He took out the trash. He went into the airlock clean. He came out bloody. He casually walked back to Gunbus and showered.
Back in his suite, Angel did a double take on seeing us, and quietly climbed to the top of her kitty castle.
Jon went straight through to his bathroom, stripped, and sat in the spa. The twins joined us shortly after.
"Guilds," I whispered to him.
Abagail pulsed him an edited vid of the entire event, and he uploaded it to both the Mercenary and Bounty Hunter Guilds.
"Message," I whispered.
He posted on both.
"I no longer take prisoners. You want to die? Come after me. Better yet, shoot yourself and save me the trouble."
No more Mr. Nice Guy.
The twins finally broke their silence and asked Jon how he'd done it. He didn’t believe them when they told him his combat routines were not enough.
I detached from him, and left them to talk.
"You had to do it Thirteen," said Twelve. "He didn’t have the skill set to survive that by himself. You taught him to be a pilot, not a marine. And the message had to be put out there."
"I know. But now I'm the one who feels dirty."
"Spend some time in the Pure Land. You deserve a break. I'll keep an eye on things here for you."
"Fine."
I left him there, pretending he wasn't gawking the twin's breasts.
* * *
They were all back in the Pure Land, to watch the battle of Avon. If anything, there were more of us now, than ever before in one place.
I left them there, and stood behind Jon's chair.
If something unwanted happened, I'd be there to do something.
The beginning of the fight was already choreographed, and ten seconds before expected arrival, Jon gave the order to fire.
All hell broke loose.
While the enemy was still down jumping, I slowed time to see what was happening better. I immediately became aware that Jon was also seeing a slowed down view.
"Good thinking Thirteen," said Twelve. "He can use the perspective of slow time to good effect."
I brought us back to normal time, and the battle continued.
We prevailed. And yes, I was so much a part of this battle, I included myself in the feeling of relief for surviving it. For the first time ever, I'd wished I had actually been fighting it.
Jon began checking survivors, and giving orders.
And suddenly, we were heading back to the station to help with boarders.
Alison was calling for help, and Jane did an override on the airlock and decompressed the entire deck.
We raced to find Alison, Jon gunning down four men with his sniper rifle on the way.
When we found her, her suit was shredding, her wounds starting to freeze.
Jon attempted to control what remained of her belt, but it was beyond working, as it continued to shred.
I reached out to both their belts, and merged them together, using Jon's to cover Alison as well.
He rushed her to a med capsule which was coming to meet them. As she slid inside it, I reversed what I’d done with their suits.
Jon continued on to the CCC, and followed along behind Jane.
I could feel his fatigue.
I detached completely from him, and returned to the Pure Land.
One said nothing. She simply hugged me.
Four
The second battle of Avon caught us all by surprise. As did Jon flying a station sized Battleship as if it was a fighter.
There was dead silence when the battle ended.
"Fuck me!" said Twelve. "Have we created a monster?"
"No," answered One. "He's exactly what we need."
I think it was Sixteen, wearing a young attractive female body, who sidled up to Twelve and whispered something in his ear. He went bright red. But I noticed they both disappeared pretty soon after.
There was after all, advantages to wearing human bodies.
* * *
The third battle of Avon was a slam dunk. Jon's new Pocket Battleships hit the Midgard forces so hard, they didn’t get off an offensive shot.
We did high fives all round.
"How come the Keerah never developed someone like Jon?" I asked One.
"Different mind set," she replied. "For plain battle sense, no-one beats them. Even technically, they're ahead of most. But for all their battle-smarts, they don’t have either the subtlety or lateral thinking of Humans."
"All other things being equal, who would win between Humans and Keerah?" asked Twelve.
"If we used credits, I'd put mine on the Humans."
One's answer surprised me. She must have seen it on my face.
"Don’t forget though, they would never meet on otherwise equal terms. The Keerah have been making war longer than Humans have existed."
"Be interesting all the same," added Twelve.
I nodded. It would indeed, especially if a more experienced and better equipped Jon was leading the Humans.
* * *
"Celebration or not, remind Jon to tool up before he leaves."
One hadn't bothered to materialize this time.
I did so. Jon wasn’t aware these whispers were not his own thoughts. No-one ever did, when something attached to them. You had to be looking for them, to find attachments. Jon was open to higher entities, but he still had no idea something like me was whispering to him.
On his way out of the ship, Jon was shot twice. By a Pulse rifle, and then a Meson Blaster. One materialized next to me, standing over where he lay on the deck. More bruises for him I suspected.
"Make him angry Thirteen," said One. "This has to be taken up a level."
I looked at her.
"Got to be done Thirteen."
I made him very angry.
He hobbled out, changed one of his guns to lasers, yelled at one of the security cams, and shot both men in the head.
