Hunter Legacy 12: Hero in Darkness Page 8

  "Annabelle, you can promote Alison to Lieutenant Colonel as well if you wish. Keep things balanced."

  "She'll like that. She did good work on the medical side of the first boot camp, and she's certainly ready for a step up. The Alpha team is getting a bit top heavy though."

  "Doesn’t matter. The team is the team, regardless of rank. You taught me that."

  Aiden was nodding.

  "Annabelle, your office is next door, in the Marine Commander's Ready Room. Aiden, Janet has a similar office for you, just ask."

  "Janet?"

  "Station AI."

  "Ah. This whole AI thing is going to take some getting used to."

  "Homer is run by a Jane clone. Bonko has one as well, but also has a full ship crew. He wouldn’t let me split them up, and they are a cohesive unit. Jane will more or less monitor there, but she can take control of the ship if need be. The Colonel on Homer will have a Jane clone at the helm, and a previously freighter captain and now green Commander in command of the ship. But Jane gives orders with my voice. While a Colonel in rank, her orders are not open to negotiation by any rank."

  "Even you," said Jane, through room coms.

  "Yes, but I can argue with you."

  "Argue, smarg-you. You can try."

  "I can order."

  "You can try that too."

  "Shut up Jane."

  "Confirmed."

  Annabelle and Aiden were laughing.

  "Welcome to the madhouse, General."

  After they left, I asked Janet to send in Lacey, and Jane to dock Crusader.

  Lacey slunk in with his tail between his legs and sat. He looked like I’d shot his dog.

  "Wanted me sir?"

  "I'm appointing you to command the Super-Destroyer Crusader. Jane is in the process of docking her now."

  "Yes sir."

  Not only shot his dog, but made off with his woman. I couldn't help it, but started laughing. He looked at me as if I’d added injury to insult.

  "Sorry Group Captain. Your face! Maybe I should have been clearer. Crusader has the firepower of three Destroyers, while being identical to Camel to fly. I took delivery of her myself, and made sure she flew to spec. The only real difference is size, and that’s the problem of anyone dogfighting with you, not yours."

  His eyes lit up.

  "Really sir?"

  "Yes. Take her for a spin after the meeting and prove it for yourself. Janet will have your stuff moved into the captain's suite as soon as she docks."

  "I'll do that sir."

  "Right. Well your responsibilities have grown. In addition to three squadrons of Privateers, and four squadrons of heavy fighters, you also have nominal command of the two Escort Carriers Preserver and Deliverer. They can each carry only two squadrons each, and they're no longer really Carriers, but special purpose ships. The special purpose is a secret for now, and won't come into play until we get to Morocco, where you will likely become an independent command. For now, your squadrons will sortie from this station, and the Carriers will add their firepower to the fleet, acting as emergency landing platforms in case of need. The captains are both Commanders, but they used to be freighter captains. As such, they command the ships, but you give the orders. Each ship should have its own CAG, but they take orders directly from you, and not the captains of the ships.

  "Overly complicated sir?"

  "Has to be. I want one person in command of it all, and it's you. Bring your captains and squadron leaders to the meeting at one."

  "Aye sir."

  "You can select two pilots for your ship. One becomes your XO, and the other your second. They can dock their fighters in your hanger, and fight them if need be. But a person is on the Bridge at all times, which is why I'm putting at least three people on each ship. Your AI will fly the ship except when you take direct control, some as with Camel. Did you have a Camel avatar?"

  "No sir."

  "Okay, I suggest you get Jane to clone you a new avatar for Crusader. And then make you two more avatars exactly the same, one for each Carrier, all controlled by Crusader. Makes it easier to give fast orders to all three ships at once."

  "Fine sir. Do I get a say in how the avatar looks?"

  "You do. But as I told George, no to Gorillas or anything which a higher rank might object to."

  "You take all the fun out sir."

  "So George keeps telling me."

  He saluted, and left.

