I looked at her in awe.
"So that’s why you're called Kali the Destroyer?"
"He's getting it," said Ganesha with a grin.
"What do you mean I carry your sceptre?"
"A human is gifted with the Sceptre for one lifetime," said Kali. "Whoever accepts this burden is granted wisdom and power beyond their wildest imaginings. But it's only given to those of pure heart."
"Many die young," said Ganesha. "The burden is too great for them."
"So I failed," I said. "Crashed and burned."
"Technically," he said, "you burned and crashed." The comment seemed to give him great amusement.
The medical team had given up. I was lying there with wide open eyes, the girls draped over me crying hysterically.
"So that’s it? The darkness wins because I couldn't carry the burden properly?"
"What is the darkness to you, Jonathon Hunter," said Kali.
"You tell me. I could never get a straight answer from the Keepers. All I know is the little they told me, and the nightmares. But I've known since the first nightmare, I was here to do something connected to the darkness. I accepted it very early in life."
"Ah yes," said Ganesha, "you worked that clue out quite nicely."
"Clue?"
"When those we speak to do not listen," said Kali, "all we can do is send clues. Sometimes dreams are the only way we can reach you."
"But what was the point if it ends here?"
"We needed to speak at last. You needed to understand."
"Understand? What for? Do I have some choice to make?"
"You already made the choice," said Ganesha. "You’re here to understand why you made it."
"What choice are we talking about?"
"Carrying the Sceptre of course," said Kali. "The burden comes with responsibility as well."
"Responsibility for what?"
"To wield it properly," said Ganesha.
"To wield it wisely," said Kali.
"And I haven't been, have I? I killed when I didn’t need to."
"You did as we bade," she said. "The question was not would you accept the task, but would you carry it through regardless of the personal cost."
"And I failed?"
"No Jon. You passed."
Kali looked extremely happy with me. Her tongue extended to its full length. She gazed at me for a moment, and suddenly all four hands thumped down on the table so hard, it bent under her blows.
There was a heavy weight on top of me.
"Fuck that hurts," I said. "For divine's sake, get off me!"
Sixteen
The three girls shot away from me as if they'd been yanked off me. All three of them looked at me speechless. Their tears stopped, but faces remained wet.
A doctor shot in the door as if propelled from an antique cannon. Before he reached me, I changed my suit back to a belt.
He gaped at me without comprehension. But medical instincts kicked in, and he started to work on me. I had a major pain shot as fast as a nurse could bring one, and the agony in my body subsided to a major ache.
From my heart to below my left knee, was a solid blue bruise.
Miriam rushed in at that point, and had to be restrained by Amanda. She was crying, and suddenly confused by the fact the doctors were still there. Amanda told her I was alive, and she collapsed into a chair. Alison sank down next to her, and the twins stayed standing. They were all staring at me.
I was scanned and checked for broken bones. And given another shot.
I woke to an empty room.
"Jane?" I whispered. "Where are you?"
"Outside your door."
"How long was I out?"
"Ten hours."
"Where is everyone?"
"The celebration is still in progress. The flag officers stepped in, and made sure everyone went."
"What did the doctors say?"
"You have major bruising. They don’t think you'll be able to bend your left knee for at least a week, and they plan to keep you under for the whole time."
I did some basic math.
"Time for a midnight flit."
"Jon? You can't possibly by thinking of leaving here."
"Nope, not even thinking about it. Can you get hold of a pain shot?"
"Already have one."
"I need it."
She came straight in and gave it to me. Major ache became minor ache.
"What's that you're wearing?"
"Security uniform."
"Good thinking. Go out and buy me the best grav chair you can find quickly. One that allows a leg to remain straight."
"You said you weren’t thinking about leaving."
"It doesn’t require thinking. I'm not losing another week of my life. Go."
She went. I'd already lost a week two months ago, when I'd first been injured. The doctors had kept me out because of a head injury. My head was fine. It was just the rest of me that wasn’t.
