"I will. Thanks. But you never answered my original question."
"Which was?"
"How could you do what you did to that man?"
"Part of what I believe is about Karma. His karma was majorly unbalanced, given he'd been hurting people his whole life."
"How do you know that?"
"I get told these things, when I need to know them."
"Who by?"
"ArcAngels mostly. I won't go into Karma now. Jane can show you past discussions about it. The important thing is, when souls can't collect against a person creating karma, the cosmos sends someone to collect for them. I carried the sword, but it was Kali who wielded it. In a sense, I was just the messenger, delivering Kali's message."
"But isn’t killing just wrong? What happened to loving all beings?"
"Being spiritual doesn’t mean you walk around with 'Doormat, wipe feet here' on your t-shirt. We do what we have to, what needs doing, and what we are asked to do as far as the higher beings are concerned. As I've found out the hard way, sometimes this involves killing. The important part is we take responsibility for our own actions, and we do the releases and forgiveness appropriate to the action."
"It still makes you a killer."
"I don’t view myself as a killer. I don’t ask these people to threaten me and those I love. I don’t ask to be attacked. But when I am, I view it as the attacker has been brought to me to answer their own karma, and sometimes their life is forfeit to pay their debts. Others are simply unaware they are truly suicidal. I didn’t ask to take their lives, but it’s the role I seem to have to play, the role they chose for me by choosing to attack me. I’d rather not kill them, but sometimes you just don’t get a choice. It's not like I don’t have a reputation out there. My guild records show the number of my kills, and this should put people off taking me on. Alas, some people just don’t pay attention."
"How many kills do you have?"
"I stopped counting after I passed seven hundred." She shuddered. "But take into account, the majority of those were during the Midgard war. All the rest were a result of other people, mainly pirates, assassins, and dark Mercs attacking me. And I did the karmic release for every single person who died or was hurt. I take responsibility for my actions, even though I’d prefer not to have to take those actions at all."
She looked at me skeptically.
"There is also a deeper Karmic issue. All action or inaction incurs karma. When you have a chance to stop someone who believes they have a right to hurt and kill people for their own amusement, the karma is mixed. If you kill them, you incur the karmic debt for the death, but you also gain positive karma for all future negative actions that person could have committed, but now wont. But if you allow that person to go on as they were, you accrue all the negative karma for each negative action they do, because you made no attempt to stop it. Yes, I know how that sounds. There's an example in Liao-Fan's Four Lessons where the writer talks about how being a vigilante is illegal in the eyes of the law, but failing to act as a vigilante in certain circumstances actually carries the higher karmic debts to yourself."
Her eyes were glazing over.
"Anyway, when confronted with a rapist in the act, who condemns himself with his own words, I follow the guidance I get. In this case, he deserved death. Did the girl I rescued express any opinion as to my actions?"
"She thought you killed him way too quickly."
"And if you had been her? What would you have wanted?"
"I don’t know."
She looked troubled.
"Good answer. When you know, you will understand more about yourself. And understanding yourself is a beginning to understanding what being spiritual means, and opening up the path for you to walk, if you choose to."
She nodded.
Just then, Aline came in. She stopped inside the door, and her eyes went to the bedroom door, and back to me.
Jill jumped up, taking the hint.
"Thank you," she said, sounding genuinely thankful.
"Hug?" I asked.
"Sure," she replied.
We hugged, and she went on her way smiling.
A hug is always the best way to end a spiritual discussion.
Aline led me into the bedroom. Which is always a good way of starting….
Twenty Four
At eight the next morning, Prometheus jumped into Pestilence. She was still intact, but the tugs were failing. The last hour or so had been more ballistic movement than thrust. The important thing though was she remained intact. Jane sent two tugs over to bring her to a stop gently, and salvage droids over to remove the other tugs.
We maneuvered BigMother nose to nose with Prometheus, extended our shields to cover both ships, and Jane had repair droids begin the task of making a solid join. Prometheus didn’t have the nose cargo airlock which was standard these days, so Jane was improvising docking clamps for her.
My main concern was that in extending our shields, we didn’t expose us to Pestilence's scourge. But I needn’t have worried. While our shields overall strength was well down, the augmented strength of all the ships meant we remained safe.
By eleven, we were ready to move. Jane pushed the power on slowly, sensors checking Prometheus for any problems as the speed built. But the shields did their job, and before long we were close to top speed.
Eight hours to the jump point to Famine. Thirty three hours to get to the Shipyard in Treasure Chest.
Lunch was a boisterous affair, given we were now heading in the right direction, and away from danger. And as Amanda pointed out, nothing bad had happened, considering we'd had the nightmare beforehand. Her comment made me feel uneasy. We were not out of the woods yet.
It was Annabelle who asked the leading question, which came to dominate the next few days.
"Have you come up with a plan yet for when the Darkness arrives?" she asked me.
"No. It's fairly complex, given we need to plan two ways."
"What ways?" asked BA.
