Hunter Legacy 5 Hail the Hero by Timothy Ellis

congratulations. Wellington
out.”
    I sent her back a brief vid thanking her,
and expressing my absolute intention to enjoy myself from now on.
    Jeeves came in with a package. Opening it
up, popped up an invoice, which I paid. I unpacked six new suit belts, with
three boosters for each. I added the boosters to each belt.
    Again I changed my suit back to a belt, and
added a second belt around my waist. The pop-up asked if I wanted to merge, and
I answered yes. The belts merged. I checked the protection level, and it was as
the test had shown. I also checked if the non-standard nature of my original
suit remained active. It had, and in fact, the merged belt had adopted the
characteristics of the original completely.
    Now for the real test. I looped a third
belt around my waist. Another pop-up, and another successful merge. The fourth
one refused to merge, so it was the same as a fourth booster refusing to merge.
    I set the belt back to ‘slinky red’.
    I checked the protection level, and was
surprised to see it rated the same as a combat suit now.
    Feeling adequately protected, I had Jeeves
take two of the remaining suits down to my suite, and pinged Alison to come see
me.
    She limped in about five minutes later.
    “Take your belt off please,” I
told her.
    “Jon? Are you getting frisky?”
    She grinned at me.
    “No,” I answered her. Her face
fell. “I’ve a new one for you. You never received any boosters for that
one, so I ordered you a new one. It just arrived.”
    I handed it over to her. She shifted hers
to a belt, removed it, tossed it on my desk, and put the new one on. I watched
as she went blank, obviously getting a PC upgrade for it. When complete, she
shifted the belt to ‘slinky red’.
    “Good,” I said. “I feel
better now you’re properly protected. I’m off to the hospital for a checkup.
You should come with me for one as well.”
    She frowned, as if considering refusing,
but nodded. She followed me out.
    Amanda and Aleesha met us inside the Cargo
Deck airlock, and took up flanking positions. I assumed Alison had pinged them
I was heading out. Given what had happened the last time I’d gone out onto a
civilian station, it made sense.
    I stepped to the top of the ramp and took a
step down.
    My suit snapped into full protection mode
with my foot still in the air.
    Four golden threads came at me, slamming
into my suit at the same place over my heart. Instead of being pulses, the shots
continued to hit me in a continuous stream.
    The suit reacted as I’d been told it would.
The momentum of the hits was transferred down the suit, and into the deck
below, lifting me clean off the deck, and propelling me into the air.
    As I rose, the golden streams travelled
down my body.
    My Long Gun was in my hand seconds after
the hits began. Targeting went primary. Four targets were identified. From
right to left I tracked the gun to each target, squeezing off one shot at each.
Four figures in the distance went down one by one. Each golden stream shut off
as each target went down, the last one already past my knee and still going
down when it ended.
    Two meters off the ground, my rise halted,
and I came down as fast as I’d gone up.
    My feet hit the deck, and agony like I’d
never felt before, shot up my left side.
    I passed out.
    When I came to, I was sitting in my Ready
Room, at my conference table.
    I was in no pain at all.
    There were three of us sitting there. Me at
one end, both of them at the other. I couldn’t see them very well.
    The woman smiled at me.
    “Welcome Jon. You’re dead.”

Fifteen

    “Dead?” I said. “What are
you talking about?”
    She waved her hand, and a screen opened on
the wall.
    Three people were kneeling over a fallen
figure, while a line of combat droids raced past into the station.
    Alison had my head in her lap, and was
crying hysterically.
    “What?”
    “You’re dead Jon. Accept it. Your suit
worked as designed, but the trauma underneath it was so great, the pain