Hunter Legacy 8: Hero to the Rescue

by Timothy Ellis

  The jump was routine. Jane turned us towards the Earth jump point.

  "You're on Melissa," I said to her. She jumped up excitedly. "But you're not going alone." I turned to Lacey. "Wing Commander, you escort her please. There are four Lightning's, use them all. George?"

  "Boss?" came through the coms, since he was on Custer.

  "Want to go?"

  "Last one to the launch tubes is the tail end charley."

  Melissa took off out the door.

  Lacey had a grin on his face.

  "Take whoever else wants some speed time," I told him. "Go to the Sicily, Vatican and Earth jump points, where we'll meet you. Do not jump out of this system. All I want to know is if the comnavsats and comsats are there or not. Turn for the next as soon as you can verify they are not there. If they are there, I want to know about it, and you wait there for us to catch up. If you make contact with someone on the other side of a jump point, you are still not to jump though. Understand?"

  "Yes sir."

  He turned to Grace. Her eyes lit up in anticipation, he nodded to her, and she shot out the door ahead of him. He threw me a grin, and left unhurriedly after her.

  "Pilots!" said Jack, shaking his head.

  There was a general laugh at their expense, which I ignored. Fortunately, the 266 pilots rarely appeared on the Bridge these days, so there was no-one but me there to take offense. Lacey did, as one of the senior officers, unless he knew we'd see some action, in which case he went straight to his ship.

  "Jane, move us to the Earth jump point, close enough we can check the Luxembourg point as we pass. I still think maybe we should have checked Luxembourg and Monaco as well, but if the jump point is clear, chances are it was a waste of time as we thought. If by any chance we find any kind of sat, we can go investigate there first."

  "Confirmed."

  "Lunch?"

  "No thanks," said Jane, "but you all go ahead."

  We did.

  * * *

  I was back on the Bridge just before seven that evening, as we neared the jump point to Earth. It was a bit of a pain all the jumps aligning with meal times, but this time I’d gone to dinner early, and everyone had taken my queue. They streamed back in a few at a time.

  The Lightning's were waiting for us. They'd reported on the same nothing as everywhere else. They landed on the Flight Deck, and were taken down.

  It was a bad sign, I'd hoped not to get. The one place guaranteed to make a stand at was Wolf 359. So said all the science fiction stories which had Earth attacked by a superior force coming up the spine, or coming from the core of the galaxy. It was the logical block point before Earth. Given an imminent attack, here is where I would make a stand.

  We had no way of knowing if anything had happened here. Like all the rest we had seen so far, this system, although uninhabited, had been swept clean of anything man made. For all we knew, there had been the battle to end all battles here, and mankind had lost, and simply been discarded to some alien's dustbin.

  "Get a grip Jon," said Amanda.

  I sighed, took a large deep breathe in and held it for a bit, and let it out slowly.

  "Jane, jump us through please."

  I rose, walked forward to stand behind the empty helm chair, and stood there. Angel came over and presented herself for a pat, so I tickled her absently, eyes locked forward.

  There was nothing on the other side.

  There was always something at this jump point. The system was usually so busy with traffic, you had to be careful not to hit anything in a ship this size.

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  I turned to see what everyone else was thinking. I needn't have bothered. I could see the same dread in everyone's eyes. I turned back.

  "Earth," I said.

  It was all that needed saying.

  "Confirmed."

  We were three hours away. We'd know in one.

  I returned to my seat, taking Angel with me, and sat there tickling her. She purred away.

  The next hour was torture for everyone. Lacey, Grace, and Melissa rejoined us. No-one did anything, or went anywhere. Nothing was said. We all sat there and waited.

  "Nothing," said Jane.

  At this distance, we should have had the Earth Torus, and all the stations in orbit, on our HUD.

  "Nothing," said Jane ten minutes later.

  We could see that, but she was telling us that we were now well within scanner range.

  "Still nothing," said Jane, twenty minutes later.

