Hunter Legacy 11: Home Is Where the Hero Is (24 page)

"Enjoying yourself boss?"

"Indeed yes."

"Was it a good idea to do it so
publically?"

"Oops."

It hadn't occurred to me.

"I've locked down the feed for now,
but what do I tell the Media?"

"Make an announcement to the effect
this is the weapons test of the first Dreadnaught class ship, named Relentless,
which has been built by Hunter Security in response to the threat of the
Darkness, expected to invade our arm of the galaxy in six months from now. More
ships are being developed to combat this threat, but Relentless is the first
new class of Battleship sized ships to be commissioned. Several Super-Cruisers
have been commissioned this week as well, one of which will be seen coming down
the spine on assignment, escorting the newest Apricot Mapping Service Cruiser.
We have new smaller ships being built as well, but preference is being given to
the bigger ones first. Announcements of other commissioning's will be made at a
later date."

"Put more diplomatically I
assume?"

"Of course."

"What can I tell them about her
specs?"

"Not much. Just say she has the
firepower of two and half Repulse class Battleships, but with a faster top
speed."

"Anyone who's never seen a Battleship
firing before, is going to wet themselves."

"Meaning you have people there
changing their smalls as we speak?"

"Yep."

We both laughed. She vanished.

"You may fire when ready,
Grisly."

Jane didn’t respond, but the ship did two
more full broadsides while rolling, and another section of the asteroid field
turned into dust.

"Re-designate any moving rock about
missile sized as a missile, and test the Mosquitos."

The ship continued rolling and each Mosquito
launcher belched its one hundred mozzies as it came to bare on the field. Each
launcher had its medium level AI, coordinated by a Jane clone in the computer
room in the core of the ship, which itself was independent of Jane controlling
the rest of the ship.

The whole area was quickly filled with tiny
streaks, which each became a small explosion.

"Now designate any rock coming towards
us as a missile, but only use the Point Defense."

I turned to one of the drone cams. The ship
lit up like a Christmas tree, and flickered madly for about five seconds.

The roll stopped, and we sat there.

Angel turned around to look at me, right
paw raised. I rose, walked over to her, and we high fived.

The dining table had been moved out into
the living room, and was piled high with food and drink. The team were all
here. Some of them I hadn't seen for a while, and some of them were not who I
considered 'the team'. I really did need to talk to Jane about definitions. The
team was Annabelle, Amanda, Aleesha, Aline, Alison, Abigail, Alana, and Agatha.
Also George, but he wasn’t in the system.

Jane had also invited Grace, Amy, Melissa,
Dick, Jack and Sam. Jane was here herself of course, and so was D-Jane, and she
had been introduced to my mother, who'd been glad there was someone else her
own age around. It wasn’t that she'd complained about too many pretty young things
around me, as she'd, well, complained exactly like that. Not to me mind you,
but Jane had picked it up and let me know. Out of Annabelle, D-Jane, and my
mother, the latter was the younger. Or so she thought. They were all over forty,
and that was all which really mattered. It was just possible the number forty
still had significance to Mum. It was after all, one of those milestones people
had a hard time dealing with. Or so my Uncle had told me on some of our trips
in Wanderer before the Door opened, and all this madness began.

Angel, Max, and Nut were here too, and
Jeeves was having a hard time keeping them off the table.

Blowing things up had been nicely cathartic
for me. The whole 'I'm an open book' thing was behind me now, and I was settled
with the notion of space being my home. Blowing things up seemed to make Angel
happy as well. Go figure.

But something still niggled at me. Aline
knew it, but I don’t think anyone else did. She didn’t mention it though. What
was more alarming was the readiness with which she was acting as hostess. I'd
expected my mother to take that role, but she'd been quite happy ensconced in a
comfortable chair being sought out by everyone else.

The main conversation around her seemed to
be anecdotes about the younger me. I stayed well out of hearing range, and made
a point of ignoring the looks flashed at me, all with grinning faces.

Amy button holed me at one point, when I
was standing there alone.

"You caused quite a stir today."

"So you told me."

"Not that. When you arrived back at
the station."

"Huh?"

"Maybe you weren’t paying attention,
but Jane circled the entire station before coming in to dock. If there were
more than a dozen people on the whole station who weren’t either in the docking
areas watching the Dreadnaught go by the windows, or watching on a screen, I'd
be very surprised."

