Hunter Legacy 8: Hero to the Rescue Read online

  Hero to the Rescue,

  By Timothy Ellis

  The Hunter Legacy, Book Eight

  Copyright © 2015 by Timothy Ellis

  Cover Photo from the Egosoft Game, X3 Albion Prelude.

  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.

  The author has taken the liberty of using some recognizable names in a historical context or projected into the future as if such entities survive into the timeframe of this work of fiction. Such references are intended solely as a tribute to the entity so used and all such usage has an intended deep respect. The author has also deliberately chosen names for characters in tribute to the science fiction genre in all forms of media. Some may be obvious, others won't be. There is no implied connection, other than what the reader may make for themselves.

  The author is Australian and the main characters in this book are of Australian origin. In Australia, we colour things slightly differently, so you may notice some of the spelling is different. Please don't be alarmed. If you do suffer any discomfort, please take it out on the nearest pirate.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  Thirty Three

  Thirty Four

  Thirty Five

  Sector Map

  Acknowledgements

  A Message to my Readers

  Also by Timothy Ellis

  One

  "Evacuate the Bridge!" I yelled.

  No-one moved.

  "NOW!" I roared.

  Movement began, but not fast enough.

  "Jane, take them to the CCC. I'll be right behind you. GO!"

  Jane jumped up from where she sat, and hurried out. The rest moved after her, now in a hurry.

  The sun was dead ahead of us.

  "Evacuate Deck Zero to Custer," I said into ship coms.

  Of all the decks, Zero was the least protected, being at the top of the ship, and only having the hull between it and space.

  "Corvette and Privateer Pilots to your ships, and launch immediately. This is not a drill!"

  Screens showed me people not moving fast enough. We were pointed directly at the sun, and I couldn’t get anyone to take it seriously.

  "Those who can, evacuate the ship! All other personnel are to go to safe zones as fast as possible, with preference for the Marine, Pilot's and Crew Mess's, and the safe zones on the Launch deck. Drop everything, go NOW! If you're not sprinting, you're going too slowly! MOVE IT!"

  All decks of the ship had safe zones, like my stations had. They could be completely sealed off, and had their own air, water, and food supplies. The Mess areas were pretty much in the center of the ship, and well above the Flight Deck. The ones on the Launch Deck, while not in the center of the ship, and below the Flight Deck, still did have a lot of ship protecting them in all directions, although the open Flight Deck made those areas slightly more vulnerable.

  "George, as soon as you have everyone on board, you are to launch immediately as well."

  "But…" he tried to say.

  "But me no buts. Launch. All ships to RV back towards the Torus. Under no circumstances are any of you to follow BigMother. Confirm!"

  One by one, the pilots confirmed.

  "Launch the freighters as well Jane."

  "Confirmed."

  The sun was getting larger, slowly for now, but until everyone had launched, I couldn’t do anything about our speed.

  Only Angel and I were left on the Bridge.

  "Are the launch tubes sealed?" I asked Jane.

  "Confirmed."

  I waited, the sun still getting bigger.

  "All ships away," said Jane.

  "Light em up."

  "Confirmed."

  The engines on Unassailable and the four Guardians lit up, and BigMother began to seriously accelerate.

  The sun began getting a lot bigger, a lot faster.

  "Time to go Angel."

  She'd been sitting on her cat pad on the console as usual, with a "what's going on?" expression on her face. I rose from my chair, and started towards her to scoop her up, but she leapt off the console, and shot towards the door. I raced after her.

  At the access shaft, she jumped straight in.

  I followed her down. At the deck entrance leading to the CCC, she was suddenly shoved sideways towards the corridor deck, landing nimbly on it, and running off. I swung myself off on the same deck, and followed her. Mental note to ask Jane how Angel was using the access shaft so successfully. I'd seen her doing it a few times now, but kept forgetting to ask. Focus, now is not the time.

  By the time I entered the CCC, she was back in her place on the console.

  She looked at me with an expression of "Beat you!" on her face. I strode over to her, kissed her on the head, and took my seat.

  Everyone was sitting there looking at me. This included all the alpha team except George, and Dick, Amy, and Grace.

  Already, the sun was taking up most of the view now.

  "How are we doing Jane?"

  "Temperature rising rapidly. Shields holding. For now," she added.

  "Are you crazy?" asked Grace, from her normal position at the helm, which I still wouldn’t allow her to touch.

  I gave her my Maniac grin.

  "Don’t ask stupid questions," said Amanda. "Just go with the ride."

  She looked like she wanted to say "But?", but she kept her mouth shut.

  "Everyone buckle up," I said into ship coms.

  I buckled myself into my own chair, to the noise of everyone else doing the same thing.

  "Grace, can you keep hands next to Angel please, just in case you need to grab her."

  "Sure."

