Hunter Legacy 9: Hero at the Gates (10 page)

"You're showing fifth dimensional
awareness, in being aware of time at an unconscious level. Fifth dimensional
awareness for the spiritual person on the healing path also brings an awareness
of past lives, the easy reintroduction of skills previously lost, and knowledge
known before, but not known now. Hence most genuine know-it-alls tend to be
fifth dimensionally aware."

"You mean they live at the fifth
dimensional level?" Grace again.

"No. We are a three dee construct, and
can only exist in a three dee environment, within four dee space, and five dee
linear time. If you take a three dee construct and place it in a five dee
environment, it dies because only consciousness and energy can exist outside of
linear time. A lot of spiritual people get this wrong. There is no sex, coffee,
or chocolate outside linear time. To transition, the body must be discarded
first, which means dying. There is always someone talking about so called
planetary ascension, where the planet ascends to five dee, and everyone gets a
free ride there. But planets are not a three dee construct. People are. The
planet can ascend, but the people on it die. Some of them ascend to become
consciousness and energy outside linear time, but most reincarnate onto another
three dee planet somewhere. You cannot go outside linear time in a human body."

"Unless you travel around in a blue
box," laughed Aline.

We all laughed, and I was relieved when
there were no further questions. The whole concept of me being a Debt Collector
bothered me. It was not a role I would have chosen willingly. And yet I must
have, when making my soul contract for this life before being born. I felt like
I had a bone I needed to pick with Kali next time I saw her.

Bones, mmmmm.

I wasn’t going to go there.

I made my escape from the remains of lunch,
and headed back to the Bridge.

"ANGEL!"

Amanda was the first in after me, and she
stopped and started laughing. Aleesha walked straight into her sister's back,
looked to see what the problem was, and also started laughing. Jane was making
a huge effort to keep her expression neutral. Pretty well everyone did the same
thing as they came back in.

I was sitting cross legged on the console
on Angel's cat pad, facing towards Jane.

Angel was sitting in my chair, sitting up,
and acting like she was Captain.

The twins tickled her on the way past.

The jump into Last Hope was supposed to be
routine, as the nav map was clear.

Instead, something fired on us immediately
we down jumped. It took them ten seconds to fire, showing they were not
expecting us, but were reacting to our appearance. Ten seconds was pretty slow.
But it was too fast for me.

I gathered my legs underneath me and jumped
straight off the console, over the helm chair, landing a stride from my own
chair. Angel was already in mid leap off it, and she passed me going the other
direction. I thumped down into my chair, as she landed on the console, and
leapt onto her pad.

Our shields took a solid series of hits
from all around, and went down thirteen percent.

"Pirate fleet," said Jane.
"Multiple Cruisers, Destroyers, Frigates, and Corvettes, plus five
squadrons of Gladiators."

"All fighters launch," I said
into ship coms. "Break and Attack. Primary targets are Gladiators, secondary
are the Frigates and Corvettes."

Jack was half out of his seat, and
signaling to the twins and Sam.

"No Jack," I said quickly.
"We don’t have time for captures now. They picked a fight, we'll give them
one."

He subsided back into his seat, as did the
twins, and most of the alpha team.

"Buckle up," I said into ship
coms.

I locked up the nearest Cruiser close to a
line ahead of us, pulled the speed back so we wouldn’t shoot on past without
being able to fire, and lined her up. Most of my guns were pointing forward. At
Destroyer range, I gave it the full broadside, plus the thirty torpedoes in the
nose. Two seconds later, the Cruiser exploded, and I let us continue through
the debris field.

"Tagged and bagged," came though
ship coms, with a lot of other fighter pilot noise.

"Chalk one up for the Maniac," I
couldn’t resist adding.

I pushed in some speed, and took us out of
the immediate combat zone, where I pulled the speed off again, twirled us back
the way we'd come, and looked for the biggest threat. It was another Cruiser. I
locked it up, pushed in speed again, and headed back in.

"Firing missiles," said Jane
conversationally.

