Hunter Legacy 8: Hero to the Rescue

by Timothy Ellis

  Annabelle and I looked at each other. I turned back to him.

  "Are you satisfied with my rank?" I asked.

  "I don’t understand it, but for now, I'll accept it."

  "Good. Tell us how you arrived here."

  "We chased a pirate Cruiser into this system. It seemed to be making for this planet, but we entered an area of extreme turbulence while still exchanging pot shots. Their shields shredded, and they were torn apart. Ours were stronger, and we made it into some sort of null zone in the middle of the system. We managed to dodge all the debris there long enough to restore shields, took the path of least resistance out, and headed for the planet to see why they were going there. The planet itself is uninhabited, and seems to be trying to destroy itself. Our engines shit themselves as we were making orbit, and were beyond our ability to fix. Yesterday I sent down a shuttle for supplies, and it suffered an engine failure. The planet seems to have swallowed it. My people are okay, but I hadn't worked out how to retrieve them yet."

  "Are you on standard time? Because yesterday we were here doing another rescue of a shuttle, and we didn’t see you at all."

  "Ah, no. You weren't here yesterday, we'd have seen you. You're too big to miss."

  "We can't both be right, unless you arrived here after we left."

  "What are you talking about? We've been here two years!"

  "What?" Annabelle and I said it together.

  Silence did a couple of laps of the table.

  "Jane?" I said at last.

  "Still can't explain it," she said from the doorway, coming in. "It's getting more difficult by the minute."

  "Why is this difficult?" asked Jackman, finally joining in.

  "Let me sum it up," I offered. Heads nodded. "We were here yesterday, and we didn’t see you. You've been here for two years, and you didn’t see us. And you've also been missing for ten years."

  "What?" Now it was their turn for stereo shock.

  Silence did a few more laps of the table.

  "We seem to have a mystery," I said at last. "You vanished ten years ago, but you've been here two years, but were not here yesterday, but are here today." I shook my head. "That’s a lot of buts."

  I looked at O'Neill.

  "I got nothing," he stated.

  Jackman shook her head, Annabelle nodded, and Jane stood there looking blank.

  "What have you got Jane?"

  "Records confirm the Homer vanished ten years ago. Homer's logs confirm they have been here two years. They also confirm we were not here yesterday. And that chunk of Cruiser which hit us, is probably the remains of the pirate they were chasing."

  "I still got nothing."

  "Me either," I said. "Let's put that aside for now. How bad is the situation your people are in?"

  "Bad, but not so bad."

  "Clear, like mud."

  He grinned.

  "The shuttle tanked over the southern ocean. Once a week we go down to the stable bits, and collect anything we can eat, and top up our water supply. While nothing on that planet is very advanced, a lot of it is edible, and the water is pretty pure coming out of the mountains. We also trawl the ocean for this krill like creature. A mess of them provide protein when you make a sort of fish tasting chowder out of it. My engineer came up with a way to scoop them up. Something happened yesterday and they went in. Shuttle sank immediately, which in itself is odd, but no-one was hurt. They have air, water, and food for several weeks, but they tell me the shuttle was covered in silt within hours, and it's continuing to pile up on top of them."

  I looked at Jane.

  "How long?"

  "Morning should do it."

  "Will it cope with a swim?"

  "No problems."

  "Did you solve the docking problem?"

  "Confirmed."

  "What in the blazes are you two yammering on about?"

  Annabelle began to laugh, and was followed shortly after by Jackman.

  "Among other things, Jane is my engineer. They started work on an earth digger recovery vehicle, after our last experience with this planet. Figured we might need it one day. I wasn’t banking on needing it before it was complete though."

  "So you can save our people?"

  "Might be able to salvage the shuttle as well."

  "Add a grav?" asked Jane.

  "Yep," I answered.

  Silence did another lap.

  "How extensive is your damage?"

  "Very. Engines are a shipyard job. The repair droids have fixed what they could, but we ran out of spares in the process."

  "Repairs?" asked Jane.

