Hunter Legacy 11: Home Is Where the Hero Is (20 page)

Another day, another ship launch.

When I came onto the Bridge just before
eight, George was already there, pumped and pacing. I had to laugh at the look
he gave me. It could best be described as hungry.

His new command slid out of the bay right
on schedule, and Jane moved the ship near to Gunbus.

"Holy hell," exclaimed George,
while madly grinning.

It was indeed a weird looking ship. Bob had
taken the same long thin rectangle hull he'd used for Defiant, and once again
he'd cut two Cruiser hulls down the long axis. But this time, he'd only used
three of the halves. The top section was the top half of the most modern of the
captured Cruiser hulls. To the right and left sides of the rectangle, he'd used
the lower halves of the two Cruisers, giving the ship less guns than it could
have had, but two large hanger decks. The lower side of the rectangle was completely
flat.

When George's eyes had stopped bugging out,
Jane took us to one side of the new ship, flipped over sideways, and docked us
'up' into one of the hangers. We looked out over the enormous cavern, and saw
five more docking positions for Corvette size ships, and twelve more fighter
sized docks. All of them were setup for Dropships.

George took in his fill, and he led me
towards where the access shaft should be. We found one, but next to it was also
a travel car. Beyond it were a dozen more. The door opened at our approach. We
stepped into a space large enough for a combat team, or a half team in combat
suits.

"Where to?" said Jane, through
coms.

I nodded to George, giving him the option.

"Bridge," he said.

The car took off so fast we could feel the
acceleration, even through the gravity compensation. After a few seconds, there
was a definite gravity shift, which I assumed was us changing from moving
across the ship to moving up. The car stopped, and we stepped out.

The Bridge was similar to Annette's CCC,
which in itself was similar to BigMother's Bridge. The difference here though,
was the rear had seats for ten people, spaced to allow them to be occupied by
people in full combat gear. There was an XO console and coms console in the
standard position in front of the captain's chair, but behind it, and on each
side of it lined up with the front consoles, was a third and fourth console.
This put the captain's chair in the middle of the four consoles.

George sat in the Captain's seat without me
needing to invite him to. He immediately pulled up the ship's specs.

Now the true nature of the ship became
apparent.

The flat underside had massive retractable
landing struts. At intervals along it were retractable ramps big enough for the
giant suits. The entire underside had been designed to put boots in the dirt as
fast as possible. George pulled up the stats on accommodation and whistled. The
ship could transport a full battalion, with all their equipment. In terms of
our existing teams, two teams of fifty would make up a company, and the ship
could carry ten companies.

I laughed to myself. Bob had done a
wonderful job of interpreting my instructions, but I'd never considered what
the ship would need in terms of this many troops.

George would captain the ship, and command
the Dropship pilots. Each team would be led by a Major, each company by a
Lieutenant Colonel, and the whole battalion by a full bird Colonel. The Bridge
layout made sense now, as each company commander had a seat on the Bridge, the
third console was for the Battalion Colonel, and the fourth for a commanding
General. At the moment I only had five teams. But the basic structure was
there.

George kept pulling up sections of the
specs. The ship carried multiple sets of training ranges. It also carried its
own fabricators for the repair of the ship, its Dropships, and combat suits, as
well as missile fabrication to replace both Mosquitos and capital ship
missiles.

I was about to give George his orders, when
ten more ships launched from the shipyard. The HUD alerted us immediately to
them heading for us.

"Are those Pythons?" asked
George.

"Nope," I said. I pointed to the
twenty smaller ships now pouring out behind them. "Those are
Pythons."

His jaw dropped open, and stayed there.

Jane stopped the first ship in front of us,
and proceeded to dance it around so we could see it from every angle. It looked
exactly like a Python, only it was Corvette sized, and appropriately armed. The
others proceed to dock in both hanger decks. The Pythons behind them did as
well, now looking decidedly small.

"Hello Baby," said George when he
regained control of his jaw. "What are you?"

"Cobra class Dropship," said
Jane. "Essentially a Python up-scaled to handle a full company of troops,
equipped with giant suits. Sort of like converting Gunbus into a Dropship. No
accommodation at all, just pure ground attack with the defenses and armament of
a Corvette."

"Come to Papa," said George.

The last Cobra reoriented itself, and
docked. George took another look at the hanger design. He pointed to several
unused docks.

"Yes," I said. "You get room
to dock Gorilla as well. Possibly several other fighters if needed, and at
least one Gig for the battalion Colonel or even a General. But that isn’t all.
Look at the overall hull design."

It took him about five minutes to see it.
His eyes opened wide once again.

"It looks like I can dock at least
four Frigates, or up to eight Corvettes."

I nodded to him, and he wolf whistled.

