Legend of Dreamwalker (The Hunter Imperium Book 5)

by Timothy Ellis

  I waited for the second launch, and it was taking too long. We needed to do better.

  With the squadrons now forming up in front of Claymore, I pulled the speed off abruptly, flipped us end for end and rolled us over, and slowly started back towards the forest.

  CO’s bellowed, and the squadrons did the same maneuver, accelerating back to take positions around Claymore.

  “Which playbook today boss?” asked Vulture.

  “How about gatling gun?”

  “Works for me,” said Hawk.

  The squadrons and bigger ships took up a circle formation around Claymore now, but not as far out as the last time. This time we were all going down the middle, with everyone but me strafing outwards.

  And that was exactly what we did. I opened up first, blowing a hole in the center of the cloud of fighters, and just kept on firing. Guns cycled, torps fired, fingers held down and continuing. Around Claymore, the bigger ships opened up next, doing the same, and finally the Excaliburs. As we all disappeared into the mass of trees, they all began strafing, while I began to do the same within a small circle.

  An Excalibur ran right into a tree, and both became debris which took out two more trees. A corvette took a glancing blow from massed cruiser guns, rolled to keep better shields towards the worst of the formations on that side, and kept on going.

  We blasted through the middle, leaving nothing but the outer edges passing us by, and came out the other side.

  “All ships fire cap ship missiles at your designated target. Now.”

  Capital ship missiles raced ahead of us, all aimed at the four battleships, while the titan turret, now under Claymore’s control, fired at the lead. It staggered, and came apart as missiles completed the job on it.

  “Break and attack.”

  The squadrons turned outwards, now behind the remaining tree fighters, all firing FF missiles from their rear launchers as they went. The rest of us continued in at the big ships, forming a loose line as we went. The next launch of cap ship missiles was less this time, but still just as effective, with a second battleship breaking up as the titan’s did their work again.

  “Torps.”

  A wall of torpedoes followed the last missiles, with guns firing behind them, and I aimed at the third battleship while Claymore was aiming at the fourth.

  One of the destroyers zigged when it should have zagged, and took a full battleship salvo in the guts. It spun away completely out of control and with no apparent power, although still basically intact from what I could see while my attention was focused forwards.

  The rest of us went under this time, and when we straightened up on the other side, only a single cruiser remained intact. It took a salvo from the rear battleship turrets, and came apart.

  I pulled Claymore up and around, looking for clear space. Knüppel went after the damaged destroyer, and by the time I had Claymore somewhere she could recover fighters, she had it in tow.

  I switched to Unassailable, took in the debris field and no apparent damage to the now super-battleship, and stepped down to bridge mode.

  Shenaid was out cold in her seat, with Dianne holding her upright. I looked at Dianne.

  “Something happened when the destroyer got hit. I think she got the pilot out, but she fainted at the same time.”

  “The pilot is in the medical bay,” said Claymore. “So is the Excalibur pilot. Butlers are on the way to take Shenaid there as well.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll go with her,” said Dianne.

  Jane was looking at me. She was smirking.

  “Yes? What’s so funny?”

  “The destroyer which was clobbered was Unannounced. Ex-pirate. Maybe saving her wasn’t such a good idea after all. Seems she has a luck problem.”

  “I would have thought the pilot had the luck problem.”

  “Corbin? No-one would ever say he carries bad luck with him. Quite the opposite in fact.”

  “Corbin? What sort of name is that?”

  “Corbin Dallas. He was the best pilot from the American merc squadrons. You’ll love his callsign.”

  “Why, what is it?”

  I had no memory of seeing the name before, but then, on Orion there were just too many.

  “Originally he was called Multipass.”

  “What sort of a callsign is that?”

  “A funny one. The Imperator laughed himself silly the first time he came across it.”

  I had no idea what that even meant, why it would be funny, or why the Imperator would find it so.

  “And?”

  “Now he’s called Negotiator.”

  My hand tickled my forehead in the beginning of a face palm, but I stopped myself.

  “There has to be a punch line coming sometime.”

  “You know. Negotiate with extreme prejudice?”

  Now I did face palm. When I looked up again, she’d gone serious.

  “Do we clean this mess up? On both sides?”

  “We better, but as fast as you can. Nice shooting by the way.”

  “Thanks. Unassailable wasn’t in the yards for very long, but her upgrade was planned to the second before she got there, and a lot of it was pre-prepared repair bots installing pre-made turrets. I found that a most excellent test of her new systems.”

  “I bet you did.”

  I grinned at her.

  Twenty Eight

  Both pilots turned up for breakfast.

  Neither looked happy, but at least they hadn't been badly hurt. A few hours in a care unit for both of them, followed by some sleep seemed all they needed.

  Jane had brought over three replacement Excaliburs from Unassailable as soon as she jumped through after cleaning up the worst of the debris on the other side, and we’d cleared the down jump lane on this side. Two not in prime condition Excaliburs had been taken back to her for rebuilding. But having only lost one was doing really well.

