Hail the Hero (The Hunter Legacy Book 5)

by Timothy Ellis

  I checked the scanner. We were almost right on top of the jump point.

  "Tell Greer to let him jump," I said. "Hold the channel. I want to see this bozo's face after he jumps. Let Greer and Lacey see it too."

  "Confirmed."

  A medium freighter jumped in ahead of us. I thought he had less than thirty seconds to change course before he crashed into my shields.

  His face when he realized his mistake was priceless. A combination of stark terror, and total disbelief. It took him twenty seconds to do anything except gape, and five seconds more to violently change course.

  His ship bounced off BigMother's left front shield. His shields failed, and there was a spray of metal for a few seconds, as my shields eroded his hull. As far as I could determine, he didn’t have a hull breach, but he'd come damned close.

  I opened a voice only channel.

  "Admiral Hunter to unknown ship. The next time you're told to give way to a military convoy, don’t be so bloody stupid! You got lucky. You could have died right there and then, and it wouldn’t have damaged my ship in the slightest. Now, do you need assistance?"

  The voice that came back was suitably awed.

  "Sorry Admiral. No, I won't need assistance. The only permanent damage was to my underwear. Sorry to have inconvenienced you."

  I closed the channel, and had a good laugh.

  A few minutes later, Greer sent through the all clear, and BigMother jumped. I opened a channel to both ships.

  "Commanders, perhaps you better move ahead of us for the rest of the trip. It might be better to warn civilians further ahead of time, so any more stupid idiots can do the wrong thing without coming to grief."

  They both acknowledged, and the channel closed. The two Corvettes moved off at top speed. I could see from the scanner there was traffic up ahead, heading our way, so warning them to stay clear of us was probably a good idea.

  I needed to think about this anyway. If I was going to tootle around the galaxy in a ship this size, I'd need to make sure unwary civvies didn't crash and burn on us every time we jumped.

  One of the interesting things about jumping was no-one ever collided during the jump process. But on either side of the jump point was another matter. The larger you were, the more likely something might jump into you. Collisions were rare, but they did happen. It kept salvage operators in business.

  Like as not, I was going to need some pilots for point duties all the time now. The Camel however, was an ideal ship for the job. Big enough to scare off the average stupid, but small enough they weren't at risk of collision themselves. Well, not more than the average freighter was.

  The fleet jumped through behind us, and we formed up again.

  The next jump point was seven hours away now. There was no point in me staying on the Bridge.

  "Jane, can you take me down to my living room please."

  "Sure."

  "Angel, want a ride?"

  She leapt up from her pad, raced down her ramp and waited at the bottom.

  Jane gently lifted me, and set me down in the grav chair. Angel shinned up my right leg, and sat in my lap, purring away. I started patting her.

  I was pushed to the access shaft, and we gently wafted down a level, where Jane swung the chair onto Deck Two.

  Inside my suite, she lowered me into a lounge chair, Angel riding me down, and propped my leg up on a foot pouffe.

  Jeeves had a ginger ale on the table next to me before I was in any way comfortable.

  I was still getting comfortable as the room began to fill up. Aline switched on the entertainment unit, and the next episode of 'Who' began to play.

  Two hours later, I called Jeeves for a pain shot. I’d done well not moving until then, but Angel jumped back onto my lap after doing the rounds of the room, and hit a bruised area. My flinch made her jump straight off, and reminded me I was overdue for a shot.

  Jeeves came over and gave it to me, and then stood there looking at me.

  "Will you be lunching here, my Lord?"

  Darius choked on his drink. I hadn't even noticed he and Chet had come in. The floor of the room was draped in people, and the two Admirals had been given chairs. There seemed to be more chairs than I normally had as well.

  "The Admirals and I will be dining in my Dining Room, the rest will be moving downstairs."

  Aline hit the pause with a loud sigh, and everyone except the Admirals, rose and trooped out.

