Yesterday's Spacemage

by Timothy Ellis

  As the lots were sold, I pondered the best way to remove it. I could just break the detonator section, but I had the horrible thought this might just make it explode anyway. In fact, any tampering at all might make it go off.

  I was going to have to remove it completely, the same way I’d removed the gun. Only this time, I couldn’t afford to take more than the collar, or like the hand vanishing had killed the pirate, it would kill her. Still with plenty of time, I cast my sight into the rooms behind, looking for where they kept their electronics. And found a room full of boxes, with one of them open, and showing a handful of collars sitting in special recesses, which kept them apart.

  I concentrated on making one of them vanish. It did, but some of the packing around it did as well. The next one vanished with less packing, and the third one vanished, leaving an empty hole. I did a fourth and fifth, just to be sure.

  A rise in the volume around me signaled the first of the women being brought out. Instead of rags, she'd obviously been cleaned up, and was now wearing a semi-translucent shirt and skirt, which emphasized figure, without quite showing everything she had. Predictably, both were torn off her at key times in the bidding, to get it moving upward again.

  This proved to be the pattern, and explained why so many onlookers were present. All of the women ended up naked, and after purchase, were led away naked. Only a handful of the purchasers immediately clothed their purchase, although in all but one case, it was only with enough to cover the basics.

  At last, she was led out. The crowd actually went silent. She stood in the required place defiantly, and raked the crowd with a look which showed her total contempt of every single person there. The auctioneer made a slight cough, and she turned her look on him. He tapped a control wand on his lectern, finger paused over one of the buttons, and her face shattered, defiance gone in an instant.

  The crowd returned to its normal volume, as the auctioneer called for a first bid.

  Someone seated at the front held up a hand, and shouted a number.

  It was a full fifty percent higher than the stated opening bid should be. It had shock value, and for a moment, no-one else bid.

  I took the opportunity to raise my arm, and flap at the auctioneer. He didn’t see me, but one of his minions did, and called it out. Those who could, turned to see who was bidding, and laughter ensured.

  The girl took her horrified look away from the first bidder, and looked at me. The look faltered as hope flickered for an instant, and died as a third bidder entered the contest. Her eyes shot to him, and the horrified looked intensified.

  The first bidder responded, the auctioneer looked at me and I nodded, and the third bidder upped it again.

  Now I was out. But I continued bidding for another three rounds, and when looked at for the fourth, I shook my head. Any hope she had left, died visibly.

  The death of hope is the worst of all things which can happen to you. I felt her pain, and real pain slashed across my temples, and faded to a headache.

  Two other bidders took over when I dropped out, with the second one dropping out as well, a few bids later.

  Her top was ripped off her, baring her upper body, and the bidding intensified again. I could see real hatred working on her face now, and the auctioneer had to remind her of her place again.

  I stared at her, willing her to look back at me. But she only had eyes for those bidding, and it faltered again, as the first bidder retained the highest bid, and another one didn’t come.

  Predictably, her skirt was ripped away at this point, leaving her stark naked, and forced to turn on the spot, the crowed saw everything she had. The way the crowd reacted, almost broke her. If lust was a liquid, everyone would have drowned.

  She cast her eyes everywhere, looking for some form of hope, and suddenly our eyes met.

  I mimed pulling the collar off her and swishing it away, and followed it by mouthing the words 'prepare to run', and looked towards the exit behind me.

  The pilot side of her must have kicked in, as she made no sign of having understood me, but her bearing changed slightly as her muscles tensed.

  The auctioneer misinterpreted her movement, and tapped his wand again. She let her head fall forward, and now he couldn’t see the collar. She remained that way, apparently finally broken, as he started on the final bangs of the gavel, trying hard to get one more bid. I could see one of her eyes fixed on me.

  I waited.

  As he was about to bang the gavel one last time, I removed her collar and shackles, mouthed 'run', and turned away, heading for the exit, my expression like someone who'd failed at an important mission for someone else.

  Behind me, the gavel missed its mark, and banged the auctioneer's other hand. His curse was overlaid by 'stop her' from several minions, and at the door, I turned to find her half way up the isle coming towards me. Behind her, a guard was raising a gun.

  I sighed.

  The gun vanished, as did three more in successive seconds, as I removed the others I could see, dropping them into my backpack, in case of need later.

  Someone in the isle moved to stop her, and I force punched hard enough to knock him down into a dozen people behind him. I did it again just before she reached the end of the isle, so she had a path to take towards the exit.

  I waited for her outside the door, and as she came level, I began to run with her, wrapping an invisibility cloak around both of us.

  She didn’t look at me, just ran as hard as she could. I had trouble keeping up. My head was on fire, and she was faster than I was.

  "Don’t get ahead of me," I squeaked at her.

  She collided with someone, who bounced off her, and it slowed her enough for me to catch up. Her eyes caught mine.

  "They can't see us," I croaked.

