She remained silent and defiant.
"Do you deny being responsible for the death of the person down in the morgue?"
"Of course I deny it. I was nowhere near the control device when it was triggered."
"But you put the collar on each of them. Didn’t you?"
She was silent again, but her defiance was slipping. I looked around the bridge. One of them caught my eye.
"Yes?"
"I saw her put the collars on all the slaves. I failed to protest, knowing it would only bring her wrath down on me. I accept what punishment you give me."
"Thank you." My eyes went to Lea again, and she nodded. "You may also leave this bridge, and prepare to leave the ship."
The crewman gave me a half bow, and almost ran out. I looked around at the ones left.
"Anyone else have a defense?"
Silence.
"You are all found guilty, and sentenced to live the remainder of your days on a penal colony of my choice. With the exception of you." I looked at the engineer. "You are sentenced to death."
"I don’t think…"
I moved her outside the ship, without a bubble. There were gasps as she vanished.
I linked up suns all the way back to my home system, chose a place, and one by one, moved the remaining crew members to an island. I left the captain to last, waiting until he was finished with crew documents, had the nod from Lea, and without giving him any warning, moved him to the island as well.
I took a quick look to see if they made it, and they had. The lot of them hadn't moved, just staring around them, not believing what had just happened.
"Where are they?" asked Lea.
"On an island. It has a rather nasty predator, so I doubt they'll last very long. Maybe I'll be wrong."
Tasha shot me a look, but didn’t say anything.
"Let's be leaving. It's been a long day, and I could use some sleep."
They linked hands with me, and I took us back to our ship. Sasha and two marines were waiting, and I moved them over, so Sasha could take command.
Tasha and I had a much needed dinner together, and while both ships headed for the station under their own power, we went to bed.
Thirteen
"You've changed," said Tasha, propped up on one arm, looking at me lying beside her.
I'd slept the entire night through, and woken refreshed. She'd been looking at me when I opened my eyes.
"What makes you say that?"
"When we left you on the planet, you were all about not killing people. Now you're executing them in job lots, apparently without a second thought. What changed?"
"Several things. Mostly I had the expectation our efforts on the pirate station would bring about real change. But nothing happened, except they found a loophole to use."
"I can understand you not liking that, but…"
"It doesn’t account for the change in me?"
"Yes."
"I read a book."
"Really?"
She was chuckling.
"I downloaded about a thousand, across a wide range of subjects, thinking no matter what my whim was, there would be something to read to satisfy it. It wasn’t as if the funds mattered at the time, I had plenty, and the decision to leave wasn’t a sudden one. I had time to prepare. Over five years, I read most of them. One of them was really old, and really interesting."
"Do tell."
"It was about karma."
"The what you put out comes back to you stuff?"
"Sort of. Karma is really complicated, but understanding it helps you with managing your own actions."
"How is karma helping you to kill a lot of people?"
"One of the misunderstood aspects of society is 'the greater good'. Once I understood it, I could see it working in my first and second lives, and especially here."
"I don’t get you."
"Most people think greater good is doing things which enhance the lives of the many."
"It's not?"
"Yes, it is. But the trouble with it is, people narrow the definition to enhancing those people they think should be enhanced, and is usually the rich and powerful. Which is not what it means at all. But there is a flip side to it. The greater good also includes stopping what is bad. Slavery is one of the really bad things. When governments fail to act, someone has to. Even if they get labeled a vigilante. Being one is not karmically bad, as long as you're working to help those oppressed, and only stop the perpetrators."
"Sounds like an awfully fine line to walk."
"It is. As you accumulate good karma helping the oppressed, you also accumulate bad karma by doing bad things to bad people. As long as at the end of the day, you accumulated more good than bad, you're ok."
"So your day yesterday should have been badly on the negative side."
"No actually. Failing to act, is worse. It also accumulates bad karma. Which is why I let those seven go. Six of them protested, and risked comeback on themselves in doing so. The seventh had the thoughts to do so, but was too afraid of voicing it. But the thoughts were enough, and when it counted, he came forward. They all redeemed themselves in some way karmically, and so earned their freedom."
"Way too complicated for me."
"I had five years to think about it."
"Where did Judge Thorn come from?"
"A novel. He was government rather than vigilante, but he roamed the world, bringing justice to the oppressed, and down trodden."
"Is that what you're doing?"
"For now. Jen isn’t going to have any peace until her ghosts are laid to rest. And besides, I've always hated bullies. Now I can give them back what they give out."
"One left then?"
"One left, yes."
"Do we know where he is?"
"Unfortunately, no. He'll have to wait until the war is fixed."
"Are you two rabbits going to stay in there all day?"
Lea sounded highly amused.
We hurried through a shower and dressing, and bolted down breakfast. I left Tasha on her way to my bridge, and walked around to the main bridge.
All eyes turned to me as I walked in.
"What?"
"Nice of you to join us, this fine day."
