"What did you say?"
"Two weeks."
"How did that go over?"
"She grumbled a bit. Usually I ask for a week each time."
"A week each time what?"
"Each time I find something better to do than what I'm doing. The thing is though, she knows only I can do what I do, so she accepts the absences with good grace, knowing I'm still more productive being there only half the time, than anyone else there doing double time."
"Should I go and ease her mind in this case?"
"No need." He handed me his pad. "Take a couple of images with the core behind me. She'll know I wasn’t bullshitting this time, if I send them to her."
I stood well back, and took several images. Before I gave it back to him, I took out my own, and took even more.
"When I get back, I'll find somewhere on the battlecruiser for you to work."
"What about the cores?"
"I'll find you a big place to work."
"Good. I need both these cores next to each other. And can you arrange a better chair, a bigger screen, and a fridge."
"Fridge?"
"Cold store."
"What do you want in it?"
A list followed. Oddly, none of it was alcoholic. Back on the top of the hill, I took some images of the four damaged alien ships. I thought I ought to check in with Tasha before I left again.
"Have you looked in the staterooms?" she asked, as soon as I stood next to her.
"No. Why?"
"Go look."
I went and looked. All of them had personal effects in them. I looked closer in the captain's stateroom, and found they were Bentley's. Oops. I'd copied his ship a little too well. I went back to Tasha.
"Can you organize all the personal items to be boxed up and stored?"
"What do I look like to you? A maid service?"
"I can arrange that."
She gave me a long speculative look.
"You would, wouldn’t you?"
"Not really. Isn't there a bot which cleans out the room of a dead officer?"
"It's one function, yes."
"Did the bots get created with the ship?"
"I guess so."
"Find out. I'll be back in a while. Got to sort something out for Bill."
I jumped before she could respond.
Twenty Nine
Bill's boss had the office next door. She was a hassled looking short blonde in fleet uniform, wearing Lieutenant Commander insignia. Bob being a civilian left me surprised, but then, he was undoubtedly a civilian consultant.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"Judge Thorn."
"What's a civilian judge want with me?"
"I have dual credentials, but was called in without time to get into uniform."
The lie flowed off my tongue like the truth would.
"Should have made the time. They don’t like civvies walking around this building without security tags on."
"Yes, well, I came in a different way."
"I'm going to have to check you out. Sorry, but Regs you know."
"Of course."
She busied herself at her computer, and I used my sight to see what she was doing. Of course, she didn’t find me, and flipped back and forth through some of the judges. I made a mental note of what was on their records. She looked up at me.
"How did you spell that?"
I spelt it for her, and as I did, I used magic to insert a record for myself in her file. She looked down at the screen again, and retyped her query. My record came up this time.
"Oh here you are. Oh sorry Colonel, you should've told me your rank. Aren't you a bit young to be a Colonel?"
Her hand immediately went to her mouth, and she looked shocked. I laughed.
"I guess I am. But like Bill Oddie, I have a unique skill set."
"You're here about Bill? What's he done?"
"Nothing bad. I believe you expressed some doubts about him working on an alien ship?"
"Doubts?" She laughed. "Hell no. It's his best excuse to be somewhere else yet."
I set my pad down in front of her, with the first of the images showing. Her mouth fell open, and it remained that way as she flipped the images.
"That's really an alien ship?" I nodded. "What's Bill doing with it?"
"Interfacing the control systems with ours, and his next task is an interpreter."
"Fine. So he's gainfully employed on fleet work for the next two weeks?"
"He is."
"Makes a change, but at least I don’t have to cover his arse this time. Who's the senior fleet officer, in case a higher rank wants to know?"
"Captain Bentley, at the blockade fleet. At least until the new Admiral arrives."
"New Admiral? What happened to the last one?"
"Ones. We've been through two of them."
"Your doing Judge?"
"Afraid so. I'm acting as an Inquisitor into why the war is going so badly."
"Badly?"
"Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything."
"Perhaps not. I won't keep you Colonel, but thanks for keeping me in the loop about what Bill's up to."
"No problem. I was going to be here anyway. I'll see myself out."
Thirty
I left the room through the door, closing it behind me, and seeing no-one, wrapped myself in invisibility.
The building proved to be huge, but I found my way to the section of it devoted to justice. There I took notice of the uniforms, and especially the insignia. In a bathroom stall, I copied the uniform I needed, and changed, sending my normal clothes back to my room on the ship.
Now able to walk the halls looking like I belonged there, I went in search of where the Admirals hung out. I found them in a conference room, and rather than jump in, sat myself down in a waiting room nearby, and cast my sight in.
What I heard wasn’t all that encouraging. One asked another when a third would be arriving at the blockade. I learned he'd be there tomorrow, and with a quick check, found the courier would indeed be.
There was discussion about the war, its impact on politicians, and how far the aliens could be allowed to advance when they broke through.
