The Long Road to Gaia (15 page)

One tickled me with one instead.

"Good," she said.
"Everything is proceeding according to plan.

* *
*

I walked through the new Gunbus Corvette
with Jon and Bob, and couldn’t fault the design at all.

In as far as you can't hear a smile, I
could hear One smiling.

* *
*

Twelve and I watched Jon tear through a
formation of one Corvette and twelve Gladiators. The last four surrendered.

"I think he's ready," said Twelve,
sporting a shiner.

"Ready for what?"

He tapped his nose and vanished before I
could hit him again.

* *
*

I watched as the little white kitten chose
Jon. Just for once, I wished I could be corporeal just then, so I could pat the
kittens and play with them.

I sighed.

The kitten glanced in my direction, and I
froze. I wondered for a moment if she knew I was there, but it was a momentary
look, and I dismissed the notion.

There was something different about this
litter. And it wasn’t just that I wanted to have one of them.

"You will," said the voice of
One. "Wait."

* *
*

The full council sat in the lush green
countryside of the Pure Land. We'd all watched the events in the Midgard and
Pompeii systems, as Jon went through them like a tornado.

"Congratulations Thirteen," said
One. "Your training has paid off handsomely. The boy is gone. The warrior
is emerging."

I nodded to her, but wasn’t going to say
anything.

We kept watching.

* *
*

The station assault had gone off without a
hitch, under Jon's leadership.

The warrior was now fully in control of
him.

But as we were celebrating, the Colonel
caught our attention again. We went silent.

"This won't work," said the Colonel, shaking her
head.

Everyone looked at her.

"First you collect a Frigate. Then a Passenger Liner.
You go head to head with a Cruiser, and instead of it blowing you away, you
capture her single handed. And now you own a station? This won't work."

"What won't work?" Jon asked.

"Forget we ever talked to you about joining us. It
won't work."

Silence. Unhappy faces looked at her.

Twelve
looked sharply at One.

"We're joining you!"

The room went wild.

Twelve looked embarrassed. It didn’t help
that he was still showing signs of the shiner I’d given him.

We all went wild as well, other than Twelve.
One finally managed to get us to calm down.

"It wasn’t his ability to command that
was important to us. But his ability to lead, and more importantly, to be
followed."

She paused and looked at us all.

"The leader we need is now among us.
Now it really begins."

It was not often we reveled in human form.
Most of the others rarely took this form after all. But on this occasion, with
One beaming a smile around for a change, we partied Human style.

"Why did you do that?" I asked
One.

"Which that is this?"

"Don’t you start. I hear Jon say it
way too often."

"Yes."

The grin was almost enough for me to want
to wipe it off her face.

"Why the nightmare of the station
breaking up?"

"Jon needed a reminder of caution.
Things have gone his way too well, and he's ripe for making a mistake. I
thought a small reminder of how fragile things are, might keep him focused. He
has to do more than lead now. He has to keep people alive."

"Using a dream?"

"Dreams teach."

"Fine, be enigmatic."

Her grin became Cheshire.

* *
*

"Bloody Hell," said Five, as Jon
gave his crew his maniac grin. "You deliberately created this?"

One and I laughed.

A lot of Humans love what they call roller
coaster rides. Very few of them could have kept their lunch down on the ride
Gunbus had just given its crew on re-entering the Midgard system.

"The boy has talent," said Nine.
"Gotta give him that."

Gunbus blasted its way through the missile
barrage.

"Guts too," said Four.

"Yes," said One, "but look
at the crew."

"That man at the back is beyond
shit-scared."

"He didn’t choose to be there," I
said.

"Everyone else looks almost serene
about it."

"Exactly," said One.
"They've accepted both his leadership, and his fighting skills. Which is
what we need."

"The two Americans?" I asked her,
thinking I knew the answer.

"Will take the experience back to
their people, and start the process of accepting him there."

I looked sharply at One.

"Did you…"

"Yes."

I nodded to her.

She'd whispered in the American Admiral's
ear of the need to send observers with Jon. Thus ensuring they would be fed
back the right information for future decisions to be based on.

Sneaky!