  "Yep."

  Two sets of eyes bored into mine.

  "We carry a lot of spares, and also a fabrication unit. Might not be able to replace your engines, but most other things should be fixable."

  "We'd be much obliged."

  "Happy to help. If you don’t mind being a bowsprit for a while, Jane can get things done. It isn’t the first time we've transported a ship sucking our nose." There were blank looks.

  Both O'Neill and Jackman made a big deal of getting the last drops out of the coffee cups.

  "Food?" said Jane.

  "Yep. Better send them some before they decide to raid our food stores." Jackman look scandalized, but O'Neill took on a predators grin. "Start with coffee, they obviously need some."

  "And then some," muttered Jackman.

  "It's very late. If your people can wait, let's pick this up in the morning."

  "Would you care to join our training session Colonel?" asked Annabelle.

  "You still got that bad arse Sergeant slave driver?"

  "Command Sergeant Major now," she responded with a laugh. "I'm sure BA will be delighted to have a few extras drop by."

  "Huh! PT? We'll come by to show you how it's done."

  I suppressed a laugh.

  "Let Jane know how many are coming, and she'll let BA know as soon as she's awake. Jane will also have enough trolleys to take you there."

  "Awake? It’s a beautiful morning. What are yawl doing in bed?"

  His grin belied the statement, given it was well past midnight.

  "We did the same trip you did, through the null zone. It’s a might tiring, you might say. Uses a different set of muscles being bounced around."

  "That it does. Fine, see you at PT."

  The two of them rose, nodded to us both, and left with Jane following.

  "Bed," I said to Annabelle. "See you at PT."

  She grinned at me.

  Seventeen

  Jane pulled me out of the morning training session before I was properly warmed up. BA was not amused, but I was kinda glad. It had been a disjointed night, and not enough contiguous sleep for my liking, given how badly we'd been shaken up the day before.

  The crew of Homer had jogged the whole length of the Cargo Deck, in formation I might add, and arrived ready to show us how PT was done. Alas, we weren't doing PT. There was a lot of surprised looks when they joined us, and a few joyous reunions. BA cut everyone short, and training began. BA immediately put them through various combat courses, making sure none of them were competing directly with any of us. O'Neill was pleasantly surprised, and took to the courses like a man possessed of new enthusiasm for pain and endurance based suffering. Some of his crew were not quite so enthusiastic. It looked like he had a twenty five person mercenary team, and the Cruiser had a full complement of three watches of crew, most of two of whom were here, from which the not so enthusiastic ones came from.

  The new Mole, or at least I thought of it as being a new one, even though the original one had never actually made it outside a dream, was a lot bigger in every dimension. This one had been custom made, not cobbled together from existing, stuff. The cockpit had morphed into a control room, which sat six. Behind it was seating for twenty. The hull was reinforced to withstand an enormous weight of earth, and the pressure of great depth of water, where shields were ineffective or unusable. But it was still a space ship, and could be f
lown as such. In case of emergency, it carried food and water for twenty six, for a week. There was nowhere but the seats to sleep on, making things extremely uncomfortable for long term occupancy, but at least survival was possible if the worst happened.

  It had been assembled in Custer's Hanger Deck, designed to drop straight down like a Dropship. And it only just fit. At some point, I really did need to think about an Assault Destroyer design, considering we kept upping our game and requirements. The giant combat suits were also a bit too big for Custer as well. Maybe I should just do an Assault Cruiser instead, and get it right this time. Although a Cruiser dropping down close to the ground wasn't something you saw much. Midgard's had landed, much to everyone's surprise, proving it could be done, but the kind of hover mode we needed as an Assault ship, wasn’t normal to Cruiser designs. Then again, normal and I didn’t have much in common. It was food for thought though.

  The Mole was almost ready, repair droids still doing final system checks, before Jane took it over and re-checked everything.

  All through her presentation, I had the feeling she wasn’t all there, so I finally asked her outright.

  "Got something else on your mind Jane?"