  Her eyes suggested she didn’t believe, but she nodded, and kept on running. I began wheezing quietly, my body not used to this level of exercise.

  As a male convenience sign became visible, I took her arm.

  She flinched.

  "Stop," I said. "In there." I pointed in the door.

  She pulled the door open, went in, and I followed. Inside, there was luckily no-one there, and I dropped the invisibility. I pulled open a stall door, and pointed in as I pulled my backpack off. She hesitated, but saw me pulling cloth, and went in. I threw the dress to her, and shut the door.

  It wasn’t for me, but in case someone came in.

  I concentrated on the type of footwear I’d seen a lot of women wearing, guessed her size, and a pair of shoes appeared. I pushed them under the door.

  "Backpack," she barked at me.

  "Huh?"

  "A dress is not enough. I need to look completely different."

  I paused, not wanting to lose contact with mine, especially with what was in it. I put it down, concentrated, and another just like it appeared next to it. I handed in the copy. She came out, sliding it onto her back.

  For a moment she looked puzzled as she looked at my backpack going back on my back, but whatever was in her mind was quickly replaced.

  The next look she gave me would have curdled milk.

  "Let's get something straight. I owe you for helping me escape, and I'll pay my debt. But if you ever touch me again, I'll kill you!"

  My mouth fell open, I let it swing for a moment, and closed it again.

  "Understood."

  "We need to hurry."

  "Why?"

  "Because the next sale after me was going to be my ship."

  Ten

  We hurried, hopefully looking like brother and sister late for some family do. We were mainly walking side by side, but in reality, I was following her, and trying hard to keep up. My head ached, and I regretted not taking a tablet when I'd had the chance.

  The problem with the tablets is they can't be taken too often, without serious side effects to a situation like this one. I needed to be functional in order to stay alive, not dropping from mind altering tablet caused fatigue. One a day was my normal,
and the time for today was approaching, but something about what I’d done had brought it on early. I just didn’t know what.

  It could be stress warping the energy flow. I mulled it over as we walked.

  No-one paid us any attention, not even a pair of station police, who must by now be on the lookout for us. Of course, they might be so sure they knew where we were going, there was no need to look.

  I had no idea where we were now, as she'd led me into a part of the station I hadn't been to before. But all the same, I recognized docking tubes as we went passed some of them. These were much further spaced apart, so I guessed this was a larger ship docking area.

  I wondered what sort of ship hers was.

  I didn’t get to wonder long, as she broke her own no touch rule, by dragging me to a stop against a wall, before a corner. There was no-one else around us, so stopping wasn’t suspicious. Yet. She peeked around the corner.

  "You look," she muttered. "Fast. Don’t be seen."

  We changed places, and I looked around the corner for a few seconds.

  They had known exactly where we were going. There were a full twenty men there, all brandishing guns. The airlock behind them was closed, so just walking through them was out.

  She looked me in the eyes.

  "I don’t know how you do what you do," she whispered, "but can you get us through them?"

  "Through them is easy. Getting in the airlock without them seeing it open is difficult. And what happens if they changed the lock code, which I assume it has been."

  She looked annoyed, as if she hadn't thought of it.

  "Can you pick a lock?"

  "I can remove a lock. Maybe put it back after if I have something to copy. But the main problem is them seeing us open the door, and following us in."

  "Can you take them?"

  "I can try."

  "Don’t try. Do it."

  There was command in her voice. The sort I'd heard a lot when I did my military training. Questions for later.

  I nodded to her, held my hand up to stop her following me, and stepped around the corner, invisibility in place. No-one moved, as I walked into the center of the docking area, which was a good sized space. I stopped, pondering how to do this.

  Normally, I punched straight ahead. I could do that here, but twenty punches was going to take too long. So I needed twenty shots at once. I gathered as much power as I could muster, held the locations of all twenty men in my mind, and threw all I could into a twenty sided punch.

  Fifteen of them went down, and didn’t get up. The rest staggered, two more going belatedly down, while the remaining three kept their feet, and looked around for what hit them.

  I hit them again, one by one. They went down.

  "Go!" I yelled.

  She came running around the corner, and beat me to the airlock. By the time I’d managed a slow stride to get there, she'd punched in her code, and the door was opening. I sighed, and followed her in.

  I was completely done in. I needed rest. No. I had to rest.

  There was no rest. If anything, we’d just managed to complete the easy part.

  Eleven

  Her fist hit the close button as soon as we were in, and the hatch stopped opening, and started closing again. She waited for it to lock shut, and changed the code herself.

  She took off running towards a set of stairs close by, and was at the top and disappearing, before I was even half way up. Running was now beyond me.

  At the top, I simply sank into a sitting position on the top step, and shucked my pack. Water and tablets came out, a tablet went down, and I emptied the water bottle.

  "Where the hell are you?" came down from above.

  I put my tablet bottle away, hoisted my pack, and started up the next level of stairs. Two more up, I came to the top, and turned towards where her voice was still coming.

