Make or Break the Hero (The Hunter Legacy Book 4) (13 page)

Just before George and Slice arrived, I
went down to the Dropships. They hadn't been used yet, so I uploaded my
settings for them, including my unique HUD design. In the third one, I spent a
little time using the simulator function, getting used to the way it handled,
and practicing a few drops.

I remained there, while all three loaded
with troops. Naturally, my team came aboard my Dropship. Most of them clanked
in wearing their combat suits.

George signaled he was ready to go, but I
had to wait for Slice, who I presumed was doing some simulated drops to get
used to the craft.

Jane had us over the capital city and ready
to go. The hanger doors were open.

Slice signaled he was ready, and I told
them to go.

Three dropships fell out the bottom of
Custer together, and we screamed down towards the planet.

Once through the atmosphere, I started
scanning for any active coms. Silence. I activated the anti-jamming device in
Jane's combat suit, but there was still nothing.

The city was coming up fast, and almost
together, we pulled up above building level and split up, each going a set
direction, looking for either friendlies, or enemy.

It was eerily unmoving down there. Nothing
at all greeted our presence.

I slowed us down near the capitol building,
searching for anything that moved. Still nothing. Giving up, I set off for the
space port, not hurrying, since there seemed no need to hurry.

The space port was also deserted. The few
shuttles on the ground, were gutted wrecks.

I pulled up to gain height, heading now for
the technology centers.

The first of these came into sight. Except
it didn’t, since it was no longer there. A large hole was all that was left.
George reported in with similar news from another tech site. Slice followed not
long after, with the same. My second site was the same as the first.

I climbed again, going for the underside of
the clouds, so I could see further. George and Slice joined me, forming a
standard three ship V formation.

In the distance was a line of hills. I
headed that way. Nothing was showing on scanner, nothing moved on the ground as
we flew over.

We went up through the cloud cover to go
over the hill line, now on scanners alone. On the other side, I eased us down
under the cloud layer again, and we kept going.

The scanner was suddenly full of red dots.
In the distance, I could now see a large walled compound. Sitting on the ground
inside were two Cruisers and sixty Talons, but with the amount of space left
over, all the Talons we'd just killed in space could have landed, with room to
spare. As we approached, Talons started to take off, and the yellow dots of
missiles lit off towards us.

The three of us started firing IR missiles,
letting Jane target them.

Suddenly there was a voice channel open.

"Help them!" someone screamed.
"They're being held…" The channel cut out.

Missiles were exploding everywhere now, as
our IR's and Point Defense turrets hit them, the range shortening all the time.

A new line of yellow dots started towards
us.

Our shields were only just coping with the
hits which made it through.

I was starting to think we needed to get
out of here, when George took a series of hits, his shields went down, and the
next one blew his Dropship apart.

Slice went down seconds later, his ship in
an uncontrolled spiral, which ended in a huge explosion when it hit the ground.

I pulled us up, and turned away, pushing in
full speed. Point Defense was still hammering away at the missiles coming
towards.

The explosions suddenly became much bigger,
and I realized they were capital ship missiles.

The next explosion shredded my shields.

"Oh Shit," I said, watching a
missile lazily breeze through the laser fire, and come straight at me.

I jerked violently, propelled out of my
chair, and onto my left side on the floor.

Vonda and Annabelle looked at me in
amazement, from where they sat at the conference table.

"You okay Jon?" asked Annabelle.

"Shit, shit, shit," I said.

"I assume that means no," said
Vonda.

I lay there on the floor, trembling.

It had been so real. If that had been a
nightmare, I'd never, ever, had one as vivid as this one before.

Annabelle came over, and helped me back
into my chair. I couldn’t stop trembling.

Amanda and Aleesha came running in,
stopping dead when they saw me.

"Shit," they both said together.

They came over, and sat next to me.

"Your totally white Jon, did you know
that?" asked Amanda.

"He's shaking too," added
Aleesha, wrapping her arms around me.

"What's going on?" asked Vonda.

"We all just died," answered
Amanda. "The team and all the troops, I mean."

