"Some. The command crew will, and a smattering of others. Families have already been moved planet-side. Our family has its own small city on Five. Your mother will move down there as soon as you leave. Sarah and the boy too."
A thought blossomed in my mind, but I put it aside for later.
"I assume you want to stay in command?"
"Yes Admiral."
I laughed at his expression.
"I bet that was hard to say," I joked.
"You'll never know."
I let my face go serious again.
"When can you leave?"
"Two days, but I'd prefer to leave when you do."
"I'm not waiting until the last minute, so be prepared to leave as much as a day early. I'm not taking the risk of getting stuck on this side."
"Understandable."
"Boss," pinged in from Lacey. "I could use your help on the Launch Deck please."
"On my way," I pinged back.
"My Group Captain needs my presence, so got to go. See you at the meeting tomorrow?"
"I'll be there."
Jeeves bustled in, bundled Angel into her carry cage, and Jane led the way out.
Eight
"Surprise!" came from hundreds of voices as I walked into what I thought was an empty conference and entertainment room.
I should have known. It was the one place big enough to take most of the people on board for a social event.
I looked suitably surprised. Because I was.
The twins dragged me in. My mother was already there, and before I reached her, my father came in after me. The alpha team were all arranged around her, and my father moved beside her. Lacey placed a tankard of beer in my hand, and saluted me with a huge grin on his face. The party obviously was resuming, as food and drink were looking like they'd been out for a while now.
I stood there, well-wishers coming past in an endless stream, feeling somewhat stunned and wondering what all the fuss was about. Eighteen Gaia years was when we did the full party. This was early. But then, several thoughts came to mind. Only two people here knew anything about Gaia years, and the rest all celebrated standard years one way or another. And given what everyone had been through in the last year, a party was exactly what we all needed.
The tankard in my hand was replaced by George, and a warm fuzzy feeling was starting to come over me. I didn’t see Jane enter, only noticing her when she walked up and whispered to Amanda. I knew something was up when the grin on her face widened, and Aleesha's matched hers.
The lights flickered, and the volume level fell as people stopped talking to see why.
Jeeves and three other butlers entered through the main cargo doors, and the crowd parted to let them through. Between them were four grav sleds, and on them was a replica of Gunbus. My mouth fell open, and Aline nudged me to close it.
My eyes sought Jane's, and I mouthed the word 'cake' with an implied question mark. She nodded, grinning.
The cake ended up in front of me, with an appropriately large knife sitting beside it. There were nineteen candles, each one in the shape of one of Gunbus' front guns or turrets. Before I could pick the knife up, as if choreographed, the entire room burst into happy birthday and almost deafened me. I stood there stunned, and the room fell silent at the end of three cheers, waiting for me to say something.
"Thanks."
Silence continued, as if no-one thought this was enough. I looked around the room, and saw expectation and amusement at my discomfort.
I frowned, and watched some faces suddenly show concern.
"Is this a party or a funeral?" I asked them.
Grins appeared on faces.
"Who wants cake?"
Everyone did. But knife in hand, I couldn’t cut it. Not Gunbus. I stood there for a moment, until Miriam whispered in my ear. I took her advice, and cut out a section of the front of the ship, as if the cargo bay airlock was open. The piece was big enough for six people, and I took one of them and walked away, not wanting to see the ship carved up.
The cake was delicious.
The party restarted, Jane had music playing, and part of the room became a dance floor.
For a few minutes sometime later, only Jane was close to me, and I was pondering the earlier thought.
"Jane?"
"Birthday boy?"
"Huh, stow that. What do you know about our crew's families?"
"Who they are, but nothing much about them. Why?"
"Can you make arrangements for accommodation for them on Five, with my family? I'm getting a strong feeling we should be evacuating as many as we can here now."
"Not all of them could move on such short notice."
"Could you organize ships and movers for those in range who want to come here?"
"Sure. I could move every crew family in the Aussie sector in a day if need be. They wouldn’t like the experience, but it could be done."
"Will you talk to Annabelle quietly and sound her out? If she agrees to it, make the offer to everyone whose family could be moved here in the time we have, and let them decide. If it's going to happen, get my father and the Keeper involved to arrange good accommodation for them, close together so they can support each other."
"Will do. What about the families of team members you never got to meet?"
"Like who?"
"Anita Vasquez for one, the pilot who was killed that first day you met the team in space? The records for all Annabelle's teams show dead team members, Arnold Weaver being the most recent from the Alpha team itself, and all of them have families as well. A few of the kids are near an age to enlist, and may eventually join the teams."
"Include them too. But it's up to Annabelle. She'll need to do the communications to make it happen. Just support her in whatever she decides to do." I paused, thinking. "If anyone wants to be close to their people rather than move straight to Gaia, assign them accommodation on Haven. The ones you said might want to enlist would probably prefer to be on the station than here, so as soon as they meet BA's requirements, they could start training. If there's enough of them, maybe form a junior team members squad, and let BA give them appropriate starting training. Ask BA."
