Make or Break the Hero (The Hunter Legacy Book 4) (24 page)

"Why are you here?" I asked her
bluntly.

"Australian sector media companies
expressed their displeasure at being left out of the loop with war news. The
government ordered General Harriman to embed some journalists with the fleet.
He responded that the Australian sector had no fleet to embed anyone with. He
was told that Australian ships were in the fleet, and to do it anyway. He told
them to get permission from Sci-Fi sector. They approved one, and apparently I
was the top of their list of trustworthy Australian journalists. So here I
am."

She smiled like a Cheshire cat. I had this
intense desire to wipe the smile off her face. But that wasn’t really fair.
Alsop looked like he'd swallowed a frog.

"I must have missed the memo."

"The General was supposed to notify
you."

"He may have. But I've been a little
busy lately to keep up with emails. There will be some rules."

"Rules?"

"My ship, my rules. You're not on an
Australian ship. You're on my private ship, currently attached to a
multi-sector fleet. You remain here on my sufferance."

"Oh."

"You may sit on the Bridge, but you
sit at the rear. And not in one of the VIP seats. You remain quiet at all
times. Bridge time is not reportable, and you will not record anything here.
You may request access to battle feeds, but the final decision is mine. You may
interview those willing to be interviewed. I don't give interviews. Ever. You
will not harass anyone for an interview. You may ask, but if they say no,
that’s the end of it. To interview anyone on a British ship, you must first go
through Admiral Bentley's aide. To interview anyone on a Sci-Fi ship, you must
go through Commander Alsop. When we meet up with the American fleet, to
interview anyone on one of their ships, you go through Admiral Jedburgh's aide.
General Wellington is the highest authority here, and anything she decides to
restrict, shall be restricted. When we join up with the Americans, this passes
to Admiral Jedburgh. Any questions?"

She looked about to argue, but stopped
herself. Her gaze went around the Bridge. She saw the same expression on
Vonda's face as was on mine, and resignation on Alsop's. The general mood was
tolerance, since the team knew her, and I really didn’t, and seemed to convince
her arguing would achieve nothing.

"Fine," she said at last.

"Someone show her an unused suite, and
get a butler to put her name on the door. We're about eight hours to the Miami
jump point, so anyone who wants to catch up with sleep, has plenty of time for
it."

There was a general movement towards the
door.

I pulled out my pad. Sure enough, there was
a very apologetic email from Walter. He'd at least had the satisfaction of
shipping her here in a ship with no accommodation whatsoever, other than a
small fresher. I smiled at that.

"Jane, is that freighter needed back
anywhere?"

"No. It might be useful at Cobol, but
there's plenty of support in place there now. If you bothered to check the
sector scanner map, you would see a lot of support moving to Azgard as well.
Why?"

"No reason. But it could be useful to
have a freighter here on the ship."

"Confirmed."

I moved myself into my Ready Room, and
continued on with emails for a while. Angel joined me, and went to sleep on my
lap.

I thought about what needed doing. What had
been put off for a long while?

Ranks.

True, I had been putting that off. I gave
them some serious thought, did some research, and started making notes for my
own command structure. I needed three branches. There needed to be infantry
ranks for Marines, like my team. Those who operated ships needed to be noticeably
different, so anyone could see at a glance they were fleet, not infantry. And
those who flew fighters needed to be different again.

I pondered different coloured epaulettes.
What about green for infantry, grey for fleet, and blue for fighters? But would
they look strange on top of a dull red uniform with white stripes down the
arms? And what should I use? Bright red? I shifted my suit into 'slinky red'
and made up a bright red plain epaulette. I needed a mirror. A screen popped up
with mirror properties, so I went over and checked out the look. It wasn't too
bad. I changed the colour for each, tweaking until I found one that seemed to
work.

I went back to my chair. Starting with
ranks, I began at the bottom.

Private for Infantry, Apprentice Spacer for
Fleet.

Lance Corporal and Ordinary Spacer.

Corporal and Spacer.

Sergeant and Able Spacer.

Senior Sergeant and Petty Officer.

Master Sergeant and Chief Petty Officer.

Sergeant Major and Senior Chief Petty
Officer.

Command Sergeant Major and Master Chief
Petty Officer.

Now for the officers.

Sub-Lieutenant, Ensign and Pilot Officer.
The latter being for fighter pilots. It was traditional that pilots were always
an officer, so there was no lower rank.

Second Lieutenant, Lieutenant Junior Grade,
and Flight Officer. Junior Grade was usually referred to as JG.

Lieutenant, Lieutenant, and Flight
Lieutenant. Lieutenants were universal, and only the pilot really needed to be
distinguished from the others, as Flight Lieutenant was a traditional rank for
air and space fighter pilots. The infantry Lieutenant would command a platoon
of troops, the fleet Lieutenant would be an officer with some sort of specific responsibility
to the ship, and a Flight Lieutenant traditionally commanded another three
fighters in a Flight.

