"For George, it's as he passes from rookie to veteran pilot." George nodded his thanks.
"When we fly, it's traditional we're identified by a name that has nothing to do with our real name. It’s a name bestowed on us by our peers. It's chosen because it reflects who we really are, and how we're perceived." He paused. The room held it's breathe.
"I have flown with both these men, as has Lieutenant Commander Young. We've watched them both in combat. We've watched them both interact with crew and each other."
He turned to George.
"Two days ago, George Murdock was a rookie who hadn't flown a combat mission. Today he has thirty six kills to his credit, and some of us live because of this man's selfless actions. Something I saw in the middle of combat that day, will stay with me for the rest of my life, and we feel, labels him in a unique way."
George startled, and I thought I saw the beginnings of understanding of where this was going on his face.
Greer lifted his tankard. The room followed.
"Pilots, I give you George 'Gorilla' Murdock.
The room drank. George changed his suit into a Gorilla and roared. The crowd went crazy.
"You didn’t," I said to him.
He changed his suit back to fatigues.
"I did," he said. "I was so mad during that big melee, I needed an outlet for it. So I changed my suit in the middle of the battle and roared at them." He laughed, so I joined him.
Greer banged his tankard on the bar again. Some of what was in it slopped out. It was quietly refilled. He turned to me.
"Captain. I have had the honour of flying with you, and for you. I have watched you snatch life and victory, seconds from death, without flinching. I've seen you laugh in the face of daunting odds…"
"Stark terror, you mean," came from Breckenridge, somewhere towards the back.
"…and do the impossible as if it was something you did every day."
Greer lifted his glass. The room followed.
"Pilots, I give you, Jon 'Maniac' Hunter."
Fifteen
I woke in Miriam's bed. She was sleeping soundly, half draped over me.
I'd let the naming ceremony wash over me the night before, and joined in the festivities after. The CAG, who had mostly stayed on the sidelines, had had to remind some pilots they had the duty the next day and needed some shut-eye. The party went on for several more hours.
Eric had asked me why 'Maniac' was ringing a bell with him. I told him. He hadn't played those games, but he'd heard about them. The original Maniac had been a pain in the arse, but there was no-one better to have on your wing. 'Chalk one up for the Maniac' rang in my ears. Aleesha wanted to know if I was insulted by the name. I actually felt honoured, and explained to her the history behind it.
Given it was past 3am by that time, I gave up on being able to leave straight away. Jumping back into Midgard was going to be risky enough without doing it dead tired.
Miriam had led me away, but stopped me at the door. Greer had yelled out for me to wait up a second, and when I turned to see what he wanted, the whole room had saluted me. I threw them an impromptu approximation in return, and followed Miriam. We were in her room, before I realized where we were going.
Jane whispered to me via my PC.
"Wakey wakey. Time we left, or we'll never catch up with the station."
It was already after nine.
"Be there shortly," I sub-vocalized back.
I was ponding how to extricate myself without waking her up, when Miriam opened her eyes and grinned at me.
"Good morning." She saw my face, and hers fell a bit. "Time for you to go?" I nodded.
She dragged me into the shower, and a very long shower later, I emerged in fatigues. I watched her dress.
We shared one last long kiss, and she escorted me back to Gunbus. At the airlock, she saluted me. I gave her a last hug, and cycled through.
Back on the Bridge, I found the rest of the crew.
MEOW!
I went over to Angel and tried to pat her, but she moved away.
"Someone's annoyed you didn’t come home last night Jon," said Amanda with a laugh.
"Did anyone?" I asked.
There was a pregnant pause and sheepish looks.
"I did," said Eric. "Not for lack of offers though. But, you know, wife and kids. Some very attractive female pilots there though."
"Yes," said George sagely. The girls giggled.
I shook my head and went to my chair. Angel settled down on her pad.
"Let's be out of here, shall we?"
"Confirmed," said Jane.
I noticed her avatar was wearing her unit citation ribbon.
Jane undocked us, and eased Gunbus off the flight deck, setting course for the jump point.
"Jane, how did the cloning go?"
"No problems. Yorkie was a bit surprised to find himself in charge of a Carrier all of a sudden, but was adapting as I left."
"Yorkie?"
"Yorktown. Yorkie. He was bonding with Captain Renaud when I left, just before calling you. The parameters we set were all successfully done. He knows I'm his sister. He knows everything he needs to clone himself onto other ships. He also knows to ensure you get paid each time he is cloned."
Which reminded me. I set my pad to download emails again while I still could. I sent one off to Colonel Smith advising we were about to enter Midgard again.
A priority email popped up for attention before I could put the pad down. The Colonel advised me they would be waiting for us at the Midnight jump point in Cobol, if we did not catch up first. Since I really needed sector permission to bring a station into Nexus, it was probably best to wait there. However, if need be, I could put the station in Bad Wolf next to the Nexus jump point, but out of the way of the Wolf planetoid. The Midnight and Bad Wolf systems were not only unaligned, they weren't officially part of any sector. An ownership claim of Midnight would be adjudicated by the Sci-Fi sector as it was adjacent to their space, and Bad Wolf by the Australian sector for the same reason. But 'squatting' was not likely to be questioned by either. Still, there was time before any decision needed to be made.