"Confirmed."
She headed off to speak to Annabelle. I wasn’t left alone for long.
Sometime around one the next morning, with Aline nowhere in sight, Miriam led me back to my suite. Angel was asleep in her cat bed, Nut snuggled up with her. Neither stirred as we went past.
I crashed down on the bed, not quite in control of myself for once. I could have overridden the alcohol and stayed sober, but I hadn't. I wasn’t falling down drunk. Or maybe I was. It was hard to be sure. I was lying on the bed. My eyes closed.
"Oh no you don’t!" said Miriam, stopping me from nodding off.
The striptease which followed held my attention.
Nine
I didn’t get much sleep that night. Sometime around four in the morning, I awoke desperate for the bathroom, and when I came out, I found Aline instead of Miriam. She didn’t let me go back to sleep immediately.
"GOOD MORNING GAIA!" woke me up from a very deep sleep, jarring me awake enough for Angel to bat me one with a paw, and jump away before I rolled on her.
Aline was still dead to the world, so the wakeup call had only been in my head. Gee, thanks Jane. I dragged my sorry arse into the bathroom, let more of last night's beer drain away, and contemplated showering or going back to bed.
"You have meetings," said Jane.
"Who with?"
"Gaia council in half an hour. The Keeper immediately after. Meeting of everyone is scheduled for one in the afternoon."
"Sounds like a thrilling day."
"If you say so."
"I don’t."
In spite of myself, I stepped into the shower. I was already naked, so there was nothing to take off first. As a rule, I didn’t sleep well naked, but obviously last night hadn't been a normal night. There hadn't actually been a lot of sleep. I let the water make a decent
attempt at getting me to feel even vaguely human again. When this didn’t work, I turned a few medical monitor options on, and was quickly feeling like my normal self again.
"You have emails to deal with as well."
"Have to wait."
"There's one you better look at."
"Who's it from?"
"Well that’s the interesting thing. I don’t know."
"Why not?"
"No sender data."
"Nothing at all?"
"Nothing."
"Odd."
"Your odd is my interesting."
"You're odd."
"Speak for yourself."
"I was."
We both broke down into chuckles. I reluctantly shut off the water, and toweled off. With briefs and socks on, I shifted into 'slinky red', and moved into my suite's office. I had a few minutes to spare.
Jane had tagged the email to the top of the list for me. I opened it, and threw the vid to the wall.
"Admiral Hunter," said a butler droid. "You don’t know my employer, but you are well known to us. We specialize in obtaining data which is otherwise unobtainable, or at the least, hasn’t yet been procured."
Huh?
Jane walked in at that point, so I paused the vid.
"Have you ever heard of a butler droid being employed before?" I asked her.
"No."
"Neither have I."
I started the vid going again.
"A year ago, almost to the day, we were contacted from Outback Orbital, and asked to provide you with astronomical data, on this day. Three of the six systems were unknown at the time. One could not even be safely entered. We designed custom built drone ships for each system, and recorded the needed information. It is attached."
I froze it again.
"What have we got?"
There was no answer from Jane for over a minute. She just stood there.
At last she blinked rapidly, and smiled.
"You remember the idea to try and extrapolate which system the nightmare occurs in from a month's system data, yet to be collected?"
"This is it?"
"It is. Almost a year for each system."
"How would anyone know I'd be wanting that a year ago?"
"The Keeper!" we both said at the same time.
"How long will it take to convert the data into something we can view?"
"I don’t know off hand, there's a huge amount of it. But I'll get started immediately."
I nodded to her, and started the vid going again.
"Our services have been paid for, and we hope this data will be useful to you. Please do not try to find us. Not because we don’t want to be found, but because it would waste your time trying. Good day Admiral."
The vid ended.
"You're going to be late."
"Then I'll be late."
Ten
Jane nodded with a smile, and followed me as I tooled up, set my suit to hide the guns, and headed out.
As our trolley arrived at the ramp down to the station, BA moved out. Amanda and Aleesha were waiting for me. They were both grinning, but didn’t say anything. I took a quick look out the airlock in case someone was waiting to shoot me, and stepped onto the ramp. Nothing happened. Jane followed me a step behind, and once in the station proper, the twins took up a rearguard position.
Sometime I was going to have to talk to them about this bodyguard thing they still did. It wasn’t appropriate for Lieutenant Colonels to do bodyguard work. They were supposed to delegate it. While we walked, I tried various versions of how to tell them in my mind, and we arrived at the council chambers before I could figure out a strategy which would actually work.
At the door before us, stood two, well, bouncers was the only word which seemed appropriate. They weren’t military because Gaia really didn’t have much of a military outside of Galactica, some limited ground forces tasked more to disaster relief than warfare, and her shuttles; and they weren’t police. Private security I guessed.
They made no move to open the door, and blocked me from doing so.
"Only the Admiral may enter," said one of them.
"The Admiral enters with his aide," I responded.
"Only the Admiral may enter," said the other one.
