The Long Road to Gaia

by Timothy Ellis

"I take it we weren't here to save that Cruiser," I said.

  "No," said One. "It was a pirate. Our interest is the other ship."

  "How so?"

  "It needs to enjoy the hospitality of the nearby habitable planet for a while."

  "And?"

  "You need to whisper to the helmsman and help him find the least resistance way out of the null zone."

  "Sure."

  "Twelve and I have some work to do in the engine room. When you get our signal, whisper to the Captain to stop, turn towards the planet and take the shortest possible course to it."

  "What signal?"

  "You'll know it when you hear it."

  They both vanished before I could say anything more. I shifted onto the Bridge of the ship, and did as I was told. The helmsman, with a bit of prompting, found the way out, and the ship started along this course.

  After a while, a loud bang wafted through the ship.

  Assuming this was the signal, and with all heads turned towards the noise, I whispered to the Captain to stop the ship and turn for the planet.

  "All stop," he bellowed.

  The helmsman brought the ship to a stop very quickly. The sound hadn't been one you wanted to hear on a ship a long way from the nearest shipyard.

  "Engine room report," the Captain bellowed into ship coms.

  "All that shaking seems to have done some damage," said a voice.

  "How much?"

  "Not enough to stop us flying, but we need to get somewhere in a hurry in case something serious breaks. Then I can strip the casings off and see where that noise came from."

  "Fine. Can you hold it together long enough for us to make the only habitable planet here?"

  "Aye sir, should be able to."

  "Helm, put us on the fastest course to the planet.

  "Aye sir."

  Nothing more happened until we made orbit.

  "Finished with engines," said the Captain into ship coms.

  There was a loud series of cringe worthy noises from the back of the ship.

  "Aye sir, that we have," came through the coms.

  One and Twelve appeared next to me.

  "What did you do?" I asked.

  "Made sure they were going nowhere," said Twelve.

  "Made sure they needed rescuing," said One.

  I looked at them for a moment, One winked at me, and they both vanished.

  I looked around the Bridge, and caught sight of a plaque on the wall.

  The name of the ship was "Homer".

  2615

  One

  The small freighter launched from Outback Orbital, and headed for the jump point.

  Twelve was standing next to me, as we watched it leave through a window on the main observation deck. Neither of us said anything.

  "And so it begins," said One, materializing beside us.

  I looked at her for some indication of what 'it' she was referring to. Her face revealed nothing. But her human body language was tense.

  "What begins?" I finally asked her.

  "Jon Hunter's learning curve."

  "I've been training him for ten years. He's ready."

  "You think so?"

  She looked at me like I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

  "He's well trained, yes. But this is the real world. All he knows is the game worlds. It's not the same."

  "I know. But he is ready. All he needs is experience."

  "He has a year to gain that experience Thirteen. It's a year he MUST survive."

  "Must?" asked Twelve.

  "Must," replied One. "Our existence is dependent on it. We have one path to walk here. His path. Stay close to him Thirteen. He is going to make mistakes. Some of them are potentially fatal, and this must not be. In exactly one year's time, he must be back here, alive, well, and experienced enough to lead when the Darkness arrives."

  "Lead?" interrupted Twelve. "At his age?"

  "Yes, lead. On all else this depends."

  "Aren't you asking too much?" I asked. "I trained him to fight, think, and build. Leading is something else again. He lacks people skills for leadership."

  "Leadership," said One, "is something you are born with, or not. Authority can be trained and given with experience, but true leadership comes from within. He has it within him to lead, without authority. You Thirteen, must encourage him to become a leader, not just an officer. Humans have plenty of senior officers. What they lack are true leaders."

  "So I still need to teach him how to be a leader then?"

  "No, you misunderstand me Thirteen. He needs to discover the confidence to lead when others choose to follow him. More than anything, he needs to build confidence in himself, so he can use the training he has already had to survive the experiences ahead."

  I shook my head for a moment. Suddenly I was really confused.

  "So what am I supposed to do?"

  "Guide and encourage him, but let him do things his way. If he gets into fatal trouble, intervene. You must not allow him to die. But he must never know he is being protected. If he gets hurt, he gets hurt. As long as it's not fatal."

  "You don’t ask much, do you?"

  One laughed.

  "You better go Thirteen. Stay close to him. Twelve, stay. I have some instructions for you also.

  I looked at them both for a moment, and shifted to the freighter Wanderer.

  * * *

  Twelve appeared again a little while before the jump into the Sydney system. He attached himself to the man flying the ship. Jon was in the jump-seat behind him.

  "Jon," said the elder Hunter, "I think I left my pad down in the cargo bay. Can you go down and look for me please?"

  "Sure," said Jon, who was looking bored.

  Twelve detached, as Jon opened the rear door and left. I gave him a penetrating look, but all he did was smile at me, and vanish.

  * * *

  "Don’t".

  Twelve had appeared next to me again. Jon still hadn't returned from the cargo bay, but the threat was out in front of us, as the ship down jumped into the Sydney system.

