Ships on the Line, page 1
part #9 of The Last Hunter Series
Copyrighted Material
Ships of the Line Copyright © 2023 by Variant Publications
Book design and layout copyright © 2023 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
Previously on The Last Hunter
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
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PREVIOUSLY ON THE LAST HUNTER
Jack and Hunter’s crew head to Leaping Deer to strike at the Locust swarm based there, but it is far more than they can chew on. Based on their observations, the Tardans they suspected had initially come to the system were destroyed by a Novarite incursion, and then the Novarites were destroyed by the Locust swarm. Amanda and her tactical team come up with a plan to deal with them.
Their plans are complicated by the arrival of a sizeable Novarite task force and colony vessels filled with possible Novarite civilians. Jack makes the call that the civilians need to be saved, if at all possible. They succeed, and then an even bigger task force arrives with Novarite warships and Tardan colony ships under escort, which are also on his save list.
Once the Novarite warships are destroyed and the Locusts pruned back as much as possible, he has two hundred colony vessels to get back home. A challenge he isn’t quite sure how to handle.
Meanwhile, back on Argent, Christine and Lisa make some agreements with Patrick the assassin, to learn more about his people. He reveals far more than they expect and even gives them the location of the Poseidon Group’s hideout before he leaves for the Confederation proper to kill some people that need killing.
His parting gifts might give the Confederation a chance if the kingdom’s people follow the Novarites. If, of course, they can learn how to use them. In the end, they capture the Poseidon Group’s headquarters using the technology Patrick left for them, and they now have one piece off the board. That doesn’t solve all their problems, but it does allow them to focus on what must come next.
1
Admiral Jack Romanoff walked onto Hunter’s bridge and relieved the third watch officer. He sat in his seat, brought up the logs from last night, and was relieved that nothing untoward had occurred. They hadn’t been in a combat situation for a couple of weeks, but getting the refugees ready to head toward their respective homes had proven more challenging than he’d anticipated.
Ironically, it was the Tardan refugees that were more of a problem. The Novarite colony ships seemed to have fallen in line with what the first crew had decided to do and were somewhat stoic about their situation.
The Tardans, on the other hand, wanted to debate and argue literally everything, from which ships needed to be taken to the new system via the independent quantum drive that his ship possessed to whether they should go there at all. He realized he’d been lucky that the initial group of Tardan colony ships he’d had to interface with had had senior leadership aboard to make the decisions.
That certainly wasn’t the case with this group. They’d been herded up when the Novarites had come down on their escape plan like a ton of bricks and forced them into the position of running the ships. The Novarites had executed everyone they’d caught that was directly involved with attempting to squirm out from under their control, and that meant the people in charge of the ships were a mishmash from different crews and people that weren’t even trained for the work. As one might imagine, that had led to a lot of problems.
In the two weeks since he’d rescued them from the Novarites, they’d finally come to some semblance of an agreement over what they needed to do, though there was still significant argument from certain quarters. Thankfully, once the ships got to where they were going, they would be someone else’s problem. He never thought he’d say it, but fighting a war to the death was preferable to herding Tardans.
“What’s our status, Derek?” he asked. “Please tell me we’re ready to go.”
Lieutenant Derek Calvo, his chief helm officer, turned in his seat and nodded. “We’re ready to go, Admiral. It’s in the logs, so you’ve probably already seen it, but the engineers signed off on the critical systems on the three Tardan vessels that were damaged by the Locusts. They’re in good enough shape to make the trip to their new home.”
“Thank God for small favors,” Lieutenant Amanda Harris, his senior tactical officer, muttered.
Jack agreed though he wasn’t going to give voice to those sentiments. “Communications, send the signal, and let’s get them on their way.”
Even that simple task took over twenty minutes before the various colony vessels settled on the appropriate time to depart and entered hyperspace as a group. They were now on their way to the world that Regex had suggested for the survivors before Hunter had come to Leaping Deer.
The journey would take them eight months, so he would have almost a year before he had to worry about them again. That was a huge weight off his shoulders.
“Now that that’s done let’s head to the system where the Novarite colony ships are. We need to get them on the way to New Copenhagen.”