At which point, I was interrupted.
"Can I help you judge?"
The young lieutenant seemed a bit overawed to find a judge sitting where I was.
"No thanks. I was just having a short rest, before my next appointment."
"Where do you need to be sir?"
"Records."
"Three levels down, turn right, and keep walking until the paint colour on the walls goes brown."
"Brown?"
"Yes sir."
A reason why, didn’t seem to be forthcoming. I stirred myself, still looking in on the Admirals, nodded to the lieutenant, and headed towards the elevators.
The wall colour did indeed go brown. I found an empty office, sat behind the desk, and sent my sight looking for where the storage devices were. When I found them, I copied the lot, dropping them in a neat pile nearby our intelligence computer on Jen's ship. I concentrated on finding each of the Admiral's offices, and also copied every storage device I found there as well. Someone was going to be busy when I got back.
The Admirals seemed very sure the enemy would be breaking through very soon. That wasn’t what bothered me. It was their complete lack of concern about it, which turned me cold. I listened to them preparing announcements for political leaders and the media, and the longer I listened, the more worried I became.
I sent my sight through the building again, looking for any sort of data storage, copying them as I went. The Generals had their own computers, and they weren’t linked with the Admirals. The wet navy and the police forces had their own as well. I copied all of it.
With footsteps stopping outside the door, I went invisible again, and jumped to the police force area. I waited until a clerk looked up the judges file, to find one to allocate a trial for, and inserted a record for myself. I made sure to tag it with
my being assigned to the Admiralty, with the rank of Colonel. Now if I needed to be a civilian judge, I was in the system.
The Admirals were now moving back to their own offices, so I jumped back to Jen's ship, where I found Lea standing in the doorway to our intelligence gathering computer.
"Thorn!" she exclaimed, looking in.
"Yes?"
She jumped. And spun around.
"Don't do that!"
"Problem?"
"What do you think?"
I looked past her. The room was almost full of stacked data devices.
"Have they been breeding in the night?"
She hit me on the arm. Quite hard.
"Fine. I might have been a little carried away."
"I can't deal with this. Our computer can't deal with this. What is all this?"
"Military headquarters."
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She started shaking her head from side to side.
"This is out of my league. We're going to need a computer expert."
"Already have one."
I pulled the door shut, grinned at her, and jumped.
Bill was still where I left him, and hadn't noticed me arrive, so I jumped to the bridge of the battlecruiser. I'd never really looked at it except through the coms to Bentley's, or jumping him back and forth, but now being on one and looking around at it, it felt a lot bigger.
Tasha saw me arrive. Her eyes took in my uniform and insignia, went wide for a moment, and she let her grin loose.
"Almost done."
"Good, but I need something else."
"What?"
"We need a space to put two computer cores, an extra-large monitor, a comfortable chair, and a fridge. And it also needs to take our intelligence computer, and about ten times the storage devices."
"Ten times? What've you been up to?"
"Tell you later. Do we have a big enough space with nothing in it?"
"Let me look."
She pulled up the ship specs, and began flipping through sections of the ship. Finally she stopped, and pointed.
"There. It’s a secondary storage hold, but it has all the necessary power connections. It's also empty."
I looked at it with my sight. It seemed to be bigger than we needed. I looked at what Bill was working on, concentrated for a moment, and copied the two cores across to the new computer room. Next, I copied the contents of our intelligence room into an empty corner. I nodded to Tasha, and jumped back behind Bill.
"Time to go Bill."
"Go? Go where?"
"The battlecruiser. What do you need from here, which isn’t part of the two cores?"
"All this. And hold up a moment."
He typed madly for several minutes, and finally sat back, turning to face me.
"Sorry, what did you want again?"
"Stand back please."
He reluctantly stood, and backed away. I concentrated on his actual office, copied desk, chair, and screen to his new workplace, and followed them with his entire setup here. Lastly, I moved us both to just outside the doorway, opened the door, and showed him in.
His eyes widened, as he took in the expanse, containing everything he'd been working on in a cramped space before, and more. His eyes went to the intelligence mess.
"What's that lot?"
"Our intelligence gathering resources."
He blinked rapidly.
"Really? Why's it here?"
"Because I need you to turn it into something much bigger, with every device plugged in, so we can find out what everyone we took these from is doing."
"Is that legal?"
"Probably not. But I don’t care. The Admirals are behaving strangely, and I want to know what's going on. No-one knows we have a copy of their stuff."
His eyes were gleaming.
"And no-on will know about it either. Will they?"
His eyes met mine, and he slowly nodded.
"Yes judge."
"Let the bridge know when the new intelligence computer is ready. How's the interface going?"
"Just finished."
"Upload it into the ship systems, and tell Jess and Tasha. Do the Intel computer next. What do you need?"
He started listing all the likely things. When my eyes showed no comprehension, he showed me one of them, and I did hundreds of copies, right then and there. For the next few hours, my pad dinged with requests for more, as he found he needed bigger and better than what we already had.
