Hunter Legacy 11: Home Is Where the Hero Is (21 page)

The nice cozy little gathering I'd planned,
had grown.

Aline pulled me over to the lounge chair I
usually used, pushed me down, and sat on my lap. While welcome in some ways, it
was a bad start to a dinner I'd planned to use to talk shop at. Soon I had a
beer in hand, and she and the twins were telling me all about how boot camp was
going. I refrained from saying I’d dropped by. Aline had successfully kept her
bully sergeant side from me, so I wasn’t going to burst her illusion I didn’t
know she had one.

Lacey was talking to Walter and Annabelle,
while on the other side of the room, Jack and Sam were talking to my parents.
Angel and Max were playing with Thirteen. Or should I say, Angel and Max were
playing Thirteen. He had all the illusion of being in charge of the game, but
from where I was sitting, Angel was really in charge. It was actually quite
funny.

Shortly after, Jeeves had us sitting at the
dining room table. Food orders were given, and I was surprised to see Thirteen
ordering food the same as we were. He grinned at me. Of course he knew what I’d
just thought.

"What have you done to George?"
asked Annabelle, with laughter dancing in her eyes. "He was completely
incomprehensible this afternoon."

"He took delivery of Fearless this
morning."

"Fearless?" asked Jack.

"The new Super-Marine-Cruiser. George
will be her captain. He's doing the pre-acceptance trials at the moment, and
will be for the next few days."

"Days?" asked Walter. "It
doesn’t take days to trial a ship."

"This one will. It's not only the
Cruiser, it's all the Dropships aboard as well."

I told them what George would be doing for
the next few days.

"When do we get aboard?" asked
Jack.

"About a week. He needs some hand
holding by Admiral O'Neil before we start using the ship for operations and
training."

"Will it take all the trainees?"
asked Aline.

"Um, I'm not sure you understand the
scale. Fearless will carry a battalion."

"How big a battalion?" asked
Annabelle.

"One thousand marines, with all their
equipment, including a fifty percent mix of giant combat suits."

The room went quiet. Annabelle and Jack
made serious eye contact.

"I taught him all he knows," said
Amanda, and everyone laughed.

She meant me and how to design a marine
ship, not George and how to captain it. Mind you, I don’t doubt the twins had
taught him a lot without him knowing it.

"It was the logical next step up from
Custer."

"Assault Frigate," said Annabelle
to my father. "Jon designed it during the Midgard War. Avon shipyard built
it, and it's done us very well as an assault vessel, both for ground actions
and space boarding actions."

"We outgrew it," added Aleesha.

"Where do we get a battalion of troops
from?" asked Sam.

Walter coughed. All eyes shifted to him.

"I can have both marine and infantry
troops here next week, and between us, we could fill the ship. The question is,
do we want to?"

"Definitely want," said
Annabelle.

Her eyes shifted to me.

"I see a need for several different
troop roles, and we should be training for them."

"What do you have in mind son?"
asked my Dad.

"I've seen our giant suits on the
ground, firing into blackness. So we need both offensive and defensive ground
training. We need to fight anything which lands on a planet, and we need to
rearguard the evacuation of civilians. Fearless can land and offload troops
directly. She also has Dropships for both Company and team strength missions.
We need to train for every possible use of her resources."

"And?" he asked.

"We'll most likely need to respond to distressed
ships and stations. Such things as emergency repairs, moving wounded to medical
facilities, dealing with food and supplies hijackings, and putting down
mutinies or outright revolts on both ships and stations. Once people start to
flee in huge numbers, we'll see the absolute worst of human nature. We’ll need
to be able to respond to multiple threats at the same time."

"How does one ship do all that?"
asked Jack.

"Like Custer docks to BigMother now,
there will be at least two more Assault Frigates out of the shipyard soon, both
of which can dock to Fearless. She will also be able to dock Corvettes. Between
these ships and her Dropships, she can respond in a lot of different ways all
at the same time. Which reminds me."

I turned to Lacey.

"What are 266 doing at the
moment?"

"Not a lot. Augmenting patrols mostly.
Why? Do you have something specific for them?"

"I’d like to assign them to Fearless
while she trains. They can pretend to be Corvettes and Frigates docked to the
outer hull, and also be ground support fighters."

"I think Brown and the lads will go
for that."

"Brown will need to report to George
rather than you for the duration, as will the Dropship pilots."

"No problem there. Be good for both of
them."

I looked to Annabelle.

"George will report to you, but the
ship and all the ships attached to it, will act as a small fleet, where George
has the command. He needs to learn how to fight his ship as a Dropship, as well
as it being a fleet flagship and a small Carrier. He has the fighter and marine
part, but needs the command experience."

"You realize George failed Dropship
training?" laughed Amanda.

"Better do some simulations before
George does a real Cruiser Drop operation."

We all laughed.

"Talk to Carter as well," I said
to Annabelle. "Her medical team need to be trained for almost anything a
marine action might come across. And she probably doesn’t realize it, but she's
the head of a medical division which is going to get a lot larger. Fearless
will need a full time medical team."

I changed track suddenly.

"Is Alison doing a field medic course
in this boot camp of yours?"

"Yes, she is," said Amanda.

"Have Carter oversee it, and look for
recruits with the aptitude for being a field medic, or worth being trained to a
higher level."

"I have people I can send you for that
training as well," said Walter.

I chuckled towards Annabelle.

"Well General, time to earn your
second star."

"Yes sir," she said deadpan,
while rolling her eyes, causing the rest of us to laugh.

