Hunter Legacy 5 Hail the Hero (13 page)

One word came back. Brilliant!

By this time, I was having difficulty
concentrating, and put my head down on my arms for a moment.

I woke up on the bed. It had only been a
couple of hours, but Jane had obviously moved me, so I must have fallen asleep
at the table.

Jane roused from the corner where she’d
been standing.

“Freighter is almost back.”

“What did you get?”

“Half the combat suits, and about a
third of the requirements to build an armoury. My new suits and the rest are on
order for delivery in London.”

“What about my new toys?”

“Wait and see!” she laughed at
me, lying there almost helpless. I sighed.

A screen popped up, showing the freighter
approaching the right side cargo airlock.

“That freighter needs a name,” I
said. “Let’s call it ‘Zippy’, since it’s so fast. Can you do an overlay
for its ID?”

“Confirmed.”

I watched it dock, and the view switched to
an internal cam, showing butler and cargo droids waiting for the lock to cycle
open.

As soon as it did, a line of combat suits
clanked their way out, and proceeded to move to whichever bay Jane had
specified for them to wait in. The butler’s moved into the ship after the last
one came out. They emerged with a series of boxes and quickly passed out of the
cam’s view.

A short wait later, Jeeves entered with the
first box. He placed it on the floor and proceeded to open it. What emerged
reminded me of a time when a friend of mine at school had broken his leg. He’d
been given a two wheeled upright scooter to zip around on. His leg was
immobilized with a support that wouldn’t allow him to put any weight on it, and
he zipped around on this scooter for weeks. The technology was old even then,
but it was perfect for what he needed to get around.

What came out of the box for me, was
something much more advanced. It had no wheels for a start. There wasn’t a lot
to it. The base unit was a small grav sled just big enough to stand on, but a
lot thicker than a usual pad was. From it, a frame rose up into twin hand grips
with forearm support.

“Behold,” said Jane.
“Freedom for the immobile. They call it a medical grav scooter.”

I smiled. I knew anyway since I’d found
something similar in the catalogue. But this one seemed different.

“What’s different about this
unit?”

“Top of the range of course. It has
grav’s both sides. And it’s fully PC controllable.”

I opened a channel to the scooter, and its
system requested to download to my PC. I lay there and let it.

I explored the new menu it created. When I
turned it on, it rose a few centimeters off the floor. I created a set of
holographic controls and put it through its paces, moving it in all directions,
as if I was on it.

When I thought I had it pegged, I maneuvered
it so it was lying directly above me. I eased it down until it was almost
touching me, the base unit now underneath my feet. I grasped the hand controls,
and switched off the hollo ones. I adjusted the top grav so there was a gentle,
only just noticeable, push against my feet. I then began to tilt it, so the top
part raised off the bed, pulling me with it. When I was upright, I set it to
hover mode, and moved it off the bed. It sank down to about ten centimeters off
the floor. There was no pressure on my legs at all, just a feeling of
weightlessness.

I moved myself into the living room.

Angel was sitting on top of her kitty
castle. She jumped up when she saw me, and arched her back as if preparing to
fight.

“It’s only me sweetie. Nothing to
worry about. I have a new way to move around.”

I moved over to the kitty castle, maneuvered
around so she could walk onto my right shoulder. She sat up there, and purred
into my ear. I went across to my lounge chair, and picked her off and placed
her on top. The next step was going to be interesting. I positioned myself
before the chair, started to tilt the scooter backwards, and my butt swung out
a bit. There was pain from where leg joined torso. I kept up the tilt and moved
the scooter, so I gently eased myself into the chair. Using my PC, I moved the
scooter away and let my left leg drop gently onto the pouffe. Any movement of
my leg was going to hurt, but it was a momentary spike in the general ache, not
a prolonged sharp pain.

Way to go, I thought. I could get around
now.

Jeeves came in with three more packages.
The first was another pouffe, only designed for supporting injured legs. I
lifted my leg slightly, wincing for a moment, and he swapped them over.

“How many did you get Jane?”

“Six. We’ll put one wherever you need
one. There’s one down in the Rec Room waiting for you now, and another in your
Ready Room. One will go to Gunbus and another to Custer.”

“What’s next?”

Next was a glove. Jeeves unpacked it and
handed it to me. I put my right hand inside it, and felt my fingers sliding
into finger enclosures within it. Another pop-up asked to install a menu in my
PC. I let it do so and checked it out. I grinned when I saw what the options
were.

