Hunter Legacy 9: Hero at the Gates (17 page)

With Prometheus safely in the repair bay, I
sent over ten newly repaired Hive clusters, to give her a defense force for
when she started up the spine. It didn’t leave me very many in full working
order, but I figured I wouldn't need them. If something threatened us on the
way home, I'd launch missiles, and blow right by.

Precisely at eleven, I pointed our nose at
the Libya jump point, and lit 'em all up.

The record for running the length of the
spine was sixty four systems in thirty five days.

I had seventeen days left before the Door
to home opened, and sixty two systems to get through. At best, going like a bat
out of hell, I could do it in sixteen days. I’d done the math before accepting
the mission. I'd seriously hoped it wouldn’t come down to this. But it had.
Suck it up, and fly as fast as possible.

I sat there, doing the math again, hoping
like hell I’d not made a mistake.

"Now that’s interesting," said
Jane, completely breaking my train of thought.

"What is?"

"The Battleship in War just did the
hit-a-roid jiggle again, and its Id icon just vanished from the nav map."

"They destroyed themselves?"

"Looks like it."

"Good. One thing less we have to worry
about now."

"Go to bed grump."

"Don't start!"

"Jon, there is nothing at all you can
do now. We did the math. As long as nothing slows us down, we'll be there when
the Door opens. Go to bed!"

I sighed. She was right, as usual.

Aline and Angel were already asleep when I
tromped into my bedroom. I didn’t disturb either of them as I changed into
boxers and t-shirt, slipped into my side of the bed, gave Angel a quick pat,
and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I dreamed I was walking down a long
corridor. The way ahead was dark. The doors to either side locked. As I walked,
a light came on behind me, throwing my shadow large in front of me. I walked
on. As the shadow would fade, a new light would come on behind me, and my
shadow would become bold again, always in front. On and on, into the dark.
Without end.

Jane had me back on the Bridge at five in
the morning, strangely alone for once. The shuttle of prisoners going to Libya
Orbital rose from the Flight Deck, powered towards the rear entrance, and was
left behind.

Jessie Ball had said her goodbye's the
night before. She was ready to launch, as soon as I slowed down enough to make
it safe.

Don’t slow.

"Why not?"

Jessie Ball's life is now linked to The
Darkness.

"What does that mean?"

She remains with you until Outback.

"I think her boss will have something
to say about that."

He will not object.

"I'll take your word for that."

As you should.

I opened a channel to Tag'Em.

"Yes Admiral?"

"You can stand down Jessie. I've been
commanded to take you to Outback with us."

"Commanded? I've not heard from the
boss at all. You have?"

"Not as such. Kali just told me you
were coming all the way with us."

"For real?"

"As real as it gets."

"YES!"

"I'll square it with your boss, don’t
worry about that."

"Better you than me. Well then, I'm
off back to bed."

The channel closed. I could see she was
confused underneath all that happiness, but so was I. I guess we'd find out
what Kali wanted when we found out.

I opened a vid to John Slice, bluntly told
him Kali had commanded Jessie Ball to come with us to Outback, and did he have
a problem with that? I sent it off, and sat there, alone on the Bridge, just
watching space move around us.

The answer came back about an hour later.

John Slice laughed at me for a full minute,
before getting a grip.

"Really Jon? I knew the moment you
asked for my help, whoever I sent would be tied to you, possibly for good.
Jessie is good people. If you need her to stay with you, who am I to say no? I
sent a replacement towards Columbia within an hour of redirecting her to you. I'll
be waiting for you at the jump in to Apricot, in my own Lightning. Just scoop
me up as you come through. See you soon."

Soon was still a couple of weeks away, but
I knew what he meant.

The next few jumps looked easy ones, with
no traffic expected near the jump points, so I told Jane to call me only if the
jump points looked cluttered, or something big was there.

I spent some time thinking ahead, and
giving Jane some instructions for her and Amy. The first conference had gone
badly, but I wasn’t going to let it upset me. We needed to meet with people,
get the word out, and get people at least thinking about possibilities. It was
just a matter of organizing whatever we could. I could leave it to Amy and
Jane.

