’s shuttle has arrived.”

She stood up from her desk and nodded her head to the empty room. “Thank you, Commander. Please see that he’s escorted to the
ISS Winchester’
s
docking tube. I’ll meet him there.”

Pausing for a moment by the window before heading out to meet the second most powerful person on the Earth, she stared down at the green and blue globe far below.
Valhalla Station
’s orbit was about double geosynchronous, and at 50,000 kilometers from the surface it only orbited once every thirty-seven hours, affording them an uninterrupted view of whatever continent they flew over, which at the moment was North America. Squinting, she could just make out the slightly grayish look of the major cities—New York, Washington, Miami. Nashville was obscured by clouds, but she could imagine seeing the giant civilian spaceport there, rivaling the size of even the IDF port in Omaha.

So small from up here,
she thought. Letting her eyes drift farther north, she could barely make out the huge scars left by the Swarm War—circular pockmarks indicating where several cities in Ohio and Michigan had stood. The multi-megaton warheads the Swarm dropped had completely wiped those cities off the map: Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland—all gone. And in the aftermath of the war the government had seen little point in rebuilding them, opting instead to let nature take its course, and now the blast zones were covered in lush green. Dense radioactive forests. She remembered schoolyard rumors that the wildlife there had glowing eyes.

But the Swarm was gone. The surveillance missions to known Swarm worlds following the war had indicated that there was not a trace of them left. All their cities abandoned. Not a single ship, not a single alien left behind. Some fundamentalist religious leaders went so far as to claim that the Swarm was simply a scourge manufactured by God for the punishment of mankind for her many sins. And once the punishment was delivered, the scourge was taken away by God without a trace.

IDF intel thought otherwise, and spent decades searching for them, to no avail. They were entirely, and inexplicably, gone.

But now there was a problem in the Veracruz Sector. The
ISS Kerouac
was missing, Starbase Heroic had gone silent, and the scout ship she’d dispatched to investigate had similarly not reported back in for over thirty hours.

She turned to the door—a lowly IDF admiral should not keep the vice president waiting. As she left, a flashing indicator on her desk monitor caught her eye.

Returning to her desk, she examined the report.

A badly damaged data pod from the intel ship
Tirian.

Her eyes bulged as she watched the video surveillance play out.

Dammit
.
They’re back.

Chapter Nineteen

Halfway between L2 and Lunar Base

ISS Constitution

“Captain, we’re within 150,000 kilometers of Lunar Base,” said Ensign Prince.

The bridge, which had been humming along just moments earlier, came to a quiet. Granger stood up. Everyone knew that this would be the final time the
Constitution
would fire her engines as a commissioned IDF vessel. The ship needed to slow down sufficiently to enter orbit around the moon. He hoped they weren’t expecting another pep talk. “Thank you, Ensign. How’s the power plant?” he said, turning to the engineering section.

“Operating at nearly full capacity, sir. Commander Scott says we’re good to go.”

“Very well. Full reverse. Fire forward thrusters. Sixty percent power.”

“Sir? Since we’re down a few engines, that won’t slow us down enough.” Ensign Prince hemmed, and returned his gaze to his computer readout. “That is, sir, ever since engine number six was scrapped and—”

“Thank you, Ensign, for the reminder,” he said, cutting off the young man and mentally sending choice words down towards Commander Proctor in the fighter bay. “Eighty percent on the remaining engines should do it.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Notify me when we’re an hour out.”

He grunted a greeting as Commander Haws staggered onto the bridge. Dammit—he’d been drinking again. The odor was noticeable from a dozen feet away.

“We fired the engines yet?” he slurred.

Granger advanced on his friend and gripped his upper arm, pulling him along beside him towards the door.

“Come with me.”

“Ah, Tim, it was nothing. Just a glass.”

“A glass? You sure it wasn’t ten?”

He saluted to the marines posted at the entrance to the bridge and pulled the XO past some wary-eyed officers paused in conversation outside the operations center next door.

“Look, we’re throwing in the towel tomorrow anyway, what’s the big—”

Granger shoved Haws up against the wall and stared into his face, just an inch away. “What’s the big deal? Dammit, Abe, I’ve stuck my neck out for you so many times I’m frankly getting a little tired of it. I’ve warned you about showing up for duty drunk. There’s only so many times I can sweep this under the rug. You’re hurting morale and you’re disrespecting me.”

Haws snorted. “Stuck your neck out for me, my fat white ass. You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me, after that stunt you pulled. They were about to dishonorably discharge you, but because of me they promoted you. Imagine that—the rogue commander of the Khorsky incident, getting his own damn ship.”

Granger’s fists tightened around Haws’s uniform. Looking both ways down the hall to make sure they were alone, he leaned in close. “You and I both know that’s not true. The fleet’s been on the decline for decades. They needed a kick in the ass and I gave it to them. Just like I’m doing with you.” He released the XO and shoved him down the hall. “Go. Sober up then report back.”

“Is that an order,
Captain
?” Haws growled.

Granger let his shoulders hunch over. “Does it need to be, Abe?”
 

An officer rounded the corner and walked past them, nodding a quick salute. Granger let her disappear through a door down the hallway before going on. “Look, Abe, you’re my best friend. We’ve given the Old Bird a good run. Let’s not sully it by—”

Haws brushed past him. “Save it, Tim. Save it for someone who cares. You and I both stopped caring years ago, when they sentenced us to the Old Bird.”

“Sentenced?” he asked. Haws didn’t stop.

“You heard me.”

