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

While we were in the shower, Jane filled me
in on our progress home. Or lack thereof, since we were now in the Morocco
system, and heading core-ward still. There had been nothing out of the ordinary
between Libya Orbital, through Treasure Chest, and into Morocco. Jane had
stopped us after the jump long enough for Jessie Ball to re-dock.

I threw myself into training for a change,
coming out of the shower again after, feeling good. I bolted down a half decent
breakfast, which was quite unusual for me. I could see some questions forming
around the table, and cut them off before they could be asked, by heading for
the Bridge.

I checked my seat for cat before sitting,
and she looked up at me with an innocent expression.

"Off," I said.

Meow.

"Off," I repeated.

Her ears folded back slightly, but she
reluctantly rose, shook her hind leg at me, and jumped down. She sedately
padded into the Ready Room, tail held high.

I dusted off cat fur, and sat.

Jane nodded at me from her normal spot, and
popped up the nav map before I could ask for it. From Morocco, the spine ended
with the Last Hope system. Beyond, was nothing.

I asked Jane to whisper in Jessie's ear,
and have her come up. If anyone knew what was ahead, she did. If not, I’d have
to ask Magnus, and I didn’t particularly want to.

Morocco was the real end of the line for
Human space. Heading core-ward, and in two dimensional terms, it was the last
stop for the Latin American sector on the right, and the African sector on the
left. I knew almost nothing about the sectors themselves, except what the nav
map revealed, and the basic history which all kids learn, and normally forget.

Jessie bounded in, and I waved her to the
XO's chair.

"You're still with us," I said.

"Indeed. Boss's orders. I'm to map
where you go as much as possible. You're to consider it payment for my
services."

"Fair enough. You haven’t been this
far before?"

"Personally, I've been as far as Last
Hope. As much as the boss wants to explore the systems after that, they've
always been too dangerous. I notice you don’t have them on your nav map. I'll
have Tag'Em release them to Jane."

"He's never considered making a custom
big ship to do the job?"

"He's considered it, but it's never
been justifiable. I think he's been pondering the job since he took delivery of
Apricot One, but the reputation for the systems beyond Last Hope is so bad, I
suspect he thinks even a Corvette to not be up to the job."

"How big is the jump point
detector?"

"Not big. It's basically an add-on to
a more normal sensor package."

"How well have the systems ahead been
checked?"

"As far as the AMS knows, they've had
the basic checks, going back as far as when Prometheus first went through, but
no-one has had our level of detector in there before."

I looked at Jane.

"You won't want to stop to do the job
properly," she said. "Or will you?"

"No."

"Use the Hives?"

"That was my thought."

"Hives?" asked Jessie.

"Drone fighters," I responded.
"We link them up a dozen at a time to form a cluster, but each ship is
basically an enhanced medium fighter. We could fit several dozen of them with
advanced sensor packages, and bolt on your detector, and have them search each
system methodically."

"That would require my boss signing
off on it. But unmanned ships doing the scans would certainly be a quicker and
safer way of doing it. I'll ask."

"If you get a yes, tell Jane, and
she'll start the modifications immediately."

"One of the things my boss has always wanted
to find is a bypass to the core. If we found one, I think we'd be heroes in a
lot of circles."

I was suddenly seized by doubt. Finding a
jump point which bypassed the blockage system might not be such a good idea. On
the other hand, not knowing there was one could be worse.

"I'm not sure that’s a proper
definition of hero, but since we're here, we may as well do the job as
completely as possible, given the time constraints."

"I'll get us permission then."

She grinned, and hurried out.

"Better start making a search grid in
case we get a yes."

"Confirmed."

The nav map updated. Four new systems
appeared, forming a Z shape. I sat there looking at them for a moment, and a
violent shiver went down my back. I really didn’t want to go there, but I had
no idea why.

None of them were named. Inside each, there
was a notation stating any information was to be considered unreliable. There
wasn’t much, and if it was unreliable, it would be best to ignore it, and go in
on the basis of knowing nothing, and expecting the worst.

All of them were designated uninhabited,
and uninhabitable. The fourth one was designated lethal to all known forms of
life.

"That’s interesting," said Jane.

"What is?"

"We had another system added to the
nav map with these four."

"Where?"

"It's on the other side of Dead Man's
Chest."

"Must be what Slice didn’t want to
tell me about on a vid. Technically, it's my system, with only him having any
claim as the one who found it."

"Oh."

"Please, not more oh!"

"That’s interesting then?"

"More interesting?"

"Yes, it’s a system with only two gas
giants. Not a lot of them known."

"Hmmm, my nightmare is in a two gas
giant system."

"As I said, oh, that’s
interesting."

"If you think so."

"I do."

That seemed to wrap it up for current
conversation.

With nothing more to do on the Bridge, I
moved to my desk in the Ready Room. Angel was asleep on the top of one of the
lounge chairs.

As always, I was swamped with emails. Even
being this far from home, I still had to handle Duchy administrative matters
which David couldn’t.

One of the emails was a reminder of the
date. I didn’t need a reminder. I was acutely aware of the date, and exactly
how long we had for this jaunt, before I turned us around, and broke all the
speed records for travelling the length of the spine.