She had another Cruiser on a secondary
lock. Our missiles launched at it, as we swooped in on my second target. It saw
us coming, and desperately turned for open space, at the same time as this
brought all its main guns to bare on us. I fired off the Battleship guns as
soon as they were in range, and a full salvo of torpedoes.

The Cruiser Jane was engaging exploded
about five seconds before mine did. This time I pulled us around the debris
field.

"Someone get that Frigate!"
yelled Lacey. "It's going to ram…"

He was interrupted before he could say
more, but I had all the hint I needed. I touched the control to lock up the
closest ship, and found a Frigate on a ramming course with BigMother. She was
close, way too close to destroy before a collision occurred.

"Jon!" yelled Amanda, as she saw
the danger.

Time slowed.

The Frigate was off our left side, slightly
low and coming up at us, relatively speaking in space, and aiming for a middle
of the ship collision.

There was no time to turn. She was on us.

In slow motion, I rolled BigMother left,
without changing our course. Our left side rotated downwards, right side
rotating up, middle of the ship unchanged. It bought us a few seconds. In those
few seconds, I pulled us up, while continuing the roll.

It didn’t quite work. I was aiming for us
to roll right over the top of the Frigate, but it was too close. The roll
brought the top of ship into its line, and the two sets of shields collided.
The Frigate lost its shields immediately, while mine went down by half. The
shield collision bounced the Frigate down slightly, and I continued the roll
over the top of it.

Time returned to normal. The Frigate was
heading away from us now, and I targeted all the Destroyer guns I could on her,
and fired as soon as she was far enough away for them all to bare. One salvo
was enough to destroy the hapless, but nearly successful ship, which hadn't had
any chance to regenerate some shielding.

"Shit, that was close," said
Aleesha.

I had no time to comment. Another Cruiser
had fired on us, and I was turning towards it. Our shields had taken a beating,
now down below twenty percent, but the fire was diminishing now that the
smaller ships were being taken out of the fight, and the generators were
starting to make headway on getting them back up.

The last Cruiser fired on us once again,
and turned to flee. It managed to get half way around before my full broadside
smashed through its shields, and it exploded.

I brought us to a stop. There were a couple
of minor combats still in progress, but these ended quickly, as my pilots
picked off the last remaining pirates.

I looked at Jane.

She looked at me.

"Jane?"

"Jon?"

"Explanation?"

She batted her eyelids at me. I wasn’t
having it though. I gave her raised eyebrows in return. The Bridge was silent
for a long moment. I sighed. Sometimes her not wanting to answer started to
annoy me.

"How come there was a pirate fleet
waiting for us, and we didn’t know they were here?"

"No ship ID's."

"How is that possible?" asked
Abigail.

"No idea," said Jane. "It
shouldn’t be possible."

"It obviously is," I said.

"Perhaps," said Abigail, lost in
thought, "we need to update the comnavsats to also report mass without
ID's anywhere near them."

"Do it," I commanded. "I
guess it was only a matter of time. There has been plenty of incidents where we
might have been observed to apparently know what was on the other side of a
jump point, for the pirates to figure it out. Even if they didn’t know how we
knew, preventing the ID's from broadcasting was an obvious step to take, to
stop anyone from knowing you were there, or knowing who you were."

"As you said before boss," said
BA, "Whenever we make an advance, it's only a matter of time before the
bad guys catch on and counter it."

"The other question," said
Annabelle, "is why they were here?"

Everyone looked at Jane again.

"No data," she said. "We
didn’t leave an operational computer to sift through. Although there may be
some prisoners we can interrogate. SR droids are out there now."

"What do we do with the mess?"
asked Dick.

I thought for a moment.

"I'm not sticking around to do
cleanup, that’s for sure. Jane, drop off some salvage droids to clean the
debris field up, making a big solid mass out of it. Also leave some tugs to
take it back to the Shipyard in Treasure Chest."

"Confirmed."