  "What?"

  "Don’t intervene."

  Three missiles fired, heading directly at us.

  "We can't let him die!"

  "He won't. This is his first big test. He has to do this on his own."

  There was no time for more. The three missiles hit, the shields failed, and the cockpit was destroyed around us. The ship shuddered. There were several loud thumps from the other side of the bulkhead. I pushed through, and saw Jon lying on the deck. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, obviously in a lot of pain.

  "Leave him be Thirteen."

  "You're sure?"

  "Yes. I know what's coming, and you don’t. You need to stay close to him, but it's his learning curve. Let him make his own mistakes."

  "Easy for you to say."

  "Of course," smirked Twelve. "You'll know when you need to act."

  "How? You'll turn up?"

  "Probably."

  He was laughing at me now.

  "I'll be back when there's something worth seeing."

  And he was gone. I watched while Jon Hunter saved not only his own life, but those on two other ships. And Twelve, blast him, was right. I hadn't needed to intervene.

  * * *

  Something about the Military Transport bugged me, so I went back and checked. The ship had taken significant damage. The cockpit was destroyed, and the engines were gone as well. Life support was failing.

  There had been only one death, the pilot. The rest of those on board were holed up in the barracks, unable to get to their Dropship.

  There was something familiar about this team. Like a long forgotten melody, which you catch just the hint of one day unexpectedly.

  The computer was still operational, the AI still running. I accessed the databanks looking for the names of those on board.

  The pilot had been Alyssa Vasquez. Why did that ring a bell? Annabelle Smith, Amanda Peck, George Murdock, Ann
e Baracas. Smith, Peck, Murdock, Baracas?

  Suddenly I remembered. It had been three hundred and thirty one Earth years after all. Not long, but I’d been in human form for all of it. Humans didn’t have the memory for that sort of time period.

  Fancy that. Not only did the team's families survive, they were still a team after all this time.

  "And now you know why you were with them that last trip to Earth," said One unexpectedly. "Look after these people too. They're important as well."

  * * *

  "Nice arse," I said as Twelve appeared.

  I'd been watching the two girls save Jon. They appeared to be identical twins.

  "Really Thirteen? You've been in human form for too long."

  "And whose fault would that be?"

  "Don’t look at me."

  "I won't then. I'll look at these two cute arses instead."

  "Two very competent mercenaries Thirteen. The sisters Peck, part of Smith's Alpha Team."

  "I know."

  "A few centuries back, their ancestors were part of the last team to visit Earth."

  "I know. Military ran in the families then?"

  "Not always, but feel free to take a run back along their timelines while Jon is being prepared for what is coming."

  "What is coming?"

  "That would be telling."

  Twelve vanished. Telling indeed. I was getting so sick of this not knowing crap.

  But he had a point about being in human form too long.

  Exactly when did I start liking them enough find the human female form enjoyable to look at?

  When the trio arrived at the hotel, I did as suggested, and reviewed the Smith and Peck family's timelines, as well as the rest of the team, even the ones who hadn't been on the team then, and those who weren't now. It all made interesting viewing.

  I arrived back in time to see both Peck sisters in their naked glory.

  Damnit! I really was starting to like humans.

  * * *

  The explosion brought back Twelve.

  "Here to see the fun?" I asked.

  "Of course."

  "Care to let me in…"

  "No. There isn’t a nuke, and these guys are not very bright. We only need to watch."

  We did. The kid kicked their arses, and for the first time, I could see a man emerging from the years of training as a boy. It wasn’t pretty, but he got the job done. And knowing how good he really was, I had a damn good laugh watching him pretend to fly.

  When he was back on the station, Twelve and I high fived, in human fashion, and he vanished, leaving me to observe the celebrations alone.

  * * *

  Twelve and I watched Jon handle Bob Derr like a professional. Not sure what kind of professional, but it was professionally done. By the time he left, Bob had a completely new class of fighter to build for him, and was completely enthusiastic about it.

  One stopped me leaving with Jon.

  We watched Bob for a long time, as he went through the design process. I raised eyebrows at One, asking for why we were here, but all she did was smile at me in an infuriating way.

  At last, Bob looked at AI's, and One's main interest became apparent at last. He scrolled down the list of available AI's within a week's travel, and chose a medium level one, at the high end of the medium scale. Above it, there were only five others, and only one of them was a true top end AI.

  One attached herself to Bob loosely, and he pulled out a different list of AI's, being those already in ships. It was a fairly short list, given the military still hadn't come to grips with them anywhere, and only the rich could afford one. None of them were higher than a mid-range AI. He accessed another short list, and found all the top end AI's were being used to run huge computer systems for planets, rich people, and research facilities.

  "Jon needs the best," whispered One.

  Bob closed the lists, went back to his original AI availability list, and selected the one at the top.

  He didn’t even look at the price. One detached from him, smiled at me, and vanished.

