Hunter Legacy 11: Home Is Where the Hero Is

by Timothy Ellis

  Jane had me up early anyway. Annette and Slice met me in my Hunter Security Admiral's office for a last minute chat about what they were off to do. I stressed urgency and suggested they dock the ships together if they could, to maximize speed. This could be done in theory, since Slice's ship was fairly standard. They'd have to figure it out in practice. The faster they could get around, the better, since knowing if we had any concerns in the other four suspect systems would be better sooner than later. The Canadians would certainly feel better knowing their system showed nothing to worry about. It would free them up for joint operations with the Americans. It was the next one on the list, to be followed by the system on the other side of Dead Man's Chest.

  It was ironic. I had two very habitable planets in the Duchy, not including Outback, and I'd never get the time to actually colonize them. There simply wasn’t any point now.

  Excalibur left while we were talking, and once again I pondered apparently drunk pilots. The two Cruisers were not far behind, and travelling at the same speed. I let O'Neil know my Dad was on his way.

  I had breakfast with Walter, and we discussed further what had been discussed the night before. I was just leaving the Officer's Club, when Thirteen waylaid me, and we headed for BigMother.

  "It's time we began your special project."

  "Which is?"

  "The four crystals you retrieved from future Earth."

  They were still on Unassailable's Cargo Deck.

  "Would it be easier if we undocked Unassailable, and docked her to the station?"

  "It would."

  "Confirmed. But I'll need to move BigMother away from the station to safely undock her."

  "Fine. Lead us to the dock she uses. While you're at it, may as well undock the Guardians, and put them on the perimeter patrol."

  "Confirmed."

  The three of us spent the morning looking at the one I'd excavated completely. The others were still locked within rectangles of earth. But it wasn’t worth the effort of getting them out, until we had a way of connecting the one we did have to the power grid of the ship, and have it actually generate power.

  It didn’t take long to convince myself I knew almost nothing about them. I obviously had a rudimentary awareness of them brought forward from a past life, but it was obvious I had no knowledge of how to use them. Jane was actually completely clueless for once. And Thirteen proved to be no help either.

  "We need someone with specialist knowledge," I told him. "But I seriously doubt we'll find anyone nearby who has it. At a guess, there hasn’t been anyone around for some twenty odd millennia."

  "I'll seek help then from the council. If they can't help, I'll buck it higher up. Someone made sure you found these, so there must be help around somewhere to get them working."

  "Why the rush?" asked Jane.

  "Not so much a rush," he said. "But if I understand your nightmare," he looked at me, "BigMother faces the Darkness alone at the beginning. In spite of the augmented shielding that ship has, I'm not sure it'll be enough. Why go into a situation like that deliberately, without making as sure as possible you'll be coming back out of it in one piece?"

  "There is that," I said. "Someone has to be there when they come through. Maybe we can communicate with them, maybe not, but someone has to try. And if that fails, we need to determine the threat as much as possible, and get the information back to whatever fleet we have there in time to be of any use. I know I'm there, so I guess it's me. I’d say I go alone, only the nightmare makes it quite plain I'm not."

  "They'd never let you go alone," said Jane.

  It was quite obvious who she was referring to.

  "Be back as soon as I can," said Thirteen, and vanished.

  "Can I call him a rude name?" asked Jane.

  "Why?"

  "Because he can travel in time. He can be back here already if he wanted to be, regardless of how long it actually took him."

  I shook my head and chuckled. Having a time traveler on the crew was definitely different. But what really annoyed me still, was the time travelers I knew about couldn’t fix this before it started. It negated the whole point of time travelling to my mind.

  "Get me a trolley, so I can go get some lunch."

  "Confirmed."

  We locked up Unassailable on the way off her. No point in tempting stupid people.

  Bob messaged me after lunch about putting engines around Redoubt. He'd had someone poke around in the mountains of hull parts and debris which had been shipped back during the Midgard war, after the British coup, and our trip down to Earth. It turned out we had quite a few rear ends of ship hulls to choose from, including several Battleship, and quite a few from Cruisers. Nothing worked in them, but the hulls could be worked with to provide just engine and power plant spaces. Between them, ringed around the lower docking ring of Redoubt, they'd provide her considerable bulk with Guardian speed.

  In theory.

  Bits and pieces of smaller ships were also available to provide a form of maneuvering thrusters. The resulting station was going to look like a dog's breakfast, but it should be able to move and fight like a true Battleship. While he was at it, it would get Point Defense and Mosquito launchers all over it wherever possible, making it less vulnerable to side and rear attack. He'd also add more Cruiser guns and capital ship missile launchers where he could.

  He proposed to completely re-hull the join between the original stations, removing any form of join completely, and using the space for middle of the station armaments, with an all-around coverage.

  I told him to go right ahead. And I upped the priority to just behind the Explorer ships. We'd get smaller ships out while he prepared for the big job, but the Corvette conversions would have to wait. At least until those parts of the shipyard dedicated to extending the shipyard, provided additional bays, and the bays dedicated to turning out mining ships to keep the shipyard fed, caught up with the demand for resources.

