I passed a figure moving slowly away from the access shaft, towards the Dining Room. I did a double-take, and stopped for a better look.
The figure was a man, with curly hair and full beard, wearing antique spectacles, dressed in a large overcoat. Protruding from it, were three legs. I watched him walking ponderously along, left leg, middle leg, right leg, and repeat.
"Morning George," I said to him.
"Morning Jon," he replied.
I grinned, and continued walking towards lunch. It had taken him a long while, but he'd finally figured it out.
One of those questions I’d seen brewing at breakfast, and would have preferred to avoid, was asked as soon as everyone was settled at lunch.
"What's a Debt Collector Jon?" asked Amanda.
"And why are you one?" added Aleesha.
I sighed. I'd had the feeling this would come up, ever since Kali said it. The whole table was looking at me.
"Ever known someone who seems to hate you on sight, and who repeatedly makes you angry?"
"Sure," said BA. "Just about every officer I knew before leaving the military."
Everyone laughed.
"The way you deal with them, is to do the karmic release statement continually, for every little thing they annoy you with, until you stop getting any physical reaction to them. At that point, someone with whom you have major karma with which is now released, will vanish from your life."
"What if they don’t disappear?" asked Grace quietly.
"Then they're most likely a Debt Collector."
"This is karma you're talking about isn’t it?" asked Alison.
"Yes. Warriors in particular, and especially when they've incarnated as warriors for many lifetimes, tend to accumulate a lot of karma, and with many souls. The Debt Collector is used to manifest karma when there are a lot of souls involved in the same type of debt, most of whom will never be met in this lifetime. Once you complete the work with them, they continue to manifest, until you complete releases for all the rest. Then, and only then, will they vanish from your life."
"What if you run away?" asked Grace, even more quietly than before.
"One of two things happens. The Collector comes after you, or it gets passed to another one."
"Figured as much," she muttered.
"Why you Jon?" asked Aleesha again.
"I don’t know for sure. People often choose their own. The first pirates I came across chose me to tangle with, so maybe Sariel and Kali decided it was to be my role."
"Who's Sariel?" asked Dick, looking very glazed eyed.
"ArcAngel. One of his roles is as the Lord of Karma."
"Don’t you mean Archangel," asked Grace.
"No, we don’t use that spelling at home. Any Arch has a negative connotation. Arch-enemy for example. No, we use Arc Angel, meaning a higher order of Angel who walks the arc of all the dimensions."
"Dimensions? How many are there?"
"In the model we use at home Grace, there are ten. We live in three dimensions, being length, breadth, and height. The fourth dimension is space, and the fifth is time. The tenth dimension is the Divine, whom some call God."
"And six to nine?"
"Are too complicated for us to understand."
"I don’t get four," said Dick, "let alone five."
"Most of you here would be aware of everything which goes on around you, allowing you hair-trigger reactions to events. Yes?"
There was a chorus of yes.
"You're showing fourth dimensional awareness. The average person on a planet walks through a puddle of water without knowing it's there until they feel their foot getting wet. They bump into things without knowing they were there, they get hit by things they didn’t see coming. This is two or three dimensional awareness. When you move to four, you know what's around you all the time, you avoid anything in your way, and get out of the way of anything coming at you. It doesn’t require thought. You know, so you act."
Oddly, there were less glazed over expressions than I thought there would be.
"Who needs some sort of alarm in order to be on time?"
There was a chorus of no's and a lot of shaking heads.
"You're showing fifth dimensional awareness, in being aware of time at an unconscious level. Fifth dimensional awareness for the spiritual person on the healing path also brings an awareness of past lives, the easy reintroduction of skills previously lost, and knowledge known before, but not known now. Hence most genuine know-it-alls tend to be fifth dimensionally aware."
"You mean they live at the fifth dimensional level?" Grace again.
"No. We are a three dee construct, and can only exist in a three dee environment, within four dee space, and five dee linear time. If you take a three dee construct and place it in a five dee environment, it dies because only consciousness and energy can exist outside of linear time. A lot of spiritual people get this wrong. There is no sex, coffee, or chocolate outside linear time. To transition, the body must be discarded first, which means dying. There is always someone talking about so called planetary ascension, where the planet ascends to five dee, and everyone gets a free ride there. But planets are not a three dee construct. People are. The planet can ascend, but the people on it die. Some of them ascend to become consciousness and energy outside linear time, but most reincarnate onto another three dee planet somewhere. You cannot go outside linear time in a human body."
"Unless you travel around in a blue box," laughed Aline.
We all laughed, and I was relieved when there were no further questions. The whole concept of me being a Debt Collector bothered me. It was not a role I would have chosen willingly. And yet I must have, when making my soul contract for this life before being born. I felt like I had a bone I needed to pick with Kali next time I saw her.
Bones, mmmmm.
I wasn’t going to go there.
I made my escape from the remains of lunch, and headed back to the Bridge.
"ANGEL!"
Fifteen
Amanda was the first in after me, and she stopped and started laughing. Aleesha walked straight into her sister's back, looked to see what the problem was, and also started laughing. Jane was making a huge effort to keep her expression neutral. Pretty well everyone did the same thing as they came back in.
