Hunter Legacy 11: Home Is Where the Hero Is (15 page)

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 doesn’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.

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
emails, 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."

"Are you sure that didn’t
happen?"

I started cackling at that point. Maybe it
was done as a series of Captain's Logs. The whole idea of keeping such a
personal journal and sending it back in time was so close to my idea of
personal madness, laughing was all I could do to cope with it.

Cackling became hysteria.

Hysteria became hypoxia.

I passed out.

"You fainted again," said Carter.
"This time I did a full set of scans on you."

"And?"

"Nothing. You're perfectly healthy.
Other than your left knee, which probably won't ever be a hundred percent
again. Nothing wrong with your brain. No reason for why you keep
fainting."

"Speculation?"

"Could be stress."

A whole section from Hitch Hikers floated
through my mind, and I shook my head to try and get it out again. Under normal
circumstances, a Sperm Whale and a bowl of Petunias would not appear in the
same sentence, but there you go.

"I guess you'll take it under
advisement then," she went on when I didn’t respond.

"What does that even mean?"

"You'll think about it."

"Then why not say that?"

She paused, and gave me the look. The one
you give people who ask awkward questions you don’t have an answer for. I'd
always wondered about that taking it under advisement line. Americans seemed to
use it all the time. Whoever thought up the phrase originally, obviously liked
making language complicated. I'll think about it verses I'll take it under
advisement. The only possible reason for using the latter I could think of was
to avoid saying you would think about it, because you had no intention of
actually doing so. In other words, it was a cop out. Something you used to keep
someone happy while you went out of your way to ignore what they'd said.

"I am not stressed."

She gave me the other look. The one which
intimates not to pull the other leg because it has bells on.

"Work is what I need," I said as
I rose from the Care Unit, and headed out.

The twins were waiting for me outside, but
I simply nodded to them, and kept going alone.

Back on the Bridge, I found no-one there.

"How we doing Jane?"

"Last shuttle from Galactica is coming
on board now. Most of our guests are packing, so they can leave first thing
tomorrow, after the party."

"The party is tonight?"

"Yes. Generals need to return to their
commands before other Generals decide they can do without them."

"Is that what I need to do?"

"Come again?"

"If I go missing for long enough, I
can shuck all this Admiral crap? They'll see they don’t actually need me after
all, and I can go back to…"

"To what?"

"Give me a moment."

"You can't think of anything to go
back to, can you?"

"I said give me a moment."

"No need to get angry."

"I AM NOT ANGRY!"

"No Jon. Of course you're not. But you
missed your calling."

"Huh?"

"The stage misses you."

I face-palmed.

"Can we get out of here yet?" I
asked a few minutes later.

"Only awaiting your command, oh
fearless leader."

"The command is given. Take us
home."

"Homeward bound, aye sir."

For a moment I wondered where that was. The
Gaia planets had never been home, since I'd lived on Galactica. Galactica
wasn’t home, since I'd lived so long on BigMother now. But was BigMother home,
any more than Gunbus or Custer had been? Or was it Hunter's Haven where my
palatial penthouse awaited my return?

We lined up on the jump point into Nexus, I
left the Bridge to Jane, and went in search of Angel. I found her, Nut, and
Max, curled up together on my bed. I climbed on next to them, and zoned out.

"Jon?"

"Jane?"

"We're here."

"Where's here?"

"Hunter's Haven."

"Okay."

I absently tickled Angel.

"JON!"

Angel disappeared off the side of the bed
in a white blur. It was quickly followed by a brown blur, and an orange blur.

"Did you want something Jane?"

"Docking instructions perhaps?"

"Do you want to dock?"

"It might make it easier for people to
get off."

"They can get off however they want
to."

"Fine Jon. Party is at eight. Main
ballroom."

"Good."

I zoned out again.

"JON!"

Angel disappeared off the side of the bed
in a white blur. It was quickly followed by a brown blur, and an orange blur.

"Haven't we done this?" I
groaned.

"The cats have yes. They had dinner
and went back to sleep next to you."

"Dinner?"

"It's after eight already. Are you
going to the party or not?"

"Not."

"Are you still freaked out about Prophesy?"

"I don’t get freaked out about…fuck
it. Yes."

"Only the twins and I know, other than
Thirteen and the new Keeper. So put your game face on, and get to the party
before people wonder where the host is."

"No."

"You're the only person left on the
ship. Do I need to come there and put you in the shower myself?"

"No Mum."

"Well get yourself in that shower, put
the clothes on which are hanging there waiting for you, and get to the
party."

I sighed.

"NOW!"

"Jeez Jane. Don’t be so bossy."

"Jon. I understand you've had a series
of bad shocks over the last week. But you have responsibilities. Fake it if you
have to, but get your normal self to that party."

"Yes Mum."

"I am not your mother."

"Could have fooled me."

"Exactly when have I complained about
the length of your hair?"

"Point."

I ambled into the bathroom, stripped, and
let the hot water brighten me up. Was I home here in this shower? Or was the
shower in my suite over the way home? And did it even matter? The Door was a
year away again. And I knew with every fiber of my being, I’d not be going
through that Door again. The dead didn’t need a home. And in all likelihood,
the Darkness would be destroying everywhere else I could call home. Where did
that leave me? Dead man walking? The designated homeless?

