Constitution: Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Trilogy (16 page)

“Oh, god,” she said, as she saw where the damaged fighter was heading.

Straight towards the mysterious shimmering white globe.

“Dogtown, on me,” said Ballsy. “Fishtail, get closer. Shadow my movements.”

But she could hardly hear. Transfixed by the tumbling fighter barreling towards the white light, she flew as if on autopilot, matching Ballsy’s flight pattern even as she watched....

Hotbox’s fighter entered the white maelstrom, and the entire shimmering sphere erupted in a blinding flash.

When she looked again, Hotbox, and the white light, were gone.

A moment’s silence reigned over her headset, before she realized that voices were yelling on the other end, she’d just been too shocked to recognize them as language.

“All craft, hot landing on the Old Bird, NOW!”

Hot landing. Hot landing? Right. She was a shuttle pilot, but she knew that term. Hightail it to the fighter bay, and don’t slow down for the landing.
Constitution
must be preparing for a q-jump as soon as all fighters were aboard.

“You heard him, Fishtail. Get the hell out of here!”

Ballsy looped around a pair of enemy bogeys, blasted one to fiery bits, and darted towards the Old Bird at maximum acceleration. She followed.

But glanced back towards where the white light, and Hotbox, had disappeared.

Oh, god. Please be alive, Hotbox,
she thought, before pushing forward to maximum acceleration, and struggled to breathe against the massive g-force.

Please be alive.

Her cockpit lit up with Swarm weapons fire and she inhaled sharply. The remaining bogey that Volz had looped around was following them in. “Ballsy—” she began.

“I see it. Hold tight, Fishtail!” Ballsy, ahead of her and about to land on the flight deck of the fighter bay himself, veered up in a tight loop and wrapped around behind her and the enemy bogey on her tail. With a few surgically targeted rounds he sent the Swarm craft spinning out of control.

It slammed right into the tungsten armor overhanging the fighter bay doors, ricocheted down and crashed onto the lip of the deck, just inside the energy field that held the air in the massive bay. Fishtail veered right at the last moment as it fell, braking furiously as she came in for a hard landing. Finally, with a screech of metal on metal, her fighter came to a stop.

She was alive. Against all odds, she was alive.

Her comm speaker burst to life with an angry klaxon.

“
Marines to the fighter bay! Security alert! Possible Swarm presence on the flight deck!”

Chapter Forty

Near Earth’s Moon

Bridge, ISS Constitution

“What the hell was that?” To Granger’s eyes it looked as if the singularity had flared, and then disappeared.

But the
Constitution
was still there.

“Sir, the singularity is gone,” said Lieutenant Diaz.

“How?”

“Looks like one of our damaged fighters collided with it. It was tumbling out of control and flew straight in.”

Commander Proctor called out from the science station. “The mass of the fighter must have disrupted the formation of the singularity. It could be that we can take them out with normal mag-rail slugs.”

The bridge had fallen quiet. With the walls and deckplate no longer pulsing with the whatever energy the artificial singularity had emitted, and the alien energy beams no longer pounding against the hull, they’d finally been given a brief reprieve.

It couldn’t last.

They needed to get out of there, as soon as possible.

“Are the fighters aboard?”

“Aye, sir. All remaining fighters aboard and accounted for.”

“Then get us the hell out of here,” said Granger, pointing to Ensign Prince.

“Initiating—” began Ensign Prince, but he was interrupted.

“Sir, incoming signal from the
Rainbow
. They’re asking to land in our fighter bay,” said the comm officer. He glanced up at the captain. “In fact, all the remaining civilian ships are requesting entry.”

Granger grit his teeth. He couldn’t leave those kids here. He just couldn’t.

“Fine. Get the
Rainbow
aboard. Then the other ships as we have room. Ensign,” he turned back to the navigation station, “I want a hair-trigger on the q-jump initiator. When I give the signal, we’re gone. Got it?”

“Aye, sir.”

Granger turned and watched the viewscreen. Three smaller freighters queued up behind the
Rainbow,
waiting for their chance to board the
Constitution
and escape. But in the distance, near the alien ships, which had still not opened fire on any of them, the same bright, piercing light reappeared.

