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

First thing the next morning, while most
others were doing breakfast, I went in search of Sarah. Carter told me she'd
been released from medical. I took the opportunity to apologize to her. She
forgave me. I had the impression she wanted to say more, but wasn’t sure it was
a good idea. Probably very smart on her part.

The logical place to find Sarah was on Galactica,
but instead I found my mother supervising the removal of the last of the family
stuff. She informed me Sarah and the baby were down on Five, on the family
estate.

I took the Gig down, and landed on the
roof. Inside, I found family in full on moving in mode, with accompanying
stress levels. It took a while to hunt down Sarah. In the process, I noticed
there was little in the way of modern droids or bots around, so I told Jane to
break out pallets of everything from Butler droids down to cleaning bots from
storage, and send them down here.

Sarah wasn’t happy to see me, but she
settled the baby in a crib, and waved me to a chair nearby.

For a few minutes we just sat there looking
at each other.

"When did you become a stone cold
killer Jonny?"

"Shit happened."

"Is that all you can say?"

"What else is there to say? For a
year, people have been constantly trying to kill me. When it happens so often,
you learn to deal with it on their level. I'm not stone cold. I burn hot. And I
refuse to be a doormat."

"Wipe feet here. Yes I remember. You never
did allow that."

"I never will. It's not me."

"No, you aren't you. Not the you I
knew anyway."

"I told you. Not all of me survived
being dead."

"I believe it. Now."

I sighed. She sighed.

"So what becomes of us now?" she
asked.

"Now, you live here with your family
and my family, and raise our son."

"And you?"

"I have to see if I can save humanity."

"Is that really all on you?"

"Apparently. Sux, but them's the
breaks."

"What did you do to deserve this
fate?"

"Was born it seems. Legacy and all
that."

"Not fair."

I had a pretty good idea she was not
referring to me.

"Are you going to be okay here?"

"Sure."

"I've sent for some support staff.
Jane will assign a Butler droid to exclusively look after the two of you."

"You don’t need to do that."

"Least I can do."

We fell silent again.

"Will I see you again?"

"Probably not."

She came over and hugged me.

"Will you be alright?" she asked.

"Sure, Jane will take care of me.
It'll be cool and hoopy."

"Huh?"

"Hitch Hikers."

"Where?"

"Frogstar World B, and man it’s a dump."

"Put your analyst on danger
money."

"Exactamundo."

She obviously remembered some of what I was
into, having been one of the few people who actually 'got' me, before I left.
She mimed shooting me with a hand shaped into a gun, and my suit went full protection
mode, making me look like a body builder on steroids.

"Jonny? Have you gotten weirder over
this last year?"

I grinned at her. I shifted back to 'slinky
red', hugged her once more, went in and kissed my son, and left.

The grin died on the roof. I knew I wasn’t
going to see either of them again. I don’t know how I knew, I just did.

Back in my suite, I went into the bathroom
and stared into the mirror. I mimed shooting myself with my hand, and the suit
triggered again. I shook my head, and sent a bug report off to the development
team, before backing out the suit upgrade, and returning it to its previous
state.

I headed for my Ready Room, and settled in
to clear some of the backlog of work I’d been ignoring.

True to form though, I hadn't done much
more than an hour's work, when I was interrupted.

"Your presence is requested in the
main conference room," said Jane.

"Who's in there?"

"Everyone important."

"What are they doing?"

"Covering bases, dotting I's, and
crossing T's."

"Fine, don’t tell me then."

She laughed.

I went on reading the current email.

"Ah Jon?"

"Yes Jane?"

"Now would be good."

I sighed, rose, and walked casually towards
the conference room further back along this deck. I stepped inside and stopped.

At the far end of the table was the Keeper.
Along the right side was the Gaia council, now back up to twelve members. On
the other side facing them, and centered on the table, were Marshall
Bigglesworth, General Patton, General Price, General Harriman, and Admiral
Tremblay. The senior British, American, Sci-Fi, Australian, and Canadian
officers present. This made sense to me, as each sector needed to be
establishing a relationship with the Gaia council.

On either side of this senior group, were Admiral
Jedburgh, Lieutenant General Wellington, Rear Admirals Hallington and Bentley,
and Lieutenant General Smith. At the far end, making up the twelve for that
side, were Group Captain Lacey, and Fleet Captain Slice. Wellington was three
stars, while Annabelle was two, the discrepancy being the Hunter ranking
system. Lacey was presumably there because he was the senior Fighter Command
officer present, and Slice was there because of his Apricot Mapping Service,
and its unique ability to find jump points and map space.

