by Nick Webb
Contents
Title
Dedication
Front Matter
Prologue
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
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Epilogue
Backmatter
DEFIANCE
Book FIVE
of
The Legacy Fleet Series
For J., L., and C.
To be notified of future books in The Legacy Fleet Series, sign up here:
smarturl.it/nickwebblist
The Legacy Fleet Series:
Constitution
Warrior
Victory
Independence
Defiance
Liberty (coming 2017)
In addition, there are “extended universe” Legacy Fleet novels written by other authors (with Mr. Webb’s permission):
smarturl.it/legacyfleet
Other books by Nick Webb
The Pax Humana Saga:
1: The Terran Gambit
2: Chains of Destiny
3: Into the Void
The Earth Dawning Series
1. Mercury’s Bane
2. Jupiter’s Sword
3. Neptune’s War
Prologue
Vilasha Sector, Dolmasi Space
High Orbit over Vilasha-dol
Space Cruiser Khisaga Dolva
It was a small ship, as civilizational threats go.
Vishgane Kharsik, supreme Vishgane of the third auxiliary space fleet patrolling the extreme remoteness of the Dolmasi borders near human space, from his imperious perch in the captain’s chair on the highest level of his warship’s command center, didn’t even see it approach.
The old Swarm carriers had been huge—several kilometers long. But whatever the origin or intent of this newcomer, size was apparently not one of its priorities.
That meant it was weak. If it wasn’t willing to project strength and inspire fear at the sight of its ships, then it wasn’t worth taking seriously as an adversary. At least the humans knew how to build big. Not as big as the Skiohra, but the largest human ships were still over a kilometer long.
This one was a quarter of that.
No visible guns; another sign of weakness. Vishgane Kharsik grunted his disdain. For an enemy to swagger into a Dolmasi system and intrude on their space, without so much as revealing its weaponry and strength was not only a weakness, it was an insult.
And it would be responded to in kind.
“Prepare ion fire,” he said to the armaments station at his feet. The officers there grunted their acknowledgement.
And then the other ship disappeared.
“Where did it go?” Kharsik bellowed.
The armaments officers looked bewildered.
“Fire!”
“Vishgane?” said one of the armaments officers.
“I said fire!”
A red beam lanced out from the bow of their own ship, and Vishgane Kharsik thumped the side of his chair in approval. The beam extended out into space, hitting nothing.
“Nothing, Vishgane.”
Kharsik growled.
And then, a moment after the beam ceased, the world exploded in a blaze of stars and vertigo and rage. At least, that was what it felt like to Vishgane Kharsik. It felt like….
It felt like….
It was nearly identical to the calamity that struck two weeks ago. The disruption of the Ligature that shook his entire people, his entire civilization to its core, wherever they lived, whichever ship they were on. The mental barrage that left an entire people temporarily insane.
He shook his head, struggling to clear it.
“Fire again,” he grunted.
“Vishgane?”
“Fire again. Double the power, you kir-sak!” he yelled, using the most potent insult he knew. The officer glowered at him, but complied.
The red beam lanced out again, this time shimmering with twice the intensity, and disappeared into the distant background of stars.
“Still nothing, Vishgane,” said the officer, again letting derision seep into his voice.
That was it. The officer needed to be punished. Severely.
Kharsik pulled out his personal firearm and aimed it at the officer’s leg.
He fired. The projectile dug into the scales, and black blood splattered out onto the deck plate. The officer howled in pain and leapt to his feet to face Kharsik.
“You challenge me?” said Kharsik, cooly, though he trembled with the effort at restraint. He never had problems restraining himself—what was wrong with him today?
“Yes, Vishgane,” said the officer, spitting the title out with contempt.
Kharsik stood up and leapt down to the armaments pit. It should be an easy fight since the officer was at least a hand shorter than he, with smaller muscles, and the hole in his leg seeped black blood all over his uniform.
And short it was, for even as Kharsik toppled the officer and locked his head in a vice grip, preparing to snap the spine, the ship started shaking violently with the impact of weapons fire.
He finished the deed, snapping the neck with precision and dumping the armament officer’s body in a heap at the side of the armaments pit. The violent trembling of t
he deckplate nearly knocked him off his feet as he climbed back up to the command platform.
“What is happening?”
But he needn’t have asked, for on the viewscreen in front of the command platform he saw that the other ship had reappeared, closing the gap.
