Yesterday's Spacemage

by Timothy Ellis

  "Yes."

  "No. It all started with how good she was at her job, unless I'm missing something. It tends to be men who get upset when challenged by a woman."

  Oddly, this seems to be universal. I'd seen the behavior in both my second life home, and among the trainees in my first life. Funny how third life seemed to sum up now. And yet, across time and space, the patterns were the same.

  "I wouldn't have thought you old enough to know that sort of thing."

  "Military is military, wherever and whenever you are."

  "Would you like to explain that?"

  "It’s a long story."

  "I have the time."

  I told him my whole story, including some of the events of my training years. I'm not sure he believed it all, but we talked for the rest of the afternoon, interrupted occasionally by a box pickup. By the time he left, he told me he was confident I had no lingering emotional issues. He also told me to look, at least once, since the offer was there. I laughed him out.

  An hour or so later, Wei Lin turned up again, much to my surprise. We had dinner together, and repeated a lot of the night before. At one point, her pad beeped, so she padded naked across the room to check it.

  "Lea says you can peek now."

  I sighed. I'd never met a girl who actually wanted a male to look at her naked before. Wei dropped down beside me again, and began a very specific massage.

  "You better. I think she'll be disappointed in you if you don’t. I don’t quite understand what she's wanting you to do, but doing it is the best option."

  "Ok. Keep doing what you're doing."

  I lay back, and even with hands and tongue distracting me, cast my sight to Lea's stateroom.

  It was empty.

  I moved to the bathroom, and there in the shower was a naked Lea, and another girl I didn’t know. They were entwined, kissing each other passionately, and obviously enjoying each other's bodies. As if she knew she was being watched, Lea dragged the other girl out, quickly toweled them both dry, and threw her down on the bed. They re-entwined. I quickly saw every bit of both girl's bodies, and what they were doing to each other. As a straight male, there was something wrong about what they were doing. But also as a straight male, what they were doing was very arousing.

  As their lovemaking became more intense, I stopped looking, and brought my awareness back to what Wei was doing. She seemed to sense I was back.

  "What were you doing?"

  "It's a bit like watching a vid, only there's no screen, and it's live."

  "You can do that?"

  "It's sort of a mind gift I was born with."

  "So you could actually see Lea and her companion?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you like what you saw?"

  "Two girls together doesn’t seem right to me, but I guess yes."

  "You liked it."

  "How can you tell?"

  "I stopped touching, and you didn’t notice. But still, there's this."

  "You better do something with it then."

  She did.

  Later we talked about love in the abstract.

  "Take love wherever it is offered my young Thorn. You never know when it will be the last time."

  She wasn’t that much older than me, but I guess her experience was vastly beyond mine.

  "Thank you for offering."

  She giggled. I had the impression Lea had organized tonight as well.

  As it turned out, it was also for the next night too.

  Forty

  Six ships ambushed us two jumps later.

  They fired within seconds of us appearing. I wondered why they were so far away though, since even I could figure out a few seconds flying time would guarantee a kill, where being a minute away would not. If I was staking out a jump point, and I knew when the target ship was coming through, I'd be sitting as close as I could get and not jump, so the target had no time to react.

  Thinking back though, none of those hitting us had been all that close. Or maybe it was missiles were not all that fast, but this couldn’t be so, could it? My thoughts were interrupted.

  "What the hell are they doing?" yelled Jenna.

  "Firing on us," I said, since there seemed to be a need to state the obvious.

  "They're military!" exclaimed Jess.

  I took a peek. The view on the bridge of the first one was so surprising, I checked the rest.

  "Were."

  "What?"

  "There seem to be two crews on board each ship. The ones in uniforms are all dead."

  "Pirates took a small squadron?" asked Lea.

  "How?" echoed Jess.

  "What should I do?" I asked.

  We had less than thirty seconds before the first missiles hit us.

  "Wipe the missiles as usual," said Jenna. "But how accurate can you be if you redirect them?"

  "What do you want?"

  I wiped away the missiles coming at us. If she wanted something else, it wouldn't be with these ones. Not enough time left.

  "Missiles hitting airlocks. Rather than destroying the ships, I'd like to leave them here for someone to find, so everyone knows these military were taken."

  "So damage them enough to kill everyone on them, but leave them basically intact?"

  "Yes."

  I did one better. Over the next three salvos, I used my force punch to hole each ship in key places, killing the crews through explosive decompression, and sent a missile in to make it look like it was missile damage. I had to wipe away more than half of them each time, but as each ship took hits, the number coming at us decreased.

  It took a lot longer to do, than it takes to describe. And I was drawing on a lot of energy. But oddly, there was no sign of a migraine beginning. It gave me some perspective on my force punch ability, and made me wonder when I was first training, or losing my temper, I was inadvertently drawing on some energy source I didn’t know was there. I'd been knocking down walls with my raw ability after all, and no-one else I knew had been tasked that way. Which at the time hadn't occurred to me, but now seemed to indicate I'd had either more raw power than anyone else I was training with, or, as seemed more likely now, I'd been drawing on some sort of energy source even then. As unlikely as it seemed, given what I was using now wasn’t even a mad dream back then. Or maybe enough magic users in one place created a magic energy store of some kind, and I'd tapped it without knowing. I'd probably never know for sure.

