And on that note, I gave more orders for withdrawals. By two thirty, only Redoubt and the two Dreadnaughts remained, rear-guarding as the others fled towards their respective waypoints.
Relentless took the first of the expected hard hits, now the aliens had thousands in play around us. I gave the final withdraw order, and this battle was done.
The African fleet withdrew to the Mali jump point. The Latin fleet, and most of mine, withdrew to the Brazil jump point. Relentless headed for Morocco.
Everyone but me went to bed. I was still wired. Jane fed me people numbers. The evacuation of Morocco had gone well, but it had taken too much time to get a rhythm going. At best, we were only going to have time to get slightly more than half the population off. Several of the major cities were nearly empty now, but the outlying towns and farms, were mainly too remote for people to get to a collection point in time. Ships were visiting as many towns as they could, but the process was too slow.
I pointed this out to Jane for her to show to Amy when she woke up. The whole issue of evacuation timing had never really been covered, or adequately worked out, and this needed to be highlighted as a matter of urgency. Morocco was now a test case of how not to do it. Panic, of course, hadn't been a good start.
I took the time to meditate and do a new set of releases, and when I came too, I found Jane had Relentless in orbit a lot faster than I expected. Two hours instead of four. I looked at her.
"The suit armour isn’t in place yet, but the Crystal is now providing more speed, and shielding has had a boost as well."
Being on our own, meant we hadn't had to wait for anyone.
"Any eta on the armour?"
"No. It’s a great deal more complicated than even I expected. I have a full definition for Gunbus now, but Relentless is going to take a lot longer."
I nodded, and let her get on with it. The impossible we could do immediately. Miracles took a little longer.
The HUD was busy. Galactica and Enterprise were in orbit, along with Fearless and Homer. Preserver was on the ground. Morocco had three stations of its own, plus my Treasure Chest station was here as well. Buzzing around all of them were freighters of all sizes, and hundreds of shuttles and civilian craft. Of the latter, a small number were heading for the Brazil jump point, but the rest seemed to be doing shuttle work between the ground and the stations.
On a whim I checked who was in command on the ground. It turned out to be Jack, with General Hobbs having gone with Bonko to Mali. It made sense to have a General's voice in the Africa evacuation. The Africans had their own Generals, but none with actual evacuation experience. Hobbs had been running things on Morocco long enough to know how to do it now. I hoped it helped them. As of now, the African sector was on its own.
Hobbs also new the timing issues. It wasn’t a matter of just staying ahead of the aliens as they advanced. The sector had to be evacuated before we lost the Sudan jump point in Egypt, and this was almost a definite, given the shorter route. There were nine systems to evacuate in the time it took the aliens to cross three and a half. Our ships had the speed to do it, but there was going to be the constant pressure of locals to get just a few more people out. Cumulatively, this could be fatal. Hobbs didn’t need orders from me to make sure his ships made it out in time. And I knew he would be in constant contact with Marshall Bigglesworth anyway, and if need be, he'd get an order to move when it most mattered.
There was nothing at all I could do for the African sector now. But it gnawed at me all the same.
I think Jeeves overdid it with the stimulant because I was still wide awake. So I dropped Angel off on her cat tree, and took a Lightning down to observe how Preserver was doing.
Fifty Three
Preserver was an old ship. She'd started life well over a century ago as a Midway class Escort Carrier. Around fifty years ago, she was sold for scrap. I'd taken her the previous year from pirates, who'd been using her as a salvage ship for most of the intervening time. We'd never been able to find out how the pirates obtained her, but a good guess said she was stolen. She'd been little more than a wreck when her pirate crew had surrendered her to me, as her name, Junk Heap Two, sort of implied. BigMother had been Junk Heap One, but she'd been in significantly better condition than Two or Three, and was still being used as a Salvage Carrier when I’d boarded her with Jane and taken her.
Her length was half way between a Cruiser and a Battleship. Triangular in shape, she was now rigged to dock a Marine Cruiser, in this case Homer, and her function was now evacuating people. She still retained fighter launch capability for two squadrons of fighters, but the pilots now lived on the Launch Deck, in their own restricted access barracks. They were flying a sort of CAP, and acting as a police force keeping ships from ramming each other as they went up and down from the planet. The rest of the ship had been converted to house several hundred thousand people. Not comfortably. Not even remotely comfortably, but every person got a rack, food, water, and access to toilet and shower facilities, with only very limited privacy. Once the ship was full, these facilities were going to be stretched to the limit. But neither Preserver nor Deliverer were designed for long term living. They were evacuation ships. Nothing more. Collect, move, offload to a station, or its Explorer ship counterpart. If we reached the stage where people lived on them permanently, we were basically screwed.
I hovered the Lightning over the top of Preserver, and popped up vid feeds from all over the city below. Preserver was on the ground in the middle of the capital city, and this was basically outrageous. No ship that big was supposed to land, and she had. No city would normally have enough space for her to land in, and this one was no exception. She'd simply come down in the middle of the city, and her shields had vaporized the tops of the buildings underneath. As well as her huge landing struts, she was being held up by the stumps of buildings. I presumed the area had been evacuated first, but I wasn’t asking.