  "The data from the Battleship is now available," said Jane.

  "Highlights?"

  "You want to read it all I think. The main file is a sort of Admiral's log, with each entry being made hurriedly. I think he was sneaking time to record documentation. No vids, just all text, as if he was trying to do it quietly. With what he was with when we stormed into the CCC, I'm not surprised."

  I spent the next half hour reading, and headed to the mess for lunch in a very somber mood.

  Everyone on the station was already there, except for George. I had Jane connect me to him, using a holo-screen. He was up, but only just.

  "Lunch time Commander," I told him. "Shake a leg. Meeting in an hour."

  "I must have been more beat than I thought," he said. "Because I dropped off the moment my head hit the pillow, and I had the most amazing dream. Some hooded men entered my room and stole my arse. Took me out carrying the whole bed. Transported me across space, and left me alone somewhere else. But I woke up in the same room, and nothing at all was different."

  I laughed.

  "What?"

  "This isn’t the same ship. We moved to Redoubt while you slept, and they did indeed carry your bed out with you on it."

  "Oh."

  I kept chuckling.

  "Food George. Get your arse in gear."

  "Yes boss."

  Lunch was interesting. New faces, and old. George rushed in a short time later wearing garish coloured baggy golf gear. There were chuckles, but no-one said anything. But it did raise one question.

  "Why did they call 'Golf', Golf?" asked Dick. "It's a really strange word. Anyone know? I've always wondered."

  "The word 'Shit' was already taken," I said.

  Those nearby cracked up. Personally I didn’t see the attraction of golf. The balls didn’t go boom for one thing.

  Eighteen

  "Atten-Hut!" bellowed Jane, as I limped into the station's huge briefing room.

  Everyone rose and stood at attention as I entered, with Jane two steps behind me. The briefing room was a series of lines of comfy looking chairs. Everyone had aligned by rank, highest at the front. In the front row, I saw Admiral Hallington. Several rows back, were Greer and Miriam. The Americans must have arrived without telling me. Nice surprise. My father was in the seat behind Hallington.

  "At ease," I said when I reached the lectern at the front.

  I looked around at the mass of people waiting for me to speak, and the full weight of my four stars seemed to press down on me. Jane popped up a breakdown for me, on a hollo only I could see. Eighty ship captains and Squadron Leaders were sitting there, of various ranks from Lieutenant Commander to Captain; plus five flag ranks, one Group Captain and a CAG; and forty six Marine unit commanders from Major to Colonel, including the twins, Alison, and Hobb's aide.

  Who'd have guessed? Eighteen months before I was a kid washed up on the space dock. Now I was the leader of the largest fleet in a hundred years, possibly even the largest since navies left Earth's water. Most definitely the most heavily armed fleet, ever.

  "In a little over forty hours, somewhere over a million fighter sized ships are going to pour through that jump point out there. We are here to stop them."

  I looked around the room with my serious face on.

  "We will FAIL!"

  There was a disturbed movement around the room, as if everyone had suddenly become uncomfortable, and simply had to move.

  "I want no illusions about the task before us. We won't know until the last minute if that million will come through piecemeal
, or consolidate into a solid mass and come through all at once. But this isn't the enemy's whole force. It's an estimate of how many will come through immediately they find the jump point. The bulk of their force, is currently searching for jump points and habitable planets which are not there. As far as we can tell, the enemy dumped upwards of FIVE MILLION ships into the Pestilence system, and then went back for more. At some point we'll have to deal with every single one of them, because they have nowhere to go but through us. They must have a time limit for life support in those small ships, and they don’t know where the next habitable planet is. And we don’t know what is habitable for them, yet. They must hit us, and hit us hard, in order to survive."

  "This is NOT a suicide mission! There will NOT be any heroics here. There will NOT be any self-sacrifice happening."

  People began to look a bit happier, but some were also looking confused. I understood why. A million enemies, and failing to stop them, equates to everyone dead.