"Hasn’t anyone seen a ship dock
before?"

"Not one this big, or so strangely
shaped."

"BigMother is bigger."

"But she's a conventional shape. It's
probably just as well we're playing up the coming of Darkness."

"Why?"

"Because if we didn’t have that reason
for building a warship so big, sector leaders would now be shitting themselves."

"I think some are anyway," said
Jane as she joined us. "Relentless, more than anything, may cause the arms
race we need, even if it's not for the reason we want the ships built. Earth
just announced they are building bigger Battleships. Since the largest ship
they have now is a Cruiser, I’d say either the Earth sector politicians are
changing their shorts after seeing you demolishing an asteroid field for fun,
or that Admiral you love is raising hell because he knows he can't beat you in
a fight if it comes down to one."

"Whatever. If it gets more ships
built, who cares what the motivation is."

"Yes, but, a couple of months from
now, we need to head down spine with a significant fleet. We don’t want to be
fighting a war in the Earth system because some idiot is shit scared of
us."

"Point. Amy, that’s your job from now
on. The media here need to be totally behind our message of defending the arm
from an alien invader. Bribe people if you have to, but make sure anyone who
talks our message down, is made a laughing stock, or their message is revealed
as complete rubbish in very simple terms everyone can understand."

"Thanks boss. I need a
challenge."

She didn’t sound very enthusiastic. Jane
seemed distracted. It suddenly occurred to me I’d asked her to do exactly what
I'd always hated of the Media.

"No, don’t do that. Just make sure our
message is heard."

"That I can do."

"What?" I said to Jane, who still
looked distrcted.

"Thirteen was telling me One has an
organization which has been doing exactly that all year. Remember your
memorandum and how it wasn’t initially broadcast? That was One's doing."

"Figures. Is he here now?"

"Thirteen?"

"Yes."

"For fucks sake show yourself
Thirteen. If you're going to crash a party, have the decency to be seen doing
it."

He materialized slightly behind me, looking
sheepish.

"Sorry. Force of habit."

"And stop standing behind me all the
time. If you're going to be a person, be a bloody person, and mingle."

Those around me laughed. He grinned as
well, and made off to talk to Annabelle.

"I wonder who else is here who isn’t
supposed to be."

"You really want an answer to that
Jon?"

"No. I know already. Or at least, I
can guess. I'm just grousing about it."

"We know," said Amy.

Jane stiffened.

"What?"

"Trouble."

"What sort?"

"Not sure. There's a travel car
approaching, and it's dark to me."

"Who's armed?" I asked as I
started towards the door.

"Just you and me, and I've only my
stunners."

"What's going on…" came from Amy
behind me, but just then, a combat suit burst through the door.

"Nobody move!" yelled the combat
suit.

Movement and conversation stopped. The
voice gave no indication of gender. Or anything else about the occupant.

"One of the new prototypes," said
Jane through my PC.

The combat suit was carrying a large gun,
and its arm stunners were out as well. The gun was pointing at the heavens
above us. One arm was pointed at me. It would be possible to fire both at the
same time.

Time stopped.

I looked over at Thirteen, who was looking
at me.

"I've got this," I said to him.
"It's not a problem."

"You sure?"

"Positive. Everyone in this room has a
belt on. If the ceiling is breached, everyone is safe. The room has air points
all over the place, so no-one will be without air for long. And the suits will
protect anyone who gets shot while going for air. Even with the prototype
gun."

"Fine."

Time started again.

I moved to stand between the combat suit
and everyone else. The stunner on the arm tracked me.

"Don’t move," the combat suit
bellowed again.

"What do you hope to achieve
here?" I asked.

"Your death."

"What did I do?"

"You killed my parents."

"Where?"

"The mining base."

I sighed. Actions have consequences. Cause,
meet effect.

"Have you seen the feeds of what
happened there?"

"I didn’t need to. I got told all I
needed to be told. You killed them."

"They were shooting at a defenseless
girl and her baby."

"And that justifies killing
them?"

"I gave them fair warning. I told them
the consequences. I asked them to stop, and let us go. They made their choice.
They started shooting. They died because they chose to shoot unarmed
people."

"Except you weren’t unarmed."

"I never am. I told them that. They
didn’t believe me. Even now, I can kill you before you can do anything about
it."

"Why haven’t you then?"

"Because I don’t want to."

"Well you better. Because I'm going to
open this room to space and kill everyone."

