Make or Break the Hero (The Hunter Legacy Book 4) (22 page)

By four in the afternoon, we were on our
way to the planet Azgard. The eight Pocket Battleships were with BigMother. The
two Battleships, and the rest of the fleet, were matching our position, on the
line to the Midgard jump point. We'd decided to press ahead, leaving the
cleanup of the jump point only partly done. The down jump line was clear, but
the debris field on both sides was still huge. We were taking the chance there
was nothing else in the system, which could get behind us. The scanners could
see a reasonable way away, but by no means the whole system. Slice had deployed
another comnavsat, so Jane would know immediately if anything intended to jump
out. If need be, we could send a fleet back, and chase whoever it was down. I
didn’t think this was going to happen, as it simply wasn’t the Midgard style.

The planet was not far off the direct route
to the jump point, so the two fleets could move relatively quickly to support
the other, if necessary.

By five thirty, we knew there were no enemy
ships in orbit over Azgard. The Pocket Battleships peeled off, and moved to
join the rest of the fleet at the Midgard jump point. BigMother continued on
alone.

With nothing to do now until we arrived at
the planet, we all gathered in the Deck Two Rec Room. Everyone seemed in high
spirits.

Alsop was looking better. No-one blamed him
for his embarrassing display on the Bridge. He simply wasn’t a combat officer,
and had never expected an aide of a three star General, to be in actual combat.
The wonder was, he hadn't cracked up completely.

He stepped up onto a chair, and said
loudly, "Attention to orders."

He jumped back down and assumed attention
next to Vonda. The room braced with him.

I groaned to myself.

"Rear Admiral Hunter, front and center
please," Alsop went on.

I moved to stand in front of Vonda and
braced.

"For outstanding leadership in the
recent battle," said Vonda, "For tactical brilliance considered above
the normal for a Rear Admiral, and because we bloody well want to do it to
you…" There were grins and short chuckles all around the room. "…you
are hereby promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral. Congratulations."

She held her hand out, and we shook.

As people started to move towards me, Alsop
bellowed, "Remain at attention please." The room braced again.

Predictably, a screen popped up on the wall
behind Vonda.

Admiral Jedburgh appeared.

"Rear Admiral Hunter. On the advice of
General Wellington, and with the knowledge that you've already been promoted by
the SFSF, you are hereby promoted to Vice Admiral. Congratulations. As the ASF
doesn't currently have a billet for a Vice Admiral, you are being placed on the
Inactive List, effective immediately. As this won't affect your current role in
the war campaign, we see no problem doing this."

"We're in the process of removing our
debris wall from the Midgard jump point. We expect to be able to jump into
Midgard to support you, around seven in the morning. Please let us know your
timetable, as soon as your plans are complete. Jedburgh out."

The Admiral vanished and was immediately
replaced by General Harriman.

"Rear Admiral Hunter. You are hereby
promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral, and remain on the Inactive List. Congratulations.
We'll talk about Hunter Security's ongoing role in sector security, when you
return. Harriman out."

The screen vanished.

Alsop pulsed me new insignia, and I made
the changes to my uniforms while being hugged and hand shaken.

I felt like things had moved from the
sublime to the ridiculous. And I was so tired by this time, I didn’t really
care.

Vonda, Annabelle, and Alsop followed me to
my Ready Room.

We spent half an hour going over the plan
for our arrival on Azgard. They left to join everyone in the Dining Room for
dinner.

I stayed long enough to do a vid of my new
epaulettes, and send a brief message to Miriam, so she'd find out from me this
time. I followed the others down to the Dining Room.

After dinner, preparations began. I moved
back to my chair on the Bridge. Angel crawled up my leg, and went to sleep on
my lap.

As soon as we arrived at Azgard, Slice
deployed a comnavsat. We used it to scan the surface of the planet, finding a
similar compound down there, as had been on Cobol. An entire fleet of six
Cruisers and fifteen squadrons of fighters was landed there.

The Orbital station was gone. There wasn’t
even any debris in orbit. Jane found an impact crater on the southern
continent, about the size a station would make falling out of orbit.

The team and all the troops, moved to
Custer. Vonda and Alsop went with them. Lacey again took Custer's pilot's
chair.

Slice remained in his Apricot One, and
undocked from Custer.

George moved to Gunbus, Annette to
Unthinkable, and Eric to Camel. The senior 266 pilot went to the other Camel.
The other three pilots took their places in the cockpits of the Dropships.

They all undocked. The Corvettes went in
first, to deal with the fleet.

I fell asleep in my chair.

"Wake up Jon," said Alison.

I jerked in my seat, wondering why my
vision was full of purple smoke. There wasn’t any of course, I’d been dreaming
again.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Ten forty five," she said.

