Hunter Legacy 11: Home Is Where the Hero Is (6 page)

"I thought that went well," said
the Keeper once we were back in his office.

I had my doubts myself, so I just gave him
the look. The one that says 'yeah right'. I changed the subject.

"Before I forget, who designed the new
Hub joined to the station?"

"My idea, but fully executed by the
local shipyard manager. Not that you’d really call it a shipyard, since it
doesn’t actually make many ships. It's more of a repair yard."

"And yet it produced the Hub."

"Yes. Let me ask you a question. How
many stations do you think are coming here?"

"I've no idea."

"Gut instinct?"

"Hundreds."

"Exactly. So stage one is a method of
connecting stations of different sizes safely. Allows us to make stations all
belonging to the same sector, or grouping, join together to make a single
entity they can administer for themselves."

"And stage two?"

"We design a rapid transit system to
overlay the whole structure. That part is still on the drawing board."

"Where will you put them?"

"We don’t know yet. They could be
strung in a ring around each planet, sort of like the Earth Torus. Or they
could be grouped and given a fixed position in the system to occupy."

"Or both, and we let each station
decide for themselves."

"Or we let each station decide for
themselves. I'm pretty sure some of them will want to isolate themselves, and
others we will want to isolate. The council will need to make that
determination."

"Are they up to it?"

He laughed.

"We have time to see if they
are."

"Time? Do you know when the Darkness
is coming?"

"Sorry no. I didn’t mean to imply
that. I told you, I know only what you do."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Of course you do. I seem to know too
much for me not to know more. But I assure you, I don’t."

I sighed.

"It's put your prophecy where your
mouth is time," I told him.

He sighed.

"You really want to know?"

"Yes."

"You are not going to like it."

"You already told me that."

He looked at me hard for a long moment.

"Jon, take my advice and walk out of
this room now. You have enough to convince the council, to plan for the future,
and fulfil your legacy."

"Legacy? Explain."

"The Hunter Legacy. I've studied every
record there is about your family. It began in the nineteen hundreds with a boy
named Jonathon Hunter, who at the age of ten was convinced he was taking his
family into space. Over six hundred and fifty years later, having crossed half
of space along this arm of the galaxy, and against all the odds, this legendary
family produces you. You are the legacy of a family which rightly should have
died out a long time ago. And yet, the legacy continues. You are the one who
must save mankind. Or at least, some of them. That will be your legacy. Making
sure the Human race continues."

"How do you know all of this?"

"I'm the Keeper. It's my job. It's my
life. A keeper has been close to every member of your family since they first
left Earth. All the sacrifice of our order over the centuries has brought you
here to me, now."

"And you want me to walk away?"

"Yes."

I looked at him as if he was mad.

"No."

"As you wish."

He reached into a desk drawer and pulled
out a pad. He dropped it neatly in front of me.

"Read," he commanded.

I picked it up, and read.

The bulkhead
rushed at me. For a few seconds I was floating. An idle thought - bulkheads were
not supposed to do that. It smashed into me. Or more correctly, I smashed into
it. For a few seconds I hung there. My left side was on fire. The bulkhead
moved away. For a few seconds more I hung there, arching slowly over backwards,
uncontrollably in free fall. Gravity reasserted itself and I fell to the deck.
I lay there in agony. Thankfulness for carpet on the deck did not come until
later.

I looked up at him.

"What the fuck is this?"

He smiled at me, the sort of smug smile you
automatically want to hit. I restrained my annoyance. For the moment.

"Don’t you recognize it?" he
said.

"It's a description of the moment the
missiles hit Wanderer, a year ago yesterday."

"Yes. And?"

I felt sick all of a sudden. I suddenly
knew. I looked at him for confirmation. He nodded.

"It's as if I wrote a diary of the
event," I whispered.

"Exactly."

I read on, with increasing horror.

"How is this possible?" I asked
him finally.

"Scroll back."

I did so. Now I noticed the big 'One' at
the top of the first page. I scrolled back further, through a list of chapter
numbers. Then I read …

This book is a
work of fiction. The names, characters, places and events are fictional and
have no relationship to any real person, place or event. Any resemblance to
persons, living or dead, is purely co-incidental.

"Huh?"

"Back further."

Hero
at Large

By
Timothy Ellis

The
Hunter Legacy, Book One

"Read the date."

I flipped the page.

Copyright © 2014 by Timothy Ellis

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?" I yelled
at him.

The door opened, and Jane poked her head
in. Seeing me in distress, she came in.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"THIS!"

I waved the pad at her.

"Which this is that?" she said
with a laugh.

I threw the pad at her. She caught it
nimbly, and glanced at it. She did a double take, and started scrolling pages
rapidly.

"Holy shit!" she said, still
reading at the speed of, …, at speed.

I was losing it. I could feel all
rationality slipping away.

Jane stopped abruptly and tapped a couple
of times.

"Oh my giddy aunt!"

"What?" I demanded.

She ignored me, tapped again, and began
scrolling rapidly again. Her eyes flicked to me several times, before she
finally stopped, and tapped once again.

"WHAT?"

Even I could hear the hysteria in my voice.

She showed me the index of the pad.

