Hunter's Terminus

by Timothy Ellis

  "Of course," laughed Jane.

  "Oh joy."

  He was used to having an actual launch mechanism on his ship to do the job. But the Lightning didn’t usually carry this sort of load. And the process itself would cause the ship to be partially visible while the door was open. The cloaked sats were also modified to move into position really slowly, so sudden engine use couldn’t be picked up by sensors. Of course, we didn't know what any of theirs were like, so it was a risk.

  "Any questions?" I asked.

  "No, I'm good," said Melissa.

  "I guess not," said Eric.

  "One last thing then. If you do get made, or damaged, and can't get back out the jump point, use your speed to get away. As long as we can see where you are, I can get Syrinx to open a rift to get you back."

  "Noted," said Eric.

  "Let's be going," said Melissa.

  They both rose, and left. I picked up Angel, and followed them out, taking my chair on the bridge again. Jane was giving me a funny look.

  "You know, you really are an admiral now."

  "I wasn’t before?"

  "Not really. If something dangerous needed doing, you did it yourself without telling anyone. Now you just sent two civilians out on the most dangerous mission available here, and you didn’t even think about doing it yourself."

  I hadn't either. I wonder when that happened?

  "Plus you had Susan Bentley running the last two battles."

  "There were good reasons for that."

  "I don’t doubt it. But all the same, who are you? And what have you done with Jon?"

  Thirty Six

  It took the Lightning two hours to make the plant jump point.

  I sat there watching the nav map the whole time, trying not to grit my teeth. It was easier doing it yourself. With our tech, I could see the whole operation, but not do anything to help if something went wrong. At least, not fast enough for worst case scenarios.

  For the first time ever, I found myself thinking about magic. Two magicians had saved me and the team from certain death. Both had an ability to move people and ships around, although I was finding Syrinx's a lot more useful. And I knew another magician had been out there, and probably was why the Keerah had never conquered the humans in their area of space. And I was no stranger to magic like things, since the sceptre I carried could be changed to what I needed.

  How cool would it be if I could open rifts myself? It would certainly add a dimension to space combat if I could do it with a thought. But, dream on. I had no magic, just a magic sword which could also be a staff.

  I was brought out of my musings when Carter walked onto the bridge.

  "What brings you here?" I asked her, as she sat in the helm seat in front of me.

  "You really want all those PC's put in?"

  "If possible, yes. Problems?"

  "Not for this batch, but in the future? We don’t have a lot of them. And we have no way of making more."

  "Why not?"

  "They were made by a single corporate, and exported everywhere. And now the facility is in Gaia."

  "I have the specs," chimed in Jane. "I made sure I had a copy of everything before any station jumped to Gaia. Definitely illegal at the time, but if we survived this long, and we had people to look after, eventually we'd have kids needing things we didn’t carry stocks of. And largely having control of all stations by that time, I simply took what I thought we needed to preserve."

  "So you can build the fabricator for PC's?" I asked.

  "Sure. I've started one now. Just tell Janice how many you need, and what kind."

  "Fine," said Carter. "What about the tiger and roo? You serious about them?"

  "Very."

  "No-one's encountered aliens before now. Will the PC even work?"

  "We met a cat who had one, so it can be done. I presume it just needs a more comprehensive set of scans."

  "A cat?"

  "Four times the size of Angel, and had three arms as well as four legs. He was using one of our belt suits for clothing. And obviously had no trouble communicating with us."

  She looked at Jane for confirmation. Jane nodded.

  "Oh, kay. Take your word for it. If a seven limbed cat who can talk can have a PC, a tiger and a roo can get them. We just need to figure out how. But knowing it can be done is a good start. I assume we'll be giving them to other aliens at some point or other?"

  "Probably quite likely."

  "So we need a set of baseline modeling tools and…"

  "I'll leave all of that to you and Janice."

  I'm not sure she heard me, as she'd risen, and quickly vanished back through the rift, which also vanished after her.

  I sat there some more, watching that white dot closing in on the jump point. There were no other ships in the system, and the only rational explanation for this was there were no ships behind the jump points, or nothing was able to access the jump points because of debris. But this didn’t explain the Ralnor not having a scout out. The Trixone and Keerah had been hit, but the Ralnor hadn't. I'd have expected them to still be functional, and they hadn't sent the scout with any of the attack fleets. So where was it?

  "Jon?"

  I jumped clear out of the chair, and crashed down onto the deck on my left side.

  "Oops, sorry," said Aline, looking down at me, grinning.

  Angel raised her head from her pad on the main console, and looked at me as she was also grinning. I hadn't even noticed her moving over there. Aline put a hand out, and helped me up.

  "What are you doing here?" we both asked at the same time, and laughed.

  "Operation running," I said.

  "Looking for you," she said.

  "Game time," said Jane.

  I sat back down, and pushed Aline towards another chair, and she also sat. Screens popped up, showing what could be seen in front of the Lightning, currently nothing, and of Melissa in the cockpit slowing the ship down, and Eric in the airlock with the first of the comnavsats. Both had their suits in space suit mode, and connected to the nearest life support connections. It didn't give Eric much mobility, but he didn’t need much.

