Hunter Legacy 12: Hero in Darkness Read online

  "Sounds like an afternoon's work to me."

  She was grinning.

  "Chet, you command the Carrier Group. For now, my two Escort Carriers are under your command. Their two squadrons for each are currently on this station. Group Captain Lacey is effectively CAG for the entire group, and Yorktown's CAG will report to him. So will Greer and Young. In space, he calls the shots for all fighters and bombers. And I define a fighter these days as anything with Excalibur specs smaller than a Destroyer, being manually flown by a pilot. All Gunbus class are therefore a fighter, while most of the Super-Corvettes are not, since their captains are not combat pilots. Warn your people to give his ship space. I just gave him one of the new Super-Destroyers, and he will…"

  A screen popped up, showing a Super-Destroyer being flown by a total maniac. A drunk maniac. A second popup showed a look of unbridled joy on Lacey's face.

  "Bloody hell," exclaimed Chet. "Is that Lacey?"

  "Sure is. That Destroyer flies the same as an Excalibur. So if the fighters join a full on furball, he'll be in there with them. Hence needing to give him space. George did it in Custer once, which is only a Frigate. Half his shield loss was collisions with enemy ships."

  "I believe it!"

  "What rank is your CAG? And will there be a problem with Lacey being in overall command?"

  "I've got Lexington's CAG with me. He's a full Captain, but he's been a penguin for several years. Damn good organizer though. I don’t see a problem, as long as Lacey lets him do his thing with the Carrier fighters. Jedburgh wouldn’t let me bring Yorktown's CAG. He's earmarked for Lexington's replacement, which is still in the yard. He's training squadrons now."

  "What's a penguin?" asked Susan.

  "Pilot who no longer flies," I said. "It's applied to anyone who leads a fighter unit, but doesn’t fly the sorties with them. Health issue?" I asked Chet.

  "Yes. He had a crash several years ago, and the flight surgeon washed him out. Generally the pilots won't accept a penguin, and we quietly retire them, but in this case, he still has the pilot's respect. If Lacey is the type of man I suspect he is, then he'll let CAG get on with his job, and lead the pilots from the front."

  "Get Janet to assign you an office, and call him in. Get your CAG over here too. Work it out between you. He reports to you for now. I'm seriously worried the Corvettes and smaller ships are going to be under-shielded, so liaise with Susan on how to position them within the station's shields for protection. They only leave the safety of the shield if they're unable to dock here, or have to run. For the first battle at least, I’d rather have frustrated pilots than dead ones. We'll need fighters later on, for roles better suited than this one. But for now, we also need their fire power. This will change once we get to Morocco."

  "Yes sir."

  "Office ready, my Lord."

  I looked at the four of them.

  "You all report to me, but co-ordinate with each other. If you have any sort of problem, bring it to me to sort. If sometime in the future we pick up a three star Admiral, or another four, then you'll report to that person. But I don’t see that happening until we reach Hawaii. If any of the sector forces we work with has a three or four star, you still report directly to me. If anyone tries to give you orders, you refer them to me. Even if they make sense, best still come through me. We are an independent command, and the only people giving orders are those who join us fully."

  They all nodded.

  "Anyone have any questions?"

  "Uniforms?" asked Chet. "Do you want us in Hunter?"

  "Your choice. The SAS were given the choice, and I can't see them not wearing SAS fatigues. Did you get your suit belts in the end?"

  "We did. Everyone who came here is wearing one."

  "How up to date are they?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "Jane, get that checked. Make sure the pilots at least have the latest versions. And preferably everyone."

  "Confirmed."

  "The current version increases the life support time to an hour, which for ejected pilots means a much higher likelihood of surviving long enough to be picked up by SR. Nine months ago we had the problem of the suit keeping the pilot alive when the ship was destroyed around them, but the pilot dying from lack of life support before an SR droid could get to them. I'm glad that issue has been improved."

  "One of your innovations sir?"

  "There's a team working for me on improving suits, and creating new uses for them. It's been going for six months, and made some very impressive improvements. Jane pokes them now and then to keep them motivated."

  For some reason, Jane found this very funny, and we laughed along with her.

  "I suggest you use the briefing rooms here over the next twenty four hours. Get your people together, and get organized. I want to see a fleet disposition plan straight after lunch tomorrow."

  "Aye sir," they said together, and rose.

  "Chet, stay a moment please."

  Susan, Daniel, and Jane left. Chet stayed standing.

  "I'm a little concerned about Miriam," I started.

  "I have been as well. What did you do to her in Gaia, if you don’t mind me asking?"

  "It wasn’t what was done or happened. I think she left Gaia with the realization a long range relationship wasn’t going to work, especially given she had competition who was staying right next to me. She found out just before you saw her, I'm still seeing the same girl."

  "That explains it then. She was very competent before, but now she's almost reckless without any reduction in competence, if you understand that."

  "I wouldn’t expect anything else from her, but it worries me. Will you keep an eye on her?"

  "I would anyway. She's one of my best people, and I'm not about to let her self-destruct."

