Under Siege (The Last Hunter Book 11), page 1
Copyrighted Material
Under Siege 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
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
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PREVIOUSLY ON THE LAST HUNTER
With the situation stable at Argent, Jack and his people begin making plans to retake the Leaping Deer system. They had captured the codes necessary to control the Locusts, though they still need to test them to make sure they work. If they do, they’ll be able to clear the cluster in relatively short order.
Lisa finds some unusual anomalies in the quarters Patrick built for her underneath the old planetary defense headquarters. After exploring it more thoroughly, she finds that he’s tapped into the computer network through it. She’s able to track the feed to a stealth satellites and then to a secret facility of his where a ship just like his own is under construction and almost complete.
Derek begins training as a fighter pilot to ascertain whether they are worth building en mass. The things are very fast, and a drug formula Patrick provided makes it possible to fully utilize the acceleration. He thinks they will be very useful, but is itching to give them a try for real.
Tina is trying to track down Bronson Rowe, who was escaped from prison. Before she can catch him, the former Confederation spy breaks Robin Monahan out of custody just before she’s about to be executed and the search is now on.
Jack and Derek are able to use the Locusts and the stealth fighter to defeat the Novarites and Tardan military on Leaping Deer. Derek ends up being shot down, but has successfully used the fighter to its greatest capabilities, becoming an ace in the process. Jack now plans to take the war to Vesuvius.
Lisa defeats Rowe and Monahan, killing them both in the process. Tina saves her from the consequences of doing that, and makes her an offer to become a black operative for Confederation Intelligence. They must start working on defeating the Poseidon Group inside the Confederation proper, and that means they need to start creating teams to make that happen. Tina has big plans.
1
Admiral Jack Romanoff rubbed his tired eyes as his cutter took him up to orbit from his final meeting with the president of Leaping Deer. It had been a week since they’d defeated the invading forces, and he’d been working nonstop since then to get everything settled before he departed for Vesuvius.
He didn’t envy the planetary defense forces their job of keeping a lid on everything, but he couldn’t stay to oversee it all. All the enemy aliens were down on the planet and had been disarmed as well as he could manage. The Novarites had undoubtedly stashed weapons somewhere, but at least they didn’t have anything big. Small arms would cause some trouble, but that was President Birdsall’s problem.
Sorting the Novarite civilians from the military and nobility had proven to be a pain in the behind, and he’d eventually given up on it. Most of the Novarite civilians were of the higher social stratum, and he finally decided to lump them in with the ruling class and be done with it. He had neither the manpower nor the cultural knowledge to sort out everyone, and he didn’t want to get any of the upper class mixed up with the civilians the Confederation had on New Copenhagen.
That undoubtedly meant the upper classes among the Novarite civilians would force those beneath them to do the manual labor since they didn’t have any Tardan slaves to do the work for them, but his sympathy was limited. They’d created this problem themselves, and it was something they’d have to figure out on their own. Maybe if the leadership was too domineering, even the upper-class civilians would rise up and put them down.
Relocating the Tardan civilians to a location that didn’t have Novarites breathing down their necks was even more challenging because there were millions of them. They’d settled for relocating them to the far side of the continent and building military emplacements between the two groups. Since the Tardan civilians weren’t aggressive like their military had been, they weren’t going to be nearly the problem the Novarites were.
Eventually, they’d need to be relocated to the new Tardan home world, but that wouldn’t happen right away. While there were colony ships in orbit, each had sustained at least some damage. They could be used to transport the Tardan civilians, but getting them fixed, moving the Tardan civilians back aboard, and settling them into cold sleep would take a long time.
Even once that was done, it would take more time to get them to the new Tardan home world. The infrastructure needed to be built up there, and it hadn’t even gotten started yet. Hunter could speed that process up, and he was tempted. He knew the path the Tardan civilians were taking and could intercept them using his independent quantum drive. That would get them to their new home in a matter of days.
The problem was that the Tardans that had left Argent wouldn’t have arrived yet, so there would be no settlements for them. It was probably best to let them proceed as they were so they’d have shelter when they arrived.
