Hero to the End (The Hunter Legacy Book 13) Read online

  "Show me," I commanded.

  Jane flashed up the specs for the whole ship and I sat there taking it all in. When I finished this ship, I looked at the other two. One was the same layout, but the other was radically different.

  "Are you coming down for lunch?" asked Amanda through team coms.

  I startled. Sure enough, I’d been up here all morning.

  "Be right down," I said.

  Jane and I went back out through the airlock to the Lightning, and were walking into lunch very soon after.

  George was there, and I could see he was busting himself not to ask me anything. I studiously ignored him, while grinning inside.

  "We have new digs then?" asked Dick, as lunch wound down.

  "We have."

  "You replaced BigMother with a big box?" asked Aleesha.

  "I did. Or should I say, Bob, Jane, and Janine did."

  "When do we move?" asked Annabelle.

  "No hurry. We don’t need to report for duty until tomorrow morning. I guess we enjoy dinner here tonight, and transfer up before bed time. Be back at the jump point while we sleep."

  "Noted, my Lord," said Jeeves.

  I guess he was not only packing our stuff, but stripping everything which remained of use, assuming we had to abandon the planet. I could see him eyeing me, so I nodded. If he wanted to get started on it, he was welcome to.

  I spent the afternoon planning changes to make, while lying on the beach getting the last sun I'd probably see for a long time.

  My parents turned up for our final meal on Hawaii. It was as good a meal as you can have with family and friends, the night before you head back to war.

  Angel seemed happy about heading back into space, Nut didn’t care, and Max seemed confused for a while. Once again I wondered what Thirteen was doing. Granted there was no real reason for him to be around, and most likely he had other concerns somewhere else, but leaving a cat alone for long periods wasn’t a good thing for the cat. Fortunately, Max and Angel got along so well, neither of them cared if they were apart or together, and took either in their stride.

  George took his Python back to Fearless, ready to accept the troops back on board. We took Gunbus up this time, dropped my parents off on Galactica, and docked inside the new ship the same as I had the Lightning this morning. This time however, the airlock opened into the main accommodation area. After a moment of surprise, we all found our suites in exactly the same place they'd been on BigMother. It really felt like coming home. All of our stuff had been moved over from Redoubt, including anything left on Relentless.

  Of course, my suite was even bigger than before. Not quite as large as the one on Haven, but definitely larger than anywhere else. Angel had her own play room now. Instead of her cat trees being in my living room, she had her own living room, crammed full of trees, and cat entertainment facilities. In fact, instead of her having cat trees against a wall, now it seemed the trees had become fully three dimensional, and expanded to fill the room. I did see a human sized path into the room, but it looked like you needed to be something of a contortionist to get very far. Her cat bed was in my bedroom though, with several others for cat sleepover nights, arranged in a way where all of them formed one bigger bed.

  Aline's and my civvies were in separate robe areas. We both had our own offices, with side arm racks, and medal boxes on the walls. It reminded me she was overdue again. I'd have to fix that. Which sparked a whole new train of thought.

  We all met up in the Mess, which was more than twice the size of BigMother's Dining and Living rooms combined.

  "Have you seen the RANGES on this thing?" bellowed BA. "Training tomorrow morning as usual people!"

  None of us could stop ourselves laughing. Everyone except BA had been more interested in what their new quarters were like, but no, BA checked out the training facilities first. Could have been worse. She might have looked in the Armoury first, and never come out again. Jane had given me a hint of what was in there. I nodded to her.

  "Everyone leave their sidearms here when you leave," said Jane. "If you have a custom gun, it will be upgraded during the night. Otherwise, you'll be issued with a new one in the morning."

  "Have they made some further advances?" asked Annabelle.

  "So I'm informed by the Americans," answered Jane. "They took our early work, and have been working with our development team, and seem to think they have a completely new type of gun now. Not yet officially named. They want our opinions on them before they mass produce them for the rest of the troops. The dev team made sure existing guns could be upgraded easily, just by stripping the gun down and replacing the key components changed."

  "We'll get onto that straight after training in the morning," said BA, her eyes alight with anticipation.

  "What's this ship's name?" asked Amanda, obviously trying to stop BA from saying any more.

  All eyes turned to me.

  "Sceptre of Kali," I said. "She's Titan class, which is the next size up from Behemoth, which Redoubt is classed as."

  Thirteen

  "GOOD MORNING HAWAII!"

  I should have seen that coming, but Aline and I had been dead to the world after breaking in the new bed last night. We both jolted awake, and Angel leapt up and dived off the side of the bed. Whoever had done the ship outfitting hadn't skimped, and it was indeed a fitting bed for a Duke. And his concubine, came to mind, which I quickly suppressed. If that thought got out, I’d be in very deep shit. It was the first time I’d even thought about our relationship in a long time. We'd fallen into the routines of a couple, without realizing we had.

  "Jon?"

  "Jane?"

  "You have a meeting on Central Command at nine."

  "What's Central Command when it's at home?"

  "The station being used as a base of operations for the combined fleet."

  "Ah. Why didn’t you let me sleep a bit longer?"