I was sitting cross legged on the console on Angel's cat pad, facing towards Jane.
Angel was sitting in my chair, sitting up, and acting like she was Captain.
The twins tickled her on the way past.
The jump into Last Hope was supposed to be routine, as the nav map was clear.
Instead, something fired on us immediately we down jumped. It took them ten seconds to fire, showing they were not expecting us, but were reacting to our appearance. Ten seconds was pretty slow. But it was too fast for me.
I gathered my legs underneath me and jumped straight off the console, over the helm chair, landing a stride from my own chair. Angel was already in mid leap off it, and she passed me going the other direction. I thumped down into my chair, as she landed on the console, and leapt onto her pad.
Our shields took a solid series of hits from all around, and went down thirteen percent.
"Pirate fleet," said Jane. "Multiple Cruisers, Destroyers, Frigates, and Corvettes, plus five squadrons of Gladiators."
"All fighters launch," I said into ship coms. "Break and Attack. Primary targets are Gladiators, secondary are the Frigates and Corvettes."
Jack was half out of his seat, and signaling to the twins and Sam.
"No Jack," I said quickly. "We don’t have time for captures now. They picked a fight, we'll give them one."
He subsided back into his seat, as did the twins, and most of the alpha team.
"Buckle up," I said into ship coms.
I locked up the nearest Cruiser close to a line ahead of us, pulled the speed back so we wouldn’t shoot on past without being able to fire, and lined her up. Most of my guns were pointing forward. At Destroyer range, I gave it
the full broadside, plus the thirty torpedoes in the nose. Two seconds later, the Cruiser exploded, and I let us continue through the debris field.
"Tagged and bagged," came though ship coms, with a lot of other fighter pilot noise.
"Chalk one up for the Maniac," I couldn’t resist adding.
I pushed in some speed, and took us out of the immediate combat zone, where I pulled the speed off again, twirled us back the way we'd come, and looked for the biggest threat. It was another Cruiser. I locked it up, pushed in speed again, and headed back in.
"Firing missiles," said Jane conversationally.
She had another Cruiser on a secondary lock. Our missiles launched at it, as we swooped in on my second target. It saw us coming, and desperately turned for open space, at the same time as this brought all its main guns to bare on us. I fired off the Battleship guns as soon as they were in range, and a full salvo of torpedoes.
The Cruiser Jane was engaging exploded about five seconds before mine did. This time I pulled us around the debris field.
"Someone get that Frigate!" yelled Lacey. "It's going to ram…"
He was interrupted before he could say more, but I had all the hint I needed. I touched the control to lock up the closest ship, and found a Frigate on a ramming course with BigMother. She was close, way too close to destroy before a collision occurred.
"Jon!" yelled Amanda, as she saw the danger.
Time slowed.
The Frigate was off our left side, slightly low and coming up at us, relatively speaking in space, and aiming for a middle of the ship collision.
There was no time to turn. She was on us.
In slow motion, I rolled BigMother left, without changing our course. Our left side rotated downwards, right side rotating up, middle of the ship unchanged. It bought us a few seconds. In those few seconds, I pulled us up, while continuing the roll.
It didn’t quite work. I was aiming for us to roll right over the top of the Frigate, but it was too close. The roll brought the top of ship into its line, and the two sets of shields collided. The Frigate lost its shields immediately, while mine went down by half. The shield collision bounced the Frigate down slightly, and I continued the roll over the top of it.
Time returned to normal. The Frigate was heading away from us now, and I targeted all the Destroyer guns I could on her, and fired as soon as she was far enough away for them all to bare. One salvo was enough to destroy the hapless, but nearly successful ship, which hadn't had any chance to regenerate some shielding.
"Shit, that was close," said Aleesha.
I had no time to comment. Another Cruiser had fired on us, and I was turning towards it. Our shields had taken a beating, now down below twenty percent, but the fire was diminishing now that the smaller ships were being taken out of the fight, and the generators were starting to make headway on getting them back up.
The last Cruiser fired on us once again, and turned to flee. It managed to get half way around before my full broadside smashed through its shields, and it exploded.
I brought us to a stop. There were a couple of minor combats still in progress, but these ended quickly, as my pilots picked off the last remaining pirates.
I looked at Jane.
She looked at me.
"Jane?"
"Jon?"
"Explanation?"
She batted her eyelids at me. I wasn’t having it though. I gave her raised eyebrows in return. The Bridge was silent for a long moment. I sighed. Sometimes her not wanting to answer started to annoy me.
"How come there was a pirate fleet waiting for us, and we didn’t know they were here?"
"No ship ID's."
"How is that possible?" asked Abigail.
"No idea," said Jane. "It shouldn’t be possible."
"It obviously is," I said.
"Perhaps," said Abigail, lost in thought, "we need to update the comnavsats to also report mass without ID's anywhere near them."
