Legacy Fleet: Invincible
Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Nick Webb. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Legacy Fleet remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Nick Webb, or their affiliates or licensors.
For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
A Word from the Author
Invincible:
The First Swarm War – Book One
by
David Bruns
Cover Art by Tom Edwards
Other Books by David Bruns
The Dream Guild Chronicles, a sci-fi/fantasy series
Book One: IRRADIANCE
Book Two: SIGHT
Book Three: SACRIFICE
Visit www.davidbruns.com for a complete listing
Thrillers with JR Olson
Weapons of Mass Deception
Jihadi Apprentice
Death of a Pawn
Battle Djinni
Other Legacy Fleet Kindle World Titles
Meridian
By Moira Katson
Ascendance
By Saul Tanpepper
Hammerfall
By David Adams
Alt.Chronicles: Legacy Fleet
Edited by Samuel Peralta
Vengeance
By Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason
Chapter 1
Missionary ship SS Galilee
Uncharted territory, 126 light-years from United Earth Space
There was no easy way to come out of stasis. The training vids said it got easier each time, but this was her fourth rotation awake and nothing was easier.
Sister Elaine Cornwell peeled the patches off her eyes and carefully disconnected the shunt in her carotid artery. The wake-up drugs were already kicking in, allowing her to stand on wobbly knees. She grimaced as she stripped off the bodysuit that both monitored her vitals and stimulated her muscles while she was in stasis. The sensors were held together by a loose mesh that left an imprint on her skin like she’d been wrapped up in chicken wire for the last three years.
That was their rotation: thirty days awake every three years, thirty days being the average time a human could live alone and not go bonkers. The towel was rough against her skin, but it felt good to feel something again. That was the other thing they never told you about stasis. She’d been asleep for twelve years now and couldn’t remember feeling a gosh-darned thing.
A red light blinked on the panel in front of her. She stopped rubbing the towel and focused on the words. Bless the Lord, her mind was like oatmeal—another side effect of stasis, thank you very much.
Emergency Wake-Up Protocol. T minus 5.
Elaine cleared her throat. “Moses, why did you wake me five days early?”
Moses, the ship’s computer, responded, “Good morning, Sister Cornwell. You were withdrawn from stasis five days early because the ship is currently operating in an unmanned status. That is against protocol.”
Elaine racked her brain. Who was before her in the staffing rotation? Brother Michael.
“Moses, where is Brother Michael?”
“Brother Michael is no longer on the ship.”
Alarmed and exasperated at the same time, Elaine yanked a plain brown jumpsuit out of the locker and started to pull it on. “Moses, where was Brother Michael last seen?”
“Brother Michael was last seen at Airlock Six.”
Elaine did her best to walk fast, but she had to stop to catch her breath twice. The stasis suit did a fine job keeping her muscles toned, but cardio was another story. She hawked up a gob of something crusty and spat it onto the deck.
Airlock Six was on the maintenance deck in the belly of the ship. She hadn’t been in this area since before they’d left Mars Station. Elaine instructed Moses to turn on the lights as she entered the deck, but the harsh illumination left plenty of shadows among the parked equipment.
“Hello? Brother Michael?” Her voice sounded thin, pitiful in the huge space.
She kept to the center aisle; the only sound in the vast bay was her bare feet slapping against the deck. She should have worn shoes; her feet were still tender from the stasis fluid. Airlock Six was all the way at the back of the bay, behind some kind of huge yellow tractor. What was Michael doing down here?
Finally, she reached the airlock, but there was no sign of her crewmate. Elaine stood on her tiptoes to peer into the dark airlock. Nothing. She fumbled at the operator’s panel to turn on the lights and got back up on her toes.
Her scream echoed in the vast open bay.
Brother Michael’s body floated in the airlock, anchored by a short tether to one of the metal stanchions in the center of the space. Elaine sank to the unyielding metal deck and screamed until her voice was nothing but a harsh whisper. She hugged her knees and said a prayer—anything she could remember—over and over again.
She hugged and rocked and whimpered until the thought finally penetrated her mind: she was the only person awake on the entire ship. If anything was going to get done, she was going to have to do it.
Elaine dragged herself back to the panel. She kept blinking. Her tear ducts were still clogged with stasis fluid and her eyeballs felt like they might burst from the pressure. Moses didn’t operate by voice down here and she had to consult the instructions twice to get the lock repressurized and artificial gravity restored. The airlock doors made a hideous grinding clang as they opened.
