Hero to the End (The Hunter Legacy Book 13)

by Timothy Ellis

"Confirmed."

  The staff vanished from my hand. I watched various views of all three Evacuation Carriers rising out of the remains of the mock city, and by the time I arrived at the CCC, each ship was aligned with the underside of a Titan, where its underside guns had retracted, and the docking platforms were engaging. I left my combat suit outside the door, and strode in. Vonda had the main chair, and I waved her to stay there. I took the XO's chair instead, and sank into it, suddenly feeling extremely tired.

  "Nice work Admiral," said Vonda.

  "Sometime you can explain to me why you couldn’t do that staff trick a lot earlier," said Patton, from his hollo.

  He appeared to be quite pissed off. I wasn’t surprised, given how badly his pet ground action had gone.

  "I'm still learning to use it. I'm also afraid if I use it too much, it might kill everything, and not just aliens. This isn’t something to be messed with. It’s the power of a Deity after all. And not just any Deity but Kali, who isn’t called the Destroyer for nothing."

  "Pity it couldn’t be unleashed over the whole planet."

  "I suspect that amount of power would just destroy the planet. That’s not somewhere I want to go."

  He looked troubled. But didn’t say anything more.

  "Talk to me Jane," I said.

  A Jane avatar with green epaulettes was in the Second Officer position. She looked at me, as if she was weighing up my condition. Maybe she was. I was sure Aline and the twins were asking her how I was.

  "Docking commencing. We are cloaked from above, and we'll see alien ships raining past us any moment now."

  I looked at Vonda.

  "Casualties?"

  "A lot. About a third of the tanks were lost. A quarter of the giant suits, and I suspect it's about five thousand troops down."

  "Shit!"

  Even I wasn’t prepared for that many casualties. No wonder Patton wasn’t happy.

  There were a series of minor clunks from a long way away.

  "Docking complete. There's a trolley waiting to take you to Sceptre."

  "We'll talk about this tomorrow," said Patton, and his hollo vanished.

  "Not a happy camper," I said to Vonda, as we moved to the door, her staff following along behind us.

  She sighed.

  "Not a good day," she replied. "By all means say it."

  "Say what?"

  "I told you so."

  "No need. We had to do this. I just wish we'd been more realistic about it, and lost less people."

  "No one could have predicted what happened." She looked at me speculatively. "Unless you did?"

  "Not in detailed terms. But overall, I knew this was a bad idea."

  "At least we proved this shouldn’t be tried again, no matter what the desperation factor is."

  At least she recognized that now. But what it meant was I had to come up with some way of ensuring the aliens never entered Gaia. So no pressure.

  Aline and the twins were not happy I’d gone off alone again, but admitted they didn’t come up with any reason why anyone with me would have helped. And I hadn't been in as much danger as I usually found myself in. Not to mention the amount of power I was now projecting.

  Dinner was a somber affair, somewhat later than usual, and after playing with Angel, I fell asleep on my living room floor. Sometime later I came to on the bed, so I shifted to a belt, padded into the bathroom for the necessary, changed into boxers and t-shirt, and flaked out again, all without waking Aline.

  I dreamed of fire, and me tossing an accelerant on it. It raged higher and higher, consuming everything in its path. My belt suit shredded, and the fire consumed me.

  I woke up screaming.

  Forty One

  We fell back, resuming our six hours at a planet routine. Kansas was deserted, but my ships came back full anyway.

  Fleet One headed to Washington with Borgcubia, while Fleet Two moved on to Dallas with one of the two stations we'd used for evac since Hawaii. Galactica's evac fleet with the second station, did a speed run through Washington to get to Atlanta instead, aiming to double check New Orleans and Boston, while Enterprise did Oklahoma and Houston. The Evac fleets were going to merge again in Miami.

  Dallas took a couple of hours longer, as the shipyard was still there. They'd waited for us, and we added it on to the absurdly long shipyard structure which was normally a system or two ahead of us. Its next stop was Cobol. But before leaving, it slid out three Guardians to replace the one we'd lost. Unassailable came out as well, having had her battle damage repaired, and a lot of Hives replaced.

