Command authority the la.., p.1
Command Authority (The Last Hunter Book 5), page 1
Copyrighted Material
Command Authority Copyright © 2022 by Variant Publications
Book design and layout copyright © 2022 by JN Chaney
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing.
1st Edition
CONTENTS
Don’t Miss Out
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
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1
Jack rode the lift into engineering, looking through the transparent sides of the car. Commander Kelly Danek had done a lot over the last month to get Hunter back into fighting shape. Now it was time to find out how far they’d come, what was left to do, and what would be beyond their capabilities.
In the time since they’d defeated both the second colonization wave sent by the symbiotic Tardans and the follow-up attack by the Novarites, things had calmed down, and they’d made a lot of progress, but he wasn’t holding his breath. There would be damage they couldn’t repair.
The tall woman met him as the lift opened. Her brown hair was, as usual, just a shade out of regulation length and more than a bit mussed. It was almost like a challenge. How much could she get away with without him saying anything?
Quite a lot, actually. She and her people had come through time and again and had earned quite a bit of leeway. If she wanted longer hair, he was more than happy to let her have it.
Not that he’d say so. If he gave in on this, there was no telling what she’d try next. Best to manage expectations rather than see how far she’d go. She was stubborn and a bit of an iconoclast, so a bit of restraint was warranted.
“Sir,” she said as he stepped out of the lift.
“It looks like you’ve gotten a lot of work done, Commander,” Jack said as he looked around. “You and your people have pulled off a miracle.”
The corners of her mouth quirked up slightly. “That’s our mission statement, sir. Whatever you need, we exceed. We can start the tour at the back of the compartment. It’s taken the longest of all the repairs, but we’ve finally pumped the replacement material into the fractures, and it’s hardened. Our hull is as solid as the day this ship was built.”
“Even the bow?” he asked as he started toward the compartment’s rear bulkhead. “Surely we took some damage when we rammed the big Novarite warship.”
She stepped up beside him and shrugged. “Nothing that couldn’t be put right with some judicious application of replacement material. Having the hull chewed up by those phased packet plasma guns did more damage overall. The Novarites might build large ships, but Hunter masses significantly more than they do. It was like hitting a watermelon with a sledgehammer.”
She gestured with her hands as if something had blown apart and flown everywhere, which wasn’t far from the actual events when Hunter had plowed through the massive warship. He wasn’t sure what technical designation the Novarites would have given that enormous vessel, but he’d call it a battleship. The thing had disintegrated, and they had come through mostly undamaged, other than having the weapons on their front quarter scoured away.
That made winning the fight more difficult, but they’d managed. At the end of the day, one of the smaller Novarite vessels had escaped, which they’d have to deal with at some point, but not today. That chicken had flown the coop.
And for once, even with a strange saying like that, he knew what a chicken was. He and his mother had taken a trip to a petting zoo when he was younger, and he’d seen some. Not that petting chickens was generally recommended. The darned things like to peck.
What was done was done. They had to deal with the circumstances as they found them rather than as they’d wish them to be. To use one of the gambling metaphors Lisa Gane liked to toss out every once in a while, he had to play the cards he’d been dealt.
He glanced up at the massive alien hyperdrive sitting almost overhead in the cylindrical chamber. The interior of engineering was arranged so that the gravity plates kept a person’s feet on the outer hull so one could walk around the gigantic compartment if one chose. That certainly made for the ability to install a lot of equipment, but it was occasionally disorienting.
The hyperdrive was radically different from the independent quantum drive his ship typically used, much less the more common quantum gates. He was told they worked off the same general scientific laws, though he didn’t see the connection.
In any case, that alien device had saved their collective bacon. When their independent quantum drive had been destroyed, they’d had no means of leaving New Copenhagen and had had to stand and defend against whatever came their way. Adding the ability to use hyperspace had given them the flexibility they’d needed and saved their lives.
Even as he was looking at the alien drive, he saw movement at the two spherical crystalline computers attached to it. Those had come from a destroyed Tardan colonization vessel and were how the hyperdrive was controlled. According to Lisa—their resident hacker from Port Royale—they were providing information about the alien society as well. Things they didn’t have to ask Regex–the alien implanted in her body–about so they could be relatively confident the information they were receiving hadn’t been shaded in any way.