She tried not to look at Michael’s face, but it was impossible not to. She’d seen pictures of what rapid depressurization did to the human body, but seeing it in person was worse, far worse. Michael’s dark skin was stretched tight across his features like leather and all the blood vessels in his eyes had burst, leaving him with a devilish stare. His tongue, a dried lump of flesh, protruded from his mouth.
He was tied to the stanchion in the center of the airlock by a meter-long tether, his body rigid, one hand reaching up.
“Oh, Michael, what have you done?” Elaine whispered, her voice echoing in the airlock. The tear duct in her right eye suddenly cleared and tears began streaming down half her face. She dragged him the five meters out of the airlock, wincing at the sound of his dry flesh scraping the floor, then went through the procedure to shut the massive doors.
She covered Michael’s body with a tarp she sc
avenged from one of the machines in the bay, promising herself she’d give him a proper burial later.
Elaine looked at the body, then at the airlock. Her brain felt like it was still stuck in low gear. There was something wrong about this, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
Never mind. Right now her main priority was the safety of the Galilee and her sleeping crew.
She stopped by her locker on her way to the bridge and put her boots on. The soft material felt wonderful on her bruised feet. She also snatched a handful of protein bars from the galley. Still chewing, Elaine entered the bridge and scanned the flight data. All fine. She keyed in her approval code for the next twenty-four hours of flight.
She sank into the command chair, allowing the cushions to conform to her frame. She was so tired even eating was an effort. The sprint to the maintenance deck, the shock of finding Michael’s body, the long trek back to the bridge . . . her eyelids drooped, and all she wanted to do was curl up and take a nap.
No. She sat up in the chair by sheer force of will.
“Moses, show me the activity logs for the last three days.”
The data spooled down the screen. It was line after line of routine adjustments, mostly done by Moses with approvals from Michael where required. She stopped the feed, using her eyescan to highlight a line of text.
Access to Embryo Storage Locker 3D.
In addition to the three dozen crew in stasis, the Galilee carried embryos for all sorts of creatures, including humans. They liked to think of themselves as a modern-day Noah’s ark. Locker 3D was for humans. Why in Heaven’s name would Michael access human embryo storage?
Elaine was back on her feet now, running again. She called out as she entered the science lab, “Moses, open Embryo Storage Locker Three Delta. Access code Cornwell, Elaine, seven-six-bravo-three.”
“Access code confirmed. Opening Storage Locker Three Delta.”
Elaine held up her arms as she passed through the biocontainment airlock. She slipped a facemask over her nose and mouth as she entered the secure area and made her way down the row.
The locker was standing open when she arrived. The third shelf was empty.
Elaine forced herself to think. Each shelf held one hundred embryos. Michael had removed one hundred human embryos from storage. Why?
“Moses, close Locker Three Delta.” The heavy metal door slid shut with a sigh.
Back on the bridge, Elaine called up the activity logs again. She started reading from where she’d left off at the embryo access entry. Halfway down the next screen she stopped, reread a line, and sat back in her chair.
Ship’s database. Complete download.
Michael had taken a hundred human embryos and then downloaded a complete copy of the Galilee’s database. Why?
The prickle of an idea, that thing she had missed earlier, worried her mind again. Elaine closed her eyes and went through everything that had happened to her since she’d been woken up. She forced herself to slow down, remember every detail, every sensation.
Waking up . . . the red light . . . the frantic trip to the airlock . . . fumbling with the airlock controls . . . unhooking Michael’s corpse. Her eyes snapped open. That was it. The maintenance airlock had been vented, but from where Michael had been tethered in the center of the large airlock, there was no way he could have reached the controls to shut the outer door.
Elaine started to shake.
Someone else had been on the ship.
Chapter 2
Forty years later
ISS Deliver
On border patrol ten light-years outside United Earth space
Petty Officer Jon Olson stretched in his chair, stifling a yawn. Ninety more minutes, that’s all that was left in his watch, just another fifty-four hundred seconds.
“Helm, come to course three-seven-zero, mark five.”
Cripes, even Lieutenant Hurley sounded bored, Olson thought. Did anyone really think the Russians or the Chinese would try something this far out of occupied space? There was no one out here. No. One. Except us.
“Commencing sensor sweep, sir,” Olson said. Standard Fleet policy: come to a new heading, look for the bogeyman that was out there to get you.
The meta-space band jumped. More like hiccupped, actually. Odd. Olson zoomed in on the reading. The trace showed the normal scatter, then bam, a massive burst of quantum energy, like a cosmic burp. The meta-space long-range sensors probably needed recalibration.
Olson considered ignoring it. He could pretend he never saw it and let the next shift take care of the calibration. But . . . he was up for promotion to first-class petty officer next month, and a letter of recommendation from Lieutenant Hurley would be a really nice addition to his packet. Why not use this opportunity to reinforce to the lieutenant what a fine young sailor he really was?
