Jethro 3: No Place Like Home

by Chris Hechtl

  Jethro 3

  No Place Like Home

  Chris Hechtl

  Copyright © 2014 by Chris Hechtl

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book and or portions thereof in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to other people is in parody or is purely coincidental. ;)

  Cover art by Chris Hechtl

  Models purchased from Daz3d.com or Renderosity.com or made by Chris Hechtl

  Copy edited/proofed by: Gord Archer, Thomas Burrows, Poon Yee, Jory Gray, Tim Brown, and Ulrich Schlegel

  Edited by Rea Myers

  Reformatted by Goodlifeguide.com

  Let’s see; I've dedicated books to my fans, to the beta folks (thanks again both) to my family...Anne McCaffrey, who else is there? James Cameron? Christopher Stasheff? Lol. Wow, loads of people if I went that way I suppose. But it still boils down the big three, the fans, beta folks and my family. Thank you all for supporting me in this and making it possible.

  Table of Contents

  ACT I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  ACT II

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  ACT III

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Searchlight: Pyrrhic Victory

  Author's Afterward

  Dramatic personnel:

  Appendix

  Sneak Peek:

  Author's Note:

  The following starts just after Jethro 2 First to Fight and during the Admiral's long jump, as well as the beginning of Pirates Bane. It then picks up at the end of Pirates Bane and then goes on from there.

  Hopefully, it will answer some of the questions and lingering doubts people have. As I like to say, there is a method to the madness!

  …And now, on with the story!

  Act I

  Chapter 1

  “Bored?” First Lieutenant Valenko, grizzly bear and Commander of Valenko's squad, asked his senior noncom, Jethro McLintock. “I just signed off on your name change. It's going up the chain by the way.”

  “I never thought it would involve so much paperwork, sir,” Jethro said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah, good luck with it. You'll need it. It takes an act of congress to get some things done sometimes,” the bear said, snorting. He eyed the black panther. “So, again, bored?”

  “Something like that. I'm a cat and yeah, we're used to laying about and sleeping, but this is for the birds,” Jethro said, waving a hand to the troop bay. Valenko looked up. Some of the Marines were asleep, others talking, playing games or working out. Most were just slacking off. But he knew a few were replaying their recent bit of intense combat in their minds. He knew, because he was one of them. He intended to get it out in the open and try to learn from it like Gunny Schultz had taught them.

  “Well, we can't have that. Well, let's get together on our combat and see what holes we need to plug. You in?”

  “Of course, sir,” Jethro said with an ear flick. As if there was any other response he could give, he thought with a wry half smile. He had been tapped to keep an eye on the Marine recruits but Major Pendeckle had downplayed training them up to standard while in transit. The Major was still catching up on paperwork, so until they had that sorted out and the recruits run through basic physicals, there was little he could do with them other than stick them in front of a video screen and pop a movie in.

  Less than a year ago Valenko's squad had been training and getting into the usual mischief on Agnosta, the new primary training center for Federation Marines. The planet was quite beautiful, if a bit scarred from her past and her most recent encounter with the Horathian pirates. Pirates had cut a swatch through the sector and would have continued except for the heavy cruiser they were currently riding around in and Fleet Admiral John Henry Irons.

  Captain Pendeckle (he was an honorary Major on a ship due to the tradition that there could be only one Captain on board) had led Valenko's squad and other Marines in the First Agnosta Marine Expedition. They had stamped out the remaining pirates on the planet and built off the diplomatic work Admiral Irons had laid when he had passed through in the Zanzibar class Freighter Destiny. Now the planet was recovering with the help of Marines who had established a training base on one of the major island chains.

  The squad had been minding its own business on the planet, doing duty as DIs and generally getting into mischief when a civilian ship had jumped in, the Lieandra. She had screamed for help, and Captain Mayweather, skipper of the heavy cruiser Firefly, had responded. Lieandra's Veraxin Captain had reported that the enemy was intent on attacking Antigua, a system Fleet Admiral John Henry Irons had recently left. Apparently, the Admiral had found a ghost city station and had restored her. The pirates, being pirates, had seen the opportunity for loot and were headed that way.

  In a whirlwind of orders, shuttles had flown like a blizzard between Firefly and the planet, taking on stores, fuel and Marines like Valenko's squad.

  One of their comrades, corporal Deja, had taken over the hypernavigator and helmsman seat during the jump through the star systems leading to Antigua. The Selkie was one of the gifted few who could navigate in the upper hyperbands close to a system, allowing Firefly to shave months off her journey.

  They had arrived a few weeks after the Horathians had arrived and begun occupying the station and system. Fortunately, the planet was partially protected by powerful ground side weapons platforms, or so they had thought. The Horathians had proven the Admiral right in rock bombing the planet, hammering some of their defenses flat in a terrifying siege that had killed over ten thousand innocent people. The final body count would have to be estimated; some of the towns and small cities that had been turned into craters had lacked a current census.