"Died? How?"

"We shared another nightmare. We were
in the Rec Room relaxing just now, after getting back from the hospital. We must
have fallen asleep."

"We went down to the planet in the
Dropships," added Aleesha.

"The city was deserted," said
Amanda.

"Over the hills was an enemy
camp," said Aleesha.

"They killed us with missiles,"
finished Amanda.

"But this was a dream?" asked
Vonda.

The girls looked at each other, and then at
me.

Go look.

Where?

You know.

I forced myself to my feet, and started
limping for the door.

"I'll be back shortly," I said as
I passed Vonda. "I need to check something."

Amanda and Aleesha followed me out.

We went all the way down to the Hanger Deck,
and through into the nearest Dropship.

No-one had been in one of these yet. Jane
had moved them around, but no person had so far used one for any purpose.

I sat in the pilot's seat, with the girls
standing behind me.

"What are you looking for Jon?"
asked Aleesha.

"It was just a nightmare, wasn’t
it?" asked Amanda.

I looked at them for a moment before I
brought the Dropship systems online. I brought up the HUD. A set of white dots
were moving away from the planet. A white dot and a green dot were incoming.
The white dots should've been green on the standard HUD these ships had. I
opened up the code just to be sure.

"Shit," I said again.

"Jon?" they said together.

"Jane, have you or Janet changed or
installed anything on this Dropship?"

"Negative."

"You're sure? Nothing at all, except
yourself?"

"Yes Jon. Why?"

"And no person has been in here, since
we took delivery?"

"That's correct. You three are the
first people to board this ship."

"My HUD is loaded on this ship. How
can that be possible?"

For the first time, Jane didn’t answer.

The girls looked at me in amazement.

We waited for Jane in silence.

After a good five minutes, Jane spoke
again.

"I cannot explain it. There's no known
way your HUD could be on this ship. To make matters even more unexplainable,
the other two Dropships also have your HUD loaded."

"That’s only half of it," I said.

"Half?" echoed Aleesha.

"The time stamp on the last HUD
modification is an hour and a half from now."

"What does that mean?" asked
Amanda.

"I don’t know," I said. "In
the nightmare, I prepped all three ships myself. About an hour and a half from
now."

"Was it real?" blurted Aleesha.

We looked at her.

"How can it have been?" asked
Amanda. "We were asleep in two different places, and people saw us the
whole time."

"Do you remember going to sleep?"
I asked them.

"No," they both answered.

"Me neither. I felt like I was nodding
off, but I don’t remember actually going to sleep. I was waiting for the
Generals. Suddenly I was on the floor."

"Same for us," said Amanda.
"Except for the floor bit. We were in the Rec Room. Half hour before the
drop, we did suit prep, weapons checks, visited the bathroom, entered our suits
and walked into the Dropship. We watched what you saw from the cockpit on
pop-up screens in our suits. The missile was about to hit, and suddenly we were
back in the Rec Room. If we were dreaming, we weren't aware of being asleep. We
looked at each other, and saw the same horror we each felt on the face of the
other. We even spooked BA, and I didn’t think that was possible."

I sighed heavily, and stood back up. I
nodded to them both, and started the trek back up the ship.

Vonda and Annabelle hadn't moved. The twins
had returned to the Rec Room on Deck Two, so I entered alone.

"What's going on Jon?" asked
Vonda.

"I don’t know," I said.
"This bizarre connection the twins and I have, just took a leap into the
dark."

Annabelle looked at me strangely. It wasn’t
the first time I’d received that look.

"Do you believe in time travel?"
I asked them.

They both looked dubious. Even in the
Sci-Fi sector, some science fiction still wasn’t given much credence. Time
travel had been attempted for years, and killed a lot of people in the attempts,
without a single demonstrable example of it having occurred. We'd adjusted to
the fourth dimension of space, both outwards to the stars, and inwards to the
sub-atomic level. But the fifth dimension of time, still eluded us. Or had it?