He spun in his chair. “Sir?”
Lieutenant Hurley’s head swiveled toward Olson. The man’s nostrils flared and his eyes burned with an unnatural light. “Go ahead, Sensors.”
Olson shifted in his seat under the officer’s glare. Dial the intensity back to eight, dude. We’re on the backshift. He plastered a professional smile on his face. “Request permission to take the long-range sensors offline for a calibration. I’m getting a strange quantum fluctuation in the meta-space band.”
“Really?” Hurley cocked his head like a dog listening to a distant sound. “Permission granted, Petty Officer Olson. Take the long-range sensors offline for calibration.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Olson spun in his chair, his fingers automatically stabbing the screen. The meta-space band on his display started pulsing with a square wave test pattern. He cracked his knuckles. He now had seventy-six—make that seventy-five—minutes until he was off duty. Minus thirty for the calibration and he might as well just call it a day and hit the showers now.
“Communications Officer, take the transmit array offline and run a calibration.”
“Sir?” Ensign Kelly Brooks’s ponytail swung a wide arc as she spun to face the watch officer.
“You heard me, Ensign. Calibrate the transmit array. Now.”
Brooks’s face reddened. “Sir, we need the captain’s permission to take comms offline.”
Hurley’s tone hardened and Olson imagine the officer had dialed his visual intensity level on Brooks up to eleven. “Thank you for reminding me of Fleet regulations, Ensign. I have the captain’s verbal permission to perform the maintenance.”
Olson huffed. Fat chance of that. Captain Donaldson never did anything without writing it down first. The man was like a human paperwork volcano.
Brooks—God bless that woman’s persistence—tried again. “Sir, I—”
“Ensign!” Hurley chopped at the air with the flat of his hand. Brooks’s mouth hung open. “Take the transmit array offline. Now.”
Brooks swallowed. “Aye-aye, sir.”
From the corner of his eye, Olson could see the big red X flashing on her screen. Ensign Brooks’s back was ramrod straight in her chair and the back of her neck was pink. Olson was glad he wasn’t her roommate after this shift. That gal had some steam to vent.
His workstation trembled as if someone had jostled it. Odd. He placed his palm flat on the side of the panel. The faintest trace of a vibration tickled his skin.
Olson stabbed at the screen, stopping the calibration. “Sir,” he said, sitting up in his chair, “I’ve got a physical vibration or something in the hull. Bringing the sensors back online.”
“Leave them off, Olson.” Hurley’s voice was languid, not like his normal clipped tones.
“Say again, sir?” Olson replied.
“I said leave them off.” Hurley had a faraway look in his eye as if listening to distant music. He smiled.
Olson could feel the vibration in the soles of his feet now. He went through the final steps to bring the sensors back online and then just gaped at the screen. All the readings were off-scale high, as if every instrument was screaming at him.
/> “Sir! I don’t understand these readings. There’s something out there!” Olson could hear his voice climbing through the octaves, but he didn’t care. He could feel the humming sound all around him now, as if it had infected their very atmosphere. “Putting it on screen.”
Whatever it was, it wasn’t Russian or Chinese or even Caliphate. His sensors were pegged high, completely useless as a source of data. Olson gaped. They were huge, bigger than a Constitution-class carrier even. He turned to look at the watch officer for orders.
Lieutenant Hurley was standing now, his arms spread wide, with a smile of pure ecstasy on his lips. His head lolled back as if he was drunk.
The lift door behind Hurley opened and Captain Donaldson strode onto the bridge. His gray hair was askew and he wore a plain white T-shirt with his uniform trousers. He stopped when he saw the screen, and Olson saw his face go slack with shock.
But the Old Man recovered quickly. Donaldson took one look at Hurley, then started shouting at Ensign Brooks. Olson could barely hear him over the droning sound that permeated the bridge.
“Message to Fleet CENTCOM—” He saw the big red X flashing on the comms panel and the color drained from his face. He whirled on Hurley. “What have you done?” he screamed.
Olson looked back at the screen. The alien ships were so close that the computer had readjusted the magnification. A flicker of green lightning lanced out of the lead vessel.
Chapter 3
ISS Invincible
On the border of Yalta Sector (Russian-controlled space)
“No!” Captain Jason Baltasar’s roar made the very air of the bridge quiver. Executive Officer Addison Halsey gritted her teeth.
“Ensign Proctor, late again!” the captain continued. “How can we shoot something if we have no sensor inputs to fire control?”