“Sir, they’re regenerating the singularity!” yelled Commander Proctor.

“I see it. Fire a few mag-rail slugs at it. See if we can’t disrupt it like before.”

The tactical officer gave the signal to one of his gunnery technicians, and several white streaks lanced out from the
Constitution
towards the singularity. It flared, and if anything, grew in brightness, but it remained quite stable.

“Again. Unload the current magazine into it.”

The tactical crew chief gave the signal again and more streaks shot out from the bow, and again the singularity flared, and this time obviously grew into a more intense light.

“We’re feeding it,” said Proctor, her eyes staring at the screen.

Granger swore. “We’ve got even less time now, then.” He glanced at the screen and saw two freighters still hugging close to the
Constitution
. “Is the
Rainbow
aboard?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Signal the rest of the caravan. Tell them to scatter. Full speed. Preferably away from Earth—the aliens will be less likely to chase them down.”

“Aye, sir,” said the comm officer.

He waited until the comm station had finished warning the rest of the caravan, then pointed to Ensign Prince. “Go. Get us out of here.”

Ensign Prince punched the initiator control, and the telltale distortion shimmered in the air all around them as the quantum field established itself around the ship. Within a moment, the view on the monitor shifted, and the alien ships disappeared.

Replaced only by empty space.

“Where the hell is
Valhalla Station
?” murmured Granger.

Chapter Forty-One

Near Earth

Flightdeck, ISS Constitution

Jessica Miller jumped out of her cockpit the moment the hatch opened, nearly tumbling down the stepladder the tech had pushed up to the fighter.
 

As she descended, a platoon of armored marines rushed past her, assault rifles at the ready. “EVERYBODY OUT!” shouted the man in the lead, whom Miller recognized as Colonel Hanrahan. They rushed towards the smoking remains of the Swarm fighter that had followed them in.

It looked relatively unthreatening, given that half of it was a mangled wreck of smashed metal and the other half sported a dozen holes where Ballsy had punched through with his fighter’s rounds, but the harrowing idea of aliens on the flight deck made her rush for the exit, towards the debriefing room. Commander Pierce, who was surrounded by a shell-shocked crowd of pilots from the
Qantas
, motioned all the
Constitution
’s pilots back to the locker room.

Her head was light, her feet heavy, and she didn’t know whether to shout and celebrate that she was alive, or mourn her fallen comrades. Celebrating felt premature, and it struck her that they had little to feel good about. Glancing around the packed fighter deck, she saw that they’d taken on all the remaining fighters from the
Qantas
, swelling their numbers, but realized that nearly half of the
Constitution
’s pilots hadn’t come back.

Including Hotbox. He was young. Just out of the academy. Full of life and enthusiasm and charisma. It just wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

And the thought of fairness drew her mind back to the thing she was suppressing. The thing she couldn’t think about, or risk facing a breakdown right there on the fighter deck. Plus, there were probably search crews going through the wreckage of the
Clyburne
, looking for survivors, right?

Of course not. But she couldn’t think about it. Not yet. Still too many battles to fight. She had to come home to Zack-Zack whole.

“Fishtail!” Ballsy bounded up to her.

“Hey.”

Dogtown joined up with them, and they retreated back to their lockers to sit and recover before they were inevitably called up again. She eyed Dogtown. He was an older pilot, maybe in his mid forties—in stark contrast to Jessica and Ballsy, who were both in their early twenties.

The locker room was subdued. It was only half as full as before, and several of the pilots sat on the benches, their heads in their hands.

Dogtown punched his locker and swore. He punched it several more times, bloodying his knuckles.

“Stop,” said Ballsy. “Breaking your hand won’t bring him back.”

The older pilot collapsed on his bench. “He was twenty. Shit, my son is almost as old as he was. He was just a kid.”

Ballsy nodded. He was barely older than Hotbox had been. He reached into his locker and extracted a tiny bottle, and sat down in between Dogtown and Miller.

“To Hotbox,” he said, twisting the cap off and raising the bottle up. He took a small swig and passed it to the other two. Miller winced as the burning liquid went down.

