The Long Road to Gaia Read online

  The Long Road to Gaia

  By Timothy Ellis

  The Hunter Legacy, Book Ten

  An Interlude Novel of short stories, between Parts 2 & 3

  Copyright © 2015, 2016, by Timothy Ellis

  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 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 do not be alarmed.

  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.

  Author's Note

  When I started writing 1969, it was at a time when I had some significant health issues impacting my ability to write. So I thought writing a series of short stories might make it easier to at least get some writing done. My intention was to release them as a series of short stories, one every few weeks. Alas, this didn’t happen.

  I also found Space Opera readers to not be too interested in short stories. I'm not sure why this surprised me, since I'm a Space Opera reader, and I've never really been into short stories myself, unless released as a novel length book. Call it a learning experience.

  1969 introduces a new character to the Hunter Legacy universe, and it was always my intention to have him join the main series around part three.

  Having just completed part two's trilogy, I've found myself with two problems. Between parts one and two, I wrote an 'interlude' novella, partly because I was still having trouble writing, and a novella length was all I could manage at the time. Having done it once, I needed to write a new one for between parts two and three, to keep the series balanced. At the same time, I still needed to bring in the new character.

  Hence, it seemed like the best idea was to write the short stories starting with 1969, and release it as the second 'interlude' book.

  Contents

  Author's Note

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  1969

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  2016

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  2040

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  2193

  2284

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  2301

  2340

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  2360

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  2433

  2515

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  2605

  2606

  2615

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  2616

  One

  Two

  2615

  2605

  Acknowledgements

  A Message to my Readers

  Also by Timothy Ellis

  Prologue

  One

  The great battle fleet of the Keerah down jumped into their home system.

  It was a fleet which had never been defeated in battle, since the wars of consolidation, many millennia before.

  But now, it looked like it had lost one, and lost it very badly. Not a single ship had escaped serious damage.

  The Space Marshall stood at his battle console in the very front of the ship, viewing each ship in turn according to rank. More than half the fleet hadn't made it, so his review was markedly shorter than normal.

  He growled, the sound coming from deep in his chest, the black and white fur on his neck standing on end.

  All ships showed the same. None had more than half of their weapons operational. All had hull breaches, and were getting emergency hull treatments. Crews were depleted, physically lost when hulls had been breached. He shuddered for a moment, remembering what had happened to them, watching them die, and being unable to do anything for them.

  Helplessness was a new feeling for him, indeed for everyone in the fleet. A proud warrior race, once the glue which held the major civilizations at the core of this galaxy together, hadn't even had a word to describe this feeling. It was borrowed from a long dead species, who'd known this feeling all too well before their light was extinguished. The ones who viewed, now long dead themselves, had supplied this word and others to the galaxy as some sort of misguided legacy. It was only now, the Keerah had any use for them.

  He knew there wouldn’t be enough time to complete the hull repairs. The adaptive hulls, one of the reasons the fleet had never been defeated in modern times, hadn't been much use to them. If anything, they had simply delayed the inevitable.

  "Irony," he thought.

  The single most important discovery of the race, in the end, had been completely ineffective, when it was needed the most.

  He barked orders, and the fleet took up jump point defense positions, compensating for the missing ships. Again.

  "Last time," he said to himself, the idle thought distracting him momentarily.

  He turned his attention to the ships ahead of the fleet, now behind him as his ship turned to face the jump point. Civilians of a thousand worlds, remnants of the great civilizations which had spanned the galaxy for eons, moved towards the sole inhabitable planet left to them. Around it he knew were the stations and ships which had previously escaped the destruction of their worlds. Irony seemed big today. The species which had supplied the word 'helplessness', had also supplied the means for saving stations, not that they'd ever known they had.

  For dozens of cycles, stations and ships had been herded here. This was the last refuge. And of the thousands of battle fleets which had given them time to escape, only the Keerah remained.

  The Marshall sighed. This was also something new to him, and the warrior inside him berated himself for showing weakness.

  A channel opened from the planet. He startled when he saw who their latest leader was. Leadership had changed dozens of times over the last home cycle, politics becoming deadlier with each new setback.

  "Welcome home brother."

  "Thank you brother," said the Marshall.

  "How much time do we have?"