  Jane helped me into my grav chair, making me look a bit more mobile than I really was. She pushed me into the Dining Room, and removed a chair to give mine room at the table. The Admirals joined me.

  Jeeves had us eating in nothing flat. I wasn’t hungry still, and only picked at my food, eating very little of it.

  "My Lord?" asked Darius with a smile on his face.

  "The butlers are set to a British setting. They all call me that. My station AI does as well, and she won't stop no matter what I say."

  They both laughed.

  Chet started the ball rolling.

  "Just how are you out of the hospital Jon? I honestly don’t understand why they let you leave."

  "What makes you think they did?" I responded with a grin.

  Grins weren't hurting me anymore. I still had a yellow temple area, but it wasn’t reacting to facial movements now.

  "How then?"

  Darius looked like he wanted an answer as well.

  "They gave me a shot which put me to sleep for ten hours. When I woke, Jane told me they planned to keep me under for a week. Having already lost a week several months ago, I wasn’t keen to do it again. I had her buy this chair for me, and she pushed me out. Basically, I did a midnight flit."

  "Why didn’t they stop you?" asked Darius.

  I switched my suit to chameleon mode, and vanished.

  Both of them looked shocked for an instant, before getting hold of themselves, and I switched back into 'slinky red'.

  "How did you do that?" asked Darius, with a touch of incredulity in his voice.

  "Suit programming. One of my people was dabbling with it when I first met him, and when I asked him if the suit could do a chameleon mode, we found it did. In the hospital, all they saw was an orderly pushing an empty chair around. Once outside, Jane shifted into a security uniform. I stayed hidden until we were back on the ship."

  The two of them exchanged glances.

  "Yes," I said, "the applications of that are many and varied. We use the suits for far more than clothes and basic protection, but this was the first time I used it to hide. I may do it a lot more in the future. In fact, it gives me a few ideas I should've thought of a long time ago."

  "Wouldn’t you be better off in hospital?" asked Chet.

  "Probably, but I have a state of the art medical bay, which should be able to keep me functional. And I sent Jane off shopping for a few things which should make life easier."

  "You amaze me Jon," said Darius, "you really do. I've heard the stories, but perhaps you would be so kind as to tell us your background. Where did all this strategic and tactical brilliance come from?"

  I sighed, and launched into a little of the family history.

  "Those Hunters?" said Chet suddenly. "No wonder. I've heard of military dynasties which breed the occasional military genius, but your family has a history which few others match. Not so much military, as space smarts, you could call it. Looks like you inherited the best your family has ever offered down the centuries."

  Darius nodded, as if something suddenly made sense for him.

  I went on with my early background, building my own computers and simulators, playing every space based computer game I could. They nodded more and more often as I went on.

  "So what did happen to you yesterday Jon?" asked Darius. "The real story this time. I emailed with my daughter who is science fiction mad, and she not only confirmed what your Eric said as possible, she wanted to know who the shadowy figures were, and if you saw them clearly enough to identify them?"

  I l
ooked at them both.

  "It was pretty much as I said. I passed out from the pain, and found myself in my Ready Room. I was shown the events unfolding with what I assumed was my body, and had a conversation with two entities, one of whom I know has been communicating with me for years now."

  "What sort of entities? Are we talking Egyptian god's type entities? Or do you mean Jesus or Elvis?"

  I laughed. Six hundred years after his death, the conspiracy theorists still hadn't concluded if Elvis was really dead or not. Or even if he'd been human.

  "Not Egyptian gods, but along those lines."

  "Is this something to do with your spiritual upbringing?" asked Chet.

  "Everything actually. One of the entities talks to me like you do, inside my head, and makes me think about things I'd otherwise miss. I learned never to ignore that voice."

  "What's with the claim of time travel?" asked Darius.

