The Long Road to Gaia

by Timothy Ellis

  "Is that good?"

  "I should think so. But the subtle changes always have unforeseen consequences. We will have to see what happens. I'll ask Nineteen to follow the witches' progress from now on."

  "Lucky Nineteen."

  There was a brief smile, and she vanished.

  Five

  "For outstanding leadership in the recent battle," said Lieutenant General Vonda Wellington, "For tactical brilliance considered above the normal for a Rear Admiral, and because we bloody well want to do it to you…" There were grins and short chuckles all around the room. "…you are hereby promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral. Congratulations."

  With the fleet incursion into Azgard being a total slaughter, by an inferior force, Jon had been promoted again.

  "Did you expect this?" I asked One, both of us standing to one side watching the show.

  "Not so quickly. I wanted it to happen before the Darkness arrives, but now is better."

  "How so?"

  "He'll be listened to more now, making things easier later on."

  "How far do you expect him to go?"

  She grinned at me, but as usual said nothing.

  * * *

  The battle for Midgard's Miami jump point was joined.

  Jon was overwhelmed, I could tell immediately. He'd been surprised by the enemy planning to go the other way, rather than engage him. No-one could have anticipated this, who wasn’t from Midgard. It defied all logic based on their previous actions.

  I stopped time, deliberately to let Jon get a good look. He needed it. I gave him enough time to understand the situation, and returned it to normal.

  Battle was joined.

  I stood there behind Jon's chair and enjoyed the show.

  Right up until the point where I saw Jon beginning to believe he'd killed his girlfriend, and began to question everything.

  He needed help.

  I sent BA in to distract him.

  * * *

  "Doesn’t explain why he was terrified of Jon though," said Amy.

  "I don’t know," said Vonda. "Wrath is a pretty powerful word to bandy about."

  "Who are you really Jon?" asked Alison. "Or what are you?"

  "Good question One," I said, knowing she was watching, even if I couldn’t see her.

  She appeared next to me.

  "You know the answer to that."

  "Do I?"

  "Yes."

  I looked at her doubtfully.

  "He's a man. But like a very few of them over all of their time, he is a form of genius. In his case, military tactics and strategy."

  "You didn’t create him specifically?"

  "Of course not. Do you think the highers would allow that?"

  "I guess not."

  I'd not had a lot to do with the beings who existed at a higher level than ours. One had though, a lot more.

  "Such people are born from generations of preparation. Did you ever watch the square screen movie called Rollerball?"

  I cast my mind back through a decade of watching Jon's old stuff, and more decades of his name sake watching them when they were first made. It rang a small bell, so I must have seen it.

  I nodded.

  "The message in it was twofold. The game they played was supposed to demonstrate the futility of individual effort, within a corporate structure, ensuring everyone was a team player. But in any such environment, someone will be born who is a master of the game, and thus negating its primary purpose."

  I nodded again.

  "Jon is the product of six hundred years of living and fighting in space. He was trained from infancy to hone this genius."

  "Is that why we've been so protective of his entire line?"

  "Of course. Without our intervention, he could never have existed. In all the attempts to survive the Darkness which failed, he was not part of them."

  "And without him, the universe ends."

  "Yes. And no, I didn’t believe it when I was first told it either."

  I stared at her suddenly as the thought took me.

  "This Midgard War, did you create it for the sole reason of training him?"

  One was speechless.

  "No," said another voice. "I did."

  * * *

  "There are two last items of business today," said Admiral Jedburgh at the American awards ceremony on Dallas Military Orbital. "Vice Admiral Hunter, you are hereby promoted to the rank of Admiral, effective immediately, and retired from service with the American Space Force, effective at oh seven hundred tomorrow. Congratulations Admiral."

  One and Twelve were standing with me, to one side of the room.

  It wasn’t necessary to say anything.

  One was beaming.

  * * *

  After the promotion ceremony on BigMother, One appeared again.

  "Thirteen, you need to attach to Jon and give him a message."

  "What message?"

  "Just remind him of his dreams, and give him the impression he isn’t protected well enough. It should be all he needs."

  "For what?"

  "I'm not sure. But I was told to give you these instructions."

  "Who by?"

  "I think you'll find out very soon."

  She vanished.

  I attached to Jon while he was eating lunch, and made him very uneasy.

  His response surprised me.

  I wondered if it was enough.

  * * *

  Jon stepped to the top of the ramp and took a step down. His suit snapped into full protection mode with his foot still in the air.

  Four golden threads came at him, slamming into his suit at the same place over his heart. Not pulses either, they were continuous Meson streams.

  His suit reacted as he'd been told it would. The momentum of the hits was transferred down the suit, and into the deck below, lifting him clean off the deck, and propelling him into the air. The golden streams travelled down his body as he rose.

  With four shots from his Long Gun, four figures went down, and the streams shut off. Two meters off the ground, his rise halted, and he came down as fast as he’d gone up. His feet hit the deck, and he seemed to pass out.

