Hunter Legacy 8: Hero to the Rescue

by Timothy Ellis

  I turned and shot back out again. I repeated the same thing for Aleesha, but once she was on the surface, I had to wait while she changed back to a giant suit from the bulldozer. Only then could she grab hold of the sled for the ride to Custer.

  Amanda was an anti-climax, just a repeat of Aleesha. Once she was on board Custer, I hovered for a moment, observing the mess.

  "Jane, have BA and the twins move the Dropship as far back as it will go. Then have the twins bulldoze all the earth back out. But do it well away from the hole, so it doesn't make things worse there. I'm going to try and pull out the shuttle. Make sure they are out of my way when I return."

  "Confirmed, and F.A.B."

  I chose not to let the role play bother me, and shot back down towards the position of the shuttle. It was now completely buried. Getting it unburied proved to be a matter of two steps forward, one step back. It was so near the walls of the cavern, the thrust from the ship was tearing into the walls, and each time I turned on the grav, earth and rocks went everywhere, including back down on the shuttle. Back and forth I went, moving as much as I could each time, until finally, most of the top surface of the shuttle was now visible.

  Now for the real test. The shuttle was much bigger than the dropship had been. I gently eased down until a shudder told me the sled was touching the ship. I turned on the grav, and goosed the thrusters, and we didn’t move. I pushed as much power into the thrusters as I could, and finally we began to move upwards. Earth followed us up, and the engine red lined before I was ready for it. The shuttle was less than five meters above the ground, when I had no alternative but to kill the grav. The Epee shot up, the shuttle dropped.

  I mentally shot a 'sorry' at the occupants of the shuttle as it crashed back down, and I watched the engine readouts settle down. The shuttle was now on the surface, which would make picking it up again easier, but I was beginning to worry the Epee didn’t have the grunt to pull it out. Still, I had to try.

  Before I could though, the shuttle shook. Earthquake? The walls all began to crumble, threatening to bury the shuttle again.

  The Epee dropped again, as I maneuvered it to grab the shuttle in the middle of its length. Both ships shuddered as we touched. I turned on the grav, and instead of using the thrusters, I pushed in main speed. Instead of going up, we went forward, initially carving a furrow in the ground, until I pulled us up as well. Earth and rocks followed. There wasn’t enough room for us to get out on this angle, so I had to head left to give me room to curve around further up the slope. Slowly gaining height, by the time I was almost back the other way, we staggered out of the top of the hole.

  But there was too much weight. I had no choice but to turn the grav off again for a few seconds to keep the Epee in the air, during which I let the ship drop with the shuttle. With the shuttle about to hit ground again, I turned the grav back on, waited for the jolt of shuttle touching grav sled, pushed for full speed, and we shot away, leaving most of the earth raining down behind us.

  Warnings were flashing across the HUD now, as I turned us around and headed for Custer. Way too late, I suddenly wondered if the shuttle would fit in through the airlock. Wonder and relief merged, as we passed in, and the shuttle began to skid across the deck as the grav went off, and Custer's gravity claimed it.

  Still with forward momentum, the Epee died. Engine, HUD, life support, control systems, all gone like flipping a switch.

  Custer's gravity seized the ship, we crashed sideways and down, skidding the length of the bay, until a fortunately unused corner stopped us dead.

  Thirteen

  I was back in bed before five, after they cut me out of the Epee. Nut was in Angel's cat bed, and Angel looked like she hadn’t moved since I left. Less than two hours from bed to bed, and yet I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I shifted back to a belt, and still in boxers and t-shirt, lay down next to Angel.

  It was nearly midday when I awoke. I asked Jane for a status, and heard she had moved BigMother back into coms range of the comnavsat at the jump point. But she still hadn't figured out why coms were so bad in this system. Coms had been bad in the Midgard system, but this wasn’t the same thing. That’s about all she knew so far. Work continued on the Enterprise computer, but it hadn't been turned on yet.

