Finally, Grace had Custer drop in all the way down, to hover about a thousand meters above the highest building, while the Dropships practically jumped out and landed. Grace was on her way back up before the Sabres could get anywhere near her, given we had been forced to take on Custer first.
Just for the hell of it, and a modicum of curiosity, I pinged Lacey to fly the lead Sabre instead of me, and I added in a second squadron of Sabres for the opposing force. The Dropships survived, but Custer took a fair amount of damage before it escaped.
I pinged George to join in, as captain of Custer, and for him to run the pickup operation instead of Grace. He responded with "About bloody time", and I laughed.
Interestingly though, while Custer did well against the two squadrons of fighters, the Dropship's didn't. Grace had tried to make George see reason, but he hadn't listened. Which given the difference in their ranks and experience, wasn’t at all surprising. But George hadn't given enough attention to keeping the Dropships safe, and so Lacey and two others had been able to sneak in and take them out from under George's nose.
The next time worked. The dropships made it down in one piece, Custer protected them while they picked up and returned, then escaped to space.
I made them do it again. This time I added twelve Excalibur's to the mix, launching from the station in orbit after the Frigate started into the atmosphere. They intercepted Custer as it began to rise again, and rained missiles down from above. The mosquito launchers took out most of them, but not all, and the Excalibur's swept in to launch torpedoes. George didn’t have an answer, and Custer crashed into the center of the city.
On the next go, George torpedoed the station on his way in.
Given the torture he'd endured there, I wasn’t surprised at this, but it was a bit overkill. All the same, the Excalibur's were destroyed before they could launch. The Sabres were dealt with, and the pickup made. I let the scenario play out to the jump point, where I ambushed Custer on the other side with a squadron of Gladiators. George made short work of them with the main guns and torpedoes. Custer's ability to dogfight like a fighter made her very difficult to be killed by them, as long as they didn’t have overwhelming numbers and a good leader.
The afternoon almost over, I ended the session. While I wasn’t game to face my pilot's in the mess after making things so difficult for them, I'd found it a very entertaining and instructive day. I was thinking of making this a normal part of each day, using different scenarios. We needed to think quickly when we launched. We couldn’t assume we would always know what we faced, and the unexpected was always likely to bollux up any game plan on the day.
Lacey and George arrived for dinner looking happy. Grace on the other hand looked completely exhausted. Given her day, I wasn’t surprised. Lacey looked at her, turned back to me, and gave me a deliberate nod. I nodded back. She had done well.
After dinner, I was on the Bridge for the jump into the Enterprise system, followed by more t-birds action in the theatre. I watched a couple of episodes, before returning to my suite to play with Angel and Nut for a while.
Not long before eleven, Jane called me up to the Bridge for the approach to the planet Enterprise. Even given the very late hour, the Bridge quickly filled up.
It was a sight worth seeing.
The planet Enterprise had been colonized by the crew and colonists of the Explorer ship named Enterprise, the third of the three Explorer ships to be built before the exodus from Earth. Identical in most respects to her predecessors, she was an impressive sight, as her bulk grew more imposing as we drew closer.
Shaped like a crocodile, she was actually half as big again as BigMother was, larger and more bulky than any of the Battleships we had seen or come up against so far. The front section, like the elongated head of the croc, housed all the operational areas of the ship. The middle section was all accommodation and living areas. The rear section was power generators and engines. The front and rear sections were designed to be detachable, in case of some form of catastrophic event.
On each side of the center section, like giant legs, were the flight pods. These too were designed to be detached in case of disaster striking. Designed in much the same way as the old style water-borne aircraft carriers had been, with hanger space below the flight deck, they pioneered the Carriers of today. They were not designed with launch bays, since their prime complement were shuttles and small explorer ships, rather than fighters. They did carry fighters, but like the aircraft-carriers of old, the flight deck was designed to have them lined up ready to fly, next to airlocks which the pilots would have to spacewalk from to enter the ship.
They were designed to be self-sufficient for decades, although this was never really tested. Support ships followed after them, keeping them up to date with system upgrades, food, supplies, and people. As colony personnel settled a planet, more were brought to live aboard ready for the next one. Sometimes years went by between support ships, but the decades without support was never tested.
Of the three, only Enterprise returned to Earth. Galactica, with my ancestors aboard, headed up the spine. Prometheus went down the spine. Enterprise explored all around the Earth sector. Since an Earth bypass was never discovered, Enterprise visited Earth several times as she moved from one side of the sector to the other.
Why do I know so much about her? My family considered knowing the history of the Explorer ships as very important to our family history, and I'd done a lot of research on the three ships when I’d been eight. My teachers at the time knew who I was, and made sure I did the research. I've never been sure, but I think there was Keeper involvement back then as well.
Enterprise was the only one of the Explorer ships to simply die of old age. Prometheus was lost when she entered the radiation system which blocks our progress towards the core. Galactica simply vanished.