I changed my suit back to a belt, leaving
me sitting in briefs and socks. I pointed the glove at my right foot, and it
extended all the way there. I grasped the top of the sock, and peeled it back,
until it came off. I tried to put it on again, but couldn’t do it one handed.

Jeeves handed me a second glove. With both
hands operating down at my feet, pulling the sock back on was easy. I switched
the suit back to ‘slinky red’, and handed the gloves to Jeeves. He took them
into my bedroom, and left again.

I called the scooter over, and tilted it to
fit how I sat, then allowed it to pull me upright. I sat and rose six times
more to get the hang of it, and to speed it up a bit.

Jeeves took the next package past me, so I
followed him through the bedroom and into the bathroom. After unpacking, he
placed a grav pad in the shower, covering most of the floor area. He turned the
shower on, and I watched the water flow away above the surface of the pad, to
curve around its outside edges and then to fall to the floor underneath it. He
turned the shower off. I eased up next to the pad, and hopped across using my
right leg. I wasn’t quite successful in not moving my left leg, and it twinged
in pain for a moment. I hopped back onto the scooter with better timing this
time, and decided I needed to test something else. I looked through the specs
of the scooter to see if I could. Apparently so.

I moved to the spa, raised the scooter over
the side, and lowered myself into the bubbling water. There was enough room to
tilt enough to sit myself down on the ledge within the water. And I could leave
my leg outstretched without needing to bend it. There wasn’t a lot of extra
room, as this spa was only meant for six people. But it worked. I reversed the
procedure and left the spa. My suit of course was dry. The scooter dried off
almost as fast as the suit.

I headed out into the bedroom again, laid
myself on the bed, left the scooter sitting next to the bed, and went back to
sleep.

Pain woke me up an hour and a half later. I
called for Jeeves and he gave me another shot.

I used the scooter to get up, and went into
the bathroom to use the facilities.

When I came out, I visited the Bridge,
practicing using the scooter in the access shaft to get up, which proved easy. It
only needed a brief down thrust to push me up. At Deck One, I up thrust to slow,
and side thrust out. Up and down over the cat wall was easy. Thrust wasn’t
really the right word, since it was gravity manipulation, but it conveys what
was happening.

On the Bridge, I checked our status and
found we were now in the Washington system. Washington was one of the few
systems to have two Earth like worlds in it. Some others had a second through
terraforming, but Washington had them both there waiting for us when the first
survey team had jumped in. Predictably, the Americans had called the planets
Washington DC and New York.

We were going to pass reasonably close to
New York, but Washington, in the inner orbit, was on the other side of the sun
from us now.

My chair had been altered I noticed. It now
had an attachment on the left side, which would support my leg at the correct
angle. Jane confirmed that Gunbus, Custer, and Excalibur, also had them
available should I decide to fly them.

Satisfied with where we were, and I would
be comfortable on the Bridge for the next week, I headed into my Ready Room.

The table was indeed damaged, as Jane had
said. On each corner, was a figure about thirty centimeters high, looking
exactly like the smaller ones on the Bridge console. I moved them so they were
each in the middle of the table, a third the distance from each end.

Alison’s discarded unboosted belt was still
on my desk. I picked it up and pondered it for a moment.

I called for Jane to come in. It took her a
minute to enter. I gave her the belt, and asked her to attach it around the
scooter base. She did. I linked to it, took full control of it, and activated
full protection mode. It shifted to cover the entire scooter. I changed it to
chameleon mode, and it vanished. I shifted it back, and started custom building
a new suit definition. When I activated it, the base unit looked bigger than it
actually was.

I asked Jane to get my three guns down, and
to place them within a newly created hiding space, which sealed when they were
inside. There was no way I was allowing myself to be disarmed while I remained
as helpless as I was.

The next thing I tried was a lot more
complicated. When I activated the new definition, the suit around the scooter,
flowed my guns up my body on my right side, leaving my Long Gun in its holster
on my right thigh, and both stunners in upper arm holsters designed for
opposing draw. So my right hand could draw the gun on the left arm, and left
drawing from the right. After transferring my guns to my own suit, the scooter
suit returned to its original shape. I practiced moving the guns back into
storage, and up to my holsters a few times, until I was happy I could arm
myself rapidly. There was no possibility of a quick draw, but I could now move
around armed, without seeming to be so. Lastly, I had Jane scan for the guns
using standard scanning techniques used by security forces. They weren’t
detected.