  The sun was the only thing showing in the view now. We sat there watching it grow.

  "Heat bleed through occurring," said Jane, a while later. "Shields are holding, but they were never designed for this much focused heat. Hull temperature rising."

  "Where's our target?"

  A small circle popped up on the HUD, showing me where we were headed.

  "Are we going to get there in time?" I asked Jane.

  "Depends what time you're talking about."

  "There's more than one?"

  "Yes. Time to our shields failing. Time to our hull boiling off. Times like that."

  "Does one of those come before time on target?"

  "Close."

  "How close?"

  "Very close."

  "How very close?"

  "We won't be able to drop our front shield when we get there without taking some major damage."

  "If we flip first, can
we?"

  "Maybe."

  "Good."

  The circled target was growing in the HUD, as we closed on it.

  "Damn!" said BA suddenly. "We have to go back."

  Everyone looked at her in surprise. She was normally the 'damn the torpedoes' sort.

  "We forgot the marshmallows!"

  Everyone laughed, and the tension went down a few notches.

  Our target was now looking like a ship, which was good, because it still looking like a ship meant its shielding and hull integrity were still holding.

  The sun was not even a sun now. Jane had blanked the view, and we were now purely on the HUD and sensors. Even seen through a view screen with filters, the sun was now too bright to look at safely.

  "Hull temperature approaching stated maximums."

  "Are we ready?"

  "As we ever will be."

  "Everyone hold onto your breakfast," I said into ship coms.

  The ship in front of us was now identifiable. It looked something like a Liner, only smaller. And it was sideways on to us. I goosed us to go wide around it, and as we continued to approach, one end of the ship swung progressively towards us.

  As the front part of BigMother began to pass over the ship, I tore our speed off, aiming to stop just beyond the ship. I also turned us so we were parallel.

  We passed completely over the ship, and started slowing. The ship continued to come after us, both ships now falling into the sun.

  I flipped BigMother completely end for end, and rolled us so we were heading directly at the ship now, back the way we'd come. I goosed us ahead slowly, and the distance between the ships began to shrink.

  "Lower the front shield at the very last second Jane."

  "Confirmed."

  "Any coms?"

  "Negative."

  Our front shield vanished from the HUD, and immediately heat warnings went off.

  I goosed our speed again to hurry things, as the ship entered the front of the Flight Deck. Its shields cut out at the entrance, showing someone on board was still in charge of its Bridge, as our front shield was suddenly back in place. Before the ship was all in, I hurriedly pulled us to a stop. Jane killed the alarms. Even here in the CCC, it was starting to feel hot.

  A side screen popped up, showing a salvage droid entering the Flight Deck from an airlock. It flew towards the incoming ship, flipped over, and settled the grav sled on the top of the front of the ship, forcing it down to the deck. There were noticeable sparks and bits of metal flying down there as the ship came to a stop, now held firmly. Without this action, she would have either impacted one of the sides of the Flight Deck and come to grief, or sailed out the other end and continued on into the sun.

  BigMother was falling backwards now, the sun exerting its pull on us.

  I fired off all the engines again. For a moment, we hung there, fighting gravity. There were a few indrawn breathes, and we began to pull away.

  "Life signs?" I asked Jane.

  "All accounted for."

  "Yes!" said Grace emphatically, before realizing she'd said it aloud.

  As our officially sane sceptic, she'd now revealed her true self. She was as bad as the rest of us.

  The Bridge exploded into laughter.

  BigMother headed back towards the Earth Torus at a speed I wished we weren’t demonstrating, but for now, I couldn’t slow down. That capability was now well and truly out of the bag.

  Two

  Earth system is a busy place.

  As well as the Torus around Earth itself, there are colonies and stations throughout the planets and moons, making Earth system still the biggest population center along the spine.

  Trailing Earth in its orbit were a lot of stations, each one purposed to supporting life in the system. Over the previous week, Jane and I, with the twins and Aline doing bodyguard duties, had visited many of them. Most of these were dedicated to food production of one kind or another, replacing the fields of Earth to grow both animals and vegetables, both for fresh food exports within the system, and for the making of meal packs. Where most of this was done planet-side in most systems, here it could only be done on huge stations. We observed deck after deck of crops, market gardens, fruit trees, and endless fields of grazing rapid-grow food animals.

  All the age old arguments of meat eating verses vegetarian still raged, but at least the cruelty of killing had been removed from the equation. Animals felt no pain when they died, because modern weapons stunned, and then killed very efficiently.

  Amanda questioned why I ate meat, being as spiritual as I am, and I looked into her eyes to see if she really did want to know. As far as I could tell, she did, so I explained how the karma of eating anything which lived was the same. The level of the life made no difference. All things alive have a soul, even though souls evolved like everything else did, and so some were at a lower level than others. Killing to eat was a human necessity, and what we ate incurred the same karma. Those of us who worked on our karma, included releases periodically for what we ate. Those who blessed their food and thanked its source, were doing a release a different way.

