"Sir?"
"Don’t bother Bob. He has bigger priorities than fighters, and while I’d like to see us come up with something the other powers don’t see coming, your priority is well down the list."
"Understood."
He rose, saluted, and left.
"Not a happy camper," said Jane.
"Any ideas he can use?"
"If we can shield a privateer so it can take a hit and survive, and we can bring the size of capital ship missiles down enough, we could turn the privateers into a bomber. Probably mean using the small cargo bay as a missile magazine. Have to figure out how to put a mosquito launcher on one too, otherwise missiles will just pick them off."
"Smaller launcher? Say twenty with a quick reload time?"
"Possible. Gunbus could mount a twenty launcher. Excalibur? Maybe a five. But reloads will be an issue for both of them. I'll see what can be done."
"Are you involved in the deconstruction work at the moment?"
"Just monitoring."
"Create a new avatar, one star on red, and take charge. Liaise with Bob and his people without them realizing you're running things, and Janine, so she concentrates on building and logistics while you co-ordinate. Make sure no-one is duplicating effort, or chasing red-herrings. We need better shielding for the smaller ships as a matter of urgency, and then gun upgrades. Ideally, I'd like our cruiser and battleship guns shooting on par with everyone else. The titans should be upgraded as well, but I suspect power issues will be the thing there. Might be the thing for all of them, but let's have something which needs more power before we work on the power. If it slows the guns down but gives them a better punch, we can work with that in the interim by changing tactics."
"Confirmed."
"Send Miriam in when she gets here."
"Her Excalibur just docked. By the way, Lacey took a shuttle, and had his Excalibur sent to the shipyard."
"Fine. See if you can keep him happy, without derailing everything else."
Jane chuckled. Miriam came in shortly after. She also didn't look happy.
"Damnit Jon," she exploded before even sitting down, "you can't relieve me of command because I took a few hits."
"I'm not." She deflated, as if I'd stopped her before getting a good rant going. "Defiant has the same problems as the smaller ships. Way under shielded for what is firing at us. I should have realized that after the plant attack, and pulled you out then. I damn near got you killed. I'm sorry."
She looked at me for a moment, totally thrown.
"I was fine Jon. The suit shifted before the bridge lost air, and life support was never compromised. Defiant only needs a bit of fill-a-hole work. Although…"
Her voice trailed off.
"What?"
"I think a redesign would work better. Instead of trying to get three ships to fit together, it might be better to take them back to basics, and create a new ship using the sections. Make it two or three times as long for example, with the engine sections removed, and reassembled into one engine unit. Might make her look like a long nose with a big arse, but would probably be a much more useful ship."
"You’ve given this some thought I see."
"Not much else to do between attacks."
"Talk to Bob. If between you a better design of ship comes back, I'm all for it. He might want to consider adding more missile sections. A two hundred salvo will hurt more than the current fifty. He's doing missile platforms anyway, so adding more to the ship should be easy. But give him your ideas, and leave it with him. He has other priorities, and Defiant is not essential here at the moment."
I thought for a moment.
"Jane?"
"Jon?"
"Add Defiant to the list for a complete makeover. Cruiser guns don’t cut it, and like the Explorers, she needs an upgrade. But she's last on the list."
"Confirmed."
"So what do I do?" asked Miriam.
"How are you?" I asked instead.
"I'm good. Better than good in fact. I thought originally you moving me out of fighters and into something I've only ever seen as a target would suck big time. But I should have known it would handle just like a big fighter. Same speed, more hitting power, better protected. Well at least until today."
"Been seeing anyone?"
She looked at me as if the 'none of your business' card was about to be played, but sighed instead.
"Damn you Jon Hunter, you’re a hard act to follow. But as it happens, there is a nice hunk over on Arthur's ship I've been getting on well with."
"You mean my team left you someone?"
"I mean I took him while they were deciding if they should or not."
"Did he want to be took?"
"He did by the time I had to be back on Defiant."
I grinned at her, and she responded with the same.
"Good. People have been worried about you."
"They shouldn’t have been. I admit I was a grump for a while after it became obvious Aline had the front running with you, not to mention actual access to you, given I was in a different fleet half of human space away. And I don’t begrudge either of you being happy either. She's been damn good for you. What's Arthur planning? Do you know?"
The shift caught me off balance for a moment.
"Planning to leave sometime tomorrow, I believe. I'm not sure he's going to be able to, but that’s his plan. So if you want to take some personal time before you take over your new command, go right ahead. Just be back well before the Ralnor get here."
"New command? I was expecting to beached until Defiant was fixed."
"Lacey asked to be relieved, so he can get involved in fighter upgrades. That leaves BigMother without a captain. Want the job?"
"I so do!"
Her face was alive now.
"Here's the deal. As long as I don’t need BigMother myself, you captain her. When I do again, you move to Relentless, and Annette moves to Sceptre. And back again when I'm on Sceptre. Does that work for you?"
She jumped over the desk and planted a kiss on my lips. A wolf whistle came though the coms from Jane, and she let me go, and backed away.
