The ‘man’ left immediately after, to wait for the new belts for the girls. No-one noticed it hadn’t been a man at all.
Sometime after five, platters of finger food began to make the rounds of the room, starting with the group around me. I couldn’t eat, and I hadn’t been drinking either. My gut was all knotted up.
I wasn’t paying attention to anything now, and was finding any level of conversation difficult to engage in.
The ping to return to the hospital came in at five thirty. I said my goodbyes to Price, suggested Walter stay with the pilots until we were ready to leave, and with Jane, left the celebration feeling relieved to be out of there.
Back at the hospital, I found Amy trying to get out, and learnt the rest of the girls had all woken, and been put back to sleep. They were going into Care Units for transport to the ship, and were going to be moving delicately like me for a while. I sent Jane out to buy more scooters, in case they couldn’t walk very well.
While I waited, one of the doctors gave me the once over, and declared me to be in satisfactory condition.
The security droid turned up as the transports arrived. I bullied the doctors into letting me change their belts, before they were loaded up. I handed Amy her new belt, and she dived into the ladies room to change it. The old ones went into the bag the droid was carrying, which went onto our trolley. I’d get Jane to test them and see if any of them could be salvaged. As Jane wasn’t back yet, the droid took the driver’s position, with Amy and me sitting behind it, the combat suit again on the end.
We headed back to the ship at a sedate pace. Once there, Amy took a small trolley onwards, heading for her bed. I retrieved my scooter, and waited at the top of the ramp on it. Combat suits and droids were still ringing the dock area. But all the cargo was now gone.
Shortly after, the transports arrived. I dropped into the seat of another trolley, and let Jane drive it remotely to the other end of the deck, with the transports following behind. I had to show hospital people how to negotiate the access shaft, which was just large enough for the transporting Care Units. One by one the girls went up, and along to the Medical Bay, where they were transferred into the Care Units there. I retraced the journey back to the airlock with the transport teams, and saw them off.
I pinged Lacey it was time to get going, and headed back once more. On the way, I noticed one of the bays was full of cargo, which had previously been empty. It was a mixture of containers and pallets. Jane had obviously been busy while we’d been out.
Back in the Medical Bay, I stood there looking at the active units. The girls had paid for my stupidity this time. I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to face them when they came out. It wasn’t something I could avoid though, so I instructed Jane to let me know when the Care Units said they could be released.
I headed for the Bridge. Before I arrived, Jane informed me her avatar was back on board, and Walter had just arrived as well. I told her to bring the combat forces in, and close the airlock.
By the time we were ready to go, Lacey confirmed they’d all launched, and were heading to the Atlantis jump point.
I pinged station control for the docking invoice, including another day for a small freighter, paid it, and Jane backed us out. Before turning us, Zippy launched out the front of the Flight Deck, and angled around to enter the small ships dock.
By seven, we were on our way to the jump point. Three hours to Atlantis.
Walter declined my invitation to dinner saying he was for a spa, and then bed. I moved to a lounge chair in my Ready Room, where Angel zoomed in and landed on my lap. I patted her for a while, until she dropped off to sleep.
An email to Annabelle needed doing now. I explained the ambush we’d walked into, and the condition of each of the team. I included the combat feeds, so she could see what happened. I told her we were on our way home, with no more stops until Hunter’s Redoubt, so she needn’t worry about recovery time being interrupted. I also told her of the island retreat on Gold Coast, and we would be heading there as soon as possible after arriving in Nexus. Jane encrypted it, and it went off.
I entered a meditation state, and started doing releases for the mercenaries I’d killed or wounded. After, I let the angels pop in other things for me to release. The bully in first school who’d tormented me until I’d reprogrammed his school desk computer to embarrass him. The bully I’d come to blows with in second school. And the friend who kept hitting me in the later years until I’d whopped him one in class. He never hit me again, so being laughed at by the whole class had been worth it. Spiritual community that we were, kids were still kids until taught how to be spiritual. Some of us pick it up faster than others, and even in a spiritual community, some never do.
Release followed release, going back and forth along my life, obscure and obvious.
I found myself on the floor, curled up and feeling like my chest had exploded from too much coughing. Angel was on the back of the chair, sitting there looking at me. I sat up, smiling at her, and reassured her I was fine. I felt lighter, like a lot of weight had been lifted from me. I sat back down, and let myself sink back into the meditation state.
I didn’t know how I was suddenly sitting at the table, but I was. I looked along it, and two shadowy figures solidified at the other end.
“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” asked Kali.
“What wasn’t?” I asked.
“The work you just did,” said Ganesha.