Major, Lieutenant Commander, and Squadron
Leader. Here I was deviating a bit. The next rank for infantry was normally
Captain, but in my opinion, and Australian sector practice, a captain was a
title, not a rank. The next rank above Captain was Major, so I used it instead.
In some of the science fiction I’d read and viewed, a Captain in infantry, on
board ship, was given brevet rank of Major, so as not to confuse ranks with the
Captain of the ship, who was significantly more senior, and of which there was
only one. Brevet rank was temporary rank, often used to give one officer
authority over others of the same rank. I thought it better to use Major
instead of mucking around. A Major would command a number of platoons, a
Lieutenant Commander would captain a Corvette, and a Squadron Leader
traditionally commanded a squadron of twelve fighters, in three Flights.

Lieutenant Colonel, Commander, and Wing
Commander. The Lieutenant Colonel commanded multiple Majors, or roughly a
company of troops. The Commander captained a Frigate or Destroyer. The Wing
Commander usually commanded two squadrons, sometimes three.

Colonel, Fleet Captain, and Group Captain.
I was in two minds about using the word Captain at all, but Group Captain was a
traditional British rank, and Fleet Captain made sense to me alongside it. The
Colonel commanded Regimental strengths of troops. The Fleet Captain would
captain a Cruiser or larger ship. The Group Captain commanded multiple Wings.

Commodore was a brevet rank to allow a
Fleet Captain to command other Fleet Captains. Especially where the fleet was
composed of Cruisers and smaller ships.

Brigadier General, Fleet Admiral, and Space
Commodore. Fleet Admiral was a departure from the normal. In most command structures
across history, a Fleet Admiral was a five star, not a one star. But I looked
at it this way. A one star Admiral had command of a fleet, in the same way that
a Brigadier General commanded a brigade of troops in the field. Admirals with a
higher rank usually commanded bases, and were only in the firing line if their
base was attacked. I also disliked having lower and upper half, Rear Admiral
ranks. Fleet Admiral suited the role better. Air Commodore was again a
traditional British rank, updated to space. The Fleet Admiral would command a
fleet where the largest ship was bigger than a Cruiser. The Space Commodore
would command an Escort Carrier.

Lieutenant General, Rear Admiral, and Rear
Marshall. Again I was deviating from the normal. Lieutenant General was
normally a three star, but it had never made sense to me that a Lieutenant rank
should be greater than a Major rank. So I was reversing them. Rear Marshall was
completely new. I was looking at it as a base command, where the base was
fighter in nature, and not fleet. Or the command was a Fleet Carrier, such as
Yorktown was.

Major General, Vice Admiral, and Vice
Marshall. These would only be used if multiple two stars required supervision.

General, Admiral, and Marshall. These would
only be used if multiple three stars needed supervision.

Boss. Me. Technically, I'd earned Vice
Admiral so far. I’d only elevate myself further if it was really necessary. I
could I supposed give myself a Field Marshal rank, but to do so arbitrarily,
seemed perverse and vain.

I changed my 'slinky red' uniform to show
three stars, on the bright red epaulette. People could call me whatever they
liked. Admiral, General, or Boss, they all worked for me. I also removed all
the other insignia I'd had on there. The ace badges were no longer relevant,
given my current kill score was seven hundred and twenty seven, and an ace was
five. And Admiral trumped Big Ship Captain, which was a civilian skill rating.
This just left three gold stars.

I had one Brigadier General at the moment,
so top brass wasn’t really much of an issue yet. But I wanted to get a whole
structure done now, in case the cosmos threw something really strange at me,
which required the whole rank structure in a hurry. Divine forbid, but better
safe than sorry. And considering the last two months, more strange was
inevitable.

This started me thinking about the team,
and who had what rank. I know they didn’t pay much attention to rank, but
getting his recent promotion, sure had made George's day. He was a Lieutenant
Commander, and was flying both a Heavy Privateer and a Corvette.

Amanda, Aleesha and Alison were
Lieutenants.

BA was now a Command Sergeant Major, which
was about as high as she could go without being made an officer, which in her
mind would probably diminish her status. And she was already higher than she
expected to go.

Abagail was a Sergeant.

Aline, Alana and Agatha were what some
Force's called a Specialist, being something between Corporal and Sergeant, but
with a particular specialty. Aline and Agatha were gunners. Alana was the
demolitions expert.

Annette was a Lieutenant Commander, flying
a Corvette, with her own Privateer.

O'Neil had been a full Post Captain, before
he turned mercenary. In some fleets, the Post Captain was a half-step above a
normal Captain, and commanded a group of ships, or what some call a flotilla,
being less than a fleet size, and usually all the same class of ship. Greer's
new Gunbus squadron was technically a large flotilla, since they were
Corvettes, not fighters. Personally I considered the Post Captain to be a Commodore,
but not all fleets used that name. He'd retained just his rank of Captain. I needed
to think about the role I needed him to play in the future, and what rank that
suggested. At the very least, I needed to change him to Fleet Captain. He also
had crew I knew nothing about.