A moment of silence passed between the three of them, and they watched the other pilots stream through the doors, some dazed, some amped up on adrenaline. All with a haunted, shadowy look behind their eyes—the look of people who’d seen death.

“Why was he Hotbox?” she asked, turning to Volz. “How did he get his callsign?”

Ballsy smiled. “Funny story.” He looked around at the pilots surrounding him, apparently gauging whether it was an appropriate time for said funny story. “There’s the official version he wanted everyone to know, and then there’s the real story. Officially, it goes like this. He’d been on board for a month, and late one night the master chief walks in on him in the showers, smoking a joint. The whole shower was filled with the smoke. Master Chief says he got high just by walking in. Hotbox.” Ballsy shrugged, to conclude the story.

“
That’s
the story he wanted people to know? He could get discharged for drug use.” Jessica shook her head in disbelief.

“Well, that’s because the real story is a little more, ahem, embarrassing. In reality, he was in that shower all right, but he brought a portable long-range comm device with him. You know, those little boxes that let you video call people up to a few hundred thousand klicks away, without passing through the ship’s comm array?” He held up his hands to indicate the size of the box, just a few inches square.

“Oh no....” Jessica began.

“Oh, yes,” replied Ballsy with a smile. “His girlfriend’s in San Diego, see, and well, let’s just say things got pretty hot and heavy in the shower that night. When Master Chief stumbled in there ... well ... yeah. Hotbox.”

Ballsy chuckled. Jessica rolled her eyes. “And Master Chief? What did he do?”

Ballsy laughed even harder. “Old bastard just went right on showering. Didn’t phase him a bit. Hotbox keeps right on going—didn’t hear the chief come in. Then, after he’s done, when he realizes he’d not been alone the whole time, he blubbers to the chief to keep it quiet, and made up the whole story about the reefer just so Chief could have a juicy story to tell in its place. And ... well, obviously both stories got out, which makes it even better.”

Miller snorted.

Ballsy laughed, and wiped his eyes with the back of a hand. “All right, get cleaned up, Fishtail. We could get called up again soon and there’s nothing worse than flying in a cockpit with your own rank BO.”

“How did you get yours, Ballsy? Your callsign, that is.”

Ballsy smirked. “By being Ballsy, of course.”

Dogtown pointed at the younger man. “You’re looking at the only pilot in the history of the
Constitution
who’s managed to break into her q-jump field as she was jumping away.”

“But, that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

Dogtown shook his head. “Not impossible. Just incredibly dangerous, and stupid, since the quantum field can materialize at any second, and if it does when you’re only halfway in, well, it takes that half of the ship with it and leaves the rest behind. Ballsy here,” he continued, pointing his thumb at Volz, “was busy
meeting up
with his girlfriend on
Valhalla Station
a few years ago and things went a little long—”

“So to speak,” interrupted Volz with a mischievous grin.

“—didn’t realize the
Constitution
was about to jump away. So he pulls his pants up, jumps into his fighter, and races off towards the Old Bird, just barely clearing the quantum field in the nick of time. When we appear at Europa station a moment later, there’s this little X-25 fighter that’s jumped in with us, barreling towards the closed fighter bay doors.” Dogtown was chuckling by this point. “Got quite a dressing down by Commander Haws, the old drunk.”

“Ballsy,” said Jessica, raising her eyebrows at Volz.

“Yeah, sure was.” He pointed at her, his head cocked towards Dogtown. “But not half as ballsy as our little Fishtail here. That little stunt you pulled against that weapons installation? Corkscrewing in like that? Crazy. Absolutely chop-off-my-own-left-nut crazy batshit bonkers.”

Fishtail shrugged. “Yeah, well. They had it coming.”

Ballsy smirked and wiggled out of his sweat-stained undershirt before he stalked off to the shower. “Keep that up and we’ll have to exchange callsigns, Fishtail.”

A hush fell over the room as Commander Pierce stepped through the door. “CAG on deck!” shouted one of the pilots nearest him.

“Thank you. You performed like rockstars out there today, people. Absolutely brilliant. You should all be proud.” He paused, biting his lower lip. “A moment of silence for our fallen.”

The locker room fell absolutely silent as everyone bowed their heads, or averted their gaze from each other to avoid tears.