Constitution: Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Trilogy Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Front Matter

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  CONSTITUTION

  Book 1

  Of

  The Legacy Fleet Trilogy

  For J., L., and C.

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  Other books by Nick Webb

  The Pax Humana Saga:

  1: The Terran Gambit

  2: Chains of Destiny

  3: Into the Void

  Chapter One

  Sector 521, 10 lightyears outside United Earth Space

  Bridge, ISS Kerouac

  “Sensors are picking up a meta-space discrepancy, Captain. Narrowing the receiver band to confirm. Probably just a ghost signal. Distortion from a gravitationally-lensed supernova signal or something like that.”

  The captain of the ISS Kerouac sipped his morning coffee and nodded. “We should just rechristen the ship ISS Ghosthunter and make it official.”

  The sensor officer chuckled. “Yes, sir.”

  He took another sip of his coffee. Meta-space ghosts aside, Captain Disraeli of the heavy cruiser ISS Kerouac was having an awful day.

  For starters, he’d just found out that because of the recent real estate bubble on Britannia, he’d most likely lose half a million credits in some beachfront property he’d invested in last year. He shook his graying head at the thought—there goes any hope of an early retirement.

  Next, it came to his attention that he was about to lose his chief engineer and best friend to a reassignment. That was something every Integrated Defense Force officer had to be prepared for, but it still came as a shock since Admiral Yarbrough had promised him there would be no more crew rotations among his senior staff for at least the next year, and dammit all if he was going to go on these deep space patrol missions with some tight-ass newbie lieutenant straight out of IDF academy.

  His reply message to Admiral Yarbrough had not been professional, and it would probably earn him some type of bureaucratic reprisal from the old battle-ax.

  But worst of all, he’d lost his fifth straight game of Kluger’s Squares to his first officer, a bubbly red-headed commander whose shrill laughter anytime she won or found something even remotely humorous not only got on his nerves but also created within him the burning desire to wrap his lips around a .45 blaster and just end it all.

  She wasn’t that bad. In fact, she was the best first officer he’d ever had. Professional, friendly, and utterly capable.

  But, sweet mother of Stalin—that laugh.

  Still scowling, he swiveled his chair to face the sensor station, mug still in hand. “Midshipman? Status of sensor sweep?” he said between sips.

  The young man, barely out of IDF Academy himself, nodded. “Almost complete, sir. No abnormalities from the meta-space sensors, and all the EM frequencies are quiet. The meta-space discrepancy we read earlier must have been a ghost reading off our own transmitters.”

  It was an exercise this bridge crew had repeated three times a day, every day, for the last six months of their most recent assignment: the dreaded deep space border patrol. The most boring, uneventful, pointless assignment possible for an advanced Pulsar class heavy cruiser like the ISS Kerouac. Border patrol was for the old scout cruisers, or even the Legacy Fleet. It was not an assignment suitable for a state-of-the-art military vessel complete with smart-steel armor and petawatt class laser systems.

  And the border in question was a border in name only. Hell, on the other side there was probably nothing. Just more stars, nebulae, interstellar gas and dust. But mostly, nothing.

  But they were still out there. Somewhere. At least, that was still the current military doctrine.

  They were the Swarm. No one knew what they called themselves, and so naturally humanity had come up with all manner of names for them, some insulting, some descriptive. The Swarm, Pixies, the Greeners (a play on “little green men”, he supposed), Ghosts, along with several other more colorful designations, such as Sodders, Cumrats, Pusbots, and a few that even he blushed to repeat.

  They’d earned their monikers—an Earth nearly devastated seventy-five years ago served as a testament to their unpleasantness.

  But they’d disappeared. As suddenly as they’d come. And since then, Earth’s Integrated Defense Force had patrolled, ever vigilant, guarding humanity against their return. And in all the decades of reconstruction and prosperity that followed, the fear of the Swarm had waned—people had started to question whether the Swarm even still existed at all. Hell, we’d beaten them last time, right? Maybe we’d beaten them for good. Permanent extermination.

  “Thank you, Midshipman.” He turned to the navigation stations that occupied a third of the bridge. “When sensor sweeps of sector 521 conclude, prepare for q-jump to sector 522.”

  “Aye, sir,” said the chief navigator, an older woman, near retirement herself. Captain Disraeli inclined his head in approval at her—he liked the woman. Reminded him of his grandmother, years ago, before she died. Stiff. Proper. But swore like a sailor whenever her assistant navigator’s calculations were slightly off.