  An ancestor of mine declared that when they finally came up with the single pill you could take for all your dietary and internal system requirements, he would cease eating anything which had once been alive, and so avoid the whole argument.

  Alas, centuries later, and some of us are still waiting. The pill never worked. Part of the problem was in the artificial nature of what they were trying to achieve. Replacements for organics deemed harmful to humans, in fact caused more problems than they solved. Huge numbers of people became allergic to preservatives, food additives, and food colours, used in attempts to make the shelf life of food longer, and its presentation more attractive. Supplements became common, to add in vitamins and minerals people didn’t get in their normal diets, and while they worked for some people, they didn’t for others. Researchers melded the artificial together to find the food replacement pill. The first trial was a disaster, with over half the test subjects dying. The pill was shelved for a century, retried, re-shelved, and after several more attempts over the centuries, remains so today. No-one has been able to determine a way of replacing the organic with inorganic, without using artificial chemicals which the human body cannot handle.

  Science fiction ideas like plugging yourself into the power grid proved to be nothing but science fiction. The magic machine which could turn the non-organic, or just energy, into eatable food, remains a pipe-dream.

  And so humans still need to eat, and people still argue about what we should be eating. The three main sides, meat eaters, vegetarians, and vegans, have three diverse views which do not intersect, and the best thing to do is to respect the choices of others, and avoid discussing them. Jokes like how much you enjoy Vegan food because it goes so well with steak, are for the tactless, who enjoy pain.

  Interestingly though, blood group plays a big role in who can eat what successfully. People with type O blood, inevitably have a hard time being vegetarian, no matter what they believe, and no-one down the centuries has figured out how to overcome this.

  The level of their highest self makes a difference as well. Vegetarians tend to have a highest self at the fifth dimension, being Pelaidian or Archturan souls, while meat eaters are often at the sixth, where Sirians use the blood for communication purposes. The non-spiritual generally don’t want to hear this, and reject anything which doesn’t fit into their own beliefs.

  Agreeing to disagree is the only practical solution to the discussion, but alas, not all that many people are able to do this.

  One of the hard lessons you learn as a spiritual person, is not to be drawn into the arguments. You never, ever, talk about this, unless you know the person wants to know, or you have an escape route all mapped out and ready to get you out of there quickly.

  None of the girls were vegetarian, so I lived through the explanation. I'd learned the lesson the hard way, and so it's not one I trot out very often, as you
need a combat suit to survive the inevitable reaction that carrots don’t have a soul, while you insist that they were in fact murdered by pulling them out of the ground.

  Murdered cow, murdered carrot - all the same to me. One eats because one has to, one gives thanks for one's food, and one releases the karma after.

  Darkness was coming.

  Food production was going to be an issue sometime in the future, and seeing it all laid out here, like a how-to manual on feeding the billions, was something I felt compelled to explore.

  Earth had two orbital yards. One for ships, and one for stations. We'd visited both. On the Station-yard, I'd bought specifications for all food production stations. They needed a shipyard like Bob Derr's Sydney Shipyard to build the stations, and each would cost a license fee to build, and require 'seeding' to get started. But I knew in my gut they would all be needed. And a lot of them. I had no idea of where or when, just the need for them.

  In the same orbit, but ahead of the Earth, were the Zoo stations. Every animal which had been saved from Earth before it became uninhabitable was here somewhere, in specially prepared habitats, where the animals roamed free, and oblivious to it not being a planet.

  Also here were stations dedicated to the flora of Earth as it once was. I took the opportunity to meditate in several of the sacred glades.

  In the orbit of Earth itself, well outside of the orbit the Torus occupied, was a specialist medical station. BigMother was heading there. The Torus completely ringed the Earth, and was thus a huge structure, which didn’t actually move, unless you took the Earth it self's movement through the cosmos into account. As big as it was, at some time all the specialist medical facilities had been moved to a dedicated station. Why was now lost.

  By the time we reached the station, the Flight Deck had cooled enough to get a droid into the ship's main airlock, and establish contact with the crew.

  While no-one was dying, everyone on board was suffering from heat exhaustion. We learned of an explosion in the engine module, which had also fried the only repair droid on board. The rest of the ship was in reasonable shape. The captain was relieved we'd answered his Mayday call, given none of the system emergency services had had any chance of getting to them in time. I suggested if he was going to be foolish enough to fly as close to the sun as he had been, he should be organizing emergency services to be in place should something go wrong again. If it cost, well that was the price of safety, and the passengers should be paying for it. He'd nodded agreement, but I could see money concerns warring on his face, and I doubted my advice would be taken seriously.