"Forget it," I went on quickly.
"We had one of our shared dreams again." Was it really just a dream?
"We went down to the planet in the Dropships, and had our arses handed to
us before we even realized we had a problem. Call me nuts, but I'm treating it
like a warning."

"Your nuts Jon," said Annabelle
with a grin.

"Let's just accept that as given, and
move on."

I joined them at the conference table.

"We need to adjust our thinking,"
I went on. "Whatever it was we experienced just now, it suggested our
course of action. The city is empty, the tech centers destroyed. On the other
side of the mountain range is a walled compound, large enough for a thousand
fighters to land. It currently has two Cruisers and sixty Talons parked there.
Ok, I know how that sounds."

Their faces showed their disbelief. Even I
had trouble believing a Cruiser could be safely parked on the ground. But I
knew what I'd seen.

"On one side is a series of prefab
buildings, presumably being used as barracks for troops and pilots. I wasn’t
close enough to see how many troops were there, but we can assume there are at
least twenty four Cruiser's worth of them. That'll outnumber us a great deal,
although we'll have the edge technologically."

Annabelle nodded.

"The worrying thing though, is the
message I received."

"Message?" asked Vonda.

"It was cut off, but seemed to
indicate there were prisoners in the compound, and they needed urgent
help."

"This just keeps getting better,"
said Annabelle.

"Yes," I said. "We need to
neutralize the Cruisers and Talons without damaging the buildings. We also have
an unknown number of troops to deal with, whilst rescuing prisoners, who could
be located anywhere."

We talked for an hour.

"Gunbus and Apricot One are
here," said Jane through the coms.

We all stood, and went out onto the Bridge.
The two Generals kept walking out, while I settled into my chair. I opened a
channel to both the approaching ships.

"Gentlemen, please dock with the
station, and come aboard Custer. I hope you're rested, because we've work to
do."

They both responded, and I closed the
channel. Neither said if they were rested or not.

"I wish we had another pilot," I
said to Jane, who was sitting at the XO's station.

"You do."

"Who?"

"Eric."

I'd completely forgotten he was back.

"Where is he?"

"In Medical. He'd been on minimal life
support for too long before George rescued him, so he's been in a Care Unit
ever since. He's due to come out any time now."

"Send him up here as soon as he's
out."

"Confirmed."

My pad chimed. O'Neil reported the jump
point to Azgard was clear, and his fleet was in position to prevent anything
getting through.

"We're eating in the Dining Room Jon, won't
you join us please?" Amanda was just short of giving me an order. I had to
smile. I'd completely forgotten about food.

I limped downstairs, joined them, and we
ate amidst the pre-mission tension.

George and Slice joined us shortly after we
began eating, and Eric not long after that.

I looked at Eric as he sat down. He was
pale and didn’t look well.

"What happened to you Eric? John said
he last saw you out of control near the jump point, and you just
vanished."

He grinned.

"Yeah, it probably would have seemed
that way. I'd taken a series of quick missile hits, which had damaged my
thrusters, putting me into an uncontrollable spin. The next missile took out my
engine completely, leaving me ballistic. As fate would have it, I went straight
through the jump point, and continued on the same course in Atlantis. It was
probably that which saved me from further missile hits, which would have killed
me for sure. But by the time George found me, my life support was almost gone.
For a while there, I thought my wife and kids would be getting my farewell
message."

Slice looked startled for a moment.

"They didn’t, did they?" asked
Eric.

"No," said Slice. "I'm sorry
to admit, I completely forgot. I sent the ones for who we knew were killed, but
they were only four out of the ten of us."

"Who?" interrupted Eric.

Slice gave four names, and Eric nodded
solemnly.

Slice went on. "You were the only one
listed as missing, from the Apricot ships. I wanted to wait until your death
was confirmed, since there was so much wreckage. Then I simply forgot."

"Well I'm glad you didn’t send it.
I'll send them a vid as soon as I finish eating."

"Make it a short vid," I said.
"The three of you need to go straight down to the Dropships, and get
familiar with them, and drops. As soon as the troops are geared up, we're going
to the planet."

While we all ate, I outlined the plan.