  Two long days after leaving Denver, Sceptre jumped into the Pompeii system. We orbited the planet, expecting it to be empty like the others in this area. It wasn’t.

  A channel opened from the surface, and I recognized General Kitteridge.

  "Whoever the hell you are in that huge box, go…" His eyes went wide. "Is that you Hunter?"

  "Definitely me sir," I responded with a grin.

  "Sir? Looks like I should be siring you. Is that five stars I count?"

  "So they tell me."

  "And do I see two stars on Colonel Smith?"

  "You do indeed General," said Annabelle.

  "Well now, I thought you people would go far, but not that high. What can I do for you?"

  I think most of us gaped at him.

  "This was just a double check run, to make sure the planet had been evacuated. How many of you are still here?"

  "Still here? No idea what you're talking about. Everyone is here. Where else would we be?"

  Where indeed?

  "General, I think we need to talk. I'm sending a ship down for you."

  "Confirmed," said Jane quietly.

  A white dot appeared on the HUD, as a Lightning launched.

  "Talk? What about?"

  "The end of the fucking world," said Dick.

  "Are you people on something?" asked Kitteridge.

  "Solid dose of reality," I said. "We do need to talk. Ship is on the way General."

  "I'd prefer you came down."

  "Sorry General. What you need to see is best seen up here."

  "Fine. Who else should come?"

  "Any civilian authority you have these days."

  "She won't like that, but I'll have her on the ship."

  "General, you can tell her she can come up willingly in style, or I'll send someone down to carry her up stunned."

  "What would justify that?"

  "General, the end of the world is nigh."

  He looked at Annabelle. She nodded, looking serious and concerned.

  "See you soon," he said, and the channel closed.

  Soon turned into an hour. The Lightning finally docked at the CCC airlock, and two people walked in. Both of them looked scared shitless. It hadn't been intended, but maybe that was a good start. Jane grinned at me.

  "I didn’t send an avatar," she said via my PC. "So the ship not only was travelling faster than they thought possible, it didn’t apparently have a pilot."

  I showed them into my Ready Room, and Vonda and Annabelle joined us, Jane following us in. Jeeves brought in refreshments while everyone was being introduced. The female politician's name was lost on me as soon as it was said. But she came across as a hard-arse battle-axe no-nonsense type.

  "So what's this end of the world crap?" she asked.

  "You haven’t heard anything?" asked Vonda with wonder in her voice.

  "We don’t hear much these days," said Kitteridge. "Quite deliberately. We rejoined the American sector, but told them to leave us alone. After their Peacekeeper troops left with the job done, we let the com lines slide. Weren't you the Military Governor of Midgard?"

  "I was. I was recalled to help with the defense of Hawaii."

  "Hawaii needed defending? Who from?"

  "Hawaii was lost," I said. "Everything is gone down spine of Kansas."

  "What in the hell are you talking about?" she demanded.

  "The Darkness war." They looked blank.
"You remember the Midgard prophecy?"

  "Vaguely."

  "Well it was true. Our space was invaded, and we've been retreating ever since. We're here to evacuate your people."

  "Rubbish. We're not going anywhere."

  "It's your choice ma'am, but everyone who remains here will be eaten."

  "Eaten?" She laughed. "By what?"

  I nodded to Jane, and her suit shifted into the alien.

  The woman screamed and fainted forward onto the table, Kitteridge fell out of his chair in shock, and even Vonda flinched. Jane shifted back to 'slinky red', and went to help the General up. Jeeves came straight in with his potent wake up whatever, waved it under her nose, and she bolted upright. He went away again. I was beginning to think he got a kick out of waking up humans.

  "What the hell was that revolting thing?" demanded the woman.

  "The Darkness," said Annabelle. "An alien."

  "And they're coming here?"

  "Yes."