Thirty One
We caused quite a stir jumping in behind the blockade fleet. Several of the destroyer captains panicked, turning their ships to face us as fast as they could.
"That better be you Thorn!" said Jen through voice only coms, before her face popped up on a screen.
Bentley appeared on another screen, still giving his captains orders to ignore what was behind them. Jen and I waited for him to finish. Finally, he looked at me.
"Colonel? When did that happen?"
"Don’t mind me. I needed some camouflage walking around headquarters. I've not had a chance to change yet."
Jen was shaking her head from side to side, but her grin was slowly slipping out all the same.
"Where did you get the ships from?" he continued.
"I had them built."
"What about crews?" asked Jen.
"I'll be over to talk about that in a moment. The alien cruisers are all slaved, with each ship having a weapons console on this bridge."
Tasha waved from the first one.
"So all seven ships will act more or less as a single ship. This ship needs a crew, but not a full one, so we won't need to take more than a few volunteers."
"Will you bring us over there? Or are we meeting somewhere else?"
I moved them both to stand in front of me.
"I don’t think I'm ever going to get used to that," said Bentley. "But it saves a lot of time. Captain's office?"
He waved towards a door, and I nodded. Both of us followed him. He walked up to the desk in the small room off the bridge, and waved me to the main chair behind it.
"Your ship, your chair."
I grinned at him, and we all sat. I looked at Jen.
"The idea was, we all transfer over to here, and form the core of a new crew."
She nodded, as if expecting me to say it.
"What about my ship?"
"I'll park it where it'll be safe."
"Why not leave it here?" asked Bentley. "I can find enough crew for it."
"There's a new Admiral arriving soon. I'd just as soon not have an Admiral appropriate a civilian ship, and use it as cannon fodder to keep the frigates alive."
"Damned right!" exclaimed Jen.
"Why would you let it happen?" asked Bentley.
"We won't be here. As soon as we get crew organized, I'm taking this little fleet into the next system."
"I don’t have orders for that."
"I know. This is a civilian fleet, although we'll need some military crew. But as I said, volunteers only. I don’t know what game the Admirals think they're playing, but they expect us to be overrun shortly, and are planning on it. I don’t intend letting it happen."
I looked Bentley in the eye.
"Captain, you'll stay here and be a back stop, in case anything gets past us. The Admiral behind us will have the same orders you have. And as far as I can gather, this one comes from one of the other choke points, so should be solid. In any case, my aim is to push the invaders out of the next system. Once we've done that, I'll let you know the system is clear, and your fleet should move to this position in the next system, where we'll be waiting for you."
"After that?"
"I'm working on it. But someone has to go make contact at some point. Might as well be us."
Jen was nodding. Bentley thought about it, and nodded as well.
"You're wearing the wrong insignia Colonel," he laughed. "You're doing better than a lot of Admirals I've known."
"Let's not get ahead of ours
elves. You tell him Jen."
"When the fighting starts, Thorn does the real work. As such, he needs to be calling the action. So in a sense, he does act as a fighting Admiral."
"A fighting Admiral?" laughed Bentley. "Contradiction in terms!"
We all had a little chuckle over that, and started talking crew. In the end, he agreed to supply three watches of officers and spacers, to crew the ship under Jen's command, and all the marines from the rest of the fleet.
It wasn’t much. We ended up with three platoons of twenty each, under the command of Sasha. Not including Tasha, who'd be running weapons for this ship.
The biggest burden on the fleet was weapons officers. We pulled all the junior's from each ship, and also took some senior sergeants with gunnery skills and the right attitude. Three of the four larger ships also lost their second shift weapons officers, so each shift would have a more senior officer in charge of them.
Bentley and Jen went back to their ships, and the task of moving people and their stuff began. I took Tasha back to my bridge on Jen's ship, and we both packed. It didn't take either of us very long. Once back on the new battlecruiser, she was surprised when I led her into the captain's stateroom.
Jen interrupted us over the coms, while christening the new bed, and after hastily dressing again, I started moving the contents of the various cargo holds, where I thought we needed what was there. This included all the food and water, beer, and general kitchen stuff, from all over the ship. Also the containers in the hold with gold, and other tradable stuff in them.
By the time I’d finished moving things, the crew were aboard via shuttles. The process of allocating sleeping arrangements, and forming shifts was in progress, and I sat the center seat on the bridge, letting everything flow around me.
At one point, I reminded Jen to make sure Bill had somewhere to sleep, and someone showed him where it was.
Thirty Two
I waited until the courier was almost in scanner range the next day, before the fleet formed up, and we went through the jump point in formation.
We weren’t ready, but the alien ships could shoot, fire missiles, and go where they were told to go. Each ship had magic in place to replace missiles fired.
Today's Spacemage Page 10