  "Hammer home the caution line to both Miriam and Greer, and your squadron leaders. Until we know what we're going to get hit with, I don’t want any stupidity from gung-ho pilots wanting to mix it up with the enemy. My gut tells me if any fighter leaves the safety of this station's shield, it will end with a destroyed fighter, and dead pilot. They simply cannot take a hit from even five hundred ships at once. And until they see what we're up against, their aggression is likely to get them all killed. We need everyone and every ship to still be with us when we get to Hawaii. Get Lacey and your CAG together, and drill safety first into all the pilots. If someone does get killed because they can't control their gung-ho, I'll have no alternative but to send the Carriers way behind the lines for their own safety."

  "Understood. Where do you want the Carriers? Yorktown can protect herself now."

  "I want them at the rear. Two reasons. Somewhere where the smaller ships can fall back to if necessary, where they can hide in superior shielding, while they get their own back up. And I want something which can fire on any enemy ships which get past us. Like a second line of defense. Depending on how the first battle goes, we'll rethink after how the second line is composed. We will all be overrun, there is no doubt about that. But until we see how it happens, it's difficult to plan it."

  "We'll work it out sir. Leave it with us."

  "Thanks. It's actually a relief to be able to delegate it."

  "That's what four stars are for, delegating to two stars."

  He meant it seriously, but I took it as a joke. We were both grinning as he left.

  Twenty One

  I was all meetinged out. It had only been an hour since the briefing started, but it felt like all afternoon had passed. This brief and give orders thing was going to take a bit of getting used to.

  We were t-minus forty two point five hours to crunch time. I told Jane to pop up a navmap showing Pestilence and Famine where ever I went from now on. I wanted to keep tabs on where my ships were, and where the enemy had advanced to. They would already have a pretty good idea there were no habitable planets in the system, but I couldn't see any change in their dispositions so far.

  It looked like their game plan was jump in, then spread o
ut across the entire system until they identified all bodies and jump points. It spread them out both across the plane of the system in all directions, but also above and below. They obviously knew jump points were often in strange places, and were covering all the bases. It spread them thin, but five million ships spread a long way.

  They were not yet half way across the system. We were steadily losing comnavsats as they found and destroyed them, but the others were still sufficient to see where most of their ships were. We had time to prepare.

  It also suggested they had a good communication system, since their sensors were pretty useless. No point in covering the system if you can't tell the rest what you found. It begged the question of could they talk to us if they wanted to, or not? If they could, why weren’t they?

  I set the navmap back to a higher view, and noticed more ships coming through WAR. On inspection they turned out to be a dozen Gunbus. The display popped up Japanese characters, which Jane quickly changed for me. Hmmm, my Japanese friends were sending a small fleet. Given they'd standardized with the Corvette class, I guess sending a few to the early battles was their way of making sure they would be effective, and giving them time to adapt if they proved not to be. They looked about eight hours away.

  I told Janet to inform Susan she would be having guests, and Jane to send them the briefing, suitably translated. If they turned around after seeing it, at least they would all be sane. On the other hand, insane Japanese with the samurai spirit, we could use.

  I went back to my suite to play with Angel for a while. Jane woke me up several hours later, and I found myself on the floor next to Angel's tree. Angel herself was sleeping on top of my chest. I rolled her gently off, but she stalked off in a huff for being rudely awakened.

  "Jon, Carter wants to see us in medical."

  "Did she say why?"

  "Something about the two aliens you collected for her team?"

  "Be right there."

  I'd never been in the medical facilities on this station, so I was surprised to see how extensive they were. It was the size of a full ground side city hospital. My guidance took me to a set of labs. I found Carter waiting outside the door to one of them. We exchanged greetings. I hadn't seen her much in the last six months, having not needed medical help myself, and her doing her own thing under Annabelle's guidance. Even with the beating I’d taken yesterday, I hadn't seen medical since leaving Relentess, since my medical monitor was coping with yellow bruises just fine.

  She waved me in.

  "Anything look familiar?"

  I looked around. And froze. Never in my life before had stark terror gripped me like it did now.

  The two halves of the alien I'd used my sword on were inside glass cases. The black glossy look was gone, and the true shape underneath was apparent.

  The top half looked like a giant cockroach, including folded wings. It was enough to make you shudder and want to stamp on it with your boots. Only it was the size of a man's torso.

  But that wasn't the real problem. Cockroaches were normal on almost all planets, and stations, since they had a habit of being transported by ships without them knowing. Cockroaches didn’t normally give you the screaming heebie jeebies, although some women would beg to differ, and doubtless a few men as well.

  A huge cockroach I could deal with. But this wasn’t a huge cockroach.

  The bottom section was much larger. There wasn’t a head of course, which was just as well, but the body evoked terror.

  It was the body of a spider. And not just any spider, but the large hairy sort. Flat screen and Hollo makers had never really done the huge spider terribly well, since most of them were not very scary to people who knew they weren't real.

  This was real. This was a two meter diameter spider body, on eight large hairy legs. And I could see where the cockroach part met the middle of it, as if some insane being had decided to push a cockroach into the middle of a spider, and call it a new creature.

  Maybe someone had. Kali had called the Darkness a mistake. Making an abomination like this was definitely a mistake. I wondered at the level of insane which would find this thing acceptable.