  "We'll hide then."

  "Jane," I said, "show them what happens when you hide."

  The vid of Last Hope's last hour popped up on the wall. Both of them went white in the first minute, followed rapidly by puce, several shades of green, and in the woman's case, passing out again. Kitteridge managed to keep it together, and watched the media highlights of the Denver ground op after.

  "So this is it, we're going to die?"

  He seemed quite sure of it.

  "Hell no," I laughed. "We're here to evacuate you, as I said earlier."

  "How long have we got?"

  I looked at Jane.

  "Galactica can be here in about eighteen hours. Enterprise is finding more people than expected on Boston, so will be about four hours later."

  "You have eighteen hours to pack, General. If it can be carried, it can be taken. Within another twelve hours, this planet needs to be abandoned."

  "That fast?"

  "We thought you’d already be gone."

  "What the hell do I tell people?"

  "Get Amy in here please Jane."

  "Confirmed."

  "Amy will make up a media release for you with all the need to know stuff in it."

  "It might help. Or create panic. We don’t have the police to handle panic."

  "We do. Two battalions of troops will be here with the evacuation fleets, one of them the Peacekeepers you had here before. We are very good at evacuating people now. If you need help immediately, Annabelle's team can go down with you, and we can send down a couple of hundred security people as well."

  I saw Jane nodding at me. For people, insert droids in belt suits.

  "I'll take them. What about our outlying regions? Since you were last here, a lot of our people left the city and went out to form small communities out in the boonies. A lot of them don’t communicate with anyone anymore."

  "Jane, call in Orion please. The pilots can overfly as much of the planet as possible, while the Corvettes go in to pick people up."

  "You wanted me boss?" asked Amy, from the doorway.

  I introduced her to Kitteridge, since the woman was now in the fresher, and told her what we needed. She grinned and bounced out on a mission.

  We talked logistics for a half hour more, and they left.

  Forty Two

  In the end, it took two days to evacuate Pompeii. Both Galactica and Enterprise took longer to arrive than expected, both having found communities on several planets who had simply been left behind. One of them purposely it seemed, although if you tried to make an accusation, it would have been laughed at. I had to wonder about the others as well though. It seemed odd that a reclusive American Indian community knew all about the evacuation, but had never received the means to leave. And this had also happened to a mainly dark skinned community, one where most were of Japanese descent, and an Amish community. The latter admitted they hadn't believed what they were shown, and had told those trying to warn them to go away. The thing was, whoever it had been had gone away, and no-one had made a second attempt.

  Still, as I found out while eating with my parents, this had been the case on quite a few planets along the way, where unwanted communities had simply been left behind. It made me wonder how many we'd missed on the non-spine planets we'd never had time to visit.

  Mind you, I’d hate to be those who made the decisions to leave such people behind. One day they'd meet a Karma debt collector who'd make their life miserable, and they wouldn’t understand why. And in lives to come, they would have instant enemies when they met souls they'd left behind in this one. No bad deed goes unpunished, although sometimes it takes a life time or two to happen.

  And I had to wonder why no-one had made an effort to make sure Pompeii knew of the danger, and provided them a means of escape, especially since most of the rest of the American sector was already evacuated. I asked Patton and Jedburgh, and both were genuinely horrified. They even dug out instructions given to the Miami government to make sure Pompeii evacuated with them, but no-one could find any action resulting, or who in fact failed to follow them. I left this with Dick and A-Jane to chase up, given as far as I was concerned, a major crime had been committed, and someone needed to be held responsible.

  We'd had to make special provision for the people still incarcerated for slavery, since only Borgcubia had a special section for those locked away from society. Every planet had them of course, most being locked away in a special section of a station, and they all ended up on Borgcubia eventually. But most of the American sector had simply used penal transports. We had to improvise this time, and the converted freighter would get to Outback well before Borgcubia did.

  So it was on a negative note we arrived in Midgard. We were greeted by the Diplomatic station which was still here, although they were vague to the point of annoying about Midgard's status, saying they needed to talk with us face to face.