  The destroyer had been extremely lucky. A mosquito launcher on each side was now missing, as were the magazines which fed them, and everything in between. But with life support only on the top deck, getting the ship back to being combat capable only took the time the pilots took for more sleep before a late breakfast. Being two mosquito launchers down wasn’t a huge issue, so Jane had the hull patched over without trying to replace them, and internally fixed all the severed connections. It needed a shipyard, but for now, it could still fight.

  By the end of breakfast, we were well into the next system, with the threes and Lightnings spreading out ahead of us looking for any habitable planet, and the most likely jump points. Unassailable was an hour behind us, having stayed to clean up as much as possible.

  I’d bypassed the bridge, going straight into my ready room, calling Jane in as I went. We settled into lounge chairs.

  “How do we speed up launching the second group?”

  “Can we?”

  “Where’s the bottlenecks as far as speed is concerned?”

  “The slowest parts are the sealing and unsealing of the launch tubes. You know the drill. Fighter goes into the launch bay, the door is closed behind it, air removed, the door in front is removed, and the bird moves to the catapult and launches. We need to open and close doors before and after a fighter goes in. Then cycle them again after launch to get the next fighter in. Takes time, and it can’t be sped up easily.”

  I thought about it.

  “Is there any way we can load both fighters into the tube before launching the first one?”

  If she thought about it, I didn’t notice it.

  “It would shorten the length for launching, but I guess that won’t be a major issue, just leave the birds with less speed on ejection. I’d have to move the end of tube door further out to give enough room for two birds to cycle through, so we’d lose at least two bird’s length from the tubes. That’s cutting things fine for the front tubes. The rest shouldn’t be an issue.”

  “And launching?”

  “Have to change the catapult to be
able to vary the length, so it can be tight for the first fighter, and then be longer for the second. But it should bring the launch time down to a single cycle through the airlock, hook up the first, launch, rewind, hook up the second, launch.”

  “So the longest part is getting two birds into the tube at the same time?”

  “Yes. But that will be a lot less than doing it twice.”

  “At the moment it’s taking minutes to launch the second group. How long with these changes?”

  “After they’re in the tubes?” I nodded. “Fifteen seconds?”

  “I’ll take that.”

  “Thought you might. But when do I do get the work done? We won’t be able to launch until it’s complete.”

  “How long?”

  “Good couple of hours, with the whole deck open to space for a part of it.”

  “Fine. Just make sure the deck is deserted before you open it up.”

  She tapped her nose while grinning.

  “When though?”

  I thought about it.

  “After we know if there’s a habitable planet here or not. If there is, we’ll probably need to launch. If not, there’ll be enough time before we get to the next jump point.”

  “And if there’s a fleet in the system already we don’t know about yet?”

  “We can always move the birds to the flight deck first, and launch the old fashioned way.”

  “True. Your call though.”

  “Let’s see what the planet situation is first.”

  I gave her a long look.

  “What?”

  “Why are our carriers so badly designed for launching fighters from?”

  “Isn’t it only ships with not enough launchers having a problem?”

  “True. But the catapult system here is the same as on Ark Royal, and her design went back a hundred years or more.”

  “So did this design. The Scimitars were originally Midway class escort carriers, and those fought the last war a hundred years ago.”

  “How come they’ve never been updated?”

  “I guess they didn’t need to. Think about it. All the escort carriers were retired and scrapped, except for a few which fell into pirate hands. The American line carriers had enough tubes to launch the main squadrons all at once. The Orions have more than they can use. And Jon never had to think about it with BigMother as he rarely had fighters to launch. It’s why his accommodations are so basic for pilots, as he never really had any to complain about them.”

  “Surely someone else knew enough to redesign the smaller carriers?”

  “Chet Hallington and Scott Renaud are the only real carrier drivers we have, and neither of them have any mechanical know-how. Both coming from Yorktown meant they never really had to think about it. Yorktown was much bigger than Ark Royal as well. Bob Derr is a great shipyard manager, but as far as I can find out, he knew very little about carriers. Australian sector never had one, so he probably never had a chance to work on one. Come to think of it, Sci-fi sector never had a carrier either, so his days before Sydney Shipyard never saw him working on one there either. They did have a battlewagon, which is why he knows so much about them.”

  “And no-one asked a pilot when they did the rebuilds?”

  “Oh, no,” she laughed. “Way too obvious to happen. Especially since the senior pilots hadn’t launched off a carrier since their early days, and Jon never did.”

  “They could have asked me.”

  She laughed all the way out the door, and I could still hear it as she went down the access shaft.

  Twenty Nine

  The planet was habitable.

  But since it was basically a ball of ice, so deep into an ice age even the tropics was a frozen wasteland, it was not surprising we found no signs of life. A human couldn’t have lived there. It was debatable if any species we knew about could. Certainly the plants had bypassed it.

  It didn’t stop someone suggesting we take the rest of the day off for skiing. Jane wouldn’t tell me who it was, and it took her five minutes to stop laughing before she told me. AI sense of humour. Go figure.