  The resulting mess in space was far enough from where ships jump in, so there was no need to do anything to warn future ships. Jenna had us on course for the next station as soon as the last ship stopped firing.

  "Do we want cargos?" I asked.

  "No," said Jenna, "leave everything exactly as it is. If the pirates removed anything, I want it be obvious it was them, to whoever finds them."

  "How are we going to explain this?" asked Jess.

  "No need to. No other ship was in range to see what happened. If we get asked, we jumped in to find six derelict ships, and assumed someone else had reported them already. Close enough to the truth, and our logs show we haven’t fired any missiles, if anyone looks. So it can't have been us destroying them."

  "Works for me," said Lea.

  I was a little disappointed about not being able to test Lea's new display. We'd been working on a cargo display which showed me in real time, where the empty slots were, so I didn’t need to ask in future. As I moved a container or pallet, even a box, the display would update, and all I had to do was include the free spot to move to, as part of the intent of the move. Next time.

  As it turned out, what worked for Lea, didn’t work at all. When we picked up the local news feed, it was led with a lot of hype over a military squadron going missing, with calls for anyone knowing their whereabouts to let the local military office know.

  There was a quick debate, and Jenna sent off a message telling them there were six derelict ships at the jump point we'd come in from. But she made a point of not putting her name on the m
essage, just the ship's name. The obvious hope was the ship would be unknown to whoever received the message, where Jenna's name was more likely to be. Jess saw the confusion on my face, and explained Jenna's resignation had received a lot of media hype at the time, especially since no reasons were given, and no interviews happened to satisfy either the media or the public. Apparently, up and coming junior officers didn’t just up and quit on a whim.

  There was no such luck on remaining unknown. The reply came directed at Jenna, including her rank when she quit the service, and not the ship.

  "Sons of bitches!" exclaimed Jenna on reading it.

  "What?" asked Jess.

  "I'm listed as an active reserve officer."

  "How can they do that?" asked Lea.

  "It's in the Regs. Once an officer, always an officer, and they can call you back as a reserve any time they want, as long as there's a good reason for it. Its normal in wartime, but the last time I checked, there wasn’t an active war. Just the usual border skirmishes."

  "Do you know the reason?"

  "I didn’t even get a bloody notification!"

  "Better check the fine print on your discharge," I suggested.

  "The hell with them!" Jenna was now showing her temper. "They don’t get to side line my career, discharge me, and then call me back up. Not when it’s all mixed in with piracy, and slavery."

  The response she sent made it quite clear Jenna considered herself to be a private citizen, and included mentioning she'd had no notification of being called back, even as a reservist. She even suggested exactly where they could go if they tried to recall her.

  Like water off a duck's back, her whole response was ignored. All they wanted was an officer's assessment of the condition of the ships.

  She told them they were, quote, shot up, unquote, and if they wanted more details, they should go look for themselves. They told her to go back and make a decent assessment. She told them precisely which hell they could go to.

  The rest of us sat watching the exchange of messages, grinning, and making suggestions.

  Eventually they gave up trying, and we continued on towards the station. Sometime later, a military courier ship shot past us.

  Thinking it was the last of it, we all went back to what we were doing before the jump.

  It wasn’t the last of it.

  Forty One

  "There's military uniforms at the dock."

  "How many?" asked Jenna.

  "Thirteen. One seems to be an officer, and is unarmed. The others are armed to the teeth."

  "What's the insignia on the officer's shoulders?"

  I had no idea what it was, so I described it.

  "Major," said Jess. "For a station like this, probably the CO for the local recruiting office."

  I kept both my confusion and curiosity in check. I'd never felt the need to look up anything to do with the military out here. What had happened to Jenna was enough to put me off. A military which condoned rape, was something to be avoided. But suddenly, lack of knowledge left me struggling to understand what was happening.

  Jenna continued docking, and no-one spoke again until after the docking clamps engaged.

  "We'd better all go to the airlock then," said Jenna. "Armed. There is no way in this cosmos I'm going back in, and they're not going to try."

  "I'll get the guns," said Jess.

  Before she could move, I dropped a gun belt in front of each of them, and my own on the seat next to me.

  "Thanks Thorn. Meet us at the airlock please."

  "On my way."

  I took a detour past the armoury. I carefully selected three heavy weapons, one each for the girls, and placed them at the wall beside the airlock. I was last to arrive of course, as a result. No-one said anything though. They had the heavy guns in their arms, and were making sure they were ready to fire.

  Before opening the airlock, Jenna pressed a button, and a view of outside came up on a screen.

  "Not the local CO," she muttered.

  "Explains the courier ship though," said Jess.

  "You know him?" I asked.

