Constitution: Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Trilogy (23 page)

But truth be told, there wasn’t much for Isaacson and the other officials to actually do—the United Earth government had already dispersed from the central location in New York, scattering throughout the world to ensure a functioning government would survive any attack targeting the capitals, and CENTCOM was quite busy repelling the invasion. As it was, Vice President Isaacson sat back, stone faced, watching the updates and video feeds scroll by on the wall of viewscreens nearby.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

A voice in his ear mumbled, “A word, Mr. Vice President.” He turned to see the sallow face of Yuri Volodin. What now? Hadn’t the bumbling fool done enough already?

“What is it?”

“Do you know President Avery’s current location?”

Isaacson shook his head. “Classified. It’s part of the contingency plans for an invasion—she gets whisked away immediately to a secure location.”

Yuri regarded him with a cold expression. “You didn’t answer my question. Of course it’s classified. The question is, do you know where she is?”

A pit was forming in Isaacson’s stomach. This whole scheme had gone too far. Millions were dying, and if things didn’t turn around, billions more would follow. And now Yuri was still focused on killing Avery? After his odd insistence that they avoid the Miami area, where ostensibly they’d be the safest given its extensive defenses, Isaacson had become suspicious of Volodin. What were the man’s true motives? He’d acted quite surprised at the treachery of the Swarm, but now seemed to be taking it in stride, keeping his focus on overthrowing or killing the President.

“Yes.”

“Where? Miami?”

“Is that important?” Isaacson snarled, keeping his whisper low enough to not be heard by the nearest senators, all of whom were talking frantically on their personal comm devices anyway. “After this, there’s no way she’s staying in power. When we repel the invasion and pick up the pieces, people will be calling for her head for allowing this to happen. Her and all the other proponents of the Eagleton Commission.”

Volodin smiled. Cold and deliberate. “But that might not happen for months. We need to move fast. We may only have a few days. Tell me where she is.”

“What in high heaven are you going to do with that information, Yuri? Order a Russian strike force to take her out? They’d never get within a hundred kilometers of her.”

“Of course not. Don’t be a fool. But if the Swarm were somehow ... encouraged ... to move in her direction, it would play to our benefit.”

The words ran like ice through Isaacson’s spine. Was he still communicating with the Swarm? How?
 

And suddenly their earlier conversation made a little more sense. Was it possible? Was Volodin being influenced by the Swarm from afar?

Or worse, was he ... compromised? Was he
wiser
, and
smarter
? Was he completely controlled by the Swarm?

My God, what have I done?

The smart-steel quantum modulation codes. The defense network frequencies. Dammit—the Russians had all of them now, and so did the Swarm.

He needed to figure out a way to ensure Volodin wasn’t under the Swarm’s influence. Somehow.

He nodded. “Good point. Let me see what I can do—I don’t know her coordinates, but I may be able to convince one of our officers to tap into her personal comm channel and we can triangulate from the source.” He stood up and motioned for Yuri to stay where he was. Across the room Admiral Gregory was barking out orders. He’d be too busy to handle something like this. But his eyes rested on a commander coordinating responses across the various stations scattered across the room. Isaacson approached him.

“Commander, I need your help.”

“Sir?” The lanky man paused between stations.

Isaacson leaned in close to the Commander’s ear. “We have a possible security breach. Don’t look around. Don’t look at the group of senators and dignitaries behind me. In fact, nod a few times and point up at the screen as if you’re telling me something helpful.”

For the barest moment the Commander’s eyes widened and Isaacson almost saw him glance back to Volodin and the senators, but to the man’s credit he nodded and pointed up at the screen. “What’s this all about, Mr. Vice President?”

“Tell me, Commander, can you do a meta-space scan of this room?”

“Of this room?” said the Commander, blankly, obviously trying to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“You heard me. Scan for meta-space signals originating from this room.”

“But how is that even possible, sir?”

Isaacson glanced back at Volodin, and winked. “I don’t know. But humor me.”

