Hero to the End (The Hunter Legacy Book 13) Page 6

  Grins at the quote turned into serious faces.

  "So we're just going to run?" asked BA.

  "Hell no. It’s a strategic retreat, the same as we did going from Midgard to Avon. We know all of Earth sector is lost. We tried to change the future already, and failed. Now we save all we can, until we reach a defendable position. And don’t forget, billions are going to live because we were here. We're the difference between millions surviving, and billions. Even if we run all the way to Gaia now, at the pace of the aliens, we win. We are marking time with them just in case something changes. But for now, we can run all the way home, and the only problem remaining will be keeping them out of the Gaia jump point next year."

  "When do we get a proper rest?" asked Annabelle.

  "Hawaii. I told the brass there to evacuate as far down spine as they could. As soon as we hit an empty system, we'll sprint to Hawaii, and spend some quality time down on one of the islands."

  "Now that’s a plan," said the twins together, and they high fived while the rest of us laughed.

  Ten

  We fell back at a measured pace. The team and I moved to Redoubt, with Relentless acting as a close escort for the Behemoth. The Explorer ships and their small fleets ranged far ahead of us, and at times to both sides of the spine. Borgcubia was never less than three days ahead of the alien advance, and my core fleet never less than a full day ahead. We had nothing smaller than a Destroyer with us now. The Frigates and Corvettes were all doing evacuation work. The Carriers were supporting the Explorer fleets.

  The team used Gunbus' new speed to go back and forth, mainly doing troubleshooting and co-ordination roles.

  I spent my time back in the old routines. Daytime in the CCC, nighttime in my quarters, watching something. More often than not, I hosted Max and Nut as well. Max didn’t seem to be worried about anything, so I assumed Thirteen was around enough, but I saw nothing of him myself. Nut never worried about anything, so he just turned up when Grace was away. Angel was happy, so long as I was close by.

  I was content to let others manage the evacuations. My concern now was strictly down spine. I was constantly looking for any changes which might spell disaster for us.

  In particular, I was looking for any change in their speed. Or if shielding appeared on their ships. So far, nothing. It was worrying though. They'd taken a Battleship and used its technology to their advantage. But they hadn't reverse engineered the tech. If they'd had superior tech to us, we'd have obtained and reverse engineered it by now, or at least have attempted to do it. We'd have improved something. But there was no sign at all, so far, the aliens had done anything.

  Earth in particular worried me. Most of the planets they'd taken so far, had been left with no functional spacecraft. Literally everything which could fly, had flown, or had left docked to a station. A lot of those which had only functional life support but couldn’t actually move, had moved, again docked to a station. We hadn't left much in the way of space tech behind. Land tech didn’t tend to have the speed, or the shielding, to be much help to them.

  Earth was different. Up until 2284, ships had regularly crashed there, and been unrecoverable. The last, bar one, of the teams to go in to save people, had all failed, and those ships had been state of the art at the time. By now standards they were pretty basic, but for a race with no shielding, even the shields of that time would be a huge step forward. There were also unconfirmed reports that ships had vanished into the murk almost regularly ever since, for various reasons, often as simple as engine failure in an unsustainable orbit.

  We knew Earth was made pristine again. It meant they found everything man made, and either ate it, or used it. In theory, they could get better speed, and some level of shielding from what they found there. I spent a lot of time looking to see if they did, or not. So far, not.

  Seventeen days saw us arrive at the Deutschland jump point in Victoria. Victoria had been lifeless, everyone long gone. It had never had a large population, and they'd simply bought several more stations from the German shipyards, loaded everyone up, and moved out well ahead of everyone else behind them.

  I sent everyone except Redoubt through the jump, but stopped there myself.

  The Germans had constructed a gigantic missile platform across the jump point, and were justifiably pleased with themselves. Two hours later, they were not at all happy, and started dismantling it into sections, which we joined up the same way as the Torus sections had been.

  It took Jane and I about an hour to prove the platform would perform up to specs, but only for about twenty four hours, after which it would simply be destroyed as the aliens continued massing ships outside of missile range, and began bringing them in grouped in the hundreds of thousands. At this point, the whole thing would just be overwhelmed. In the next half hour we proved the same thing on the other side of the jump point would force them to do something I dreaded, and if they did, we would not only lose the platform, but a lot more as well. Maybe everything. It was too early for taking that sort of risk, and it took me the other half hour to convince them.

  On the other side of the jump point, I found German creativity and ingenuity had run amok. I was greeted with several dozen Cruiser sized ships, some of which had the firepower of two Battleships, or the missile capacity of previous squadrons. Behind them was their older ships, but all of them had been upgraded to my standards of shielding and speed.

  For a moment I thought they were going to stay there and make a fight of it, but they fell into formation behind Redoubt, and we all continued up spine.

  I took the time to check all the new ships. For the first time in hundreds of years, there was some genuine innovation in ship designs. Someone had obviously done two things. Gone back to old Science Fiction ship designs and studied them. And gone back to basics and specified what each ship needed, and designed a hull shape to provide it. They were not really Cruisers, but full on Battleships. I'm not sure why they stood by the restrictions placed on them after the last war, but they had. Technically. The hulls were Cruiser sized. And that had been the main restriction placed on them.