"On the one hand, we need to plan on how to evacuate systems which haven’t made any evacuation plans. On the other hand, we need to figure out if we even do that, or just leave them to their fate. And on the gripping hand, we may need a battle plan to give enough time for evacuations."
"Why are evacuations the main focus?" asked Alison.
"We know planets and systems get wiped clean of higher life, and all signs of humans being there. This can be some sort of major catastrophic event. If it ripples along the arm, we can flee before it. If it doesn’t, we're stuffed anyway, so there's no point in planning for that. If it’s an invasion scenario of some kind, knowing most of Earth sector is wiped clean, we can again flee from it. But fleeing an invasion requires a plan for an orderly retreat, giving time for evacuations. Either way, evacuating planets and moving stations are the core activity."
"You'd leave people to their fate?" asked Carter.
"I'd prefer not to. Obviously it would be best to try and move them, but history says every forced movement of people has a core who refuse to go. They usually die. They do have the choice, and we need to respect that. But all the same, I'd rather not leave anyone."
"We're going to need to leave people at least once," said Dick solemnly.
"Why?" asked Carter.
"Because until we can show the arm what actually is occurring," I said, "no-one is really going to take us seriously. Until we leave some people behind, and can show everyone else how they died, no-one is going to just up and leave. It's why we need to have a plan in place. Because very few will have."
"It's going to be worse than that," said Dick, now looking sickly.
"How so?"
"We can assume events will overtake us too fast at the first choke point on the spine. If we have to pull back before the systems feeding into it are cleared, anyone left behind is likely to die. For example down here, the African systems have a second escape point. But the Latin systems don't. When we lose Brazil, it's over for the whole L
atin sector. Even if Brazil is held, once we lose Morocco and Libya, anyone on the other side is toast. And once Egypt is lost, the African sector is lost."
"That’s a very bleak picture," said Abigail.
"What's our role going to be?" asked Jack.
"First, we need to be there, wherever it first happens. We need to record it, and survive it. And make sure it gets broadcast everywhere. Second, we probably have to be a sort of Paul Revere, making sure people get the time to evacuate. Third, we may have to help people evacuate, especially early on. Fourth, if it's an invasion, we'll be fighting a rearguard action in the direction people are fleeing in."
"That’s potentially in two directions," said Sam. "If the Darkness hits the middle of the arm first."
"True. So we need to plan for it. Maybe it requires we have two command structures, so once we get cut off, we can lead the retreat both ways. It means twice the resources as well."
"Are you going to claim these sectors for the Duchy?" asked Amy.
"I was thinking of doing so, yes. It's a one in six chance the Darkness comes this way. If so, owning this chunk of the spine will allow us to station a good force down here. We could build a custom station in Famine as a base."
"Why custom?" asked Grace.
I smiled at her.
"Remember that big rock in War by the jump point? I’d hate to jump a station in through there. Which is another point. If we need to retreat this way, War will need to be cleaned a bit to ensure whatever we jump in avoids hitting a big rock." I looked at Jane. "Maybe we need to plan that anyway. Just in case. Mine everything we can for the Treasure Chest Shipyard, and move anything close to the jump points which can't be mined."
"Confirmed."
I pondered for a moment.
"Can we use the roid field as a defense?"
"How?" asked Jack.
"I'm not sure. For the sake of argument, assume thousands of ships are pouring into War from Famine. What can we do to use the system itself as a defense?"
"Oh momma!" said Alana, with a shark like expression on her face.
There was a general chuckle, considering her main thought lines revolved around blowing things up.
"We need some discussion groups," said Annabelle.
"Go for it," I said.
Lunch broke up, with most of them heading for the conference rooms.
I stopped off to pat Angel, before going back to the Bridge. Jane waited for me to pull out my pad, before interrupting me.
"You've not been paying attention to the close sector maps have you."
It wasn’t a question.
"Should I have?"
"Actually, yes."
"What's happening?"
"A fair bit. Not long after you announced you were claiming the Treasure Chest system, both the Latin and African sectors sent us details of sector force dispositions. While they don’t have big fleets, they decided to get them together and scour their space for the last of the pirates. I sent them a list of the ones we had Intel on to think might be pirates, but hadn't been able to get close enough to find out for sure. There's been some fighting already, starting on the outer edges of both sectors."
"Why there?"
"I suspect they are going to drive any remaining pirates towards us, and have us be the anvil to their hammer."
"Oh. I wish you'd pointed that out earlier. Combat is the one thing we don’t need at the moment."
"You were somewhat pre-occupied."
"True. Are you tracking specific ships?"
"Yes."
The local sector nav maps popped up. There were several clusters of green dots, indicating sector forces, and a scattering of red dots.
"Any idea where the pirates will go?"
"The closest red dot looks like its heading for Last Hope. It will get there before we do. It's too early to tell with most of the rest. For now it looks like they're fleeing towards the spine, but which way they go after is anyone's guess."
"What's coming towards us?"
"Battleship."