  Firefly had arrived and had taken the pressure off the planet. She and her squadron of fighters had smashed the enemy fleet, breaking them up into smaller and smaller chunks and taking them down one at a time.

  The Marines had performed boarding actions to capture enemy ships and then had been tasked with retaking the station city, Antigua Prime. Lieutenant Valenko had led the initial assault in full-powered armor to form a beachhead. A platoon of Marines had come along with them in successive waves. The fighting had been quite fierce with many casualties and fatalities.

  After the battle the people on the station and the planet had come out of their hiding places and buried their dead. Then they had rejoiced their salvation and embraced the idea of a fleet, quite a change from what the Admiral had bitterly experienced before he had departed.

  During the aftermath, Valenko's squad and most of the veterans had been scattered on various missions all over the system. Now that the system was stable and had some defenses Firefly was racing back to Pyrax to head off what scuttlebutt said was more Horathian trouble. This time aimed at Pyrax.

  In their off time over the course of the next week, Jethro and Valenko worked on refi
ning the Marine boarding tactics, going over what had happened in deep debriefs. Some of what they covered had been covered before in the months after the battle, but they tried to look at it from a fresh perspective.

  They interviewed each of the Marines on the ship, pulling a blow-by-blow description from them and then going over it all again with the video playback. They reviewed the plot and sensor imagery from every Marine as well as footage they had pulled from Antigua Prime's security cameras. Those cameras that had been functional at the time of the boarding, that was.

  They even gamed out the Horathian side, drawing the ship's AI Commander Firefly into the project. The AI helped by plotting the positions of all participants on both sides on a map of the station. Watching the battle unfold from that viewpoint took some of the personal attachments out of the equation.

  Interestingly, word of their project made its way around the ship. Some grumbled, but then the Senior Tactical Officer Purple Thorn got involved. She pulled apart her own hot wash of the space battle and then applied some of Valenko and Jethro's observation methods into the mix. The battle had been a hot topic for a while, but after six days it was becoming stale, which was something Valenko wanted. He wanted people to accept it and move on.

  They pulled no punches when they presented their findings to Captain turned Major Pendeckle a week out from Antigua. Major Pendeckle was initially amused by the hard-hitting assessment. Valenko pointed out his own mistakes with a bullet point on how to retrain to prevent them in the future. “You're being too hard on yourselves don't you think? We won remember?”

  “Yes, sir. But it could have gone better.”

  “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.”

  “Sir, if we don't learn from our mistakes...”

  “Yes I know. But there is a fine line here. You can't know everything. No plan survives contact with the enemy. No plan will ever go off perfectly. Cut yourselves some slack. Get some downtime for spirit of space sake!” He scowled. “I can't believe I'm saying this but catch a movie or go play a game. Relax damn it!”

  “Yes, sir,” the bear replied.

  The human rolled his eyes. “It's like talking to a wall with you F platoon nut jobs. You're all gung ho crazy. Bug house nuts. Seriously, cut yourselves some slack,” he said, hands clasped in front of him. “Yes, learn from it, but there are times in combat when you either have to accept what happened and move on or don't and have a nervous breakdown. You can't control everything. People screw up; they die. Even with all the training you two threw at Fonz he still got stupid and died. Bad luck and stupidity, a lethal combination. Shit like that happens. It happens too often I'm afraid. More training may or may not break others of that, or it might drill out initiative and other things we want to nurture. So watch it,” he warned with a cautionary finger.

  The grizzly nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Jethro took the list of his mistakes in stride. It was dispassionately applied with the Major warning him to be more careful about exposing himself to the enemy. Fortunately for the cat there were few; he had been off on his own for most of the battle. He had been delegated a solo mission to sneak behind enemy lines and secure the command center of the station and keep it out of enemy hands. It had been a close thing; he had taken out two squads of Horathian soldiers, one of which had been equipped in its own crude powered armor.

  He had briefly felt a little guilt over not being there for the squad. After all he was its senior noncom; his place was with his people. But he also had the only working armor that could cloak, which was why he had been given the mission in the first place.

  When his part of the debrief was finished, Jethro took the time to visit Asazi and the other wounded Marines in the infirmary. The most critically injured had either been left in Antigua Prime's hospital to recover or had been put in stasis. Now many of the remaining troops were being prepped for stasis as well.

  Lance Corporal Asazi had lost a leg during the fighting on Antigua prime. Private Harley had gotten off with a flesh wound; she was already back to duty. Asazi had been lucky to survive; others like Private Kovu and Private Fonz hadn't been. The human Fonz had been stupid and had paid the ultimate price for it. The young neolion Kovu had gotten hit by an IED and had been put into stasis to keep him alive. The plasma had eaten him up and cooked him a bit. It would be months of surgery and rehab before he was out of the pod and back on his feet again.