Amanda raised an eyebrow while Derek began laying in the course. “I’m still not sure how the citizens on New Copenhagen will react to having a bunch of Novarites dumped onto their world, sir. There will be a lot of hostility and resistance.”
He nodded. “You’re not wrong, but we only have so many options. Unlike the Tardans, the Novarites have environmental requirements that are closer to what humans need, so all the suitable planets in the cluster have been claimed. At least New Copenhagen only had to deal with an invasion by the Locusts and the Tardan military. They might not have as much innate hostility toward the Novarites. If President Ibarra and the civilian government come up with a better idea, I’m certainly willing to listen, but we have to do something now.”
The solution they’d come up with wouldn’t make anyone happy, but just like when fighting a war, you had to make decisions that at least made the problems bearable. In this case, settling millions of Novarite civilians on New Copenhagen kicked the can down the road a bit.
It was entirely possible the Confederation Council in the cluster would decide that the best solution was to select one of the other worlds in the cluster with a relatively low population and relocate them. Honestly, as badly damaged as New Copenhagen was, it might be the best choice. Unless, of course, some other world inside the cluster had been bombarded to such a degree that they were in worse condition.
Relocating so many people would be a huge pain in the ass, but it could be done if the will was there to do it.
While he was musing on that, Derek jumped Hunter to where they’d parked the Novarite colony ships. To his relief, they were all still there.
He’d been going back and forth over the last two weeks to make sure that everyone was still as happy as they could be, and he’d expected to find all the Novarites still there, but there was always the possibility that something would’ve changed.
The people on those ships weren’t the Novarite military, and it had taken quite a bit of effort on his part to grasp that their behavior was different. Where the Novarite military was aggressive and confrontational, the civilians were merely argumentative and grumpy. It was amazing how happy he was with just that change. It made what they planned to do at least possible.
“Take us in until we’re in communications range,” he ordered. “Once we get them on the way to New Copenhagen, we can head for Argent.”
With their independent quantum drive, it would take them a week to make the journey. His ship needed some repair work from hits they’d taken from the Novarites’ antiproton beams. Most of them had been grazing shots, but a couple had penetrated deep into his ship. Sadly, those took some of his crew with them.
When they got back to Argent, they’d take new people aboard to begin training them to operate ships like his. If they intended to man the rest of the battleships as they were renovated, they’d need experienced people, and that meant taking the crew he’d painstakingly put together over the last year and splitting some of them off to work on other vessels. That really cut across the grain for him, but they had no choice. Vice Admiral India MacKinnon would very soon have the battleship Scorpius working to some degree. She needed people to help train all the newbies she’d be working with. Her job would be significantly more difficult than his had been in some ways.
He didn’t envy her all the hard work she’d have to put in, but he’d be absolutely thrilled to have a second battleship at his side when they came back to Leaping Deer. Since the Locusts hadn’t left the system, it would fall to them to find a way to continue killing the things without being overwhelmed themselves.
Unless, of course, Lisa managed to find the command codes for the automated warships. If that happened, they’d be able to issue stand-down orders. He wouldn’t hold his breath for that, but it was always possible. If they could eliminate the Locusts as a threat, he’d be able to focus his full attention on the Novarites and the massive number of warships they’d brought into the cluster.
With any luck, any follow-up groups of ships the Novarites sent would run into Leaping Deer and be annihilated by the Locusts before they could resist. That wouldn’t change things at Vesuvius, and he really hoped they didn’t send a wave of warships toward Argent. That was, in fact, his biggest fear.
The capital of the Confederation and the cluster was the one point where they could coordinate the defense of all human space. They couldn’t do anything about the Poseidon Group and what they were doing inside the Confederation proper, but they would continue to protect everything in the cluster. If Argent fell, they were screwed.
“We’re in range, sir,” the communications officer said. “I can open a channel at your signal.”
“Do it now.”
A few seconds later, the image of space vanished from the main screen, and a cramped Novarite bridge appeared. The three-meter-tall alien sitting in the command chair inclined his head toward Jack. “Admiral Romanoff.”
The translation program made the alien sound a bit mechanical, but it at least allowed them to talk.
“Captain Griesa. Is everything still in good shape? Do any of your people need assistance?”