"Sorry Jon, ah, err, sir."
"I take it you're happy with the arrangement?"
"Very. Am I assuming we want to capture one of the Ralnor ships as well?"
"Yes."
"Okay, I'll find a gun combination which BigMother can fire to do what Defiant was doing."
"Is that before or after you bonk a legend?"
"None of your business, Jon Hunter!"
Thirty One
It occurred to me after she left, Miriam would be stepping up to Relentless anyway, when Bob delivered the two new titans. Annette and Ron Greer would move to them, and Miriam was the only capital ship driver I had left for the dreadnaughts. Maybe Sato would take Dauntless? Or maybe it was time I overrode O'Neil's insistence on staying on John Wayne, where frankly he was now wasted. It needed some thought. Or maybe just action.
It was good Miriam was happy with her new job, and there was no animosity between her and Annette. They were both around the same age, but Miriam had technically been senior for most of their military time.
Annette had been a Flight Lieutenant before being lured to a merc unit, who'd been absorbed into another one, and I’d left her as the sole survivor after she was bright enough to not lock me up, when the rest had fired on me over Pompeii. During the Midgard War, I'd moved her to a corvette and a lieutenant commander rank, and she'd been moving up ever since.
Miriam on the other hand, had been bog standard American fighter command off a carrier, being their equivalent of a squadron leader during the entire Midgard War, and a wing commander after it, only moving up to something bigger towards the end of the Darkness War, and had been American military even after the remaining sectors merged their forces under my command.
So while Miriam had command time over her, Annette had been with me longer, and in capital ships much longer. As far as I could tell, neither had m
uch to do with each other, but then, there hadn't been much time for anything else other than surviving, until this last week.
I put personnel matters aside.
When I stepped back out onto the bridge, I found everyone still there. Grace offered to 'mind the ship', even though Jane was quite capable of doing so. I sent Annabelle off to liaise with Jack and the teams. The rest rose, looking like they were coming with me.
"Where to?" asked Syrinx.
"The small conference room off Redoubt's CCC."
The door at the back of the bridge turned into a rift, and I stepped through it. The others followed, and I took a seat at the head of the table, with Arthur on my left, and Jane on my right. The others took places at the same end, although Hobbes and Roo had to wait while a butler droid brought in bigger chairs, designed for them. Another one brought in a tiger chair for the ship captain, and placed it at the other end of the table, so he would be looking down at me.
Angel was the last through, and she leapt up onto the table, slid most of the way down it, picking herself up with a satisfied smirk on her face, and settling down on my lap. The rift closed.
We waited a few minutes, making small talk, before Sato appeared at the door, with a tiger behind him, and Janet's avatar and five security droids in their robotic state behind them. Sato moved to a chair when I waived him to it, and the tiger sat as well when Hobbes invited him to.
Once again I was aware of needing Tanith present to enable communications. It was rapidly becoming the top priority to fix.
No-one spoke. Instead, Angel hopped up onto the table and began walking calmly down its length. All eyes followed her. She stopped at about tiger arm's length, and sat. She sniffed him. He sniffed her back. She spat at him. He spat back at her. Her fur started to rise, and he directed a stream of words at her which didn’t translate, but sounded like what Angel said to me when she was narked about something.
Angel growled in response, and moved more into an attack posture. The tiger did likewise, the two of them ending up nose to nose, with the rest of us holding in our laughter.
Angel bit his nose!
He reared back roaring, and claws extended from his paws. He looked ready to pounce on her, and suddenly her suit shifted.
Angel wore a belt suit like the rest of us, but hers looked like a cat collar. It shifted to cover her completely, with fur about twice her normal length sprouting and standing on end. But the biggest difference was to her face.
She now had a saber tooth tiger head which equaled the size of the tiger captain's head, but with much larger teeth. The jaws opened wide, and snapped at him. The whole effect caused him to rear back, and tiger and chair went over backwards.
Her suit returned to normal, she turned, put her tail in the air, and butt towards the tiger picking himself up, and calmly walked down the table as if nothing happened. When she reached me, she sat right down, curled up, and completely disregarding everyone, started purring as I idly tickled her.
The tiger captain made an effort to control himself and his standing on end fur, picked up his chair, and sat again.
"Cat one, Keerah zero."
I looked at Jane, knowing exactly who'd been responsible for taking our 'guest' down a notch, and as everyone else started laughing, gave into it myself. The tiger looked angrily at everyone, until he noticed Hobbes was laughing harder than everyone. Reluctantly, he let go of his anger, and started laughing himself.
It took an effort to get a grip again, and as I sat there with my game face back on, everyone else did the same.
"Nice to know you have a sense of humour captain," I said.
"How did…"
His voice faltered, obviously not knowing how to complete the question.
"One of the technologies at our disposal," said Jane. "Had you actually attacked Angel, you could not have hurt her."
"You protect your lesser species?"