  "Fuck!" said Dick.

  Most of us were so shocked to hear him swear, we all looked at him in surprise.

  "It's all gone," he said. "Billions, gone."

  His eyes were full of tears. Earth had been his home. He'd lived on the Torus for most of his life.

  Jane got up, went over to him, and hugged him. Almost everyone looked on in surprise. Only those of us who knew the full story of how he'd joined us, understood. Or thought we did. There were depths to Jane which even I wasn’t fully aware of.

  He composed himself quickly, and Jane returned to her post.

  No-one said a thing for the next hour and a half.

  I almost told Jane to use full speed several times, but each time I stopped myself from saying it. We would know soon enough.

  Just after ten, we made orbit. As expected, there was no Torus, no stations, and no sats. There was not even any of the space junk which had orbited for centuries.

  The moon was there. But it was a lifeless rock again. No domes, no underground warrens, no spaceport and ships buzzing around like mosquitoes. Nothing.

  We waited for Jane to complete her scan of Earth.

  "All gone," she said. "Just like the others. No animals, no people, no signs humans were ever here."

  "What about the Great Wall?" asked Aline.

  "Gone."

  "Pyramids?" asked Jack.

  "Gone. Sphinx too. All gone."

  "Ice age?" I asked.

  "Yes, definitely signs of a bad one. Everything above forty degrees north, is under snow and ice."

  "Back where it was in thirteen BC."

  "Indeed."

  "What was thirteen BC?" asked Sam. It hadn't taken long for her to be on first name terms with everyone.

  "Between thirteen BC and five BC," I responded, "the snow and ice of the previous ice age melted, raising the water levels two thousand meters. Five thousand six hundred BC is when the Atlantic rose high enough to wash over the land bridge which separated the Atlantic from the Mediterranean fresh water lake system. Noah's flood. In the space of eight thousand years, the land masses shrank to how all the current maps show them. Most of the civilizations which predated thirteen thousand BC were drowned under so much water, they vanished completely, and were lost to history itself. Only legend remained."

  "Is that Australia?" interrupted Amanda with shock in her voice.

  Everyone looked.

  "Yes," said Jane. "And we can see the effect of all that ice in the north. The land mass of Australia is almost doubled. It merges into what used to be islands to the north, and links to a larger New Zealand via a land bridge from north eastern Australia."

  "But we can see it," exclaimed Aleesha.

  "Holy shit," said Jack.

  For centuries, the mega storms had circled the Earth. From space, nothing but ugly polluted cloud could be seen.

  All gone.

  Australia, or perhaps we should call it 'Terra Australis' again, was enjoying a bright sunny day, everywhere. Further north, where the South East Asia rainforests had once been, it was raining. No thunderclouds, just light monsoonal rain. North again, and it was all snow and ice. There was no China Sea, and no Japan, just a few large lakes in the middle of a much larger land mass.

  We watched in awe as Jane took the ship around an orbit of the planet, more or less along the line of the equator.

  "Is that Middle Earth?" I asked Jane at one point, as we were passing over the much reduced Atlantic. It wasn’t so
much that Africa and America were larger, as the ocean had been broken up into seas by crisscrossing mountain ranges. The Pacific had been the same, only with larger resulting seas.

  I could see a land mass in the north, partly covered in snow, which matched the shape of how I remember the land mass being described.

  "Confirmed."

  "What's going on Jane?"

  "I'm not sure. All the pollution is gone. The land is regenerating plant life. There are small fish in the seas and rivers."

  She stopped, and went back over her sensor data.

  "The coral reefs are back. The Great Barrier reef is partly restored to before white men invaded the dreamtime."

  "Partly?"

  "The inner islands are all part of the mainland now, and the northern section of the reef is now coastline. So some of the reef has been lost on dry land, but the rest is thriving again."

  "It’s a miracle," said someone at the back.

  "How can a fucking disaster of unimaginable scale, also be a miracle?"