  We were on the clock now. The curve of things to do was exponential. The shipyard had too much to do. Bob's own shipyard in the Sydney system was also expanding itself and building mining ships as fast as it could, while still attending to Camel and Python orders, Australian Militia orders, and producing the first station Hubs. The latter would be needed for accommodation purposes in Outback very soon.

  We also needed custom food production stations, but had no capacity for building them yet. When refugees started pouring into the Australian sector later in the year, we needed to be able to feed them, and while the Australian planets over produced food now, it wouldn’t be enough to last until the Door opened. This raised a thought about the retreat. We really needed a raiding force with the sole task of retrieving planetary food stocks as each planet was evacuated. And come to think of it, there were other things which should be salvaged from abandoned planets as well. I pinged the idea to Annabelle.

  I was lucky I didn’t need to address all this myself. Bob had people managing things. David had his finger on the pulse as well. And my senior officers were managing what we needed to accomplish. We'd get it done, I had no doubts about it. But I wasn’t going to be here to see it.

  While I was thinking about stations moving, my thoughts changed to how to preserve Haven. As well as all the other stations in the Australian sector. Station tugs were fine for moving slowly, but we needed to move other stations down the spine a lot faster. And as much as I wanted this station to survive, I also could see a need for it to be amongst the last to go through to Gaia, providing us with a last stand base. And if the worst happened, and we arrived back here when the door was closed, the station might need to be moved somewhere else to protect it. But converting it like Redoubt wasn’t feasible. All the same, Bob's ideas for using junk hulls to make station engines seemed like a good one. And it might be possible to make them dock with the standard docks, but thrust in a useful direction. The docking links would need to be much more solid though.

  I spent time during the afternoon coming up with id
eas and sending them off to Bob. Eventually he told me to stop sending them to him piecemeal, and to just send one message when I ran out of steam. Which I did, after Jane reminded me I was having a one on one dinner with Aline at one of the best restaurants on the station.

  For the life of me I couldn't remember being told about it in the first place.

  Forty Nine

  "Who are you and what have you done with my Jon?"

  It took me a moment for what she said to register.

  "What?"

  "You're not here. You haven't been since talking to the Keeper. It's like the Keeper took you and left a suited security droid in your place."

  "That’s ridiculous."

  "Is it?"

  "You can't fuck a security droid."

  "Wanna bet?" said Jane through my PC.

  "What was that look?"

  "Jane said did I want to bet on it."

  "She'd know. You keep disappearing. I want to know where you go."

  "It's not so much where, as when."

  "When? Are you still hung up on your life being an open book?"

  "How can you joke about it? My life was entertainment six hundred years ago."

  "Maybe so, but I think you're missing the whole point."

  "And that would be?"

  "Where would we be if the books hadn't been written?"

  "I don’t follow you."

  "Jon, this isn’t rocket science. A detailed prophecy was made. We can presume a lot of people read it. Enough people believed it. It was carried forward through time against all the odds. A few people received what they needed to make sure you and I would be sitting here right now having this conversation."

  "Huh? You and me now?"

  "Jon. Keep up. This conversation is the end result of a legacy which began six hundred years ago, with the channeling of your life story over this last year. But it's also just the beginning. From here, we fight the Darkness, and try to find a way where humanity survives. Without those novels, we wouldn’t have met because without the Keeper, your parents would never have let you leave Gaia two full Gaia years early. If you never left Gaia, we'd all have died on the first page of that first book."

  There was something funny about that. The book ending on the first page, because none of it actually happened. I kept my expression serious.

  "This last year wouldn’t have happened. Sometime in the next several years, the Darkness sweeps up the spine. Everyone we know and love dies because there is no coordinated defense, no commander committed to saving humanity rather than isolated groups of people who can't be saved. And at the last, your Door opens, the Darkness pours through, and Galactica is the first to fall. If you weren't already dead, you are now without firing a shot, and a short time later the last human is dead. And that’s the best guess scenario."

  "Best? What's the worst?"

  "Galactica never made it out here. The Australian sector was never found, and Gaia was just a dead dream of people who never stood a chance of finding a new home. When the Darkness came, humanity had nowhere to go."

  "Have you been talking to Thirteen?"

  "Yes. Amanda and Aleesha had it out with him after he revealed he'd been with us the whole year. A lot of the miracles we wondered about were his doing. Apparently he was the pilot who died when Moose was destroyed, although he was using a different body at the time. Like it or not, higher being or not, he's one of us now. He lived the last year with us, he showered with us on the way to Pompeii, and that makes him team. He's saved all of us, you most of all. The one thing he doesn’t know how to deal with is what's going on with you now."

  "What is going on with me now?"

  "You seem to be in crisis mode, and it's not about your life being entertainment."

  "It's not?"

  "No. Want to tell me what's really bothering you?"

  I sighed. I guess this is what a relationship was really about. Holding the mirror up to you because they love you.

  "I don’t know where home is."

  "Why does it matter?"

  "I'm not sure. But it does."