Being almost dinner time, I headed down to
the Rec Room.

There was no-one in the Rec Room, so I
continued on to the Dining Room.

Everyone was already seated, and
conversation died as I scooted down the length of the table to the only empty
seat, at the head of the table at the far end.

Jason pulled the chair out for me, and I
reversed myself into it. Showing more strength than I thought butlers had, he
picked up the chair, and pushed me into the table, being very careful not to
bang my leg. A pouffe went under my leg before holding it up could get tired. I
noticed the next chairs along the table, were far enough away so no-one would knock
my leg accidently. It left me a little isolated down the end, but it was better
than running the risk.

“Jane told us you were asleep,”
said Amanda.

“I’ve had a couple of naps this
afternoon, and as you saw, Jane did some shopping for me on Kansas
Orbital.” I grinned down the table.

Alison opened her mouth to say something.

“Yes,” I said to her. There were
a few smiles, as well as a few frowns from those not knowing what the byplay
meant.

Dinner was strange for me. I felt hungry
and not hungry at the same time. I nibbled at my food without eating much at
all. My ache increased the more I ate, so I stopped eating. Instead, I pondered
if my bruising went further than skin deep.

Well before anyone else had finished
eating, I had Jason pull my chair out, transferred to my scooter, and headed
into the communal bathroom. It contained two twenty person spa baths, an area
for showering, space toilet cubicles, and several full fresher’s. I shifted my
suit to a belt, lowered myself into one of the spas, tilted the scooter to
allow my butt to settle on the underwater ledge, and moved the scooter to the
nearest wall out of the way. All my new bruising was under water. There was no
way I could get my underwear off, so I didn’t try.

Alison came in about five minutes later.
Her suit changed to a belt, her underwear was tossed against the wall near my
scooter, and she dropped herself into the spa near me.

“You’re feeling better I take
it?” I said.

“How can you tell?”

“You didn’t wince getting in.”

She laughed.

“I hadn’t noticed that. I guess I
do.”

“So this is what that was about,”
said Miriam from the doorway.

She came in and undressed, folding her
clothes as she did, putting them in a neat pile on the other side of my scooter
from Alison’s. She dropped into the spa on the other side of me.

The water hadn’t stopped sloshing around
from her entry, when Amanda and Aleesha came in, stripped, threw their
underwear onto Alison’s, and literally jumped in.

BA and Abigail were in next, and the pile
of underwear grew again. Aline, Alana and Agatha followed soon after, and the
pile was now a junior mountain. Aline was last in the spa, as she stopped to
start a new ‘Who’ episode first. She climbed in opposite me.

There was silence for a while as we all
watched the wall we could see well.

“Jon,” said Aline finally.
“Show us your bruises.”

There was a general mutter of agreement,
and nods all round.

I put my hands behind me on the edge of the
spa, gathered my good leg under me, and eased myself up so my butt was resting
against the top, with my right leg straight and holding me up, and my left lifted
slightly, trying not to hurt it. Even so, I winced as my left leg moved at the
top of the thigh.

There were a series of shocked gasps, as
the girls saw the damage. The bruise was no longer blue, but a bright shade of
purple. It ran from slightly above my heart all the way down to below my left
knee. My left shoulder was yellow, and I still had other yellow bruises
visible.

“Someone’s over dressed,” said
Aline with a sly grin.

The rest of them grinned as well.

Miriam moved in front of me, and without
touching my bruises, pulled my briefs down. She moved back to my side, and
pointed between my thighs.

“Does that still work?” she said.

“I’ve no idea,” I replied.

“Turn your override off,” said
Alison.

I looked at her, somewhat shocked.

“Jon,” said Amanda, “if
you’re going to have a problem, its best you know now.”

I couldn’t fault the logic, but wasn’t sure
the motivation for offering it was pure.

I hunted the menus for the PC’s social
setting called ‘suppress autonomic sexual reactions’. This was a very useful
setting when you were a late teenager who kept getting aroused by the ways some
girls dressed. Turning this override on, saved you a lot of bulges in your
pants, which led to blushing and other embarrassment when noticed. Not even
your belt suit would hide such a bulge fully. I left it on all the time now,
except for when a sexual encounter came along. Due to bruising, I’d not had one
since before the first Avon battle, when Alison had initiated it.

I turned the override off. Nothing
happened.

