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

by Timothy Ellis

  "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."

  Forty One

  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."

  "That’s not a problem. Next time we get somewhere you can buy them, order a new set, with a complete set of backups. And General?"

  "Yes sir?" She smiled at me.

  "You order the top of the range."

  "I've always wanted to do that, but could never justify it."

  "Only the best will do for my team," I said, deadpan. She laughed. "Actually, order a dozen extra of Jane's special suit. Its sounds like the Meson Blasters would have been very useful in quantity."

  "Yes. Jane was a godsend in that regard. Actually, I had a thought along those lines. I was wondering if they could build something like the Dropship turret guns for Jane to use. A combat suit firing four Point Defense lasers would be devastating against unarmored troops, and still effective against belt suits, and combat armour."

  "Talk to the 'tool man', when you're ordering combat suits. The standard Dropship ramp gun might be adapted easily. They seem to always be tinkering with things, so ask."

  "I will. So anyway, immediately we deployed from the dropships, we came under heavy fire. BA and the twins actually ripped out a portion of a blast wall from around the ship landing area, and positioned it in front of us as a shield."

  "Whose idea was it?"

  "The twins. Came out of both their suits in stereo. BA was off and running before they finished saying the idea. They dumped it down in front of us, shocking the hell out of the regular troops. But it did the trick, giving us some protection. I directed the fighters as to where to lay down fire, while the combat droids deployed in front of us. Some gung-ho officer gave the order to charge the combat droids, and it was like an ant hole had swarmed all around us."

  I smiled. I could see it in my mind's eye as she described it.

  "At that point, the fighters became ineffective, as the fighting was too close quarter to allow them to fire indiscriminately. We could have used your sniper rifle again. Or a dozen of you."

  "When you get time, start rethinking your attack strategy. Plan on having three Dropships, with a Gunbus or Camel, and an Excalibur, supporting them. As a base force. You might have more. How many snipers do you have on all your teams?"

  "Two. We've never really relied on them, since snipers rely on being able to be still. In a fluid situation, they tend to be more vulnerable, and get killed quickly."

  "Think about recruiting more. Two or three per Dropship ramp, plus more for the Corvette and Excalibur. They can hover to give them a height advantage. We need more pilots too, so look for experienced Dropship combat pilots."

  "The three we used on Azgard did pretty well. But it was Eric who made the decisive play, turning things around for us, allowing us to go on the offensive properly."

  "How so?"

  "He brought his Camel down to grass height next to BA, with
the Cargo Bay open, and told her to jump on. She did. He took her over to the first building, she jumped through the door, and found it empty. They repeated this with every building, until she determined there were no prisoners in any of them. It was the damnedest thing Jon. This bloody huge ship, dropping down between rows of buildings it barely fit between, putting BA exactly where she needed to be for each jump. It was the kind of thing you'd expect a Dropship pilot to do. Seeing a Corvette do it, was straight out amazing."

  "How do we reward BA? She wouldn’t want to be promoted again, would she." It wasn’t a question, I knew the answer.

  "Make her an officer?" She laughed at the suggestion. "She'd refuse. She has what she always wanted now. She was as proud of making Sergeant Major, as I was finally making General." She coughed and went red. I ignored her blush.

  "What would make her happier?"

  "A top of the range combat suit would definitely do the trick." Her laugh returned her face colour to normal.

  "Done." I grinned at her.

  "While I'm talking to the 'tool man', I'll see if he can rig a backpack for the combat suit, which will enable her to carry a Meson Blaster as well as Jane. That, would make her day to receive."

  "Great idea. What happened next?"

  "I pulled us all back to the shield, and sent the ships in to flatten everything. Once they had nothing but rubble to hide behind, the guns on the ships picked off the majority of the enemy soldiers, and we mopped up the few who were left."

  "Did we lose anyone?" I paused, as she just looked at me. "I've been a little pre-occupied at the strategic level. I've left the ground wars to you while I concentrate on space. I can only do so much!"

  She smiled at me.

  "I know. I was just having a go at you. Yes, we lost some people. Nine Marines died, and another ten were badly injured. The combat suits gave us the edge, but they had significant numbers. You lost a dozen combat droids as well."

  "The droids are expendable. And as it happens, I received four hundred more at the same time you arrived at the jump point. If you need to go in at Midgard, they can go in with you."