"Did you see my face when it started?" I responded.
"I guess that means no," said Aleesha with a laugh.
"More to the point, Commander, did you know?" I asked Miriam. She laughed.
"I had an inkling. Both Commander Greer and I both made reports to the Admiral. While Greer had the wing command through seniority, we're both squadron commanders, so we jointly had the responsibility to report on the actions. While I didn’t know what was going to happen, I suspected something might."
"Jane, let's get this officially citationed show on the road please."
"Confirmed."
Eleven
The jump back into Midgard was an anticlimax. The area around the jump point was clear.
The American ships formed up into a V formation, and we created an arrow head formation with Gunbus behind Greer, who had the lead position.
We headed on the most direct route for the Miami jump point.
I turned to Miriam, who was seated at one of the turret positions.
"Why Stiletto?" I asked her.
"Shoes?" asked George. The girls laughed.
"Weapons," said Miriam. "Because I'm lethal with one. I actually have permission to wear it with my dress uniform. I need to thank you by the way. I was able to recover mine from my cockpit. I was really pissed when I had to eject without it. It had fallen beyond my reach when I decided I had to eject, and it almost made me too late. I would have been sorry to lose it."
"Glad to be of service."
"How is it none of you have call signs?" she asked.
"We were a Mercenary company before we joined Jon as crew," said George. "Soldiers. They sometimes earn nicknames, but only for something really distinctive. And they only usually get used off duty. BA is a bit of an exception to that rule."
"So how did you get to be such a great pilot?" Miriam seemed genuinely curious. "For only two combat missions, you fly better than half my squadron. Granted, half of that is Excalibur's capabilities, but that still puts you ahead of half my squadron." George shrugged.
"My first dropship experience," he replied, "was like the first time you bungee jump. Exhilarating while you're terrified. When I was back aboard ship, I begged the pilot to teach me how to fly one. He gave me enough of the basics to get me hooked, so I went and did the Mercenary Guild's pilot's course. I breezed through that exam so well, I did the small and large ship captain courses too. That allowed me to pilot a Military Transport. But I was still only second pilot for the team, not having any experience. I'm embarrassed to say, I flunked the dropship course. Twice. I simply could not pull out at the right time to satisfy either examiner. The first time I pulled out too high and a missile took me out. The second time there wasn’t a piece bigger than my hand left of the ship after."
We all laughed. My laugh turned into a choke.
"Anyway," went on George, "I was a seemingly natural pilot, without the split second decision making ability that good combat fighters have. So I didn’t bother to take it any further. Jon dropped me into Excalibur cold, more from necessity than anything else. That ship is good enough for even a mediocre pilot to excel in."
"Don’t sell yourself short," said Eric. "Pilots with split second decision making ability, but without the pilot skills to use the decisions properly, tend to die young. Most of the time, a good pilot will learn split second decision making, as long as they survive long enough." George nodded.
"What's your training story Captain?" asked Miriam.
"Firstly, we're off duty. It's Jon. Second, I didn’t have any training. Colonel Smith dropped me in the deep end with only a few hours pilot experience. I had pilot and small ship captain before I left home, but no real flying experience. It was all simulator. I almost died the day I left Outback, spent a week in hospital, used bravado and macho-bullshit to convince people to let me take on the pirates who wanted me delivered to them, and I was lucky they were stupid. My first attempt at a drop was exactly the same as Murdock's. Splat!"
They all laughed.
"Abagail told us about that," said Amanda. "She deliberately set you up, didn’t she?"
"She did. Gave her a great laugh. I had a couple of hours of simulator time before doing it for real. It almost ended right there. I was about to land us on the top of a building so hard that the top five floors would have become a single floor."
"Ouch!" said Miriam laughing.
"Fortunately, I just knew I wasn’t going to make it and twitched us off line. We went down about ten stories before I brought her to a stop, and went back up more sedately."
"That was you then? Landed on the side of a building to evac people by having them jump out the windows?" I nodded. "We heard about that. Most people discarded it as absurd, especially as the report mentioned that the only windows harmed in the stunt were the ones the evac happened through. Having seen you fly though, I believe it."
"We didn’t believe it," said Aleesha, "and we were the ones jumping out of the building. It wasn’t until our friend Amy, who's a journo, sent us a recording of the whole thing from start to finish. After seeing it from the outside, including us jumping out of the building, we still had trouble believing it."
"No-one bothered to tell me it couldn’t be done," I said. Everyone laughed.
"But you must have had some training," went on Miriam.
"Other than Guild courses, none at all. My father is a Captain on a ship that never leaves our home system, so I had Bridge time as far back as five. But I didn’t fly for real until I started the pilot's course. Although that was an easy pickup, given I'd been using simulators since I first built my own."
"You built your own simulators? What age?"
"First computer was around six. I wanted one which would run older programs slower and couldn’t find one. So I built it. I started playing six hundred year old computer games about that time. Around ten I shifted to simulators. I've played almost every space based simulation game ever made."
"That’s incredible. I didn’t know any of them still existed from that far back." She seemed genuinely amazed. "I started simulation hollo's in my early teens, and was good enough to convince the ASF to send me for officer training. I'd have loved to try some of the early stuff. Where can I get it?"