  "Each ship will be placed into a command structure, led by a flag officer. Each ship will be placed in a position, and expected to defend it. You will be told what flexibility you have in holding your position, and you will NOT go outside this."

  I stared at George, who was suddenly uncomfortable, since he knew I knew he was one of those most likely to step outside his orders.

  "Our job here isn’t to try and win. Our job is to BLEED the enemy as badly as we can, and then fall back to the next position, which will usually be the same jump point in the system behind us. When we get to Last Hope, we have a planet to defend. We will try. We will fail. We will fall back."

  I looked at them solidly, not showing any doubt.

  "This is going to be how it goes. Get used to it. This is going to be a grueling rearguard action which will take us all the way to Hawaii at the beginning of the American sector. It may take years, or it may take months. We have no way of knowing yet. But this is how it goes. We defend the jump point in. We fall back to the planet. We lose the planet. We fall back to the next system up the spine. Rinse and repeat. On and on and on, until either we manage to destroy their entire force, or they run us off the end of the Galaxy."

  "But this is how it will be. Each ship will bleed the enemy until its shields fall to twenty five percent, and it will immediately fall back to safety, or it will dock or land somewhere which still has plenty of shielding."

  "The first rule of engagement, and this is an order, and one which cannot be countermanded by anyone but me; is at exactly twenty five percent shielding, you WILL pull out of your formation, and land, dock, or run, depending on your ship class. No exceptions, until we are being overrun, when I, or Fleet Admiral Jane will issue a retreat order. After the first battle, I'll review the percentage. The object here is bleed them without losing anyone ourselves."

  I saw Jane's head jerk in surprise. I’d just promoted her on the fly. But I’d suddenly realized she needed a higher rank.

  "The second rule of engagement is that no ship will take a direct course to any jump point leading up spine, or to a still inhabited planet. One of our advantages is our level of tech is substantially higher than theirs is, allowing us to escape at more than ten times their speed, and we will drop off their scanners very quickly, since they appear to have a limit of ten kilometers. We will NOT be giving them any idea where any jump point is. Waypoints will be issued for each system. When you have to withdraw, you will take the advised vector to the first waypoint, and only there will you be allowed to change course to where your next assignment is. Depending on where the enemy is, you may be given a second waypoint."

  The room was in total silence.

  "I want to make this quiet clear. I do NOT want to lose a single ship. I don’t want a single casualty. This is a long haul campaign, and we cannot afford to bleed ourselves. We will get reinforcements from each sector as we fall back. But we are the CORE of the defense of the entirety of human space, and we cannot afford to lose ships or people. What sector defense forces do is up to their commanders. We will attempt to work with them. But if they decide to suicide to defend their sector, we will not be helping them. No matter what they do, we follow the plan. Because if they are stupid, if they fall, the defense falls on us again."

  I paused and took a breath.

  "Each enemy ship is about the size of one of our Carrier based fighters. It has no detectable shield. It is slow. It has one very low power gun. But don’t be fooled. When we went for their Carrier asteroid, their first shot at us was with some ten thousand ships all firing at once at the same place. The most heavily shielded ship we HAD, took a ten percent hit to its shields with one shot. We proved yesterday that we DON'T have a ship capable of sustained fighting time against them. While we managed to take a win yesterday, in taking away from them their single most important asset, it also cost us ours."

  Miriam looked shocked. I ignored her and moved straight on.

  "The reality is, we may not be able to hold this jump point for more than a few hours. More likely it will be less than a half hour, and perhaps even just minutes. It depends on how many ships come through at once. If they mass before coming through, the time we can stay diminishes by the scale of how many they come in with. The entire fleet cannot stand against five million ships. Not even against one million ships. We will bleed them and leave. Bleed them and leave. And keep bleeding them and leaving, until we no longer have anywhere to go to."

