Make or Break the Hero (The Hunter Legacy Book 4) (20 page)

I woke the next morning naturally. No
alarms, no bellowing Jane, no fur in my mouth. Angel was curled next to my neck
as usual. I lay there for a moment, and eased myself up. I ached, but it wasn’t
the outright pain I'd been suffering the last couple of days. I checked the
time, and found it was just after eight. Six and a half hours sleep. It wasn’t
my usual requirement, but all the same, I felt refreshed. I bounded out of bed,
regretted doing that, used the facilities, showered, and was back in fatigues.
I used the access shaft to go up to the Bridge.

Jane was the only one there.

"Sitrep," I said.

"The Drone Freighter turned up here at
three thirty. It left again at six. The Dropships are making their final run
now, and should be back shortly. There's been no news from the Azgard jump
point. Seven thirty went past without any reports, so Midgard is probably
massing on the other side." I’d need to think about what to do about that
possibility. "The modifications to Custer are complete. She is now
docked."

I brought up some hull cams on the
underside of the ship. Custer was snuggled up under the front section of
BigMother. I switched to a cam in the Level One stairwell, and it showed a new
airlock in the ceiling. It was open. I triggered it closed. On the Cargo Deck,
I checked for the other new airlock, and saw it was in place. From a cam on the
other side of Custer, I could see Apricot One was docked to the new airlock.

"Great," I said. "Just what
I wanted. What happened to the team's combat suits?"

"Back on Custer. As soon as the work
was complete, I docked Custer nose to nose again, and walked the suits back to
her Armoury. As a way of transferring equipment, it works very
effectively."

"Have the Dropships dock inside Custer
when they return, and have a trolley waiting for the pilots. Better tell them
how to find their way back to their suites as well. As soon as they're docked,
get us moving for the Azgard jump point."

"Confirmed."

I headed down to the Deck Two Dining Room
to see who was up.

It looked like I was the last one to come
in. Everyone, except the three pilots doing the supply drops, was sitting
around the tables eating. Amanda waved me over to the empty seat next to her
and Alison. I limped over, and sat.

"Morning boss," came from various
places around the room.

"Morning all," I said. I waved
away Jason, who was approaching to see what I wanted to eat. I wasn’t hungry at
all this morning. He put a bottle of water in front of me anyway. I opened it,
and took a slurp.

Breakfast continued on around me, as I just
sat there, and enjoyed being with them. Conversation buzzed, but the only topic
not being covered was the recent mission.

I looked down the table at John Slice, and
he noticed my attention.

"Apricot One is docked with Custer,
Wing Commander," I said. He nodded. "Have you checked your
emails?" He shook his head. "Do so. When we get to the Azgard jump
point, you'll need to deploy another comnavsat. Will you need to be onboard to
do that?"

"Yes sir."

"Ok. Jane will have to tell you how to
get to Custer."

"Sir?"

There was a ripple of silence going out
around us now, as people caught the oddity. I smiled.

"Custer is now docked underneath
BigMother in a special docking berth. She now has a topside airlock, which
matches an underside airlock on BigMother. You need to go down to the Cargo
Deck, trolley to one of the forward side down shafts, drop to the bottom level,
move inwards to the new airlock, and drop through it using the access shaft
facility in it. Hike down the stairwell to Custer's Cargo Bay, and through the
new airlock into your ship."

"I'm going to need a map," said
the owner of the Apricot Mapping Service.

I grinned at him, and there were a few
chuckles.

"That sounds like a hike," said
Alana.

"Not so bad. Most of it is access
shafts and trolleys. Unless you really want to jog it."

Slice held his hands up as if to say, 'not
me'.

"I ran the Cargo Bay before
breakfast," said BA with a grin. "Good exercise."

There was some good natured ribbing to that
remark, which I let wash over me.

"Why BigMother?" asked Aline.

"It’s a joke," I replied.
"Something that was said when I first docked the Carrier at Sydney
Shipyard. Her previous name was Junk Heap One." I waited for the laughter
to stop. "Bob renamed her when he did the refit. I kinda like it."

"You would," said Annabelle.

"What's next boss?" asked BA.

"Our ETA Azgard jump point is around
eleven. We've been waiting for some supplies to be ferried down to Cobol,
before leaving."

The three pilots walked in at that point,
and took seats.

"Thank you, gentlemen," I said to
them. They nodded. "These three have been up all night moving food and
medical supplies down to the planet, while the rest of us got some
shuteye."

There was a round of applause, and the
three pilots looked pleased, but also embarrassed.

"What's the plan for Azgard?"
asked Annabelle.

"Well, that is the question, isn’t it?
We've had no updates, so I'm assuming nothing has happened there of note. Which
implies Midgard is massed on the other side waiting for us."

"That sounds bad," said BA.

"It's not good. Be nice to just bottle
them up here. But we can't not go in. The people of Azgard are depending on us.
It's just a matter of how, and when. You'll know when we figure it out."

"You'll work it out boss," said
BA. "You always do."

Alsop choked on his breakfast.

"So we can use the gun ranges on
Custer now?" asked Agatha.

"Sure," I said. She nodded, and
shared a glance with Aline and Alana. "Plenty of room on the Bridge for
everyone, if you want to be there when we arrive at the jump point." There
were nods around the room.

Vonda made eye contact with me, and I
nodded to her. I stood, took my half empty water bottle in hand, and left them
to complete their breakfast.

I plodded back to my suite. At the door, I
stopped.