Sasha sounded a bit sarcastic. I ignored her.
"Where are we headed next?" asked Jen.
"The war. We've one target left, but unless you've found where he is overnight, we should check in at the warfront."
Jen shook her head, frowning.
"What are we doing with the other ship?" asked Jess.
"Oh. Have it follow us out to the scanner line. Let me know when we get there."
I could see they were curious about what happened once we got there, but I left them with their curiosity unsated. I was tempted to go back to bed now the vitally important 'where are we going now' business was sorted, but thought better of it.
The run out was routine, and I checked to see what books Lea had been able to get for me. She hadn't let me down, and the tablet now had several thousand more books on it. Not all of them were novels. I’d included a lot of history, art, philosophy, ship functions, and general interest stuff. The idea being, to progressively update myself to this new kind of society I was living in. For example, understanding their history might lead me to understand why this society couldn’t function without the covert use of slaves.
Once we were out of range of the station, I told Jen to remove the slave of the controls. We kept on going, leaving the other ship behind.
I concentrated, linking suns, assembling as much energy as I could, and dropped it neatly next to the old damaged one.
"What the hell did you just do?" asked Jess, over the coms.
"Parked it somewhere safe."
Fourteen
"Battlestations!"
I'd jumped us just outside the scanner range of the jump point the fleet were defending. Sasha made the call as soon as our scanner lit up the battle going on at the jump point.
I'd been g
iven a lesson in battle HUD understanding, which helped me see one of our ships vanish from the display.
"Thorn! What do we do?"
Jen seemed anxious.
"Don’t panic!"
"I'll show you fucking panic."
I don’t think she'd meant that to come through the coms, but I grinned anyway. She pushed the ship up to top speed, indicating what she thought was needed.
I looked at the whole battle from above it. Nine large ships had jumped in, although they seemed to be in several sizes and variations. I didn’t know enough to understand what they were, or how much of a threat they were. They were just 'the enemy', and were holding their formation, which was one long line.
Arrayed in a very wavy line in front, were twelve smaller ships, five I recognized as armed freighters, and two which were larger than the enemy ships. Both sides were all popping off at each other, with missiles and lasers, although it was obvious the enemy guns were different to ours.
"Thorn?"
"Wait! I'm trying to find where to put us."
"Try faster!"
The command was back in Jen's voice, and it was good to hear it.
I shifted my gaze to the middle enemy ship, and looked it all over. Lots of turrets and launchers, but mainly around the front and sides, and all pointing forward. I shifted to the next one. The design was different, but the overall picture was the same. Designed to fight pointing at the enemy.
"Standby to jump. I'm putting us up the arse of the middle ship. Fire everything at the one target, and only shift target if it's neutralized. Go for maximum damage rather than outright kills. If we need to get out of there, tell me to jump."
"What will you be doing?" asked Sasha.
"Protecting the rest of the fleet. After we do enough damage to get their attention, I'll start dealing with them directly. Show me where the jump point is."
A detailed map of the area around the jump point popped up. I needed to know, so I didn’t jump us into the point itself. Finding ourselves in the next system, on the enemy side, might prove embarrassing.
I looked over at Tasha. It was her mind and fingers who would fire our weapons. She looked like a block of ice, but did notice me looking.
"Minimum distance for maximum hitting?"
Instead of telling me, she added two marks to the map I was already looking at.
"Blue is minimum. Red is where I'd prefer. Missiles need arming distance. I'd rather make sure they did."
"About to jump. Tell me now if you’re not ready."
"Go!" yelled Jen.
The ship jumped, and the view forward was suddenly the arse end of a ship. I could feel the vibration through the ship of launchers and turrets doing their thing.
But my sight was viewing the battle from the other side, watching missiles and laser shot coming towards our ships.
I erected a force wall across the front of all our ships, allowing their missiles and shot to go through, but stopping everything the enemy were throwing. Hits were coming thick and fast, exploding on contact, but the wall was holding with little effort.
The rear end of the ship in front of us exploded, and for a moment, I was seeing in two places at once, and throwing up a second wall around us, as bits of ship began to bite into our ship shields too much, too fast. My sight focused on the bigger battle again, while I felt more than saw, us turn to face the ship to the left.
"Ammo?" muttered Tasha.
I found myself looking into a magazine as well, watching the auto-loaders bringing missiles out of the magazines, and setting them up for launching. Gaps were appearing where missiles were already gone. We weren't in any danger of running out any time soon, but she had a point. I reached out to the nearest asteroid field, and set the intent to make a missile to replace each missile taken out of the magazine. A moment later, the first one appeared in an empty slot, and I let the process go.
No longer taking any damage, our fleet had straightened up their line, and were firing everything they could. The enemy ships were now taking more damage than before. But two of them were moving now.
"Thorn!" yelled Jen. "Move us back, before we get flanked on both sides."