A nurse came in, and I pretended to be still asleep.
After what seemed like an eternity, broken only by an invoice to pay, and actually being less than half an hour, Jane returned with a grav chair. The left leg support was already in place. Jane was dressed now in an orderly's uniform.
She plucked me off the bed gently, and placed me on the chair. The meds stopped any pain spikes.
I shifted my belt into chameleon mode. Except for a faint outline, my body vanished.
"Home James," I said to her.
She pushed me out of the room, and towards the hospital exit. Heads turned as an apparently empty chair went past them, but no-one seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. It was just an orderly going somewhere with a chair. Once outside, with no-one in view, she shifted into the security uniform again.
Neither of us spoke again until we were inside the ship. At the top of the ramp waited a trolley. Jane moved the chair onto the trolley, took the driver's seat, and the trolley started for the other end of the ship. Once a reasonable way from the airlock, I shifted back to 'slinky red'.
"What more did the doctors say?"
"They couldn’t understand how you were alive in the first place. You were dead for fifteen minutes Jon. Total goner. The next thing they couldn’t understand was why your heart showed up as being normal for your age. Your heart stopped and wouldn’t start again. There should've been damage preventing the restart. There wasn’t. They hadn't a grip on that, when someone pointed out your brain should have been fried by lack of oxygen. After five minutes, brain damage is normal. Your brain was fine. They went through the motions of scans, but except for major bruising, you were perfectly healthy."
"How will they explain it?"
"Not even trying to at the moment. You do realize your midnight flit will cause a lot of trouble when they find you're gone?"
"Not my problem. Can you hack my hospital record?"
"Sure."
"Do so, and mark it 'Patient discharged himself'."
"Confirmed."
We arrived at the access shaft. Jane moved the chair down off the trolley, into the access shaft, and gave a modest push-off.
"Where to?"
"My suite."
She deftly moved the chair out of the shaft on Deck Two, and moved me into my suite. Angel woke as we arrived, looked at me with an alarmed expression, and stood up.
"Hi sweetie. I got hurt badly. Come into the bedroom and keep me company."
I told Jane to take me to the shower. She stood me up, held me upright, and carried me into the shower. I changed my suit back to a belt, Jane removed my briefs and socks, and washed hospital off me. After drying me, she pulled new briefs and socks back on, and laid me on the bed.
She tossed the sheet completely over me.
I pulled it back from my head with my right hand.
"I'm NOT dead Jane!"
"Could've fooled me. The only reason they didn’t do that in the hospital is the girls wouldn’t let them."
I sighed. Even that hurt.
>
Angel came running up. She sniffed at my bruises, and her claws extended, as if to fight off whoever gave them to me. She looked at me, I smiled at her, and she relaxed, moving to my neck on my right side, and curling up as she usually did.
Seventeen
I woke at six to find four naked women on my bed.
They were lined up next to me. Miriam, Alison, Amanda and Aleesha. I looked across eight breasts in a row. It was a sight to gladden any young man's … well let's not go there. It would hurt too much anyway. Just as well it was a king sized bed.
"Jeeves," I said softly. "Pain."
He came in within seconds, and gave me a shot. Jane came in after him, helped me out of bed, and into the bathroom, where she held me up while I used the facilities. My bruised side was in full Technicolor now. The bruises on my head and shoulder were a dull yellow. I couldn’t bend my left knee at all. It wasn’t that it hurt too much to try, it wouldn’t bend. I pondered if the knee itself was damaged.
I shifted into 'slinky red', and she helped me into the grav chair. Angel was eating her breakfast when we went past the kitchen.
She took me to the Medical Bay, and one of the doc-droids gave me the once over. I asked it to co-ordinate with Jeeves as to when I could have pain shots. Going into a care unit wasn’t on my list of things to do. Its response on my knee was the muscles were too traumatized to be able to move. All of them were down the hit area, not just the knee. But it was the knee, and thigh muscles I noticed couldn’t move. It would heal I was told. Give it time. I had plenty.