  "That one I have no clue about. But did you play games at some time in your lives?" They both nodded. "Well it felt like when you die in the game, and have to reload a previous save in order to start again. It's like it took three goes to get something right. How it happened is anyone's guess. Returning the second time threw me against a wall so hard, I still can't use my left arm fully. And it wasn’t just me, there were three of us involved."

  "No rational explanation at all?"

  "None. Maybe the closest is a ghost tipped us out of our chairs."

  I grinned at them, and they laughed.

  "The thing is though, it wasn’t just three people, but also three Dropships. After the first time, I checked them out, and they had logged programming done on them an hour and half after we checked. I can't explain that either."

  "As someone put it," said Chet, "you're just a weird magnet Jon."

  The laughs continued. Lunch went back to generalities after that, for which I was relieved.

  The Admirals went off to do some work in one of the offices, and I settled where I was, continuing on with emails.

  Alison pinged me to ask about spa time, and I told her after dinner. For now, I'd have a hard time getting in and out, even with Jane doing it for me.

  Both Bob and Walter had sent 'glad to hear you're still with us' emails. I let them know some of the details, but told them I had no real idea of what happened, just that it had. I asked Bob if he still had a clone of Jane around, and if so, to use it to encrypt his emails from now on. If he didn’t, he was to email my station, and ask for a ship to return to supply him a copy of Jane.

  Maybe I was late to the paranoia party, but as they say, better late than never. I should've done this a long time ago. If someone was reading Walter's emails, they would have known my movements for all the time before the Door into the Australian sector was closed, and after it opened again. It was somewhere to start anyway, in hunting down the mystery assailant, assuming it wasn’t Santiago spitting at me from beyond the grave. It was the most likely explanation, but my new state of paranoia demanded we check it out as completely as possible.

  Several invoices came in from Jane's shopping expedition, and I paid them without looking at them.

  I sent an email to the Avon 'tool man', asking him to send me an encryption key. It came back a few minutes later, so I sent him the details of what had happened, how I’d merged three fully boosted suits, and how the suit had pushed me two meters into the air. I asked him how he was coming with dealing with the hits themselves, given how badly bruised I was now. I suggested he look at how the suit composed itself when it went into protection mode, and if he could change it so it was more like a combat suit in terms of solid protection. It seemed to me the biggest flaw was its skin hugging nature, when things hit it. If it was more like armour, the hit wouldn’t get to the skin until the armour was worn away. If there was an energy reflecting surface on it as well, the energy could be reflected before it hit solidly enough to affect the person underneath. In theory.

  One word came back. Brilliant!

  By this time, I was having difficulty concentrating, and put my head down on my arms for a moment.

  I woke up on the bed. It had only been a couple of hours, but Jane had obviously moved me, so I must have fallen asleep at the table.

  Jane roused from the corner where she'd been standing.

  "Freighter is almost back."

  "What did you get?"

  "Half the combat suits, and about a third of the requirements to build an armoury. My new suits and the rest are on order for delivery in London."

  "What about my new toys?"

  "Wait and see!" she laughed at me, lying there almost helpless. I sighed.

  A screen popped up, showing the freighter approaching the right side cargo airlock.

  "That freighter needs a name," I said. "Let's call it 'Zippy', since it's so fast. Can you do an overlay for its ID?"

  "Confirmed."

  I watched it dock, and the view switched to an internal cam, showing butler and cargo droids waiting for the lock to cycle open.

  As soon as it did, a line of combat suits clanked their way out, and proceeded to move to whichever bay Jane had specified for them to wait in. The butler's moved into the ship after the last one came out. They emerged with a series of boxes and quickly passed out of the cam's view.

  A short wait later, Jeeves entered with the first box. He placed it on the floor and proceeded to open it. What emerged reminded me of a time when a friend of mine at school had broken his leg. He'd been given a two wheeled upright scooter to zip around on. His leg was immobilized with a support that wouldn’t allow him to put any weight on it, and he zipped around on this scooter for weeks. The technology was old even then, but it was perfect for what he needed to get around.