  "Very little."

  "Is there nothing you can do?"

  "Nothing."

  "You condemn yourself. I have no alternative but to replace you."

  The Marshall smiled his predator grin. He beckoned to his second, who joined him in the channel image.

  Their leader looked at the second.

  "You are now…"

  "No!" said the second, the yellow and white fur at his neck standing up.

  "You tell me no?"

  "I do. I will not take command. No-one here will."

  "You deny tradition?"

  "What use is tradition, on this day?"

  There was no answer to that. The second returned to his station.

  "Brother," said the Marshall. "You have a job to do. I have a job to do. There is not much time, although you have a little longer than I do."

  "So this is it?"

  "This is it. We stand alone. We lasted the longest, b
ut we will accompany all the others into extinction."

  They stood there looking at each other for what seemed like a long time.

  "Contact," came from a voice behind the Marshall.

  "Be strong," said the Marshall.

  "Be strong," repeated his brother.

  The channel ended.

  He shifted his attention to the jump point. The area was already black, and within a very short time, his ships were all enveloped in the Darkness.

  Weapons fired ineffectively. Hulls resumed taking damage. Weak areas suffered explosive decompression, and allowed the darkness to enter.

  He looked over at his second.

  "Who did this to us?" he was asked. The second waved at the darkness outside. "Not that. Who released that upon us?"

  "They are long gone."

  "I don’t care. I wish my last thoughts to damn them for eternity."

  "They will not care."

  "I care."

  "For all you know, you were once one of their souls."

  "The ultimate irony, and even more reason to damn them."

  "Even if you damn yourself?"

  "I am already damned. Who? What did they call themselves?"

  Hull breach alarms interrupted them. They had only moments left now.

  Their eyes met, and they gave each other the warrior salute for those about to die in glorious battle.

  "Humans," he said with his last breathe.

  Two

  Two beings stood in space, watching the darkness fall on the last habitable planet in the galaxy. The stations in orbit around it were gone now, and only a few hundred million beings remained on the surface. Their time was almost up. Some of them were dying as the last fragments of the stations rained down upon them. Those which could, sought shelter underground. These lucky ones would last just a little longer than everyone else.

  "Is there nothing we can do?"

  "We did it."

  "It didn’t work."

  "None of it worked."

  "What happens now?"

  "You will be next."

  "How is that even possible?"

  There was a shake of a head.

  "How was this possible? All things are possible. This darkness has no end."

  "Show me."

  The two flow forward, until there is nothing left to see. They return to the end of the Keerah.

  "Why can't we stop this?"

  "This? There is no stopping it. But perhaps it can be altered."

  "Then there is still a chance to prevent this?"

  "It’s possible."

  "What did we miss?"

  The two flow back along the timelines. It takes them a long time to work back to the moment of creation. Time for them has little meaning though. Along the way, they revisit every place where they attempted to change the way the future went. Hundreds of situations altered. No change to the eventual outcome. All paths led to the Keerah homeworld.

  Finally, one of the beings took the other back to where it all seemingly began. The two of them looked down at a planet putting the fate of others to the vote. No-one seemed happy about it, but the result was overwhelmingly in favour of the motion.

  "This is what we should be changing."

  "Forbidden."

  "Why?"

  "Freewill."

  "All it would take is for someone to tell them the results of their compassionate choice."

  "Forbidden."

  "What if I did it anyway?"

  "Not enough would believe you to change the choice. There is too much guilt here. It is guilt, not compassion, which made this choice."

  "So guilt dooms all?"

  "Perhaps overly dramatic. But in this case, choice dooms all."

  "But they never know it."

  "No. Choices carry consequences, and this one dooms them in a more immediate way. They will never know the true consequences."

  "Why can't we end them before they make the choice?"

  "Forbidden."

  "Of course it is."

  "I understand your frustration. But there are fixed points in linear time which cannot be undone. This is one of them."

  "So all are doomed."

  There is a long silence.

  "Perhaps not."

  "Tell me."

  "I cannot. But I can ask you a question."

  "What question?"

  "How many species did you not try to help?"

  There was subtle emphasis on the word not.

  "We tried for all of them. You saw it all. Nothing helped."

  "Did you?"

  The pause became a silence.

