I was out the hatch first, and walking to my end of the ship, so I wouldn’t need to hear all the exclamations of surprise about how good the ship looked now. I wasn’t surprised when Tasha followed me. Outside my stateroom, I waited to see what she'd do.
Her stuff was next door. Without even looking at me, she marched straight into my room, went to the clothes hangers, and hung her bikini up, pushing it to one end. It was all she'd had to bring up. Her eyes met mine, and she pointed to the other end. I smiled, nodded, and hung up what clothes I had where indicated. By the time I was heading out, she was heading in with everything she had aboard.
I walked the distance to the main bridge, and found Jen doing system tests. She looked at me, and her eyebrows went up.
"Get us moving. Take ten or so to get the feel of the ship, then tell everyone to sit, and buckle up."
I could see the need to ask how I’d fixed the ship so well burning within her, but she kept a lid on it.
The ship left orbit.
"Ten minutes to buckle up, people."
Her voice sounded through the ship. There was no hint of any of the turmoil still inside her, and I could now see why no-one else had known about it.
"Where would you be normally going from here?" I asked her.
"Didn’t Tasha tell you?" I shook my head, even though she had. "Nearest military depot. We need missiles."
"No, you don’t."
She opened her mouth to contradict me, but decided to check the magazine displays instead.
"No we don’t," she confirmed. "So where are we going? Straight back to the front?"
"No, we're going to the depot anyway."
"Why?"
"I hear it has good fishing."
She closed her eyes, and sat there for a moment. The moment was interrupted when Sasha came in, and took a seat next to Jen, but at her own console. I raised an eyebrow at Jen.
"XO."
Which made sense. Sasha was the next down officer, who didn’t have a real job on the ship. Jess was engineering, so it couldn’t be her. Lea wasn’t a command officer. Sasha was technically a marine, but she also commanded. Hence, XO.
"Show me the map of systems between here and the depot."
Jen brought it up on a screen.
"Now the system with the depot, with an indication of where the station is, and how far it can see a ship coming."
Another screen, and this time showing the planets in a system diagram, a dot where the station was, and a ring around the station showing where ships appeared on its sensors. Yes, I had learned a thing or to. Reading enough books will give you an education. Even if most of it is useless entertainment.
"Transfer both to my screens please."
She nodded. I made my way back to my bridge, where I found Tasha at her part of the console.
"You did a great job of repairing the weapon systems. There were some minor adjustments necessary, but nothing major. All launchers and turrets are operational."
"Good. Prepare to jump."
A confused look appeared on her face, but she buckled up anyway.
"All hands sit and buckle up," came Sasha's voice over the coms.
I gave them another minute, concentrated hard on the two screens of information, flicked my sight ahead to make sure where we were going was empty space, focused my intent, and moved the ship.
"What the fuck?" echoed in from the main bridge.
Tasha looked at me accusingly, but her grin removed it almost immediately.
"Are we at our destination?"
"Did you get it organized?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Thorn?" said Jen, over the coms.
"Yes Jen?"
There was a pause.
"Are you okay?"
"I am."
Another pause.
"Should I ask how you did it?"
"Would you understand the answer?"
Tasha was laughing.
"Probably not. I assume we're docking here?"
"Yes. I told you, we're going fishing. I'll be along when it's time to check the other side of the airlock hatch."
The com clicked off without further comment.
"You enjoyed that, didn’t you?"
I grinned at her.
"What did you do?"
"I linked up all the suns between where we were, and where we are now, and used their energy to power the jump."
"I'm sorry I asked."
"Lunch?"
Eight
"So what's the play?" asked Sasha.
I nodded to Tasha.
"Ordinarily, being on our way back to the war, we'd stop here to refill the magazines with missiles. The depot is on the military station, but being a civilian ship, we can't dock there. So we have to deal with the office over here. Normally the captain and weapons officer would go. But we are a might paranoid, so we’ll all go."
Jen looked at me suddenly. I smiled at her.
"You said fishing. Am I the bait?"
"Is that a problem?"
She thought about it, obviously not happy, and eventually shook her head.
"Recon mode?" asked Sasha.
"Hostile recon," answered Tasha.
Jen looked at both of them. Tasha answered the unasked question.
"We split into five groups. Biggest protects the officers and specialists in the middle, one takes point, one trails behind, and the other two take the sides as best they can."
Jen cast an eye my way.
"Yes, I'll be with you."
She still wasn't happy. Tasha went on.
"If Thorn vanishes at any point, the op is aborted, and we fall back to the ship like we walked into an ambush."
"I assume we will have?" asked the sergeant.
"Most likely," I confirmed. "Just be prepared for more than one hostile."
"Always am!" he laughed.
"Anything anyone wants to add?" asked Sasha.
There was a moment's silence, during which she made contact with everyone.
"Gear up then."
The marines all left. Jen left with them. Jess and Lea stayed put.
"What do we do?" asked Jess.
