Constitution: Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Trilogy (27 page)

She jumped to her feet and stared out the window. Sure enough, in a wide arc, the Old Bird soared through the debris field, aiming straight for the shimmering singularity, even as the aliens tried to evade her.

“Impossible.” She brought up the sensor display on her tiny console. “I thought you told me no life signs remained on board!”

“That’s what the internal sensors said, sir!”

“Then how the hell is that thing changing course?” she hollered, pointing out the window.

The comm beeped softly, and Proctor almost missed the sound in the commotion and the shaking of re-entry. She stared at the amber light indicating the signal. Finally, she tapped it to accept the incoming transmission, still eyeing the old ship out the window suspiciously.

A familiar voice sounded over the speaker, and somehow, she wasn’t surprised in the slightest to hear it. “Commander Proctor. Job well done.”

Her voice caught. “Sir, I—”

She didn’t know what to say.

“I hope this fireworks display will be worth it—I’m sure giving away the farm here.”

Lieutenant Diaz murmured, “He’s closing fast. Less than a kilometer now.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Proctor. “For everything.”

“Ah hell, don’t get all weepy on me, Commander. The captain goes down with his ship—you know that.”

“I’m sorry I tried to take her away from you, Tim.”

A silence.

“No. You helped me find her again.”

The pulsing light from the singularity intensified, and Proctor knew the aliens were preparing to teleport it to below the surface, deep underneath Los Angeles. Waves of gravitational energy buffeted the escape pod.

The tip of the
Constitution
was close to the singularity, and it started to visibly stretch as the space distorted all around it.

Granger’s voice sounded out again, this time distorted by heavy static, but defiant. “Take that, you bastards—”

And several things happened simultaneously.

With a blinding flash, the
Constitution
plunged into the singularity, disappearing in a violent flare. For a split second, the invisible quantum tethers that had connected the singularity with the reactor cores inside the alien ships became visible, shimmering with an unearthly green glow, and in the next moment, all four ships erupted in massive explosions.

Proctor shielded her eyes with a hand. The viewport dimmed automatically under the intense radiation, but it was still too dazzlingly bright to look at.

When she opened her eyes, the remains of the four deadly alien vessels were smoldering shells, husks of twisted metal and armor, debris and smoke and the alien’s organic liquid spewing out into the void. They were gone. Defeated.

The singularity was gone.

The
Constitution
was gone.

Granger was gone.

“The old bastard did it,” she murmured.

Somehow, against all odds, he did it. Against overwhelming firepower. Against unthinkable odds.

With an unthinkable sacrifice.

They did it.

She shuddered, angling her head so her two fellow bridge crew members wouldn’t see her face as it contorted. When she first boarded the
Constitution
, she thought of her assignment as a chore. An unpleasant little detail that needed doing in order to check a box, to advance her to the next stage of her career, hopefully on to newer and more prestigious ships, where she could travel the galaxy to see hundreds of new worlds. And Granger was the cantankerous old fart that was deliberately standing in her way. Intentionally making her life difficult.

But with the emergency, he changed. He transformed into a leader. And even when humiliated by the doctor’s not-so-discrete intervention, he still managed to foresee the inevitable, decide on a plan, and do what needed to be done.

And saved them all.

She touched the viewport, pressing her hand against the spot where the Old Bird had disappeared, taking Granger with it.

Something far off to the side caught her eye. She almost missed it in the atmosphere blazing past the viewport, but the sight of another explosion was unmistakable.

Out of nowhere, a ship snapped out of the ether and into existence, just a handful of kilometers from the destruction of the four ships.

“Impossible....” Proctor stood up again and pressed her nose to the viewport.

It was impossible. The singularity should have chewed up anything caught in its wake.

But there she was. Even more broken and hobbled than she’d looked just moments ago:

The
Constitution
, blazing fire and debris, hurtling down towards the atmosphere.

Chapter Sixty-Six

Low Earth Orbit

Command Escape Pod

“GET A SENSOR LOCK!” she bellowed at Lieutenant Diaz. “Get a lock, dammit! I want to know if anything’s alive over there!”