I sighed, and turned off the water. There
were civvies hanging there waiting for me, and I put them on. It felt strange
wearing a real suit for once. The belt was a belt again. Jane pulsed me a belt
file, and I activated it. The buckle turned into a representation of BigMother.

Angel was nowhere to be seen, nor was any
of her stuff. Or any of my stuff either. By the time I was on the Cargo Deck on
a trolley, I could see another trolley in the far distance. I accessed the cams
up that way, and saw a cat carry cage next to Jeeves.

The trolley took me directly to the
administration tower. On the way, it passed close by the lake. It was
transformed from when I’d last seen it. The grounds were a lush green, and
there were people enjoying being there.

I rode up alone, and stepped out into the
main ballroom, hoping I'd be able to slide in unnoticed. I might have known I couldn’t
get away with it.

"There he is," yelled someone.

I was mobbed.

"Help!" I subvocalized to Jane.

Aline and Miriam appeared beside me, and
took an arm each. With the twins in front of me, and BA behind, the crowd was
kept at a minor distance. They escorted me to a raised area on the far side.

"Oh no," I said, when I saw the
lectern.

"Oh yes," said my father,
standing in front of it.

I did a double take.

My mother was standing beside him.

She grinned at me, came forward between the
twins, and hugged me.

"No dear, you're not dreaming. The
moment I found out your father was leaving Gaia, I changed all our plans to be
here with you. We let you go through that year in hell by yourself because we
were told to, but I'll be damned if you have to go through any more without
family behind you."

"Where did Jane put you?"

"A very large suite on the floor down
from yours apparently. It has one hell of a view."

"Mine has this view."

I indicated up. She looked, and laughed.

"Of cause you do dear. You’re the
Duke."

"Be careful mother, or I'll make Dad
an Earl, and you'll never see him because of all the work he gets lumped with.
I'm sure David would love to share the load."

"Yes dear. Empty threat, and we both
know it. Your father will be flying that ship of his until the day he croaks
it. He's military, even if Gaia has never really had a proper military. Try and
make him do civilian work, and he'll just ignore it."

I had to laugh. She was right. I looked over
at him. He was only a few steps away, but the noise in the room was such, he
hadn't heard a word we'd spoken. He beckoned me up.

My mood of a while earlier seemed to have
broken. I stepped up, leaned on the lectern, and waited for the noise level to
go down. Surprisingly, it did quite rapidly. I looked around the huge room,
seeing a lot of people I had no idea of who they were. Amongst them, were
people I did know. Everyone from BigMother was there. Janice started popping up
name tags for me as I looked at people, especially for those who lived here
permanently now. Amy was with a group of media people. David and his family
were with a mixed group of station employees and some of the richest people up
this end of the spine. Margaret was with her gardening staff, a few of whom
looked like they felt under dressed and overwhelmed.

"Anytime you're ready," said Jane
through my PC.

"It came to my attention yesterday,
that those of us travelling on BigMother needed a party. We've been gone a long
time, although it was less for us than it was for those of you waiting for us to
return. I haven't seen much of the station yet, but what I have seen has
changed incredibly. Those of you working with the parks and gardens are to be
commended for doing an extra-ordinary job."

I started clapping, and the room soon
followed, resulting in some very embarrassed overwhelmed people feeling
underdressed.

"I can see the population of the
station has increased a great deal since I left. For those who moved here while
I was away, welcome."

I beamed a smile I didn’t feel at the room,
while searching out David. I pinged him to get up here. He looked startled, but
started threading his way through the crowd.

"I'd like to introduce the Duchy's
chief administrator to everyone, who shouldered the load while I was absent. Somewhat
belatedly, he's been recognized with an actual rank."

David stepped up beside me.

"For those who don’t know him, this is
David Tollin, Earl of Outback."

David did a sort of partial bow to the
crowd, and I went on.

"David will continue to shoulder the
administration of the Duchy in my name. I have other things to attend to."

"Prophesy?" yelled someone from
the middle of the room.

"Yes. It is real. Darkness is coming.
My job now is to be ready for it."

The room was silent now.

"But for tonight, let's get this party
happening!"

I stepped straight down, to the sound of
happy people getting happier. I wasn’t happy, but I left my smile in place. As
Jane had said, I needed to fake it. The twins could see through me of course,
and they were faking it too, since they couldn’t show how worried they were
about me. Aline and Miriam took my arms again, and we moved to a more private
area with lounge chairs. My parents followed, while the twins and BA formed a
standing presence around us.

Jeeves appeared before me baring a tray. On
it was a champagne flute, a beer mug, and a glass of ginger ale.

"Welcome home my Lord," he said,
waiting for me to choose.

I took the ginger ale. Aline took the
champagne, and Miriam the beer.

"Jon," said Aline, "you look
lost."

"I'm not sure where home is these
days."

"That’s simple. Home is where you
are."

Miriam looked troubled for a second, but
held her mug up, and the three of us touched glasses together and drank. It
wasn’t much of a toast, but I felt better for it.