Victory Audio Book - Third In The Legacy Fleet Trilogy by Nick Webb - scifi science fiction galactic space travel alien war - The world of Indira is under attack, and Granger, still smarting from being used by Vishgane Kharsa, arrives with his fleet too late—the planet is almost completely destroyed. To make matters worse, the Swarm has unleashed another weapon—a supermassive dreadnought, a hundred kilometers long, that is basically a planet killer.
Granger manages to destroy an entire super-dreadnought and has his sights on another when the dreadnought initiates contact, revealing that the massive ships are part of yet another alien race under Swarm control, the Skiohra. Vice Imperator Scythia Krull, the leader of the vessel, claims the Skiohra are no longer fighting for the Swarm, and asks to meet a few days later.
Granger, President Avery, and Admiral Zingano are all skeptical. It sounded too convenient. The war is going very badly. So Avery decides that after the parlay, General Norton would lead a massive strike force to board the Skiohra super-dreadnought, seize it, and point it at the Swarm fleets.
At the meeting, Granger learns that the Skiohra are essentially a race of mothers, each female carrying tens of thousands of sentient embryos, each a fully developed person, connected to the mother through something resembling the Swarm’s meta-space link. Only a select few are born to the exterior life—the rest live inside the mothers for centuries. Scythia Krull claims that she and her interior children worked on the Russian Singularity production station, outfitting the Swarm carriers with the dreaded weapons.
She reveals much of the Swarm plan to Granger, who believes her, and tries to prevent the impending invasion.
General Norton doesn’t listen to Granger, as he believes the Captain to be under Swarm influence. The invasion proceeds, hundreds of boarding ships and cruisers show up, as well as dozens of Swarm carriers, which confirms Norton’s suspicions.
The battle is grueling—half of the fleet is destroyed. Admiral Zingano is killed, and the Warrior is destroyed. Norton even brings the half-repaired Constitution with him and hurls it at the super-dreadnought in a vain attempt to subdue it. The operation is a complete disaster, and Granger—having escaped with his crew to Zingano’s ship ISS Victory, convinces Krull to trust him. The Victory and the Dreadnought escape, making their way to the Russian Production facility where they will attempt to stop the Swarm plan.
Krull claims the Swarm plan is to hurl all the debris that has been scooped up by the singularities deployed against human worlds at Earth, destroying and subduing it permanently. The singularities come in pairs, and what goes in one side comes out the other, but the timing can be controlled. The Swarm has calibrated all the singularities such that everything that goes in one end will come out the other roughly this moment—right before Granger arrives on the Victory. The debris has all conglomerated in a huge ball the size of a small moon, and the Swarm’s plan is to then transport it all through one last singularity and aim it at Earth.
Meanwhile, Isaacson has been sent by Avery on a mission to the Russian Production facility, where he is to meet with President Malakhov, ostensibly for secret peace talks.
Volodin, though, is trying to convince him that he should kill Malakhov and Avery both,so that Volodin can take over the Russian Confederation and Isaacson the United Earth government. Once there, Malakhov tries to convince him that they are on the same side an reveals his decade-long plan: use all the debris sucked up by the singularities and hurl it down to the planet below the Production Facility—what Malakhov claims is the Swarm homeworld.