"Fine," I said turning away. "I have plenty of other things I can be doing right now."
Like going back to bed.
I heard the door opening behind me.
"Admiral?" said the Keeper. "We're waiting for you."
He turned to the door guards, who sprang to a semblance of attention on each side of the door.
"Colonel Jane is welcome."
He said it in a tone flag officers used when dressing down someone who has really screwed up.
I stopped, turned, and started back to the door, Jane still behind me.
Inside I found a semi-circle shaped desk with twelve people sitting behind it. In front of it, positioned where no-one needed to look sideways to see anyone, were two one person desks. The Keeper moved to the one on the left, and sat. This left me the chair on the right. I moved to it, but didn’t sit.
"Welcome Admiral, my Lord Duke," said the middle aged woman to the left of center.
All except the man on the far right, who shot a dirty look at the speaker, nodded to me respectfully. I nodded back.
"Please sit," said the same voice.
I did so, taking in the range of people represented. The woman who'd addressed me was Australian Aboriginal. The man to her right was American Indian. There was also a Buddhist Monk, a Hindu Indian woman, and a Sikh man complete with turban. The other seven had a range of skin colours, none of which identified the groups they represented. Men and women were equally represented. Religious views were prominent, but not all the councilors had a specific religion. I certainly didn’t. And I knew at least one, obviously far right, rejected all forms of religion. Gaia may have been colonized by spiritual groups, but that didn’t mean everyone born there believed as their parents had. I assumed dirty-look on the right was their representative.
There were no names in front of them. No indication of who represented whom. And I recognized none of them. No-one made any attempt to introduce themselves.
"Keeper, you wanted this meeting. Please begin."
The Keeper rose to his feet, and faced the center of the desk.
"Councilors, it is time for Gaia to embrace Prophesy."
"So you've been telling us for the last standard year," said the man on the right end, somewhat nastily. "Where's the proof?"
The reaction was mixed. Just over half of the councilors glared at him, the remainder nodding. The Keeper smiled pleasantly at all of them. He waved at me.
"Here is your proof. A boy left Gaia a year ago. He returns to us in a triangle shaped Battleship, with Admiral's stars on his shoulders. He returns to us as a hero."
"Anyone can dress up. I see a triangle shaped ship out there. It could be anyone's. It could be anything."
More glares, more nods. But no attempt to shut him down.
The Keeper waved to a wall, and the image zoomed in on BigMother. It showed the turrets on top, moved to the front to show the Flight Deck opening, and underneath. It must have been recorded by a drone as we approached yesterday.
"What are we seeing Keeper?" asked the Indian woman.
"The top part of the ship is a Carrier. It has five squadrons of fighters on board, plus five small capital ships. Underneath is a Battleship and four Pocket Battleships."
"So?"
The objectionable councilor was not impressed.
The Keeper waved again. Part of the Bridge feed from yesterday's missile attack played. It showed me issuing orders from the center seat. The Keeper stopped it, and left the image showing me looking back at the rear of the Bridge.
"You will notice the group at the back," said the Keeper. "Here are four star Admirals and Generals, who are guests on this man's ship. You will note that while concerned about what is happening, none of them co
mment on the orders given. This ship belongs to Admiral Hunter here."
He paused for effect. He had them all now.
"It is the triangle ship of Prophesy. It has the dreamers on board."
"The dreamers?"
Objectionable was the only one not accepting things as they were.
"You all know the basic prophecy," went on the Keeper. "When the three who dream come to Gaia on the red arrow, then must the preparations for Darkness begin."
The room was silent.
The Keeper waved again, and the image showed the twins looking back at me from the front of the Bridge.
"The twins you see here are the other two dreamers. Hunter here we have known about since he was very young. First and second signs. A Hunter named Jonathon, and being a dreamer. The third sign was him failing to return after we granted him permission to leave Gaia before his eighteenth year. The fourth sign was his becoming a British Duke. The fifth was him returning here after one standard year, on the red arrow, with the other two dreamers."
He looked around the twelve. They were all looking somber now.
"Prophesy will not be denied!" he yelled at them.
They all flinched.
"Prove it," said objectionable again. "So the signs have come true. I still see nothing to prove anything abnormal is about to happen."
"You will," I said quietly.
He glared at me, and the others shifted their gaze to me.
"It's been a long year," I went on. "I've travelled the length of Human space, all the way into the Death system where Prometheus was lost. I've been to the future and seen what becomes of many planets."
"Bull, shit!"
I gave him my predator smile, and he visibly wilted.
"You will see all the evidence this afternoon, aboard my ship. You will also meet with Military representatives of the Australian, American, British, Sci-Fi, and Canadian sectors. Until yesterday, they didn’t know Gaia existed. This afternoon, all the pieces will finally be in place, and we will all see how Prophesy has brought us all to now."
"I still say bullshit, but I'll be there."
"Yes," I said coldly. "You will. All of you will."
"We don’t take orders from you."
Hunter Legacy 11: Home Is Where the Hero Is Page 4