&nbs
p; He raised his head, which the “all the bells and whistles” computer immediately recognized as a sign to prepare to address someone in another section of the ship. “Disraeli to Commander Gooding, report to the bridge.”

  A few minutes later his XO appeared, saluting the marine guard as she crossed the threshold to the bridge, which sensibly resided deep within the armored core of the ship rather than being perched precariously on the top of the vessel like an old-style soda can on the fence, ready to be picked off as alien target practice.

  “You called, sir?” Commander Gooding, took her position at the center of the operations center.

  “We’re about to q-jump to the next sector.”

  “Well, it’s about time. I think we’ve had far too much fun in sector 521. Shall I recall the crew from shore leave early?” She winked at him. He forced a strained smile back. She was always making her jokey small talk—in reality it annoyed the hell out of him, but he couldn’t let his crew know that. And she meant well.

  “Indeed, Commander. Let’s try to keep the frivolity to a minimum in sector 522—we’ve got an important mission to accomp—”

  “Sir! I....” A voice called out, but trailed off.

  Disraeli snapped his head over to the sensor station where the voice had originated. “Well?”

  The midshipman cocked his head in confusion, scrutinizing his readout. “Sorry, sir. It looked like there was a massive quantum fluctuation in the background vacuum energy, but it’s gone. Running diagnostics now—could’ve been another grounding problem with the sensor array.”

  Disraeli turned back to his XO. “Well! That was the most excitement we’ve had around here in weeks.” He heard scattered chuckling around the bridge. Still, after the ghost meta-space reading earlier, it was suspicious. But nothing Gooding couldn’t handle—he had to get to sickbay. “As I was saying, Commander, please take the next shift. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment this afternoon that I don’t want to miss.”

  “Yes, sir. Is Doctor Evans giving you a sucker this time?”

  “No, but he told me that my fifth visit is free, and I’m cashing in.” He winked at her. She didn’t need to know about his decade-old case of Rigellian warts. Especially since the only place one tended to contract it was in the red light district of New Mumbai on Rigel Three.

  He stood up, grabbed his coffee mug, and walked to the door, saluting the marines with a half-hearted wave.

  But stopped mid-stride.

  He held still, putting his hand out to feel the bulkhead nearby. A faint vibration.

  That shouldn’t be there.

  “Sir?” The XO stepped towards him, a questioning look on her face.

  “Midshipman,” he said, momentarily ignoring his XO, “what’s the status of that diagnostic?”

  The young man fingered his console. “Completed, sir. All systems functioning normally.”

  The tremble intensified. Now his XO and the rest of the bridge crew could feel it—he could see it in their faces.

  He bolted back to his station. “Full sensor sweep! I want to know what in the blazes that is.” He raised his head. “Engineering, Disraeli. What the hell is going on? Is there an engine test I wasn’t told about?”

  The faint vibration grew to a shudder.

  “No, sir,” replied the chief engineer.

  “Then what the devil is this shaking?”

  A pause at the other end, and before the engineer could reply the captain heard an odd noise from one of the sensor stations. The midshipman’s face had gone white, and a choking noise escaped his lips. He pointed a shaking hand at his console.

  “Midshipman?”

  The young man fiddled with his console and sent the image on his screen to the large holo-viewer on the starboard wall.

  Captain Disraeli turned to look at the screen.

  And dropped his coffee mug, which shattered in a steamy puddle at his feet.

  “Holy Mother of God....”

  Chapter Two

  Veracruz Sector

  Operations Center, Starbase Heroic

  Admiral Ryten glared at the report before tossing aside the datapad. It was highly unusual, but from everything he knew about Captain Disraeli, it was not entirely surprising. The man often showed little regard for authority and much less for regulations and procedure. Probably why Admiral Zingano had practically banished him from the core to the periphery, resigning the old officer to patrol duty.

  “Ensign Taylor, please check the data logs for the past 48 hours. It could be that their regular reports just got lost in the bog of bureaucratic manure we’re drowning in.”

  The young woman nodded. “Yes, sir, but I personally review every report that comes back from the patrols in the periphery sectors. I’m telling you they haven’t reported in for two days.”

  “Anything unusual in their last report?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. They’d completed their scans of sector 520 and had just q-jumped out to 521. That was the last we heard from them.”