Around an hour later, Jessie bounded back
in.

"He agreed, but you may not like the
price."

"Price?"

"You putting our detector on your
ships effectively gives you the technology. To make them, Jane will have to
have the actual spec for it. He'll sell it to you."

"How much?"

"You custom build him a Drone Cruiser
to Unassailable specs, without the Battleship guns, with twenty four Hive
fighters equipped with the sensors and jump point detector."

"Does he want a new hull, or can I use
an existing one?"

"As long as the hull is not more than
thirty years old."

"When does he want it?"

"A month?"

"Done."

"And done."

She grinned at me, and bounced out again.

Jane came in and took a seat opposite me.

"Drone Cruiser," she said,
"should be able to take twelve full Hives, if all we leave is a single
deck of life support, with access shafts for the usual airlocks, an aired up
cargo bay, albeit non-standardly placed, and a hanger bay for normal shuttles.
Still leaves enough room for standard Cruiser armament, plus the Mosquitos, and
some capital ship missile launchers."

"Gives him a decent ship capable of
surviving almost anything thrown at it. And that’s a hundred and forty four
Hive fighters, with their missiles and torpedoes."

"Make him all of them?"

"Yes. But only include twenty four on
the documentation."

"Confirmed."

"Do we have a suitable hull?"

"Yes. Several of the Cruisers we took
on the way to Earth are more than suitable."

"Send yourself the specs, and have
Janine put a priority on it."

"Confirmed."

Jane left, and I continued wading through
the electronic verbiage.

I headed down for an early lunch, so I
could be on the Bridge again when we jumped into Last Hope.

I passed a figure moving slowly away from
the access shaft, towards the Dining Room. I did a double-take, and stopped for
a better look.

The figure was a man, with curly hair and
full beard, wearing antique spectacles, dressed in a large overcoat. Protruding
from it, were three legs. I watched him walking ponderously along, left leg,
middle leg, right leg, and repeat.

"Morning George," I said to him.

"Morning Jon," he replied.

I grinned, and continued walking towards
lunch. It had taken him a long while, but he'd finally figured it out.

One of those questions I’d seen brewing at
breakfast, and would have preferred to avoid, was asked as soon as everyone was
settled at lunch.

"What's a Debt Collector Jon?"
asked Amanda.

"And why are you one?" added
Aleesha.

I sighed. I'd had the feeling this would
come up, ever since Kali said it. The whole table was looking at me.

"Ever known someone who seems to hate
you on sight, and who repeatedly makes you angry?"

"Sure," said BA. "Just about
every officer I knew before leaving the military."

Everyone laughed.

"The way you deal with them, is to do
the karmic release statement continually, for every little thing they annoy you
with, until you stop getting any physical reaction to them. At that point,
someone with whom you have major karma with which is now released, will vanish
from your life."

"What if they don’t disappear?"
asked Grace quietly.

"Then they're most likely a Debt
Collector."

"This is karma you're talking about
isn’t it?" asked Alison.

"Yes. Warriors in particular, and
especially when they've incarnated as warriors for many lifetimes, tend to
accumulate a lot of karma, and with many souls. The Debt Collector is used to
manifest karma when there are a lot of souls involved in the same type of debt,
most of whom will never be met in this lifetime. Once you complete the work
with them, they continue to manifest, until you complete releases for all the
rest. Then, and only then, will they vanish from your life."

"What if you run away?" asked
Grace, even more quietly than before.

"One of two things happens. The
Collector comes after you, or it gets passed to another one."

"Figured as much," she muttered.

"Why you Jon?" asked Aleesha
again.

"I don’t know for sure. People often
choose their own. The first pirates I came across chose me to tangle with, so
maybe Sariel and Kali decided it was to be my role."

"Who's Sariel?" asked Dick,
looking very glazed eyed.

"ArcAngel. One of his roles is as the
Lord of Karma."

"Don’t you mean Archangel," asked
Grace.

"No, we don’t use that spelling at
home. Any Arch has a negative connotation. Arch-enemy for example. No, we use
Arc Angel, meaning a higher order of Angel who walks the arc of all the
dimensions."

"Dimensions? How many are there?"

"In the model we use at home Grace,
there are ten. We live in three dimensions, being length, breadth, and height.
The fourth dimension is space, and the fifth is time. The tenth dimension is
the Divine, whom some call God."

"And six to nine?"

"Are too complicated for us to
understand."

"I don’t get four," said Dick,
"let alone five."

"Most of you here would be aware of
everything which goes on around you, allowing you hair-trigger reactions to
events. Yes?"

There was a chorus of yes.

"You're showing fourth dimensional
awareness. The average person on a planet walks through a puddle of water
without knowing it's there until they feel their foot getting wet. They bump
into things without knowing they were there, they get hit by things they didn’t
see coming. This is two or three dimensional awareness. When you move to four,
you know what's around you all the time, you avoid anything in your way, and
get out of the way of anything coming at you. It doesn’t require thought. You
know, so you act."

Oddly, there were less glazed over
expressions than I thought there would be.

"Who needs some sort of alarm in order
to be on time?"

There was a chorus of no's and a lot of
shaking heads.