  She gave me 'the look'. The one which says no, meaning yes, but I'm not ready to talk about it yet.

  "I'm working on a theory which may explain our mystery."

  "Do tell."

  "It's not so much a theory, as an idea."

  "Spill it."

  "It's not so much an idea, as one of those mad thoughts which defy logic."

  "Spit it out!"

  "Well," she paused, looking troubled. "It requires more of a suspension of disbelief than I think yours can cope with."

  "Mine's hair-trigger. Hit me with it!"

  She did.

  I was glad I was sitting down.

  I got up, just so I could thump down again to provide the emphasis the occasion demanded.

  Eventually, I found the ability to speak again.

  "You have proof?"

  "Not as such. The glimmer of an idea for parameters to look for it."

  "Once we get this rescue over with, it's priority one. Let me know when you work out how to go about getting proof. I'm not mentioning this to anyone until we can back it up."

  "Confirmed."

  We sat there in silence for a while, before I had an idea.

  "Can this shuttle eating dirtball help?"

  "How so?"

  I told her.

  "Not enough perspective."

  "Think bigger then."

  "Ten four."

  "Rubber duck, yes I remember. Remind me where that came from?"

  "A song."

  "Oh yeah. I thought you meant the one in Hitch Hikers, but the context didn’t fit. And I have no plans for installing a bath on the Bridge. I'm not that eccentric."

  She grinned at me. I went down to breakfast.

  By the end of breakfast, with O'Neill and Jackman joining us, the Mole was ready. The two of them wanted to join us on the rescue attempt, so we made our way up into Custer, with Annabelle. The twins followed us, talking animatedly with Jane.

  "This cannot be the same ship," said O'Neill, as we passed through. "You sure this is General Custer?"

  "Very sure," I responded. "She was almost destroyed during the Pompeii civil war, and I had her rebuilt."

  "Civil war?" asked Jackman. "I thought you said it was a multi-sector war?"

  "Pompeii came first," said Annabelle. "We went in on a cake run, and walked into a trap. Jon here pulled us out with his then brand new Heavy Corvette, just as we were about to go down. We've been with him ever since. Within a week of the civil war ending there, Midgard went retro on everyone, sending out large fleets of Missile Cruisers. It was a close thing. Jon ran most of the war himself, with governments continually promoting him because there wasn’t anyone better on the spot, and because he had the forethought to gather assets as we retreated, which eventually won the war. Shortly after, the Brits suffered a pirate backed coup attempt, and we were roped into putting it down."

  "We didn’t hear anything of any of it."

  "You wouldn’t have," I said. "As far as we can tell, coms don’t work in this system, beyond a very short range. It was a minor miracle we picked your beacon up, although it's possible the null zone affects coms the same as matter."

  "How's that?"

  "Pulls it all in. Having already been here, we hadn't planned on coming back."

  "Glad you did."

  We arrived at the top of the Hanger Deck, to find George waiting. Annabelle introduced them.

  "How we doing Jane?"

  "Almost ready. Last repair droid is coming out now. I'm running the diagnostics. Should be ready to go by the time you decide whose going."

  "We're going," said the twins together. "We helped design it after all."

  "We're going too," said O'Neill. "They are our people after all."

  I looked at him and Jackman.

  "Are you wearing belt suits?"

  "No, what are they?"

  "Jane, two belts please, pronto."

  "Prontoing."

  She of course didn’t move, to the surprise of our guests. They looked question marks at us.

  "Belt suit," I said. "You wear it as a belt, but it changes into space armour or a full space suit if you need it. Standard belt will take a few pulse rifle hits as long as they don’t arrive at the same time. What we use will stop Meson Blaster hits. Ours also provide us with day to day uniforms, and some added bonuses."

  "Rubbish!"

  "Which part?"

  "All of it."

  "George, show them."

  He shifted into his Gorilla outfit.

  Jackman jumped. O'Neill stood there like a block of cement, but I could tell he was shaken. George shifted through a number of his clothing options, and back into 'slinky red'.

