Hunter Legacy 5 Hail the Hero (21 page)

With the Queen extracted from the combat
suit, with her suit returned to a belt, and her laid out in the XO’s bed, I was
assisted into my chair on the Bridge.

“Sitrep,” I said to Jane.

“You better listen to team coms from a
little while ago first.”

“General,” said Amanda, “can
you move a team to the RAF hangers ASAP?”

“Why?” answered Annabelle.

“George and the other pilots are over
there. Stunned I think.”

“How do you know that?”

“Jon just had another out-of-body
experience. Aleesha and I experienced it with him.”

“BA?”

“Boss?”

“See to it please.”

“Sir!”

“What happened to Jon?” Annabelle
asked next.

“Gunbus was shot down, crashing into
the Bridge of a pirate Battleship.”

“Is he alright?”

“They both are.”

“Both?”

“The Queen is with him.”

There was a loud sigh.

The recording ended.

“The pirate fleet was destroyed,”
went on Jane. “Two British ships, a Cruiser and a Destroyer, are intact
and under my control, but will both need towing, as they’re extensively
damaged. Three of the Guardians have minor damage, the fourth has hull breaches
and extensive internal damage. We were lucky none of the breaches were against
magazines. The Battleship will need towing, but other than no longer having a Bridge
or the areas underneath it, it’s in reasonable shape. BigMother is free from
the station, and undamaged, although some holes along the Flight Deck will need
some minor attention, as will the mess you left need some cleaning up. Angel is
trying to get out of her cage.”

I laughed.

“Let her out please. Tell her I’ll be
back soon.”

“Don’t go back too soon. That is one seriously
pissed off puss.” I laughed even harder. “The Mercs are still flat on
the deck. What do you want to do with them?”

“Can you introduce a gas into the
suits?”

“Sure. Make them sleep?”

“Yes. Once asleep, restore the gravity
to normal, remove them from their suits and Brig them. Ah, we do have a Brig on
BigMother don’t we?”

“We do.” She laughed at me.

I still don’t know everything about my own
ship yet.

“Do that. Take their suits somewhere
you can dump them for a while. The Brits might want them.”

“Confirmed.”

“Can you retrieve Jeeves before we
head back to BigMother?”

“You know where he is?”

“My suite, jammed under some debris. I
have no idea if he’s still functional or not. And while you’re there, there’s a
dead Duke in the Brig. Can you bring the remains back here? He’ll need to be
formally identified.”

Her avatar nodded and hurried out.

“Combat suit is now charging,”
Jane went on through ship coms. I nodded. “The station was taken. Some
minor damage to combat droids, but repairable. All those involved in the coup
are in the station detention cells now. Mopping up on the ground is still in
progress, but the fighting has ended. No casualties to our team. The pilots
were only stunned, and have been moved to a hospital for checks.”

“Good. Does anyone need me?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“The nearest doctor.”

“Ha-ha. I’ll go down to the Medical
Bay while we wait for your avatar to return. Once back on board, take us back
to BigMother. I’ll lie down when we get there.”

I hobbled down to the Medical Bay, changed
my suit back to a belt, and was looked over by one of the doc-droids. It
pronounced me undamaged. It had no explanation for the movement now available
in my left knee, but other than the original bruising, I’d not hurt it anymore
for all the movement and pressure on it. It did suggest I continue to keep it
straight for another few days. I shifted back into ‘slinky red’, added the leg
brace back on, and hobbled up to see if the Queen was awake yet.

She was still out when I went in, and with
nothing else to do, I sat on the end of the bed.

She stirred a few minutes later, and bolted
upright, with a wild un-Queenly yell.

I grinned at her.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“My Frigate.”

“I’m sorry. You were right.”

“What about?”

“Running away. I should never have
disagreed with you on that.”

“Hindsight is always easy. If I’d
pulled away a second earlier, we wouldn’t have been hit.”

“I think I fainted when the side of
the ship vanished. Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t. You were knocked out in the
crash.”

“Is that why my arse hurts?”

I chuckled, and grinned at her.

“Ah, no.”

“Why then?”

“We both went down five decks worth of
stairs, arse first.”

“Whatever for?”

“We only had a half hour of air in our
suits, and the only working life support was in my combat suit, down in the
Armoury. It took me all of that half hour to get us down, and the only way of
going down stairs I had, was on my arse. I wasn’t in any condition to carry
you, so you went down the same way, one step at a time.”

“Oh. You made it then?”

“Obviously.”

“What’s been happening?”

“I don’t have a full account, but the
fighting is ended. My team and your troops took out those staging the coup. The
Duke died in the Brig, when we crashed. The pirate Admiral survived, and tried
to take another crack at us. He’s red paste all over the wreckage of Gunbus’
Cargo Deck.”