Of course, that same fight had seen the alien’s host body shot between the eyes, so without transplanting Regex into one of their people, he’d have died. Hopefully, that would generate some gratitude because they could use the alien’s help with their multitude of problems.
The Tardans had invaded the Confederation, and the naval response had severed the cluster from all assistance and destroyed the ability to go between occupied systems through the quantum gates. That had been Vice Admiral Suzanne LaChasse’s final act before Jack’s father had arrested her.
At least, that’s what he assumed had happened since he’d jumped for the cluster and had no way of knowing how things had turned out. He supposed it was possible the traitorous flag officer had successfully resisted being taken into custody and that his father was dead or in a brig somewhere, but he doubted it.
One more issue he had no way of controlling. Frankly, even though he and his father had never gotten along, he wished the man every bit of success in dealing with the murderous conspiracy they’d uncovered. He was thrilled that it was someone else’s problem. He had enough of his own.
Kelly gestured toward the rear bulkhead as they approached. He could still see where the cracks had formed because the newer nickel-iron material wasn’t quite the same color as the old. That made perfect sense, considering it had been melted and pumped into place two centuries after the ship had been hollowed out.
“It looks good,” he said. “How strong is it?”
“Just as strong as the original material,” she said, patting the smooth wall. “We ran a lot of reinforcement through the fractured areas and drilled deep before we pumped the new material into place. We also did some initial heating inside the damaged areas to fuse everything back together as well as we could. I think there’s probably a bit more structural strength in this area than there was to begin with.”
He nodded and crossed his arms as he turned to look at all the mechanisms inside engineering. “That sounds good. What about everything else?”
“Before I get into that, I should mention we took an opportunity to run current through the outer hull all the way around the ship as we added material. Those phased packet plasma guns and the kamikaze drones and motherships left a lot of pits and fractures that needed filling. Since we were spending the time anyway, I figured we might as well do the job right. The hull has been heated and fused as deeply as we could manage without getting too close to airlocks and weapons batteries. I figure it made the outer third of the hull ju st as strong as the repairs back here.”
“Does that mean it can stand up to combat damage better?”
“Somewhat, though I wouldn’t get carried away if I were you. Think of what we did as something of a refit. We won’t always be able to do it, but we had the time, so we went whole hog.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I tell Derek not to ram any battleships in the future.”
His wisecrack made her scowl. “That young man is a menace. Doesn’t he understand how dangerous these crazy ideas of his can be? He seems willing to take just about any risk that comes his way.”
Jack laughed. “He does need a bit more seasoning, but he’s come through so far. Even when things haven’t gone as well as we’d hoped. What about our other gear?”
“We had them disassemble an independent quantum drive from one of the other battleships and bring it over from Port Royale. We put it together, added new parts as needed, and everything checks out. We’ll give it a test drive whenever you’re ready.”
She turned toward the fusion drives at the rear of the chamber. “We also had to replace half our fusion drives, which took more time. All of them read as functional now, and we’ve even moved around the system a bit to verify we’re getting the right amount of thrust. We’ve replaced all the damaged and destroyed fusion plants and are back up to full power, too. Engineering is ready for operations, sir.”
Her words made him grin. That was one worry he was glad to set aside. “What about the rest of the ship? How are we doing on replacing damaged or destroyed weapons and getting other systems operational?”
“Better than I’d hoped. We’re getting a lot of assistance up from New Copenhagen, and they’ve been through the ship from top to bottom, working on systems we didn’t have time or hands to deal with. I won’t say everything is functional, but this ship is more operational than she’s been in a very long time. Amanda will have to tell you more about the weapons, but we’ve got people working on them. There’s still a lot to be done, but progress is being made.”
That was excellent news since it was only a matter of time before they had to fight again. Having his ship in condition to do so was critically important.
“Let’s talk with Lisa and our alien friend before we get ready to try the independent quantum drive. If it doesn’t work, the hyperdrive is our only way back, and I want to make sure it’s ready.”