"As soon as everyone is aboard, get us
moving to the planet." I paused. "I assume there is only one planet
in this system capable of supporting life?"

"Good assumption."

"Then we better go find out if the
pirates have been there or not."

I turned to Jack.

"Better prepare for another ground
action, just in case. This system is so far from anywhere important, it
wouldn’t surprise me if the pirates made it a fall back base. If they did,
we'll have to take it away from them."

I turned back to Jane.

"Any data on what's here?"

"Actually," said Annabelle,
"I can tell you that."

All eyes turned to her, some of them in the
process of getting up.

"An ancestor of mine was responsible
for removing the last group of people from Earth, in its last days as its
atmosphere became toxic, and the storms made everywhere unsafe to be. They were
forcibly removed, loaded onto the last colony ship of the exodus period, and
brought here, being the only remaining unsettled planet known at the time. It
was called Last Hope, because for them, it was. It was a mixed group of people,
and they have largely ignored the rest of humanity, especially making the point
of not joining one of the local sectors. By all accounts, they trade with those
who come, but don’t seek any contact with anyone. They never wanted a station,
so it's mainly small freighters which visit."

"How come you know so much?"
asked Alison.

"It's a pilgrimage for anyone in my
family who join the military. We go there to be reminded the price of following
orders."

"You make it sound like it’s a harsh
place," I said.

"No, it's quite a nice planet. But the
locals haven’t forgotten being uprooted against their will, and forcibly
brought here. Spending time with them gives one a dose of reality."

"All ships docked or landed,"
interjected Jane.

"Get us moving to the planet then. I
just hope the pirates haven’t been giving the locals a bad time.

"Confirmed."

I settled down to doing yet more releases.

"Pirates? Nah, every time they show
up, we hide from them. We leave out some supplies, a few trinkets and whatnot,
so they can have fun looting, but they never see sight nor sound of us, or
anything we value."

The man on the screen looked serious and
determined.

"You won't either," he added,
"so don’t bother coming down. We know you're a Merc unit, and we only
entertain very select ones of those. And only when they seek an invitation
first."

"I hadn't intended on coming down. We
took out a pirate fleet at the jump point, and wanted to make sure you were all
right. Two systems over, we found pirates using slaves for labour. If the same
was going on here, we'd be on the way down already to set you free."

"That’s a mite generous of you to be
sure, but completely unnecessary as I said." He seemed to be looking
around the Bridge. "Is that a Smith in the chair next to you?"

"I am," said Annabelle.
"Brigadier General Annabelle Smith. But I was a green Lieutenant when I
visited here last."

"I recall. Excuse me saying, but I
didn't think you had it in you to get stars. None of your family ever do if I remember
rightly. Too much reality in ya. Pisses off the brass. It's one of the reasons
we tolerate you coming. We blame the original Smith for bringing us here, but
if he hadn't been such a hard-arse with his superiors, we wouldn’t have
survived very long here. He made them include a full colony start-up package.
Without it, this planet would have beaten us."

"It sounds like a story I'd like to
hear," I said.

"Well I'm not tellin it," the man
said. "Git going, I got stuff to be doing, and yammering with you aint
gunna get it done."

I threw him a mock salute, and the channel
closed.

"Put us on course for the next jump
point Jane."

"Confirmed."

"What's the next system called?"
asked Grace.

"Not named as far as we know,"
said Jane.

"We have some unofficial names,"
said Magnus from the rear.

All eyes turned to her.

"Prometheus mapped the jump points,
but didn’t name any of the systems. Our first crew to run the route, back with
the first test to get through, gave them names, but we never submitted
them."

"What names?" asked Dick.

"We named them for the four horsemen
of the apocalypse."

"The systems are that bad?" I
asked.

"Oh yes. Each has its own problems.
You'll see."

She grinned.

"Four Horsemen?" asked Alana.
"Isn't that biblical?"

"Yes," said Magnus. "And seemingly
appropriate. The system we enter next is called War. Then comes Famine,
Pestilence, and Death."