  Dick was lost in his own private hell now. The planet he called home was renewed, but at the cost of everyone he'd ever known.

  "Is there anything man made left down there?" I asked Jane. "What about places like Norad?"

  "What's a Norad?" asked Grace, standing at the back.

  "Originally a missile silo," I said. "Used as an underground military base until late in the twenty first century."

  "Nothing," Jane said. "There isn’t even a hole into the mountain anymore."

  The twins suddenly did their commune thing, and both of them went pale at the same time.

  "What?" I asked them.

  "Did we cause this?" asked Amanda.

  For the first time ever, I saw fear on both their faces.

  "How could we cause this?" asked Annabelle.

  "We weren’t there," said Aleesha in a hushed tone.

  "Explain," demanded BA.

  The twins looked at me, and I thought I understood. But I couldn’t say it. I nodded to Amanda.

  "Everything we’ve been through this last year, we thought was to prepare us for prophesy. The coming of Darkness. We thought we were supposed to be there to do something which has been foretold."

  "We weren't," said Aleesha. "We vanished into the future."

  "And in so doing," continued Amanda, "we were not there when we were supposed to be. Whatever prophesy said would be done, wasn’t. The Darkness came, it saw, it wiped humanity from the galaxy."

  "We can't be sure of that," said Alison.

  The twins looked at me, and the three of us shuddered violently.

  Silence returned, as we gazed down upon a pristine planet, perfect for the human species to live on. But the only ones we knew about were on this ship.

  Dick was the one who finally asked the question. The only question which now mattered.

  "What are our options now?"

  Everyone looked at me.

  "There are a few. We can go down there and recolonize Earth. We can explore the spine in both directions, and make sure if we are alone or not. We can attempt to go back now, or wait until the Sirius system will allow us safer passage. The latter option would give us time to explore first."

  "Now," came through coms.

  Dick and Jack nodded. Others joined in. I polled the bridge and it was resoundingly 'now'. Each mess gave the same answer.

  "Thankyou everyone," I said. "As much as going back now is our wish, we can't do so safely."

  I thought for a full minute, and everyone just looked at me.

  "I don’t do fucking rescues," I mumbled to myself.

  "You don’t get a choice Jon," said Amanda. "We have to go back and rescue our species. It's not only us, but all animals. Like cats. It's not an option. We go back, or we die trying."

  "Yes!" said Jack emphatically.

  "Fine," I said. "Melissa."

  "Boss?"

  "Take George as your wingman, and go down spine as far as you can go in five days. That’s one hundred and twenty hours. You turn around and come straight back. Ten days maximum for out and back. You search for any signs someone survived. You linger nowhere. Get as far as you can, and come back."

  "Go now?"

  "Go. George?"

  "Sir?"

  "You enforce that five day limit. Not a minute more."

  "Yes sir."

  "Move."

  Melissa was already gone.

  "Wing Commander?"

  "Sir?"

  "Take Grace on your wing, and go up spine. Same five days. Same rules."

  "On my way sir."

  "Grace?" She stopped and looked at me. "You do what you're told."

  "Yes sir."

  They left in a hurry.

  "What about the rest of us?" asked Annabelle.

  "Jane and anyone who wants to help, needs to figure out how to get us much better shielding, or all we'll do is kill ourselves in futility. We have ten days. Time for someone to be a genius, or think outside the box, or invent a new box. In the meantime, everyone go to bed. There will be stuff for people to do tomorrow, once I get a chance to think about it. If anyone has any bright ideas, bring them up at breakfast."

  No-one moved.

  "Bed. Go."

  Still no-one moved, so I gathered up Angel, who was still on my lap, and stalked out.

  Twenty Three

  I was drowning. I'd left it too late to get out myself. The last few weeks had been desperately trying to help people escape the rising water. Some walked out via the only high ground available. Others completed their ascension, and left their bodies behind.

