Hunter Legacy 11: Home Is Where the Hero Is

by Timothy Ellis

  "And how do you know this Thirteen?"

  "I can see him when he hides slightly out of phase. I met him the day you first had me pretend to be human. You were staring out into space, watching Moose leave, and he was standing there watching you. He convinced me he wasn’t a threat to you."

  "And so you kept it a secret all this time?"

  "He asked me too, and I saw no need to reveal his presence."

  I turned back to the Keeper. No, I needed to think of him as Thirteen now.

  "So you've been watching me for this last year?"

  "I have, but when you went through the jump point into Gaia five days ago, that was ten years ago for me. I saw you to the jump point, and have been waiting for you to arrive ever since."

  "Wait. You followed me for a year, then went back in time ten years to wait for me? That's nuts!"

  The twins and Jane were grinning now as well.

  "Necessary," said One.

  I was close to losing it.

  "Will someone please tell me what's going on?"

  "That is why you're here," confirmed One. "Your training has ended. You are now the leader we needed you to be. Now you get a short time to prepare. But never lose sight of one thing."

  I waited, but she obviously wanted me to ask.

  "What?" I demanded.

  "Darkness is coming."

  Thirty

  "Darkness is coming? That’s all you can say? Darkness is coming? How about a time table, and an explanation of what the Darkness really is?"

  I was really pissed off with the continuing lack of useful information.

  "All in good time," said Sariel. "You will have the timetable you wish shortly."

  "Such things must be discovered," said Uriel. "They cannot be given."

  "As for the Darkness," said Kali, "we can tell you little."

  "Why?"

  "Thirteen already explained this to you. Linear time has rules, and foreknowledge is something not allowed to those beings within it."

  "Even I don’t know," said Thirteen. "I exist outside of time, but since I've spent so much time in an avatar state, my own future is hidden from me. I share your annoyance, but I've been putting up with it for over six hundred and fifty of your standard years, where you've only had to endure it for a single year."

  "That’s a pretty big martyr complex you have going there."

  "Comes with the territory. And while we're making comparisons, we were both drafted into this. I had no more choice about it than you did."

  "He has saved your life on numerous occasions," put in Jane. "Saved all of us in fact."

  "Fine."

  It wasn’t. But I was sick of beating my head against the brick wall. It didn’t stop me doing it again though.

  "What CAN you tell us?"

  "Ask," said One, "and if we can answer, we will."

  "What is the Darkness?"

  "A mistake," said Kali. "One which could not be undone. A race of beings, now long gone, did something which they thought would be the answer to all their problems. Instead, it almost destroyed them. Their compassion, coming from an immense sense of guilt, contained their creation instead of destroying it forever. Being an act of freewill, exercised by a vast majority, made it a point in space and time which could not be undone."

  "You said contained?" asked Aleesha.

  "Yes."

  "Fuck!" I muttered.

  Now it was beginning to make sense.

  "What?" asked Amanda.

  "The containment is failing?" I asked Kali.

  "Yes."

  "Fuck!" said the twins together.

  "What is the Darkness?" I demanded again.

  "You will know soon enough," said One.

  "Not good enough," I snapped. "Throw us a bone for Gaia's sake."

  "Ask the right question."

  I sighed.

  "Is the Darkness some sort of celestial event we have to run from?"

  "Yes, and no."

  I face palmed. Silence remained until I looked up again.

  "Is it something we can fight?"

  "Yes."

  "Can we win?"

  "Unlikely."

  "How unlikely?"

  "Jon," said Kali. "You are not asking the right questions. Let me put it to you this way. Those of us outside of linear time, have observed all possible outcomes. In all but one, Humanity was destroyed utterly."

  We stared at her, totally shocked.

  "And the one?" asked Jane.

  "Is what you are living right now."

  "What makes this one different?" I asked.

  "You," said Ganesha. "In all other timelines, you were never born. Thirteen was given the task of intervening to ensure you would be. And not only be alive, but trained."

  Thirteen threw me a mock salute.

  "It can't just be me," I threw back at them. "What's really the difference?"

  "No-one thought your species was worth trying to save," said One.

  "Ouch," said Amanda.

  "Because we cause the containment failure?" I asked.

  "Yes. But understand this. Containment always fails. Humans caused it more often than not, and will cause it this time, but someone always does."

  "So it hasn’t happened yet?"

  "You would call it… In Progress."

  I screwed up my eyes for a few moments.

  "So it's begun?"

  "Yes."

  "Did we cause it? Did I cause it?"

  "It depends on your point of view. In absolute terms, no. In abstract terms, yes."

  "But you won't tell us what?"

  "Forbidden," said Kali.

  "What changed your mind about saving us?" asked Aleesha.

  "Everything else failed."

  "What do you mean by everything else?" I asked. "What aren’t you telling us?"

  "This is way bigger than we think," speculated Jane. "Isn’t it?"

  "Yes," answered One. "If the Darkness is not stopped, it will destroy this galaxy. It already has, so many times, and in every case, our aid was given to change the way it went in some critical way. But no matter what we did, the Darkness always took us to the same place. And this galaxy ended."