  The Lightning almost stopped, I saw the front view change to the suit, and back to the view as the suit provided a cam view instead, the dot on the navmap vanished, and came back in the next system, along with several light hours of visibility. The down jump always imparted slightly more momentum than you went in with, and Melissa brought the ship to an immediate stop.

  On one screen I could see the suit around the airlock retract, the hatch opened, and Eric push the now invisible comnavsat out. As the suit and hatch began to close, the small engine on the comnavsat engaged, pushing it slowly upwards, where it would hang over the jump point well out of the way of any traffic.

  On another screen I was looking at what Melissa could see. The down jump lane and a large area of space in all directions except behind her was littered with debris of all sizes. But out further, a fleet of plant ships still existed. Some of the ships looked battered, but the fleet itself had obviously held reasonably easily. Such of course is jump point defense.

  Melissa twirled the ship, goosed it for a moment, and it jumped back out. The navmap remained up showing the new view. The ship suit vanished, the view forward became normal again, and Melissa pushed the ship back up to its top cruising speed. Two hours give or take to the Ralnor jump point.

  I studied what I could see in the new system display. The plants had what looked like a full fleet there still, but I’d seen a lot of debris there which could only have come from their ships. Which suggested a layered defense. The first fleet on top of the jump point had been mostly destroyed, but a second fleet had been in place I guessed about ten to fifteen light seconds out, which had been far enough away to survive and get the job done.

  In the distance, there were more dots heading towards the jump point. Given how fast they were reinforcing, there had to be a major military base within a system or two, maybe on the other si
de of the system itself, or one jump out.

  "Jon!"

  I jumped again, but this time kept my seat. Aline was standing there wearing a belt and not much else.

  "How long before the repeat?"

  "About two hours."

  "Spa time. Come."

  I came. Let me rephrase that. I followed her out, the short way to my admiral's suite, and into the spacious bathroom, where underwear collected in a corner, and we were soon naked in the water. After, we dried off, and made up for lost time on the bed.

  Shortly before Jane would announce needing to return, I did so, leaving Aline asleep, and Angel curled up with her.

  Jane gave me a grin. She of course, saw everything. I'd long ago given up being concerned about it. Any inhibitions I’d had vanished that day when I'd first been naked in the spar with all the girls in my team. And it seemed so long ago now.

  "Game time," said Jane, snapping me out of my musings.

  The same procedure followed, and the system beyond added to the navmap. I had half an eye on Eric, while mainly looking at the fleet arrayed around the jump point, and the station placed out about an hour away. It was an identical fleet to each of the ones they'd sent out, and I could see what looked like another one docked at the station. The roos took this situation seriously it seemed.

  With the comnavsat on its way, Melissa spun the Lightning as the suit filled the hole. But before she was able to jump, a yellow dot appeared.

  I opened a channel just as the Lightning jumped back into the next system.

  "Missile launched! Random direction. Shut it all down. Now!"

  Melissa demonstrated why she wasn’t military. It took her a second to react, and she only just had the ship angled down and away left, with the engine completely off along with everything except life support, in time. The ship had very little momentum.

  The missile came through the jump at its full speed, and failed to detect a target immediately. It started hunting. But it was hunting away from where it'd come from, and progressively became further and further away from the Lightning. Without finding a target, it self-destructed, but we'd had to wait while it scanned the entire system to be sure there wasn’t one. Might have been a bad time for the Keerah to pop a scout back in, but they didn’t.

  "All clear," I said, and closed the channel.

  The cloak came off the Lightning, and Melissa fired up the engines for the trip to the Keerah jump point.

  "What happened?" I asked Jane.

  "One of their ships must have scanned the airlock before the cloak closed, or a scanner caught the pulse as the comnavsat fired off, and it was enough of an anomaly for someone to fire off a missile just in case. Might have thought it was a drone or something, sent in to determine what their defenses might be like."

  "Will they suspect us?"

  "Hard to say. Could have been anyone or nothing."

  Movement caught my eye, and I opened the channel back up again.

  "Re-cloak. There's a ship coming out behind you. I think it’s the scout-destroyer."

  "See it," said Eric. "Punch it hard, and shut down just before it jumps."

  Melissa did as she was told, and the ship continued on its way on pure momentum. I closed the channel again.

  "How long?" I asked.

  "Two and a half?" suggested Jane.

  I went to bed.

  Thirty Seven

  I managed one good rem cycle before Jane whispered in my ear to get me up again. It took cold water on my face to fully wake.

  The Lightning was still ballistic, but closing on the Keerah jump point. Melissa was going to need to slow her shortly, and this meant turning everything back on again.

  Why do we run with engines on all the time? Because of how things worked. I’d explained it to Grace not long after I’d rescued her the first time. With no engines, the ship had no shields, so it was in normal space, and would never stop. With no shields, it was also vulnerable to anything solid which might be zapping around, although nothing appeared to be, which was really odd, and the suit was a layer of protection, even while acting as a cloak. The cloak was using the power source, which wasn’t visible to scanners, where the engines producing thrust was.