  I encouraged the German Admirals and Captains to talk to mine. I ordered Bentley and Sato to make sure the Germans understood our tactics so far. If we had to fight, we needed to be coordinated. The senior German Admiral was a three star. They had almost a division of troops on troop transports as well, commanded by a two star General. I had Annabelle and Hobbs work with them to see if they could be useful. I also had them talking to the Americans. I had the feeling at some point they would be trying another ground action. An extra division of troops would be very handy to have at such a time.

  In Fourth Reich, we found the planet and all its outposts deserted. The Nazi fleet was formed up at the jump point waiting for us. They too had been doing some interesting things with ship design, but had less of them. But I’d take nine Battlecruisers pretending to be Cruisers, plus their also updated older fleet.

  As if pre-arranged, the German fleet moved to cover one side of Redoubt, while the Nazi fleet moved to cover the other. If some of the guns on each side were pointed at the other, I pretended not to notice. More Admiral and Captain interactions followed. But this time, I knew the limitations. The Nazi's would take my suggestions, but not my orders. It was a minor complication I was happy to accommodate. If it went pear shaped later on, so be it, and I’d deal with it then. For now, I was happy they hadn't insisted on defending their system.

  Eleven

  Forty days later, we jumped into the dark.

  Or so it seemed.

  They'd actually done it!

  It was small scale, but we'd jumped into the center of an actual Dyson's Sphere.

  Redoubt was the last through, and the Behemoth felt small in the space left inside. But then, it had to be a large space, to allow the stations and shipyards to jump in safely.

  "Um," started Amanda. "How do we get out?"

  I'd only just realized the same thing. We were completely locked
inside.

  A screen popped up next to the CCC HUD. Predictably, it was the top brass, and they were all grinning.

  "Welcome back to the American sector," said General Patton. "What do you think of our door?"

  "Does it revolve?" I asked, keeping my grin in, and looking serious.

  "Sure. But not the way you think."

  "Do we need a password or something to get out of here?" asked Dick.

  "You do."

  Their grins got wider.

  "And?" asked Annabelle.

  "Guess," said Bigglesworth, who was only a tad away from laughing fully.

  "Open says me," I said in a formal god-like voice.

  "By your command," said Patton.

  In front of us, a complete section of the shell opened up, and moved away, showing how all the stations had passed through.

  "Janet, take us through before they decide they want to levy a toll."

  "Damn," said Jedburgh. "I told you we should have done that!"

  They all lost it, and so did we. Janet moved us out, and popped up the view behind, showing the open door sealing behind us, and once it was, the entire structure revolved to put the weakest part on the opposite side of the jump lane.

  There was nothing behind us now. The last of the ships heading up spine had been docked with Redoubt, and we'd brought them on at our much faster speed. They began to undock, and set course for the next jump point.

  The outside surface of the sphere was ugly. The Dyson theory had been reversed. Dyson's whole idea had been to create a sphere on the outside, and a livable surface on the inside. So outside wall nice and smooth, while inside had the usual clutter of various sized buildings and open areas. This was inside out, with the smooth being inside, and the buildings outside. Dyson of course had been thinking about a sphere the size of Earth's orbit. This was huge by station standards, but tiny by comparison with the original idea. I pinged Patton to find out when they'd started building it, and he'd replied with the moment he'd returned from Gaia. I assumed he'd hidden the initial costs from government oversight in order to keep it happening. I would have.

  Jane popped up a spec, and we could see where a fleet worth of power and shield generators were dotted around the outside. There appeared to be areas where doors could be opened in addition to the main one. Not far away, I could see a staging area for what looked like additional modules. This could be interesting to see what its capabilities were.

  "Nice," said Dick.

  "Take your word for it," said BA.

  "Where's the beach?" asked Amanda.

  We all cracked up again.

  "Co-ordinates received," said Janet.

  "Admiral," said Patton, "Hawaii has been evacuated already, but we left a series of islands provisioned for all your people, and they've been sent on already. The other sector fleets will be integrated into our combined force while you have a rest. Take five days off. We'll use the last two for last minute plans. Enjoy."

  "Thankyou General."

  They all rose and saluted me, so I rose and saluted them back. The screen vanished.

  "Onwards and beach-wards," I said.

  We found it was more than just a few islands. Instead of leaving a couple of big islands functional and putting us all on together, they'd assigned each group to an island appropriately sized for them. The Japanese, SAS, British crews, my troops, the Pocket Battleship crews, Greer and Miriam's pilots, and each of my sub-fleets, all had their own island. The Alpha team had a much smaller one, adjacent to the one where my parents went, but far enough away we had complete privacy, while I could visit them in a half hour speedboat ride. George joined us here, but he hopped back and forth to visit the troops using a Python.

  It wasn’t until I stopped, lying naked on a beach with the girls, Angel chasing things in the sand nearby, that I realized just how exhausted I was. But stress is like that. While it lasts, you ride the rapids, which eventually you cease being able to identify as rapids, because it's normal. But as soon as you stop, you start to see things as they really are. It was over four months since the invasion started, and I felt every single day of it. I had to make myself lie there and do nothing.