"And of course," said Sam,
"you're telling us Prometheus is in Death."

"Where else? The system is lethal.
What better name for it?"

Better indeed.

The Last Hope system was a standard two
jump point system, with them located on opposite sides of the star. Visiting
the planet hadn't added much extra to travel time, and so not long after
dinner, we arrived. There hadn't been anything more of interest. I'd caught up
on email work, before going down for dinner.

There was a comnavsat at the jump point,
but not one on the other side. So we had no idea what we were about to jump
into. I'd had Jane slow us right down for this jump. There was no point in
taking chances.

"Jumping," said Jane.

"Shit!" said the twins together,
as I yanked our heading upwards.

The huge asteroid we'd been on a collision
course for, floated serenely by below us. I brought us to a stop. Jane popped
up external cam screens.

Beneath us, in all directions, was the
asteroid field to end all asteroid fields.

"What have we got Jane?"

"Red giant sun, but it's not as big as
I would expect. Certainly no sweet-spot here. Whatever inner planets this
system once had, were long ago eaten by the sun."

"Makes sense," said Dick.

"How so?" I asked.

"War rides a red horse. So a red sun
makes the system aptly named."

"What gives with asteroids so far
out?" I asked Jane.

"I'm not sure. I can't detect any
planets. The entire system appears to be a giant rock field. There's no rings
either, so we're not seeing destroyed planets. The asteroid field simply covers
the whole plane of the system, between the sun itself, and where an Oort cloud
should be. It's like planetary bodies never formed here."

"Like the whole system is at war with
itself?" suggested BA.

"Fairly apt," said Alison.

"Where's the next jump point?" I
asked.

"About 5 hours away, over past the
left of the sun. But avoiding both the sun and the asteroids, will add another
hour. War into Famine represents the bottom line of the Z."

"Launch the mapping Hives, a comnavsat,
and hit it."

"Confirmed."

I thought for a moment, doing the math.
Going fast would bring us to the next jump point around two in the morning. We
needed to do this fast, but doing it too fast in the middle of the night, was a
recipe for disaster. Night and day were the same in space, but people were not.
Two in the morning was the low ebb of functionality for most people. When you
could avoid doing foolish things at foolish times, it was better to.

"On second thoughts, slow us down, so
we arrive at the next jump point around seven in the morning. If we skip
training and have an early breakfast, we can jump in ready for anything."

"Confirmed."

BA was frowning, but Annabelle and Jack
nodded to me.

I sent everyone off to whatever evening
entertainment they were into, and suggested early nights.

Angel and I stayed on the Bridge, watching
a strangely fascinating asteroid field sweep by underneath us. Sometime after
eleven, Aline practically dragged me back to my suite. Angel trotted in
sometime later after we had stopped moving around, and curled up between us.

"GOOD MORNING WAR!"

Breakfast was a fast affair for everyone,
and the Bridge was well settled by the time we arrived at the jump point. The
Hives had met us there, and docked for jump. They hadn't found another jump
point, or anything else of much interest. The whole system was a red sun with
rocks. The only really interesting thing was no asteroid rings, just wall to
wall rocks. Most systems had asteroid rings, where a planet hadn't been able to
form, or had been destroyed. Jane was still looking, but she thought this one
was unique in being just randomly placed rocks.

We dropped a comnavsat. The jump into
Famine was done cautiously, but proved to be routine. There was nothing there
to worry us on down jump.

Actually, there appeared to be nothing
there at all.

"Black dwarf sun," announced
Jane. "And as far as I can tell, there is nothing else here."

"Bit like Midnight," I said.

"Exactly like midnight, although
Midnight's sun is a lot hotter. Four hours to the jump point. It's to our
right, and not far past the sun. Famine into Pestilence makes the center of the
Z."

"Famine rode the black horse,"
said Dick.

"Rinse and repeat," I ordered.

"Rinsing."

A comnavsat shot out. Followed by the
Hives. Jane started us moving.

"Training!" said BA with a grin.