  "Shall I fetch a Pulse Rifle?" he asked with a grin.

  I raised my eyebrows at O'Neill.

  "I'll take your word for it, for now anyway."

  "Everyone on my ships wear one."

  "And it's saved a lot of lives too," added Annabelle. "Notably my own."

  A butler droid appeared with two belts, and Annabelle talked them through putting them on and activating them. George had them stand still while he scanned their uniforms, made up the spec for the belt suit, and pulsed them to them. I had them try them out in various modes, before resetting them back to belts.

  "Do we have enough belts for all of Homer's crew?" I asked Jane.

  "No, and yes."

  "Explain."

  "No we don't, but by a strange happening I won't go into, we have a fabricator on board to make them with."

  "And when did this strange happening happen?"

  "When we passed through Avon last."

  "And you kept it quiet because?"

  "I used your funds without telling you. I thought it was a good idea at the time, and you were otherwise occupied."

  George burst out laughing.

  "License agreement with the Avon tool man?"

  "Yes. We pay the standard license fee he pays to the inventor, plus his wholesale markup, plus his license fee for the upgrade."

  "Let me do the math on that."

  O'Neill and Jackman were looking at us as if we were crazy, George looked like he was in pain, and Annabelle stood there with a long suffering look on her face.

  "Fine," I said, not bothering with the math at all. "Belts on everyone who hasn’t one."

  "Confirmed."

  "All on who's going," I said. "George, when you get control of yourself again, take us down to a spot a little way off where the shuttle is located, and drop us in gently. In case it takes a little bit to work out how to move the thing properly, I don’t want us dropping on the shuttle itself. Then haul off out of the way, and wait for us. I'll dock with you if we take the crew off. If we can pull out the shuttle, you'll need to rotate Custer so we can both fly into the Cargo Bay, with the sh
uttle underneath us. Better have the cargo droids ready to clean up if we do. Likely we'll bring a good chunk of the seabed up with us as well."

  "Understood. Good luck."

  He headed for the Bridge, Annabelle headed for BigMother, and I was last inside the Mole. At the last second I remembered the gravity shift, since the Mole was at right angles to Custer.

  I was glad Annabelle had decided not to come with us. It indicated she was taking the whole 'not going in with the troops' thing seriously, and it was also emphasizing her superior rank to O'Neill. I doubt he knew it yet, but she was already working on recruiting him, so I'd give her the extra star she wanted. So far, he seemed competent to me, but I'd want to be seeing more from him before having him join up. Besides, he may not want to. Although, come to think of it, Homer might just make a good Assault Cruiser, if he let me refit her to my specs. He had a few surprises coming, so I'd see how he reacted to them.

  The control room had the pilot's chair at the front, with a chair to each side and behind, and three more at the rear. Jane and Amanda had taken the two front ones. Both had consoles in front of them, not that Jane needed consoles. I thumped down into the pilot's seat.

  "System check done?" I asked.

  "Confirmed."

  "You're piloting this thing?" asked O'Neill.

  "Sure," I said, looking back at him over my shoulder as I strapped in. "It's never been flown before. I can't ask someone else to pilot a new ship, which might just drop into the water and keep going down until it vanishes into the magma. You're all volunteers. I'm not ordering anyone else to take this sort of crazy risk."

  He gave me a serious look, as if assessing my ability to pilot the ship.

  I gave him my maniac grin, which caused the twins to grin as well.

  "We are go for drop," said Jane.

  I turned back to the HUD, tweaking it to my normal specifications. I also checked Jane had set up the controls the way I liked them. She had.

  I opened a channel to Custer.

  "Ready to drop when you are George."

  "Nearly there. Hanger doors opening."

  "Jane, give us a plot showing where the shuttle is." It popped up, and we studied it. "Okay, let's hit the water there." I pointed to a spot. "We go straight down, and into the silt. We dig to a point right underneath the shuttle, and see if we can snag it, and thrust it up into the water. Once in the water, we simply fly on out. Anyone have a problem with this?"