Hunter Legacy (Ellis)

Surviving having survived comes with a body count. Jonathon Hunter has evoked the wrath of twenty-seventh-century pirates. With his twin sexy bodyguards, Jonathon seeks to come to grips with station life in a suddenly hostile universe. Celebrity, gratitude, sudden attacks, and a mysterious prophecy are more than most eighteen year olds can handle. A reluctant hero, Jonathon is on a journey, seemingly out of his time, but always in time. Meet Jon Hunter as he starts a two-year journey to prophecy, with his AI sidekick, and mostly female mercenary team. This is a rollicking coming of age story, of life in space, fighter and ground combat action, and surviving the consequences of surviving.

How does a young spiritual warrior cope, as the kills mount? Jonathon Hunter's world grows darker each day. Assassins, Pirates, Bounty Hunters, Mercenaries, and Retros, all want a piece of him. Each trap leads to yet another trap. When the unthinkable happens, the prey becomes the predator. The hunted goes hunting. But how does a young spiritual warrior cope, as the kills mount?

Jonathon Hunter is a long way from home, and intent on getting back to track down his unknown adversary. But local problems intrude-an annoyance becomes a real threat. Trading one war for another wasn't in his game plan, but you do what has to be done to keep others alive. Jonathon isn't playing one of his computer games any more, and the save button only works by putting your life on the line. When the odds are stacked against you, there is only one thing left to do. Send in the Hero.

All good heroes are insane. Was that really a joke? Jonathon Hunter hasn't the time to ponder the labels people try to put on him. The war shifts from defensive to offensive. The stakes get higher, as the means to fight the aggressors finally become available. But has he risen too high? Or are the consequences of his own actions, interfering with his judgement? As fast as you move, the past is faster, and always catches up with you when you least expect it. This is not a game, and being a Hero has its own price tag. Just where is the point, where you Make, or Break, the Hero?

What could possibly go wrong with accepting an invitation from an ally? As the war comes to an end, Jonathon Hunter sees the good and bad sides to being considered the hero, but which is which? All he wants to do is go home, but home isn't any closer than it was a month ago, and this time, he's going the long way around. A hero's work is never done, and with the stakes never being higher before, just how much paranoia is not enough? The impossible can be done immediately, but for miracles, you need to Hail the Hero.

One Detective. A killer on the move through human space. The ultimate target. The name's Burnside, and I always get the weird cases. I built my detective career taking down the strangest bad guys in Earth Sector. No matter how crazy the case, I always managed to get it off the books. After twenty years of pounding my beat, I was ready to pack it in, and I'd called it a day. Then these killings started, weird to the point of freaked out PD Chiefs, and only one person who fit the case. So much for retirement. You'd think twenty years of weird would have you weirded out. But crime scenes are not the only weird out there, and expanding your experience of weird isn't for the faint hearted. The story I'm going to tell you covers 2 years of my life, and took me from one end of human space to the other. And that's when the weird really starts, out on the edge, where space is owned now by Jonathon Hunter, and I get his best people to work with. This was one for the history books, and my name will always be remembered, because of Burnside's Killer.

There's no such thing as a dull life for Jon Hunter. He's come to grips with being an Admiral. But why does someone want to keep him from becoming a Duke so badly, that collateral damage doesn't matter? The Midgard war is over, the British coup behind him, but war comes in many forms. Life isn't the same when you fly a desk, unless the desk comes under direct attack. When the dust settles, it takes time to get things done. There is a time to plan and wait, a time for covert deviousness, and a time to strike. In the midst of all else, Jon is confronted with a new journey, to somewhere no one in their right mind would want to go. Actions have consequences, and Sectors have their own problems. What does a Sector Government do when the problem is beyond their immediate resources? They Hire a Hero!