"You keep the ship ready to leave at a moment's notice."
"And me?" asked Lea.
I handed her my tablet. A list was showing.
"You get to download me some new books."
"Gee thanks."
Lea'd be surprised at some of the things on the list. And truly, some of it I didn’t know if I’d ever read. But I'd been thinking about things, and it was time I stopped being so detached from reality. Now I was back, knowing how some things worked, would be a good idea. And also at the back of my mind, was the germ of an idea. The kind you don't actually know what it is, because it needs watering and feeding first.
The dock outside the airlock was clear. Customs had cleared us to dock without putting in an appearance, on the basis we were on military business, and not trading. No-one seemed to be taking any interest in us. Jess opened up, and the sergeant and the point and sides teams left first.
As the main party stepped out, I put a shield in front of us, and made it spherical all around us when we were clear of the ship. Sasha was in the lead, Jen behind her, and me behind her. Tasha and two others covered our side and rear. We were all armed with side arms, and each group had a marine carrying a heavy rifle. All of them fired a slug which would tear a person up, but not hurt the station.
I didn’t bother using my sight. I had no visual reference to look for, and the man I was looking for was a pro. There would be no warning.
And there wasn’t. We had to cross the main square in the middle of the station, or take a very long detour. Since it suited my purposes, we crossed the square.
The shot hit my shield directly in line with Jen's head. She flinched, hands reached for guns, and I sent a force punch up the line of the shot. Without even looking, I moved myself to the only place the shot could have come from.
The upper le
vel corridor looked out over the square. A man was out cold on the floor, a rifle still in one hand. Down below, the whole team had formed up into a defensive formation, and begun to move back towards the ship.
I sent the rifle back to the ship's armoury, slotting it into a spare rack, and waited for the man to recover. As his eyes flickered open, I reached down, grabbed him by his clothes, and hauled him to his feet.
I put a bubble around us, and jumped us outside.
His eyes went really wide when he saw where he was. He didn’t panic, and I could see the wheels going around in his head, as he began to formulate a plan to save himself.
I let him go, pulled out my pad, and showed him the image on it.
"Recognize this?"
"Should I?"
His voice was cold and hard, and the eyes were dead, and back to normal size.
"Let me tell you what's going to happen. When I have what I want, I'm going back to my ship. I'm leaving your body here."
His eyes widened slightly this time.
"You can have a quick death by my hand, or you can experience the full on asphyxiation and freezing, of a death in space without a space suit on. Your choice."
"You wouldn’t."
"I already have. We have about five minutes air. When it's gone, I leave."
"Who are they to you?"
The image showed a wrecked vehicle, and the faces of two people.
"Parents of a friend of mine. The one you just tried to shoot."
"Did shoot. I never miss."
"You did this time. You did this too?"
"What if I did?"
"You'll tell me who hired you."
"My reputation is built on not telling anyone anything."
"Your reputation ended when you took that shot. Now all that matters is the method of your death. Do you want a fast clean one, or a slow lingering one?"
"You're serious?"
I looked him in the eyes. He seemed to sag a bit.
"Who paid for the hit on the old couple?"
"I don’t know a name."
My finger slid the image across, and it was replaced by a face. There was no reaction from him, so I kept bringing up faces. After four of them, there was a flicker of recognition.
"This one?"
I could feel the quality of the air deteriorating rapidly now, and it was beginning to get cold, since I hadn't built heat into the intent this time. He could feel it too.
After staring at me for what seemed an age, but was only seconds, he nodded.
"Say it."
"He paid me to kill the old couple."
"Thankyou."
I put my hand over his heart, and force punched him so hard, his ribs broke, the heart was crushed, and a hole appeared right through him. The light went out of his eyes, and I jumped back to the ship, leaving his lifeless body floating in space.
Jess and Lea were waiting on the bridge.
"And?" asked Jess.
"We were right."
Nine
"When did you write that last part about maybe being dead before anyone found the pad?"
I looked at Tasha, both of us sitting on my bridge, as the ship headed out to beyond station sensor range.
"About half an hour before I time jumped. Which as it turned out, was only a few days before you arrived back."
"You didn't think you'd be coming back, did you?"
"Not really. There was so much which could have gone wrong, and simply killed me. The first time, I nearly drowned. Anything could have happened to kill me. I might even have jumped straight into the sun."
"How could you do that?"
"Several novels I read had a lot in them about orbital mechanics, and the way solar systems moved. One of them suggested the suns move as well, and the planets revolve around them as it moves ahead. So if that was true, and I failed to take the movement into account, I could jump into the middle of the deep dark, or into the sun, or into the middle of the planet."
Her mouth had fallen open.
"It wasn’t just a jump through time, it's also across space. To make an accurate time jump, you also need to make an accurate space jump."
"So how did you get here safely the first time?"
"Absolutely no bloody idea."
She laughed, but was serious again quickly.
"So it was a fluke?"