I looked at Tasha, and pointed a finger upward. She saw the movement, looked at me, and nodded.
The ship jumped, and turned at the same time. We were now above the enemy fleet, still to the rear of them, and pointed directly at them. I adjusted the wall to cover more arc around us.
"Fucking idiot," said Jess.
I could hear Jen talking to someone, presumably over in our fleet. I was finding holding two views at the same time, not so much tiring, as a bit like being cross-eyed. It was hard to keep both perspectives right in my head. Which of course, was the wrong approach.
Calling myself an idiot under my breath, I moved my sight to a midpoint between the two, and higher up again, so the entire battlefield was in a single viewpoint for me.
The idiot wasn't me, but the captain of one of the two bigger ships, which was about to cross my wall line. The moment he did, he'd start taking fire again, and the ship was already badly damaged.
Better safe than sorry, I took my eye off the battle for a moment, looking into the ship's engine room. Inside one of the black boxes inside the control system, I broke something. Nothing happened, so I broke a few more. Red lights began popping up, and the engineers started turning things off. I went back to looking at the battle, the ship now dead in space. They had life support and gravity, but very little else.
Three of the enemy ships were now badly damaged. Two were still circling back, and coming up after us.
"Thorn," I heard Lea say, "stop playing with your food, and get it done!"
Fifteen
"What's your rush?"
"Are you even paying attention to what's coming for us?"
"Not really, no. Why? Are we in trouble?"
Silence. I grinned. Tasha hadn't even noticed. She was in the zone, fingers dancing, mind and weapons acting as one. I really should get her something bigger to fire.
I shook my head, and concentrated again. Two ships were coming towards us, and maybe they were getting too close. Before doing something about them, I checked the rest. Which was when I noticed the fire coming from our side, no longer had any missiles. Presumably the fleet were out of them.
Four of the enemy ships were now disabled, and out of the fight. The remaining six started moving ahead, as if seeing their enemy out of missiles meant they now had the advantage.
I moved my sight to be in front of the ship I’d crippled, took hold of the force wall, and punched it forward.
Six ships simply crumbled to dust as the wall went through them. The last two, broke off attacking us, and headed for the jump point. I checked the damage on each of them, and punched the one with the least damage. It disintegrated.
Before Jen could shift us onto an intercept course for the last ship, I jumped us well away.
"What did you do that for?" she yelled.
I ignored her. The battle was effectively over, the enemy withdrawing. What was left was four badly damaged ships, which I now looked inside of.
On the bridge of the first ship, I found people who looked much like us. Same shape, different but similar clothes, but their skin was variations of a burnt orange colour. As far as species go, we might have been cousins.
So much for aliens.
All four ships were lifeless, having either lost life support, or with too many holes to escape explosive decompression.
On a whim, I shifted them one at a time, parking them next to the other two. Off to one side, I made a hole, and moved all the bodies into it, lining them up carefully, and with dignity. After filling in the hole, I created a monument to the unknown alien warriors.
I kept the force walls up until the last enemy ship jumped. Tasha was slumped over her console, so I legged it into the kitchen, and brought us both back water. She took hers mechanically, and drank most of it in one go.
"Thanks. Are we fin
ished here?"
"For the moment. Battle anyway. Now the interrogation starts."
She laughed, but I had a pretty good idea of what was coming. Expecting to have been summoned before now, we collected another water each, and walked around to the main bridge.
Jen was giving orders. We quietly took seats, and waited.
Whoever she was giving them to, wasn’t happy about getting them, but wasn’t contradicting them either. Someone behind him was repeating them. When I checked my overview sight again, I saw our ship moving into position near the jump point, and the others forming up around us. One ship was heading away, and when I checked it I could see why. It was limping badly, and needed a shipyard urgently. I saw one spot where the hull was leaking air, and sealed it.
There was talk about how far away supply ships were, and when the next reinforcements were due. The stocks of missiles were less than a day away, so I didn’t see the point in making missiles for everyone else. Not at least while I was here.
The com screen vanished, and Jen turned her gaze on me.
"What were you doing?"
Her voice was calm, but I could see she wasn’t happy about something.
"In the first instance, putting us where we could be a threat, and protecting the ships we had left."
"And in the second?"
"Assessing the enemy."
"Why?"
My mouth fell open, and I had to push it back with my hand.
"Why what?"
"All you had to do was destroy them all in the first few seconds. Why didn't you?"
"Have you even seen your enemy?"
"Of course. We've been fighting these ships for weeks."
"Not the ships. The aliens themselves."
"No. How would we? None of their ships has been taken before."
"They haven’t tried to communicate?"
"Not as far as I know."
So I wasn’t even going to ask if anyone had tried to contact them. I was so far behind the eight ball, especially with my lack of history awareness, but it really felt like something was really wrong here.
"Well, without communications, we learnt a lot about them today. Because I took the time."
Today's Spacemage (The Spacemage Chronicle Book 2) Page 5