"I'm not in the rescue business," states Jonathon Hunter, to the amusement of his crew. But rescues are the least of his concerns. Darkness is coming, and there are still people out there who don't like him. The Sirius system has always fascinated Jon, and he is drawn to solve its mysteries. But what is the price of being curious? Can one simple step cause what you dread the most? Is it possible to do one too many rescues? To take one step too far into the unknown? For those who take that one step too many; be they foolhardy, curious, or simply unlucky; hope takes the shape of the Hero to the Rescue.

There are some days when you should just stay in bed. Jon Hunter begins to realize this, as the consequences of saying yes, when he should have said no, begin to add up. The trouble with making tech advances, is someone will always come up with a counter eventually. And when this occurs on one of those days you should have stayed in bed, the cosmos tends to demonstrate just how many ways things can actually go wrong. But time is ticking away. The Door to Jon's home, and all the answers he so desperately wants, is soon to open. But it's no longer a question of will he get there on time, but will he get there at all?

Jon Hunter has made it home. But a lot of things have happened to him over the last year. Some of them made no sense at all to those with him, but they accepted the really weird as if it was part of him. Jon himself didn't understand a lot of it, but accepted he wasn't allowed to know yet. But what really happened, and why? For 600 odd years, Hunter's have traveled space. Where did it all start? What were the events which shaped the galaxy Jon Hunter finds himself in? And what of the previous Jon Hunter's, mentioned in prophecy? Thirteen doesn't like humans. The last thing he wants is to be assigned a mission to babysit them. Given a choice, he'd happily let them blow themselves up, after he saved all the cats first. Exactly how humans could ever have anything to do with galaxy wide consequences is completely beyond his ability to understand. When asked to perform an intervention, there was always freewill to choose not to. But in this case, does he really have a choice? For Thirteen, walking with humans for 650 years, is definitely a long road to Gaia. This is an interlude novel between parts one and two of The Hunter Legacy, from the point of view of a new character in the series.

Jonathon Hunter has at last come home. Or so he thinks. The Door is only open for five days, and it should be long enough for what he needs. What he doesn't need is his whole concept of home to be challenged. Not when there is so much else to do. The answers he's long wanted are now within his grasp. But does he really want to know the truth? Can he handle the truth? And what else is there he doesn't know about? The Darkness is coming, and Gaia has its role to play. But Prophecy doesn't care who believes in it. It unfolds as foretold. Shock follows shock, and as the stakes get higher, Jon's grip on reality comes down to one simple question. A question everyone else knows the answer to. Home is where the Hero is.

It's crunch time for Jonathon Hunter. The Darkness War has begun. His nightmares led him to the edge of Death, waiting for Darkness. Prophecy will not be denied, and the nightmare seemed to suggest all would go black. But is a nightmare something you can really rely on after all? And when you've seen the future, is that all there is? Does it have to go that way? Finding out the truth can sometimes be worse than your worst nightmare ever was. The biggest fleet since Jutland is ready to fight the longest rear-guard action ever fought, but does it need to? Can victory happen in spite of knowing you lost the future? Darkness has come, but why was it called the Darkness? Is it actually important? Life is important, but who made Jon the one to choose who lives and who dies? A hero can't save everyone, not even the Hero in Darkness.

"If we fall, humanity is lost. Those are the stakes." The Darkness War rages on, and a war weary Jonathon Hunter faces obstacles which only humans can create, while an enemy which keeps growing stronger, continues to force him to retreat. Saving humanity is the goal, but can Jon be excused for thinking some of it just doesn't want to be saved? Extraordinary events require extraordinary responses, but is Jon still up to the challenge? Humanity has its bolt hole in another galaxy, and Jon must stop the aliens arriving there before the Door closes, so the survivors will be safe. It's his job to ensure no alien enters Outback, in spite of those wanting to be more aggressive, and take bigger risks, with consequences he dreads happening. In the end, Jon knows someone has to do the impossible, and maybe even the unthinkable. The safety of humanity carries a price tag. Jon knows this. His team know this. But only Jon knows the true price to be paid. When all that's left is one insane gamble, will they let him be: the Hero to the End?