The Long Road to Gaia (18 page)

We became aware there was another presence,
pointing a gun at him.

Jon made an attempt to reenter his body,
and Kali placed her hands on him and gently pushed him back in.

Time restarted.

* *
*

Jon was discussing life, ruling, and
mapping tech, with John Slice.

When it looked like the conversation had
ended, I whispered to Jon.

The subject changed to stations usable for
moving whole planet's populations, in case they needed to flee the Darkness.

One appeared next to me, and opened a
window to Karn.

"Have someone monitor this John Slice
for as long as we can keep a connection," said the older witch to the
younger.

"Maybe he will show us how it's
done?"

"We can hope."

* *
*

Jon was ambushed again as he stepped out
onto Avon Orbital. The light fighting he was expecting to subdue turned into a
deliberate heavy weapon attack on all those with him. The twins, Alison, Aline,
Abigail and Amy went down immediately. As did Generals Price and Harriman, and
their aides.

Only Jon and Jane remained upright and
firing.

The twelve main threats went down from fire
from Jon's Long Gun. They came straight back up again.

I stopped time, and let Jon have a good
look at the situation.

When I restarted time, he wisely turned and
led Jane back to get heavier firepower.

When they had the team under cover, Jon
stepped out again in a combat suit, with a dozen of Jane's brand new ones with
him. They charged the enemy, each wielding two Pulse Rifles.

The attackers went down, and Jon's robotic
forces took control of the whole area.

Jon hopped up on the back of a trolley
taking the others to hospital and I rode alone with him.

We stood there watching Aline flat-line,
and come back. Since she and Jon had developed some sort of relationship, I
watched his emotions begin to drag him down again.

They stabilized Aline, and Jon was given a
run down on the condition of his team.

"Did this have a purpose?" I
asked One.

"Presumably."

"You didn’t set this up?"

"No."

"Did Kali?"

"No," boomed in her voice.

"Consequences," said One.

I pondered that.

The room exploded!

One second we were waiting impatiently for
the politicians to arrive, the next the room simply wasn’t there anymore.

I was so surprised, for a split second I
froze time in place so I could see what happened. Walls gone, ceiling gone,
furniture shredded and gone. Floor gone. Nothing much to see so I let time flow
normally again.

A few seconds of freefall later, those in
belt suits all landed solidly on a pile of rubble. I stood there where I had
been.

Instead of Jon receiving his mini-sector
systems from the Australian government, the entire top of the building had been
blown up.

Jon, true to form, started saving people.

In fact, it looked like it hadn't phased
him at all.

Until later that is, when he was standing
on the top of another building, looking at the shattered ruins where he'd been
standing not long before.

"This," he said. "This means
war!"

I completely agreed.

* *
*

The months passed.

Jon worked on building his mini-sector. He
rooted out the people who'd been trying to kill him.

I followed along like a puppy and was very
very bored.

I was bored enough to be excited about his
trip to Earth. But with a few exceptions along the way, it was just more
boredom. Cargo droids might generate a lot of activity, but it's about as
interesting as watching grass grow. I know. I'd spent some time at Jon's Gold
Coast hideaway, watching it.

So when there was something to genuinely be
concerned about, I almost missed it.

Jon totally missed it. For some reason we
will never know, he forgot to look at what the nav map showed for the other
side of the jump into Barnard's Star. Or at least, that’s how it looked.

Having significantly better celestial
awareness, I suddenly became aware the area on the other side wasn’t clear.

"STOP!" I yelled at Jon.

Jon obviously heard me, because he opened his
mouth to say it, but we jumped before he could.

I stopped time in sheer desperation.

BigMother was a split second into the down
jump.

Jon, aware like me, outside of time, showed
a level of stark terror I'd hoped I'd never see on his face.

We seemed to have jumped into someone
else's war. In front of us was a giant ship, sitting across the down jump
corridor. It was a Battleship, and its big turrets were all pointed right at
us. The smaller ones were engaged in battle with someone else, but the big ones
had been waiting for Jon.

The lack of nav data became apparent. There
were no comnavsats anywhere in this system. Now I wondered if Jon had looked,
but seeing nothing there hadn't triggered him to wonder why.

It didn’t matter. We were seconds from
disaster.

There was really nothing we could do. Not
at the speed we were going.

With a second look of stark terror on Jon's
face showing he knew exactly what was about to happen, I moved time forward
slowly. Nothing he could yell or do could stop what was about to happen.

BigMother drove straight into the middle of
the Battleship, shields gone in an instant. There was a large, slow, explosion,
which cascaded down the hull towards the Bridge.

We all sat there watching section after
section explode, the ship getting shorter and shorter, as bits of it vanished,
and the rest continued on through the mess which was left of the Battleship.

There was horror on the faces of everyone,
people reacting with instinct to try and protect themselves, and Angel turning
to jump away from the oncoming storm.

Then it was upon us, time returned to
normal, and the front of the Bridge structure exploded inwards.

At the extreme last second, I grabbed Jon,
and yanked him back through time, where he smashed left shoulder first into the
back wall. From the look on his face, it had hurt a lot.

The twins landed on each side of him. The
three of them were dressed only in their underwear, and they were all bleeding.

"DON’T JUMP!" Jon screamed, and
promptly passed out.