  What came out of the box for me, was something much more advanced. It had no wheels for a start. There wasn’t a lot to it. The base unit was a small grav sled just big enough to stand on, but a lot thicker than a usual pad was. From it, a frame rose up into twin hand grips with forearm support.

  "Behold," said Jane. "Freedom for the immobile. They call it a medical grav scooter."

  I smiled. I knew anyway since I'd found something similar in the catalogue. But this one seemed different.

  "What's different about this unit?"

  "Top of the range of course. It has grav's both sides. And it's fully PC controllable."

  I opened a channel to the scooter, and its system requested to download to my PC. I lay there and let it.

  I explored the new menu it created. When I turned it on, it rose a few centimeters off the floor. I created a set of holographic controls and put it through its paces, moving it in all directions, as if I was on it.

  When I thought I had it pegged, I maneuvered it so it was lying directly above me. I eased it down until it was almost touching me, the base unit now underneath my feet. I grasped the hand controls, and switched off the hollo ones. I adjusted the top grav so there was a gentle, only just noticeable, push against my feet. I then began to tilt it, so the top part raised off the bed, pulling me with it. When I was upright, I set it to hover mode, and moved it off the bed. It sank down to about ten centimeters off the floor. There was no pressure on my legs at all, just a feeling of weightlessness.

  I moved myself into the living room.

  Angel was sitting on top of her kitty castle. She jumped up when she saw me, and arched her back as if preparing to fight.

  "It's only me sweetie. Nothing to worry about. I have a new way to move around."

  I moved over to the kitty castle, maneuvered around so she could walk onto my right shoulder. She sat up there, and purred into my ear. I went across to my lounge chair, and picked her off and placed her on top. The next step was going to be interesting. I positioned myself before the chair, started to tilt the scooter backwards, and my butt swung out a bit. There was pain from where leg joined torso. I kept up the tilt and moved the scooter, so I gently eased myself into the chair. Using my PC, I moved the scooter away and let my left leg drop g
ently onto the pouffe. Any movement of my leg was going to hurt, but it was a momentary spike in the general ache, not a prolonged sharp pain.

  Way to go, I thought. I could get around now.

  Jeeves came in with three more packages. The first was another pouffe, only designed for supporting injured legs. I lifted my leg slightly, wincing for a moment, and he swapped them over.

  "How many did you get Jane?"

  "Six. We'll put one wherever you need one. There's one down in the Rec Room waiting for you now, and another in your Ready Room. One will go to Gunbus and another to Custer."

  "What's next?"

  Next was a glove. Jeeves unpacked it and handed it to me. I put my right hand inside it, and felt my fingers sliding into finger enclosures within it. Another pop-up asked to install a menu in my PC. I let it do so and checked it out. I grinned when I saw what the options were.

  I changed my suit back to a belt, leaving me sitting in briefs and socks. I pointed the glove at my right foot, and it extended all the way there. I grasped the top of the sock, and peeled it back, until it came off. I tried to put it on again, but couldn’t do it one handed.

  Jeeves handed me a second glove. With both hands operating down at my feet, pulling the sock back on was easy. I switched the suit back to 'slinky red', and handed the gloves to Jeeves. He took them into my bedroom, and left again.

  I called the scooter over, and tilted it to fit how I sat, then allowed it to pull me upright. I sat and rose six times more to get the hang of it, and to speed it up a bit.

  Jeeves took the next package past me, so I followed him through the bedroom and into the bathroom. After unpacking, he placed a grav pad in the shower, covering most of the floor area. He turned the shower on, and I watched the water flow away above the surface of the pad, to curve around its outside edges and then to fall to the floor underneath it. He turned the shower off. I eased up next to the pad, and hopped across using my right leg. I wasn’t quite successful in not moving my left leg, and it twinged in pain for a moment. I hopped back onto the scooter with better timing this time, and decided I needed to test something else. I looked through the specs of the scooter to see if I could. Apparently so.