“Oh, that. No, I guess not.”
“Plenty more to do,” said Kali. “An hour a day for the next two months should get you there.”
“Get me where?”
“Ascended. The time for everyone varies, and yours is shorter than most.”
“Do I need to be?”
“No,” said Ganesha. “But it’ll make things easier if you are.”
“Easier for what?”
They looked at each other, and then at me.
“For what is to come,” said Kali.
“Obviously,” I said, with a lot of sarcasm. “Why me? I nearly lost half my team today through stupidity. I’ve risen to my level of incompetence.”
“Now Jon,” said Ganesha, “don’t be like that. You trained yourself to be a combat pilot, and an Admiral. And partly to be a Duke. So you know nothing about being a General, or a Mercenary. Don’t beat yourself up for not being all things.”
“So my team was beaten up to point out my shortcomings?”
“No Jon,” said Kali. “You all needed a lesson in prudence. Each of them will be the first to admit they made the same assumption you did. You were going to hit a minor force in the rear. You all thought it, you all laughed at the prospect. None of you contemplated an ambush for a second, even though you’d been through them before.”
“Do the lessons need to be so painful?”
They both laughed.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked.
“Your beach resort seems a good place to heal,” said Kali, with a smile.
“That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.”
“We know,” she said. “You have some time to build now. Not a lot, but enough. When the time is right for what comes next, you will know.”
I sighed.
Kali’s tongue extended to its full length and she thumped the table hard with all four hands.
“Jon,” said Jane. “We are almost to the jump point.”
I startled to awareness, sitting in the lounge chair, Angel behind my head. I looked over at the table, and found the end with the figures to be damaged again.
I shook my head, rose, and moved to my chair on the Bridge. Angel bounced up onto her console pad. The jump point showed no signs that a series of battles had ever been conducted here. McLauchlan had obviously been cleaning up.
Lacey signaled the all clear for jumping, so we went through into Atlantis without reducing speed. 266 were already accelerating out in front.
By quarter after ten, I was asleep in bed, Angel
curled up by my neck.
Forty Seven
The girls came out of the Care Units at eight the next morning. Jane had let me sleep through the jump into Cobol, which hadn’t needed my attention, especially since we had real time ship movements there. She bellowed me out of bed with enough time to shower and make it down to the Medical Bay to greet them as they emerged.
Jeeves was on hand to give them pain shots. Petersen was embarrassed to find herself topless in my presence, but the girls helped her to laugh it off, as they all compared bruises. I pointed out their new scooters to them, and left them there to get changed into clean underwear.
We all met in the Dining Room for breakfast. I still didn’t feel like eating, but forced down what Jeeves put in front of me without asking.
We were all moving tentatively, and I had trouble meeting their eyes.
“Stop it Jon!” said Amanda. “We all screwed up. We all paid the price for rushing in blindly. We knew better, but we did it anyway.”
“It was nothing at all to do with you,” added Aleesha.
I looked troubled.
“Jon,” said Walter. “Their right. Even I didn’t think twice about it. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I was in a combat situation, but I have the experience to have known better than to walk into a classic trap. So stop beating yourself up.”
“We all screwed up,” said Aline. “But after that, you did everything right. We watched the ambush feed before we left the Medical Bay. You did exactly the right things, and got us to medical as fast as possible. We survived, and that’s all that matters.”
Meow?
Angel was sitting on the table, and none of us had noticed her come in. We all laughed, and hands stretched out to pat her.
I left them there, and headed for the Bridge.
By nine, we were through into the Midnight system, and heading in to dock with Hunter’s Redoubt. John Wayne and two Guardians had the jump point staked out, but were well clear as we came through.
David Tollin met Walter and I at the airlock, and buried us in catchup work for the next three hours. I’d rather have been in the spa with the girls, but duty calls. Especially since I owned this part of space.
The most urgent of matters were laws to be put in place. The station had been operating under Australian sector law, but without any real authority behind them, other than I had the last say, while not being here to say anything.
After some discussion, I decided to implement Outback law rather than Australian sector law. The former hadn’t changed much since Outback was colonized, where the latter changed all the time. Outback didn’t have politics in the normal sense, so its laws had none of the stuff competing political parties added into laws, and then had modified by the next government. The basics were the same in any case, so most people wouldn’t notice any difference. Customizing the law was something I’d do once I had an entity in place, and received the benefit of a lot of legal expertise.
We returned to BigMother for lunch, where we were joined by the 266 pilots, and O’Neil and his wife.
I formally gave the station to O’Neil to command, and bid him talk to Walter for Militia information, since he’d be acting as head of my mini-sector’s Militia in this system.
