Read Hunter Legacy 9: Hero at the Gates for Free Online Page A

towards the next nearest
dark Jane, and the sword moved. Step forwards, swing, and step over. Forwards,
swing, and step over. Rinse and repeat. The occasional combat droid moved
towards me, and I took care of it as well.
    Janes swarmed around me, staying away from
my flashing sword, but intercepting all the shots fired at me. I lost track of
time. I crossed and re-crossed the Cargo Deck, going from one target to the
next. My focus came down to which dark Jane was closest, and what my sword and
feet were doing.
    And finally, there was one. The last dark
Jane was a combat suit. I could tell it was dark only because it was fighting
the light ones.
    I strode towards it, and seeing me coming,
it started running at me. I let it come, but instead of waiting for it to reach
me, I hurled the sword at it when I was sure I wouldn’t miss. Janes came
between us so it couldn’t reach me, and the combat droid swiped at the sword. The
arm was cut completely off and dropped to the deck, while the sword continued
through the suit and came out the other side. The remaining Janes grabbed hold
of both sides of the rent in its middle, and pulled it apart.
    I stood there panting. The sword vanished.
    It was over. Here. I needed to secure the
Bridge. I only hoped it didn’t need securing.
    On the way up I checked my suite for Angel.
She was curled up in a tight ball on the top of her kitty castle, with Nut
curled up with her. Nut wasn’t the most aware of cats, so Angel must have
sought him out, and convinced him to join her. I patted them both quickly, told
them I’d be back when it was safe for them to come out, and shot out again.
    At the top of the access shaft, I found a
combat suit.
    "You okay Jon?" asked Annabelle.
    "Yes. But you missed a hell of a
battle down on the Cargo Deck."
    "Battle?"
    "Later. Did Jane come out?"
    "No."
    I walked up to the door to the Bridge, and
gingerly pulled it open.
    Jane was still where she had been, still
Jane, and still rigid.
    "Jane?"
    "Here Jon."
    The voice came from Bridge coms. I had no
idea why Jane could still talk to me with no com room active.
    "Sitrep."
    "I remain in control of BigMother,
Gunbus, and Excalibur, but as you found out, I lost control of some of the
combat and security droids. My avatar is still battling."
    "Anything we can do?"
    "No. She has to win this one on her
own. Destroying the coms was a great idea, but it means I can't help her now.
It’s a good thing I don’t actually live in the coms room though, or need the
com lines. I live in the whole ship. Now if you’d destroyed the computer room,
it would have been a problem."
    "What was, is, attacking you?"
    "It was me Jon. Dark, twisted, but
me."
    "How?"
    "I don’t know yet, but I will be
finding out."
    "Can you get repair droids to reroute
coms through Gunbus?"
    "On it already. That was good thinking
Jon. Until you destroyed the ship's coms, I was losing. The station seems to
have a very powerful coms array, and it was overpowering me until you pulled
the plug."
    "Do we know what's happening on the
station?"
    "No. It will be a few minutes to
complete the reroute. Point Defenses managed to protect the ship reasonably
well, but we took some missile hits, and have some minor hull damage as a
result. I've got repair droids on fixing damage already. We were lucky in one
respect, none of the Mosquito AI's were affected. It looks like the station me
went for me, and me only. But when you severed the coms, you also severed the
Mosquito AI's link to the sensors."
    "We should fix that. Even if we lose
all primary systems, the guns and launchers should still be able to function
locally."
    "Confirm that. I'll have local sensors
installed for each one."
    "Lacey," I pinged,
"sitrep."
    "All quiet out here. We've taken
casualties, but the day is ours. SR droids from Custer are collecting
survivors."
    "Any word from the station?"
    "No. Sorry."
    "Land anyone who needs to land, form
the rest up into a CAP."
    "Roger that."
    "Coms are back up,"