The two walked around engineering until they arrived at the massive hyperdrive and its computers. A few technicians were examining the cables, but his focus was on Professor Alan Prescott and their resident hacker, Lisa Gane. The two of them were hunched over one of the alien consoles examining the strange text on the screen. Jack cleared his throat as they got closer.
The professor turned and smiled. “Jack! Perfect timing, my boy. We were just reviewing some of the information Lisa is pulling from their systems. The Tardans didn’t have complete access to the Novarite’s databases, but they’d acquired a general map of Novarite space, and we’ve determined roughly where it sits relative to the Confederation.”
Jack pursed his lips. “That’s good to know, but it’s not something that will help us right now. We have to find the ship that got away and figure out what they’ll do when they get to wherever they’re going.”
“There’s no telling,” Lisa said. “From everything Regex has said, they’ll probably run back home and announce what they found. Even at the speed they left, it will take them fifty years to get there, so it’s not like we have to worry about it right now. Unless, of course, they sent other ships to follow the first group, but I kind of think that’s unlikely.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They’re busy fighting a war that’s lasted centuries with a group of people that are their equals. They’re not going to send ships they can’t spare. I can’t believe they sent that big monstrosity we rammed, honestly. Seems like that would’ve been worth a lot more in a local fight than in chasing down the slaves that got away.”
“I wish it was that easy, but we can’t count on things being so straightforward,” Jack said with a sigh. “All it takes is being wrong, and we’ve got a second invasion to fight alongside the first. Trust me when I say that just because the Novarites would attack the Tardans first doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do something horrific to the humans they find here. For that matter, they might invade the rest of the Confederation. That ship, as small as it is, is a major threat.”
He grimaced. “They were traveling at twenty times the speed of light when they left, so they could be almost two light-years away by now. Since they’re not heading directly toward any systems, getting in front of them isn’t a straightforward option, particularly when we can’t jump into deep space. If they stick to deep space, they’re out of our reach unless we jump ahead and hyper out to find them. Since we don’t have a location for them, that’s pretty much impossible.”
“It’s not going to get any easier with time, though,” Prescott said, clapping a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I understand you’ve got a lot of worries on your plate, but you can’t let that ship get away. No matter how hard it is to search the area it could have traveled to, I believe that’s more doable than waiting for the inevitable response, which will almost certainly come at a time and place not of our choosing.”
“The hyperspace detector has a range of about sixty light-hours,” Jack objected. “Even if we guessed where they were going, we’d never find them. And that brings us to the other thing you haven’t considered. We only have enough trained people to crew two of the exploration ships, and one of them is off doing something. That leaves Hunter and one other ship. Not quite the net of coverage we’d need.”
He’d sent Captain India MacKinnon—his executive officer—and some of his senior people back to the system where they’d parked the civilian vessels that had escaped from the Gateway system. As her people got the ships ready to travel, she and her people would assemble a gate near the vessels and jump them to a system leading back toward New Copenhagen. They’d set up the matched gate there, and as soon as all the civilian vessels were extracted, they’d disassemble the gate in that system and return to New Copenhagen. Since there was no need to provide signposts to where they’d gone for any Locusts, and the gates were a limited and expensive resource, they’d disassemble them as they went all the way back. That also eased any worry that the Locusts might circumvent the protections built into them. Paranoia was good in small doses.
By this time, they should hopefully be more than halfway back. The assumption was that the entire process would take between four and six weeks. If things went well, they could show up at any moment. If things went poorly, he was willing to give them an extra month before declaring them overdue. After all, it wasn’t as if he could send them a message urging them to hurry up.
He considered what the scientist had proposed and slowly nodded. “Even with one exploration ship, you might be right. One of the problems is that we don’t have enough hyperspace detectors to make this work. We’d have to negotiate with the Tardan colony vessels to get any additional hyperspace detectors. I’m not certain they’d be willing to give them up.”
Lisa smiled. “Leave that up to us. Regex and I can be very persuasive.”
“We can’t count on having our independent quantum drive working unless we test it out,” Kelly Danek said. “It’s all good and fine to say that it’s fixed, but until we put it through its paces, that’s still hypothetical. We could make a guess at their first exit point and go take a look. They’ll be long gone, but it can’t hurt, right?”
