The Long Road to Gaia
Read The Long Road to Gaia Online
Authors: Timothy Ellis
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Exploration, #Military, #Space Fleet, #Space Marine, #Space Opera, #Time Travel, #Teen & Young Adult, #Metaphysical & Visionary, #Space Exploration
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.
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.
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, but 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 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.