Which brought me back to thinking about
insignia, since I wasn’t going with the fleet stripes that most of the space
forces used, since usually only infantry used badges on epaulettes. I had many
different services and fleets to choose from. But I set that aside for now, I
still had people to consider.

Lacey had been a Squadron Leader for many
years. In this, I could understand why he'd become disillusioned with the
British Fleet, as his record was almost spotless, and he should've been much
higher ranked than he'd ever achieved. I wondered why he'd never been promoted,
since there was nothing in his record to indicate why not. Or had it been he'd
always been in the shadow of Marshall Bigglesworth on his rise, and had been
overlooked as only a good second in command? He'd certainly demonstrated much
more than Squadron Leader skills in Midnight.

I suddenly realized I didn’t know the names
of his pilots, or anything about them. I'd only really known them for a few
days now, and had been somewhat preoccupied during this time. They were loyal,
disciplined, and had volunteered for the cake run to Cobol without any
hesitation. But who were they? I looked them up.

Alexander Brown was a Flight Lieutenant.
Like Lacey, his record wasn’t in sync with his rank. He was also a lot older
than most fighter pilots, being forty eight. Tom Jones was a Flight Officer, as
was Warren Taylor, and Gavin Williams. The three youngsters, being early twenties,
had records more in keeping with their ranks. But all the same, they also had
the look of being held back, promotion wise.

I made up a table of ranks and threw it on
the wall, before pinging Annabelle to join me in my Ready Room when she was
free.

I was tickling a belly up Angel, when she
came in. I waved her to the chair next to me.

"How was Azgard?" I asked her.

"Rough. We had to wade through several
thousand Midgard soldiers."

"Tell me about it."

It occurred to me I hadn't been paying
attention to what had happened on Azgard, and a good commander ought to. I also
needed to know what my team was doing when I wasn’t with them.

"Slice technically had the command,
but it was Lacey who came up with the attack plan, and carried it out. Slice
seemed to be fine with it. Someone said he retired from combat service a long
time ago?"

"Yes. We had to get him reinstated. He
volunteered to help at Avon, but I don’t think he considered being reactivated
formally. As I understand it, his home planet was on the advance after Avon, so
it was in his interests to prevent Midgard from taking his system. He did a
good job with the fighter force there."

"I had the impression he was a lot
more tired than he was letting on. He's not a young man anymore Jon. You could
have been asking too much of him."

"It's possible. But then, the war has
been asking too much of all of us. Given a choice…"

"You’d still be in hospital," she
interrupted me.

I chuckled.

"There is that, yes. I'll keep what
you said in mind. All I really need from him now, is deploying the comnavsats.
But he can't avoid the next big Furball, although I'll try to keep the smaller
ships out of it if I can. So what did Lacey do?"

"The fighters went in fast and low,
taking out all the Cruisers in one pass. They went up to ten thousand meters,
and pumped out missiles until there was nothing functional on the ground which
could threaten them. They flew down to just about ground level, and hovered in
specific places using their turrets against ground targets."

"Sounds like it was an effective plan,
well carried out."

"The Dropship pilots put us on the
ground close together, so we could form one large formation. I was really glad
we did this, when most of the buildings turned out to be full of troops. At a
guess, they had all the troops for the eight fleets we fought jumping in, and
the fleet on the ground, all in that one compound."

"Why would they have done that?"

"I've no idea, but it was almost too
much for us to handle. You know Jon, when you gave us those suit boosters, I
couldn’t think of a situation where we'd actually need them. Only
someone…"

"Like me," I interrupted.

She chuckled.

"Sure. Only someone like you, could
possibly attract enough fire to justify them. Well, I was wrong."

"Wrong?"

"It was death by a thousand cuts down
there. We were so outnumbered and every one of us was being hit by lasers so
regularly, a normal suit would have shredded within the first half hour. Even
with the boosters, I was getting worried my suit wouldn’t last. It did, but
without the ship's giving us supporting fire, I personally wouldn’t have made
it out of that firefight. So thank you for being more worried about my safety
than I was."

"You're welcome."

"The combat suits fared better, but
they were taking most of the heat. The droids were also getting more attention
than we were. Between them, the technology was like a red rag to a bull for
them. But I tell you Jon, most of the combat suits are in a terrible state. We
can't use them again without some serious maintenance first. My suit has
regenerated, but the combat suits don’t. The wear and tear is cumulative. Ours
are getting on now. They really should be replaced. In fact, we should've
replaced them while we were at Avon, but events overtook me, and I didn’t think
to mention it to you."