Free Constitution: Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Trilogy by Nick Webb Page B

glass of water set out for him. They told him he had fifteen minutes, but damn it all if he wasn’t able to write down more than five minutes of material. Guess he’d have to wing it. Stalling for as much time as possible, he picked up the glass of water and downed it.
    Granger cleared his throat and stared down at his notes, squinting before realizing that his reading glasses were still tucked snugly into his pocket. Placing them on his face, he mumbled, “They say your eyes are the second thing to go in old age, followed quickly by your ears.” He waited a moment for comedic timing. “But I’ll be damned if I can remember the first thing.”
    More polite, measured laughter. God, he hated speeches.
    “One hundred and thirty years ago, our forefathers had a vision,” he began, reading his speech from the beginning. “A vision of safety, and progress. We had started spreading among the stars, and with that spread came unknown dangers. It seemed we were alone in the universe, but those early leaders of a United Earth had the foresight to realize that might not always be the case. And fortunately, almost serendipitously, we built warships. Fleets. Far more overpowered than what we thought we needed.”
    He coughed, and it turned into a full-blown fit. An admiral seated behind him reached under the podium and handed him another glass of water, which he accepted gratefully, and continued, “The Constitution . The Chesapeake . The Congress . The Warrior . The Independence , and the Victory . What we today call the Legacy Fleet. We built some ships before, and some after, but those were the finest. Our golden age.”
    He paused, glancing up at the waiting audience. “And then the Swarm came. Without the handful of carriers, cruisers, and frigates that we had at the time, humanity as we know it would have disappeared.”
    Another pause. “But we won. We survived. We lived to fight another day. But that day never came....” He trailed off. He just wasn’t feeling it. The words seemed hollow. Like he was repeating politicized platitudes designed to soothe the ears of everyone present. To not offend. To keep everyone comfortable.
    The hell with it. He picked up his speech and flipped it over, and clearing his throat, he stared up at the audience again.
    “But the truth is, we were lucky. Damned lucky. It wasn’t skill, or grit or gumption or bravery or brilliance that got us through that war. It was dumb luck. They handed our asses to us, and we almost paid the ultimate price. Now we say the Swarm has disappeared. We say they’ve abandoned their worlds and that they’ll never come back. We develop tests and analytic techniques to confirm this conclusion and we pat ourselves on the back for our ingenuity, for surely it must have been us. Surely it’s because of our brilliance, our excellence, that we’ve driven off the Swarm. And so we sit back. We relax. We pretend we’re perfectly safe.”
    He glanced over at the collection of seated dignitaries on the rostrum, and saw that several of the officials were nervously checking their watches, some staring at him, some shooting daggers out of their eyes at him, President Isaacson included. Admiral Yarbrough slowly moved her head back and forth at him.
    “Just because something is old, doesn’t mean we need to throw it away. What kind of society have we become, what happens to our values when we say that just because something or someone has been around a hell of a long time that they’ve outlived their usefulness? We become a society of vacant, immature materialists. Moving from one new thing on to the next. Devaluing age and experience.” He was talking about the Constitution , but he couldn’t help but feel like he was talking about himself as well.
    “And what does this old guy say? He says: be careful. Be watchful. Be vigilant.” He grit his teeth. He knew he needed to make this speech politically palatable to the muckety-mucks up on the rostrum behind him.