I'd been asleep for three and a quarter
hours. It hadn't been enough. All the same, it was too long sleeping in a
chair. I slurped from the water bottle I found in the chair's holder. I
splashed a little on my face as well, to help me wake up. Jeeves handed me a
towel before I could use my sleeve.

"Why are you here?" I eventually
said to Alison.

"It was a choice of be useless on
Custer, or be useless here. I'm still not well enough to rejoin the team in a
ball match, let alone combat. I chose to stay with you."

"Custer was the safer choice."

"Maybe, but if its check out time, I'm
happy going with you."

She pecked me on the cheek, before sitting
in the helm position.

"Angel," she called.

There was a flash of white, and Angel was
back in her place on the console. Instead of sliding past as she usually did,
this time she leapt from the top of the ramp onto her pad. She sat there
looking proud of herself.

"Sitrep Jane."

"We're approaching the Midgard jump
point. The Midgard fleet on Azgard was destroyed without too much difficulty,
but fighting is still happening on the ground. It turned out they had a major
ground force in place. The last report was our forces were making progress,
even though vastly outnumbered. The Midgard soldiers have no counter to the
combat suits, so we've a technological edge on them. Just not enough combat
suits to get the job done rapidly. For now, we need to ensure the Midgard
troops aren't reinforced."

"What's our status here?"

"Nothing has come through the jump
point since the fleet came into scanner range. There was no picket force, so we
have to assume they're waiting for us on the other side again."

Channels opened from Repulse and John
Wayne. O'Neil and Bentley appeared on com screens side by side.

"Welcome to the jump point, Vice
Admiral," said Susan Bentley.

I now outranked her properly, not just
through an appointment.

"Are we ready to go in?"

"Yes sir," they both replied.

"Let's form up the same way we did
last time. If they've the same formation waiting for us, we can follow the
comnavsat straight in."

"Is that wise sir?" asked O'Neil.

"Won't know until we send the
comnavsat in."

They both nodded.

It took us half an hour to reposition the
ships into the same configuration as our jump into Azgard.

When we were ready, I nodded to Jane. A
salvage droid popped out of the forward airlock, headed into the jump point,
and jumped.

The scan map already up on the main screen
increased in size to include the new data. For thirty seconds we had telemetry,
and abruptly it vanished. The yellow dot which hit it, had come from a cloud of
red dots. There had been just the one, so it was most likely an IR.

The last frame was now on the screen, and I
pulled it into three dimensions.

"Damn," I said.

"What's wrong?" asked Alison.

"The commanders keep getting smarter.
This one has the same formations as last time, but instead of being opposite
each other, they're ninety degrees around. Same forty eight Cruiser
configuration, but much better positioned. No chance of them hitting their own
ships with missiles which miss. They also look one second further out."

I opened channels and started giving
orders. This was going to be harder, but it was still doable.

A half hour later, we were ready to go. We
looked even stranger now. Half the Guardians were standing on their rear ends
this time, so half faced left, and the other half upwards.

I waited another seven minutes for
randomness.

We jumped.

Once again, one second after jumping, every
capital ship missile launcher we had, belched a missile. At the same time, the
Hive fighters crammed into each of twelve launch tubes down the left side of
BigMother, spat four torpedoes each, as fast as they could fire. On the right
side, the Hive fighters had been repositioned to cling to the side hull, facing
upwards, and they too fired four torpedoes each. Again, every capital ship
turret that could, fired on a target not receiving missiles or torpedoes.

For four long seconds, nothing happened.

Once again, almost together, forty two
Missile Cruisers exploded.

"Yes!" I exclaimed. I’d been more
worried about the calculations for this one.

Six seconds.

Six missile barrages appeared from the last
six ships, and twenty Mosquito launchers belched a response.

Eight seconds.

Mosquitos met capital ship missiles and
annihilated each other.

Nine seconds.

Our second salvo of missiles spat towards
the remaining Cruisers.

Thirteen seconds.

The last six Missile Cruisers exploded. The
Mosquito launchers fired again.

Every Point Defense turret we had which
could come to bear on the Talon cloud in front of us, aimed at the anti-fighter
missiles now coming at us. Every anti-fighter missile launcher we had, started
spewing out FF missiles as fast as they could.

Twenty seconds.

The Mosquito launchers fired a third time.

Thirty seconds.

The first wall of missiles from the Talons
exploded against our Point Defense. Our shield started taking hits.

Thirty three seconds.

FF missiles started hitting Talons, and the
red dots began to wink out. The Mosquito launchers fired again.

Forty seconds.

The second wall of missiles coming at us
started exploding.

Fifty seconds.

There was no third coordinated missile
launch.

"Bring our smaller ships."

Jane sent the signal. The remainder of our
ships started jumping in behind us. The combined capital ship continued forward
into the rapidly thinning cloud of fighters.

One minute thirty.

Grey dots had overtaken red dots as the primary
colour on the nav map.

One minute fifty.