* *
*

Jon bolted upright in bed and fell off it
completely, before crawling into the bathroom to throw up.

"Was that really necessary?"

"Giving him a dream of his station
blowing up and his people dying?"

"Yes."

"I didn’t."

"Who did?"

"He did. His own fears manifested
it."

"So it's not going to happen?"

"Of course not. At this point, if such
a thing was going to happen, I’d be sending you in to stop it."

"Ah."

I looked around the glade. There were more
than thirty of us here now, all watching a small group of Humans. I tried to
think when this had happened last, but as far as I could remember, it was
unheard of. Nothing had ever been this interesting to all of us at the same
time before.

I looked at One, and she nodded in another
direction.

I followed her gaze.

My jaw fell open.

* *
*

"Was that your doing?" I asked
One.

Jon had just been promoted to Captain.

"None of it," she said. "The
combat was all him, and the decision to offer him a commission in the ASF and
promote him was purely theirs."

I looked long and hard at her.

She seemed sincere.

It was hard to tell.

* *
*

"Pilots, I give you, Jon 'Maniac'
Hunter."

I took one look at One's face, and started
laughing at her.

She hadn't seen that one coming.

* *
*

One got everyone's attention.

"Now that Jon is beyond Midgard, we
can expect nothing much of interest to happen for a while. I suggest you all go
back to what you normally do."

No-one moved.

I couldn’t help it, but started chuckling.
My normal was at least, staying with Jon.

One by one, everyone left. The historic
occasion ended.

One nodded to me, before she too left.

I shifted myself to Gunbus, and continued
watching from close up.

Angel gave a quiet meow as I appeared, but
no-one seemed to notice anything.

* *
*

"Who'd have known?" said Jon.
"I started out to rescue you guys with a Corvette and a Privateer, and I'm
returning home with a station and a small fleet. With enough credits to refit
every ship. Wonders will never cease."

Amanda was suddenly serious.

"Is this all for Prophesy?" she
asked.

"I don’t know. Could be. But one thing
is for sure, as a Mercenary force, this team just became a whole new level of
bad-arse to be reckoned with."

Jon, the twins and George all high fived.

Twelve had appeared next to me.

"It’s a good question," I said to
him. "Is this all for prophesy?"

"Just the beginning," he replied.
"Drop in the bucket."

"What am I doing here Twelve? It looks
like things are going as One wants them, and Jon seems to have a handle on
things."

Twelve laughed.

"He may have a handle, but it's not
attached to anything yet. You trained him well Thirteen. He's dealing because
he can. But this won't last forever. You need to stick with him for when things
become unglued again. And they will."

"Swell."

* *
*

"Ah, sirs," said Jon into a vid.
"Apologies for appearing to be giving you orders. Suggestions, sirs,
suggestions."

He gave them a big grin, and closed the
vid.

One and Twelve had appeared to watch him
giving orders to superiors. We were all grinning.

"Is this what you wanted?" I
asked One. "Someone who ignores the chain of command and just gives orders
anyway?"

"Exactly what I wanted."

She and Twelve left me alone, and I watched
Jon eat.

Truth to tell, I was bored. Once the
battles stopped happening, normal space travel didn’t have anything to keep me
interested.

To amuse myself after Jon left, I turned on
Angel's cat ball, and she jumped on it. So I kept nudging it aside as she tried
to jump on it. Eventually, she tired of missing it, looked in my direction, and
meowed. She put her tail up straight, giving me a brown eye, and walked out.

Twelve's chuckle could be heard without him
needing to appear.

I joined Jon on the Bridge, and slouched
into a chair at the back unnoticed.

* *
*

Jon threw a vid from Miriam to the side
screen.

The opening notes of 'You can leave your
hat on' began, with Miriam standing in front of her pilot's chair, in full
uniform, with cap on. She proceeded to do an incredibly erotic strip tease, in
time to the song, ending with her saluting, stark naked, except for the cap.

Jon went bright red.

So did I. For the first time ever, I felt
embarrassed. Which didn’t really make sense to me, considering I’d seen them bonking
already. But I guess this was my first genuine strip tease, and, damnit, I was
reacting like a Human again.