"We have no lesser species," I said. "All beings are equal. Cats don’t have the ability to speak as we do, but they still manage to rule the lives of those they choose. And as you just saw, a being who can make people laugh and feel good, is very welcome when the universe is ending."
"And when was that?"
"About a week ago."
He looked at me as if I was crazy.
"No, I'm not crazy. I don't understand everything, but I've been told the Keerah were going to be the last surviving species in this galaxy by the time the Darkness were finished with it. And you, like everyone else, lost."
"Who told you this?"
"A higher power."
"The Darkness is a myth."
A vid popped up, showing a Darkness in action in a room full of people. It was only part of the full occurrence, but it was enough. Just about everyone shuddered.
"What was that monstrosity?"
"That was an actual Darkness. Part spider, part cockroach, and single minded eating machine."
"It's still a myth."
"No myth," said Hobbes.
"No myth," said Roo, causing the tiger captain to have to officially notice another enemy in the room.
"Watch," said Jane, and she showed him highlights of the war.
"Our people and the Ralnor came together to fight a common enemy neither of us could defeat," said Hobbes. "The humans fell back saving people while we were exterminated and pushed back. Our people died because we couldn’t adapt. Even our regenerative hulls couldn’t save us. The humans used a bolt hole to escape this galaxy, and then closed the door on it by causing a sun to go giant."
"How do you know these things?"
"We were there. Both the Keerah and the Ralnor each had a human society in our space with magicians and seers. They survived by borrowing concepts from the humans they were watching fight the Darkness. When we understood what they were, we each consulted the seers, and both sets told us to unite or perish. Uniting didn’t slow down the Darkness one little bit, but they brought the four of us together, and we saved Admiral Hunter and other needed assets from certain destruction. His radical ideas saved the galaxy."
"How."
"We changed the past to stop the future from happening," I said. "The time lines reset, undoing a lot of things the highers had meddled with, and they placed us here, in the middle of all three dominant species. And here we are."
"I don’t believe a word of it."
We spent another hour talking him around. In the end, he agreed to consider things, and talk to his officers. Where he and his crew went from here was largely up to him. And I had other things to worry about.
The tiger went back to his cell, and I dismissed everyone else, but remained sitting at the table, idly tickling Angel. Jane remained as well. I looked at her with an eyebrow raised.
"I've been waiting to spring that one on someone for over a year now!"
Thirty Two
I had dinner with Arthur.
Well technically, I was dining with all the ship crews and my team, and Arthur's people, but Janet had provided a table and a corner so we could talk semi-privately as we ate.
By the end of the meal, I'd swapped belt suits for the translator system, and Jane was busy adapting it into our own translator systems, which worked through our PC's. For those without PC's she was also developing a pad based version, using an earbud mic. One of the small fabricators was dedicated to making pads and earbuds, so those of our own people who didn’t have a PC could be issued one, and yes, there were some, and enough for all of our refugees, now settling into accommodations in one of the empty Haven towers. Janice had to make a lot of alterations in facilities to cope with the new species, but builder droids do fast work.
Jane delivered belt suits before anyone left, and I sat in my corner watching my people teach Arthur's people how to use them. If they had PC's they weren't saying, and without them they'd also needed a pad to run them from. I’d seen no evidence Arthur had one. But not knowing what their tech was like, I wasn’t sure I’d know or not. If they did, I assumed the pa
ds would vanish fairly quickly.
One after the other, they all activated an imitation of what they were wearing supplied by Jane, and once they were all done, all of them turned canary yellow.
Jane sat down heavily where Arthur had been, laughing as hard as I was.
"Is there a generic bug in the software?" I asked her. "Or are you Snarking them?"
"Apparently I did it to Snark, so I thought, why not here too? Girl has to have some fun somehow."
I grinned at her, happy she'd pulled herself out of whatever funk she'd been diving into.
"Who's that with Miriam?"
"Lancelot."
That figured. And trust her to go for the biggest name before anyone else could. She wasn’t the tallest of girls, and he was not only very tall, but solidly built as well. Made for an interesting couple.
"Amanda?"
"Gawain."
"Aleesha?"
"Galahad."
"Alison?"
"Percival."
"BA?"
"Bors."
I knew all the names from plenty of entertainment from down the centuries. But matching people to the names was an interesting experience.
"Is that Guinevere with George?"
"No, Morgan."
Okay, I didn’t see that coming.
"Is she…"
"No, I've not seen her. She might be on the ship. Mordred isn’t here either. Or Kay."
One by one the couples left, and once the entertainment was gone, everyone else drifted out as well. Aline had given me a wave, and taken Angel with her.
"What's up with Aline?" I asked Jane.
"Giving us some space I think. So we can work out our sibling thing without interference."
"Sibling thing?"
She shrugged.
"Anyway, work intrudes. Two hours to Ralnor, and Melissa just returned."
"May as well use the conference room again."
She nodded, rose, and led me there. Lancelot and Miriam. Well, good luck to her.
Melissa and a group of assorted civvies were already seated at the conference table when we walked in. All of them looked exhausted, but jubilant.
Hunter's Terminus Page 13
