The Legacy Fleet Series is a science fiction novel series written by Nick Webb.
There are six books in the main story:
- Book 1: Constitution
- Book 2: Warrior
- Book 3: Victory
- Book 4: Independence
- Book 5: Defiance
- Book 6: Liberty
In addition, there are a set of expanded universe novels, formerly published under the now-defunct Kindle Worlds program.
The Legacy Fleet series contains examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo: In the first trilogy, the usual IDF defense against the Swarm's primary weapon (an artificial singularity bomb) is to throw a large osmium brick at them.
- Aliens Speaking English: Justified. The races connected to the Swarm's telepathic Ligature have learned English due to the Swarm assimilating some of the humans before the start of the Second Swarm War.
- The Battlestar: Most IDF ships have a reasonable complement of fighters.
- Blob Monster: The Swarm is something like a very sophisticated, sapient slime mold. It can communicate with its individual globules and allies with "meta-space" transmissions, and pours itself into starships to pilot them.
- The Bus Came Back: Post-Victory, Timothy Grainger is still very much alive, becoming a major character again in time for Liberty."Shelby, they're back. And so am I."
- Great Offscreen War: The series begins fifty years after the end of the First Swarm War.
- Subverted in that some of the spinoff novels are set during it.
- Kill Tally: The record for most Dolarissi fighters destroyed by a single pilot in one engagement is 100 by Tyler "Ballsy" Volz. His son Ethan "Batshit" Zivic beats this record in Liberty, but Ballsy points out this doesn't really count because he's fighting the actual Swarm, which are separate from the Dolarissi.
- Leeroy Jenkins: How Ballsy and later Batshit got their callsigns.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: The Swarm has Deflector Shields that stop lasers dead in their tracks, but can't stop mass-driver bullets. The impact tends to discombobulate the emitters anyways, leading to a strategy of punching a hole with railgun slugs then Beam Spamming it until the ship blows up.
- More than Mind Control: The Swarm/Valarassi can symbiotically merge with most species it encounters. Those so "allied" with them retain their personalities and free will, but find the union quite enjoyable.
- Nick Naming The Enemy: The Swarm is their official name, but the fighter jocks call them "cum-rats." For the record, their allies call them the "Valarassi."
- Quantum Mechanics Can Do Anything: Quantum physics-based jump drives come standard on most IDF ships, warm up within a minute or two, and go about 1/10th of a lightyear a pop. The Constitution is so elderly she requires an hour. The Swarm has a black-hole gun that uses quantum relocation to fire, generating a singularity at the center of a bunch of ships, then teleporting it under or inside a target. The matter is yanked in so suddenly that it rebounds off the singularity's core, smashing it into nothing and escaping near lightspeed. Quantum mechanics is also used to make "smart steel," a matrix of iron atoms that harden to impenetrability when struck. Unless you have the frequency, in which case it might as well not be there.
- The Topic of Cancer: Captain Grainger spends 99% of book 1 with a mass of cancers throughout his abdomen and brain. He gets better after a three-day operation performed at relativistic speed, which looks like 10 seconds to the outside observer.
- Zerg Rush: How the Swarm got its name. They show up in carriers and spam fighters in squadrons of hundreds. Unlike most wave tactics, each individual fighter is no pushover, either.