  "That being said, we have a lot of firepower. We will use it the best we can. Because of the number of ships we are targeting, our nav software has had to be altered to group targets. Pay attention to the groupings and how many are in them. Select targets in your part of the firing pattern based on how many ships are close together there. And I do mean a firing pattern. The jump point is a large area of space. We will be targeting all of it. The only time shooting outside your allocated area will be allowed is when we are down to too few ships to cover it all. But by then, we'll be almost ready to retreat anyway."

  "Make no mistake, we will be overrun. But another advantage seems to be our enemies own tactics. When they entered Pestilence, they spread out to proceed to cover all possible jump point locations, and to locate a planet if there was one. If they continue to do this, it will spread them thin across the whole system. This gives us several advantages. They fired at us as they came in range. Their guns seem to have a large arc of fire, but they only got off a single shot each, before we blew past them. Once past, they kept on going. We didn’t see a single instance of a ship turning back to reengage us. This may have been because of our speed, and sitting here may prove different, but I'm expecting them to down jump, shoot at one of us, and then continue past us in whatever direction they have determined to go in search of a planet, and the next jump point."

  "The danger is, any given ship may be shot at by tens of thousands of guns at once. Those with lesser shielding will be positioned where they will be less vulnerable, but once the tide washes over us, there may not be anywhere safe to be, in which case we will run. For this first engagement, our fighters will remain within the shield of this station, as will the Corvettes. This will be reviewed later. Once we fall back to a planet, the role of fighters will change anyway. For now, I want their firepower, but without risking them."

  I saw Lacey and some of his squadron commanders nodding.

  "Okay, now I want to say something else. Everyone here is a volunteer. And you know what that means?"

  "We're totally screwed!" yelled Amanda.

  The room laughed.

  "Indeed. Every military structure I've read about had a maxim that you never volunteered for anything. And we are about to prove why. This is a volunteer outfit. If you or any one of your people wants out, they can go with no questions asked. I have fast freighters who can take them to the nearest place to find some form of evacuation on. They will not be allowed to take anything with them, other than personal possessions."

  I paused for effect.

  "Let me be quit
e clear. The next few days, weeks, and months will test every one of us. It's easy to stand here and say we face one million ships, but the reality when they fall on us is likely to be stark raving terror. Anyone can leave. But not in the middle of a battle, and not taking one of our ships. Mutiny will be met with one of two actions. The ship AI will either render you unable to move, or kill you outright. If anyone is stupid enough to try to take out the AI and its avatar, they get what they get. If anyone succeeds, a Marine force will go in and take back the ship, and their orders will be shoot to kill. If need be, it will likely be me personally who pulls the trigger. Ships matter more here than people do. The AI's can fight this entire battle without us. Not as well I think, but firepower is more important than who pulls the trigger."

  I lowered my voice and tone a few notches.

  "Show this briefing to everyone in your command. Anyone who wants to leave now, should report to the station in the next six hours, and will be taken to Morocco orbital. Better we lose some people immediately, than have people go bonkers during the first fight because it's not what they expected."

  "None of us signed up for this. We all volunteered, but none of us had the slightest inkling of what we'd be up against. I've been seeing the Pestilence system go black in my dreams since I was a baby, but never in my wildest and most deluded imagination did I ever consider facing down over five million enemy ships dumped into a system in a matter of hours."

  "So, there's no shame in admitting you're in over your head. There's no shame in going somewhere else, where maybe your skill set can help there. Everyone gets this choice, here and now, regardless of rank. This isn’t what we thought it would be. It's so many orders of magnitude worse, it's almost incomprehensible. Six hours people. After that, we prep for battle."

  "As my Command Sergeant Major is fond of saying, we go in at the shit end. In just over forty hours, the shit end will dump on us. We will be ready for it."

  "Damn right we will be," yelled Jack.

  Nineteen

  I let the comments and conversation go on for a few minutes while I drank some water, and tried to frame what I was saying next. Finally I raised a hand, and talk stopped. I nodded to Jane. She was wearing her new insignia, one star on a red epaulette. Images came up behind me.