The Hero's Companion (The Hunter Legacy) Read online

  The author has two eBooks on Amazon for the X3 Trilogy. The X3 Handbook, and the X3 Handbook for Albion Prelude. The Handbook is a compilation of all the main guides for the three games, including some for X2, with descriptions and links to all the major Mods, and modding resources.

  A lot of the combat scenes in the early Hunter Legacy novels come from his flying experiences in these computer games.

  Wing Commander

  Wing Commander was a space combat game for the 386 chip computer, running MS-DOS. It was released in 1990, and required a special memory manager program to enable it to have enough memory to run.

  It was followed by two add-ons, and Wing Commander 2, which also had two add-ons.

  By the time Windows 95 was on computers and the Pentium chip was released, Wing Commander 3 The Heart of the Tiger was released in 1994. It was the first ever attempt to combine a computer game with Movie like cut-scenes using real actors, staring Mark Hamill, of Star Wars fame.

  Wing Commander 4 The Price of Freedom followed in 1996

  Wing Commander Prophesy followed in 1997.

  There were also two off-shoot games called Privateer and Privateer 2 The Darkening. Also Wing Commander Armada, which was more of a 4X game than space combat game.

  There was also Wing Commander Academy, a 13 episode animated tv show.

  In 2007, Wing Commander Arena was released for Xbox.

  Wing Commander Saga: The Darkest Dawn was released for PC in 2012.

  The Wing Commander 1-5 games, and the 2 Privateers, kept the author sane through several of the dark periods of his life. A lot of the combat scenes in the early Hunter Legacy novels come from his flying experiences in these early computer games.

  Moi

  Me. Pronounced Mwu, with a hard u, or Mwah with a silent h. From the square screen series The Muppets, being how Miss Piggy refers to herself.

  Staff weapon

  Pronounced with a hard a. The weapon of choice for the Jaffa warrior. From Stargate SG1. Basically a long thick broom handle with a paddle on one end and a laser on the other. As proved, a weapon of terror, rather than a weapon of war.

  A miniature sun exploded

  A miniature sun exploded, sending yellow light from the center of the ball outward, where it vanished.

  From the flat screen movie Star Trek Generations.

  Significance to Jon? Not yet known.

  bright yellow rubber duck

  The Captain of the Golgafrincham Arc B, spent his time while in space, in a large bath on the bridge of his ship, playing with a yellow rubber duck.

  Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy in five parts, by Douglas Adams.

  Where else would you find something like that?

  The Rings

  Adaption of the monologue by Galadriel, explaining the forging of the Rings of Power. Lord of the Rings flat screen trilogy.

  Dralthi - Kilrathi Light Fighter

  The Kilrathi were a race of bipedal cats/tigers, from the Wing Commander computer games. The Dralthi was one of their original front line fighters.

  Warcraft

  Based on the computer games World of Warcraft, which the author never played.

  Hero to the Rescue

  plugging yourself into the power grid

  The Borg from Star Trek, plugged themselves in the power grid and the energy was converted into whatever the drone needed. They therefore avoided the whole need to eat, drink, and the associated side effects of doing so.

  The magic machine

  The magic machine which could turn the non-organic, or just energy, into eatable food – The Star Trek Replicator, first presented in The Next Generation.

  Wolf 359

  Wolf 359 is a star about 7.8 lightyears from Earth, towards the core down the arm of the galaxy.

  It was the battleground for the epic unseen battle between Starfleet and the Borg, which occurs at the end of the third season of Star Trek The Next Generation. Since computer graphics weren't available at the time, battles such as this one, where the pride of Starfleet (20+ starships) was destroyed by a single Borg Cube, were too expensive to actually film for a tv series, so the whole battle was off-camera. Only the resulting ship graveyard was shown.

  THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!

  Thunderbirds was a square screen tv series in the 1960's, using supermarionation (puppets on strings). It was about an organization in the future called International Rescue, which had high tech equipment beyond most other at the time. Ground breaking at its time, using models and the occasional human hand to be more than a cartoon. It had an incredible mix of detailed imagining about what the future would look like tech wise, while completely missing the mundane future. So the aircraft are all super high tech, but the cars and clothes are totally 1960's.

  In 2015, a sequel series began, using animation. The story continues from just after it left off in the original series, with everything updated to the future in the way only computer graphics can deliver, while keeping the original ships and concepts almost unchanged.

  Palffy

  Palffy was the surname of the actor who played Anubis in Stargate SG1. Anubis was the biggest baddest bad guy in the series, part Goa'uld (parasite being which took human hosts), and part ascended being.