The next email after it was confirmation of a payment from the ASF for one billion credits. My mouth dropped open, even though I'd been expecting nine twenty five million. What would be worth another seventy five? Oh. The AI cloning fees for thirty six ships would be something around that.
"Jane, hold us a minute, I need the coms." We slowed to a stop, just short of the jump point.
I did the math, and made the payments.
"I assume you did the transfer of the ship specs?" I asked Jane.
"Yes, as soon as the payment was made. I transferred them direct to Yorktown by a physical link, same as cloning myself to create Yorkie."
I nodded. It was quicker that way. The alternative would have been sending a fast courier from Sydney with the specs, and that would have taken a week at least. Not even the fast couriers were as fast as Gunbus. I made a mental note to design one. My friend Melissa would want something faster for sure. Might even need one myself sometime.
I emailed Bob an authorization to repair all the ships I had on the Carrier or docked at his station. That included starting work on the Carrier to bring it as close to Gunbus standard as it could be made. I said I'd send him more about weapons for it later. But for now, he should begin on the changes we had already talked about, with priority to replacing what needed to be replaced, and adding the speed and maneuvering I wanted. I asked him to send a detailed report of the internal layout, and what he recommended we keep or remove. It would give me something to work on during the trip home.
I emailed General Harriman, offering him up to two hundred used Talon's for the sector Militia. They would require the replacement of the computer in each, but otherwise be ready to fly. Swapping out the computer modules for new ones, was a flight crew job.
With the crew getting restless, I finished up.
"Gunbus to Yorktown.
"
"Hear you Gunbus."
"Thanks for the hospitality. In case you were wondering, delay in leaving was using the coms before we head into blackout. We're departing now."
"Good luck Gunbus."
I looked around the Bridge.
"Buckle up," I said. We all did just that.
Jane jumped us.
Sixteen
The scanner showed twenty six red dots, two of them dull red.
Four hundred yellow dots appeared as a solid blob of yellow. I was guessing it was four hundred, being two barrages of two hundred each.
"Jane!" I yelled.
The ships all began to stop, but the missiles kept coming. The turrets handled a lot of the first wave, but four missiles hit Gunbus' shields and they dropped to forty percent. Suddenly the rest exploded, shredding the remaining shielding. When things settled down outside the hull, the shields were at two percent. They started to regenerate.
"That was damned close," said Eric.
"What happened Jane?" I asked her.
"Sorry, they had encrypted the destruct code. It took a bit to break it."
"I wonder if they had a spotter just out of scanner range when we went through last night?" pondered George. "They won't have known what we did, but would have seen the missiles destruct short of the target. Could have suspected a traitor, so encrypted the destruct code so only the captain had it?"
"Sounds feasible," I said. "Jane, any survivors?"
"No. Suicide again."
I sighed.
"Fine, form the Talons up into a V formation and have them lead the Cruisers to the Azgard jump point as fast as they can manage. We won't wait for them. How much control do you have?"
"Only that, control. There is not enough of me on any ship to be able to repeat the taking over of other ships. The computers are too basic to cope with a full AI."
"Not to worry. If they have to fight, let them fight, but keep any survivors heading for the station, wherever it is when they catch up." Most likely in Nexus. "If all they do is take out more of the Midgard squadrons, they're ships that won't be bothering anyone else, and it gives the American's time to fortify their end, and arrange a blockade at the other end."
"Confirmed."
We started the eight hour journey to the Azgard jump point. With luck and no interruptions, we would be there around dinner time.
The girls headed for the gym. Eric left to catch up on some more sleep. George stayed put, looking troubled.
"Jon, can I ask you something?" he said.
"Sure."
"How do you cope with this hero business?"
"Why do you ask?"
"What Greer said about saving people? And how they've been treating me since? I don’t understand it."
"What's your problem?"
"I didn’t do anything heroic. In fact, I really didn't know what I was doing at all. I just attacked anything I could see, and the ship did the rest. There's nothing heroic about blundering about in the middle of a battle."
I laughed.
"Welcome to my world," I said.
"Seriously, how do you cope?"
"What makes you think I do? I find the whole thing as mystifying as you do."
"That doesn’t help."
"That's what I told BA once. What if being a hero is blundering around in the middle of a battle, not knowing what you're doing? What if saving people unintentionally is what your there for? And being humble and not understanding it, is why people respect it so much?"
"You really believe in the destiny and life purpose stuff, don’t you?"
"Hard not to, when that’s what your taught from day one."
"So if I was bragging about my kills, people wouldn’t respect me?"
"No. They would respect the pilot, but not the person. They respect you because you don’t understand what's going on. I guess that makes sense for me too. I've never really thought about it this way before."
"Isn't it harder for you?"
"Why would it be?"
