The last best hope for victory.
The Last Hunter is a Space Opera series by JN Chaney and Terry Mixon.
It's been two centuries since the Confederation defeated the Locust Drone armies. The Hunter-class battleships have all been mothballed since then. The ships are supposed to be maintained for the possibility of the Locust armies returning, though.
After Captain Jack Romanoff is forcibly retired by the corrupt Navy, his retired father pulls strings to put him in charge of the last remaining Hunter: the Delta Orionis. Unfortunately, the once-magnificent ship has been stripped of parts and its budget for maintenance has been embezzled.
Determined not to be put in charge of a pointless command, he soon finds himself up against a massive criminal conspiracy in the Navy and a possibility that no one wants to admit: the Locusts are back.
- The Last Hunter
- Bonds of Blood
- Alpha Strike
- The Enemy Revealed
- Command Authority
- The Grand Conspiracy
This series contains the following tropes:
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The Delta Orionis crew is a bunch of extremely talented people that have a black mark on their record somewhere. Jack Romanoff gives them all a fresh start as part of his promise to them as his commander.
- Cool Ship: The Delta Orionis is the last of the Hunter-class warships. It is a massive kilometer-long vessel able to tank most of the attacks of the Locust drones. It is covered in five thousand laser implacements and many missile launchers that are meant to carry nuclear charges.
- The Conspiracy: For a hundred and fifty years, someone has been siphoning parts and money from the maintenance of the Hunter ships' budget. This is apparently a conspiracy that goes up to the highest levels of the Navy.
- Evil Is Petty: Admiral LaChasse makes a large production of cashiering Captain Romanoff as well as insulting him, his father, his command, and his lack of wealth. She also makes sure to have his replacement right there when she removes him from command.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: Most ships use jumpgates but the Delta Orionis is strong enough to generate its own drive. Eventually, it becomes the first starship to have its own functioning hyperdrive by adopting an alien one into its unit.
- First Contact: Humanity has only met one alien race in the Locust Drones. They proceeded to attack without warning and refuse to communicate. In the end, humanity had to destroy them all, but most believe the aliens to still be out there.
- Insectoid Aliens: The Locust Drones are a race that is apparently insectoid in nature and design philosophy but we've only seen their self-guided robot forces so far.
- Loophole Abuse: Jack's father, Eric, proceeded to put his son in charge of the Delta Orionis to remove him from his political enemies chain of command. It got him promoted to a commodore but also put him in charge of a literal museum.
- The Mole: Lieutenant Selter turns out to be an agent of The Conspiracy within the JAG Office. He's perfectly willing to try to murder his boss to protect it from discovery as well.
- Mundane Solution: Much of Jack's ability to repair the Delta Orionis depends on him going to swap meets and seeking the parts necessary second hand via the internet.
- The Mutiny: In Bonds of Blood, Captain Magri attempts one of these by recruiting a bunch of pirates to try and take the Delta Orionis from Jack and his crew. It fails miserably due to a cat carrying a video recording giving them a ten minute warning.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Jack has to deal with these throughout The Last Hunter. It seems everyone is reaction far in excess of what is even normal hostility to him trying to get the Delta Orionis back to snuff. He soon figures out it's because there's a large embezzlement scheme at the top of the Navy that his actions to expose.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The Tarden race is a symbiotic species that bonds with less intelligent mammals in order to bestow upon them higher brain functions in exchange for mobility as well as the ability to use tools. Humans are justifiably horrified at the possibility that they might try to take them over due to centuries of sci-fi showing the possibility. The Tardens, themselves, are horrified when some of their military plan to do just that.
- Proud Warrior Race: The Novarites are a race of conquerors and bloodthirsty warlords who are the slave masters of the Tarden species.
- Ragnarök Proofing: The Hunter-class is easily more powerful than any of the modern ships due to the fact they're mile long ultra-thick hulled dreadnoughts that are able to tank most of the Drones abilities. They also would have been still functional 200 years later if maintained properly.
- Ragtag Band of Misfits: The Delta Orionis is populated by the undesirables and misfits of the Confederation Navy.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Commodore Natashi is the head of the Naval JAG office and the first one to start taking Jack Romanoff's complaints seriously.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: The aliens behind the Locust Drones turns out to be one of these as their military is attempting to force their race into a conflict with humans to steal their bodies. The Tardens (the aliens) are generally peaceful and are enslaved themselves.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Captain Magri is utterly unfit to be an officer but is able to buy his way into a commission with his father's money.
- Smug Snake: Captain Ronnie Magri is an arrogant, entitled, weasaly little man who buys his way into commanding Jack's old ship.
- The Sociopath: Lieutenant Selter is able to work for a woman for decades before casually killing her. Jack comments everything about him is an artiface and he has a very deeply hidden but all consuming darkness to him.
- Swarm of Alien Locusts: The Locust Drone horde is a seemingly mindless bunch of autonomous drones that attack with no communication or mercy. They are under the control of an alien military.
- Wretched Hive: Subverted. The crew assumes Port Royale will be this, being settled by anti-authoritarian separatists. In fact, it is a surprisingly orderly and family-filled state.