  Transformers

  Alien sentient robots with the ability to change into any shape consistent with their base size.

  Flat screen movie series.

  Imperious leader

  Imperious Leader was the most augmented of the Cylons in the original Battlestar Galactica, and thus gave all the orders. In the books he was identified as having four brains.

  Skye Walker

  From Luke Skywalker, character in the Star Wars Movie series.

  Ken Obi

  From Obi-wan Kenobi, character in the Star Wars Movie series.

  Elisabeth Carter

  From Samantha Carter, character in Stargate SG1.

  From Elizabeth Sladen, who played the character Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who.

  Note: The author's sister spells her name with an s instead a z, and the author wasn’t paying attention when he used it.

  Gestalt

  A group creature, where the group is more than the sum of its individuals. Marvel's Avengers could be considered a Gestalt, when functioning as a team.

  First encountered in a book, now unremembered.

  Also used in the fourth season of Blakes 7.

  Formal black suit

  "It’s a 106 miles to Chicago," she said deadpan. "We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."

  "Hit it," I replied.

  The Blues Brothers – square screen movie.

  One of the all-time classics, mixing blues music with humour. Jake and Elwood Blues, best described as an ongoing disaster on a mission from God, who always wore black suits, black ties, black hats, and sunglasses.

  Homer

  Homer Simpson, from the flat screen tv series The Simpsons.

  Hogan's Heroes

  Square screen tv series, about a group of prisoners of war, operating as a resistance group from Stalag 13, a POW camp in Nazi occupied France during World War 2. Played for comedy, not drama.

  Ten four, rubber duck

  From a 1975 song, Convoy, by C W McCall.

  Jack O'Neill

  Character in Stargate SG1. His favourite tv show is The Simpsons. In one episode he has a broken down ship called Homer. By this time, the author just couldn’t resist.

  Samantha Jackman

  Samantha Carter was a character in Stargate SG1, played by Amanda Tapping. Enough already said.

  Hugh Jackman was the Wolverine in the X-Men flat screen movie series.

  Mole

  A digging and tunneling vehicle in the series Thunderbirds.

  ripping the whole area out

  Star Trek The Next Generation: The Borg assimilate cities by ripping the entire area out of the ground, leaving behind giant holes.

  You will be a
ssimilated

  Star Trek The Next Generation: The last thing you hear before you become a Borg drone is, 'We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.'

  Middle Earth

  Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. The story is set on this land mass, the description of which matches an undersea area of raised land, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean.

  For reference, seek a map of the world which shows all the underwater mountain ranges.

  The Man who did maintenance to the engines

  In late 2005, one week after the last Hurricane of the year battered Florida, the author sat in a hotel room in Orlando. He meditated. When he came to again, an hour had passed in the blink of an eye. It felt like he had left the room completely, spent a day doing work at the etheric level, and was returned an hour later. Unlike in every meditation he had ever experienced before, there was no passing of time. Blink, gone, blink, back, one hour missing. Even in sleep, there is an awareness of time having passed. It may take checking the clock to find out how much, but the passing of linear time always has awareness of it. Not this one time. Blink, gone, blink, back, one hour missing.

  A fog covered what he had been doing, as if the human perception was not capable of processing what it experienced. But he felt the fatigue of having been gone a day without sleep.

  When he asked, ArcAngel Gabriel told him he had been repairing the engines beneath the healing temples of the three Atlantean cities which defined the area known as the Bermuda Triangle. Further, he was told he was the one who failed to turn them off before the cities were drowned. And over time, the engines had degraded greatly because they'd had no maintenance in over thirty thousand years.

  Believe it or not.

  But there is one interesting fact:

  Since the end of 2005, no hurricanes have crossed the coastline of the USA. Florida averages seven hurricanes every four years, while an average of three major ones cross the Florida coast every five years.

  In the ten years since the author was there, none have crossed the coast.

  Co-incidence?

  Que music from The Twilight Zone main title. (1950's square screen tv series.)

  The author at the time, was on a round the world trip. He left the Gold Coast (Atlantean outpost off the coast), and travelled Brisbane to Fiji (destroyed city to the Southwest). To Los Angeles (outpost off the coast) and then Orlando Florida (The Bermuda Triangle). He went north to Green Bay, Wisconsin (outpost in the lakes area), and back to Orlando. Next stop was southwest Ireland (city off the southwest coast, where standing on the shoreline, a beam of light came through heavy cloud to highlight the place out to sea where the city lay – author has a photo). The last stop was Malaysia (partially destroyed city to the southwest, near where the 2004 Tsunami originated).