  "But you said it was unlikely we would win." I was getting confused. "Can we win or not?"

  "It depends on how you define win," said Gabriel.

  "How should we define it?" I demanded.

  "Survive your species does," said Amitabha, "win it will be."

  "But we can fight?" asked Amanda. "And it is possible we can survive?"

  "Yes," replied One.

  "So there are alien species out there?" asked Aleesha.

  "Yes."

  "And they lose if we lose?"

  "Yes."

  I looked at Aleesha to see if she was going somewhere with this, but she appeared to have run out of questions. She'd asked some very good ones, much better than mine had been. I looked at Kali again.

  "So let me get this straight. The Darkness is coming. We can fight, but all we can hope to achieve is survive. If we survive, the galaxy has hope. If we don’t, the galaxy is toast. And you're not going to tell us anything more than that?

  "You already know too much," said the man at the far end of the left side.

  "Twelve!" said One, in a tone which left the impression he was out of line.

  "Tell me one thing? Is Gaia safe if we fail?"

  "No."

  Thirty One

  All too suddenly, Thirteen and I were back in my Ready Room.

  "We're back!" wafted through from the Bridge, but I wasn’t paying attention.

  "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!"

  "Don’t step in it," Thirteen said with a laugh.

  "This is total bullshit," I went on.

  "Hey," interrupted Jane. "Do you know how to tell the difference between cow shit and bullshit?"

  "No, how?" asked Thirteen, while I inwardly groaned.

  "You throw it up in the air," she said. "If it comes down, its cow shit. If it do
esn’t, its bullshit!"

  Thirteen roared with laughter, and I sat there shaking my head.

  "You lied to me."

  His laughter toned down in the face of my seriousness.

  "It depends how you look at it."

  "Don’t you ever lie to me again."

  "Now, it won't be necessary to do so."

  "Go away," I said to him. "Jane, get in here."

  "Yes grumpy."

  He took himself off, still chortling to himself. You'd think in over six hundred years of following humans around, he'd have heard that joke before.

  Jane came in off the Bridge. The twins were at the door as well, peering in at me. They took note of my mood and decided somewhere else was a better place to be. I can't say I blamed them.

  Jane sat next to me, where Thirteen had just vacated.

  "I thought that was very useful," she said.

  "They gave us a bone, and sent us home. How useful is that?"

  "I know you're annoyed Jon, but at least we know we have to fight now. We can forget the running scenarios, and concentrate on fighting ones."

  "Stop the galaxy," I said. "I want to get off."

  Laughter filled my head. At least someone up there thought all this was funny. I looked upwards.

  "We are not amused."

  The laughter intensified.

  "Get out of my head." I waited a few seconds, and added, "Please."

  The laughter stopped.

  "How are we coming with the system data?" I asked Jane.

  "Nearly there. I should have something for you to see in the next day or so."

  "Put the twins on it. Separately. And tell them to turn off their communion thing while they're on it. When they both independently agree, bring it to me."

  "Confirmed."

  "Where are the Brass?"

  "Still on the Bridge. Waiting to talk to you."

  "Put them in the conference room, and get the twins in there, and everyone of flag rank."

  "Will do. When?"

  "Now. I'll be out in a sec."

  She rose, and trotted out, the door closing behind her.

  I sat there. Depression was sliding its grubby hands up my mind. I shook my head from side to side, as if trying to throw depression off. It didn’t work. But I needed to get a grip. Although we had more idea of things now, the meeting had totally thrown me. The implication was, I either had caused containment failure, or was going to. Me. It was me. It is me. I break it, so I have to fix it. Bloody figures.

  The automated message Midgard had used came to mind. Maybe they'd been right after all. If we'd stopped all space travel immediately, maybe containment wouldn’t fail. But was it too late already? Not that it really mattered. Stopping space travel was impossible. And if it was already too late, pointless.

  I sighed, dragged myself up, and took myself off to the conference room.

  David was there as well, which seemed to indicate Jane considered Earl to be flag rank.

  I sat at the head of the table, still trying to figure out how to start. I didn’t have to.

  "We hear you were off the ship for a while," said Bigglesworth.

  "Yes. A little face time with the higher ups."

  There was a nasty pause.

  "Well don’t keep us in suspense," said Walter.

  "Okay then. Here's the speeded up version. The Keeper turns out to be an avatar of a higher being, with the unlikely name of Thirteen. The Darkness is a real threat we must fight, created by a long dead alien race. Until now, it's been contained, somehow. The containment is either failing, has failed, or is about to fail. And last but not least, we, or should I say I, am the reason for this containment failure. The saving grace is it's not something I specifically do, but rather the consequence of something I do. Or did. Or will do."

  "My brain hurts," said Lacey.

  It broke the tension my mood was obviously causing. I was going to have to define flag rank for Jane, since Lacey wasn’t one either. Yet.

  "We need a good party before we all leave," said Slice.

  I looked at Jane, who smiled benignly back at me. Slice wasn’t…. Fuck it.

  "Jane?"

  "Sire?"

