"You won't get away with this Hunter."
"Sure I will. Give the order, or do I blow you away?"
He gave the order. He didn’t even hesitate. His ships stood down.
"Get moving Jane."
"Confirmed."
"What about my marines?"
"Most of them need medical attention. They'll get the best I can offer, and will be left on your Torus."
"They better."
There seemed to be nothing more to say. I sat there staring at him, while his fleet moved aside, and mine headed for the Earth jump point, escorted by the American and Japanese fleets. When they were safely away, I took my finger away from the torpedo button, and he visibly relaxed.
"Good luck Admiral. You're going to need it."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means when we said it wasn’t going to be a fair fight, your ships and people never stood a chance against us. We've been fighting aliens for over two months now. Your tech is totally inadequate to the task compared to ours. If it'd come to a fight, we'd have blown you all away."
He said nothing, but he took it badly.
"And as for your marines? They didn’t even have decent armour compared to ours. I did them a favour by dropping them on the deck instead of allowing my people to shoot them."
"You're going to regret this Hunter."
"No. I don’t think I will. I give you one chance in a thousand of surviving to meet me again. You're a fool. Our combined fleets could have done some serious damage to the aliens, maybe even have stopped them for a while. We'll never know now, and the planets up spine from here will regret your stupidity."
"Get out of here Hunter. We have a defense to mount."
I flipped him a salute, the bird, and waved dismissal at him. And cloaked. I moved Gunbus immediately, coasting down the side of his ship, before blasting away, completely trashing his regenerating shields again in the process. My Crystal augmented shields didn’t even notice the collision, and once clear of his ships, I pushed Gunbus up to near Lightning speed, and shot off after my fleet.
Two
"Oh, you complete fuckwit!"
I stared at Jane. Jane swearing? Amazing! I grinned at her, and she looked sheepish.
"Who?"
"Who else. Your Admiral friend back there."
"What's he done?"
"Look for yourself."
I did.
"You complete fuckwit!"
"I'm glad we agree."
The entire Earth, Italian, Corporate, and French force had jumped back into Paris, on a line with the disk now formed between the Paris sun, and the planet itself.
We hadn't left a lot of people there. By now, everyone was taking the invasion seriously, and we'd merely been taking off those with no other way of leaving. We were very good at it now.
The disk had been there for an hour and a half, and the alien front runners were now well beyond the planet, spread out looking for the next jump point. They'd find the ones to Wolf 359 and France at about the same time.
Or they would have. Muggins in charge of the Earth fleet was taking a direct course to Paris, and he was about to give the jump point location away.
"What do they think they're going to achieve?"
"Hard to know. Neither of us do stupid all that well."
"True. Speculate."
"Maybe they think they have the firepower to take out the disk, and think if they do it, the main battle is won, and all they need to do is mop up the rest?"
"Can anyone be that stupid?"
"You rang?" asked Thirteen, materializing in the helm seat in front of me. "Sorry, kidding." He grinned at us. "Yes, they are that stupid. I've been watching them argue about it, and in the end, your Admiral friend just pulled rank on all of them, and they fell in line."
"Who wasn’t happy with the plan?"
"The Italian two star had seen the vid of you almost getting your arse whooped, the one time you tried for the disk, and was trying to insert some sanity, but without any luck. Unfortunately, he's a follow orders type, so once one gets given, he shuts up and follows it."
"The French?"
"Apparently they never wanted to pull out with you in the first place, but were taking orders even then from Earth. Since most of their sector has been evacuated, they saw little to be lost by appearing to follow you. But they desperately want to retake Paris before France is invaded. And before you ask, the Corporates have blind faith in the Earth sector military."
"What about the junior officers?"
"Ah, well that’s a different story. The Cruiser drivers are all Admiral's pets. The smaller ships have a higher percentage of passed over officers who are actually good at what they do. Put a lot of them on the bigger ships, and most of that lot would be heading after you."
I looked at the navmap.
"What a waste!" I exclaimed.
"True," agreed Jane. "But they made their choice."
"Does that mean we have to agree with it?"
"We have so far."
I shook my head. Agreeing with people's choices had resulted in a lot of dead people. This was going to result in a lot of destroyed ships. Ships we desperately needed further up the spine.
"Oh fuck it!"
I grabbed the controls, flipped us over, and rolled us around. I pushed the speed slider as far as it would go.
"What are you doing Jon?" asked Amanda through fleet coms.
"Going after those arseholes."
"Why?" asked Aleesha.
"We need the ships."
There was dead silence.
"You need help boss?" asked George.
"No, we've got it. Jump everyone into Earth and wait for me."
"Any change in plan?" asked Susan Bentley, from Dauntless, who had the command in my absence.
"No, but maybe a tweak of the timing. I'll let you know. You'll see how well we do anyway."
"Good luck," said a chorus of voices, and the channel closed.
It didn’t take long to jump back into Paris. Jane cloaked us before jumping, so unless anyone was specifically looking for engine emissions and a moving mass without a ship ID, we were safe from observation.