I was soon on the Bridge. I bypassed breakfast, even though I hadn't eaten since lunch time yesterday. I wasn’t in the least bit hungry.
Jane settled me in my command chair, and used the grav chair to prop up my left leg. Jeeves came in with a pillow and gently padded the top of the chair underneath my ankle.
Angel shot in, and took her usual place on her console pad.
I opened a vid and recorded a brief message to the effect that contrary to first reports, I was alive, if not kicking, and functional enough that the trip to London was on schedule. I sent it to everyone who mattered, and a few who didn’t, but would be wanting to know anyway.
I pinged Admiral Jedburgh's aide to say BigMother was leaving on schedule, asking when the Admiral's party would be coming on board. It took ten minutes to get a reply for thirty minutes later, putting him minutes ahead of official departure time.
I sat there checking emails, answering the few that needed responses, and deleting junk. I lost interest quickly. As a distraction, it wasn't working.
"Jane, who were they?"
"Assassins. Apparently four who usually work alone, banded together to make sure you were taken out this time."
"Paymaster?"
"Unknown. They haven’t said, even under intense interrogation. Dallas military took them off station security's hands before they even woke from your stuns."
I looked up my Bounty Hunter record. I didn’t have any new bounties on me.
"Professional hit then," I mused. "I wonder who would go to all the trouble."
"Unknown. Abagail has all the information that could be found. The contact emails were untraceable."
"Emails again. It always comes back to dodgy emails. Have her and Amy come up here after they finish breakfast, and after the brass are finished with me."
"Confirmed."
I thought it a pretty good assumption that Admiral Jedburgh would be on the Bridge to see me as soon as he was on board.
"Jane, you better go down and welcome the Admirals."
"Confirmed." She left.
I thought I better check what was docked where. Custer was in her underside position. Camel and Gunbus were docked to her, making her look like she had reversed nacelles. Apricot One was attached to the left rear airlock, and Nascaspider to the rear right. Excalibur was on the Flight Deck, and Gorilla was inside Custer, as were the three Dropships. Jane had done some rearranging as the Corvettes had come back from the Shipyard, but the configuration looked good to me. There were four more Excalibur's and five Centurions in docking bays along the inside of the Flight Deck.
A channel opened.
"Starman to BigMother, permission to dock, and where please?"
It was Greer. I checked the scanner. Starman was stopped not far away, and Stiletto was just entering the Flight Deck from the rear.
"Starman, use the mid left cargo airlock. Dock nose on, so the airlocks are the same size."
"Is that really you sir?"
"No, this is my avatar pretending to be me. Of course it's me. Sheesh!"
"Roger that sir. Docking now."
Station traffic control were probably having heart attacks about now, as a Corvette sized ship moved too close to the station for comfort. But Greer's AI would be doing the actual docking, so there was no risk.
Stiletto touched down inside a Flight Deck Bay. Since I'd seen Miriam on board already, her AI must have done the transfer.
Apparently they were both invited to London as well.
With the thought of her, she bounded onto the Bridge, with Alison, Amanda and Aleesha behind her. They stopped abruptly when they saw my leg perched on the grav chair.
"What," I said. "You've never seen someone in a captain's chair before?"
"That's not funny," they all said at once.
I shook my head slightly. My women were now speaking to me in quadrophonic. 'My women'? Now how did that happen? That taunt of 'Hunter's Harem' popped back into my mind. Just as well the man who said it was dead. If BA had ever heard of it, she'd have killed him.
Amanda took out her gun and wacked me on the right foot with it.
She was angry again. Now what had I done?
"What?"
"Why didn't you tell us you were leaving the hospital?" demanded Amanda.
"Why didn't you wake us up when you woke?" demanded Miriam.
"What are you doing on the Bridge?" demanded Alison.
"What's wrong with your leg?" demanded Aleesha.
I sighed.
Amanda took that the wrong way and whacked my foot again.