  "Party when we get back. Shindig in the ballroom. Let these fine folks head home on a positive note."

  "What about the darkness?"

  "We'll leave the lights on."

  There were a few titters, but it basically went down flat.

  I looked down the table. They were all serious faced.

  "We’ve had it confirmed we face a threat we can fight, and we can ignore the run like hell scenarios."

  I saw mouths opening to ask the obvious question, and pre-empted it.

  "No, we're not expected to win. But humanity might survive. Gaia is our ultimate bolt hole, but we need to figure out how to protect it more than a five day window does."

  Patton shook his head.

  "We don’t yet know where the threat is coming from?" he asked.

  "No, but Jane assures me we should soon."

  "If it’s the Death system it comes from, and we have to rearguard action the whole way up the spine, it will be the rearguard to end all rearguards."

  "In more ways than one," agreed Price.

  "But Murphy's Law tells us if we plan for Death, it will happen the one way we don’t pay enough attention to."

  I'd revisited Murphy's Law. The last corollary made the most sense. Murphy had been an optimist.

  "So we need defenses in all the block systems," said Jedburgh.

  "And they will all need to be different," added Walter.

  "I have ideas," I said.

  "Beyond what you've already told us?" asked Bigglesworth.

  "Yes."

  "Do tell," suggested Lacey.

  I did.

  Thirty Two

  The Shipyard had grown again. Galactica slid into a new capital ship bay specially built for her. Another was waiting next to her for Prometheus. The Dreadnaught was back in its bay as well.

  While we waited for my Dad and his people to complete moving the last of their stuff, and anything they wished to preserve, to be returned after the refit, Bob and I talked about the next generation of ships.

  We didn’t resolve anything, but we came to an understanding of where we thought ship design needed to go. The Carriers had to be bigger. Everything needed more shielding, enough so the ship could survive the trip across Death if need be, and we ended up doing the rear guard in reverse down the spine. Any ship which didn’t have the shielding had to be able to dock with one which did. I figured anything below Destroyer size wasn’t going to have enough shielding, so they needed docking. Once the new Dreadnaught was complete and tested, if the design worked, it would be scaled back for Cruisers and Destroyers.

  First out though would be Slice's new Hive Cruiser. Bob checked the progress, and it was about a week away. His first job would be to test it on Outback and Nexus. In the meantime, Slice was going to be using the office and living space Eric had setup for the AMS in the same tower Australian Militia used.

  "Door just closed," said Jane.

  "How do you know?" asked Bob.

  "Walter's last ship going in missed it."

  "Who was he sending?" I asked.

  "All the people you suggested. But some of them took longer to get moving than others. I guess this last lot left the gas on at home, and were delayed turning it off."

  We both laughed. It was an old joke for an earlier era. But in some isolated places where people had chosen to live, it was still the cooking method of choice. Another one of those things I’d looked up when I was eight. Why I still remembered it was something I didn’t understand.

  "I'll be off then, young Jon. Keep in touch. I want to hear any new ideas you have. And I agree with you. We need a next generation of ship design. I'll be in touch with whatever the other ship builders think of as well."

  He waved as he went out.

  I'd just begun to get back into the endless e
mails, when the twins came in. They sat opposite me and waited for me to notice them. Their grins grew wider as the minutes went by, and I continued to ignore them.

  "What?" I finally asked.

  "We wondered," said Amanda, but she stopped without finishing the sentence.

  "Fine. Can you do it somewhere else?"

  "Ha-ha," said Aleesha. "Actually…"

  "Will one of you just spit it out?"

  They looked at each other doing their commune thing.

  "What was in Prophesy Jon?" asked Amanda.

  "You've been acting all grumpy and distracted since that first day with the Keeper," added Aleesha.

  I sighed.

  "Come on Jon, it can't be that bad, can it?"

  They said it together.

  "Yes, it can."

  I started tugging on the beard hair on the right side of my chin. I was surprised to feel it was getting quite long now. The twins did their commune again.

  "Jane?"

  "Yes Amanda?"

  "What was in Prophesy that has Jon so spooked?"

  "I've not been given permission to tell anyone."

  "But you've read it?"

  "Yes."

  "How long is it?"

  "Over five hundred thousand words."

  "WHAT?"

  Even I could feel the depth of their shock.

  "Jane, tell them. If I try, I'll choke."

  "Are you sure Jon?"

  "I'm very sure I’ll choke."

  "It can't be that bad," said Aleesha.

  "Prophesy," said Jane, "was written as a series of novels about the life of one Jon Hunter, over the course of a single year."

  "When?" asked Amanda.

  "The first novel was published in 2015."

  The girls looked at each other in shock this time.

  "So you mean…"

  "Yes Amanda. The naked spas, the bedroom activities, the lines of naked buttocks, it's all in there."

  "How is this possible?" asked Aleesha.

  "Apparently channeled. The author was as spiritual as Jon is, or at least we can assume so from his spiritual books which survived the centuries."

  "How close is it to what actually happened?" asked Amanda.

  "It's like Jon dictated everything which happened to him over the last year into some sort of journal, and it was then sent back in time and converted into novels."