With the captain now in his bathroom, I jumped into his bedroom, and sat on his desk chair, waiting for him to come out.
"How the hell did you get in here?" I opened my mouth to respond, but he went straight on. "Who the hell are you?"
"Judge Thorn."
"Never heard of you. Get out."
"Be nice Captain."
"Please get out."
The tone was sarcastic.
I moved us both to stand next to a head stone.
"What? How…"
"Captain, this is a desert. If you don’t want to remain here, shut up and listen."
He look angry, but he shut up.
"Are you exceeding your orders by taking command of the fleet?"
"No. Of course not."
"I've seen your orders Captain."
"No-one's seen my orders."
"I have. They were to put yourself under the command of whoever the senior officer was at the blockade point. Correct?"
His head sagged, and he found something on the ground more interesting to look at than me.
"I've not heard an answer Captain."
"You’re not getting an answer."
"Fine. There is no food or water for five days, in any direction. I'm going to leave you here. If you admit the truth, I'll give you a day's water. If you write a resignation due to ill health on your pad, and give it to me in the next few minutes, I'll leave you four day's water."
"Why only four?"
"Motivation. It'll last you if you drink it wisely, but you'll still be very thirsty before you find water. The thirst will drive you the last part of the journey."
"You wouldn’t dare leave me here."
I wrapped invisibility around me.
"COME BACK!" he screamed, and began rapidly dictating to his pad.
I uncloaked as he finished, and with a sigh of relief, he thrust the pad into my hands.
He'd gone one step further than I’d asked. The resignation letter admitted he had a medical condition he'd been hiding from his doctor, but he was actually resigning because his wife had begged him not to leave, and as he'd reached the war, he'd realized he was too old to be commanding a ship in a time of war, and his wife had been right. All he'd be doing here, was getting his crew killed.
A quick check of his mail, told me this wasn’t true. His wife was already dead, and he'd come to the war for one last blaze of glory.
I looked him in the eyes, and saw the conflict there. He didn't want to die, but his dead wife was calling him.
"You didn't tell the military she passed, did you?"
"No. I wasn’t even there at the time, too busy getting the ship ready. You call yourself a judge?"
"When I have to be. No-one else can do what I can."
"What are you?"
"Spacemage."
"Some sort of magician?"
"Yes."
"And you judge people?"
"Yes."
"Well I'm guilty. Just a passed over war horse, with delusions of grandeur, who never made it to the one thing he ever wanted to do. Lead people into a war."
"Did it ever occur to you why you never got the chance?"
"Always wondered about it. Never known."
"Your motivation is all wrong."
"How so?"
"The best leaders also want to lead them back out again."
He sighed, and hung his head again. I let him think, waiting for him to speak again.
"So you're leaving me here to die?"
"What do you want?"
"I want my bridge."
"What if it's not your bridge, but a different one, a smaller one?"
"You'd put me on a destroyer, and give that captain my ship?"
"Perhaps. All the captains here have combat experience. You don’t."
He sighed again.
"Every time there was fighting at the frontier, I was never there. By the time I made it back, the skirmish would be over. I'll take the destroyer. Just make sure I get a good XO to keep me from killing everyone doing something stupid."
I gave him back his pad.
"What will you do if I take you back?"
"Cancel the captains meeting. Who's fleet command now? I never even asked."
"Captain Bentley."
"I know of him. Solid leader. Got one of the BC's, doesn’t he?"
"Yes. He's expecting you to take it from him."
"But he has you to make sure it doesn’t happen?"
"No. No-one has me."
"Don’t be so sure of that. With the powers you have, the high command will want them."
"Maybe so, but for now, what will you tell Bentley?"
"I'll ask him which ship he wants me to transfer over to, and to give me a good solid XO."
"I'll be watching."
"I bet you will."
A blink of the eye later, he was back in his bedroom, and I was standing behind Jen on her bridge. She looked around at me, having seen the coms marine startle.
"Did you kill him?"
"Why does everyone assume I will?"
"Because you always do."
"Not this time."
I hoped, I added to myself.
Twenty Five
The moving around of crews took an entire day.
The two new cruisers were taken over by competent crews, and everyone else shuffled downwards from them. I was glad I'd not had to use the resignation plan, of which the pad was only the first part. This way was much better, and I made sure Bentley gave him one of the better destroyers, instead of busting him right down to a frigate, which is where the commander captaining the second cruiser ended up, although he was delighted to keep any command, including one of the frigates. He'd had no illusions about being anything except a ferry commander.
During lunch, a magic completed alarm dinged in the back of my mind. I left the chaos of moving people, which even my own crew had been dragged into helping with, and jumped to the top of the hill overlooking my ship building area.
A brand new alien ship was sitting there. Behind it, was the shimmer of magic drawing an incredible amount of energy into a small space, as the second ship prepared to be materialized.