Her fingers danced across the tiny computer console screen, bringing the emergency thrusters online and pushing them to their limit. “Get us out of the atmosphere!”

“But, sir—”

“NOW!”

“But, sir, we may have descended too far into Earth’s gravity well. These things weren’t designed to enter orbit.” Ensign Prince’s face was flushed—he knew what was at stake, Proctor could tell, as his eyes flitted back out the viewport towards the
Constitution
, which itself was falling precipitously towards the atmosphere.

She seethed. “Try. Try, dammit!”

“Trying, sir,” he replied, frantically working the controls, desperately trying to arrest their descent and enter orbit.

“Sir,” Lieutenant Diaz began, shaking his head in disbelief, “picking up one life sign in engineering. Very faint.”

He’s alive.

“Ensign Prince, if you don’t get us over to that ship in the next two minutes, I’m going to toss you out when we hit the stratosphere.”

Ensign Prince’s face went white, apparently not picking up on her gallows humor. “I think I can get us over there and intercept her trajectory, but we’ll never break our own descent, sir.”

“Fine. Get us over there.”

She held her breath as the escape pod drifted ever closer towards the
Constitution,
which itself began billowing red and orange compressed atmosphere all around it.

“Are we going to be able to re-dock with the escape pod port through that compression shock front?” Lieutenant Diaz eyed the fiery air streaming past the
Constitution
warily.

“If not, it’ll be a hell of a story, won’t it?”

And in another thirty seconds, they were there. As soon as the pod hit the compression shock front, the entire craft shook violently, buffeted by the hyper-compressed, ultra-heated air. But the next moment, with another burst of the thrusters, they were in. Nuzzled safely into the port. But safety was relative.

Proctor fingered the controls to open the airlock. Lieutenant Diaz protested and pointed at his console’s screen. “Sir, the seal is damaged. We’re partially open to vacuum.”

“Screw it. I’m going in. You should have enough air if you close the door fast behind me.”

“And you, sir?”

She flashed a dark grin. “Guess I’ll have to hold my breath.” She stood and stepped to the door. “Ready?” They both nodded. She wrenched the lever, and the door burst outward towards the compromised airlock as a rush of air from the escape pod flooded past her.

She sprang out into the airlock and pushed the escape pod’s hatch closed with a grunt. She felt the air grow thin as she dashed the two meters across the airlock and opened the hatch into the ship. Another blast of air nearly knocked her over, but gripping the door frame, she pulled herself into the corridor beyond, fighting the air rushing inexorably against her.

With a balled-up fist, she bashed the door controls, which closed the hatch behind her, and the violent wind whipping past calmed considerably.

But it didn’t stop. She glanced down the hallway where the wind was going, understanding that there must be a hull breach in that direction.

Turning into the wind, she limped down the debris-littered corridor. She nearly tripped over a figure huddled against the wall, and reached down to feel his neck. At her touch, the figure slumped backward onto the floor—most of the man’s face had burned away, along with his clothing and most of his skin. She shuddered, straightened herself, and resumed her sprint to engineering.

She recognized the fighter bay up ahead, which meant that engineering was only three more decks down. The temperature was rising, but, oddly enough, the ride through the atmosphere was strangely smooth. Apparently the buffeting of re-entry was no match for the sheer mass of the
Constitution
.
 

The Earth’s surface, though, would be less forgiving.
 

Sprinting two steps at a time down the staircase, she felt her lungs scream for air and her sprained ankle protest—she didn’t know how much time she had, but the sooner they could get out, the better.

Rounding a loop to another landing, she saw something odd out of the corner of her eye. She’d seen a few more bodies on her mad dash through the ruined ship, but except for the burned man crouched against the wall, they were all laying prostrate.

Down this hallway, which she recognized ended in the
Afterburners
bar on the observation deck, she saw a figure seated in a chair in front of the huge windows that looked out at the maelstrom of atmospheric fire beyond, slumped to the side as if asleep. Was it another body? But why in the world would a body be propped up in a chair in front of the observation deck’s windows?

“Captain!”

There was no response. No indication he heard her. Swearing, she half bolted, half limped down the corridor, grabbed his shoulders, and gently shook him.