"Contact Price and Patton as well. See
if they want to be involved in some joint training. If they want to send ships
as well, Greer's Gunbus squadron for example, co-ordinate with O'Neil and
Lacey."

"Me sir?" asked Lacey.

"Yes. Anything below Destroyer size,
with Gunbus specs is considered a fighter, and is therefore under your
command."

"Oh."

"Bigglesworth would call it living up
to your potential."

"Everyone else calls it
bollocks."

Most of us lost it. He was serious, but the
comment was just too funny.

Jeeves brought in the first courses. As
conversation lagged while we ate, Walter kept shooting me speculative glances.
Finally I gave in, put down my eating irons, and turned to him.

"You had something to add
Walter?"

"I've been thinking. Australian sector
can't add much to an offensive naval force. We've simply lost too much over the
last few years to afford to build capital ships. Not to mention the political
willpower isn’t there. Officially, Prophesy is viewed as a sort of Duchy
religion. As such, my hands are tied. But I have some ability to push. The new
government knows we need some larger ships, and I've been talking to the PM
about a half squadron of Corvettes. The only one we have went into Bob's
shipyard in Sydney to be upgraded to Gunbus standard a week ago, and is due out
tomorrow. If I can get approval for five more, they could be attached to
Fearless as a defensive screen. We have good pilots ready to move up now, so
commanders for them isn’t a problem."

"Can Sydney Shipyard handle the
load?"

"It's grown a lot since you last saw
it Jon. Bob had a huge number of orders for Camel's and Pythons, and he's been
growing the shipyard steadily since you left down spine."

"It shouldn’t be taking a week for
your Corvette then."

He laughed.

"That was our problem, not his. As
soon as the ship went in, an argument started over how it should be redesigned.
It took me three days to get agreement from everyone."

"You let the ship be designed by a
committee?"

Everyone laughed. Walter looked sheepish.
The question wasn’t answered, but it hadn't really needed to be.

"If you want to allocate the ships,
I'm happy to have them work with mine. But George has the command of the fleet,
at least as long as he isn’t put under someone else's command."

"No problem there. The highest rank we
have in space at the moment is Squadron Leader. So anyone getting a Corvette
will become a Lieutenant Commander. Like I did for you. So they will
automatically fall under George's command."

"Works for me then."

"Good, I'll organize it."

Dinner plates were being collected now.

"Are you joining Hunter Security
sir?" Annabelle asked my father.

"Don’t call me sir, Annabelle. You
outrank me by rather a lot. I'm just a humble ship captain."

"Humble my arse," muttered
Thirteen. Everyone looked at him. "Sorry, did I say that out loud?"

I couldn’t stop myself chuckling, and it
proved contagious.

"The question stands," said
Walter. "You do bring a rather large asset to the table, even if it needs
a lot of work. I could give you a Senior Commander rank off my own authority,
just for the ship you captain. Which since Jon retired, would make you the
highest rank in the space force of the Australian Militia. We only have a
single Lieutenant Commander, and a Squadron Leader in each system."

"Tempting offer, but no. If I'm to
join the fight, I need to be where the action is. While my allegiance is to
Gaia, a proactive defense is the best option, and that means Galactica goes
where the action is."

"What role do you see Galactica and
her sisters playing?" asked Annabelle.

"Maybe you should be asking my son
that?"

"Galactica and Enterprise are
currently being gutted," I said. "All the tech needs replacing, and
the structure needs to be fully assessed to determine if we need to rebuild at
all. So it's going to be a few weeks before we need to have designs ready for
interiors. Prometheus will be here soon, but she needs even more attention,
given the state of her when we found her. The other ships we have are primarily
assigned to a set of completed designs. But I'm still debating how to use the
three biggest ships we have. So for now, I want to hear what everyone else
thinks."

All eyes turned back to my Dad. Dessert
began being served.

"The obvious need is Battleships I
think. Since the first one was built, I don’t think there has been a time when
all up, we had less than now. But the Explorer ships were not designed to be
Battleships. They don’t have the external structure to mount huge turrets on.
Not unless you stripped them back to the frame, augmented it and did completely
new hulls."

"It's an option," I said.
"But is it the best use of the ships?"

"Probably not. The overall shape isn’t
consistent with the requirements of a Battleship. If anything, the design is
more conducive to being a Carrier, but again, they weren't designed with that aim.
The primary mission was explore and colonize. But how does that fit our needs
now?"

"We don’t need explore now," said
Sam, "but colonize could be refunctioned to people movement."

"Explain," said Jack.

"How many people will be left behind?
When all the ships are gone? When all the stations are gone? We may think we
have a lot of ships along the whole spine, but in terms of moving the entire
human population? Drop in the bucket."

"And?" I asked.

"And even with the stations each
system has, no system will have enough lifting capacity to fill them, before
they have to leave."

"She's right," said my mother.

"Lifting I think I have covered,"
I said. "But only for a limited number of planets at a time."

"So you suggest converting the
Explorer ships to be fast, armed, passenger ships?"

Dad seemed a little incredulous. I didn’t
blame him. He could see himself relegated to being a taxi driver.

"I wouldn’t say that," said
Walter. "I can see us evacuating planets as the Darkness starts to
overwhelm them. We'll have troops on the ground, protecting civilians being
packed into lifter ships. The lifter ships have to offload somewhere and go
back for more, for as long as they can. Where they offload to can't be a
station, as it won't be able to get away fast enough. But whatever it is, has
to be as fast as Jon's existing ships, be shielded well enough to escape, and
be able to fight its way out at the last second if need be."