“I’ll buy you a new ship, since it’s
my fault you lost it.”

“With luck she can be fixed. When they
put the Battleship in for repairs, they can remove Gunbus and see if she’s
repairable.”

“Battleship?”

“Jane captured it after the crash
destroyed the AI they had on board. Its engines were destroyed, so before I can
take it home with me, it needs some work.”

“Before you take it home with
you?”

“Sure. Privateer Law. I’ll put in a
claim for the ship, having captured it from pirates in a battle.”

“What on earth will you use a
Battleship for?” She held up her hand at me. “No, don’t tell me, I
don’t think I want to know.”

“Oh I think I have a few ideas.”
I grinned at her. “By the way, two of your ships survived. They’ll need
tows to a shipyard, but should be repairable.”

She sighed, remembering mutineers. At least
she didn’t have to deal with trials for them. She had a full circus on her
hands with any of those in the coup who’d survived.

“Recovery complete,” said Jane.
“Moving to BigMother.”

“Come onto the Bridge,” I said to
Queen Liz, “and let’s see who we can contact.”

I hobbled out, and she followed me.

Once on the Bridge, we were able to contact
Marshall Bigglesworth. Arrangements were made for the Queen, to meet us on
BigMother.

Back on BigMother, we took the long trek up
to Deck Two, where I showed her to one of the VIP suites, and suggested she get
some rest while her people did their jobs.

I went to my suite, calmed down a not at
all happy puss, and discussed with Jane what I wanted done with the Battleship
and Gunbus. I intended to get some sleep, so if the opportunity to get them
both into a shipyard became available while I slept, Jane would know what to
do. I also gave some instructions for adding an access shaft to Custer.

I showered and changed into boxers and
t-shirt, and went to bed. Angel curled up by my neck as usual, and I was fast
asleep before the lights dimmed.

I woke up abruptly, oddly feeling very
refreshed, while pain still washed my left side. It hurt, but not nearly as
much as it should’ve. My eyes had hardly registered Amanda and Aleesha sitting
next to the bed, before Jeeves was there giving me a pain shot. It was Jeeves
too, I could tell. He’d obviously had some work done, but still needed a bit
more.

“Welcome back,” said Aleesha,
after Jeeves had departed.

Amanda had the look of someone either
pinging, or emailing.

“What’s up Doc?” I said with a
giggle. One of my favourite twentieth century cartoon sayings from when I was a
kid.

Aleesha gave me a piecing look, as if
wondering about my sanity.

“Why the vigil?” I asked her.

They looked like they’d been staked out
waiting for me to wake for some time now.

“It’s eleven Jon. We weren’t sure when
you’d be waking up. The doc said to let you wake naturally.”

“Doc?”

“Umm, you’ve been asleep for forty
four hours now.”

“What?” The force of my
exclamation made her lean back a bit.

“The Doc who came up to look the Queen
over, also looked you over. He was shocked at your overall condition. In his
opinion, you were malnourished and dehydrated. He put you into a deeper sleep.
You had a hydration module on you for about twelve hours.”

I suddenly became very aware of my bladder.

“Welcome back sleepy head,” said
Amanda.

“Help me into the bathroom,” I
said.

I rolled myself to the side of the bed, and
swiveled to bring my legs over the side. Amanda held a hand out, so I grasped
it, and she gently pulled me to my feet. My left leg seemed to be able to move
properly, and there was no additional pain when I put the foot down.

She helped me hobble into the bathroom,
where I shooed her out. Fifteen minutes later, I hobbled out wearing ‘slinky
red’.

The twins looked me in the eyes with a
steady gaze.

“What?”

“We have to make sure you eat a full
meal before you do anything else,” said Amanda.

“No distractions,” added Aleesha.

I waved them out before me, but they were
having none of it. They followed me to my Dining Room. I stopped to pat Angel
on the way, after coaxing her half way up the kitty castle so I didn’t have to
bend too far.

Jeeves had Chinese food for four people on
the table waiting for us. I sniffed the aromas, and was suddenly very hungry
indeed. I loaded up my plate and dug in. The twins followed suit.

“Sitrep,” I said between
mouthfuls.

“The coup was successfully put
down,” said Amanda, “but you knew that before you went to
sleep.”

“George and the others are fine,”
said Aleesha. “Just stunned.”

“I knew that too,” I said.
“Stop alternating, and one of you tell me the rest.”

Did I get up on the wrong side of the bed?
Or was finding out I’d lost nearly two days enough to make me crabby? I decided
I had good reason to be crabby.

The twins looked at each other. Amanda
opened her mouth to continue.