  Vonda, Annabelle, and I, took the Gig over to the station, with Jane piloting. Station tugs were already leaving Redoubt to prepare to move the station out of orbit to where it could be joined to the others we had with us. Gunbus and other ships were already on their way down to check on who was left here.

  The station had received a great deal of refurbishment since I’d last seen it, with the diplomatic reception room being impressively opulent. I saw Vonda frown, and wondered if it had been given a facelift since she left, which she wouldn’t have approved.

  The top diplomatic staff sat us down at a conference table, and visibly fidgeted. The introductions over, silence descended on the room. Vonda's frown deepened, and I could feel my own forming.

  "What's the status of Midgard's evacuation?" I eventually demanded.

  "Well you could say it's complete," said one of them.

  "Or you could also say it hasn’t started yet," said another.

  Clear, like mud.

  "Have the inhabitants been evacuated or not?" demanded Vonda.

  "Not," said the first.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "There's no-one to evacuate," said the second.

  "So they've all left?" asked Annabelle, looking as confused as the rest of us.

  "Not as such," said first.

  For the first time in my life I had the intense desire to force choke someone. I pushed the emotion back where it came from, and made myself stay calm.

  "Explain the situation on Midgard," I demanded.

  "Um, well, err, its no-ones fault, really," muttered first, looking scared now.

  "What isn’t?" I demanded in a louder voice.

  "Well, we told them what was coming."

  "We did, I swear, and they believed us."

  "But instead of leaving…"

  He stopped, and neither of them went on.

  "Instead of leaving, WHAT?"

  The first one gulped, turned white, and simply couldn’t get any words out. The second one put his head down on the table and sobbed.

  The three of us looked at each other, wondering what the hell was going on.


  A sense of shock was coming from Amanda and Aleesha, but before I could ask why, Jane looked around suddenly, looking as shocked as Amanda was feeling.

  A vid popped up on the wall, showing Amanda.

  "Sirs, I don’t know how to say this, so I'll just spit it out."

  She paused, as if trying to find the words.

  "Everyone down here is dead."

  Vonda and Annabelle's shock matched my own.

  "Explain?" I croaked.

  "It looks like everyone committed suicide. Like every man killed his wife and children in whatever manner was easiest for him, and then killed himself."

  One of the team was throwing up in the background. I could see Alison crying.

  "Everyone?" I asked.

  "There's no sign of life on the entire planet," said Jane.

  "We'll keep looking Jon," said Amanda, "but I don’t think we're going to find anyone alive down here."

  "Keep me posted," I said to her, and the vid closed.

  I rounded on the two diplomats.

  "What the hell did you say to these people?" I roared at them.

  The second one had pulled himself off the table by now, and he simply fainted. I grabbed the first one by the front of his clothes and shook him.

  "Tell us," said Vonda, in a voice which would quick freeze a glass of water.

  "We, ah, told them about the aliens, and we told them their prophecy had turned out to be true."

  "And?" I prompted him.

  "We told them Admiral Hunter would be here soon to take care of them."

  Forty Three

  Nearly every person not on duty in the fleet came down to the planet, and we buried every last one of them in individual marked graves, with as much dignity as we could muster, and as close to their own beliefs as we could manage. It gutted nearly all of us, especially burying children.

  I knew it was pointless, the aliens would dig them up anyway, but we did it regardless. It took us three days working around the clock.

  Amy made sure everything was documented, every grave photographed, every person accounted for, and the rest of humanity saw what had happened here.

  It hadn't really been anyone's fault, even though Vonda tried to assume responsibility. She berated herself for not leaving better instructions behind, for not having made sure the invasion would be explained to the Midgard people in a safe way. She was kicking herself for making sure I left Midgard as fast as I had, once we discovered how terrified of me they were. And we all wondered if we had taken the time to make sure the people understood I was just a normal person, if they would all be alive now. If. If. If. Too late now.