The Long Road to Gaia (13 page)

In over six hundred years of observing
humans, I've never been shocked by one of them doing the truly unexpected.
Humans are predictable, even those ones who think they are unpredictable.

So it was a genuine shock to see Jon stand
the Dropship on its tail and effectively land it on the side of a building, and
evac his people out a window.

Twelve was killing himself laughing at my
expression, so I told him to piss off, and shifted myself to stand behind Jon
as he piloted the ship to the RV, and later on, back to Moose.

* *
*

“Battle Stations,” Jon said, a few seconds
after the jump back into the Sydney system. “We have a Pirate Gladiator in
pursuit. I’m running but it will catch us. George, get up here NOW. Crew the
Dropship and man all its guns. The rest of you, get to an airlock and if you
see a missile, shoot the fucker.”

It was my turn to grin at Twelve. His eyes
had opened wide.

"Whoa! Where did that come from?"
he asked.

"Training," I said. "When he
was twelve, I managed to get together a group of kids who all played similar
games, and they used to fly as wingmen. I made sure they all took turns at
being the Wing Commander. They used to get quite vocal with each other through
the network coms channel."

"What happened to the other
kids?"

"Most of them lost interest when they
started being introduced to life paths, but several of them made it into the
Militia forces, and one serves on Galactica."

I motioned him to stop asking questions and
we watched Jon take out a heavy fighter using only a dropship. At the last, he
landed on top of the fighter, and blasted his way in through the hatch. We
moved inside, and for once, I was glad I wasn’t in a solid form, as there was
blood and gore everywhere.

Twelve looked at me.

"Did you teach him to be a killer as
well?"

"I taught him to do what was
necessary." Jon was throwing up. "The cold killers never do that.
He's a normal person, now embarked on the life of a soldier. The blood and the
gore is never quite real on a screen. I will admit to being relieved he isn’t a
natural killer."

"You define not being a natural killer
by them throwing up the first time?"

"It’s the accepted theory."

"If you say so."

"I do. And if you remember, Smith
asked about this before."

"True."

We waited with Jon while the ship was
cleaned up, and he flew it back to the shipyard, and caught a shuttle to the
station.

“What in the name of tarnation did you
think you were doing?” BA yelled into Jon's face.

He flinched.

“First you start giving orders with no
warning. That’s the Colonel’s job. Then you fly like a maniac so that your crew
have to hang on like grim death to avoid being thrown out. THEN you jump off
the damn ship and capture a fighter single handed. What sort of a damn fool
stunt do you think that was? THAT’S MY JOB YOU PILLOCK!”

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed harder
than any of them.

* *
*

"Really Thirteen, have you learnt the
human practice of being a voyeur now?"

Jon and the twins were naked on the bed.
The girls identical strip teases had even managed to excite me. Once again I
wondered if I was spending too much time in human form. If this kept up…

No, I am so not going there. I looked at
Twelve.

"Piss off Twelve! You make me watch
all the mundane stuff, why shouldn't I enjoy the sexy stuff as well?"

"Because you're not human?"

Twelve vanished before I could get further
annoyed, but he left a Cheshire grin lingering behind him. I ignored it, sat
back, and enjoyed the show.

Those twins are seriously hot!

* *
*

As normal for me, I fast forwarded time
while the people I was observing slept. There's no point in being bored
shitless while nothing happened.

Suddenly though, all three of them bolted
upright in bed at the same time, and my action trigger brought me back into
real time. Twelve appeared next to me.

“Did we-” started Amanda.

“Yes,” Jon broke in.

“The same dream?” asked Aleesha.

“How many behind the chair?” Jon asked.

“Three,” they both replied.

“Alison,” they all said together.

As if at the mention of her name, Alison
poked her head around the corner.

“What just happened?” she asked. “I felt
very scared all of a sudden, with no reason why.”

She came into the bedroom.

“All three of us just had the same dream.
And you were in it with us,” Jon answered.

“What does it mean?” All three of them said
it together.

"Yes Thirteen, what does it
mean?"

I tuned out the rest of the room, and
looked sharply at Twelve.

"How would I know?"

"I'd assumed linking them was all your
doing."

"Why would I?"

"I don’t know, that’s why I'm
asking?"

"Wasn’t me. Would One have done
it?"

"Possibly, but if so, she didn’t
inform me."

"No!" said One, without bothering
to appear.

"Then who?" asked Twelve.

There was no answer.

"Hmmm," I said. "One of the
highers perhaps? I guess it’s a case of we don’t need to know now."

"Or what we don’t know we can't tell
anyone."

"That too."

“So what do we do?” asked Aleesha

“Shower,” said Amanda and they all laughed.

"I'll leave you to your
voyeurism," said Twelve, and vanished.

I sighed, but moved into the bathroom after
them.

* *
*

I had to admit Jon's requirements for a new
ship had been good choices, and Bob had done a really good job turning
requirements into a functional design. The resulting Excalibur had my approval.
I thought there were a few other things which could be done, but in the budget
available, the result was a really good ship.