  Now the human fear of spiders made sense. If this was what we were really afraid of, because our souls had met them somewhere in the past. And remembered the sheer horror of it.

  Jane was standing beside me, and she looked almost as freaked out as I was. Which freaked me out even more.

  I could see Carter was waiting to say something, but a scream from a few labs down rent the air. The level of terror matched what I was feeling, and the scream didn’t stop. It went on and on and on.

  I shook myself out of rabbit-in-headlights mode, and ran. Jane was a few steps behind me, Carter behind her.

  I kicked in the door the screaming was coming from and stopped in total shock. Jane cannoned into me, and Carter into her, and the three of us went down.

  Oddly, this saved our lives.

  There was a live alien running amok in the room. Legs with knife sharp looking ends whipped around the room, and had passed straight over the top of us. The creature seemed to be squatting, and its legs were acting almost like those of an octopus.

  I rolled to the side, crawled back to the door, and stood, just out of its range. I motioned for Carter to crawl out, and Jane to come to my side. Both were lucky to get out before a leg took a swipe at them.

  The screaming was still going on, and I finally noticed a pair of feet sticking out the underside of the creature. If anything, the screaming was getting louder.

  My sword appeared on my back, and I drew it and lunged forwards in one movement, cutting the creature in half almost where I’d done the first one. Movement stopped, but the screaming continued.

  Not wanting to touch it with my skin, I changed my suit to form large gloves, and dragged the top section into a corner. It was heavier than I expected, as if it was much denser than a human torso.

  Jane had formed gloves as well, and together we hauled the lower section off the person underneath.

  "Vivian!" yelled Carter.

  She pulled on the feet, and dragged her out into the passageway.

  "Care unit NOW!" she yelled, and started trying to calm the traumatized woman, who was still screaming.

  People came running, one dragging a portable care unit. Before they lifted her into it, I noticed her suit was now a dull white colour, except for her feet, and head. Oddly, it wasn’t covering her head at all, which presumably had been sticking out the other side of the creature. I mentally measured the creature and it was smaller than the one we'd been looking at before. But it still made Vivian a tall woman.

  As they began to take her away, I queried her suit's integrity. It was down to nine percent, and wasn’t recovering.

  "Is it dead?" I asked Jane.

  "Yes its dead."

  "Why wasn’t it dead?"

  "It should have been, being frozen solid."

  "It wasn’t."

  "Scary. I wonder what it takes to kill these things?"

  "Let's find out. Get BA here immediately. Better have a squad in combat suits for both of them. I don’t want them knitting back together and coming after us again."

  She looked like she wanted to rib me about that comment, but she didn’t. We were in no man's land in the dark here, and this creature was outside everything writers had been speculating about since man started writing things down.

  "Confirmed."

  A screen popped up almost immediately.

  "Sorry boss," said BA. "I'm on Fearless. Be there in ten. Troops there in two."

  "Jane, go and watch the other one. Yell if it so much as twitches."

  "Bloody oath I will."

  Jane swearing? I'd always wondered what it would take to spook an AI. Maybe I just found out. Although it probably had nothing to do with being an AI. Jane's soul probably had the same memory we had.

  Maybe the whole galaxy did? Is that why even the higher beings were afraid of this thing?

&nb
sp; Twenty Two

  The good news was, they stayed dead.

  The bad news was they were almost impervious to everything except the Meson streamers the giant suits used. The standard Mesons needed six shots to damage them. The Pulse Rifle was useless. Hand guns? Forget them.

  I cancelled the orders about wearing side arms and keeping a rifle nearby. We needed the new guns which had been under development, but they weren't ready yet. Nothing really was. We'd had six months to prepare, but true breakthroughs in weapons come with a genius shrieking eureka from their bath. As far as I know, it hadn't happened yet.

  We pushed the boundaries on what we had instead. Lots on the go, nothing delivered. Cue the sigh.

  We did have some luck though. While the alien proved to be resilient to gravity, above twelve gees its structure collapsed. BA tested our own suit at that level, and found while difficult to breathe, the suit did protect you enough. The word was passed if boarded, apply twelve gees immediately, even if you had to endure it yourself. We'd only know if this worked, when it happened for real with a live one.

  We had another stroke of luck too. One of Carter's people was testing the outer skin for reaction to light, trying to figure out why we couldn’t see them distinctly when alive. Even frozen, the one which proved to be alive was still just a black blob. The sample was accidently exposed to the whitest white we could make, and it seemed to sizzle for a moment, before breaking down.

  Not exactly a useful weapon though. In theory we could pump that sort of light into a room, but the flash would burn out the retinas of anyone in the room as well. No-one was willing to take the risk of testing the theory the suit would also protect them.

  I skipped dinner. In fact, the sight of food made my stomach revolt. I took myself back to my suite on the station, and played with Angel. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch anything.

  Everything I knew about the aliens went round and round my head.

  Carter reported in, saying Vivien was unhurt, but in a deep traumatic state, and had been sedated. Her suit had proved to be toast. Tests on it revealed it had been eaten at a molecular level, and only a few more minutes would have seen it shred.