"Do we have a plan?" asked Jane.
"Can we take these ships over like we did the original Midgard fleets?"
"No. I tested their defenses while you were goosing the Admiral. We'll need direct contact with the ship."
"Damn. Slows things down a lot. How many droids do we have on board?"
"Twenty. Half and half security and combat."
"Okay then. Can we do a close flyby of the largest ships, and put a droid on the hull by an airlock?"
"We'd need to be inside their shields for the droid to survive."
"Which means busting down their shields, which will be rather obvious now."
"Maybe not," said Thirteen.
"Maybe not obvious?"
"Maybe not having to bust down shields."
"How?"
"I'll go visit each one, tell Jane the shield setup, you match shields so you can go through, send the droid over, hack the ship, pick up the droid, and we do the next one."
"So Jane has control, but doesn’t do anything until all of them are hers?"
"Yes. Activate all at once, put the crews to sleep, and turn them back."
"Sounds like a plan," said Jane.
We started with the Earth flagship. Thirteen vanished for a minute, returned and fed numbers to Jane, our shields changed, we passed through the shields of the Battleship, aligned with an airlock, and a droid jumped across. A minute or so to access the airlock, hack the ship's computer using brute AI force, unplug the droid, and jump back. On to the next ship.
Thirty one Battleships and Cruisers took over an hour. The Destroyers took almost another hour. By which time I was getting increasingly worried this was taking too long. The Earth ships were slower than mine were, but we were still closing the distance to the outlying enemy ships fairly fast.
"Rec
ommend we collect what we can now," said Jane.
"I think she's right," said Thirteen.
This was demonstrated at that moment, when a flash of fire originating at the position of the disk, tore through one of the Battleships as if it hadn't had shields at all, leaving it open to space across a diagonal from front left to rear right. It dropped off the formation.
"Do it," I said to Jane.
"Confirmed."
There was a pause, during which nothing appeared to happen.
"Damnit!"
"What happened?"
"They had explosive charges on their computers, and as soon as I gave a command which threatened the crew, the explosives detonated."
"They don’t have computers now?"
"Yes, but they're not linked to the ship itself. I have no access."
The next flash of fire completely vaporized a Battleship. The fleet started more aggressive avoidance maneuvers, but continued on.
I pulled the speed off us, and let them continue on without us.
One by one, the Battleships were destroyed. Then the Earth Cruisers, which were now leading. By the time the Italian Admiral gave the order to turn back, the disk was firing in dozens of directions at once, and one by one, the entire fleet simply vanished.
We sat there looking stunned.
"What a waste!" I said again.
"There's being paranoid," said Jane, "and being suicidally paranoid."
"Turn us around Jane. We'll collect that hull before it gets finished off as well, and get out of here before we push our luck any further."
"Confirmed."
We didn’t make it back to the hulk, before it too vanished into dust.
I sighed. There was nothing we could do about it now. But all those ships and people lost. There had to have been something we could do to stop it. A thought popped in. Always dangerous for me.
My sigh became a smile, which became a sigh.
"Did you think of something?" asked Jane.
"I did."
"Will it work?"
"No. Unfortunately it requires us being on the other side of the jump point, and several hours ago."
"No."
Thirteen was very emphatic about it.
"No?"
"No. Not going to happen. No."
"What's not going to happen?" asked Jane, looking genuinely confused.
"I'm not taking him back in time to fix this."
"Oh."
She looked disappointed.
"But I am," said One, appearing on the Bridge standing between us.
She placed her hand against my chest, and pushed.
Three
I slammed back into my chair in the CCC of Relentless hard enough to make the chair supports groan, and for the air to woof out of me as if I’d been slugged in the chest.
Everyone looked at me in surprise.
"You okay Jon?" asked Amanda.
"Yes," I croaked. "Give me a sec."
It took longer than that, even with several mouthfuls of water from the bottle Jeeves dropped in the holder next to me. I'd gone back about five hours, to just before I’d left Relentless in Gunbus, expecting there to be trouble once we jumped through into Wolf 359.
"Change of plans," I announced when I had some wind back.
"Already?" asked Dick. "We haven't started the old plan yet."
"It worked just fine."
"Huh?" said the twins together.
"Up until the point where the whole fleet you see on the other side of the jump point waiting for us, with the Frenchie's behind us, jumped into here and committed suicide by Alien. We had a plan, but it didn’t work. That Earth Admiral sun-of-a-bitch was just too paranoid for us."
"Has Thirteen been throwing you through time again Jon?" asked Aline.
"No, he refused. One did it."
They looked at me. Time travel wasn’t a new concept to them, but it still took a moment to sink in.
"So, plan B?" asked Annabelle.
"Plan B," I agreed.
"Do tell," said BA.
"Jane and I are going to Gunbus with as many security and combat droids as we have on board."
"Sixty two," interjected Jane.
"Load em up," I told her.
"Confirmed."