The same was true of the Novarite civilians he’d intercepted the last time they’d visited Leaping Deer. They were on their way to New Copenhagen, but there wouldn’t be anything there for them if he sped the process along. Sometimes, it was best to let things proceed at their own pace.
That wasn’t to say that going back to Argent didn’t have appeal. Lisa Gane had that stealth cutter that could get a better read on what was going on at Vesuvius. He’d imagine they’d also been building probes and sensor buoys with the same anti-sensor material. Those might make the difference between survival and destruction, so he needed to decide now if he was going to Vesuvius via Argent or heading directly there.
Jack was still thinking about it when his cutter landed in the small craft bay aboard his battleship. He left taking care of it to its assigned crew and headed directly for the bridge, his Marine guards forming up around him.
His ship was in much better shape than she’d been the first time he’d visited her. Even though the crew was still working on repairing and replacing nonessential systems, everything was clean and gleamed where appropriate. Sara Nastasi—the vice admiral assigned as his senior staff officer and his girlfriend by her own choice—had brought a number of willing hands aboard to take on that particular task.
He hadn’t considered it before because he’d been focused on combat capability, but now that the changes were evident, he approved. Undoubtedly, they’d focused their attention on the most traveled areas of the ship first, so it wasn’t surprising that the corridor leading from the closest small craft bay to the bridge would have gotten a lot of attention during the last couple of weeks.
Having her handle the administrative side of running the ship had also taken a lot of work off of his plate and allowed him to focus on the tactical and strategic necessities of fighting off two simultaneous invasions. Now that the Locusts were no longer a threat and the Tardan military was likely eliminated, he could focus his attention on the Novarites.
The big aliens had gotten into a shooting war with a human civilization called the Kingdom of Kastelara and lost. Just as the Confederation hadn’t had any idea that the kingdom existed, these other humans weren’t aware of them.
Jack hoped it stayed that way because, from everything he’d heard, it wasn’t a very nice place. The government was a monarchy, and it seemed they kept their population subdued and watched closely. They weren’t about to allow any threats to their rule, and they weren’t above assassination and other nefarious deeds to make sure no one got any funny ideas.
The data they’d originally gotten about the kingdom came from Patrick Tebbe, a former spy for the kingdom who had followed the Confederation’s secret mission to learn about the Locusts back home. Certain individuals who were high in the kingdom’s government or held very trusted positions were given antiaging drugs, and that explained how Patrick was still around to bedevil them even now.
The man had provided a number of books in electronic format about the kingdom, and though they had no way to verify them, the people they had studying them indicated there were enough nuances and glitches about how things were explained that they believed the works were authentic. In other words, there were various theories and bits of history that were at odds with one another, and that’s basically how a real civilization was documented.
Jack would have to take their word for it. He really hoped the kingdom didn’t follow the Novarites here. The word from the various Novarite civilians he’d spoken with indicated that the war against the kingdom had turned bad, and the kingdom forces had been forcing their way into Novarite space and bombarding worlds from orbit until they were lifeless.
That was why a large number of Novarite warships and colony vessels had suddenly shown up in Confederation space. They’d decided to follow their Tardan slaves so they could reconquer them and take over a new area of space away from the people who were destroying their empire.
Jack hoped there wouldn’t be many more Novarite fleets. And as long as he was wishing for things, he prayed that the kingdom decided to let the survivors run away. Not that he thought that was likely, so he’d been planning what might have to happen if yet another set of invaders showed up.
He walked onto the bridge, still thinking. Derek Calvo rose from the command seat. “Everything is nominal, sir.”
“Good. How’s the arm?”
The young officer’s left arm was in a sling. He’d broken it when his fighter crashed while attacking the Novarite military positions on Leaping Deer. He’d used an antimatter missile to destroy the fighter so that the anti-sensor material didn’t fall into enemy hands, and even though there’d been a hill between him and the explosion, it had still tossed his acceleration couch around like a toy. He was lucky to have survived.