And now it was firing its own weapons.
The beams didn’t look terribly powerful, just common ion-assisted lasers, but they sliced into the hull over and over again, and were accompanied by devastating mass-driver slugs. “Why aren’t we doing customary evasive maneuvers? Where’s the defensive EM shielding on the hull?”
He spun around to the defensive station, only to see the officers there engaged in their own fight. All three were bleeding profusely, and the largest was about to snap the neck of the smallest. “Stop! Stop this instant!” Kharsik yelled.
But they ignored him.
Another inexplicable pulse of rage washed over him like a wave, tugging on his control, ripping at his sanity.
The anger boiled up inside, uncontrollably, raging like a frothing sea on Verdra-dol—his world that, until two weeks ago, had been one of the thriving centers of the Dolmasi civilization.
But now that civilization was dying, which became all too clear to Kharsik as he watched half of the bridge rip away, exposing them all to the deadly vacuum of space. Far down below, he caught sight of the green surface of Vilasha-dol. Would it, too, succumb to the madness that had engulfed Verdra-dol?
And, curiously to the Vishgane, his last thoughts were not of duty and survival like his long years of training had taught him, but of bloodlust and revenge against the defensive officers that had allowed this catastrophe.
Even as the breath escaped his exploding lungs he wondered if he still had time to leap down into the defensive pit and teach those officers a lesson or two in pain. He looked from the pit, to the advancing ship, back to the pit….
He jumped down, shoving a flailing, suffocating officer aside, and grabbed the weapon controls station for balance. A finger jabbed at the fire control button, and he looked up at the exposed space above him. His ship’s red beam slammed into the other ship.
The other ship.
Great Homeworld, he swore. The other ship. It was not Swarm. And it was definitely not like the mysterious intruder from two weeks ago that raped and punctured half a dozen moons in Dolmasi star systems.
It was … it was human.
One final destructive beam from the other ship slammed directly into the exposed bridge, silently vaporizing all his surprisingly discordant thoughts.
Chapter One
Irigoyen Sector
Near Rivadavia
ISS Independence
Captain’s Ready Room
Admiral Shelby Proctor, former Fleet Admiral of the entire Integrated Defense Force of United Earth and its fifty-six worlds, Companion to the Hero of Earth Tim Granger, PhD in experimental biology with an emphasis in xenobiology, so-called Motherkiller by the Skiohra race, bane of the Swarm, and champion of the senior’s division badminton league at Oxford Novum University on Britannia, read the report on the data pad her aide handed to her, and swore.
“Ridiculous. This is utterly ridiculous.” She rubbed her painful lower jaw, and glanced over the report again. “This can’t be right. We live in the twenty-sixth century, for god’s sake. How does this still happen?”
For weeks she’d been receiving regular reports of instability in Dolmasi society and space, as well as the now nauseatingly regular reports from her contacts within IDF and the UE government detailing corruption and secret kickbacks and back-room deals at the highest levels, as well as numerous rumors of conspiracies far deeper and far more insidious among competing groups within the government—parasites, all of them.
Ever since the mysterious alien ship—the so-called “Golgothics”—had destroyed the planet El Amin in the San Martin system and launched its own ship’s core into the crust of Titan in the Saturn moon system of Sol, it seemed the galaxy had exploded. And the betrayal of Admiral Mullins of CENTCOM Bolivar, now CEO Mullins of Shovik-Orion Industries, only added a sense of personal urgency and betrayal to an already ugly situation.
But this new report on her data pad was just too much. She couldn’t handle this right now. “Are you sure this is for me?” she waved the data pad at her aide, a tall young man seemingly fresh out of IDF academy. “Please say this is a mistake. You messed up, Ensign. Admit it.”
He shifted uncomfortably on his feet, hating to be the bearer of bad news, and replied awkwardly.
“Sorry, ma’am. Doc Patel gave that to me himself, and told me to tell you to report to him immediately. Uh … I mean, respectfully ask you to report to him, ma’am.”
She tossed the pad onto her ready room desk. “I’ve got a brewing civil war between us and the GPC—Galactic People’s Congress my ass—a few rogue Dolmasi fleets that aren’t responding to anyone’s hails, a mutinous Admiral Mullins that half of UE’s leadership still believes over me, and a moon just a few billion kilometers from Earth that is slowly growing—growing!—and Doc Patel thinks he can pull me down to sickbay for a frickin’ root canal? What the hell is he smoking?”