  Admiral Ryten drummed his fingers on his desk. Damn. Captain Disraeli may have held standard fleet regulations in low regard, but to Ryten’s knowledge the man had never missed a daily report. Besides, it wasn’t his job anyway. It was his XO’s. And Ryten had served with her. She never missed a report. The woman practically breathed paperwork.

  “Very well. If they don’t file it in the next five hours, send a scout ship out there.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Chapter Three

  Sol System, Earth orbit

  Valhalla Space Station

  Captain Tim Granger shook his head. He couldn’t believe it. After all this time, after all his years of dedicated service. All the awards, medallions—every worthless pin, bar, and insignia that adorned his left breast meant nothing.

  They were taking her away from him. Dammit, they were actually doing it.

  “Admiral Yarbrough, I don’t understand. The Constitution wasn’t scheduled to be decommissioned for at least another five years.”

  The thin, gray-haired woman gestured for him to sit.

  He remained on his feet in quiet defiance, eliciting a drawn-out sigh from the admiral. She sounded like a worn-out school teacher, and it irked him.

  “Tim, you know how ancient the Old Bird is. I’m sorry, but the High Command has decided to—”

  “Nonsense,” he interrupted. “She’s in as good a shape as any ship in the fleet. Why Constitution? Why now? Dammit, Vicky, I—”

  “Tim, the decision is made.” She winced when he swore under his breath. “Look, I did what I could. I tried to extend the decision out another year, but they wouldn’t have it.”

  Granger stared at the pictures on the wall, Admiral Yarbrough posed in handshakes with various government dignitaries—including President Avery—a smattering of favorite vacation destinations, and, of course beautiful shots of all her previous commands, the ISS Legacy and the ISS Baltimore included. Magnificent ships. Just like his beloved Constitution. His home.

  “It’s the Eagleton Commission, isn’t it? They’re forcing the military cuts, and Command decided the easiest way to comply with reductions is to scrap her, didn’t they?”

  “I won’t pretend I can read their minds....” She trailed off when he shot a skeptical look at her. “But, you’re probably right.”

  He finally sat down, slumping heavily into the seat across from the Admiral. He remembered sitting in the same chair in the same office fifteen years earlier, when he accepted command of the Old Bird. The Constitution was old even then. Hell, she was old during the Swarm War seventy-five years ago.

  But they built them right back then. They built them to last.

  He sighed, and searched for words. But there was nothing he could say, so he resorted to nostalgia. “When we were at the academy, things were different. You still remember old Commodore Vickers?”

  She grinned. “How could I forget? Ninety-five years old and still teaching Orbital Tactical Theory.”

&n
bsp; Granger stroked his chin, rough from neglecting his morning shave. “I was a year ahead of you, so you might not have been there, but one day he burst through the door of the classroom, waving his cane—bashing the chalkboard and the screen and his desk with it—screaming about a new Swarm invasion—” He broke off as he saw her chuckle, and descended into laughter himself as he tried to finish.

  She finished his story. “And then he pulled the fire alarm, and caused the evacuation of half of the academy before they sorted out what happened ... yeah, I remember that. Who could forget?”

  Granger wiped his eye. “Who could forget indeed? All it turned out to be was him overhearing some old archived press reports that they were playing in the history class as he walked down the hall. Thought he was listening to a live news feed.”

  Admiral Yarbrough stood up and pulled a small bottle out of the cabinet behind her, along with two glasses. She offered, and Granger nodded. “Poor old man—probably scared the living daylights out of him. Didn’t he die just a few years after?”

  “He did.” Granger swallowed some of the liquid she’d offered him and grimaced. Jack Daniels. Damn, she broke out the good stuff for him. He coughed, and winced more—he’d been coughing more lately, sometimes with pain. It was probably time to schedule that checkup with Doc Wyatt. “But you know the thing about Commodore Vickers? He was there. He was there. He was old enough to have actually served during the Swarm war. He knew what it was like. The action. The danger. The casualties. He was a goddamned war hero. Blew up half a dozen Swarm capital ships with his own light cruiser before they finally got him, and he drifted in high-earth orbit in just his space suit for almost three days before IDF found him—mind you, that’s when space suits were rated for only one day at vacuum.”

  “Hardy old bastard, wasn’t he?” She threw back her own glass and winced.

  He stared at her knowingly, wondering if she was on the High Command’s side or not, if she had actually tried to dissuade them from decommissioning the Constitution. “And you know what he would say to the Eagleton Commission?”