I looked at One in amazement.
"You wanted this?"
"Necessary. Stay close to him, it gets worse."
She vanished.
* * *
"So you’re the one," said a voice.
Jon looked up, into the face of the old man who'd been staring at him a short while earlier.
I whispered to Jon to stand up and face him properly.
"Have we met?" Jon asked him.
"No, we've not met. But I know you. You’re the one who killed my older sons, put my granddaughter in prison, and today killed my younger son. Now it's your turn."
He placed the end of his walking stick exactly where the Meson Blaster had hit Jon earlier, and pulled a semi-hidden trigger.
There was a loud bang, and Jon went flying backwards, where he lay still.
His heart stopped for twenty seconds, but started again before I could do anything.
I looked at the old man. BA took a step in his direction, and I leapt onto her, attaching fully. Within a minute, the man was dead. Breaking the nose, hitting it again, and pushing it up into the brain, wasn’t always fatal, but BA, boosted by my anger, had done the job properly. The man was dead well before he hit the floor.
I let BA calm down, waited by Jon, and followed him to the hospital.
"I told you it gets worse," said One.
* * *
We all watched the battles which took place across the Atlantis system. Me from behind Jon's chair, and the rest from the Pure Land meeting place.
Part of me was in both places, so I knew what was going on. Multitasking isn’t difficult at our level.
Each battle started to close the gap, as far as results were concerned. Each battle was testing Jon's ability to lead.
I watched One. She seemed unconcerned, even when Jon botched the formation choice for the jump into Cobol, which almost ended in disaster. She nodded to me.
It was good training for Jon. And it wasn’t going to his head at all.
I wondered how long it would be before I had to take an active role in
the battles myself.
* * *
The battle at Cobol could only be a slugfest. Two large fleets at long range. We fired off our missiles and torpedoes, they fired off their missiles.
As they began to cross, I stopped time so I could look at things from above.
I'd seen a lot of battles over the eons, but nothing like this. On the left, our formation of ships. On the right, the Midgard formation. Less than half way to the middle on both sides was what looked like two solid walls of missiles.
Once again, Jon was aware of time stopping. So I started it moving slowly so we could see the various barrages moving, before returning time to normal.
I pondered if Jon was getting the time effects from me due to proximity, or if One had bound us somehow and not told me about it.
It would be just the sort of thing she would do.
* * *
The Dropships went down to Cobol, looking for why no-one had answered com attempts. We found a ruined city, all signs of technology destroyed.
Over the other side of a small range of hills, we found a compound containing enemy ships.
A few minutes missile spamming by two Cruisers and too many Talons, and all three Dropships died.
"Oh Shit!" I echoed Jon, as the missile which killed him lazily came at us.
Wreckage fell from the sky, as I struggled to cope with the unexpected tragedy.
I got a grip, and stopped time.
Twelve appeared next to me.
"That went well," he said with a grin.
I hit him again.
Maybe two shiners instead of one would stop him making stupid comments. For a moment I pondered why he'd still be sporting a shiner, given we had total control over how we looked, but then, Twelve was spending a lot of time in Human form as well, and maybe the more we spent in a corporeal form, the more the laws of that form applied to us. On the other hand, Twelve was perverse enough to think the shiner made him look more cool to the rest of us. On the gripping hand…
I was getting very sick of Twelve. We normally had very little to do with each other. While six hundred years was nothing to us, spending it with Twelve was still long enough for him to start getting on my nerves. Especially since Humans had very intense nerves, and I was spending way too much time Human.
I pulled myself back on track. Twelve was gone, which was at least one good thing.
One hadn't put in an appearance yet, which was a second good thing.
What to do about this mess.
Obviously, I needed to wind back time to some point, and take Jon back with me. I allowed things to rewind to just before the missile killed him. I reached out to connect to him, and stopped.
There were two other connections already in place. I followed them to the twins, who were in combat suits below.
I tugged gently on Jon, and both of them moved as well.
"Wait," said One as she finally put in an appearance.
"Did you attach these connections to Jon?" I asked her before she could say anything else.
"No. But it's obvious that anything you do with Jon, will need to include them as well."
"I gathered that," I said sarcastically.
"You need to take them back to before they left."
"Duh!"
She actually smiled at the twins' impersonation.
"Where is the question though."
She waved up what a Human would call a hollo screen, rewound time to the point where the fleet arrived at Cobol Orbital, and let it play forward.
"There," she said, pointing to Jon sitting in his Ready Room.
"How's he going to react to this?" I asked her. "You know he's aware of it every time I mess with time."
"It's nothing to do with your proximity."
"How then?"
"I'm not sure. I can guess, but there's no point in voicing it without some evidence."