Miriam was incredibly sexy though. She
looked rather like a young Nicole De Boer, much like she was in the original
Deep Space Nine. Only projecting a lot more authority and command presence.

Odd. A strip tease with command presence.
Strangely provocative.

Far too Human!

I sighed.

* *
*

There was the sound of a heavy weapon
firing and Jon was slammed backwards, landing heavily on his left side. He
stood up. His hands went for guns that weren't there. He'd never expected to
need guns on his own station. Sloppy thinking.

I was equally as guilty. It hadn't occurred
to me either.

Jon got angry. It wouldn’t be enough.

I got angry too. Together we could do
anything.

A platoon of soldiers were standing there
looking stunned that after a Pulse Rifle hit, Jon had stood straight back up
again.

I attached myself fully to Jon. His combat
routines had gone primary, but they wouldn’t be enough.

I took full control of his body.

We ran at the nearest soldier, who went
white. It didn’t help him, and our suit belt augmented fist slammed into him,
and he went down for the count.

Cold fury dominated us both, as we tore
through half the platoon, ignoring hits on our suit, arms and legs working in a
ballet of perfection, going from soldier to soldier, putting them down.

Another Pulse Rifle shot knocked us down
again. We got straight back up.

We went for the heavy weapon holder, put
him down, and kept on going.

Within minutes, the entire platoon was
down.

I eased back from Jon, remaining only
partially attached.

He checked his suit integrity and found it
at thirty six percent, but improving. We'd taken a lot of hits without being
aware of them. We looked at the people lying there.

"Stun them," I whispered to him.

He picked up the nearest gun, changed it to
a stunner, and shot all but the Colonel, who was out cold anyway.

One materialized next to me.

She took me back to the previous day.

Jon stood facing troops in formation.

"What the fuck are you people doing
here?" he bellowed at them. "You want a fair fight? Be a Boxer! You,
are supposed to be soldiers. This is a war. Our job is to hit the enemy and put
them down before they even know we're a threat."

"You, are on my station. The AI that
runs this station is reading your thoughts as you have them. The next person
who even thinks about defying the chain of command, who disrespects anyone for
any reason, will find themselves doing guard duty, outside an airlock, without
a space suit. Do you understand me?"

One dragged me back to the moment we left.

"You understand what must be
done?" she said.

I looked at her, shocked.

I looked again at the bodies on the deck.

I nodded to her, and she vanished.

I whispered to Jon again. He didn’t
hesitate.

"Janet, send me a grav sled please. I
have some trash to take out."

While the bodies were being loaded, I
monitored his thoughts. I threw a "No more Mr. Nice Guy" in there for
good measure. He might do what he had to, but he was too much of a nice guy,
and this image had to change. Spiritual or not.

He took out the trash. He went into the
airlock clean. He came out bloody. He casually walked back to Gunbus and
showered.

Back in his suite, Angel did a double take
on seeing us, and quietly climbed to the top of her kitty castle.

Jon went straight through to his bathroom,
stripped, and sat in the spa. The twins joined us shortly after.

"Guilds," I whispered to him.

Abagail pulsed him an edited vid of the
entire event, and he uploaded it to both the Mercenary and Bounty Hunter
Guilds.

"Message," I whispered.

He posted on both.

"I no longer take prisoners. You want
to die? Come after me. Better yet, shoot yourself and save me the
trouble."

No more Mr. Nice Guy.

The twins finally broke their silence and
asked Jon how he'd done it. He didn’t believe them when they told him his
combat routines were not enough.

I detached from him, and left them to talk.

"You had to do it Thirteen," said
Twelve. "He didn’t have the skill set to survive that by himself. You
taught him to be a pilot, not a marine. And the message had to be put out
there."

"I know. But now I'm the one who feels
dirty."

"Spend some time in the Pure Land. You
deserve a break. I'll keep an eye on things here for you."

"Fine."

I left him there, pretending he wasn't
gawking the twin's breasts.

* *
*

They were all back in the Pure Land, to
watch the battle of Avon. If anything, there were more of us now, than ever
before in one place.