  "BA is already waiting on everyone for training. Somewhat impatiently I might add."

  Aline muttered something under her breathe, which I pretended not to hear, and we moved into the bathroom. Aline was late for training, but I was early for everything else, and definitely not doing training. Aline left at the run, and not being hungry, as was my normal morning feeling, I looked up how to get to the CCC. I was surprised to find it far enough away, that training would be over before you arrived, if you tried to run the distance.

  "Jane?"

  "Jon?"

  "How do I get to the CCC?"

  "You take the travel car."

  I poked my nose out into the passage way, and a door slid open opposite the airlock. I headed for it, and stepped inside. I'd been aware the entire habitable area was only on two decks, but the sheer size still hadn't sunk in yet.

  The door slid open, and I stepped into the CCC. Jane was sitting at the XO's position. She had a tactical display up next to the HUD and navmap.

  The number of ships here was staggering. At the moment, they were lined up in formations, grouped by sector fleet.

  The British now had ships here, including both Repulse and Warspite. Both looked substantially different, and although they didn’t have the firepower of my Dreadnaughts, they could be classified as Super-Battleships. Susan Bentley was back aboard her pride and joy, so I’d be needing a new Captain for Dauntless.

  The Sci-Fi sector had sent a small fleet, made up of one Dreadnaught class SuperStarDestroyer, six Battleships, several of which looked vaguely like BigMother had, only distinctly themed; and a collection of Cruisers which all looked familiar from the Midgard War. The SSD and the Battleships were paint still wet new. Only three of them carried fighters, but between them were twenty squadrons. I popped up the specs for each of the Cruisers, and they'd all been seriously upgraded since I’d last seen them.

  The Canadian fleet was larger than I thought, but the largest ship was barely a Battlecruiser. They simply hadn't needed much of a fleet, having always been on good terms with their neighbors, and never really havin
g had much of a pirate problem.

  The Americans had concentrated on converting their Cruiser fleet to Pocket Battleships, and creating super versions out of their smaller ships. Greer's Gunbus squadron was the smallest capital ships they had, but were no longer classified as such, now being larger fighters. In some ways, Miriam's Excalibur wing was now obsolete. Although they still had advantages over the standard heavy fighter.

  Intrepid, a brand new Behemoth class carrier, had been rushed here. I could see she was still being worked on, but her Operations areas were fully functional, and she had thirty squadrons on board, plus a good number of Privateers. She was bigger even than Yorktown, and custom designed from scratch.

  Central Command turned out to be a medium sized station, with roughly the same space as Redoubt, only in a more conventional shape, and unarmed. It was totally dedicated to military use. Its fighter docks were crammed full of assorted fighters and Privateers. Jane told me she also had a complete division of American troops on board. Maybe they'd taken my suggestion for a planet force seriously.

  Jane took me over there in an Admiral's Gig. It had to be the single most over-comfortable ship to travel on I'd ever come across, and personally, I didn’t see the point. But I guess it had something to do with … No, I've no idea what it had to do with. Jane was grinning at me, so maybe it was all a joke at my expense. Bob's quite possibly. It was entirely likely his sense of humour would suggest an opulent ship like this for a four star Admiral, and he knew damned well how uncomfortable I’d be, being so comfortable.

  Admiral Jedburgh met me at the dock airlock, we shook hands and greeted one another, and he led me towards the senior officer's conference room.

  Inside were Marshall Bigglesworth, General Patton, General Price, and to my surprise, General Harriman. Also to my surprise, no-one else was present. Greetings and handshakes over, we sat at a small round conference table. A butler droid dropped a ginger ale in front of me, along with a bottle of water. I nodded it thanks, and sipped at the ginger ale.

  "We're keeping this meeting at the top Jon," said Bigglesworth, "in case you were wondering. We want to fill you in and get you up to speed. We six are basically the joint command equivalent of the American's Joint Chiefs. With the exception of the Canadians, we are the top ranks for the remaining sectors. The buck stops with us. The other four stars, or three star heads of other sector militaries, are all deferring to us, with two exceptions."

  "The Germans," I said.

  "Yes," said Patton. "Fourth Reich will subordinate themselves to no-one, but will apparently take your 'suggestions' seriously. The Germans have made it quite clear they will take your orders, and no-one else's."

  "I was hoping they'd soften, the further away they got from their own space, but apparently not."

  "We'll put both their fleets under your direct control," said Jedburgh. "It's not ideal, but it could have been worse. Until you highjacked Earth's fleet, we expected that jackass to want to command everything. Which would have created an intolerable situation."

  I couldn’t help but smile at this. It was putting things mildly.

  "You never did tell us how you did that," said Price.

  "Did what?" I asked.

  "Took their fleet over without a shot, and without any comeback from their government."

  "Didn’t I?"

  "No," said Patton. "You didn’t. I suspect it just slipped your mind, given you were looking almost dead at the time. It's good to see you rested and alert again. We were seriously worried about you when you came through here."

  "I was expecting it, which is why I asked you to clear a buffer zone so we could speed run the last section, and get some downtime."

  "You want to tell us what you did back at Earth?" asked Harriman.