"Figures. It's not you then?"
"Of course not. How could I give a Human awareness of time and the ability to think outside of it?"
"Who could?"
"Those above us could."
"Oh."
"Stop prevaricating and get on with this."
I gathered the connections to Jon and the twins.
"Wait."
I raised an eyebrow at her.
"It's not enough."
"Why not?"
"This time he needs something tangible to tell him he did see the future."
"Why?"
"Because he needs to know it wasn’t just a dream."
"Again, why?"
"It's part of his training. He needs to know how badly he screwed up."
I stared at her for a good while, but she said nothing more, just returning my stare.
"How?" I finally asked.
"Take the three Dropships back as well."
I opened my mouth to say something sarcastic, but nothing came out. I closed my mouth.
It required thought. I'd need to wind back time slowly to grab the other two Dropships in the moment before destruction, then jump back to the moment we'd selected, reintegrating all six displaced objects with their state before going back.
I'd never done something this complicated before. Moving myself through time was easy. I'd even moved objects a few times. But three corporeals, and their vehicles, minus the other corporeals?
I very carefully attached myself to all six objects.
And shifted. At the same time, I edited the logs of the Dropships, and the memories of the three people. They needed to remember what happened, but not the events which would now be done over. I'm not sure Humans could cope with having two memories of the same time period.
It was almost perfect. The three Dropships interposed over their previous selves without a hitch. The two girls jerked like they'd fallen asleep for a few seconds unexpectedly.
But Jon reacted violently enough to propel him off his chair to hit the floor.
I idly wondered why he always hit the floor on his left side.
"Well done Thirteen," said One, now hidden by several hours of time.
Unseen, I sank into an unused lounge chair. The effort had drained me and I needed to rest for a while.
* * *
A few hours later, I did most of it again. Jon had gone down in Excalibur, and again a missile had taken him out. Or was about to.
Before it hit, I yanked hard on Jon, pulling him out of that timeline, and putting him back into himself, back in the Dining Room when they were discussing how to do the job better this time.
I forgot about the twins in the urgency of the moment, and they came with him.
The integrations were fine, but having done it without preparation this time, Jon was hurled backwards into a wall, and the twins were both dumped onto the floor.
"Easy on Thirteen," said One. "He doesn’t need you hurting him as well."
"Oops."
* * *
Third time was the charm, and the ground assault on Cobol went off without any further problems.
One dropped in on us while Jon was patting his cat, after.
"You should probably see this, Thirteen."
"Which this is that?" I asked, using Jon's favourite comeback.
"Come."
We materialized on another planet.
Two beings, not Human, but close, were sitting watching a crystal ball.
"The Witches of Karn," said One.
"Karn? It’s a real place?"
"Of course. A lot of what humans think is fiction is actually a real place or species, or something which happened somewhere. Some of them tap into galactic or universe knowledge without knowing it."
"Or someone at our level feeds them hints."
"That too."
She pointed at the ball.
"What?" I said in confusion.
The image on the ball was showing Jon patting his cat.
"At last," said the younger one.
"He looks older now," said the older one. "The last time we were able to find
him, he was still a child."
"He's still young, but look at his shoulders."
"Rank insignia?"
"Looks like it to me."
"This is the time we have been waiting for then. I hope we have not connected too late."
The four of us watched for several hours, as Jon made preparations to leave.
With Custer and Apricot One in orbit over the planet, the station started moving.
The two witches became very excited.
"At last," said the older one. "Long have we sought a way of leaving Karn before the Darkness arrives. Now we have a way."
The ball had the image of Jon's station being moved using small ships attached to it.
"Bring me a memory acolyte," commanded the older one.
She placed her hands around the ball and began to incant.
The image moved aboard the station, and settled on a room I knew to be the CCC. No-one was there. The image moved to a work station, and a screen popped up. Schematics began to appear, of the station, and what I knew to be station tugs.
The images stopped, centered on a basic station blueprint.
The other witch returned with an acolyte.
"Remember all you see, sister," said the older one to the acolyte. "On this our lives depend."
One by one, the blueprints of the station and tugs flashed up, the acolyte memorizing each one.
"I don’t understand," said the second witch. "How does this help us? We have no understanding of such things. How will we build them?"
"With our magic of course. The one with memory will instruct those who create, and between them will construct enough of these to save the race."
One nodded to me, and we returned to where we'd left.
"Do you see Thirteen?"
"I had wondered how this particular idea had managed to get used by others in the galaxy. Wasn’t it one of the few things Humans contributed?"
"It was. While Jon thought of it this time, in all the other timelines, some other Human somewhere else did the same in order to save people. This time, it's happened earlier than before."
The Long Road to Gaia Page 13