From each airlock, including special ones built into her underside, long access pipes extended out in all directions, allowing dozens of loading points for people trying to escape. At the mouth of each were combat suits. Combat droids were spread out all over the city, directing people inwards.
Movement caught my eye, as a giant suit threw a ground vehicle into the third story of an office building. I looked at the roads, and found them chock full of abandoned vehicles, all pointing inwards. People streamed past them on foot, while combat suits and some giant suits moved vehicles out of the way to allow faster access to the center of the city.
And therein lay a whole problem no-one had ever thought of. In every square, flat, and holo screen about disasters ever made, people had always been trying to escape the cities, choking the roads with abandoned vehicles. Here, it was the opposite. The vehicles had choked up the roads because the people leaving them were on board Preserver now, or already in orbit. This needed rethinking.
"Jane?"
"Jon?"
"Between here and Brazil, can you get the relevant people together to discuss this clusterfuck on the ground?"
"How so?"
"What happens when hundreds of thousands of vehicles head into the center of a city?"
"Into? Oh."
"Yes. We need a procedure to keep them moving. Too many people here on foot, taking too damned long to get anywhere. I can see a couple down there carrying babies, and they look exhausted."
"I see them. Can I use some of the combat droids?"
"Go. Help the struggling families only though. We need to keep roads operating as functional roads. That means we need to do something with vehicles as soon as they're empty. Get Hobbs involved in the discussion, so he can implement anything you come up with. I can see combat suits carrying vehicles into buildings, and giant suits throwing them onto higher floors. We really need to quickly crush them and do something with them."
"We should be salvaging the metals."
"Can we do that without sacrificing people?"
"We are already, rem
ember?"
"There's a limit. We better find it quickly. If we need specialized droids for handling vehicles, make them, but get the higher ranks on the ground to say what they think they need first. When we get to Brazil, it needs to be in place and working from minute one."
"Confirmed. What about we have some specialist droids crush cars and anything else salvageable, and toss the mass up onto the top hull? We put some grav sleds in between the turrets, and drop all the salvaged mass on them. We do the same thing on the outside of stations, and have all the salvaged mass moved that way. When the station reaches a Shipyard, we offload by tossing the mass towards the shipyard, and use salvage droids to collect them."
"Sounds like a plan. Do it."
"Confirmed."
I landed the Lightning next to the family I’d seen before, and helped them up into the living area, followed by as many people as I could fit in, packing them standing room only into the small cargo area as well. With them were five cats, two dogs, a mouse cage, and some fish. I patted the cats and the dogs with a smile on my face, and made an exaggerated show of welcoming them more than the people. It got some laughs, and relieved the tension.
On the way up, I told Jane to dock us with a station which could take them, which she did. The thankyous of the people as they left the ship were almost heartbreaking. Once they were off, Jane took me back to Relentless, and I finally felt like crashing.
Aline was coming out of the shower as I came into the bedroom.
"Haven't you been to bed yet?" she asked with horror in her voice.
"Couldn’t sleep. I've been down to the planet to see the evacuation. Tell Annabelle you all need to go down in combat suits. There's a lot of road congestion down there, and the suits can clear vehicles faster than people can. Check what the policy is on pets. I don’t recall ever discussing it, but I have no problem with it. I brought some back myself, and I can't say I noticed anyone turning them away or setting them loose, which is just as well. Find out from Jane if she took pets into account redesigning the ships. If not, tell her to address it. Can't have pet fights, but can't leave them behind."
"Jon?"
"Yes?"
"You're rabbiting on."
"Whatever. Jane has a Lightning waiting for you, the one I was using. I'm going to crash now."
And I did.
Fifty Four
I pulled the plug on the evacuation at two in the afternoon the next day. It was four hours before we expected the disk to start forming, and about the same before the Mali jump point would be overrun. We were pulling out with plenty of time to spare, and making sure no alien ships saw where we went.
Preserver was already in orbit, but hadn't had the time to transfer people. We'd do that once we were in Brazil. She was packed full, and it was going to be uncomfortable for all of them for a few hours, but they were at least alive and heading to safety.
We’d left millions behind.
The media was now full of how we’d cut and run, and left them all to die. I had Amy on countering this by showing vids of people packed on board every ship we had. Even Relentless had a sea of people sitting on her Cargo Deck. There was no sanitation facilities for them, and if people thought Preserver was uncomfortable, they'd soon find out they were in luxury compared to some.
My Treasure Chest station had spent the time over the last few days getting small versions of the Gaia Hubs ready to use. Instead of being a cross shape with four airlocks, it was just a single length with one airlock on each end. While refugees had been streaming up, the station clone of Jane had been joining up the stations into a single giant structure. The station tugs were in position on all of them, and dead on two, the stations had moved out of orbit at the same speed as the rest of the ships.
Galactica and Enterprise had their flight decks stuffed full of civilian ships in addition to their own shuttles. These were the overflow from the stations, which hadn't been able to land or dock, and didn’t have the speed to keep up with us. Freighters of all sizes fell into convoy with us, and they had shuttles and private craft docked to them as well.