  The city elders had miscalculated. The water had risen much faster than anyone expected. For thousands of years this city had sat on the edge of deep water, and we prided ourselves on how well we understood the water.

  Now, it was too late.

  The 'engines'. I had to turn off the 'engines'.

  Below the healing temples, were the power sources for our crystal technology. Left on and unattended, they would cause havoc with the weather of the world.

  I had to turn them off.

  But the water closed over me, and I died.

  Time passed.

  Another city, another life, rising waters, must turn off the 'engines'.

  More time passes. Yet another city, another life, rising waters, must turn off the 'engines'.

  Failure. Three times failure.

  In the last gasps of breathe, I ascend, leaving my last body to the water.

  Millennia pass.

  The 'engines' left behind by a long gone civilization degrade.

  Storms become hurricanes.

  Hurricanes gain intensity.

  I monitor as best I can, but cannot act.

  The energy of the region changes, becoming wild, and unpredictable.

  Something changes. From my once more ascended state, I am drawn to one of the cities, now buried under the accumulated silt of the ocean. The specter of a man appears, casting around for a healing chamber he knows is there, finding it, and descending to the 'engines'. He does the maintenance I could not do. I urge him on, and follow him from city to city. I follow him back to his body. He is human!

  So are you now.

  The man sits in a chair in meditation, but soon comes out of it. He is surprised to find only an hour has passed, for he feels the exhaustion of being gone for a day. I cast around for a date, and find 2005, but this tells me nothing, since it has no relation to the calendar I know. I look out the portal of the structure he is in, and wonder at a society which has arisen without crystal technology.

  This is the time of metal. Its master you will one day be.

  Remember.

  The voices were familiar to me. I would remember.

  Time passed. I looked down on a dead world and wept.

  Then there was darkness.

  And in the light which followed, a pristine world was revealed.

  I woke up. I knew what had to be done before we could leave.

>   Twenty Four

  I skipped training again, going straight to the Bridge from our shower. Aline was curious, but didn’t ask what was on my mind. Angel was only interested in breakfast.

  The twins were already there when I arrived, seated in their normal seats on each side of the helm position, swiveled to face mine.

  "Good sleep?" asked Amanda, with a grin.

  "Not really. But you know that, don’t you." It wasn’t a question.

  "Yes," confirmed Aleesha. "But we can't say we understood what we saw."

  "Although," went on Amanda, "it did feel very familiar."

  "Past life stuff," I said. "We were Atlantean souls, there at the end of the civilization."

  "Wasn’t Atlantis a city which sank?" asked Aleesha.

  "No, it was a civilization which spanned the Earth for one hundred and fifty five thousand years. The cities were destroyed or drowned progressively over time. The city sank myth is all humans have been able to retain of the race memory of watching another species die off, but it's merged with what they call Noah's flood. Those souls which didn’t ascend at the end, incarnated human, but down the millennia since, most of what was known has been lost. You both ascended, and after a time, reincarnated human. But you retain a link to the water from your Atlantean lives. Me on the other hand, I feared water from birth, and it was one of my more painful trials as a kid to overcome it."

  I turned to Jane, not giving them time to ask any more.

  "Are you familiar with the so called Bermuda Triangle?"

  "You mean that area between the coast of southern Florida, Costa Rica, and the island of Bermuda? The area where ships and aircraft mysteriously disappeared for a couple of centuries?"

  "That's right. I want you to find something for me. At the tips of the triangle, probably well buried, but now on land, there should be a city. In each city, at the exact center, there should be the remains of a temple. Under the temple, there should be some very unique crystal structures. Find them. When you do, we'll go take a look."

  "Why Jon?" asked Amanda. "What did that dream tell you?"

  "Why we came here. We didn’t cause this. And I doubt we can stop it. This isn’t an alternate reality based on a choice we made. It's what is going to happen. But in happening, we have an opportunity we wouldn’t otherwise have had. Assuming we can use what we find down there, it could make all the difference. Or not. I just know this is something we need."