Aline stood up, and deliberately sat on the
edge of the spa, giving me a full view of the entire front side of her body.
The rest of the girls did the same, moving so I could see everything all of
them had.

“No problems there,” announced
Miriam, and they all giggled.

My blush suppressor failed again, as I
realized they were all looking at the part of me now standing at attention. I
went bright red, and turned the override back on, cancelling the error message
from the blush suppressor. I really should log an error report about that, it
kept on happening.

“Aww, I wanted to play with
that,” said Miriam, Alison, and Aline together, as what had been at
attention, stood easy instead.

All eyes went to Aline, who blushed a deep
red. I looked her in the eyes, and saw interest for the first time. My eyes
flowed down her body to her breasts, and then down to her thighs. Both of us
went even redder.

She slid off the edge of the spa into the
water. I did the same, and suddenly the water was trying to slop out of the spa
as the rest did the same together.

I pinged Aline.

“I never knew you were
interested.”

She pinged back, “I always have been.
But unlike Alison and the twins, I’m shy.”

“What changed?”

“You I guess. You died on me, and you
never knew. This was just too good an opportunity to let you know, for me to
pass up.”

“Oi!” yelled Miriam. “What’s
going on with you two?” She turned to Aline. “He’s mine!” She
paused. “Well for the next few days anyway. After I head back to Dallas,
you can have your turn.”

I looked at her surprised. Miriam grinned
at me.

“Jon, I get it. We all live on the
edge. None of us is capable of having a decent relationship while we might die
tomorrow. None of us will begrudge someone living for today, even if we wish we
could be monogamous with them. Our lives don’t work that way. Besides, in a few
days I go back to Midgard, you go home to Nexus. Long distance relationships
rarely work. I’m not stupid enough to think it would work for us.” She
turned to the other girls. “But that,” she said, indicating my groin
area, “belongs to me until I leave.”

“Pfft,” said Alison, and splashed
water in Miriam’s face.

The rest of them followed suit, and Miriam ducked
under the water. When she emerged, and the water settled down, Aline restarted
the episode, and we soaked while we watched.

Before getting out, I called Jeeves to
bring me a spare belt. The girls all pulled themselves out first, and stood
there dripping and naked, watching me use the scooter to get myself out.

They all laughed when I fully emerged from
the water, with briefs around my ankles and socks still on. They deferred to
Miriam as she removed the sodden socks, and briefs. Fortunately, the grav that
held me off the base unit, allowed things to be pulled through the field, so I
didn’t need to move my leg.

I scooted over to the shower, and was
washed by Miriam, Alison, and to my surprise, Aline. The others washed
themselves. Drying off was a group affair.

Jeeves came in as we finished. He handed me
the belt, and departed without a word.

We all started pinging the underwear
dispenser for what we wanted, and Miriam brought mine over, and gently dressed
me.

When she finished, I slipped the belt on
around her waist. We talked her through the setup procedure, and she selected a
very stylish cocktail dress as her first belt to suit change. The others did
likewise. I chose a dinner suit and changed as well. We moved into the Rec Room
as a group, getting comments from the others there, some of whom changed their
suits to join us. Miriam was the last in, having dropped her uniform into her
suite.

I pinged her to bring it with her later, so
I could scan her in it, and make a suit definition for her.

By nine forty five, I was ready for another
pain shot, but rather than advertise the fact, I took my leave of the group,
and went to my own suite, before asking Jeeves to give me one. I patted Angel
for a little while, having coaxed her up to the upper levels of her kitty
castle so I wouldn’t need to bend.

I had Jane add the special gloves to the
scooter’s hiding place. I practiced bringing them up to my hands, and back down
to storage. Now as long as I had my scooter nearby, I had the ability to do
things like dressing myself, without needing help. As helpless as I was, I was
no longer as helpless as I was. I chuckled to myself.

Miriam came in a short time later, carrying
her uniform. I had her put it on, scanned her in it, and made up a suit
definition for her, while watching her strip it off again. I pulsed her the
definition, and she activated the suit. She went into the bathroom to see
herself in the mirror, and came out laughing. I suggested she go get her dress
uniform as well, and she ducked out and back really quickly. We duplicated the
whole process.

I used the facilities in the bathroom, and
manipulated the scooter to lay myself out on the bed. It came to a rest by the
wall.

Miriam pulled my briefs and sock off,
changed her suit to a belt, and pulled off her own underwear.

It wasn’t easy to keep her from knocking my
bruises, but we managed to find out that everything worked as it should.