"I didn’t announce it, you all looked like you needed the sleep, this is where I'm supposed to be when the ship gets underway, and it doesn't work."
Silence. They glared at me.
"Oh for divine's sake. Why can't you all be happy I'm alive and sitting here?"
Miriam kissed me.
Alison gave her a full minute, hauled her away from me, and kissed me. Amanda gave her thirty seconds and did the same. Aleesha let her sister take as long as she wanted, and then as soon as our lips parted, did the same.
"Go get some breakfast," I said, "before you embarrass me in front of the Admirals coming on board. We'll talk later."
"Yes, we will." Deadpan quadrophonic.
I winced. Then winced because wincing hurt.
"Admiral's Gig is landing on the Flight Deck now," announced Jane.
"Oh hell," said Miriam. "I need to get down there."
Two levels in her chain of command were arriving. She raced out. The others followed her more slowly.
I watched the shuttle arriving on a side screen.
"Is there any reason we can't leave yet Jane?"
"All present and accounted for. The Battlecruiser will RV with us half an hour out."
"Button us up and prepare to undock. Advise Dallas Control we're leaving and have them pulse me the docking fees."
"Confirmed."
The invoice pulse came in a minute later, and I paid it.
Precisely on seven, Jane backed us away from the station. When there was enough distance to not upset the traffic controllers, Jane spun us around, and set course for the Battlecruiser Guam, which I could see in the distance.
I was now retired from the ASF, which was a big relief. I had no responsibilities with either the SFSF or the AM. A weight left my shoulders. For now, I was free to simply be the owner of a mercenary fleet. I had four stars on my shoulders, a
nd no-one was going to be able to promote me ever again.
I could hear laughter in my head for a brief moment, but couldn’t tell where it came from. Could have been Kali, but I wasn’t sure.
The last promotion actually solved a problem. I'd never have to worry about an employee being a higher rank than me again. As soon as I could shuck the SFSF and AM as well, the happier I'd be.
I'd missed the celebration, which was something of a relief as well. I'd imagined it to be something similar to the one on Avon the night before we left, and I didn’t really need another one like it. Getting shot the way I had, wasn’t the best way of avoiding people, but it had done the trick.
Ten minutes out, the remaining four Guardians formed up in diamond formation around us, top, bottom, left and right. Repulse took station behind us, with her fleet around her.
Twenty minutes later, Jane slowed us to a stop. The Guardians moved some distance away, as did Repulse and her fleet.
Guam was about the same length as Big Mother, mid-way between a Battleship and a Cruiser. But she was taller than she was wide. BigMother out massed her by a long shot.
Jane threw her specs on a screen and we looked for the best way of linking her up.
A large group of people came onto the Bridge behind me. I turned my head, saw the Admirals at the front of the group, and waved them to the VIP chairs. They looked shocked to see me there, but didn't say anything. I guess they expected me to be in my bed for the next week.
Jane and I went on with our discussion. It took us another five minutes to decide the best way to connect her was the left middle underside dock point, grav'ed to the forward highest gun turret. I opened a channel.
"BigMother to Guam. Captain to Captain please."
I was an Admiral in rank, but still Captain of the ship. Rank and title, not the same thing. And my rank was no longer active, so I was the Captain of a friendly ship, not a superior.
"Captain Patterson speaking. Admiral Hunter?"
"Indeed. Captain, can you release control to my AI please? We'll grav dock you at the front highest turret, to the underside of BigMother. My AI will ensure there's no possibility of accidental collision."
"Aye sir. Control released."
I nodded to Jane. A screen popped up and we watched two very large ships come together. Guam moved into position beneath the grav point, and slowly closed the distance until she was merely centimeters away. The grav plate came on, and the ships kissed. Jane tweaked the attitude so she was perfectly aligned with the underside of BigMother, and finally increased the grav to hold her in exactly that position.
Hail the Hero (The Hunter Legacy Book 5) Page 9