The first entry said 'Hero at Large'.

There were nine more of them, ending with
'Hero at the Gates'.

"Ten books?" I croaked.

Jane nodded.

"Nine books, and one short
story."

"All written like I wrote a
diary?"

She nodded again.

"How long?"

"They cover the last year, up until
the moment we jumped into Gaia."

"How?" I screamed.

The Keeper flinched. Jane looked at me
calmly.

"It seems the last year of your life
was written as a series of novels by someone named Timothy Ellis, beginning in
the year two thousand and fourteen."

"WHAT THE FUCK?"

The words echoed as a high pitched screech,
and I could hear running boots coming towards the office. But suddenly I was
dizzy and finding it hard to get a breath in.

Everything went black.

"Welcome back sunshine," said
Carter.

I looked around, and yes, I was back in
station medical.

"What happened?"

"You fainted."

Memory rushed in.

"FUCK."

"Jon, calm down. Your blood pressure
is dangerously high."

I ignored her.

"Where's the Keeper?" I demanded.

"In the next room. But you're in no
state for visitors."

"Get him in here. Now."

"No."

I looked at her. Every book and series
where the good doctor could tell the captain what to do in a medical crisis,
came to mind all at once. Now I knew what they all felt, being given orders on
their own ship. Bullshit. I got a grip.

"Doc?"

"Yes?"

"Get him in here. Now."

"No."

I pinged Amanda to frog-march the Keeper in
here if she had to, but get him here immediately.

The door opened, and the Keeper walked in.

"Out," said Carter, to the
Keeper.

"Out," I said to her.

We locked eyes. She opened her mouth to say
something, but closed it again. She took a look at the monitors, and quietly
left, closing the door behind her.

He came over to the bed I was lying on, and
stood there looking down at me.

"YOU. KNEW."

I paused to see if he would react. He
didn’t.

"DIDN’T. YOU."

"Yes."

"You let me go to my death and back
again when you could have stopped it."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Isn't that obvious?"

"Join the dots."

He pulled a chair over and sat down next to
me.

"A lot of what was once known is lost,
and some of what I think is only conjecture based on what we have. But it goes
like this. In 2014, a man named Timothy Ellis began writing a series of novels
he called The Hunter Destiny. We know of only eight full novels, one novella,
and a short story. We suspect there were more, because the last one mentions
books ten and eleven, but if they were ever written, they haven’t survived
time."

"And?"

"We're not sure. Someone found the
series early on, and not only loved the story, but came to the conclusion it
was all true. Why, we don’t know, same as we don’t know why the books were written
in the first place. By the time Galactica left orbit, the first group of
Keepers were on board, they considered the books to be Prophesy, and they were
almost fanatical about keeping the series safe for the future."

"Why didn’t they know when all this
was supposed to happen if they had something they thought was true?"

"Good question. None of the books
contain any date reference of any kind."

"Figures."

"Indeed. And it gets worse. We know
there was an accident on Galactica which killed all the Keepers. Anything they
knew and had been passing down verbally to each new Keeper, was lost with them.
A new Keeper started the order up again, and has successfully brought us the
books across the centuries, but as I said, all we know is what you know,
because you lived it."

"What do we know about this author
bozo?"

"Not much. He was spiritual, and in
poor health at the time of writing the series. You should actually recognize
the name."

"Should I?"

"He wrote 'The Wisdom of the Ages,
Accrued Karma', and several other books your people used to teach you spiritual
concepts."

"Fuck."

The name hadn't rung any bells. I wondered
why.

"How spiritual was he?"

"Very, apparently, although his
awakening happened later in life."

"He channeled?"

"We have to assume so, don’t we?"

"Who?"

"Could have been any of the higher
ups. You visited them several times. At a guess I’d say Kali, or perhaps
Sariel."

"Why make prophecy this way?"

"You tell me and we'll both
know."

We went silent for several minutes, as my
thoughts went crazy with speculations.

"Are you okay?" the Keeper asked
me.

"Why wouldn’t I be?"

"You're the one lying on a bed with
high blood pressure."

I sighed.

"Who else knows?"

"Ah. Officially, only me, and now you,
and Jane."

"And unofficially?"

"I let slip a few things over the
course of the year to your parents, to keep them from worrying too much. It was
in strict confidence, and I'm very sure they told no-one."

I sighed again.

"Please tell me they didn’t read about
me in my bedroom."

"They didn’t read about your sexual
antics, no. But I did tell them you had girlfriends and was living life to the
fullest."

Which explained my mother taking Aline and
Miriam aside when we arrived. She'd have picked them out on the ramp, just from
how they looked at me. Even if she didn’t know their names, their names and
ranks were freely available on their social profiles, and even Mum would know
to check those, even if no-one had ever told me about social settings. I guess
that was down to me. I'd never been much for social interaction outside school.

The Keeper was grinning at me. I still
wanted to hit him, but I was calming down now.

"I'm going to try and forget you
did."

"Good plan."

"What do we do now?"

"You need to eat something, before the
big meeting this afternoon."

"I'm not telling anyone Prophesy was a
series of novels."

"No, best not to."

"It stays between you, me, and
Jane."

"Yes."

"Confirmed."