  Asazi was in stasis as well; she had been placed in it shortly after the battle. “Popsicle,” the panther said, eying her frosted-over tube in the storage compartment. A nurse looked up at him, then nodded as she recognized him. After a moment she seemed to shrug and then go back to the tablet she had in her hands.

  He checked Asazi's readings, but he had barely a clue what they really meant. Alive, that was all he knew. His ears flicked as he walked around and then leaned against her pod. “Well lady, you'll be pleased to know we're headed to Agnosta and then home,” he murmured softly. He knew she couldn't hear him, but somehow it felt better talking to her, letting her know in some small way that he still knew she existed.

  He talked for a brief time, and then left, patting her tube in passing. The nurse monitoring the compartment looked up as he left. He flicked his tail and then stepped through the hatch and back to work.

  ---( | ) --- ( | )---

  Jethro checked on the Marines on the ship. There were thirty-nine veterans left on the ship, two of them officers, and the rest of the 210 were raw recruits of various species. They were packed into the Marine troop bay and surrounding compartments. His own squad had been remarkably untouched by the poaching that had gone on in Antigua. He had to count himself lucky; some squads had been decimated in the fighting.

  Of course that might have been because First Lieutenant Valenko, the Neo grizzly officer in charge of the squad, had kept his people together on purpose. They were the best after all. Valenko was one of two Marine officers left on the ship, the other was Major Pendeckle. Captain Dana Harley had taken the remaining Marine officers to keep an eye on things in Antigua. The two officers had their work cut out for them keeping an eye on the Marines and recruits on the ship.

  Sergeant Jethro McLintock was one of only a handful of noncoms trying to keep a lid on the circus. He was increasingly finding his time was divided between running around the ship and keeping a lid on the bored recruits, trying to find something for them and others to do, or do projects his boss assigned to him.

  As a Neo panther, Jethro had one of the rarest of gifts, the ability to cloak himself. Only his cousin Letanga and a few other Neos had the ability, but none could cloak as well as the panther could.

  Sergeant Ox, the Tauren of their squad, was also busy. He was splitting his time up between activities with the squad, working in the armory with Sergeant Riley, their armorer, or helping Chief Engineer Chowler's people in Navy country. Jethro had also heard the Tauren dictating a video letter to someone, most likely one of the Taurens they had left behind in Antigua. Jethro felt for Ox; he was glad the big guy had found more of his species.

  Private Harley Quinn, Neo Hyena, was surprisingly quiet, which was ominous for the practical joker. She was another veteran of F platoon like most of their surviving squad. Jethro wasn't sure what Harley was up to. The one time he'd checked in on her she'd given him a saucy wink. That alone had told him two things she was okay, and that she was up to something. Hell, for all he knew she could be laying low knowing he and the rest of the squad expected something...which was a prank all on its own. Keeping them looking for something that wasn't coming. He snorted wryly. He wouldn't put it past her wicked little female mind.

  She did her duty, so he really couldn't say anything. Though if she dragged it out for too long she might be surprised that one of the others might do a preemptive strike to get it over with.

  PFC Sergei wasn't much of a role model for the kiddies; all the big white liger wanted to do was eat and sleep. He grumbled a lot but stood his post and generally kept an eye on
things like he was supposed to. One growl from him was enough to cow practically any troublemaker in the troop bay.

  The Veraxin female Private Pa'nash, also known as Pinashe was spending a lot of time with the counselors. At first Jethro had thought it was a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) flashback brought on by the recent combat in Antigua. Then he had discovered she was serving as an assistant counselor helping others. It seemed the Veraxin had faced her ghosts during the crucible of combat and had come through stronger for it. Or at least he hoped so.

  PFC Clive Bret, their sole surviving token human, was stoic on duty. He tended to brood, spending a lot of time dictating letters to his pregnant wife back on Agnosta. Valenko had briefly questioned the private to see if he had any concerns after being in combat, people realized their mortality when they married and settled down. Bret hadn't brought anything up though and he didn't want a transfer, so Valenko decided to let it slide for now. They could always work something out when they passed through Agnosta if necessary. Though from what the scuttlebutt said, there wouldn't be time for any leave.

  Their medic Petty officer Gusterson, a Neo greyhound, was up to his elbows in the infirmary helping out there. Since the ship had taken on not only the wounded but also the recruits, Valenko had let the greyhound be where he needed to be.

  ---( | ) --- ( | )---

  Corporal Deja nodded to the Marine guarding the bridge as he reported for duty. Commander Firefly was off shift, but he dutifully signed on through his implants. Once the computer passed him through the security check and cleared him for the bridge the Marine guarding the bridge stepped aside slightly and nodded.

  Deja nodded slightly back in passing. He saluted First Lieutenant Purple Thorn. She didn't look up from her screen, merely saluted and waved a dismissive hand towards the navigational tanks.