  "Them?"

  "Them."

  "You have got to be kidding me!"

  "Do I look like I kid?"

  "No, you never do. But with your face, how could anyone really tell?"

  This was answered with a smile.

  "Why should we save them?"

  "Because they are the only ones you didn’t try?"

  "But really. They were the youngest race of all, and the least technologically advanced. They were the first to be destroyed, in spite of spreading out over a standard number of planets. And the only reason this was allowed, was because they were isolated. They made one advance which no other species did as well, but it wasn’t enough, because everything else was inferior."

  "And?"

  "And they caused this."

  "No. They were merely the first to create the great consequence of what we see here now. Had it not been them, another species would have done the same thing sometime."

  "Show me."

  Quite some time later, they ended up back at the Keerah homeworld.

  "I see. As with everything else we tried, it all ends here."

  "For them. It’s a while off for you, but still just as certain."

  "But there is something we can do?"

  "Yes. One last hope."

  "Save the ones who unleash this?"

  "Yes."

  "What do they need to survive?"

  "Not what. Who."

  "Show me who."

  They move back into the past.

  "Isn't this a child?"

  "Yes."

  "So we need to protect him?"

  "No. You need to protect the legacy which results in him."

  "Why?"

  "Because this bloodline didn’t survive. This is a projection, not real time. What you see will only exist if you ensure it does."

  "Where do we need to start?"

  They shift back into real time.

  "Another child?"

  "It begins with him."

  "Remind me what this species called themselves?" asked One.

  "Humans," said Kali.

  Three

  Two witches sat on either side of a crystal ball.

  "And so it begins."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Sure as can be."

  "You doom us all then."

  "Not I. The scrying globe merely shows us the most likely outcome."

  "But it depends on the question?"

  "As always."

  "What did you ask it?"

  "To show me the moment which begins prophesy."

  "And this is it?"

  "Yes."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Because I've been asking this same question every night since prophesy became an acceptable question."

  "And you get this every night?"

  "No. Just tonight."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Something in the cosmos just changed. Until now prophesy had no focus. You know what the others have seen?"

  "Yes, our doom. But it has never had any focus for them either. They always say prophesy ends in our doom."

  "They ask the wrong question, and are shown the end result of it."

  "And you ask the right question to get something different?"

  "I ask the right question to be given the truth."

  "What truth?"

  "That our mother kin interpret prophesy
too literally."

  "And you do not?"

  "No. I seek the truth, not something to use for political advantage."

  "And the truth is?"

  "As I said. Something just changed. Prophesy is still there, but it is not as it was. And unless those who seek change their questions, none else will see the truth."

  "What is it we see?"

  "A child."

  "That's a child? Its skin is so smooth. It’s the ugliest thing I've ever seen."

  "True. But a child it is."

  "Why a child?"

  "Ah, now that is a different question."

  "Of course it is. But I’d still like it asked."

  "Well then, we shall."

  The scrying crystal clouded for a long time, and they waited patiently. At last, an image formed.

  One being sat, while a triangle shape of the same kind of beings stood behind. Darkness was before them.

  "What does this mean?"

  "The length of time to obtain the image pushes the image well into the future."

  "How far?"

  "The same as prophesy states. We will not see the Darkness, but our daughters will."

  "And the image itself?"

  "A single being will rise to challenge the Darkness, where until now, none has been able to."

  "The child we saw first?"

  "No. But one of his line. If I read the skrying correctly, what has changed is the likelihood of this line surviving to produce the one."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "You question my scrying?"

  "I am sorry."

  "So will we all."

  "Does this not now give us hope?"

  "It is too soon for hope. Perhaps a hope of a hope."

  "Should we tell anyone?"

  "Not yet. But this species is now worthy of our study."

  "What species is it?"

  "I've come across them before. They are very young still. But even so young, the way they think gives answers we might not have considered."

  "Is this why only you have seen this? Because you have seen them before?"

  "No. But perhaps it is because I do not dismiss them as irrelevant, as most above us in the ranks do."

  "But who are they?"

  "Humans."

  Four

  The Mage-King stood over his scrying pool. He grunted to himself, waved away the image, and cast another question into the pool. A new image formed. He grunted again, and removed this one as well.