  I gave the go ahead for the tube alterations, and Claymore closed down the whole maintenance and launch deck, after moving all the Excaliburs to the flight deck.

  After some thought, I did stand down everyone, with the proviso while they could do whatever they liked, we could be called into battle at any time. Some went back to bed. Others decided on various joint entertainments, or decided to watch or listen to something in their own brand new quarters. But it was no surprise to me when pilots went back into the simulators, and started battling using ships from entertainments instead of real ones. The bar was closed.

  The only person aboard who still had to work was Rockmonster. Dianne nearly threw a fit when Jane told her to keep working on her courses, but you can’t say no to an admiral and expect to get promoted one day. She did what she was told. It didn’t mean she liked it.

  I took the opportunity to go back to bed for a few more hours, knowing I’d be up again well before we made the next jump point. Back in my ready room, I pondered why we were only finding systems with two jump points. I knew it was not unusual for more than six systems to be joined in a row, but usually they went around in a ring, or some sort of shape which eventually joined to a system with three or four jump points, or back to close to the starting point spatially speaking.

  This run of systems though was different, and even Jane had no idea why. While not a straight line, it also wasn’t a proper curve. And in spacial terms, I’d been surprised to find we’d been gradually heading down the plane of the galaxy. The core might be ten thousand light years wide, but it was a fraction of that deep. All the same, it meant you couldn’t look at a nav map in two-dee, and understand it.

  Unassailable had caught up while we did the planet survey, fast as it was, and transferred builder and repair droids over to rebuild Unannounced, the damaged destroyer, properly. I still didn’t expect it to have its mosquito launchers replaced by the next time we went into battle, but Jane was trying to get it done by prefabricating the entire missing section in advance. When ready, she’d peel off the replacement hull and slot the new section in. But she’d need us to be stopped somewhere to do it.

  Claymore came up with an answer. When the new section was complete, we’d slow a bit, the destroyers would detach, Unannounced would dock with Unassailable, and the rest re-dock with Claymore. All done by AI’s of course. We’d lose minutes instead of an hour or two, both ways. I told her to schedule it with Jane and get it done when appropriate.

  I spent some time with the CO’s before lunch, going over squadron matters, Hammer’s confirmation of taking over the 266 A flight lead, and morale issues. The latter was fine until Jane came in and announced Orion’s Belt had lost a couple of rookie pilots overnight. They’d been flying Brawlers, and been unlucky enough to take battleship hits too fast for the ships to survive, and both pilots had taken hits in space before a mage could move them. Vulture scheduled an announcement for before lunch mess began, as some of the pilots here had known or flown with those who’d bought the farm.

  As far as I knew, they were our first official casualties of the war. It put a damper on things, and highlighted just how dangerous what we did was. We spent some time considering formation options for possible future battles. Now Unassailable was as powerful as Claymore, we had another capital ship to insert into the mix. It changed the dynamics a lot. Claymore had more forward firepower, while the super-battleship was even all the way around, but changeable so most of it fired forward as well.

  Sam took up my offer of a private lunch in my own dining room. We touched on deployment options, given she had a single twenty person team, and a thousand combat droids, deployable in six Cobra dropships. A Cobra being corvette sized, was designed for five teams or an infantry company of a hundred. But you could pack a lot more droids in than people. We also had Monty, which her team would use for insertion, along with Claymore’s
steadily growing number of combat droids, and Jane’s dozen combat suits. Of course Jane would be controlling all of the combat droids, so co-ordination was inbuilt and would be rapid.

  Of more interest to me as we ate, Sam filled me in on how they met the Imperator in the future, marooned in orbit of an unstable planet which had almost killed the Alpha team, and Grace. It was a story I hadn't heard, and at first I rejected the whole possibility of time travel forward and back, until she explained the physics and my eyes glazed over. It sounded plausible, and she assured me it was all true, but it sounded much more likely to be the plot of a good space opera novel.

  I made a mental note to ask Grace about it next time I saw her. Assuming I did. Which started a chain of thought which had me sending her a message once Sam had left. With Fearless in the shipyard, I had a reasonable expectation of getting a reply this time, but no. Nothing.

  The first part of the afternoon was spent in the simulator, trying out ways of including Unassailable in the formations. After I’d collided with her several times, to the considerable amusement of Jane, we worked out spacings and tactics which we thought should work.

  By the middle of the afternoon, with the next jump point approaching, Claymore completed the launch tube changes. We slowed a bit so she and Jane could test every tube several times without the pilots. The load time for two birds was not much longer than for one, and both were launched within Jane’s fifteen seconds. We could now launch all three squadrons pretty much at the same time. Vulture stopped by my ready room for an update, and went off to plan who slotted where, and inform the pilots.

  The destroyer repair was put off until after we knew if we’d be fighting again shortly.

  Five minutes before we arrived at the jump point, with threes still converging on us from other parts of the system, the Lightning which had found the jump point tossed a cloaked comnavsat through, without any thrust, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed.

  As it turned out, there was nothing waiting for us on the other side, and Jane had it turn its small engine on and reposition itself to a normal jump point location.