I sat on a convenient rock, and watched the shimmer, thinking things out. A sore bum convinced me sitting on a lounge chair on my beach would be more comfortable, so I went there.
The more my brain concentrated on trying to work out what the war was all about, the less useful was the thought processes. So I lay back, drink in hand, and watched a pod of whales out in the ocean, listening to their song in full magicphonic.
Free from being forced, my mind processed what it needed to, and as the whales dived deep and moved away, it provided me with what I needed. It wasn’t clarity, but it was the promise of clarity.
I chose a course of action, fixed the intent in my mind, and set the magic going, rinsed and put my glass away, and jumped back to my bridge.
"Nice arvo at the beach?" asked Tasha, and I jumped again.
She did the finger thing. Second time she'd got me.
"Lots to think about."
"Take me with you next time you go."
"If you're not on duty, sure."
"Take me anyway."
She made eye contact with me, and held it until I nodded. She was still seated, so I sat down next to her.
"You know how Jess can slave a ship with another one, so it can be flown remotely?"
"Sure."
"Can you do the same with weapon systems?"
"Probably. Why would you though? It'd be better to have each of them run by a different person, on a single slave link."
"Why?"
"Even if you lined the ships up to fire at the same point in space, the guns would all be slightly differently aligned. You'd spray around the point, more than hit the point. If the ships were say line abreast, the turrets would all be aligned on a target differently, and the miss factor would be huge. And they'd only be able to fire on a single target."
"So?"
"So each ship is controlled by a weapon's officer from the main ship, and they each fire independently."
"Or they each have a crew?"
She thought about it.
"Better with a crew, but we don’t have spare crews. You building new ships?"
"One is already ready."
"What type?"
"Copy of the alien."
She looked dubious.
"What?"
"We'd need to connect up interfaces on each ship, to bridge the difference in control language."
"Say that again, slowly?"
"Our consoles won't communicate with those ships. They have their own language, and own computer code. We'd have to build a converter, so our commands get executed in their languages."
"Can you do that?"
"Not on my own, no. Needs a computer expert."
"Does the fleet have one?"
"I doubt it."
"Ask."
"Can't you magic it?"
"Creation is harder than copying."
"And there's nothing to copy when it has to be created."
I nodded. She asked Jen. Jen asked Bentley. No.
"Does anyone know one who could build this in a hurry?"
She said no, and asked Jen. Jen said no, and asked Bentley. Bentley said yes.
"Who, and where do I find him?"
Twenty Six
The name on the door said 'Bill Oddie'. Underneath, someone had scribbled, 'Oddbod Bill'. The door looked like someone had given up trying to keep the graffiti away.
I knocked, and went in. I'd been expecting a room totally cluttered with bits of computer equipment, screens all over the place, and no-where to sit but in the middle of the mess.
I found a single screen, on a single desk, with a well-dressed man behind it. His beard was wild, but the rest of him wasn’t. Obviously I’d been reading too many novels.
"Call me Bill," came from behind the monitor. "Who sent you?"
"Captain Bentley."
"Which one?"
"There's more than one?"
"Bentley is a common name in the service. But only two captains I know of at the moment."
"Drives a battlecruiser?"
"Both do."
"Can I buy a vowel?"
"Do they call him 'Big Bill the bastard' behind his back?"
"Not that I know of."
"Probably the other one then. Let me just check something."
He typed away for a minute, with a lot of clicking going on as well.
"Well, there you go. The other one."
"Come again?"
"Big Bill died over a month ago in the first attack. So unless it took you a month to get here, it's not going to be him."
"Is any of this relevant?"
"Not really, but I like to know who sends people to me. Certain people I tell to piss off, based on who sent them."
"And the Bentleys?"
"Old Big Bill was a genuine bastard, but if someone had to shout 'damn the missiles, full speed ahead', he's the one I’d want doing it."
"Maybe he did."
"Could be right and all. So what you want me for?"
"I need a computer interface built."
"Forget it. I need a real challenge to get me away from this desk."
"I have an alien ship. The language is different, the computer code different, and I need to be able to run the ship remotely, for both navigation and weapons."
"You do not have an alien ship."
"I also have hard gold to pay you with."
"How much hard gold?"
"More than you can carry."
"I can carry a lot. But you don’t have an alien ship. I’d know."
"Want to bet?"
"I don’t bet."
"If I show you an alien ship then?"
"Show me the ship, yeah, you got me. But you do not have an alien ship in orbit around here. I’d know if there was a panic going on."
"It's not in orbit."
"No way in the world you've got one on the ground here."
"It's not here."
"Where then?"
I shifted us to the hill overlooking the new ships. The shimmer had moved, and there were now two alien ships parked there.
"Fuck, that’s alien. Let me see the computer core."