"I'd have loved that too," interjected Eric. "I managed to pick up a few oldies. Remember X3?" I nodded. "I picked up a re-engineered version of all three games that someone had done so it could run on the oldest tech available at the time. That was back in my teens. I'd have loved to play the earlier games than that as well. Where can we get them?"
"You can't," I said flatly.
"Is this the entertainment library you talked about before?" asked Amanda.
"Yes," I replied. To Miriam I said, "Do you know your Explorer history? Galactica, Prometheus, Enterprise?" She nodded. "Outback, was the last planet colonized by Galactica before she vanished. The crew had kept everything sent to it over all those centuries, and made a point of accumulating everything ever made. The last copy is on Outback. But it's locked behind an isolation policy, and the Door doesn’t open again for another eleven months. Even then, you have to have connections to access it."
This was not strictly true. But it had to be said that way.
"I gather you have the connections?" asked Miriam.
"Yes. The Hunter family have always been close to everything to do with Galactica. A Hunter was her first captain when she was launched, and a Hunter was captain when she vanished."
"THAT Hunter family? Now I understand. This runs in your blood!"
"I don’t follow," said Aleesha.
"The Hunters were the leaders of every major space exploration advance between Earth and the edge of the galaxy." Not exactly true, but damned close. "They pioneered space exploration and made a family dynasty out of it. Mark my words, when the barrier to the center of the galaxy is finally breached, that family will be at the heart of it. He's young enough that it might be him too, but more likely one of his descendants."
<
br /> "I have quite enough on my plate now," I said, "thank you very much, without you adding more for me to do. Your right though, my family was mostly born in space. We have a natural affinity for traveling it. The family offices are on Outback Station. When we're not on a ship, we tend to roost there. Anyway, if you want access to the library, you will have to come with me in eleven months' time, and you only get five days."
"I may well do that if I can get some leave," said Miriam and Eric together. They high-fived.
I turned to Amanda and Aleesha.
"What's your story? Where do you come from?"
"Oh, we're Gold Coast beach babes," they said together with a laugh.
We joined in. I felt a little red on my cheeks as I recalled a recent dream of naked twins on a beach. Last time I'd blushed, the blush suppressor function had failed. I quickly turned it back on.
"How did you end up Military?" asked Miriam.
"We were wild as teenagers," said Amanda.
"We ended up in more trouble than we could get out of," said Aleesha.
"We were given a choice," said Amanda. "Jail time or military,"
"We chose military," said Aleesha, "were tested, and sent to a training facility."
"Could have knocked us over with a feather when we saw we were at officer training, instead of boot camp." Amanda.
The girls were alternating sentences.
"Except it turned out to be boot camp anyway."
"BA had to literally pound on us to get us to fit the military mold."
"She was our drill sergeant."
"We both had our arses handed to us numerous times before we got the message."
"Back then, we hated her."
"That changed."
"She was so damned good."
"Eventually it sank in."
"They split us up of course."
"Bad mistake."
"Apart, we're just screw-ups."
"Together, we can do anything."
"Our first ops were disasters."
"Colonel Smith was the first to put us back together."
"And that op, was a resounding success."
"Confused the hell out of everyone as to who was in charge."
"But we don’t care."
"When we're together, we think together."
"As long as they follow whoever speaks, the job gets done."
"The Colonel recruited us into her Mercenary unit as soon as she left the service."
There was a sudden silence.
I realized I'd stopped breathing, and sucked in a huge breathe. The twins laughed.
Meow.
We all looked at Angel.
"For those who haven’t actually met her yet, this is Angel. Only cat in existence with three Bounty Hunter kills."
"Seriously?" asked Miriam.
"Would I joke about a thing like that?"
"You might." I laughed.
"No, seriously. On our way to Pompeii, when we first jumped into Azgard, we found three Bounty Hunters flying Orion's. It was Angel's first access to the Bridge, because I came in so fast, I inadvertently left the door open. She managed to jump up onto the helmsman's seat, and onto the console. This was before I turned the console off. Well I was too busy dogfighting to get her off. She slid to the back of the console, and then along to the right side edge. When I turned left, she slid the length of the console, firing thrusters, guns and torpedoes as she went, destroying the first Bounty Hunter. I had to go right shortly after, and she slid the length back again, doing it all again with the second one. On the next slide, Jane stopped her right on the gun trigger, and she kept firing until the last Bounty Hunter was destroyed. I had to pull us up to avoid the wreck, and she shot off the console into my lap."
They were all laughing, except George and Eric.
"I bet that hurt," said Eric.
"Indeed. I was only wearing boxers at the time, since Jane had called me to the Bridge from bed."
They both cringed. The ladies laughed harder.
Meow?
Everyone went over to pat her, and she purred her little heart out.
After that, the group broke up, and I was left alone on the Bridge.
Twelve
Emails had downloaded onto my pad while I was in the Azgard system, but I'd had no time to view any of them. Why do I use a pad, when my PC can throw anything to a screen or even a holographic screen? I just do. I prefer to see it on something I can read easily. Call me a throwback for half a millennia. Maybe I am.