“It still hurts, but it’s getting better. The injections Doctor Brenna gave me to speed the bone healing seem to be working, and he says that I can probably come out of the sling in about two weeks. I still won’t be able to use it at full capacity for a while, and he wants me to do some physical therapy, but he says I’ll make a full recovery.”
“Excellent. I’m sure your team will be happy when you can resume your duties.”
The young officer grinned. “I think this is good for them, sir. They need to have the experience of running things for themselves. I’m putting the time to good use by going over everything I can on their training schedules and working with Vice Admiral Nastasi to improve the training regimen. Her people have been very helpful.”
“That’s good to hear,” Jack said as he leaned back in his chair. “I think this notion of having a separate administrative staff aboard the battleships will pay off big. While it’s good for a command track officer to understand how things work administratively, it’s not good for them to have to do all the paperwork. Having someone to assist them while they follow up with spot-checking to make sure the data they’re getting is good will work out better in the long run. Load sharing and all that.”
“Have you thought about what we’re going to do next, sir? Do we go directly for Vesuvius or head back to Argent?”
Jack nodded. “I’ve been thinking about it, but I’m curious what you think would be best.”
“I think we should go to Argent,” the helmsman said without hesitation. “We can take the Novarite warships we captured back with us and pick up Lisa and her little ship to do some reconnaissance for us at Vesuvius.”
Jack nodded. “As hard as it is to believe, I’d forgotten about the big warships we captured. They won’t have crews aboard to maneuver them, so will we be able to take them all in one fell swoop?”
“We have enough understanding of how their systems work to program them to stay close to one another in station-keeping mode. It shouldn’t be a problem to pick them up as a group and cart them along with us. The question is, what do we do with them once we get there?”
“I think we’ll leave that to the grand admiral to figure out. I know he’s got a full plate with the cruisers coming online, but this is the kind of sideshow that he’s best suited to handle. Him and Vice Admiral Tobin.”
“Do you think they’ve gotten any more people from the Confederation proper?” Amanda Harris, his tactical officer, asked.
“I certainly hope so. They’ll have had an opportunity for people to start arriving, and if the Poseidon Group is as busy as I suspect they are, there will be an opportunity for people to get away. We probably won’t get many more warships, but if we can get trained people, that’ll be helpful. We can start training volunteers in basic shipboard operations using the sleep-learning gear. That’s no substitute for actual experience, but at least it will allow them to get the cruisers operational.”
Enough time had passed that the first half dozen cruisers that were modified to use the antiproton beam weapons should have left the shipyards for their trials. So long as everything looked good, they could start working on finishing up the remainder of the 144 cruisers. It might still be a few weeks to a month before all the work was done, but the cluster was about to have a surplus of warships that needed people aboard them.
They wouldn’t be useful fighting the Novarites, but they would be a hammer to drop on the Poseidon Group when it came time to free the Confederation proper. He wasn’t going to jinx things by saying that the worst of their problems were behind them, but he was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. He only hoped it wasn’t an oncoming freight train.
“What do you think, Amanda? Straight to Vesuvius or back to Argent?”
“Argent,” she said from where she sat at the tactical console. “By now, they’ve probably got a lot of the new Marines trained up. It would be nice to have a full set aboard. Also, we need to let them know that it’s okay to construct a quantum gate network between Argent and Leaping Deer. Honestly, we should’ve started that before we left and just had the last couple of links to be done. We need to do the same with Vesuvius.”
He nodded at her words. “That’s well thought out, and I agree. It’s time that we got all the worlds in the cluster reconnected. They may not have ships, but once we get the network up, we can start the process of getting everything we need in place to lift people back up where they’ve been knocked down. In fact, the grand admiral may have already started that process. There may not be any ships available to help us with this segment of the network.”
Jack pursed his lips and then nodded. “Instruct your people to take us out to where the Novarite warships are, Derek. We’ll get them linked up the way we want them and then head for Argent. As soon as you’ve got that finished, I want you and Amanda to stop by my office. There is something that we need to discuss.”
He retreated to his office and sat at the desk. The thing was huge and was a historical artifact. It had been built for the first commander of this ship 200 years ago, and even though he felt ridiculous sitting behind it, he wouldn’t have changed anything.
