The pathologists did an autopsy on the one I'd killed today, although they had little idea what it was they were doing. However, they concluded the internals were primarily about food consumption, and digestion. The really scary part was the cockroach end had a conventional mouth, while the spider underside had a maw which secreted something along the lines of a molecular acid.
It was traumatizing just hearing the details. Cold seemed to be a soporific, and they could stay in a state of hibernation indefinitely, but speculation said an oxygen rich environment was required, even when asleep. The scary thing about this was even if we managed to cripple a ship, the alien would just go to sleep for however its life support lasted, which in hibernation could be a long time. It meant eventually we had to destroy all of them to survive.
There was no mention of how they reproduced. I guess someone was enthusiastic about finding this out, but I told Carter to leave me alone at that point, unless they came up with something which we could fight them with.
The Japanese squadron arrived just after ten. I received a greeting from the one star Admiral in charge, and he quite happily agreed to place himself under Susan's command. His captains were pilots, but none of them had decent combat experience, being the original Corvettes they were used to, flew like bricks. So for now, they would be used as Navy ships, and not fighters. I suggested the pilots talk to Greer and his pilots.
Still feeling nauseous, I went to bed. The night passed with a series of disturbing dreams. One sequence showed me a combat suit being fed into a kitchen garbage disposal unit by something black. Another showed me cockroaches eating a garbage dump, and growing to man size. The one which woke me up though, was of me being stuffed head first into the mouth of a giant Cockroach, and the jaws closing to bite me in half.
"Bad dream Jon?" asked Aline sleepily.
"What made you think that?"
"Bolting up in bed screaming implies that idea."
"Sorry."
"Don’t apologize to me, better go calm Angel."
In alarm, I jumped out of bed, and found Angel at the top of her kitty castle. Her tail was a complete bottlebrush, and she spat at me as I approached. I told her everything was alright in soothing tones, and managed to pat her fur back to normal. I picked her off and cuddled her. It was four in the morning, and I’d had less than six hours sleep. And there was no way at all, I was going to try to sleep again tonight.
Amanda and Aleesha burst in the door a couple of minutes later. They said nothing, but sat on the arm rests of my chair and hugged me. They were of course naked, except for belts.
"What would you be trying to do," asked Aleesha, "which would result in the mistake of creating such a creature?"
"What was it we saw just now?" asked Amanda. "Garbage disposal? Dump removal? Eating everything from combat suits to sentient beings?"
Pollution.
"Pollution?" I parroted.
"What about it?" asked Amanda.
"Oh," said Aleesha.
"What?" Amanda and I said together.
"Think about what we saw in the future."
"Paradise planets?" said Amanda.
"No pollution at all," I said.
"That’s what they did," stated Aleesha.
"I agree," said Jane through room coms.
"What did Kali say?" asked Amanda. "…"
A race of beings, now long gone, did something which they thought would be the answer to all their problems. Instead, it almost destroyed them.
This time it wasn’t in my head, but boomed into the room.
"Will you keep it down out there?" yelled Aline from the bedroom.
"That’s what they did," said Aleesha. "They bioengineered a creature for the purpose of solving their pollution problems. But instead of just eating pollution, it ate everything."
"Must have taken some insane gamble for them to put the result into containment," I said.
"We'll probably never know," responded Aleesha.
"But it does explain how more than half the spine had all higher forms of life removed," said Amanda, "and all signs of human existence."
"I begin to see why the highers are scared," I pondered.
"They eat everything," stated Aleesha. "Including energy forms I suspect. When there is no more life in the galaxy, they go after the nebulae. And then the suns?"
"Nothing left. Galaxy gone. Whole universe gone?"
Amanda sounded awestruck.
Now you finally understand the stakes.
"I heard that in my head," said both twins together.
"Welcome to my club," I grinned at them.
Not wanting to sleep, the three of us worked out on the ranges until BA arrived and tried to organize us. We headed for breakfast instead, but the sight of food still revolted me. I fled to my Ready Room and buried myself in work.
"T-minus twenty four hours," said Jane through room coms, dead on eight thirty.
Twenty Three
"Hi Michael. I'm your father."
"You're watching this now, because you're old enough to understand what happened, why you haven’t had me in your life."
"I love you. Never for a moment think otherwise. Your mother and I never got the chance to be anything more than very good friends. We were too young for one thing. For a few brief hours we were something more to each other, on the eve of me leaving for a four day trip to the other side of the Gaia jump point. By now you should know about it. I came back a year later, long enough to meet you, break your mother's heart, and leave again. I'm sorry to both of you."
"They will have told you about Prophesy, and my part in it. The Darkness is real. I've seen it now, seen the face of humanity's implacable enemy. Seen what Prophesy was preparing us, me, for."
"It's taken me six months to make this vid. Making it feels like a final goodbye to me, and I wanted to put that off as long as I could."
"Tomorrow we face the enemy. We've assembled the largest fleet since before anyone left Earth. It may not be enough. By this time tomorrow, everyone here may be dead. We planned to preserve ships and people on the assumption we are overrun. But no plan survives contact with the enemy."