The usual quantity of junk mail. Wade through and delete. So many people seem to think I'm loaded and therefore I'm a good mark. Well hello. Oh, sorry, I am loaded. But I have big plans, with equally big price tags. Repairing what I'd salvaged so far on this trip was going to cost a pretty credit. Everything is relative.
I was still receiving bounties for kills made over a week ago. Some going back over the last six weeks. They seemed to endlessly trickle in.
The Mercenary Guild sends me updates of my record on a regular basis. The Trader and Bounty Hunter Guilds do as well, but the Mercenary Guild is obsessive about it. After the first couple of weeks, I'd given up checking them. They were mainly repeating themselves with only the kill count going up, and I'd stopped wanting to know.
This time though, with all that had happened lately, I was intrigued to see how up to date they were. I should have known they would be.
Jonathon Hunter.
Owner/Operator of Hunter Security.
Active Rank:
· Senior Commander, Australian sector Militia.
· Captain, American Space Forces.
Other Rank: Commander, Pompeii Freedom Fighters (Retired).
Personal Ship: Gunbus Heavy Transport.
Ratings: Pilot. Systems Specialist. Large Ship Captain. Marksman. Sniper. Dropship Pilot. Ship Boarding/Capture. Decisive Command.
Awards:
· Australian Meritorious Service Medal.
· Australian Distinguished Service Cross.
· Australian Meritorious Service Cross.
· Pompeii Distinguished Service Order.
· 3 American Silver Stars.
· American Distinguished Service Cross.
· Gunbus American Distinguished Unit Citation.
Kills: 274.
Personal Combats: 4 won of 4 fought.
Prisoner's Taken: 34.
Ships Captured: 4.
Mercenary Guild Members Defeated: 9
Mercenary Guild Members Killed: 7.
Bounty Hunter Guild Members Defeated: 4.
Bounty Hunter Guild Members Killed: 5.
Trader Guild Members Defeated: 0.
Trader Guild Members Killed: 0.
Employ's: Smith's Alpha-Team. 266 Squadron. Flight Lieutenant Annette Bronson. Captain Daniel O'Neil.
Base: Hunter's Redoubt, Azgard system.
Military Fleet:
· Midway class Escort Carrier.
· Gunbus class Heavy Transport.
· Excalibur class Heavy Privateer.
· 5 Centurion class Heavy Privateers.
· Actor class Cruiser (Dam).
· 3 Tyr class Missile Cruisers (Dam).
· Dallas class Frigate (Dam).
· Lincoln class Corvette (Dam).
· 16 Sabres (13 Dam).
· 12 Epees (10 Dam).
· 100+ Talons (Dam).
Civilian Fleet: Flower class Passenger Liner.
Hell of a record, even if I do say so myself. Interesting though, they had understated the number of Talons. However, that could be how many I have left after the Australian sector purchase what it needs. I wonder if they know something I don’t? Very likely. I'm stuck in the middle of Norse mythology and can only paddle madly to get out.
Bob had emailed expressing his reservations about moving to Nexus, per my suggestion. He suggested I look Nexus up in the system database. I did.
Nexus 618. Central system in the Australian sector. Unaligned. Unowned. No habitab
le planets or moons. Third asteroid ring currently mined by Norbett Mining.
I looked up 'Unaligned'. Not claimed by any sector or system government.
I looked up 'Unowned'. Not owned by any government, corporation, or individual.
I looked up ownership provisions. While not claimed by a sector, the sector within which an unaligned and unowned planet existed had jurisdiction over ownership. Or in other words, anyone wanting to claim a system, had to put up a very good case to whichever sector government it belonged to, presumably with a very big number of credits attached.
I looked up access to resources. Any company or individual may use an unaligned, unowned system, subject to permission by the sector government.
Now I began to see what Bob was on about. Presumably, getting permission also involved a large number of credits being attached to the application.
I did an email to General Harriman, outlining my plans for the station I was bringing back with me, and requesting he seek permission to base a station in Nexus under our existing contract for Nexus' protection. It would be sent in Miami. The contract was for the regular patrol of all Nexus jump points for the immediate future, currently being seen to by 266 squadron. In bringing a station there, I was providing a base for these patrols. Or at least, that was my argument. It would also allow the patrols to be done by short range fighters instead of long range Privateers. Not to mention a base for my new capital ships, once they were refitted.
I continued wading through emails. I'd expected something from 266 squadron, as they should have had some combat by now. I'd asked them to keep me up to date. But nothing from them as yet.
There was a series of updates on past combat claims. The three Orion's I'd claimed in the Azgard system on my way to Pompeii had been adjudicated to me, and had arrived at the Carrier. The remaining four small freighters found on the Carrier when I'd captured it, had been adjudicated to me. They all needed work. Of the eleven private yachts, also found on the Carrier, two had found owners and the rest had been adjudicated to me. They also needed some work. The four Mustang class Privateers I'd salvaged in Pompeii after destroying the Mercenary squadron there whilst going in to rescue my friends, had also been adjudicated to me.
Send in the Hero (The Hunter Legacy Book 3) Page 9