"I didn’t know they had any left."
"Apparently they do."
"Why would it be heading to Last Hope and not Treasure Chest?"
"It's been pretty widely broadcast that we took Treasure Chest from them, and we took the ships guarding it. They'll know that one on one, they can't hope to survive against that force."
"So why aren’t they trying to just vanish?"
"Maybe they were trying. They might have succeeded as well, if we hadn't told the sector forces about them."
"We?"
"Well I did."
"We need to have a discussion sometime about your independence sub-routines."
"What about them?"
"They're getting too independent."
She looked at me for a moment.
"Confirmed."
"I'm not saying you were wrong. Just that I should have been in the loop first."
"You were pre-occupied at the time."
"We've done that."
Jane sighed.
I goggled at her, not ever having seen her sigh before.
"Keep me in the loop. Make sure I'm on the Bridge for any jump where there is any sign of hostiles on either side of the point."
"Closest is that Battleship. There is a slight probability it is actually coming to take us on, in which case, we'll see it around the time we approach the Last Hope jump point in War, sometime around five tomorrow morning. I'll let you know something more definite before you go to bed tonight. Otherwise, if they are after the planet, we'll get there around eight."
"Better send a warning to Last Hope, just in case."
"Confirmed."
"You know, you don’t have to say that."
"I know. It feels right though."
"As long as you're happy."
She batted her eyelids at me.
During the afternoon, I spent time with each of the focus groups. I didn't add anything to their discussions, but silently encouraged them. I had my own ideas, and was interested in hearing theirs, not having them adapt to mine.
Some of the ideas were just plain way out, some were adaptable, and a few were pure gems.
BA's group, predictably, concentrated on ground holding actions, while people boarded ships to flee.
Sam's group also concentrated on the ground side, but were more interested in what sort of ships we needed to evacuate huge numbers of people effectively. I listened to some of the comments, and realized the average freighter which could land on a planet was not going to move enough people, even if they were packed in like the proverbial sardines.
The feasibility of Cruiser sized Dropships was discussed. I already had the idea for marine landings, given Midgard had actually landed their Cruisers safely, but dedicated people collectors was a good idea. However I doubted even Cruiser size would do the job, unless we had sufficient time to build a lot of them. Using combat ships wouldn’t work. They'd need to be designed from the ground up to carry huge numbers of people, with the bathroom and food facilities necessary for however long it took to offload them somewhere else. In the end, they might even become permanent homes, so would also need enough sleeping facilities.
It was coming home to me slowly, exactly how big the problem of saving humanity might be. I’d watched all the entertainment of the last six hundred years, which portrayed humanity fleeing for its survival, but none of them had ever dealt with the kinds of numbers of people we potentially could be. We weren't talking about survivors who were off planet at the time it was nuked. We were talking about having advanced warning enough to move entire populations of millions, or even hundreds of millions of people.
I looked up the current estimate of the population of the entire arm. Even if we saved hundreds of millions, billions were going to die.
The sheer scale of it all was mind boggling.
And at this point in time, I couldn’t see how we could save more than a small fraction of them. Not because we didn’t want to, b
ut because we had no means of transporting that many people, or feeding them into the longer term. All the freighters currently in service, wouldn’t carry more than the population of say the Australian sector.
The shorter the time we were given to prepare, the fewer people would survive. This was becoming clearer to me all the time. It clarified for me the need to convince as many governments and military leaders as possible of the threat, and the need to begin to prepare now.
Annabelle's group included most of the senior officers. They were discussing what they needed for ground operations, based on the recent actions. Predictably, hardware was a major factor being discussed, as well as how to use it against different types of threats. Jane told me they'd started with the Fortress idea, and moved from there. They wanted a heavier weapon than the Meson, with the capability to rapid pulse, normal pulse, and stream; depending on the threat. But they wanted it for normal suit use, meaning it needed to draw as little power as possible, and be small enough to carry easily. And I thought we'd exhausted this line of approach with the modifications to the suits to carry the Mesons.
Lacey had a group of senior pilots gathered, including George and Annette, and were discussing missiles. This was surprising enough, but the really surprising thing was they were discussing capital ship missiles as well as fighter ones. Jane filled me in on some of the earlier discussion, including how limited current missiles were in terms of roles. I had wondered once a long time ago, how the submarine torpedo seemed to have never made it into space, when most space combat games had them. Likewise, the cluster missile, and all sorts of other ideas. Heat seeking and radar had become Image Recognition. Friend or Foe had come with the development of the ship ID. But essentially, they were still one explosion, with a modicum of guidance attached. Or none if you included dumb-fired, which I didn’t, and the modern small torpedo.
Science fiction had quite often come up with ships which were many kilometers long, or as large as small moons. As stupid as killing a moon sized station with a single small missile down the exhaust port was, if something like this came at us, we'd be resorting to just this kind of action, since we had nothing big enough to throw at such a monster.
Hunter Legacy 9: Hero at the Gates Page 13