  I was wheezing quietly, and my sight was blurring a little. Bad signs, when combined with throbbing temples. If I didn’t stop soon, I’d be throwing up as well.

  "In here!" bellowed her voice.

  I shambled in as fast as I could, and stopped. Obviously the bridge, it was huge in comparison to the last one. She was in one of the chairs in the middle. She waved me to one next to her. I removed my backpack, let it thunk to the floor, sank into the chair with a sigh of relief, and found it was quite comfortable.

  "Can you cut metal?" she barked at me.

  "Possibly. What needs cutting?"

  I wasn’t about to tell her I was done in.

  "The docking clamps on the station side. Ours are disengaged, but I can't ask them to set us loose. They're already trying to cut into the airlock."

  "I don’t know what a docking clamp is. Can you show me?"

  A screen on one side lit up, showing an image of a ship docked to a station, from the perspective of being in space between them. She pointed to the ship side couplings.

  "Those are the ships. Don’t touch those." She pointed again. "Those are the stations. Cut them or remove them without damaging the ship." The finger moved again. "Them too. The facilities hoses are better cut than yanked loose."

  I gulped, staring at the image. She didn’t want much.

  The floor began to vibrate slightly as the engines came up. She hit a switch, and the ship image on the other side of the bridge showed a shield around all but the front of the ship.

  And suddenly, I felt much better. I reached out to the energy of the shield, and let it flow through my being. The migraine halved in intensity, my fatigue fell away, and I began to concentrate my intent on the image. My sight expanded to encompass the front of the ship, and the station next to it. The clamps were there, and suddenly they weren't. The hoses vanished as well.

  "Go," I said.

  The ship immediately backed away from the station. Stuff popped up on the central screen, overlaying the receding station view. I sat back, feeling the ship with my senses.

  It was the weirdest feeling. It was like my body had expanded to be the size of the ship. I explored it, following the shield energy to the engines, and back to the power plants. Barely being used as they were, the energy coursed through me.

  For a moment I was back in the moment before I transported myself away from the mages attacking me, the feeling being similar to all the energy I was using to make the move happen. Only this was an order of magnitude greater.

  "What a rush," I murmured, and she shot me a look.

  "Feeling better?" she asked, sounding sarcastic.

  "Yes."

  "Good. Because any minute now, someone is going to start throwing things at us."

  Twelve

  "Damn them!"

  "What?"

  "They took everything from my cargo hold."

  She popped up a schematic of this deck.

  "Check the first stateroom to see if my stuff is still there."

  It wasn’t a request. I shifted my awareness, and looked inside.

  "Nothing there."

  "FUCK EM!"

  The ship jerked around, and started back towards the station.

  "What are you going to do?"

  She was already doing it. The main screen was now showing a list of things for sale, lots of them tagged for auction on station if not bought first.

  "There. Can you find that pallet of stuff?"

  "What do you think I am?"

  "I don’t care what you are. Can you do it or not?"

  This was something I’d never done. First I needed to focus on the list, then jump from the list to where it was, view it, and what now?

  "Where do you want it?"

  "First stateroom."

  I checked it again, and moved it.

  "Put the pallets on either side in the cargo hold. I suspect they're my food stocks."

  "Where in the ship? I need a plan showing the deck and the position."

  They popped up. I moved both pallets.

  "These next."

  She'd highlighted a series of containers.

&nbs
p; "Let me guess, your cargo?"

  "As far as I can tell, yes. Try and stack them neatly."

  I looked at her open mouthed for a moment, and closed it.

  I drew more on the energy in the shields, and one by one, the cargo hold began to fill up.

  "Hey, don’t do that?"

  "What?"

  "Drain my shields is what. We're going to need them in about a minute."

  "Why a minute?"

  The ship had turned again, and was now moving away from the station. A view popped up showing what was behind us.

  The station's police force had finally reacted to the ship leaving, and three ships were now coming around from behind the station.

  "Now what?" I asked her, looking worried.

  "Now they throw things at us. How much do you know about ships?"

  "Nothing."

  "Figures."

  "What should I know?"

  "How to blow up missiles before they hit us would be useful."

  "I'm open to suggestions."

  I should have been careful with word selection. I received a blast of verbiage about missiles, none of which I understood, but once again gave me an impression of someone military in origin.

  "Just show me where one might be vulnerable."

  A missile spec popped up. She jabbed at it with a finger.

  "Poke a hole in this wall, and it should blow up."

  I thought about it for a moment. It seemed easy enough.

  "Where do I draw power from, if not the shields?"

  "Why do you need power?"

  "I could do it if it was sitting on the deck here. Just holding sight of a missile in space would take all I had. Doing something inside it is going to take more. Doing it more than once is going to take a lot more."

  She looked at me, with a 'not understanding this' look on her face.

  "How far can you shine a light into the distance?"

  She nodded.