I went back to bed, as Aline was getting
up. Angel was busy eating breakfast, but I didn't feel like it. I dropped off
back to sleep.

I walked the passageway once again. Ahead
was light. Behind was dark. The light receded from me, as the dark seemed to be
catching me up. Something hit me from the side, and I went down. The dark
caught up with me, and swallowed me.

I woke up on the floor, my left side throbbing.
Crawling back into bed, I lay there thinking about what it was I thought I was
doing.

How does one person get to take on the
safety of an entire species? How could one person cope with the pressure and
expectations of such a burden? Why was it me?

Sleep took me again without any answers.

From Libya, we blew through Egypt and
Nepal. A large Shuttle was waiting at the jump point inside Delhi, and we
swallowed it almost in the process of down jumping. The pilot made a hash of
landing on the Flight Deck, but although the passengers were shaken, none were
injured, and after it was docked in one of the internal Flight Deck bays, the
ship was quickly fixed by Jane. Amy updated her instructions to ensure ships
wanting to be picked up by us as we passed through, should leave a reasonable
distance from jump points to avoid accidents, and be prepared for a landing on
a moving deck.

Given BigMother's accommodations were now
being stretched to the limit, Jane had prepared the accommodation on
Unassailable for delegations. We had suites for brass and diplomats, but the
functionaries with them would have to use the Marine barracks. If that
overflowed at any time, they'd have to sleep on their shuttles.

These first delegates to the next
conference represented the Indian sector. We'd had a response from Nepal,
indicating they were currently on good terms with the Indian sector, and would
receive a briefing from them after the conference. Since they had nothing more
than a token militia force for planet policing, their presence wasn’t really
required. While they were an independent state of sorts, the most they could do
if the Darkness came this way was evacuate.

Over the next day or so, we collected
Chinese sector delegates in Beijing, Japanese delegates in Nippon, and Russian
delegates in Moscow. All were using large shuttles.

The conference seemed to go off reasonably
well, although each group kept to themselves. Jane provided real time
interpreting into their native languages, and ensured those of us English
speakers heard a precise interpretation when anyone used a different language.
While our PC's had interpreter functions, Jane could do it quicker, and ensured
everyone received the exact same words.

I'd never figured out if the Latin sector's
antipathy to the whole concept of Prophesy was based on anything in their own
past, or if it was simply because the African Admiral had been so dead set
negative about the idea.

We didn’t have the same problem this time.
While none of the delegates openly accepted Prophesy as a motivating factor for
future planning, they were at least neutral going in. It wasn’t until we
displayed detailed scans of the planet Moscow taken by Melissa in the future,
before any real reaction occurred. The Russian delegates were profoundly
disturbed by what they saw. We emphasized that every planet looked like this in
the future.

The Japanese Ambassador argued time travel
with me like a true Science Fiction fan. By the time everyone else was glazed
over and fidgeting, he announced himself satisfied we had indeed time travelled
forwards, and experienced a possible future. He wasn’t prepared to gamble the
lives of his people on it being an alternative future, or not. I'm not sure
anyone else there at the time had any clue what 'alternate' actually meant, but
they were swayed by his certainty we had time travelled.

Between the Russian reaction, and the
acceptance of the Japanese of Prophecy being possible, the meeting moved on
from speculation to courses of action. The most important thing for each of
their sectors was they only had a single system on the spine. This meant that
they needed response forces able to move to whichever jump point any threat
came from. While they may have support from forces falling back, they had to
assume they would have to take the brunt of any attack themselves, at least
initially.

Regardless of if it was an Invasion or a
Celestial event, they also needed to be ready to move as many people as
possible away from the threat. If it was coming up or down the spine, they
needed to be able to clear their sectors of as many people as possible, before
their spine system was lost.