  In order to stop, the ship needed engines and the shields which the engines used. And while still invisible, good scanners could still detect them on if they were being looked for.

  They were going to need to take a risk now, and hope the Ralnor ship was too far away to detect just engine emissions. They needed to change course slightly, as well as stopping before jumping.

  I gritted my teeth while Melissa brought the ship systems back up, made the course change, and slowed to a stop. The Ralnor ship did nothing to indicate they'd seen anything.

  The Lightning jumped, and I got a look at the Keerah system. It looked a lot like the plant system did, with a fleet intact beyond a debris field, a station in the distance like the Ralnor had, and a lot of small ships tugging large pieces of debris away from the down jump lane. They looked like another hour or so would see them able to send their scout ship back through the jump point.

  Comnavsat deployed, the Lightning jumped out, and set course for our jump point.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, waited to see if the Ralnor could detect the engine emissions on that angle of flight, and when it seemed they didn’t, I went back to bed. It was going to take them longer to get back than going out, and Jane would wake me if something happened, but for now, this op no longer needed my attention.

  I slipped back into bed next to Aline, and sleep took me.

  The morning routine was uninterrupted, and I was back on the bridge while Aline was starting to eat breakfast. Grace was in the helm chair again, and she greeted me with a short report of nothing happening. Jane nodded her agreement.

  I sat, and began pondering where the day was likely to go.

  The Keerah had finished cleaning their down jump lane, and their scout was back in its usual position. I gave the plants another hour or so, and they'd have a ship on station as well. The Ralnor fleet seemed to be hyperactive. Their ships were constantly moving positions, but maintaining what looked like an effective blockade.

  I had to wonder how much they thought they saw of the Lightning, and if it wasn’t enough to call a ship, but was enough for paranoia to wonder about stealth drones or some such. They almost seemed to have the jitters. Then again, if I’d launched an attack on three fronts and nothing came back, I’d be expecting retaliation.

  "Is Arthur still planning on leaving today?" I asked Jane.

  "He was talking about it a few minutes ago. Carter wants to do some more tests to make sure the PC's implanted perfectly, but they should be ready to go in a couple of hours. Carter is just being Carter I think. Everything I saw of the procedures, and how they're using them now, suggests all is well."

  "That’s what Doc's are for," said Grace, smirking.

  I ignored her.

  "Why do I think we're in the wrong ship?"

  "You think they'll run into trouble after they jump out, and we'll need to go in after them?"

  "My gut is suggesting that, yes."

  Grace was looking back and forth between us.

  "I can't dispute that. The Ralnor are not looking happy, and civilian ships coming from anywhere they just lost a fleet, are probably not going to be welcome at the moment."

  "That's my feeling as well."

  "BigMother?"

  "BigMother."

  We played musical ships, as it were. Jane, Grace, Aline, Angel, and I, along with Jeeves who never seemed to get left behind as I moved around, took Gunbus over to BigMother. We met Miriam on the bridge, and told her to move to Relentless. She picked up what she needed, boarded Stiletto, her Excalibur, and shortly after docked in Relentless's hanger bay. A few minutes later, Nightshade, Annette's Mustang privateer, dropped from the hanger bay, and flew over to Sceptre.

  Jane let the team know, and an hour or so later, they started turning up, presumably
after individual goodbye scenes had played out. George had gone straight to Sceptre, and flown Custer over to dock on top of BigMother.

  Something was niggling at me while all this was happening, and I finally figured it out. Stiletto had launched like a normal fighter, using a launch tube.

  "Jane, bring up the specs on the launch deck please?"

  A screen popped up. I zoomed it in on one of the launch tubes.

  "Does that look different to you?" I asked her.

  She blinked a couple of times.

  "It does. The tubes are bigger."

  "That’s what I thought."

  The original launch tubes for this class of carrier had been designed for more than a hundred year old fighters, which were much smaller than the ones these days. Even after her refit following my taking her from pirates, the tubes had only just fit a heavy fighter. Our Excaliburs and other privateers were simply too big, and even as big as she was, she'd only had room for a dozen Excaliburs in internal maintenance bays in the sides of the flight deck itself.

  "That must mean the ship lifts are bigger too?" I suggested.

  She zoomed in the specs on one of them.

  "Indeed they are. Looks like we can now take Excaliburs down to the maintenance and launch deck."

  "How many?"

  "Three squadrons."

  BigMother had previously been able to take four squadrons of heavy fighters easily, and six if we squashed the ships in. But it had been a long time since the ship had been used as an actual carrier for more than shuttles and small freighters.

  "Anything else we missed?"

  "I'll look." There was a slight pause. "Oh."

  "What?"

  Another screen came up.

  There were twelve Excaliburs in the maintenance bays.

  And they hadn't been there yesterday.

  Thirty Eight

  Miriam popped up as a hollo.

  "Jon? Has someone been working on Stiletto without me knowing?"

  "Not that I know of, why?"

  "Someone has. None of the baselines are accurate anymore. She seemed faster as I moved to Relentless, and that wasn’t the only thing I found different."