  After a solo shower, as I'd woken alone, I dragged myself along to the Dining Room. About half the team were there in addition to those whose sleep hadn't been interrupted. Those only just up, like me, looked it.

  "No," I said to BA as I went past her.

  She chuckled to herself. I knew she wasn’t going to suggest the days training start after lunch, but I also wasn’t going to give her the chance to use it as a joke.

  I plonked down in my seat at the head of the table, and Jeeves enquired if I was wanting breakfast or lunch. I had to think about it. My stomach gurgled, so I requested lunch.

  The rest of the team straggled in as we were eating. We all looked like we had been sucker punched, and won the fight on a technicality. They all knew how close they'd come this time. There might not be a tomorrow, had almost happened. The team might not come back was what had happened for me, and it felt the same.

  The few attempts to lighten the mood were quickly abandoned. I wondered for a moment if training was the answer anyway. I had no doubt BA would be on the ranges very shortly, and probably the twins.

  Being one of the first to finish lunch, I left the somber atmosphere for the Bridge, intending to dive into the day's work load.

  But I'd no sooner made the door to the Ready Room, when George followed me in, with a group of people I’d never seen before behind him. I kept on going to my desk, but remained standing beside it.

  George came straight on in. A woman with captain's stripes followed, with a crewman behind her, and what looked like civvies behind him.

  "Admiral Jon Hunter," started George, "this is Captain Skye Walker, from the medical shuttle we rescued."

  She held out a hand, and I shook it.

  "Thankyou sir. We were beginning to think rescue would never come. While the rescue itself was unexpected and somewhat traumatic, especially since we didn’t know what was actually happening, we're all glad the hospital sent a rescue outfit after us."

  George coughed quietly.

  "Actually," I said and paused. "We're not a rescue outfit. And we didn’t come here looking for you." The news didn’t go down too well. "We were told to look out for you, and we did, which is why you're here now. But we came out of my curiosity for this system, not because you were lost."

  There was a long pause. Finally, Captain Walker got a grip.

  "No matter Admiral. We needed rescue, and you rescued. That's all that matters."

  "Indeed."

  "This is my crewman, Ken Obi." She waved another woman forward. "And this is the leader of the medical team, Doctor Elisabeth Carter."

  Carter shook hands with me, and I could see questions dancing in her eyes, ones she was restraining herself from asking. She looked to be in her thirties, but this was quickly challenged.

  "It's good to meet you, Your Grace," said a British accent. "This is my daughter Jill," she went on, indicating a teenage girl a little behind her.

  I nodded to Jill, but received a cold look back. Carter glared at her, but didn’t say anything more.

  Walker introduced me to the rest of the medical team, who turned out to be a mixture of medical scientists and technicians. I quickly forgot their names.

  Introductions over, I enquired if they were comfortable on Custer, and was assured they were. I let them know they could be evicted at a moment's notice if Custer was needed for a mission, so if they would prefer to move to BigMother, they should speak to Jane about accommodations. I called her in, and introduced her avatar.

  Carter asked about our medical facilities, so I asked Jane to show her, and any of her team who wished to see them as well. They followed her out, teen in tow. I overheard a comment about moving several people from care units on one ship to t
he other.

  I turned to Walker.

  "Captain, you are welcome to a chair on the Bridge at any time, both of you, although since we don’t really have a ship crew, Mr. Obi might feel more comfortable in the Marine Mess?"

  I made it a question, and received a smile and a nod.

  "No crew?" asked Walker.

  "This ship is run by Jane, who is a top level AI. Other than pilots and marines, we don’t carry any crew. If it comes to combat in this ship, I control everything from my chair, and Jane backs me up."

  "That’s incredible!"

  "Different maybe, but hardly incredible. You're welcome to talk to Jane about anything while you're here."

  "Thank you Admiral. We'll be getting out of your way. Thank you again for our rescue."