"Do it," I commanded. "I guess it was only a matter of time. There has been plenty of incidents where we might have been observed to apparently know what was on the other side of a jump point, for the pirates to figure it out. Even if they didn’t know how we knew, preventing the ID's from broadcasting was an obvious step to take, to stop anyone from knowing you were there, or knowing who you were."
"As you said before boss," said BA, "Whenever we make an advance, it's only a matter of time before the bad guys catch on and counter it."
"The other question," said Annabelle, "is why they were here?"
Everyone looked at Jane again.
"No data," she said. "We didn’t leave an operational computer to sift through. Although there may be some prisoners we can interrogate. SR droids are out there now."
"What do we do with the mess?" asked Dick.
I thought for a moment.
"I'm not sticking around to do cleanup, that’s for sure. Jane, drop off some salvage droids to clean the debris field up, making a big solid mass out of it. Also leave some tugs to take it back to the Shipyard in Treasure Chest."
"Confirmed."
"As soon as everyone is aboard, get us moving to the planet." I paused. "I assume there is only one planet in this system capable of supporting life?"
"Good assumption."
"Then we better go find out if the pirates have been there or not."
I turned to Jack.
"Better prepare for another ground action, just in case. This system is so far from anywhere important, it wouldn’t surprise me if the pirates made it a fall back base. If they did, we'll have to take it away from them."
I turned back to Jane.
"Any data on what's here?"
"Actually," said Annabelle, "I can tell you that."
All eyes turned to her, some of them in the process of getting up.
"An ancestor of mine was responsible for removing the last group of people from Earth, in its last days as its atmosphere became toxic, and the storms made everywhere unsafe to be. They were forcibly removed, loaded onto the last colony ship of the exodus period, and brought here, being the only remaining unsettled planet known at the time. It was called Last Hope, because for them, it was. It was a mixed group of people, and they have largely ignored the rest of humanity, especially making the point of not joining one of the local sectors. By all accounts, they trade with those who come, but don’t seek any contact with anyone. They never wanted a station, so it's mainly small freighters which visit."
"How come you know so much?" asked Alison.
"It's a pilgrimage for anyone in my family who join the military. We go there to be reminded the price of following orders."
"You make it sound like it’s a harsh place," I said.
"No, it's quite a nice planet. But the locals haven’t forgotten being uprooted against their will, and forcibly brought here. Spending time with them gives one a dose of reality."
"All ships docked or landed," interjected Jane.
"Get us moving to the planet then. I just hope the pirates haven’t been giving the locals a bad time.
"Confirmed."
I settled down to doing yet more releases.
Sixteen
"Pirates? Nah, every time they show up, we hide from them. We leave out some supplies, a few trinkets and whatnot, so they can have fun looting, but they never see sight nor sound of us, or anything we value."
The man on the screen looked serious and determined.
"You won't either," he added, "so don’t bother coming down. We know you're a Merc unit, and we only entertain very select ones of those. And only when they seek an invitation first."
"I hadn't intended on coming down. We took out a pirate fleet at the jump point, and wanted to make sure you were all right. Two systems over, we found pirates using slaves for labour. If the same was going on here, we'd be on the way down already to set you free."
"That’s a mite generous of you to be sure, but completely unnecessary as I said." He seemed to be looking around th
e Bridge. "Is that a Smith in the chair next to you?"
"I am," said Annabelle. "Brigadier General Annabelle Smith. But I was a green Lieutenant when I visited here last."
"I recall. Excuse me saying, but I didn't think you had it in you to get stars. None of your family ever do if I remember rightly. Too much reality in ya. Pisses off the brass. It's one of the reasons we tolerate you coming. We blame the original Smith for bringing us here, but if he hadn't been such a hard-arse with his superiors, we wouldn’t have survived very long here. He made them include a full colony start-up package. Without it, this planet would have beaten us."
"It sounds like a story I'd like to hear," I said.
"Well I'm not tellin it," the man said. "Git going, I got stuff to be doing, and yammering with you aint gunna get it done."
I threw him a mock salute, and the channel closed.
"Put us on course for the next jump point Jane."
"Confirmed."
"What's the next system called?" asked Grace.
"Not named as far as we know," said Jane.
"We have some unofficial names," said Magnus from the rear.
All eyes turned to her.
"Prometheus mapped the jump points, but didn’t name any of the systems. Our first crew to run the route, back with the first test to get through, gave them names, but we never submitted them."
"What names?" asked Dick.
"We named them for the four horsemen of the apocalypse."
"The systems are that bad?" I asked.
"Oh yes. Each has its own problems. You'll see."
She grinned.
"Four Horsemen?" asked Alana. "Isn't that biblical?"
"Yes," said Magnus. "And seemingly appropriate. The system we enter next is called War. Then comes Famine, Pestilence, and Death."
"And of course," said Sam, "you're telling us Prometheus is in Death."
"Where else? The system is lethal. What better name for it?"
Better indeed.
The Last Hope system was a standard two jump point system, with them located on opposite sides of the star. Visiting the planet hadn't added much extra to travel time, and so not long after dinner, we arrived. There hadn't been anything more of interest. I'd caught up on email work, before going down for dinner.
Hunter Legacy 9: Hero at the Gates Page 9