I wasn’t sure why they needed me.

All eyes turned to me as I started walking
to the only empty chair, on this end of the table, facing the Keeper. I heard
the door close behind me, gave it a quick glance, and saw Jane take up a
position in front of it.

I sat.

"Admiral," said the Keeper,
looking at me, "apologies for not including you sooner, but the council
has been discussing mutual interests between it and the sectors. We are now at
a point where your input is requested."

"No problems," I responded.
"I've been catching up with family matters, and some outstanding
work."

"How would you summarize Gaia's
expectations in one year's time?" asked American Indian.

I thought for a moment.

"It depends. If nothing has happened,
normal trade happens. Maybe some immigrants. If the Darkness is coming up the
spine, expect refugees. How many depends on how far away it is, and what
ability to retreat has been granted us. Might be just ship loads of people
taking the opportunity to escape well ahead of time, or it might be a full
exodus. If the Darkness hit the Australian sector first, you either get
nothing, which would suggest the jump point wasn't discovered, or you get full
on Darkness. You won't know until it happens. We could all be dead by then, or
nothing at all might have happened."

"Immigrants?" prompted the newest
member of the council, a middle aged woman.

"I've been pondering advertising the
fact a new jump point has been found in the Outback system, and a new Earth
like planet would be available in about a year's time. Might encourage a lot of
people to emigrate instead of flee in stark terror later on. I've been thinking
the more people we can move to Gaia next Door opening, regardless of the threat
at the time, the less we have to move later."

"You mention this now?" she
challenged me. "Surely this a matter for the council, not the likes of
you."

A few people bristled at the hostility in
those words, but I gave her a warm smile.

"You don’t get a say in it," said
the Keeper, preventing me from answering.

"What?"

"Hunter is the Duke of Hunter's Run,
which includes the Outback system. If he decides to advertise a new found
planet, and people flock to Outback to move there, the Door will open, and they
will pour through. All you can do is accept them graciously, the same as you
will inevitably accept the fleeing masses when the time comes."

"I thought we were already past
this," said Bigglesworth. "We've just concluded agreements on where
sectors can set up within the Gaia system. It doesn’t seem to matter if this
happens next year, or ten years hence, from emigration or refugees. We are all
agreed this is going to happen. The timing of the transition of people would
seem irrelevant."

"Only to you General," said the
new Objectionable. "The council has a majority, but not all people here
will be accepting."

"This is not the time or the
place," said Aboriginal Woman.

She looked directly at me.

"The council will advise you of our
position on your 'ponderings' before you leave the system, and we hope you will
abide by our wishes."

I bowed my head to her.

The Keeper threw something onto the wall,
and I turned to look at it. It was a map of the system, with areas designated
for sector convergence of stations. I took a moment to study it. They'd done a
good job.

"You know," I pondered,
"it’s a pity we can't built a proper Dyson sphere. Something just inside
the orbit of Seven would provide enough space to house the entire populations
of every sector, with plenty of space to spread out."

"Such an undertaking is currently
beyond us," said Price. "But who knows what could be accomplished by
a system with a huge population all working towards such a goal?"

"What are you people talking
about?" demanded new Objectionable.

"Look it up," I said. "We'll
all be long dead before something that ambitious could be built anyway."

"Let's move on," said the Keeper,
"shall we?"

They did. I wasn’t sure why I was there,
but I tried to look interested. We talked about the building of sustainable
cities on the triangle worlds, and how to allocate people to them. We discussed
potential needs for food, clothes, and medical needs, assuming all surviving
humans poured in here as soon as the Door opened next year. It carried on
further into storage needs if the worst didn’t happen then, giving more time
for more preparations in the following years. We talked out the worst case
scenario we could think of, and what Gaia needed to do to prepare for it.

We covered what expertise was going to be
needed, and if it was already available. With one full day left for the
transfer of people, some rushed reassignments were made by Walter to bring key
people and their families here in less than a day. Jane took the movement
orders, and arranged ships to bring them.

The meeting broke up around two, without
having had a break for lunch. The council took themselves back to the station
to meet again and continue their discussions, and the rest of us headed to the
Dining Room on Deck Two.

Eric and Jessie returned not long after I’d
dived back into emails again. Slice led them into my Ready Room and we took
seats at the conference table.

Their faces were alive, so they must have
found something interesting.

They made me ask.

"So what did you find?" I asked,
after the silence had become awkward.

"Nothing useful," said Eric.

"But lots of potential," said
Jessie.

"Clear, like mud."

The three of them grinned at me.

Jane came in and threw a map on the wall.