  "Actually, I'd like to hear what happened." I indicated a seat for her.

  She nodded to Obi, he nodded to me, and left. We both sat in lounge chairs. Angel came racing in at this point with Nut following. They raced around the room, and Nut raced straight out again. Angel however, changed direction, and leapt up onto my knee. I introduced them. Angel curled up in my lap, and I idly tickled her.

  "How much do you know?" asked Walker.

  "Not much. You caught a lift to the jump point, and were investigating why the planet here was uninhabited, or was it inhabitable?"

  "Both. Yes. We couldn’t find anyone to bring us into the system, so we were dropped off at the jump point on the other side. Pity we hadn't waited a month, because it looks like we could have come with you. But. Well who was to know? We lost communications as soon as we jumped. Making our way to the planet was straight forward. We surveyed it from orbit, determined the least active place to land, and landed without incident."

  "Least active? It looked like the most active to me."

  "Least active. While we were trying to find a place on the same time as the ship, we were mindful of what was going on down there. What we didn’t bring though, and in hindsight it was almost a fatal mistake, was a geologist."

  "We don’t have one either."

  "We landed in a broad meadow, and for a week, we did tests of everything we could find, looking for reasons why there was no life here. We did actually find a lot of life, as you would have seen, but nothing in the larger or higher types of life. We'd expected the air to be toxic, or the planet life to be poisonous, but everything seemed to be idyllic."

  She paused as Jeeves entered and put a bottle of water down next to each of us.

  "Butler droid?" she asked.

  "Yes. We have a lot of them, spread across the ships."

  "Dress uniform?"

  "Jeeves was my first one. His appearance was changed for a state occasion, and he was subsequently damaged in combat. I left him as he was, after his repairs. He is the primary butler, after all. The rest link to him."

  She laughed.

  "I'd heard you were a bit eccentric."

  "Who moi?"

  She laughed harder.

  "Idyllic?"

  The laugh stopped.

  "We had almost no warning at all. After several tremors close together, I called everyone back aboard. About a half hour later, there was a massive earthquake, and the ground just opened up and swallowed us."

  "You tried to fire up the engines and escape?"

  "How did you know?"

  "It was the most likely explanation for what we found."

  "I had the engines going before we hit the bottom, but before I could do anything, something really big hit us, swung us around, and I hit the speed slider accidently while the ship was pointed at a dirt wall. We hit it pretty hard, the whole thing collapsed, and before I could do anything, we were rolling. When we stopped, I found the engines had died along with quite a few systems. Life support was fine, and we had limited power, but there was no way of getting out. We did try the airlock, but couldn’t get it open. You're people had to cut us out."

  I hadn't heard that, but then, I hadn't asked either.

  "What did you find when you arrived here?"

  "Nothing until we reached orbit, where we picked up your distress beacon. If I hadn't been going there specifically, we wouldn’t have heard you. Something in this system destroys coms. Jane is still working on it. We located where you were, and sent in a small cargo droid with a bright light. It found a large underground cavern."

  Her eyes opened wide.

  "So we landed on top of some sort of cave system?"

  "Yes. A very extensive system as far as we can tell."

  "Shit! If I ever do something this stupid again, I'm bringing a full survey team, and all the bells and whistles!"

  "The droid found a narrow way into a second chamber, and found you at the other end of it, mostly buried. We dug out the first chamber, and my team had almost dug out your shuttle, when the whole thing dropped on top of my team."

  She looked shocked.

  "I had to hastily rig a grav sled on the bottom of our smallest ship, and do some earthmoving to get my team out, and then your shuttle out."

  I waved the vid from the bird to the wall, and we watched it in silence.

  She shook visibly when the shuttle dropped from the grav sled, and was caught again before hitting the ground.

  "I remember that. We had no idea what was going on, as I'd strapped us all into mess seats when the shuttle started moving. Half of us threw up when the ship dropped suddenly. I have to ask, why did you do that?"

