Hunter Legacy 9: Hero at the Gates (21 page)

When the day finally ended, I headed for my
bed with some trepidation as to what, or should I say who, would be there.

I found the two women in my life sitting in
my lounge chairs, barely acknowledging each other. I paused inside the door,
one foot still in the air.

"Come on in Jon," said Miriam.
"We were just talking about you."

I put my foot down carefully, and completed
making my way through the doorway. I closed it quietly behind me, not wanting
the inevitable explosion to go beyond the door.

Angel was sitting on the top of her kitty
castle, with the expression of someone about to enjoy what happened next on her
face.

I looked from Miriam to Aline, and back
again, before sinking into an unoccupied chair.

Both girls looked at me, with the same
serious face.

Aline finally burst out laughing, and
Miriam joined her.

"He looks terrified," Aline said
to Miriam.

"He does, doesn’t he," she
laughed.

I looked at them both, not appreciating the
joke.

"Lighten up Jon," said Miriam.

"He doesn’t know, and hasn’t
guessed."

"Better tell him then."

Tell me what?

"Um, Jon?" started Aline.

I looked at her, wondering what was coming
next.

"I have a confession to make."

Huh?

Miriam laughed so hard at the expression on
my face, she fell out of her chair, and rolled around on the carpet.

I looked at her, and back to Aline. I gave
her the one eyebrow raise.

"I've been messaging with Miriam from
the moment she left the ship, before we returned to Nexus."

"Messaging?"

"At first I was just making sure,
given how I knew she felt about you, I wasn’t going to be causing a major
problem by sleeping with you."

"You HAVE been sleeping with
him?" exploded Miriam from the floor, laughter gone.

I cringed.

They both exploded into laughter again.

"That was too easy," Aline said
to Miriam, when they both had control again.

"Told you so."

I looked at them both, without the foggiest
idea of what was going on. I was so tired, their faces began to blur.

"Isn’t he just adorable?" Miriam
asked Aline.

"He is."

The two of them started giggling
uncontrollably.

Women.

I made an effort and rose, leaving them
both where they were, and going into my bedroom.

"Don’t you bloody well fall asleep on
us, Jo…"

I crashed down on the bed, and was asleep
before the sentence ended.

Verse being so big, it's hard to say we
blew through it. All the same, I was awake again before we jumped out. I found
I'd been moved to the center of the bed, and I had Miriam on one side of me,
and Angel and Aline on the other. All three were asleep, so I quietly eased
myself off the end of the bed, and went down for training. Only BA and Jack
were there, the former giving me a strange look, which I ignored. I threw
myself into the ranges, showered down there, and was back on the Bridge while
everyone else was finishing training, or eating breakfast.

We did blow through Sanctuary.

John Slice was waiting for us just inside
the down jump area in Apricot, and we swallowed his Lightning the same as all
the rest. He gave me a solid hug after bounding onto the bridge, demanded to
know when he could take delivery of his new Cruiser, grinned at me to show he
was joking, and took himself off in search of Jessie Ball.

He was more than content to wait for the
next briefing session.

In Argon we picked up the local defense
force Admiral, a one star. He wasn’t technically part of the SFSF, being the
commander of the defense forces for the X sub-sector, and a separate military
force in its own right. But given the support we'd had from them during the
Midgard war, I’d sent them an invitation for someone to join us for the next
briefing. As far as sub-sectors went, they had one of the bigger fleets, almost
up to the German fleet in size, and Sci-Fi sector might come to rely on them.
The SFSF could technically call them to service, but it had never happened
before, although the X-Force tended to offer themselves before being asked.

In Avon, we picked up General Price and his
aides. He asked when the briefing would be, and I let him know I had it planned
for as we crossed Cobol and into Midnight. He was happy to wait.

As Annabelle showed him and his officers to
their accommodations, I stood there on the Launch Deck wondering at a
fundamental difference happening.

At the other end of the spine, Ambassadors
had been present with their military leaders. Here, only the military had
showed up.

It made me wonder if the military here,
were running things independently of political oversight for now, or if the
political side of the sectors simply didn’t believe enough to bother, or were
content to let the military handle it, at least until decisions had to be made.

Thinking back to my recent problems with
the Australian sector government though, I wasn’t too sure I really wanted the
Australian government involved in any way, at least not in the planning and
execution of plans. They needed to okay the expending of credits and resources
by General Harriman, but having politicians involved in the planning process? I
shuddered.

I could ask, but maybe it was better not to
know. Each of the four stars here was political enough to negotiate their own
local politics, and know how to get what they needed. I didn't need to know any
of it.

As we made our way across Avon and
Atlantis, there was a steady stream of people through my Ready Room, asking
various questions or seeking some explanation of something.

In the background, hovered two obviously
frustrated women. But they could see my time was being used for more practical
concerns. But it was pretty obvious the next time they could trap me in the
bedroom, it was going to be some form of threesome.

On the one level, this excited me. On the
other level, I wasn’t sure what was going on, and this made me feel a little
insecure. On the gripping level, things seemed a little surreal, like I was
trapped in some male fantasy where threesomes was the normal. I mean, it
wouldn’t be my first time, but the twins made sense at some level. I wasn’t
sure Aline and Miriam sharing me made any sense at all.

Maybe I was overthinking it, in the times
between the endless stream of questions. But I had been brought up to be a
monogamous heterosexual, although I had the choice about the latter. I had been
taught to choose one person, make a commitment, and stick to it, her.