"Spoilsport," said Jessie,
although she was still grinning.

We looked at the map.

There was a single jump point on the far
side of the Gaia system. On the other side, there were two more jump points.
Neither of those systems had been checked yet, but at least there was room for
expansion here.

"I see what you mean about potential.
I assume you mean the system you did enter doesn’t have a viable planet, but
with two more beyond it the odds are good at least one of them does. And
possibly the number of jump points after that is endless."

"Yes," they all said together.

I looked at them. They looked at me.

"What do you want to do?"

Slice nodded at both of them, but they were
hesitant to answer.

"I'm coming back with you," he
said. "You owe me a Cruiser, and we have five systems to check out
fully."

"We?"

"Well I do. Besides, I need to get
back to my own business. This has been a nice vacation, but the wife was not
amused I didn’t bring her."

"Why didn’t you?"

"She'd have picked up on the
underlying tone of all the meetings, and I don't want to worry her until I have
to."

"Eric?"

"I'm staying. My wife is looking at
accommodation down on Five near your family."

I looked at Jessie.

"I'm staying too. This is just too important
to bail out on."

"Important how?"

"We need to find more living space for
people than this system holds, if for no other reason than humans have proved
we can't get along all that well. Once billions arrive, some of them will want
somewhere else to go, and some of them will need to be forced to go somewhere
else. We have a year to explore and find places for people to go. Two of us
will do the work faster."

"All true."

"I've bought the next Hub to come out
of the shipyard here," said Slice. "They are not very big, but can
dock four ships, and have enough room in the center to provide for an AMS base.
As they get further away, it can be sent after them as a forward base."

"Good idea. But can I suggest some
caution?"

"How so?" asked Eric and Jessie
together.

"We have to assume this galaxy has
life in it. For all we know, the planets you find could be poisonous, or there
is an intelligent species in the neighborhood which is hostile. Each new jump
out you take, could be dangerous. So I suggest you down jump with extreme
caution, remembering you won't have any support here."

"I've already told them that,"
said Slice.

"I've ordered the modification of a
small freighter into a comnavsat builder," said Jane. "It'll be here
by morning. Take comnavsats with you and stay in touch with Gaia. I'm leaving a
clone of myself to run the Hunter household on Five, and an avatar is already
here on the Missile Cruiser. So stay in constant touch with me. If you get into
trouble, at least we'll know what happened to you. How much we can help will
depend on the assets available at the time. But knowing what's out there is the
most important thing, given the stakes involved."

What she was alluding to, was the danger of
the human race fleeing here, and running straight into a hostile species, or
something else we couldn’t handle. Frying pan into the fire sort of thing.
Nothing we could do if it happened, but caution might put off how long before
it happened. Once we had defensive fleets in here, assuming any made it, any problem
on the other side of Gaia was likely to be more containable.

It was always the danger with exploring.
You never knew what was on the other side of that jump point. We'd been
expecting a hostile alien species for six hundred years, and never found one.
But this was another galaxy, and who knew what was here waiting for us.

"Be careful," I said. "Be
paranoid and suspicious. If you detect intelligent life, don’t let it detect
you. Report back to Gaia, and let the council decide what to do."

A thought hit me.

"Excuse me a sec, I need to follow up
on something."

I pinged the Keeper.

"Jane is leaving a clone avatar
behind. Can you get her added to the council? We need a voice there, both for
the military perspective, being non-Gaia, and as a Hunter representative."

"Agreed," he pinged back.
"I'll see what I can do."

I had another thought, and pinged Walter.

"Any chance you can put together a
planetary survey team, and get them here before the Door closes?"

"Sure. Why?"

"AMS found a jump point out of Gaia,
and two more on the other side. Two of them are staying to keep looking for
jump points, but if they find viable planets, they need to be properly surveyed
by people who know what they're doing."

"I'm on it, but I wish you’d thought
of this a few days ago."

"So do I."

"Sorry," I said, focusing back on
the AMS team. "Too much going on at once, and the clock is ticking."

"No problems," said Eric.

"I just organized a planetary survey
team to follow up on whatever you find out there. Stay in touch with them as well
as Jane."

"We will," said Jessie.

"Good luck, both of you."

I stood to go back to my desk, and Eric
rose and hugged me. Jessie followed, and I stood there watching them leave. I
wondered if I was going to see them again. Or not. Slice turned and nodded to
me at the door, before leaving himself. I went back to my desk.

I was too distracted to work. I re-read the
same email five times, without having any retention of what I’d read. Jane put
me out of my misery.

"Council wants you."