“We’ve had no engineering problems. I’ve used the time we’ve had to speak with the other crews and secure their agreement in the course of action we’ve discussed. There is much uncertainty, but as you pointed out, we don’t have a choice.”
“I think you’ll find we’re willing to work with people that are willing to work with us,” Jack said. “Your military was offered the opportunity to surrender, and they chose not to do so. Thus, there was conflict. With you, you were offered the opportunity to surrender, and you accepted. That means we will work with your people to find a way to keep you safe and, for those who are interested, introduce you to our society. I understand you’ve run away from a situation where the people you were fighting were obliterating military and civilian targets alike, but we are not like them.”
In fact, the people the Novarites had been fighting were just as human as he was, though he had no idea how they’d gotten there. Maybe that was the reason the Novarite military fought to the death after he’d tried talking to them. There would have to be some kind of negotiation attempt when they returned to Vesuvius. Once again, that was a problem for another day.
“If your people are ready, you can send them on their way, and we’ll jump ahead so you can be waiting for them. If we unload your passengers and get them to prepare the necessary infrastructure, perhaps it won’t be such an inconvenience for them.”
“I think you overestimate the amount of work we can do preparing for everyone else,” the Novarite captain said with a grimace that Jack fully understood. “We have sixty-four colony vessels, and though each ship has the industrial capacity to begin building housing and other basic necessities, our leadership anticipated that most of the work would be done by the Tardans. There will be a learning curve, and I’m grateful we have ten months before the other ships arrive. I suspect we’ll need every moment of that to prepare.”
Jack was pleased that the Novarite had changed how he referred to the Tardans. The leadership saw the symbiotic race as their slaves, and that terminology had bled down into the general populace as well. Watching these citizens of that culture adapt how they spoke—and hopefully, how they behaved—was gratifying. It meant there was a real chance this would work.
“If we need to, we can always come back and pick up more of your people,” Jack said. “We know the course they’ll be following and can arrange to drop in at the prearranged locations I’ve already given you. Picking up one of your vessels to bring back with us shouldn’t be a problem if that will help.”
“We won’t know how things are working until we’ve been at the task for a month or two,” Griesa said. “At least the work will be easier since the senior leadership of our nation decided to abandon the wealthy and influential members of society and only bring those they thought would be best at building new worlds. Though they did that to protect their own power, it certainly serves us well now.”
Jack forced himself not to smile. It was never good when people were abandoned to their deaths, but hearing that the entitled found themselves abandoned after being strung along was funny. It certainly would help the Novarites build a new society, though not in the way their leaders had expected.
Whatever leadership had come to Leaping Deer was dead or trapped on the planet itself. Those who had gone to Vesuvius were still very much alive. Unfortunately for the Novarites, all they had to help them were their military and the Tardans, which had arrived before they did. Admittedly, ten million Tardans would certainly help. As would any of the humans they forced to help them. If the Novarites didn’t just exterminate everyone on the planet first.
The Novarite leadership wouldn’t have seen any difference between the civilians on Vesuvius and the humans they’d been fighting back where they’d come from. It was likely that orbital bombardment had been used to take out the cities. In fact, the same might be true of Leaping Deer. They hadn’t sent any probes close enough to find out for sure.
He could only pray that the Novarites had not been in the system very long when the Locusts came to exterminate them. Otherwise, two of the major systems inside the Perseus cluster would have been exterminated, in addition to the damage done on New Copenhagen.
Whatever the case, it was beyond his control, and he’d just have to clean it up as well as he could.
“If you’re ready to send your people on their way, we’ll take you back to Leaping Deer while we gain the necessary intelligence we need from the sensor buoys and probes we have deployed there. I doubt the Locusts have left since they hadn’t done so over the last two weeks, but we have to pull in the last bit of data to be sure. Or, if you’d prefer, we can leave you here and come back for you.”
“Perhaps it would be better if you come back for us. If you are unfortunate enough to suffer an ambush, we will hinder your ability to defend yourself and be at risk. Better to be safe, I think. If you wish to collect your data now, I will see that our ships are sent on their way. There’s no need for you to oversee that portion of this operation. We’re ready to execute that plan and were only awaiting your arrival to begin.”
Jack nodded his satisfaction at that. “That sounds good, Captain. We’ll be back in about an hour. Hunter out.”