I moved us straight there.
Twenty Seven
Within an hour, I had Tasha and Jess working with him, along with a lot of screens, consoles, and other equipment. An hour after that, they also had a copy of Bentley's ship's computer core. By the end of the day, they had a dozen other people working with them.
Around ten that night, I called a halt, and moved everyone to my beach. When I say called a halt, I mean I tried. Getting Bill out of the alien core was going to be impossible, and most of the others ignored me. They hadn't even eaten. Moving them was the only way.
I provided food and drink, and they each found themselves a bed up the beach. Tasha kept me up well into the small hours, but a ward dinged me awake as soon as the first person appeared on the beach the next morning. Predictably, it was Bill.
I made sure he ate, and moved him back to the alien core. The others followed as they emerged, and ate.
By the time they had a prototype ready to go later that day, there was a third alien ship parked there. I'd gone back to bed in the morning, and supplied lunch to people who had no idea what they were eating, and didn’t care.
No-one saw the new ship materialize but me, since I was up on the hill looking down. Well, my eyes were pointed down, but my sight was in the next system past the blockade fleet.
It seemed the enemy had regrouped, and were coming for another try. Eighteen ships this time, but only half were the same as these ones, one was bigger than Bentley's ship, and the rest smaller than these ones.
The problem was, they'd be here before my building task was complete. Technically I didn’t need them. But…
An idea popped in there. Definitely one of the things which make you go hmmmm. And then grin wildly. No-one was there to see it. Probably just as well.
But I needed to be closer. I needed a ship, and one which wouldn’t attract attention.
Shuttle. Yes, a shuttle would do the job nicely. I jumped myself into the nearest alien shuttle bay, and inside the nearest shuttle. After checking life support was working, and the hatches were all closed, I sat in the pilot's chair, and moved to a place behind the formation of alien ships. No-one seemed to notice.
Which triggered another thought. No-one seemed to notice anything odd about what I did around them. I jumped people all over the place, and they didn't seem to think anything odd had happened. And yet, these people didn't have magic. Or any expectation of it. So why no surprise? Something wasn’t right. And it could be me, but for now, I had other matters to attend to.
In my mind, I gathered up the alien fleet, and I not only threw it back through the jump point it had recently come through, on the other side I threw it the distance of this solar system width from jump point to jump point, up the system. Which put them at a ninety degree angle away from the system plane, at least a day at full speed to get back to the jump point, and another to get to ours.
And if need be, I could keep throwing them, for as long as was needed.
For now, job done, and no-one dead, I parked the shuttle back where I'd found it, and went looking for Tasha.
She and a few others were clustered around a console, from which cables snaked into the core. Bill was still in the core, apparently oblivious to everything else. It occurred to me his boss was probably wondering where he was. It took jerking him by the shoulder to get his attention, so I could ask him.
"No problem. This happens to me a lot. Sudden call out, sometimes days on ships to get there, fix something, and days back. I keep in touch, so I'm not off the grid. I told them I was working on one of our recurrent problems, we can't actually fix properly, because of no budget. Be another day yet before they wonder why I'm not back."
I left him to it. Tasha had finally noticed I was there.
"When can we test this out for real?"
"Tomorrow, I think."
"We'll be ready. Will the enemy give us the time?"
"I already bought us the time."
"Thorn?"
"Hmmm?"
"Why do we even need ships? We have you."
"Would you want to be responsible for keeping the peace your whole life?"
"I guess not. All the same, there are some who'll expect you to."
"I know. I'll deal with that in due course."
"Make sure you include me this time."
I could see she was serious. My heart went fluttering for a short time, but the ding of magic completing tore my attention away from her. Number four was sitting next to number three, and the shimmer had moved again.
Twenty Eight
The following morning when we arrived back from the beach, there were seven ships lined up, side by side. One of them was considerably larger.
"Is that one of our battlecruisers?" asked Tasha.
"It is. I figured we better have one of our ships as well, for you to run the slaving of the others from."
"Good thinking. I'll get consoles set up on its bridge for each of them."
"Get Jess to check it over. It would be embarrassing to turn up at the jump point, and find the engines won't turn on."
She laughed at me, and started organizing people to stand in a group. When she nodded to me, I sent them to the bridge of the battlecruiser.
Bill wasn’t one of them. He was exactly where I thought he'd be.
"What are you working on?"
He didn't so much as look up from his screen, and kept typing.
"Database retrieval interface. And then a translator."
"How long for them?"
"Retrieval will be done by the time those ships are ready to leave. The translator will take a few days longer."
"What's your boss going to say?"
"I already told her the truth."
"Seriously? How did that go?"
"I told her the blockade fleet had captured an alien ship, and they needed me to crack its computer systems. She told me it was my best one yet, and asked how many days I needed."
Today's Spacemage Page 9