  Later, when the AI arrived, he almost sent it back when he saw the invoice. But One had primed me to be waiting for this, and I made sure he justified it to himself as necessary. Besides, Jon didn’t need to know the actual price of just one item in the overall ship cost as it wasn’t enough to exceed the swap over value established to pay for the new ship. Used all of it yes, but it didn’t matter enough to question. It took a little 'self-arguing' to make him happy, and I helped him forget he'd even questioned it.

  I also helped him forget pulling up an AI interface, and tweaking the AI's character routines, with an emphasis on learning what the owner liked in order to interact better.

  Jon needed a companion more than an intelligent computer. And a companion operated a little differently to how AI's were normally programmed.

  One appeared again to watch him do the character selection, and nodded to me when Bob finished. I hoped we'd gotten the programming right, and I wouldn’t need to make changes later on.

  * * *

  "You're going to want to see this," said Twelve.

  "See what?" I asked, as we followed Jon and Amanda onto the Moose.

  Twelve just grinned. I shrugged, and we followed Jon into the Cockpit.

  For a long while, nothing interesting happened.

  Both of us cracked up though, when Jon's first drop ended in little pieces of debris scattered over a large area.

  "I take it you never showed him Dropships?" said Twelve.

  "No. Never occurred to me he'd ever fly one."

  "He seems to be getting the hang of it now."

  "Indeed."

  We continued watching.

  Jon's first real drop introduced me to some genuine tension. Here was something I couldn’t really help with, something I hadn't taught him, which had the potential to kill him without much warning.

  Suddenly I knew he had it wrong, and destruction was imminent. I opened my mouth to say something to Jon, but closed it when I saw Twelve grinning madly at me.

  Jon had seen and tweaked his down vector to miss the top of the building. All the same, if I'd been inclined towards nail biting, I'd have been well into it by now.

  We kept watching, now standing in space, somewhat away from the target building.

  Twelve nodded away from us, and I saw an incoming craft. Jon had seen it too, and we clapped as he engaged it and took it down, using only ground use weapons.

  In over six hundred years of observing humans, I've never been shocked by one of them doing the truly unexpected. Humans are predictable, even those ones who think they are unpredictable.

  So it was a genuine shock to see Jon stand the Dropship on its tail and effectively land it on the side of a building, and evac his people out a window.

  Twelve was killing himself laughing at my expression, so I told him to piss off, and shifted myself to stand behind Jon as he piloted the ship to the RV, and later on, back to Moose.

  * * *

  “Battle Stations,” Jon said, a few seconds after the jump back into the Sydney system. “We have a Pirate Gladiator in pursuit. I’m running but it will catch us. George, get up here NOW. Crew the Dropship and man all its guns. The rest of you, get to an airlock and if you see a missile, shoot the fucker.”

  It was my turn to grin at Twelve. His eyes had opened wide.

  "Whoa! Where did that come from?" he asked.

  "Training," I said. "When he was twelve, I managed to get together a group of kids who all played similar games, and they used to fly as wingmen. I made sure they all took turns at being the Wing Commander. They used to get quite vocal with each other through the network coms channel."

  "What happened to the other kids?"

  "Most of them lost interest when they started being introduced to life paths, but several of them made it into the Militia forces, and one serves on Galactica."

  I motioned him to stop asking questions and we watched Jon take out a heavy fighter
using only a dropship. At the last, he landed on top of the fighter, and blasted his way in through the hatch. We moved inside, and for once, I was glad I wasn’t in a solid form, as there was blood and gore everywhere.

  Twelve looked at me.

  "Did you teach him to be a killer as well?"

  "I taught him to do what was necessary." Jon was throwing up. "The cold killers never do that. He's a normal person, now embarked on the life of a soldier. The blood and the gore is never quite real on a screen. I will admit to being relieved he isn’t a natural killer."

  "You define not being a natural killer by them throwing up the first time?"

  "It’s the accepted theory."

  "If you say so."

  "I do. And if you remember, Smith asked about this before."

  "True."

  We waited with Jon while the ship was cleaned up, and he flew it back to the shipyard, and caught a shuttle to the station.

  “What in the name of tarnation did you think you were doing?” BA yelled into Jon's face.

  He flinched.

  “First you start giving orders with no warning. That’s the Colonel’s job. Then you fly like a maniac so that your crew have to hang on like grim death to avoid being thrown out. THEN you jump off the damn ship and capture a fighter single handed. What sort of a damn fool stunt do you think that was? THAT’S MY JOB YOU PILLOCK!”

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed harder than any of them.

  * * *

  "Really Thirteen, have you learnt the human practice of being a voyeur now?"

  Jon and the twins were naked on the bed. The girls identical strip teases had even managed to excite me. Once again I wondered if I was spending too much time in human form. If this kept up…

  No, I am so not going there. I looked at Twelve.

  "Piss off Twelve! You make me watch all the mundane stuff, why shouldn't I enjoy the sexy stuff as well?"

  "Because you're not human?"

  Twelve vanished before I could get further annoyed, but he left a Cheshire grin lingering behind him. I ignored it, sat back, and enjoyed the show.