"I'm sending this vid off to Nexus, to await the next Door opening. You'll be one year old. I entrust this message to your mother, in the hope she will know when it is best to show it to you."
"I hope a lot more follow it, but in case this is it, I needed you to know why I wasn’t there. Why I couldn't be there."
"If I fall here, or somewhere on the way back to Outback, know that it was necessary. Not fair. Not fair to you. Not fair to your mother. Not fair even to me. But necessary."
"You will be the Duke of Hunter's Run. It hasn’t existed very long, but it belongs to you now. Maybe one day you can reclaim it. When you are fifty two, I'll be sort of close to you again, walking the surface of the Earth. The time jump story is a good one. There were no signs of the Darkness then. If the door is still open, and the Darkness isn’t waiting up there to come through still, perhaps you won't be too old to become an explorer, and reclaim the Duchy. Maybe you already will be, as I'm sure the galaxy you are in has much to be discovered in it. The city embassy you rule now, is only that, an embassy. Go forth and carve out your own Duchy, but do it as a mediator, a helper and healer; as someone who cares about others and wants to create a safe place for them to live."
"Trust Jane. She is unique, and my best friend. I hope she is guiding you, as she has great wisdom to help you with. She isn’t human, but she has a soul. I trust her with my life. I trust her with yours. She will make you a great friend too, and she can change her shape to match what you need in a friend."
"Try to be friends with your cousin Fred. I put him in a terrible situation. He was the oldest Hunter son, my cousin, but you are my son. The succession falls to you, but he is close to being of age, and someone needs to be the boss until you are old enough to. I don’t know where this will go. I can only trust I did the right thing, and the family supported you both."
"Tell your mother I want her to be happy. If she hasn’t already done so, she should forget me, find someone she can love, who loves her more than anything else, other than you, and live a great long happy life. She wanted me, and she wanted you, but she only got to keep you in her life. She deserves to be happy. If she isn’t, it's up to you now to steer her to happiness."
"I told her I wasn’t coming back. I feel this with every fiber of my being. I may die tomorrow, or sometime in the next six months, or not for a few years. But when the Door opens again, and this message is sent through, if I'm not already dead, I will still be fighting, somewhere. We don’t have a time frame. If we fall here, the arm will fall as fast as the Darkness can move. Even if we don’t fall here, they may push us back as fast as they can go. They have the numbers, we have the tech. Which will prove to be the deciding factor is unknown now."
"I don’t know what's coming for any of us. I just know I will never see Gaia, your mother, or you again."
"I love you. I know you will do me proud. I'm sorry I'm not there for you."
"Goodbye, son."
Twenty Four
"Well that’s different," said Jane.
It was dead on crunch time, and the Alpha team and I were in the CCC of Relentless. Angel was in her usual spot on the console. Grace had the helm. Dick, Amy, and Melissa, were in their normal spots, as were the now officially declared insane media people, none of whom looked as insane as they obviously were for staying. They could do their job just as well on Redoubt, but had chosen to stay with the team. Nut was in Grace's room, but I didn't know where Max was. Thirteen was sitting towards the back.
We were watching the alien's ships, via the last functional comnavsat, which was at very long range beyond the jump point, where I hoped it wouldn’t be found. So far, they hadn't gone past the jump point. They were forming up into a cylinder shape, which looked to be the width of the jump point, or at least what we knew to be the outside distance where a ship would jump regardless of if it intended to or not. It was already several kilometers long, and growing rapidly.
"What does that look like to you?" I asked generally.
"Old style drill bit," said Dick.
Everyone looked at him in surprise.
"Hey, we all watched Ally McBeal. Don’t you remember the secretary wielding the drill?"
"I was looking at her skirt," I said.
"Of course you were," said Alison.
"Focus!" said Jane.
"Drill bit," said Amanda. "Seems like a very good way of getting maximum ships through the jump point without collisions."
"Instinct, or Intelligence?" I asked.
"Neither is good," said Aleesha.
"We wondered if they would come through as they arrived, or mass first. They're massing. I think we can do something about it. Admiral Hallington?"
Dick looked surprised for a moment. It was so easy to forget ship coms was taking our voices to every ship here. Side effect of being in command.
Maybe I wanted to rethink this, based on how many people were now in the loop. Or shut my mouth and keep it professional. Oops.
"Sir?"
"Batter up! Launch a bomber with a nuke on board, and have it stand ready to launch into the jump point. Jane will give it co-ordinates to launch from."
"On it."
"Jane, figure out where the best detonation point is. Then position the bomber so it can fire the missile in such a way it doesn’t hit anything early. I don’t mind if a few of the first ships escape damage, but I want as much of that formation shattered as possible. Order the pilot to fire the moment they start moving to jump."
"Confirmed."
We waited, while the Broadsword bomber launched from Yorktown, and took up a position directly in front of the jump point. We'd set up orders for this the previous day. The moment after firing, it was to head back to Yorktown as fast as it could go. I could use more nukes, but we'd most likely need them elsewhere. So we had three bombers loaded with them, but only one expected to go. The other two were in case we really needed to send another one through for a respite, on the basis a respite was possible. But I didn’t want to waste them.