"Most likely two Frigates and four
Corvettes. Frigates is the one design we didn’t capture much of. There will be
two worth converting like Custer was, so you'll most likely be assigned them as
well. Not sure where the Corvettes will come from. There's plans for some
Super-Corvettes, but I'm not sure they'll be able to dock with this ship. We'll
try when the first one comes out."

Greer's squadron came to mind. As an escort
force, half could be docked while the other half flew CAP. I moved to stand in
front of him.

"Commander." He jumped up and
braced to attention. "I assign you to command the Hunter Security Marine
Cruiser Fearless."

"Thank you sir," he responded,
followed by a salute.

He ruined it by grinning at the same time.
I returned his salute solemnly.

"At ease Captain."

He sank back into his chair, and I took the
Helm position in front of him, and swiveled around to face him.

"Your mission, should you choose to
accept it," I started.

"Are you kidding? Of course I accept
it. Be serious Jon. Ah, sir."

We both laughed. We knew each other too
well.

"George, you captain this ship, and
command the Dropship pilots. But you will be outranked by the Colonel
commanding the troops, and any General commanding the mission itself. They can
give you orders regarding the mission, but you have ultimate responsibility for
the safety and operation of the ship, and its Dropships. Captains or pilots of
any ship from Destroyer size down assigned to your mission, will report to you.
You report to either a Fleet Captain, if another Cruiser is with you, or an
Admiral if a larger ship is with you. Down the track, you might find yourself
reporting to either or both, but in the short term, I have a shortage of both,
so if Commanders are the only senior rank on the mission, whoever has the
seniority will command the mission. If that’s you and Annette, you have the
seniority since you were promoted first, but she has the superior fighting
ship. If she's supporting you, you command. If she's protecting you when you're
not on a mission, you should defer to her. Don’t let it be a problem I have to
solve."

He nodded emphatically.

"This ship isn’t designed for slug
matches. It's essentially a huge Dropship. So you'll usually be escorted by
something with a lot more firepower, possibly even a fleet. You may or may not
be assigned command over lesser ships in the fleet. You don’t have the rank or
experience for it at the moment, so you need some training on big ship handling,
and command."

"Very true," he admitted.

"So, your first task is to trial the
ship. Once you are completely satisfied everything works as it should in space,
test everything including the landing systems, drop capability, and dirt
storming. You will land this ship on Outback, deploy the combat droids Gunbus
brought down all the ramps on the lower deck at once, leave them there, return
the ship to orbit, and pick them up again in a Cobra. You are then to drop in
each Cobra and Python, deploying combat droids onto the dirt, recover them,
re-dock, and in the process fully configure and test each ship."

He began to look a little sandbagged.

"It should take you about two to three
days. From here, go straight to Midnight. Admiral O'Neil will be expecting you,
and he'll put you through a very rushed big ship captain course. I expect you
back at Hunter's Haven for final fit-out and supply in about a week. By the
time you're back, BA should be ready to use you for training purposes. I'm
thinking of giving you 266 for a while, to simulate working with small capital
ships. It won't hurt them to work for a Cruiser driver for a while, and they
can practice ground support roles while the troops are out. Any
questions?"

"Avatar?"

"There's a security droid with the
combat droids. Make your own. At the moment, the ship is being run by Jane, but
if you want your own clone, by all means have Jane do it, and set your avatar
up as you want."

He grinned suddenly.

"No, you can't use a gorilla. Best
choose a person shape which no higher rank is ever going to object to."

"That takes all the fun out of
it."

Barely five minutes after leaving Fearless,
"Yee-Hah!" came through the coms. The HUD showed a Cruiser flying
like a drunk had control. I chuckled to myself. I'd done the same with every
one of my ships. I didn’t begrudge George enjoying putting Fearless through its
considerable paces.

On the way back to Hunter's Haven, I sent a
message off to Susan Bentley. As the most experienced Capital ship driver I
knew, I asked her if she had simulator material she could send to both Annette
and George, which they could use to train themselves in handling their ships,
commanding small fleets, and being part of a larger fleet. The package which
came back from her took all of an hour to download, and was copied to both of
my new Cruiser drivers. I had Jane store it for later use in a proper training
environment. I could see more use for this sort of training down the track.
Lacey would one day get a Carrier, regardless of if he liked it or not, and
he'd be needing this training as well.

I'd have to suggest my Dad took a look at
it too. Galactica might well end up being a fleet flagship. Given that very
real possibility, I still needed to consider what rank to offer him.
Technically, he should be a Fleet Captain, and carry the full bird on his
shoulders like Slice now did. But his ship was one of the three biggest I had.