  No, he was dead.

  I stood there petrified in shock.

  One appeared next to me, took one look at the body on the deck, and dragged me off.

  We appeared in Jon's Ready Room.

  Shock became confusion.

  I couldn’t believe that Jon was sitting at the conference table. There were two indistinct figures sitting at the other end of the table. As far as I could make out, one was male and the other female.

  The woman smiled at Jon.

  "Welcome Jon. You're dead."

  We watched Jon dispute this with the figures. A screen came on, showing his body still down on the deck.

  With a wave of a hand, they became visible.

  Confusion turned back to shock.

  Kali and Ganesha were here.

  "You work for them?" I said to One.

  Kali cast a look in my direction, but didn’t say anything.

  "No Thirteen, I don’t. But Kali is the one who's been helping me save the universe. Now shut up and watch."

  Kali actually grinned at us.

  We listened to them tell Jon a few home truths. He didn’t take it well.

  "You were special Jon," Kali said. "You carry my Sceptre."

  "Your what?"

  "Sceptre."

  I shot a glance at One, my eyes wide. Hers were too.

  "I know something of Kali, and she's never been depicted with a sceptre."

  "Very true. Do you want to know why?"

  "Yes."

  "Because the only time I carry my Sceptre is when I bring destruction at a cosmic level. For humans, this would be terminal. The species would end in a blink of my eye."

  Jon looked at her in awe.

  I looked at her in awe.

  One looked at her in awe.

  "Fuck me!" I said quietly.

  Kali's eyes
bore into mine for just a second.

  "Be careful what you ask for," she said.

  I cringed.

  "A human is gifted with the Sceptre for one lifetime," said Kali to Jon. "Whoever accepts this burden is granted wisdom and power beyond their wildest imaginings. But it's only given to those of pure heart."

  "Many die young," said Ganesha. "The burden is too great for them."

  "Oh," said One.

  She looked at me.

  Understanding dawned. Things made so much more sense now.

  "What choice are we talking about?" asked Jon, as I tuned back in again.

  "Carrying the Sceptre of course," said Kali. "The burden comes with responsibility as well."

  "Responsibility for what?"

  "To wield it properly," said Ganesha.

  "To wield it wisely," said Kali.

  "And I haven't been, have I? I killed when I didn’t need to."

  "You did as we bade," she said. "The question was not would you accept the task, but would you carry it through regardless of the personal cost."

  "And I failed?"

  "No Jon. You passed."

  In an instant, the room was gone, with One and I finding ourselves in a hospital room.

  "Fuck that hurts," Jon said, referring to the three girls draped over him. "For divine's sake, get off me!"

  I looked at One.

  "I don’t know about you," I said to her, "but I'm going full human for tonight."

  "Why?"

  "I'm going to get totally pissed!"

  "Good idea. Give me a moment to call Twelve to watch Jon, and I'll join you outside."

  I shifted out of the hospital. A few moments later, a stunning girl about the same apparent age as my own body, appeared next to me.

  "One?"

  "Who else, numb nuts?"

  She grinned at me. We looked around and saw we were alone. Both of us shifted into a full human body.

  "Let's get sloshed," she said, and lead the way towards the nearest source of alcohol.

  * * *

  One, Twelve, and I, stood behind the two Witches of Karn, as they watched Humans discussing the possibility of other intelligent life in the rest of the galaxy.

  The witches laughed the whole way through.

  I found the whole thing sobering. As much as the Humans had no clue about other life, and we did, we all shared one thing.

  None of us knew what the Darkness actually was.

  I suspected One did, but in spite of our now closer relationship, I wasn’t game to ask her. She'd retained her younger looking body look, and it made her look more formidable, not less.

  The revelation she was playing on the same stage as the likes of Kali, I was surprised to find, was intimidating. More so than before I knew.

  Sobering. Yes. I needed that, for more reasons than the obvious.

  * * *

  Life support failure.

  Jon sat next to the Queen, in the wreckage of Gunbus' Armoury. His suit life support was exhausted. The Queen was inside his combat suit, safe.

  "Give yourself to me," said Kali to him.

  She repeated it.

  "I give myself to you," he parroted.

  His pain stopped.

  His breathing stopped.

  His heart stopped.

  Time stopped.

  Kali appeared next to me, as I looked down on a dead Jon once again.

  "Things are not as they appear," she said to me.

  I tried grinning, but it faltered. Instead, she grinned fully at me.

  She reached down and touched him.

  Jon burst out of his body, incorporeal like us, but out of phase. We could see him, but he couldn’t see us.

  "Fly my dove," murmured Kali, as the incorporeal Jon left the ship.

  I followed him. We discovered Jane outside the hull of the Battleship. I felt relieved. We'd had few interactions since our first one, and I'd watched her development with interest, given she was unique to the galaxy. When Gunbus had been shot down, she vanished with the side of the ship, and I’d felt a wrench, like something special was gone. Not gone, just out there.