  Each stop along the way had Atlantean significance. He called the trip his Circle of Atlantis, and established a domain name on the internet using that name.

  Triffid

  The Day of the Triffids was a 1951 novel, made into a movie in 1962, three radio shows in 1957, 1968 and 2008; a square screen tv series in 1981, and a flat screen tv series in 2009.

  Overnight, most of the population of the world goes blind. An aggressive plant becomes the dominant species on the planet, able to walk around, and with a large flower on top from which it swings a long stinger. Once stung, a person dies very quickly. The survivors with sight have to help those without it to survive, while trying to survive themselves.

  Put you're analyst on danger money.

  From the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

  Generally means what you said, or just did, was so profoundly weird or incomprehensible, any shrink poking around in your head is in serious danger of getting hurt.

  Spiritual healer

  In the town of Abadania, one and a half hours outside Brasilia in Brazil, there is a place called the Casa. Within, is a man they call John of God, who is a trance medium who channels over sixty Entities, who all do what is loosely called Faith Healing.

  The author has been there twice, and has written a guide for people planning on going there.

  The energy of the place is real, and for those who feel the energy coming off crystals, you can feel the energy rising from the ground.

  android, who wanted to be human

  Data. From Star Trek The Next Generation.

  USS Arizona Memorial

  When the Japanese bombed the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, the Battleship USS Arizona was one of those sunk. Given the damage to it, it was never salvaged like some of her sister ships were, which went on to play a role later in the war.

  In 1962, the site was converted into a Memorial, which continued to attract large numbers of tourists until shortly before the world ended in 2284.

  Mount Rushmore

  Mount Rushmore is a US National Memorial. It is a massive sculpture carved into the Black Hills region of South Dakota between 1927 and 1941. The sculptures are about sixty feet high (about eighteen meters), carved in granite, featuring the faces of U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

  Yellowstone caldera

  Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming USA, is actually the site of the caldera of a super-volcano. The actual area measures some 34 by 45 miles or 55 by 72 km.

  There were three known main eruptions, some 2.1 million years ago, about 1.3 million years ago, and about 630,000 years ago.

  No-one can agree on what would happen to the planet if this volcano erupted again.

  Optimists believed the USA would have significant problems feeding its population and the rest of the world would be affected very little.

  Pessimists believed this could be an extinction level event, or at the minimum plunge the world into a nuclear winter scenario.

  Realists wanted the opportunity to emigrate off-world before it blew, and received their wish.

  One hundred days

  'A hundred days' was the episode title of a third season episode of Stargate SG1, where an asteroid hitting the Stargate and burying it, leaves Jack O'Neill stranded on another planet for 100 days, before his team are able to find a way through the buried gate, to rescue him from the woman he fell in love with.

  I'm going to knock your block off

  The threat Lucy keeps making to Charlie Brown, in the cartoon series Peanuts, by Charles M Shultz. Originally a paper cartoon, later turned into square screen tv series and movies, before being remade in flat screens. Subsequently remade several times each century.

  It's Borderline on the simulator

  Said by Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, in the movie Star Trek 2.

  Just one damned minute Admiral

  Said by Spock, in the movie Star Trek 4.

  Hero at the Gates

  Carol Magnus

  Carol Marcus was a scientist in the movie Star Trek 2.

  Helen Magnus was the leader of a Sanctuary for Abnormals, in the tv flat screen Sanctuary, played by Amanda Tapping.

  The author appears to have run out of names associated with this actor, but don’t count on it.

  Nose pushed back into the brain?

  There is some controversy over if this will kill someone or not.

  In theory, the nose is made up mainly of cartilage, which is too soft to damage the brain. Given force against it, it gets compressed against the brain, most likely resulting in a headache.

  However, at the top of the nose, is bone. Hit hard enough, like by a combat suit fist or an android fist, the bone would also break, and be pushed up into the brain. The bone shards would penetrate the brain itself, opening a way for the cartilage mass to enter the brain as well, resulting in death. This could even happen using a suit belt covered fist.

  Even if the bone wasn’t broken, a sufficiently violent impact, such as from a combat suit fist or an android fist, could push the cartilage matter into the brain itself, resulting in death. At the
very least, the frontal areas of the brain would be traumatized to the point where the brain ceased to function.

  The naked human fist most likely lacks the power to effect death by broken nose, but again, if sufficient power is applied, once to break the nose, and then to push it straight back along the line the cartilage forms from the back of the nose to the tip, it could do enough damage to the brain to cause death. It would require the exactly right angle to hit at, since merely hitting the nose straight on, would flatten it against the rest of the front skull, doing no damage at all brain wise.