It's not easy weighing up your own father.
I still didn’t know exactly what he thought of me outranking him, even though
he seemed accepting of it now. But son surpassing father always seems to be
drama creating in novels and hollo's. I honestly didn’t know how he would take
being given actual orders by me. It might be better to keep him in a ship
handler rank, and put an Admiral over him, so I gave orders to the Admiral, and
the Admiral gave him orders instead of me. But I only had one Admiral, and they
hadn't met yet. Although O'Neal was older than my Dad, so it might work out.
The nagging issue though, was my Dad had been independent for his entire time
as Captain. I wasn’t even sure he could handle not being the one in charge. I
guess I needed to talk to him about this, find out what he thought of things,
now he'd had a chance to see the real galaxy for the first time, and those who
were career military in it.

I spent the time pondering what I had, and
how to get the most out of it all. I didn’t like the idea, but I came to the
conclusion almost immediately that Hunter's Redoubt would have to go to war
again. We were going to need a station for supplies and repairs, and it would
have to be fully mobile and properly shielded. Redoubt was almost mobile enough,
and effectively added a Battleship to the fleet. I sent Bob a request to
consider how to structurally reinforce the join between the two originally
separate stations. That was the easy bit. I also requested he replace the tugs
which allowed it to move, with proper engines. If this meant bolting the arse
end of otherwise wrecked ships onto the newer end of the station where all the
shielding was, and outfitting these as engines for the station, giving it the
same speed as my other Capital ships had, then he was to figure out how to do
it.

If he needed the station moved to the
shipyard, then so be it. Cobol Orbital was back in service now, and so a
station in Midnight was no longer so necessary. Cobol was taking up the slack
again. I’d have to move the last of the families and businesses still on
Redoubt to Haven, but at some point it was inevitable anyway. The war would
come to Midnight eventually, and civilians had to be well gone by then. It made
more sense to use the station to support the fleet on the front line.

Bob sent me back some ideas before I made
it back to Haven, and they looked good. I asked him when he'd want the station,
and he thought it would take a month or so to get engine modules ready.

After I docked, I went straight to David's office,
and dumped the civilian end of the station upgrade onto him. He thanked me
profusely of course. In my dreams. It was not as if he didn’t already have
enough to do. But he did at least acknowledge relocating civilians off the
station did fall into his purview. And he did have the staff already there to
organize it.

He took his revenge by dumping some
decisions back on me, and it took me half an hour to escape to my own office.

I asked Jane what David's finances were
like. One thing we'd never done was talk about payment for his services. He'd
always offered himself freely, and had simply taken on everything I dumped on
him without any noticeable reaction. Of course, this was what you expected of a
spiritually ascended person. No matter what happened, they only projected
serenity. I wasn’t there yet myself. But David was a lot closer. I'd never seen
him lose his temper, or even display any sort of anger. Ascension wasn’t
enough. You had to walk the talk long enough it became the only way to live.

"David is quite happy with your
arrangements Jon."

"My arrangements?"

"Yes. He's listed as crew for all four
stations, so is getting crew shares the same as your team are. He's used his
share of the income from the sale of apartments on Haven to buy his own ships,
and is getting owner's shares from them as well. He also bought accommodation
here, and is getting rental income. As an Earl, he's getting an income the
equivalent of having been granted estates with the Earldom."

"You're doing?"

"Me, Janice, and Janet. We were
missing at the time, and something needed to be done given he was running
everything."

"Quite right. Nice job, all of
you."

There was a chorus of thankyous.

I pinged father to join me for dinner in my
suite, and rather than make it just us, I invited mother, Walter and Annabelle
as well. Strictly speaking, mother was the odd one out, but I couldn’t really
exclude her. And you never know, she might actually be interested in the
conversation. Next I asked Janine to inform Jeeves to cater.

I worked solidly for an hour and a half,
and then took myself off to see what boot camp was all about. Jane intercepted
me with a trolley, and took me on a tour of the newly completed facilities,
doing it in a way where we didn’t actually come into contact with any recruits.
The closest we came was an observation window, where we looked out into a room
full of sweaty people doing pushups.

I was surprised to see Aline doing most of
the bellowing. I hadn't actually known she had a bellow. It was a bit scary. She
was usually quiet and retiring, except when in her combat suit, where she was
quiet and forceful. I made a mental note to never get her angry at me. And then
I wondered how come I'd avoided it so far.

Being out and about, Jane took me on a
proper tour of the station, showing me areas now completed and thriving. We
ended up on a park bench, overlooking the main lake. There was a lot of
activity out on the water, and the boat franchises seemed to be doing well. So
was the ice cream man. Jeeves brought me over a giant cone with half chocolate,
and half strawberry. It never ceased to amaze me how Jeeves always turned up
when I needed something. Or quite often when he thought I needed something, and
it hadn't occurred to me yet.

"Don’t let George overdo it," I
said to Jane.

We both chuckled, knowing how much fun he
was having at the moment. She assured me she wouldn't let him, but I wasn’t
convinced.

Ice cream finished, Jane took me back to my
suite. As soon as I stepped in the door, I turned and glared at her.