The official history of Enterprise says she visited the Sirius system, and after jumping back out, suffered a serious systems failure, which necessitated abandoning ship. They made it as far as the only habitable planet in the system, and left her in orbit. The planet proved to have only a limited habitable area around the equator, so it never attracted many colonists. Hence even today, it has a small population. They were never interested in joining the French sector, so it remained part of Earth sector, although really independent, since Earth sector ignored them as well.
Jane brought us to a stop a safe distance away from Enterprise herself. There was no station in orbit of the planet. A channel opened, and we were welcomed, informed that Enterprise was no longer open for tourists, but the planet was happy for us to land and visit the memorial. I looked around the Bridge and received nods from most of those there, so I said we would be happy to visit after some sleep. They sent us up a data package, and Jane pointed out the memorial was on standard time.
I can't say I was surprised to find Enterprise was not up to accepting tourists anymore. She was after all, approaching six hundred years old, and had been a lifeless hulk for nearly three hundred years. In some ways, it was amazing she was still in orbit at all.
We all went to bed, with a sense of history weighing us down.
Four
I was sitting in my command chair, in space.
Hundreds of people stood behind me, beginning with the twins, each line containing two extra people to form a huge triangle.
No ship, no life support, no nothing.
Just me, in my chair, in space. With a triangle of people behind me.
Space around me was not familiar.
As I looked around I saw no planets.
There were many asteroid fields.
In the distance, two gas giants.
A movement in front of me caught my eye.
A black dot had appeared at long range.
As I watched, another dot appeared.
Then another.
Then ten, a hundred, a thousand.
Space in front of me turned black.
I bolted upright in bed. T
he old nightmare had returned. Angel was not impressed with having her sleep so rudely interrupted, and jumped off the bed in search of somewhere else to snooze.
To my surprise, Aline was asleep on the other side of my bed. I'd been alone when I went to sleep, so she must have snuck in during the night. Since our little interlude on Christmas day, she'd kept her distance, but had been throwing me looks.
I was still trying to get a grip on her being there, when the twins burst in. They were stark naked. This wasn’t surprising at all. Since we'd first met, they'd been sharing the dream with me, and had a habit of bursting in after each time. Since they slept in the nude, they also had a habit of forgetting to put anything on before doing so.
"It's started again!" they said together.
Aline jolted awake, and bolted upright alongside me. She was obviously naked as well.
"What?" She looked at the twins with wide eyes, and shook her head. "I was dreaming I was in bed with Jon, and he bolted upright from a nightmare, and the two of you ran in naked." She paused, looking at each of us. "Why did I just dream that?" No-one said anything, we just looked at her. "More importantly, why did my dream seem to have been no dream at all?"
Amanda laughed.
"The risk you take sleeping with Jon," she said.
"You know weird things happen around him," said Aleesha.
"We didn’t …" she stopped. "I…" she stopped again. She closed her eyes and finished with "Fuck it."
The three of us laughed.
"Shower?" I asked.
The three naked girls waited while I stripped off my boxers and t-shirt, and hung them in the cleaner section of the closet. I followed their arses into the bathroom. Four was a bit of a tight fit in the shower, but we managed it. The old routine with the twins came back to us, and was improvised to include Aline. Somehow though, I seemed to have been washed all over three times instead of once. Four was obviously more complicated than three, and needed some practice to get right.
With underwear from the dispenser donned, we shifted into 'slinky red' and headed for BA's torture session. But all through the exercises and assault courses, I pondered the significance of the nightmare's return. Kali had said I hadn't needed it anymore. I'd taken that to mean I'd never need it again. But obviously this wasn’t the case.
When I finished pondering why, I started pondering what. Each time I'd had the nightmare in the past, it was followed by something very dangerous. Granted, danger was my business, and getting a heads up could be considered a good thing, but the nightmare itself never provided any insight into what was coming, and thus wasn’t a lot of actual use.
The four of us returned to my suite after breakfast, and we spent an hour in the spa. Nothing was said about Aline being in the wrong bedroom, although I could tell the twins were curious about it. We did discuss what the nightmare was trying to tell us, but like me, the twins couldn’t see why we'd had it again.
The only thing which made any sense was the triangle of people, making up the rough shape of BigMother. Obviously it meant the right ship and people were in place for the events of the nightmare to play out.
The really scary thought came from Aline.
"What if it means the Darkness is almost here, and we're going to encounter it without finding out about prophesy first?"
None of us had an answer to that, and all we could do was punch the more bubbles button, and sit there silently pondering the imponderable.
Five
The Enterprise Memorial was a good way away from the small space port. We landed there in shuttles, leaving a squadron of Sabres doing CAP, with the three Dropships ready for instant retrieval, all of them on high alert.