He turned around the corner and disappeared out of sight.

And Haws was right: their assignment was a sentence. A subtle effort to get the two of them out of the way. To silence and discredit them. A court martial would have brought too much publicity, and a discharge, honorable or otherwise, would have given them the ability to speak out. But a dead-end assignment?

Granger rested a hand on the wall. The ship hummed with the distant pulse of the ancient engines. Her engines.
His
engines. Haws called it a sentence, and it may have been, but it was the best damned sentence he would have ever dared to ask for.

Chapter Twenty

Earth’s Moon

Main Auditorium, Lunar Base

Vice President Isaacson of the United Earth Government beamed out from the podium, flashing his toothy politician’s grin at the auditorium full of reporters, dignitaries, politicians, celebrities, and civilians—there was even a class of students from some well-to-do private elementary school in New England.

Granger glanced at his watch—an ancient gold and silver time-piece with leather straps given to him by his mother several decades ago. Damn, this ceremony was taking forever. Isaacson sure knew how to talk.

“—in fact,” the Vice President continued, “some might say that we’ve gone too far in our efforts to modernize the military. They think we should remain constant. Fixed. Unchanging. Well, ladies and gentleman, times change, and with those changes we rise to meet them. The challenges we’ll face in the twenty-seventh century will be unlike those we faced in the twenty-sixth. The Swarm is long gone, as our intelligence and science expeditions have claimed. There is no sign of any other alien civilizations for all the many thousands of cubic lightyears we’ve explored. Again, as we’ve seen throughout the millennia, our most difficult challenges will come from within, and so we must be prepared for that threat—”

Granger suppressed a wry grin. He knew the Russian president was probably seething if he was watching, which he almost undoubtedly was—who wasn’t watching the decommissioning ceremony of the oldest ship in the history of Earth’s spacefaring fleets?

“—and so we say to you future generations”—Vice President Isaacson inclined his head down to his left, towards the rows of seated students—“the future lies with you, if you will rise to meet it. We deliver into your hands a safer galaxy, a safer humanity, a safer world. Study hard, learn as much as you can, follow in the footsteps of your heroes, and for god’s sake, come up for air from your video games every now and then, ok?” he added, to a roomful of delighted, polite laughter.

And before he knew it, it was his turn. Isaacson sat down, and all eyes turned to Captain Tim Granger as he lifted slowly to his feet, trying hard not to wince from the sharp pain in his lungs.

He approached the podium, and set his hand-written speech down next to a glass of water set out for him. They told him he had fifteen minutes, but damn it all if he wasn’t able to write down more than five minutes of material. Guess he’d have to wing it. Stalling for as much time as possible, he picked up the glass of water and downed it.

Granger cleared his throat and stared down at his notes, squinting before realizing that his reading glasses were still tucked snugly into his pocket. Placing them on his face, he mumbled, “They say your eyes are the second thing to go in old age, followed quickly by your ears.” He waited a moment for comedic timing. “But I’ll be damned if I can remember the first thing.”

More polite, measured laughter. God, he hated speeches.

“One hundred and thirty years ago, our forefathers had a vision,” he began, reading his speech from the beginning. “A vision of safety, and progress. We had started spreading among the stars, and with that spread came unknown dangers. It seemed we were alone in the universe, but those early leaders of a United Earth had the foresight to realize that might not always be the case. And fortunately, almost serendipitously, we built warships. Fleets. Far more overpowered than what we thought we needed.”

He coughed, and it turned into a full-blown fit. An admiral seated behind him reached under the podium and handed him another glass of water, which he accepted gratefully, and continued, “The
Constitution
. The
Chesapeake
. The
Congress
. The
Warrior
. The
Independence
, and the
Victory
. What we today call the Legacy Fleet. We built some ships before, and some after, but those were the finest. Our golden age.”

He paused, glancing up at the waiting audience. “And then the Swarm came. Without the handful of carriers, cruisers, and frigates that we had at the time, humanity as we know it would have disappeared.”

Another pause. “But we won. We survived. We lived to fight another day. But that day never came....” He trailed off. He just wasn’t feeling it. The words seemed hollow. Like he was repeating politicized platitudes designed to soothe the ears of everyone present. To not offend. To keep everyone comfortable.

The hell with it. He picked up his speech and flipped it over, and clearing his throat, he stared up at the audience again.

“But the truth is, we were lucky. Damned lucky. It wasn’t skill, or grit or gumption or bravery or brilliance that got us through that war. It was dumb luck. They handed our asses to us, and we almost paid the ultimate price. Now we say the Swarm has disappeared. We say they’ve abandoned their worlds and that they’ll never come back. We develop tests and analytic techniques to confirm this conclusion and we pat ourselves on the back for our ingenuity, for surely it must have been us. Surely it’s because of our brilliance, our excellence, that we’ve driven off the Swarm. And so we sit back. We relax. We pretend we’re perfectly safe.”

He glanced over at the collection of seated dignitaries on the rostrum, and saw that several of the officials were nervously checking their watches, some staring at him, some shooting daggers out of their eyes at him, President Isaacson included. Admiral Yarbrough slowly moved her head back and forth at him.

“Just because something is old, doesn’t mean we need to throw it away. What kind of society have we become, what happens to our values when we say that just because something or someone has been around a hell of a long time that they’ve outlived their usefulness? We become a society of vacant, immature materialists. Moving from one new thing on to the next. Devaluing age and experience.” He was talking about the
Constitution
, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was talking about himself as well.