No response. His head was lolled back and his eyes closed. She felt for a pulse at his carotid, and found it, but it was deathly faint.

“Captain!” she repeated, but he didn’t stir.

She eyed the window. The surface of the Earth was looming up closer now. They’d broken through to the stratosphere, and were descending rapidly like a fireball through the sky—the trail of fire stretched away from the window, and she could just glimpse below them the telltale white salt flats of western Utah, and to the northeast, the Great Salt Lake.

Stooping over, she pulled Granger forward and draped him across her shoulders. She’d never carried a man before in her life—just her sister when she was younger when they’d play in the back yard.
 

With a grunt, she lifted.

He was surprisingly light. Still heavy as a sack of potatoes, but bearable. She’d never noticed what a thin, haggard, rail of a man he was.

She struggled down the hallway, her ankle screaming in pain, racking her brain to remember the location of the nearest escape pods. Would they even be there? Wouldn’t they have launched during the evacuation? Only one way to know. At the stairwell landing, she held on to the railing as she descended the remaining level to engineering. The door to the giant bay stood wide open.

Hadn’t Commander Scott warned them about lethal levels of radiation? She glanced at the rad warning lights, but they were dark. Normal radiation levels. Odd.

Struggling across the engineering bay, she finally found the airlock that led to the escape pods for engineering.

She checked the control panel outside the door.

They were all gone. Every single pod.

“I think I tried that already,” came a murmur from near her shoulder.

“Sir!”

She bent forward and let him down as gently as she could, but he still slid off the last two feet and landed with a grunt on the floor. “Sorry!”

He vaguely waved her off. “Fine. I’m, I’m fine.”

“What happened? How did you get up to the observation deck? I found you in
Afterburners!
”

His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “Can’t remember. But”—he stared at the escape pods—“I know I tried those.”

She grit her teeth. There really was only one option. “Then I’ll have to guide her down and make a landing.”

He closed his eyes. “Sounds like a plan, Commander.” He laid his head back down on the deck. “I’m afraid I won’t be much help. I’m ... I’m tired....”

She dashed across the bay to the computer stations where she could bring up the navigational controls. The indicators showed they were coming in fast. Very, very fast. Somehow, they had to arrest their speed, and come in at a shallower angle. Ships like the
Constitution
weren’t designed with aerodynamic landings in mind, but she knew that at least
some
attention was paid to that remote possibility. There were aerilons and flaps that could extend and help guide the descent, and if she could get some engine thrust there was the chance they could make a somewhat controlled landing.

Her fingers danced on the console. All engines were dead. No, wait, engine six was still online. Barely. Applying power to it, slowly so as not the burn out the thruster, she managed to increase the thrust to nearly ten percent. She flipped the thruster into angled mode, which slightly rotated the nozzle direction downward. Between that, the flaps and aerilons, the navigation computer was telling her the ship’s speed was slowly decreasing.

But it wasn’t enough. They were still coming in at over five hundred meters per second. Supersonic. The atmospheric drag was doing a wonderful job slowing them down, but it wasn’t doing it nearly fast enough.

On the monitor, she eyed the Great Salt Lake below them, and on a whim, she retracted the port aerilons and leveled out the one thruster. As expected, the
Constitution
arced to port, beginning a giant spiral down towards the lake.

If she could just make a few loops....

The ship angled towards the north, then west, then swept towards the south, dipping ever lower, until finally, at still well over three hundred meters per second, they hit the water.

The ship lurched. She was thrown into the air, halfway up to the ceiling five meters overhead, and came back down with a crash, feeling her wrist snap under her as she landed.

Grunting against pain, she pulled herself back up to the console and watched the external view on the monitor. The
Constitution
glided like an angry, burning swan over the surface of the vast lake, still moving at just under supersonic speed and sending up giant waves in her wake. But the water was slowing her down quickly. Soon, the ship emerged up onto land, crashing over a superhighway that, thankfully, had been cleared of traffic, then burst through a series of embankments and sailed through onto the wide park-like meridian of the transportation line leading away from the spaceport several kilometers to the west.