"Fluke, dumb luck, higher power intervening? Who knows? All I know now, is the intent has to be perfect, or something bad could happen."
"How far back were you aiming?"
"I think that’s how I screwed it up. I'd had two separate ideas running around in my head while thinking about doing it. The first was I only needed to go back less than two years, and do something which told my younger self not to vanish missiles. Maybe write a novel, and make sure I read it. Minor change to the time line, and undoes the damage missiles might have caused."
"And the other?"
"I needed to go back to the moment I left my first life, and correct whatever damage was done there. Maybe by making sure wherever the missiles were going to explode, was clear of people. Or maybe I needed to contain the explosions."
"But didn’t you say the crater was in a different place to where the city was, or your first life village?"
"Yes, but how do we know one of those missiles I vanished wasn’t a nuke?"
She sat there for a moment.
"Fuck."
"Yes. I may have destroyed everything without even knowing it. I think I could contain a nuke, and even bury it so the fallout didn’t kill anyone, but it would mean the people would need to move, to be safe in the long term."
"So what happened?"
"The two thought processes didn’t quite separate when I did the intent for the jump, and instead of doing either, I jumped back five years. Could have been five hundred for all I knew, but for the stars being in pretty much the same places. I didn’t know exactly how long it was until I showed up a couple of months ago."
"So we could have found you as an old man? Or just your skull, and a few bones?"
She shuddered.
"Fraid so. I was very lucky it was only five years. The best magic is simple unambiguous magic. It works because there isn’t much which can go wrong about it. Copying something is simple, because copy is a simple concept. Make something from scratch is much more difficult, because you need to know everything about it. Maybe not everything, as part of making is also copying, but the intent behind making is a whole order of difficulty level different. Jumping in space has relatively simple variables, because time isn’t one of them, since it flows as it normally has. If the jump takes a second, the time part of it was a second, and you don’t need to know that, to do it. But changing the time factor is a whole other much more complicated thing. If even one of the factors isn’t known, and especially not known to not be known, almost anything could happen."
Her eyes had glazed over.
"But it did answer one question."
"Which?"
"Five years ago, there was no civilization here either. So my idea of going back and telling my younger self to not vanish missiles, wouldn’t have worked, because there was nothing there to go back to. It likely means I'd have to go back to the moment I left, in order to fix whatever I did. And at the moment, I have no idea of when that was."
"So not possible?"
"Yeah. But to answer your original question, even if everything had gone right, I didn’t expect to make it back here. I'd have been home, and I'd have lived out my life as the local battle mage, and died back then."
"Out of range," said Jen, over the coms.
Navmap and inner system chart popped up like last time. I concentrated, and we jumped.
Ten
"That’s them," said Jen. "I remember the ship."
The ship Jess had been a slave on, was docked at the station we were heading for. The unanswered question for now was, were both father and son on board, or not.
"How did they get out of being arrested
for slavery?" asked Lea.
"Good lawyer," said Tasha. "And Thorn's actions."
"Thorn? What did he do?"
I sighed.
"After I got Jess out, I went back and arranged to free the rest of the slaves."
"Yes," added Tasha. "So when authorities caught up with them, there was no proof of slaves ever being on their ship, and the accusations didn’t stick."
"They'll stick this time," I muttered.
I moved myself back to my room to be alone, and used my sight to look through the slaver ship. Both men were on board. But it wasn’t them which made me really angry. Walking around the ship were three girls wearing collars.
I was done with being subtle.
Girl one. Vanish collar. Jump. Hand on shoulder. Jump back.
Girl two. Vanish collar. Jump. Hand on shoulder. Jump back.
Girl Three. Vanish collar. Jump. Hand on shoulder. Jump back.
"What the hell?" said Sasha.
"Look after these three will you. I'm not done."
I located the son, and jumped in behind him, slammed my fist down on his shoulder, wrapped us in a bubble, and jumped outside the nearest airlock. I pushed him up against the hatch, and glued him to it, making sure the glue went through his clothes so his skin was solid to the metal. I didn't want him pulling his clothes off, and drifting off.
"You didn't learn anything, did you?"
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Death. Be nice."
"Fuck off!"
"Fine."
I went back to my room, taking the bubble with me.
Fifteen minutes later, I snatched the father the same way, and put him up next to his now frozen son.
He took one look at the solid figure next to him, and fainted. I waited a couple of minutes for him to come out of it.
"What did you do?" he yelled, already shivering.
It wasn’t that cold yet, so maybe the shivering was fright.
"The penalty for being a slaver is death. Your lawyer got you off. This time the judge cares."
"You can't do this, I want my lawyer. He'll talk sense into you."
I'm not sure he understood what was going on.
"Where do I find your lawyer?"
"Cabin ten."
"I'll be right back. Don’t go away."
I left him with the bubble, tagged the lawyer, and put him up against the hatch next to his client.
Today's Spacemage Page 3