  "Okay. If this was one of your old flat screens, how would the hero's girlfriend put it?"

  "Holy hell."

  "I doubt that."

  I almost chuckled.

  "I don’t think she would understand."

  "I don’t understand. Explain it to me."

  "I'm not sure I can."

  "Try."

  "My family left Earth nearly six hundred years ago. They left their home and everyone they knew, and undertook a one way journey into the future. Eventually they found the Australian sector planets, and Gaia, but even then, my family never put down roots on any of the planets. They stayed in space. On a ship. It was a ship, not a home. We lived there. It moved around. There was no sun, the air was cleaned and re-cleaned, the water recycled, the food mostly processed. No roots. I was born in space, and except for a few visits, I've no real experience of living on a planet."

  "And why is that bad?"

  "I feel no connection to most of humanity. And I'm supposed to be their savior? How do I do that when I have no connection?"

  "Jon…"

  She rose, stepped around the table, and hugged me. I hugged her back, and people began to stare. Eventually she let me go, and resumed her seat.

  "Listen to me, Jonathon Hunter. You evolved in space. You live in space. You fight in space. The Darkness will cross space. You are what you are because the battles which will matter the most are in space. Humanity not only needs a hero, it needs one evolved for space. It's you. Space is your home. You'd never feel comfortable anywhere else. Accept it. Love it. Live it."

  "Who are you, and what have you done with Aline?"

  We both chuckled.

  "Seriously Jon, the only reason your life being a novel bothers you is because you're one of the few people who associates with the entertainment of more than half a millennia ago. It was so long ago, it makes no difference to the here and now. If the books were actually available to read now it would be different, but they haven't been in over five hundred years. Get a grip on reality. For right now, this station is your home. When we start down the spine, BigMother will be your home. Or Redoubt will be, or perhaps even Gunbus. It doesn’t matter. A lot of philosophers have spent far more time than you have on where home is. Some said it's where you hang your hat. Others said it's where you put your boots at night. I say home is where the hero is. Home is where you are."

  I opened my mouth. She reached across the table and closed it.

  "Let's not argue about the hero thing. Being humble is one of your endearing traits. But we don’t need humble for the next year. We need a leader. We need you at the top of your game."

  Her voice changed into the drill sergeant.

  "So get rid of this angst ridden security droid using a suit, and get the real Jon Hunter back in play. If I don’t see him first thing in the morning, I'm going to kick this pathetic suit version the whole way around this station until the suit shreds. Do you hear me soldier!"

  "Sir, yes sir."

  I think we both became aware of people clapping her from all around the room at the same moment. Aline blushed. I grinned at her.

  She reached over and took my hand.

  "I love you," she said.

  "I know."

  Fifty

  I turned up for training the next morning. BA ran me through the courses relentlessly. I'd been ignoring this since we arrived in Gaia, and my body had been getting soft again. I knew I'd face the Darkness in space, but I also knew I'd face it at least once on the ground. Not being in top physical condition then would probably be fatal. And I was acutely aware, now, of my mental condition sliding with my body condition. Gaia had been a set of shocks I hadn't needed. But they'd happened, and like Aline had said, I needed to move on. Getting back into physical condition should help my mental condition.

  I ate breakfast with the team. Everyone except George was there. It seemed like forever since w
e'd last been together as a group, at least socially. My birthday party didn't count. I invited everyone for a buffet dinner at my place that evening. Just the team, Mum, and Angel.

  Breakfast over, I was starting back to collect Angel, when Thirteen appeared beside me.

  "You'll want to be here for this."

  "Which this is that?"

  He didn’t answer, but led me toward Unassailable's dock. Jane fell in beside us along the way. We arrived at the dock next door to the Battleship, just as the airlock opened, and a dozen people walked out. They looked around vaguely, as if having no idea where they were. The one in front saw us, and stepped our way.

  "We're looking for someone named Hunter," she said.

  "That would be me."

  "Ah good. Please arrange for our gear to be taken to our hotel, and someone show us where the crystals are."

  "And you are?"

  "Didn’t anyone tell you?"

  "Apparently not."

  "I knew it," said an older man behind her. "Whole thing was a crock of shit, and we spent all that time on that apology of a cruise ship getting here for nothing."

  Jane was trying hard not to laugh.

  "Excuse me, but what are you here for?"

  "Its top secret boy. Tell your boss the crystal specialists are here."

  "I am the boss."

  They all looked at me as if I'd said I was a frog. They looked at Jane. She nodded. They looked at Thirteen. He nodded. They looked back at me.

  "Hmmm," said the leader. "We were headhunted from all over the arm, to come here and work on some sort of energy from crystals project."

  "So you all retain your knowledge of Atlantean times?"

  Grins broke out among them.

  "Yes," she said. "Do you?"

  "I have some of them, but only enough information to turn the crystals on or off."

  "Please," she said reverently. "How many are there?"

  "Four, but only one is available to be worked with."

  "Four," said another voice from the back. "Beyond our wildest dreams."

  "Take us there," said the leader.

  I waved towards the dock next door. As we walked, I gave Jane instructions.