  "He's a troubleshooter," said Jenna. "Works out of the regional naval office, even though he's not navy. Interesting. They only send him when someone else has already failed."

  There was silence for a full minute.

  "Hadn't you better find out what he wants?" I asked.

  Jenna rounded on me.

  "Don’t tell me what to do!"

  She sighed, and her face eased into something a little less ferocious.

  "Thorn, they do not enter the ship, and they do not take me with them. Understood?"

  "How far do I go?"

  "Don’t kill any of them."

  "Don't kill, yes captain."

  Her look said she wanted to yell at me, but she said nothing, turning back to the airlock controls. The inner door slid open, followed by the outer one. The three of them stepped forward to the line of the outer door, but remained inside the ship. I followed, but stayed behind them.

  The man waiting outside stepped up close, but stopped short of the bottom of the ramp, leaving plenty of room between him and Jenna. The size of her gun might have had something to do with it.

  "Lieutenant Commander…"

  "I am not," grated Jenna, "and have never been, a Lieutenant Commander. What game are you playing at Major?"

  "No games. I assure you. You were promoted at the same time as you were recalled to duty."

  "And when was this?"

  He quoted a date, which meant nothing to me. Another of those things I hadn't bothered with yet.

  "Bullshit! You know where I was on that date Major?"

  "No, where?"

  "On the slave block, about to be sold to some corporate pig-shit, the government denies buy slaves. Someone in the military organized it."

  Give him some points, he looked totally confused, and more than a little shocked.

  "You can prove this?"

  "Which part?"

  "All of it."

  For a moment I thought she was going to shoot him. He did too, and he stepped back involuntarily. Not that the extra distance would have helped if she had.

  "Not. Yet. But we will."

  "That’s a serious accusation."

  "Only when I find the rat bastard it gets aimed at. And by then, I'll have the proof to make it stick."

  He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again. Jenna didn’t let him get the next word in.

  "Tell me why I’ve not received notification of either the rank change, or being recalled to duty? It should have been a priority message, which I’d have received when I picked up my emails the first time after it was sent. I didn’t receive anything."

  He pulled out his pad, hit a key, and started talking to someone quietly. His expression darkened as the conversation went on. He put his pad away.

  "I don’t understand this. There is no evidence of the notification getting through to this end of space. And yet, my orders included a copy of it."

  "Someone didn’t want me getting the notification it seems. Perhaps it was the same person who sold me to the slavers?"

  "Perhaps. It warrants investigation anyway."

  "You do that Major. Now if you don’t mind, I have cargo to offload."

  "Commander, I don’t think you understand."

  "I understand perfectly. Do you?"

  "Of course I do. I was briefed fully."

  "So you understand a superior officer raped me, had his superiors cover it up, and send me to a back of nowhere command, where I’d never see a promotion again. I resigned my commission. I'm out, and I will not, ever, have anything to do with any organization which condones rape. I don’t care if I've been recalled. I will not be coming back. Not even if Captain Rapist is brought up on charges, and flung out an airlock."

  "He's now a junior Admiral."

  "FUCK!"

  "No need to use such language Commander."

  "I AM NOT A FUCKING COMMANDER!" />
  The man seemed to sway back slightly, as the force of her statement washed over him. It wasn’t me either, although I’d been half tempted to knock him over. The team at his back however, reacted to the outburst by raising their guns. The major found his voice again.

  "Are you refusing to be recalled to active service?"

  "Yes."

  "What about your friends?"

  "What about them?"

  "Are they refusing as well?"

  "Are you fucking tell me all three of us are recalled?"

  "Yes, of course."

  I couldn’t help it. I started laughing.

  "For the record," said Jess, her voice sounding like metal grating on metal, "neither of us received notifications either. And you're not recalling us either."

  "You all refuse?"

  I wondered how this man reached Major, let alone be some sort of troubleshooter. He seemed as thick as two short planks.

  "Of course we all do," grated Jenna.

  "Then I'm afraid I must declare you to be deserters, and have the marines here take you into custody."

  "Deserters? How do you work that out?"

  "In times of war, refusal to be recalled is an act of desertion."

  "What war?"

  "The brass think war is almost upon us, and are actively preparing for it."

  "So there is no war yet?"

  "Not yet. But it will be soon."

  "You got that right Major. There will be a war soon, but not the one the high muckety mucks think there will be."

  "What war are you talking about?"

  "The war on slavers and pirates, Major. The one which should be being waged by the military, and isn’t. Since you lot won't do anything, I will. I don’t have time for your make-believe war, I have my own to fight."

  "You're not making any sense Commander. There is no piracy to speak of, and slavery was banned hundreds of years ago, and the slavers wiped out."

  The four of us glared at him. He looked at us one by one, and saw the same expression each time.

  "You are misinformed Major. There is a pirate station not all that far from here. It regularly holds slave auctions. We've been attacked by pirate ships a number of times now. You can't tell me there are no pirates. I know better. And how do you explain six dead navy ships?"