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Near Earth

Bridge, ISS Constitution

The odds went from impossible, to
...
Granger squeezed his head between his hands, trying to think through the growing pain. What came after impossible? Especially when he was fresh out of ideas and pushed into a corner, with his body breaking down at a rate that rivaled the battered old ship around him?

“I’m open to suggestions,” he said, glancing at Proctor, and around at the rest of the bridge crew.

Ensign Prince turned around. “Ram them.”

“Ram them?” Granger raised an eyebrow. “Suicide run?”

“Their armor is strong, but not as strong as ours. Maybe we can cripple them one by one, and—” He trailed off, realizing his idea sounded foolish and desperate now that he said it out loud. “Sorry, sir.”

“No, Ensign, you’re right. We may get to the point where we will all have to do exactly what Lieutenant Miller just did. We may have to sacrifice the
Constitution.
But not yet.” He turned back to Proctor. “Anyone else?”
 

“Sir!” Lieutenant Diaz had stood up, tapping the controls on his console furiously. “It’s the aliens. It’s....” He trailed off.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Granger turned to the screen to see for himself.

The two remaining ships were leaving. Plowing through the debris field, darting away from the handful of IDF ships that still limped along, firing feeble blasts at the fleeing ships.

“Are they retreating?” asked Proctor.

Granger shook his head. “No. They’re heading towards Earth.” He looked at the distant globe far below.
Valhalla Station
had been in an orbit about double that of a geosynchronous orbit, so the surface was still a good fifty thousand kilometers away, but the continents, and even several large cities were clearly visible.

Lieutenant Diaz nodded. “Confirmed. And the four new ships haven’t even slowed down. They flew past twenty seconds ago and never even fired a shot at any of us.” He tapped a few more buttons. “And they’re heading”—he looked up at Granger—“straight towards Earth. Western hemisphere.”

They were relentless. The aliens were not going to even stop to mop up the remains of the fleet that had met them at
Valhalla Station
, but were going straight for the prize. Right to the endgame.

“Engine status?”

The engineering officer on duty shook his head. “We lost main engine power during the battle, sir. Got hit pretty hard back there. I can give you ten percent thrust. If that.”

Granger frowned. “How fast does that get us down to low Earth orbit?”

“We’ve got Earth’s gravity working for us here, but even so, all we can manage is one-point-two g’s. We can’t match the aliens—in fact, they’re already almost there....”

In desperation, Granger thumbed the comm. “Rayna, bridge. Please tell me the caps have had enough time to recharge for another q-jump.”

A few moments of shouting and clanking sounded over the speakers before Commander Scott’s voice fluttered through the bridge. “Well, Cap’n, I got good news and bad news.”

“Fine. What’s the good news?”

“I can get you down to low Earth orbit pretty quickly. We’ve built up enough charge for a short q-jump.”

“Brilliant.” He hesitated. “And, the bad news?”

She didn’t answer for a few seconds, and when she did, it sounded like she was trying to hold back tears. The
Constitution
was hers as much as it was his, but his chief engineer had always had a more emotional attachment to her, like she was her baby. “We got hit pretty hard in that battle, sir. Cracked the containment vessel clean in half. We’re not spewing radiation ... yet. But we will be once we make this jump, sir, and when we do, it’ll be her last.”

The words sank into the bridge crew. This would be the last journey of the
Constitution.
Granger had been holding out hope the last two weeks that somehow they’d be able to put off decommissioning. That something would unexpectedly come up. Some clerical or administrative issue would be discovered that would buy the
Constitution
an extra month. An extra week.

The aliens returned, and it bought the Old Bird an extra day.

“Understood, Rayna. Make preparations to execute jump. Get your people out of there—once that thing loses containment, I want the core ejected before it goes critical.”

“Got it, Cap’n,” she replied—Granger could hear the hint of a sniffle. “It’ll be a few minutes. If we don’t take a few precautions we’ll just explode in q-space, half of our molecules showing up and the other half staying here. I’ll let you know. Scott out.”

Granger turned to Proctor. “Are the weapons crews reloading?”

