Warrior (book)

***Warrior*** is the second book in the Legacy Fleet trilogy by Nick Webb. It was published on November 16, 2015.

**Description**

We repelled the Swarm, for now.
But they won’t stop: they’re inhuman. They have no inhibitions. No conscience.

And no mercy.

But from the crucible of battle has risen an unlikely hero. Captain Timothy Granger, at the helm of another time-tested battleship, will take the fight to the enemy. He’ll discover their secrets. Find their homeworld. Destroy it before they destroy ours.

He will save us all. He must.
Or we’ll die.

WARRIOR

**Summary**

Warrior
starts with a bang, as Granger swoops in to the New Dublin system to save it from
a Swarm attack. He is a legend at this point, having not only saved Earth, but several
other worlds from Swarm invasions. Near the end of the skirmish, a new alien race
shows up—the Dolmasi. They claim to be friends of the Swarm, and warn Granger not
to pursue the fleeing Swarm ships.

On
Earth, both Vice President Isaacson and President Avery survive separate assassination
attempts, and Isaacson, humbled by his guilt that he’s caused the destruction,
nevertheless starts to suspect a conspiracy on Avery’s part, and begins to investigate
her anti-matter program behind her back.

Avery
narrowly avoids another assassination attempt in space that kills her body double
and destroys her ship’s military escort frigate. Besieged constantly by the
withering Swarm offensive as well as the unknown political enemies in the
shadows, she gives the go-ahead to Granger to strike back into what they
perceive is Swarm territory, though they can’t seem to find any actual Swarm
planets, much less their homeworld.

Granger
leads the assembled strike force deep into Swarm territory, crossing Russian Confederation
space, and stumble upon a planet with a few orbiting Swarm carriers. After
a short battle, the Dolmasi intervene again, destroying several ships in
Granger’s fleet.
Granger agrees to a negotiation meeting with Vishgane Kharsa. When they meet, they
shake hands, and Granger momentarily blacks out and relives the vivid dream he’s been
having about laying on a medical bed and staring out the window at a strange planet.

Proctor
figures out that there is a meta-space link between all individuals controlled by
the Swarm, and later discovers the existence of an actual Swarm virus that
infects people.
They detect this meta-space link coming from Vishgane Kharsa, and also a second
signal coming either from Doc Wyatt, Colonel Hanrahan, or Granger himself.

They
stumble upon another planet with several Russian ships around it. They withdraw
under Russian threats, and their probes find another world with possible Swarm
activity around it. When the images come back, Granger realizes it’s the image
of the planet from his dreams, and remembers Kharsa—and the Swarm—feeling
longing and nostalgia for the planet when he was temporarily connected to the
alien during the handshake, as if it’s the Swarm homeworld.

The
Dolmasi stage a surprise attack, forcing the fleet to return to Earth. Granger convinces
everyone that the planet they saw with the probe is the Swarm homeworld, and Avery
and Zingano authorize a full-scale invasion fleet. They arrive at the planet,
destroy a few orbiting stations, but the anti-matter bombs deployed to raze the
surface are all duds (thanks to Isaacson). The Swarm show up in force, the
largest fleet Granger has faced yet. Big fight. The Russians show up, and
openly declare themselves for the Swarm, and turn the tide of the battle
against IDF. The Dolmasi show up, and all hope fades, but they, surprisingly,
start firing on the Swarm.

Ballsy
flies into a singularity to destroy it. After the barely victorious battle, Vishgane Kharsa
reveals the planet they just conquered was not the Swarm homeworld, but his own
homeworld, and that he’d been influencing Granger to do the Dolmasi’s dirty
work for
them, as the planet from Granger’s dream was a false memory implanted by the Dolmasi.
Ballsy reappears from his singularity, with Fishtail, who soon dies. Granger orders
her injected with Swarm matter to bring her back, and she falls under Swarm control,
but lives.

Avery,
having suspected Isaacson of the assassination attempts, manages to get him to believe
that General Norton has arrested them both and is overthrowing the government, and
will soon execute them both. She tricks him into confessing to her his
involvement in the Swarm invasion. She gets the confession on tape, then reveals
her duplicity to Isaacson, and injects him with thirty silver implants that
monitor his thoughts and emotional state and can deliver mind-bending pain,
essentially making him into her puppet.