  I sighed, they laughed, and I gave them the whole story.

  "You time travelled again?" asked Price. "Seriously?"

  "Yes. There are advantages to having a time traveling alien working with you. You met him on Gaia, although it was his boss who did the real move. I don’t see much of him at the moment though, so I assume he has other more important stuff going on somewhere else now."

  They did their eye contact thing.

  "Did you really set a live alien on the EarthGov people?" asked Bigglesworth.

  I just gave them my maniac grin, and they all laughed.

  "You aren’t planning on doing it again are you?" asked Jedburgh.

  I laughed.

  "No. I had the rest disposed of. Jane flung them into Earth's sun. It wasn’t worth the risk of keeping them any longer."

  "Good," said Patton, in the tone a General uses when he finds out a sub-ordinate actually did the right thing.

  The rest laughed, and we both joined in.

  "What's the status of evacuations?" I asked them, when we'd calmed down.

  "The Canadian sector is already evacuated," said Patton. "Although not empty. Several million people across the sector refused to leave. We're finding it the same as well. We are mostly clear back to Denver, although people are still moving from the outer systems into the spine systems, where your stations can take them. Further back, those who could leave easily are already gone, but the core stations are still loading."

  I looked at Bigglesworth.

  "We've concentrated so far on moving everyone close to the spine. The Royal Court is getting its own station, but will be joined to all the rest of them. We’ve been watching the progression of joined stations going up spine, and are arranging our own to do likewise."

  I looked at Price.

  "Ditto."

  I smiled, and turned to Harriman.

  "I'm having trouble getting any sense of urgency into the government. They're convinced we'll stop the aliens here, and even if we don’t, they have plenty of time to evacuate to Outback. I'm going to need something from you to kick their collective arses."

  I leaned back in my chair, linked my hands behind my head, shut my eyes, and just rocked there for a few moments. I sighed as I opened my eyes again.

  "Tell me about your Dyson Sphere," I said.

  They explained it to me.

  "Walter, talk to me later. We need to put a rocket up them. The Door to Gaia opens in forty nine days' time, and closes five days later."

  I looked around the table at all of them.

  "This goes for every planet which hasn’t evacuated yet. In fifty three days' time, any person who hasn’t gone through to the Gaia system, has a life expectancy of weeks. The Gaia system has a life expectancy of exactly one year, during which time, someone has to find a way to lock that door. But on this side, I don’t give us days myself."

  "Why?" asked Harriman.

  "Because by the time we get to Outback, the aliens will number something over a quarter billion, and be rising exponentially."

  "You don’t think we can hold here, do you?" asked Patton.

  "I think this will hold for a few days, maybe a week. It’s a brilliant idea, but it has a single flaw."

  "What?" asked Bigglesworth.

  I told them. I'd never seen a group of people look so shocked before.

  Fourteen

  "The aliens have instant communications. The moment they get a clear picture of how your trap works, they will start trying different things, and there are only a limited number of things they can do. You have responses to some of them in place already, which is why we might make a week, but they may prove to be more intelligent than we would like to think they are. They've already proved able to find a hole in every tactic I've used against them. As I said originally, these are not dumb bugs. It's an intelligent alien species."

  "Who just want to eat everything," muttered Price.

  "Exactly."

  "What do we do?" asked Bigglesworth.

  "Context?"

  "Several. Firstly, how to counter what I can see you fear most? Second, how we fall back."

  "I've only a few half-baked ideas for the first. Let me ponder them, and get back to you tomorrow.
We have the German missile defense platform. We have an enormous fleet. It requires some good old tactical lateral thinking."

  "Bring in the junior flags on this then?" asked Jedburgh.

  "Yes" I said. "After lunch?"

  "We have a ceremony planned for after lunch. It only needs your attendance. The invitations to your people have already been sent. We can keep the flag ranks here after."

  "Purpose of this ceremony?"

  "Mainly redeploying people," said Patton. "Those of our people who were with you, need to know what happens next. A few promotions. That sort of thing. We need your input on some of this, so please go on with what you were saying."

  I took a moment to breathe.

  "I have a few promotions of my own which need doing too. I assume you're taking Hallington and Bentley back. Are you taking Greer and Young too?"

  "Let's hear your thoughts," said Bigglesworth.

  "About falling back from here?"

  He nodded.

  "We'll need two fleets. One of them falls back through San Francisco to Denver. The other through Los Angeles and Phoenix to Denver."

  "We have plans for Denver," said Patton.

  "You're going to try a ground action?"

  "Yes."

  "I really think you should reconsider."

  "Wait until you see the plan," he grinned.

  "Don’t tell me until I get there."

  "We know how you love surprises," said Walter.

  I rolled my eyes.

  "Go on," said Bigglesworth.

  "First fleet falls back up the spine. The second fleet goes the back way through Dallas and Midgard. Since this is the shortest route, it's vital we keep them as slow as possible that way. It'll need the more powerful fleet. I'll go the back way. I'll need to check on Pompeii and ensure they're evacuated. And Midgard might be a problem unless I'm there to give them a nudge."