  "Between the shuttle and all the earth the grav was pulling along, the weight was too heavy. The fighter was red lining almost as soon as I got to ground height, and was only getting worse. I figured I could let it all go, and reacquire you fast enough to lose most of the earth, but still keep you in the air. It worked, but the fighter died as I laid you on the Cargo Bay deck."

  "I saw a wrecked fighter, but couldn’t work out why it was there. You pulled us out yourself?"

  "Had to. My team were under a life support deadline. I left you to last, but if I’d not pulled you out then, chances are we'd have never been able to get you out."

  "We're very glad you did."

  "Talk to Jane about repairs to your shuttle. There shouldn’t be any trouble, as we carry spares for a whole range of ships, and can fabricate anything else we need."

  "Thankyou. I will. How long will you be remaining here?"

  "I don’t know yet. Your planet question is only one of the mysteries here."

  "How so?"

  I ran her through the theories, and she expressed interest in what we found. It turned out she had taken the job of captaining the shuttle, because she had an interest in the planet as well as the medical team did. Finding there were other questions about the system intrigued her.

  She left with a smile on her face, with the dual mission of outfitting her people with basic suit belts, and to find Jeeves to allocate her and Carter suites on Deck Two. The rest of the medical team were to settle into the original Marine Mess.

  I picked up my pad, and began on the days emails.

  Fourteen

  "Jon? We're in the Deck Two spa room. Can you come down and join us?"

  I thought about it for a moment. My mind wasn’t on what I was doing, and I felt sluggish. Might as well.

  "Okay Amanda, I'll be down shortly."

  I walked into the bathroom which contained two large spa baths, and a communal shower, and stopped dead.

  There was a line of naked women across the room, facing away from me, heads turned to look at me over their shoulders. I had a moment of intense déjà vu.

  "What are you…?"

  "Don’t Jon," said Amanda. "You saved our arses again. It's only appropriate."

  "No it isn’t!"

  "Yes," said Annabelle, from behind me in the doorway, "it is."

  The door shut behind her as she moved to the left end of the line beside Amanda, switched her suit to a belt, pulled her top over her head, slipped her lacey briefs down, deftly kicked them into the air, and sent both items of clothing to j
oin the pile against the wall. For someone her age, she had a class arse. She also looked at me over her shoulder.

  "Jon, we screwed up. Worse, we didn’t take you seriously when you didn’t throw yourself into the rescue, and we didn’t bother to find out why, or press you into making sure it was safe, or pay enough attention to your caution warning. We know what you saw in your dream. We all died. The twins saw it and told us. You took an insane gamble to get us out, and nearly killed yourself in the process. This is atonement for stupidity. And for the record, the only reason I wasn’t part of the last time the girls did this, was because they didn’t tell me they were doing it."

  "But…"

  She turned around, and walked towards me. She had the same toned fit body the rest of them did, only the hair on her head and pubic area showing any real signs of age. Some artificial colour in her hair, and she would pass as only slightly older than Alison. She stood before me, pulled me into a hug which threatened to squash the life out of me, and kissed me on the lips. When she finally let me go, striding off to drop herself into the spa, the rest of them were grinning.

  The twins were next, and I noticed that like me, their all-over tans were fading. Alison, Alana, Agatha and Abigail followed. BA almost crushed me, and Aline didn’t stop kissing me until we were both about to pass out from lack of air.

  There was one person left, and she looked scared. Grace was the only one with tan lines and the most lily-white arse I'd ever seen. She looked at the spa for support, got a series of nods and smiles, and a definitive head shake from Amanda, before she made an effort, spun around and launched herself at me. Her body was everything I thought it might be, back when we'd been dating, but had never had the chance to find out. She hugged me fiercely, breasts digging into my chest, kissed me long and hard, and then ran to the spa and jumped in. Which wasn’t a good thing to do, and BA had to reach under the water and haul her out.