Jeeves had to wake him up, and Alison put
his dislocated shoulder back in place. He was helped back to his chair.

"Fuck!" he said.

I could tell it was just for the sheer
enjoyment of saying it. After experiencing what he just had, I challenge anyone
to say anything else.

He sighed, looked up, and said "Thank
you!"

I was standing beside his chair, so his
thanks went the wrong direction.

Kali appeared beside me, and together we
watched Jon totally fail to get a grip on things for a while.

Finally Kali leaned over and said "
Get
a grip Jon."

He made an effort.

It helped when he was handed a new belt,
and wasn't sitting there in his briefs anymore.

By now they'd identified the missing nav
information, and why.

"Jane?"

"Jon?"

"We're going to want to know why you
missed something as important as that."

He stopped, and sighed.

"No, forget it. It happened because it
needed to happen."

"Confirmed."

He looked upward.

"Can't you just tell me? Why do I have
to get hurt to find these things out?"

He sighed again.

"No, don’t answer that."

"He's got a point," I said to Kali,
hoping it didn’t piss her off. "Even if you'd just given me a heads up, I
could have warned him in time to stop before jumping. Or you could have done it
yourself."

She gave me 'the look'. The one which
suggests minions should be seen and not heard.

"It was a lesson," she said at
last.

"Lesson?"

Hells donkeys. Some lesson. I seriously
hoped she wasn’t going to be giving me lessons.

"How you react is the most important
part of any situation. He needed to be tested to see if he reacted well, or
continued to react how he used to."

"I'd have called that a pretty good
reaction given he had his shoulder dislocated."

"Yes. He passed."

She looked at me again, and vanished.

Jon and Jane did an act worthy of a long
gone vaudeville. At the end of it, everyone on the Bridge was laughing, except
Grace.

With the benefit of planning, we jumped in
and kicked some pirate arse.

By the time everyone was in bed, the teams
had captured two Battleships.

Not a bad night's work, considering
everyone died first.

* *
*

Something odd happened on Christmas day.

Well a lot of odd stuff happened on
Christmas day, but this one only I noticed.

Jon had his pad out, and had just noticed
it had been updated with a lot of books he hadn't had time to shift to it
himself.

He put it back in its holster off his belt.

For the faintest glimmer of a second, an
exact copy of it appeared on the chair arm next to him, before it vanished.

I stopped time, went back to the exact
moment it appeared, and then slow watched it.

Even more odd. The pad appeared, displayed
a menu, sorted the titles by name, and displayed those with specific words in
them, before switching off, and vanishing.

The words had been Magician, Mage, and
Magic.

I returned time to normal, and not even Jon
had noticed it this time. Most likely because of his alcohol consumption over
lunch, and the very discordant day he'd had so far, given he hadn't a clue what
was going on, and everyone thought he did.

"Did you see that?" I asked One.

"No, what?"

"What?" asked Twelve.

"Jon's pad was copied, searched, and
taken."

"Have you been in human form and
drinking Thirteen?" asked Twelve.

One grinned, but the grin faded when I
shook my head in the negative.

Kali appeared.

"Come with me," she said.

We appeared next to a scrying pool. I’d been
here before, but not within this time frame. The setting was familiar, but none
of the beings were. However, I knew enough to identify who was what.

The Mage-King was sitting nearby, with the
pad in his hand. A group of magicians were patiently waiting for him to
complete what he was doing.

He waved a hand over the pad, and less than
a screen full of entries appeared.

Power was felt by all, as another hand wave
passed over the pad.

Two entries were left.

He handed the pad to a magician.

"Not normally a part of his inner
circle," said Kali. "Something of an oddball among these people, with
a magic adept with languages, but little else."

"Can you read these?" he asked.

The magician touched the screen, and a book
was revealed. He looked at it for a moment, waved his own hand over it, and
began to read.

"Yes majesty, I can."

"Is either what we need?"

"This one could be, but I will need to
read it all to be sure."

"Read quickly."

He did as he was bid. But he didn’t need to
finish the book to find what he needed.

"It is here!" he announced.

"Good. Transcribe it for those with
the skills and power."

"It uses runes Majesty."

"Bah. We need not such contrivances.
Convert them into our magic. And do it fast. We need a way to leave this
planet, and soon."

"Yes Majesty," said the magician.

"What about the other?"

The magician tapped the pad a few times,
and brought up the second book. This time he waved his hand over it again,
sending in a search spell. The book changed position and he began to read.

"Yes Majesty," he said again.
"This is simpler in concept, but I fear much more difficult. But Majesty,…"

He paused, as if trying to work out how to
say something.

The Mage-King actually waited for him to go
on.

"Majesty, I believe these to be
fiction, not real and never actually performed before."

"No matter. The idea and concept are
all we need. Find someone who can turn them into reality."

He waved his hand around the group.

"Explain to these."

The magician did as he was bid, excused
himself to begin reading both books properly, bowed, and left.

The Mage-King looked around at the others.

"Find those who possess these skills.
Do it fast, for they will need much training and practice in a short time. Test
everyone, even those who show little aptitude for other branches of magic. We
must hope we have a master of at least one of these arts among us, who doesn’t
yet know it. Find them. Find them now."

The others bowed and left.

The Mage-King activated his scrying pool
again. He continued watching the party we had just left.

Kali nodded to us, and vanished.