It was a four hour journey to the Brazil jump point. We'd get there in time to see the disk forming, relayed to us from a comnavsat specially positioned to observe the process.
I'd done what I could. It wasn’t enough. Things only got worse from here. I was not going to beat myself up about it, no matter what the media said. I'd saved millions who otherwise hadn't a chance. If that wasn’t enough, tough.
The team were back in the CCC with me, but most of them left as soon as we broke orbit and there was nothing to hold their attention. They'd been the last to leave, and I could see heartbreak on their faces from leaving people behind. They were all exhausted, as were all the troops. I didn’t begrudge them down time. I'd slept for a lot of the previous day myself.
We'd had one problem, and Annabelle was sitting there waiting for me to address it. One of team four's squads had offered to stay ground side so a few more people could be packed onto the Dropship. I hadn't let them. One member had been stunned on my order, to stop him walking away. They'd packed those people in anyway, and the Dropship had barely lifted. Finally I looked at her, and nodded towards my Ready Room. We sat without saying anything, and continued like that for about five minutes.
"I love these little talks of ours," I finally said. "Do we have a problem?"
"Not with me. If you hadn't given the order, I would have."
"Why didn’t you?"
"Because they needed it to come from the top."
"Fair enough. How did you know what I’d do?"
"Duh!"
Fair comment, she knew me pretty well by now.
"Better issue an edict to the troops. Self-sacrifice is all very noble, but it's too early to even consider such things. Sacrifice now, and by the time we need highly trained troops on the ground, we may not have any left. We can only save so many people, and while it breaks our hearts to leave the next one in line behind, that’s the way it is."
"It wasn’t a good day Jon."
"There's plenty more to come."
She nodded, and left. Amy replaced her in the chair, and we talked about the media situation. She went off to try and defuse tensions, and I dived into the endless emails.
Everything seemed to happen around six, when I was about to head off for some food.
We jumped into Brazil, and as soon as the station convoy was away from the jump point, my ex-Treasure Chest station, which had looked like a spherical command module on the front of a huge ship, and henceforth christened the Sphere, detached itself to move straight on to the planet, where most of the Latin sector's stations were now in system and on their way to. Sphere would do the same job of linking the stations together, and send off those ones already full of people, staying to wait until the evacuation was complete here.
Relentless, the two Explorer ships, and the two landing Carriers, all docked with the stations Sphere was in the process of disconnecting from, and the packing of people onto those stations began.
Fearless and Homer started immediately for Brazil, to help with their evacuations, and prepare for Preserver to land. BigMother was also insystem, but on the other side, having come from Libya. She'd get there about the same time, no longer having the speed advantage she'd once had. Jack's orders were to find the best place to set both Carriers down, have the areas cleared, land the ships, and start filling them as fast as possible.
At the same time, the disk began to form to cast Morocco in darkness, and a cylinder began to form at the Mali jump point.
"Boss?" said Amy, "there's new Media reports in, and these ones you're not going to like."
"I didn't like the last lot."
"These are worse."
I sighed. How could things get worse? I waved at the side screen. She waved as well, and a typical media current affairs style studio appeared, with a woman behind a desk, and a man obviously being interviewed.
"It's bad enough Hunter is leaving
the jump point defense way earlier than he should be," said the man, "but he left Morocco a full four hours before he needed to, leaving millions of people behind."
"You think he's really a coward?" asked the woman.
The team were watching, and this went down like the proverbial lead balloon. The man was too much a politician to let himself be linked to such an accusation, so he blustered on.
"I think he has his own interests at heart. There are disturbing stories that he has ships scouring the sector looting our planets of anything valuable. Gold, silver, gems, art work, and precious cultural icons. There's no limit to what he seems to be taking for himself, all the time while leaving people behind."
Amy froze it there. BA was standing, and obviously wanted to tear out throats. All eyes turned to me.
It was at that moment I realized I had a slow anger burning inside me which hadn't been allowed an outlet.
"Who is that bozo?" I asked as calm as I could manage.
"Which one?" asked Amy.
"Both," said Dick.
"The woman is the top media anchor for Brazil, and for her to accuse you of being a coward shows she's under intense pressure from above. Her facial expression alone showed she didn’t like what she was saying, but had no choice but to say it. The man is Lucas Garcia, current chair of the Latin sector ruling committee."
"Who makes up the committee?"
"One elected representative for each planet. The chair rotates each year, so no one planet can dominate the committee."
"Are they all on Brazil?"
"Yes. They quietly moved here two months ago, while telling everyone there was nothing to worry about."
"Jane?"
"Sir?"
I looked at her sharply to see if she was taking the mickey, but she was as serious as everyone else.
"Take us to Brazil as fast as we can get there. Message Admiral Bentley to mind the fort while we're gone."
"Confirmed."
"General," I said to Annabelle. "I want the anchor, her producer, and her CEO, in my conference room as fast as humanly possible after we arrive at the planet. I want the entire committee there as well. Find out where they all are. You have the two teams on this ship, send who you need to round them all up. I'm not taking no for an answer. If you have to stun them and haul them here over someone's shoulder, do it."
Hunter Legacy 12: Hero in Darkness Page 24