A fast monorail took us to the Memorial. Some two thirds of the crew had elected to visit the Memorial, and the clerk on duty seemed in seventh heaven with what I had to pay to get us all aboard. It was almost exactly the same when we arrived, and I had to pay for us all to enter the Memorial itself. Like all places specifically for casual travelers, the main industry was "fleece the tourist".
The Memorial itself comprised a dilapidated hanger, obviously centuries old, within which were the decaying shuttles which had brought the crew of Enterprise to the planet. The only modern part of the exhibit was an area with full hollo facilities, which gave an account of the last flight of the Enterprise, and the desperate evacuation to the planet which ended her service as an Explorer ship. The account gave a fast history lesson of the planet since then, which I allowed to drone on in the background as I pondered the end time for the ship.
The official histories all said Enterprise died of old age. The odd thing was, there was no actual warning signs ahead of time which would suggest the ship's deterioration. Nor were there here either. The local story had more details, but were still pretty thin about what actually happened.
Enterprise had gone into the Sirius system for the second time, it being the one known system in the sector, which had not been adequately explored.
On its original pass through the system, it had confirmed the three known suns, identified the single planet capable of sustaining life, noted this planet was actually lifeless, and left to move further afield from Earth.
The second time was nearly three hundred years later, and reported as being much the same exploration as the first, with the exception a team had landed on the planet long enough to determine the sensors were correct that nothing lived there, but not long enough to determine why. That particular question mark remained unanswered.
After her jump back into what was to be named the Enterprise system, she suffered a serious systems failure, and her people had had to abandon ship as soon as they reached orbit. While teams had returned to the ship many times since, there was still no explanation for why the ship had died so suddenly. The damage was deemed unfixable, and so she had been left in orbit.
Up until a few years earlier, the ship itself was viewable by tour group, but when a group had nearly died, the tours had been stopped.
Instead, there was a holographic tour, which cost extra to watch, which showed us her interior. I found the whole hollo-tour fascinating, given my ancestors had set out into space in an identical ship.
I expressed my frustration at coming so far, and not being able to visit the ship itself. The bland smile assured me no-one was allowed there now, that the whole ship was in fact a death trap.
I wondered if this was in fact true. It all had the feel of 'we protest too much', and made me wonder what they had to hide. Still, there was nothing I could put my finger on.
After a lunch served in the expensive local restaurant, I was approached by one of the tour guides, who asked if I was indeed a descendant of the Hunters who took out Galactica. I responded that indeed I was, and was invited to visit with the administrator, who was supposed to be a descendant of a member of the original bridge crew of Enterprise. I followed the guide through a door marked for authorized personnel only.
* * *
I came to with a significant headache, and a feeling of weightlessness. I seemed to be wearing some sort of light space suit, presumably for emergency use, since weightlessness usually comes with no air, and both tend to come with major cold. A loose belt was holding me into a chair.
My medical monitor was primary, indicating a blow to the back of my head, and a dissipating chemical in my blood. I let it deal with the pain and the chemical, as I tried to figure out where I was.
It appeared to be the bridge of a ship. It was a huge bridge too, much bigger than BigMother's. And much older, not to mention non-functional. Enterprise then. Had to be.
I brought up a plan of the Enterprise Bridge, and confirmed the layout. There was of course, nothing to indicate why I was here.
A clumping noise caught my attention, and I turned to see a combat suit walking down the right side of the bridge, right being in relation to me facing forward. It continued down to the front consoles, and turned to face me.
My PC popped up its specs. It was a q
uite old, near bottom of the range combat suit. Nothing at all special about it.
Held steady in the right hand was a Pulse Rifle. It was aimed at me.
The suit stood there, so I let it.
I started analyzing the situation. My belt suit was still set to 'slinky red'. Over it was this light space suit, which was actually more of a hindrance than a help. There was no indication of how much air the space suit still had, but my belt suit could keep me going for another half hour once the air ran out. It was unknown if Mr. Combat Suit had any idea I was wearing a belt suit or not. The combat suit gave him around five hours of life support. So I was disadvantaged from that perspective.
Damage wise, my suit was a match for any combat suit, but would take damage from the Pulse Rifle, or metal fists, faster than I could inflict it with my fists.
Fortunately, I wasn’t unarmed.
Quite some time ago now, Jane had figured out how to hide weapons using the belt suit. She'd taught me the method not long after. These days I tended to walk around apparently unarmed, while I was actually wearing two Gatling stunners and my Long Gun. I still was, as my PC reassured me. The Long Gun was on my right thigh, a Gatling stunner on the left, and also on the left hip placed for right hand draw. Unless I actually bumped into something, they could not be seen.
Trouble was, they were all set for stunning, which was completely useless against a combat suit. Jane however, had also designed a command to have the suit insert the laser bolts. I activated this now.
Hunter Legacy 8: Hero to the Rescue Page 3