The aide, Ensign Babu, shrugged and deadpanned: “Cannabis, ma’am. I’d guess cannabis.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. While he’d been rather stiff and formal the first week after he’d replaced her former aide who’d died during the engagement with the mysterious alien ship, she was starting to get a sense of the young man, who seemed to thrive on subtly sarcastic asides and snarky comments. To tell the truth, it had gotten her through the past week, what with the steady stream of bad news. His irreverent attitude was a welcome relief from the stark realities of war.
“Dismissed, Ensign,” she said, a half-smile still lingering. “Please tell Captain Volz I still want to talk to him asap.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Babu ducked out the door. Not two seconds later, it opened again.
“Did you forget something…?” she began, still staring down at the data pad.
Captain Tyler “Ballsy” Volz ambled towards her desk and swung the chair around, sitting in it backwards. “Not that I know of.”
She looked up in surprise. “Well I’ll give that to him. Ensign Babu is fast—I just barely asked him to call you here.”
“Oh really? Because I just talked to Doc Patel—he asked me to come up here and—”
She slammed the data pad down. “He’s getting you to harass me too? Dammit.” She stood up and retrieved the teapot and cups from their secured receptacles on the counter in the corner. “Next time you see him, tell him I’ll be down there when I’m damn well good and ready, and to stop hounding me. And to stop talking to other people about my medical shit.”
He grinned, but shrugged. “It’s just a root canal, Shelby. Honestly, you’d think he was asking you for a kidney or something.”
She gulped the tea down fast, eager for the burn down her throat that would remind her she was alive.
And they were alive, against all odds.
They’d survived their confrontations with the devastatingly powerful alien ship, and with the treacherous Admiral Mullins. And somehow, they’d lived.
She caught herself. Not all of them.
She still had nightmares about the people she’d lost. Captain Prucha. Pregnant Ensign Flay. Nearly a hundred others. Even one was too many. Just losing Ensign Flay felt like the kind of monumental loss from which she’d never recover. It had been a long time since she’d lost anyone. One might think it would get easier with age, but the opposite was true.
It was harder. Much, much harder.
With age, came the realization that life was fragile, and short.
“I just don’t have the time, Ballsy.” She set the cup down, and offered him the other, which he declined with a raised hand. “I just received a report an hour ago. The corporate board of Shovik-Orion has declared Bolivar to be a sovereign world, under the direct governance of the Shovik-Orion corporation.
Admiral Mullins is now effectively not only the CEO of Shovik-Orion, but the president of Bolivar. Can you believe that? That ass-wipe just declared himself president of an entire planet.”
“Is that legal?”
“It is now. After Sangre de Cristo was nuked, and after that stolen nuclear missile was launched from our own fighter bay towards Europe, all the worlds are in an uproar. Recruitment for the GPC went up ten-fold overnight.” She sat back down with a grunt. “And to keep everything from falling apart, the Senate and President Quimby just signed an agreement with Secretary General Curiel of the GPC agreeing to a nominal degree of self-government for any world that wants it. Which was basically permission for any planet to secede from United Earth, and before anyone realized what a foolish arrangement that was, Mullins with his cronies at Shovik-Orion took advantage of it. Bam. President Quimby, allow me to introduce you to President Mullins.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “But why would Shovik-Orion do that? They’ve got lucrative contracts with IDF. Trillions of dollars. We’re their biggest paycheck.”
“Oh, we’re still paying them. We can’t just cancel all the contracts overnight—they’ve designed half our weapons and navigation systems, after all. It would be catastrophic for us if we suddenly decided to kick them all out. Planetary defense systems would fail. All the construction of new starships would halt and be delayed for years while we bid out the contracts again. Even our food processors on board would stop working because their technicians would be recalled, and as everyone knows, you don’t piss off the foodies. Those machines are finicky, and if I don’t get my coffee in the morning, you can bet there will be crimson hell to pay.” She grinned, but didn’t feel it.
All she felt was impending dread. She’d felt it for two weeks. And it wasn’t because of all the political bullshit. That was normal. She’d never served in IDF without political bullshit. The dread came from the uncertainty, the not knowing what that final message meant. The message encoded in the alien ship’s drilling beam over Titan.
She fell silent, thinking about those words. Volz seemed to read her mind, and said them out loud.