"Let me tell you what's going to
happen if you do."

"Oh please, this should be
interesting."

"No-one will die. No-one will even be
hurt. The air will be sucked out, and we will all be standing here, perfectly
fine, waiting for you to make your next move. If you do nothing, then five
hours from now, you die when your suit air runs out. It'll be boring waiting,
but what the hell. If you try to hurt someone, I'll cut you in half, and then
we'll evacuate this deck in an orderly fashion, and send in the droids to clean
up."

"You cut my parents in half."

"Yes. I'm sorry I had to."

"You're a monster."

"No, the monster was the man who
kidnapped my son and his mother. The monster was the man who shot her in the
head and the heart, and turned the gun on my son. The monsters were the people
who stood there and watched him do it."

A sob came from the combat suit.

"You don’t want to do this," I
went on. "That would make you the monster. And only you would die as a
result."

"I can gain control of the combat suit
now, Jon," said Jane through my PC. "Should I?"

"Wait," I told her. "Let's
offer the chance to do the right thing first."

"Your cat would die," said the
suit.

I accessed the collars of all three cats,
and shifted them to full space suits. The suits immediately sought out air
points, and connected. None of them were impressed, and Nut and Max immediately
tried to get them off.

"See?"

I looked around, and Amanda shifted into a
space suit. One after the other, so did everyone else, including my Mum. I
looked back at the combat suit.

"What about you and them?"

The arm pointed at me shifted to point
first to Jane, and then Thirteen. And back to me.

"Mine will activate as soon as there's
a threat. They don’t need air."

"What?"

"You have no idea what you walked into
here, have you. Your parents were the same. They and the man they followed were
completely clueless as to our level of combat tech, and the nature of the real
world."

"We only wanted to keep what is ours.
Your stupid prophecy shouldn't be used to usurp our homes."

I looked at Thirteen. And back again.

"The Keepers did too good a job of limiting
what was known about Prophesy. Maybe if more had been released a long time ago,
your parents wouldn’t have made stupid assumptions."

"Don’t call my parents stupid!"

"Sorry. Misguided then."

"How on Gaia were they
misguided?"

"Has it ever occurred to you why a
system with four Earth type planets capable of supporting in excess of twenty
billion people without destroying the ecosystem was colonized by only a few
thousand and then hidden away?"

"No," the combat suit said
grudgingly. "But it's our home. Why should we share it with billions
because of some hokey old prediction?"

Kali appeared next to me.

"Because child," she said
sternly, "Gaia was created to be the final hiding place of all
humanity."

The combat suit shook, and backed up a few
steps. Kali waved a hand, and the guns vanished from the suit.

"It's over," I said. "In
case you don’t recognize her, this is Kali. Power the suit down, and step out
of it."

The suit powered down, and a girl stepped
out of the back. She wasn’t more than sixteen as far as I could see. I shifted
the cat suits back to collars, and the cats indignantly raced to the top of the
nearest tree.

"I might have known," muttered
BA.

"One of yours?" I asked her with
a grin on my face.

She nodded, as did Aline.

"What are you going to do with
me?" asked the girl.

BA looked at me, and I nodded. She started
forward, followed by Aline.

"Well for starters," said BA,
"you better really like KP duty. Cause you're going to be doing it for the
rest of your life."

She and Aline took the now cringing girl by
each arm, and led her out. The combat suit powered up, and walked out after
them.

"I had that," I said to Kali.

"Did you now, young Jon. Well maybe
you did, and maybe you didn’t. And maybe I like to make an entrance now and
again."

"You certainly did that."

"I did nothing."

And she vanished.

"Was that really Kali," asked my
Mum.

"Yes," said the twins together.

"Your Dad is going to be so pissed
when he hears he missed out on all this."

The room burst into laughter.

"Any punishment boss?" pinged BA.

"No. Do what you think is appropriate.
Show her the complete feeds of the whole mining station incident. If she wants
to quit, let her go. Give her to Jane to take to one of the Australian planets,
and start a life. If she wants to stay in boot camp, give her the normal
punishment for screwing up, and then see why she chose a combat suit without
having been trained on one yet. Be useful to know how she got the prototype,
and what she did to hide from Jane. With luck, the gun is back where she found
it, but you better check."

"Will do."

The party restarted, but only Aline
returned. Thirteen was nowhere to be seen.