By two, David and his people had moved onto BigMother, and we undocked to head for Nexus.
David kept me busy all afternoon, and I was glad to escape to dinner.
The girls dragged me along to the communal spa after we finished eating. I hastily turned my arousal suppressor back on as we stripped. I was about to get in after them, when a voice came from behind me.
“Can I join you?” asked Amy.
I looked over my shoulder to see her looking at my butt. I hastily eased myself into the water, and turned to watch her come in, closing the door behind her.
“Sure,” said Amanda. “No clothes though.”
Amy giggled, and stripped. She slid into the water next to me. There was another round of compare bruises, with a lot of giggling. I still won with my down the left side mottled yellow, although they all had purple ones where I no longer did.
By nine, we were all in bed. In our own beds.
I lay there for a long time, patting Angel and pondering things in general.
It was ten weeks since I’d left Outback as an apprentice. Now I owned three systems, and apparently ruled Outback as well. I had my own fleet, stations and shipyard. Someone still wanted me dead, Walter dead, and my team dead. Everything had changed, and yet nothing had changed.
Angel was fourteen weeks old tomorrow. Maybe that was a good reason for a party.
Jane let me know we were jumping into Bad Wolf, and I watched the forward view on a wall screen as we did. The pop-up closed, and I dimmed the lights again.
I dreamed of naked beach babes.
Forty Eight
I slept through the jump into Nexus 618, but was up in time to be on the Bridge as we approached the center of the ring of jump points just before seven.
Hunter’s Haven was dead center of the ring. The distance to each jump point to the Australian systems varied, but not by more than ten minutes. The Shipyard was positioned well below the station. Jane informed me a connection tube was being designed to link the two.
There was substantially more traffic moving between the jump points than when I’d left the sector. It moved in both directions around the ring, and crisscrossed between them all.
The others joined me on the Bridge before we started the docking sequence, and Annette welcomed us home.
BigMother docked, and I sighed.
Home sweet Home.
I grinned around the Bridge, and was about to stand, when Abagail spoke into the silence.
“Boss,” she said. “You know that email problem?”
I nodded. She indicated Amy, and I looked back and forth between them.
“I think we cracked it!”
Jonathon Hunter
will return
in
Hire a Hero
Acknowledgements
Once again, a big thank you for Helen Ellis. My editor, sounding board, ear that listens, and experience which talks.
Also thanks to Egosoft, for allowing me to use photos from their games, to make the cover of this book.
Special thanks to ‘pref’ from the Egosoft forums, for the specific image used for this book cover.
A Message to my Readers
I’ve had a lot of fun writing this novel. There is still a lot of story to come, and I invite you to come along for the full journey with me.
If you have enjoyed this novel, I hope you will take the time to leave a review on the Amazon site. All reviews are greatly appreciated, as they help assist purchasing decisions by other readers. Sales and reviews will help me to focus on the next book in the series, which impacts how fast the next installment is released.
Please join me on the series Facebook Page:
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Feedback is welcome on my Games Forum.
http://apricotmappingservice.com/X3forum/viewforum.php?f=46
If you would like to be kept informed of new eBooks, updates and information from The Hunter Legacy universe, join the mailing list at http://eepurl.com/bqMgVz
The Apricot Mapping Service exists as the author’s personal in-game entity, for the computer games in the X3 series, by Egosoft. John Slice and other AMS characters, were originally used in fan fiction for mods, walkthroughs and guides for the games.
http://apricotmappingservice.com
The Egosoft website is at:
http://egosoft.com
Thank you.
Also by Timothy Ellis
These Kindle eBooks can be found on Timothy Ellis’ Kindle Author page.
These links can also be found at TimothyEllisAuthor.com.
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00HRTTIJG
The Hunter Legacy
Hero at Large.
Hunted Hero Hunting.
Send in the Hero.
Make or Break the Hero.
Hail the Hero.
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PC Games
The X3 Handbook.
The X3 Handbook for Albion Prelude.
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Spiritual
The Wisdom of the Ages is available for the price of asking a question.
The Wisdom of the Ages Volume 2.
The Wisdom of the Ages Volume 3.
The Wisdom of the Ages Volume 4.
The Wisdom of the Ages Volume 5.
The Wisdom of the Ages Volume 6 Accrued Karma.
The Wisdom of the Ages Volume 7 Healing the Indigo.
I want to go home, Ascension for the travelling soul.
Personal Healing using basic meditation.
101 Tips for the John of God Brazil Experience.
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Feng Shui
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Table of Contents
Hunter Legacy 5 Hail the Hero Page 27