On the gripping hand though, the whole we
might be dead tomorrow thing did loom large over everyone. And as prophesy felt
like it was closing in on us, didn’t simply enjoying life as you could make
more sense than restricting yourself with rules designed for a completely
different set of circumstances?

For once in my life, I wondered what Dad
might have to say about it. Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, but actually only
a couple of years, we'd had the father son talk about girls. But neither of us
had any idea where and what I’d be now. And as much as I wanted some basis to
feeling right about the current situation, I was really in an emotional turmoil
about it.

But I was the Admiral, and I told my face
to not show anything of what was going on beneath. I was probably completely
transparent to anyone who cared about me, but I had to maintain the illusion
anyway.

And although the girls wouldn’t like it,
the chances are I'd be flaking out as soon as I went to bed rather than playing
with them. I had that much to do during the day, and evenings, even spending
this time trying to work out my feelings was an indulgence, and was slowing
down getting my work done. It couldn’t be helped, but it wasn’t helping.

Maybe once I'd been home a day or so, the
pressure would come off, and we could find somewhere to spend some quality time
figuring out what was, or was not, actually going on. Or maybe it would need to
wait until after the Door closed again.

What I was really grateful for, was two
sensible women in my life, who hadn't engaged in a cat fight as soon as they
met up. At least one of my dreams had proved to be just that. It was a comfort
to know not everything I saw while asleep was prophetic. But there was also
that nagging doubt that my nightmare was also just a nightmare, and nothing I
should be basing briefings about the end of everything on.

I sighed, as the next person wanting
something came in.

Just before the jump into Cobol, Jane
called me onto the Bridge.

"What's up?" I asked her, while
moving Angel off my seat to her pad.

She didn’t even stir as I did so, being
deep in la-la land for cats.

"There's a bounty hunter sitting in
coms range of the jump point."

I gave her the eyebrow raise, as if to say,
what of it?

"It's one of those you sent to Azgard,
while we were withdrawing."

"Oh."

"I thought we weren't doing oh
anymore?"

I debated the relative wisdom of calling an
AI a smartarse. It took so long the moment passed completely, so no comment
seemed necessary.

A channel opened the moment we jumped into
Cobol.

"Bloody hell Hunter! You took your own
sweet time getting back here."

He looked vaguely familiar. But I wasn’t
sure if I’d talked to him before or not.

"What can I do for you?"

"You can stop that oversized pile of
junk you're in, and fight me."

"Fight you why?"

"You sent us all to our deaths! I'm
the only one who survived, and I spent three miserable months hiding on Azgard
trying to fix my ship."

"Why were you hiding?"

"From the Midgard patrols,
stupid."

"For three months? The war didn’t last
that long."

"Well I didn’t know that, did I?"

The urge to face-palm arose once more.

"So why do you want to fight me?"

"Because of all the mates of mine who
died. You sent us there. You knew we wouldn’t survive. I demand
satisfaction!"

What was he? A throwback to the Knights of
the Round Table?

I felt more than heard BA stirring behind
me, not that I'd been aware anyone had come in. I held up a hand to her, trying
to head off the inevitable 'Over my dead body' comment I knew was coming.

"Well I'm not stopping. So if you want
to pick a fight, you either start shooting now, or we leave it for another
day."

"I'm not taking you on in a ship, for
fucks sake. I mean dueling swords at dawn."

He was some sort of throwback, but I wasn't
sure where to. No-one had fought sword duels in who knows how long.

I sighed.

"Fine, come on board. But be careful, as
I'm not slowing down for you. Park in one of the Flight Deck bays. I'll send
someone to escort you up."

The channel closed.

"You aren't serious about fighting a
duel, are you?" asked BA.

"You don’t think I'm up to it?"

She hesitated, obviously considering
something.

"Is this a trick question?"

I laughed. So did everyone else who had
come in.

"Let's just see what this bozo has in
mind when he gets here. And besides, it's not like I've not had any experience
with a sword."

"It's not the same thing," said
Dick. I turned to look at him. "A sword which cuts everything isn’t
exactly a teaching tool on how to defend against another sword. And if he wants
to duel, presumably he has his own set of dueling swords."

"Let's wait and see."

The bounty hunter ship was rapidly
approaching now. He'd lined up on the front Flight Deck entrance, being the
easiest to enter at the speed I was going. Actually the only way of entering at
the speed I was going.

Jane popped up screens so we could watch
him landing.

He sailed in safely enough, given the front
entrance was the smallest, and was fine until he tried to set down on the deck.

His ship cartwheeled. And kept on flipping
over the length of the Flight Deck, until it fell out the back entrance, and
tumbled away behind us.

"What an idiot," said Lacey, from
his seat in Camel. "Even the shuttle pilots knew to turn one eighty as
soon as they entered, and thrust as hard as possible, before setting down.
Silly git was still thrusting forwards."

"Guess he'd never landed on a Carrier
before," said George, from Custer. The laugh was only just controlled.

I nodded to Jane, and she sent an SR droid
and salvage droid after the obviously damaged ship. The salvage droid could tow
it somewhere to be repaired, or tow it to Hunter's Redoubt if its owner had
just killed himself. The SR droid was in case his life support was now down, as
it could keep him alive long enough to get him somewhere.

I had one of those thoughts. The ones which
really bother you.

"Spill it," said Amanda, who'd
obviously seen it cross my mind.

"It occurred to me, in spite of all
the military might we can gather at the moment; when prophesy gets here,
everything might hang on the actions of idiots like that."

"Fuck!" said BA.

That said it all really.