“Already on it, sir.” She’d been issuing orders during his conversation with Commander Scott, and he nodded his approval. “And we should check on the escape pods. Get a few people from ops to make sure they’re all operable—some may have been damaged during the fight.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And get a repair crew on the lasers that can be fixed up in the next ten minutes. Looks like those bastards are vulnerable to them, but only if we’ve punched through their armor first.” He turned to tactical. “Incorporate that into your firing patterns. Puncture with the mag-rails, then boil the shit out of them with the lasers through the holes we punch.”

The seconds ticked by inexorably, slowly, and every moment felt like he was abandoning some North American city to a hopeless, cruel, fiery fate. Surely the alien ships had arrived by now, and he doubted there were any ships left to defend their planet—everything had been sent to
Valhalla Station
. The aliens had free rein over the entire surface. There were a few orbital defense platforms, sure, and the surface defenses were nothing to sniff at, but the planetary defense command had no chance against the forced singularity weapon. Nothing did, except mass. Lots of it.

It was up to
Constitution
, and
Constitution
alone.

Unless....

“This is Captain Granger,” he said, thumbing the comm open to a wide signal. “All remaining ships in fighting condition, report in.” He’d forgotten about the remnants of the fleet—all of the remaining vessels were severely damaged, most drifting listlessly. But there may have been one or two with q-jump capabilities. Any help was better than none.

A voice crackled over the comm. “Captain French reporting in, commanding the
ISS Picayune.
We’re limping, Granger, but we’ve got some fight in us yet.”

Granger nodded. Good—the
Picayune
was just a light cruiser, but perhaps hiding in the shadow of the
Constitution
she could pelt the enemy with enough mag-rail slugs to make shielding her worth it.

Another voice sounded out. “This is Captain Wei.
ISS Xinhua
, reporting for battle, Captain. We’ve lost main thrusters, and all mag-rails. But we can q-jump in with you, and have nearly all laser turrets operational, and half a fighter wing we can bring to bear.”

“Good to hear it, Captain.” He scanned his command board, and, seeing the status of the remaining ships, realized he probably wouldn’t be hearing from anyone else. The rest were too damaged to help. And given that their captains weren’t responding, their bridges were probably destroyed anyway.

“Captain Granger! Long time no see!”

A third voice boomed out of the speakers. Granger glanced at his board again to see which ship was the source, but none of the ships which had survived the battle were signaling.

“Who’s this?” he said, standing up.

“You old bastard, don’t you remember your own roommate at the academy?”

“Pickens? Is that you? I thought you retired!” he replied with a broadening smile.

“Yeah. Funny that—I just recalled myself. Looked like we could use a little help, and they only mothballed the
Congress
a year ago. I made a call to Admiral Zingano before
Valhalla
blew, asked if I could have a skeleton crew to fly to the rescue, and the rest is ancient history. Ancient being four hours ago.”

Granger’s jaw dropped slightly. “You recommissioned the
Congress
in under four hours? She’s space worthy?”

“Hell, she wasn’t exactly space worthy when I commanded her. These Legacy Fleet ships are basically just hollowed-out asteroids with a few guns bolted to the sides. But their systems are so simple that all we did was blow off the dust, execute a hard restart of the engines, and off we went. Given the emergency, I didn’t pay much attention to the finer details like, well, oxygen regenerators and food and shit. But I figured we were just going to die in a few hours, so what the hell, right?” He laughed darkly, which made Granger chuckle along with him, in spite of the dire situation.

“The Legacy Fleet. All back together, huh?” Granger beamed. “All we need is the
Warrior
, the
Chesapeake,
and the
Independence
, and we’ve got the band back together. It only took a hundred years and two alien invasions.”

“Shit, at this rate we’ll resurrect the
Victory.”
She was the first ship to fall to the aliens during the first invasion, and a giant memorial stood to her in the middle of Salt Lake City, near where she’d crashed.

“Where are you, Bill?” Granger didn’t see the other ship on his console—if she was anywhere near, he’d see her, since, as one of the
Constitution’
s twins, she’d be detectable from hundreds of thousands of kilometers around.