  The island we were staying at was a small five star plus resort. Jeeves found everything we needed for luxury and fine eating, and proceeded to organize it for us. Even Angel, Nut, and Max ate gourmet cat food. Thirteen was still absent, but since Max wasn’t fretting, I figured he was there enough to keep the cat happy. Nut decided sand was his litter box, not his playpen, and so while Angel and Max chased bugs and lizards around the dunes, he found a nice place to sun himself, a slight movement away from disaster. But since he was usually hanging upside down on the cat trees, no-one worried about him falling.

  Janet's avatar joined us on the beach as well as Jane, and I noticed her avatar was one of the newest versions of the droid body underneath. They were obviously continuing to improve the avatar model, which showed up most in the avatar's movement. They were still a long way away from doing without the suit for the body shape, but when Janet showed me the droid underneath one day, I could see just how sophisticated it was getting.

  I spent some quality time with my parents, who'd more often than not, been days ahead of me, and a bit far to just visit on a whim. They'd been here several days longer. The crews of all three Explorer ships were together, along with those from the three modified Escort Carriers. I'd put a crew on Gatherer by moving a few people around. Her Captain reported to my father, so his relative inexperience hadn't mattered. The people now living permanently on Enterprise also managed a few days on a beach, after another island was hastily reopened for them.

  I was surprised to see an absence of tan lines on my mother, but she and Dad were looking happy. They'd even adopted a cat Dad had found abandoned on a planet. It was the strangest mix of black cat, with longer white tipped fur mixed in. Mum had called her Midnight. I introduced Midnight to Angel and Max one day, and the three of them had hissed at each other for a short time, and after Midnight had dive bombed them a few times without actual hostilities breaking out, the three had become firm friends. Angel had loved the boat rides, standing in the bow, letting the wind blow through her fur, but Max had retreated to a calm warm spot, and gone to sleep both ways.

  The days passed rapidly. Too rapidly. Jane found me on the beach on the morning of day five. A Lightning landed not far away from me.

  "Your new toys have arrived," she said with a grin.

  I looked up, and could indeed see three new ships in orbit. Each one was larger than Redoubt.

  Jane handed me briefs and socks, and after pulling them on, I shifted into 'slinky red'.

  "Let's go," I said.

  Twelve

  From the outside, it looked like Bob had taken the standard door shape, and expanded it to make the three most boring ship shapes ever made.

  Until you came to grips with their sheer size. Redoubt looked small against them. They were in Hunter red, but looked like huge boxes. Even Borgcubia looked more like a proper station than these looked like ships.

  The first indication of their true size was their engines. If you parked the entire new German battle fleet next to it, this new ship class had more engines on one ship. You could line up the dozen Earth Battleships along the top, and it was wider, and still had more engines. Jane was showing me this using tactical displays.

  "Just how big are they really?" I asked her.

  She popped up the shape of Hunter's Haven next to it. My eyes went wide in surprise. As usual, I’d given Bob and the AI's a set of wants, needs, and would be useful's, told them to go bigger than Redoubt for a true Behemoth class, and they'd gone ahead and built something far beyond my expectations. It did however explain why they'd taken so long to be built.

  Two of these ships, docked side to side and standing on end, were slightly wider than Hunter's Haven was, and higher. The mind boggled.

  "Depth?"

  She removed the station, and put Galactica alongside
. Then she put Gatherer next to Galactica. The two depths combined were less than a third of the depth of the new ship. I whistled.

  I nodded to Jane, and she took us directly at a gap between engines. At the last second, a door opened, and we shot into a Frigate sized hole, which seemed to run down the length of the ship. We docked to an airlock, and Jane waved me to leave.

  The airlock opened directly into the ship's CCC. It was the largest one I’d seen yet, divided up into separate areas. The main Bridge section was what I was used to, albeit bigger. Behind, there were two distinct smaller versions. I looked at Jane.

  "Command ship layout. The Fleet Admiral now has a separate CCC. So does the Marine General. Both can be sound proofed so all three areas are distinct from each other. But I still laid them out how you like, except I added in an extra level in the main CCC, so the Admiral can sit behind the Captain, and both can pilot the ship as well as the Helm position."

  I noticed there was now a group of four seats, each with its own console. It was very like Redoubt's, with a raised chair behind the Captain's, so the Admiral could see over. Naturally, I sat in the high chair.

  "All four senior officers have Ready Rooms," she went on, "and there's a set of offices for lower ranks and aides. Accommodation wise, there is more than twice the amount BigMother had, both in terms of officer suites, and crew and troop barracks. There is more than enough room here for both our battalion of troops, and the SAS battalion. The three Assault Frigates can be docked internally, as can Gunbus, Excalibur, and Camel, all our Lightnings, and multiple gigs and shuttles. We have a Cobra and several Pythons as well. But she's not a Carrier like BigMother was. She doesn’t carry any fighters, and only has the single launch-landing tube. It's not actually a Flight Deck of any kind. Just a tube with docking slots, each with an airlock to the rather small habitable areas of the ship, relatively speaking."