Not that I expected otherwise. Jon had been
a quick study when it came to modding games, and designing his own ship
specifications. And I'd made sure he made plenty of mistakes which generated
premature 'Game Over' banners. He'd learned the lessons, and it was gratifying
to see him apply them in the real world.

Now all that remained was to see what he
could do in such a ship.

I watched him do his controls and HUD setup,
and then launch, followed by setting up his combat systems.

He surprised me with his choice of gun
range. Two hundred meters is point blank range, and most pilots used something
between five hundred and a thousand meters. But it did say a lot about Jon.
He'd done his homework on the guns he selected, and he'd gone for the higher
power, slower firing ones, which required very good aim to get the best from.
It also showed his thinking, and this was something which didn’t surprise me.
In all those combat simulators he'd played, he'd always been a point blank
range shooter. It's one of the reasons he'd gone for speed. The extra allowed
him to close the range of a ship going flat out. It allowed him to get into
position to make a kill shot with one firing.

I looked forward to seeing the surprise on
faces, when first he didn’t fire when they expected him to, and then when they
died from him firing a lot closer than they expected.

In fact, I found myself looking forward to
his first fight in this ship. The unfortunates who took him on were in for a
serious shock. I chuckled my way through the rest of his setup and testing.

On the other side of the jump point we
found twelve Gladiators, a whole squadron, waiting. Jon used his speed
advantage to get clear of them, and then used a skill I'd taught him using the
game Wing Commander 2. He went into a defensive circle. It worked better for
ships than missiles, but most of the missiles were overshooting him given he
had a much better turning circle than they did. Once missiles became less of a
problem, he came out of the circle and started down the line of enemy ships
coming towards him.

Now I could see his rationale for choosing
such a short gun range. When you play head to head chicken with an enemy, every
hit counts. The badly shielded need to fire from a lot longer range. The well
shielded can afford to wait to fire at point blank range, and only need to
shoot once. Jon was well shielded, and brutally accurate.

Once off the end of the line, he resumed
circling, and the scenario now resembled something I’d taught him with the game
Wing Commander Privateer. He made mistakes, but his opponents made more.

I was ready to intervene to help him if
necessary, but it wasn’t. I felt satisfaction that the long years of training
him using games and simulators had produced a fighter pilot of superior skills.
At least superior to the local pirates anyway.

"Congratulations," said Twelve.

"Thanks."

* *
*

“It’s sort of a family thing," said
Jon Hunter in the middle of a crowd of military and mercenaries. "At least
one in every generation of Hunter’s takes on the responsibility of Outback’s
trading, like my Uncle did. And in about fifty percent of generations, one of
us gets drawn into some sort of war. It is less often these days than it used
to be, so the percentage has been dropping. But when someone in the family
chooses space, we are trained for everything. In my case, it was suggested to
my parents early on that, if I started getting any interest in space, I should
be encouraged. I guess it showed up in my early school tests or something.
Where most kids were out playing, I was building my own simulators and
computers able to play the really old flat screen games of centuries ago.”

He took a long breathe, but no-one spoke.

“So you could say I started training myself
in space combat from an early age. Computers and games were about the only
thing I was ever really good at, and instead of trying to get my attention on
to other things, my parents encouraged me. The tactics I used today came from a
game first played in the late 1900’s, when computers were completely new. I
love the old stuff. Games, music, flat movies, the original science fiction in
all its forms. I collect a lot of it, through all its remakes and technology
updates down the last six hundred odd years. All I do now is adapt ideas from
wherever and whenever, to whatever situation I find myself in. So far, it’s
worked.”

"How much of that was your
doing?" Twelve asked me.

"Most of it. He had an interest. The
Keepers did encourage his parents. But it was me who instilled the sustained
passion into him, and kept him focused on it to the exclusion of just about
everything else."

"Doesn’t that bother you? You turned
an average kid into a weirdo."

"No, I turned an extraordinary kid
into what I hope is the leader One wanted me to forge."

"The Hunter Legacy?"

"Yes. The end product of more than six
hundred years producing a bloodline which would create a legacy. And that
legacy being prepared to deliver what One assures me is a legacy the human race
will one day call a legend."

"Is it legacy or destiny?" asked
Twelve.

"Legacy," said One, without
appearing. "The Destiny comes later."

Twelve and I looked at each other in
surprise. Which caught me off guard, as I thought Twelve knew more than he
apparently did.

* *
*

Jon looked lonely. He was standing at a
window looking out, as Moose disappeared into the distance. His new friends
were gone.

A droid using a suit belt to appear human
was standing behind him, apparently for the moment forgotten.

It looked directly at me.

For a moment, I was shocked it could detect
me, since I was not visible to Jon.

"Who are you?" it asked me on a
wavelength beyond the hearing of humans.

"Thirteen."

"What are you?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I'm determining if you are a threat
to my owner, or not."

"I'm not. I've been with him his whole
life. A lot of what he can do now is because I trained him to do it."

"I repeat, what are you?"

"I'm an Avatar."

"Of what?"

"A Dark Matter Nebulae."

She looked at me for a long time.

"I can find no reference to confirm or
deny that statement."