"You were brought up spiritual. Doesn’t that mean you respect all life too much to kill anyone?"
"Yes, but at the same time, we don’t walk around with a sign that says, 'Doormat, wipe feet here'. We take responsibility for our actions. That means when we do something against life or karma, we accept it, forgive it, and forgive those involved with it. We release the situation all the way back to where it began, not knowing where or when the cycle started."
"You're talking reincarnation?"
"Yes. You believe it or you don’t. When you do, you pay attention to the cycles."
"Cycles?"
"Everything happens in a cycle. A thousand years ago, you accidently hurt someone and they died. In the next life that person takes revenge on you. The life after that, you do the same. On and on it goes through many lifetimes, until we get to now. Knowing about karma and the cycles, allows us to break the cycle by releasing it back to its beginning."
"How do you know who you have a cycle with?"
"Ever met someone who you totally hated on first sight? Or who hated you without even knowing who you were?"
"Sure."
"Those people are the ones you have the worst cycles with. Souls remember. And they recognize other souls from past lives, even though they wear a new body. Those are the ones you need to release before they continue the cycle on you. What was done in the past comes back to haunt you now, unless you do something about it."
"You're talking karma now? The scales thingy where you do a bad thing, and need to do a good thing to balance it?" I laughed.
"That’s the simplistic version of it. Some groups believe you need to do three good things to offset each bad thing. But the truth is much more complicated."
I stopped and looked hard at him.
"You really want to know?" I asked him.
In my experience, away from home, a lot of people are curious, but few really want to know. If you bang on about it, their eyes glaze over.
"Yes, I do. I've never had the chance to explore any of this stuff before. I instinctively know there is more to things than I'm aware of, but I never found the right person to explain it to me before."
"There was a book written eleven hundred years ago in China. 'Liao-Fan's Four Lessons'. A very small book, it was written by a man as teachings for his children. It's one of the best books on karma ever written, and has always been free to anyone who wants to read it. At home, we read this book almost as soon as we can read, and it pops up during schooling for years after."
"Can I get a copy?" I pulsed it to him. I still re-read it periodically.
"There are a lot of stories about the nature of good and bad, about which it talks a lot, pointing out that much of what's thought to be good by society, is in fact bad. And vice versa. There was one story in particular how a man was judged good when he had done bad all his life. It demonstrates how inadequate that scales of balance concept of karma really is."
"Can you remember it?"
"Sure, this is it from memory, but it goes like this. A man dies, and goes before the karmic board for judgement. The judge asks for all his bad deeds to be displayed. The room fills with representations of each bad deed the man had done. The judge asks for all his good deeds to be displayed. A single scroll appears on the judge's hand. The judge announces the man had done good with his life and should be rewarded in his next life. The man does not understand. He asks the judge how this could be so, when the room is full of his bad deeds and the judge held but a single scroll of his good. The judge asked him if he remembered when the Emperor decreed that a Bridge be built, and knowing how many thousands of lives would be lost during the construction, he had written asking for the Bridge not to be built. The man remembered, but reminded the judge the Bridge had indeed been built, and all those people had died. The judge told him it did not matter. He had risked his own life to try and stop the loss of other people's lives. That he failed was not the point. He had tried. And for each person he had t
ried to stop dying, he was awarded a karmic point for having tried to save them. In the balance, this one act offset everything else in his life."
I paused and added, "Karma is judged on your thoughts, not your words or deeds. The thought to save all those people is what he was judged on, not sending the letter. However, sending the letter is the difference between talking the talk, and walking the walk. Having the good thought and following it with no action, incurs both positive and negative karma, since you are not following through to action the thought. In this case, he did, so he accrued only positive karma."
"So this hero business is doing what needs to be done to protect others, even when you've no idea that what you're doing is so important?"
"You could put it that way. Want to read some more about it?"
"Sure, we have plenty of time for the next few days."
I pulsed him another book.
"This one is called 'Changing Destiny'. It was written five hundred years later, and is a twentieth century interpretation of each paragraph in Four Lessons. The former is very short, the latter will take you a week or two to read. Don’t let the Buddhism in it bog you down. Some of it's useful, other parts will make you think, and some of it will resonate so deeply you wonder why you never realized it before."
"Thanks. Can I ask you something else?"
"Sure."
"What do you do when you're meditating? Your kills should have made you a basket case by now, but you must be doing something that helps you cope. What is it?"
"I do releases, as I said."
"What do you mean?"
"Okay, repeat this after me. I accept all karmic debt for the first pilot I killed, and release all karmic debt into the earth for renewal into good energy, at all the levels, in all the bodies, in this lifetime and all lifetimes, across space, time and dimension, forgiving myself for whatever I have done wrong, and forgiving anyone else connected to this karmic debt for whatever they have done wrong, with healing to be given now."
He stumbled over the beginning, so I talked him through it phrase by phrase. At the end, he started coughing, and continued for several minutes.
"What was that?" he asked.
Send in the Hero (The Hunter Legacy Book 3) Page 12