"And?" asked BA.
"We're going to cloak, blow down the shields of each ship as fast as we can go, dropping off a droid to go hack their computer, and take the ship over when I give the command to."
"What's the catch?" asked Jane.
"They rigged their computers to blow if any command was given which might hurt the crew."
"What kind of paranoid idiot does that?" asked Dick.
"Duh!" I said, waving at the dots on the other side of the jump point. "Admiral who hates my guts. Actually I've always wondered if that guy had pirate ties. It’s the sort of dick move they would have done."
"So I need to deactivate the explosives before I can do anything else?" asked Jane.
"Yes. Can do?"
"Should be able to. I'll know with the first droid to plug in."
"Let's get on with it then. Admiral Bentley," I said into fleet coms.
"Sir?"
"I'm going ahead in Gunbus alone. Hold the warships on this side of the jump point until I give the word, but let the stations go through as if nothing was going on."
"What will be going on?"
"Nothing spectacular I hope. I'm going to try to persuade that fleet to join us."
"Good luck with that."
The channel closed on her chuckle.
I rose from my chair, scooped Angel up onto my shoulders, and started for the door. Jane followed me. The rest followed her. I stopped, and they all stopped as I turned and looked at them, mouth open to tell them to stay put. I closed it again, and kept walking.
We knew each other pretty well. The subterfuge we'd used last time wasn’t necessary this time, so there was no argument I could put as to why the team needed to stay here. On the way down to the hanger, I pondered if we could do this from Relentless, but I decided she was a bit too big for close in maneuvering with other large ships. Jane could do it, but why take the risk of the other ship being accidently spooked into a collision?
When we were all seated on the Bridge of Gunbus, Jane launched us, and as soon as we were clear of Relentless, we cloaked, and went to full speed. This was just short of what the Lightning could do, and substantially faster than what the fleet could do.
It didn’t take long to arrive at the jump point, and we slowed right down before jumping.
"Admiral first Jane."
"Confirmed."
We changed direction slightly, heading for the Flagship. It was a stock standard Earth Battleship, with nothing about it to indicate it had any of our tech advances fitted.
"They didn’t learn anything, did they?" speculated Grace.
"Apparently not," said Dick. "Why are we doing this?"
"Apart from the lives saved?" I asked.
"Yes," he confirmed.
"We need the hulls. Thirty one large hulls, upgraded to our specs, or as close as possible, would be a very useful addition to the fleet. And the smaller ships, once upgraded as well, would all be added firepower. The Battleships with extra shielding added would give some of our smaller ships a place to hide behind, cutting down on how many times the Corvettes have to retreat to renew their shields."
"When you say it that way," said Dick with a grin, "it makes sense trying."
"Buckle up," said Jane.
No sooner than we'd done so, than there was a jolt which shook the ship, as we blew down the Flagship's shields. A few seconds inside the shield, and we turned and headed for the next ship in line. All eyes turned to Jane.
"Droid needs a minute to get to the airlock. No luck with access without a hard connection. I am getting coms though. The Admiral just about shot one of his officers for letting their shields collapse. It hasn’t occurred to them it was an outside cause."
She was grinnin
g.
"Droid is on the hull now. I have external panel access. Plugging in."
She went silent. No-one moved.
"Computer taken over successfully. Oh."
"Good oh or bad oh?"
"Interesting oh. They have an internal defense system installed. Almost all areas of the ship have small turret versions of Pulse Rifles. Computer and manually controlled."
"Stun or lethal?"
"Set on lethal, but stun is available."
"Let me guess," said Dick. "If you try to fire them without a manual authorization, the computer blows up."
"Exactly."
"Can you …"
"Already done. Want me to stun the entire crew?"
"What's the Admiral doing?" I asked.
"Still yelling."
"Can you impersonate him?"
"If the droid can get to the Bridge, sure."
"Better put him out of his misery then. Once everyone is down, you and the droid had better answer any calls which come in."
"Confirmed."
There was a jolt as we blew down the shields on the next Battleship in line.
Over the next hour, we repeated this until we had control of all the Earth Battleships and Cruisers.
"Jane, get them all moving to the Earth jump point. And drop our cloak."
"Confirmed."
I opened a channel to the Italian Flagship.
"Admiral Hunter? I might have known." The two star seemed amused. To one side of him was a screen showing the Earth ships leaving. "You're doing?"
"Yes Admiral. Am I right in assuming once I’d been taken into custody, the whole fleet here was jumping into Paris to retake the planet?"
"How did you know?"
"It was pretty obvious when you think about it. Also completely suicidal. Had you gone back in there, within a couple of hours every single ship would have been destroyed."
"You know that for a fact?"
"Yes."
He didn’t push me to explain it, which was probably just as well. He stood there looking at me, as if waiting for me to say more. I didn’t.
"Orders Admiral?" he said at last.
"You don’t need to follow my orders Admiral. You must do what is right for your people."
Hero to the End (The Hunter Legacy Book 13) Page 2