“I know that too,” I said before
she could say something.

“What?” they asked together.

“You saw my out-of-body experience
with me.”

“That was weird,” said Aleesha.
“Time stopped, and yet we saw everything you did.”

“The weirdest part was seeing
ourselves frozen in time like that,” said Amanda.

“Tell me what I don’t know.”

“They confirmed it was Admiral Abbott
you and Jane killed. He’s been top of the British sectors’ most wanted list for
a decade. You can expect a lot of bounty payments for removing him. Someone in
the media managed to get aboard Gunbus with the forensics team, and take a vid
of him splashed across the wreckage. It made headline news. Apparently he used
to be a bigwig here until he went pirate, after which all the admiration for
him turned to hatred. The celebrations for his death were unbelievable. Half
the planet wasn’t at work the next day because of too much partying.”

“Gunbus?”

“I’m sorry Jon. She was too badly
damaged to be worth trying to fix. It wasn’t like Custer, where the hull was
mainly intact. She had most of the left side missing, and the entire hanger was
crushed where she crashed down on the Battleship. It was just as well your Excalibur
was on BigMother, or it would have been completely destroyed as well.”

I sighed deeply. It was likely I had a new
record to add to my list. Shortest life of a capital ship. She’d been less than
two months old. Damn, that hurt more than my side did. Belatedly I realized
that record went to some Americans, who’d died in Miami, within days of being
launched. It didn’t help. I’d killed a friend by a second’s bad judgement. I
shook the feeling off.

“Battleship?”

“At the local shipyard, getting the
makeover you told Jane to organize. She’s been adjudicated to you already. Oh,
and the salvage droids found your scooter and guns floating in space. They’re
in your Ready Room.”

“Jane, send them down please.”

“Confirmed.”

“You haven’t told him the other big
news here sis,” said Aleesha.

“What big news?”

“It turned out the coup wasn’t
organized by the Duke of Norfolk. They found the bodies of him and his family
on Norfolk, apparently slain several weeks ago. The family were supposed to be
on holiday, while the Duke was attending to matters on London. When the
authorities there went looking for evidence of the Duke’s treason, the trail
led them to the bodies of the whole family. They genetically tested the
imposter, and found he’d been surgically altered to impersonate the Duke.
No-one understands why the impersonation was done as yet. Unfortunately, the
only two who probably knew, died on the Battleship. As yet, they haven’t
identified the imposter.”

“Eat your dessert, Jon,” said
Amanda. “You have a meeting at the Place at two.”

“Not another medal ceremony I
hope.”

They laughed.

“No,” said Amanda. “We had
it yesterday. We all received British medals this time, since you apparently
drafted us into the British Fleet.”

“Huh? I did no such thing. Annabelle
yes, I had to commission her, so she could command the ground troops. She was
the only flag officer down there I knew I could trust. But the rest of you were
just seconded under contract as far as I knew.”

“Well someone obviously didn’t think
so,” said Aleesha. “We’re all on the inactive list of the British
Fleet now, with the same ranks we have in Hunter Security, or their equivalent.
All except George, who is kicking himself he let himself be ambushed, and spent
the whole time out cold. Lacey looked like he wanted to kill someone when he
woke up and found out what they missed. Most of the local defense pilots felt
the same. Those on the ground, and on the station. I believe the security
around pilots is going to be increased as a result of how easy it was to take
them all out.”

“Actually,” added Amanda, “I
think we were promoted, since their fourth officer’s grade, which is what I
understood us to be, is Captain, and we were commissioned as Major’s instead.”

“Odd. I expected some confusion from
my rank system, but not that. I expect you want to be Lieutenant Colonels
now?”

“Hell no,” they said together.

“Too much responsibility,” added
Aleesha.

I grinned at them.

We finished our desserts. The three of us
had emptied the platters. As we were getting up, Jane came in with my scooter
and guns. The scooter didn’t look like it had any damage, but I ran a
diagnostic to be sure. Its suit still worked, including the hidey hole I’d
built in. I also ran diagnostics on all three guns. Everything working as it
should, I had Jane place the guns in the hidey hole, and stepped up onto the
scooter. I didn’t technically need it now, but scooting was definitively
preferable to hobbling. At least for the next couple of days. No doubt I’d get
an earful from a Doc in due course about exercise during the rehabilitation
period. I could hardly wait.

Out in the Living Room, Angel was belly up
on her kitty castle, so I stopped to tickle her. She purred and carried on, so
it turned into a full pat-the-kitten session. At last, she lost interest, and
went to sleep.

The twins led me out, and down to the Rec
Room, where it seemed everyone else was waiting.

I was mobbed.