The Chinese delegate was curious as to how
they could possibly get enough warning to be able to do so? I had Jane show
them the nav map we used, so they could see we had the entire arm under a
measure of observation. When we started losing feed from systems, we would know
immediately where the threat was coming from, and I assured them the word would
go out as soon as we knew. The Japanese Admiral looked at me with a speculative
look, and I could see the gears going around in his head as he wondered how to
get the specs for the comnavsats. To forestall any problems in that direction,
I made the specs available to them.

I did wonder how long it would take the
media to find out the new sats existed, now the cat was effectively out of the
bag, and I had no illusions the new sats would be pressed into service as soon
as each of the sectors could build them, for their own internal uses. Although
I doubted the media would gain access to sector sats. More than likely the sat
specs would be stolen or sold, and the bigger media groups would start laying
their own sat chains.

Mine was effectively encrypted, and anyone
trying to break into a comnavsat belonging to me was in for a rude surprise.
But now I wondered how long it would be before the communications breakthroughs
would be available along the entire arm. Almost real-time communications across
sectors was a dream for the media types, now actually available, and probably
not going to remain unknown to them for long now.

Ah well, it had to happen sooner or later.

I also gave them the specs for station
tugs.

While there was no agreement between the
sectors for joint operations or plans, they all proved reasonably receptive.
Before leaving the ship, they all issued media statements they were also
following the high spine sectors in dusting off emergency plans for sector
defense and extinction level event evacuations.

Before leaving, I had a long conversation
with the Chinese Admiral about Feng Shui in space. Feng Shui had long been
returned to accepted status in Chinese society, and while not used by the
general population any more than those in other sectors, it did still have more
practicing Masters than any other sector. I was surprised to learn the
Admiral's father was one such Master, and even more surprised to learn he
followed the same yang methods we had at home.

While he wasn’t a master himself, we both
knew enough to have a decent conversation. The Admiral was most interested in
my view of how to align a spaceship with the planetary directions, given it
could travel in any direction possible. We found we agreed that no matter which
way the ship was pointed, the front of the ship was South, given South
represented the view into the future, among other things. This defined the back
of the ship as North, right middle was West, and left middle was East. As I'd
done all my own bed alignments and such based on this, without having had
anyone to consult to confirm I was right, I was happy to have someone agree
with me.

Also before leaving, I had a quick
conversation with the Indian Ambassador and Admiral about Kali's role in all
this. They were both shocked and impressed to see the vid we had of the two
statues appearing on my Ready Room table, and later, the statues moving from
where I had rearranged them to, back to where they appeared; and the table being
repaired at the same time. They were much more shocked when my sword appeared
on my back, and vanished again a minute later. I explained Kali's scepter to
them, and their whole attitude towards me changed from cool and diplomatic, to
fawning, the Ambassador calling me Guru-G. It took a moment to remember I’d
been called this before.

The delegates left before we were through
the Moscow system. It would take the Indians several days to get home.

The Japanese were the last to leave. I'd
looked up their fleet composition and found they had standardized on Corvettes.
The mainstay was the Centaur I'd based the Gunbus design on, although they
called it something different in their own language. I gave the Japanese
Admiral a tour of Gunbus, pointing out where the Centaur was weak and how it
was adjusted in Gunbus.

Back where the Ambassador was waiting,
there was a furious exchange of Japanese, as the Admiral updated the
Ambassador, and seemed to be demanding something. It resulted in my being asked
for the specification for Gunbus to be built under license, including the
upgrading of existing ships as far as possible given the hull was smaller. I
told them what the Americans were paying, and provided them the drop account
details. Before they boarded their shuttle, Jane presented them with a small
external storage device with the specifications on it. Both Ambassador and
Admiral gave me deep bows from the top of the stairs, before turning into the
airlock.

I watched them on a pop up screen,
undocking, moving to the middle of the Flight Deck, and disappearing out the
back as we powered away.

Before I’d reached the Bridge, there was an
email notification for the full value of twenty four Gunbus licenses, with the
partial license fees for the upgrade of forty eight Centaurs.

The whole meeting had gone well, and had been
profitable as well.

We hadn't as much as slowed down in the
slightest, the whole time.