  Jon toured the Battleship, trying to make sense of things. Next was BigMother, where he found Angel was safe. Then the station, and the planet below. Eventually he returned to his body, and stood there looking down at it.

  We became aware there was another presence, pointing a gun at him.

  Jon made an attempt to reenter his body, and Kali placed her hands on him and gently pushed him back in.

  Time restarted.

  * * *

  Jon was discussing life, ruling, and mapping tech, with John Slice.

  When it looked like the conversation had ended, I whispered to Jon.

  The subject changed to stations usable for moving whole planet's populations, in case they needed to flee the Darkness.

  One appeared next to me, and opened a window to Karn.

  "Have someone monitor this John Slice for as long as we can keep a connection," said the older witch to the younger.

  "Maybe he will show us how it's done?"

  "We can hope."

  * * *

  Jon was ambushed again as he stepped out onto Avon Orbital. The light fighting he was expecting to subdue turned into a deliberate heavy weapon attack on all those with him. The twins, Alison, Aline, Abigail and Amy went down immediately. As did Generals Price and Harriman, and their aides.

  Only Jon and Jane remained upright and firing.

  The twelve main threats went down from fire from Jon's Long Gun. They came straight back up again.

  I stopped time, and let Jon have a good look at the situation.

  When I restarted time, he wisely turned and led Jane back to get heavier firepower.

  When they had the team under cover, Jon stepped out again in a combat suit, with a dozen of Jane's brand new ones with him. They charged the enemy, each wielding two Pulse Rifles.

  The attackers went down, and Jon's robotic forces took control of the whole area.

  Jon hopped up on the back of a trolley taking the others to hospital and I rode alone with him.

  We stood there watching Aline flat-line, and come back. Since she and Jon had developed some sort of relationship, I watched his emotions begin to drag him down again.

  They stabilized Aline, and Jon was given a run down on the condition of his team.

  "Did this have a purpose?" I asked One.

  "Presumably."

  "You didn’t set this up?"

  "No."

  "Did Kali?"

  "No," boomed in her voice.

  "Consequences," said One.

  I pondered that.

  Six

  The room exploded!

  One second we were waiting impatiently for the politicians to arrive, the next the room simply wasn’t there anymore.

  I was so surprised, for a split second I froze time in place so I could see what happened. Walls gone, ceiling gone, furniture shredded and gone. Floor gone. Nothing much to see so I let time flow normally again.

  A few seconds of freefall later, those in belt suits all landed solidly on a pile of rubble. I stood there where I had been.

  Instead of Jon receiving his mini-sector systems from the Australian government, the entire top of the building had been blown up.

  Jon, true to form, started saving people.

  In fact, it looked like it hadn't phased him at all.

  Until later that is, when he was standing on the top of another building, looking at the shattered ruins where he'd been standing not long before.

  "This," he said. "This means war!"

  I completely agreed.

  * * *

  The months passed.

  Jon worked on building his mini-sector. He rooted out the people who'd been trying to kill him.

  I followed along like a puppy and was very very bored.

  I was bored enough to be excited about his trip to Earth. But with a few exceptions along the way, it was just more bo
redom. Cargo droids might generate a lot of activity, but it's about as interesting as watching grass grow. I know. I'd spent some time at Jon's Gold Coast hideaway, watching it.

  So when there was something to genuinely be concerned about, I almost missed it.

  Jon totally missed it. For some reason we will never know, he forgot to look at what the nav map showed for the other side of the jump into Barnard's Star. Or at least, that’s how it looked.

  Having significantly better celestial awareness, I suddenly became aware the area on the other side wasn’t clear.

  "STOP!" I yelled at Jon.

  Jon obviously heard me, because he opened his mouth to say it, but we jumped before he could.

  I stopped time in sheer desperation.

  BigMother was a split second into the down jump.

  Jon, aware like me, outside of time, showed a level of stark terror I'd hoped I'd never see on his face.

  We seemed to have jumped into someone else's war. In front of us was a giant ship, sitting across the down jump corridor. It was a Battleship, and its big turrets were all pointed right at us. The smaller ones were engaged in battle with someone else, but the big ones had been waiting for Jon.

  The lack of nav data became apparent. There were no comnavsats anywhere in this system. Now I wondered if Jon had looked, but seeing nothing there hadn't triggered him to wonder why.

  It didn’t matter. We were seconds from disaster.

  There was really nothing we could do. Not at the speed we were going.

  With a second look of stark terror on Jon's face showing he knew exactly what was about to happen, I moved time forward slowly. Nothing he could yell or do could stop what was about to happen.

  BigMother drove straight into the middle of the Battleship, shields gone in an instant. There was a large, slow, explosion, which cascaded down the hull towards the Bridge.

  We all sat there watching section after section explode, the ship getting shorter and shorter, as bits of it vanished, and the rest continued on through the mess which was left of the Battleship.

  There was horror on the faces of everyone, people reacting with instinct to try and protect themselves, and Angel turning to jump away from the oncoming storm.