The last red dot winked out.

"Separate."

Each ship attached to BigMother
disconnected, and moved away to a safe distance.

"Picket at five, Commodore."

"Yes sir."

The PB's moved off.

"That went well," said Alison.

I grinned at her, but didn’t answer.

"Deploy the salvage droids, clear the
down jump area, and collect salvageable hulls. Then full clearance."

"Confirmed."

"Midnight snack?" I asked Alison.

"Contact," said Jane.
"That's strange, it's very close to us."

"How close?" I asked.

"Now it's gone."

"Where was it?"

She highlighted a position.

It was very close. Almost like…

It had always bugged me how the Americans
had been ambushed here. We should've had ample warning of any fleet
approaching, and yet they'd simply appeared on the nav map seconds before
firing. Only the distance had allowed them to prepare enough of a limited
response to survive the first attack. But at the time, I'd been preoccupied
with the station, and had forgotten about it. Later, it had bugged me, but we
were well on the way to Cobol by then, and I'd had sleep on my mind instead.

"Jane, what's wrong with this
picture?"

"Nav range appears to be less than ten
percent of what it should be."

"Why?"

"Unknown."

"Is it system wide?"

"Unknown, but entirely possible. Although
if it is, it can't be the same all through the system. We had a lot more range
over by the other jump point. Although, it wasn’t as good as it should've been
there either. However, this would explain why we never detected their
shipyard."

"Could we be in some sort of nebulae
we don’t have the tech to detect? The effect on the scanner varying according
to how dense it is in any location?"

"It's as good a theory as any."

"How come we didn’t notice this
before? We spent a lot of time here after all."

"This time was a dead giveaway
something was wrong. Before, we didn’t have any reason to suspect there was a
problem."

"Follow that ship, let's see where it
came from, or where it's going."

"Confirmed."

I opened a channel to Repulse.

"Admiral Bentley, we're following a
contact we detected a minute ago. Deploy the fleet to prevent any access to
this jump point from any direction."

"Yes sir."

She started giving orders, and I closed the
channel.

We were moving off at an angle from the
direction to the planet Midgard.

"Launch the Hives," I said on a
hunch. "Let's have them flying escort all around us."

"Confirmed."

"What's going on Jon?" asked
Alison.

"With luck, we're about to discover
the elusive shipyard."

I grinned at her.

"What if it's really well guarded, or they're
in the process of launching a new fleet?"

"Then I guess we hear the fat lady
singing." I kept grinned at her. She looked at me steadily. "We run
back to our fleet. We're faster than they are."

"Contact," said Jane.

"Slow us down to matching speed. Try
not to spook them."

Alison laughed this time.

"Try not to spook mode engaged,"
said Jane deadpan.

Alison nearly fell out of her chair.
Abruptly, she stopped laughing, and put hands over her wound.

"Ouch," she said. "Shouldn’t
have done that. Jeeves!"

Jeeves was in within seconds, and gave her
a pain shot. He disappeared just as quickly.

"Stop making me laugh Jon. I still
hurt."

"I do too, but it’s just a dull ache
now."

"Swap you."

"No thanks."

She pouted, and I had to laugh this time.

I opened a vid.

"Admirals. We're in the Midgard
system, and have control of the Azgard jump point. I would advise against
jumping in from Miami, without first determining the force you'll face. There
was another forty eight Cruiser fleet here, in a different formation to last
time. The outcome was much the same, but had we assumed the formation was the
same and simply jumped in, half our assault would have missed, and we would
have been hard pressed to avoid serious casualties. They again responded six
seconds after we jumped, so unless you can hit them with a killing blow before
they can fire barrages, you'll be in serious trouble."

"I recommend you hold off any plans to
enter Midgard, until I can arrive at the jump point in force. If I create a
distraction, it gives you the chance to jump in without being an immediate
target, and be able to play to the strengths of the Gunbus and Excalibur. See
if you can attach all the ships you want to jump in together, so they jump as a
single ship. Just be mindful they have to separate in a hurry, and all need a
clear vector, that takes them to a target."

"On another matter, there's something
seriously wrong with this system. It bothered me at the time when both jump
points were attacked with so little warning. I'm afraid to say, I was
distracted away from thinking about it. We just discovered a contact very close
to us, which simply appeared and disappeared on our scanner. The only theory we
have at this point, is the system is within some sort of nebulae, which our
current tech cannot detect, which renders our scanners to short range only, and
variable according to the density of the nebulae. Not having any traffic
through the system before, failed to highlight there was any problem, so we
didn’t notice it. And given this is a back route, there probably never has been
enough traffic here for anyone to notice a scanner problem. We're tailing the
contact, and will report back when we find where it's going, which isn’t the
planet. Hunter out."

I sent this vid only to the two American
Admirals.

"Hives deployed," said Jane.

"Midnight snack?" I suggested to
Alison again.