There was a cat flap in the door.

I tried it, and the actual flap was light
enough for even Angel to push aside. I went in looking for her, and found her
on her kitty castle. I picked her up and took her to the flap. I set her down
next to it and explained what it was. She looked at me as if I was crazy. I
picked her up again, extended her paw and pushed the flap open a little, and
allowed it to swing back. She pulled her head back in surprise, and wiggled to
get down, so I placed her next to the flap.

She pushed a paw into the flap again and it
pushed out. She poked her head through the gap, and stepped through. On the
other side, she turned, and used her head to push her way back.

Meow! She looked happy.

It may seem a bit strange in this day and
age to rely on something so simple, instead of cat responsive automatic doors,
but I preferred the simplicity. There were so many things which could go wrong
with automatic doors, and especially for a kitten. Technology has its place,
but sometimes simple is best.

"Bridge Angel?"

She pushed her way through again, and trotted
towards the stairwell. I opened the door, went through, closed it, and followed.
I watched as she jumped up the stairs one at a time.

"Jeeves?" I called.

He appeared as rapidly as usual, down the
stairs.

"Can you rig a cat ramp for these
stairs please? So Angel can go up and down without needing to jump each
stair."

"Yes my Lord. There's a storage bay
with all the remains of the building supplies, and carpeting offcuts. It
shouldn’t be a problem for a builder droid. Leave it with me."

I followed Angel up, taking it one step at
a time myself. By the time I was up the top, I was ready for a sit down. I
limped onto the Bridge, and Angel raced past me, up her ramp, and onto the
console. She slid past her cat mat as she tended to do, scrabbled a bit, and
finally sat on it, looking out at the space in front of us.

"Angel," I said to her. She
turned to look at me. "I'm in there if you want me."

I pointed into my Ready Room, and limped
in, leaving the door open, and took my seat behind the desk. Angel poked her
nose through the door a moment later, and strolled in. She had a look around
and headed for the lounge chairs. Jeeves had put a cat ramp by one of them so
she strolled up and settled on the chair. Moments later, she was asleep.

I pulled my pad out and started looking at
emails.

General Harriman had sent a summary of the
supplies sent to Cobol. It was mostly made up of what had been left over from
the supplies added to the station for the troops, before the battle in Avon.
He'd requisitioned replacements already, on the basis that in future, the
station might be entertaining troops again.

Miriam had sent me an all quiet on the
Miami front message. Apparently Midgard had stopped sending fleets through.
That made me feel even more uneasy than nothing coming through from Azgard did.
She'd a full squadron now, and they were training for entering Midgard. I sent
her back a positive sounding nothing of an email, hoping she wouldn’t see my
worry through it.

The truth was, I was starting to feel
spooked. We'd a much larger fleet than I ever expected to have available for
this job, but I had the distinct feeling it wasn’t going to be enough.

If all we had to do was stake out this jump
point, we could hold indefinitely. But we couldn’t. We had to go in there, and
we could only jump blind.

Or did we have to? I pondered that for a
while, and was interrupted by Vonda joining me. I moved to the conference
table, and Vonda joined me there.

"Tell me what happened after I
left," I said to her. "The team all looked exhausted."

"They were. They found a whole
building full of captives, who all needed urgent medical help. The Dropships
ferried them up to Custer, and the worst went into the care units. The
doc-droids worked on the rest. The team coordinated the move of all the
civilians back to the city. The combat suits came in useful to move some of the
heavier gear. It took all night, and had only just been completed when you
arrived back. General Chandra had just come out of a care unit, and resumed
command, when you showed up."

She looked me in the eyes.

"Was it really necessary to pull that
stunt with the strange looking robot thing? Annabelle showed me what you
did."

I laughed.

"Actually yes. It was Jane's idea, and
I didn’t know what she was going to do, only she'd thought of something really
funny. I let her do it. We don’t get much opportunity for a good laugh these
days."

"Annabelle wasn’t laughing. Alsop just
about had a heart attack."

"True, but Eric certainly was. Knowing
his past interests, he'd have known exactly what Jane was pretending to be."

"And that was?"

"You live in the Sci-Fi sector and you
don’t know?"

"Living there doesn’t make you
obsessed with science fiction. Maybe our ancestors were, but whatever madness
they had, died with them."

"Have you looked at our fleet
lately?" I laughed.

"Good point. The madness still lives,
but not everyone shares it. So give, what was that robot thing?"

"A late twentieth century cyborg,
created for a square screen series. It was supposed to be the ultimate evil
adversary for the good guys to fight. Machine grafted to a person, with their
individuality suppressed by an all-consuming hive mind. The process of
converting a person was called assimilation. They were technologically far more
advanced, and took any new tech they found directly from the brains of those
they assimilated. Brilliant idea, but in six hundred years of remakes, they
never lived up to the threat they were supposed to be."

"And you know about this
because?"

"I share the madness?"

We both laughed.

"Why would Jane choose it?"

"From the moment we turned her on,
she's been rummaging through my collection of six hundred years of science
fiction. Every now and then, she throws something at me. It's usually funny.
And as I said, I can use the laughs. That’s the first time she's turned it on
other people though. I must tell her to be careful where she uses it. Like as
not, some areas of the Sci-Fi sector would take cyborgs as an insult, not a
joke."

"Confirmed," said Jane through
ship coms.

We both laughed.

"So," said Vonda, going serious
again. "How are we going to do this next action, without being
killed?"

I looked at her.