A yellow dot appeared on the HUD, and the bomber peeled off and headed home. A few seconds later, the dot vanished, and reappeared on the Pestilence side, where it lasted for several more seconds, before exploding.
The cylinder of ships vanished. The comnavsat vid showed very little left, and wasn’t itself damaged.
Cheering erupted in ship coms. I shook my head and sighed. We'd killed a few thousand ships. It wasn’t much more than a drop in the bucket.
The vid showed movement once again, and lots of it.
"All ships stand by."
The fleet was laid out to maximize our firepower. All the larger capital ships were side on to the jump point, as was Redoubt, at Destroyer gun range. None of our ships were directly in front of the jump point.
Redoubt was forty five degrees above, with Dauntless, all the Destroyers, Corvettes, Privateers and fighters; firing diagonally downwards to the down jump lane. All the other larger ships were in the same position below. We had them bracketed, but any which made it through our firing pattern would be allowed to continue straight on. There was no jump point in that direction, so letting them go that way was a bonus, not a problem. They would spread out, but I wasn’t worried about that either. I knew we couldn’t kill all of them, but thin them out for a while we could do. I hoped.
The Carriers were above the jump point. Well above it. If need be, they would run straight up until well out of range, and then turn for the War jump point well above where the aliens had been in Pestilence. We all had our escape route plotted. The only real question was how long before we needed it, and would we actually last long enough to escape. My idea of being a second line of fire had been discarded in favour of safety.
"Has anyone seen a bee hive after someone breaks it?" asked Grace suddenly.
"Why?" asked Amanda.
"Because they look like a swarm of angry bees to me."
She was right. The ships on the other side now did seem to be swarming like angry bees.
"Oh Jeez!"
Now everyone looked at Aleesha.
"You don’t suppose they snort nuclear radiation do you?"
"We made them angry and high?" said BA.
"Here they come," said Annabelle.
I waited. With no form of formation now, the alien ships were simply pouring towards the jump point. I knew exactly how long our pulses would take to reach the down jump lane. I waited a couple of seconds more.
"Fire."
Every ship fired at the same time, but not its full broadside. Those of us who needed to roll to bring other guns to bare, started rolling. The AI's kept the HUDs oriented to the jump point, without any spin, otherwise ship crews would be getting very dizzy, very fast.
Bentley, O'Neil, and the senior captains, had spent a lot of the previous day finding out the right roll speed for each ship, so as they rolled, a continuous and relatively equal fire rate would continuously fire on the jump point.
Those not needing to roll, were also firing to match the rollers, so they too were always firing something.
The Corvettes and fighters, being face on to the jump point, were cycling through their turrets and guns in rapid time, but at a speed where the first gun was recharged by the time the last one fired.
The first few hundred ships appeared just as the first pulses arrived. Nothing survived. The next few hundreds made it further in before they too were destroyed, but the gap between firing allowed them to get a shot off first.
Redoubt took the first hits, but her shielding didn’t waver.
The minutes passed as more and more ships down jumped in, and our fire took them all out.
"It's beautiful," said Grace, her face looking a picture of rapture.
And it was. The media people had launched cam drones hours ago, and these were now recording both what was happening a
t the jump point, and how our fleet looked firing continuously. These screens were up on a side wall, and Grace was staring at them as if mesmerized.
You could hardly see Redoubt at all. It was a vague shape wreathed in constantly winking lights. The bigger ships were like pulsars, with regular flashes. It was mesmerizing!
The number of ships coming through at any one time was steadily rising, and we now had the odd one slip through the barrage. IR's began firing from which ever ship was nearest, and none made it past us.
Ten minutes in, and we were holding our own. I wondered how long it would last.
"Jon!" said Jane loudly. "Look at the other side."
All eyes shifted to the navmap. They'd formed another cylinder outside our viewing range, and it was heading inward like a battering ram.
"All ships fire FF's now," I ordered.
Jane had reprogrammed them. They would ignore the jump lane, and only go after anything which left it. A massive swarm of missiles left the fleet, heading towards a waiting spot where they wouldn’t be hit by our fire.
"Bloody hell," said Dick, echoed by several other voices.
Twenty Five
The down jump area was suddenly solid. The spacing between ships was enough to avoid collisions, but only an AI could achieve that if we tried it. It was scary, the way they could get that close and not collide. It wasn’t human. Duh!
Jane was tracking the numbers coming through, and it now jumped to one hundred a second. Our fire became much less effective all of a sudden.
"Yorktown fighters, launch your new missiles in scatter mode."
"Roger that," came a voice I didn’t know, in an obvious American accent.
Yellow dots popped up from Redoubt, and headed inward, where they multiplied for an instant, and small gaps appeared in the flow of ships past us. IR's and FF's picked at them, but the first alien ships made it into open space.
"Mark the time Jane. Now marks the countdown to their arrival at the War jump point."
Hunter Legacy 12: Hero in Darkness Page 11